It was impossible to mistake what he was asking of me. I knew I should’ve been stoic about it, but I had never had much control over my emotions. But I should’ve just said yes. It’s what Danny would’ve done, in a heartbeat, if I had asked this of him. But the idea of hurting him—even a monstrous version of him—made my insides feel like they were filled with a nest of pissed-off wasps.
“Danny, it was just a little blood.”
“What if there had been two of them? Or if we’d gotten jumped by something else after taking the vamp out? It’s happened before.”
“We’ve always been fine.”
“Because we’ve beenlucky, Michael! And maybe next time or the time after that, we won’t be. And I need to know that I won’t eventually become an undeadthingthat hurts other people for fun.” He took a swig from the bottle, wincing a little as he swallowed. Then he fixed me with those impossibly deep, dark eyes. “I need you to promise me, Michael. Promise me you won’t let me be a monster.Ever.”
And I couldn’t say no to him. Somehow, I no longer wanted to.
“You’ll never walk a single day on this earth as a monster, Danny. I won’t let that happen to you. I promise.”
Danny relaxed and handed the bottle back over to me. “Good. And I promise the same thing. If you ever get turned into something that isn’t human, I’ll take care of it. You won’t wake up. You’ll just be at peace.”
“Right,” I said, taking another swig, mostly so I wouldn’t have to look into his eyes and see the relief there. I relished the way the alcohol burned all the way down my throat. But it couldn’t take the edge off of the fact that I might’ve just lied to the only person I loved.
Now
CHAPTER ONE || DANNY
The lamia snarled as it picked Michael Sullivan—my hunting partner of the last five years—up by the lapels of his denim jacket, clearly intent on biting his head off. Its double rows of razor-sharp teeth could chomp through bone, no problem.
Well, fuck. So much for diplomacy.
Icy terror rocketed through me at the prospect of Michael’s impending demise, but I was pretty used to working through that kind of shit on the fly.
“You can shoot it any time you like,” Michael said, somehow managing to sound way too calm even though he was inches away from a grisly death. Anyone else would’ve been shitting themselves. Or screaming. Or possibly both.
I aimed the barrel of my gun right at the lamia’s head.
The creature’s double rows of red eyes—double everything, really, since it also had two sets of arms to go with the extra-long snake tail it was sporting—flicked over to me and widened with alarm.
It seemed to understand what was about to happen, because it dropped Michael to the ground in an unceremonious heap—served him right—and immediately turned to flee for the hole it had somehow managed to burrow into the side of the solid cement basement wall.
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” I muttered.
The creature had already killed at least three people that we knew of in the past month. And probably a whole lot more than that over the years. It would obviously keep killing, too. Michael had even tried totalkto it, to make sure it was actually evil, which is how he’d gotten scooped up in the first place, like a goddamn idiot.
Without any further hesitation, I pulled the trigger.
The shotgun kicked, slamming into my shoulder.
I hadn’t braced myself properly—there wasn’t any time for that—so the impact jolted through my entire body. I staggered backward and my jaw snapped shut with the force of it. I was lucky I didn’t chip a tooth.
The mixture of salt and silver exploded out of the end of the gun and lodged itself in the creature.
The lamia screamed—probably, anyway: my ears were ringing too loudly to know for sure—but it thrashed around for a bit, literal smoke steaming off it.
Silver for the win.
To his credit, Michael didn’t hesitate again. He scrambled to his feet, snatched his machete off the ground, and with one sure stroke, chopped the creature’s head off.
The lamia’s body went limp at once.
Its head rolled a few feet away, its mouth still twisted into an ugly snarl, its rows of jagged teeth, like a shark’s mouth, glinting against the dim overhead light.
I doubled over, letting my terror and its accompanying nausea subside. It left me feeling jangly and wrung out. When the ringing in my ears finally stopped, I straightened up and fixed Michael with a hard glare. “Will you stop trying to talk sense into the monsters now? Before one of them finally eats you?”