Wendi’s eyes went to my hand, to my outstretched arm. There was confusion and something like hurt in her eyes. “I want Pike,” she said, her voice like a spoilt child.
“Get out of here, Pike. She’s a vampire.”
Pike stumbled backward a few inches. “She’s a what?”
But the word was snatched out of the air by the sound of Wendi launching herself from the bottom step right across me and directly to Pike. I saw her mouth open, saw the budding edges of those two new fangs cutting through her bright pink gums, her own blood pooling and dribbling over her chin.
I’ve been a vampire longer than I’ve been anything else, and so our speed is more than second nature to me. I sliced in front of the newbie, landing an elbow to her chest with such force that she snapped backward, her bony model back hitting the wall with a solid smack. She slid down the wall in a crumple that lasted only a few seconds. Then she was back on her feet, a blur of blue jeans and bloodstained hair as she whipped by Pike and disappeared out the front door and into the Manhattan morning.
“What the fuck just happened here?”
“I would like to know the same thing,” I said. “But, in a nutshell, someone attacked Wendi and left her for dead. Or undead. Now we have to go find her.”
“Wait. A vampire attacked her?”
I cocked my head, looking at the smears of dried blood that had oozed into my once-gleaming grout. “I’m not sure. The attack may have happened first, the vampire second. If it was a complete vampire attack, there wouldn’t be this much wasted blood.”
I hated myself for it, but my eyes stayed locked on the blood, the little pools that had dripped into low spots in the tile beginning to congeal. I had eaten already but my mouth started to water.
“Nina?”
I snapped to attention. “Yeah, sorry. We’ve got to go, Pike. We have to find her.”
I pushed Pike aside and went to the door, but he stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Hey, she’s a vampire on foot. How far could she have gotten? It’s not like she can fly.”
The smugness in his voice didn’t go unnoticed, but being the bigger person and the better of two supernatural creatures (and vampires are quite fast, let me assure you), I let it go. Instead, I pushed open the door and gestured to the deserted street. “She can be halfway to Brooklyn by now. Come on.”
“Why is it so important we find her? Isn’t she just going to, I don’t know, run out into some sunlight and self-combust?”
I narrowed my eyes. “It’s a wonder your mother didn’t toss you out of the nest when you were hatched.”
Pike let out a slightly audible growl, his eyebrows going low. “I wasn’t hatched. I just meant that aren’t new vampires meant to be a little squirrely?”
“Squirrely, not stupid. And she can do a hell of a lot of damage. We need to find Wendi before she attacks anyone else or goes back to her sire. People can’t just go around making vampires willy-nilly. It’s against the rules.”
“Rules?”
I shook my head, going for the door. “It’s complicated.”
Pike clapped a hand on my shoulder, pulling me back into the vestibule. “No, that’s complicated.”
I glanced to where he was pointing and groaned. I had been so preoccupied that I must not have heard the sirens and now, a police car was stopped in the middle of the street, flanked by a fire truck and an ambulance. I watched in horror as car doors flung open and uniformed officers jumped out, all poised and ready to move, each with guns at the ready.
“How did they know?”
Pike leaned down and snatched my cell phone from the floor. “Nine-one-one?”
“Crap.” I pasted on a sheepish smile and pushed open the smoked glass door just enough to shimmy out but not enough to expose the smears of blood undead Wendi had left behind.
I batted my eyelashes and kept to the shade of the awning over the building’s large windows. “Is there a problem, Officer?”
I hoped my smile didn’t sink, but my heart did when I saw the officer who was striding toward me.
“Oh. Officer Moyer.”
Now, I have nothing against cops. Though I prefer firefighters (mainly for their calendar potential), I have a soft spot for cops, too—I just wasn’t all too keen on running into the same handful of officers over and over again, particularly at crime scenes. Tends to make a girl look suspicious, and the last time I had the good fortune to chat with Moyer, he was examining a pair of wardrobe shears that belonged to me . . . and that were firmly implanted in the chest of one of my biggest rivals.
He really got the wrong impression of me.
If Officer Moyer recognized me, he didn’t comment on it. He was all business. “We received a call about an incident here. Someone called nine-one-one?”
I forced a blush. “I’m so very sorry, that was me. I—it was a scare. I thought I saw someone, turns out I was wrong.”
“You told the nine-one-one operator, and I quote,” Moyer started, pulling out his every-cop-everywhere-has notebook, “There’s been a murder here at the studio. One of the models that I work with.” His eyes flicked from the notebook back to me, one eyebrow cocked.
“Yes. Right. I did call and say . . . that, but it turns out she was just sleeping. She had fallen asleep and I thought she was dead. Whoops!” I clasped my hands and did one of those silly-me looks and giggled. “Wendi’s quite the hard sleeper. Supermodels, huh? Who knew?”
I angled myself just enough to block the giant bloodspot while giving myself a sweeping view of the street. I thought perhaps I could spot Wendi banging her head into a plate-glass window or trying to feed off a fire hydrant (the girl wasn’t exactly a brain surgeon in life), but no such luck. The street was empty and there wasn’t a single clue as to which direction she might have gone.
Moyer took a step toward me, his giant cop head blocking my view, his eyes narrowed as though I would throw myself at his feet and confess any and every trespass I’d ever made. I held his gaze until he broke away, edging a chin toward the door behind me.
“That Pike?”
Pike had a history with the NYPD as an occasional crime scene photographer. My mind was ticking, thinking how best to use that to my advantage. All I came up with was a tiny tremor of annoyance that Pike hadn’t come striding out to save the day with some sort of inside joke or doughnut or something.
“Yeah, of course. We’re friends. Acquaintances. We do business together. We’re friends.” I was happy to steer the conversation away from Wendi. So happy that I babbled like an idiot, apparently.
Moyer nodded. “Was he here when you called in the murder?”
I bit down hard, working to keep my expression light and pleasant. “When I called in what I thought was a death? No, no, he just got here. You know, on time, ready to work with Wendi.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and send Wendi and Pike out here, just so I can get everything squared away.”
“Of course I can send Pike out. I’ll do that right away.”
“And Wendi.”
“Wendi.” I blinked, then focused directly on Moyer. I could feel my glamour—a sexy little vampire superpower that is occasionally used (responsibly, of course) when one might need to sway the opinion of a breather in the vicinity—start to ramp up. Immediately, Officer Moyer’s shoulders relaxed, dropping a half-inch from his earlobes. His belly eased out and his back swayed the slightest, his eyes getting the telltale glaze of being wholly under my “spell.”
“I would like nothing more than to send Wendi out to you, Officer, but she’s inside getting ready for her photo shoot. We’re on a really, really tight schedule.” I accented all the right words, seeing Moyer’s jaw go slack each time my lips moved. I kept my eyes on him while I straightened his collar, my long, pale pink nails striking against the blue of his shirt. His eyes followed my every motion, and his breathing went low and ragged. “So you see, I could send her out, but it would really make things hard on me, cutting into my precious, precious time
an’ all.”
Moyer swallowed, eyes still wide as saucers, Adam’s apple bobbing slowly in his throat. “That’s fine, then.”
I held the glamour until he turned on the heel of his department-issued boot and locked himself in his squad car, starting a parade of first responders down the street and out of my life.
“Whew,” Pike said, coming up over my shoulder. “Glad that’s done.”
“Yeah, thanks for stepping in.”
Pike didn’t back down, which grated on my nerves but kicked my body into sexual overdrive. “You look like the kind of girl who can handle her man.”
“Oh, I can handle a man. Any man. But now I’m more concerned about a lady. Are you coming with me to find Wendi or not?”
Chapter Three
I dialed Vlad and he picked up before the first ring had even completed. “Another dead breather drop in your lap, Auntie?”
“Turns out Wendi is a lot less dead than previously thought.”
“What?”
“Halfling,” I said. “She came after Pike and then took off.”
“Did she feed?”
“Not on Pike, but she took off.”
“You let her go?” I could hear the incredulity in Vlad’s voice.
“No, I didn’t just let her go, she took off.”
“Well, on the one hand, no one is going to suspect you of being a murderess since there was technically no murder.” He seemed pleased.
“And on the other hand, I’ve just allowed a hungry Halfling to take Manhattan.”
Vlad paused. “Yeah, that’s going to be a rather significant problem.”
“So we’ve got a Halfling to kill. Be outside. We’re on our way.”
I hung up the phone.
“We’re going to kill her?” Pike asked incredulously.
“Technically, she’s already dead. Let’s go.”
Vlad was waiting outside for us—shaded by the awning for the Hungarian bakery that covered our first floor, of course—by the time we pulled up to the apartment. He stepped out from the shadows and Pike and I both started, mouths dropped open.
It’s obvious that I got the LaShay fashion gene both by my career and by the fact that my nephew, by all accounts, dresses like a cross between Bela Lugosi and the Count from Sesame Street. The brocade vests and ridiculous ascots are a throwback from the time of vampire empowerment, before the vampire was raped in modern media, when people feared and revered us. A time far before people painted us as emotionally abusive sparklers or overly broody jackasses who routinely went ashes-to-ashes at the hands of a spunky blond slayer. However, this was beyond Vlad’s normal poor clothing choices.
He pulled open the car door and settled himself in the backseat. Both Pike and I swung around.
“Are you really carrying a bow and arrow?” Pike asked him.
Vlad looked down at the bow in his hand as though it were the most normal accessory on earth.
“I’m just carrying the bow. The arrows are in my quiver.”
He turned sideways, showing off a clutch of feathery arrows bound in what looked like a FedEx tube. He grinned. “Let’s get vampire hunting.”
Pike leaned forward, hands spread in front of him. “Wait, wait, so you guys are used to this? Isn’t vampire hunting like cannibalism?”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t birds eat their young?”
He threaded his arms in front of his chest and glared at me. “No, but they have been known to attack random others.”
“Guys, guys,” Vlad said, trying to edge between the two of us from the backseat. “Please dispense with the foreplay on your own time. We need to find the supervamp.”
Now I glared.
“What? Supermodel vamp? Vampmodel? I’m looking for a catch phrase here, people. I think I could get a reality show.”
I rolled my eyes. “You can’t be seen on film.”
“Always the negative one, aren’t you, Auntie?”
Pike started the car. “Okay, where to?”
I pulled out my phone and started to navigate. “We should probably start at Wendi’s apartment. There’s a good chance she’ll go back there, especially if she hasn’t fully realized what’s going on yet. Make a left up here.”
“So does this kind of shit happen often?”
I bit my bottom lip. “No, not really.” Then, “Probably more often than it should. Three more blocks, then it should be on the right.”
“What happens if she’s not here?” Pike wanted to know. “Is there like, some kind of vampire community meeting house or something?”
“Oh, you mean our clubhouse? Yes. We all meet under the folds of the Statue of Liberty’s dress.”
Vlad snorted but Pike glared. “No need to be all snarky. Where I’m from, we’re pretty much the only otherworldly creatures around.”
“Yeah,” Vlad said with a nod. “Lotta sun in your neck of the woods. Tends to be bothersome with all the bursting into flames and stuff. And also, vampires can’t swim.”
“They can’t?”
Vlad and I both shook our heads. “Nope.”
“Fascinating.”
“I can’t believe whoever sired her left her there. It’s just bad form,” Vlad said, shaking his head.
“Why do you think we’re after her?”
Pike slammed on the brakes and gaped at me. “Wait. We’re risking our lives to take down a snappy little vamp because it’s bad form to leave her?”
“Vampires have a very strict honor code, Pike. There’s a certain social code by which we all must abide in order to function in society.”
Vlad leaned over the seat back. “And also, a single Halfling or vampire left to her own devices can decimate whole towns in a matter of hours.”
Pike stepped on the gas again, though more slowly this time. He looked pale. “Hours? Really?”
Vlad nodded. “Absolutely. I speak from experience.” He broke out in an ear-to-ear grin and chucked me on the shoulder. “Remember that one girl? Three towns and a water park. That little thing was fast. Slipped right through my fingers.”
Pike swallowed and scooched up in his chair a half inch.
“We’re close,” I said.
“Can you sense it or something?” Pike asked.
I held up my phone, Google map illuminated on the face. “Yeah. I can sense it. It’s right here.”
Pike pulled the car to a stop in front of a squat, soot-colored building nearly set right on the curb. I recognized the stop instantly; I had dropped a few of my models there in the past. It was a little hovel in an ancient building that rented solely to artists and models. The place was run-down, with threadbare carpets and a single, broken-down cargo elevator. The fading wallpaper was yellow with nicotine stains, and the scent of cigarette smoke was as much a part of the scenery as anything else. Mail was strewn around the front hallway, a litany of fat, glossy fashion magazines, overdue bills, and tear sheets.
I glanced down at my phone. “She’s on the second floor.”
We walked up the stairs single file and stopped in front of Wendi’s door.
“What do we do?” Pike asked. “Do we just knock, like, ‘hello, we’re here to rightfully kill you’ or something?”
Vlad drew a ridiculously long arrow from his quiver and fumbled it against his bow.
“You’re both a bunch of asshats. Let me do the talking.”
I knocked and waited, running through possible introductory lines in my head: “Hey, Wendi, sorry about the firing yesterday, and by the way, you’re a little too undead for my taste. Please present your chest so that my idiot nephew can drive a wooden stake through it.”
It was as good as anything else I could come up with.
“Hello?”
The voice was small and meek and coming from behind us. We turned as the strange motley crew that we were and stared down the speaker. She was tiny, five foot one at best, with ink black hair that fell into enormous deep-set green eyes. They were trimmed with enviably long lashes and wh
en she blinked, she looked even more innocently sweet, like a Disney character ready to burst into song or ask us on a quest at any moment.
“Can I help you?”
“Uh, we’re looking for Wendi,” I said. “She lives here, right?”
The girl nodded. “Yeah, she does. I’m her roommate, Celeste.”
Celeste cut directly through us and sank her key into the lock. We followed her into the house. “Wendi? Some people are here for you.”
“I’m her boss, actually, Nina LaShay.” I offered a hand. “Well, I was her boss. And these are Pike, our photographer and”—I narrowed my eyes at Vlad, who swung his quiver and bow behind him—“Robin Hood.”
Vlad was so adept at slipping into glamours—and he did have the uncanny ability to make mere mortal girls swoon with just the ruffle of his ascot even without the glamour. Whatever it was, it was working on Celeste, and her eyes inched open even wider before her lips pressed together into a tiny heart shape.
“It doesn’t seem like Wendi is here,” I said, stepping between Vlad and Celeste and breaking the spell.
Celeste frowned. “She should be. She called me twenty minutes ago and said she was waiting here for me.”
A protective instinct washed over me. Celeste was small enough to crush with my pinkie, and those leaf-green eyes were so warm and trusting. I knew why Wendi wanted Celeste to come to her, and I knew the second she sucked the life out of those wide green eyes that Wendi would turn into something darker, something awful . . . something that lies at the pit of us all: evil. New evil, evil sucked from innocence, is deep and unwieldy and cannot be tamed.
It can only be killed.
“You need to get out of here,” Vlad said, and I knew he saw the vulnerability in her as well.
Celeste cocked her head, her eyes genuinely puzzled as she went from Pike to Vlad, and back to me. “No. Wendi is probably just in her bedroom.”
On the Hunt Page 35