I could have sworn I saw his eyes twinkle, but he turned to lope off into the darkness and I chalked it up to the light glinting off his glasses.

I paralleled him, leaping up to the top of the containers and silently tracking behind him. I drew my power around me to cloak me even further and watched my libido disturbing doctor as he peeked around corners, searching blindly.

Given the daemon taste for human flesh, I figured Rafe would tempt the beast out of hiding and then I’d soar in for the rescue.

At least that was my plan until something hit me in the back and sent me tumbling to the ground. I hit the packed earth hard, but immediately rolled in time to miss being impaled by the sharp claws of a daemon.

Holy fuck. The beast was huge, bigger than the daemons we’d faced previously. And uglier, too. He sported a pair of curling alabaster horns with sharp points, a perfect match for his filed teeth. His black skin gleamed with moisture covered in an icky slime I knew from experience would burn my skin.

“Well, aren’t you a handsome boy,” I crooned as I jumped to my feet.

The creature drooled in reply and I shuddered, especially when I saw the saliva hit the ground and sizzle. Mental note to self: do not kiss the daemon.

I circled the monster, sizing him up and waiting for the right moment. When the opening didn’t miraculously arrive, I just charged to make one. I hit the beast in the midsection and we barreled backwards into a container with a loud thud.

I’d underestimated the daemon’s strength, though. Its arms came around me in a bear hug that squeezed the breath from me and trapped my arms.

Stuck, I leaned forward instead of away from its grasp and sank my teeth into the oily black skin of its neck, my lips burning at the touch.

I immediately spat out the foul tasting blood. “Eew,” I exclaimed as the daemon screeched.

But the creature loosened its hold on me and I stepped back to deliver the killing blow. Palming my knife of purest silver, I slashed and sliced at the hulking brute. We danced back and forth, it slashing with its claws, me with my razor sharp dagger.

The daemon’s movements got sluggish, the loss of blood from the dozens of cuts that oozed ichor, affecting it finally.

I grinned in triumph and prepared to strike the killing blow.

So then my old friend fate-that bitch who hates me-arrived to fuck me over.

Arms thick as saplings wrapped around me from behind, squeezing me in a tight vise that forced the breath from my lungs.

Fuck! I’d miscalculated. There were two daemons, not one. I struggled in the implacable grasp of the beast holding me, especially when the one I’d grievously injured approached with a leering grin.

I guess I should have waited for my troops to arrive before engaging the enemy. Then an even scarier thought overtook that one. Rafe. He wouldn’t stand a chance against these brutes.

“Run, Rafe,” I yelled, amplifying the sound of my voice. I didn’t manage to say anything else for the daemon in front of me punched me in the face.

My head snapped back, but I refused to show pain. “You’re going to have try harder than that,” I taunted.

The daemon hissed and held up its clawed hands in front of me, its intent to slice and dice me clear. Me and my big mouth. While I would eventually heal, getting cut up definitely would suck, not to mention hurt.

A flash of white from the corner of my eye filled me with relief-my men are here finally. I yelled, “About time you guys got here. Get the tranquilizer guns and take these bastards down.”

Apparently the daemon holding me didn’t like my plan for it whirled us until my back was against a metal storage unit, then it commenced to bash my head against it. Harder and harder. It fucking hurt. The attempt to crush my skull along with my constricted chest in its boa like arms made me close my eyes as the world spun nauseatingly around me.

I found myself slipping into a soothing blackness, and barely noticed the daemon releasing me. Everything in me ached. But I hadn’t lived over four hundred years only to swoon like a damsel because of one itty bitty daemon ambush.

I forced my eyes open, but found myself unable to focus. What I did see was blurred and bright. I thought I saw the flash of a sword wielded by a being that shone white, but when I blinked-a long blink that might have lasted a few minutes-I opened them to see Rafe kneeling before me.

“Run,” I gasped, some stupid sentimental part of me not willing to see him killed.

“Shh, it’s okay.” He stayed on his knees as he checked me, shining a pen light into my eyes and palpating me for injury.

“I’m healing,” I grumbled as I struggled to sit, hard to do with his surprisingly strong hands holding me down.

“You need blood,” Rafe replied in a tight voice.

“My people will have emergency blood bags in the van. Have they secured the daemons?”

Rafe looked away from me. “Um, well, see-.”

His explanation was cut off by the shouts of my people as they poured into the area and surrounded the daemon which I could now clearly see as my body healed the damage. The black beast lay on the ground, a hole from its side pouring blood. Only the gentle rise of its chest let me know it lived. Of the other daemon, only a black sludge remained. Someone or something had killed it and I wished I could take the credit.

I frowned. Wait, if they just arrived then who saved me? I looked at my benign doctor with suspicious eyes. Dressed in black and definitely not carrying a sword, he obviously wasn’t the blurry white figure I’d seen saving my ass. Then again, given my mental state at the time, I could have possibly hallucinated.

Questions would have to wait. I had more important things to deal with. I picked myself off the ground and brushed off the dirt as I gave my crew directions for taking in the daemon. A big fucking bastard compared to the punier ones we’d fought with before. I hoped it wasn’t a harbinger of the hordes to come. If I, one of the stronger more vicious vampires, couldn’t handle one of them alone, then how would the puny humans fight them?

I hoped that Rafe would find the answers. Find a way to save us all from the sure death approaching. And if he didn’t, then just maybe I would take the pleasure to be found with the good doctor before the daemonic hordes arrived.

Chapter Seven

We put the daemon in the wine cellar, the thick stone great against possible scrying and mind games. The chains I’d had installed as a just-in-case were sturdy enough to hold the creature. The magical wards the witches set around the place were added as an extra precaution. And for a last security measure, tubes from a pair of IV drips were inserted into its arms. All of the action was being monitored from a control room lined in lead. At my signal, those who manned the drip would either crank up the tranquilizers on the left or the undiluted cyanide on the right. We weren’t sure the cyanide would work, but I was willing to try anything.

I stood across the room, my hand on my dagger in case I needed to go medieval on the daemon’s ass. In other words decapitate it. All the precautions in the world didn’t mean squat if the daemon was more powerful than we expected.

Rafe walked around the still slumbering daemon, measuring and taking notes. I’d had time while we drove back to think-me on my bike and him in the van with the daemon which he found more fascinating than me. I narrowed my eyes as I watched Rafe at work.

Something or someone had helped me when I’d lost the upper hand to the daemons. It still galled me that I’d needed help in the first place. Losing did not sit well with me, and I vowed to go on a feeding binge to increase my strength. But I put thoughts of a more rigorous feeding regime aside to return to the fact that my team weren’t the ones to save me from the daemons. Everything pointed-illogical as it seemed-to Rafe. Human doctor or something else?

I looked at him, really looked at him. He still wore the baggy clothes, but I remembered well the feel of his body against mine, and even with his bulky clothes, I recognized a body shaped by muscle, not fat. The fact he could resist my personal brand of charm, something unheard of among humans. The strength he kept displaying. How he was the only thing around when I came to after the attack. I kept staring at him, noting his glasses, one of the reasons he appeared so harmless. I acted on a theory.

Quicker than the human eye could follow, I swiped his lenses and dropped them onto the floor. My feet, encased in shitkicker boots, ground them into shards and bent metal. “Oops,” I said.

Rafe’s lips tightened and his eyes flashed, not with anger, but with light. Now that definitely wasn’t a reflection off his glasses that time.

“What did you do that for?” he asked.

“You don’t need them,” I stated baldly.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed.

“What? Aren’t you going to deny it?” I taunted.

“No, you’re right. I don’t.”

I couldn’t believe he so readily admitted the ruse. “So, why the disguise?”

“Would you believe people tend to take me more seriously with them?” He gazed at me, and, without the barrier of his lenses, I got the full impact of his eyes. It took my breath away and I found myself unable to look away. Sure, I’d found him handsome before, but now, with his jaw hard and his eyes glinting, he was beyond delicious. He looked dangerous, and not at all the shy and awkward doctor I’d taken him for. How could I have been so blind?

I didn’t fall for his obvious lie. “Whatever you say, Clark Kent,” I quipped. “Care to tell me what else you’re hiding?”