Page 1

Chapter One

Everyone in Arrhythmia, Texas, expects grace from a vampire: the fluid movements, the unnerving stillness, that predatory elegance. Just not from me. The bell above the door of Paws, Claws & Fangs gave a rusty shriek as I shoulder-checked my way inside, trailing a gust of hellish October heat and a disintegrating strip of mosquito tape. If you were a regular, you got used to the smell: pine cleaner, hops, and a background hint of cat litter nobody could quite locate. I was halfway across the checkerboard linoleum, setting my sights on the only open barstool, when my boot caught a metal leg. The stool scraped out and introduced itself to my shin, hard.

“Jesus,” I hissed through my teeth, momentum pitching me forward like a marionette whose strings had been yanked by a drunken toddler. I windmilled my arms, which did nothing to slow my descent, but did give the room’s after-work crowd a little floor show. In the end, I managed a full-body catch against the edge of the bar, taking it in the ribs and gripping the counter so tight the withering fake wood laminate groaned. I thought for sure it would snap quicker than my last girlfriend when she was hangry.

My entire performance spilled exactly one mouthful of beer from the nearest patron’s glass, which was a personal record and, frankly, deserved recognition.

Lucy, a were-fox with reflexes fast enough to save the rest, lifted her glass safely out of range.

“You owe me a sip.”

“Put it on my tab.”

“You don’t have a tab.”

“Then put it on Dean’s.”

“Absolutely not,” Dean called from behind the bar.

I finished maneuvering onto the stool like a man docking a damaged boat. Lucy snorted and went back to scrolling through something on her phone.

Behind the bar, Dean pretended not to be impressed. He was a big wolf-shifter in a small apron, hands like baseball gloves and a jawline that could sharpen pencils. The only thing older than his “No Humans Allowed” T-shirt was the tattoo peeking out beneath the collarbone: a faded, toothy wolf, mid-roar. He was polishing a pint glass with a rag that had started life as a dish towel and ended up as a biology experiment. Thank God, supernatural folks didn’t get sick from germs like humans.

“Evenin’, Logan,” he said, eyebrow doing a little upward tilt. “Gonna try to sit upright the whole night, or should I call Mack now for an extraction?”

“I’m experimenting with a new thing,” I replied, massaging my shin. “It’s called not concussing myself before happy hour.”

Dean snorted, which for him was a sign of deep affection. “Your usual?”

“Yeah, thanks,” I said, and meant it. It was an off-brand pale ale, exactly cold enough and reliably mediocre, and Dean poured it like he was handling nitroglycerin instead of the cheap-ass beer. The tap handle was shaped like a bloody fang, which made me smile every time I sat at the bar. He slid the pint over, not a drop wasted. I’d expect nothing less from a true professional.

I gripped the glass, watched the foam settle, and tried not to look at my own reflection in the bottle display behind the bar. Not because I was one of those old-school vamps who couldn’t see themselves. Nope, the change had seen fit to leave me all my vanity and then some. I avoided it because my face lately looked like a police sketch drawn by a guy who only vaguely remembered what human faces were. Sharp chin, high cheekbones, nose that had been broken once and never fixed quite right. My hair was dark brown and cut short enough to be nearly respectable, except it had this permanent just-crawled-out-of-a-ditch quality I’d never been able to shake. My eyes, though, those were the giveaway: green as bottle glass and, if you caught them in the light, reflecting back like a cat’s. Most people didn’t look that long. Maybe it made them uncomfortable, or maybe they were just polite. Arrhythmia was that kind of town.

Dean was still watching me, a tiny grin leaking through the beard. I took a sip. The beer was hoppy, sharp, with a chemical tang that told you exactly how many corners the brewer had cut. It tasted, if I squinted hard, almost like real beer, the kind I used to drink before everything went to hell. But it wasn’t the same. Nothing was.

Dean’s voice was a low rumble. “Not the same, is it?”

I shrugged, running my thumb over the condensation ring on the counter. “Tastes like something. Better than blood.” I still wasn’t used to the blood. Yes, it kept me nourished, and my body needed it. Didn’t mean I had to like it.

He grunted. “That’s the spirit.” Then, softer: “You want me to keep Mack off your ass tonight?”

“Please and thank you.” I did not need my parole officer and best-friend-who’d-drawn-the-short-straw showing up to supervise my evening.

The bar was starting to fill up as full dark settled over the town and the streetlights began to bleed through the dirty glass windows. You could find every flavor of supernatural at Paws, Claws & Fangs: shapeshifters with full-sleeve tattoos, baby witches giggling into their spritzers, and the odd cryptid lurking in a shadowed booth, hunched over a stack of pancakes. The sign above the door glared “No Humans Allowed” in alternating green and red neon, though everybody knew it was more a suggestion than a rule. The only humans who were allowed in town were just one generation removed from something with fangs or fur. Most folks got along as long as you didn’t talk politics or religion. Those were the big no-nos. And then there was me. The resident outcast whom everyone looked down upon. I had no idea why I was treated as a steaming pile of something they’d stepped in.

I flexed my hands around my pint, feeling the edge of a tremor in my right pinky. That shit started a week after the accident. One of those tiny, dumb reminders your body makes when your brain won’t stop replaying a thing. I had a whole collection of those: an ache in my left ankle from the impact, a scar on my shoulder from the glass, a tic in the jaw when the weather went south. Most of the aches had faded after I’d been turned, replaced by new and weirder tells, but the scar remained and the pinky tremor had stuck around. Maybe I liked it, in some backward way. It was the only proof I had that I was still me.

I was mid-sip when the memory hit me, same as it did most nights: cold rain splattering against the windshield, headlights splintered into a million prisms, the desperate thud of my heart as I yanked the wheel and realized it was too late. I wasn’t going to miss the guardrail. Then, nothing. Time stitched together by the sound of sirens and police yelling that everything was going to be okay. I remembered a white room, antiseptic and humming with old fluorescent bulbs. I remembered someone in scrubs, her eyes so blue I thought they’d cut through my skull. “You want to live?” she’d asked, with the flat delivery of a person who’d asked the question a hundred times before. I’d nodded, not realizing I was signing away my last mortal breath. The bite itself I didn’t remember; just the burn in my veins and a waking hunger so raw I could’ve eaten the mattress.

Dean interrupted my spiral with a gentle clink, setting down a bowl of pretzels. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. The pretzels were for the salt. As I’d found out, vampires didn’t really need to eat, but we still liked to, and we tended to have the weirdest sodium cravings.

“Thanks, man,” I said, voice rough. I grabbed a handful and tossed them in my mouth. They were stale and perfect.

“Just doin’ my civic duty,” Dean said, then turned to break up an argument between two goblins about whose turn it was to pay for nachos.

The door shrieked again, and for a second, I thought it might be Mack, which would’ve been my luck. But it wasn’t. It was a woman I’d never seen before. She was tall, poised, with a mane of red curls and curves in all the right places. She stepped inside with the self-possession of someone who knew exactly where she belonged, then scanned the room like a predator casing her territory. Her eyes caught mine, held for a second, then moved on. She was impossible to ignore. At least for me. My brain wouldn’t let me, even if I wanted to.

Every head in Paws, Claws & Fangs swiveled to track her, even the goblins, even Dean, who didn’t have time for drama unless it came with a hefty tip. The noise in the place hit a mute button.