Authors: Rosalie Stanton
Know Thine Enemy (10 page)
"
Or sumfink ran into 'er."
That might have been the most intelligent thing
Ryker had heard the other man say. He nodded and looked to the numerous shadows and alleyways in which a predator might hide.
"
Ya tink sumfink grabbed 'er, is that it?"
"
Maybe." He didn't like jumping to conclusions.
"'
Nother bloodsucker, ya tink?"
Ryker frowned. No, that didn
't make sense. None of this made much sense. The odds of a vamp making a random successful grab of a talented hunter were steep.
"
No."
"
Coulda followed her."
"
I
followed her. If someone else was on her tail, I would've known."
"
Ya tink?"
The note in Connor
's voice lent him pause, but Ryker decided not to pursue it, or Izzie's mysteriously hovering scent.
Perhaps he was thinking too hard. After all, it had been over a century since a woman had stirred in him more than a mere passing interest. The most action he
'd seen in years was the blood he nursed off a willing neck before bringing his bedmate to fruition. Izzie was different. She knew what he was, yet she wasn't afraid or disgusted. Even as a hunter, she didn't reach for her weapon unless she was under fire.
Perhaps that was why he was concerned.
Perhaps.
Either way, she was a clever, resourceful girl. He wasn
't one to worry, and he definitely didn't want to start now over someone he'd just met.
Not now. No.
Though something told him if she didn't show up by the following evening, his answer would change.
Chapter Five
The mind was a funny thing.
Izzie
's childhood, for the most part, was nothing more than a blur of images and sensations. Memories of her later years—the last spent as Harrison's daughter—were more concrete. The line separating what she imagined and what she knew was real had solidified somewhere between the ages of ten and thirteen. Granted, she didn't particularly care to reflect on the life she'd left behind, but she had learned how to compartmentalize. How to preserve the memories she needed and lock all the others away.
H
er mind felt fuzzy when she pried open her eyes the next day. She blinked and yawned, her skin humming, her heart pounding, and a sense of dread pooling in her belly. A few moments passed before the night returned in all its confusing glory.
Izzie sat up, looking from one corner to the next. This was her motel room
—the same one she'd awakened in the day before. Her duffle bag sat where she'd left it, as did the crossbow she'd inherited from Wright and the clothes she'd worn last night. On her nightstand lay her dagger. Everything else looked in place. Everything else . . . .
"
The fuck." She threw her legs over the side of the bed. Another moment passed before the haze faded, and then the rest came flooding in. Leaving the warehouse where Prentiss and his friends had held her, spouting peace theories and making offers. She'd taken a complicated way home and doubled back a time or two to ensure she wasn't followed, though something told her it was for nothing. If one vamp could get a beat on where she and Wright were staying, others could, too.
Wright had been
in by the time she got back, but she hadn't stopped in to say hello. She knew she'd get her ass handed to her when they next spoke and decided it would be better to put a few hours sleep between being kidnapped and explaining where she'd been. Wright's head would spin around but she had no control one way or another.
The memory of last night
felt muddied and confused, yet too lucid to be mistaken for a dream. Besides, dreams didn't leave marks on her wrists. Prentiss's cool confidence and commanding stare, stories of an underground society consisting of vampires who had been turned against their will. And try as she might, she couldn't shake away his warnings regarding the mysterious Ryker, her other undead stalker. None of it made sense, though.
Izzie wouldn
't pretend to be an expert in matters of the underworld. She didn't get close enough to her prey to study their looks or mannerisms, just as she didn't go out of her way to observe the habits of those demons smart enough to leave humankind alone. Yet she did have enough sense to know when something felt fishy, and Prentiss was as cold and scaly as they came. What his true motives were, she didn't know. The only thing she knew with any degree of certainty was where he intended to start.
Ryker might not be a standup guy, but when he met her eyes, she saw no agenda. That meant either he hid his motives with expert skill or he told the truth. At any rate, unlike the other guy, he hadn
't tied her up or asked her to choose a side in a war that wasn't hers.
He also could have taken her out at any time during his Stalk Izzie Campaign, but had left her alive and only a little disoriented. Likewise, he could have chased her after she
'd hightailed it last night, but he hadn't. In fact, had he followed her, she might not have spent much of the night drugged and bound and listening to a lunatic with a grudge.
Whatever else Prentiss had planned, Izzie was certain Ryker sat at the heart. And though she knew their feud was out of her hands and none of her business, she felt she owed him the courtesy of informing him someone was gunning for his head. He might already know and he might not care, but he hadn
't done her any kind of wrong.
More than that,
there was a familiar quality to him. And she knew finding him wouldn't be difficult.
A harsh knock thundered against the door, penetrating the cloud around her head and dragging her back to the present.
"Izzie!"
She rolled her eyes and rose to her wobbly legs, doing her best to ignore the way the room twirled and threatened to throw her off balance.
"Hold on." She grunted. "Coming now."
"
Open the fucking door!"
"
Didn't anyone ever tell you what 'hold on', means?" Izzie staggered the rest of the way and quickly unfastened the dead bolt. "The—"
Whatever she
'd been about to say fell off her lips. The instant the lock clicked open, Wright barreled inside, his eyes wild and bloodshot, his hair a tussled mess. He burned her with a hard stare before turning his attention to the room, gaze bouncing from one corner to the next. "What the fucking hell happened last night?" he demanded. "You don't show. You don't call. You don't even fucking bother to let me know you got in. Jesus fucking Christ, Izz, you fucking—"
"
Oh, knock it off."
"
What?"
The surprise in his voice didn
't faze her. She very rarely got mouthy with him, and their arguments typically didn't end in her favor. "I said knock it off. I had a rough night."
He stared at her vacantly.
"You," he replied incredulously.
"You
had a rough night?"
"
What the hell do you think? I was out hitting every frat party on campus?"
"
You didn't show."
"
And gee, let's not once stop to think that might just not have been
my
fault." Izzie's nose wrinkled. "You're a very special kind of jackass, you know that? And for all your talk, you sure weren't lurking outside the door waiting for me to get home. Must've been so fucking inconvenient to get all that sleep."
"
You're gonna grill
me
'cause I nodded off waiting for your ass to get home?"
"
How long have you known me, asshole? You really think it was on purpose?" Izzie snickered. "I got grabbed last night."
He paused.
"Grabbed? What do you mean, grabbed?"
"
I mean I got myself invited to a mandatory party."
"
Who?"
"
What?"
"
Who grabbed you?"
"
Who do you think? We only know one kind of person, Zack, and they typically come with sharp teeth." She held his gaze for a long moment before breaking away, tension rolling off her shoulders. "Look, there's something I haven't told you. In hindsight, I should've told you right away, but I know how you like to flip your lid about every little thing and I really wasn't in the mood for a lecture."
"
Uh-huh," Wright said. "How do you think you're gonna fare now?"
"
Not well."
"
Good guess."
Izzie hesitated, worrying a lip between her teeth. She
'd known to expect this—hell, just yesterday she'd questioned the judgment about keeping Wright in a dark about her newfound vampire friend. But while the encounter had left her puzzled and shaken, she genuinely hadn't felt threatened. She hadn't felt anything but bewildered.
Yet Wright wouldn
't see it that way. He couldn't. He'd see nothing but a walking corpse with homicidal tendencies and a pair of fangs.
"
Night before last, I . . . I met a vamp."
Wright stared at her blankly, his
eyebrows arching. "Yeah. And?"
"
We talked."
"
You talked," he deadpanned.
"
He'd been tailing me. This vamp."
The suspended skepticism on Wright
's face dissolved, replaced with the hard outrage she'd expected. "Tailing you?" he spat. "You let a vamp tail you?"
"
Yeah, I signed his permission slip and everything. What the hell do you think?"
"
You got sloppy."
A cold shudder claimed her.
"Fuck you."
"
What the fuck do you expect, Izz? You could've gotten killed!"
She spread her arms.
"Standing right here, aren't I?"
"
You disappeared last night!"
"
That wasn't Ryker's fault!"
Wright froze.
"Ryker?" he repeated. "Ryker? Is that supposed to be its name?"
"
His name," she corrected without thinking. The look she received in turn was no less than she expected. Assigning a vamp a name was a huge no-no—it personalized the target, and emotionally compromised the hunter—and Wright would read her the Riot Act in several languages before she could even imagine a day when she wouldn't hear about it again.
"
His name?" Wright repeated at last, blinking erratically. "His
name?"
"
Calm down—"
"
Fuck you,
calm down.
You got to know a vamp
by name?"
"
That's not the point."
"
Yeah, well, I'm making it the point."
"
You can back the hell off, 'cause I'm the one telling the story."
Wright
's brows shot skyward again. "Watch it—"
"
I told you I got grabbed. Is that worthy of your attention, or is he suddenly more important than me?"
That at least seemed to calm him
. The fire in his eyes faded.
"
All right," Wright said, exhaling. "All right. Dish."
"
Three of them. A guy and two chicks. They grabbed me outside The Wall—"
"
What's The Wall?"
Izzie
frowned. "Umm . . . this . . . bar."
"
A bar?"
"
I know the owner."
"
Yeah?" he replied suspiciously. "How long?"
The frown melted
into a wince. "How long have we been here, again?"
"
Jesus, Izz. You got a death wish or something? What do we say?"
"
We only trust each other," she recited. It was one of the tenets of their relationship. They didn't explore new places unaccompanied—places being anywhere with walls and a door. Nightly scouring of their territory was a different matter. Most of the time, there were at least five ways to escape if accosted outdoors. The same could not be said for businesses or homes with which they were unfamiliar.
"
I know this is asking a lot," Izzie said, "but is there any chance we could skip this part?"
"
What do you think?"
"
I think you know I didn't tell you for a reason, and therefore have whatever lecture you wanna throw my way memorized."
"
Yeah, 'cause obviously that's fucking effective."
She ignored him.
"They got me with a dose of something wicked. When I woke up, I was tied to a chair, and they were at the end of a long table." Izzie paused, shivering. "They knew me, Zack."