Almost Midnight (Shadow Falls: After Dark #3.5)(63)

“I know. I already see her,” Miranda said, and when she turned back to Della, she spotted two other familiar faces. The twins, Candy and Sandy Gleason, about three hundred feet away caught in the middle of another group of Eiffel Tower admirers.

“Where?” Della snapped.

“Tabitha’s there and then—”

“No,” Kylie said and raised her face to sniff the air. “She means vampire. There’re several close by and they reek of old human blood.”

“Yeah, but they’re still probably nicer than Tabitha.” From the corner of Miranda’s eye, she saw a blurry figure swoop past, and it flew around the six Asians with their cell phone cameras focused on the tower.

Miranda watched in horror as the figure swooped down on Tabitha.

“There,” Miranda screamed and took off.

Forget being the first to spot the vamp or the first to run, Kylie and Della surged forward, followed by Shawn, and the three of them passed her in a fraction of a second.

Hating her lack of speed, Miranda stopped and watched in horror as the scraggily looking vampire stopped behind Tabitha, reached one hand around her chest, and pressed his other hand on the side of her face. She’d seen it in the movies, the scary-looking position that made it easy to twist and break someone’s neck. Fear rose in Tabitha’s blue eyes. The same fear clutched Miranda’s stomach.





Chapter Eight


Archenemy or not, her heart ached for Tabitha. Regretting her snarky comments about the girl, she recalled preschool when she and Tabitha shared a love of the same cookies, the same nursery rhymes, and anything princess related.

“Stop him!” Miranda screamed. She raised her hand to throw a spell.

“Let her go,” Kylie said, her voice a deep rumble as Miranda’s spell went on hold. Kylie, the protector, could work more magic than she.

The greasy, dark-haired vamp laughed as if nothing was going to stop him. His dirty clothes and overall appearance marked him as rogue.

The yellow-toothed smile of confidence just meant he didn’t have a clue he was up against a protector and a super vampire. He pressed his hand roughly into Tabitha’s cheek, but before he could get any rougher, Kylie caught his arm. With little effort, she slung him up and over her head and he landed with a dark thud on the cold ground. Della shot forward in case he tried to get up.

Screams rose from the crowd of tourists and they scurried about like rats without a maze. Then it started raining vampires. Two, three, four. Della and Shawn charged, each taking on two. Kylie took on three.

Miranda’s gaze flipped from one fight to the other, then landed on Tabitha. The girl dropped to her knees and ungracefully lost the contents of her stomach. Miranda got about twenty feet from the girl when the feeling of danger increased. Warning chills ran down her spine. She glanced up and saw the cannon-sized fireball barreling from the sky. Barreling right at Tabitha.

Knowing Della, Shawn, and Kylie were too busy dealing with rogue vamps to see the fireball, Miranda raised her hand, wiggled her pinky, and shrunk the size of the ball to a dime. It hit the ground about two feet from Tabitha. The girl screamed and stood up as if to run.

Shifting her gaze around to see if any more trouble had arisen, Miranda spotted Shawn, now fighting three vamps with a glowing sword. She’d heard about honor swords given to a few warlocks who were gifted with strong integrity and an abundance of magic.

When the fourth vamp came up against Shawn, Miranda decided he could use some help. Holding out her arm, trying to think of a spell that wouldn’t be noted by humans, she saw a large, black-and-tan German shepherd and two French bulldogs. “Got this,” she muttered. “Attack him.” Right as her pinky twitched, she realized her mistake. The last detail she’d held in her dyslexic mind had been Della’s comment about all the poop, not the dogs.

In horror, she watched as piles of dog excrement rose from the grassy knoll and were slung at the fourth vamp.

“Oh no,” she muttered.

Before she could fix it, a fog, thicker than smoke, rose from the ground. The heavy cloud painted everything a whitish gray and made it impossible to see a foot in front of her.

“Miranda?” Shawn’s voice rose in the mist, but it sounded distant.

“I’m here,” Miranda answered, and just like that, someone grabbed her. An image of the dirty vamp that had almost broken Tabitha’s neck filled her mind. Instinct had her raising her knee to hit the soft spot between his legs, while her mind raced for a curse.

“Damn.” She heard someone grunt the word. It took her about a second to recognize that moan as Shawn’s.

“Oops,” she muttered.

Then, like magic—of course magic—the fog evaporated. The thick cloud became only a pale veil of mist. She saw Shawn cupping his privates and embarrassment wiggled its way into her chest.

“Where the hell did they go?” Della snapped, looking first at Kylie and then turning to look at Miranda and Shawn.

It took a few moments for Miranda to realize who was gone. The vamps. Including the one she’d attacked with dog poop.

“Oh, lordy.” She really hated her dyslexic goofs sometimes. But on second thought … this might not be one of those times. The rogue vamp who would now go through his life being attacked by any nearby piles of poop deserved it. Didn’t he?

Then it hit that the fog had been a ploy for the vampires to escape. But vamps couldn’t make fog. Witches and warlocks, and perhaps a chameleon in witch mode, could create fog.