by Jess Haines
His fingers spasmed, tightening around my arm, his other hand reaching out to steady himself on the table. It took everything I had not to scream in pain, but somehow I managed. God, he was strong, probably strong enough to snap my arm if he put just a little more effort into it.
“Not interested,” I panted, using my free hand to slide under my jacket and grab one of the guns. “But thanks for the offer,” I said as I shoved the muzzle under his chin.
He abruptly shoved me away from him, sending me sprawling back on my ass. It was a good thing the safety was still on, or the gun would’ve gone off and he’d be missing a good portion of his face.
“You conniving little bitch!”
“Alive and whole conniving little bitch,” I shot back, using one hand to grab on to the sideboard next to me to pull myself up. I knocked a bunch of cookies or something to the floor in the process, but didn’t bother to look. My eyes stayed firmly focused on the vampire just a few feet away, who looked like he was having a tough time deciding whether or not to rush me. My other hand kept the gun trained on him, though technically I couldn’t do anything to him with it just yet.
“You can’t fight back,” he growled, taking one menacing step forward. “Are you crazy or stupid or both? There is no provision in that contract that can save you from your own people if you shoot me.”
Levering up to my feet, ignoring the twinge in my back, I brandished the gun at him and gestured for him to back up. Panting a little from fear and pain, I narrowed my eyes and deliberately flicked the safety off the gun.
“Au contraire,” I said, feeling particularly high and mighty right at that second for having gotten the better of a vampire as old as he was. “It’s been doctored. You touch me, and I swear to all that is holy I will use this gun to shoot those pearly white fangs of yours into the back of your skull. Want to try me?”
His face twisted into an angry, silent snarl, but he backed up a couple of steps. Thank the Lord, it was working. The plan was working! I unbuttoned my trench coat very deliberately, very slowly, revealing the other gun and the stakes. His eyes widened at the sight of the belt, and his fists clenched at his sides. “I told you to give that to me!”
“Tough shit. It was a gift. It’s mine, not The Circle’s, and doesn’t come with buying out their contract.” After a moment’s thought, I added, “Aside from which, you don’t own me. We have a binding agreement that we can legally hurt or kill each other with impunity. That doesn’t mean we should act on it.”
He growled, low and deep, rumbling in his throat and sending a shiver through me. I really needed to reconsider baiting the already very pissed off vampire.
“Check,” he said, his tones resuming that honey-sweet lull that made it hard to decide whether or not to be frightened of him. The fangs made it easier to stay scared. “But not mate. I’ll let the contract stand as is, then. You’ve caught me off guard this time, it’s true. But you can’t hide from me forever, and the minute you let your guard down, you’re mine.”
“Is that Royce speaking, or the one holding the focus?” I asked snidely, cocking my hip to look a lot more relaxed and arrogant than I was. “You’re starting to sound a little like a bad B-movie.”
He snarled and narrowed his eyes, leaning forward threateningly. “You’re speaking to the holder of the focus. I know who you are, Shiarra Waynest. Do you know me?”
I paused. What the heck was this? “No.” I let a bit of my own glare come out. “I don’t care who you are or what you’re after, I just want you to leave me alone. Can we make a deal, you go your separate way and leave me out of whatever it is you’re up to?”
“No,” he said, the scowl easing into a dark, dangerous smile, the kind that would melt your insides if you didn’t know there were fangs hidden behind those velveteen lips. “Maybe, if you’d been less intuitive, if you hadn’t worked for The Circle. Maybe. Not now. I’ll find a way to hunt you down, whether I have to use Royce or another means of reaching you. Your little pet mage can’t keep you safe from me.”
Okay, this was just getting creepy. “That’s nice. I’m leaving now. You stay right where you are or so help me I will use your teeth for shooting targets.” I cautiously backed around the table, never taking the gun or my eyes off him and some part of me intuitively knowing where to step so as not to bump into any of the scattered chairs.
He did what I said, seething, something dark and menacing moving behind his eyes. Alien thoughts, not his own. I could almost see him fighting to regain some measure of control of himself, clawing toward but never quite reaching the surface. Like a part of him wanted to spring at me and another wanted to stay put. It was hard to tell which side was winning out.
Just in case he lost his mind and decided to jump me, I slid my other hand into my pocket, fingering my cell phone to turn off the key lock, and pressed until I heard the reassuring beep that said my preprepared text message had been sent to Sara. If I wasn’t downstairs in the next five minutes, she and Arnold would come looking for me.
“Shiarra.” Royce’s voice was faint, slick with unspoken promise, hissing out between his clenched teeth. “I know where your parents live. I know you’ve been staying with that rich little cunt. I know you’re still working with someone from The Circle. Walk out that door, and I will personally see that every Other in the state makes it their business to destroy everything, everyone you’ve ever known.”
Chilled, I paused with one hand on the doorjamb. What was with this guy? “What did I ever do to you? I already said I don’t want any part of this.”
He took a slow step forward, creeping closer to me. There was still a healthy distance between us, but no more table or chairs to bar his way. “You interfered. You forced my hand.” Anger started creeping into that not-quite-Royce’s voice. “You made me have to take it before I was ready. But you know what?”
“What?” I asked, unnerved. He wasn’t making any sudden movements, but I didn’t like that surreal gleam to his eye as his snarl turned into a dark, nasty grin.
“Seeing you bleed will make it all worth it.” With those few words, he sprang at me, faster than I would have thought possible.
Chapter 29
I screamed and jerked back as he came at me, moving with a boneless grace, his fingers curled into grasping claws. My finger tightened on the trigger and he twisted to one side, hissing a spitting mixture of pain and epithets as he fell just short of me when I pressed my back flat up against the door. The bullet barely slowed him down, since he gathered his feet up under him and leapt up almost as soon as he’d fallen, black blood oozing sluggishly out of the wound in his shoulder.
I seemed to have acquired a sixth sense, knowing exactly what he was going to do before he did it. As he sprang forward again, I ducked, twisting my body around to get in another shot to his torso as he came at me. There was little room to maneuver, and he was driving me back from the only exit, but I wasn’t so interested in that as in avoiding having him sink his fangs into me or crush my arm again.
His eyes had shifted to glowing red pools of hot hatred, his fangs nearly cutting into his lower lip as he came at me. There was no room for thought as he reached grasping fingers for my wrist, capturing the one that held the gun and forcing the third shot to go wild. I could hear shouts and pounding on the door as we fought, but they were distant, somewhere outside myself. As he crashed into me, I fell back, digging a knee into his stomach and forcing him to flip over my head and land painfully on his back. Whoa. Where’d I learn to do that?
His grip loosened as he hit the floor, and the two of us twisted and shifted like snakes, coming back to our feet in seconds and warily facing off just a few feet apart.
As I reached for the other gun, he came silently forward once again, lips peeling back from his fangs as he slid one arm around my waist in mockery of a lover’s touch. The other came up to grab my wrist again, forcing my arm back and to the side as he drove his fangs against my neck, trying to bite through the material.
I could feel the pressure of the bite, but the fangs never penetrated. I’d probably have one heck of a weird-looking bruise at the crook of my neck later on. Enraged, he scraped his fangs over the material as he kept trying and failing to pierce the shirt, which I was more than thankful for right at that moment. His grip on my wrist was painfully tight, but my other arm was still free. I slid my free hand up and under his jaw and shoved, hoping to at least get him off my shoulder.
The result was a little more than either of us were expecting. His jaw audibly snapped shut and he staggered back unsteadily, like I’d given him one mother of an uppercut. His fingers at my back slipped and slid against the slick material of my shirt and finally lost their grip entirely. He had wrapped the fingers of his other hand entirely around my small wrist, and didn’t let go, almost jerking me off my feet as he pulled back.
Unthinking, quick as a whip, I closed the newfound distance between us with a stake in my free hand, just barely piercing his chest right above where I somehow knew, just knew, a blackened husk of a heart rested. He went very still, the hatred frothing behind those black eyes turning into an abrupt kind of panic and fear. I was willing to bet it had been a very, very long time, if ever, since he’d had to worry about an untimely end to his existence. He hadn’t had a doubt in his mind when he attacked that he would win. I knew for a certainty that it was the “real” Royce looking so afraid. After all, what did the holder of the focus have to worry about other than losing a valuable pawn? If not for the fact that I knew he had been trying to kill me a few seconds ago, I might have felt sorry for him right at that moment.
“Look,” I said quietly, realizing dimly and with a vague sense of horror that there was a part of me that wanted to push that stake home, wanted to end his existence, and that I had to put effort into not destroying him then and there. “I don’t want to kill you. I don’t want to fight you. I just want to get out of here. So you’re going to back the fuck up, give me some space, and let me walk. Capeesh?”
He nodded, and I watched in morbid fascination as something twisted and swam behind his eyes even as his fingers slowly released their vise grip on my wrist. Though I didn’t really want to show weakness in front of him just then, as soon as he let go, I shook my wrist out and grimaced just a little. Man, he had a tight grip.
Fortunately, I had never lost my hold on the gun, so once I’d worked a little circulation back into my wrist, I lifted the weapon until it was aimed square at his nose. Next I tucked the stake that had magically found its way into my hand back into its sheath as I slowly backed toward the door again. He stayed right where he was, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides, but otherwise unmoving. It looked like the holder of the focus was trying to goad him into doing something stupid, and he was gamely fighting against it. That, and, oddly, the blood that had been trickling out of the bullet holes in his shoulder and stomach had ceased flowing. Creepy.
Once I put my hand on the door handle, he spoke, voice low and uneven, like his control was wavering. “La Petite Boisson tomorrow night. Bring the mage.”
His eyes were closed, his expression contorting like he was in pain. When his eyes opened again, that feral glitter had come back to them, and he took a step toward me. His voice was once again that sickeningly sweet lull, promising all sorts of things that I really, really didn’t want anything to do with. “When I get my hands on you, you will beg to die. But I won’t let you. I am going to drag out your death for days, weeks, years. You could only wish you had gone the easy route and given yourself over to Royce.”
“That’s nice. Here’s how it’s actually going to play out,” I said with far more brashness than I felt. My insides felt like they’d turned to iced jelly, but I kept talking smooth and bored like I was going over my grocery list instead of threatening the obviously psychotic holder of the focus. “When I find you, and you stop hiding behind your big bad vampire flunky”—Wow, did I really just call Royce a flunky?—“I am going to kick your sorry, cowardly ass from here to the Mississippi. And trust me, I will find you.”
He snarled and took another threatening step, so I shot him in the knee. He fell, howling and cradling his injured leg, and I stared in stupid shock. I hadn’t even thought about pulling the trigger, hadn’t even really tried to take aim. The laser sight wasn’t on. How could I have managed to hit him? I’m not that good a shot.
Yet somehow I’d just felled him with no real effort, knowing instinctively that it would take him too long to recover from the knee injury for him to follow me. Go in for the kill. He’s easy prey now, a soft voice whispered in the back of my mind. He can’t run or fight back as well wounded like that. All it will take is one quick thrust and it will all be over. Chilled, I shook my head violently to stop the thoughts prodding at me, holstered the gun, and yanked the door open.
The people who had been gathered outside the door backed up immediately, all of them looking frightened and shocked. I threw one last, pitying look over my shoulder to the vampire who was glaring at me with someone else’s hatred in his eyes. There was some part of me that was hating back, not Royce, but the one who was making him lash out against me. Sure, he was a manipulative bastard, probably worthy of some loathing, too, but I knew what it was like being under someone else’s thumb. It couldn’t have been easy for someone who was so used to being in control to be subjected to something like the hold of the focus. He was suffering from that indignity a lot more than I was just now.
He was a vampire, but he had also been human at one time. While he’d been a manipulative asshole in the short time I’d known him, he hadn’t done anything to physically harm me exactly, only use me. The holder was something else. Whoever it was seemed out for blood. Royce was smart enough to have let me go once he knew the papers had been doctored; it was the holder forcing him into acting like such an unconscionable, unreasoning shithead.
That made it much easier to make my next decision.
“I’ll save you,” I promised before turning on a booted heel and rushing past the people and through the offices, faster than I’d ever run in my life. The cubicles and doorways were a blur, and once out the door, I barely paused in my rush to the gleaming exit sign down the hallway. I’d take the stairs and meet Arnold and Sara outside so we could make a quick getaway.
But who will save you? asked that mocking voice in the back of my mind.
Chapter 30
Arnold and Sara were in the lobby, having a shouting match with the security guard, who was also shouting orders into a walkie-talkie and waving a gun at them. When my friends saw me burst out of the stairwell, they started shouting in relief at me instead. I couldn’t make out a single thing anyone was saying, and even though I was nearly shot by the skittish security guard, who trained his gun on me the instant I appeared, I didn’t stop running for the doors leading out into the street.
“Let’s get out of here!” I cried on my way past the guard desk.
They followed quickly enough, and I glanced back just long enough to see Arnold pointing in the direction of the car. Three blocks away, I finally spotted it, and only then turned to see what happened to Arnold and Sara.
They were trailing gamely behind, but a block and a half away. A New York City block is pretty dang long, and it surprised me to see how much distance I’d put between us. Strange. Just like my newfound strength and Annie Oakley shooting skills, it seemed I’d picked up some peculiar latent talents in the last half an hour or so. The sound of police sirens in the distance was getting louder, but I couldn’t see where they were. There was a part of me that simply knew that the cops were roughly half a mile away, coming toward Royce’s office building from a different direction than we’d been running. Weirded out, I started pacing, only then noticing I wasn’t even winded once Sara and Arnold joined me, huffing and puffing, a minute or so later.
“Go, speed racer.” Sara grinned at me weakly, taking a few quick breaths. “When did you turn into a marathon runner?”
“When…she…” Arnold gasped, wheezing more than I would’ve expected considering it was only a couple of blocks. Maybe he was a heavy smoker? “…put on…the…belt…”
Horrified, I looked down at the plain black leather circling my waist. “This did that?”
He nodded, braced his hands on his knees for a moment before clicking the car open. We all slid inside, me in the back, Sara in the front, and I cringed as something that sounded like faint, mocking laughter bounced around in my skull. I can do a lot more than that if you let me, that strange, whispery voice said.
“What the blue flying fuck!” I exclaimed, scrabbling at the belt buckle. Arnold and Sara twisted around in their seats, eyes wide as they stared at me having a fit over the buckle. It seemed like the tongue had adhered with superglue to the rest of the belt and wasn’t about to be pried loose by my frantic fingers.
That won’t help anything, it said, that edge of mocking laughter grating on what few nerves I had left. You’re stuck with me until sunrise. Relax.
“I won’t relax! Get out of my head!” I cried, redoubling my efforts. Sara and Arnold exchanged a look and I glared at them. “Snide looks aren’t helping me get this thing off any faster!”
“Uh, Shia, you do realize you were just talking to yourself, right?” Sara said, amused.
“She was talking to the belt,” Arnold said, though he was still staring at me like I’d grown two heads. I finally folded my arms across my chest and growled in frustration, quickly unfolding them when the guns started digging into my ribs again. Damn it, I had to remember how uncomfortable it was to do that. “It’s…uhh…It’s sentient. A dead hunter’s spirit inhabits it and gives it its power.” He had the grace to look sheepish, I’ll give him that.
Seething, I reached out and grabbed the collar of his shirt, practically dragging him into the back seat with me. He yelped and grabbed at my wrist, but wisely didn’t fight back. The way I was feeling just then, I probably would’ve punched his teeth in if he had. “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?!”