He had to let her go, let her leave, when his body urged him to bring her back. Once she walked out that door, he might never see her again. Odds for that were in her favor.
Now that he had seen her, spoken with her, having her disappear would leave a dent in his understanding and a hole in his hammering heart. That damn heart was acting like a schoolboy’s with a first crush. After just a few minutes, she had become an addiction.
Did he see sadness in her eyes when she gave him a final glance from the sidewalk? He was sure the light he had witnessed in the blue depths of those eyes now reflected regret. Probably he was wrong. Nevertheless, he was after her in a blur of speed.
On the sidewalk, he stopped. Two mortals passed by. A Night Shade slipped through the shadows and into the alley beside him. That Shade should have been of concern to him, but distraction was a hell of a thing. The female he’d just seen in that shop was gone, leaving no trace other than the lightest wisp of fragrance.
Whispering a litany of curse words, half of them in Latin, Rhys spun to face the next problem. Monsters were indeed rallying. Half a block away, and with the swiftness of an oncoming black tide, vampires were closing in.
The black tide swept the two mortals who had just passed Rhys into the vampires’ vortex of flashing fangs and overruling hunger. One of those unlucky people had enough time to scream before they were on him.
And that was not acceptable to a Guardian.
There in seconds, Rhys joined the fray, pulling a silver-tipped dagger from his right boot and a sharpened wooden stake from his left.
The bloodsuckers were quick, but out of their league when facing a vamp-killing machine from a larger supernatural gene pool. Rhys swung his arms as fluidly as if he had been made for the intricacies of fighting. He had been created with the strength of ten men for just such a purpose.
“Go back to the same black breath that created you,” he said calmly, lunging sideways with deft strikes of the blade to take down the first vamp, whose yellow fangs were too near the throat of its young mortal prisoner.
“Rest in peace.”
The street exploded with a snowstorm of dark gray ash, which caught the attention of the remaining sharp-canined monsters and made them angry.
“Not what you were expecting?” Rhys quipped, waiting out the seconds until they released the two stunned, but as yet unharmed, mortals.
These vamps’ faces were gaunt, almost skeletal. As usual, Rhys regretted that their afterlives had been so cruelly tweaked. Dull black eyes, lacking all hint of their former color, were fixed on him. Grossly sharp teeth snapped with displeasure. All of these bloodsuckers were new to the walking undead status. Hunger ruled them. Feeding was everything. Common sense had departed with their dying breaths.
“It’s not your fault. I get that,” he said, stepping forward to meet the remaining crush of fang-snapping abominations. “However, you are cursed to be the bane of human existence. You must be aware of that.”
His body rocked as the awareness of other company came to him like a moving wall of heat. Without looking for the source, Rhys could venture a good guess as to who had returned. Not many creatures would have been close enough to sense trouble, with the ability to do something about it.
She had come back, as if he needed help with five malnourished fledglings.
“Damn you,” she said, appearing beside him from out of nowhere with the ease of having just dropped from the sky.
The sky thing wasn’t possible, of course, Rhys knew, since the wings on her back were fake.
He feinted to the right. Simultaneously, she moved left in a choreographed fighting pattern that split the oncoming vamp fledglings into two groups.
“Hell, do I now have to worry about you?” he silently griped.
“I was thinking the same thing. About you,” she returned in the same manner.
“You can hear me?”
“No need to shout, Knight.”
“You heard things I might have thought earlier?”
“Anyone within a five-mile radius could have heard you.”
She went for two of the bloodsuckers as if she had been born to the art of wielding a blade.
Rhys struck the sweet spot in one fledgling’s chest with his knife, and that fledgling went down in a flurry of musty-smelling gray ash. Spinning on his heels, he embedded the stake in the second vamp’s chest and left it there as the vamp staggered back a few steps before what was left of it became a funnel of ash.
His new fighting partner had taken the brunt of things, with another of the vamps going after what it incorrectly assumed might be the weaker link. Big mistake.
The woman beside him moved like lightning, like a storm in human guise, and with a fighting grace Rhys had never before seen in any but his brothers. Fast, sure, talented, she was all liquid motion. Prepared to jump to her aid, Rhys instead watched at a standstill, his body reacting to each move she made as if he’d made it.
His pulse was again racing. This immortal woman was fast, flexible, canny and dexterous. Tracking her movements roused emotions long compressed deep in his soul. How had he missed this creature’s existence? Who the hell was she, and why couldn’t he reach the answer to that question when it was buried somewhere inside his mind?
Like a white whirlwind, the female parried, spun and thrust her blade to victory over those ornery bloodsuckers. And when the street had been cleared of fanged parasites, and the two mortals had run off to safety with a story to tell that no one would believe unless they had seen such a thing for themselves, she turned to Rhys with a stern expression on her incredibly beautiful face.
Speaking with the same throaty voice that had caused his muscles to twitch in the shop behind them, she said, “The mortals won’t remember. I’ve seen to that, and you owe me one.”
She wiped her short silver blade on her leather-clad thigh and turned from him.
“You truly imagined I’d need help?” Rhys asked, amused and far too fascinated with the curve of that lean thigh for his own good.
“Well, maybe I just needed to exert some energy,” she admitted, turning back. “I was in that damn shop for far too long, and those needles were a bitch.”
She was feisty. Sexy. The black leather getup molded tightly to her body, showing off angles and curves Rhys hadn’t been able to see when she was sitting down. Her hood had been thrown back. Silky strands of platinum hair crossed her face in the night’s moist breeze, partially hiding the features Rhys wished he could see.
“Now what? You’ll disappear again?” he asked.
“Disappearing is what I do best,” she said.
“Why? Are you hiding from someone?”
“Good thing it wasn’t you. Look how that turned out.”
Rhys grinned, liking her quick-witted comebacks.
“You might want to can the light show if stealth is your objective. Your appearance in the alley was pretty flashy.”
She stared at him with her lips parted for a retort she didn’t make—lush lips nearly as pale as the rest of her. He wondered what those lips would taste like, and if she’d use her knife on him if he tried to find out.
When seconds passed and she hadn’t spoken or made her retreat, Rhys figured those things would have been points for him in the challenge game, if anyone had been keeping score. Then again, she had known about Blood Knights and had pegged him as one with a single glance, so maybe he’d have