Shane and I crept through the woods unchallenged, and I began to think Clayton’s prediction about the vampires leaving me alone was going to happen a lot sooner than he’d thought.

“Anything yet?” Shane asked.

I lifted my nose to the air. “No.”

There was an awkwardness between us that hadn’t been there before we’d had sex. He remained quiet and slightly grumpy as always, though, so probably it wasn’t on his mind the way it was on mine. It loomed in the background, the sex, and the possibility that it could happen again.

Oh, that possibility.

I’d tossed the box of condoms into my nightstand, but not before taking a couple of them out and slipping them into my pocket. I didn’t want a baby or an STD. Not that supernaturals could carry human diseases, but there was Shane, who was human and apparently very fuckable, and what did I really know about him?

So I slipped a couple of condoms into my pocket along with the holy water and an extra silver crucifix.

It was smart to be prepared.

I cleared my throat. “What I told Miriam—”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“She’s persuasive,” I said.

“You’re weak.”

“I’m not weak,” I snapped. “I told her because I wanted to tell her.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” God, why did I always have to sound like a dimwit around him?

He glanced at me. “She’ll devour you if you let her. She has a warped need and not just with the golem.”

“She wants to devour you,” I told him.

He grunted, which told me nothing.

“Is there a—”

“Trinity,” he interrupted. “Less talking, more hunting.”

I fell into silence, then realized he might have been right to rebuke me when I gave the air a quick, searching sniff and pulled in the faint perfume of Gordon Gray’s scent.

“Got you,” I whispered.

But then, there was something else.

Shane turned, bringing up Betty the Shotgun, and I immediately pulled Silverlight. She glowed, but her light was dim, as though the vampires weren’t quite close enough to excite her.

Still, I could feel a change in the air. Something was stalking us. “The demon,” I realized, suddenly terrified. I’d rather have been devoured by the necromancer than the incubus.

I stood back to back with Shane and searched the shadows of the woods with a narrowed gaze, watching for detaching shadows and listening for the furtive rustle of feet across dry undergrowth.

My heart pounded, my stomach tossed, and I felt slightly dizzy with the onrush of adrenaline. I needed to run, to fight, to do something.

But we waited, silent in the heaviness.

“Do you feel him?” I whispered, finally.

“Quiet,” he hissed.

He was weak, the demon, so it wasn’t like he could rush out and suck the life from us. Still…

The click of my dry throat was loud when I swallowed, and I forced myself to take in a deep breath and release it slowly, calming myself before I became a blubbering mess.

The vampires and the fight got me eager and excited. The dark unseen, the unknown threat, and the foam-throwing demon scared the absolute crap out of me.

But then, something that very well might have been worse than the demon strode out of the darkness.

Miriam and Clayton.

“What the actual fuck,” Shane yelled, lowering his shotgun.

Silverlight brightened, just barely, and I watched stunned—but a little relieved—as the necromancer walked toward us.

When she got close enough for me to see her eyes, I understood a sad fact. She didn’t want to just bang Shane Copas. She loved him.

That was why she’d called in the hunter. Not to help me, to teach or guide me, but because she wanted him near her.

“No one tells me I can’t hunt.” Her voice was cold, but her stare was so fierce and hot I wondered how Shane’s face didn’t burst into flame.

Clayton stood just behind her, guarding her back, and he only shook his head when I looked at him. He hadn’t wanted to come. He’d had no choice.

Shane was raging. He grabbed her arm and shook her, hard, then shoved her away from him. “Get the fuck out of here,” he said. Then he turned on Clayton, his voice full of contempt. “Get her out of here, bitch.”

Clayton didn’t react at all to Shane calling him a bitch—but one day, Clayton was going to explode, and the unlikely person in his path would die.

Miriam got in Shane’s face—not literally, since she was shorter than him by about a foot—but she stepped up to him and poked him in the chest, her face tight with anger. “I will not stay at home like a good little girl,” she told him. “I’m more than capable of killing vampires.” She pointed at Clayton. “So is he. Your reluctance is just a little fucking strange, Shane. Just a little fucking strange.”

“You are not a hunter,” he told her, through clenched teeth. “You cannot kill vampires. You can only get in my way and fuck up everything by making me have to take care of you. Go home, Miriam.”

Her face paled further, but she stood her ground. “I’m going to help you.”

He threw his head back and yelled his frustration to the dark sky and the watching moon.

I took her hand. “We can’t protect you, Miriam. In the heat of battle, we can’t protect anyone. We can only kill, and you will die.”

She looked up at me, but there was no anger in her eyes. Only despair. “I want to be included,” she said, confused. Like a child.

And it broke my heart.

Shane had no such tender feelings. He slung his shotgun over his shoulder and glared down at her. “You raise the dead—you don’t hunt. You’re a burden I don’t want to—”

“Shut your mouth,” I told him, and my voice was as calm and cold as it had ever been.

He jerked his head around to look at me, but he shut his mouth.

Miriam squeezed my fingers. “Thank you, darling, but he’s right. I wasn’t thinking.” She let go of my hand and turned to Clayton. “Take me home. We’re not needed here.”

But even as they turned away, the incubus, with a dozen vampires at his back, charged into the clearing.

Silverlight attached with an enthusiasm that hurt my arm—the pain traveled over my shoulder, through my chest, and down my spine, but there was no time to think about it.

Even if Shane hadn’t felt him, I had. I’d known the demon was near. I had to start listening to my gut. Perhaps if I had, I wouldn’t have let my guard down with the arrival of Miriam and Clayton.

The demon led the posse of undead like a nightmare scene from a fictitious horrorscape. And just that quickly, Miriam and Clayton went from being unwelcome liabilities to powerful, supernatural allies—despite what Shane and I thought.

Our only allies in the woods that night.

Seemingly from thin air, Miriam produced two wicked looking switchblades, and holding one in each hand, she ran to meet the vampires—and the demon.

“Miriam,” Shane roared, and raced after her, firing his shotgun just before he reached her. The crowd of vampires scattered—some died, some kept coming, and I knew they were infecteds before I could properly see them.

From the other side of her, Clayton, his pistol in his right hand, stake in the left, coolly picked off one vampire at a time. He’d said he was no longer a hunter, so I’d have to give them the true death later, but that was okay. Shot up with silver—I assumed—they’d stay down and out of the way for a good long while.

The infecteds fought and died behind the silver wall of my supernatural friends, but the incubus shot past them, and he came for me.

After all, there was nothing tastier than a bloodhunter.

Silverlight shook with eagerness and nearly took off my arm when the demon threw himself at me. He was well past the point of caution, and I could see in the rot and cracks in his face that his condition was critical.

And he was not thinking straight.

I drove my blade through his shoulder and he screamed, and all the sounds of hell were in that scream.

“I need to go home,” he cried, and I was so stunned I hesitated.

But Silverlight didn’t. She drove herself through his ribs even as he bore me to the ground, his mouth open, his eyes like tortured bits of glass, trying desperately to latch on to my essence so he could feed.

Even through his weakness, his cracking façade, and his desperation, I felt his sexual pull. He had to use the foam to make it irresistible, but it was there.

I turned my face to the side and thrust my blade in more deeply, twisting it as I pushed. I heard bones grind and crack, and I kicked my way out from under him, realizing only then that the supernaturals and the hunter stood around us, none of them knowing what to do with the demon so close to me.

I didn’t need them.

At least I thought I didn’t. I thought I had the situation under control.

I grinned. “No demon is getting into my pants.”

But then the incubus, as though drawing on everything he had, did something none of us expected. He didn’t use sex to feed.

He grabbed my head, slammed his mouth against mine, and latched on. And then, he began to suck, and I began to die.