Page 68 of Psycho

“That’s where Viper and crew come in,” Nera said.

“Yes.”

She ran a gentle hand along my thigh that was giving me inappropriate thoughts, but I shoved them down.

“What’s the plan then?”

My phone chimed with a notification from my cameras. I pulled it up to see a black SUV ring the buzzer. I recognized Viper in the driver’s seat and buzzed him in through the gate.

I picked up my phone.

Me: We’re inside Rumble. You can’t miss it.

Viper: I see it.

They entered shortly after, my guys making faces of disgust at the vampires. I would need a talk with them about that. Natural enemies or not, we needed each other.

Viper, Shadow, Phoenix, and Venom entered. I greeted the wolf with a head nod and we quickly huddled together.

“To make a long story short, these girls were kidnapped by a vamp named Deon and his crew. Unfortunately, to rescue them, I had to use UV bullets.”

I watched them all flinch, except Venom.

“The victims saw them turn to ash. The main one, Deon, he was set on fire by Nera, but he healed enough to get away. They girls have been asking questions. Most of them are local to Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and have family coming to get them soon. I think it’s a good idea to just bamboozle them to remember the guys getting shot and killed with regular bullets and not turning to ash. Take away the fire part of the story with Deon. Let the cops go after him.”

“I got this,” Phoenix said.

“Oh, and the black eyes. They were very frightened by that,” I added, remembering what Nera told me.

“On it,” Phoenix said.

I looked at Viper.

“He’s the oldest of all of us. He has the coercion down pat. That’s what we call what you refer to as bamboozling,” Viper explained.

“Excuse me,” Phoenix shouted.

I looked at my guys and made a cut-throat motion with my hand, indicating for them to not look at Phoenix. The guy was a huge fucker, probably 6’4 with flaming red hair. I’d seen him be able to create fire too. I had no idea how he could do that, or how Shadow could disappear into thin air, but I knew sometimes vampires came with special powers. I didn’t think Viper had any.

The girls looked at Phoenix.

“Hi, ladies. Let’s sit at this table right here.” He indicated a large round table. The five of them sat down with him while Nera clung to my side. “My name is Gabriel. You can call me Gabe if you want.” He smiled. “Listen, I know you sweet girls have been through a lot, but listen—I have something really cool to share with you.” His voice was also hypnotic and deep, with a slow, calm Southern accent.

He went on to do exactly as we discussed. He didn’t take their kidnapping experience away, but he just changed a few small supernatural details away from the rescue effort. We were worried about human cops going up against the remaining vampire kidnappers, but at this point, we didn’t have a choice. The girls would remember what they did and when the cops put out an APB for Deon, they probably wouldn’t get very far.

But we would.

I instructed Chaos and Strife to grab the grocery getter and take the girls to the local Greyhound station and stay there with them until they were all picked up.

Trigger, Menace, Nera, and I sat with the Nighthawks and explained everything from start to finish.

“You should have called me,” Viper said, narrowing hazel eyes at me.

“I knew you were going to say that, but I didn’t think you’d appreciate my UV guns. I didn’t need any of you getting caught in the crossfire,” I replied.

“We aren’t ‘caught-in-the-crossfire’ types,” Shadow snarked.

I ignored that and looked at Viper. “Do you know a vamp named Deon?”

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