Dressed to Slay

by Harper Allen

  I turned back to a disconcerted-looking Marilyn, the strangely icy calm that filled me not affected in the least by what I’d just done. “Not wannabes, the real thing,” I confirmed, my gaze roaming the room to find my next target. “My advice to you is to find a place to hide and—”

  “Bull-crappies, girlfriend!” Marilyn’s arched and plucked eyebrows drew into a ferocious scowl. “This leatherneck’s never run from a fight yet. Pantyhose or no pantyhose, I don’t intend to start now!”

  My concentration was temporarily broken. I glanced at the tattoo on her arm and saw the inked depiction of an eagle, a globe and an anchor. “You were in the marines?” I asked, trying to keep the surprise from my tone.

  “Semper fuckin’ fi, and proud of it, girlfriend,” Marilyn growled. “So what do I do, find a hunk of wood and start aiming for the hearts of these unfriendlies?” Even as she spoke she grabbed a nearby chair, smashed it against a table and selected a length of chair-leg from the wreckage.

  “That’s basically it. Although you seemed to be doing pretty well with those nails. Revlon Red?” I couldn’t help asking as I began to turn away.

  “Cherries in the Snow,” Marilyn corrected me. “And these acrylic wraps are way too expensive to risk breaking one, girlfriend. Before you go, tell me—with moves like that, who are you? Some kind of hereditary vamp killer like the chick in that old TV show?”

  I was unable to keep the bitterness from my tone. “No, I think I’m what they call a vamp, girlfriend. Like you, I’ve got the moves and the accessories—” I gestured to my stake “—but I’m just an impersonator. Good hunting, marine.”

  Marilyn’s gaze narrowed, as if she were sizing me up as a future enemy. “Good hunting, vamp,” she said slowly, before moving into the crowd and becoming lost to my view.

  I saw sights that night I’ll never completely get out of my mind and if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not dwell on them in gory detail. There must have been a couple of dozen of Zena’s boys there—all the vampyrs at the Hot Box were male; I assume because they’d been better able to blend in with the rest of the campers earlier—and by the time I joined the fray they’d already killed or savaged too many to count. I stepped over bodies, stepped on bodies, saw bodies piled up like cordwood; and through it all, I moved like an automaton, searching out my prey and staking them as expeditiously as I could. About twenty-five minutes into my self-appointed mission, it became obvious that the vamps had begun to realize that someone in the room was an opponent who knew how to kill them and my encounters with them became increasingly hard-fought. But I kept staking, the vampyrs attacking me kept turning to dust in front of my eyes, and my icy certainty of what I was kept increasing.

  My strength was vamplike, my agility was vamplike and my bloodlust was vamplike. I hadn’t completely turned yet, but I was definitely the triplet who’d been marked by Zena.

  Which meant I couldn’t ever go home again.

  Chapter 12

  The way I almost got killed was stupid, but in my own defence, I was running on empty by then. Worse, I didn’t know it. I’d killed thirteen vampires in ninety minutes, which works out to a right arm so sore that I’d switched the stake to my left and a numbness I attributed to determination, but which was probably post-traumatic stress. My decision to find another place to live so I wouldn’t have entrance privileges to the Crosse mansion was part of that stress, but my reserves drained completely when I saw Marilyn among the dead. During my search-and-destroy exercise, I’d glimpsed her using her chair-leg stake like a bayonet and grinning ferociously everytime she nailed an unfriendly. But her luck had run out.

  Ignoring those Hot Box patrons who were wandering around like shell-shocked soldiers—who could blame them; one minute they’d been drunkenly revved up to watch nekked wimmen, and the next they’d seen the gates of hell open—I was glancing around the room to see if there were any vampires left to kill, when my gaze fell on a scrap of red beneath an overturned table. I knew it was Marilyn even before I lifted the table and saw the marine tattoo on the outflung arm. Her wig was missing, and suddenly it seemed important to me to find it and replace it on her head.

  “Looking for something?” I turned to see the vamp I’d noticed from the stage when I’d been trying to escape. He spun the platinum wig on his finger before tossing it aside. “Let’s rock and roll, blondie. You wiped the floor with those other undead wimps, but let’s see how you do against a real man.”

  “He was a real man,” I said, glancing again at Marilyn. “You’re just dust in the making.” I turned as if to walk away. At the moment I gauged his rush at me had brought him within striking distance, I whirled, my arm straight and the stake reversed in my hand so the point was directed backward from my fist. Feeling the momentum of my spin drive it deep into his chest, I yanked the stake out and began heading for the door, exhaustion rolling over me like a wave.

  I heard a sharp grunt behind me and turned to find myself face to face with the vampire I thought I’d killed. My stake still reversed in my grasp for a backhand strike, I wasted a precious nano-second getting it into position, knowing even as I began my thrust that I’d left it too late.

  Since I was expecting to have my throat ripped open, it was kind of anticlimactic to feel something sharp jabbing into my palm. I said, “Ouch!” before I could help myself, wished in chagrin that my last words before I died hadn’t made me sound like Vamp-Killing Barbie and then watched in astonishment as the vamp I hadn’t restaked dusted.

  When he did, I saw the man who’d been behind him. Detective Van Ryder’s skin was gray and his eyes held the same staring-into-hell-too-long expression I suspected mine did. He looked exhausted and strained and hotter than Brad Pitt. I debated whether to thank him for saving my life or dispense with the small talk and ask him if he wanted to have meaningless sex with me all night long. In the end I just gritted my teeth at him.

  “Uh, my hand?” The business end of the chunk of wood he was holding was still inserted into my palm. He followed my gaze.

  “Shit!” Gripping my left wrist to steady it, he carefully withdrew the stake. The point hadn’t gone all the way through, but it had done enough damage so that as it was extracted the blood welled up like a miniature oil well. Van Ryder exhaled. “This should be cleaned and stitched and those whip-slashes need to be disinfected. I’ll take you to the hosp—”

  I cut him off. “No hospitals, no doctors. I don’t want to run the risk of some E.R. physician giving me a shot of something that could dull my reflexes while I still need them.” I hesitated, remembering my own initial denial and wondering how I was going to convince him not to dismiss what he’d seen tonight. I was still groping for words when he spoke, his tone wry.

  “God, and to think I asked to be transfered from L.A. to get away from all this craziness for a while. Nice little upstate New York town, I thought, probably spend most of my time investigating missing library books. Two weeks after I arrive, I find out I’ve landed in vamp central.”

  I blinked at him. “You know…I mean, you believe in…”

  “Vampires? Yeah,” Van Ryder’s smile faded. “Ever since Carmel Lopez, my former partner, went up against one and was killed. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that I began to believe in them the night after I attended Carmel’s funeral, when I found my newly undead partner waiting for me in an alley. That was also the night I realized the movies and books were right, and staking them through the heart was how you killed them,” he shrugged. “But this was a murder spree. I’d bet my badge none of these victims is going to rise again.”

  “I don’t think so, either.” I looked at him. “What now, Detective? Do you call the police station and see if they buy the PCP-riot story you tried to sell me earlier?”

  He shook his head and met my eyes. “Now we leave before someone else calls the cops and we have to try and explain what happened here. You hungry?”

  “God, no,” I began reflexively. Then I stopped. “Actually, I am
,” I said, surprised. “Ravenous, in fact.”

  Van Ryder’s smile widened. “There’s a big pot of spaghetti Bolognese sauce on my stove at home. I’ll let you eat as much as you want in return for telling me how a nice girl like you got so good at vamp-killing.” He looked thoughtful. “And also whether you really meant it when you told me I had a gorgeous butt.”

  So that was how I ended up having my first date with Detective Bedroom Eyes, aka Van Ryder, whose last name wasn’t Van Ryder, but simply Ryder. His first name was Donovan, short form Van, which meant that I’d been constantly calling him by his full name up until then, like some bodice-ripper heroine. You know—as Althea felt herself falling into Rock’s eyes, she breathed, “Rockwell Wilder, I believe I’m falling in love with you.” And don’t think that very sentence didn’t run through my mind a couple of hundred times that night, without the Rockwell Wilder part, of course. Van was funny and sexy and easy to talk to, and as a major plus, his spaghetti Bolognese was to die for.

  “So you or one of your sisters inherited this Lilith title from your mother?” Van picked up the bottle of California red we’d been depleting. I held out my wineglass.

  “Daughter of Lilith,” I clarified. “That’s how it works if you come from one of the ancient families with slayer blood, apparently. You’re the chosen one, bam, that’s your destiny whether you had other plans for your life or not. Tash would be perfectly okay if it turned out she was this generation’s Daughter of the Darkheart line, but Kat’s non-thrilled about the prospect.”

  “After watching you in action tonight, I don’t think either of them has to worry.” He reached for my plate. “More spaghetti? More salad? I promised you could pig out, remember?”

  “I already have.” I let my glance linger on his rear view as he rinsed our plates in the sink but when he turned to open the dishwasher I hastily pretended to be gazing around his apartment. That took about half a second, since the decor in Van’s walk-up bachelor over an appliance-repair business seemed to consist more of unpacked boxes than anything else. I reflected without enthusiasm that tomorrow I’d be looking for an apartment myself. I didn’t trust myself to be in the same house as my sisters in case I turned, and although I hadn’t told Tashya that when I’d phoned her an hour ago to let her know what had happened, tomorrow I intended to warn both her and Kat. I wondered if Van’s apartment was typical of what was available in Maplesburg, and tried to counter my sudden depression with another gulp of wine. But the in vino, veritas thing kicked in just then and the glow that the wine had spread through me fizzled away, leaving me to face the truth.

  I had no right to be sitting here at Van’s kitchen table wearing one of his shirts, eating his spaghetti and checking out his butt. He seemed to think I’d fought at the Hot Box like a Daughter of Lilith, but I knew better. I’d slaughtered like a vamp, coldly and mercilessly. And I couldn’t wait to do it again.

  But I had even more compelling proof that I bore the mark of evil: the sick desire I’d felt when Zena had been seducing me. Some of that desire had been a mirage created by her glamyr, but not all of it. She’d seduced me too easily. That had to mean that part of me hadn’t needed to be seduced. And although I’d found the strength to reject her tonight, I couldn’t count on having that same strength the next time the darkness rose up in me. That next time could be a week from now, a month from now…or a minute from now.

  I shoved my chair back from the table so abruptly that my wineglass almost tipped over. “I’ve got to go,” I said to Van’s back as he finished filling the coffeemaker on the counter and flicked its switch. “Thanks for the spaghetti and the wine and the Bactine on my hand,” I babbled. “And for saving my life back there at the club, of course. But when I phoned Tash I told her I’d be home soon.” I reached the door. “I’ll have your shirt laundered tomorrow, okay? Uh, thanks for the meal—”

  “And the wine and for stabbing you in the hand while saving you from a vamp you probably could have killed yourself. I think we’ve already established the thanks part, Megan.” Van crossed the nine feet that separated his so-called kitchen from his so-called living room in two long strides and put his hand on the edge of the door. I switched tactics.

  “Well, I am grateful and I wanted you to know it. But like you just said, you also shoved a giant splinter into my palm and although I totally don’t want you to feel bad about that, I guess I’d better go to the emergency room and have it looked at by a doctor. So that’s what I’ll do.” I looked expectantly at him and then at his hand, still gripping the door. “Now,” I added, just in case I hadn’t made myself clear.

  “To the same hospital you didn’t want to go to an hour ago?” He shook his head. “My keenly honed detective intuition’s telling me you’re feeding me a line of bullshit,” he stepped away from the door, “which is okay, if that’s what you feel you have to do. I just want you to know I recognize crap when it’s being shoveled at me, even when I don’t know what I did to merit it. I’ll walk you down to your car.”

  I felt like what he’d just accused me of shoveling at him. I nudged the door with my foot, swinging it closed again, and walked back to the table. Lifting my wineglass, I drained it. Then I picked up the almost-empty bottle, tipped it to my lips, and drained it, too, which sounds more dramatic than it was because there were barely a couple of drops of wine left in it. But even if I’d knocked back a half-dozen shots of Jack Daniel’s they wouldn’t have made what I had to say any easier.

  “It’s not you, it’s me,” I told Van by way of preamble.

  “Save it, Megan,” he replied, looking irritated. “I thought I felt something good starting between us. You didn’t. The speech isn’t necessary.”

  “It kind of is,” I insisted, “because in this case the speech goes, ‘It’s not you, it’s me. I’m a vamp.’” I glanced at the wooden salad bowl, still on the table, and the wooden servers resting inside it. I extracted the fork server and thrust it at him. “You should arm yourself.”

  Van took the server from me, flicked a stray piece of lettuce from its tines and tossed it onto the table. Gently he pushed me back into my seat and pulled his own chair beside me, taking my hands loosely in his. “I’ve seen enough cops go through what you’re feeling right now that I should have recognized the signs. Guilt comes with the territory of any job that forces violence upon you. You think there must have been some way you could have handled the situation better, maybe saved a few more lives. From there it’s a short step to believing you’re just as responsible for the carnage as the bad guys—”

  I pulled my hands from his. “There’s one part of the Darkheart legacy I didn’t tell you. Zena put her mark on one of Angelica’s babies during their final battle. That baby was me.”

  Slowly, Van sat back. “And now the Vamp Queen’s calling in her marker, so to speak?” he asked carefully. “That’s what that little performance on the Hot Box stage was all about?”

  I chose my words with equal care. “More like her marker’s calling itself in. I told myself I had a good reason tonight for ending up at the one place where I’d be almost sure to run into Zena, but when I looked into her eyes, I realized the truth.”

  “Which was?” he prompted with professional detachment.

  I looked down at my hands. “That I’d been drawn to her,” I said, my whisper unsteady. “That from the start some part of me had known she was my destiny.”

  With those words I felt as if a floodgate had opened inside me. I let everything pour out on Van—the violent need to join in the blood battle taking place on the Hot Box floor that had swept through me, my vamp cruelty and coldness during the fight. I told him how inept I’d been during Darkheart’s training, and how starkly that ineptness contrasted with the dark power that had settled over me when I’d bleakly accepted what I was. I even related the vision I’d had of myself stalking Kat and Tashya.

  “That part won’t come true,” I said with sharp emphasis. “I’ll make sure that Kat gets a locksmith
out to the mansion to change the locks and security codes. It won’t be my home anymore, so when the final change comes I won’t be able to enter. But by that time I’ll have done what I have to do, anyway.”

  “You intend to stake yourself.” The warm brown of Van’s eyes took on a chill.

  “I don’t know if I could,” I said. “So I’ve come up with another plan. Tomorrow I’ll buy a length of heavy chain and a padlock at the hardware store. As soon as I start feeling that the vamp part of me is taking over the Megan part, I intend to go to my car and chain myself to one of its axles. Then I’ll throw the key to the padlock away and wait for the sun to come up.”

  “Dammit, Megan, you’re talking about killing yourself!” he expostulated.

  “I’m talking about killing the monster I’ll become,” I corrected him. I held his gaze. “I felt something good between us tonight, too, Van, and if things were different I’d have liked to take things further with you. But I don’t have much of a future and you do. Starting something with me would be the stupidest mistake you ever made.”

  For the second time that evening I rose from his kitchen table. He rose with me, his posture tense. “Stupider than jumping off a garage roof with a bedsheet parachute when I was seven? Stupider than going white-water rafting on the Colorado River when I didn’t have the first clue about what I was doing, just to impress a girl I had a crush on at the time?”

  I shook my head, wishing he weren’t making this harder. “It’s not the same thing,” I said, turning to leave.

  “Okay, how about stupider than falling like a ton of bricks for a woman who was wearing a wedding dress the first time I laid eyes on her?” he demanded, his hand on on my shoulder. He turned me to face him. “And the whole time I was attempting to question her about her missing groom, barely being able to think past the way she looked, the perfume she was wearing, how beautiful her eyes were? If we’re talking about stupid mistakes, that one’s got to be in the top ten, wouldn’t you say?”