Bitten & Smitten

by Michelle Rowen

  She waved her hand. “You know what I mean. It’s like you’re glowing, or something. That zit you had on your cheek yesterday has cleared up already. And”—she leaned even closer—“you’re not wearing any makeup, but you don’t look like hell.”

  I backed away from her. “I guess I must have had a really good sleep.”

  Her eyes widened. She stood up so suddenly that her coffee mug jerked and a little of the warm liquid splashed on me. “I think I know what it is.”

  “What what is?”

  “Why you look so good. I can’t believe it, Sarah. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.” Her bottom Up wobbled. “We’re supposed to be best friends, aren’t we?”

  I felt what little color there was still in my cheeks drain away. How could she have figured it out so easily? She was nice enough, but not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. At least, not usually.

  “I’m sure it’s not what you think,” I said quickly.

  “There’s no other explanation for it. Disappearing for a whole day, not returning my phone calls. Looking so different.”

  She grabbed her purse and began shuffling through the contents. I stared at her with disbelief. Good God, she’d figured out I was a vampire and was hunting around in her bag for a weapon. I didn’t want to fight for my life against my best friend. That would really put a damper on our trip to Mexico. Not good. Not good at all.

  She stopped searching and looked at me, her eyes even wider than before. “You are, aren’t you?”

  Maybe I should just admit it. Get everything out in the open.

  Or maybe not. Denial was a wonderful thing.

  I stood up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I got ready to tackle her, but all she ended up pulling out of her purse was her pressed powder. She held the compact loosely in her hand and sat back down on the sofa.

  “You’re in love,” she informed me. “And you don’t even want to tell me about it. I’m so incredibly hurt.”

  “I’m in… in love?”

  “Who’s the guy? Oh wait, I’m sure that’s too much information for me, isn’t it?”

  I was so relieved that I almost fainted. She thought I’d disappeared for a day and looked great because some guy had swept me off my feet. Which, thinking back to the fall from the bridge with Thierry, wasn’t all that far off.

  I sat back down beside her as she inspected herself in the small mirror and powdered her nose. “There’s no guy. I’m serious. If there was, you know you’d be the very first person I’d tell. I promise that I’m still pathetically single.”

  She studied me for a moment. “For real?”

  “The realest.”

  She closed the compact and put it back in her purse. “If you say so, then I guess I believe you.”

  “I say so.”

  She grinned at me. “Then we definitely need to go to the mall today to celebrate your liberation from that dead-end job. What do you say?”

  That sounded like a plan. I wanted to get out, didn’t particularly matter where. After the night I’d just had, the apartment felt very claustrophobic to me.

  I dressed quickly in jeans and a comfy dark blue sweatshirt with a little picture of Tweety Bird on the front. Then I slipped into my leather jacket and grabbed my purse, all in under ten minutes. Had to be some kind of a record.

  The Eaton Centre was four subway stops away and accessible by the PATH. I found the skylights in the mall to be painfully bright, so I left my sunglasses on the whole time. Amy thought I was trying to be incognito in case we saw anyone from the office. I was just trying not to go blind. Luckily, it was starting to cloud over. The weather report called for snow by the end of the day.

  I watched Amy rack up her credit on a pair of diamond stud earrings. I was so jealous. If I still had a job, I might have done the same thing, but now I had to be budget girl. Had to make my money last—well, until the end of time.

  We grabbed lunch in the food court. I still wasn’t hungry, but I got Mexican, anyhow. Burritos with sour cream and refried beans. Diet Coke on the side. One of my favorites. But, after the first bite, it tasted so bland, and sat so heavily in my stomach, that I pushed it away.

  Amy watched me absently play with my food while she chomped away on her cheeseburger and fries. Then she put the sandwich down and covered it with a paper napkin.

  “You’re right,” she said. “We shouldn’t be eating this crap. Way too many calories.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone approach our table and sit down next to me. It was a crowded food court, but I didn’t think we should have to share our booth without even being asked first. Some people were so rude.

  I turned around to face whoever it was, and a gasp caught in my throat.

  It was Quinn.

  He stared at me with a smile on his face. “Do you believe in fate, Sarah? Or is this just a lucky coincidence that we’ve bumped into each other again so soon?”

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

  He looked at Amy. “And you are?”

  “Amy,” she offered without hesitation.

  “I’m Quinn,” he said, and nodded at me. “A good friend of Sarah’s here. Isn’t that right?”

  I swallowed and glanced at Amy. Her smile held, but I could see accusation in her eyes. She thought this was my mystery man.

  The real mystery was—how had he found me so easily? I felt sick. Maybe it was fate. He didn’t have to follow me to my apartment. I’d saved him the trouble by walking right into his path.

  I was so dead.

  Chapter 7

  I’m going to take off.” Amy stood up from the table. She swung her purse over her shoulder and gave me a dirty look.

  I looked up at her bleakly, but didn’t try to stop her. No reason for her to get hurt, too. “I’ll call you.”

  “Whatever.” She turned her best fake smile in Quinn’s direction. “Nice meeting you.”

  “Yeah, you too.”

  She was about to leave and then seemed to hesitate.

  Good, Amy, I thought. Do something courageous. Make a scene. Anything would be great.

  She turned back around and, without making eye contact with me, grabbed the rest of her cheeseburger, wrapped it in some napkins, and shoved it into her bag.

  And then, my best friend of the past four years left me in the clutches of a vampire hunter whose wooden stake had my name etched on it.

  Quinn watched her walk away until she was just a tiny pink dot entering a clothing store at the other end of the mall. Retail therapy to get over her friend’s betrayal.

  He turned back to me and presented me with a wide grin. “So, where were we?”

  I breathed in slowly through my nose and let it out just as slowly through my mouth. I could remain in control here. I wasn’t going to show him how scared I was.

  “Before or after you decided to kill me?”

  “I believe we left off at the deciding-to-kill-you part.”

  I took another deep breath. “Actually, I think we left off just before your daddy gave you a spanking for being a bad boy.”

  His grin faltered, and he took a moment before answering. “He’s a man who’s very hard to please.”

  I shrugged. “Your family problems are your own business.”

  “You’re right, they are.”

  I told myself to shut up and not make things worse, but my mouth wasn’t listening.

  “So,” I said, “does your mommy spank you, too, or just your pops?”

  The grin didn’t just falter this time, it slid right off his face. “My mother is dead.”

  “Oh.” My stomach sank. “I’m sorry.”

  What the hell was I apologizing for? I did tend to stick my foot in it sometimes. I suppose apologizing was just my knee-jerk reaction.

  “Yeah,” he continued, even though I didn’t want him to. “When I was just a kid, she was killed by one of your kind.”

  “An executive assistant?” I of
fered.

  “A vampire. A cold-blooded, vicious, murdering monster like you.”

  “You have me all wrong. You don’t even know me.”

  “I know enough.”

  “Look, I’m sorry for your loss. Really. But I’m not what you think.”

  He shook his head. “You’re new. I get that. But it doesn’t change anything. You’re one of them. My sole purpose in life is to rid the world of things like you.”

  My eyes narrowed. “I don’t much like being called a thing. When was the last time you had a conversation with a real live woman? When it didn’t require a credit card number first, that is?”

  He scowled at me. “You have a real mouth on you.”

  I sighed. “Look, I just want you to walk away and leave me alone. What’s that going to take?”

  “You not being a vampire.”

  “So that’s the only qualification needed to end up on the wrong end of a stake with you? What about the fact that I’m totally innocent?”

  “Innocent.” He snorted at that. “No vampire is innocent.”

  “Yeah, and I used to think that vampires were dangerous and sexy. I’ve managed to blow that theory out of the water.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You’re not dangerous and sexy?”

  I paused for a second and studied him. Okay, what was he doing now? Threatening me or flirting with me?

  I looked around. The food court was packed and noisy. A kid had just dropped his ice-cream cone and was screaming like a banshee a couple of tables away.

  “I have a question, Quinn.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Would your mother be proud of you?”

  “What?” The word was like a gunshot.

  “Your mother,” I repeated. “Would she be proud of you hunting down helpless, innocent women and killing them all in the name of vengeance? Somehow I doubt it. She’d probably be ashamed to call you her son.”

  I took the moment, since I knew it was all I had. In one quick motion I threw the food at him, clobbering him as hard as I could. My untouched retried beans hit him right in the eyes. That would sting. He stood up and slipped on the spilled food and drink and fell to the floor. I grabbed my purse and ran through the crowd, out of the food court.

  You’d think that with all my running around lately, I would have chosen more sensible shoes. Well, you’d be wrong. I was wearing two-inch platforms that were about a size too small. They looked great with the jeans, but it was at the price of comfort.

  I pushed open the nearest door to the underground and flew down a flight of stairs and past the subway entrance. The PATH was practically deserted on Saturday afternoons, since it was mostly set up for the Monday-to-Friday business crowd. There were a few stragglers. Some window-shoppers, even though most of the stores were closed up and dark.

  I looked behind me as I ran. Quinn was right on my heels, rubbing at his eyes. I hoped that he didn’t know the underground as well as I did. Then again, he was much faster and probably would catch up to me before I even had a chance to lose him. Not good.

  I swore, if I got out of this in one piece, I was only wearing Nikes on my feet from now on. Sensible footwear was my promise to the powers that be.

  I hung a left. Directly in front of me was a set of revolving doors leading to the lower level of a downtown business tower. I swung through them and then grabbed the door to stop it in midmotion. I’d planned it just right. Quinn didn’t have a chance to stop and whacked his face against the clean glass, falling backward with a surprised yelp.

  He yelled my name as if that would be enough to slow me down. I didn’t even pause. I passed through another set of doors. Unfortunately, this time they weren’t the revolving kind. The tunnels went on and on, and most looked exactly the same. I was near the exit to Dundas Street

  now. I passed a store that had a really nice dress on a mannequin in the front window. I instinctively made a mental note of where I saw it and kept running.

  I could hear Quinn behind me, getting even closer. His breathing was labored. I sneaked a quick peek behind me and almost panicked when I saw the stake in his right hand. He wasn’t playing around. If he caught up to me, he would kill me, no doubt about it.

  The hallway coming up on my left had a sign reading UNDER CONSTRUCTION. I hurdled over the hazard tape and immediately regretted it. Only twenty feet ahead the hall was blocked off. Dead end. Well, what the hell had I thought “under construction” meant? I ran as far as I could.

  Quinn appeared as he turned the corner. He looked straight at me, panting hard, and shook his head.

  “Nice try.”

  Surprisingly enough, I wasn’t winded at all. Physical endurance. Mark that down as another perk to being a vampire. Unfortunately, since I was about to die, it didn’t really matter.

  “Why don’t we go grab a coffee and talk about this?” I said. “My treat.”

  “I like that you never give up. I almost wish I could say yes.”

  He was still moving toward me and made no move to put the stake away.

  “Forget coffee.” I felt myself start to panic again. I had to keep him talking. “Let’s have a few more tequilas. We were having such a good time last night, weren’t we?”

  He paused. “Yeah, we were.”

  “We had a connection, don’t you think?” I tried to keep eye contact with him, but that stake in his hand was extremely distracting.

  “Are you saying that we should put aside our differences and be friends?”

  I nodded crazily. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “Tempting,” he said slowly. “But no. I know what I have to do here, whether I want to or not. Sorry, but it’s time to say good-bye.”

  I pressed up against the wall and let out a short, frightened scream. He took another step closer to me and raised the stake. I looked into his blue eyes. He didn’t look maniacal like White-teeth had. Quinn was taking no pleasure from this. He felt like it was his duty. His job. Clean up the garbage, no matter how bad it stank.

  I didn’t like being compared to garbage, but then again, it was my own analogy.

  I stared at him with wide eyes. “Don’t do this.”

  “I’m sorry, Sarah.”

  A dark shape tackled Quinn from the side. He went down hard, and the stake clattered away from him. I gasped. What the hell just happened?

  Somebody had Quinn pinned down on the floor, raising his arms above his head and straddling his body. The man turned to look at me. He was middle-aged with a beer belly and a full beard. He wore an expensive-looking dark gray business suit.

  “Are you okay?” he asked me.

  I struggled to find my voice. “Barely.”

  “You’re lucky we were nearby.”

  Quinn fought against the man, but the impact with the floor had knocked the wind out of him. “Let me up. This is no concern of yours.”

  The man glared down at him. “It’s definitely my concern when someone messes with the master’s new girlfriend.”

  The master’s new what?

  Another man came running around the corner. “Dan! There you are. What the hell happened?”

  Just what I was wondering.

  Dan stopped Quinn’s struggles with a quick bash of the back of his head against the hard floor.

  “Vampire killer,” Dan told him. “Picking on a fledgling in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. No damn respect.”

  “Monsters,” Quinn moaned. “You’re all monsters.”

  “Actually, I’m a lawyer,” Dan said. “So I’ve been called worse.”

  I was surprised. “Oh? You’re not a vampire?”

  Dan glanced up at me. “Yeah, I’m a vampire, too. But being a lawyer pays the bills. Can’t let all that schooling go to waste, after all.”

  Dan’s friend came closer. He touched my arm and I flinched.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “I will be. Eventually, anyhow.” I nodded down at Quinn. “What are you going to do with
him?”

  “Don’t worry yourself about that.”

  The way he said it was filled with menace. “Don’t worry yourself about that” translated into “we’re going to chop him into tiny red pieces and flush him down the nearest toilet.” But maybe that was just my interpretation. I hoped so, anyhow.

  I looked at the friend. He flashed his sharp fangs at me in what he probably thought passed for a friendly smile. The fangs seemed longer than they had a moment ago. “Yeah, you’d better be on your way now, sweetheart.”

  My stomach sank. Shit. They were going to kill him. I wanted to feel nothing. After all, Quinn had tried to kill me twice, and I didn’t even want to know what other damage he’d done since arriving in Toronto. But I guess that’s what separated us. Even after what he’d tried to do to me, I didn’t want him to get hurt. I just wanted him to leave me alone.

  “This should send the hunters a clear message.” Dan was talking to Quinn. “You and your friends hunted down my wife last week. We were newlyweds.”

  “Tough shit,” Quinn spat. “I’m sure the bitch deserved it.”

  A deep growl emanated from Dan’s throat.

  I felt sick. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to help Quinn. But even if I did, then what? Could I fool myself into believing that he’d forgive me for what he saw as an obvious tragic flaw? No. He’d just try to kill me again. He seemed the stubborn type.

  Dan’s friend got down on his knees beside the other vampire, grabbed the top of Quinn’s head, and twisted it so his neck was fully exposed.

  Then I heard it—the sound that wound haunt me. The sound of fangs sinking into soft flesh and tissue. The sound of Quinn’s short scream of pain and terror. I clasped my hand to my mouth. Why hadn’t he begged for his life? Why did he have to taunt them, rub in the fact that he was directly or indirectly responsible for whatever had happened to Dan’s wife?

  Dan looked up at me. His eyes were so dark they seemed fully black. His lips were curled back over his fangs. His mouth was bloody. I took a shaky step backward.

  “Get lost,” he said and then turned back to Quinn.

  Not thinking anymore, I turned and ran away from them. Out of the hallway that was under construction. Away, far away from what I’d just witnessed. I wanted to block it out of my mind. Forget what I’d seen, but it was burned into my brain like a horrific Polaroid photo.