Night’s Edge by Barbara Hambly

touched hers, was not what she’d call comfortable. She slid her arms around his neck and abandoned herself to the kiss. When Rue felt his body pressing against her, she knew he found their contact equally exciting.
    His mouth traveled down her neck. He licked the spot where he usually bit her. Her body flexed against his, involuntarily.
    “Layla,” he said, against her ear, “who did you see that frightened you so much?”
    It was like a bucket of cold water tossed in her face. Everything in her shut down. She shoved him away from her violently. “You did this to satisfy your curiosity? You thought if you softened me up, I’d answer all your questions?”
    “Oh, of course,” he said, and his voice was cold with anger. “This is my interrogation technique.”
    She lowered her face into her hands just to gain a second of privacy.
    She was half inclined to take him literally. He was acting as if she was the unreasonable one, as if all the details of her short life should belong to him.
    There was a knock on the door.
    Their eyes met, hers wide with surprise, his questioning. She shook her head. She wasn’t expecting anyone.
    Rue went to the door slowly and looked through the peephole. Sean was right behind her, moving as silently as only vampires could move, when she unlocked the door and swung it open.
    Thompson stood there, and Hallie. Between the two, awkwardly, they supported Hallie’s partner, David. David was bleeding profusely from his left thigh. His khakis were soaked with blood. The vampire’s large dark eyes were open, but fluttering.
    Thompson’s gaze was fixed on Rue; when he realized that Sean was standing behind her, he was visibly startled.
    “Oh, come in, bring him in!” Rue exclaimed, shocked. “What happened?” She spared a second to be glad none of her neighbors seemed to be up. She shut the door before any of them roused.
    Hallie was sobbing. Her tears had smeared her heavy eye makeup. “It was because of me,” she sobbed. “Thompson and Karl came in the bar. David was already there, he’d been having words with this jerk….” While she was trying to tell Rue, she was helping David over to Rue’s bed. Thompson was not being quite as much assistance as he should have been.
    Sean whipped a towel from the rack in the bathroom and spread it on Rue’s bed before the two eased the wounded David down. Hallie knelt and swung David’s legs up, and David moaned.
    “It was the Fellowship,” Thompson said as Hallie unbuckled David’s belt and began to pull his sodden slacks down.
    The Fellowship of the Sun was to vampires as the Klan was to African Americans. The Fellowship purported to be a civic organization, but it functioned more like a church, a church that taught its adherents the religion of violence.
    “The other night I turned down this guy in the bar,” Hallie said. “He just gave me the creeps. Then he foundout I worked for Black Moon, and that I performed with David, you know, for the show, and he was waiting for me tonight….”
    “Take it easy,” Rue said soothingly. “You’re gonna hyperventilate, Hallie. Listen, you go wash your face, and you get a bottle of TrueBlood for David, because he needs some blood. He’s gonna heal.”
    Snuffling, Hallie ducked into the bathroom.
    “He decided to get Hallie tonight, and David intervened?” Sean asked Thompson quietly. Rue listened with one ear while she stanched the bleeding by applying pressure with a clean kitchen towel. It rapidly reddened. She was not as calm as she’d sounded. In fact, her hands were shaking.
    “David likes her, and she’s his partner,” Thompson said, as if David’s intervention required an excuse. “Karl had left earlier, and David and I came out just in time to catch the show. The bastard had his arm wrapped around Hallie’s neck. But he dropped her and went for David real fast, with a knife.”
    “Out on the street, or in the bar?”
    “Behind the bar, in the alley.”
    “Where’s the