by Jenn Windrow
Evil’s Unlikely Assassin
An Alexis Black Novel
Jenn Windrow
Evil’s Unlikely Assassin © 2018 by Jenn Windrow
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, or events, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Cover Art © 2017 by Erica Petit Illustrations
Title Art © 2018 By Mariah Sinclair
Layout and Book Production by Jenn Windrow
Second eBook Edition July 2018
Irreverent Publishing
PO Box 11371
Chandler, AZ 85248
To my READerlicious girls…eleven women rocking the writing world.
Chapter One
Tonight’s job had me sitting in a shadowy corner of a dead-end dive watching the unfortunate, the hopeless, and the degenerates. Had I known this is how I’d be spending my one hundred and seventy-third birthday, I would have called in sick.
An aging cocktail waitress hustled to over-serve society’s misfits. An ex-con, a dealer, and an addict pissed their lives away at the far end of the bar. A trio of prostitutes circled the room, their knock-off stiletto’s clicking on the wooden floor. And a single cockroach scurried for cover before being squashed.
How would the humans feel about me, the vampire, hiding in their shadows?
One of the battered bar stools toppled, throwing its occupant to the filthy concrete. The man, in a faded red and black flannel shirt, picked himself up off the floor. Dingy jeans slid down his hips, revealing a pair of boxers far past the expiration date for a wash. He bumped and weaved his way through the crowd, ignoring the spilled drinks and curses he left in his wake, and cut a crooked but determined path right to my table.
He collapsed into the booth next to me, blocking my only chance at escape. “How’s ’bout a drink?”
I wrinkled my nose at what had to be three days’ worth of sweat and grime, raised my bottle and sloshed the liquid from side to side. “Still nursing this one.” I focused on a faded picture of the Blues Brothers nailed to the wall and hoped he’d take the hint. A sharp tap on my shoulder told me this guy was either clueless or didn’t give a shit. My money was on clueless.
“What’s your name, sexy?”
Oh how I wanted to ignore his question, but the last thing I needed was Mr. Drunk and Stupid to cause a scene and blow my cover. “Alexis.”
His grease-coated fingers played “Get the Buggy” up my arm. I slapped them away before they got past my elbow. “How’s ’bout we get to know each other better?” He gave me a lopsided wink and ogled my breasts.
When he looked at me, he saw what every other human did, a twenty-three year old, petite brunette with large, light blue eyes. But if he leaned in close, he would see what lurked below the exterior, something sinister and scary, with sharp fangs and a deadly personality.
I placed my finger over the throbbing vein on his wrist, tempted to sink my fangs in and make him regret hitting on me, but I settled for a hastily spoken, “Not interested.”
He nudged deeper into the booth, his arm snaking its way across my back, until his hand settled on my shoulder. “Bet I can change your mind.”
Bet I could eat you before you can remove that dirty appendage.
My inner vampire, the unwanted passenger that shared my body, who I lovingly called Eddie, spoke up, always hoping I would give in and reward him with the human meal he craved. Every night I let him starve.
I tapped my lilac-coated nails on the scratched tabletop, and searched for my angel-appointed human partner, pain-in-my-fangs, and self-assigned babysitter. On my second pass of the smoke-filled room, I found him tucked between Pac-Man and Centipede, arms crossed over his bulldozer-like chest, the usual happy-to-see-you scowl on his face.
Reaper.
I caught his gaze and silently begged him to run interference. “Stop screwing around,” he mouthed.
I blew him a kiss. Reaper sneered and turned his head.
Sleazy bars were a hazard of my vampire-dusting occupation. Working with Reaper was another. Had I known the details before I signed away my undead life for a chance to become human again, I might have driven a stake through my own heart. Before I turned my attention back to Mr. Can’t-Take-A-Hint: the stench hit me.
The smell of blood, the smell of death, the smell of a predator, the unmistakable smell of another vampire.
My fingers tightened around the beer bottle in my hand. Fangs forced their pointy tips through my gums. Eddie stretched and a fiery pain traced every curve of the branded angel wings on my hip. The intensity would render any other vampire useless, but after two years I had learned to suck it up and get the job done.
I searched the small crowded room and joined every other female eye that watched the undead Don Juan strut to the bar. In his designer jeans and gleaming shit kickers, he stood out like a diamond in a pile of crap. He located a stoned working girl, and after a few words and a smile, he placed his hand on the small of her back and guided her down a hallway.
Vampire. Eddie pushed against my defenses, ready to take the lead. Anxious for the kill.
Not yet.
Why not?
Too public. After two years, Eddie still needed the reminder.
Eddie raged, using my insides as his own personal punching dummy. He wanted death, food, and release. He didn't care that we were in a public place, but I did. And I controlled the beast. It didn't control me.
I took a deep breath and attempted to tamp down my inner Mr. Hyde.
I pushed past my foul-smelling friend, anxious to confront my prey. “Excuse me, need to use the restroom.”
He grabbed my wrist and jerked me onto his lap. “Can I join you?” He waggled his eyebrows at me. “I could put the motion in your ocean. Know what I mean?”
I shot out of his lap like someone lit my ass on fire and swallowed back the urge to remove his heart from his chest cavity. Instead, I reached down and gave his nuts a painful twist, grabbed him by the collar, and lifted him off the booth. “You don’t have what it takes to put the motion in my ocean.” I shoved, and he hit the back of the booth, eyes going wide, mouth opening and closing like a ventriloquist’s dummy.
One minor annoyance taken care of, one major annoyance left to go. A quick nod in Reaper’s direction and I followed the mixed smell of copper and blood down the hall.
Stopping in front of the men’s room, I leaned my ear against the door; muffled moans came from the other side. Hopefully he was into quickies because I could only hold Eddie back for so long before he exploded out of me in a fit of rage.
I slipped into the women’s room to wait and grimaced. Lemony-scented rot polluted the air, and a nuclear bomb wouldn’t remove the filth. The stalls wore graffiti and the walls recited limericks from amateur poets. I leaned against the door and promised myself I would burn my shirt when I got home.
The ten minutes it took my prey to feed felt like a hundred lifetimes, thanks to the amped-up bloodlust raging a battle I was sure to lose, a wonderful by-product of my cursed existence. When he finished, the hinges on the men’s room door creaked, and two sets of footsteps left. The click of hooker heels went back into the bar, but the soft clunk of boots stopped close by.
Had he sensed me waiting? Was he waiting for me?
Of course. Running into another vampire out of the Undergroun
d was rare these days. Unless it’s your job to assassinate them, and then you found one in every rat hole in the city.
I reached down and patted Revanche, Reva for short, the silver dagger that hung at my side. The smooth bone handle a comforting presence that reminded me why I spent my evenings hunting and killing my own kind. Revenge, for the mother, father, sister, and twin brother that Xavier had ripped from my life.
I counted five heartbeats of the nearest human, opened the door, and searched the hall. The vampire leaned against the wall next to a payphone, the words for a good time call written over his head. The tips of his blood-tinged fangs peeked over his too-rosy lips. He gave me a cringe-inducing leer.
He. Must. Die. The close proximity of the vampire drove Eddie insane. He Freddie Kruegered my insides, demanding control, demanding to be set free. I lost the fight and Eddie’s blood lust took over. The multi-colored world faded into shades of red. Heat rushed through my veins like a blazing inferno through a water-starved forest. My fangs elongated, cutting my lower lip, and a warm trail of blood ran down my chin.
My ironclad contract with the angel of attitude was very specific. The death of one supernatural creature every night for fifty years, or the blood of a human. Any human. The only two ways to satisfy my blood lust, and the only chance I had to survive.
I locked eyes on my prey. Tonight it would be Rico’s death.
One look at my unusual red eyes and the dagger at my hip, and a spark of recognition turned his wanna-fuck-grin to a holy-shit-frown. No one wanted to get up close and personal with Evil’s Assassin. He ran toward the emergency exit and pushed the bar on the door, setting off an ear-piercing siren.
Run. Chase. Kill. Eddie urged from the abyss.
Half a second behind, I pursued him like a newly turned vamp pursues her first meal. I rushed into a back alley. A single light bulb blinked on and off, doing an inadequate job of cutting through the dark.
The vampire scrambled to a nearby dumpster and hooked his hands over the top. I grabbed him by the boot and pulled him down. Ca-thunk. His head bounced off the concrete.
Before he could recover, I pinned him to the ground, one knee on his chest, one hand wrapped around his throat. I reached into my knee-high, silver-studded boot, and pulled out a five-inch long redwood stake, my never-fail-me vampire killing tool.
I clenched the smooth familiar wood and drove it forward. The point was just millimeters from his heart when he arched his back and knocked me off. I stumbled but didn’t let go. I lifted him by the collar of his Brooks Brothers shirt and forced him against the brick wall, stake against his neck. He scratched my face, clawed my arms, and knocked off my hat. A hunk of my hair fell free and he wrapped it around his fist. A silver dagger appeared from behind his back. He held his weapon high, aimed at my heart, ready to strike.
With my stake threatening to pierce the base of his throat, and his weapon aimed at my ticker, we were locked in a stalemate.
“I heard you were dead.” He pushed the words out with such venom spit peppered my face. I really needed that shower now.
“Guess you heard wrong.”
“Does it weigh on your conscience to kill your own kind?”
“Does it weigh on yours to use humans as your personal blood bank?”
“I only drink from the willing.” He pulled my hair tighter. I felt the roots giving up the good fight but swallowed down the pain.
“I bet you do.” I pushed the stake harder into his flesh.
His eyes flickered over my shoulder, and his lips spread into a smile far too confident for a man who had a piece of pointy wood adding a drainage hole in his throat. Before I had a chance to react, something prodded me in the small of my back. Now what? I pushed against the vampire’s chest hard enough to tear my hair from his grasp, most of it, anyway. A hunk of my jet-black waves remained tangled around his fist.
I turned and confronted my intruder.
Three men stood behind me, bodies swaying from side-to-side, led by my horny friend from the bar. He held an aluminum baseball bat, the words ‘Vampire Basher’ written on the beat-up metal in thick black marker.
The clueless wonder cleared his throat. “Leave him alone, Bloodsucker.” He held the bat high on his chest, but his words were laced with tremors.
The hunger was out of control, and the blood of Larry, Curly, and Moe would satisfy the craving more than the death of a vampire. My mouth salivated at the thought of blood fresh from the vein slipping down my dry throat, but I fought off the thirst.
I. Don’t. Drink. From. Humans.
But they taste so delicious. Eddie purred from his prison.
“You need to leave. Now.” There was nothing in my tone that hinted my words were a suggestion.
The vampire knocked the stake out of my hand and sent it flying to the other side of the alley. It landed in a pile of garbage. He pushed against my chest, knocked me to the ground and leapt to the roof of the four-story building next to the bar. He took off into the inky blackness.
“What the hell was that?” Moe asked.
Blood or death. The only way to tame the beast, and the option of death just left.
The angrier half of my sparkling personality rejoiced. Blood was back on the menu. But I wouldn’t, no, couldn’t, let Eddie feed.
I stalked over to the trio and stopped close enough to smell the cigarettes and the stale beer and whisky that stained Moe’s teeth yellow. “That was the vampire you let get away to suck another innocent human dry.” The two without weapons glanced at each other and took a step back. One look from Moe and they took two steps forward.
“Don’t move.” Moe pointed at me with the blunt end of the bat.
I looked at his useless weapon and gave him a lethal grin. “Or you’ll what? Attempt to kill me with aluminum?”
His gaze traveled along my barely five foot six frame. “Three men against one tiny vampire. We’re not afraid.” He rubbed the stubble on his chin and turned to his buddies. “Don’t you agree, boys?” Larry and Curly stayed silent, obviously the brains of the operation.
I bared my fangs. “Tiny but lethal.”
“Well, if you give us too much trouble we can always call the VAU.”
Hearing the words caused cold fingers to grip my spine and shake my bones. No vampire wanted to tangle with the Vampire Apprehension Unit, a highly trained unit of former military and police who made it their mission to find and destroy any vampire brave enough to peek their head out of the gutters.
Grisly images of televised executions swarmed my brain, but I coated my words with confidence. “Call the VAU. By the time they get here, you and your buddies will be lying in a pool of your own blood, and I’ll be long gone.”
The stupid human leader didn’t back down. Didn’t he understand that I was wrestling for control? For his life? Eddie didn’t care if he lived. I did, but I wasn’t in charge anymore. If it was up to me I would be chasing the vampire that got away, but my feet were rooted to the floor and wouldn’t budge. I needed to scare some sense into this lower-than-shit-on-my-shoes human.
I slapped the bat out of his hand. The clang of metal and concrete connecting rang through the alley. I grabbed him by the throat and my nails punctured his flesh. “You’re pissing me off.”
Larry and Curly got out fast, taking the only functioning brain with them. They left their not-so-fearless leader in my clutches. The odor of freshly released urine mixed in with the pungent aroma of garbage.
“I’m sorry.” His words finally shook with the fear I expected from any semi-intelligent human. “Please let me go.”
“You’re only sorry because you realize you’ve made a fatal mistake.”
“I’m just drunk and stupid.”
“Being stupid is no excuse for confronting a vampire. Did you forget why they tried to wipe us off the planet? Why the Eradication took place?”
“I remember.” He swallowed over the lump in his throat. “But you looked harmless.”
“No va
mpire is harmless.” He obviously needed a reminder. I released the tight leash that controlled my hunger, allowing him a peek of the true monster that lived beneath the surface. “Don’t let my pretty exterior fool you. I am the monster they warned you about.”
Moe’s mouth sagged open.
The smell of his fear called to my inner monster, the predator. I fought Eddie, tried to control him once again, but Eddie was strong. Stronger than me. I couldn’t stop myself—I sank my fangs into the soft skin of his throat. The first drop of blood landed on my tongue.
More. More. Eddie begged. Blood gives you strength. Blood will quench the hunger. Tame your blood lust. Tame me. Blood will allow you to be the creature you are meant to be.
One sip. One draw. One gulp. That’s all it would take to satisfy the urge. To kill the craving.
To destroy everything. To turn me into the monster that I have fought to become.
I released my grip, and Moe fell from my hands, landing at my feet, limp and pale. Twin rivers of blood ran down his neck and dripped onto the asphalt.
You will never win this battle. I meant every word.
Eddie growled, frustrated, beaten once again. One day you’ll be too weak to deny me. Then he settled into the background.
A large hand shoved me out of the way. Reaper rushed past me and knelt next to my victim. I backed against the wall. Terror that I had almost drank from the man jump-started my cold, dead heart. No. No. No. Two years. I hadn’t touched a human in two years.
“Is he okay?” My voice trembled under the weight of fear, guilt, and shame.
“He’ll be fine. Just passed out.” He looked up at me and disappointment marched over his features before it was replaced with his perma-scowl. “His buddies called the VAU from the bar. Get out of here. I’ll clean up your mess.”
I turned and followed the same path over the dumpster as the vampire who had escaped.
I ran away from my guilt, away from my fears, and away from my pain. I leapt from one rooftop to another, feet pounding on the exposed tarpaper and kicking up bits of gravel, hoping to outrun the life I had been forced to live.
