“Yeah, and I’m a Prime member,” Dara added wistfully. “I can get one-hour delivery on a lot of stuff.”
Nathan glanced sharply at her, his gaze falling to the stake in her hand. He turned and scrutinized Lucy’s in the same manner. “Hmph,” he grunted.
“What?” Lucy wondered, clutching her stake self-consciously against her chest.
Nathan hesitated. Sounding reluctant, he admitted, “You have not done a terrible job fashioning those weapons, ladies.”
Jessica beamed and grabbed her stake back from him, dropping it into her purse. Her smug look only lasted a second, though, because then Nathan closed a large hand around her bicep and repeated, “You should leave. Now.”
“No way,” she responded.
His jaw clenched. “It astonishes me that I have to say this, Jessica, but you have no idea what you are up against. You all are woefully unmatched against a creature such as you have described, and I...” his tone eased up a bit, “I would hate to see you get hurt.” Lucy assumed he meant all three of them, but he only seemed to have eyes for Jessica right now.
“That’s very nice of you to be concerned,” Jessica told him, “but like we talked about, this isn’t your problem. It’s ours. Lucy’s, Dara’s, and mine,” she pointed at each of them as she named them. “We’ll take care of it.”
Frustration shrouded Nathan’s face. “Please,” he said. “At least agree to come with me for a moment, someplace where we can talk.”
“Talk about what? How you don’t think we can handle ourselves? You aren’t convincing us to give up, okay? So just forget it.”
Now Nathan’s eyes hardened, and he looked about ready to start throwing things, but he managed to say evenly, “Jessica, listen to me. If you insist on staging some sort of…hunt, I can...Well, I can help you formulate a better plan than...this.” He waved his free hand around the alley.
Jessica frowned up at him. “What is that supposed to mean? What’s wrong with our plan?”
Disbelief widened Nathan’s eyes, and a rough half-laugh rumbled out of his chest. “What is wrong with it?” he repeated. “What is wrong…Where do I even begin!?”
Jessica glanced at his big hand still wrapped around her arm. She started tugging to get free of it. “Let me go, Nathan,” she said.
“No, wait just a second,” he ground out through gritted teeth.
“No,” Jessica insisted, “lemme go now.”
Nathan did, and she stumbled back a couple of steps. Dara caught her by the shoulders and hissed at her from behind, “Jessica, maybe we should listen to him?”
Jessica glowered over her shoulder at her. She looked like she was about to start arguing, but Lucy jumped in before she could. “I think we should listen to him, too, Jess. I mean, he’s the only one who really knows—”
Before she could finish, the security bulb finally gave up, extinguishing with a nerve-shattering POP!
Lucy heard an embarrassingly high scream burst from between her lips, and she jumped about a foot in the air. Dara clapped her hand over Lucy’s mouth, and at the same time, Jessica catapulted herself back in Nathan’s direction. She grasped his forearm, cowering against him. In the moonlight, Lucy saw him stare down at Jessica with his eyebrows raised.
“Okay, okay!” Jessica said, clinging to his sweatshirt, “So…you might have a point about us. We’re not exactly experts at this vampire-busting stuff...Or at dealing with anything that’s remotely scary.”
A smug look settled over his majestic features. “You do not say,” he sniffed.
Jessica backed away from him, straightening her shirt. “There’s no need to rub it in,” she grumbled. Turning back to her friends, she said, “C’mon, you guys. Guess it’s time for us to go for a drive with a friendly vampire!”
Chapter Ten
In the 4Runner, Nathan gave Dara an address. She tapped it into her iPhone and sped off, and then she and Lucy watched and listened from the front seat while Jessica and Nathan bickered in the back.
“I told you to call Kiefer to take care of this,” Nathan was growling. “Why didn’t you call Kiefer?”
“I did!” Jessica retorted. “Like a million times. For a whole day. But he never picked up the phone.”
“He didn’t?”
Jessica shook her head.
Nathan scratched his chin, his scowl deepening. “Well…that is troubling.”
“Do you think the vampire got him?” Lucy wondered, peering at him from between the front seats. She was only half-serious, but Nathan’s face fell.
“I sincerely hope not,” he said quietly. “Although I suppose we will know soon enough. The place I have directed you to, Dara, is Kiefer’s headquarters. If he is there, he will be able to give you and Lucy each an elixir to administer to your men. It should help alleviate some of the symptoms they may be experiencing as a result of their bites.”
Lucy didn’t say anything, but she didn’t like the sound of that. Medicine to relieve the symptoms? That was not the same thing as a cure, and it made it sound like the real remedy—wiping out the master vampire who’d bitten Aaron and Jason—was out of reach. She’d already feared that might be the case, of course, but she didn’t like having it reaffirmed, especially not by the only person around who had any sort of expertise on the matter.
“Slow your roll, Nathan, back it up,” Jessica was saying now. “I still don’t understand what you were doing at the bar tonight. Am I supposed to believe it’s just a coincidence that you were hanging out there, too? On the roof, of all places?”
Nathan looked uncomfortable, one gloved hand working at the knee of his jeans. “No,” he finally admitted. “I was there for the same reason as you, to look for the vampire you told me about.”
Jessica’s eyes grew. “But you’d told me you wouldn’t get involved in our case!”
“I lied,” Nathan snapped.
Jessica gasped. “Oh. Well, that’s real nice. Care to tell me why?”
The vampire’s hands curled into fists against his
