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Kevin, her eyes widened and then squeezed shut for a moment. When she opened them she said, “Damn you, Pryor. Get the hell out of here.”
    â€œNot happening,” he said. “You hang in there.”
    â€œGot nothing else to do,” she said, but there was something in her eyes, her face that made him go tense and still inside.
She’s going to move,
he thought, and he dreaded it so hard it felt like a knife turning in his guts. She’d accepted her own death. She just wanted to make sure Glick got what was coming to him.
    Jesus
, he had no time. Wallace wasn’t moving; there were other vampires here, too, crouched in the shadows, watching, but they weren’t going in to save Kenya. It was as if they were waiting for some signal.
    When it came, it was invisible to human eyes; maybe it was Stan Davis and his telepathy again. They all
moved
, white flashes in the starlight, vicious and deadly. Kenya was already twisting violently against Glick’s broken hands, and the shotgun Kevin held wasn’t going to work because she was in the line of the spread; before he even completed the thought, he was releasing the shotgun, and as it began to fall toward the ground, as the vampires closed in on Glick, as Kenya completed her turn, it felt as if everything ticked slower . . . slower . . . slower . . . except that his hand was moving in regular time, flashing toward the holster and closing and drawing with the same fluid motion he’d practiced all those hours at the range and
snap
the shot hit his senses at the same time the shock traveled up his arm and a black hole opened between Glick’s bloody, rabid eyes.
    By the time Wallace seized Glick, he was already dead, and Kenya was falling forward to the ground.
    Kevin let out a wordless yell and lunged for her, went down on his knees amid the crack vials and needles and condoms and didn’t give a good goddamn about any of that as he reached out to roll her over.
Don’t be dead, don’t be dead, don’t be . . .
    â€œNice shot,” Kenya said. She sounded almost normal, but he felt the vibration under her skin, the tremors of adrenaline and the aftershocks of terror.
    He didn’t even think about it. He just grabbed her and pulled her into his arms. It didn’t feel like embracing a partner. It felt more like coming home.
    â€œShe’s alive,” Wallace said from behind them. “You owe Stan.”
    â€œThe hell I do,” Kevin said. “I shot him before you even touched him. Stan owes
me
.”
    There was a moment of silence, of chill and whispering danger, and then Wallace shrugged. “I guess that would be between the two of you. Good luck with that conversation.”
    The moment was over. Kenya’s muscles were starting to tense, the animal comfort of their embrace passing, and he let her go before she had to reject him by pulling away. They didn’t meet each other’s eyes, but he saw that she was smiling. It looked a little shaky, but genuine enough that she felt like she needed to turn her head to hide it.
    He didn’t offer to help her up, and she wouldn’t have accepted it. They just climbed separately to their feet, and Kenya retrieved the shotgun from where he’d dropped it as he holstered his sidearm.
    When he looked up, the vampires were gone. Glick was gone, too. They’d carried his body off, and Kevin expected it wouldn’t ever be seen again. The official
Wanted
posters would go up in Shreveport, and that dead young man’s family would never have the comfort of closure, but at least Glick was done.
    He expected to feel something after shooting a man in the head, but all he felt at the moment was a dull, ringing emptiness and a distant relief.
    â€œKevin?” Kenya was watching him. “We need to get out of here.”
    It had been a hell of a long day, and the thought of getting the hell away from Dallas, from