“Was she a last-minute change?” Jimmy asked, easily their least prepared and most immature pack member. “Or is she in the way wrong place at the absolutely worst time?”
Devon directed his gaze back toward the private road. “I don’t know.”
“I recognize that chick.” Andy scratched his nose, expression troubled. His dirty-blond hair stuck up at all angles, the result of using his fingers for a comb after his surf earlier. “She’s in my physics class. Damn smart. Dresses like a poor street kid. Smells funny.”
Devon remembered the way the gal had scowled when he’d noticed her lack of jewelry, something none of Samantha’s friends would leave the house without. They wore bling like it was an art form. Instead of inviting scrutiny, as Samantha always did, this woman shied away from it. If her eyes could’ve literally shot knives, he would’ve had to change to his wolf form to heal from the wounds.
“Why would Vlad be interested in a poor street kid?” Dillon asked.
“He wouldn’t, unless there is something we don’t know.” Devon bit back the annoyance in his voice. Surprises were liable to get his whole pack killed. He turned back to Andy. “Smells funny how?”
Andy shrugged and ran his fingers through his hair. “Dunno. She just…doesn’t smell right.”
Devon pushed away from the bumper of his car. “Is it something we’ve got to worry about tonight? Or is the smell because she doesn’t shower?”
“She smells good. Tantalizing. She’s that Sammie girl’s roommate. Maybe she got sucked into this gig. The girl is dirt poor, I hear. White trash or something.” Andy scratched his chest, catching a hole in his T-shirt and ripping it a little bigger. He didn’t seem to notice. “I definitely tried to hit that. You can tell she’s feisty, ya know? She wasn’t havin’ none of it. Hah! She ignored me. She’s jonesing after that Donnie kid that got an invite. It’s obvious.”
Dillon snorted, throwing his arm around his girlfriend Macy’s shoulders. “This surprises you?”
“Hey, man! I can usually get the girls. Not as good as Devon, okay sure, but I’m freaking hot, yo. Girls like me.”
“Not all girls, apparently.” Dillon chortled.
Devon hit each of them with a hard stare. Nerves were to be expected in these situations. Hell, they were going up against the baddest vamp he knew. He’d question his pack if they weren’t a little squirrelly. But there was a difference between nervous jitters and acting the fool. They were currently skirting the line.
As expected, their smiles withered.
“I don’t think we have to worry about her,” Andy said. “She can’t have anything a vamp like Vlad would want. Except blood. Maybe she’s the blood bank for after.”
That wasn’t any better.
“Can’t save ’em if they don’t want to be saved,” Rod, the largest of the pack, said as he glanced up the dark drive.
Rod was right. The chick had made her choice. Devon couldn’t do anything about it now. They’d set up shop dangerously close, and if he approached the house too soon, he’d alert the vampires. They had to wait a couple of hours, and by then, everyone who’d drunk the turning potion would be as good as gone.
“When’s this going to go down, again?” Rod asked, digging his hands into his pockets and turning away.
Anticipation ran through Devon. This was his first big changing party. His first real chance to prove himself to Roger, the alpha of the North American region. Devon needed everything to go perfectly. He needed his pack to be on top of their game.
“I was told two or three,” Devon answered, breathing through the flip-flopping of his belly. He had to stop thinking about the stakes. It was messing with his head. “Roger doesn’t think Vlad knows we’re on to him. Vlad apparently hopes this party will go like the one he threw in Europe two months ago.”
The European pack had recently lost their alpha when a powerful mage had up and ripped the shifter out of him. No one had even known that was possible, but from that time onward, Europe had been scrambling to place someone new. Powerful shifters from across the region kept trying to fight their way to the top, disturbing the lesser packs and sending everything into disarray.
Despite a short-lived truce between the shifters and vampires, formed for a collective storming of the Mages’ Guild’s compound, Vlad hadn’t hesitated to take advantage of the upheaval in Europe. He’d waltzed in, changed twenty people right under the shifters’ noses, and then waltzed back out, unscathed.
But this was the North American region, and Santa Cruz was Devon’s territory. Despite being part of the team that had collaborated with Vlad for the Mages’ Guild compound, he wasn’t about to stand back so their former ally could waltz into his territory and make new vamps. Finding out about the party had been a stroke of luck—the bastard had been cocky enough to send out paper invitations to girls that couldn’t help bragging. Alerting Roger of it had earned Devon this emergency detail. His pack’s job was to stand guard until Roger arrived with his crew. The more experienced shifters would then take out the middle-tier vamps and go head to head with Vlad, while Devon and his pack headed off and discharged any newbie vamps. They’d make sure Vlad’s attempts to increase his numbers failed.