Sara wasn’t used to feeling sorry for vampires. Her job, after all, was to bag, tag, and transport them
back to their masters, the angels. She was no fan of indentured servitude but it wasn’t as if the angels hid
the price of immortality. Anyone who wanted to get Made had to serve the angels for a hundred years.
Non-negotiable.
You didn’t want to bow and scrape for a century, you didn’t sign the Contract. Simple. Running out on
the Contract after the angels delivered their part of the bargain? That just made you a welsher. And
nobody liked a welsher.
However, this guy had worse problems than being returned home to a pissed-off angel. “Can you talk?”
The vampire clamped a hand over his almost-decapitated neck and looked at her as if she were insane.
“Yeah, sorry.” She wondered how the hell he was still alive. Vampires weren’t true immortals—they
could be killed by both humans and others of their kind. Cutting off the head was the most foolproof
method, but the majority of people didn’t go that way—it wasn’t as if the vamps were going to stand still
for it. Shooting out the heart worked, so long as you then cut off the head while they were down. Or fire.
That did the job.
But Sara was a tracker. Her job was to retrieve, not kill. “You need blood?”
The vampire looked hopeful.
“Suck it in,” she said. “You’re not dead. Means you’re a strong one. You’ll last till I can get you home.”
“Dhooooo.”
Ignoring the gurgled rejection, she crouched down to slide an arm around his back so she could drag
him to his feet. She was only five feet three, and he was considerably taller. But she wasn’t bleeding out
from her neck, and she worked out seven days a week. Grunting as she got him up, she began to walk him to the car. He resisted.
“Need a hand?” A deep, quiet voice, aged whiskey and smoldering embers.
She didn’t know that voice. Neither did she know the body that moved out of the shadows. Six feet plus
of solid, muscled male. Heavy across the shoulders, thick in the thighs, but with the liquid grace of a
trained fighter. One she wouldn’t want to be up against in a fight. And she’d taken down vampires twice
her size. “Yeah,” she said. “Just help me get him to the car. It’s parked at the curb.”
The stranger all but picked up the vampire—who was starting to make vaguely understandable
sounds—and dumped him in the backseat. “Control chip?”
She pulled her crossbow off her back and aimed it at the vamp. The poor guy scrambled back, pulling
his feet completely into the vehicle. Rolling her eyes, she returned the crossbow to its previous position
and withdrew a necklet from its spot hooked into the waistband of her black jeans, under her T-shirt.
Reaching in, she paused. “Don’t try anything funny or I’ll shoot you for real.”
Slumping, the vampire let her clamp the circle of metal around his rapidly healing neck. The science
behind the device’s effect on vampiric biology was complex, but the results clear—the vampire was now
constrained from acting without a direct order from Sara. Helpful didn’t begin to describe the control
chip because even this injured, the vamp could probably rip off her head in two seconds flat.
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