Page 52 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

Surprisingly, it was the kitchen maid, who I hadn’t taken for a badass. But I guessed so because she threw another spell at us a second later, some kind of shield, and screamed something at the other girl. Something that my useless translator didn’t know but which was probably the local vernacular for “run.”

Another door was at the back of the small room, but the waitress didn’t run for it. Instead, she helped to fortify the shield while arguing with her friend. But then Pritkin took their protection down with a flick of his wrist, and all hell broke loose.

I got clocked by an invisible fist to the jaw, sending me reeling backward; Alphonse hit the ground snarling, jumped up, and shoved me behind him; and Pritkin swore and yelled something that the girls weren’t listening to because they were busy pummeling me.

Or they were trying to. But the blows landed on an already pissed-off master vamp instead, and that wasn’t good. He was gonna go off any moment if they didn’t—

Yep, right on cue.

Alphonse threw himself into the fray, ignoring the hits like they weren’t even there, and snatched the waitress away from her buddy. And got a hand around her throat, squeezing hard enough to make her yelp and causing the kitchen maid to go ballistic. A human would have been dead under the hurt she put on him, and why the hell was someone that strong a kitchen maid?

But she had clearly never met a master vampire before because her eyes got big as the long, bloody, knife-like rents that another spell put in his body closed up almost as fast as she could make them.

Alphonse grinned at her. “I can do this all day.”

“What are you, Captain America?” I asked, picking myself up. And keeping Rhosier between me and the girl because I couldn’t heal like that.

“Don’t know. Always thought I had the ass for it—”

“And don’t hurt her!”

“I ain’t planning to hurt her. But the more I gotta heal, the hungrier I’m likely to get,” he said, and those terrible fangs re-emerged.

They made even me shudder, and I’d grown up with vamps. But what they were doing to her was . . . nothing. What had happened to the delicate flower that had passed out in the kitchen?

I was beginning to suspect that that had been an act to get out of there quickly and find her friend, since the only thing that happened when Alphonse got scary was that she snarled back at him.

“Touch her and die, vampire,” she spat.

He looked at the waitress, who he still had in one hand. “I’m already touching her.”

“Then let her go, and perhaps I will spare your miserable hide!”

“Miserable?” Alphonse looked down at himself and then glanced back at his ass. “That why you were ‘mirin’ earlier?”

“What?” she looked confused.

“You were checking out the bod when you had me splayed up there on the wall. Which good one, by the way. I couldn’t move for a second.”

This time, she was the one blinking, as if she didn’t know which of those statements to answer first. “I was not!” she finally said.

“Was not what?” he asked, like they were having a casual conversation over coffee. “’Mirin’?”

“That—that’s not a word,” she said, looking flustered.

“Is so.”

“It is not! I know your tongue!”

He grinned. “Not yet, but maybe we can work something out later.”

Pritkin cleared his throat. “I hate to interrupt—”

“Then don’t,” Alphonse said and widened his grin at the girl, who did not appear to know what to do with that. Since he hadn’t retracted the fangs first, I wouldn’t have, either. I decided to get involved because I hadn’t done anything stupid in a couple of minutes now, so I was due.

“We don’t mean you any harm,” I told her, peeking out from behind Rhosier and pushing him forward a little. “Go on. Tell her.”

“They . . . may be trustworthy. Lord Emrys vouches for them—”

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