by Sierra Dean
If history held true, he had a penchant for flaying his victims alive. Removing their skin and picking them apart piece by piece until their insides fell out.
He was also a vigorous fan of the rape in rape and pillage.
My heart sank as I thought of him in there with some poor, innocent girl. Why was it the worst kind of monsters focused on the sweet, sunny little kids?
“I’m sorry, they sent you after Grendel?” I climbed through the damaged frame, avoiding shards of broken glass as I stepped onto the patchy floor within. Boards of plywood crisscrossed over gaping holes where I could see through to the lower levels of the apartment building.
A scream echoed through the walls, rattling upwards into the ceiling and falling again, quieter. She was still screaming in fear and not pain, which was a small comfort. Anguish had its own unique sound, and it was one I was becoming increasingly familiar with.
Shane was edging across a rotting two-by-four, and Siobhan was nowhere in sight. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“No offense, Shane, but hunting Grendel isn’t a job for a human.” As foolhardy as I could sometimes be, I wouldn’t have gone after the warlord vamp on my own, let alone send a single human hunter after him. “Did you piss off Juan Carlos?”
The third Tribunal Leader, a Spanish conquistador, tended to hold grudges, especially against me. When I’d been the bounty hunter in Shane’s place, I was often assigned some impossible hunts, usually because a certain someone wanted to do away with me. Was he punishing Shane now, since he couldn’t take it out on me?
“It’s because of you,” he said in a ragged whisper. “They’re spread too thin looking for Peyton. I was the only one around. Now shhhhhh.”
As if us trampling around on creaky wooden planks and stepping on broken glass hadn’t alerted Grendel to our presence. But we’d play it his way and sneak up like unstealthy ninjas if that was what Shane wanted.
I tested a piece of plywood with my foot, and it bounced back. If I stuck to the edges, I might be able to rely on some extra resistance from the original floor. Except the floor must be in pretty shitty condition if the plywood was necessary. Seemed like my chances of safe passage were about even with the likelihood of me falling into the room below.
Fighting a thirteen-hundred-year-old vampire would be bad enough. I didn’t need to try doing it with a broken leg.
“Is any of that blood his?” I asked hopefully.
Shane had reached the empty elevator shaft and shot me a glare for breaching his cone of silence. Admittedly, it looked a lot more menacing with the coating of red all over him. Adding a splash of gore made a man much…manlier.
Something was very wrong with me.
“You don’t want to know where this blood is from,” he answered.
“I’m not in the habit of asking questions I don’t want the answer to.”
Shane checked his gun—a stupidly large revolver straight out of Dirty Harry—and glanced up the shaft of the elevator rather than down. “He ripped a dude’s head off. This was the result.”
Provided with such a lovely visual, I sort of regretted asking. “Did you—?”
“There were no witnesses. Wardens were called to clean it up, but God only knows when they’ll show.”
Bless my twisted little soul. He was learning. I might make a real bounty hunter out of the boy after all.
I tucked my gun into its holster and jumped across the hole, bypassing the questionable plywood altogether. Below us the screaming had faded to whimpers, meaning we were running out of time. Soon the screaming would start again, and when it did, it wouldn’t be from fear anymore.
Inside the belly of the elevator shaft the rust-coated cables started to wobble and sway. I stopped next to Shane and followed his gaze upwards.
Siobhan slid down the cable and jumped between us, shaking her hands and swearing. Her palms were bloody, and the front of her dress had been worn threadbare in places from the friction of the cable. “Remind me never to do that again without the proper equipment.”
“Is your mountaineering gear in your other purse?” I asked.
“Har-har.” Siobhan wiped the blood on her dress. “The upper floors are clear, no additional guards. If he has anyone protecting him, they’re downstairs.”
This girl was nuts. I liked not being the craziest woman in the room for once. “Don’t suppose either of you have any special skills that might help us figure out how many we’re up against?”
“At least two,” Shane said, still the only one whispering. “I used my special skill of seeing.”
I arched a brow at him. If Siobhan was responsible for him growing a pair, I had to give her props. I’d always assumed Shane had no backbone, but maybe I scared him. I was a fan of him coming out of his shell, but perhaps the sass could wait until after we’d killed some vampires.
There was only room for one person to be sassy on the job, and I already filled the quota.
Right now, though, I had to worry about the fact we had at least two more vampires on our plate in addition to the already challenging rogue we’d come for. Not that I was worried or anything, but having a vampire sentry with us might come in handy.
Thanks to the paranoia for my personal safety, my irritatingly modern phone had been outfitted with a panic button that sent a message right to Holden with my GPS coordinates. There really was an app for everything, as it turned out.
I pulled out my phone, hit a button on my home screen, and it made a happy boop noise in return. The sound was a bit too cheerful to be attached to a kidnapping tracker app, but I wasn’t the one who’d designed it.
“Is now the most ideal time to be updating your Facebook status?” Siobhan pulled her weird black baton from a sling on her back. She’d managed to remember that but hadn’t considered the advantages of pants?
“Actually I was—”
Glass crunched near the window, and the three of us turned. Holden dusted bits of glass and wood off his suit jacket and cast a disgusted look around the room. “Cavalry is here. And he’s thrilled.”
Chapter Three
Holden was a fish out of water in the dilapidated interior of the abandoned complex. The former GQ editor was wearing a gray Hugo Boss suit worth about a thousand bucks—he’d narrow down the price range for me if it was damaged somehow—and looked peeved.
His dark brown hair was brushed back from his face, curling slightly behind his ears and long enough to tease his nape. Brown eyes managed to convey his absolute disdain in a way words never could.
But it was the faint turn of a smile on his lips that hooked me. Holden had a way of taking the most terrifying situations and twisting them on their heads to distract me from the danger. Either by annoying me so intensely I wanted to murder him, or making me forget there was any risk by charming the pants off me.
Sometimes literally.
Even when he was being a snob, he made me feel safe.
It was one of the things I loved about him.
There was no shortage of those, unfortunately. It made not loving him almost impossible.
“What have you gotten us into now?” he asked. “And who are these civilian casualties?”
“Dude,” Shane responded, “we’ve met.”
“Ah yes. Secret two-point-oh. And you, tiny Irish?”
“Siobhan,” she said.
“Siobhan’s a druid,” I told him.
Holden wrinkled his nose, trying to keep from outright sneering at her. I admired his version of restraint. “How lovely.” He drew out the word lovely, making it as sarcastic as possible.
“I’m sorry, why is he here?” Shane was clearly exasperated by the way the hunt was spiraling out of his control.
“I called him.”
“For the love of—”
“Now, now, children. If you don’t want me here, I can just take my toy and go home.” With a burst of vampiric speed he was across the room with his hands possessively around my waist, pulling me towards h
im. I guess in this scenario I was the toy.
“Who’s acting like a kid now?” I smacked his hands away. He might have handled my assets in every conceivable way, but it didn’t mean he had permission to act as if he owned me. “Look, if we’re waltzing into a vampire nest, we’d be much better off having some real strength on our side. No offense to either of you, but you’re both human.”
Siobhan opened her mouth to protest, but I raised a finger. “And even a skilled human can’t face off against Grendel alone.”
Holden was still touching me, running his fingers up and down my spine, and even through the leather jacket I was tingling with awareness from his lingering presence. I didn’t tell him to stop. The last thing I needed to worry about right then was my lover getting handsy with me in front of people.
Just thinking of him in conjunction with the word lover was more of a problem than I was willing to deal with at the moment.
“So what’s the plan?” Holden looked past me to Shane. I could have hugged the vampire for giving the hunter his dues as the leader of this expedition. Maybe the blood veneer made Shane seem more respectable to everyone.
“The elevator is out of the question, obviously,” Shane said.
Siobhan raised her bloody hands as evidence. Holden’s nostrils flared as the smell of the girl’s blood fanned through the air. He sucked in a ragged breath, and since breathing wasn’t necessary for vampires, I knew he was taking a good whiff of her.
“Has anyone checked for the stairs?” Holden asked, his voice strained.
“It’s at the back, but a section in the middle is rotted through. Not passable.”
“A few stairs missing? That’s nothing.” Holden stepped clear of us and bounded across the patchwork floor with the ease of an alley cat prowling the city streets. His confidence was contagious because the three of us followed after him, less nimble, but still able to track his route.
Holden was waiting at the top of the emergency stairwell, which must have been constructed in a bygone era before concrete was the norm, and we all assessed the rot damage.
The stairwell wrapped around the wall, with a broken railing along the outer edge. Where the railings gave way there was a central column open all the way to the ground floor. Since we were ten flights up, I didn’t think jumping to the main level would be feasible for anyone but Holden, and even he couldn’t guarantee making it without a broken ankle. He was still a man, not a cat.
Each section was missing six or seven steps—about half of the stairs—and the remaining bits looked worse for wear. I wouldn’t have trusted Siobhan’s lithe figure on the steps, let alone Shane or Holden. The weight of a full-grown man would fracture the threadbare wood.
“So, genius, you were saying?” I turned my attention from the stairs up to Holden.
He sneered at me and jumped to the next riser. Holden landed smoothly, avoiding the center section of the steps, and gave me a haughty I told you so look.
“Throw me the tiny one,” he said.
Shane and I stared at Siobhan, who was shaking her head emphatically and backing away from us. “No. Nope. I have no intention of being tossed into the waiting arms of a vampire.”
“It’s okay, he won’t bite you,” I told her.
“It doesn’t escape my notice you said he won’t bite me instead of he doesn’t bite.”
“He’s still a vampire,” I reminded her, rolling my eyes.
“Yeah, and we came here to kill vampires.”
“Vampires pay your boyfriend’s rent. I’m a vampire.” My tone clearly conveyed I wasn’t in the mood to argue about the shades of gray when it came to the badness of vampires.
I grabbed Siobhan, and before she could wriggle free I shoved her off the top step. I was careful not to just knock her off the edge, but instead gave my push a little oomph so she went flying into Holden’s arms. He, in turn, carried the momentum a step further and tossed her down to the next riser.
Siobhan was flustered but still a warrior at heart. She landed in a crouch, her back to the wall, and scowled up at us.
We continued the system, ensuring there was never more than one person standing on any riser longer than a few seconds, lest we push the wood’s limits and send us on the express route to the ground floor.
After a few tense moments we were all on solid ground, regrouping behind Shane. I took my gun out, as did Shane, and Siobhan retrieved her baton. Only it wasn’t a baton anymore. I didn’t see if she squeezed it, twisted it or whispered some weird druid incantation, but the baton had extended and grown in length, transforming into a bow.
She unstrung the tiered silver necklace she was wearing, and as she looped it around the ends of the bow I realized it wasn’t a necklace at all. The crazy woman was wearing a bowstring as a necklace. She must have noticed my slack-jawed expression because she gave me an uneasy smile. “I wasn’t a Boy Scout, but I do like to be prepared.”
“Hey, who am I to judge? I brought a gun to my own wedding. I’d just be worried about an accidental garroting.” A bow was one thing, but where the hell was she hiding the arrow—
She slipped a small silver blade out of her belt and squeezed, and I watched in amazement as it unfolded into a full-sized arrow. Apparently the druids had come into the twenty-first century with open arms. Cool.
Holden was the only one of us to remain unarmed, and it made sense because he didn’t need a weapon. With no further need to worry about falling to our deaths, Holden led us down the nearest hallway just in time for the whimpering girl’s voice to escalate to screaming.
This time her screams were those of pain, and my heart hammered. Adrenaline pumped through me, and I restrained myself from running headlong into danger. I had a bad habit of being impulsive and putting myself at unnecessary risk, and though I’d started to control those urges better, I still had them.
Holden must have known what I wanted to do because he raised a hand as if he could use invisible force to keep me back. “Hold on.”
The screaming petered out into a pain-filled mewling noise like an injured animal. My pulse pounded in my ears, and I glared at Holden, silently insisting he get this show on the road.
Shane was getting anxious too because he edged past Holden and moved to stand outside the room where Grendel would be waiting. His large gun was trembling slightly in his hands, and I wasn’t sure if it was from fear, rage or both.
“Let’s just fucking do this,” Shane growled, and kicked the door open.
Standing inside the room was one of the largest men I’d ever seen, undead or otherwise. He towered over seven feet, and his hair was a scraggly, grease-coated mane falling beyond his shoulders. Like Shane, he had a layer of blood over his bare chest and forearms, but in one meaty fist he was holding a skinny girl—no older than twelve—around her neck. It was hard to tell if the blood on her was from his skin or a fresh wound.
Behind him, on the periphery of the room, were three vampires. They were a normal size, but next to Grendel they looked like toddlers.
The girl started crying when she saw us, gasping sobs that racked her whole body. Grendel gave her a rough shake to silence her.
“I was beginning to wonder if you fools were just going to tromp around in the hall all night, or if you’d ever knock.” His voice was a deep, booming rumble, and it made me imagine the whole floor quaking with each word.
This guy was scary.
I’d killed scarier.
Chapter Four
“You.” Grendel shook the girl at Shane, her small head whipping from side to side. “You think you can triumph over me with these tiny women?” The giant vampire laughed loudly, and if there’d been any windows left in the complex, they would have broken.
The way he said tiny women was how I imagined a god might say puny humans. He clearly thought Siobhan and I were no threat, and that could only benefit us. If Grendel focused all his energy on Shane and Holden—the “real” threats—the petite druid and I could teach him why tiny women
were just as tough as burly men.
Holden waltzed into the room with the casual ease of a man who was looking for ties at Bergdorf.
“Tiny women and a gay?” Grendel’s laughter contained a note of concern. He hadn’t been expecting another man, and now our numbers were throwing him for a loop.
Holden smoothed the lapels of his suit and glanced down at his ensemble. “This says gay to you?” He seemed genuinely interested in the barbarian’s opinion of his attire. “I was going for ’50s chic. Interesting.” The vampire looked at me like he was waiting for a second opinion.
I wanted to remind him of the more pressing issue at hand, but the whole routine was having an interesting effect on Grendel. The giant vampire lowered his captive to the floor and glared at Holden with determined anger.
“Which of you wants to die first?” Grendel boomed.
How original.
Beside me, Siobhan was nocking up an arrow, her focus not on Grendel but rather the girl he was holding. I licked my lips, dry from the dusty interior of the building, and spoke quietly to her. “If you get the chance, you grab the girl. Understand?”
“Don’t need to tell me twice.”
“How good is your aim with that thing?” It didn’t really matter if I whispered. With Grendel this close, he’d hear everything we were saying. I was counting on him being distracted by Holden’s cheeky disregard, though.
Siobhan winked at me. “Very.”
“Great. Can you shoot him in the neck for me?”
She blinked, as if surprised by the request, but collected herself, posed like an elf right out of Lord of the Rings and released the arrow without seeming to adjust her aim at all. I pivoted my head in time to see the arrow cross the room and lodge itself in Grendel’s neck.
The giant vampire dropped the girl, and both hands flew to the projectile now sticking out the side of his neck. His thick flesh had stopped the arrow from piercing all the way through to the other side, but there must have been a barbed edge on Siobhan’s arrowhead, making it extra difficult to remove. Grendel was struggling and grunting with discomfort and annoyance. He didn’t seem to be in a great deal of pain, but distraction had been my primary motivation.