“I’m not interested in that kind of leadership.” Nate clapped a hand on the back of the guy’s neck and gave him a shake. “Enough. Let’s concentrate on your bright idea. Now will you look at all that smoke?”

To help ADHD focus, he turned Shuli’s face toward the plume rising up out of the tree line and into the night sky.

Shuli stopped again. “What the fuck is that?”

“It’s not on account of your hotness.”

“Well, duh, or it’d be right above us.”

The good news was that courtesy of whatever they were walking toward, the guy left the left-handed business alone. The bad news was that whatever was steaming in those woods, and smelling like someone had lit a cauldron on fire, was likely . . . well, bad news.

“Should we call someone,” Nate wondered.

“Like who?”

“My dad?”

It still felt a little weird using the d-word, but not because Murhder wasn’t his father. He’d just never expected to have one. Life wasn’t supposed to grant you a true family just because you’d wanted one. Just because you needed one.

Nate frowned. “Hey, are there people in there?”

“You know, maybe this isn’t such a great idea—”

“No, I want to—”

“Nah, I made a mistake. Let’s turn around. Break time’s done.”

When Nate felt his arm get taken in a hard grip, he shot Shuli a glare. “You’re kidding, right.”

His best friend’s face was more serious than Nate had ever seen it. “I made a mistake.”

“No, you’re being a pussy—wait, is that a gun? What the fuck are you doing with a gun!”

“I’m protecting you.”

Nate blinked and shook his head at the weapon in his buddy’s hand. “Who are you and what have you done with Shuli?”

“I can’t let anything happen to you.”

With sudden dread, Nate said, “What did my father tell you.”

“It has nothing to do with your dad.”

Nate glanced at the plume and the people he could see moving in and around the forest. Then he decided, Fuck it.

“Well, I’m not your problem, and I’m going over there. If you have another opinion about this? You can shoot me in the ass.”

He didn’t make it far before Shuli caught up. “Nate, this is dangerous—”

“Put that thing away, will you? Christ. You’ll just end up popping yourself.”

As they hit the tree line, they were arguing about all kinds of things—guns, idiots with guns, idiots who wanted to go investigating stuff when it wasn’t safe, idiots who suggested investigations and then bailed on them—although at least the nine millimeter was out of sight.

And boy, they were not alone.

At least a dozen people had gathered about a hundred yards in, but fortunately, going by the scents, they were all members of the species. Then again, there weren’t a lot of humans out here in the sticks, which was precisely why that farmhouse was being worked on by their crew.

It was best to stay far away from those rats without tails.

Nate had learned this firsthand. In that lab.

As the metallic stench got worse, his sinuses revolted, kicking out sneeze after sneeze. To help, Shuli pounded on his back, which added a round of coughing to the party.

Nate was slapping his buddy’s palm away, and worried that the Heimlich maneuver was coming next—or maybe, God forbid, CPR—when they stepped into a clearing.

Talk about the scene of a crime. The earth had been violated by something big enough, traveling fast enough, to backhoe out a good thirty or forty square feet of dirt. And in the hole? Steam. So it was hard to see much.

Nate and Shuli closed in, joining the males and females who were tilting forward and trying to eyeball whatever had landed.

“This belongs in a Stephen King book,” Shuli muttered.

Blinking away the sting in his eyes, Nate looked up to the sky. “Meteor. And assuming that’s what it is, he already wrote about one.”

“Or space junk.” Shuli elbowed Nate’s arm. “Hey, do you think if I go lick the meteorite, I can go viral?”

“I think you’ll get a virus.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know, and now I’m scared.” As the wind changed directions and swept the smoke away, Nate muttered, “And no, I’m not going to film it . . .”

His voice drifted off, losing track of the words his brain promptly forgot.

Across the hole, at the side of the crowd, a lone figure stood by itself. Herself. It was a female. At least, he was assuming it was a female, going by the long, gossamer lock of pale blond hair that had slipped free of the hood that was up on her head.

“Hello?” Shuli prompted. “I said lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice. So we’re safe.”

Nate turned away from his buddy, and mumbled, “I thought your brother told you it wasn’t lightning.”

As he started to walk toward the female, Shuli called out, “Where you going?”

“I’ll be right back.”

Mae’s brain was tangled with recriminations as she dematerialized out of the parking garage. Re-forming in the shadows down at ground level, she rubbed her face and took note of the streams of humans pouring out of the stairwell and peeling away from the open-air lots. As cars skidded into a traffic jam, and people scrambled free of the door where the wait line had been, she told herself to just ghost out and go back home. Or maybe to Tallah’s. She could return for her car in a half hour when the crush was gone.

Well, that was assuming the place wasn’t flooded with human cops by then. Even in an abandoned part of town, this kind of commotion could get noticed, and frankly, she was surprised they got away with the fights at all.

“Damn it . . .” She looked up to the sixth level.

But this isn’t about him, she told herself. He is not my problem.

Horns blared. Someone tripped and fell right in front of her—recovered, took off again. Up on the open floors of the garage, headlights were flying around, the three or four cars that had been used to throw light on the fight now funneling out the drain of the exit route at a bolt. When she glanced at the heavy concrete barriers that had been moved into place to block the entrance, she wondered if there was another way out—

The question was answered as a truck ran right into one and shoved it out of the way with its front grille.

So someone already has troubles with the law, she thought as the Ford cut across onto the sidewalk to circumvent the jam.

You must leave me! Go! Save yourself.

That was the right advice. That was—

Suddenly, Mae looked up again in a panic. What if the vampire who organized the fights . . . was the vampire who was in them?

What if that male who lay dying was the Reverend? She’d scoured the crowd with her instincts, searched all the scents and presences, and there had only been one vampire in that whole lot of humans.

“Fuck!”

As her heart started pounding, she closed her eyes and tried to take slow, deep breaths. When she got nowhere with that, she shuffled her feet, rolled her shoulders—and gave herself a big fat lecture about how she needed to chill the hell out RIGHTTHISVERYMOMENT.