Vampire Huntress

by Rosemary A Johns

  I glanced down at my scabbard: no Star.

  I groaned. I hoped I’d dropped the dagger in the battle in the Cemetery. At least then Rebel would have his father’s weapon.

  I eyed the exit: grand oak doors behind a ballroom dance floor. At the other end, there was only a raised polished wood stage. Above us, a high painted ceiling swirled in a glorious mural of the blue and white heavens.

  ‘When he brings me here, sometimes I can pretend I’m flying,’ the vampire smiled timidly, before he shrugged, ‘and sometimes not.’

  ‘We’re not talking buddies, Fang Face,’ I pushed into a crouch, my trapped shoulders protesting. I peered around an ornate table, which was laid out with silver cutlery, at the ballroom. There were hundreds of identical tables and high backed chairs. The scent from the lilies in glass bowl centrepieces was overwhelming. ‘You? Vampire. Me? Huntress.’

  Smash — the vampire booted the crystal goblet, shattering it. ‘Me? Anarchy. You? Bitch.’

  I gaped at him. Then I grinned.

  The wallad had balls.

  Suddenly, Anarchy reminded me of Jade. The longing for my kid sister…loneliness…fear for her…rose up, until I gasped from it, doubled over.

  Anarchy?

  In only a pair of tatty blue jeans, with a curl hanging over his nervous eyes and a body battered with purple bruises, looked more like the poster boy for slavery.

  I hadn’t expected the outrage storming inside to drain the bastard who’d ripped away the kid’s strength, manhood, and identity.

  It roared to give Anarchy back his name.

  Vampire huntress? Who the hell was I kidding?

  Choice. It’s always been yours. But be careful because you’re in the Pures’ world now. They don’t believe in true choice.

  I’ll just have to convince them different then, won’t I?

  Eden’s not like our Irish punk. He doesn’t love the world; he wants to feast on it.

  I pulled my hands against the steel handcuffs.

  No luck.

  ‘Kinky bastard vampires,’ I muttered.

  Anarchy laughed. ‘I’d help you but…’ He edged closer. ‘Eden’s punishments are inventive. And it’s enough the ceremony’s tonight.’

  Ceremony, J, tonight. That’s top of the things you don’t want to hear when you’re trussed up.

  Inventive punishments comes in a close second.

  I glanced at Anarchy. ‘How long was I out?’

  ‘Since last night.’

  When I pushed up and paced towards Anarchy, crunching over heart-shaped confetti that was ground into the carpet, he backed against the striped white-and-blue wallpaper. ‘The Big Bad here is Eden. I don’t give a hell about anything else. He’s my only enemy right now. So, how do we gank him?’

  Anarchy blinked, before a shy smile curled his split lip. ‘Burn the wanker,’ he rubbed his hand over burns that patterned his chest, like a child had been playing with matches. ‘He hurts with fire because it terrifies him.’

  ‘And I just trust you, yeah?’

  Anarchy shook his head, his dark gaze serious. ‘Never.’ When he reached towards me, I backed away, but he only stroked my hair with quivering fingers. ‘I’m sorry. Eden brainwashes to purify. To make you one of them. I’ve fought but I can’t even save myself. Forgive me for not saving you, princess?’

  I jerked away. ‘I save myself. And you’re not one of them yet. My blokes don’t give up.’

  His lips parted, before he straightened his shoulders. ‘Then I won’t.’

  Bang — the grand doors at the end of the Victorian ballroom swung open.

  Anarchy cringed back at the tap, tap, tap of footsteps down the central wooden dancing strip of the ballroom.

  Although my heart raced, I turned to Eden with a smirk. ‘Why not let me free, so we can play?’

  Eden faltered, his wide smile frozen. Then he tilted his head, his brunet sweep of hair falling over his brood of mutton chops. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his sky-blue velvet coat. ‘Why, I’m delighted you’re already feeling at home. Welcome to Perfection Hotel!’ He sprang on a table, shattering a glass centrepiece in a spray of white lilies. ‘All may enter, but only the pure may leave.’ His smile widened, canines lengthening to fangs. ‘Except the Pure don’t leave because they’re mine. Soldiers, soldiers, pure in a row, and one day soon, they’re going to kill, you know.’

  I tilted my head. ‘What are you, the storyteller for Fang kiddies?’

  Eden pouted, before calling, ‘Stephanie, we have a lost soul to save tonight.’

  When Anarchy let out a strangled cry, I stiffened.

  A Pure vampire had prowled behind us, whilst Eden had been posturing.

  In charcoal business suit, lilac shirt and smart blonde hair in a ponytail, you’d have reckoned Stephanie a mild receptionist…until the claws slashed from her knuckles and her gaze hardened with the look of a torturer offered their favourite treat.

  Before Anarchy could dash to the other side of the ballroom, Stephanie had crushed her arm around his slim neck, dragging his wrist high up his back. ‘Where are you going, sweetie?’

  Pop — Anarchy’s shoulder dislocated.

  Eden leapt off the table, before glancing back at me. ‘And where is your angel? Was it his decision or yours to allow the witches to burn in your place?’ He twirled around, holding out his hand. Stephanie shoved me with her heel onto the wooden strip towards him. ‘Dance with me.’

  I shuddered. ‘In your dreams, bastard.’

  ‘Indeed, monster, every night for the last twenty-one years.’ Eden gestured across the ballroom.

  A willowy vampire in mauve evening dress stepped out of a hidden door onto the stage.

  I rolled my eyes when she raised a violin.

  A gentle, romantic waltz started up.

  Eden was a dramatic bitch.

  Eden slipped his arms, as if around the waist of an invisible partner, before waltzing across the gleaming floor towards me.

  I grimaced, backing against the ivory table with a clatter of cutlery.

  The calming coils of the violin drowned out Anarchy’s cries, as Stephanie dragged him up onto the stage, before backhanding him. He fell in front of a long wooden block.

  Anarchy’s terrified gaze met mine over its top.

  It was an executioner’s block.

  My breath caught.

  ‘Such a sad boy and a rare failure.’ I jumped: Eden’s pale face was inches from mine. He scrutinized me, resting his hand lightly on my hip. I cringed as his fingers drew circles. ‘Purity, I offered, but impure he wished to be,’ his lips whispered onto mine, ‘but tonight we try one last time to save the Fallen.’

  ‘And me?’

  Eden clutched me tighter around the waist, swinging me out onto the dance floor. When I fell over my own feet, he laughed, pulling me into the dance. All was lilies, sky-blue, and the sweet sickening glide of the violin. He sniffed my hair. ‘You, my monster, have a choice.’

  Do I play the game?

  Whatever this dancing ass offers, it’s not a true choice. Trust no one.

  Eden brushed my cheek. ‘Time to take the first step to purity.’

  Eden’s canines slowly descended into glistening fangs; he grazed his teeth against my skin. Then he licked up the cut on my neck.

  I stiffened.

  My blood belonged to Rebel.

  I snarled, kneeing Eden in the balls. He collapsed to the floor with a satisfying groan.

  Stephanie roared, leaping down onto the dance floor. She twisted my hair, yanking me away from her leader. ‘Who said you could play rough?’

  She hauled me onto the stage. I kicked and stamped at her matching lilac kitten heels, but with my hands cuffed, it was like being the fly bothering the lion. She elbowed the violin player in the guts to stop her playing and then thrust me onto my knees next to Anarchy.

  Anarchy shot me an apologetic smile around his tears.

  I bumped his shoulder. ‘A bitch doesn’t give up
.’

  Anarchy nodded, tossing back his curls. He glared defiantly at Stephanie. Surprised, Stephanie raised an eyebrow, her lips thinning; Anarchy’s shoulders drooped.

  Eden dragged an ivory silk chair scraping along the wood, until he sprawled across it in front of the stage: his throne.

  When Stephanie drew a silver staff from her belt, Anarchy shook.

  ‘Please, I’ll try harder…’ Anarchy’s eyes were wide and desperate.

  Why did it have to remind me of Tiny Fang? He’d been begging through his gag for me not to hurt and kill him.

  Yet I still had.

  And I’d got off on it, as much as Stephanie was now.

  A black flame exploded from the staff on one side, turning it into a giant burning axe.

  Stephanie booted my neck, bending me over the block.

  When I twisted my head, two dark eyes sparked, looking straight back into mine. Anarchy was bent over right next to me.

  Both our necks were for the chop.

  I fought not to squirm.

  ‘Your choice,’ Eden’s light voice made it sound like he was merely offering us raspberry or strawberry jam with our scone, ‘is between who is saved and who dies. You’ve both forced upon me the unwelcome truth that not everyone is fit to live in my new world. But here’s the game: shall the monster or the Fallen die?’

  My gaze never left Anarchy’s. Suddenly, his small fingers reached for mine behind my back.

  A vampire hunter comforting a vampire? Except, maybe it was a vampire comforting a vampire hunter. And wasn’t that a bitch?

  Eden’s tone became shriller. ‘Tick tock, goes the clock. In one minute, you shall each offer your choice and reason for it. If you refuse, then you both die.’ I stroked my thumb over the back of Anarchy’s quivering hand. ‘I’ll be playing your judge tonight, and Stephanie will be your executioner.’

  The scorching heat from the axe seared my neck. Tendrils of smoke curled from Anarchy’s skin.

  What had J told me about choice?

  I wet my dry lips. ‘I don’t need a minute. You want to know who to kill? Ask.’

  Anarchy’s eyes widened, his eyelashes matted wet, whilst he braced himself.

  I gritted my teeth. The executioner’s blistering axe pressed closer.

  Eden was nothing but a puppet master playing with his toys.

  I wasn’t any bitch’s puppet.

  When Eden waved his hand, the oppressive heat lifted from my neck. ‘Then I shall ask: who dies, monster or Fallen?’

  Anarchy squeezed my hand, giving a resigned smile.

  ‘Monster.’ Anarchy goggled at my response. I smirked back. ‘My reason? Do I look like a bitch who could be purified?’

  Now it was my turn to squeeze Anarchy’s hand. He swallowed.

  ‘Rebellious Fallen?’ Eden’s smooth voice trembled with rage.

  Anarchy’s mouth quirked upwards, copying my own smile. ‘Fallen.’ He poked his tongue out at me, and I stifled a laugh. ‘Reasons? Do I look like a bitch who could be purified?’

  A bellow. Followed by a crash. Then tap, tap, tap…

  You’re playing with fire and to save a Fang who’s young enough to be Jade’s kid brother. He’s cute, but you’d be a cradle snatcher if you rode that ass—

  Not everything’s about…not anymore.

  You can’t trust him. You don’t know him.

  Save it. I’m not shanking Anarchy in the back to save my own arse. I won’t play this wingless sadist’s game.

  Sometimes you’re caught in a game, whether you want to be or not.

  Eden hauled me up by the hair, hurling me across the stage. I gasped, as my arms twisted, trapped beneath me by the handcuffs. Anarchy tried to stand, but Eden shoved him with a crack back to his knees.

  ‘I judge between the pure and impure.’ Eden stretched out Anarchy’s ash-grey left wing, caressing the tip, until Anarchy shuddered. ‘Only the perfect may come to tea.’ He mock bowed towards me, as if we were courtiers in a dance. ‘Monster and Fallen choose death at a ball, my oh my, what shall become of them all?’

  ‘We shank ourselves because of your bad poetry?’

  Eden’s eyes blazed. ‘Monsters with no heads can’t hear poetry.’

  I’d known it from the moment I’d woken up in the white-and-blue heaven swirled ballroom. In fact, from when I’d been carried into the blackness by the waves of the Pure on Hackney Cemetery.

  I’d been a dead woman walking. My true choice had been how I died.

  20

  Choice is a crown only worn by the free and the powerful.

  Trapped on the Utopia Estate, a shank had earned respect but not choice.

  Imprisoned in Jerusalem Children’s Home, rules had guided my every breath, until breaking them hadn’t been a choice but survival.

  Eden loved to offer choice because the trick was for the poor bastard to condemn themselves.

  ‘Please…kill me, not my princess,’ Anarchy struggled up, and again Eden pushed him back over the wooden block.

  I twisted on the cold floor of the stage; the citrus polish caught in my nostrils reminding me of sitting cross-legged at the back of the stage in school assemblies. But I hadn’t been handcuffed then.

  Or about to die.

  ‘The death of a monster should be a grand affair. I shall hold a special party here for the Pure.’ Eden clapped his hands, giddy as a kid before his birthday. ‘But first, we have a disobedient Fallen to save. And then we all have dinner reservations.’

  Eden wrenched Anarchy’s wing along the wooden block. He stretched it out, twisting Anarchy’s back, until his shoulder blade pressed against the block.

  I thumped my forehead on the stage, growling in my throat.

  I warned you, Violet-kitty: the game still plays, even if you storm away from the board. You have to be playing to win.

  When Stephanie tested her flaming axe to the base of Anarchy’s wing, he whimpered.

  ‘You’re breaking your own rules.’ I squirmed onto my knees, panting. The Victorian ballroom lay before us, dressed for a wedding, whilst Eden threatened death. It swept in a grand slice of blue-and-white heaven; and we were trapped in hell. ‘You said monster or Fallen. Not both.’

  Eden’s grin was wide. ‘Your choice was between who was saved and who died. You shall die, and the Fallen here will be saved through purification. When we carve his wings from his back, he will be clean. How sad you believed yourself the hero. Rejoice, rejoice, for today Anarchy will be pure!’

  I wrenched my arms against the handcuffs, until my wrists bruised. ‘And I’ll burn your sky-blue world to violet, if you touch his wings—’

  The violin struck up a soaring joyful ode.

  Black flames blazed. The axe fell.

  And Anarchy screamed.

  Anarchy quivered, kneeling on the angel mosaic floor at Stephanie’s feet. His wings were bloody cauterised stumps. When he glanced up, he caught me looking and flushed.

  Eden lounged at the head of the mahogany table, with Stephanie and me at either side of him. Plush, blue velvet drapes swung at the windows of the restaurant, and a wing shaped mirror hung above a marble fireplace.

  Eden had chosen the table furthest from the spitting roar of the open fire; I wondered if Anarchy was right about fire being Eden’s weakness.

  What type of bloke took his own fear and spent his life shanking others with it?

  The restaurant inside Perfection Hotel — Eden’s Lounge — was crammed with the Pure. They could’ve passed for human, except for the blackness of their eyes, when they scrutinized me.

  And that tingle between my shoulder blades.

  I shifted on my padded leather, sinking further into it. The rich meaty aromas of roasts — gravy, potatoes, and lamb — made my stomach growl.

  All I’d had for Christmas dinner had been cold baked beans out of a can.

  Where was the condemned woman’s last meal?

  Anarchy whined, wrapping his arms around himself, as his body spasmed
with pain.

  Stephanie, however, gripped Anarchy’s curls and jerked him back into position on his knees.

  ‘Feed our newest soldier,’ Eden speared a large slice of beef wellington into his own mouth, ‘it’s hard on them in the first days. Transformation into purity. He’s a lucky boy, he has Stephanie here to teach him his lessons.’

  ‘Are you hungry, darling?’ Stephanie tore a thin shred of lettuce from her Caesar salad and held it out on her palm, like Anarchy was her pet rabbit.

  I’d have sneered…something…but Eden had rammed a leather gag in my mouth, before he’d led me into his joint.

  I guess the bloke was touchy about his poetry.

  I bit the leather, hating the way it tasted; I sucked down my saliva.

  How screwed was my Boxing Day, when I was sitting gagged and handcuffed in the fanciest restaurant I’d ever been in, surrounded by psycho vampire fanatics?

  Anarchy nibbled at the lettuce, wincing when Stephanie tapped his head.

  Stephanie’s gaze was flat and hard as she simpered, ‘Good job, sweetie.’

  ‘I imagine you’ve been told lies about us,’ Eden touched his chest with his long pale hand, as if it hurt, ‘that’s why you’ve murdered so many of my friends.’ I flinched, remembering searing my touch down Tiny Fang’s cheek. Eden brushed his cheeks, wiping away imaginary tears. ‘No more to play with me, dead are they, can’t come to tea.’

  ‘She’s a hunter,’ Stephanie scoffed, ‘their hearts are stone.’

  I shrank back.

  Hell, they were right: I’d revelled in the kills because what was one dead vampire?

  One dead Fallen Angel. One dead the Pure. One dead friend.

  ‘Lies like we’re the vampires who kill?’ When I straightened in my chair, Eden nodded smugly, banging his fork clinking against his plate for emphasis now he had my full attention. ‘Angels kill. The Fallen too. There’s only righteousness and perfection, not good or evil in this dance. Besides, now I’ve learnt a new trick to feed without killing. A delicious Utopia dessert of my own.’

  Utopia? Eden was talking about feeding on my Utopia Estate?

  Anarchy moaned, juddering as a new wave of pain swept through him. Stephanie pushed his jet curls, which had fallen in front of his eyes, gently behind his ears. Then her hand slipped lower, between his shoulder blades, and then to the base of his back. She played her fingers around the waistband of his jeans.