“Warren made a noise, the first one I'd heard out of him since we'd come into the room. I'd have been happier if he hadn't sounded scared."Easy, Warren," Adam told him. "You're safe here.”"If you die on us, you won't be," said Kyle with a growl that would have done credit to any of the werewolves in the room.”

“A second floor window opened, and Kyle stuck his head and shoulders out so he could look down at us. “If you two are finished playing Cowboy and Indian out there, some of us would like to get their beauty sleep.”I looked at Warren. “You heard ‘um Kemo Sabe. Me go to my little wigwam and get ‘um shut-eye.”“How come you always get to play the Indian?” whined Warren, deadpan.“Cause she’s the Indian, white boy,” said Kyle.”

“His heart's occupied elsewhere," said Ben from behind me. "And even if it weren't he's not interested in your kind. But, I'm available and ready.""You don't have a heart," I told him. "Just a gaping hole where it should have been.""All the more reason for you to give me yours."I pounded my forehead against Warren 's back. "Tell me Ben's not flirting with me.""Hey," said Ben sounding hurt. "I was talking cannibalism, not romance.”

“For Adam, screwed-up bonding thing or not, I’d wait forever.“Really?” he asked in a tone I’d never heard from him before. Softer. Vulnerable. Adam didn’t do vulnerable.“Really what?” I asked.“Despite the way our bond scares you, despite the way someone in the pack played you, you’d still have me?”He'd been listening to my thoughts. This time it didn't bother me.“Adam,” I told him, “I’d walk barefoot over hot coals for you.”

“Then again, maybe you couldn't have killed me," he said, crawling out of the stairway. He moved very slowly, like a lizard who had gotten too cold.I heard a whimper from behind one of the closed doors next to the bathroom, and sympathized. I wanted to whimper, too."I'm not hunting you," I told him firmly, though I stepped backward until I stood in a circle of light at the end of the hallway.He stopped halfway out of the stairway, his eyes were filmed over like a dead man's."Good," he said. "If you kill Andre, I won't tell-and no one will ask."And he was gone, withdrawing from the hallway and down the stairs so fast that I barely caught the motion, though I was staring right at him.I walked out of his home because if I'd moved any faster, I'd have run screaming.”

“A cowboy, a lawyer, and a mechanic watched Queen of the Damned,” I murmured. Warren—who had once, a long time ago, been a cowboy—snickered and wiggled his bare feet. “It could be the beginning of either a bad joke or a horror story.” “No,” said Kyle, the lawyer, whose head was propped up on my thigh. “If you want a horror story, you have to start out with a werewolf, his gorgeous lover, and a walker.”

“Hey, Adam,” I said.I thought you’d want to know that Warren and Darryl made it out of the vampire den alive.”I sucked in my breath. “You didn’t actually agree to their meeting on Marsilia’s grounds?”He laughed. “No, it just sounded better than saying they made it out of Denny’s alive. It might not be romantic, but it’s open all night and set in the middle of a brightly lit parking lot with no dark places for skulking parties to ambush from.”