by P. N. Elrod
Something was snuffling at my new shoes.
I stopped, looked down, and spotted a big black wet nose.
Quicksilver, my ever-shadowing wolfhound-wolf guard dog, was grinning up at me with fangs and panting tongue on equal parade display.
“All’s well that ends swell, boy. We can head home to the Enchanted Cottage and the DVD player now. How’d you like to settle in with an Awesome Gnawsome chew stick, some jalapeño popcorn, and a couple of really prime vintage monster movies? The Wolf Man is a must, but, after that, do you go for heroic bell ringers or demonic organ players?”
His sharp, short bark indicated he was ready to eat up anything.
WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE
L. A. Banks
Tanya took a deep breath, collecting her thoughts as best she could before speaking into the small, handheld digital recorder.
“Being dead sucks, especially if it happened on the job. Okay, true, I’m not what you technically call dead, but the fact is, I don’t have a heartbeat. I’m this in-between kind of being, sorta the way I’ve lived my whole life: Really smart but couldn’t conform to school. Really sexy, if I do say so myself, but hated that guys couldn’t get past my rack to look me straight in my eyes. Stood up for justice at every turn and broke the so-called law every chance I got. Yeah, all right, I admit it, I’m complicated. And so what? Why would I think dying would be a straightforward two shots in the back of the head in a parking lot or something?”
Tanya clicked off the tiny digital recorder she held in her slender palm and then tossed it on her desk. “This is bullshit.” Tears momentarily filled her eyes and then burned away as she stared out of her office window at the new moon. “What was I thinking? A book? Stop dreaming.”
Leaving a legacy had never been her plan. Until last month, Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse had been her motto. That had been the original plan.
By twenty-nine, she was one of the best bounty hunters, and sometimes hit woman, in the biz. She’d always thought that one day someone would get to her before she got to them, if she got sloppy. But she’d also felt that, if she did manage to live long enough to get old and sloppy, then having a faster gun put her out of her misery wouldn’t be a totally bad thing.
But having a long-range plan that meant leaving some sort of legacy was never anything she’d dwelled on. Hell no. Life was too unpredictable for that. After her own disastrous childhood, trying to have a couple of kids and win the Mother of the Year Award would have been a disservice to the planet. No, rather than be a procreator she’d elected to be an eliminator, wiping the city streets clean of the kind of scum that had made her childhood hell.
Tanya hugged herself. It had been so easy to get into the business. Maybe too easy. Work with bail bondsmen was her entry point. It was good money, fast money. The bigger the fish she hauled in, the more side jobs would come in, until one of the casino boys realized that she had the body of a black widow. Most of her targets were male. All of them were dirty as sin, so she didn’t get into the politics of justice. She just served it.
Regardless of nationality, her targets were always wary of other men casing them, but not of a female who looked like she did—five seven, satiny brown skin, mahogany-hued hair that swept her shoulders, intense Egyptian kohl-rimmed eyes, with thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-eight dimensions. That was always good for a conversation opener. Slipping them a roofie made hand-to-hand combat a less likely thing, albeit she was prepared to go there if she had to.
Then in one night, the night that would have been her largest takedown, everything went wrong.
Dimitri wasn’t like her other targets. He didn’t drink. He didn’t bend to her feminine charms. He did seem amused by her, though. That should have been her cue. But she’d gotten cocky. Had never missed her mark. Had become the thing she promised herself she’d never be while still young: sloppy. That would never happen again.
Even now thinking back on it, the memory gave her a chill. Somehow Dimitri had gotten her to actually drink … and chat … and had turned her on. Now she knew why. There was something hypnotic about his dark, intensely piercing eyes.
Back then, it was all still a strangely exciting mystery. It was a shame that the people who’d hired her wanted him dead. The man was seriously fine, but had been fleecing their blackjack tables, and when they’d stepped to him, he’d killed several of their guards. The people who ran Vegas beneath the shimmering lights didn’t want to wait for law enforcement. They wanted justice served the old-fashioned way: cold and immediately. They thought they’d be sending a message to the Russian mob and had no idea that it was an invitation to war with a seriously old vampire.
Tanya looked around the expansive Manhattan brownstone that she now owned, courtesy of her last job. Dimitri had old-world tastes, but had a fully functional vaulted crypt in the basement. At some point when she cared more, she’d have it all redone.
Still, the one thing that bothered her was how quickly the mission had gotten blurry and how she foolishly wasn’t afraid of the interesting, dark-haired Russian. At that time he seemed like he was just a man. After sex, they all fell asleep. At some point, they all had to eat. Poison. A silenced bullet. Whatever. It didn’t matter. She was patient. Unfortunately, so was he.
Tanya closed her eyes. This was the part that she wanted so badly to write about. This new awareness of a life beyond life was what she wanted to chronicle. That would be her legacy, the only thing that maybe she’d be remembered for.
But then she’d also have to tell how he’d toyed with her as though playing with his food. Humiliating, but true. She was human, then; he was not. He’d brought her back to his suite; she thought she was in a good position. He just smiled and remained the perfect gentleman … pouring her a merlot. And she found herself getting naked for him while he watched from across the room. His eyes held more fascination than desire—an enjoyment of the hunt that she’d recognized too late. And that’s when everything began going badly.
Tanya unconsciously covered the side of her neck with her palm and walked away from the window. He’d tranced her to come to him and then he’d stood, caressing her throat with the softest kisses that instantly turned into blinding pain. Panic swept through her, but survival instinct kicked in and sent her hand clawing his groin. She was rewarded with a backhanded bitch slap that sent her sprawling across the room to shatter the small oval coffee table by the sofa.
Clearly enraged, he glowered down at her for a moment, her blood staining his mouth. He then cursed at her in a language she’d never heard, and then suddenly he laughed. That’s when she saw his teeth. It was a cruel laugh of unchecked power. His eyes were no longer intense and darkly sexy; instead they were all black, no whites showing. The eyes of a demon. The eyes of certain death.
“You will die tonight, my lovely,” he’d said. “Such a disappointment, I know—especially when you had come all this way to kill me. Ah … the vagaries of fate.”
Tanya squeezed her eyes shut and rested her forehead on the wall, still hearing his voice echoing in her mind. Then he’d lunged at her; she’d used the broken table leg like a knife to defend herself and to ward him off. It gored his heart and left her beneath a pile of burning embers. Everything from that point forward became a blur. She knew she had to move, had to get out. Up in an instant, she covered her mouth to keep from screaming, found her dress and her purse with the gun in it, and was gone.
Fifty large they’d paid her, but that wasn’t enough money in the world for what her life was suddenly to become. Others followed Dimitri, looking for his killer. At first they thought it was another vampire—she could feel them, hear their thoughts. All those he had made were looking for his heir apparent. Everything that Dimitri was and had learned bled into her mind over the days she lay dying in her dark apartment by the bay. Then one night her heart stopped, but her eyes opened. The hunger came, and with her first feeding came the knowledge that she’d never see daylight again.
> Everything he’d owned, she inherited, even at times the way his words threaded through her mind and changed her normal patterns of speech. She now owned his made men, too. But in the vampire world that also meant that she owned the late Dimitri Andropov’s problems as well, namely those who had wanted to wrest power from him for a long time. And that meant a nightly vigil against those who wanted to take her down and not knowing whom to trust … not that living that way was any different than her human life had been. But still. The constant paranoia was wearing and she was new to the vampire way of life.
In the vampire world, to the victor go the spoils. This was not the legacy she’d wanted. And for all its opulent, everlasting glory, when the time came for her assassination, all that she ever was would turn into a smoking pile of embers, her memories and knowing suddenly owned by her killer. But for the moment, membership did have its privileges.
Now she understood her kind’s fascination with history and building monuments. She understood why they were so erudite in the arts. For beings that lived for an eternity, knowing that they would disappear from the annals of time by a simple assassination had to be maddening. To be both timeless yet ephemeral, therein lay the paradox.
Tanya glanced back at the small silver digital recorder and then up at the moon. She had to get out of here. Dinner and danger were on the streets.
* * *
“Pyotr, do not grow arrogant and lose your life for it. Dimitri was a centuries-old vampire and lost his life to a mere mortal.”
“My friend, your words bring comfort that you have my best interest at heart, but this human girl is only a month old to the ways of Vampyre. We will find her. We will kill her. It is already decided and quite a simple task.”
Pyotr stopped walking and leaned against a tree in Central Park for a moment, taking his time to light a cigarette and slowly exhale the smoke. “Do we yet know how many are still loyal to their bond to Dimitri?” When Vikenti didn’t immediately answer, Pyotr stared at his ancient friend. “Just as I thought. There is no way yet to know.”
“What is to know is that she walks this path every night, and for every night that we wait, she grows stronger. For every night that we linger in worry, another may beat us to our objective and claim his victory—then we would have to assassinate him. Not such an easy task.”
“But we do not yet know of her numbers, those that stand with her.”
“How many of Dimitri’s loyalists will stand to be told they cannot procreate? What leader of a coven from the old world would have such an edict that no more of our kind could be made?”
Vikenti spat on the ground, his dark eyes narrowed with disgust. “Who will now change the way they once fed freely to accept her preposterous notions of drinking only from the wicked—no longer tasting the pure innocent? Ha? You have no answers.”
Feeling victory in his grasp, Vikenti watched his friend take a particularly long drag off his cigarette before he pressed on. “And now she organizes them in vigilante squadrons to help humans. Dimitri’s made men must spend their nights in service to their food? Where is the honor in that? It is madness—no, it is weakness. Her connection still to the human condition is an opportunity. But we must be quick, my friend, for her ranks will attempt a coup. Of this I am certain. It is rumored that they are already assassinating each other for the chance to be the first to go against her while she is still new.”
“You know this rumor must be false or there is some element of this story we do not know. Her own made or those she inherited from Dimitri cannot kill her.”
“But they can align with others not of her line and give them critical details to make it easy for them to assassinate her … so says our master, Aleksei. He was giving us a hint, giving us a clue to increase his territory without his hands getting dirty on this.”
Pyotr pushed himself away from the tree he’d been leaning on. “And there are two of us. This inheritance of Dimitri Andropov can go to only one.”
Vikenti smiled, allowing a bit of fang to show. “Then, my friend, I suggest you hurry at the task. May the best man win.”
* * *
Winter wind cut at her face, but she didn’t hunch against the cold. Leather coat wide open, she allowed it to billow out behind her, enjoying the sting of feeling halfway alive. Frigid temperatures bit into her arms and torso, ignoring her black sweater, and then wrapped around her black leather pants and boots, chilling her legs. The cold evening air was obviously in no mood for compromise tonight; but then again, neither was she.
Tanya watched dispassionately as humans bundled up against the elements walked quickly and kept their heads down. Cattle. The thrum of their heartbeats and blood was intoxicating, but she had to show restraint as she scanned dull minds when she passed warm bodies. The homeless had committed no crime beyond being poor and mentally ill. To her way of thinking, to feed on them and then kill them would be unjust. They’d already gotten the shit end of life. Same with the working girls on the streets, she thought as she passed a group of shivering prostitutes. Someone was already kicking their asses; someone was already sucking the lifeblood out of them, be it a pimp or their drug dealer or the johns that kept the trade going.
No. Her goal was the bastards that created the conditions. She wanted the men like Bernie Madoff, and bankers, and politicians, and corporate moguls who stole from the poor to give to the rich. Her best feeding grounds were on Wall Street or in the high-rent districts. They also ate a better grade of food and drank top-shelf liquors and wines. Their blood was all the richer for it.
Tanya crossed through the park to save time. Maybe she’d dine in Greenwich, Connecticut, tonight, or even scour SoHo. Tonight was going to be different. No more petty thieves and thugs. The cops could handle them. She’d go after the ones that had enough resources to buy their way out of prosecution. Yeah … it was time to upgrade. But a presence behind her gave her pause.
A tall, lanky man stepped out from behind a tree before her, smoking a cigarette. Although her focus was on him, she could feel a silent but deadly hulking form behind her. Instinct told her they were both vampires. Their feel told her immediately that they’d never belonged to Dimitri. They were enemies.
Seconds clicked by. No words were exchanged. The air around her suddenly became too still. She could feel the one behind her go airborne. She could smell the freshly broken wood he grasped in his sweaty palm.
Tanya went down on one knee as the assassin hurtled over her. She came up with two steel blades in her hands and caught him in the back. But the puncture wounds missed his heart entirely. The second one was on the move, charging her, as the first one pivoted with a snarl and came at her again.
Using the tree for leverage, she ran up one side of it, flipped over them, and caught the lean one in the center of his chest. The huge, burly one hissed his fury as his friend went down on one knee.
“Get up, Pyotr!” he yelled as he got out of Tanya’s kill range. “Feed and it will all be better. Don’t allow this human sympathizer to squander your existence!”
Before she could blink, the stake the thick-muscled nemesis had been holding whizzed toward her like a missile, but she sidestepped it and caught it in a firm grip, and then quickly relay-flung it into the chest of the vampire that was slowly standing up. An explosive plume of embers lit the night around her. Now the odds were even.
She watched the huge vampire before her give his friend’s passing a moment of thought before he launched at her with visceral rage.
Taking him at hand-to-hand combat was out of the question. He seemed almost as ancient as Dimitri had been. But the question was, did he own anything close to Dimitri’s old power? Only seconds would provide an answer. Tanya held up her hands in front of her and sent a black charge of dark energy out from them. The Russian hit it like he’d slammed into a brick wall. She jumped back, winded and feeling slower. The felled vampire looked up at her, eyes completely black as he scrambled to his feet to attack again, but then suddenly burst in
to flames as his head fell away from his body.
Tanya jumped back and snarled. A presence stepped out of the smoke and calmly tucked a large bone knife into his brown leather jacket.
“Who the fuck are you?” Prepared to battle yet another assassin, she waited, her every sense keen.
“I am Anastas.… It means ‘resurrection’ in my native language. So, you might say, I have come back to see if the rumors were true. And they are.”
Still wary, Tanya circled him slowly, watching him turn with her in a counterclockwise direction. This vampire was definitely dangerous, but why had he helped her? There was no such thing as a free lunch, so what did he want? Maybe the chance to kill her for himself?
She drank in everything about him, trying to place him. He felt familiar, but he wasn’t controlled by Dimitri at all. Odd. His intense dark brown eyes held a bit of a smile in them, and his auburn hair hung about his broad shoulders in an old-world way. His accent had that formal Eastern Bloc ring to it, but she couldn’t place it. Strong chin, strong, solid features. Tall. Maybe six two or three. A hint of five o’clock shadow graced his jaw. Beside his brown leather jacket, he wore an ebony turtleneck, jeans, and scuffed, well-worn brown leather boots. If they both walked out of the park alive, she would not forget him.
Suddenly he stopped circling with her. “This dance is making us both dizzy. Can I buy you a drink?”
She stopped moving and stared at him. “What?”
“A drink. You have to eat, and so do I after expending so much energy.”
She hated that he was right. “What do you want?”
“I needed to see for myself that Dimitri lost his life to the black Madonna. Or black widow, as the case may be. A centuries-old vampire taken down by a human hit woman on the payroll for the human mafia, who in death has grown a conscience and only wants her coven to kill those who she feels deserve that fate. Completely fascinating.”
