"Fuck you," the Minion spat.
Dante threw another punch, then drew his blade and leaned it against the human's cheek.
"Go ahead and kill me, vampire. I'll tell you nothing."
The urge to oblige the mind slave was hugely tempting, but Dante hauled him off the ground instead. He slammed the Minion into the cinder-block wall of the nearest tenement house, taking dark pleasure in the audible crack of his skull as it bounced off the hard bricks.
"How about if I just cut you up piece by piece?" he hissed, his voice a low growl through his fangs. "I don't care if you talk, but I'll sure as hell enjoy hearing you scream." The Minion grunted as Dante's blade pressed into his fleshy neck. Dante felt him squirm, heard the click of a safety coming off a handgun. Before he could wrestle it away from him, the Minion's arm came up to the side of them.
He didn't raise the weapon on Dante but on himself. In a split second, the human had the barrel up to his temple, then he fired.
"Goddamn it!"
The explosion flashed orange in the darkness, the percussion ricocheting off the tall buildings around them. The Minion dropped to the wet ground like an anvil, blood and gore spread around him in a grisly halo.
Dante looked down at his own injuries, the sundry scrapes on his hands, the deep wound cutting across his right thigh. It hadn't been that long since he'd fed, so his body was strong and it wouldn't take much time for him to heal. A couple of hours, maybe less. But he needed someplace safe to do so.
Above him, lights came on in a few of the surrounding apartments. A curtain parted in a window across the way. Somebody let out a horrified scream. It wouldn't be long before a call went out to the police, probably already had.
Shit.
He had to get out of there, pronto. Chase was already long gone in the SUV, which was good, all things considered. As for Dante, he couldn't very well drive off in the busted-out sedan and not be conspicuous. Sucking up the pain in his lacerated thigh, he pivoted around and took off on foot, leaving the dead Minions and the abandoned car behind him in the street.
Chapter Twenty
Tess dried the last of the dinner dishes and put them away in the cabinet next to the sink. As she snapped the plastic lid onto the leftover chicken marsala, she felt a pair of eyes boring into the back of her skull.
"You've got to be kidding me," she said, pivoting her head over her shoulder to look down at the whining little beast at her feet. "Harvard, are you still hungry? You do realize you've been eating practically nonstop since you got here."
The terrier's tufted brows quirked over his chocolate-brown eyes, his ears lifting high as he cocked his head at an adorable angle. When that didn't get her to move fast enough, he tilted his head in the other direction and raised one paw off the tile. Tess laughed. "All right, you shameless charmer. I'll give you some of the good stuff."
She walked over and retrieved the small bowl that had been licked clean of its second helping of canned Iams. Harvard trotted along, following her every step of the way. He'd been glued to her side all day, her new shadow since she'd made the decision to bring him home so she could keep a closer eye on him.
It wasn't something she'd ever done before with her patients, but then she'd never used her hands to heal one of them either. Harvard was special, and he seemed to be equally attached to her, as if he knew she'd brought him back from the brink today. After a round of IV fluids, some food, and a flea dip, he was a whole new dog. She didn't have the heart to leave him alone in the empty clinic kennels after everything he'd been through. Now he had decided she was his new best friend.
"Here you go," she said, cutting up a few small pieces of cooked chicken and dropping them in his bowl. "Try to pace yourself this time, okay?"
As Harvard went to town on the food, Tess put the rest of the leftovers in the refrigerator, then turned and poured herself another glass of chardonnay. She strode into the living room, where she'd left off with her sculpting. It had felt good to be working with her clay again, especially after the strange couple of days--and nights--she'd had.
Although she hadn't sat down with any plan for what she would make, Tess wasn't surprised when the lump of light brown Westklay began to take a familiar form. It was rough so far, only the general hint of a face beneath the tousled waves of thick hair she'd worked into the clay. Tess sipped her wine, knowing that if she went back to continue, she would only obsess and be at it all night, unable to tear herself away until the piece was finished.
Like she and Harvard had bigger plans or something?
Putting her wineglass down on the worktable, Tess pulled her wheeled stool over and took a seat. She started shaping the face, using a wire loop to gently carve the slope of the strong forehead and brow, then the nose and the lean angle of the cheekbones. In little time, her fingers were moving on automatic pilot, her mind disengaged and gone into its own flow, her subconscious directly commanding her hands into action.
She didn't know how long she'd been working, but when the hard rap sounded on her apartment door some time later, Tess nearly jumped out of her skin. Sleeping next to her feet on the rug, Harvard woke with a grunt.
"You expecting someone?" she asked quietly as she got up from her stool.
God, she must have been really zoned out while she was sculpting, because she'd seriously messed up around the mouth area of the piece. The lips were curled back in some kind of snarl, and the teeth...
The knock sounded again, followed by a deep voice that went through her like a bolt of electricity.
"Tess? Are you there?"
Dante.
Tess's eyes flew wide, then squeezed into a wince as she did a quick mental inventory of her appearance. Hair flung up into a careless knot on top of her head, braless in her white thermal henley and faded red sweats that had more than one dried clay smudge on them. Not exactly fit for company. "Dante?" she asked, stalling for time and just wanting to be sure her ears weren't playing tricks on her. "Is that you?"