by Alice Bello
Lucy smiled and gave Rachel a quick once over. She was dressed rather conservatively, in Laura Ashley of all things. And the thin, lace like sweater she wore covered the gruesomely romantic tattoo she had inked on her wrist.
Then she turned and looked up the stairs behind her, and then back at Lucy. “Didn’t want to wait in line either, huh?”
Lucy grinned and they said their goodbyes as Lucy made her way up the staircase.
Once upstairs Lucy tracked down the empty bedroom Monica had ushered her past before, and with a covert check of the hall—to make sure she was alone—she slipped into the vacant bedroom. She flicked on the lights and was suddenly well aware why Monica had left this off the house tour. The bedroom was dinky. That would be two strikes against the house: an inadequate kitchen, and very small bedrooms. Actually, if she wasn’t mistaken, her little room at her Gram’s house was bigger than this room.
She shook her head as she ventured further into the room. There were two doors off to the right. One she opened and found a spacious closet. Okay, that was a nice surprise. Not that it made up for the tiny bedroom.
And then she opened the other door and walked into a bathroom nearly as large as the bedroom had been. All done in polished black tile, with a walk-in shower, a gleaming new toilet with a privacy wall in matching black tile, and a large porcelain sink with a spacious countertop. Above all that was a nearly wall length mirror.
She gasped at how wonderful she looked in that mirror. She hadn’t really been checking herself out too much, since she was so busy with wedding details, her family, and getting ready to start college. Not to mention all the training she’d been going through with Micah...
Regrettably, though, she couldn’t lump spending time with her fiancé as a reason she hadn’t had time to really look at herself.
She has lost the five pounds of McDonald’s fat she’d gained, and had some nice lean muscles she had never had before, making her look even more graceful and strong.
Elegant, she thought. She looked elegant.
She grabbed a tissue from a box on the counter and dabbed under her eyes. They had been moist, but her mascara had held up perfectly. Another find Elaina had shown her on one of their shopping dates. She would need to stock up on it before the wedding. She didn’t know what she’d be feeling on that day, but she knew she didn’t want a single picture snapped of her with raccoon eyes.
She felt the air pressure in the room change, and she looked up to see the door to the bathroom opening but no one was there. She turned and felt the bottom fall out of her stomach as she saw the cool and collected young woman who’d signed her in at the front door moving quietly into the room, closing the door behind her.
Lucy couldn’t feel it, which was frightening enough, but there was only one thing that didn’t cast a reflection.
A vampire.
Lucy gulped and forced herself to breathe. She then reached to her left arm to pull her dagger from its magically concealed sheath. But damn it, it wasn’t there. It was back home on her dresser, exactly where she couldn’t use it.
The vampire smiled, showing fang, and walked a few paces into the room.
“Angela, isn’t it?” Lucy backed up against the sink and looked around her for anything she could use as a weapon against a vampire. There wasn’t even a freaking plunger sitting in the corner by the toilet. Guess the girls in this house kept it in a closet in the hall... or called someone to unclog their toilet every couple of days.
“I’m touched.” She brought her hand delicately to her chest. “The great Lucy Hart remembered my name.”
Lucy grimaced. She sounded pissed off... at Lucy personally. “I try.”
“Now don’t get me wrong,” Angela said, treading closer. “You would have been quite the catch for our sorority. I mean, you were going to marry into the Enoch family dynasty.”
Lucy really didn’t like the way she was talking in the past tense.
She licked her lips hungrily. “But a girl’s got to make a living... ”
“I didn’t feel you... and I can usually feel a vampire.”
Angela nodded. “I’d heard that. So I had this kooky shaman I know make me this little talisman.” She ran a pale finger over a small golden pin in a strange shape. “He said it would dampen your powers... guess it was worth the price tag.”
She smiled again, and then flew across the room at Lucy with that unearthly vampire speed they all had, her hands out like claws, and her open mouth full of fangs and ready to sink into Lucy’s throat.
But she fell against the bathroom counter—making a disbelieving shriek that Lucy wasn’t in her clutches.
Lucy was feeling a little disbelieving too as she moved toward the walk-in shower, putting as much distance between them as possible.
Angela stood up straight and patted some hair back into place that had come out of place . “How did you do that?”
Lucy shrugged, feeling her heart racing inside her chest. How did I do that?
And then for a second she flashed back to kicking Micah’s ass earlier that week.
Vin...
Angela mimicked Lucy’s shrug and leapt at her again, this time faking to the left, and getting hold of her arm as Lucy tried to evade her. Her grip was bone crushing, and Lucy yelped. But then something flashed through her mind, and her body just seemed to know what to do. She moved into the vampire, hit her in the throat with her free elbow, and then head butted her.
The vampire fell back into the shower door, glass shattering as she fell through and landed on the tile floor. Her tidy hairdo was coming undone, but she looked absolutely ravishing in the glittering shattered glass that clung to nearly every inch of her.
Angela’s face shot up and her eyes lit on Lucy, a flash of glowing red making them anything but human... and pretty pissed off looking.
Lucy lunged for the door leading out to the adjoining bedroom. She was just about to the closed bedroom door when a grisly, bloodcurdling scream rose from behind her, a mere instant before the vampire crashed into her.
They both hit the wooden door with amazing force... the thing didn’t stand a chance. Before Lucy knew it she and the vampire were rolling over the carpeting of the hallway, broken pieces of door raining down around them.
There was a gasp from the right, and Lucy saw that fetish-store Rachel was standing only two doors down, a couple of glasses of punch in her hands. Her eyes were wide as she looked down on Lucy.
“What’s going on?” she said as she set the cups of punch on a tasteful marble-topped stand.
Lucy couldn’t just say, I’m fighting for my life with a vampire, so she said, “What are you doing up here again?” It probably sounded like she was being beaten with a club while she said it, but that wasn’t far from the truth as Angela the vampire bludgeoned Lucy with the back of her undead hand.
She wasn’t a full blooded vampire—thank god. Delia had been born one, so when she’d hit Lucy it had all but knocked her out each time. Angela had been all too recently turned. But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt like hell.
Rachel shook her head. “I thought you could use a drink. Do you need some help?”
Yes. “Nah, I’ve got this.” Lucy somehow got her leg bent up in front of her and with a good deal of effort kicked the vampire across the hall, where she rolled and sprang to her feet with disturbing speed.
Lucy’s eyes lit on a nicely cracked piece of wood on the floor by Rachel’s feet. It would be perfect for something like staking the vampire bitch in front of her.
But before she could crawl over to it, or even move to stand up again, Angela jumped Jackie Chan style at her and had Lucy pinned to the floor, the vampire’s hands wrapped around her throat.
Oh, this isn’t good.
She tried the thing Micah had showed her last week. She swept her right arm from left to right... but Angela was stony hard with pissed off vampire strength. So she reverted to chick fight kung fu, grabbed a handful of hair, pulling the vamp's head ba
ck with all her strength, and then unceremoniously jabbed at her eyes with the two first fingers of her other hand.
Angela howled in agony. Lucy had missed one eye by a fraction of an inch, but her middle finger went up to her first knuckle in the vampire’s right eye.
Gross.
Gooey.
But most of all, effective. The vamp's grip on Lucy’s throat eased. The vamp rolled away from her.
“Something wood!” Lucy gasped at Rachel. But with all her hacking and sucking in air it didn’t sound much like English. Rachel’s wide eyed expression said so.
“Wood!” Lucy choked out, just as Angela gained her feet, one hand held to her oozing eye socket, the other holding a six inch dagger. Just seeing the thing made Lucy’s body tighten. She didn’t like knives, at least not when they were being used on her. They had a way of causing damage that was practically impossible to heal... well, before you died of massive internal bleeding.
Ironically, she hadn’t yearned for her own faerie made blade more. Her palm practically itched for it.
“Lucy!” Rachel called out, and she looked up to see Rachel throwing her something from where she stood.
Lucy reached up and caught it, and then stared in bewilderment at what was in her hand.
Instead of throwing Lucy the nice, sharp shard of broken door that was at her feet, she’d pulled the wooden Betty Croker second place spoon from the wall, replete with a pretty, frilly pink Breast Cancer ribbon on it.
Angela screamed, Lucy gulped, and turned the pointed, though not remotely sharp handle of the spoon in Angela’s direction, just as the vampire took to the air. Angela was smiling, with one slimy eye sagging from its socket, her fangs fully extended as she flew through the air to land on Lucy. The dagger held ready in her hand to stab Lucy.
But Lucy brought her legs up, and held the damn spoon up as well. Her outstretched legs caught most of Angela’s weight, as the spoon luckily sunk right into the vampire’s chest. Lucy wasn’t sure if she’d hit the heart. Angela had stopped screaming and her face was frozen in a sort of seizure.
Lucy bent her legs and then with all her newfound borrowed strength, catapulted Angela off her. The vampire crashed through the railing of the hallway and fell to the foyer below.
With amazing speed Lucy leapt to her feet and made it to the hole in the balustrade Angela had made, just in time to see the vampire hit the nametag strewn folding table she’d been stationed at beforehand.
There was a collective screech from the assembled debutantes, and each and every one of them moved a big step back as they got a gander at the bloodied and battered Angela... with a wooden spoon sticking out of her chest.
As if on cue Angela’s vampire body just fell to ashy pieces. In less than three seconds it wasted away to a mere pile of dust, one that wafted off the broken table top like sands across the desert, leaving only the table and the wooden spoon behind.
There was some frightened murmuring, and some shaking heads... and then Monica and her entourage appeared.
She looked over the scene of the broken table... her eyes flaring when she saw her prized cook off spoon—it had broken somewhere inside Angela’s chest, and now lay there looking like the symbol on the arrow key of a keyboard.
And then she looked at Lucy as she stood at the broken railing of the second floor.
Rachel came up and handed Lucy the glass of punch she’s gotten her. “I think you need this after all that,” she said with an odd calm.
Lucy shot her eyes over and down to the glaring president of the sorority. “I don’t think I’m going to be inducted, rich fiancé or no.”
Rachel smiled. “I don’t think so either.”
They both smiled and turned to Monica, and then raised their glasses in salute.
“Thanks for the invite,” Rachel said through her laughter. “It was a blast.”
Chapter 7
Lucy had to laugh. It was all too ridiculous. Just when her life was coming back together, as she’d wanted it, as it was supposed to, then suddenly a new threat was actively trying to kill her.
Ridiculous.
But god help her, she was starting to get used to it. The first time something supernatural tried to take a bite out of her—Delia—she’d been rattled, but had kept her eye on the prize: she’d renegotiated her contract with the Enoch family to include hazard pay.
And then there was the first time something supernatural nearly killed her—again, Delia—and that time she’d taken the evil bitch out herself... but would have died from the blood loss she’d already suffered. Heck, she might have died as soon as she lost consciousness all together. Who knew if her necromancy powers would hold up when she was truly, completely knocked out?
But they hadn’t, and Delia, though she’d be a great prime suspect, was still in a coma that Lucy had magically thrown her into.
And, anyway, Delia would want to rip her apart by hand, not send assassins to do the job for her.
For some reason, even with all these thoughts whirling uncontrolled in her head, Lucy felt perfectly calm as she sipped her glass of punch and walked sedately beside her new sister in arms—Rachel from the fetish emporium.
“I don’t think either of us are getting into this sorority,” Lucy said as they walked shoulder to shoulder down the grand staircase. Monica was still glaring at them with undisguised hatred.
“You think?” Rachel giggled and gave Monica a little wave. “I wasn’t really a prospect anyway, but they like inviting non-prospective girls just so they can break their itty-bitty hearts.” She sighed dramatically. “Anyway... Monica hates me. We go back a couple years.”
“Same high school?”
She shook her head. “Same boyfriend.”
Lucy stopped and stared, her mouth falling open. “You two share the same...” It was just too icky to say out loud. Funny, since for a while she was sharing her now fiancé with another woman... well, a blonde, homicidal vampire.
“Gross... ” Rachel shuddered. “No. My boyfriend, David... well, he’s actually now my,” and she held up her hand to show the most amazingly brilliant red ruby with tiny diamonds around it, “he’s now my fiancé.”
“Congrats,” she said and meant it. “They’re all the rage in accessories this season.”
That got another giggle out of Rachel. Lucy looked at her and had to kind of look up. She was not only skinny but tall. She could’ve been a supermodel.
“So, David used to be Monica’s boyfriend... back when they were in high school.” Rachel shivered. “But then we met at church—”
Lucy’s jaw dropped again. “Church?”
A little frown made Rachel’s eyebrows bunch up. “Yes, I go to church every Sunday. Why wouldn’t I?” she said, as if she’d had to say it over and over, and it was starting to fray at her.
“I’m sorry, I just assumed. And you know what that does...” Lucy wriggled her eyebrows, trying to lighten the mood.
Rachel’s brows evened out and she took in a deep breath and let it out. “Sorry. I get a lot of flack sometimes. People don’t think someone who dresses and looks the way I do should be or would ever be going to church. But I’m the daughter of a Baptist minister, so of course I go.”
Lucy nodded. “Oh,”
“No,” she said and steered up toward the door. “I don’t go because I’m obligated by family. I really do believe in God, the almighty... I just believe in a bunch of other stuff too.”
Lucy silently wished she believed in anything like that. She would love to believe deep down that there was a higher power looking over her, keeping her safe...
But she just couldn’t.
“What I don’t get is why everyone’s so calm,” Rachel said, looking around. “I mean, everyone just saw a freaking vampire get staked and turn to dust, and no one seems fazed by it.”
Lucy shrugged. “Most normals can see something, and since their minds can’t or don’t want to process it, that memory can just be altered and explained away... like
they never even saw it... especially when the evidence turns to dust.”
“Oh... ”
Lucy was about to ask Rachel a profound metaphysical question that would probably change her entire outlook on life... but that was when the werewolf barged in through the front door.
He wasn’t in his wolf form, but Lucy knew him on sight. It was Paul, the were that Micah had been flirting with right before she’d kicked him across the room the other day.
He suddenly halted and stared at Lucy for a moment, and then tried to pass himself off with a casual, “What’s up?” And smiled.
“What are you doing here?” Lucy asked.
He suddenly became very uncomfortable looking. “I... well, I was just... ”
“Rushing the sorority?”
He turned bright red, quite a feat for someone so very naturally tanned. “Umm... no, I was... ”
Lucy leveled him with her best 'Queen Bitch, don’t bullshit me' glower. “Gabriel sent you to watch me, didn’t he?”
“Oh, no... no I was just... ”
“And he told you to keep out of sight too, huh?”
“No... not at all... ”
“You’re a rotten liar, Paul. I’d refrain from it from now on—it can mess with your complexion.”
Paul sighed in defeat.
“My man can be a little stupid sometimes,” she said to Rachel. “He sends a bodyguard, but makes him ineffective by telling him to stay hidden.”
Rachel giggled.
Paul turned redder.
And Monica sashayed up to our little trio with an indignant air. She tossed her long, shiny hair over her shoulder—Lucy cringed. She used to be so good at that.
“You all need to leave before I call the police.”
Lucy didn’t like her tone, so she decided to give her a little mean bitch right back. “Go ahead. I’m sure they’d love to see under aged girls drinking alcohol.”
Monica’s expression tightened, but she didn’t back down. Lucy had to give her credit; she was tougher than she’d thought.