I fought against whatever spell was holding me down, but no matter how hard I struggled I couldn’t move. I closed my eyes and focused, but even my vampire abilities I’d only come in contact with recently weren’t good enough. The fact was that they were older and stronger than me.
I groaned inwardly. When I looked at Connor, his eyes were finally open. He looked at me, and his eyes were big and blue, resigned. He knew they were going to kill him. He knew as well as I knew. And he wasn’t scared. He was angry.
All this, and this was how it ended?
The door flung open, and something shot past me. It was Phil. The vampires both hissed and moved to him, but he had caught them by surprise. He’d yanked the curtains away from the window. It had only opened a crack, but one line of sunlight was enough. Vladimir froze halfway on his way to Phil, and screamed. Then he burst into ash and fell to the floor in a cloud of dust.
Number two hissed and drew to the further corner. He was sizzling and smoking but it wasn’t direct light. With Vladimir dead I could suddenly move again. I rolled over and drew my Smith & Wesson. I didn’t take the time to aim properly. I just fired.
Number two looked down at his chest. Blood oozed out of it from a hole as big as an eye. I’d hit the heart, and it had been with silver. It didn’t matter how well he healed, it was over for him. He looked at me, his face blank, and then he fell to the floor. My arm was numb from the recoil, and I lowered my hand to the floor, lying there for a second. Then I pushed myself up.
Connor, also able to move again, was curled against another wall, moaning and smoking as well. I jumped up and yanked the curtain closed again, and the complaint stop. Phil sat huddled in a ball at my feet.
“They’re dead,” I said, tapping Phil on the shoulder.
“Thank god,” he said and stood up.
“No, thank you,” I said and gave him a hug. “If it weren’t for you we’d be lost.”
He smiled. I turned to Aspen and cut her tape with my knife. Her eyes were squeezed shut.
“It’s okay, Aspen,” I said, kneeling in front of her. “It’s over.”
“I knew you’d come for me,” she said.
“Of course.”
She took a deep breath and looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time.
“You look different.”
I looked at my leathers and shrugged. “I didn’t really want you to see me like this.” But she shook her head.
“I don’t mean your clothes and your guns. I mean you. Your teeth. And… well, just you.”
I smiled, and she smiled back.
“I’m going to have nightmares about this for weeks,” she said, nodding toward number two on the floor in a pool of blood that colored the carpet a dark red.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I hugged her.
When I got up, Phil was bent over Carl.
“I think he needs help,” he said. He pulled out his phone and called 911. Connor walked to me and he looked like he had bad sunburn.
“You look like shit,” I said. He grinned.
“You look amazing,” he said, and I felt myself flush. And then I realized that for the first time in a very long time, I felt it.
Chapter 21
Everything was different after that. Aspen and I found a place where we could stay together for a while until I could make arrangements for a new live in nurse. She didn’t want anyone just yet. She’d been close to Zelda, and her death had been painful.
She got nightmares for a long time. She’d seen Zelda get killed and we never found Claude. After a year the police suggested we expect the worst. It didn’t go down well.
Joel recovered and he went back to working for a company that did their job during daylight hours. He had some pirating business on the side for a thrill, but I had the idea he was done with the night world for a while. He was sweet on my sister, and the way she lit up for him was enough for me not to take his head off for dating her. She deserved a guy, and if anyone was a good guy, it was Joel. It wasn’t very serious yet, but it would be. I could feel it.
Carl had a leg broken in three places, two broken ribs and a hell of a concussion, but he made it out alive, and we stayed friends. He came over every now and then and we pretended to be friends even though we didn’t always get along. What he did for a living was a mystery, he never told us, but I had a feeling we’d all had enough of the darkness. He didn’t like to admit that he owed his life to a martial arts instructor that he didn’t like so we didn’t talk about it. Neither of us knew what had happened to Sonya but Ruben’s company closed and a nightclub opened in its place. I would never go there again.
I didn’t go back to the ugly side of the world. It had been hard enough as it was. Instead I’d managed to find a job at the Academy, training with Phil, teaching classes of my own in self-defense, fighting techniques, and we were thinking of branching out to a shooting range. I spent every day with Phil, knowing that if it hadn’t been for the most inexperienced, most human one of us all, we’d all be dead.
Connor and I had visited my father a week after the incident.
“Who’s this?” he’d asked when Connor had sat next to me. I’d looked at Connor, and he’d smiled, his blue eyes encouraging me to face my past and deal with it.
“He’s my boyfriend,” I’d said. “I love him.”
My dad had nodded.
“Why are you here?” he’d asked the way he always did.
“I came to say…” I took a deep breath. “I forgive you.”
My father’s face crumpled and he pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.
“And goodbye,” I added. This was the last time. When he’d looked up at me again, he’d nodded.
I’d gotten up, and Connor and I had walked out into the night, hand in hand.
“Did you mean it?” he’d asked.
“Someday, I’ll come to mean it,” I said. “But for now, it was right to say it.”
We’d walked into the night, world that accepted me now, that didn’t hold monsters and hell wherever I looked.
Jennifer disappeared. It was in the news. Either she left the country, or she turned. I guessed we would never find out.
And me? I didn’t know who I was just yet, but I would find out. With Aspen and Joel, Connor and Phil, and Carl we made a twisted but fairly happy family. And we accepted each other for what we were, and what we weren’t. They only thing I wasn’t willing to give up yet was my bike.
I may not have been a vampire slayer anymore, but I was still Adele Griffin. I liked my bike and my guns and my leathers, and everyone loved me for it, me included.
And those who didn’t, could suck it.
BOOK 2
VAMPIRE’S SHADE 2
Chapter 1
I breathed out and the world fell away around me. It was just me, the steady rhythm of my heart and the weight of the Beretta in my hand. The body came into perfect focus, and I squeezed the trigger. The gun clapped, jerked a little in my hand, and the chest I’d been aiming at exploded.
I squeezed the trigger three more times, all hits in a small circle in the middle of the chest, slightly to the right and down, where the heart would be. The quiet that coursed through my veins was new and familiar all at the same time. It was the opposite of what I’d used to experience when I still killed for a living, but the familiarity of the gun in my hand, the feel of the bullets leaving the chamber, the satisfaction of a perfect hit – I still had it.
I became aware of the thick earmuffs that drowned out the sound, the glass walls that boxed me in and the artificial lighting that almost always ended up messing with my night vision when I spent more than eight hours at the shooting range.
“That was freakin’ amazing,”Jono said behind me. I’d forgotten he was there. I clicked the safety back on the gun and handed it to him, barrel pointing to the side so he wouldn’t accidentally hit either of us. The safety was on, but people have done incredibly stupid things.
�
��You’ll get there. Your problem is you think too much.” Then again, thinking too little was a problem too. It made for mindless killing, which was what I’d realized I’d been doing once upon a time.
He took the gun and looked at it. I gave him a tightlipped smile. I was used to guns. They were second nature to me, but to the teenager that paid for weekly shooting lessons, it was still like playing with fire. Something that he wasn’t sure he was allowed to do yet. He thanked me and fished in his pocket for a fistful of notes. I took it from him. When he turned his back I curled my lips up, baring my teeth. He was one of the couple of students that didn’t know my vampire side. I tried to keep the fangs hidden. It wasn’t hard but it was annoying. At home I could be myself.
“See you next week,” I said and made a note of the cash payment in the book after he left. See, even I could be housetrained. Phil appeared in the doorway.
He smiled when he saw me writing and folded his arms when I glanced up. He was a bulky man, more muscle than anything else, with a bald head and eyes that missed nothing. He wasn’t very tall, but he was strong. I owed my life to him.
When I was still in trouble, the days when I hunted vampires for revenge, he was the one that had ended up killing the vampires that had been set on killing us all. I’d mentioned stupidity before. Turned out half-vampires – like me – did it too, sometimes. We’d gone in with a team that had consisted of me, Carl, a human vampire hunter, and Phil who had taught me MMA most of my adult life. And we’d been out for the count quicker than I wanted to mention.
“You’re working late again,” he said.
“Connor doesn’t wake up until dusk. There’s nothing for me at home until then, and it’s good to be working with guns. It’s something I know.”
Connor was a pure bred vampire, and he couldn’t go into the daylight the way I could. It was the human part of me that let me walk in the sun. There were upsides and downsides to being half-human, but since I’d embraced my vampire side I’d found a lot more skills I hadn’t known I had. Like amazing speed and better hearing than I’d had before.
Blood was new too, but not in a bad way. Connor and I shared blood. It was intimate and erotic and powerful.
It was probably a good thing that I hadn’t found my true self before. If I’d known about all these special tricks while I was hunting vampires, I’d have gotten into trouble a lot sooner.
“Do you miss it?” he asked. I knew what he was talking about. He’d been able to help me with the guns. The shooting range was a great extension of his academy and I was a good instructor. He meant the killing. The revenge. The nightlight. The monsters.
And I didn’t miss it at all. Yeah, so it made me feel bad-ass when I could stake a vampire without thinking about it twice. But it always made me feel rotten afterwards, a reminder of a conscience buried under all the hatred, and the demons that had haunted me with it – it just hadn’t been worth it.
I shook my head and shrugged into my leather jacket.
“I’m coming in tomorrow,” I said to Phil when we walked out into the dimming light together.
“It’s you day off,” he pointed out. I shrugged and threw my leg over my bike.
“She said she was urgent to get started, and all my students know what they’re doing now. I need a challenge.”
I smiled wide enough for the tips of my fangs to show, and Phil pulled a face. He was used to me by now. It was a year down the line after he’d found out what I really was and the fangs lost their initial thrill for everyone, but I still couldn’t decide how much of the vampire world Phil really accepted. He was polite to me and Aspen because we were at least half-vampire, and to Connor because we were probably going to end up married one day and he was full-on night crawler.
“See you tomorrow,” I said and pulled my helmet over my hair. I left it loose to stream behind me in the wind. I didn’t like tying it up under my helmet. Besides, there was nothing as unattractive as helmet hair. When I climbed onto my bike I ran my hands along her curves. It was one of the perks of my past life I wasn’t willing to give up. An MV Augusta M4CC doesn’t just show up in your life. I’d taken it off a vampire with a hell of a lot of money after I’d killed it. I wasn’t willing to give it up.
I still rode it, even when I didn’t carry guns in the compartment and I didn’t have to blend in with the shadows of the night anymore. I turned the ignition and my bike purred to life. I let it bark into the silence of dusk, turning the throttle twice before I pulled into the road. Phil had disappeared into the night. When I got home the shutters were just rolling up, the sign that there was no sunlight anymore. They were designed to keep all natural light out – it could fry a vampire if he wasn’t careful. I pulled into the garage and pulled off my helmet, hanging it on the handle.
The door from the garage opened into the house, and Connor walked into the kitchen the same time I did. The sight of him always made my heart skip a beat. From the moment that I’d seen him first, unconscious in an alley, all the way through. There were even times when I supposed to be killing him – I’d been a vampire slayer and he was my mark – I just couldn’t do it because his blue eyes had been electric and had drawn me in when I’d vowed not to feel anything.
When you start sleeping with your mark, things get messy.
“Hey beautiful,” he said, wrapping his arms around me pulling me in for a kiss, and when he said it, I believed him. Even if before I’d just used my beauty to reel them in for the kill. Even when I had a scar down my neck that would never heal. Connor made me feel beautiful. My body melted against his.
“God, it’s good to see you,” I said. His body was still soft and cuddly with sleep, and he buried his face in my neck, in my hair. He traced the scar with his tongue and I could feel his fangs. I shivered. His body was pressed against mine all the way down, and parts of him felt like it wasn’t asleep anymore at all.
I put my hands on his chest and pushed him back gently. He pouted.
“We have to get going,” I said and smiled at him. “Aspen said eight.” We went to Aspen’s house for supper every Thursday night. It was tradition. And it was good for me to have a set date with her instead of dropping in on her all the time to check that she was okay.
In the beginning, when my life still endangered us all, I checked up on her every day. I’d felt guilty for not being able to save her. And I was scared that the things that I was doing would make her life worse, not better. But it was different now. My life was perfectly respectable, and she had Joel. If anyone could protect her, he would. She would always be in a wheelchair.
After my father had lost his mind when we were younger, he’d gone on a rampage that had left my mother killed and my sister crippled for life. I’d gotten away with a scar and a death wish, blaming myself that it had been them and not me.
I was still working on forgiveness, but I didn’t feel like I had to watch over her all the time anymore.
Joel used to be my techy. He hacked into databases for me, and he supplied me with guns and silver ammunition so I could take down the monsters. He was one of my best friends, and I couldn’t have chosen a better man for Aspen myself, purely because of how much he adored her. Love bridged most gaps, even when he was human, and he used to help me kill. There were some things we all chose to overlook.
While we got ready, I filled Connor in on my day. I told him about the new student, too.
“You can’t work every day,” he said after I’d told him I was going to work on my day off.
“Why not? I can’t do nightlife the way you do. I need to see people, not just vampires. And the academy is a day thing, so I’m always alone when I’m home and I hate being trapped like this. Besides, she said it was urgent, she wanted to learn how to defend herself.”
Connor nodded but he didn’t answer me. He knew how much I hated doing nothing. I’d always worked most of the time, and the times that I didn’t, I’d literally counted the seconds until I could work again. He also understood how impor
tant it was to me that women could defend and look after themselves. Especially after what had happened to us when we were younger, and then what had happened when the vampires I’d pissed off had come to get Aspen and I had to go get her.
We’d all nearly died – the fact that that was mostly my fault aside – and I wanted to do everything I could to make sure that no woman would be in that position again.
We drove the short distance to Aspen’s place and parked the car. When we knocked on the door Joel answered, and he looked great. His hair was cut short now, in a style that fit the office environment where he was working, now that he’d rejoined the real world, and he wore a collared shirt. When I was seeing him after dark in my old life, he had long stringy hair and messy clothes most of his time, and his work had been his life.
Aspen rolled up behind him in her wheelchair and I bent down to hug her.
“It’s so good to see you,” she said, and put the salad bowl I’d offered on her lap.
Carl appeared in the doorway to the kitchen and leaned against the doorpost, folding his arms over his chest. He smirked at me when I rolled my eyes.
“The whole family’s here tonight,” I said. Connor walked to Carl and offered his hand. Carl hesitated, and then took it. He didn’t want to. His life had been about hunting vampires just as mine had, and I wasn’t sure yet if his convictions had forced him to give it up, or just because he was starting to know too many of them personally.
“So nice to see you too,” he said, matching my own sarcasm. We had a working relationship. It wasn’t a good one. But we tolerated each other because we’d been to death and back. I rolled my eyes, and followed Aspen into the kitchen. When the men joined us, the place was cramped. Her previous house would have been big enough, but none of us missed it.
She’d sold her old place. Zelda, her live-in nurse, had been killed – my fault too – and the memories had just been too much. I’d lived with her at this place until Joel had decided to move in. And I’d joined Connor.
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