“Why would she keep workin’ with them knowin’ they would kill her on her twenty-fifth birthday? If it were me, I think I’d hit the ground runnin’ and never look back.”
“Guess these aren’t the kind of guys you run from. There isn’t really a Druid Witness Protection Program. Maybe she thought she’d die of other causes before it ever came up.” He shrugged. “It isn’t like the work we do comes with a high life expectancy.”
Nolan swished his beer around in the glass. “If she’s tough’s you say, wouldn’ the guys she’s scared of be tougher?”
“The thought has crossed my mind.”
Shane’s head pivoted as a waitress in a short dress passed them with a sly, flirty smile. Nolan elbowed him, bringing Shane’s attention back to his mocha-skinned friend.
“’re you going to help her?” Nolan asked.
“I said I would.”
“You once said you’d had a three-way with two supermodels, so forgive me if I call bullshit on your word.”
“You can’t prove that never happened.”
“An’ you can’t prove it did.”
“This is different. She saved my life.”
“That’s somethin’.”
“It is. I think I owe it to her to at least try.”
“Man, I dunno. This ain’t like she loaned you some money and now you’re gonna help her move a couch or somethin’. She’s askin’ you to put your life on the line.”
Shane shrugged and finished off his beer. The waitress who’d been circling like a hungry shark darted in and leaned close to him, rubbing her breasts against his arm as she gave him a predatory leer. “Can I get you another one, honey?”
It wasn’t until she touched him that Shane realized what was strange about her. Her skin gave off no heat whatsoever. She wasn’t cold, but she didn’t have the natural warmth of a living human woman. And she was trying really hard to catch his gaze.
“Yeah, and you can stop trying to enthrall me.” He fixed his stare on her forehead right between her eyes. “Don’t think the Tribunal would take too kindly to knowing you’d tried to dupe their hunter out of a bigger tip than he was planning to give.”
The vampire huffed an offended sigh and placed Shane’s pint glass on her tray. “How about you, babe?” she asked Nolan.
“I’ve got a
vampire girlfriend ’lready.”
Their undead waitress looked back and forth between them, her expression a mix of impressed and exasperated. “I meant your drink.”
“Yeah, okay.”
She took his mug and wandered off.
“When did you figure out she was a vamp?” Shane asked.
“Soon’s we walked in. Spen’ enough time wit ’em and you learn to see the signs.” Nolan, once a little-league vampire hunter, was now dating a vampire warden named Brigit, and his former hatred for all things undead had diminished a great deal with the pretty blonde’s attention.
The waitress returned and thumped their drinks down without a smile before walking off for less resistant fodder who would be easily taken in by a big smile and a little vampire enthralling. It wasn’t against the law for vamps to use the thrall on humans unless they were using it to do harm. If they tricked someone into letting them feed, it was fine, so long as that person walked away alive at the end of the ordeal and was none the wiser about vampires existing.
Rules in vampire society were a funny thing.
And by funny he meant fucked up.
“Back to my problem.”
“Damn, man, I dunno. Did she tell ya what she wanted?”