He had nothing to worry about.
As a rush came over him and his body began to swell with strength, he shut his eyes again and scattered into his molecular form, traveling easily through the window. Down on the asphalt, he re-formed at the far side of the guard’s vehicle and he wasted no time. Striding around the back bumper, he—
Set upon the vampire from behind.
Once again, his body was taken over, the animation emanating from somewhere inside of him that was nonetheless not intrinsically him:Clapping a hold on the side of the guard’s neck, he slammed the male face-first into the side of the vehicle. The impact made a sharp, declarative sound, and riding a surge of aggression, he shoved his hand down to the male’s hip and came back with a gun, the weapon tight in his palm. Slipping off the safety, even though he shouldn’t have known where it was, or how the weapon operated, he—
Another set of headlights flared, but they were still in the distance some.
The guard moaned and tried to recover his balance.
Bite him.
As if on command, Kane’s fangs dropped down, and he hissed as he jerked the head back to expose the throat. With a quick strike, Kane bit the male from behind, burying his canines deep in the veins and sinew. The gasp was not a surprise, and it was quieter than the discharge of the gun he’d taken would’ve have been—
The spasming didn’t make sense.
Against Kane’s body, the guard began to thrash and buck, and the seizures were so unexpected that he spun his prey around.
The male’s face was beet red and sweat was beading up across his forehead and above his lip. Eyes that were wide were going bloodshot, as if they were flooding from some kind of hemorrhaging, and his breathing changed pattern. As the wheezing started, high-pitched and panicked, the guard went for his throat with his hands—as if he were attempting to clear a constriction.
Kane glanced toward the ever-brightening light source coming around the building. Then he looked back—
“What thefuck,” he breathed.
The front of the guard’s uniform was covered with blood, the flow from the bite so great, it was pumping out in surges. Kane had a dim thought that he must have hit an artery—no, it was too much blood. Grabbing hold of the guard’s hair, he pulled the lolling head back to see what was going on… with…
The strike mark was… liquefying?
“Dearest Virgin Scribe.”
The skin and the anatomy of the neck were being melted away somehow, denaturing before his very eyes. And as the breakdown continued, the blood flowed to the beat of the heart.
Everything was dissolving, even the bones of the spinal—
Flop.
As the head separated from the body, the latter dropped to the ground by the vehicle’s back tire, and Kane was left holding the former. The eyes, so wide the whites were showing, stared back him, the lid of the one on the left twitching such that it appeared to be winking.
Like this was all one big fat joke.
“I told you. You don’t need a weapon.”
Kane wrenched around to the wolven, who’d dematerialized down to the pavement and was standing with his hands on his hips.
“Did I do that?” Kane asked. Then he corrected himself. “How… did I do that?”
Apex re-formed down by the SUV just as a guard’s body went loose and hit the cracked asphalt like a deadweight. Because that was what the male was: Alive no more than a minute ago, and now an inanimate corpse but for the involuntary muscle contractions. One bite and the bastard had gone down.
There were questions to ask.
“Now’s not the time,” Apex said as a box van came around the corner of the building.
They all ducked—well, he and the wolven did. Kane was still standing there like a tool, holding the decapitated head like it was a trophy that he didn’t want, his eyes locked on the guard’s as the neck continued to disintegrate.
Apex grabbed the idiot’s free arm and yanked him to the ground. “Jesus! You wanna get killed?”
As Kane looked over in confusion, the box van pulled in on the far side of the SUV. Apex glanced to Callum—no wolven. The male had taken off somewhere.