Mae put her hands on her hips and leaned down at him. “I’m allowed to go where I please, it’s not the dark ages of vampires anymore.”

“Oh, so you have freedom, but I don’t because I’m a male. How convenient—”

“I wasn’t bare-knuckle fighting with them!”

“So you only came to bet? Then, oh, yeah, you’re totally aboveboard in all this.”

Mae ground her molars—and thought seriously about walking over and kicking him in the leg. Or maybe the ass. Either way, she’d love to give him something to worry about other than his aching head.

“I did not come to gamble—”

“Was it for sex, then? ’Cuz you might get further if you showed some skin. You look like you could be someone’s mother.”

Mae rolled her eyes. “Oh, sure, I’m going to take sartorial advice from a three-hundred-pound walking ad for death. Haven’t you ever heard of false advertising, though? ’Cuz last time I checked, you were getting sliced open by a human—”

The male threw up his hands. “Because someone we know was telling me not to kill the sonofabitch!”

“You shouldn’t be killing anybody!”

“Well, aren’t you two the happy couple.”

At the sound of the dry male voice, both of them looked to the shadows where a large figure loomed in the darkness.

Without missing a beat, she and the fighter both spoke at the same time:

“We’re not a couple—”

“We’re not a couple—”

The chuckle that emanated from that corner was a yeah-sure if Mae had ever heard one—but then she was suddenly more worried about her life and safety than whether she was linked with Skeletor over here.

And P.S., survival should have been her priority in the first place.

As her hand dipped into her purse for her mace, the source of the voice stepped into a patch of ambient glow. “I’m going to request that you keep your weapons where they are, thanks. And that includes you, Shawn.”

Shawn?

She looked over at the fighter. And then refocused on what had come to join them.

Okay, this male was . . . nothing like what she would have expected to see in a decrepit part of town. He was tall, he was big, and his face did belong in a lineup of people who’d murdered their enemies in very messy ways. So yes, all that fit the bill—as did his cropped Mohawk. But he was wearing a floor-length fur duster, and the gold cane that was aiding him with his balance made him seem like he was on the way to the opera—

On that note, “Shawn” got to his feet and moved the mountain of his body in front of her. Like he wanted to protect her.

“Relax, big man, I’m not going to hurt her,” the other male said dryly.

“Damn right,” Shawn shot back. “Because I’m not going to give you the fucking chance.”

Mae leaned to the side and looked around a set of bulging arm muscles. “Are you the Reverend?”

The male in the mink’s expression didn’t change. Yet she sensed a shift in him, though she’d have been hard-pressed to pinpoint why she recognized it.

“What do you want the Reverend for, female?” came the slow drawl. “You’re not his type.”

“She’s not yours, either, asshole,” Shawn snapped. “So how ’bout you fuck off—”

“She’s not talking to you, my guy—”

Okaaaaay, she was so sick and tired of big, swinging dicks.

Mae stepped out from under cover and stared at the newcomer. “Tallah sent me. To find the Reverend. And something tells me I’m looking at him.”

Both males shut up, like they were surprised she wasn’t willing to play wallflower to their thumping-chest routines.

“Just be real with me,” she said with exhaustion. “I was so over tonight even before you waltzed in looking like Liberace and Hannibal Lecter had a love child.”

As the male in the mink narrowed his eyes, Shawn barked out a laugh.

“Oh, come on, Reverend,” he said, “you gotta admit that was a good one.”

Mae was too busy measuring the stare of the other male to pay attention to Shawn’s compliments. She had a feeling his irises were dark purple—which was something she had never seen before. And God, that weird sensation was going through her again. It wasn’t attraction—no, no, she seemed to be reserving that for killers who had more ink than a Bic factory and tasted like heaven. No, what she was feeling was something else—and whatever it was, she just wanted to run from the coiling uneasiness.

“I’ll ask you again, female.” The male’s drawl didn’t change. “What do you want with the Reverend—”

“Oh, cut the shit,” she interjected. “And I don’t want you. I want the Book. Tallah said you’d know how to find it.”

As tires screeched down below, and car doors started opening and closing, the male stopped talking. And stayed that way.

“So you know what it is,” she said with hope. “You know what I’m looking for—”

“Sure, I know what a book is. It’s two hard covers with some flimsy stuff bound in the middle. Words are written on the pages in even lines, unless it’s illustrated. And sometimes they have cuss words in them, like what the fuck are you talking about.”

The growl that rolled out of Shawn made it seem like maybe his name was short for something like Shawn-ado. And she wheeled around and pegged him with hard eyes.

“I do not need your help.” When his nasty stare stayed locked on the other jackass in the parking garage, she batted at his chest. “Hey, Shawn. You can leave now—”

Annnnnnnnd that was when a bunch of human cops burst out of the stairwell, guns up and blinding flashlights pointed straight ahead.

As Shawn dropped another f-bomb, and the vampire in the mink coat threw up his hands, Mae shielded her eyes with her arms—and was very clear on the fact that, probably for the one and only time in all of their lives, she and these two males were in complete agreement.

Fuck was right.

• • •

As Rehvenge was hit with a retina-busting beam of LED, he was so not feeling the female with the bright ideas about something she needed to avoid like the plague. He was also totally annoyed by Shawn and his he-man posturing—although that was mostly because the fight had been forfeited and now Rehv had twelve kinds of headaches to look forward to as he settled up with the bettors. But the police? Well, those boys and girls in blue ticked him off.

He had enough problems without them interfering.

On that note, he froze the trio with the shields where they stood. As a symphath, reading their emotional grids was both irresistible and a blink-of-the-eye kind of thing: The woman on the left was highly anxious, a new trainee still getting her feet under her; the man in the middle was completely calm, a veteran who had seen pretty much everything; and the guy on the far side was hiding something from everyone around him.

“Be of ease,” Rehv commanded.

In a coordinated dance, they lowered their flashlights, turned off their body cameras, and reported to their shoulder communicators that there was nothing out of order on the sixth floor, nothing wrong, nothing going on. Whatever had been happening here had wrapped up. The call-ins had been incorrect or it was another case of a false report to divert resources.