Against her wishes, Zack had let his parents—Quinn’s dad and stepmom—sweep him back home to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he’d almost immediately become ill with something the doctors couldn’t explain. She alone knew what it was—magic sickness. She’d convinced Zack to come back to D.C. with her, and here they’d stay until the magic was renewed, and he was well again.
Four days.
Several days ago, she’d packed up most of hers and Zack’s clothes and given them to the Salvation Army. Everything else would remain behind. They’d each take one suitcase, no more, when they fled. But now she had nothing to do but wait for the equinox and worry.
The one thing she would never do was go back to that vampire hell.
To the vampires, of course, Vamp City was utopia—a city where the sun never shone, where they could enslave and hunt humans without fear of retribution. A place where the vampires, werewolves, and other immortal creatures could live their lives in the open. In freedom. And peace.
But even utopias have a dark side. Unbeknownst to the vampires, Phineas Blackstone, the powerful wizard they’d paid to create their dark city, had engineered a death trap instead. The moment the magic began to fail, all vampires within the city’s boundaries would be trapped, unable to escape as the sunbeams slowly broke through, frying them, killing them.
Two years ago, the process began, the sunbeams breaking through, here and there, for seconds at a time. But in the past months, the process had escalated until the vampires feared they had only weeks left until the magic crumbled, and all those trapped, died.
They needed another sorcerer to renew the magic, but so far neither of Phineas’s immortal sons had managed to do it. They’d been hunting for another when she accidentally stumbled into V.C. while helping Zack search for his missing friend, Lily.
And, it turned out, she was a sorceress. Apparently the small and not-so-small weirdnesses that had always been part of her life were not her imagination after all. She might be an honest-to-God sorceress, but she was a completely ineffectual one, with little power. What power she did have, she couldn’t control. In the end, Arturo had let her go, promising her that Phineas’s sons would ultimately be able to renew the magic even though he’d first told her they couldn’t.
Arturo Mazza was nothing if not a liar. Which of those was the lie, she didn’t know and didn’t care so long as she and Zack were free.
From the moment she’d stumbled into that world, the dark, handsome Arturo had been there, in turns her protector and friend, lover and betrayer. And in the end, her savior, rescuing Zack from certain death and freeing them both. As much as she hated to admit it, she missed that vampire more than she could have imagined. In a weird sort of way, they’d become friends. Perhaps more than friends. He was the only one in her life who’d known exactly who and what she was, right from the beginning, and accepted her anyway.
But that didn’t mean she ever wanted to see him again. If she ever crossed paths with another vampire, it would be too soon.
Quinn glanced around the room, looking for something . . . anything . . . to do as she listened to the second hand on the replica antique desk clock ticking off the time with incredible slowness. Crossing to the window, she pushed open the lower half of the double-hung to let in the cool September air, then glanced at the dorms across the street. Half the windows were lit, like the spots on a domino, the other half dark, the students still out and about campus despite the fact that the sun had set more than an hour ago.
Zack and his best friend, Lily, both GW seniors, should have been out there with them, though more than likely they’d have been right here, side by side in front of their computers either playing some high-action fantasy shoot-’em-up or designing one. But Lily had disappeared, as so many people around D.C. had in recent months. Quinn suspected she’d fallen through the same door into Vamp City that she and Zack had, but while they’d searched for her, they’d never found her.
Lily was most likely dead. Humans didn’t last long among the vampires. And Zack . . . poor Zack was suffering not only from the magic sickness but from grief and depression as well. Her sweet, easygoing brother had not emerged from Hell unscathed. Not by a long shot.
Quinn straightened, hoping her neighbor, Mike, would come over as he did most evenings and give her something to think about other than vampires, and something to listen to other than the ticking clock. In his company, she could pretend, even if just for an hour or two, that she lived a normal life in a normal world. Even if nothing could be further from the truth.
But as she turned from the window, a familiar chill skated over her skin—a feeling she knew presaged the bleeding together of the two worlds. And she was reminded, with the subtlety of a mallet to the head, just how far from normal her existence really was.
Within Vamp City, they’d feel the bleed-through as an earthquake. In daylight, the quake would be quickly followed by sunbeams bursting overhead like light through a dark piece of hole-riddled construction paper. The vampires would flee the sunlight, or die if they were unlucky enough to be standing in the wrong place when the sunbeams appeared.
But in the real world, Quinn alone felt the change, thanks to her sorcerer’s blood. She alone could see through the shadowy breaks like windows into the other world. Unable to resist another glimpse of that place, she turned back and bent low, staring through the screen into that otherworld, a doppelganger of 1870 Washington, D.C.
When Blackstone created Vamp City, he’d duplicated the city of that time. But while the humans continued to upgrade and modernize the real D.C., the vampires did little with their version other than build a few castles for their vampire masters and an arena for their games. Some of the vampires had moved into the fully furnished houses, but most of the structures had been left to decay, including the line of row houses across the street from her now.
Vamp City’s streets were still unpaved, its infrastructure all but nonexistent. There was electricity only in homes with generators, and few modern conveniences. Though some vampires had brought in off-road vehicles to traverse the pitted streets, most continued to live as they had in those earlier times—riding horses and driving carts and carriages. And feeding, as all vampires did, on humans.
As she peered into that strange place, she saw no one and heard nothing but the sound of the real world, which continued to carry to her ears—a car driving down the street, the tick of the clock, the banter of college kids walking along the sidewalk below her window, discussing their fantasy-football picks. This neighborhood of Vamp City, she knew from her own experience, was uninhabited and generally deserted except for the roaming Traders, who hunted for escaped slaves and humans who wandered in accidentally.
Suddenly, a young man stumbled into the scene below, a college kid appearing out of nowhere. Quinn gasped as she watched him fall to his hands and knees in the dirt. Oh, shit. One of the fantasy-football kids must have slipped between the worlds as he’d passed through the dark sunbeam. Every day, thousands passed through the breaks unaware and unaffected, but every now and then, one slipped through. As Lily probably had. As she and Zack had.
As the kid struggled to his feet in Vamp City, Quinn heard his friends’ voices below, shouting for him from the real world. Shouts the kid would never hear. Only she could hear both worlds at once where they bled into one another.
She watched as the young man leaped to his feet, staring around him in stunned silence, his body language projecting disbelief, shock, and slowly dawning terror. Her heart ached for him because she’d been in his shoes just a few weeks ago. And she knew what he’d soon learn—that he had every right to be afraid.
His friends would tell the cops that he’d been right there, then just wasn’t—the same story reported over and over again on the news from others who’d been with one of the missing. But the cops wouldn’t find him. They didn’t have a clue what was going on. And they couldn’t d
o anything about it even if they knew.
I might be able to save him.
If she ran, she might be able to run into that world and snatch him back out before the break closed. She alone, thanks to her sorcerer’s blood, could leave V.C. on a sunbeam as well as enter. And she’d managed to free others as well.
But instead of running, her body tensed with indecision. The breaks were unpredictable, some lasting many minutes, some only a minute or two. If she ran into that world to save the kid, and the break closed before she got out again, she’d be stuck, unable to return to Zack. And he needed her.
Her heart pounded. But before she could force her feet to move through the mire of indecision, she heard the sound of hoofbeats and knew any chance to help the kid was gone. As she watched, a pair of riders pulled up on horseback. Not vampires, but Traders, an inhuman race she knew little about, only that they could come and go even with the magic failing and that they were the primary procurers of supplies and humans for the trapped vampires.
As she watched, the kid stared at the riders in relief, his expression quickly turning to terror as one of the Traders threw a lasso, roping him like a steer, then hauled him onto the back of his horse. The kid’s cry for help went silent, the break between the worlds closing as suddenly as it had opened, leaving Quinn once more looking at the dorms across the modern D.C. street.
Oh, God. Covering her forehead with her palm, she turned away, her skin cold, her head throbbing because she knew what awaited the kid. She’d been in that world twice and wouldn’t have survived either trip if not for Arturo’s intervention.
A low rap sounded on her apartment door, a knock she recognized. Mike’s. Relief coursed through her, and she headed toward the door as if it provided the only measure of sanity in an increasingly insane world. Mike would not only offer her some much-needed company, but also the illusion, for however short a time, of normalcy.
As she peered out the peephole into Mike’s smiling face, a sense of calm settled over her, a calm that she hadn’t felt all day. The tense misery eased out of her shoulders as she unhooked the chain and unbolted the dead bolt to let him in. Mike had moved into the apartment across the hall a few weeks ago, while she was caught in Vamp City. She’d met him the first evening she got back, and he’d pushed right past her usual reserve to become a welcome, undemanding friend. A writer, he lived alone, working from home. When he was done for the evening, he was sorely in need of company and had taken to bringing over a bottle of wine about this time every night. She, in turn, always had dessert ready and waiting.
She opened the door and smiled as she stepped back to let him in. He was a good-looking guy despite his untrimmed hair, his unshaven jaw, and the three-inch scar that ran down one cheek, a scar he’d earned in a fight with his brother as teenagers, when they’d shattered a sliding glass door. Dressed in a plain black T-shirt tucked into well-worn jeans, his gray eyes alight with life and laughter, he was a welcome ray of sunshine in the dark mire that had become her life.
Mike’s smile faded, his brow lowering as he studied her. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
The man was far too perceptive. “I’m fine. It’s been a long day.” The understatement of the year. She’d felt every single one of the day’s 86,400 seconds tick by. “What did you bring tonight?” she asked, eyeing the bottle of wine in his hand.
He held it up with a flourish. “Chateau la Peyre Saint-Estephe Bordeaux.” The French rolled off his tongue as if he’d been born to it.
“Will it go with banana cream pie?”
Mike’s eyes crinkled with laughter. “Everything goes with banana cream pie.”
They fell into their nightly routine, Mike uncorking the bottle and pouring it into the two wineglasses that Quinn had waiting, while she served up whatever dessert she’d made that day. Dessert was the one thing she could still get Zack to eat.
A glass in one hand and a dessert plate in the other, they wandered into the living room, Mike taking the sofa while Quinn sat on the reading chair across from him.
Fortunately, there was no attraction between them. If there had been, she’d have stopped these nightly visits as soon as they began. After all, she was leaving town the moment Zack was well. Hopefully, in four days. There was no sense getting involved with yet another male she’d never see again. Not that she wanted another male. The last, one far-too-handsome Italian vampire, still held her libido in thrall and probably would for months.
But Mike was good company, an easy man to like even without the gifts of expensive wine.
“How’s the book coming?” she asked after she’d taken a bite of her dessert. She might not be the world’s best cook, but she made a damned fine banana cream pie.
He gave her a pained smile. “Three steps forward, five steps back.”
“Ouch.”
“No one ever said writing was easy. I spent half the day wandering in front of the window trying to understand why my protagonist left the scene of the crime three chapters back, only to realize he wouldn’t have.”
As Mike launched into the details of his latest thriller novel, Quinn took a sip of wine, sinking back into her chair, enjoying the calm, mellow tones of Mike’s voice. And wishing, despite herself, that it was another’s. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t stop thinking about Arturo Mazza, couldn’t stop dreaming about him. He’d been arrogant, controlling, and manipulative. Cristoff’s snake. But he’d also been charming and protective, even kind. And a gentle, passionate lover.
Heaven help her, she’d been attracted to him! An ungodly attraction that still had her waking feverish with desire almost every night. Even in her dreams, she smelled his warm, masculine scent and felt the brush of his hands over her heated skin.
Even when he’d claimed her as his slave, he’d never hurt her, not physically. Not personally. And in the end, he’d come through for her, saving Zack, rescuing her from the cruelty of his master, Cristoff, and freeing them both. Within Arturo, she’d found shades of both the hero and the villain. A male she’d trusted with her life. And a male whose word she’d never been able to trust at all.
Mike paused to take another bite of pie as he eyed her with what she’d come to think of as his writerly scrutiny, as if she were one of his characters, and he was trying to figure her out. He’d never succeed, of course. Humans didn’t believe in sorceresses, or vampires, or immortal otherworlds. And she wasn’t about to tell this one about them.
“How are you really, Quinn?” Mike asked, his tone compassionate, as if he could see the way she was falling apart at the seams. Every night he asked the same question, in the same way, then never pressed when she gave him her stock, trite answer, for which she was grateful. It wasn’t like she could ever tell him the truth.
“I’m fine. Tired and worried about Zack, but things will be better once we get home.” She’d told him that Zack’s best friend was one of the many missing persons in D.C. and that Zack was suffering from depression as a result. That they were moving back to Pennsylvania to get him away from the memories. She was never sure if Mike believed her, but it didn’t matter. The truth would be far harder for him to accept.
As she sipped her wine, she wished she could tell Mike everything. She wished she had someone she could confide in other than Zack, who was still too traumatized by all that had happened.
She wished Arturo were here.
No, she didn’t. Not really. She never wanted to see another vampire again.
“Quinn?” Mike asked quietly, and she realized he’d quit speaking, and she’d been too lost in her own thoughts to notice.
She met his gaze sheepishly. “Sorry. I’ve got a lot on my mind. I’m afraid I’m not good company tonight.”
He smiled at her with understanding. “You’re always good company.” Watching her with that studious look, he opened his mouth, then closed it slowly, as if he’d decided against saying w
hatever was on his mind. “Get some sleep,” he said, rising. “Everything looks brighter in daylight.”
Quinn snorted and smiled. “Profound.”
Mike grinned at her. “That’s the smile I like to see.”
She said good-bye and let him out, locking up behind him, then went to check on Zack, to see if she could coax him into eating a little pie.
As she eased open his door, the light from a streetlamp lit his face, a face that had aged during his brief captivity in Vamp City, making him look older than his twenty-two years. His was still an engaging face, if harder than before, framed by overlong curly red hair. If her own hair had looked like his, instead of being blond and straight, they’d have looked rather startlingly similar, despite being only half siblings. They’d both inherited their dad’s lanky height, green eyes, wide mouth, and straight nose.
“Zack?” she asked, flipping on the light. “How about a slice of banana cream pie?”
His eyes opened slowly, the circles beneath dark as bruises, the whites an unnatural, shimmery gray.
She swallowed, aching at the sight of him.
“No thanks,” he murmured, then rolled away from her.
Quinn turned off the light and closed the door behind her, then sank back against the wall. He’d be fine after the equinox, after the magic was renewed. She had to believe that. But the equinox was still four days away.
And deep inside, she was terrified that Zack might not live that long.
Want to know how Violet went from
B-movie script writer to shapeshifter?
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DIARIES OF AN URBAN PANTHER,
the first in the Those Who Wander series.
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Prologue
Vampires Gone Wild Page 26