by Sierra Dean
As soon as I hit the railing I caught the sword, despite my broken arm. I knew I’d still need it when I made it out of this mess. Even holding the lightweight weapon sent fresh shock waves of pain through my shoulder. With my free hand I grabbed the slick wall and used the momentum of my body to swing myself upward and over. I moved in a smooth arc, sweeping across the glass, until I could hook my knees over the edge of the railing and propel myself back onto the balcony, where I landed behind the stunned guard.
I rose from my crouched stance, transferring the sword back to my good hand, and didn’t waste time waiting for the guard to turn for a second attack. He spun on his heel to face me as the sword sliced through the air, and it didn’t falter as it bisected his head from his shoulders. My arm was still extended, sword out and glistening with blood where it had gone through the vampire.
For the briefest second it didn’t look like I’d done anything to the guard. He blinked and his lip curled in disgust. Charlie watched with detached amusement, and I knew he thought I’d missed until he saw the blood on the sword.
We both watched the guard as his eyes widened before they went dull. He fell to his knees, and with the force of his big body hitting the ground, his head lolled to the side, then toppled off his neck where it had been severed with surgical precision. It landed at his knees, his unseeing eyes staring at my feet.
“What are you?” Charlie roared.
“My name is Secret McQueen.” My broken arm was held against my stomach. I rested one of my gold Jimmy Choo heels on the severed head of the vampire guard and pointed my sword at Charlie. “I’m here to kill you.”
He hadn’t recognized my face, but he knew my name. Most vampires did because it had become vampire legend. This time I didn’t think he’d forget it so easily.
“I didn’t leave L.A. just to get killed by some council lackey.”
It never ceased to amaze me that no matter how familiar rogues were with my name, they always believed they’d be the one exception to the rule. No rogue got away from me, but I guess I shouldn’t expect them to roll over and let me kill them. It would be nice if someone died quietly one of these times.
Charlie wasn’t going to be that one. He jumped onto the railing, and before I could cross the balcony, he had jumped. Vampires couldn’t fly, nor could they land on their feet from a forty-story drop without some ill consequence. I looked over the railing in time to see him grab hold of another balcony about ten floors down.
Sure, they couldn’t fly, but they could annoy the hell out of me with their agility.
The second guard had shown up, having heard the commotion from wherever he’d been hiding. He was just reaching the door when I blitzed past him and through the emergency stairwell next to the elevator. I heard the elevator doors sigh open as the stairwell door shut behind me, and by the time I was one floor down, I heard the door bang open again and two sets of feet pounding on the stairs behind me.
The guards were gaining on me as I spilled into the penthouse foyer, sliding into the wall and jarring my injured shoulder with an agonizing thump before I ran out the door. I had to catch up with Charlie before he left the hotel, and it pained me to admit the elevator would be the fastest route to the lobby.
I wanted to grab my cell phone, which I’d stuffed into the front of my bra after leaving my clutch with Holden, but with one arm broken and the other maintaining a death grip on my sword, I just had to hope Holden would be waiting in the lobby. The elevator doors closed at the same moment the men barreled into the hall. I gave them both the finger with my disabled arm.
After what felt like an hour, the doors opened into the lobby, and I stepped out and surveyed the space to see if Charlie had been there yet. Holden sat in an armchair near the entrance and got to his feet when he saw my arm. I was thankful for the late hour, because most of the tourists were gone, and the only guests in the lobby were the ones coming from the bar. I didn’t think drunk businessmen would be the most likely candidates to notice the sword I had against my leg.
Holden was halfway across the lobby when the stairwell door burst open and Charlie skidded out across the Plexiglas floor. He saw me and snarled. I curled my lip in return. I wasn’t going to back down because some sorry excuse for a rogue flashed his fangs at me. When the night was over, I knew which one of us would still be standing.
He turned to run for the door but stopped cold when he saw Holden.
“Chancery?”
“Charles.” Holden was gritting his teeth, doing nothing to hide his anger. He looked past Charlie, and his gaze fixed on my arm. He was pissed, and I didn’t need to see black pupils or fangs to know it. The low growl in his voice told me everything.
“By God,” Charlie said. “The council has you as their whipping boy now?” His surprise led me to wonder about their connection again. My Holden lived and breathed dedication to the vampire council. “I never thought you’d be one of them, brother.”
“And I never thought you’d abandon all sense and go rogue. So I guess we don’t know each other as well as we thought. Brother.” The last word sounded like a swear rather than a familial greeting.
My gaze flicked between the two, trying to figure out if it was just a turn of phrase or if I had failed to notice a physical similarity between them. No, they looked nothing alike.
“Love to stay and chat,” Charlie said. “But I’ve got a pesky death situation following me.” He didn’t wait for Holden to reply before he dashed through the door with me trailing after him only a few seconds behind.
“Secret?” Tyler was passing through the door on his way in, while I was heading out.
His timing couldn’t have been worse.
“I, uh…” I stammered and saw him scrutinize my arm, which seemed to hurt worse whenever someone looked at it. Then he noticed the sword and followed my own wandering gaze to where Charlie was barreling across Bryant Park. “Sorry.” I gave a limp, apologetic shrug, the motion turning my pain from a searing ache into an exploding blossom of misery.
I ignored my arm as it throbbed along with the beat of my heart, and was down the steps and across the street before Tyler could say anything. But damned if he wasn’t running down the stairs with Holden, following the vampire who was following me. Behind them, the two guards had made it to the lobby and were joining in the chase. We made quite the sight, had there been anyone in the park to watch us.
The small parade was the least of my concerns. I saw where Charlie was going and it threw, as Holden might have said, a huge monkey wrench into the gears of my plan.
Charlie Conaway, Hollywood star, rogue vampire and giant pain in my ass, was heading for the stairs leading to the 5th Avenue subway station.
Chapter Seven
“Get out of the way!” I screamed, hurtling down the stairs behind the vampire, trying to dodge the people he’d just displaced.
“Hey, lady.” The twenty-four-hour booth operator was pounding on thick Plexiglas wall that protected him from thugs and thieves. I had taken a running jump, propelling myself over the turnstile Charlie had vaulted without breaking a sweat. I wasn’t as fast or nimble as the vampire, and needed to use my feet to continue my forward motion.
My heel slid against the smooth metal of the turnstile, and I staggered, landing none too prettily, and used my sword to help me regain my balance. This was the exact reason I didn’t wear high heels when I might be required to work.
Judging by the various shouts and swears coming from the lower platform for the number 7 train, it didn’t take a Mensa scholar to figure out where Charlie had gone. I ignored the booth operator, who turned his attention to shouting at Holden, the two guards and lastly Detective Tyler, who was now at the back of the line behind the vampires. They too ignored the man in the glass box and passed over or under the turnstiles behind me.
A few late-night passengers going through the exit gates looked to see what all the fuss was about, but no one stopped.
I blessed each of their callous,
cynical New York hearts.
I slid down the metal handrail that separated the up and down staircases leading to the number 7 platform. On one side, a heavily populated Queens-bound express was about to depart, and on the opposite side an almost empty Times Square-bound regular.
If it had been me running for my life, I’d have gone for the Queens train. More people meant a better chance of hiding, and once he got out to Queens he wouldn’t have to contend with threading through crowds. A smart vampire would have taken the express, so I moved towards that train.
That was until someone swore a “Fuck you, buddy” towards the end of the other platform. There was a clamor of irritated voices, and a few people exited one of the cars in a hurry.
Charlie was going for the regular.
On cue, the doors on the express closed with a warning ding-ding-ding. The train left the station, and everyone who was a part of my chase, including the breathless human detective, were sharing the barren platform with me.
I heard the first warning bell for the regular and knew I had to take the chance. I jumped into the empty car closest to me, followed by the three vampires, but watched as the doors closed before Tyler could get on. He banged against the window, but once the doors had shut, they wouldn’t reopen until the next stop.
We pulled out of the station, with Tyler still hammering against the train, and I was ecstatic he had missed it. I doubted I could be effective if I had to worry about a human risking his life in my fight.
I didn’t take time to see if Holden had the two guards under control. I had to trust my liaison could take care of himself. I opened the doors that led to the unsheltered passage between subway cars, and the air of the tunnel smelled of dirt and oil as the train barreled forward. I stepped into the next car, and this one had a small collection of passengers—a black man, fast asleep, and a young couple speaking in a foreign language, holding their Bloomingdale’s bags close. They hushed when they saw me enter, and avoided eye contact.
Something heavy slammed against the wall of the car I’d just left, and the train trembled for a moment, tossing me sideways into one of the metal poles used to help passengers keep their balance. I was starting to wonder if the universe found it funny to throw me into hard objects when I had a broken arm. I gritted my teeth against the momentarily blinding pain, then moved through the car and on to the next. A once-living heap of middle-aged man in a tweed coat with a copy of Proust next to him on the floor told me I wasn’t far behind Charlie.
There was a scream, but I couldn’t tell if it came from the car behind me or the one ahead. The sounds of the tunnels rushing by outside the car made it impossible to tell what direction noise was coming from.
I was between one car and the next when the guard caught up with me. In spite of all the additional damage I’d done to it, my broken arm had begun to heal slowly. Enough that I could move my hand with only moderate agony now. I was reaching for the next door when the giant who had killed the girl grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked me backwards.
My heels caused me to stumble on the shaky platform, and he took advantage of my momentary falter. Of Charlie’s guards, this was the one I least wanted to be fighting because of his colossal size. Yet here we were, stuck together on a two-foot-by-two-foot metal slab, with the bowels of New York swishing past. I couldn’t have swung my sword if I wanted to.
He knew it too, because he lifted me off the ground, using only his grip on my hair, and hung me over the side.
I was pretty sick of vampires thinking they could drop me off things.
He held me out far enough I could feel the whoosh of the subway walls skimming behind me, close enough I worried I would die from being slammed into a pillar rather than falling onto the electrified tracks.
Stupid pigheaded stubbornness kept me from releasing the sword, but with my free hand I dug my fingernails into his arm and held on for dear life. I was glad he was focused on dangling me, because he didn’t see what I saw—a light at the end of the tunnel. We had almost reached the Grand Central platform. I just needed to hold on a few seconds more.
I swung my legs up so the balls of my feet were on the flimsy iron handrail rather than the chains that hung between the cars and offered no useful tension. I bent my knees and prepared for the moment he let go.
I didn’t need to wait long.
He saw the end of the tunnel and opened his hand to drop me but was too late. The stale air of the subway station washed over me as he let me go, and I kicked off from the handrail rather than letting myself fall straight down where I would have been crushed under the train.
My landing was far from graceful. I hit the platform with a thud, rolling onto my broken side as I slid across the floor with the momentum of my dismount. I came to a stop on the edge of the opposite side, a hair away from tumbling over, and remained on the floor, dazed by my luck and the pain shooting through my shoulder. I’d managed to scrape the skin off my elbow and a good length of my leg while skidding over the concrete.
A crowd of late-night commuters were stunned to silence by my dramatic exit from the train. There were a lot more people than I’d hoped to see, since the bulky vampire guard had followed me onto the platform. The train doors opened, and he was joined by the second guard, and one door up Charlie stepped out.
He saw me on the ground, and instead of taking the opportunity to run, he did what most would-be villains did. He decided he wanted to finish me off himself.
When I’d landed, my sword had slipped from my grip and was now teetering precariously on the edge of the abyss between the platform and the electrified rails below. I couldn’t reach it before Charlie got to me. I needed to find a way to get him to focus all his attention on me so I could get within reach of the sword before he noticed where it was. That shouldn’t be too hard.
But where the hell was Holden?
The crowd parted around Charlie, and a few people whispered to one another in hushed tones of recognition. They all stood back and watched. I was no longer blessing their callous, cynical New York hearts.
“So, this is the great Secret McQueen. Death herself.”
“The one and only.” I grimaced.
“Not so mighty now, are you, little girl?”
This was a favorite insult among the vampires. I knew they used it behind my back, but it was only the really stupid ones who called me little girl to my face. In Charlie’s case, stupidity was working hand in hand with overconfidence. He believed he had me beat.
Who could blame him, considering I was lying on my back on the floor of a subway station? If I didn’t know better, I would have bet against me too.
The guards were waiting at the fringes, watching their master for any sign they should swoop into action. But for the time being Charlie seemed content to play with me. He got right up close, then placed a foot over my broken clavicle. At first he let it hover, his eyes daring me to give him a reason to press down.
My flat expression mustn’t have been quite what he was hoping for, so he changed his approach. He stepped down hard to see what kind of reaction that would get him.
I swallowed my scream this time, but a gurgling moan escaped my lips. Super-strength and super-healing are great, but broken bones don’t heal right away, especially when you keep injuring them. I don’t care how strong you are, if someone steps on your broken shoulder, it hurts.
As I looked up at him, my vision blurred and rose-colored tears sprang from my eyes.
“It’s too bad I’ll have to kill you. I would have liked to taste you again.” He put more weight on my shoulder, and the smile on his face told me he was enjoying the whimper it forced out of me.
“What’s stopping you?” I said in a strained gasp. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”
He let up on the pressure on my shoulder, and I was grateful for it. The crowd behind him was getting restless and more than a little worried about what they were witnessing. I guess my pain was too real for them. They calmed down a bit wh
en Charlie and I started talking again, but the whispers were getting louder, and there was a frenzied tone to them. The train we’d arrived on had left the station, and with it all my hopes of a rescue from Holden.
Charlie crouched over me, pinning my arms to my sides with his Prada-clad feet. He turned my face towards him with a hard jerk so I was forced to look him in the eyes.
“I’m going to enjoy killing you,” he told me.
“Not as much as I will.” My meaning was lost on him. He was too focused on my neck and the blood exposed from where I’d been scraped. A vampire with the smell of blood in its nose is like a shark in chum-filled water. Try as they might to ignore it, it was only a matter of time before they would go primitive.
A Queens-bound train pulled into the tunnel just as Charlie’s weight collapsed on top of me as he dove for my neck. The surging wave of air brought in along with the subway rocked my sword into a spin, moving it well outside of my reach and carrying it away from me with each rotation. I watched helplessly as my plan fell to pieces, and winced as Charlie’s teeth pierced my skin for the second time.
I didn’t waste time cursing my luck. Even with Charlie’s weight pinning my arms down, I still had use of one hand. Fumbling under the hem of my dress, I grabbed hold of the holstered switchblade and gripped it firmly in my sweaty palm.
While I contemplated how I might be able to open the knife without accidentally cutting myself, someone stepped on the hilt of the sword, stopping its loud, metallic spin. I hadn’t noticed a second Times Square train arrive, but one was here now. Some of the crowd had decided they’d rather move on than watch me die, and boarded the new train. When they were gone, I could see Tyler standing on the concrete platform, my sword under his shoe.
I couldn’t read the look on his face, but I could have kissed him when he kicked the sword over to my outstretched arm. I grabbed it with my bad hand, but couldn’t swing at Charlie from my current position. He had begun to lap at the open wound like an eager dog, which meant he wasn’t clamped on to me. I took my chance and lifted my head up hard and fast, smashing my skull into his with a sickening crack.
