Angel's Pain. Maggie Shayne

door. She opened it to see Jack, with his dirty blond hair that was always a little too long and his slightly scruffy whiskers, making him seem like a rebel, wearing the satisfied smirk of a man who’d had far better sex than he deserved.

      “We’re getting ready to move out, Bri. You got your stuff together?”

      “Two minutes,” she told him.

      He nodded, his eyes doing a quick survey of her face. “Your headache better?”

      “Gone,” she told him.

      “I figured. Crisa’s is, too.”

      She frowned at him.

      “Reaper filled us in. I’ll help you keep an eye on her. Don’t worry.”

      “I wasn’t. And I don’t need your help ‘keeping an eye’ on Crisa, because it’s not my job to keep an eye on Crisa. Jeez, who appointed me the keeper of the nuthouse?”

      He shrugged. “Need help packing?”

      “Go jump your freaking princess again or something, and stop pestering me, will you?”

      “Okay.” He winked and left the room.

      Why the hell, she wondered, was everyone so determined to see things in her that didn’t exist? She wasn’t worried about Crisa. She didn’t give a shit about Crisa—or anyone else, for that matter. This pile of do-gooders just couldn’t seem to accept that about her. They didn’t understand it, sought to project their own moral bullshit onto her. But she didn’t believe in it. Never had.

      She was out only for herself, her own best interests and the fulfillment of her own needs. And right now those needs included only two things. The basic need to devour living blood in order to survive, and her sole purpose for wanting to.

      She had to kill Gregor for what he’d done to her.

      Revenge was the only reason she continued waking up each night. It was her life force. And once it was done, well, hell, she would probably be done, too, despite her tough talk to Roxy about being a true immortal.

      There really wasn’t, as far as she could see, much of a point to it, after all.

      2

      “I understand you’ve been looking for me,” Gregor said, speaking as if he were perfectly calm. As if every cell in his body wasn’t coiled tight at the notion of what he was about to do.

      “Yes, that’s true,” Special Agent Dwyer confirmed. He kept his hands thrust into the deep pockets of his raincoat, shoulders hunched, collar turned up against the icy drizzle that pelted them both where they stood in a rest area off a major highway in the middle of nowhere.

      3:00 a.m. Gregor was at the peak of his wakefulness. Dwyer was having trouble keeping his eyes open, despite the fact that he reeked of the coffee he’d been guzzling.

      “So?” Gregor asked.

      “Look, I appreciate you comin’ in, Gregory.”

      “Gregor,” he snapped. “Nobody calls me Gregory. Not anymore.”

      “Sorry.” Dwyer had jerked backward a bit at the barked correction, and Gregor was glad to see it. It wouldn’t do to have this man thinking of him as just another mortal operative under his command. He wasn’t mortal. And he wasn’t just another anything. He was a vampire.

      He was a god.

      “Sorry,” Dwyer repeated. “Still, it’s good you decided to come in for this meetin’. It’ll go a long way toward convincin’ the powers that be of your sincerity.”

      “Fuck the powers that be.”

      Dwyer went silent, his head coming up slowly and his eyes seeming to reflect uncertainty for the first time during their clandestine meeting.

      “I know full well there’s a burn order on me, Dwyer. Frankly, I’m surprised you haven’t tried to take me out already.”

      “No one’s goin’ to kill you, Gregor.”

      “You’re right about that much, at least.” Gregor lifted a hand, snapped his fingers. Immediately, the drones came lumbering out of the wooded area behind the rest stop.

      They were not pretty, and they couldn’t even begin to pass for human. Their size, their lumbering gait, the blank, not-quite-right look in their eyes. They were a step evolved from the popular version of Frankenstein’s monster, but only in that their heads were not visibly stitched onto their necks, nor did they have bolts sticking out on either side of their throats.

      Aside from those minor differences, though, they were pretty close.

      A woman came out of the restroom, saw the drones lumbering across the slightly sloped lawn toward her, a dozen of them, and ran shrieking for her car. Change jangled like hailstones onto the pavement as a stunned man stared, his hand seeming to lose its ability to grasp the coins. A car that had veered into the parking area suddenly accelerated, nearly running other vehicles off the road as it sped back to the highway.

      The mayhem caused by the appearance of the monsters lasted only seconds. And yeah, Gregor thought, maybe the witnesses didn’t really think of them as monsters. But there was no question something about them wasn’t quite right, no question that there were a lot of them, no question that they were big, oversized, powerful and intent on…some thing. That was enough.

      And he liked to think someone might have had the word monster whisper through their mind.

      “What is this?” Dwyer asked. He was already pulling a gun from inside one of those deep pockets, no doubt the one he’d intended to shoot Gregor with, and backing toward his car. The rest of the place was now deserted.

      “This is what I believe you would call an ambush, Dwyer. But don’t worry. I’m not going to have them kill you.” He smiled slowly. “Not right away, at least.” And then he ducked behind the concrete building to watch as the drones closed in.

      Dwyer lifted the gun, fired off a round, and one of the drones dropped in an oversized heap on the ground and lay there, moaning and bleeding and too damned dumb to do anything about it. Nor did any of his cohorts rush to his aid. They had one purpose. Obey their master.

      They kept coming. Dwyer kept shooting. A few fell, but the rest came on faster. Dwyer grappled for his car door, yanking it open, stumbling backward into the car while still firing.

      A wounded drone grabbed at his ankle. He fired again and tugged himself free, yanking his leg inside, slamming the car door, hitting the locks.

      He thought he was free as he struggled to fit the key into the ignition.

      The idiot.

      A drone tore the driver’s door from the car and sent it sailing through the air. Another gripped Dwyer by his gun-wielding arm, squeezing his wrist until the pistol dropped uselessly to the ground. Then he picked Dwyer up easily as the terrified man struggled.

      Why did he fight, Gregor wondered, when he knew he was beaten?

      One paw to the side of his head and Dwyer was fighting no more. Gregor stepped out from behind the concrete bunker that housed the public toilets and tasted victory.

      “Tie him up and put him in the Jeep,” he commanded. “I’ll take him from here.”

      The lug with Dwyer over his shoulder gave a mindless nod and carried the agent to the Jeep Wrangler, tossing him into the back like so much dirty laundry, then binding his wrists and ankles.

      Gregor looked around the parking lot. There were three dead drones, a handful more wounded. There was too much here to clean up. Bullets, casings, blood. “Leave the dead,” he said. “Leave it all, but tend to your wounded. Stanch the bleeding the way I’ve shown you. Remember not to bind the wounds too tightly,” he said, recalling how one injured drone had lost an arm the first time he’d tried to show them basic vampire first aid. “Once