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  “Okay…okay,” Dillon said, reaching for his cane on instinct. “But why me? That’s what I don’t get.”

  “You’re one handsome motherfucker. That’s why,” Mason said with a grin in his voice.

  “Ah, a beauty contest. No wonder you exempted yourself and entered me for top prize. Natch.” Dillon smiled in the direction of his friend’s voice. “Now give me the real answer.”

  Mason sighed, a long, slow exhalation, the kind that sounded worn out. Like maybe he’d been after this particular target for a long while, without success. “We’re all obvious, that’s why,” Mace said. “The enemy would suspect us going in. This is an old guard Savannah family I’m talking about, people who know us and are very aware of what we do.”

  “What you do,” Dillon repeated, still not sure exactly what the Shades did to battle evil, but also finding himself increasingly curious.

  “What we hunt,” Jamie clarified on his brother’s behalf. “And how we do it. Our particular brand of expertise is no secret around town.”

  Mason added in a rush, “But you, Dillon? You’re new blood. A handsome guy with spot-on instincts and a warrior’s skills. We need you to infiltrate their ranks, and confirm our suspicions about this family…about what we think they are. See, there’s a party tonight, out on Tybee. You and I go, drink a few beers, and you move in on the target. Who just so happens to be a really hot female, by the way. One who’s got a thing for Marines and warrior types in general. She dated one of my buddies when I was at the Citadel. So, yeah, in you walk with your GQ face—”

  “I’m not that good looking.” Dillon rolled his eyes.

  “I can think of several dozen women around Camp Lejeune who’d disagree with that one, Dill. You were a babe magnet.”

  “Glory days,” Dillon sang, trying to deflect the embarrassing attention. When you could no longer see yourself in the mirror, it became harder to believe you were still hot. “So…I hit this party with you, and what?”

  “We drive out to the beach later this afternoon, have a few brewskies. Regular relaxing time on Labor Day weekend, period.”

  “And?” Dillon prompted, waiting for the rest.

  “And, like I said, you chat up the mark,” Mason replied easily, unaware of just how far Dillon had fallen from his game. “Dazzle her with your dimples. Charm her with your wounded hero routine and bam. She’s all in. And that makes you, my friend, our ultimate secret weapon.”

  “Secret how?” Dillon knew the answer before he asked, but he was as blunt as he’d always been, and wasn’t about to start sparing anyone’s feelings now. “Because I’m a blind son of a bitch, you think she won’t suspect I’m one of your anti-evil operatives?”

  “Yes,” Mason told him with unflinching frankness. “We believe that the people we’re talking about would naturally discount you and your skills, that this female target would take you at face value.”

  Dillon cleared his throat, turning in the direction of his friend’s voice. “Mace. Dude. I’m not worth my salt for any man’s battle. Not like this.” He pointed toward his sightless eyes with a significant gesture.

  Mason took a few steps closer, his shoes making a squeegee sound on the floor. Nikes, probably. “This isn’t a man’s battle,” he said smoothly, but his voice was like cold steel. “In fact, it isn’t a war against men at all.”

  “You said this was an old guard Savannah family,” Dillon pointed out, frowning. It was like Mace and Jamie were talking in circles, everything as clear as the darkness that Dillon lived with every day. “Are they a Savannah family or something else entirely?” Dillon pushed, starting to feel annoyed and frustrated. “Straight shot here, boys. Lay it out for me.”

  There was a few more seconds of silence, and then it was Jamie who stepped to the plate. “They’re not like any humans you’ve ever met, not like any family you know. Trust us,” he said somberly.

  “Fuck me,” Dill said, whistling under his breath. “Are you saying they’re demons, then?”

  Mason and Jamie spoke in unison, their similar voices perfectly in synch. “Vampires.”

  Demons were one thing—he’d done his time in the pews of his parents’ Baptist church growing up and seen enough shit in the war zone. Yeah, demons he could buy wholesale, but vampires? He didn’t know any book or passage of the Bible where you’d find mention of that.

  “You’re punking me,” he said, wishing he could see his way out of the room. The darkness was closing in on him, becoming claustrophobic. Jerking his head toward the doorway, he started feeling along the shelf, wanting to bolt. “I don’t know what kind of dumbshit you think I am––”

  “Is this room real?” Mason asked, voice intense.

  “Yeah, like I don’t see that one coming.” Dillon stopped his awkward steps, pressing his hand against the bookshelf, steadying himself.

  “Dillon, is this room real?” Mason repeated.

  “I’m blind, not stupid, buttsuck,” Dillon hissed angrily.

  Mason punched his arm. “Answer the goddamned question.”

  “Yes, Captain Angel, sir! This goddamned room is real, sir,” Dillon barked back at his friend.

  Mason’s breath was right against Dillon’s face, warm, urgent. “So are vampires. So is darkness. It’s real, all of it. And it’s around us, whether we see it or not. So the question isn’t whether vampires exist, Dillon, ’cause okay they do,” Mason continued intently, his voice hushed, electric. “And it’s not whether you’re still a warrior. That heart’s always gonna beat inside you, my friend.” Mace flicked the center of Dillon’s chest significantly. “No, Dillon Fox, all of that was settled long ago. There’s only one real question now: whether you’re still willing to fight.”

  “You know that I am,” Dillon whispered fiercely, blinking at the darkness.

  “That’s what I wanted to hear.” Mace clasped his shoulder with a strong, reassuring grip.

  “It’s what I knew I’d hear, too.”

  “Tell me what it is you want me to do. I don’t think I get it. It’s got to be more than charming her panties off…literally.”

  Mace didn’t say anything, the long pause more than a little weighty.

  “Right?” Dillon repeated more sharply. “I mean, hell, you wouldn’t recruit me to just go seduce some poor little vampire chick, would you?”

  “Nothing poor or sad or pitiful about this one, dude. Trust me there.” Mason whistled low. “She’s more like danger incarnate. And, yeah, as a matter of fact, I’d love for you to get close to her tonight, and frankly, I don’t care how you pull that off. But we need you to find something in particular. It’s more than confirming her identity—if she’d even let you. It’s about a family heirloom––Their family’s mating ring, which by our calculations…she’s supposed to need sometime soon for her ritual mating ceremony.”

  “She’s going to mate?” Dillon was incredulous. Mating? That sounded like something from a freaky SyFy channel show. Or Animal Planet.

  Jamie moved closer and said, “From the research and reading we’ve done—from all that we know––she’s at the critical point. The female’s blood is a kind of bargaining chip in their society. And rumor has it that Kate’s line is deadly pure. So if she’s already done the deed, your presence will reveal her partner because mated male vamps are crazy possessive. And if she hasn’t mated, you can find this ring for us before she gives it to the male at her mating ritual.”

  Dillon rubbed his eyes. His head was hurting a little more sharply than it often did; he lived with chronic pain because of his brain injury. “You want a blind man to find a ring,” he muttered, trying to beat back the sharp pain in his head. “Freaking awesome.”

  “Who better?” Mace laughed. “She’ll have her guard down, and you can search her room, maybe find a jewelry box.”

  “Or maybe trip over my own two feet and make an ass of myself.” It was so easy for someone without a disability to ignore the issues Dillon faced with his blindness.

 
“You get around better than old Jamie here does, so shut up,” Mason said.

  Maybe he should take on this mission, Dillon thought, suddenly feeling an odd surge of excitement, a sense of purpose that had been missing for far too long. What had he done in the past year, what point had his life even had? But now Mason and Jamie actually needed him. He was skilled and capable, and hell, even with his ruined vision, maybe he could do this thing.

  Dillon cleared his throat. “Okay, so I understand the mission and the objective. But why is it so important to determine whether she’s taken a…mate or not?”

  Neither of the Angel brothers answered at first, and Dillon would’ve sworn they were trying to decide what to tell him, possibly trading glances. Finally Mace replied, “Because once she mates, she’ll become fully vampire. The females don’t drink until they’re mated. She hasn’t been a threat to our community, but that will change once she’s mated. So…we need to know if our intel is right.”

  “So, I get close to her and we confirm all this. That she’s about to mate, about to start…feeding or whatever. Then what?”

  “If we’re right,” Mason answered, “then we have to kill her.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Kate stood by the kitchen sink and scrutinized the living room. She’d already ensured that all the chip bowls had been refilled and the dip freshened. There were paper napkins with seashells fanned beside the party platters and citronella candles burning in every corner. Out on the deck overlooking the beach, there were three giant metal tubs filled with beer and Cokes and lots of ice. An hour into this end of summer bash that her brother, Toby, had insisted on having, everything was on track. So far nobody had broken anything—legally speaking or otherwise. She should be having fun, enjoying catching up with some of the friends she’d not seen since the Fourth of July.

  So why was there a knot in her stomach, one that had her feeling vaguely nauseous as she prepared to do another pass through the party crowd?

  She knew exactly why her palms were sweating. And why she felt dizzy and light-headed. And if she forgot, she was totally sure Toby would keep reminding her, well into the night.

  Her body and her life were a ticking time bomb. If she didn’t want to die in the coming weeks, this party would be her last as a single woman—and the last where she could pretend she was a Normal human. Time to grow up, the end. As eldest female of their generation, she was obligated to mate with a full-blooded vampire to preserve the bloodline. Not so for Toby, who could mate freely and without the supervision of the elders and their father. For Kate, however, looking toward Normals wasn’t tolerated—no matter how intensely her mating urges seemed to compel her toward human males instead of breedable male vampires.

  Her father and older brother believed her desires the work of demons, the way she craved the touch of someone so alien to her. They said the holy scriptures were clear on the point—that if one yearned to mingle across species lines, it was the work of Satan.

  It was like a sickness in her blood, and no matter how she tried to explain to Daddy and Toby the way she burned for a human mate, they discounted her needs completely. Maybe they were right; maybe she was listening to the dark spirits when she should just keep asking God for the right mate. The one he had destined for her, not the one she’d encountered in those strange, sightless dreams nearly every night for the past year. But she could smell him, touch him, feel him, night after night, and it only made her blood burn hotter for the faceless human male––a man who was, quite literally, the man of her darkest dreams.

  But even those dreams were dismissed by her family. It was natural for a vampire female to dream of her mate—in fact, it was the way couples were drawn together, beckoned toward one another. But she knew the man she’d been dreaming of was human. She could smell his blood, the coppery tang so different from any vampire male’s tangy scent. The dreams raised an important question. If she kept praying that God would bring her the mate he had ordained, and if she kept dreaming about this nameless, faceless human, wasn’t it possible that her desires weren’t evil or dark at all, but rather her destiny?

  It was a fruitless hope, though. She turned to the sink and wiped her hands on a towel with a dejected sigh. This party had been Toby’s idea, a big summer blowout to allow her to feel like a Normal for one last hurrah, to play the game before he and her father escorted her to Charleston to meet several eligible men from the full-blood families. Toby just didn’t get it, remaining as sanguine and clueless as ever in his outlook on life, but then again it wasn’t his duty to preserve their family’s pure bloodline. That responsibility fell entirely to her, rendering her without any choices of her own, and no amount of beach parties would ever change that fact.

  Toby could laugh it up, do shots, and never stop grinning because he didn’t suffer under any mandate as to whom he’d eventually marry. His mate could be human or vampire or any blend in between. But Kate’s female bloodline, one of the most pure and undiluted in all of the Southeast, fell under the aegis of codicils that were hundreds of years old. She literally had no right to choose for herself. Equal rights for women had no play in their courts, and her blood was to be preserved—and used—at the discretion of others.

  “Kate, girl! What’re you doing hiding back here in the kitchen?” Her friend Sunny plopped down both hands on the marble kitchen counter, squaring off with Kate from across the bar.

  “Just making sure we’re all set with everything,” she said, lying through her teeth. She didn’t want to be at this party anymore than she wanted to deal with her biological and familial deadlines.

  “You ain’t gonna hide in here anymore. You’re coming outside with me. On the deck, now.” Sunny wagged a finger, and although she still smiled, it didn’t reach her eyes. Her friend knew firsthand just how much Kate was struggling these days; she was also the only Normal who Kate had ever told the truth about being a vampire. Sunny, oddly enough, said that nifty little revelation didn’t faze her in the least, that she’d always known Kate was special, ever since they met in their fifth grade gifted class. Except…something about Sunny had always been different, too. At times, Kate found it hard to believe her lifelong best friend wasn’t a vampire, as well.

  “I’m telling you, Katydid. There’s some yummy-ass men out there, circulating round your party. Come on now, you can’t hide your love away!” Sunny’s brown eyes crinkled at the edges, playful and teasing in their expression. Her honey-dark skin seemed touched by the sun after the long day on the beach. Kate’s pale skin always burned easily, whereas Sunny’s African-American complexion only grew richer and more lovely.

  “I’ll come out there. Just let me feed the cats real quick.”

  Sunny swept a black eyebrow upward. “You fed ’em before the party. I saw you do it.” She glanced significantly toward the outside. “You better go feed the dawgs now.”

  “You’re a hot mess, Sunny Renfroe, you know that?”

  Sunny planted a hand on her hip, cocking her head sideways. “This funk you’re in’s gotta end. Like, I’m talking tonight.”

  “It’s still afternoon.” Kate busied herself with spraying down the bar so as to avoid her friend’s prying gaze.

  They’d spent the past few days hanging out, catching up. Sunny lived in Athens now, where she’d stayed after they’d graduated from University of Georgia. She worked at the Botanical Gardens, and Kate envied her sorority sister’s satisfaction in her job. Whereas Kate seemed to struggle with the nagging sense that she should be doing more than running her family’s bookstore, Sunny tackled new skills and challenges without batting an eye. Kate envied her friend’s serenity, a peace that forever eluded Kate, just as that faceless, nameless man from her nightly dreams did.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She knew his scent as surely as she knew the wonderful smell of the beach just beyond the open sliding glass doors. It was warm and soothing and arousing all at once; she’d known from the very first dream that if she ever caught even the fai
ntest whiff of that human’s aroma in her waking life, she’d be hooked like an addict.

  Sunny picked up a discarded towel and flicked Kate on the arm with it. “Come on. I just saw Mason Angel and some friend out there.”

  Kate’s skin prickled, alarms going off in her head. “You did not.” Mason wouldn’t have the balls to show up here, in the midst of her party, would he? The Angels and the Rabineaus were like the pentagram and the cross, they just didn’t mix without everyone’s hackles rising.

  “Come on and give him hell, girlfriend. It’ll take the edge off.” Sunny started across the room.

  “The edge off what?” Kate called after her, already trying to scan the crowd of mostly twenty-somethings gathered outside on the deck.

  Sunny did a one-eighty, sailing back toward Kate. Eyes mischievously wide, she stage-whispered, “The edge off your mating itch, that’s what.”

  He was beautiful, no other way to put it. The tall, broad-shouldered guy beside Mason Angel, leaning against the deck railing like he owned the space, was absolutely positively drop-dead gorgeous. He seemed to be looking across the deck at nothing in particular, a faint smile playing at the edge of his full, luscious lips. She couldn’t see what his eyes looked like, the dark wrap-around designer shades obscured them. But that smile…was a true thing of beauty, making him seem mildly amused with life in general and her party in particular.

  And he had dimples that were so deep they popped even at his hint of a smile. His dark brown hair spiked short and stylish, but with the kind of GQ effortlessness that meant he was danger on wheels. A guy who, obviously pushing thirty, seemed single and fully fine with that fact, a little cocky in his self-assurance. So Mason Angel had brought reinforcements for his party-crashing maneuver. Releasing the clip that held her ponytail, Kate let her long blond hair fall loose down her back. She had a few weapons of her own at her disposal, and she planned to use them.

  Holding her daiquiri overhead so she wouldn’t somehow wind up with it sloshed onto the front of her sundress, she pressed her way through the party. From the stereo, an old Jackson Five song blared, music just made for a beach party like this one. She had to squeeze through a couple of frat boy pals of Toby’s, guys with thick drawls who were already well on their way to being drunk. With another glance, she laid eyes on Mason and his gorgeous friend and shoved a little closer, nearly to them.