Sunglasses at Night (Claws Clause 3)
And here she was again.
To be sure, he moved the red glowing sword from the back of the Nightwalker to the side of the woman. The glow immediately dimmed. No color at all. No gold for a shifter, no silver for an in-control vampire, no blue for a human. Nothing.
Just like last time.
From behind the shield of his sunglasses, Adam locked on the woman. He couldn’t help it. There was just something about her. Even if it wasn’t for the strange way his sword reacted to her, he’d recognize her anyway. It was no coincidence that, for the second time since he’d been turned, one glimpse of this blonde woman had him hungry for something more than a fight.
He’d had twitches below the belt before. He’d seen a beautiful woman and wondered what if? He’d even contemplated taking one of Hudson’s Donor friends up on her blatant invitation to bed once or twice just to prove he still could.
But when he’d had the one single, solitary erection in all the time since he’d been turned? It had been because of her.
And now she just gave him his second.
What made it worse? She wasn’t doing anything to turn him on. It was just… her. Watching the blonde beauty be threatened by the bloodthirsty Nightwalker was enough to have him primed and ready to take her.
Adam didn’t know what the hell that said about him, but he didn’t like it.
Ignoring his aching cock, he thought about the machete he wore strapped beneath his undershirt whenever he went hunting. He thought about the holy water injections he kept in his pockets.
 
; When the Nightwalker lunged at the woman, Adam realized there wasn’t time for any of that.
So he raised his sword and tore down the alleyway, looking forward to working out some of his aggression on the big bastard in front of him.
Tabby was in trouble.
Surprisingly, it had nothing to do with the Nightwalker whose fangs were inches away from her jugular. Nope. She’d already picked up on three different weak points and, as soon as she shook off the strangely unsettling—yet somewhat compelling—feeling she got from the second Nightwalker suddenly appearing in the darkness, she’d finish him off easily.
First, though, she had to wonder if this was really happening.
Again.
It was déjà vu or something like that. The last time she was in Grayson, she’d been avenging the death of Aiko Hashinaga. It was one of her first hunts on her own after Boone decided it was time Rosie retired and Tabby took it as a test. If she could prove that she could do it on her own, her uncle would stop with the nonsense about partnering her off with a human this time instead of her beloved hound dog. If she failed, she would be saddled with another slayer.
And since most slayers went out on their own, as per the Slayer’s Code, anyone agreeing to be her partner would no doubt have an ulterior motive.
She wasn’t naïve. She knew exactly who that would be. Eddie had been making it clear for a while now that, if she wouldn’t date him, he’d rely on any kind of partnership he could get—Slayer’s Code or no Slayer’s Code—to convince her to change her mind. Desperate to avoid that, she threw everything into that last Grayson hunt.
It had been going well. With a perfectly positioned slice, she bled just enough to lure her target closer. She’d picked the particular alleyway on purpose, knowing that it was out of sight of the Normies—the humans who had no idea that slayers like her family protected them from the Paras who hunted them—while still being close enough to the populated downtown area to snag the Nightwalker without having to worry about any annoying witnesses.
It… hadn’t worked out the way she planned.
Tabby’s Nightwalker target could sense that she was different. Did he know that he was facing off against his race’s biggest enemy when he looked at the tiny blonde chick? Probably, since he backhanded her when she goofed and let him get too close. It was still freaking weird. Vamp usually would take the opportunity to bite her when they figured she was a slayer, not send her flying like that.
Or maybe that was because he also could tell that they weren’t alone any longer.
He’d been there, too.
He was a Nightwalker. No doubt about that. Between the way he moved and the oversized sunglasses he wore, she knew what he was—even if she didn’t have any idea what he was doing. In an instant, she adjusted her plan of attack, trying to gauge how she would take on both males… until she saw the newcomer’s weapon.
The enchanted falchion he wielded.
A slayer’s blade.
Her uncle would’ve been ashamed. Boone always warned that even the smallest distraction could be deadly. She almost learned that the hard way. Three seconds. It was probably only three seconds that the other Nightwalker had her attention, but it was enough.
The backhanded slap had sent her through the air before Tabby crashed into the brick wall at her back. By the time she recovered enough to shake off the hit and pop back up to her feet, the blond Nightwalker had used his falchion to lop off the bigger bastard’s head.