by Harper Allen
I raised my eyes and saw she was watching me, the lash of her whip twitching on the floor beside her like the tail of a big cat. I let my arms drop to my sides. This was a game to her, and by covering myself against the leers directed my way, I was playing the role she’d constructed for me. I didn’t want to play Zena’s game. What I didn’t understand until later was that I’d been playing it all along.
“Why?” My tone was flat as I posed the question. She didn’t pretend not to know what I was talking about.
“Why I don’t kill you, but merely disrobe you?” Her wrist moved slightly and the whip jumped in her hand, its lash curling around my ankles like a caress. Her voice was equally caressing as she moved toward me. “Is because you are my darling. You do not feel same way to me, even a little?”
“I’ve already told you what I think of you,” I answered, trying not to look directly into her eyes. “If I had any doubts, which I don’t, they would have vanished an hour ago when Cherry’s body fell out of your closet onto me.”
“But I do not kill stripper,” she protested, uncoiling the whip from my ankles and flicking it so that it wound around the top half of my body, trussing me to the chrome pole I was backed up against. “I give gift of being always young and beautiful. You take Zena’s gift away and kill girl, just as grandfather once killed mother.”
I tensed as she drew nearer. “Darkheart killed Angelica for the same reason I killed Cherry—because you turned them into vamps.” Zena was so close now that her breath played upon the skin of my neck as she exhaled. As she placed one hand under my chin I tried to jerk away, but the lash held me tight. Without warning she dipped her head. The next moment I convulsed in shock as I felt a velvety warmth trail upwards along my exposed stomach. Slowly Zena raised her gaze to mine, her bottom lip made redder with the single drop of my blood that clung to it.
The Hot Box exploded with whistles and raucous yells and I forced myself to ignore the tiny frissons that seemed to be running up and down my abdomen. “The next time you taste my blood you’d better make sure you either turn me or kill me, because if you don’t, you’re dust, vampyr!”
Seemingly unperturbed by my outburst, Zena walked around me and stopped at one side of the chrome pole. Constrained as I was, I could only see her out of the corner of my eye, but I felt her fingertips, as light and cool as snowflakes, brush my shoulderblades and then sink into my hair as she went on in a murmur. “I had hopes you would come tonight, my beautiful one. I needed to make sure you delayed your departure long enough so that we would meet. Finding Cherry was good delay, da?”
She moved around in front of me, her hand still in my hair, and dipped her head a second time. “I don’t believe you,” I said tightly. “You had no way of knowing I was coming here—I didn’t know, until just before sunset. You may be a vamp, but you can’t read minds and unless everything I’ve learned from Darkheart is way off base, you can’t foretell the future, either.”
“But I can make guesses.” There was more of my blood on her lips now, individual drops that gleamed like tiny rubies. “I guess that old man will take only one sister on hunt, the other sisters will be too angry to stay away—will seek vengeance. In end is completely turning out the way I guess, da? You and I meet as I have hoped, my darling.” She flicked a dismissive glance at the room. “Unfortunate is necessary to have first interlude together in public, but do not be afraid. Pleasure will be exquisite. Is always so when is grand passion, you agree?”
I knew what her intention was even before I saw the tips of her canines begin to lengthen past her bottom lip. Fear sluiced through me. “You expect me to believe any of that? How did you know Darkheart wouldn’t choose me to take on the first hunt? Because if he had, our little date here would have been kind of rained out, wouldn’t you say?”
“I knew was impossible. Old man takes future Daughter of Lilith on hunt, da? This could not be you. I feel such bond between us, I know you must be mine from many years ago.”
“What are you saying, that I’m the triplet you marked?” Her lips brushed my shoulder but I no longer had the strength to pull away. Even my earlier hopes of Van Ryder’s help now seemed irrelevant. My reality had narrowed to Zena and myself and the cold stone of despair that had lodged in my heart.
She kissed my temple. “Is what I believe, da,” she breathed against my mouth. “Is what I feel, my beautiful love.”
From somewhere deep inside me I dredged up a final burst of anger. “I need to hear what you know!” I exploded, trying not to tremble as I felt her touch on my neck. “You put your mark on one of Angelica’s babies, damn you—you must know which one!”
From the floor it probably looked as if I was making a titallating last-ditch effort to stave off Zena’s advances. The noise in the room swelled, but it didn’t drown out her reply.
“I am not one who knows this truth. You are,” she said, bringing her face to mine. “You came to me. You feel the pull. You tell yourself to fight against it, but in your heart you want to stop fighting, nyet?” The color of her eyes intensified, deepened, until they seemed not to be merely emerald but the essence of emerald, holding within them a blend of everything green in the world…an unblooming field of clover, a deserted lawn at midnight, a green-flowing river with the drowned bodies of suicides turning in an underwater ballet beneath its surface.
“You’re right, there’s no use in fighting anymore…” As I let myself fall deeper into her gaze, I wasn’t sure if I’d said the words out loud or whether words were no longer necessary between us. “I came to you…”
I bared my neck to her and the pinprick of red I saw behind her irises seemed more beautiful to me than the green it obliterated. Closing my eyes, I waited for her fangs to pierce my neck, slice my jugular, spill my blood. The whip fell away from me as the tips of her fangs touched the pulse in my neck, and from deep in my throat came a low, menacing growl. I felt Zena freeze. I opened my eyes as another hate-filled growl trickled from my throat.
All of a sudden I realized what had been about to happen to me—what I’d been about to let happen.
I guess if I’d been the queen of the tumblers, like Tash, I might have done a triple back-flip with a twist, run on my hands in a circle around Zena, and cunningly attacked her from behind. Or if I’d possessed Kat’s Dead-Eye-Dick skills with a stake, I could have whipped the underwire out of my bra and speared her with it, although that probably wouldn’t have done much good, bras not being made of wood. But I was the Crosse triplet who sucked at ye olde art of vampyr-killing, as taught by Darkheart, so I just punched Zena in the face as hard as I could.
“Keep your hands and teeth off me, vamp!” I shouted as she rocked backward from my blow. One of her boot’s stiletto heels caught on the whip’s coils and the next moment she landed on the stage floor, her legs sprawled out in front of her. I bent down to the remnants of my Juicy hoodie and grabbed the letter opener from its pocket. “You want a girlfriend to cuddle up with on those long lonely days in the coffin, take out an ad in the Times personal column,” I said tightly, “under ‘Single Chalk-White Undead Female Seeks Same.’ But don’t you ever put the moves on me again!” I moved toward her. “Why am I telling you this, though? In a second you’re going to be a big old grease spot.”
Okay, here’s a tip for if you ever get the drop on a vamp—don’t piss it away by taking the time to deliver a few lines of snappy dialogue à la Bruce Willis in those old Die Hard movies. For one thing, the rest of us aren’t Bruce and we’re not in a movie, and for another, in a situation like that there’s a good chance that the words coming out of your mouth probably aren’t snappy dialogue, but nervous babbling.
I raised the letter opener and brought it down in an arc toward her. “Say your prayers, vamp, because you’re about to—”
Something grabbed at one of my ankles. I crashed sideways, hitting my head hard on the chrome pole. Zena was on her feet in front of me, the whip in her hand.
“The old man bonded ob
oroten to you,” she hissed. “Was bad mistake. For that he will live long enough to know you came to me not easily, as I planned, but in most unbearable agony.”
She snapped her wrist and I felt the lash uncoil from my ankle. The tip of the lash darted toward her as she raised the stock, and I realized she intended to bind me to the pole again.
Tossing aside my stake, I threw myself into a desperate leap, closing the few feet between us and catching the whip as it began whistling into the air. It sliced like a hot blade through my palms and I forced myself to tighten my grip. I felt a sharp jerk and heard Zena snarl as she threw the lash down.
“No fucking problem, darling. I simply rip your arms off before drinking blood, da?” Her version of snappy dialogue, I suppose, and it just goes to show that even vampires shouldn’t grandstand while they’re going in for the kill. She took a step toward me and all hell broke loose.
I realized later that all hell must have been breaking loose for a few minutes. I’d been vaguely aware of a scuffle at one of the tables while I’d been doing my ill-advised Bruce Willis imitation, and the fight had apparently spread throughout the room. My attention only became riveted on the situation, however, when a gun went off at the side of the stage.
“Police! Don’t take another step, lady, or my next one won’t be a warning shot!” Detective Van Ryder held his weapon on Zena, obviously ready to carry out his threat. The problem was, he didn’t know it was a hollow threat, since he was addressing a vampire who could take a lead-jacketed licking and keep on ticking, so to speak. Dropping the whip from my lacerated palms, I opened my mouth to warn him but it wasn’t necessary.
Zena smiled her catlike smile at me, her gaze glittering. She still had a drop of my blood on her lip and as I watched she brought her finger to her mouth, caught the drop on the tip of it and licked her finger clean, her eyes never leaving mine. “I will wait for you to come to me again. I think wait will not be long,” she purred. “Do svidaniya, my darling.”
“I said stay where you—” Van Ryder’s words ended in an oath as Zena, in the act of leaping off the stage and into the crowd, grabbed her whip and gave it one final flick in his direction. His gun flew from his hand and skittered across the stage.
I snatched up my stake and began sprinting down the runway after Zena, who was now slashing her way through the fighting crowd, but as I raced by Van Ryder he stiff-armed me, knocking the wind from my lungs and causing me to double over in an attempt to get my respiratory system back online again.
“Wha…the hell?” I wheezed furiously, glaring at him from my hunched-over and stomach-clutching position. “She’s getting away!”
“She won’t go far—this is her place of business,” he said. “That’s why I dropped by tonight in the first place, to question her about what happened here the night of your fiancé’s stag party. I’ll have her picked up tomorrow if I have to. Right now, my main concern isn’t Zena or asking you what the hell you’re doing on stage at a strip club, it’s getting you out of here alive, and there’s a good chance that won’t happen if you wade into that crowd. Where’s security?” he added tensely. “I know this dump has bouncers, dammit, a bunch of them already tried to stop me.”
My breath had returned. I squinted past the footlights to the smoky and inadequately lit room, my anger at Van Ryder dissipating into stunned disbelief as I took in the scene.
It wasn’t just a bar fight anymore. Even as I watched in shock I saw a man crash backward into a table, his throat streaming blood. Another patron a few feet away had fallen in the crush of brawlers, and I heard a high scream of pain come from him as a heavily-booted foot came down on his ankle. The next boot came down on his face and his scream abruptly cut off. Sickened, I glanced away and saw one of the burly bouncers who’d impeded Van Ryder clamp a hand on the shoulder of a man who was attacking another patron. Relieved, I began to turn to Van Ryder. Then I stopped, my blood turning to ice in my veins.
The bouncer probably died before he knew what was happening. The man he’d grabbed launched himself at the security man like a jaguar taking down a bull. I saw the flash of fully extended fangs as his canines impaled themselves into the bouncer’s thick neck, and then the vamp gave a powerful sideways shake of his head. His fangs were so deeply embedded that the motion almost tore the bouncer’s head off. The vamp stayed with him as he fell, drinking the blood that pumped upwards in weakening jets.
Now that my eyes had adjusted to the dimness beyond the bright stage, I realized similar scenes were taking place throughout the room. The handful of vamps I’d seen when I’d tried to escape from the stage earlier hadn’t left with their mistress as I’d assumed they would; they’d stayed, and there were a lot more of them than I’d realized.
The Hot Box had turned into a slaughterhouse. That was terrible enough. But there was something that made it even worse, I realized with slow horror as I watched the carnage.
I wanted to join in.
“This place is a war zone.” Van Ryder’s strong fingers bit into my arm. “We’ve got to get out of here while we still can!”
“Have you called for backup?” I resisted his pull on my arm, my gaze on the unequal vamps-against-humans battle. Van Ryder hadn’t seen how the bouncer had died, I decided, or maybe he had and his brain refused to process it. He was a homicide detective. Vampires weren’t exactly part of his mind-set. His next words bore my supposition out.
“My cell phone’s showing no reception in here so I’ll have to call from the car, but the Maplesburg force isn’t equipped to handle a full-scale PCP-fueled riot, anyway. We’re going to have to call in the state troopers, maybe get the fire department over here with high-powered water hoses to use on these crazies.” He jerked me toward him. “Every second counts, Megan. Move!”
He jerked my arm a second time and something inside me seemed to explode. “No, you move, Detective!” I thrust off his grip and, so swiftly that I barely realized what I was doing, I brought my stake up under his chin. The ivory tip pressed into his throat above his Adam’s apple, and a minute bead of crimson welled up to stain the blade. Ignoring the agitated voice inside my head that was saying, Uh, Megan, please let’s take the stake out of the nice policeman’s throat and go with him quietly, okay? I went on hoarsely, “Back away from me very carefully, Van Ryder. Then get that gorgeous butt of yours in gear and get to your car as fast as you can. Drive like hell away from here, and whatever you do, don’t change your mind and come back to try and save me,” my hand clenched with the effort to keep myself from pushing the stake deeper, “because instead of thanking you, Detective, I think I might kill you.”
“Zena Uzhasnoye drugged you somehow, didn’t she?” he asked tightly, not moving away from me. “She did a Jonestown, put something in the drinks served here tonight that turned everyone wacko. Listen to me, Megan—I need to get you to a hospital where they can find out what’s in your system and—”
I could feel my precarious control slipping completely away, and knew I couldn’t hold on any longer. In one swift movement I stepped backward so that the stake was safely away from Van Ryder’s throat and I was standing at the edge of the stage. Flexing my knees, I flung myself into one of the back flips that I’d had so little success with during my lessons with Darkheart.
But this time my form and execution were perfect. I landed lightly on my feet and looked up at Van Ryder on the stage. “I don’t need to go to the hospital to know what’s in my system, Detective. It’s not spiked fruit punch and the poison didn’t just enter me tonight. But as long as there’s a trace of the real Megan Crosse left in me, I’m going to go down fighting, and if the infection that’s working in me gives me the ability to take some of Zena’s followers with me, so much the better.” I hesitated before turning into the crowd. “When you call for backup, tell your people to bring stakes, not guns.”
The first person I saw was Marilyn. The tall transvestite was holding her own against two vamps, but they were slowly backing her into a
corner from which she wouldn’t be able to escape. Blond wig askew, she raised a size-twelve stilettoed shoe and spiked it into the nearest vamp’s kneecap before turning her attention to his undead pal. One large-knuckled hand crashed into the vampire’s chin, while the red-painted acrylic nails of her other hand raked at his eyes. As her first opponent rushed at her again, I decided to even up the odds.
I took three fast steps toward the vamp, and then broke stride. Acting under a compulsion I couldn’t explain, I pressed the leather and ivory hilt of my stake to my lips and kissed it. “Be with me,” I said under my breath. I didn’t know where the words had come from, but as soon as I uttered them, an icy calm seemed to descend upon me. I reversed the stake in my hand and took two more strides toward the vampire.
His back was to me and he had seized Marilyn. As he went in for the kill, I thrust the polished ivory blade between his back ribs. Remembering Hetty Maisel’s mocking advice, I gave the hilt the extra shove that would propel the stake’s pointed tip deep into his unbeating heart. He dusted so quickly he didn’t have time to turn his head to see who’d sent him to hell.
“So these mothers really are vampires?” Marilyn grunted. Her deep voice seemed less disconcerting than before, since the platinum wig was pushed back on her head like a casually-worn ball cap, exposing the buzz-cut brown hair. The tattoo revealed by the pushed-up satin sleeve on her muscled right forearm was a tip-off as to her gender, too. “I’ve been trying to tell myself they’re some goth gang taking their wannabe fantasies a little too far, but that scenario isn’t working for me anymore.”
My side vision caught a blur of movement as the vamp she’d raked with her nails leapt at me, and I reacted without thinking, pivoting sharply to meet him side-on and backhanding my stake directly into his heart. Impaled in midair, he gave a fury-filled scream that broke off abruptly as he disintegrated.
