“Go ahead and try taking me down, vamp.” I widened my stance. Since vamps move fast, I needed to brace myself in case he charged my position. I’d have to act fast to ensure that my stake hit its mark.
Wolfgang laughed. “I’m not going to fight you, Nyx.”
I raised my eyebrow. Not a lot of folks called me that. Only those who knew me as a vampire hunter—supernaturals, witches, and vampires, folks like that who were a part of my late-night life. In my regular nightlife, and during the day, I was Nicky. “How do you know that name?”
The vampire shrugged. “You’ve become something of a boon to the Order, Nyx. Anyone involved in the business of hunting vampires knows of the elusive Nyx—mysterious, unidentified, efficient. You’re doing a lot of the work that we used to do.”
“I thought you weren’t a part of the Order anymore… I mean, you were hunting, you were feeding…”
Wolfgang huffed. “The Order used to send us to places like that to feed on sinners. We are to be their judgment. It’s how the nightwalkers are sustained.”
“So you’re a part of the Order, still?”
“Of course not.” Wolfgang shook his head. “After the incident with Alice, the nightwalkers were disbanded. Most of us were staked, our hearts burned. But as the oldest remaining nightwalker, they couldn’t capture me so easily.”
“Doesn’t explain why you’re still targeting my community.”
Wolfgang shrugged. “I was a part of the Order for so long that old habits die hard. After a while, we acquire a particular taste. The conflict, the emotional turmoil in your community, there’s something delectable about it. It pleases my palette.”
“That’s disgusting,” I said, diverting my eyes downward.
“At least I only drink blood,” Wolfgang said. “You used to eat humans whole. Do you mean to tell me you’ve come to empathize with them, the creatures you used to hunt?”
I sighed. “I suppose I have, to a point. Some of them, anyway. The people in my community.”
“Your community?” Wolfgang asked. “Tell me, Nyx, how many in your community would support your desire to become a flesh-eating water monster again?”
“They support my desire to be free. We all support our efforts to be our true selves.”
“But I doubt they’d agree with the alternative, with choosing to return to what you once were.”
I sighed. “Probably not.”
“You see, Nyx,” Wolfgang said, “you and I are more alike than we are different. We are both… conflicted. I have a history with the Order, a moral compass that tells me the monster I am is an abomination. But I’ve also known what it is to fight for a system, an organization, that hates me for what I am.”
“So the Order is hunting you now, too?”
Wolfgang shook his head. “I wasn’t telling the whole truth when I said I have a taste for your community. Don’t get me wrong, I do. But limiting the communities from whom I feed to those approved by the Order, it’s a part of our agreement.”
“So you’re no longer a part of the Order, but you have an agreement with them?”
“The Order isn’t as strong as it used to be,” Wolfgang explained. “The original chapter in Rhode Island was… decimated. It’s a long story, and not relevant to our discussion. But there are lesser chapters around the country, including one here in Kansas City. And they haven’t given up on eliminating Alice.”
“And they want your help to do it,” I said. “To eliminate another nightwalker.”
“Former nightwalker,” Wolfgang said. “And in exchange, they’ve agreed to leave me be.”
I snorted. “So, you’re turning on your own kind to get the Order off your back?”
“You could say that.”
“Seems cowardly.”
“I’m a survivor.” Wolfgang folded his hands in front of his waist. “As a vampire, you have to be a survivor first. We do what we have to do to ensure our ongoing existence. Call it cowardly if you must, but I’d rather be alive as a coward than courageous and dead.”
I chuckled. I supposed that most people, while they’d never admit it, felt the same. I mean, sure people who die on account of their bravery are celebrated in human culture. Not sure how vampires feel about it, but vampires used to be human, and in my experience they share a lot more in common with the species they feed upon than most vamps would care to admit. But given the choice, most people—hell, most creatures of any species—would gladly be perceived as cowards if it meant they could stay alive rather than be honored post-mortem for bravery.
The cowardice versus bravery dichotomy is only one way to look at it.
Smart versus dumb is an alternate, arguably more accurate, way to characterize the choice.
I mean, how smart is it to die, especially when you won’t be around to bask in the glory of your own courageous sacrifice?
I didn’t agree with Wolfgang’s motives. I loathed that he was complicit with the bigoted Order of the Morning Dawn. But he and I not only shared an interest in seeing Alice eliminated—we had a common mission.
“I suppose,” I said, “you’re proposing we work together?”
Wolfgang smiled and looked me up and down. “Do you have any other options, honey?”
My stomach turned. Was he flirting with me? I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time someone I found creepy had hit on me. It was the first time, though, a vampire seemed to be undressing me with his eyes.
All in all, Wolfgang wasn’t an unattractive man. He had a well-toned physique. His hair was dark, parted down the middle, and falling to his shoulders. He looked as though he was probably in his middle-twenties when he was turned. He was dark and broody. If it wasn’t for his red eyes and the fact that he was a vampire, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find him attractive.
I mean, I don’t find a lot of humans attractive. And vampires, while possibly more alluring than most humans—which, like me, is a way they attract their prey—tended to be attractive in ways that humans would normally find attractive.
Not like me.
Before I’d lost my abilities I was customizable, my attractiveness catered to each of my victims.
Usually when I looked at humans, I was attracted to them in the same way a person might be attracted to a perfectly cooked steak. But the more I’d been human, or at least human-like in appearance, the more I came to appreciate their beauty.
“I’ll consider it,” I said.
“What is there to consider?” Wolfgang asked. “We both want the same thing.”
“We have the same goal,” I said. “That doesn’t mean that we want the same things. We have different reasons for why we’re hunting Alice.”
“Does it matter?” Wolfgang asked. “If we catch her, I don’t care what you do with her so long as she ends up dead.”
I bit my lip. “Like I said, I’ll think about it. Meet me back here tomorrow night and I’ll give you my decision.”
“Very well, Nyx.”
“In the meantime,” I said, holding my stake in front of my face, “stay away from my people.”
“Agreed,” Wolfgang said with a slight nod.
“And one more question,” I said just as I was about to leave.
“Yes?”
“You said the Order knows my name. But to them, my identity is a mystery. They don’t really know who I am.”
“I did.” Wolfgang grinned slightly.
“Then how did you know who I was? How did you find me?”
Wolfgang’s smile widened. “I have my… abilities. My skills. I’ll simply say this much: when there’s information I require, it doesn’t take me long to attain it.”
CHAPTER FIVE
It wasn’t the opportunity that bothered me. It was the reason. I mean, why did Wolfgang even think he needed me? If he had all the information and I’d been basically spinning my wheels for months trying to find Alice without much headway, I was concerned why, since he’d managed to escape my chains, he wouldn’t just go after Ali
ce on his own.
Perhaps he was afraid of her.
Alice was a badass vamp—especially now that she had my ability and could shapeshift at will. She had access to celestial magic, a sort of witchcraft the Order of the Morning Dawn erroneously claimed they’d gotten from angels. Even with Mercy Brown—one of the most badass vamps I’d ever encountered—by my side, Alice had come close to killing both of us.
The whole idea of us catching her was secondary.
Sure, that’s what I’d set out to do when I left New Orleans. But I wasn’t pursuing Alice because I was confident that if I caught her I’d be able to beat her. I’d been hunting her because I had no other choice—she’d taken something of mine and, damnit, I wanted it back.
Was Wolfgang hoping to partner up with me because he figured two of us had a better chance against Alice than either of us did alone?
It wasn’t unreasonable.
I’d garnered a reputation. I was every vampire’s worst nightmare. Wolfgang knew my name—“Nyx”—not because I’d told him or because he knew the story from Alice’s perspective. He knew who I was because I’d staked so many vamps in the last year that half of Kansas City’s vampire population had left town.
I hadn’t staked all of them. I’d only taken out a couple dozen, give or take. But those who left did so because they knew it was a matter of time before I found them.
I could smell them.
And I was really damn good at killing them.
It was getting bad enough, in fact, that before encountering Wolfgang, I’d thought about leaving town myself. I needed more vamps. More vamps meant more who might know where Alice was.
I’d probably put off moving longer than I should have, mostly because I had a community here. There were people here—both in the trans community, and the queens at the club—who had my back. They had Nicky’s back, anyway.
Only Donnie knew about Nyx.
And now, more than likely, Gina did, too.
As Geraldo, he was an attractive gay man. But as Gina, she was a diva who rocked the stage.
Not my kind of performance. I was something different. I did something different.
But Gina was famous in the community. Everyone knew and loved Gina. Badass queen.
Geraldo was, by comparison, a quiet man. He kept to himself most of the time. From the little I’d gotten to know of him—I’d barely spoken five words to Geraldo even though I’d had many conversations with Gina—he was an artist who spent most of his time painting in his studio apartment in the Power and Light District.
Something about being Gina transformed Geraldo into a force. The quiet and introspective artist became a loud, impossible-not-to-notice diva who could wrap crowds around her little finger. Or around her little…
You get the point.
But it had been a long night. After nearly being bitten as Gina by a vampire, I doubted Geraldo had slept much at all.
I was worried.
And honestly, a part of me felt like teaming up with the vampire who’d attacked Gina was just wrong… It made me feel dirty. It was one of the reasons I couldn’t just give Wolfgang a clear answer.
I’d only been here once before. I wanted to purchase a painting from Geraldo for Donnie. A gift to say “thank you” for all the ways she’d supported me. I’d commissioned the piece—a vision of Marilyn Monroe in the present day. Donnie fashioned herself after the classic beauty. Donnie even went for a vintage style which, in truth, flattered her body well.
Donnie loved the painting. It wasn’t just Marilyn—it was Marilyn in our world. Our city set as a backdrop. In fact, one could make the case that it wasn’t Marilyn at all. It was Donnie, in all her beauty, taking on the world.
After all, Donnie didn’t have a glamorous job. But she was accomplished. She was a pharmacist. She had a respectable job—but the way I saw her, she was more than a pill-cutter. She’d found her place. She had her struggles, like most of us, but she was happy.
I was happy for Donnie. And I also envied her for it.
When I thought about that painting, though, I also thought of Geraldo. Geraldo had done a masterful job. But his story was different. Two totally different personas, two different lives.
Earlier in the evening it was Gina… that was the persona that was attacked.
I was preparing to visit Geraldo when I mounted my motorcycle. It wasn’t that I didn’t want a car or anything. And perhaps, since I was so prone to “draining out” if I got hurt, it was reckless. But I’d snagged a Thruxton RS in jet black, a retro-looking bike. And when I rode it with my red Jimmy Choos and my white, flowing hair blowing in the wind from beneath my helmet… well, I turned a lot of heads.
And I couldn’t get enough of the thrill. The wind in my face…
Momentary illusions of freedom.
I had to find as many of those moments as possible.
I dismounted my bike, parking it in a lot across the street from Geraldo’s apartment. I made my way to Geraldo’s door and knocked.
But it was Gina, surprisingly, who answered the door. Her eyeliner was smeared and running down her cheeks.
“Gina,” I said, “are you okay?”
Gina looked at me. Her whole body was shaking. “What are you, Nicky…”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw you. How fast you moved… how you took him down, it down, whatever that monster was.”
“He was a vampire, Gina.”
“And you’re a vampire, too?”
I smiled. “No. I’m something else.”
Gina nodded and wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. “But you wouldn’t hurt me… You wouldn’t hurt people like that.”
Gina’s words cut me to the core. When I was purely one of the “Neck,” the name used to describe my kind, I had killed humans. I had seduced and lured vulnerable people not unlike Gina into my lair. I’d eaten people, for heaven’s sake!
Not like heaven had anything to do with it.
Who was I kidding? I was every bit the monster Wolfgang was… that Alice was.
Arguably, I was worse.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just wanted to be sure you were okay. I expected I’d be seeing Geraldo tonight.”
Gina shrugged. “Tonight we’re one and the same… just scared. I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Sometimes talking is the worst thing you can do. There weren’t words I could speak—nothing that was true, anyway—to make Gina, or Geraldo, feel better.
So I gave my friend a hug. I allowed Gina to cry into my shoulder for what felt like ten straight minutes.
“If you need anything,” I said, “call me, okay?”
“Thanks Nicky,” Gina said. “I will.”
I sighed as I headed down the stairs and walked out of the apartment. I mounted my motorcycle and revved it up.
Wolfgang was right: I was a monster every bit as vile as he was. Who was I to even consider that I was somehow above him? I hated Wolfgang for what he’d done to Gina. But as the wind blew in my face as I made the short, ten-minute drive home in the middle of the night, I couldn’t help but picture all the faces, all the humans I’d made into meals over the centuries.
All the bodies that were on my hands…
I didn’t deserve friends like Donnie or Gina. I wasn’t a part of their world.
I was what I was.
Except when I was what I was, I didn’t have a conscience. I didn’t feel guilt. I wasn’t any angrier about it than a rancher when he slaughters a heifer.
But that was before I’d walked a mile in a human’s shoes… and certainly before I’d walked a mile in nine-inch heels.
CHAPTER SIX
I’m a night owl. Always have been.
Despite my regular gig at Leotards and Lace—even if Donnie didn’t wholly approve—I needed a little extra daytime work to pay my share of the rent and make my motorcycle payment.
Another thing that’s shitty about being human: the constant need to acquire more money.
So I had a second job at Leotards and Lace. Not nearly so glamorous.
I cleaned the place every day.
A challenging job for most people. They used to have a whole team that came in during the day to do it. But I moved fast. And I had an affinity for working with water—which is generally an essential part of cleaning shit.
I could clean the whole place, spick and span, in a couple hours.
It took a little convincing for me to get the job. I needed a day to prove I could do it alone. Totally alone.
Social anxiety—that was my excuse. I don’t work well with others watching.
You’d think that Tevin, the club owner, would call bullshit on that one. I mean, I was a performer. Why would he believe I had issues working with people watching? That was sort of the nature of the gig…
But as a drag-queen club owner, Tevin didn’t question it. Most of his performers were very different on stage than in virtually any other context. It’s not universally true, of course. Some of the queens were 24/7 fabulous—the extroverts. But you might be surprised how many queens are naturally shy, introverted men who only come out of their shells when assuming their drag personas and taking the stage.
That I’d have different anxieties in my regular life versus on stage wasn’t something Tevin would second-guess.
And I let them pay me half of what the whole team used to get. I made less than any of the individuals whom they’d formerly paid to clean the place, and I got it done in half the time.
A win-win from the owner’s perspective.
It was one reason I was reasonably certain they wouldn’t be completely put off by the fact that I’d skipped out on one of my numbers.
If I just explained… and certainly I’d have to.
After sleeping away half the day, I showed up at Leotards and Lace shortly after noon.
Tevin was waiting for me. “What happened last night, Nicky?”
I sighed. “I don’t know if it’s my place to say.”
It wasn’t my place to tell anyone about Gina being attacked. Not that I was worried that someone would track Wolfgang down, but she deserved her privacy. And in this case, bringing her attacker to justice just wasn’t going to happen. If I told Tevin any specifics, he’d probably report it. And Gina certainly hadn’t asked for more attention over the matter. Who was I to bring it upon her?
Scared Shiftless: An Ex-Shifter turned Vampire Hunter Urban Fantasy (The Legend of Nyx Book 1) Page 4
