of each one. They matched the floor mats.
Of course they did.
Seth managed not to groan aloud as he poked his head in, then stepped up. The van was tall. Most people would be able to stand up in it, though for Seth and Reaper it required significant stooping.
“There are only three of us,” Seth said. “Why do we need all this room?”
“Never mind that,” Roxy said quickly. “Take a look at this.” She went around to the back, opened the two rear doors, climbed in and pushed a button. The rear-most seats folded forward and down, then lower, tucking themselves neatly into the floor. Then Roxy lifted a piece of floor mat, tugged a handle hidden beneath it and the floor folded up, revealing a nearly full-sized bed underneath.
She met Seth’s eyes and grinned. “Built-in coffins. This baby can sleep three vampires under the floor, well hidden. And we could close the floor over them, and put three more on top, because the windows tint all the way to black at the touch of a button.”
Seth glanced at Reaper and saw that the man was impressed in spite of himself. There was a slight edge of approval nudging its way into his grimace.
“There’s a minifridge,” Roxy said with a nod, “so we can take a supply of that Kool-Aid you guys love so much. Her sides are reinforced steel. Bullet-proof. She’s got a Hemi under the hood, and all-wheel drive so we don’t get stuck. Big ground clearance for a van. She gets terrible gas mileage, but let me tell you, Shirley will fly. And to top it all off…” She moved to the center of the van, gripped a handle mounted to the inside of the sliding side door and lifted.
The inner panel of the door slid upward, revealing a cache of weapons stored behind it. Shotguns, rifles, handguns and several odd-looking little weapons that looked like dart guns. Boxes of ammo lined a number of small built-in shelves, and holsters and clips hung every which way.
“What are those little ones?” Seth asked.
“I call ’em Noisy Crickets,” she told him.
Seth laughed out loud, shaking his head, and muttering, “Good one, Roxy,” between chuckles. He was just getting it under control when he noticed that Reaper hadn’t so much as cracked a smile. “That was a reference to Men in Black,” he told the sour-faced vamp. “The movie? You know, Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones?” No reaction. “Hell, don’t you see movies at all?”
“No.”
Roxy handed one of the tiny weapons to Seth and took a second one off the wall for herself. “These shoot tranquilizer darts. I have a supply in the fridge, measured, loaded and ready to go. Seth, the only way Reaper will agree to let us come with him is if I can convince him that you and I will be perfectly safe. And the only way I can think of to do that is to give him our word that we will each carry one of these with us at all times. It needs to be loaded, and we need to carry spare ammo on hand.”
Seth took the tiny weapon and turned it this way and that, looking it over. It seemed pretty simple and straightforward. “Why do we need tranquilizer darts? You guys expecting to run into a herd of angry elephants or something?”
“Those darts aren’t for animals, Seth,” Roxy explained.
“They’re for vamps. They’re doped with the only tranquilizer that will work on you guys. The only one I know of, at least.”
Seth frowned, then nodded. “I guess we could use it against the rogue vampires if we had to. Yeah. Not a bad idea.” He looked at Reaper again. The man was oddly silent. “Don’t you want to carry one, Reap?”
“The tranquilizer isn’t to protect you from the rogues, Seth. It’s to protect you from me.”
Seth started to laugh, thinking the miserable fuck had actually made a joke. But there was a grimness in his tone, a darkness in his eyes, that had the laugh dying in Seth’s throat before it was even born. His smile faded, and he searched Reaper’s face. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Reaper lowered his gaze. “I’m not going to go into detail or bare my soul or my history or my flaws to you, Seth. This is not up for discussion. It’s my personal business, and it’s off-limits. I will only say that if I should ever turn on you in an apparently mindless burst of violent rage, you will need to act and act fast, or die. If it happens—if it even looks like it’s happening—use the tranquilizer. Don’t hesitate.”
Seth opened his mouth, then closed it again as question after question tried to get out. Why would Reaper turn on him? What the hell was he talking about? Did he have some kind of split personality-Jekyll-and-Hyde thing going on, or a brain tumor or what? But Reaper wasn’t going to tell him any more. He’d made that clear. So Seth settled on one question, the only one he thought might elicit an answer.
“Can the tranq do you any lasting harm?”
Reaper looked at Roxy for the answer.
“No,” she said, and she said it firmly, with a shake of her head that had all that long hair swinging. “It’ll knock him cold, and he’ll wake up with a hell of a hangover. That’s all.”
Seth nodded and faced Reaper again. The guy looked really miserable. As if even broaching this subject was ripping into his guts, and Seth hated that. He needed to lighten things up. “Okay, then. I got it. I just need you to make me one promise.”
“And what would that be?” Reaper asked.
“If I misread you and shoot you by mistake when you weren’t actually intending to eat me for lunch, you can’t be mad at me when you wake up.”
Reaper scowled at him.
“Dude, I’m serious here. If I have to worry about being wrong and pissing you off, I’ll hesitate, and you’ll have time to rip me a new one before I pull the trigger. So you have to promise.”
Eyes narrowed, Reaper nodded. “All right. I promise.”
Seth grinned. “Man, this is great. You so much as look at me funny, I get to pop you with the Noisy Cricket. And you can’t even get mad about it. You are so gonna regret this.”
“Seth.” It was a warning, Reaper’s tone dangerous.
“Whoa, that sounded menacing. Did it sound menacing to you, Roxy?” Seth glanced at the gun in his hand. “Maybe I should shoot him now.”
Reaper glared at him.
Seth lowered the weapon and wiped the grin off his face. As usual, his attempts at humor were hitting a brick wall. “Hey, come on. I was kidding. I’m not gonna pop you with this thing. Come on, man, don’t look like that.”
Sighing, not saying a single word to Seth, Reaper climbed into the van and took a seat all the way in the rear. “Let’s get going, Roxy. We need to see this Topaz woman before we can go any farther.”
Roxy handed Seth a holster. She was already wearing one of her own, with a tranq gun tucked into it. Then she closed the weapon door and climbed up into the driver’s seat. Seth took the one beside her.
As she backed the van out of the driveway, Seth glanced at her and whispered, “I was kidding.”
“Hey, I thought it was funny as hell.”
He smiled, relieved. “Does he ever lighten up, Roxy?”
“Not that I’ve ever seen. But I’ll tell you one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re good for him. Real good.”
“Hell, he can barely stand me.”
“Trust me, I know these things.”
Reaper sat up straighter in his far backseat and said, “People, I am a vampire. I have preternatural hearing. I could listen to your entire conversation from a half mile away. From here, it’s as if you’re on