by Jasmine Walt
“Will you guarantee my safety?”
“Why should I guarantee your safety? Will you guarantee the safety of any vampires you come across in the process? You’re the big bad vampire killer, after all. Seems to me that they have more to fear from you than you do from them.” He actually sounded bitter as he said this. As if he had any right to be bitter at all. I was the injured party here.
I thought for a moment. He was right. I did know how to kill vampires. Besides, I planned to call Nick in for backup.
“Okay. Fine. But I’m taking all my gear,” I finally said. “And I’m carrying the crucifix. You don’t bite me. You don’t touch me. You don’t even stand too close to me.”
“Agreed,” he said.
I felt like maybe I had just lost that round of negotiations somehow. If Greg the Vampire was anything like Greg the Lawyer—and I was realizing more and more that there was little difference between the two—then he had thought of every contingency and had figured out some way to twist every possible situation to serve his purpose. Whatever that might be.
That was the question of the moment: why was Greg doing this? What could he possibly gain from it?
I didn’t have the answer to that question. What I did have was a friend who was missing and quite possibly in very real danger. I had no other choice, really.
“Okay, then,” I said. “Give me fifteen minutes, then meet me in front of the building. I’ll show you the files, but I get to hang on to them until I see Malcolm. Then I’ll hand them to you. Good enough?”
“Good enough.”
I turned to gather up all the vampire-killing equipment I had in the apartment, expecting Greg to head down to the front of the building. As I straightened from pulling a gym bag out of the closet, however, I saw that he had settled himself on the fire escape. He sat on the top step and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. His hands dangled down in between his legs and he stared across the open courtyard behind the building.
“What are you doing, Greg?”
“Waiting for you.”
“Why don’t you just go ahead and go downstairs; I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Nope. I want to stay right here and watch you get ready. And I think you should know that it’s a bad idea to call your military buddies before we leave.”
I didn’t like the idea of him watching me pull all of my stakes out from their various hiding places, but I didn’t know how I could possibly get rid of him.
I sighed. “Fine. Stay there. I’ll let you know when I’m ready.” I shut the window and moved the crucifix to the windowsill. Just try to get in past that, I thought.
He could sit there if he wanted to, and he could even watch me pull all my weapons out, but I wasn’t about to let him watch me as I changed clothes. Besides, I wasn’t going to let him know where in my clothing I hid all my little vampire-killing sticks; the only way he was going to discover that was if I pulled one out and staked him with it.
I put on an outfit similar to the one I had worn to the armory: black stretchy pants, t-shirt, light jacket. This time, though, I wore tall black boots with flat heels and soft soles. The sneakers might be better for running, but boots were better for hiding stakes.
I ended up strapping on every weapon I could find. There weren’t all that many, really. I had two stakes down each boot, two chopsticks taped to each arm under my jacket, another chopstick taped to my stomach. I had a third stake under my waistband, nestled in the small of my back.
I carried a stake in my hand, too. I didn’t know where we were going, but I did know that I was going out into the night with a vampire. I wasn’t taking any more chances than absolutely necessary.
“I’m ready to go,” I announced. Greg nodded at me through the window and I picked up the crucifix. Stake in one hand, crucifix in the other. I was loaded for vampire.
At the last minute, I grabbed my cell phone from its place on the desk beside the computer. I hoped that Greg was gone, but I didn’t turn around to check; I just tried to angle my body to keep him from seeing what I was doing.
I jammed the cross and the stake into my jacket pockets, then shut the front door of my apartment behind me. With one hand I locked the door. With the other, I scrolled through the electronic phone book and hit Nick’s number.
He didn’t answer. Dammit.
I left another message telling Nick what had happened, probably mostly garbled—I was trying to give him the pertinent information, but I didn’t want Greg to wonder what was taking so long. I ended by saying, “I think I might need help. Please try to find me. I’ll call later if I can.” I turned the ringer to “vibrate.”
I dropped the phone into a jacket pocket, pulled my weapons back out, and headed down the stairs to meet my undead ex so that he could take me to my probably-still-alive sort-of-ex.
14
When I walked out the double glass doors of my building, Greg was leaning against the wall waiting for me, in almost the same spot and pose in which I had found Malcolm the day I had come home with my Hemastix and broken up with him.
I didn’t say anything, just gestured for Greg to lead the way. I used the hand with the crucifix in it.
“A bit aggressive, don’t you think?” He motioned toward the stake and the crucifix. Without waiting for an answer, he turned and headed toward the train station.
Falling into step beside him made me feel almost dizzy. We had walked this way hundreds of times, companionably silent, content merely to be in each other’s presence. Our strides matched almost perfectly; we had always moved in synch. At this moment, I could hardly believe that the past few weeks had really happened.
I couldn’t let the silence continue. It was too easy to fall into old habits of trusting the man beside me. I had to do something to remind myself that he was no longer a man—not in the sense of being human, anyway. I assumed he was still male. I wondered if vampires could have sex. Did they have enough blood in their veins to spare some to make their…. No. I shook my head. That was not an acceptable line of thought.
“Can you move around in daylight?” I blurted.
“What? No. The sun’s a bit of a problem.”
“Not in the sun. I mean, if there isn’t any direct sunlight, can you move around? Or do you go all dead and have to sleep in a coffin or something?”
He laughed. “Coffins are for the dead. I’m not dead.”
“You’re sort of dead.” He started to interrupt me, but I continued. “Anyway, that’s beside the point. If you were, say, underground, would you be able to move around even when the sun is up?”
Greg looked thoughtful—the same look he used when he was working through a legal problem.
“I don’t know,” he said.
We turned the corner onto Fordham Road. There weren’t many people out on the sidewalks this far down, but cars whizzed past us.
“You don’t know? Well, what’s it like when you… when the sun comes up?”
“It’s like getting really sleepy. Combined with anxious, if I’m not someplace safe. That goes away as soon as I’m someplace I know the sun won’t hit me. Then I go to sleep.”
“Do you dream?”
“Sometimes.”
“What about?”
He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Fishing for compliments?”
“No. God, no.” My voice sounded harsh. I looked away from him.
“It’s not like it used to be,” he said, pretending I hadn’t spoken. “The dreams are more,” he paused, searching for the right word, “more primal.”
I decided I didn’t want to know any more than that. Talking to him wasn’t helping me feel any better about the situation. Anyway, the closer we got to the train station, the more crowded the sidewalks got. I tucked my hands into my jacket pockets so that no one could see them, but kept a tight grip on the crucifix and the stake.
Instead of talking, I watched the way Greg’s eyes moved across the people around us. He might look human for the most part, but his
eyes were the eyes of a predator. He scanned the crowd, then fell on one young woman re-settling a backpack across her shoulders. His gaze moved up and down her body, lingering on her face and then her neck. He actually licked his lips. At that moment, any illusions I’d had about feeling comfortable with him fled.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“To the city, first.”
We crossed Fordham Road and made our way into the train station. Greg stopped at the kiosk and bought two tickets to Grand Central. I didn’t offer to pay my way, and he didn’t ask. As far as I was concerned, this was his party, and he could cover any associated costs. He did still have a job, after all.
The train ride into Grand Central Station was miserable. Greg took a window seat—I wasn’t about to let him get between me and the aisle and any chance of escape. I sat in the same row, but left one seat open between us. I didn’t want to brush up against him at all, even accidentally. The thought of letting him touch me made my skin crawl.
A car met us on 42nd Street outside Grand Central. The car itself was a black Lincoln, much like the livery cabs in the Bronx. Unlike the cabbies, though, this driver wore a dark gray suit. He had dark hair and extraordinarily pale skin. I assumed from the pale skin that he was a vampire, but I had no way of telling for sure. The vampires at the armory had seemed alien, but some vampires seemed to be able to blend in with humans. I needed to figure out some sure way of knowing which was which.
The driver, who had gotten out of the car when he saw us exiting the train station, held the back door open for us. I hesitated before climbing in, but I couldn’t think of any other way to find Malcolm. I had to go. Anyway, as Greg had said, I was the big bad vampire killer. I knew how to take care of myself.
Once again, I seated myself as far from Greg as possible.
I was surprised when I realized that we were headed toward the Midtown Tunnel; I had anticipated a Manhattan destination. I looked over at Greg.
“We’re going to Long Island? Wouldn’t it have been easier to get there from the Bronx?”
“I assumed you wouldn’t want Rafael to know where you live,” he said blandly, gesturing at the driver.
That confused me. Greg the Vampire trying to protect me? It didn’t make sense. I sank back into the seat and decided not to think about it too hard. I was sure that there were plenty of reasons Greg might have for wanting to keep my address a secret—like not wanting any other vampire to get to me before he could. It didn’t have to mean he was protecting me.
I lost track of where we were headed—not surprisingly, as I always get lost when I go to Long
Island. For the most part, it looks like one long, repeating suburb, full of strip malls and middle-class neighborhoods.
Eventually, though, we left suburbia and drove through a winding green—maybe a park or a golf course? We took a left and headed toward a building at the end of a drive.
The building itself had a billowing fountain in front of it, the sort you see in front of wedding reception halls. A circular drive, covered by a sort of portico held up by tall Doric columns, led up to the entrance. A red carpet covered the steps that led to the glass double doors. Rafael stopped the car in front of the steps.
Another pale man, also in a suit, opened the front door for us. It led into an elegant foyer. Inside, men and women in eveningwear clustered in small groups, talking. I could hear the clink of crystal and the shrill of high-pitched feminine laughter. A piano played softly in the background.
Through open doors at the end of the foyer I could see a sort of drawing room with couches and chairs arranged in what the decorating magazines called “conversation groupings.” The colors were dark and muted, elegant.
To the right of the foyer, a wide marble stairway curved both up and down.
To the left another set of doors led to a sort of ballroom with a dance floor in the middle. Tables lined the walls. A few couples were dancing, and more elegantly dressed people sat at the tables.
None of them were eating, but most of them had glasses in their hands. Other men and women dressed in black suits circulated through the crowd carrying silver trays with drinks on them. Some of them I recognized—champagne, white wine—but other glasses held a darker liquid.
Red wine, I told myself. It’s just a dark red wine. I wasn’t convinced, especially after I saw people sipping the viscous fluid.
There were probably two hundred people there.
Holy Mary, Mother of God. I had just allowed Greg to lead me into the mother-lode of vampire dens. And no one else knew where I was.
That’s it, I thought. I’m dead.
My eyes lit on woman in a long red evening gown standing in one of the small knots of people in the foyer. Her long, white-blonde hair curled over her shoulders and halfway down her arms. Her backless dress skimmed her body, and a short train gathered at the small of her back swept the floor in a long fall of shimmering red fabric. Her skin was white and smooth, almost the same color as her hair. As she excused herself from the group and turned, she caught me staring at her and moved toward us purposefully.
From the front, the illusion of perfection crumbled. She was certainly beautiful, without a doubt—her large dark eyes almost seemed to glow with energy and her mouth, outlined in a red lipstick that matched her dress perfectly, was full and sensuous. But her beautiful face was cold and hard. She looked almost plastic.
She approached us with her hands outstretched.
“Gregory, darling, I’m so very glad you could make it.” Her voice was low and smooth with just a trace of an accent. She caught his hand and leaned in to kiss the air by his cheek.
Leaning back from him, she turned toward me. “And this must be Elle. Welcome to my home.”
She eyed me up and down, then turned back to Greg.
“Greg. You bad, bad man. You didn’t tell her you were bringing her to a party, did you?” She directed the next comment to me in a conspiratorial whisper. “Men are so terrible that way; they never know when to tell a woman she’s under-dressed. But then,” she said, looking at Greg in his Friday-casual khakis and dress shirt, “he didn’t do much in the way of dressing up himself, did he? No matter. I have clothing to spare.” She snapped her fingers at the nearest server. “Please see Mr. Parham and Miss Dupree to a dressing room and find appropriate clothing for them both.”
The man she had called over made a short bow and turned, saying, “Follow me.” Greg obediently moved after him, but I stayed where I was. I willed my voice not to shake with the fear I felt.
“I’m fine as I am, thanks, Ms.…?” I paused, waiting for the blonde woman to fill in her name.
“Oh, I am so terribly remiss. Please, call me Deirdre.”
“Deirdre. I see.” And I did. Deirdre was one of the names on the list of New York City vampire leaders. A chill went through me. I was in the home of one of the most powerful vampires in New York and Nick had no idea how to find me. This was not good. I gripped the stake and the crucifix in my pockets more tightly than before.
“And I insist,” said Deirdre, “that you change clothes before joining us again.” Her voice never lost its underlying smoothness, but it became hard and implacable.
“Greg told me that he was bringing me to my friend Malcolm.”
“Of course, of course, my dear. But first you must change. I shall brook no opposition.” She raised her eyebrows at me expectantly.
“Fine,” I muttered. I would dress up if it meant I got to see Malcolm, but I didn’t have to be gracious about it.
The dressing room the servant led us to upstairs was lovely, decorated in white and cream, with a dressing table and full-length mirror against one wall and a folding privacy screen against the other.
A fainting couch upholstered in a cream brocade angled out into the room from the far corner. The servant, a tall black man, eyed me up and down, then said, “Size eight?”
“Ten,” I replied. I could sometimes squeeze into an eight, but I wanted to
keep some of my stakes on me. A skintight dress would definitely prohibit that.
Apparently Deirdre’s staff already knew Greg’s clothing size, because nobody had asked him.
When the servant came back into the room, he handed a tuxedo to Greg and an armload of dresses to me. Some of the dresses were size eight, I saw. I handed those back to him, and he accepted them with a bow, then left the room.
I turned around to find Greg already stripped to his underwear.
I stepped behind the privacy screen.
Okay. Greg and I had lived together for years. We’d had sex in our dorm rooms in college, for chrissakes. It’s not like I hadn’t seen him naked before. Or like he hadn’t seen me.
But it was different now. I kept remembering the way he had eyed the young woman on the way to the train station.
He didn’t get to see me naked any more. Or even in my underwear, for that matter. I was going to keep as many of my veins as possible out of his sight.
Most of the dresses were of the skintight sheath variety. Many of them were backless, and a couple of them were strapless. I discarded those.
I finally settled on the most modest dress of the bunch. It fit more loosely than the others; the front of the dress scooped low across my chest then swooped up to tie behind my neck. I tied it slightly tighter, and the front covered my cleavage. Most importantly, though, the dress had sleeves.
They were mostly detached from the shoulders, connecting only at the top and under my armpits, but they fell into a wide hem at the wrist. The skirt of the dress fell away from the fitted waist in a wide A-line that mimicked the shape of the sleeves. The hemline just brushed the floor.
Overall, the dress was both elegant and (more important to me at the moment) good for hiding weapons. I had to take the stake out of my waistband and tuck it into one boot; the one from my jacket pocket went into the other boot. I dropped the cell phone down into the boot as well. I decided to hang onto the crucifix. If I got out of this alive, I was going to sharpen the end of it into a stake so it could do double duty as deterrent and weapon.