A sensation of warmth and wooziness moved through me.
“Well…” I braced my shoulder against the wall to steady myself. “You need to be more careful. It’s too bad your sire was a jerk, but it happens. Find some new friends to help you out—”
“Like you?” she asked hopefully.
My head felt very cloudy. “Like me, or there are… there are lots of other helpful vamps in the city.” I swallowed hard. “It’s really warm out tonight, isn’t it?”
“It’s February.”
“Hot for February.”
The fledgling looked at me strangely. “Are you feeling all right?”
My purse dropped to the ground as the warmth continued to course through me. “I’m just fine.”
She squinted at me. “Your black eyes are a bit freaky.”
The slight cloudiness in my mind turned to thick fog.
“Black eyes are a warning sign. Even the nicest vampires are dangerous when their eyes turn black. Consider that your first lesson in survival.”
Something in the tone of my voice made her take a quick step away from me. She was trembling again.
“Uh…” She gulped. “So I think I’m going to, like, leave now.”
She gave me a look that could only be described as fearful and then nervously began to walk around me. I reached out and grabbed her by the throat much as I’d done before with the hunter. She made a scared, strangled sound.
The blood flowed from her forehead like honey. So warm, so alive… so tempting. My vision narrowed more than it already had.
“P-please…” she stuttered. “Please d-don’t hurt me.”
Why did she think I was going to hurt her?
Because you are going to hurt her, the nightwalker inside me said.
It was as if I could see myself, but from miles away. The rational me was far away now and I was yelling and frantically waving my arms, scared for the girl, scared for myself. My chain had been off for too long. My nightwalker had taken control now—and she was very hungry.
I pushed the fledgling up against the wall, focused only on one thing—the gentle pulse at the side of her throat. I felt my fangs elongate. Normally a vampire’s fangs were small and barely noticeable—sharper than a human’s canines, but nothing that would raise any alarms if you didn’t know what you were looking at.
But a hungry vampire… well, that was a different story. Whether at her core she was a good vamp or a bad vamp, the hunger that raced through her body turned her fangs into the perfect weapon meant to sink into soft, warm skin to get what she desired most.
Human blood was necessary for survival, but vampire blood was addictive and decadent—
like dessert, like alcohol, like a drug.
And no matter how much the normal me screamed or fought, the nightwalker’s need to feed would win out. It was clear, focused, and so very natural. And there was no way to predict if the fledgling would survive when it was all said and done. Not tonight. Not with the way I currently felt.
My lips peeled back from sharp fangs as I pushed the fledgling’s head to the side, swept back evidence of her bad dye job, and grazed the surface of her skin.
The very next moment something yanked me away from her and I staggered across the alley. I turned with a hiss. There was a dark figure standing in the shadows.
He wore a red mask that covered most of his face.
The man glanced at the fledgling. “Leave now.”
Without needing to be told twice, my potentially delicious bleached blond meal ran out of the alley. I couldn’t see straight. I was so hungry. It blinded me to everything else. My thoughts were cloudy and my darkened gaze now locked on the stranger’s throat.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said, his voice low.
But I was thinking about it—in my foggy kind of way. The anger at being interrupted filled me and I clenched my fists at my sides. I moved toward him, my focus never leaving the side of his neck. “Let me guess. You’re the Red Devil? The real one?”
He took a step further into shadow so all I could see was his outline. “I am.”
“So that means you’re my bodyguard now.”
“Correct.”
“I don’t need a bodyguard.” My eyes narrowed. “As you can see.”
“All I see is a stupid woman who should be wearing the gold chain that dampens behavior like this. You could have killed that fledgling.”
Stupid? A flash of anger cut through me. Did a pathetic excuse for a vampire vigilante just call me stupid?
I really didn’t like it when people called me stupid.
“You need to mind your own business,” I hissed through clenched teeth.
“This is my business.”
Normally—since Thierry hadn’t exactly been very forthcoming with the details—I would have been curious to know more about who this guy was and where he came from, but I’d had enough talking. I walked directly toward him. He glared down at me through his mask. I registered nothing except his heartbeat and the knowledge that warm blood coursed just beneath his skin. Everything else was background noise. I slid my hands up his firm chest and he didn’t resist or try to pull away.
I went up on tiptoes to whisper into his ear. “I bet you taste very good.”
The moment before my fangs would have sunk into his throat, his hands came around my upper arms like iron vises. He pushed me away, turned me around, and before I could do anything about it, he slammed me up against the cold hard wall.
I tried to fight him, but I was in an awkward position. He crouched for a moment and then got back to his feet. Something cold and thin pressed against my throat.
My eyes widened. Was he going to strangle me? Maybe try to decapitate me? According to my research, that was one of the most effective methods to kill a vampire if you didn’t mind the wet work.
But nothing painful happened. The very next moment he let me go. I felt at my throat to find the gold chain he must have retrieved from my open purse on the ground and put back on me. The hunger and darkness left in a near-painful whoosh and my knees buckled.
I had to fight to remain standing.
The Red Devil’s back was now toward me.
“Don’t let this happen again,” he growled.