Midnight Marked (Chicagoland Vampires 12)

Right, Ethan said as the vampire turned and dodged back toward the El.

Maybe he’d taken the Red Line to get down here, and was planning to take the same route home again.

Stay on him, I told Ethan, and dodged across the street. If I could make headway, I could cut him off before he dodged into the alley again.

“Cubs hats!”

A man stepped in front of me from out of nowhere, wearing a column of stacked baseball caps on his head, a dozen more hanging from his fingers. “You need a Cubs hat?”

He was enormous. A red-and-blue-clad wall of a man. “Not tonight, pal,” I said, and tried to pivot around him, but instead we did the awkward left-or-right dance as he swung his hats back and forth, tried to get a bite.

I finally managed to slip around him, but the effort had slowed me down. The vampire darted across the street and into the shadows under the tracks again. I hit the shadows only seconds before Ethan . . . and nearly too late to hear the engine race. The driver’s door still open, a beat-up Trans Am barreled toward us. The door slammed, the vampire’s face shadowed in the vehicle, but I could see—and sense—perfectly well the handgun that pointed out the window.

I moved with only instinct, and without thought.

“Move!” I told Ethan, and turned in front of him, pushing him to the ground as the shot rang out, the sound slapping off brick and concrete and steel. Tires squealed as the car jerked forward, turned onto the street, and screamed into the night.

I rolled off Ethan. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he said testily. “You stepped in front of me.”

“I will always step in front of you. You named me Sentinel.”

“In the larger scheme, not my wisest decision.”

I wasn’t going to argue with that admission of fallibility, even if I disagreed with the sentiment. “You can’t take it back now. I’m finally getting good at it.”

“Jesus, Merit.”

“What? Are you hurt?” I didn’t see blood, so I looked around, then back at Ethan. “Is he back?”

“No,” he said, with silvering eyes that shone in the dark. “You’ve been shot.”

“No, I haven’t.” I glanced down at my arm, saw the crimson rivulets that flowed down my arm and now pooled into my open palm. Adrenaline faded, and I felt the spear of fire that lanced through my biceps.

“Damn it,” I said, my vision dimming at the edges. The world began to spin, but I gritted my teeth. I was a goddamn vampire, and I was absolutely not going to pass out. Not after chasing a murderer and taking a bullet for my Master.

“It looks like I took another bullet for you,” I said.

mell of death—overripe and cruel and undeniable—spilled out from the darkness. Something had met a very ugly end here.

Or someone, I realized, glancing at the body on the ground.

CHAPTER TWO

BAD BITE

The man was young, maybe twenty-five or twenty-six. He had rough, tanned skin, brown eyes, and deep lines around his mouth. His body was whipcord lean beneath jeans and a T-shirt, and thatchy brown hair stood in mussed spikes on his head.

Magic still lingered in the air above him like heavy fog waiting to settle. And it carried with it the faint sense of animal.