Demon Night

through the shadows behind her.
    “Oh, my God. Jake, hurry!”
    Jake stood up, swore, and aimed through the glass. “Vampire. And—shit, I don’t have a shot. Change of plan, Charlie—I get him away from her, you get her inside and use the symbols. Drifter showed you how?”
    Charlie was already nodding frantically, tugging at the door handle. Locked. “Okay, okay—”
    Jake pulled her hand away from the deadbolt, stabbed the pad of her forefinger with his dagger, and said grimly, “So you’re ready as soon as you get back.”
    Then he replaced the knife with a sword and twisted the lock.
    The door swung open on a visual more horrific than anything Charlie could have imagined, and worse for the silence of it: her sister on her stomach, the vampire holding her to the ground with his knee on her back and using her hair to pull her head up, exposing her throat. Jane’s mouth opened in a scream, the vampire leaning forward to tear at her neck.
    Then the scene was replaced by Jake’s back as he ran through the door. Charlie followed him…and it was all wrong. Sounds rushed in, but there was no screaming, nothing human except the strange whistling noise that Charlie was making.
    Only two steps past the door, she slammed into Jake. He was turning, his hands on her arms to spin her around, shove her back inside.
    The side of his head caved in. She felt the splatter of his blood the same instant she heard the suppressed burst of gunfire.
    He vanished.
    Charlie was still spinning, but Jake’s hands weren’t there to guide her into the house. She hit the solid wood beside the door, crumpled to the porch.
    Get inside. But she was dizzy, looked the wrong way. The vampire lifted himself off Jane. Jane…who held two pistols in her hands.
    Charlie blinked, and now it was Dylan climbing to his feet, a startled expression on his face. “I wasn’t expecting him to teleport. A shame, that. His head would have left a nice message for Michael.”
    Get inside. She crawled forward. Dylan’s shiny shoes appeared in front of her. He crouched, looked into her face, and his expression was so sympathetic, so familiar, that for an instant she wanted to reach out to him.
    “A message that they need to receive, because they’ve been lying to you, Charlie,” he said quietly. “Let me take you to Jane, and we’ll get all of this sorted out. She can explain everything to you.”
    God, how she wanted to believe him. She’d eaten dinner with this man, laughed with him, seen the love with which he’d treated her sister.
    But Jake’s blood was on her face, her hands…her finger was bleeding. Get inside.
    She staggered to her feet. “Move out of my way, Dylan. You can’t keep me from going in.”
    “No, I can’t.” He stood, smooth as a snake rising from his coils. Cold hands gripped her arms from behind. “But Mr. Henderson, my associate, can. Let’s take a ride.”
    His SUV appeared next to Jane’s car. Charlie kicked backward, heard a satisfying grunt before Henderson twisted her wrist up high, almost brought her to her knees.
    Tears filled her eyes, and she walked forward obediently, the pea gravel rough under her feet. The SUV’s alarm chirped when Dylan pointed his key at it, and the blinkers flashed.
    They were going to turn her into a vampire.
    Fuck this. Ignoring the agony in her right arm, she slammed her left elbow into his belly.
    She didn’t get another blow in. Henderson simply lifted her, squeezed her tight. Dylan turned, frowning.
    “Mr. Henderson, I told you that if you hurt her at all, or if you touch her wrong, I wouldn’t be pleased.”
    Charlie stared at him in disbelief, but the arms around her loosened. Not enough to get away, despite her struggles. Henderson shoved her into the backseat, took a place beside her. His hand covered the opposite door handle before she’d done more than move an inch toward it.
    Dylan slid into the driver’s seat, turned to smile at her. “Now, that’s a good girl. You learned that you can’t beat him much more quickly than I thought you would.”
    Terror was setting in, leaving her cold and shaking. “Where’s Jane?”
    “Safe at home with me.”
    She didn’t try to make sense of that; she’d never been good at word games, and she suspected a demon was a master. “Where’s Drifter?”
    Dylan was right—she couldn’t physically defeat them, but Ethan could.
    He would .
    “McCabe? I don’t know.” Dylan’s eyes changed, the whites and irises glowing