Beautiful Danger. Michele Hauf

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      Didn’t matter. One vampire, be he tattered and barefoot or cloaked in finery and charm, was the same as the next to her.

      Crossing at a light, Lark holstered the stake at her hip and insinuated herself into a crowd of hipsters that lingered outside a nightclub blasting out technopunk loud enough to frizz her eyelashes. If the vampire wanted to lose her, he’d go where the crowds were.

      Lark didn’t like rubbing elbows with all these free and happy drunk people, so she slipped into an alley. Near the end, puffs of smoke signaled someone standing alone sucking on a grit.

      She walked swiftly, head up, and fierce mien carrying her slender frame as if she were a quarterback headed for the end zone. No one would mess with her. Until a man flicked the half-smoked cigarette and it careened through the air and landed on the cobblestones before her steel-toed boots.

      Lark stopped before the smoldering ember and slammed her hands to her hips. Her forefinger touched the stake. In her left hand she’d concealed brass knuckles that were bladed on the palm side.

      “Hey, demoiselle, you are lonely.” It wasn’t a question.

      Lark rolled her eyes. Smoke and whiskey shrouded the man. The scent was obnoxious. But beyond the normal smells she’d expect from a patron lingering near a nightclub, something deeper clung to him. Wild and feral.

      And then she sensed others. Two to her right and one to her left.

      Shit.

      “What do you say, boys?” the whiskey-scented man asked. “We need a little fun before we go for a run, eh? Too bad the full moon ain’t out.”

      Lark bit her bottom lip. Werewolves? They gave off a distinctive aura that she sensed, more alpha than most mortal men were capable of. They had better not be from the Levallois pack, or she would insist on double her pay for enduring these half-wits when finally she had slain the longtooth.

      “I’m not into dogs,” she said, and turned quickly, backing up to hold a firm stance with the open alley behind her.

      A pack of four stood before her. Double shit. All of them looked like bodybuilders, arms flexed out at their sides, and wearing muscle shirts and blue jeans that enhanced their meaty, rugged builds. Wolves were rowdy but usually never gave her problems. They couldn’t know what she was—that she was trying to help them.

      She didn’t need them to know.

      Holding out her hand, she revealed the blade tucked against her palm, and bent it in a come-get-me gesture. She didn’t go so far as to say “bring it,” but she was thinking it.

      “Oh, she’s spunky! Henri, you hold her down.”

      “With pleasure.” A brutish blond wolf lunged for her.

      Lark slashed her blade across his cheek and stepped aside to avoid the blood spatter. The wolves saw the gaping wound on their buddy’s cheek and charged all at once.

      Not too proud to save her ass the smart way, Lark turned and ran down the alleyway but paused when she felt the breath of one at her back. Times like this she questioned her sanity.

      She spun on one foot, swinging her leg up into a high roundhouse, and clocked him against the skull with the hard rubber sole of her boot. It was never easy to bring down a behemoth. The wolf grabbed her leg and toppled her off balance. She hit the cobbles, back and shoulders first, an unladylike grunt forced from her lungs.

      She should have kept running. Panic had distorted the calm she had been trained to maintain.

      Kicking at the next wolf who lunged for her, she slashed his jaw with the blade that sprang from the toe of her boot. Using her hands as springs, she jumped to her feet.

      “She’s armed to the teeth!” one growled. “What are you, lady?”

      “She’s a walking death wish,” one said.

      “I like ’em feisty,” another said, revealing with a smirk his thick canines made for tearing meat.

      Lark felt a beefy arm wrap about her waist. The shing of talons grazed her Kevlar vest. Another of the wolves shifted out his claws. Not good. She didn’t want to deal with four fully shifted werewolves. Did they dare shift in the city? So close to mortals?

      “You don’t want me enough to risk exposure,” she said, and drew her blade across the wolf’s wrist, which granted her a howling release.

      Lark stumbled against a brick wall, and realized the alley was fenced off with wrought iron topped by pointed spindles, a dead end. Four wolves stalked toward her, bleeding and flexing their muscles, each with a hunger for something she wasn’t willing to give them.

      “I say we rip her limb from limb,” the one commented as he sucked at his bleeding wrist. “She’s too nasty to screw.”

      “Me first!”

      The big blond one named Henri charged her, and when Lark wasn’t sure what her next move would be, she slashed blindly through the air—yet impact of wolf to her slender frame did not happen. The wolf howled and landed up against the brick wall to her left.

      And before her stood Domingos LaRoque, his back to her, standing tall, with arms out as if to shield her.

      “Come on, puppies,” he said. He whistled, short and quick, as one would to call in a dog from the yard. Twisting his head to the side, he flipped back his wild tangle of hair. “Pick on someone your own size.”

      “A bloody longtooth,” one growled.

      “Get him!”

      And the battle began.

      Wrestling only momentarily with the weirdness of the vampire protecting her, Lark found her bearings and pulled out a stake. She preferred not to kill werewolves unless it was life or death, but she would do what was necessary to save her own life.

      The vampire tossed one wolf down the alleyway as if it were a rag doll, and followed by crushing another’s face into the brick wall. His moves were erratic yet swift. Though tall, he was much leaner than the wolves, and anyone watching would have laughed to see the werewolves get their asses kicked by the slender vampire.

      Henri grabbed Domingos from behind. Lark swung around her arm and stabbed the werewolf in the back with the stake. The wolf yowled but didn’t ash. She hadn’t expected him to. Only vampires were reduced to ash with a death punch to their heart. But the wolf did bleed and whimper at the well-placed strike that had, no doubt, pierced a lung.

      Disengaging the stake, she swung toward the next attacker.

      The vampire ducked and yelped, “Watch that thing! I’m trying to help you here!”

      “Sorry.” But she didn’t mean it. If she could take out the vampire amid the ruckus, then bonus points for her. The stake landed in the skull of another wolf, and she had to tug hard to reclaim it. “Thickheaded beast.”

      She kicked the slumped wolf aside, and turned to catch the vampire against her chest. The last two standing wolves had tossed him at her.

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