Page 97 of Angel Of Darkness

So what? Was he supposed to act surprised? No, not his way. Carlos nodded. “I know. That’s why I want to take her out. She killed my brother in Mexico.”

The men around him all glanced at Big Mike.

Mike swallowed. “Mine, too.”

What? Really? Carlos almost smiled. Talk about a fucking perfect cover story! He couldn’t have planned that one better.

“I want her to pay,” Carlos said and let his voice vibrate with fury. “I want her to hurt, I want her to beg, and I want her to bleed.”

“Good luck.” Mike rubbed the stubbly line of his jaw. “That vamp’s got some kind of guard dog. The bastard won’t let anyone close.”

Carlos tried very hard not to let his excitement show at that news.

One of Mike’s gang members muttered, “Probably uses him for fucking and sucking.”

Probably.

“He’s the one who broke my hand because I was touching his whore,” Mike admitted.

“You were getting ready to stake her...” This line came from the same man who’d spoken before. The one with a big red lump on his forehead.

Big Mike grunted. “He took us all out.” He waved a hand toward his tight-jawed men. “If we couldn’t take him, you damn sure ain’t gonna have any better luck with the freak.”

Maybe. “I will if you help me.”

Now that had Mike looking interested.

“Your mistake was that you tried to take them down when they were together.” Huge mistake, especially for humans going up against supernaturals. “We need to separate them.”

Mike started nodding.

“We want the vamp, right? She’s our target.” The idiot would believe anything he said.

Mike licked his lips. There were murmurs from the men. A few “damns straights” and one “fuck, yeah.” After a minute, Big Mike confirmed, “Yeah, that bitch is the one I want to stake.”

“You’ll get your chance.” Eventually. “But first, we’ve got to break them apart. Break them apart, make them weak, then we attack.” Because Nicole St. James, killer and Taken vamp, wouldn’t be nearly as fierce on her own. Not once she lost the angel on her shoulder.

“So how we gonna do it?” Mike wanted to know. “How the hell are we supposed to get her away from him?”

Now that was the hard part. But, luckily, he had a plan. “Leave that to me. You just get your men ready to jump her.”

Lie. Lie.

Mike and his men were his plan. They were his bait and his distraction. Because Nicole and her angel would be so focused on them that the vamp wouldn’t even realize the true danger until it was too late.

“We’ve got to act fast.” The faster, the better. “We’re gonna need to attack before the sun sets.” No sense in going up against a stronger vamp. Not while there was still daylight left.

“You know where she is?”

Shifters had good noses for a reason. They were the best at tracking. Once he’d caught her scent at Temptation, he’d followed her all the way back home.

He’d always had the strongest nose in the pack. Blood, fire, and sex—it wasn’t easy to miss that combination. Tracking Nicole had been fucking child’s play.

“I know.” He smiled. “Now let’s go and drag that bitch into the sunlight.”

Nicole woke with her heart racing and her body shaking as the nightmare still played in her mind.

The alley. The blood. The monster.

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