Free Know Thine Enemy by Rosalie Stanton Page B

night. On her nightstand lay her dagger. Everything else looked in place. Everything else . . . .
    " The fuck." She threw her legs over the side of the bed. Another moment passed before the haze faded, and then the rest came flooding in. Leaving the warehouse where Prentiss and his friends had held her, spouting peace theories and making offers. She'd taken a complicated way home and doubled back a time or two to ensure she wasn't followed, though something told her it was for nothing. If one vamp could get a beat on where she and Wright were staying, others could, too.
    Wright had been in by the time she got back, but she hadn't stopped in to say hello. She knew she'd get her ass handed to her when they next spoke and decided it would be better to put a few hours sleep between being kidnapped and explaining where she'd been. Wright's head would spin around but she had no control one way or another.
    The memory of last night felt muddied and confused, yet too lucid to be mistaken for a dream. Besides, dreams didn't leave marks on her wrists. Prentiss's cool confidence and commanding stare, stories of an underground society consisting of vampires who had been turned against their will. And try as she might, she couldn't shake away his warnings regarding the mysterious Ryker, her other undead stalker. None of it made sense, though.
    Izzie wouldn 't pretend to be an expert in matters of the underworld. She didn't get close enough to her prey to study their looks or mannerisms, just as she didn't go out of her way to observe the habits of those demons smart enough to leave humankind alone. Yet she did have enough sense to know when something felt fishy, and Prentiss was as cold and scaly as they came. What his true motives were, she didn't know. The only thing she knew with any degree of certainty was where he intended to start.
    Ryker might not be a standup guy, but when he met her eyes, she saw no agenda. That meant either he hid his motives with expert skill or he told the truth. At any rate, unlike the other guy, he hadn 't tied her up or asked her to choose a side in a war that wasn't hers.
    He also could have taken her out at any time during his Stalk Izzie Campaign, but had left her alive and only a little disoriented. Likewise, he could have chased her after she 'd hightailed it last night, but he hadn't. In fact, had he followed her, she might not have spent much of the night drugged and bound and listening to a lunatic with a grudge.
    Whatever else Prentiss had planned, Izzie was certain Ryker sat at the heart. And though she knew their feud was out of her hands and none of her business, she felt she owed him the courtesy of informing him someone was gunning for his head. He might already know and he might not care, but he hadn 't done her any kind of wrong.
    More than that, there was a familiar quality to him. And she knew finding him wouldn't be difficult.
    A harsh knock thundered against the door, penetrating the cloud around her head and dragging her back to the present. "Izzie!"
    She rolled her eyes and rose to her wobbly legs, doing her best to ignore the way the room twirled and threatened to throw her off balance. "Hold on." She grunted. "Coming now."
    " Open the fucking door!"
    " Didn't anyone ever tell you what 'hold on', means?" Izzie staggered the rest of the way and quickly unfastened the dead bolt. "The—"
    Whatever she 'd been about to say fell off her lips. The instant the lock clicked open, Wright barreled inside, his eyes wild and bloodshot, his hair a tussled mess. He burned her with a hard stare before turning his attention to the room, gaze bouncing from one corner to the next. "What the fucking hell happened last night?" he demanded. "You don't show. You don't call. You don't even fucking bother to let me know you got in. Jesus fucking Christ, Izz, you fucking—"
    " Oh, knock it off."
    " What?"
    The surprise in his voice didn 't faze her. She very rarely got mouthy with him, and their arguments