I’d barely gotten my door shut before Alessio threw the vehicle into reverse and backed out of the alleyway. One of the guys had turned the radio on to cover up the painedwheezes and moans emanating from the cargo area, but I could still hear them.
“What the fuck did youdo?” Vince bellowed as Alessio backed out onto the street. His thick tattooed neck bulged with irritation as he turned to glare at me. “We can’t drain a dead vamp!”
I swallowed down the urge to remind Vince that vampires were already dead. Without thinking, I scrubbed at the blood still dripping from my nose, and pain lanced up my face.
“Shit.” My nose was broken — not a big deal for a full-blooded hunter with their crazy-fast healing capabilities, but for me it would be at least a few days of agony.
Before I could explain what had happened, Vince whirled in his seat and smacked the side of my head so hard I saw stars. “Hey!” he shouted. “I’mtalkingto you!”
“It was a bad night, all right?” I snarled, glaring into his muddy brown eyes with every bit of hatred I’d been storing up these last five years.
“Abad night?” Vince’s nostrils flared. “You had a bad night?” Raw, unchecked fury danced in his eyes, and I squared my shoulders in case he hit me again. “Thanks to your screwup, we’re down a bloodsucker, which means Si’s gonna haveallour heads.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I gritted out.
“You’ll talk to him?” Vince repeated, running a thick hand over his pale shaved head.
“Yes.”
I held his stare with enough promise of violence that he didn’t raise his hand again. He turned back around in his seat and crossed his arms with a contemptuous scoff.
Tears burned my eyes as I gingerly tried to wiggle mynose. Gods, I hoped Julian found that stone, because I didn’t think I could handle living under the same roof as Vince for much longer.
Vince had been with Silas for more than a decade, and he hadn’t been happy when I’d come along. It wasSilas who’d found nineteen-year-old me in the alley that night — battered, bruised, and nearly dead from blood loss. I’d been in and out of consciousness for hours, and yet I’d still heard Vince trying to persuade Silas to leave me on the street to die.
Weak. Useless. Liability.
Even though Silas had trained me to be as deadly as any full-blooded hunter, Vince’s stance on me hadn’t changed. Neither of them let me forget what I was — a pitiful half human. Weaker. Slower. Inferior in every way.
I was fine with being the other hunters’ punching bag, though. It was easier to remember not to trust anyone when everyone hated your fucking guts.
When I finally stopped messing with my broken nose, I caught Alessio watching me in the rear-view mirror. While Vince might have been a bully who frequently flew off the handle, Alessio actually scared me more. He was quiet, calculating, and intelligent — a proverbial snake in the grass.
He wasn’t checking out my injuries, I realized. He was staring brazenly at the two half-moon scars along my neck — the physical evidence of my weakness. I resisted the urge to cover up the marks, and Alessio looked away.
We’d pulled up behind a dingy red-brick building, and the men hopped out to retrieve their bounties. Silas’s back entrance was lit by a single buzzing fluorescent light, which threw long shadows across the yard. The crumblingfoundation was choked with weeds, and the chain-link fence that hemmed in the back parking area was half falling down in places. More light spilled into the yard as the back door opened, and Kyle appeared to help Vince drag his vampire up the short flight of stairs into the house.
The one benefit of being sent out to hunt was that I didn’t have to do the actual siphoning or dispose of the desiccated bodies. Draining the other hunters’ bounties of their blood had been my job the first two years I’d been here. Maybe that would be my punishment for returning from the Quarter empty-handed.
My body ached in odd places as I shuffled up the steps, smearing tarry black blood underfoot as I went. The sound of deep male laughter drifted from the kitchen, but the other hunters fell silent the moment I walked in.
A bunch of them were seated in folding chairs around the table, playing cards. Cartons of Chinese takeout, empty beer cans, and bottles of whiskey lay scattered among them. Bruno took one look at my busted nose and smirked. “She wasn’t much to look at before, butnow—”
A rumble of laughter broke out among the hunters, though none of them dared look up from their cards. I ignored the slight from Bruno and reached for a bottle of whiskey. I took a quick sip and set it back down, savoring the sting along the back of my throat.
But then I felt a hand brush the swell of my ass, and Bruno’s smirk grew. “Don’t worry, baby. My offer still stands. Just as long as you face the wall while we do it.”
I wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe it was the adrenaline still coursing through my veins after the tussle in the alley with that vampire. Maybe it was because I’d failed to hit my quota that night or my pent-up aggression toward Vince.
Whatever it was, something inside me snapped at the feeling of Bruno’s hand on my ass.
Before any of the hunters had registered my movement, I’d palmed one of the daggers sheathed at my thigh. I drew it as fast as any full-blooded hunter and slammed the blade down over Bruno’s other hand.
The tip sank through flesh and cartilage before lodging in the battered table. A howl of shock and pain ripped from Bruno’s throat as he slammed his other fist down on the table. He banged it once, twice, three times, and the rest of the hunters fell silent.
“Ahhhrrgga! What thefuck, Lyra?”
Kyle, who’d just cleared the steps with Alessio’s vamp, roared with laughter at the sight.
