“Lisa Durant.”
“Was dead.” Her shoulders tensed. “I don’t remember anything that happened in between that alley and that room. I just remember—”
“I was there,” Simon spoke, holding the cop’s gaze and daring him for a challenge. “I saw the vamps kill the woman. They left Dee in her blood. I saw it all.”
“Bullshit.” Tony stepped forward. “I don’t buy that—”
“It’s my story.” A brief pause. “The one I’ll tell everyone I see if you so much as even think about hauling Dee away from here.” Not going to happen. His temples throbbed in a sickening, painful rhythm.
No one could threaten Dee. She was too important.
“Oh, so you’re just gonna f**king out the vampires?” Disgust had Tony’s lips tightening.
“They outed themselves.” Maybe it was time for the whole world to stop pretending. Feeding rooms were cropping up in most cities—and dumb humans were stumbling inside, some quickly getting addicted to vamp bites. Some never making it back out. Lucky for the vamps, they’d perfected the body ditch over the years.
“There’s a Born Master coming to town,” Dee said and she tilted her head. Simon’s eyes narrowed. Yeah, that was his mark on her neck and he knew the cop saw it. No blood drawn, no bite since Dee didn’t like that. But a sweet suck had done the trick. “I’m the best vampire hunter at Night Watch. You take me out of this game, and there’s no telling what hell will come to the city.”
Tony’s eyes widened. Ah, so the dick hadn’t ever come across a Born? Then he didn’t know what hell looked like. “You can’t kill Borns the way you can most vampires.” No, they were so much harder to slay. He’d once heard of a Born who’d survived a stake to the heart and a partial beheading.
Their bodies were tougher. They healed ten times faster than the Taken. When you were changed into a vampire, you brought some of your human weaknesses with you.
But when you were Born a vampire…
There was no weakness for you. Not once the powers kicked in and the bloodlust began.
“Who are you?” Tony demanded again.
“Ease up, Tony. Simon’s not the bad guy here.” She unfolded her arms. “He knows what I’m up against. He can help me.”
“And I can’t?”
“No.”
Tony flinched.
“You’re a cop. You protect innocents.” She shook her head. “But your job isn’t to kill vampires.”
“Some days it is,” he fired back.
Simon’s brows shot up. So the cop had some bite, did he?
“I know things look bad right now,” Dee said.
“You ran, Dee. Innocent people don’t run.”
Okay, his fault. Simon rolled his shoulders. “I didn’t give Dee much choice. When I hauled her out of that pit, she was barely conscious. Sirens were wailing—I just couldn’t risk her.”
“You couldn’t, huh?”
“No.” Nothing more to say on that. “The woman on the floor was dead. Dee wasn’t. My priority was getting her to safety.”
“Yeah, cause getting in her pants had nothing to do with it, right?”
Fuck him. Simon attacked. In a second’s time, he had the cop pinned to the wall as his fist twisted the front of Tony’s shirt. “Don’t…talk about Dee like that.”
A tap on the back of his shoulder. “Ease up. Tony just turns into an ass**le when he’s worried.”
“He needs to watch that tendency. It’ll get him into trouble soon.” He held the cop’s stare. “Real soon.” He unknotted his fingers.
“Christ, Dee, where’d you find him?” Tony muttered, straightening his shirt.
“In an alley, one littered with bullets.” She pushed in between the two of them. “Same place I found you a few years back.”
A grunt, then his lips started to curl, just a bit.
“Tony, we were attacked right before dawn. Some guys in ski masks found us at Simon’s house. They shot up the place.” Her hand lifted to her shoulder. To the wound Simon had all but forgotten when he’d had her in that bed. “We were lucky to get out alive.”
“Hell.”
“Yeah, that’s where we are.” She swallowed and Simon heard the soft click. “But I’ll be damned if I stay here. I’m not going to keep hiding out, waiting for the vamps to strike. We needed to rest. We needed to recover—done that.”
Simon knew where this was going. Knew, and didn’t like it.
“Now it’s time to hunt these bastards,” she said. “Because I really don’t like it when jerkoffs try to kill me, especially when I’m already down.”
“Can’t say I like it much, either,” Simon added.
Tony’s gaze snapped to him, then back to Dee. “You really think you’ll be able to find the vamps?”
A little shrug. “It’s what I do.” Her chin was up. The woman was cute when she was promising death. “I was weak before, I’m not now.”
Yeah, um, humans didn’t recover that fast from concussions and gunshots. Maybe she was feeling all good and vampire-pumped-for-killing, but the woman still wasn’t 100 percent.
Neither was he.
Not yet.
“Brass is leaning on me like a tree about to fall.” Tony blew out a hard breath. “It’s those witnesses who say they saw you fighting with the vic at Onyx. They’re nailing your coffin shut.”
Her gaze darted to Simon. “That part’s right, Tony. Lisa…met me behind the bar. She was working for the vamps.”
“A lure?” the cop asked.
“More a messenger,” Simon said. “You know, the cheery kind that comes and says You’re going to die. Beg for death. Blah. Blah.”
Tony blinked.
Dee gave a little shrug. “She pissed me off. I lost my temper.”
“That’s the problem.” Lines of worry tightened the cop’s face. “Too many folks know about that temper of yours. It’s not a leap to think you met up with the woman again, and got angry one more time, so angry you didn’t stop yourself when the stake came out. After all, it’s easy to kill, isn’t it? So easy.”
The guy sounded like he was speaking from experience. As if he could ever compare. “Give us time and we’ll prove Dee’s innocent.” The words snapped out. Not what he’d been planning. Simon rubbed his temples. The throbbing was getting worse. The sleep hadn’t been enough for him. To recover fully, he’d need so much more.