But Ivan didn’t recognize the man who exited the driver’s side of the vehicle. He had light-brown hair and sharp cheekbones and was dressed in a patterned suit like some sort of eccentric professor.
Ignoring Ivan and Nix on the porch, the stranger opened the door to the passenger seat, drawing out a conventionally attractive blond man around Ivan’s age who was dressed much more casually, like he’d just come from a backwoods hike.
The two strangers faced them, the professor type standing in front of the blond, much in the same way Nix stood in front of Ivan.
But it was the blond who spoke. “Sascha?” he asked hesitantly. “Or…” He cocked his head. “Ivan?”
“Not that we don’t love surprise visitors,” Nix drawled. “But who the fuck’s asking?”
“I’m Eric,” the blond said, not looking too put out by the rudeness. He pointed to his companion. “This is Wolfe. Alexei sent us?” He made it sound like a question rather than a statement.
The one identified as Wolfe made a vaguely disgruntled noise. “We were notsent,” he corrected. “We were already in the area. And we found something of yours.” He steered his partner to the back of the car, popping open the trunk.
It would be stupid to walk over, yet Ivan found himself too curious to resist. But before he could step off the porch, Nix froze in front of him, halting his progress.
“What is it?”
Nix sniffed the air like some sort of bloodhound. “Vampires,” he accused, loud enough for Eric and Wolfe to hear.
“Yes,” Wolfe said coolly, arching a brow. “Was that not clear? We’ve already stated we’re…friends of Alexei’s. What else would we be?”
There was a time—merely a few weeks ago, in fact—when Ivan would have assumed the worst from that statement. Would have thought Alexei had sent these two to do his dirty work—to hit Ivan when he was already down. He would have rushed back into the house with Nix at his heels. Or, more likely, fled the state entirely, convinced Sascha had done his part to set him up.
But now, for whatever reason, he found himself urging Nix forward, approaching close enough to peer into the trunk.
For a moment, he was at a loss for words, even as Nix cackled at his side.
Eric cleared his throat. “Did we do it right? I’ve never really abducted someone before.”
There was a first time for everything, apparently.
Because there in the trunk, bound and gagged and clearly unconscious, was Sergei.
15
Ivan
“Idon’t like this,” Sascha moaned, wringing his hands like some despairing maiden. “I donotlike this.”
When Kai glared at Ivan with glowing blue eyes, Ivan shrugged. “It wasn’t my doing. You have Alexei to blame.”
Their group—including the two newcomers—was gathered in the living room, which was feeling quite crowded with the three couples, even with Matteo hiding upstairs.
There’d been quite a bit of hubbub initially when Kai had realized a duo of vampires had arrived. It had involved Kai transitioning into his demon form and letting his wings out, a sight Ivan had already had burned into his brain from his last visit to Maine. Nix had transformed as well, seemingly out of a desire to disrupt more than some instinct to protect, since he’d already decided the two were friends rather than foe. Wolfe had told them all matter-of-factly that he and Eric meant no harm but that if either of the demons disturbed even a hair on Eric’s head, he’d rip off the wings and the tail and stuff them down their throats.
It had calmed down a bit after that.
Although, Ivan noticed Nix still had a wary eye on the vampire Wolfe, even now. And he’d been unusually quiet during the whole exchange, considering his usual mouthy demeanor.
In some fit of mass paranoia, everyone was standing—Kai and Sascha in the back corner, with Kai’s arm wrapped around the front of Sascha’s shoulders; Ivan and Nix behind the couch, Nix cocking a hip up against the upholstery; and Eric and Wolfe closest to the door, Wolfe’s hand on Eric’s shoulder.
Ivan hadn’t missed the way Wolfe had assessed the room and quickly placed Eric and himself where they could escape easiest.
Eric, for his part, seemed to be doing his best not to gawk at Kai in his demon form, but his best was…horrendous. His eyes kept darting over to the massive blue demon and lingering on his shoulders, as if he was expecting the wings to make another appearance.
Sascha stuck his tongue out at Ivan, presumably for shifting the blame to their brother, then faced Wolfe and Eric with a considerably more polite expression. “Did Alexei really send you?”
It was a question worth asking, as overall it seemed unlikely. Besides the fact that Alexei would be hesitant to spit on Ivan if he was on fire, as the saying went, it was also that Eric and Wolfe were a strange duo. Eric seemed like nothing more than a regular man, one raised in the suburbs rather than dingy basements and docks, and Wolfe seemed…oddly blank. Like he was uninterested in these proceedings, even if he’d been the one to initiate them.
