Tainted Blood (Hell's Belle Book 2) by Karen Greco

building. I'll get him out."
    Before I could even get out of the car, Frankie reached in and yanked Matty out of the back seat. He lifted the sniveling pile of vampire over his shoulder, letting Matty's head smack against the car a few times, and then carried him to the front door. I raced to catch up, fumbled with my keys for a moment, and then swung the door open just in time. I think Frankie was ready to just plow on through.
    He dropped Matty in the vestibule and yanked my jacket off his head. "You're inside."
    Matty looked around the hallway, and then shrieked when he saw the dawn's weak sunlight filtering in through the glass window on the door. 
    "Maybe you'll get a sunburn, but you'll heal," Frankie said as he stalked down the hallway to the door that lead to the basement.
    "I can't stay here in the light!" Matty was audibly sobbing at this point.
    "Frankie..." I warned. Matty was right. Eventually the sun would get him. He had to get into Frankie's room. "Come on, Frankie. We need him alive."
    Frankie shot us both a nasty look, but opened the door leading to the basement, bowing with a flourish as Matty rushed towards the pitch-black staircase. Frankie slammed the door behind them.
    "I'll be right down!" I yelled at the heavy metal fire door. Then I listened carefully for the sound of a body falling down the stairs. There was a very good chance Frankie would give Matty a shove.
    I waited a beat before knocking on Darcy's door. Well, my door, but technically Darcy's since she was staying there.
    "Who is it?" Her voice was hard, cautious. She didn't like the barren neighborhood. Where I saw solitude, she saw desolation.
    "It's me, Darce." I waved at her through the peephole.
    The door swung open. She clearly just woke, but she still looked absolutely sleep-rumpled stunning in a black body-skimming jersey knit nightgown. The camisole-style top was trimmed in black lace. Her long blond hair was tousled to a perfect bed-head sexy.
    "What the hell happened to you?" Darcy asked, moving to the side as I stumbled gracelessly into the apartment.
    Feeling a pang of jealousy, I yanked at my tangled mess of hair and sighed. I was so tired I could actually feel the bags under my eyes. And to make matters worse, I was pretty sure I smelled like stale beer and dry sweat. A shower and a few hours of sleep were all I really wanted, but since that was impossible, I'd take a steaming mug of coffee.
    Darcy padded behind me as I headed to the kitchen. She plopped down at the large wood farm table while I made quick work of prepping a pot of coffee.
    "So, what happened to you?" she repeated after a huge yawn.
    I shrugged. "The usual Bertrand bullshit. Matteo Purefoy has a team of professional groupies surrounding him that everyone insists are sirens. But I am not so sure of that."
    "Sirens? Following around a rock band, whose stock and trade is making women swoon?" She pursed her lips tightly and gave her head a small shake. "Well, that doesn't pass the smell test."
    "Thank you!" A pang of relief hit me right in the gut, nearly doubling me over. Finally! Somebody got what I was saying. That's why Darcy was my best girlfriend.
    "So, if not sirens, what are they?" she asked.
    I stared at the coffee pot, willing it to drip faster. "Demons."
    "Demons? You sure?"
    "I have no idea what the hell else they could be." I rooted around the kitchen cabinets, looking for some mugs. Darcy moved some stuff around, compounding my frustration.
    "Nina, hon, they may be plain old vanilla human," she said gently. "Not everything out there is some variation on us."
    I slammed the cabinet shut. "Totally not human. The one I met, Kittie, she had a tattoo of a rattle snake, and it moved. And where did you put the damn mugs?"
    She pointed at the cabinet above my head. "Closer to the coffee pot, where it made more sense."
    "Oh." I wasn't exactly Suzy Homemaker. I glanced around the apartment guiltily. She piled my still unpacked moving boxes into a corner of the