The purr of the engine settled my nerves as I drove out of the posh downtown neighborhood and turned onto Maritime Drive, the street that divided witch territory from vampire. The street was lined with colorful restaurants, bars, and even a nightclub or—
The hair on the back of my neck stood at attention and my foot slipped off the gas.
Something wasn’t right.
Something was very, very wrong.
The car slowed as I hit the phone button on my steering wheel.
“Lachlan,” our king’s second-in-command answered.
“Everything okay back there?” I couldn’t kick the foreboding that sat perched on my shoulder. My stomach heaved like I’d eaten something rotten.
“Aye,” he confirmed.
“You’re sure? Everyone accounted for?” Jerking the wheel, I pulled into the nearest parking spot and lurched out of the car, taking my cell phone with me.
“We’re all here. Alek, Hawke, and I are in the war room, and the Hunters are crashed out on the couch in the living room watching their thirteen-billionth hour of local news. They ran out of NASA documentaries earlier tonight. What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure.” My stomach seized again, cramping and twisting as my feet hit the sidewalk in front of a popular night club. “Avianna?”
“In her room with Jocelyn,” Hawke answered. “Though why Alek continues to let a witch on the premises, I’ll never know.”
“They’re friends,” Alek retorted. “And I’m pretty sure Jocelyn left about an hour ago.”
“Check,” I ordered, ignoring the staring humans as I sucked in a breath. The nausea gripped me with iron fists. The last time I’d felt like this, my parents had been found murdered alongside Alek’s.
“He’s going,” Lachlan said through the phone.
“Everything going okay with Saint tonight?” I managed to ask through gritted teeth, doing my best to not stick my head between my knees.
Saint was a fucking match in the middle of a gas station, waiting to incinerate us all. He’d already been driven toward bloodmadness before the Hunters had entered stasis and now that they were awake, we all took turns monitoring the vampire for signs that he’d slide into darkness.
God help us if that happened, because I wasn’t sure any of us could destroy Saint with his twin brother, Samuel, defending him. They were classic Cain and Abel, and there was nothing Samuel wouldn’t do—including put himself and the rest of their brotherhood into stasis for hundreds of years—to protect Saint.
“He fed normally and seemed okay when we saw him last, but that was around seven,” Lachlan said. “We’ve been mapping out the pattern of the latest attacks while you’ve been at your appointment.”
It was close to midnight now.
A couple swiftly moved out of my way as I strode toward the velvet rope, led by a compulsion I couldn’t identify. My stomach clenched and my mouth watered, filling with saliva like I was about to vomit, but I hadn’t been sick in at least a hundred years. What the fuck was going on?
“Benedict, what—” Alek started.
A figure stumbled out of the club, crying hysterically, her hands thrown out in front of her as she hurtled toward the ground in a tangle of lavender hair.
Fuck. I was immediately at her side, catching her in my arms before she could meet the pavement. The cool kiss of frozen air on my neck told me I’d wended without even knowing it. It’s dark. No one saw. At least, that’s what I told myself.
She stiffened in my arms, shoving at me as she screamed, striking at me with her fists.
“Jocelyn!” I shouted, deflecting the hits and sending my phone crashing to the sidewalk.
“Get away!” She shouted, scrambling back from me, her short, black dress riding up the back of her thighs as she turned and retched, vomiting over the curb as she scraped her knees on the sidewalk.
The second the scent of her blood hit me, all citrus and lavender, my nausea disappeared.
“Jocelyn?” I heard Alek shout through the phone.
“Damn!” I lunged again, catching her before she fell into oncoming traffic. “Are you okay?”
“Fine!” She retched again, her body convulsing behind a curtain of purple hair. Now that was a smell I could live without.
“Fucking hell. It’s me, Jocelyn. Benedict.” My arm burned, and I knew there would be a new lie inked into my skin if I pulled back my sleeve.
She retched once more and fell back against me, gripping my vest with wide eyes that stared into nothing. Her pupils were blown. “Benedict?” The panic in her voice broke my heart.
“It’s me,” I promised, lifting her by her elbows to get her off her scraped knees. Then gravity shifted as I got my first clear look at her face in the streetlight. “Oh, God.”
Her lip was busted and the entire side of her face swollen and turning a shade darker than her hair.
“What happened to you?” I was going to fucking kill someone.