This Side of the Grave (Night Huntress, #5)(20)


The vampire’s hand curled around mine as he placed his arm on the table, having to bend a little due to his greater height. His grip was firm but not punishing, raising my opinion of him a notch. A schmuck would’ve ground my fingers in his fist trying to make a point.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Verses shoulder his way to the front of the other onlookers. He was probably wishing he hadn’t let us in after all.

“Count of three?” I suggested to the vampire.

Blue eyes tinged with emerald met mine. “Why not?”

Calls of “Show her what you’re made of, Nitro!” and “Knock her on her pretty ass!” rang out when I began to count, never taking my eyes from my opponent. As soon as the word three left my lips, that previously steady grip tightened and Nitro hammered his hand downward, going for the quick win with a blast of inhuman strength.

Except our arms stayed in their same vertical position. Nitro’s biceps bulged almost as much as his gaze when his efforts didn’t move my arm so much as an inch. I flashed him a smile as I held my position, mentally counting to ten before I began to edge his arm in a slow, steady arc downward. After all, I didn’t want to embarrass him by slamming his hand on the table before he’d even realized what happened. It wasn’t Nitro’s fault he had no idea I’d been born with unusual strength, or that I still had some of Bones’s power in me from drinking his blood. Poor burly vampire didn’t stand a chance.

Murmurs rose from the crowd, drowning out even the music as Nitro’s arm inched closer to the table. Lines formed in his face and a harsh grunt escaped him as he put more effort into holding me off. I let him raise his arm up a few inches—the male ego was such a fragile thing, after all—before sending it down onto the table with a thunk hard enough to crack the Formica.

We’ll have to pay for that before we leave, I thought amidst the burst of surprised exclamations from the watchers around us.

Nitro stared at his arm in disbelief. Then his gaze swung back up to me even as I disentangled my grip and shook the temporary numbness out of my hand. He’d really gone all out those last few seconds.

“How the hell did you get to be so strong?” he demanded. “You can’t be more’n a year undead!”

“Good guess,” I remarked. “It’ll be a year this fall, actually, but I’ll tell you a secret—I had vampire strength long before that.”

His brows drew together in a frown. Then comprehension dawned and Nitro laughed. “Red hair, beautiful, and badass. You must be the Reaper.”

I grinned. “Call me Cat.”

He glanced at Bones next, drawing the obvious connection as to who he had to be. Bones didn’t notice; he was too busy collecting his winnings. Comments like “Ah, that’s splendid,” and “Better luck next time, lads” came from him. By the time he sauntered over, he had a thick stack of bills in his hands. Most vampires were slow on catching what they considered the “new” credit card trend and still carried cash.

“Leave it to you to find a way to make a profit off this,” I noted in amusement.

His mouth curled. “Fortune favors the bold.”

Nitro shook his head as he looked back at us. “Guess it’s time for me to pay up, too.” Then he walked over to where his friends stood, pulling the reporter out from behind the wall of vampires. He gave him a light shove that nevertheless had him landing in an ungainly heap near my feet.

“All yours, Reaper,” he drawled.

I ticked my hand off my brow in a jaunty salute. “Pleasure doing business with you, Nitro.”

That earned me a laugh. “Next time, I’ll know better than to fall for your innocent little female act.”

“Don’t feel bad, mate,” Bones replied. “She fooled me with the same thing the first time we met, right up until I saw her kill a vampire seven times her age.”

Then Bones went over to the nearest bar and slapped his bundle of cash onto it. “Drinks are on me until this runs out,” he announced, to a rousing round of applause. I caught his wink to Verses next and the ghoul’s wry shake of his head. It probably didn’t come close to making up for the damage we’d caused the last time we were here, but it was a start.

With another chuckle, Nitro and his group walked away to place their drink orders. Around us, the onlookers faded as people went back to dancing, drinking, or whatever it was they’d been doing before this all started. I looked down at the man who was slowly getting up from the floor, sandy-brown hair mussed from his earlier struggles.

Yep, this was who we’d come here for.

“Hi, Timmie,” I said in a low voice.

His head whipped up, revealing a face with five o’clock shadow on his jaw and faint lines around his eyes and mouth. He looked different from the gangly boy who’d been my neighbor seven years ago when I was a college student by day and a vampire hunter by night. In addition to the stubble on his face, the laugh lines, and his hair being longer, his frame had also filled out to a stockier, more muscular physique. Getting older looks good on him, I mused.

“How do you . . . ?” he began. Then his voice died away while his eyes widened.

“Cathy?” he managed. He looked me up and down, his shocked expression changing into a smile that wreathed his face. “Cathy! I knew you weren’t dead!”

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