by Harper Allen
“My point exactly.” I tried to shrug off his hand but he tightened his grip.
“And mine is that I’m a risk-taker from way back. I still remember how it felt to fly off that garage roof, dammit—like just for a second, I was an angel. Yeah, I busted my leg, but it was worth it. Same with the rafting. I didn’t get the girl, but I’ll never forget the thrill of staring death in the face and knowing I’d beaten it.” His voice was a rasp. “What I’m trying to say is that if there’s a risk here I’m willing to take it, because I think there’s a chance it could be worth it—for both of us. You don’t know for sure whether or not you’ll turn, just as I don’t know whether I’ll get shot on the job tomorrow,” he smiled with sudden wryness. “Of course, after a few days of getting to know each other, you might end up bored to tears and I might decide you’re too high-maintenance, but at least we won’t spend the rest of our lives wondering what might have been.”
Regretfully but firmly, I told him that I intended to do the responsible thing and walk out of his life. I looked into his eyes, part of my mind wondering if I’d describe their color more as bittersweet chocolate or milk chocolate. I noticed a tiny scar by his mouth, and knew I’d never have the chance to ask him if he’d fallen off his bike when he’d been a kid or whether it was a legacy of his roof-jumping days. I let myself appreciate the broadness of his shoulders, the sexy fullness of his lower lip, the muscled length of his legs, and virtuously turned him down because I’m a friggin’ saint, right?
Wrong.
“You have to promise me one thing,” I said, bringing my hand to his mouth and brushing a fingertip against the tiny half-moon scar by his lip.
“No, two things.”
“I promise.” His response was immediate.
“Hear me out first. If I start going fang-girl, you’ve got to stake me.”
He nodded. “I promise, Megan. But I’d do it for the same reason Darkheart staked your mother—to save you, not myself.”
“I know,” I said softly, moving the tip of my finger from the corner of his mouth. “I never paid you for the meal,” I murmured, slipping my fingertip past his bottom lip and feeling his teeth gently catch hold of it. “You know, telling you whether I meant it when I said you had a gorgeous butt?”
He released my finger long enough to speak. “That was just a ploy to get you here. I knew you meant it. You kept checking me out, the same way I kept checking you out. What’s the second thing I have to promise?” He caught my finger again. His tongue flicked against it, and I felt like I was about to miniorgasm right then and there.
“Second promise?” I asked weakly. “Oh, right, your second promise. It involves police-issue handcuffs.”
“The unsanctioned use of?” Van said against my finger. “On you or me?”
“Me,” I decided. “For tonight, anyway. After dawn we can try them on you.”
“I’m a police detective,” he reminded me. “Do you really think I’m going to let a woman who was recently a prime suspect strip me, cuff me to my bed and do whatever she wants to me while I’m helpless to stop her?”
“Yes, I do, Detective,” I breathed, moving my fingertips from his mouth and rising slightly on my toes so that my lips were against his. “In fact, all the evidence seems to indicate that you’re getting hot just imagining how it’s going to be.”
“Hot? Try on fire,” he muttered, bringing his mouth harder against mine in the beginning of a kiss.
I say the beginning of a kiss because just as my tongue and his touched, something thudded so resoundingly against the apartment’s one small window that for a moment I thought it must have broken. Locked in our embrace, Van and I stared at the window for a split second.
“Zena,” I said.
“Or one of her undead posse,” he agreed shortly.
We flew apart, me grabbing my stake from the waistband of my Juicys and Van reaching for the wooden salad fork on the table. We both reached the window at the same time, and he unlatched it while I raised it. As the warped frame screeched reluctantly upwards, an even more spine-tingling sound assaulted my ears. Van frowned. “Vamps don’t howl. That’s a damn dog.”
“Guess again.” Anger gave me the strength to shove the window fully open. I stuck my head out and looked past the metal fire escape to the Dumpster below. From atop its reeking contents, golden eyes glared up at me and black-tipped hackles rose as the silver muzzle rose again in a howl. I ducked back inside and slammed the window shut.
“It’s not a damned dog, it’s my damned oboroten,” I said wrathfully.
Chapter 13
“Oh. My. God,” Tash exclaimed in the doorway of unit seven, Park Vista Motel. “Could you have chosen more of a dump?”
“On the plus side, it’s right across the road from Take-a-Nip Liquor,” Kat said dubiously. “Handy for when you want to serve your guests something a step up from rubbing alcohol.”
It was the morning after my non-roll in the sheets with Van and I was in no mood for my sisters’ comments. The Park Vista was a dump, but at least it had a bed. I’d awoken this morning in the backseat of the Mini, and my temper hadn’t been improved when I’d glanced into the front of the car. During the night Mikhail had shape-shifted again, this time from the human form in which he’d confronted me after we’d driven away from Van’s apartment, back to a wolf again. He was curled up cozily, his canine form a better choice for car-sleeping.
“I can’t believe you were spying on me,” I’d raged at him after making a hasty apology to Van, promising to see him the following night and racing out of his apartment to the Dumpster. My speed caught Mikhail by surprise, giving me the opportunity to haul him out of the Dumpster by his ruff before he could begin shape-shifting from wolf to man. I’d kept my grip on him while we’d made our way to the car, coming out of the alley to the sidewalk just as a late-night dog-walker and his pooch went by.
The man had smiled sympathetically at my furious face. “Someone won’t hurry up with his tinkles? I swear, some evenings Fritzi drags me around the block a dozen times before he goes.”
I hadn’t replied, but had grimly opened the door of the Mini for Mikhail. By the time I’d gone around to the driver’s side he was six-foot-four of gorgeous male again—not that I cared.
“You violated the contract between oborotni and—” he began ominously, but I cut him off.
“Screw the contract! You violated my privacy!” Out of the corner of my eye I saw him stiffen. Then he leaned over and sniffed me. I jerked away from him, almost running the Mini onto the deserted sidewalk. “Stop that!” I said, taken aback. “God, talk about rude! Oboroten or no oboroten, you just can’t go around sniffing—” I stopped, hearing a growl trickle from deep in his throat. I braked for a red light and turned to him. “What?” I snapped, my patience at an end. “Stop inhaling me and tell me what your problem is.”
“You stink of vampyr,” Mikhail said coldly. “I can’t tell if it’s you or the bitch who tried to turn you tonight. Go, it’s green,” he added.
I’d stared at him, flabbergasted—a word I’ve always wanted to use, by the way. Then I collected myself and started driving again. “Okay, so you know about the Hot Box and Zena. You want to tell me how you found out?” I said in a terse, no-more-fucking-with-me voice. “Oh, and also? How about filling me in as to why you didn’t try to save my ass!”
“Because you made sure I couldn’t by using a childish trick to get away from me!” he shouted back. “I arrived at the club in time to see you and Van Ryder peeling out of the parking lot in separate cars and I had to start tracking your fucking vehicle again! It’s not like following a human scent, sweetheart!”
I was momentarily distracted. “You followed the scent of my tires to the Hot Box?”
“How else?” he demanded. “But before I began tracking you and your detective to his place, I took the time to trace your movements inside the club.” His voice descended to a low, flat tone. “You were in her office. You killed a vampyr t
here, but not Zena—the scent clinging to the ashes wasn’t strong enough to have belonged to an ancient. Then you went on stage and that’s where she found you. Her undead stench is all over you, but somehow you escaped her and began killing.”
“Vamps,” I said in the same flat tone as he’d used. “I began killing vamps. That’s a good thing, as I understand it.”
“Did it feel like a good thing while you were doing it?”
Wrenching the steering wheel over, I pulled the Mini into a parking lot and turned to him. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded. “If you’re asking whether I felt a twinge of remorseful kinship every time I dusted one of the creeps who were trying to kill me, the answer’s no! I may have killed like a vamp, but none of my targets were human, okay? That should be proof enough even for you that I haven’t turned yet!”
“You killed like a vamp?” Mikhail went very still. “That’s how it felt to you?”
I took a breath, intending to bluster my way out of my unfortunate slip of the tongue, but then I stopped, knowing it was no use. I let my breath out and met Mikhail’s eyes. “That’s not just how it felt, that’s how it was,” I said in defeat. “You were right, Mikey-baby—I’m the one she marked. And tonight I realized that the change in me has already begun.”
We spent the next two hours in the car while, for the second time that night, I confessed all…my reaction to Zena, the vision I’d had of stalking Kat and Tash, how I’d felt darkly alive and focused on the club’s killing floor. Mikhail didn’t say “I told you so,” as I’d been expecting him to, and part of me wished he would be his usual abrasive self so I could be a jerk, too. But all he did was listen to the end, agree that going home wasn’t a good idea, then tell me that I looked tired and I should get some sleep.
His staggeringly unsatisfactory response totally bore out my theory that if men are from Mars and women are from Venus, shape-shifting wolves are from another solar system altogether and even if intergalactic travel becomes possible in my lifetime, I don’t want to go there.
Anyway, as I said, he had a good sleep, I didn’t, and now here I was in the Park Vista Motel listening to my sisters’ reactions to my new home away from home.
“I’m not sitting on that bed,” Tash declared.
“Suit yourself. Go outside and join Darkheart and Mikhail at the broken picnic table if you want.” Totally depressed, I lay back on the grungy-looking coverlet and punched a pillow under my head before reaching under the bed and coming up with the paper-bagged bottle I’d stashed there an hour ago. I peeled off the bag and squinted at the label before twisting off the cap. “I can’t offer cocktails, but as you noted, Kat, the Take-a-Nip is mighty handy for those times when nothing but six-week-old Scotch will do. This is one of those times.”
Kat grabbed the bottle from me, but not before I’d taken a sip. I sat up on the bed, gagging, and she looked at me without pity. “You’re not a drinker, Meg, especially not of rotgut at eleven in the morning. Pull yourself together.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” I choked. “You’re not the one who’s turning into a fucking vampire.” The tears that had welled up from the raw liquor suddenly began gushing for real. Appalled, I tried to hold them back, but it seemed as if a water main had abruptly sprung a leak behind my eyes. “Look at me,” I wailed, catching a glimpse of myself in the dresser’s cracked mirror. “My hair’s a mess, I haven’t had a shower this morning and I’m wearing a crumpled man’s shirt over a blood-speckled bra. I’m living in the motel from hell and I’m bound by some ancient contract I can’t get out of to a shape-shifter who tells me I smell of vamp. And you know what’s the worst part?” I caught the roll of toilet paper that Tash, standing in the doorway of the bathroom, tossed my way. Blowing my nose on the trailing end without bothering to tear it off, I looked miserably at my sisters. “This is the friggin’ upside! Things are only going to go downhill from here!”
“I never thought of it that way, but you’re right,” Tash said. “Wow, your life really does suck, Meg.” She looked at Kat. “Are you going to tell her or am I?”
“Tell me what?” I sniffed. A thought struck me and I tried to rise above my self-pity. “Oh, God, Kat—you proved yourself a Daughter of Lilith last night? You cleaned up that vamp hotbed of a mausoleum and Darkheart realized you were the triplet who inherited Mom’s title, right?”
“Not right,” Tash said before Kat could reply. “She and Grandfather Darkheart waited all night for nothing. There weren’t any vamps there.”
“Although I did see a couple of really husky-looking rats.” Kat shuddered delicately. Her gaze grew serious. “When you phoned this morning and told Grandfather Darkheart what had happened at the Hot Box last night with you and Zena, including the part where you and she almost…” She paused considerately.
“Where she and I almost got it on together?” I finished for her. I waved a listless hand. “Don’t bother trying to tiptoe around the subject, Kat. I fell for a female, big deal. Yeah, she’s older than dirt, and yeah, she’s undead, but hey, all that went through my mind when we were nearly lip-locking was how hot she was and how great it would be to sleep with her in the daytime and hunt with her at night.” Fresh tears leaked from my eyes and I reached for the toilet-paper roll again. “I’m going to hell, aren’t I? I’m going to turn into a mini-Zena and end up in hell after I’m dusted.”
“Not necessarily,” Tash said over her shoulder as she peered into the mirror and fluffed her curls. “All we have to do is stake her before you turn vamp. In fact, even if you do turn vamp, as long as the mistress who made you is destroyed before you taste blood, you’re home free. Good news, huh?”
Slowly I set down the roll of toilet paper. I swung my legs off the bed and planted my sneakered feet on the floor. “And just how long has everyone but me known this choice little nugget of information?” I asked in an ominous voice.
“Only since this morning,” Kat said quickly. “Grandfather told us there might be a way we could save you.”
“We’ve only known since this morning,” Tashya corrected her. “Grandfather Darkheart’s known all along, but he didn’t want to tell us until we were further in our training, in case we did something rash like try to take on Zena before we were ready.”
“Which is kind of ironic, since I was the schmuck who went up against Zena with no preparation,” I said tightly. “I suppose Mikhail knew all along, too?”
“I don’t think so,” Kat frowned. “Sweetie, Tash overstated things slightly. Grandfather said there might be a way we could save you. Zena’s an ancient, and the rules that apply to ordinary vamps don’t apply to her. She can take some sunlight without bursting into flames, she’s learned to fake a heartbeat and it’s possible that her death won’t save her victims from turning when their time comes, the way it would if she weren’t so powerful. But Grandfather’s focused his research on this one point and he’s found two old references to a vampyr called Alexa, who by all accounts was even more powerful than Zena. One of the references states that when this Alexa was staked by a Daughter, those of her victims who hadn’t yet hunted with her reverted to being human. The other reference insists that didn’t happen, and anyone she’d infected stayed infected.”
“But Grandfather says the second book’s author was a crackpot monk whose work’s been discredited,” Tash volunteered.
“Let me get this straight,” I said, trying to keep the shakiness from my voice. “Despite the fact that it’s commonly believed the death of a vamp like Zena won’t release her victims, from the start Darkheart’s known of at least one documented case where they got a get-out-of-vamphood-free card when the queen was dusted? And he let me go on believing I was doomed?
“Not exactly, Meg,” Tash rushed hotly to Darkheart’s defence. “Don’t forget, because you only bore a single mark, not two, he hoped you wouldn’t turn at all. Although he did mention he’d gotten that particular theory from the mad monk’s writings,” she added a little less conf
idently.
“That’s it.” I got to my feet, my hands clenched at my sides. “I’m having this out with him right now. No wonder Mom tried to break away from him and live her own life, instead of having him run it for her!”
“Sweetie, wait.” As I began to push past Kat, she stopped me. “He’s already heard the lecture,” she said firmly. “From us. We told him we weren’t going to stand for his paternalistic grandfather-knows-best crap anymore. When we said we wouldn’t continue training until he promised to change his ways, he agreed, so don’t go marching out there and upset all our delicate blackmail-slash-negotiations. Tell him you’ll be happy to join our Zena-hunting group tonight and you don’t even mind wearing a cross against your skin, so if anything starts happening with you we’ll get a heads-up. I didn’t think that was necessary but—”
“No, he’s right to take some precautions against me, Kat,” I interrupted. “You’re having the locks changed today, too?”
“I’ll call the security company as soon as I get home,” she promised. She looked at her watch. “Which will be soon, since we should have started our Sweatin’ with the Vampies workout ten minutes ago. Usually Grandfather gets totally antsy if we don’t start on time, but our little chat with him this morning must have put the fear of the Crosse triplets into him, no?”
“Uh, more like the fear of Mikey-baby,” Tash said in an odd voice as she stared out of the window. “That is Mikhail standing over Grandfather, isn’t it, Megan?”
My startled glance followed hers. Outside on the handkerchief-sized patch of weeds with which the motel’s owners justified their establishment’s name, an unsettling tableau was being enacted. Darkheart was lying prone on the ground by the picnic table. Mikhail, in wolf mode and with his silver-tipped ruff making his muscular form look even more intimidating, was baring his gleaming teeth only inches from Darkheart’s throat.
