Promises to Keep - By Amelia Atwater-Rhodes Page 0,2

anyway? He had a party to get to.

There was a phone and a clock upstairs. Jay was halfway there before the shapeshifters’ anxious thoughts caught up to him: Where is he going?

“Need to make a call!” he shouted back from the stairs. “Lay your friend down, elevate his feet, try to keep him warm.” Jay knew the basics of how to treat blood loss, because a vampire hunter needed to, but he wasn’t a healer.

Jerky?

The query came from a Canadian lynx who had been waiting lazily outside the front door. He had helped Jay track the shapeshifters here, but he hadn’t had much interest in joining the fight itself.

Lynx had been a cub when Jay had met him two years ago. They had bonded swiftly, and now Lynx’s presence meant Jay’s senses were sharper—the traditional five, as well as his sense of the fluid shifts in the power around him. In exchange, Lynx’s life span would be longer, and his body stronger and more resistant to disease and injury. Hopefully that included resistance to the salt and chemicals that packed beef jerky, for which Lynx had developed a ferocious fondness.

Jay grabbed a strip of moose jerky from a box beside the register and tore it open while he held the store’s phone to his ear with his shoulder. It didn’t count as stealing when you took things from people who’d tried to kill you, right?

Lynx had eaten two strips before Jay had finished calling SingleEarth for medical support and a cleanup crew. By the time the EMTs had arrived and Jay had sponged blood off his skin in the restroom, he was ridiculously late to hook up with his carpool.

“Sorry, I couldn’t wait any longer,” the bloodbond said when Jay called to ask if he could still get a ride. “I’m almost there now.”

“Damn.” A bloodbond was a human tied to his or her vampiric master through a blood exchange, as well as what Jay considered an unhealthy level of emotional dependency. He couldn’t expect this one to willingly run late to an event her master considered important.

“Is there anyone else I can get a ride with?” he asked. “I was really looking forward to this bash.”

If helping SingleEarth made him miss the best vamp-fest of the year, he was going to … whine and do nothing about it, most likely. SingleEarth paid pretty much all his expenses. He was obligated to help them out occasionally.

“Well …” The bloodbond hesitated. She probably wasn’t supposed to let him know precisely where the house was.

“I would really hate to disappoint Nikolas,” Jay added. “He asked me to come.” Invoking her master’s name was dirty, underhanded manipulation. Jay was cool with that.

“I guess I could give you directions?”

“Great! I have a pen right here.” Jay knew to accept the offer quickly, and swiped a souvenir pen and a handful of receipts to write on.

Kendra’s annual Heathen Holiday was infamous—and extremely exclusive. The celebration lasted from Christmas Eve until New Year’s Day and was as much an art exhibition as a social gathering. Kendra’s line was primarily made of artists—emotionally unstable, frequently violent artist vampires, specifically. No witch and certainly no hunter had ever been invited. All the most powerful and influential bloodsuckers would be gathered in one place.

Jay changed into a tux featuring a black silk jacket and a green and gold vest. The cashier at the rental shop had assured him that the color complimented his hazel-green eyes and auburn hair, which he brushed and pulled back into a ponytail.

Want to come to a party? he asked Lynx.

The cat merely yawned.

Lynx would be able to make his way home when he wanted to. Jay double-checked to ensure that his knife was accessible but not visible, then got into his car and eased it onto the snowy road.

He hoped he would get there in time. It would be so disappointing if all the good vamps were gone.

CHAPTER 2

JAY HAD BARELY stepped through the front door of Kendra’s mansion, when he stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the larger-than-life sculpture that dominated the front hall.

The artist had captured in blown glass the very instant when a proud huntress launched a falcon from her wrist. Her expression held despair, and hope, and pain, and power, all at once. The falcon seemed like her soul, freed of its earthly bonds. Could she fly with it, or was she forever earthbound, cursed to only dream of the skies?

He saw that his hand had risen, and grabbed