by Laken Cane
When she sagged against her car, he held her there effortlessly and put his face level with hers. “I am dying.” And in his eyes was such agony and hopelessness that she had to look away.
“What can I do?” Her words came out thick and garbled. “I can’t…” She realized her palms were against his cold, hard chest, bloodless and dry and dead like the cat she’d been given in anatomy class to dissect. She snatched her hands from his body and rubbed them on her coat. “I mean…”
The vampire slid to the ground, his head hitting the car with a painful-sounding thump.
She should have bolted. She knew she should have. But she’d always been a soft touch, a romantic, a bleeding heart. And she wanted to save her very first vampire.
He was a vampire, and he was asking her for help.
It wasn’t his fault he wasn’t human.
She didn’t like seeing anyone mistreated or in pain—not even vampires, apparently.
As injured as he was, he’d be almost human slow. Human sick. He couldn’t hurt her.
His damage was too severe.
He sat on the cold, wet pavement, and for a brief second, the light blinked and went out of his dark eyes. Then it was back, dimly, and he smiled. “Shall I live, or shall I die?”
Her choice. Her decision.
Or maybe he wasn’t even asking her. Maybe he was asking himself.
She pulled away from him, and he didn’t try to stop her. He dropped his head and sighed, his hand to his chest.
She shut off the engine, then slammed the door shut, her heart hammering. She pulled her cell phone from her pocket.
Maybe she should have rushed back into her sister’s house, called the police, and watched from behind the safety of the window glass as he was hauled away.
But she didn’t. “Linda,” she said, urgently, when her sister answered. “I need help.”
Immediate panic lit her sister’s voice. “What’s wrong? Where are you?”
“I’m outside. There’s a…a very injured vampire at my car. He needs our help.”
“Oh my God,” Linda cried, and in the next second, she and everyone else in the house came pouring through the doorway.
“Trin,” Linda yelled. “Trin!”
“I’m here.” Trinity let her coat slide from her shoulders and handed it to the vampire. “Put this on. We’ll help you.”
She caught sight of her sister’s pale face and wide eyes as her family, stuffed full of Thanksgiving food, milled around her and the downed vampire.
“Linda!” Trinity reached for her sister. “We need help.”
Linda held out her hands but didn’t move forward. “Oh my God, Trin! What’s happening?”
“He’s…” Trinity gestured helplessly at the vampire. “He’s badly hurt.”
They all stood frozen, for one heartbeat, then Derek yanked his cell from his pocket. “Chad, get my gun. Bedroom closet. Top shelf. I’m calling the cops.”
“No,” she cried. “You can’t.”
Derek narrowed his eyes. “Why not, Trin?”
“They’ll kill him. You know they will. He’s too injured to hurt anyone. We have to help him.”
The vampire shivered, clutched his stomach, and then a low, tormented growl slid past his cracked lips.
He opened his mouth, deliberately showing them his fangs, which were once again elongating and then retracting, over and over, with a small clicking sound like they were popping through thick plastic.
“Trinity,” Linda yelled, “Get in the house. Get in the house!”
Derek grabbed Linda’s arm and stepped back. “I’m calling the fucking cops.” And once more, he lifted his phone.
“Wait,” Trinity begged, as it all began to spin out of control. “Just wait.”
But fear spread through them like a fire that had caught the curtains. Panic followed. The littler kids began to cry and their mothers snatched them up and backed away, some turning to run for the house.
Trinity put her cold hands to her hot cheeks, then turned to the vampire she’d tried to save. “We should go. I’ll drive you somewhere safe.” She put her hand on his arm. “Please. Come with me.”
He turned his head slowly to look at her, silent.
Chad returned with the gun, and when he hesitated, Derek yanked the weapon from his grip and turned it on the vampire. “In the house,” he told his family. “Get in the house. Now.”
The vampire smiled, and that smile shocked Trinity to her toes. It wasn’t the smile of an injured man needing sanctuary. It was the smile of madness. It was the smile of hunger.
Derek pulled the trigger and the bullet ripped through the vampire’s head. He didn’t appear to notice as half his face was blown off.
“I made a mistake,” she realized.
“I’m afraid so,” the vampire said gently, and suddenly he wasn’t the only vampire there.
As though he’d silently beckoned them, dozens of vampires, reeking of death and disease, raced from the shadows. And they went after her family.
“Hungry,” one of them screamed. “So hungry!”
Her family shrieked and scattered, but it was too late.
He and his vampires killed them. Killed them all.
Except for her.
She lay seizing on the street, blood spilling from dozens of bites, and as police sirens screamed through the night, he slipped away, leaving her alive.
And that was his mistake.
Part One
Chapter One
Amias Sato landed on the hood of my car with a violent unexpectedness that jerked a startled scream from me two seconds before I leapt from the car and went after him.
Despite the pain the attempt would cause me, I went after him.
I held a stake in either hand, barely aware I’d pulled them from my belt. Amias slipped away, so fast, like dark water sliding through my desperate grip.
I caught a glimpse of his eyes before he disappeared into the night. Eyes as familiar to me as my own. I saw them every night in my dreams.
My nightmares.
The hatred and the desire to kill him twisted with physical pain and became almost too much for me. I pushed the stakes against my stomach, moaning. One of these nights, those overwhelming emotions would split me wide open. I could feel it.
“Trinity.” I felt the breath from his whisper on my naked neck and I whirled, striking with the sharp pieces of wood. I moved fast, but not faster than the vampire who tormented me.
Amias was a master, and he was fast.
That didn’t stop me from trying to kill him. It never would. I’d stop trying when I was handed my death—which, judging by the pain that ripped through my body when I tried to hurt him, wouldn’t be too long in coming.
“I need you to listen to me,” he said, from the other side of my car.
Once again I whirled, frustrated tears clouding my vision. “Amias,” I screamed.
As though that scream might hold him in place while I ran a stake through his black heart.
I caught a spark of pity in his eyes before he blanked them. “Please, Trinity. Listen to me.”
“Never again,” I swore.
I was ready when he disappeared, and I whirled, stake up, and caught him not in the chest, but in his shoulder.
He looked down, surprised, then met my stare. “Better.” Then he yanked the sharpened stick from his flesh and was gone.
The stake hit the pavement where he’d stood a millisecond earlier, his blood climbing halfway up the wood.
I leaned over with my hands on my knees, trying to breathe through the agony. I’d never been able to physically injure him before, and I was pretty sure it had hurt me more than it had him.
“Ow,” I whispered, waiting for the waves of pain to recede. “Shit, that hurts.”
Heavy footsteps sounded, racing across the parking lot, but I didn’t bother to turn. The footsteps didn’t belong to Amias. He was gone.
“What is it?” Angus Stark roared, racing towa
rd me with a shotgun in his fist. “The fuck is it?”
“Amias was here.” My energy faded with the pain, and I leaned over to retrieve the bloody stake. My voice was as dead as the vampire who’d just left. “You’re too late. He’s gone.”
Angus stood beside me, his head swiveling, eyes narrowed, searching the shadows for a vampire he’d never catch.
None of us would.
I watched, for a few seconds, the strange fog that spread in muted colors and orderly trails close to the ground. The most vivid fog trailed in the direction Amias had just gone. It was a dark blue, swirling with lighter blues and white, and was actually quite beautiful.
No one else ever saw it. When I’d remarked upon it, only once and only to my doctor, all I’d gotten was a worried look and the suggestion that I discuss it with my psychiatrist.
So mostly, I ignored it, and I never spoke of it again. There was something wrong with my mind, or with my eyes, or both.
Half a dozen of the Stark kids gathered around us, smelling of pizza sauce and warmth and innocence. “Are you okay, Trinity?” one of them asked. He was a skinny eight-year-old named Cory. He was trying hard to be brave, scanning the dark like his daddy, his eyes narrow, his small hands curled into fists.
Lydia, Angus’s six-year-old daughter, took my free hand. “You’ll have some pizza,” she decided. “Let’s go in.”
“What’d he say?” Angus continued holding the shotgun in a white-knuckled grip. “What’d he say?” His voice was a low growl and he turned his angry glare on me, as though it were my fault Amias had gotten away.
I wasn’t the only one who wanted a piece of that vampire.
I’d told Angus before that if I got to Amias first, I wasn’t sharing.
“Nothing.” With Lydia still holding my hand, I turned and began walking toward the long office building that held not only Stark’s Pizza, but Bay Town Real Estate, Bay Berry Accountants, Bay Town Daily Times, Clary Sage Coffee, and…
Miriam Crow, necromancer.
The woman who’d introduced me to Bay Town and the nonhumans who lived there. The supernaturals weren’t exactly invited to live in the city with the humans.
“Nothing?” Angus raised an eyebrow.
“He said he needed to talk to me. Told me to listen. That’s all.”
Angus snorted with derision. “Go inside.” He was finished with the conversation. “It’s not safe for a girl out here.”
“I’ve told you to keep your orders and your opinions to yourself, you sexist, condescending bastard,” I said, but mildly. I had bigger, bloodier things to worry about than the chauvinistic bull shifter.
Lydia tugged my hand. “Come in with me.”
“She likes to play with that tea set you gave her.” Angus stared into the distance, after the vampire who’d just fled. “And she likes cookies. Go on in and feed the child.”
“Triny,” the child said, insistently. “Play with me.”
I patted the little girl’s hand, then gave her a gentle push toward the shop. “Not tonight.” She forgot me immediately as she knelt, grabbed a pebble of some sort, and took off after her siblings. “Cory,” she yelled. “I got a rock.”
Angus focused on me, staring down from his great height, his nostrils flaring as though he caught the scent of something that pleased him.
“I work for you, Angus. I make pizzas. I’m not tending your kids.”
He frowned. “What?”
“I said, I’m not tending your kids. That’s your job, and their mothers’, if you can find any of them. Seriously. Birth control. Look into it.”
He flashed a white grin, and his stare dropped to my lips.
I could see what attracted women to him, honestly I could. He was one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen. Not that handsome was really the word for Angus Stark, exactly. He was hot, raw, domineering, loud, and bossy. And every single thing about him screamed sex.
Women threw themselves at him.
He had fourteen children—that I knew of—and one on the way. He adored them all. It was obvious in the way he looked at them, the way he cared for them.
And that was just awesome, but I wanted no part of it.
Their mothers gave them over to Angus’ care because they’d have been unable to raise a shifter baby. Not only were they unequipped to deal with the special needs of a supernatural child, their human community was an inhospitable environment for a nonhuman.
Very inhospitable.
I strode into the pizza shop, Angus at my back. I’d worked for him for five years, and considered myself lucky. I had my reasons for staying at the restaurant. Angus paid well, was lenient, and I loved pizza.
But mostly, I stayed there because no one in Bay Town was human. Well, except for me. I was human, but I was also one of the supernaturals.
I’d been through hell because of a nonhuman, and they understood me. They accepted me. They didn’t look at me like I was a freak.
The Red Valley Thanksgiving Day Massacre had changed me.
Amias Sato’s bite hadn’t killed me, but it had modified something inside me. Now their tricks didn’t seem to work—they couldn’t mesmerize me, and no matter how motionless they stood with their spooky, creepy stillness, I saw them. They couldn’t hide from me.
The attack had taken away my innocence and replaced it with rage.
There was more—I could feel it. I didn’t know what else he might have done to me, but there was more.
And I felt more comfortable in the supernatural community than I did in the human world.
For the most part, humans accepted the supernaturals. The shifters and wolves and other nonhumans who lived in the humans’ world were pretty much allowed to exist without constant persecution—as long as they lived by the rules.
But no one loved the vampires. Most humans shuddered at the very thought of a parasitic monster walking the city. Most supernaturals shuddered at the thought, as well.
Lucky for them, vampires had protections. How else could they survive in a world full of humans? Creepy, mystical protections, like being able to stand so still a human would look right past them and have no idea the bloodsucking monsters were lurking nearby. At least the older vampires had that ability.
But I saw them. And I saw Amias often. He stalked me. His obsession was obvious, but his reasons were murky.
All I wanted was to kill him.
The memories began to break free from the coffins in which I’d buried them, and I hurried through the restaurant, muttering “shit, shit, shit,” under my breath.
“Trin,” Angus called. “Are you all right?”
“Lydia wants tea and cookies,” I snapped. “Go feed her.”
I jogged down the hall to the small bathroom, shut the door, and slid down the wall to sit on the floor. I didn’t turn on the light. I sat with my arms wrapped around my knees, shivering.
Amias had that effect on me. Every time I saw him, I lost control. Still, each interaction left me a little less affected. But I didn’t want to get used to the homicidal bastard.
“Listen to me.”
And then echoes of human screams flashed through my mind.
I put my hands over my ears, which did absolutely no good.
Until I killed Amias, I would never be free, and I would never be forgiven. Maybe that wasn’t logical, but it didn’t matter. That was how I felt.
I had no choice. I had to kill him.
There was, of course, one problem.
I couldn’t kill him.
Stabbing him in the shoulder was the closest I’d gotten to that cold, black heart. I shivered as the remembered pain from that attempt streaked through my body.
I wasn’t sure why it caused me such pain to hurt Amias. He’d attacked me, had nearly killed me, and for some reason that made him off limits. When I hurt him—or even attempted to hurt him, I was brutalized by some unseen, mystical force that had decided it was a bad idea for me to hurt that particular vampire.
The f
act that I’d been able to stick him meant something was wrong. If he’d been alert, I wouldn’t have gotten in the lucky shot.
And that worried me. Things had been good lately. Quiet. I thought maybe I was going to be okay after all.
I didn’t want the vampire showing up out of the blue, trying to talk to me. I saw him lingering in the distance sometimes, or lurking in the shadows of the building in which I lived, or standing in the parking lot at work. I’d race toward him, my stakes out, but when I reached the spot where he’d stood, he was gone. Always.
I knew there were times when I didn’t see him.
He watched me, followed me, stalked me, but he was quiet.
Until tonight.
Finally, I heaved myself off the floor and staggered across to the sink, then turned back to flip on the light switch.
I splashed water on my face, flinching when my wet fingertips touched the scars on my right cheek. I ran my wet hands over my head, dampening my dark, short hair, then washed and dried my hands.
When I walked into the kitchen, I’d successfully buried the memories once more, and it was time to go to work.
Chapter Two
The heat of the kitchen wrapped around me, warming me even as scents of sausage, onions, and tomato sauce made my stomach growl.
Angus’s sixteen-year-old daughter Derry smiled at me. “You want a slice?”
“Yes.” I rubbed my stomach. “Two slices. Onions and bell peppers, please.”
Angus shook his head and sighed.
“What?” I asked. “I’m hungry.”
“I’ll be in my office,” he growled, then stomped away. He was back in ten seconds. “Harlan and Jerome can do deliveries. You stay in tonight. Take the register.”
He knew I hated the register. I shook my head. “I’ll wash dishes. And make pizzas.”
He threw his hands in the air and stomped away once again.
Behind me, Derry snickered. “He doesn’t like when people disobey him.”
“He doesn’t like when women disobey him,” I corrected. “And he’s not the boss of me.”