Page 28 of Cold Sacrifice

“Yeah. It’s the same thing that was in the parking lot of Vanessa Greenfield’s apartment.”

“I saw movement before I felt it,” Joe said. “You know what it feels like to me?”

I looked at him. “What, Joe?”

“It feels like a vampire.”

I put my stare back on the shadows. “It kind of does to me, too, now that you mention it.”

“Do you think this is what’s messing with Bastien’s vampires?”

“It can’t be, can it?” I asked. “Whatever is killing his vampires attacks during the day when vampires are asleep. Unless it’s some sort of daywalker…” Then I stopped, frowned, and rubbed my shoulder.

“What?” Joe asked.

“Zach did something to the daywalker bite and the vampire ghost bite. Something that combined them. But right now, those bites are throbbing like a sonofabitch.”

It didn’t make sense. I hadn’t felt the pain from the bites after Zach had…combined them or turned them into something magical that he believed would help me. But I was feeling them now.

And the throbbing pain was growing stronger by the second.

“It’s watching us,” I murmured. “Whatever is out there is watching us.”

“Why is it here,” he asked, “at the council building? Can you alert them?”

“I have a feeling they already know,” I said, as the parking lot was abruptly filled with light. It wasn’t regular pole lights that dotted the lot. It was magical light, and it carried more than brightness.

I pulled my demon blade. “You ready to fight, Joe?”

“Always,” he said. “And I’m ready to hunt it if it runs.”

Because the supernatural was in the council parking lot, I thought for a minute that it was after the elders. But then I realized it was highly unlikely that he or she knew the location of the council in Jakeston.

Wasn’t it?

The elders had changed their location for a reason—but they’d only changed it during the day, likely because that was when the baddie was attacking the sleeping vampires. Which meant they didn’t believe it was a vampire.

But it felt like a vampire.

Joe and I were ready for just about anything. When it came at us, silent and fast, I had a moment to think, why, it’s just a woman. But then, she did something no one who was “just a woman” could do.

She sent out a sharp crack of red power like a whip, and before I could get out of the way, that whip slapped me across the face. I staggered back, feeling a hot line of blood bursting from the cut, and it took me about ten seconds to right myself.

But that wasn’t what scared the hell out of me. I could take a hit of magic. I’d done so before. Many, many times. No. What scared me was the fact that Joe was standing calmly in front of the woman, his hands at his sides, his machete lying forgotten on the pavement.

“Shield me,” she told him.

Immediately, he placed himself between her and me. And when he turned to look at me, he was still there, behind his wide, horrified eyes. He knew what was happening, and he was powerless to stop it.

He obeyed her, because he had to.

And if I wanted to get to her, I’d have to go through him first. I wasn’t doing that. I sheathed my blade and held up my empty hands.

“Release him,” I said. “I’ll let you go.”

She wasn’t tall, or big, or muscular. She was a slender woman with long, light brown hair and startling blue eyes, but that was where the resemblance to a human woman ended.

The rest of her physical appearance was something…bad. Her skin was covered with black rot, but it had dried into scabs. I could see the dull gleam of bone across her knuckles, where the skin had not repaired.