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  “How?” Phillipa looked at all the police vehicles and officers within the restricted view of the camera. “The perps are being swarmed by cops, and—”

  Her words were cut off by a loud crash, Phillipa jumped to her feet as a huge section of plate glass shattered into the living room.

  The workmen leaped off the scaffolding and poured into the room. Still dressed in white coveralls, they now wore black ski masks over their heads.

  Michele’s last orders to her people had been a firm, “Make it look like a robbery. Leave the sister alive. We want a witness.”

  She realized this command might be impossible to carry out, when the sister plunged a metal knitting needle through Kevin’s arm as he rushed toward the whore.

  He screamed, blood spurted, the baby began to cry, and the sister planted herself squarely in front of the real objects of the attack.

  Then Britney came at the woman from the side, tackled her around the waist, and brought her down.

  Chapter Sixteen

  H e really was going to get on the next flight. Bridger fed more quarters into the slot machine next to his boarding gate. McCarran Airport was set up like any Strip casino, only the theme here was the hustle and tumult of a very busy international airport.

  He’d won and lost the same twenty dollars for several hours now. He alternated between feeding the slot machine and watching the huge screens that advertised the hotels’ glamorous shows, comedians, and magic acts. Whenever an ad cycled through featuring a certain magician, Bridger’s attention returned to the slots.

  It was a way to pass the time between the flights to London that he kept not getting on. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to step onto two planes so far, and the airline people were getting rather annoyed with him. Being telepathic, he was able to soothe their irritation, and dispel any fears that he might be some sort of terrorist.

  He let them think he was a gambling addict who couldn’t pry himself away from gaming, when the addiction he was fighting went much deeper than that. He kept having visions of what life could be like.

  “Bugger,” he muttered.

  He really should leave, no matter how much the bonding need called to him. He couldn’t recall if he’d shared his blood with Phillipa last night, but he was still drunk with the taste of her. He could do the right thing and get as far away from her as possible, or he could do the easy thing and go to her and claim her as his own.

  So far he hadn’t yielded to temptation. But he hadn’t managed to leave Las Vegas yet, either.

  I’ll take the next flight, he promised himself.

  Only to have the promise instantly forgotten as fear stabbed through him, followed by a swift rush of anger. Neither emotion was his own, but they belonged to him—as she belonged to him.

  “Phillipa!”

  She was in trouble. He started running to her aid.

  And vampires could run very fast.

  Phillipa went down when the intruder tackled her. She turned the attack to her advantage by going down on one knee, then rolled across her attacker and back onto her feet. The masked attacker was now on the floor, and Phillipa kicked him to keep him there.

  A quick look showed her that two of the intruders were intent on ransacking the condo. But two more were closing in on Jo. Jo had snatched up Brandon and was backing toward the center of the living room.

  “This way!” Phillipa pointed toward the exit. Jo’s gaze flicked to her, and she gave a quick nod.

  One of the intruders shoved something at Jo. Phillipa wasn’t sure it if was a gun, but she kicked at the outstretched hand. Jo used the diversion to dash toward the hallway, and Phillipa followed hard on her heels. They reached the door and were out of the condo within seconds. Phillipa slammed the door behind them just in time, as the crack of a bullet ricocheting off the closed door reverberated out in the hall.

  “Damn!” Phillipa snarled. She grabbed Jo’s arm and pulled her toward the elevator. “Let’s go!”

  Jo ran beside her, but gave a fierce look back. “They could have hurt the baby!”

  Phillipa had never heard her sister sound so angry. “It’s not wise to mess with a mother.”

  “Damn right.” Jo clutched the wailing Brandon closer to her chest.

  “Don’t worry,” Phillipa told her. “They’re here to rob the place. They won’t come after us.”

  Then the door flew open behind them, and she knew she was wrong. Well, crap. This was not the way a B&E normally went down.

  The sound of the gunshot behind them was deafening, and the bullet left a dent in the copper elevator door before ricocheting into a wall. The shooter fired again. This time the bullet hit the elevator’s call panel, shattering it just as Phillipa was getting ready to press the Down button.

  She didn’t know if this guy was deliberately trying to trap them, or if a wild shot had done it for him.

  “Not good,” she breathed.

  “Stairs,” Jo said, and led her to a door around a corner. “Hold him.”

  Phillipa took the baby and watched their backs as Jo punched numbers into a keypad. The door lock clicked open, and they ducked through into a stairwell. Their attackers reached the door before it was fully closed, but Jo gave a mighty tug, getting it closed and locked again before the others could follow them inside. Then she snatched her son back from Phillipa.

  “This is the emergency exit down to the garage.” She started down the stairs. “Hurry up!”

  Phillipa looked down the stairs, and closed her eyes for a moment. She couldn’t remember how many stories the penthouse was above street level, but she knew racing downstairs wasn’t going to do her any good. But there was nothing for it, not when they had the baby to worry about. She wished she’d had lunch, or at least been able to grab her purse before having to flee.

  “Too late to worry about it now,” she muttered, and hurried after Jo.

  “Damn!” Michele swore. She turned on Andrew. “Why did you shoot out the elevator controls?”

  “I was aiming for the brat,” he answered.

  “Can you shoot the lock off this door?” Kevin asked. Blood soaked the sleeve of his white coverall, and he was holding his injured arm close to his side. “Are you sure we can’t kill the sister?” he added.

  “I agree,” Britney said.

  “She was protecting her family,” Andrew spoke up. “She doesn’t understand that they’re the enemy.”

  “For somebody who isn’t the enemy, she’s done a hell of a lot of damage,” Britney complained.

  “What about the lock?” Michele asked.

  “Everybody stand back.”

  The Purists backed away from Andrew as he took careful aim at the keypad.

  “Freight elevator,” Michele said before he took a shot.

  They’d used the freight elevator to gain access to the roof. She quickly led them back to the condo entrance. Even though she dreaded climbing onto the scaffolding again, this was the fastest way to catch up with their quarry. You did what was necessary for the cause.

  Phillipa stopped as they reached the bottom landing to take long, deep breaths. She had to get it together. She was used to being a little dizzy sometimes, and sometimes a little nauseated. It was par for the course, and all that crap. Only right now she felt really nauseated, and really dizzy, and the world was kind of fuzzy on the edges of her vision.

  She reached into her pants pocket, and found it was empty. She usually carried a roll of glucose tablets with her, but she’d been so upset about Bridger’s departure this morning that she’d forgotten just about everything else.

  “What now?” she asked. She was the big sister, the cop, she should be taking the lead. But it was getting harder to think by the second. “Sorry,” she said, and began to weep.

  Jo turned to her. “This door leads to the parking lot. We can use the OnStar in my Jeep to call nine-one-one.”

  “Clever.”

  “If you hang with the Cages, you learn a few survival tricks.” />
  Why? Phillipa wondered, but she was starting to shake, and it would take too much energy to ask. Jo pressed buttons on another keypad, and Phillipa followed her into the building’s underground parking garage.

  Where figures in white coveralls were waiting for them.

  Chapter Seventeen

  T he alarm that went off when Matt broke down the door to the garage was silent to human ears, but the subsonic whine was sharply painful to his. The pain merely fueled his desperate anger: nothing would stop him from getting to Phillipa.

  He ran down a short flight of stairs, and as he went through an open doorway, a bullet struck the doorframe, then zinged across his cheek. Hot pain seared in a line across his face, but he ignored it, and the gunman. Instinct demanded he find Phillipa; that was all that mattered.

  The garage was filled with rows of cars and supported by thick concrete pillars. He was aware of the presence of at least eight mortals lurking there, most of them hunters. Two were being hunted. One was bawling his lungs out, which was not aiding his mother’s effort to hide.

  Bastards! How dare they hunt a child!

  Matt needed to get to Phillipa, but protecting the baby came first. As he dashed toward the sound of crying, a low moan came from behind a concrete pillar to his right, and a gunman stepped out of cover to point his weapon squarely at Matt’s chest.

  “Look out!” Phillipa shouted, staggering out from her hiding place.

  Matt turned toward her, heard the gunman squeezing the trigger…

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” a deep voice rumbled. And Marcus Cage streaked across the garage to knock the shooter to the ground.

  Dealing with one vampire was hard enough, but two monsters was not a scenario they were set up for. They hadn’t really thought one would ever appear.

  “Withdraw!” Michele shouted to her team. She feared she was about to lose Andrew to the murderous fury of his attacker.

  But the monster hadn’t finished off Andrew just yet. He kicked the gun far across the concrete floor, where it disappeared under a car. Then he ran straight for where his human whore cowered with her brat.

  Michele waved her people toward the nearest exit, praying the distraction would last long enough for them all to get out. The others moved quickly, unnoticed by the monsters, but she wasn’t so lucky. The first vampire stalked toward her, all fangs and claws, with fury burning in his glowing eyes. Her blood ran cold with terror, and her mind froze as well. Michele Darabont knew she was going to die.

  Then the other woman appeared, and stumbled a few steps toward the vampire before sinking to her knees. The vampire’s attention was immediately on the woman. As he ran to her, Michele went to Andrew.

  “He’ll kill her,” Andrew rasped as he struggled to sit up.

  “Better her than us.” She helped her groggy henchman to his feet, and they ran for their lives.

  Matt knelt beside Phillipa as the Cages came running up.

  “What did they do to her?” Marc asked.

  Matt gathered Phillipa into his arms. She was very pale, her skin clammy. “I don’t know. There’s no blood.”

  Her life was fading, and he couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t think for his own pain.

  Josephine thrust the baby into Marc’s arms and dropped down beside him. She felt Phillipa’s forehead, and said, “This has to be hypoglycemia.”

  “What’s that?” Marcus asked.

  “Her blood sugar’s way too low, low enough to make her pass out. If it gets too low, it could kill her. We have to get her to the hospital.”

  There was something wrong with Phillipa’s blood? Relief flooded Matt. “I can help her. I can share my blood—”

  “No!” Josephine declared. “She’s needs a shot of glucagons or a glucose IV. Not—”

  “She needs my blood.”

  Marc knelt beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Not unless you’re willing to make a permanent commitment, my friend. Do you take this woman—”

  “No!” Matt shouted, rising to his feet with Phillipa in his arms. “I can’t do that to her.”

  But he could feel her fading. He had to—

  “We have to get her to a hospital,” Josephine insisted. “Now!”

  Her fierce shout brought him to his senses. Mortals could save her, in a mortal way. He had to accept that this was for the best, no matter what his instincts shouted at him. “Let’s move.”

  “This way.” Josephine led them toward a bright red SUV. Along the way she said, “Marc, honey, you smell like fish.”

  “Lobster,” he answered. “I was at work when I got your psychic scream for help.”

  Marcus’s bondmate had called out to him, Matt realized. Just as the woman who should be his—could be his—he couldn’t risk being his—had called to him. It was one more sign they were meant to be together.

  “Damn it all to hell,” he muttered, and got into the back of the SUV, gently cradling Phillipa on his lap. “Drive,” he ordered. “Hurry.”

  This sucks.

  Mike crawled deeper behind the row of garbage cans and licked at the drying blood on his flank. At least the bleeding had stopped.

  And it hurts.

  I hate being a werewolf.

  No, what he hated more than anything right now was humans. Was it any wonder that sometimes his kind ate them? Wolves and men were never meant to be in such close proximity. There could be no trust between them, no friendship. Never mind all that “man’s best friend” doggy-loyalty belief from humans, and the whole “we’ve got it good, the trained monkeys’ll always feed us” attitude from dogs. Real wolves couldn’t live around men. Men feared other predators, and men destroyed what they feared.

  Take his situation, for example. He’d just been doing his job, saving the human world from a monster, and along comes a cop and shoots him! Just because he was there.

  Looking like a huge, dangerous, snarling wolf.

  Okay, maybe the cop had a sliver of a reason for what he did, but Mike was still wounded. He was still in pain, and he was still totally pissed off.

  And he was hot, he was mercilessly thirsty, and the garbage he hid behind stank. Even worse, he still couldn’t morph back to his more convenient human shape. He wasn’t sure how bad his wound was, but it hadn’t started to heal yet, which was not a good sign at all. Had the vampire managed to take that skill away from him as well?

  Were the humans hunting him?

  How was he going to find Matt like this?

  Most importantly, was night ever going to fall so he could move through this cursed human habitation without the fear of being seen?

  “Are you sure that’s how the incident happened?” the police officer asked Marc.

  Matt paused in his pacing around the ER waiting room to watch as his cousin held the earnest young copper’s gaze.

  “That is exactly how it happened.” Marc’s deep voice was a gentle, firm rumble. The sort of voice one would believe even if Marc wasn’t hypnotizing the man as he spoke.

  One of the peskier parts of living semi-openly among mortals was the occasional need to convince the humans that supernatural beings didn’t exist, and that there were logical explanations for even the most bizarre occurrences. Marc was trying to keep mortal authorities out of vampire business now. Let the mortal police think they had jurisdiction over bringing justice to the attackers, but vampires took care of their own.

  Matthias Bridger defended the Families, and he concentrated on what he had to do while Marcus talked to the mortal cop. If he let himself think too much about Phillipa right now, he’d do more than pace, but it was better for her this way. Mortal medicine could control her disease.

  But he could cure it.

  He pushed the temptation away and stepped up to Marc as the officer walked away. “Now what?”

  The other Prime turned to him, all the ferocity he was feeling showing only in his eyes. “We hunt.”

  Matt could still feel the limp weight of Phillipa in his arms, raising his r
age again. “Good.”

  Josephine approached them before anything else could be discussed. Marc took Brandon from her, and held the baby easily against his broad shoulder. “How’s your sister?”

  “She’s good,” Josephine answered with a relieved smile. “She’s stable and sleeping peacefully. The doctor says she can go home when she wakes up.” Her expression clouded. “To the hotel, that is. We don’t have a home right now. We have a crime scene.”

  Marc put his arm around his bondmate’s shoulder. “We’re all safe. Everything else is details.”

  She rubbed her head against his chest. “Yeah. But if they stole my T-shirts, they’re going to be in big trouble.”

  Marcus’s cell phone rang, and he returned Brandon to his mother’s arms and flipped open the phone.

  A nurse stepped up and tapped him on the shoulder before he could speak. “Take it outside, please.”

  Marc nodded and went out the nearby exit.

  “Cell phones aren’t allowed inside hospitals,” Josephine explained when Matt gave her a puzzled look. She shook her head and leaned close to whisper, “The things your folk don’t know about our kind could fill a vampire self-help book. Don’t worry so much,” the empathic woman added. “Pip’s going to be fine.”

  “Pip?”

  She put a finger to her lips. “And I’m going to be fine as long as you never tell her I called her that. That’s what she was called when we were kids.”

  “I promise.” He stored the nickname away, glad that Phillipa’s sister seemed more kindly disposed toward him. “Can I see her?” he asked. “Since she’s asleep, I promise—”

  He stopped as Josephine’s attention shifted over his shoulder. When he turned to look, he saw Pete Martin coming toward them. It took an effort not to snarl at the mortal.