Horrified, Jenna took a step toward him.
He sank to the ground.
Richart appeared at her side and took her arm to prevent her from continuing forward.
Sure enough, the vamp swung his blade again and again until he couldn’t anymore.
Jenna looked up at Richart. “It was an accident.”
“It was inevitable,” he said softly. Withdrawing a handkerchief, he wiped her face with care. “You saw it—the madness that entered his eyes as you fought?”
She nodded.
“The brain damage was progressing more swiftly in him. Had we let him live, simply feeding from his victims would not have satisfied him much longer. He would have tortured them, killed them, and seen nothing wrong with it just as he saw nothing wrong with preying upon you or allowing his friends to kill you, as they would have had I not intervened.”
Jenna’s gaze went to the vampire, who stopped breathing and began to shrivel up like a mummy as the virus he housed devoured him from the inside out. “This is what it’s like? This is what you do?”
“Yes. I know it seems brutal, but we save lives, Jenna. You saved lives. And you kept him from becoming a monster. Even good men become fiends once the madness seizes them. Most, when lucid, would much prefer the end you just delivered to harming others.”
Dropping the daggers, she leaned into him. “I don’t know if I can get used to this.”
“I won’t lie. It’s difficult. But once you see what they do to their victims, it will become a little easier.” He cupped her face in his hands, urging her to look up at him. “And I will be with you all the way.” He smoothed his thumbs across her cheeks. “I’ll be with you always, if you’ll let me.”
She summoned a smile. “Always sounds good.”
He lowered his lips to hers for a slow kiss. “Let’s go show John you’re okay. You can tell the study group the vamp has become ill and is still in the bathroom, then send them home.”
When she nodded, Richart wrapped his arms around her and the world dissolved.
HIGH STAKES
HANNAH JAYNE
Some people were meant for big cities.
And fabulousness.
I’m one of those people.
I’m Nina LaShay and one day, my brand will be everywhere.
I stand in front of the mirror every day and say that to my reflection. Well, not so much to my reflection as to the mirrored image of my brand-new, temporary Manhattan digs as I don’t have much of a reflection—or any reflection at all.
Being undead will do that to you.
Call me what you want—vampire. Bloodless one. Nightwalker; lost one; soulless, Godless aboveground hell dweller. Personally, I’m partial to Life-Backward, Fashion-Forward Temple of Awesome. How else do you explain a twenty-one-year-old (give or take 141 years) woman being one of the last three standing in the greatest fashion competition the couture world has ever seen?
I was steaming my latest Drop Dead creation—that’s the name of my fashion line—Drop Dead Clothing (I know, totes adorbs, right?), when the faint scent of two-day-old patchouli oil and sweat snaked into my apartment. The whole super-vamp sense of smell? Makes pastries smell a thousand times more amazing. It also makes the modern street hippie “at one with the Earth” smell like a three-day bus ride through Calcutta in June. I wrinkled my nose and did my best to breathe through my mouth before I snatched open the multi-bolted door and grimaced—then snarled—when I saw where the pungent scent was coming from.
It was her.
Emerson Hawk.
With her beady brown eyes, gaunt cheeks, and head of Supercuts-styled straw-colored locks, she looked far more drowned pigeon than hawk, but what can you do?
She gasped when she saw me, her anemic lips dropping open.
“You’re my competition?”
I wanted to say something scathing and smart but decided to err on the side of breather-approved sportsmanlike conduct. “And I suppose that means that you’re mine.”
Emerson cocked her head and swooshed her ugly hair over one shoulder. “I was being facetious, sweetie. You and your welcome-to-the-dark-side designs are no kind of competition at all.”
I felt myself bristle and although Emerson is shamefully, one-hundred-percent flesh-and-blood human being (“breathers” as they’re known on the undead end), I desperately wanted to stake her through her patchouli-scented heart.
“Please,” I said, crossing my arms in front of my chest. “Drop Dead has spanked—what is it? Tweet by Emerson Hawk?”
“Soar,” she corrected with a snarl. “Soar by Emerson Hawk.”
“Oh, right. Either way, Drop Dead has spanked your line often and repeatedly.” I smiled sweetly, my lips pressed together—not so much in an effort to hide my always-there pointed petite incisors, but more in an effort to keep my fangs from digging into her obnoxious sallow flesh.
But I bet she’d taste like stale bread.
Emerson waved at the air like I was some gnat at her ear. “Small-town shit.”
“San Francisco Fashion Week is not small-town shit.”
“Emerson?” A head popped out from the door behind Emerson, and Emerson bristled.
“What do you need, Nicolette?” she asked from between gritted teeth.
Nicolette blushed a fierce red and glanced quickly at me and then directly to the stained carpet at her feet. But in that fleeting glance, I noticed that Nicolette shared Emerson’s unfortunately beady eyes and sharp, defined cheekbones, though she had clearly gotten the luxe end of the stick when it came to hair. Hers was cut in a cheeky bob and glistened a pretty blond. “I have all the garments steamed if you want to take a look.”
“Hi,” I said casually, “who are you?”
“She’s my sister,” Emerson snapped. “And Nicolette, even you can’t mess up steam. There are a few more things in the bathroom, though.”
“Sisters?” I said. “How very Little House on the Prairie.”
Even with her face turned toward the floor, I could see Nicolette’s cheeks push up into a smile. “I’m Nina, by the way.” I pushed out a hand and Nicolette shook; the female equivalent of crossing enemy lines. I could practically see the steam shooting from Emerson’s ears and it gave me a happy.
“Your sister was telling me all about her cute little fashion line.”
“Cute? Apparently you forgot who spanked who in Seattle?”
“It’s whom. Who spanked whom. And of course I didn’t forget. I generally find it hard to forget when someone steals my designs,” I said.
“Steals? I prefer to call it ‘borrowed inspiration.’”
“I prefer to call it a death wish.”
“Um,” Nicolette said, her voice soft as she addressed the floor. “Isn’t there a third person in the competition?”
Emerson rested her fists on her love handles and threw back her head, looking like a stupid statue of some sort of conqueror. “There is a third person, but he’s hardly part of the competition.”
“He?” I hated being caught unawares, but I hadn’t read my welcome packet (hello? I’m in New York. Is someone seriously expecting me to read?) and didn’t know who was behind door number three.
Emerson jerked a thumb in the vague direction of the hallway. “Reg.”
“Reginald Fairfield?” I gaped.
Reginald Fairfield was the Queen Elizabeth of the up-and-coming fashion world: regal, benign, and basically a figurehead who kept plaid walking shorts and seersucker fabrics alive and kicking. Every one of his lines was crisp and came in shades of Martha’s-Vineyard-slash-old money, and the rumor around town was the man himself had never actually wielded a pair of scissors—he left the dirty work to his “traveling companion,” an exceptionally well-tanned young gentleman with a heavy accent and a resumé that I am completely sure contained the words “cabana boy.”
“They moved in about a week early.”
I nodded. “I suppose it would take some time for Reginald to unpack his marble busts
and Felipe’s Speedos.”
Nicolette sniggered behind her hand and Emerson went from remotely tolerable back to grade-A horrible. “Didn’t you have some fabric to steam?”
Nicolette scampered away like a sad little pup and Emerson turned her eyes—and her stench—back to me.
“Look LaShay, you and I both know that this competition boils down to only two people: you and me.”
I pursed my lips. “So you admit I’m competition.”
Emerson just rolled her eyes and continued. “Your designs may have impressed a few lesser judges and”—she made air quotes—“spanked mine, but this time, make no mistake. I. Will. Bury. You.”
I cocked an eyebrow, not the least bit bothered by Emerson’s attempt at threatening me. “Don’t you mean your designs will bury mine?”
She smiled this time, poking the edge of her tongue out to moisten her bottom lip as she shrugged. “Semantics.”
I stood in the hallway, staring, as she slammed the door.
It was the next morning and being a vampire with no need of sleep, I spent the midnight hours checking out the town, frowning at the all beautiful clothes locked behind plate glass and CLOSED signs, and ultimately decimating two more blood bags than I needed to while watching Susan Lucci hock obscene-looking Pilates equipment and god-awful jewelry. When the sun finally began to peek through my drawn blinds, I gathered up my wares—rolls of gorgeous, plush fabric that was hand-sewn decades before the word vintage was coined (one of the huge benefits of having a shopping habit that spanned centuries rather than seasons), spun gold thread, bugle beads, and my absolute favorite, number-one must have: a good pair of scissors. I rolled the pair I had across my palm, enjoying their heft, the Swarovski-crusted handle, the ultrasharp blades, and the swirled-letter engraving there: Not friend, sister. Love always, Sophie.
It gave me a little pang when I ran my fingers over the words. Sophie Lawson is my San Francisco roommate and though so fashion-challenged it’s terminal, she means the world to me. In my afterlife I tried hard to never let anything get to me, never let anything attach, but Sophie did both of those things. Besides, her constant bad body luck (the dead were constantly dropping out of the woodwork when she was around) kept me really entertained.
Good entertainment means a lot when you’ve been around for every movie from The Horse in Motion to Spiderman (all iterations).
My hand was hovering over the phone when I heard the thunk-thunk-thunk of someone beating the walls in the hallway, then a low, enraged voice echoing through the hundred-year-old architecture.
“I’m know you’re in there! Get out here!”
I poked my head out into the hallway and groaned when I saw that the burly, angry voice was coming from Emerson, and the thunk-thunk-thunking from her clodhopper shoe as she kicked my next-door neighbor’s door.
“What the hell is your problem, Emerson? You’re going to wake up the entire borough!”
Emerson turned to me, nostrils flaring, eyes spitting fire. “It’s Reginald Fairfield. I know he’s in there,” she said, turning her back to the still-closed door. “I know you’re in there!” She gave the door another wallop—this time with her fisted hand—then a few more swift kicks before I grabbed her around the waist, yanking her back.
“Why are you beating on his door like a maniac?”
“A maniac? A maniac?” She wriggled out of my bear hold. “You were probably in on it! You probably let him into my apartment!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Reginald stole my fabric. The whole bolt! All of it!” She was flailing but hitting nothing, and sweat beaded on her upper lip and at her hairline, matting down her blunt-cut bangs. “He’s a cheat! And now he’s hiding out. He won’t even open the door, the coward.” She launched herself at the door. “You’re a coward, Reginald!”
“Dios mio! Ladies, ladies, what is going on here?”
We both blinked at Felipe, Reginald’s paramour, as he stood in the hallway, tanned legs exposed in his plaid walking shorts, muscles flexed as he carried two stuffed grocery bags against his chest.
A new rage roiled through Emerson’s body, the heat coming off her in waves. I held my nose and wrapped an arm around her before she lunged at Felipe.
“Nice to see you again, Felipe,” I said, doing my best to secure Emerson but avoid her stink. “Emerson is under the impression that Reginald stole some fabric from her.”
“It’s not an impression!” Emerson screeched.
Felipe just shook his head and clucked his tongue, unaffected. “My Reginald would do nothing of the sort,” he said in his heavily accented English. “Besides,” he continued, his dark eyes taking in Emerson and her cardboard-colored dress, “Reggie would not use your fabrics. They are so . . .” He let the word trail off, the disgust on his face finishing his sentence.
“He didn’t steal it to use it, he stole it to fuck me up!”
“How do you know that Reginald was the one who stole your fabric?” I asked Emerson.
She gritted her teeth and spat through them. “He came over last night. Both of them did. We had a glass of wine, and Reginald was touching the fabric, admiring it.”
“He was just trying to be nice,” Felipe clarified, shifting his shopping bags.
“I got sleepy. They must have drugged me. I fell asleep—probably didn’t even lock the door after they left. And when I woke up—gone! The whole bolt. And now the damn coward won’t even open up the door and confront me.”
“Pshhh!” Felipe let out a dismissing puff of air. “Reggie is just a hard sleeper.” He handed me a bag and plugged his key into the lock. “Reggie,” he sang as we trailed behind.
I heard the bag clatter to the hardwood floor first, a jar of marinated mushrooms shattering, the oil oozing toward my shoes. Then I heard Felipe, heard the air squeeze out of his lungs. I didn’t have to see his face to know that it was twisted in horror, and as pearl white as mine.
“Oh! Oh!” He clutched his chest and I set my bag down, then gently pushed him aside. And if I hadn’t seen it before, I would have screamed, too.
A body. Reginald.
A loop of fabric was wrapped around his neck, pinching tight as he hung from the rafter. His head lolled forward as if he had just fallen asleep. But his eyes were open, bulging. They were already clouded and dull. His skin was mottled purple and he swayed an inch this way, an inch that way, his shoes scraping across the glossy finish of the cherry-wood table underneath him. Each time his body moved, the rafter he was tied to groaned. The scrape of his feet and the groan of the rafter seemed like the only sounds in the entire world and I remembered, far before I was turned, my father sitting with me as a child while I held my grandmother’s hand. She lay in bed, wilted, her body ravaged by sickness.
“She’s gone now,” my father said as his hand glided over her eyes.
I squeezed my grandmother’s hand, unwilling to believe, even as sadness locked in my throat. “But how do you know?”
There had been no change in my grandmother from this moment to the last. Not a final word, a sigh—not even a flicker of her soul as it passed through her body.
“The silence,” my father said simply, standing. “It’s dead silence.”
That was what surrounded us now in Reginald’s apartment—dead silence, punctuated only by the scrape and groan.
And then the living came through.
“Oh, Reggie!” Felipe slapped his hands to his cheeks and started to scream—a high-pitched, painful wail, tears welling and rolling over his manicured fingers.
“Oh, God,” I whispered.
“That’s my fabric!” Emerson’s voice was a shrill knife cutting through Felipe’s anguish and my own astonishment as I tried to tear my eyes from Reginald. Emerson shoved me aside, pointing to the ragged-edge loops around Reginald’s neck. “That’s why he stole my bolt?”
It actually was god-awful fabric, even for a suicide.
Felipe heaved and began clawing
at the table, his clawed hands going for Reginald’s pant legs as I tried to hold him back.
“Emerson,” I snapped, “forget about the fabric and call nine-one-one.”
I held on to Felipe and he crushed against me, finally giving up, crying silently. I could feel his warmth, the thud of his heart—and I couldn’t look at Reginald anymore. He wasn’t just a dead breather. He had been loved.
Emerson was on her cell phone; I could hear her voice, calm and rigid as she talked to the nine-one-one operator.
“Suicide . . . hanging . . . already dead.” She was shielding the phone with her hand, her back toward the body. She looked over her shoulder once or twice and mumbled into the phone.
“We have to get him down!” Felipe sobbed, tearing away from me. “We can’t just leave him there, hanging like that.”
“No,” I said, grabbing a handful of his shirt, yanking him backward. “We have to leave him, Felipe. The police will handle this.” Back in San Francisco, I had tried to pull my roommate away from enough CSI marathons to be pretty familiar with police procedurals.
“We’re going to call the police? But why?”
“They’re already on their way,” Emerson said, waggling her cell phone as if that explained it all.
“Holy fuck.”
It could have been the slow motion of the whole situation but the two-word sentence sounded like a full monologue. My head snapped to where the deep voice was coming from. It was my direct intent to rip his throat out for interrupting this horrific moment, but when I saw him, the death scene in front of me faded into oblivion and my entire body went rigid, colder than normal, and on complete and utter I-want-to-eat-him-in-a-nonvampiric-way high alert.
He was handsome in that traffic-stopping kind of way, with brown-black hair that was just slightly shaggy and unkempt. The wave of his bangs licked over his eyebrows and framed chocolate-brown eyes that I would happily drown in. His skin was the most delicious shade of non-New York, non-vampire toasty brown, and, I happily noticed, he had the kind of body that made one think of Greek gods or jungle men in loincloths. He had a tribal tattoo running down the length of his well-muscled arm and though I had never been interested in them before, I was suddenly, wholeheartedly pro-ink.
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