Evil's Unlikely Assassin_An Alexis Black Novel

by Jenn Windrow

  But our night wasn’t finished I still needed to kill a supernatural and feed the beast.

  Reaper and I agreed to make it fast, and headed to our good ol’ stand by. A corner populated by willing blood donors, attached to a dark alley, perfect for a quick game of hide the fangs.

  We parked the Chevelle a few blocks away and headed to the alley on foot. Past rows of businesses with protective gates over their entrances and windows, beggars sitting on the corner waiting for some loose change to fall into their gloved hands, and rows of homes the rest of the city would love to see torn down. Then we turned the corner and entered a pocket of the world that most of polite society didn’t know existed.

  It always surprised me, the sheer number of men and woman who volunteered to play cattle to the vampires. All addicted to the high and euphoria they experienced from a vampire’s bite. Not just the bums and the homeless, but businessmen, homemakers, and college kids looking for a thrill.

  Before the Eradication, Sanguine houses populated the city, legal places for the willing donors to live and vampires to feed. When the undead population became public enemy number one, the houses closed, but that didn’t stop the humans from feeding their addiction. Nope, like any other addict, they just moved to secret locations. Locations like this one.

  All I needed was one misbehaving vampire, and then I was free to leave.

  Eddie stirred at the first whiff of blood and vampire. Creeping to the surface, anticipating payment.

  My favorite time of day.

  That makes one of us.

  I slipped into the shadows at the back of the alley and waited for the sounds of struggle. It didn’t take long before the sound of fabric ripping, and frightened protests filled the cramped quarters.

  I focused on the sounds and found my target not more than twenty feet away. Pulling out my stake, I casually strolled past the vampires who were behaving, and moved closer to my target. Standing behind him, I plunged the stake through his back, straight into his heart, and watched him disintegrate into flames and ash.

  One less undead asshole in the world.

  Eddie settled deep into the background, satisfied with the single kill that my contract required.

  The girl, not more than seventeen, clutched her ripped shirt to her breasts. “He hadn’t paid me yet.” Her unappreciative tone angered me.

  I dug deep into my purse, pulled out a few crumbled bills and threw them at her feet. “Next time get payment up front,” I shot back and stormed out of the alley.

  I didn’t talk on the way home, and Reaper didn’t ask about my shitty mood. I wanted to forget everything that had happened tonight, starting with the VAU visit, ending with the ungrateful blood whore.

  We pulled up to my apartment. I left Reaper and went upstairs to my home, happy to have the rest of the evening to be able to sit and relax. A very rare occurrence in my life, and I was taking advantage of it. Hot bath, cheesy movie, bag of blood, and then off to bed at a decent hour.

  The rickety service elevator arrived at the second floor. I pulled back the cage door, but before I stepped off I knew something was wrong. The hunched back, hissing kitty was my first clue.

  The ghost hovering in the middle of my living room was my second.

  Chapter Seven

  Holy fucking shit! There was a ghost in my living room. And not just any ghost. Nathan.

  A rocket-propelled lump plopped into my stomach. Plunk.

  I wanted to run to him. Wrap my arms around him. Hold him. I wanted to do all that, but my feet were frozen to the floor and my jaw hung open.

  My fangs clicked against each other when I snapped my mouth closed to stop the drool from running out of my mouth, and I forced my brain to process words. Speech eluded me unlike the stake that I drove through Nathan’s heart. What are the appropriate words when faced with the apparition of the vampire whose death you were one hundred percent responsible for? Unpeeling my fingers from the elevator cage, I twirled the platinum ring, Nathan’s ring, on my thumb and walked closer.

  How was it possible that Nathan was here? In my home. In the…well, not flesh.

  Nathan’s ghostly form was unlike anything I’d ever seen before, and not at all what I thought a ghost would look like. Sure, he was transparent, and hovering two feet over the wood floors, but a small part of him was solid, still very corporeal. His heart.

  “It’s not possible.” I reached out and touched his arm, surprised when my fingers rested on his wrist.

  Tiny sparks of blue and purple shot out from where we touched. His body became solid. It started around his heart, a wave that spread out until every inch of him looked like it did when he was alive. I jumped, pulling my hand back, and he began to fade away again.

  “How…” I stuttered. “How did you do that?”

  “No. Bloody. Idea.” His words slow and enunciated, but his wide, round eyes showed that he was at freak-out level seventeen.

  I placed my hand over his heart. It beat under my touch, a slow thump that shouldn’t have been there. More sparks shot out from under my palm. A jolt of energy ran up my arm, lifting the fine black hairs. It raced through my body, sending a hum of electricity though me. Crackles and pops, like a bursting campfire filled the room.

  “How did you get here?” I walked around Nathan’s ghostly form, astonished that I had a second chance to tell him how sorry I was. How much his death scared me.

  Nathan turned to face me. “This is just where I appeared when I woke up.”

  “Where have you been for the last two days?”

  “Two days?” His voice entered teenage girl at a sleepover territory.

  “You die…” The word tripped over my tongue. I cleared my throat and forced it out. “Died two nights ago.”

  He shot straight up from the couch, his head going through the ceiling leaving his legs dangling over my head. Once he extracted himself, he began floating around the room. “Not possible. Right after the stake pierced my heart I came here.”

  “No you didn’t.”

  “Then where was I?”

  I didn’t have the energy to figure out the mysteries of the universe so I ignored his question. “Have you tried to go anywhere else?”

  He stopped in the middle of the room. Closed his eyes, scrunched his nose, and made some grunting sounds. His body began to fade, starting at the edges and moving inward, slowly, all the way to the solid area around his heart that beat in a slow rhythm, something it hadn’t done in over three hundred years. The last bit of transparency disappeared and all that was left was the Ramone’s logo on his shirt, then that disappeared too.

  Pop.

  The light fixture shook, bottles of blood clinked in the refrigerator, and my apartment had a tiny Nathan-induced earthquake, then he returned.

  “Where’d you go?”

  “Nowhere. Maybe I’m not doing it right.” His loudly spoken words shook with panic. “It’s not like being a ghost came with an instruction manual.”

  This time Nathan settled his smoky form over the couch, crossed his legs, made with his best “I dream of Jeannie” pose and took two deep breaths. His eyelids closed over his golden pupils, lips pursed, hands gently placed in his lap. The edges shimmered, blurred, faded.

  Pop.

  Back again. Biting his bottom lip between his teeth. Chest rising and lowering. Fist clenching and unclenching. All that was missing was the puffs of smoke coming from his ears. I wondered if he was counting to ten in his head.

  “Why can’t I fucking go anywhere?” If his word were any shaper they would have cut me to shreds.

  “What happened?”

  “Weren’t you watching?”

  My eyebrows lifted and I nailed him with my best don’t-get-pissy-with-me look.

  “I can’t leave.”

  I placed my hand on his shoulder and our personal firework display started right up.

  “Why does that happen when we touch?”

  “No sodding idea. Every time you touch me it’s
a jolt to my heart.”

  My fingers left his body and he returned to his ghostly form. I flopped on to the couch and played with the ring again. Stressed. Confused. Exhausted. On top of being a freaky vampire I was also some sort of ghost jumper cable. Could my life get any more complicated?

  “We’ll get it figured out.” I tried to sound optimistic because Nathan looked like he was about to lose whatever sanity he had left. “Until then it looks like we’ll be roommates.” I placed my hand on his knee. He solidified.

  “Just like old times, except this time I’m dead. Well, dead, dead, not just undead.”

  This seemed like the best opportunity to acknowledge the eight-thousand pound elephant sitting on my chest. “Nathan, about your death…”

  He touched his finger to my lips and shocked me. I pulled back and rubbed the flesh that the electricity had run through. He held his hand up and turned it from side to side. “What’s done is done. At least I bit it in my favorite t-shirt.” Nathan pointed to the platinum circle on my thumb. “Is that my wedding band?”

  “I pulled it out of the ashes.”

  “I was looking forward to seeing her again.” His voice lowered. “Main reason I wanted to die.” He cleared his throat and settled next to me on the couch. “Let’s watch the tube.”

  He was taking this pretty well. I picked up the remote and began channel surfing.

  Living with Nathan wouldn’t be that bad. Hell, it wasn’t the first time either. I stayed with him for ten years when I first came to Chicago. Having company would be good for me. And best of all, I had Nathan back, even if he was transparent, and I didn’t have to kill him again.

  Yeah. This could be fun.

  “Do you get any porn channels?” Okay, maybe not.

  The morning light crept into the room. Time for bed. I didn’t know if ghosts slept, but I needed to. I said good night to my friend. Happy to have him back in my life, although I’m not sure he felt the same.

  I spent the next evening on my small bricked-in balcony surrounded by foliage and flowers; it overlooked the world around me. Twenty minutes of peace. Twenty minutes of contemplation. Twenty minutes of assault rifles and Sigourney Weaver blowing alien guts up all over space.

  Sounds blared from my surround sound and Raja’s body tensed with each gunshot. I stroked her fur to reassure her. Finally, she curled into a tight ball and started to purr. Wish I had someone to rub my fur.

  I tried to ignore the sounds coming from inside and took a sip of my mug o’ blood. The city skyline kept me company while the human world below prepared to settle in for the night.

  Mine was just getting started.

  A horn blared from below and I glanced over the railing and watched the cars play chicken on the abandoned streets. I downed the rest of my breakfast and slid back the sliding glass door and peeked in at my roommate. His ghostly form sprawled across the couch, eyes focused on the big screen hanging on the wall, hand securely tucked down his pants like a ghostly Al Bundy.

  “Hey, Nate. I’m going to get ready for work.” When he didn’t acknowledge me I added, “You going to be okay today?”

  He brushed me off with a wave of his hand.

  Half an hour later, showered, dressed, and ready for a night of hunting, I walked out of my room. The couch was empty. I wandered through the living room and into the kitchen, searching for Nathan the friendly ghost. He hovered in the middle of the room, fading in and out, over and over again. Every time he came back the room shook.

  “Nathan?”

  He popped back in. “Thought I’d try again.”

  “No luck?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head. “None.”

  I laid my hand on his shoulder, the sparks shot between us. I wanted to comfort him, like he had done a thousand times for me in the past, before the stake pierced his heart, but I didn’t know how. “We’ll figure this ghost thing out. I promise.”

  His lopsided smile didn’t meet his eyes.

  “I’ll be back before sunup.” I walked to the elevator and pulled back the cage.

  With one last look at Nathan, I pushed the button and started down. I shouldn’t feel guilty about leaving him, after all he was older than me by one hundred and fifty years, but I did.

  The night was beautiful, full of stars, so I decided to walk the eight blocks to the gym. I’d taken ten steps when I heard a familiar pop.

  Standing in front of me, wearing the same what-the-fuck expression I imagined mirrored my own, was Nathan.

  “Aw. Bloody hell.”

  And there went the tiny bit of hope that the situation with Nathan would be easy. “Looks like you go where I go.”

  “But the next movie was just about to start.”

  For eight blocks I listened to Nathan grumble about the injustice of being a ghost who couldn’t do as he pleased. By the time we got to the gym my eye twitched and I contemplated finding an exorcist.

  I needed to punch something.

  Reaper greeted me at the door and I wondered if he could see Nathan, who now floated in and out of the punching bags hanging from the ceiling, like it was his personal obstacle course, but Reaper never glanced in his direction. “Let’s get this over with,” he said.

  Without any warning I attacked. Fist headed right at his nose, but the fast bastard grabbed it and pushed me away. I went back for more. We sparred back and forth, kicks, punches, and blocks. The workout was just what I needed to get rid of the edge.

  When I felt more in control I said, “There have been some developments.”

  “About the attacks?”

  “No.”

  Reaper turned his back on me, and walked to the other side of the gym. Obviously un-interested in my developments. “I’ve got a ghost attached to me.”

  That earned me a you’ve-completely-lost-it look from across the gym.

  “I’m serious. The vampire I…um…” I stopped to think about the next words that would leave my mouth since the vampire in question was right across the room. “The vampire I killed the other night, Nathan. He turned up in my apartment yesterday.”

  Reaper started working a punching bag in the corner. “A ghost that used to be a vampire now lives in your apartment?”

  “Yes, and he’s right here.” I pointed to where Nathan was standing.

  Reaper stopped beating up the bag and massaged his temples. “Did you drink some bad blood today?”

  Fine, he needed proof. I placed my hand on Nathan’s shoulder. The sparks flew and he appeared.

  Reaper’s head jerked back. “Shit.”

  “This is Nathan.”

  Reaper walked around Nathan, head bobbing up and down while he checked him out. “He looks like a bad imitation of Billy Idol.”

  “And you’re the tosser she’s stuck working with?”

  I didn’t have the patience for male posturing. “Knock it off.” I steeled my gaze at Reaper, and then at Nathan. “Both of you.” Once I was sure they would behave I continued on with my explanation. “It seems Nathan is tied to me some how. Where I go he goes.”

  Nathan gave Reaper the finger over my shoulder. Great, the ghost wanted to antagonize the hot head. This situation had disaster tattooed all over it. There was no way I was going to spend every night refereeing the two of them. I took my hand off Nathan’s arm. Problem solved.

  “Hey.” Nathan protested.

  I turned to him. “We don’t have time for a pissing match. We have a Sire-less nest to locate.”

  Reaper shot a last glance in Nathan’s direction. “I’ve been researching the police records of the area surrounding the park. There are several with high attack rates, so I chose one at random to start with. Make Out Creek is our first stop, lots of activity in the area. No deaths yet, but a lot of vampire related injuries.”

  I grabbed my leather duster off a pile of gym mats. “Sounds like a good place to start.”

  Reaper grabbed the rest of the gear and headed to the car. A vampire, a human, and a gh
ost. Sounded like the beginning of a bad joke.

  Chapter Eight

  Bare breasts and butts. That was the view on our walk through Make-Out Creek, as the humans liked to call this little section of dense forest that ran along one of the many streams that made up the Illinois landscape. The tall pines and oaks provided the perfect camouflage for the sex-starved teenagers to get hot and heavy under, behind and in-between.

  Nathan and I followed Reaper through the woods. I tried to shield my eyes from the sights, unlike Nathan who didn’t have a problem with PDA. He pointed to a couple half a second away from penetration. “Why weren’t girls this slutty when I was young?” he whispered, even though I was the only one who could hear him.

  “In the 1700’s? Not likely.”

  “Damn shame,” he muttered, and left to enjoy the rest of his little private peep show. I guess I should be happy he couldn’t join in, unless he figured out how to possess a body. Let’s hope that never happened.

  Reaper stopped and waited for me to catch up. “Getting anything?”

  I waited for any sign from Eddie, but he stayed quiet in his corner of my mind. “Not yet. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there.”

  We continued to walk along the rock-covered ground in silence. Nathan popped in and out causing slight tremors that none of the teenagers seemed to notice. Probably thought they were making the earth move with their naughty bits.

  I turned a corner and Eddie gave me a poke that kicked the breath out of my lungs. I smelled the vampires before I saw them, held up three fingers behind my back and waited for Reaper to back away. Eddie was ready to fight and clawed at my insides for control.

  Not yet.

  You must release me. I must fight.

  Pain flared through my chest as I held him back just a moment longer.

  A trio of vampires turned the corner and stopped when they saw me blocking their path.

  A burly vampire, who looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger, if Arnold was a foot shorter and suddenly sprouted fangs, spoke up. “Hey, pretty lady, want to play?”