Beauty Bites

by Mary Hughes

  “Your turn. The cuffs.”

  “Right.” Ric slid his wrists into the loop. A snap of teeth pulled it tight. He held up his restrained hands with a challenging half-smile. “Now what?”

  I’d encountered plastic cuffs during my ER rotation. On the negative side, if misapplied, they could cause nerve damage. On the plus side, unlike metal cuffs, they could be cut or melted. Or, rarely, broken. A doctor had related a story where a young man hyped on drugs had actually snapped the things. I didn’t know how strong vampires were but from Ric’s confident smile, he must have been more than strong enough to get out of these.

  Ogre Face snorted. “Mr. Nosferatu’s head of security designed those cuffs himself. Maybe you’ve heard of him—Giuseppe Marrone?”

  Ric’s smile disappeared and he actually got angry. “Fine. I’ve put on the cuffs. Now let another of my people go.”

  “Why not? That one, I think.” He pointed to bearish Harry. “He looks like trouble. Might as well get rid of him.”

  Harry glared at Ogre Face then strode out of line. I was sorry to see him go. Ogre Face was right, Harry might have been helpful in a fight.

  As he passed us he snagged Rosie and dragged her along with him.

  “Hey,” Ogre Face shrieked, forgetting to disguise his thin voice. “Stop!”

  Harry turned. “If I leave, she leaves too.” He squared his shoulders into a bulldog stance. “Unless you want me to stay.”

  “No.” Again the little-girl voice. Ogre Face scowled, dropped into his motor-oil growl. “Fine. Go.”

  As Harry made double-time for the door, dragging Rosie behind, it struck me how he’d make a dandy bear prince, like the story of Rose-Red and Snow-White. Not Grimm’s Sneewittchen, but Schneeweisschen, where Rose-Red befriends a bear and also tries to help a dwarf. The bear is grateful but the dwarf is nasty. Eventually the bear kills the dwarf and turns into a handsome prince.

  Substitute ogre for dwarf, and Harry had rescued Rosie like the bear rescues Rose-Red.

  Aw, that was sweet.

  Smack me sideways. If I was going to see fairy tales everywhere, it would’ve been handy if Harry had killed the ogre first. Or at least mauled him a little.

  As the door swung closed behind Harry and Rosie, a dark patch, barely a shadow, seemed to filter through.

  I blinked.

  Nothing there now. Must have been seeing things.

  “Time to go,” Ogre Face said. “Come on, Blondie, get your gorgeous heinie over here. I think, to be sure everyone cooperates, we’ll take you along.”

  “No.” Ric’s shoulders tensed in front of me. “I’ll go with you. But Dr. Byornsson stays here.”

  “Forget it. We’ll take her with us—in a different car, so you don’t get any funny ideas.”

  A shadow darted between wavelike partitions and silk screens. I blinked a couple times. Nothing again.

  “I’ll agree to play nice,” Ric said. “If she stays here.”

  “Tell you what. We’ll play nice.” Ogre Face’s smashed leer made me shudder. “With your girlfriend.”

  “Unless she’s safe, deal’s off.” Ric’s growl was menacing.

  “Then one of your people gets it.” Ogre Face pointed at a woman near his end of the line. “Her. Bring her here.”

  The biggest of the men, a black mountain, grabbed the woman’s wrist and yanked her away from the window. She stumbled and nearly fell, awkward with a distended belly.

  I covered my mouth. “Oh my God.”

  She was as pregnant as Elena.

  “I’ll come,” I said. “Don’t hurt her.”

  No one heard me. The big man brought his gun up. The woman screamed.

  “No!” Ric leaped forward.

  “Stop.” The mountain’s gun snapped to the woman’s head. Her scream cut.

  Ric reined himself in with obvious difficulty. “All right. You hold all the cards. Synnove?” He turned to me, his eyes so blue I nearly drowned. “Go ahead. Go to them.”

  I warmed. Ric respected me enough to handle myself with the bad guys. “First he has to let her go.”

  There was a pause and for a second I wondered if I’d pressed too hard.

  Then the ogre said, “Let her go.”

  The mountain released the pregnant woman. She wept in relief and staggered back to the window.

  I expelled a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.

  The mountain extended a sausage finger at me. Curled it.

  My mouth dried. My heart tripped then started hammering. Moment of truth. Sure, I had martial arts and self-defense training. But my particular martial art was for distance fighting, and self-defense was only useful when you could strike your assailant and run away. The mountain wanted me to come grabbing-close. My martial arts wouldn’t help, and I couldn’t do a self-defense move and run away, not when my fleeing would trigger the pregnant woman’s slaughter.

  I was stuck.

  Ric nodded me forward. Maybe he had a plan.

  Okay. If he could trust me, I could trust him.

  Slowly, I went, practically inching. Even so the trip across the wide agency floor took maybe ten seconds. They were the longest seconds of my life.

  The instant I got within reach, the big man seized my wrist and yanked me into him. He had a grip like a nut crusher. I twisted against the pain.

  “You’re a looker.” The mountain grabbed my hip and pulled me flush with his oversized body. “Give us a kiss, baby.” He pronounced it bay-bee.

  First Chicken Little and now this monstrosity. I was beginning to hate the term baby. Sugar Babe and Apple Bottom seemed almost charming in comparison.

  He lifted the bottom of his mask and puckered up. I jerked my face away. He caught my chin and tugged back. Automatically I went with him—until I faced his cauliflower lips. Yuck. Pass. I kept going, turning away before he could plant one on me.

  My view wheeled to six black-clad bad guys watching avidly. In an odd coincidence, they were lined up in reverse order of size, the biggest at the far end and a short skinny dude nearest me.

  Whoa, wait. Shouldn’t it have been five black-clad guys? I blinked.

  Still six.

  A shadow had crept up behind the last raider in the row. Unfolded to its full height, it became a tall man.

  Whip-fast, the shadowman raised his arm and struck, chopping a sharp, silent blow to the tallest masked hostile’s head. The bad guy collapsed without a sound. The shadow caught him as he fell and eased him to the floor.

  None of the other bad guys seemed to notice.

  Shock rushed cold through my veins, freezing my limbs. Six to one weren’t great odds, even vampire versus human. Unless I could keep the men’s attention off the shadow. Surprise could better those odds. Especially if I could distract the mountain with the dick-crushing grip.

  Before the yuck factor could stop me, I swiveled back to center and planted one on cauliflower. For the team.

  They say all true heroes endure suffering. Kissing that asswipe, I sure did. His lips were wet foam rubber and his tongue was stale garlic with a garnish of cat litter. But I mashed sour lips for all I was worth.

  Yuck yuck yuck…a throttled cry snagged my attention. I cut eyes to my left. Two more bad guys were down but the penultimate had screamed a warning before a smack across the face sent him crumpling.

  Worse, the shadow’s blow was much slower than that first neat karate chop. And wisps of smoke rose from him.

  My scalp prickled. Sunlight lanced through the gaps between hostages and the shadowman was smoldering, and fading fast.

  “Stop him,” Ogre Face shouted.

  The mountain smooching me raised his head.

  Time to change distracting tactics. I unpuckered. Cleared my throat.

  And head-butted him.

  He made a pained gah. Mission accomplished but I’d gone forehead to chin. While skull trumps jaw they’re both still bone. Pain burst in my forehead and for an instant I lost track of my surroundings.

&nb
sp; “Stop! I’ll kill her.” Not the mountain or the ogre.

  I blinked. The scene resolved slowly. The shadow had taken out all but the leader, the mountain and the last of the lined-up bad guys. Good news, he was the skinniest of the bunch. Bad news, he’d had time to wrap an arm around a gray-haired grandma’s neck. Silent tears trickled down her wrinkled cheeks.

  He swung his gun up to her skull. It made an audible thud. “One more step and I’ll shoot her.”

  The shadow froze. The lancing sun revealed a tall, lean man with broad shoulders, powerful arms and long-fingered hands, in a black hoodie and jeans. Barely visible through the puckered hoodie were black slash brows and glittering black eyes. He held himself like a ninja, with a dangerous ease.

  He glanced at me, and for the merest sliver of time, I was staring into death’s dark abyss.

  Then those death-dealing eyes shifted to the skinny dude. The bad guy startled visibly.

  “Y…you. Stay there.” Chest pumping, he inched his hostage closer to where I stood in the grip of Mt. Nut Crusher; scared, even though he held the gun. Having met that black gaze, I couldn’t blame him. He stopped a foot away from me, gun jammed against his captive’s head. “One step closer and I’ll kill her.”

  Grandma whimpered.

  The shadow glanced again at me. Enigmatic eyes considered me like a man weighing his tools. He seemed to decide something because he twitched a significant glance at the punk’s gun hand. I followed his gaze. The dude’s finger rested outside the trigger guard. I cut wide eyes back to the shadow and raised a brow. The shadow glanced at my feet, then at the skinny punk, who was standing with legs braced apart, then again to me.

  Oh. Obvious.

  I drew back my foot. Kicking from the hip, I connected with punk stones, hard enough that my toes penetrated body cavity. His eyes popped, his breath expelling on a whoosh. Yeah, Mr. Miyagi taught his grasshoppers well.

  Even before I pulled my foot back, the shadow launched. I’d never learned to hide my telegraph. First time that was a good thing.

  As my foot connected, the shadow snared goon wrist and shoved the gun from grandma’s head, simultaneously pulling his trigger finger the other way. It broke with a snap. The goon screamed. Automatically his arms constricted, yanking the gun inward. The shadow went with the motion, using the punk’s momentum to haul him away from the woman entirely.

  Whereupon the shadow yo-yo’ed the punk by his gun wrist, tossing him out one handed, then reeling him back—into the shadow’s waiting fist. Several times, like a paddle ball, whack, whack, whack.

  It was all fun and games until the gun hit my skull.

  Thud. A bright pain cracked in my brain, telling me the mountain had brought his own weapon to bear.

  Almost immediately something heavy plowed into us, spinning me away from the gun. I staggered to a stop.

  My sight cleared to Ric, wrestling the mountain.

  The big goon seized Ric with one arm, hugging him close like he was going to give him noogies. But the gun in his noogie hand made reality more chilling.

  Ric shimmered, and suddenly the mountain was holding a cloud of mist. Vampire fighting technique? I cheered before it occurred to me to wonder why Ric hadn’t used it before and why the shadow hadn’t used it at all.

  The edge of Ric’s mist caught a stray beam of sunlight. It instantly combusted—poof. My elation turned to horror.

  Ric snapped back into being like a rubber band. His cheek was seared open, exposing red muscle surrounded by blackened, bubbling skin. But he lost no time raising his bound hands, swinging, and whacked the bad guy’s head with fists like a mallet.

  The mountain swayed but didn’t go down. Ric spun, once, twice, winding up his whole body behind it, and whacked him again.

  Still the guy didn’t go down. My heart tripped double time. The mountain swept his gun toward Ric.

  I leaped at them. Went oof when I hit the shadow’s arm, stuck out like a bar. I folded over it like a cheap towel and staggered back.

  Ric slid into the rifle.

  The mountainous goon opened fire as Ric knocked the gun to the side—the ogre’s side.

  Ogre Face ducked and covered. A spray of bullets rat-a-tat-tatted a line where his head had been.

  Ric chopped his forearms across the mountain’s right wrist. The mountain howled, both arms flying up in defense, right hand dangling with a protruding lump at the wrist presenting as broken. The gun fell to hang from its clip. The mountain groped for it with his left hand.

  Ric grabbed the big man’s balls.

  The guy shrieked. Ric wrenched. The mountain dropped, curling on the floor like a shrimp. Apparently Ric also had a grip like a nut crusher.

  “Stop!”

  I whipped around. Ogre Face pointed his gun at my head. He rasped, “You’re dead.”

  Terror burned that instant into my head like a snapshot. I stood facing the ogre. About ten feet separated us. Behind me was the hostage-lined bank of windows, the shadowman already running toward them. A few feet to my right, the mountain goon curled on the floor, Ric breathing deeply over him.

  Both Ric and I were too far away to stop the ogre from shooting.

  “Down!” The shadowman pushed hostages to the floor, starting with the ones in Ogre Face’s direct line of fire. Well, if you didn’t count me.

  Ric leaped.

  My knees started to bend.

  Ogre Face pulled the trigger.

  Ric wouldn’t hit him in time, even though he’d leaped before the ogre pulled the trigger.

  The gun went off.

  Chapter Fourteen

  But Ric wasn’t leaping for Ogre Face. He plowed into me. I went down, Ric’s heavy body covering mine.

  Warmth trickled down my neck. Shock hit me. Had I been shot?

  My ears rang. Concussive sound. I blinked. I was in a place where all time was compressed into one point. A lifetime went by in a flash.

  A second report. Shock but no pain. But there wouldn’t be, not until later.

  And then, between one breath and the next, time uncoiled and ran normally. Ric’s harsh breath was in my ear. The warmth on my neck was cooling.

  “It’s safe.” The shadowman’s shoes were to my left. When he wasn’t shouting, his voice was as deep as Ric’s but cooler, more rigidly controlled.

  “Stay down.” Ric rose to his knees over me. His eyes, intense violet, seared me. “I need to check things out.”

  Stay down? Ha. I flipped my Crisis Time switch. First, triage.

  Me, still no pain. Ric? Facial burn gone. How…? Irrelevant now. The shadowman slicing the cuffs, good. Dark hole, suit coat, breast pocket.

  Red bloomed.

  The bullet had hit him. It knocked me out of Crisis Mode. “Wait.”

  He sprang to his feet. “No time.”

  “Damn it, Holiday, you’re not indestructible!”

  He shot me a small, warm smile. “Almost.”

  Then he spun, sweeping the floor with his own triage scrutiny as I levered myself to my feet. His people, near the windows, were starting to move, none bent in pain or injury although the floor was cluttered with moaning black-clad men.

  Ric’s expression changed to grim satisfaction. “Aiden. Your timing is impeccable, as always.”

  He addressed the shadowman, who held a subdued Ogre Face by the scruff of the neck. Ogre Face’s gun was tucked under the shadowman’s arm, and two goons’ rifles were slung over his shoulders, crisscross like a pair of bandoleers. Despite the violence and being armed to the teeth, he looked slightly bored, cool. Well, except for the bits of smoke still rising from him.

  His black eyes went to Ric’s chest, where the flower had spread to more of a lake. “You need to get that hole patched.”

  “He’s right,” I said. “I have my kit in the car—”

  “What I need,” Ric said viciously, “is to make sure this never happens again.”

  Aiden started, “Our plan—”

  “Fuck the plan,” Ri
c said. “I want this over now. We need a bigger gun against Nosferatu. We need to get the item.”

  Ogre Face’s head swiveled to Ric, ears practically quivering.

  Aiden’s black brows rose. “Is that such a good idea?”

  “It’s the only idea.” Ric slashed the air. “We screwed up, not foreseeing this.”

  “We can’t plan for every eventuality—”

  “I don’t care. I won’t have Synnove or any of my people threatened again.”

  Aiden raised a palm. “It’s your call.”

  “Damn right it is. John!” He waved a man over. “Cancel my appointments for today and tomorrow. Make sure the VPs know.”

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  In two strides Ric was hugging me. Abruptly he released me and stepped away. “I’m going out of town. Stay with your cousin. Do not come here.”

  “Why? Where are you going?”

  “To make sure you’re never attacked again.”

  That evening Ric glided, vampire-fast, along the dark Wisconsin country road. He moved in absolute silence, a creature of the night and one with it.

  As good as he was, the merest shadow glided next to him, indiscernible to the human eye. Ric was one of the best, but Aiden was beyond even that. Normally Ric would have enjoyed flexing his abilities with his best friend.

  He missed Synnove.

  Which was sharply unexpected. Since his parents’ death, he’d gone it strictly alone, accepting even Aiden’s help reluctantly and only when absolutely needed.

  Yet when they’d needed to distract the guards from Aiden, she’d simply done it. Ric knew if any of his people were injured, she’d help.

  How had he come to rely on her—to lean on her—so quickly?

  As he had another young, beloved human female.

  Damn. He shoved the thought away.

  Before he left, Synnove insisted on attending to his wound. The bullet had already pushed out of his body, the crater almost completely healed. She’d been amazed and, unless he missed his guess, intrigued. That was his Dr. Sunshine.