Book Read Free

Another Kind of Dead

Page 33

by Kelly Meding


  I felt no pride in having once again tossed a monkey wrench into one of his carefully laid plans—only weariness at knowing he wasn’t finished with us.

  If you can’t fight an infection, you remove the damaged limb.

  Thackery wouldn’t quit until he’d either found his elusive cure or eradicated the entire vampire race. And we’d be there to stop him. The Triads were in ruins, but we weren’t destroyed. Wyatt and Phin were up to something, and they likely had been for a while. Their assistance today was well timed and raised a lot of questions: Did the brass know? The Assembly? Who else worked with them? Who was in charge?

  I’d get the answers soon enough. We’d worry about finally capturing Walter Thackery in a little while. For now, the aftermath of the battle faded into the background, and nothing existed except us, in each other’s arms—a place I thought I’d never be again. A place I could stay forever.

  Okay, realistically, given battle fatigue and other recent trauma, another ten minutes or so.

  Or until we both started to smell.

  Whichever came first.

  Read on for an excerpt from

  WRONG SIDE OF DEAD

  by Kelly Meding

  Published by Bantam Books

  Coming soon!

  The rave was already in full swing by the time Phineas and I showed up dressed to blend, even though we weren’t there for a party. Illegal raves full of drunk college students and twenty-somethings were the perfect hunting ground for half-Blood vampires, which made the transformed warehouse the perfect place for our little stakeout. But while any Halfie would do, I was hoping to see one particular target show up.

  The music vibrated in my chest, loud enough to know my ears would be ringing by the time I left. We paused just inside, and Phineas el Chimal, my squad leader and partner for the night, closed his eyes to orient his more sensitive were-hearing to the din. Ravers jostled past us, ignorant of the partygoers around them, caught up in their own narrow little worlds. They had no clue why we were there, or that death was mingling out there among the kegs, glow sticks, and gyrating bodies.

  No clue and no fucking manners. I was ready to turn around and slap the next person who elbowed me.

  Phin saved them future bruises by opening his clear blue eyes and smiling. “Ready to have some fun?” he asked.

  “Definitely.” I draped myself onto his arm like the happy couple we were pretending to be, and his fingers laced through mine. We both knew we’d have to do some acting, and I trusted him to watch my back. He’d been doing it without fail since the day we met.

  I stumbled a little in my knee-high boots, not used to the three-inch heels. My default shoes of choice were sneakers or combat boots—better for running and kicking. The black leather boots I had on now matched my black leather miniskirt, and their knee-high length carefully hid a pair of serrated blades. The boots were the only place my skimpy outfit could easily camouflage weapons, so I suffered the indignity of stumbling around in them. It was also a good excuse to lean on Phin and put on a lovey-dovey show.

  At least Phin had the benefit of jeans and a black wife-beater, which showed off his toned physique and earned him appreciative smiles from a few female gawkers. I shot them possessive glares as we wove our way into the dancing, gyrating crowd. The air was thick with the distinctive odors of smoke, beer, and sweat.

  Phin tilted his head, pretended to nuzzle my neck, and whispered, “Team one, six o’clock.”

  I spotted them easily, dancing amid a tight cluster near the DJ’s stage. Gina Kismet and Marcus Dane were team one to our team two, and even from a distance they made quite the convincing (if mismatched) couple—Gina’s five-foot-two, pale-skinned, red-haired goth girl to his six-foot-one, black-haired, copper-eyed pirate.

  Okay, so I never actually called him a pirate to his face, but the long hair in a ponytail, the ruddy complexion, and the tendency toward scruffy facial hair gave that impression. Even if I hadn’t known the man was actually Felia—a were-jaguar, to be precise—I’d have suspected he wasn’t quite what he appeared to be.

  They were burning it up on the dance floor, completely into each other—at least to the untrained eye. And besides our two pairs, we had four single plants mingling around the rave, on the lookout for shimmering eyes and silver-streaked hair, or even a set of fangs that hadn’t been filed down. Half-blood vampires have certain telltale signs that can be covered up with contacts and hair dye, but the newest crop of Halfies were bolder, smarter, and they weren’t as afraid of us as they used to be, back when an organization called the Triads existed and just our name sent them fleeing in fear.

  God, I missed those days.

  It didn’t really help that one of our own was now one of these bolder Halfies and seemed to be using our hard-learned tactics against us.

  Phin swept me through the crowd and we ended up near the makeshift bar where two guys with silver rings in their noses were filling cups from dozens of different kegs. He collected a beer for each of us to complete the fitting-in image. Beer wasn’t my favorite, but I’d guzzled worse in the line of duty.

  At least a hundred people were in the main part of the warehouse, and I imagined dozens more wandered around, getting into any unlocked rooms they could find. Initial surveillance told us the place had a section of offices on the north side of the warehouse, as well as roof access from the main floor.

  While I had officially returned to the field last week, after spending almost three weeks training and recovering from being nearly tortured to death (again), this was my first big mission since … well, since my time with the Triads.

  And a lot was riding on finding the guy we were looking for.

  “Time to play,” I said.

  Phin grinned. The strobe lights lit his angular face in a way that accentuated the fact that he was a were-osprey—a predator in every sense of the word, but also a very loyal ally. Our relationship had its share of ups (me saving his life twice in the first two weeks of knowing each other) and downs (him stabbing me in the stomach the first day of knowing each other), but I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else by my side for this little operation.

  We moved with the crowd, creating an easy dance of grinding and groping, while carefully observing the other dancers and slowly sipping at our beers. Gina and Marcus had disappeared. I spotted one of our single plants, a full-blood vampire named Quince, dancing it up with a pair of girls in slinky dresses. He’d dyed his white hair dark-blond and wore blue contact lenses to cover his glimmering purple eyes—two very distinctive vampire attributes. The other was his long, lean frame, which he carried like a male model.

  Quince had joined our organization two weeks ago and proved, right from the start, to be eager and very trainable. Phin immediately asked to have him assigned to his squad.

  Before separating for the night’s mission, our working sextet had come up with a handful of signals, since using ear-buds would be useless with the noise levels. Quince caught me looking at him and tugged hard on his left earlobe—shorthand for “I might have something.”

  I scratched my forehead, along the hairline, motioning that I understood. “Come on,” I said to Phineas.

  We leaned on each other as we threaded our way to the opposite wall, which was painted with Day-Glo stripes and splatters, both of us pretending to be more tipsy than we were. Quince extricated himself from his dance partners and met us there, slapping Phin on the shoulder as if greeting an old buddy.

  “Rumors are circulating about a private party at midnight,” Quince said, tone serious even as his expression remained playful. “It promises a narcotic experience that is both mind-altering and life-changing.”

  It definitely sounded like what happened when a human was infected with the vampiric parasite that turned them into a half-Blood. Vampires are a species unto themselves; they aren’t made and they were never human. Their saliva, however, is highly infectious to humans, and a single bite alters a human’s brain functions and physical nature. Many
infected humans go insane from the change, but some adapt and are able to function with relative ease—relative given that they’re still driven by blood-lust and are at risk of infecting more humans. Which is why all Halfies are on our “kill first, don’t ask questions” list.

  But the functional Halfies were even more dangerous. During the last two weeks, we’d stumbled across several places where a dozen or more Halfie corpses had been dumped after being beheaded. Word on the street said that several functioning Halfies were looking to create an army of similarly functioning Halfies to take us on. And since two in three went bat-shit crazy from the infection, they were building their ranks by trial and error.

  Which meant the bodies of the once-innocent were piling up, and their makers had to be stopped. Of all the minor disasters plaguing the city, this was our most pressing. And the most personal, given the former Hunter who was helping to organize it.

  “Where’s the party?” I asked.

  “Meeting on the roof,” he replied. “For a brief inspection, I assume, before reporting the location to the chosen candidates.”

  “Awesome. What time is it?”

  Phin checked his cell phone. “Eleven-twenty.”

  Good, we had a little time. “Quince, I want you and the other plants to stay down here just in case things get rowdy. Phin and I will let team one know, then head up to the roof.”

  Quince nodded, laughed like I’d just told the funniest joke ever, then melted back into the crowd. He was a damned good actor, for a vampire.

  Phin crowded in and pressed his forehead to mine, like a lover going in for a kiss. His familiar scent, wild and clean like a raging mountain river, settled around me. “Think he’ll show for the roof meet?” he asked, mouth mere inches from mine.

  “Hope so,” I replied, keenly aware of his warmth. “But I’m not counting on it.”

  “I’ll go tell Marcus. Meet me by the roof access.”

  “Okay.”

  I lingered against the wall for the length of a song. That should be enough time for Phin to track down Marcus and Kismet and let them in on the new plan. The music changed. I eyed a path toward the far end of the warehouse where the stairwell (according to the blue-prints) was located, aware of the throng in front of me.

  Which was why I didn’t notice my shadow until he’d sidled up next to me, leaning casually against the wall like he belonged there. I shifted sideways, prepared to tell him to get lost, and froze. Shit.

  “Hey, Evy.”

  He had taken care to dye his hair back to its natural shade of brown, and donned a pair of lavender-tinted sunglasses to obscure the new shimmer to his eyes, but the face was the same. Felix Diggory, former Hunter and two-week-old half-Blood, grinned at me, his unfiled fangs gleaming brightly under the constantly shifting lights.

  I wasn’t sure how I’d react when I saw him again. I expected anger, grief, maybe even a little bit of shame, since I was there the night Felix got infected. Instead, all I felt was relief. Relief that he was there and I had the chance to correct my mistake. The mistake that allowed him to run free in the first place.

  “Hey, Felix,” I said.

  “You look good. Been training?”

  “Yeah, getting back into fighting form.”

  He dragged his tongue along the front teeth between his fangs, as if he thought I hadn’t noticed them. (Or maybe it was a nervous tick; who knew?) “Saw you with Phineas earlier. You two on a date or are you working?”

  I considered lying—for about three seconds. “Working. Looking for you, actually.”

  “Me?” He tilted his head. “I’m flattered.”

  “Don’t be. You know why we’re after you.”

  His mouth quirked at the corners. “Because I’m a big, bad Halfie now, and therefore must be slaughtered with extreme prejudice?”

  “Bingo.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  The nonchalance was beginning to grate. I narrowed my eyes. “You don’t think I can take you?”

  “The last time I saw you, you couldn’t take a house cat.”

  Okay, it was a challenge then. Good. I needed to get him out of the warehouse and away from hundreds of potential human shields—or victims. Rumors were circulating. The newspapers were printing stories full of incomplete information, speculating on mutilated bodies and the extraordinary number of missing persons. People weren’t stupid, no matter what we did to try to convince them it was business as usual. I couldn’t kill him in front of so many witnesses without causing a huge mess—and not of the spilled-blood variety.

  I shifted my stance and pulled back my shoulders. “I might surprise you. I killed three Halfies just last week, all by my little old self.”

  He chuckled. “Good for you, Evy,” he said, then let his gaze scan the crowd. “So who’s here with you? I know you and the osprey can’t be out hunting by yourselves.”

  “Marcus and Gina are here, and some new guys you don’t know.”

  His attention snapped back to me. Eyebrows arched and lips slightly parted, he was caught somewhere between surprise and excitement. “She is? Really?”

  The eagerness in those words broke my heart a little bit. Gina Kismet had been his boss, his Handler, for a little over two years. Their entire Triad had been very close, and losing Felix to infection had devastated all of them—Gina, Tybalt Monahan, and especially Milo Gant.

  “Yeah, she’s here somewhere,” I said. I didn’t bother trying to be casual as I scanned the crowd myself, looking for familiar faces. But we were tucked against a wall with a sea of people in front of us, and the lights made it difficult to see far or well.

  “I wish I had time to say hello.”

  “Someplace else you need to be?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay, but you do realize that’s not going to happen, yeah?”

  In an instant, the predatory intensity was back. His nostrils flared, and he parted his lips just enough to let the tips of his fangs show. “You couldn’t kill me the last time.”

  “I wasn’t myself the last time.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what do you propose? We duke it out right here on the dance floor?”

  He was playing along nicely. “I was thinking the roof,” I said. “You and me.”

  “Let me guess.” Felix cocked his head, clearly amused. “I win, and I get bragging rights on finally killing the un-killable Evy Stone.”

  I shrugged one shoulder. “As long as you promise to kill me and not infect me.”

  “I don’t know. I think infecting the un-killable Evy Stone would be a hell of a lot more fun.” He frowned. “Then again, you survived infection once before.”

  Barely. A unique healing ability, gifted to me by a gnome, helped me battle the parasite that infects humans and turns them into Halfies. The ability also helped me survive too many near-fatal wounds in the two months since I died and was magically resurrected into my current body. An ability that part of me wished had been physical—something that could be duplicated and used to help others who were wounded or dying.

  Because sometimes being the one who always survived when your friends died all around you really sucked. “Then I guess we’re both fighting to kill,” I said.

  He ran his tongue along his front teeth, between his fangs. “Guess so. And I kind of still owe you.”

  “For what?”

  “Punching me in the head the night before the factory fire.”

  I snorted. “Somehow I think getting blown up in that fire is payback enough.”

  “Maybe.” He checked his wristwatch. “Well, let’s get this over with so I can still make my appointment.”

  The utter normalcy of the statement took me momentarily aback. For the vast majority of Halfies, the infection makes them go mad. They can’t think about anything except blood and death, and they rarely run around making plans and speaking about appointments. The utterly normal conversation (so to speak) I was having with Felix was an anom
aly. The insane Halfies were the ones we most often encountered and killed. It made me wonder again just how many other lucid Halfies were out there—and how many more Felix had made in the two weeks since he was infected.

  I just nodded.

  “Ladies first?”

  “You’re fucking out of your mind if you think I’m turning my back on you.”

  Felix laughed. “That’s the Evy I remember.”

  He pushed off the wall and strolled past me. Other partygoers, tired of the grind, slid quickly into our places. I kept my attention on Felix as I followed him through the smoke-and-liquor-scented throng, barely an arm’s reach between us. As much as I wanted to look for someone in my group, to signal them about my destination, I couldn’t risk Felix disappearing into the crowd. Now that I had him, I wasn’t about to let him get away.

  His path wound us in and out of clusters of dancers and groups of drinkers, but his goal always seemed to be the roof access doors at the opposite end of the warehouse. Three-quarters of the way there, I spotted Quince. His attention was on Felix, who he knew on sight from photographs. But if Felix sensed the full-Blood vampire nearby, he made no indication. And if Felix was signaling anyone else, I couldn’t tell.

  I passed into Quince’s line of sight and pretended to adjust one of my clip-on earrings—the signal that I had engaged the target.

  Felix reached the access door. It was partially hidden behind a stack of old wooden pallets, in what was a pretty lame attempt at keeping people from opening it. The door itself was metal, large, but he opened it easily with one hand and slipped inside. I grabbed the handle before it could slam shut and nearly wrenched my arm from its socket. The fucking thing was heavy.

  The stairwell itself was dark and stifling. I stopped inside and let my eyes adjust to the murky shadows. Felix’s pale skin came into focus first, several steps up the first flight. He beckoned, and I followed the sound of his echoing footsteps.

  He could have attacked at any time, using his extrasensitive night vision to easily gain the upper hand and kill me. But he didn’t. He just kept going until he reached the roof door. It didn’t open right away, probably rusted shut from disuse. I waited one step below the landing while he slammed one shoulder into the door.

 

‹ Prev