With his good hand, the vampire whipped a switchblade out of his pocket, flicked it open, and swung in a wide arc at Riddick’s face.
He loosened his hold on the vampire when the knife blade glanced across his cheekbone. Irritated, Riddick swiped his sleeve over the cut. Great. Head and face wounds bled like a sonofabitch. He’d look like an unfortunate extra in a Tarantino film in a few minutes, all because of a lucky shot that probably didn’t even need stitches.
The vampire’s nostrils flared and his pupils dilated. Huh. So maybe he was just really hungry instead of completely clueless, Riddick thought. Again, not that it really mattered.
Sorry, mosquito. I’m not on the menu tonight.
This time when the guy came at him—one-handed, because he was cradling his broken hand against his stomach like a sissy—Riddick dropped to the ground and swept the vamp’s leg out from under him, knocking him flat on his back. Too bad vampires didn’t breathe, because a hit like that would’ve knocked the air right out of his lungs.
The vampire dropped his knife when he hit the ground and rolled over to make a grab for it, but Riddick swatted it neatly out his reach. Pressing a knee into the vampire’s spine with enough force that he felt the bones shift, he pulled a couple of zip ties out of his pocket and cuffed his hands.
All in all, the whole thing was over way too quickly to even take the edge off Riddick’s mood.
The wild beast inside him whined restlessly.
“Go ahead and take the bitch,” the vampire said, sounding awfully defiant for a guy who had his face pressed to the ground. “She’s not worth it, anyway.”
“Shut it,” Riddick grumbled. For emphasis, he grabbed a fistful of the vampire’s hair and slammed the guy’s forehead into the ground.
He pulled out the vampire’s wallet and glanced at his driver’s license. “I’m only going to say this once, Gerry Justice—if indeed that is your real name. You just became a vegetarian. Go to the grocery and stock up on bottled blood, because your hunting days are over.”
“Or what?” he sneered.
“Or else I’ll come find you. And I will, Gerry. If I hear your name come up on the police scanner for so much as an unpaid parking ticket, I’m going to hunt you down and introduce you to the sun, piece by fucking piece. Do we understand each other?”
The vampire’s gulp was audible. “And even if I promise not to go after another human, I’m supposed to believe you’re just going to let me walk away now?”
“I don’t remember ever saying I’d let you walk away.”
And with that, he grabbed the guy’s ankle and twisted savagely, neatly severing bone, tendons, muscles, and skin. He tossed the amputated leg aside carelessly.
Sadly, it would grow back. Fucking vampires could heal just about everything.
The vampire shrieked in pain and fury, then proceeded to puke up every drop of blood he’d ingested for the past several days, from the looks of the puddle in front of him.
A good person might have felt sorry for the guy. Riddick felt nothing but mild irritation that he hadn’t put up a better fight—and frustration, thinking that the odds of finding someone else to beat the shit out of tonight were low.
He pulled out his cell and called 911. “If you start…inch worming away, right now,” he dispassionately told the sobbing vampire, “you might be able to escape before the cops get here.”
Riddick stepped over Gerry’s broken body and offered his hand to the woman who was still laid out on the hood of the car like a buffet. She jerked back as if he’d swung on her.
He withdrew his hand, thinking about what he must look like to her, blood rolling down his face onto his shirt after mutilating a vampire before her eyes.
She saw the wild beast.
“What the h-h-hell are you?” she cried, cowering against the windshield.
It wasn’t the first time he’d been asked that question. He’d never really had an answer.
But now, maybe—just maybe—he was exactly what he needed to be to save Harper and win in the Arena.
And if that just happened to be a monster…well, so be it.
Chapter Eleven
“You shouldn’t let him run away like that, Harpy.”
Harper frowned at him and sat down on the edge of the bathtub. “Do I look like I can body-block a hundred-eighty-pound ex-slayer?”
He shook his head. “That’s not what I mean. I mean emotionally. He’s running scared.”
“You want to talk about Riddick’s feelings?” She leaned forward, resting her elbow on her knee and her chin in her palm. “When did you turn into such a girl, Nancy?”
He let his head fall back against the wall. “And you’re using humor to hide the fact that you’re scared, too.”
“Of course I’m scared, you asshole. You shot me up with poison!”
Romeo studied her through slitted lids. “That’s the sick part. That’s not what you’re really afraid of. Because deep down, you don’t really think you’re dying. You know you’ll find a way out of this because you always do. You’re charmed.”
She snorted. Yeah. Sitting in a hotel bathroom with Romeo Jones, poison pumping through her veins, while her fiancé stalked the streets of Las Vegas like some kind of blood-hungry, vigilante psychopath.
Charmed, my ass.
“So, tell me, Dr. Phil,” she began, sarcasm dripping from her tongue like venom. “If I’m not scared of dying, what am I so scared of?”
“Losing Riddick.”
She kicked him in the shin, although it was a halfhearted effort at best. The day was really starting to weigh on her. “Of course I’m scared of losing Riddick! You’re asking him to take on your debt to the supernatural mafia! He could get killed trying to save your sorry ass.”
“That’s not what I mean. You’re not scared of him dying in the Arena because you know how good he is. He’s going to win and you know it. You’re scared of losing him. Of him turning back into what he was before he met you. Of him becoming what he’s always trying so hard to keep inside.”
She blinked. Jesus, that was insightful. Scarily accurate. Not that she’d ever tell him that. “You really have turned into a girl, haven’t you? They make you check your balls at the door when you signed into rehab?”
He sighed. “Fine. Whatever. Make jokes. Live in denial. But we really do need to talk about the Vrykolakas. We both know Riddick will fight, and if he walks in there by himself like the idiot he looks like, they’ll kill him.”
Her head pounded at the mere thought of trying to formulate a plan tonight. “Tomorrow. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
And what fun that would be.
She suppressed a sigh. Who knew that eloping to Vegas would be even more dramatic than one of her family’s traditional weddings?
Mischa set her Kindle down and glanced at the display on her ringing iPhone. She sighed. She supposed The Princess Bride would have to wait. Which was a total shame, because there were few things she loved more than a hero dressed as a pirate. But, Harper was definitely one of those things. Damn it.
“If you’re just calling to gloat that you’re now married to a hot guy while I’m sitting at home, reading, I’m going to hang up and get back to Buttercup and Wesley,” she said in lieu of a greeting.
“You’re reading it again?” Harper asked, incredulous. “Swear to God, you’ve read it a hundred times.”
“Only about eighty,” she said, somewhat defensively. “And what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, I guess, if there’s nothing on TV. Or, if you don’t have a date, which, you totally could if you weren’t so stubborn.”
She rolled her eyes. “Ugh. If you call me a big disappointment—in Italian—because I haven’t given you any grandchildren, you’ll sound just like my mother.”
Harper adopted a heavy, New York-Italian accent and lowered her voice to a throaty, raspy, smoker’s growl before saying, “You aren’t getting any younger, doll. Time to shit or get off the pot.”
If she wasn’t sitting alone in the room, she’d swear her mother had just walked in. Mischa shuddered. “I’ve asked you repeatedly not to do that. It’s eerie. How the hell do you do that so well?”
“I started practicing after the first time I met your mom. I love that accent. Its part Linda Richman, part Sophia Loren.”
“Why are you calling me, weirdo?”
“I need your help.”
She snorted. “That’s no joke.”
“No, seriously. I need your help.”
Mischa sat up straighter at Harper’s tone. This was Harper’s serious-shit-is-about-to-go-down tone. She hated that tone. In her experience, Harper’s serious tone could mean anything from “I just found out your mother is planning to come stay with you for an extended period of time” to “I’ve just escaped a cult compound and need a ride home.”
Regardless, no good ever came from Harper’s serious tone.
Mischa’s concern escalated as she listened to Harper’s story, then she fluctuated between being terrified for her friend and royally pissed off at Romeo for putting her friend’s life on the line for a stupid gambling debt.
“I’m going to kill Romeo, that rat bastard,” she said.
“Yeah, you’re going to have to get in line behind Riddick,” Harper said dryly.
Frankly, Mischa was surprised Romeo hadn’t been crucified on a roulette wheel at the Bellagio by now. Riddick must be getting downright mellow in his old age.
“What can I do?” Mischa asked.
“Do you remember that ex-Sentry biochemist you worked with at TEV?”
How could she forget Leon Steinfeld? She hadn’t known him when they both worked at Sentry, but after vampires came out and Sentry folded, Leon had taken a job working for Mischa in accounting at TEV Technologies. He was a certified genius, and always felt he was above the job. His attitude had been complete shit.
And in truth, he probably was above the job. But with Sentry research on his resume, he wasn’t likely to find anything else. Certainly not anything in his field.
Which is why Mischa had been surprised to learn that instead of being grateful to TEV for hiring him, he decided to embezzle money from them.
Too bad for Leon that Mischa was also a certified genius and caught on to his scam before he was able to steal more than a few thousand bucks. TEV had fired him immediately, but didn’t bother to prosecute him. Lucky bastard. If it had been left up to her, he’d be someone’s prison bitch right about now.
“Yeah,” Mischa answered. “Why?”
“I need you to track him down. Ask him if he can help synthesize an antidote for whatever poison Sentry used to kill cleaners.”
Mischa’s stomach sank into her bunny slippers. “Harper, that might be a problem. Leon isn’t exactly a fan of mine. He’s more likely to spit in my face than help me with anything.”
“I’m sorry, hon. I wouldn’t ask if I had another plan B.”
And plan A was letting her fiancé fight in the Arena. She suppressed a shudder. Just the thought must be giving Harper chest pains.
“Maybe you can get Lucas to help you,” Harper went on. “Or, better yet—”
Mischa wished Harper could see her narrowing her eyes menacingly. “Don’t finish that sentence.”
There was a pause on Harper’s end. “Fine. I won’t. It’s just that…wouldn’t it be nice to have someone who can read minds with you when you talk to Leon?”
She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. Even in a crisis, her friend was matchmaking. “You’re the devil, Harper. I hope you realize that.”
“I’ve been told.”
Then it occurred to Mischa that if Harper really did only have a few days to live, she didn’t want their last conversation to end with name calling. So, she swallowed the lump that suddenly threatened to occlude her throat and said, “Harper…you know I love you, right? You’re like a sister to me.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Harper groaned. “I’m not dying! Pull yourself together, woman.” Then, after another short pause, she grumbled, “And just for the record, I love you, too.”
But before Mischa could get too caught up in the emotion of the moment, Harper broke into an overly dramatic rendition of Wind Beneath My Wings.
“It would so serve you right if I let you die, you horrible bitch,” she said without heat.
“Yeah, but you won’t. ‘Cause you luuuvvv me.”
She sniffed. “I did, but I’m over it now.”
“’Did I ever tell you you’re my hero?’ You’re everything I wish I could be…’”
Mischa told her to fuck off in Italian, and hung up on her before she could burst out laughing.
Now, she just had to formulate a plan to convince Leon to help her find or create an antidote for Harper. Surely she could complete that one little task without asking for help from a cocky, ridiculously hot, overbearing, jackass of a vampire. Right?
Cane, her beagle mix, curled up on Mischa’s bunny slippers and gazed up at her adoringly. “What do you think, baby? We can do this, right? We don’t need Hunter.”
At Hunter’s name, Cane’s tail began to thump frantically.
She sighed. “Yeah. That’s what I was afraid of.”
Chapter Twelve
Riddick didn’t come back to the hotel until dawn. Harper followed him into the bathroom when he walked right past her without even bothering to greet her, as if nothing had happened the night before.
He whirled around to face her when he found the bathroom empty. “Where the fuck is he?” he growled.
She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. “Good morning to you, too, Sally Sunshine. Nice of you to come home.”
Riddick grabbed her wrist and hauled her to him. “Where. The. Fuck. Is. He?”
She grabbed his hand and gave his thumb a hard yank backward until he winced and let her go. She should feel bad about it, but she didn’t. He should’ve known better than to manhandle her when she was sleep-deprived and angry at him. And he’d taught her that move, anyway. Dumbass.
He continued glaring at her until she jerked her thumb toward the balcony. “I moved him out there last night.”
His incredulous look pissed her off, so she hissed, “You weren’t here and I had to pee. I made a judgment call, OK?”
“Perfect,” he muttered under his breath, turning his back to her as he started washing his hands.
That’s when she noticed his appearance.
She’d gotten used to the bluish circles under his eyes. He barely ever slept anymore, so those were to be expected. But the angry gash on his cheek and dried blood stains on his knuckles? Those were new.
“What did you do?” she whispered, moving to stand behind him.
He glanced up and met her gaze in the mirror, but didn’t turn. “I told you I was going hunting. That’s what I did.”
Her blood ran cold at the hollow look in his eyes. He wasn’t just pushing her away emotionally as Romeo suggested, he was shoving her away, hard, and trying to slam the door shut in her face.
Yeah, well, fuck that.
She’d gone through this once with him and she’d be damned if she’d let him do it again. She told herself a year ago that all of his I-can’t-be-with-you-because-I’m-a-big-mean-dangerous-slayer crap was never going to darken the doorstep of their relationship again, and by God, it wasn’t.
Harper ducked under his arm and wedged herself between him and the sink so that they were nose to nose.
He eased back a half step and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. “Harper, what the fuck?”
“What the hell’s going on in your head? Why are you pushing me away and not talking to me?”
“I’m not pushing you away.”
She narrowed her eyes on him. “And now you’re lying to me. What the hell, Riddick? And don’t tell me this is all about Romeo and the cleaner killer, because I know that’s only part of it. You haven’t been sleeping for months. What
are you so stressed about?”
His jaw set mutinously, reminding her of Romeo. She assumed he wouldn’t appreciate the comparison, so instead of pointing that out, she guessed, “Is this somehow about your ridiculous, overprotective need to guard me all the time?”
This time she actually heard his teeth grind together. She wasn’t sure if that indicated she was making progress or not.
“It’s not ridiculous. I let my guard down here and you were kidnapped. The last time I let my guard down?” He paused, shaking his head as if he could dislodge the memory. “You almost died.”
“I was kidnapped by a serial killer,” she said, somewhat dismissively. “I hardly see how that was your fault.”
“The guy was only trying to get to me, remember?”
Harper rolled her eyes. “Of course I remember. But I’m fine. Really, I don’t know what more I can do to convince you it wasn’t your fault. The guy was completely batshit. It could’ve happened to anyone.”
His look was disbelieving. “Now that’s ridiculous. Stuff like that just doesn’t happen to girls who date accountants and lawyers and shit.”
She rested her palm against his cheek. “And there’s probably not a lawyer or accountant alive who could’ve saved me the way you did. All’s well that ends well.”
He closed his eyes and turned into her touch ever so slightly with a deep sigh. “It’s not all’s well and it will never end,” he said quietly.
“You have to learn to stop worrying all the time. I can take care of myself.”
His eyes opened and irritation sparked there again. “Obviously not. You could be dead in a week! Shit, Harper,” he said, tunneling his hands through his hair. “How can you be so cavalier about this?”
Harper put her hands on her hips and tipped her head to the side as she looked up at him. “I’m not going to be dead in a week. Do you know how I know?”
He threw his hands up, obviously beyond frustrated. “No, but let me guess. Because Romeo, the lying sack of shit, would never really hurt you? Or because you have a completely misguided sense of faith in me and think I’ll find a way to save you that doesn’t involve the Arena? How about that? Am I right?”
Semi-Human (Harper Hall Investigations Book 2) Page 6