Nick reached the far end of the bar and glanced around frantically. There was me, advancing with my silver knives, and my men with their Desert Eagle handguns pointed at him.

“You’re surrounded,” I stated the obvious. “Don’t make me angry, you won’t think I’m pretty anymore when I’m angry. Drop the girls.”

He had two of them in his grip, one hand on each vulnerable throat. Seeing the terror in those girls’ eyes made anger flare through me. Only cowards hid behind hostages. Or murderers, like Nick.

“I leave, they live, Reaper,” Nick hissed, no romance in his tone any longer. “I should have known. Your skin’s too perfect to be human, even if your heart beats and your eyes aren’t gray.”

“Colored contacts. Modern science’s a bitch.”

Nick’s icy blue eyes bled to glowing vampire green and his fangs slid out.

“It was an accident,” he yelled. “I didn’t mean to kill her, I just took too much.”

An accident? Oh, hehad to be kidding me. “Her heartbeat slowing down would have warned you,” I replied. “Don’t try that accident crap on me, I live with a vampire, and he hasn’t had an ‘oops’ moment once.”

If possible, Nick looked even more ashen. “And if you’re here…”

“That’s right, mate.”

The accent was English, and the tone was lethal. Invisible waves of power rolled over my back as my men parted to let Bones, the vampire I most trusted-and loved-through.

Nick’s gaze didn’t shift, which I’d been hoping for. No, his eyes didn’t leave me as he suddenly yanked my blade from himself and then stabbed one of the girls in the chest.

I gasped, catching her instinctively when Nick threw her at me.

“Help her!” I yelled to Bones, who’d lunged at Nick instead. With that wound, unless Bones healed her, she had only seconds to live.

I had time to hear Bones mutter a curse before he spun around, abandoning his pursuit of Nick to drop to his knees beside the girl. I vaulted after Nick, doing some cursing myself. Gunshots went off, but only a few. With the rest of the bar patrons still scrambling for the doors, plus Nick holding the other girl like a shield, my team couldn’t just open fire. Nick knew that, and so did I.