Predatory

by Alexandra Ivy

  “Mr. DeLaCruz?” Hopkins said, edging his way back toward the living room.

  I fixed him with a stare, not entirely sure what I was trying to convey. I was angry, suspicious, sad for Felipe’s loss—and, strangely, a little scared.

  “So you and Hopkins, huh?”

  Pike broke out into a smile that looked wildly inappropriate amongst the background of crumpled tissues and crime scene techs, but it shot a bolt of fire through me just the same.

  “Me and Hopkins? It’s not like we were dating or anything. I just bump into him on occasion.”

  I nodded.

  “So,” Pike said as he followed me into the kitchen, inclining his head, eyes jutting to Felipe and the officer. “What do you think that’s all about?”

  “Probably just routine,” I said, suddenly feeling the need to put space between us. “Can I get you something to eat?” I asked him, wishing to God he’d say no since the entirety of my refrigerator’s contents were six O negative blood bags and sixteen varying shades of OPI nail polish.

  “No, I’m cool. So what did Hopkins want with you?”

  I spun, my body suddenly colder than normal. “He wanted to know what he should buy you for your birthday.”

  Pike scrunched his brow and I rolled my eyes.

  “Hopkins didn’t want anything with me.”

  Pike gestured toward the hall. “You guys were talking for quite a while.”

  I pinched my bottom lip, scanning Pike from tip to tail. He was gorgeous, there was no doubt about that. But, could I trust him?

  The last time I trusted a good-looking man, he sucked away my blood and my soul. I had learned my lesson.

  “It was nothing. He just had some basic questions.” I shrugged, still feeling uneasy.

  I peered over Pike’s shoulder to see Felipe on the couch, head in his hands, index fingers pressed against his temples. Hopkins sat across from him, that stupid pen poised over his little leather notepad.

  “No one would want to hurt my Reggie,” Felipe moaned. “He was such a gentle soul.”

  “Why is Hopkins treating Reginald’s suicide like it was a murder?” I whispered.

  Pike shrugged, his gaze following mine. “Maybe there is more to it than we saw.”

  By the time Hopkins had grilled us all and the crime scene and cop brigade had left the building, my body was humming. I could still smell Pike in my apartment, his coconut scent just hanging in the air. But there was something else, too—and having spent enough time with it I couldn’t deny it: the stench of death was heavy in the air.

  I leaned against my window, watching the taxicabs honking and tourists walking on the street below, watching people going about their everyday lives in the twilight. They moved in sort of an organized chaos, completely unaware that just a few hundred feet away a life had ended and another had changed completely.

  I remembered the last breath of life as it seeped out of me. My body fought to hold tight to it and I felt like my insides were burning. But the handsome stranger—his arms—were tight around me and somehow I still felt safe, willing the life to drip out of me as I licked the droplets of blood on his neck. I needed them. The thirst was overwhelming. I was changing; I was becoming someone—something—else, and all around me life went on. My parents sat in the parlor; my siblings, fast asleep in their beds. And I was outside, dying, living, changing, becoming.

  An immense sadness washed over me.

  I flopped onto my couch and pressed my fingertips to my temples. I didn’t have a headache—it’s physiologically impossible for a vampire to have a headache—but I could almost swear it was on its way.

  That’s why I jumped a foot and a half when the goddamn black bird that had taken up residence outside my front window started squawking like the disease-infested winged rodent that it was. I rolled last week’s copy of US Weekly into a narrow tube, flattened myself against the wall, then slammed the magazine against the glass, willing the stupid bird to exit once and for all. I didn’t have the nerve to look.

  It’s not that I’m afraid of birds. Hello? I’m a vampire. I’m afraid of nothing! Except maybe sunlight, shoulder pads, and the very real idea that neon and side ponytails are coming back into fashion. But birds? No. They just disgust me. With their beady eyes and their mean, pointy beaks, and those wings. Disease is carried on those wings, I just know it. So the fact that this, this—monster—had the gall to pace my windowsill on a very regular basis, squawking and clawing and generally just making a nuisance of itself, bothered me to no end.

  Seriously, I was considering renting a cat.

  When a good minute—a silent, non–wing-beating or squawking minute—passed, I took a two-inch step forward and peered around the window molding, an indescribable relief washing over me when all I saw beyond the clear window glass were a few cabs inching along the street and a woman berating a parking meter.

  My relieved sigh curdled into a scream as that stupid bird launched itself into my line of sight, squawking and flapping like a murderous maniac, the tips of its wings tapping the glass.

  I was reeling backward, vaulting toward the couch when an insistent knock at my door terrified me five times more and I felt every muscle in my body instinctively stiffen. Though my fangs are always exposed, in times of true vampdom—i.e., when an artery needs ravaging or a bartender spills something on my Manolo Blahniks—the fangs extend an extra half-inch causing that frightening scowl you see plastered all over TV. My hackles were up and adrenaline pulsed through me; even my hair seemed to stand on electrified end. My every thought was savagery and a hiss of air sliced through my teeth as I snatched open the door.

  I was met with pursed lips.

  And a cocked eyebrow.

  And an expression completely devoid of terror or shock.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “What? A guy can’t fly across country to see his favorite aunt?” My nephew was standing in the hallway, framed by chintzy yellow hallway light, grinning like I had just won the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes. His fangs were small but pronounced, pinching against the edges of his upturned lips.

  “I’m not your favorite aunt, I’m your only aunt.” I addressed him suspiciously and the smile fell from his face.

  “So can I come in or not?”

  In the Hollywood sea of vampires with horrible accents, satchels full of graveyard dirt, and the ability to turn into bats—there was one thing they had gotten right: a vampire can’t enter private premises without first being invited. Even if those premises were home to another vampire. I stood aside and opened my arms. “Vlad, you are welcome to come into my apartment.”

  Vlad stepped over the threshold, arms crossed in front of his chest. Looming at just over six feet, he looked down at me with one of those noncommittal teenage expressions. A hint of mischief flickered in his dark eyes and I was instantly seized with joy and sadness. Vlad looked so much like his mother—my sister—that it warmed me. But the feeling almost immediately fled because I knew Sonia was dead, would never know that her son was thriving—though undead—or that his Aunt Nina was taking good care of him. She also would never know that Vlad headed up the West Coast division of VERM—the Vampire Empowerment and Restoration Movement—or dressed like a fashionably suicidal cross between Bela Lugosi and Count Chocula.

  Maybe it was better that she stayed in the grave.

  I jumped forward anyway, enveloping Vlad in a crisp hug. “I’m sorry. I am really happy to see you! But, really, what are you doing here?”

  He stepped back in true teenage fashion as though someone would catch wind of the fact that he had shown a modicum of emotion. Vlad may be one hundred and twelve, but he was forever caught in the moody, brooding, obnoxious sentience of a sixteen year old.

  And he never picked up his socks.

  He threw an Army duffel onto my couch and grinned again. I could tell he just fed by the deep, ruddy pink of his lips.

  “I came to visit you!”

&nbs
p; Now I crossed my arms in front of my chest and cocked a brow. “What’d you do?”

  A sweet innocence flooded over Vlad’s face. “What do you mean?”

  I pulled my cell phone from my jeans pocket and poised a finger over the trackpad. “You know I have Sophie on speed dial.” In addition to being my roommate in San Francisco, Sophie is Vlad’s partial guardian by proxy, and my very best friend.

  Vlad held up a silencing hand. “Okay, okay. So, there’s some talk that I may have had a tiny indiscretion with a fairy.”

  “Fairies are awful!” Though Walt Disney painted them with big, kind eyes and pursed pink lips, anyone who’s met one will tell you that fairies—and pixies, too—are awful little buggers. Mean, sassy, stuck-up.

  And some of them bite.

  “So you came out here to escape your fairy lover?”

  “Actually, I came out here to escape Kale. You think fairies are bad? Try a jilted teenage witch.” Vlad whipped off his coat, showing off a dark strip on his pale white arm. “This just happened. She made the sun rise in our damn apartment. That bitch could have killed me!”

  I slung an arm over Vlad’s shoulder. “Oh, she’d never kill you. Just torture you a little. I like her. And I’m glad you’re here.”

  Vlad tugged me close in an awkward hug. “Me, too. It’ll be nice to hang here for a bit. No romantic drama, no bodies dropping from the ceiling or crime scene tape.” He flopped down on the couch next to his duffel and I bit my lip, before perching next to him.

  “So, it’s not totally drama-free around here.”

  “Oh, right because of your little ‘fashion war’ with that guy and—what’s her name? Kenmore?”

  “Emerson,” I corrected. “Reginald and Emerson. And the war is pretty much over.”

  Vlad gave me an appraising smile. “You won?”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Not exactly.”

  He quirked a brow. “Someone drop out?”

  “More like dropped dead.”

  “Dropped on her own or . . .” Vlad waggled his eyebrows in the universal “don’t-make-me-say-it” style.

  “What? Are you kidding me? I had nothing to do with it. It was right next door and it looked like suicide.”

  “‘Looked like’ suicide?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Vlad pulled a blood bag from his duffel, pierced it with a single fang, and started to suck. He emptied the thing and burped loudly before he addressed me. “So you made it look like suicide.”

  I turned to look at Vlad full in the face. “Are you seriously asking me if I had anything to do with Reginald’s death? Because I follow the strictest UDA bylaws and even if I were to stray just the slightest”—I held my thumb and forefinger a smidge apart—“tiniest bit, frankly, it wouldn’t be Reginald Fairfield that I’d off. It’d be Emerson Hawk. That woman is vile.”

  Vlad’s eyes flashed.

  As if on cue, there was another insistent, thundering knock on my door. “You can stay,” I told Vlad as I went to answer it. “Peace and quiet, however,” I said as I snatched open the door. “Died about a week ago.”

  Emerson was standing in the hallway, hip out, arms crossed, beady eyes even beadier though they were rimmed with coal and something hideously sparkly. She had actually brushed her hair and it was in a semi-attractive swoop pinned at the base of her skull, and her black gown had an asymmetrical hemline that was so completely last year it was laughable. But still, the dress was impeccably tailored and the ruched drop waist was understated and elegant, wondrously hiding Emerson’s usual Kentucky Fried Chicken and Yoo-hoo paunch. Nicolette was behind her, back toward me as she hunched, managing two beaded purses in one hand while she struggled to lock Emerson’s door.

  “Hello, Emerson.”

  Her eyes raked over me, her sour expression not changing. “Aren’t you ready yet? Or is that what you’re wearing?”

  “What are you talking about? What am I wearing for what?”

  Nicolette, having finally gotten the door locked, rushed to Emerson’s side and handed her a heavy ecru card. My stomach sunk as I recognized it.

  “The cocktail reception.”

  Emerson nodded.

  “Someone just died. Are they actually still holding that? Only the completely heartless and macabre could think of going through with any of the competition activities right now.”

  “Everything was already booked. They couldn’t cancel at the last minute and Mr. Forbes said that everything would go forward as planned. Except of course, with one less fashion show.”

  “You talked to Mr. Forbes?”

  Mr. Forbes was the head of the New York Design Institute and whether or not you knew your Vera from your Versace could be overlooked if Jason Forbes was on your side.

  A sly grin rolled across her face. “We may have run into each other a time or two at this quaint little coffee bar I frequent.”

  I was gritting my teeth so hard I imagined them starting to powder. “You’ve only been in New York a week.”

  “Anyway, Jason”—she stressed the name—“thought that the best way to honor Reginald would be to continue on as planned. So, again, are you wearing that? As far as your designs go, it is one of your better ones.”

  My nostrils flared and I felt myself shrink back in my fashion-fail skinny jeans, Ugg boots, and tank top.

  “Is that your date?” Emerson poked a bony finger into my apartment, aiming at Vlad.

  “Nephew.”

  Nicolette’s head peeked over Emerson’s shoulder. I saw her cheeks redden when her eyes met Vlad’s.

  “Christ,” I groaned. “I’ll see you at the reception.”

  The door had barely slammed before Vlad was at my side, smiling and licking his lips. “Who’s the girl?”

  “Emerson Hawk is hardly a girl. I don’t even know if she’s human.”

  “No,” Vlad groaned. “The other one.”

  “That’s Emerson’s sister and A, anyone with even an ounce of Emerson Hawk blood in her is completely and totally off limits to you and your undead little friend down there,” I said as my eyes skipped over his zipper, “and B, you’re on the run from one woman and you’re running out of safe houses. So keep it zipped. I have a party to get ready for.”

  The reception for the Institute for Haute Couture was at a swanky restaurant in Chelsea with low lights, polished cement, and an open bar. It was stuffed to the gills with beautiful people in one-of-a-kind dresses, white-gloved waiters wielding untouched appetizer trays, and quite possibly every hair product in the tristate area. My town car let me out in front of the restaurant at the precise time as Emerson’s let her out and even though a grimace would totally throw off the incredible vibe of my gold-threaded vintage Versace, I couldn’t help it when I saw her.

  Emerson strode past me, her beaded clutch almost taking me out as she did. Nicolette, hurrying behind as usual, shot me a small, apologetic smile before she yanked open the door for Emerson. They walked into the restaurant and melted into the crowd; I stepped in and there was an audible gasp.

  Scanning the room, I could see why.

  Aside from the waiters, the place was a morbid sea of black. Black dresses, black suits, black hair décor that masqueraded as vintage. My gold dress stood out like a shiny beacon and I smiled, accepting my glory while Emerson glowered in the crowd, her drink practically evaporating from the waves of heat that rolled off her.

  The energy in the restaurant was low, most people not knowing whether they should mourn or celebrate. Half a drink in, Jason Forbes took a makeshift stage and made a touching—if quick—toast to Reginald’s life and career then a muted introduction of the contest, Emerson, and me. Directly afterward, the heavy appetizers—and the murmured gossip—started. I carried around a canapé and a glass of champagne and flitted from group to group, head cocked, lips in a serene yet friendly smile, ears open.

  I heard that Reginald had offed himself because Felipe was going home to a mystery wife he had back in Brazil. I heard
the suicide was due to a fashion line Reginald was hired for that nosedived, taking the entire company with it. I heard that it was drugs, alcohol, carbohydrates. But when I heard that Reginald hadn’t committed suicide at all, I stopped walking.

  A model I knew as Bea was talking, her greasy-plate lips stained a weird glossy orange as she held court.

  I edged my way in, gushed appropriately, and Bea pulled me into the conversation.

  “My boyfriend,” she said, flapping enormous baby-girl lashes. “He is interested in so many things, so he volunteers at the city morgue.”

  The woman next to me nudged me in the ribs with a bony elbow and mouthed the words “community service.”

  Bea shot her a death glance and kept going. “Adam had to stand by and watch the coroner start the autography.”

  “Autopsy,” I corrected, taking a burning swallow of champagne.

  “Right. They started the preliminary thing and the coroner talks into a tape recorder. Adam heard him say that the . . . the,” Bea said, and made a motion around her neck. “The rings on Reginald’s neck were not conducted to a death by hanging.”

  “They weren’t conducive to a hanging?”

  Bea turned her enormous eyes on me and nodded. “You heard that, too?”

  I had to physically control myself from rolling my eyes.

  “Anyway,” Bea went on, “he said that it looked like Reginald was dead before he could hang himself.”

  The other women in the circle shivered appropriately but I stepped forward. “How did he die, then?”

  Bea’s tiny bird shoulders rose. “And did he hang himself before or after?”

  I handed Bea my champagne glass and beat a hasty retreat—at least I tried to, before coming face to face with Emerson.

  “Someone’s in a hurry,” she said, her eyes raking over me. “Need to rush off and rip a few seams?”

  My one-track mind went from checking out Reginald’s not-suicide to wishing Emerson was the one swinging from the rafters.