The Sharpest Kiss

by Elizabeth Myles

  “A wooden stake, what else?” she replied testily. Then, with a note of uncertainty, “Please tell me those work on vampires. That it’s not just some B.S. myth?”

  “They do work, actually,” he acknowledged, twisting the stake and examining it in the moonlight. “Did you make this yourself?”

  Jessica snorted softly. “Of course I did. Where would I get a wooden stake? Amazon?”

  Lucy frowned and said, “Actually, Jess, now that I think about it…maybe we should have checked Amazon. They do have everything.”

  “Yeah, and I’m a Prime member,” Dara added wistfully. “I can get one-hour delivery on a lot of stuff.”

  Nathan glanced sharply at her, his gaze falling to the stake in her hand. He turned and scrutinized Lucy’s in the same manner. “Hmph,” he grunted.

  “What?” Lucy wondered, clutching her stake self-consciously against her chest.

  Nathan hesitated. Sounding reluctant, he admitted, “You have not done a terrible job fashioning those weapons, ladies.”

  Jessica beamed and grabbed her stake back from him, dropping it into her purse. Her smug look only lasted a second, though, because then Nathan closed a large hand around her bicep and repeated, “You should leave. Now.”

  “No way,” she responded.

  His jaw clenched. “It astonishes me that I have to say this, Jessica, but you have no idea what you are up against. You all are woefully unmatched against a creature such as you have described, and I...” his tone eased up a bit, “I would hate to see you get hurt.” Lucy assumed he meant all three of them, but he only seemed to have eyes for Jessica right now.

  “That’s very nice of you to be concerned,” Jessica told him, “but like we talked about, this isn’t your problem. It’s ours. Lucy’s, Dara’s, and mine,” she pointed at each of them as she named them. “We’ll take care of it.”

  Frustration shrouded Nathan’s face. “Please,” he said. “At least agree to come with me for a moment, someplace where we can talk.”

  “Talk about what? How you don’t think we can handle ourselves? You aren’t convincing us to give up, okay? So just forget it.”

  Now Nathan’s eyes hardened, and he looked about ready to start throwing things, but he managed to say evenly, “Jessica, listen to me. If you insist on staging some sort of…hunt, I can...Well, I can help you formulate a better plan than...this.” He waved his free hand around the alley.

  Jessica frowned up at him. “What is that supposed to mean? What’s wrong with our plan?”

  Disbelief widened Nathan’s eyes, and a rough half-laugh rumbled out of his chest. “What is wrong with it?” he repeated. “What is wrong…Where do I even begin!?”

  Jessica glanced at his big hand still wrapped around her arm. She started tugging to get free of it. “Let me go, Nathan,” she said.

  “No, wait just a second,” he ground out through gritted teeth.

  “No,” Jessica insisted, “lemme go now.”

  Nathan did, and she stumbled back a couple of steps. Dara caught her by the shoulders and hissed at her from behind, “Jessica, maybe we should listen to him?”

  Jessica glowered over her shoulder at her. She looked like she was about to start arguing, but Lucy jumped in before she could. “I think we should listen to him, too, Jess. I mean, he’s the only one who really knows—”

  Before she could finish, the security bulb finally gave up, extinguishing with a nerve-shattering POP!

  Lucy heard an embarrassingly high scream burst from between her lips, and she jumped about a foot in the air. Dara clapped her hand over Lucy’s mouth, and at the same time, Jessica catapulted herself back in Nathan’s direction. She grasped his forearm, cowering against him. In the moonlight, Lucy saw him stare down at Jessica with his eyebrows raised.

  “Okay, okay!” Jessica said, clinging to his sweatshirt, “So…you might have a point about us. We’re not exactly experts at this vampire-busting stuff...Or at dealing with anything that’s remotely scary.”

  A smug look settled over his majestic features. “You do not say,” he sniffed.

  Jessica backed away from him, straightening her shirt. “There’s no need to rub it in,” she grumbled. Turning back to her friends, she said, “C’mon, you guys. Guess it’s time for us to go for a drive with a friendly vampire!”

  Chapter Ten

  In the 4Runner, Nathan gave Dara an address. She tapped it into her iPhone and sped off, and then she and Lucy watched and listened from the front seat while Jessica and Nathan bickered in the back.

  “I told you to call Kiefer to take care of this,” Nathan was growling. “Why didn’t you call Kiefer?”

  “I did!” Jessica retorted. “Like a million times. For a whole day. But he never picked up the phone.”

  “He didn’t?”

  Jessica shook her head.

  Nathan scratched his chin, his scowl deepening. “Well…that is troubling.”

  “Do you think the vampire got him?” Lucy wondered, peering at him from between the front seats. She was only half-serious, but Nathan’s face fell.

  “I sincerely hope not,” he said quietly. “Although I suppose we will know soon enough. The place I have directed you to, Dara, is Kiefer’s headquarters. If he is there, he will be able to give you and Lucy each an elixir to administer to your men. It should help alleviate some of the symptoms they may be experiencing as a result of their bites.”

  Lucy didn’t say anything, but she didn’t like the sound of that. Medicine to relieve the symptoms? That was not the same thing as a cure, and it made it sound like the real remedy—wiping out the master vampire who’d bitten Aaron and Jason—was out of reach. She’d already feared that might be the case, of course, but she didn’t like having it reaffirmed, especially not by the only person around who had any sort of expertise on the matter.

  “Slow your roll, Nathan, back it up,” Jessica was saying now. “I still don’t understand what you were doing at the bar tonight. Am I supposed to believe it’s just a coincidence that you were hanging out there, too? On the roof, of all places?”

  Nathan looked uncomfortable, one gloved hand working at the knee of his jeans. “No,” he finally admitted. “I was there for the same reason as you, to look for the vampire you told me about.”

  Jessica’s eyes grew. “But you’d told me you wouldn’t get involved in our case!”

  “I lied,” Nathan snapped.

  Jessica gasped. “Oh. Well, that’s real nice. Care to tell me why?”

  The vampire’s hands curled into fists against his thighs. “Kiefer was supposed to give you the elixir and tell you that he would be hunting the vampire for you. That way you would not feel the need to involve yourselves any further. In the meantime, I would go out and search for any evidence of this master you reported to me.”

  “I don’t get it,” Jessica said. “Why lie about it? Why not just tell me you would be the one looking for the vampire?”

  “I was worried you would want to continue interacting with me about the matter, and that was the very last thing I wanted.” Jessica pulled back from him, looking wounded. “It is nothing personal,” he assured her, holding up his hand. “It was for your own protection. It is not good for anyone to be linked to me in any way, not even remotely.”

  Jessica looked like she was about to ask another question, but Dara interrupted her. “The GPS says we’re here, guys. But, um, are you sure this is it, Nathan? ’Cause it looks like a donut shop.”

  Lucy saw she was right. Dara had pulled the SUV up in front of a storefront in a strip mall, where a pink-and-white striped awning stretched above a glass door. A neon pink donut with the word “FRESH” flashing intermittently in the center dangled in the window, and the words “Endless Donuts” had been stenciled on the glass in jaunty script. The interior of the place was dark, and a Closed sign hung on the door.

  “This is it,” Nathan said.

  “We’re asking a donut fryer for help hunting a vampire?” Jessica asked,
unbuckling her seatbelt and hopping out.

  “The donuts are but a front,” Nathan said as he and the others exited the SUV. “And Kiefer is more than a mere donut fryer. He has an office in the back here, where he practices magic, selling potions to paying customers, and monitors the area for paranormal disturbances. Here, I will show you.” He stripped off his gloves and shoved them into a pocket of his sweatshirt. From a different pocket, he produced a key ring and fit one of the keys into the shop’s deadbolt. The group eased inside, and Nathan locked the door behind them. He flipped on a light.

  As the neon stuttered to life overhead, Lucy glanced around at their new surroundings. Directly across from her, she spied a glass display case, sitting empty at the moment, with a cash register perching on one end. A few small, spindly tables and chairs stood scattered around the center of the room, and a long counter was bracketed against the back wall. A drink cooler hummed in the corner, and a delicious smell of sugary baked goods hung in the air, coaxing a growl out of Lucy’s empty stomach.

  “This way,” Nathan said, leading them behind the display case.

  He murmured a string of strange phrases, and a panel in the wall slid away, revealing a hidden door behind it. Nathan touched the door and paused, gathering his brows in skepticism.

  “What is it?” Jessica asked him. “What’s wrong?”

  “This door ought to be warded, but I do not feel anything. The protective magic that ought to surround it appears to be…missing.”

  Jessica gave a worried frown. “That’s probably bad, right?”

  Instead of answering her, Nathan pushed open the door and charged inside. Immediately, it was obvious that something was wrong here. The cramped office they’d entered had been ransacked, and most of the furniture was broken, laying in disarray. Bookcases had been overturned and half their contents ripped to pieces. Papers were scattered everywhere.

  “Oh, no,” Lucy said when she spotted something else that made her heart seize. The others looked where she was pointing and saw the bloodied pant leg sticking out from behind a desk across the room.

  “Kiefer?” Nathan rushed forward, and the women followed after him, picking carefully through the debris littering the floor. “Kiefer,” he repeated, and fell to his knees beside the body. He rolled it over, and Lucy found herself staring down at a young man, maybe in his mid-to-late-twenties, in jeans and a navy t-shirt, who looked like he’d been beaten with a baseball bat. His hair was sandy blonde and matted with blood, but it was impossible to know what color his eyes were because they were both shut, the right one horribly swollen.

  “Oh, no,” Lucy said again, and covered her mouth.

  “Is he dead?” Jessica blurted with characteristic tact.

  Nathan lifted the young man’s wrist, feeling for his pulse. He touched his neck and frowned. “It…it would appear so,” he said in a rasping voice. He brushed the young man’s hair back from his forehead and touched his cheek with a shaking hand. A quiet, mournful sound came out of Nathan, and he bowed his head.

  “I’m so sorry, Nathan,” Lucy said, swallowing down the sick feeling that had arisen in her throat.

  “Great. What now?” Jessica said.

  “Jess,” Lucy admonished her.

  “What?”

  “His friend just died. Could you maybe show a little sympathy?”

  “I am sympathetic,” Jessica said, and turned back to the vampire. “Really, I am, Nathan. But I’m guessing the master vampire killed your friend here. Which makes our mission of catching her all the more urgent, right? We have to stop her before she hurts anybody else.”

  “A vampire did not do this,” Nathan said, getting back to his feet. “Nevertheless, Jessica is correct. We must…we must determine what happened here and…and...” He trailed off, looking dazed and disgusted, and Lucy felt terrible for him.

  “Look,” Dara said, pointing. “There’s blood on the floor.”

  “There’s blood everywhere,” Jessica reminded her.

  “Yeah, but it looks like maybe Kiefer was trying to spell something here.” She gestured at a spot on the floor near the body that had been swept clear. Three letters had been written in blood on the floorboards. C-E-L. There was also a dot next to the L, as though maybe Kiefer had intended to form another letter.

  Nathan groaned when he saw the writing. “I think he may have been trying to spell ‘Celia,’” he said through clenched teeth.

  “Who’s Celia?” Lucy asked. “Another friend of yours? Someone else who can help us?”

  Nathan’s mouth twisted. “Hardly. Celia is a vampire Kiefer and I hunted together years ago. If she is involved in this, it…well, it would be very bad.”

  “How can she be involved?” Jessica wondered. “If you guys hunted her down, doesn’t that mean she’s dead now?”

  Nathan shook his head. “We did not kill her.”

  “Why not?” Jessica asked pointedly.

  “Because Celia is a master,” he replied. “As I told you, masters are extremely difficult to destroy. Set them afire, and they will survive. Most blades will not even penetrate their skin. If one is somehow dismembered, it will either knit itself back together, or simply retreat into hiding until it can regenerate a replacement body part.”

  “Even a head?” Dara wondered, wide-eyed.

  “Even that,” Nathan said grimly. “Or so the legends say. However, the legends have also taught us that if one starves a master long enough—many years at least—they may become weak enough to be harmed, perhaps even killed. Kiefer and I managed to trap Celia years ago and bury her in concrete. We intended to check on her in the future and see if she could then be dispatched.”

  “Concrete?” Jessica said. “Then how could she get out?”

  “That is a very good question.” Nathan’s eyes were troubled. “She would have needed help. I think perhaps that is what Kiefer was attempting to warn me of with his message here.”

  “Bingo,” a croaky voice affirmed from behind them. “You got it, buddy.”

  Everyone turned around to look at the body, which had, impossibly, begun to move, the arms and legs jerking as it attempted to sit up.

  “Kiefer!” Relief vibrated in Nathan’s voice. “Thank goodness. I thought you were dead!”

  “Dead?” Kiefer groaned. “Did you even check?”

  “Of course I checked. I did not detect your heartbeat.”

  Kiefer snorted. “What kind of vampire can’t find a pulse?”

  “You know what kind,” Nathan tossed back drily, and Lucy was surprised to see a smile touching his mouth.

  “Yeah, yeah, one that doesn’t eat people,” Kiefer said.

  “And who imbibes sense-dampening potions—which you provide.”

  “What can I say? I’m good at what I do. Maybe a little too good.” When Nathan cast a dubious look at him for that comment, his friend broke down and admitted, “Okay, so I was just messing with you. It was a spell.”

  “To make you appear dead?”

  “I was tired of getting beat on,” Kiefer said, spreading his hands. “Figured if they thought I’d croaked, they’d let up.”

  “You did a good job,” Nathan told him. “Very convincing.”

  “Evidently. Anyway, I guess your falling for it explains why y’all decided to just stand around yapping instead of taking me to a hospital or anything.”

  Nathan crouched beside his friend again, helping him into a sitting position. “You do not need a hospital.”

  “Sure I do,” Kiefer countered with what Lucy was beginning to notice was a rather thick West Texas accent. “Saint Nathan’s Cure-all Clinic. Ah! Hey, careful, careful, pretty sure my leg’s busted. In more than one place.”

  “What does that mean?” Jessica asked, her eyes bright. “What’s the cure-all?”

  Nathan took a folding knife from his pocket and pulled up his sleeve. “You ladies may want to avert your eyes from this,” he cautioned.

  But of course they didn’t. They all watched w
ith avid interest as Nathan sliced the blade across his forearm and pressed his wound against his friend’s battered lips. Kiefer sucked down several mouthfuls of the vampire’s blood and, as he did so, his injuries miraculously healed.

  When Kiefer broke away from Nathan’s arm again, only a few seconds later, he was still covered in blood, but his face was no longer mangled. The swelling around his eye had faded away, and Lucy saw that his irises were light brown, the color of caramel. He wasn’t ethereally handsome, like Nathan, but then again, nobody really was. There was still something about him that sent a warm feeling vibrating through Lucy’s heart and made her hand flutter up to rest at the base of her throat. She was struck by the idea that, outside the glare of the vampire’s rarefied beauty—and without the blood caked all over him—Kiefer would be notably handsome in his own right. At the very least, there was something undeniably endearing about the cocksure grin he offered everybody as he jiggled his restored leg.

  “Yep,” he said, slapping Nathan’s shoulder, “all good. Take a bow, Saint Nathan, ya still got it.”

  “Whoa,” Lucy breathed, her eyes wide as saucers behind her glasses.

  “Neat trick,” Dara chimed in approvingly.

  Nathan ignored the remarks. The cut on his arm, Lucy noticed, had already started to heal. “Who did this to you?” he demanded of Kiefer. “It could not have been Celia. She would not have left you in one piece.”

  “Nah,” Kiefer said. “It was just a couple Snacks I’m guessing she’s put to work for her since she woke up from her dirt nap.”

  “They were looking for me,” Nathan said, not questioning, and guilt flashed across his face.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t tell them anything,” Kiefer assured him. “Just before the spell kicked in, and I was lying here with my eyes closed, they thought I’d already winked out. I heard them start going through everything, trying to find a clue, but you know I don’t keep anything down here that could’ve helped them.” He rubbed his eyes. “How long was I out?”

  “More than twenty-four hours, I would guess. I last spoke to you yesterday morning, just before sunrise. It is Friday evening now.”