On the Hunt

by Alexandra Ivy

  “Looks like it might be about time.”

  Pike nodded. “Let’s go.”

  Ruby was throbbing before we even opened the door. It was already packed, the music low but the bass still a chest-thundering thump. Pike pulled open the door and I stepped into the place, immediately wincing at the cacophony of sounds. There were the usual high-pitched squeals of almost-drunken girlfriends swilling cosmopolitans and mango-tinis, the low rumble of men more coifed than I was telling strange women how beautiful or mysterious they were while tinkling the ice in their gin and tonics, the roaring, overbearing laughter of a group of uncomfortable office drinking buddies clinking beer glasses to some success or other. Every sound was intense on its own, but massed together and echoed within the industrial-chic décor—shellacked cement floors bursting with bright swaths of Jackson Pollock-on-crack paint, slabs of reclaimed steel pounded into irregular (and therefore “stylishly upcycled”) bar tables, and walls covered in corrugated steel, polished to a gaudy shine—it was earsplitting.

  My head was aching with the pulse and energy in the bar, and Pike’s cologne—which was faint to everyone else, I suppose—was choking me like I had chugged the entire bottle of eau de-whatever-the-heck-it-was. I pressed the back of my hand up against my nose, doing my best to blot out the cologne, the comingled scents of human bodies, and the acrid smells of mixed spirits and hops. It wasn’t working as Pike leaned into me, wiped a tear from the edge of my eye, and held it on his thumb.

  “Your eyes are watering.”

  I blinked furiously and worked to paste on a dazzling, this-is-my-kind-of-place smile. “I’m fine.”

  Pike put his hand on the small of my back, the vibration of his living, breathing warmth sending delicious little shock waves all the way through me—so much so that I forgot for a brief moment that we were on a reconnaissance mission. I wanted to slump into him, to curl up and listen to the sure, steady beat of his heart and nothing else. When his fingers walked down my spine and reached the few inches of bare skin underneath my filmy blouse, the hot versus cold, him versus me, living versus dead was almost too much to bear. I bit my lip, the edge of my fang digging into my own flesh, a blossom of blood sliding onto my tongue. My knees weakened.

  The high-pitched squeal of a female patron pulling a hideously shiny pink negligee from a gift bag snapped me back into unfortunate reality.

  “This can’t be the right place.”

  I strode into the bar, careful to leave a slight distance between my bare skin and Pike’s oozing sex appeal, and took a seat in front of the polished wood. Pike plopped down next to me and scanned the place, then leaned into me.

  “How can you tell which ones are”—his eyes flashed and he dropped his voice—“vampires?”

  I arched an eyebrow. “You just know.”

  He held my gaze a beat before nodding, a knowing smile cutting across his face. “Oh, like vamp-dar or something?”

  My nostrils flared, a little bubble of annoyance welling up inside me. “Something like that.”

  “Well, which ones are they, then?”

  I did another precursory scan and frowned. “None of them. Well, that girl over there.” I jutted my chin toward a chubby girl sitting next to the bachelorette with the negligee. “She’s not a vampire per se, but she’s definitely dead. Well, undead.”

  Pike’s honey brown skin paled slightly, his lips pulling down at the corners. “She’s dead.”

  “Undead,” I corrected, narrowing my eyes. “She’s—” Knowing, like a stone hot and heavy, sank in my gut. My saliva soured. “She’s Nephilim. A half-breed. No good.”

  “What’s a Nephilim? Are they water-based?”

  “Water-based? Pike, we’re on land. In a bar.”

  He cocked an eyebrow and I could see a hint of amusement playing at the corners of his mouth. “Manhattan is an island. And this is a wet bar.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Nephilim. Neptune? Aren’t they from the same . . . phylum or whatever?”

  “Okay, quick little lesson. Neptune is the god of the sea. He’s also not real. Nephilim, superbad eggs. No relation even though they sound the same.”

  Pike held up both of his hands and blew out a sigh. “Sorry, I didn’t read my latest edition of Mythical Creatures Monthly. But at least I’m trying.”

  “Are you implying that I’m not?”

  “I’m implying that you’ve been biting my head off for the last day and a half. I don’t have to be here, you know. No supermodels dropped dead, then came back to life again on my watch.”

  Pike took a few steps back, and that was all it took for the crowd to part, then swallow him whole. I was annoyed and angry—and frankly, a little scared. I hadn’t gone up against a newbie vampire in thirty years, and I hadn’t been on my own in even longer. Now here I was, about to come face-to-face with a wild-eyed predator, and Vlad was with Celeste and Pike was done with me. It was just me and my haute couture.

  Maybe next season I could create a lovely line of bejeweled wooden stakes.

  “Pike, wait!” I cut through the crowd and got to Pike just as he slipped out the front door. I stepped out after him and was immediately surprised at the quick drop in temperature.

  “Hey, I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t—I’m not usually so jumpy or short-tempered . . . anymore.”

  “I get it—a little. You’re after someone who could, according to you, tear your throat out and/or decimate this entire island in a single episode of American Idol. That’s a little scary.”

  I looked down at my shoes on the damp concrete. “It’s not just that.”

  Pike took a step closer to me and I could feel the live heat wafting from his body. “What else?”

  My tongue flicked over the point of one of my fangs. “Look, vampires—we—we’re not great with emotion. Feelings, you know.”

  Pike’s eyebrows went up. “And you have feelings?”

  Suddenly I was a step closer to him. I wasn’t sure if I closed the distance or if he did. “I do.”

  “About what?”

  “Whom,” I corrected. “About whom.”

  “Me?” He seemed genuinely surprised, and it endeared me to him even more.

  Until he kind of snort-laughed that “as if” expression.

  “What was that?”

  “You have feelings for me?”

  I looked away. “Maybe.”

  “And that’s the way vampires show their affection for someone? They treat them like shit, constantly bite off their heads?”

  I narrowed my eyes, crossing my arms in front of my chest. “No,” I deadpanned. “Usually we bite. Now let’s go get Wendi.”

  Chapter Five

  I went back into Ruby, my head a tumbling fog of vampire-in-love, vampire-annoyed-with-love, and vampire-hunting-vampire. I was honest when I told Pike that we vampires aren’t great with emotion. We’re spectacular at hunger and thirst; but love, longing, need? Not really our bag. It had taken me just over a hundred years to recognize that I still had the ability to consider love—or need.

  We found a spot at the bar.

  “Can I get you two anything?” A hipster bartender with a shoulder span the size of my left foot stood in front of us looking uninterested.

  “What are your specials?” Pike asked with a wide, annoying grin.

  “Kumquat Manhattan. Vodka martini with fresh stinging nettles.”

  Pike swung his head back to me. “Stinging nettles? You still think this is the wrong place?”

  “We’re looking for something else,” I said, my gaze intense. “Something with a little more energy. Something that’ll make my friend and I here feel”—I dragged my tongue slowly across my lower lip—“alive.”

  I could feel my glamour—the little something extra that we vampires have when we need to get our way—begin to work on the bartender. His shoulders relaxed slightly as he leaned in toward me. The unaffected expression was gone, the dull look in his eyes vacated and replaced by a mesmerized
spark that shone behind his glasses.

  “Alive?” His eyebrows went up over the thick black frames of his glasses, his lips rolling over and over the word as though tasting it for the first time. “Alive.”

  Pike thumped my shoulder with the back of his knuckles as though we were childhood chums—it irked me—but I followed the jut of his chin as he aimed it toward the clutch of bachelorettes. The chubby one was excusing herself; she had a stiff British accent.

  “She’s probably going for a pee,” I hissed at Pike, then swiveled back to my bartender, who looked like his bones had suddenly gone oozy and soft. “So, do you have some information for me?” I pasted on my most beguiling smile and the bartender smiled back, his lips looking cartoonish and plastic with puppy-dog love.

  “I can make you a Bloody Mary.”

  I fisted my hands, about ready to fly over the stupid steel bar and shake the hipster like a rag doll when Pike’s hand closed around my arm, tugging me from the bar stool and steadying me in my Via Spigas.

  “Come on,” he said, his voice throaty against my ear.

  I straightened, letting the reverberation of his voice thunder through my every vein. It was a sexy, delicious feeling but not quite enough to quell my annoyance.

  “What are we—?”

  But Pike had already threaded an arm around my waist and practically had my feet off the ground as he strong-armed me, commandeering a path through the crowd of beautiful people as we followed the chubby Brit.

  She walked as though she knew the place but avoided eye contact with every head that swung to take her in. Her chin was hitched and she walked with purpose, cutting down a hall that led to the restrooms. I shook myself loose from Pike. “See? She’s going to the bathroom.”

  Pike’s eagle-eyed expression didn’t change and he gave me yet another soft shove forward. “Follow her.”

  I whirled in a huff and stomped down the soggy-carpeted hallway, coming up just against the girl’s shoulder as she slowed in front of the ladies’ room. She turned to face me, trying to act casual, trying to paste on one of those “ladies always have to pee, huh?” kinds of expressions.

  “After you,” I said pleasantly.

  Her smile was staid. “I insist.”

  “I don’t actually have to use the loo,” I said, my voice conspiratorial, low. “I was just going to fix up my makeup.”

  As a vampire, it is always easy for me to tell the “others” in the room, both because of a sort of unspoken language that we all speak—darting eyes, slight glances that result in one of us suddenly mimicking the action of a breather in the room, or because of the smell.

  Everything has a smell.

  As I mentioned previously, breathers stink of everything from general body odor to bitter coffee, and everything in between—Tide, shampoo, high-end cologne, fear, stale noodles, fried onions, wanton sex appeal (à la Pike). Non-breathers have their scents, too: Werewolves smell like wet dog even in the driest climates, zombies reek of moist soil and rotting flesh (a huge reason why vampires and zombies are rarely, if ever, in closed quarters together). Succubi smell like a three-day-old sex shop and buttered popcorn, and your run-of-the-mill Wiccan or witch always smells like a mishmash of herbs and citrus rinds. But the Nephilim have absolutely no scent.

  They do, however, have the same uncanny ability to spot the undead.

  The chubby girl licked her waxy lips and her friendly smile slid into a smirk. “Care to borrow my mirror?”

  We held each other’s gazes for what seemed like a millennium until Pike clattered down the hall and cleared his throat loudly.

  “So, everything straightened out?”

  The Nephilim’s eyes widened as she took Pike in; I could see the light in her eyes change to something hard and dark and seductive as she undoubtedly peeled off his clothes in her mind.

  “My name’s Liv,” she said, offering Pike a hand.

  I stepped between the two, arms crossed in front of my chest, our little dance of the undead suddenly tiresome.

  “Where’s the real club?”

  “Club?” Liv’s eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Look, Liv, I don’t care what your deal is, but the two of us”—I thumbed to Pike and myself—“are just looking to get out of heartbeat alley before something goes”—I licked my lips, making certain that she could see the hard edge of one of my fangs—“wrong.”

  “Wouldn’t have pegged you for the type to care,” she said, cocking out one hip.

  “I don’t. But if my stomach keeps growling like it is, I just might rip the throats out of your little bachelorette party, and I have a feeling that no one, not even you, wants that.”

  Liv’s eyes flashed back to the booth where the girls were seated. She seemed to consider their demise by vampire for a second before relenting with an annoyed sigh. “Follow me.”

  I turned to Pike, who offered me an impressed smile. We followed Liv through a door marked Employees Only and then down another dark hall. I felt Pike quicken his step so that his chest was pressed against my back, one hand clapped protectively over my hip bone. I had only a half second to enjoy the sensation before Liv pushed open a door to the “real” club.

  She glanced over her shoulder at us. “You’re on your own, kids.” Then she disappeared into the throbbing vortex of low lights and black leather.

  “Ugh,” I groaned, edging my way through a team of vampires trussed up in latex like sexy turkeys. “So stereotypical.”

  “So what are we looking for in here exactly?” Pike asked, yelling over the music.

  My eyes were scanning the crowd, and I guess Pike didn’t think I heard him. He stepped closer still, now his belt buckle pressing into the small of my back, his stiff angles fitting into my curves. Electricity shot up the back of my neck and it was like every hair on my head was standing on end as static crackled through my mind. I felt alive, tip to tail, sex and need pulsing through me as Pike’s warm breath broke over the back of my neck.

  “What are we supposed to do here?” Pike said again, this time his voice low and throaty as his lips traced my ear.

  “Blend in. Listen. Look for Wendi. If she’s not here”—I glanced around, taking in the scene of beautiful people and thinking back to the disheveled Wendi, her face stained red—“which I don’t think she is, someone will be talking. Someone will know there is a new vamp in town.”

  Pike nodded, his eyes scanning the crowd.

  Sex hung in the air and everyone in the club moved together like one single throbbing body, pulsing and grinding and gripping, eyes closed, faces obscured by the low light. Someone thumped against me and Pike’s arm was there again, snaking in front of me, pulling me into him protectively.

  His hand tightened on my hip, pulling me closer, now grinding his pelvis against my backside, either out of necessity or desire, I couldn’t be sure—nor did I care. The sensation was so tantalizing, like Eve with the apple, and every inch of me wanted to forget these supermodels and disappear into Pike, let him swallow me whole. He used a rough hand to push my hair away from my neck and his lips were there again, slightly moist, his breath breaking in little sexy bursts against my ice-cold skin.

  “I know we’re technically on a stakeout, but damn, there ain’t a girl in here that I’d rather be with.”

  His voice slid through me like melted chocolate and I was humming, the music pulsing through my empty chest.

  “Is that so?”

  I leaned back against him, moving slowly with the music, and Pike growled, the sound reverberating through my skull. His other hand traced its way down my arm, his fingers lacing through mine, and I was thrust back to Paris, to Luc, to the way we lay, bodies intertwined as we waited for night to fall, as we waited to assuage our hunger. The image shook me from loving the feel of Pike’s body against me and I stumbled forward, breaking the spell.

  “I’m going to the bar.”

  I could see Pike in the mirror b
ehind the bar; he was one of the few people that had a reflection and his face was drawn, confused for a brief second while he looked after me. I didn’t look back—though it took all my willpower—and what seemed like a lifetime later Pike slunk into the shadows, hugging the soft velvety walls, scanning the crowd.

  “Highball of O-Neg, please,” I said to the bartender.

  She looked me up and down, her dark eyes made darker by the heavy cat’s-eye makeup she wore. Like mine, her skin was milky pale, and she was corseted into a red damask bustier that brought her boobs to her chin.

  “Haven’t seen you here before.”

  I sat down. “I’m new.”

  She poured my drink and slid it to me. “How new?”

  “Just to the area,” I said, palming my highball glass. “You get a lot of newbies around here?”

  The bartender studied me and I could tell she was considering how much to tell. “Not really. If so, they show up with regulars.”

  I took a casual sip, the liquid warm as it went down my throat. Just the smallest bit was like swallowing a light that ran through every inch of me. “Anyone interesting?”

  She leaned in, a grin slicing across her face and exposing her fangs. “Honey, we’re all interesting. I’m Kat.”

  “Nina.”

  “What are you after, Nina?”

  “I’m looking for a newbie. Made. Or the one that made her.” Kat’s eyes darkened. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  I was about to answer when I felt Pike’s hand close around my arm. “We’ve got to go,” he whispered.

  “I’m talking to Kat.”

  He swiveled me on the bar stool until I was facing him. His eyes were set hard, his lips pressed in a thin line. Without taking his eyes off mine, he slapped a few dollars down next to my drink and said, “Now.”

  We were on the sidewalk in record time, but it took another minute or so for the din of music and conversation to die down in my head. “What’s going on?”

  Pike still held my arm and was nearly dragging me along with him. I snatched my arm away. “What?”