Just then Gala entered the ladies’ room like she was striding down a runway in Milan. She passed Lilith without a single glance and disappeared into one of the stalls.
Lilith turned the sink faucet on with her elbow and began to pretend to wash her hands. A minute later she was rewarded by the sound of a flushing toilet and the stall door reopening. She pulled a length of brown paper towel from the dispenser, taking her time drying hands that had never been wet. She then stepped out of the way, allowing the model access to the sink.
“I saw you at the trunk show,” Lilith said, the words tumbling out faster than she’d intended.
“Yeah?” Gala said in a politely bored voice as she stuck her hands under the running water.
“I was wondering—can I ask you a question?”
Gala shrugged but did not bother to look up at Lilith.
“What do you think of Kristof?”
Gala turned off the water and looked sideways at Lilith. There was a hard glint in the model’s aquamarine eyes that Lilith had not seen before. “What about Kristof?”
“I’m just asking if he’s any good? I’m thinking of taking up an offer to pose for him—”
“You? Pose for Kristof?” Gala ran her eyes up and down Lilith’s body like it was a dirty rag. “There’s this magazine called Vogue, sweetie—you better pick it up and thumb through it before you go wasting Kristof’s time.”
As Gala walked out of the ladies’ room, she thought she heard the low, throaty growl of an angry dog. But that was ridiculous. What would an animal like that be doing in a Manhattan nightclub?
Gala already had a realtor lining up a new place for her that was more befitting her rising supermodel status, but until something opened up she still split the rent three ways with two other models from her agency, living in an apartment in Chelsea.
As the taxi pulled away from the curb, she was momentarily startled by what she thought was someone standing in the shadows of the doorway of her building. She gasped in fear, but when she looked again, the figure had disappeared.
Damn it, Skyler, you better not have palmed off acid as X on me again, she thought sourly as she unlocked the door to the lobby. She had that shoot with Kristof first thing Monday, and the last thing she needed was to spend the next eighteen hours tripping. Kristof hated it when his models arrived for a shoot looking tired and worn out.
It was one thing to pretend she was partying her ass off for the cameras; it was quite another to look like she’d just closed down the last bar on the Bowery.
As Gala walked past the bank of mailboxes in the lobby, she had the weirdest feeling that she was being watched. She glanced over her shoulder but saw nothing. Still, she couldn’t shake the sensation that someone, or something, had been behind her.
Damn it, Skyler! Dosed again!
She punched the call button and heard the elevator start to make its way back down from one of the upper floors. As she waited for it to arrive, she consoled herself with thoughts of all the nice things she was going to buy herself with the money from the Maison d’Ombres contract.
After what felt like an eternity spent modeling expensive cars, clothes, shoes, perfumes, and jewelry, she was finally going to be able to afford them. Not bad for a high school dropout from Ledbetter, Texas, with nothing but a GED and some kick-ass genes to her credit.
The doors to the elevator opened, revealing pitch-black darkness. At first she thought the bulb inside the car must have burned out, but as she stepped in, Gala heard broken glass crunch under her foot. Someone had shattered the overhead light.
Gala quickly stepped back out of the elevator. The very idea of being sealed inside a pitch-black box, even for a few seconds, was enough to give her the chills, tripping or not. For all she knew, whoever broke the light was still in there, watching her from the darkness.
Cursing under her breath, she began climbing the stairs to her fifth-floor apartment. The building was prewar and the steps were worn from generations of foot traffic up and down their flights. One thing was for certain, in her new building—wherever that might be—this kind of thing would never happen. Supermodels didn’t take the stairs.
As she reached the third floor, Gala heard the scuffing of a foot on the landing above her. She paused and leaned out past the banister, looking up the narrow shaft of the stairwell. To her surprise, she saw someone peering back down at her from the fifth floor. She instantly recoiled, her heart racing in her chest, and began frantically fishing around inside her Gucci tote. She sighed in relief as her fingers closed around her cell phone.
She was about to punch in 911 when it suddenly occurred to her that calling the police might not be the smartest thing to do. After all, she was underage, drunk, and on drugs. While she wasn’t sure she’d really seen someone looking back at her from the landing above, she was dead certain she couldn’t pass a breathalyzer test. She was probably just seeing things. She was tripping, after all.
Mustering up her courage, Gala edged over and peered up the stairwell. No one was looking back down at her. With a sigh of relief, she returned the cell to her purse and resumed her climb.
As she reached the landing, there was a loud flapping sound, like laundry on a clothesline snapping in a high wind, and something large and dark came swooping down the stairs. Before she could react, Gala found herself being pummeled by huge, leathery wings. The thing attacking her thrust its face into hers, revealing a hideous mix of bat and human features: short, piglike nose, beady eyes, and gnashing fangs.
Gala screamed and clapped her hands over her eyes in a desperate attempt to blot out the horror before her. As she spun around, the heel of her shoe abruptly gave way, sending her tumbling down the steps. She came to rest on the next landing, her legs bent like those of a broken doll.
She moaned in pain as she lifted her head, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth, only to freeze upon seeing that her attacker was crouched over her like a vulture. The model opened her mouth to scream, but she was so frightened all she could manage was a choking noise.
The creature’s monstrous features seemed to waver, as if seen through a haze of rising heat, and, to her surprise, Gala suddenly found herself looking into the face of a beautiful young girl with cold blue eyes and long honey-blond hair.
“Nobody talks to me like that and gets away with it,” the bat-girl snarled. She grinned, revealing a pair of white canines that grew bigger and bigger the longer she smiled. “Kristof is mine, bitch.”
Before the creature could sink her fangs into Gala’s throat, there was the sound of a door being thrown open.
“Who’s there?” a man’s voice called out.
The bat-girl yanked her head back, hissing in anger. And just as suddenly as she had appeared, she was gone. In her place was an older man Gala recognized as one of her neighbors, dressed in a loosely belted bathrobe and carrying a hockey stick as an impromptu weapon.
“Oh my God! I’ll call nine-one-one!”
Gala looked up and saw the bat-girl hanging from the ceiling over the Good Samaritan’s head like a monstrous chandelier, grinning down at her with demonic glee.
Only then was she finally able to scream.
CHAPTER FOUR
It was early Sunday evening and Cally was in her room. As she finished sewing the zipper into a black miniskirt, her home phone rang. Setting aside her scissors and thread, she picked it up before it could roll over to voice mail.
“Hey there, girl,” Melinda said, not bothering to identify herself.
“Hi, Melly. What’s up?”
“Nothing much. I was wondering if you wanted to go check out this new club tonight. I used to party at the Belfry, but I need a new place to hang. Scuttlebutt has it that the Viral Room is a VIP club.”
“VIPs?” Cally frowned.
“You know: Vampires Into Partying.” Melinda laughed. “What about it? Wanna check it out?”
“Are Bella and Bette coming?”
“Those two? Clubbing? Are you
serious?”
“Okay, I’m game. I need an excuse to get out of the house—my mom has been driving me nuts!”
“I hear that. When do you think you’ll be ready? I can send a car around for you….”
“No, that’s okay,” Cally replied quickly. The last thing she needed was one of her friends accidentally getting a look at her mother. “I’ll meet you there. How’s midnight sound?”
“Great. The witching hour it is. See you at the club.”
Her mother, as usual, was reclining on the red velvet chaise lounge in front of the television. Tonight she was watching Near Dark with a pair of wireless headphones clamped over her ears in grudging concession to the condo board’s most recent complaints.
Cally leaned over and lifted one of the headphones, speaking directly into her mother’s ear. “Mom, I’m going out to the clubs tonight.”
“Don’t forget to pick up the laundry from the cleaners first,” Sheila replied. “I had them dry-clean your school blazer. Honestly, Cally, it looked like you’d worn it to a slaughterhouse! Next time try and be more careful when you open the blood packets the school gives you for lunch.”
“Don’t worry, Mom, I will,” Cally promised. She was relieved that her mother did not question her explanation for the bloodstains. If she knew that her daughter had been attacked while at school—by Lilith Todd, no less—Sheila would freak.
“That’s nice, sweetie,” Sheila replied, unaware that she was talking to an empty room.
Lilith sat on the corner of her bed, staring at the number printed on Kristof’s business card. Marshaling her courage, she quickly punched the numbers into her cell phone before her resolve could fade.
The phone on the other end of the line rang. And rang. And rang. She was afraid the call might go to voice mail when she suddenly heard an older, masculine voice.
“Hello?”
“I’m trying to reach Kristof…?”
“Speaking.”
Lilith never got nervous around humans. In her mind, nervousness was connected to fear. And with the exception of Van Helsings, what did she have to fear from humans? After all, she was faster, stronger, deadlier, and prettier than all of them, wasn’t she? However, for some reason she found her mouth dry as cotton as she spoke.
“This might sound weird, but I’m calling because you gave me your card at the Dolce & Gabbana boutique on Madison—”
“Ah, yes! The blonde!” She could hear the smile in his voice. “So, you have changed your mind about my taking your picture?”
“Maybe I could stop by your studio sometime soon…?”
“How about tonight?” Kristof suggested.
Lilith smiled, pleased at how quickly the photographer had risen to the bait. “You mean that?”
“I never say things I don’t mean. Unless I’m in love, of course,” Kristof said with a laugh. “And even then, I wait until the third date. I am going to be very busy, starting tomorrow. If you want me to take your picture, it will have to be tonight or not at all.”
“I think I can make it—I’ll need to know where you are, though. All I have is your phone number.”
“Very well,” Kristof replied, and rattled off an address in Tribeca. “By the way, since you know my name, it is only fair that I know yours.”
“My name is Lili—” Lilith was about to give her full name when she thought better of it and caught herself midway. If Kristof noticed her oddly clipped response, it did not register in his voice.
“I’ll be here waiting for you, Lili.”
Cally arrived just as the cleaners were locking up for the night. She quickly paid for the laundry, which was waiting for her in the collapsible shopping cart Sheila had dropped it off in the night before.
As she began pushing the heavily laden cart back to her apartment, she passed the remaining low-income six-story structures that had yet to be bought up and turned into overpriced lofts. Cally thought about how nice it would be to finally go out on the town for the sake of having a good time, not because she needed to roll drug dealers in order to pay the light bill or buy a new pair of shoes. Ideally, she would have preferred to go out clubbing with Peter, but that was impossible.
Suddenly a tall, gaunt male figure stepped out of a darkened doorway just ahead of her, blocking the path. Cally quickly recognized him as Johnny Muerto, one of her former schoolmates at Varney Hall—on those rare occasions he’d bothered to come to class.
“Looky what we got, boys,” Muerto said with a nasty laugh, motioning to his half dozen followers, who emerged from the shadows to cut off Cally’s escape. “What’s the matter, oldie? You get lost on your way to Bloomingdale’s?”
Muerto was scarecrow thin with a face that resembled a skull with skin stretched over it. An unruly shock of hair, as black and shiny as the feathers on a crow, hung down to his shoulders. Rumor had it that Muerto had personally driven stakes through the hearts of two oldies who’d made the unfortunate choice of slumming on New Blood turf.
“What are you talking about, Johnny?” Cally asked. “I’m no oldie and you know it.”
Muerto’s lizard lips pulled back into something that was more snarl than smile, revealing yellowed fangs. “The grapevine has you attending Bathory Academy.”
“And you believe that?” Cally retorted, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. Even though she was pretty good at hand-to-hand and could summon storms and lightning, there was no way she could take on all seven gang members at one time, and they knew it.
“Well, you certainly ain’t hanging round like you used to. So what am I supposed to think?”
“I’m surprised you think at all.”
“Ah. You hurt me, Cally.” Muerto tapped his rib cage with one crooked, clawlike finger. “Really, you do.”
While she was distracted, a shifty, rat-faced gang member reached out and snatched the laundry cart away from Cally.
“Keep your hands off my stuff, you creep!” she yelled as he dug through her belongings, tossing clothes in every direction.
“Muerto! Look at this!” he squealed, holding aloft a school blazer.
“Give that back!”
Cally tried to snatch the telltale jacket, only to have her arm grabbed.
Muerto pointed at the crest. “What’s this? Looks like a big ol’ B. Wonder what that stands for?”
“I said give it back, Johnny!” Cally shouted.
“Oh, I’ll give it back to you,” Muerto said. He twirled the jacket like a matador’s cape, keeping it just outside her grasp. “But first you have to surrender that kiss you owe me.”
Cally raised her right hand and an arc of electricity shot from her palm, striking the rat-faced gang member. Then she turned and fled.
“Don’t just stand there!” Muerto shouted. “Get her!”
Cally ran as fast as she could, the gang cackling and screeching at her heels. She knew better than to scream for help. The families who lived in the shadows of the Williamsburg Bridge had learned long ago that it was safer to turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to those things that wandered their neighborhood after the sun went down.
Cally ducked between a couple of tagged-up old warehouses, but halfway down the alley she was driven to the ground by a pair of razor-sharp claws slamming deep into her back.
“Quick, tie her hands!” Muerto screeched, resuming his human form. “She can’t call lightning if they’re pinned behind her!”
Cally bit her lower lip as one of them planted a knee in her back and tied her hands together with a length of wire. Although her vampire heritage meant her broken ribs were already healing, the pain she felt was still very real.
Two gang members yanked her to her feet by her bound wrists, holding her between them.
“What a shame,” Muerto sneered. “Like my mama used to say: ‘All that flapping, only to die within sight of the cave.’”
“If you’re going to kill me, get it over with,” Cally spat.
“Kill you? Is that what you think I want to do
?” Muerto feigned indignant surprise. “All I ever wanted from you was a kiss. Just one little kiss!” Muerto’s tongue flickered, tasting the air like a snake. “The first time I try, you punch me in the throat and knee me in the cojones! The second time you nearly fry me and then run away! Why? Am I so damn ugly to you? Or is it because you think you’re so much better than me? Is that it?
“I could have been nice to you, Cally. Very nice. But now I’m about to be very nasty. And when I’m finished with your fine, oldie ass, my boys are going to be even nastier.”
Suddenly the alley was awash in the blinding glare of xenon headlights. Muerto instinctively raised his stick-thin arms to cover his light-sensitive eyes. Cally could see the outline of a car blocking the alleyway behind the gang members.
“Let the girl go,” the driver said, stepping out of the car. His voice was very deep, with a distinctly Mediterranean accent.
“You’re on Impaler turf, asshole! Back off!” Muerto snarled.
The passenger climbed out of the car and spoke in a voice as hard as steel. “He said leave the girl alone!”
“On whose orders?” Muerto hissed, flashing his fangs in defiance.
“Mine,” the passenger said.
The driver reached inside the car and switched off the headlights, revealing two men dressed in the dark suits, black shirts, and crimson silk ties of the Strega.
The driver looked to be in his early thirties, with a huge head and hands the size of catchers’ mitts. His passenger was considerably younger but carried himself with the confidence of a much older man.
A look of open fear crossed Muerto’s face, and his sallow features grew even paler. “A thousand pardons, sir! I didn’t realize it was you!”
“That much is evident, fool!” the younger man snapped. “Now do as I command and let the girl go! She’s a friend of the family.”
“Forgive us, sir! We had no idea!” Muerto pleaded as he freed Cally’s hands.
“If I want to hear your voice, Muerto, I’ll ask you a question. Now go fetch her belongings.”
Night Life Page 4
