by Karen Chance
“You don’t look like a dhampir!”
“You’ve met one?”
“No, but… a dhampir would be taller. And you’d have a tail.” His eyes flicked downward for a second, and he looked almost disappointed at my human- looking butt.
“That’s a myth,” I told him gently.
He still looked skeptical, so I flashed my tiny fangs. They’re vestigial in my kind, since we don’t drink blood, but they got the message across. His eyes widened, and he retreated a step before he caught himself. “Dhampir!”
“Out of curiosity, what did you think had decapitated the boss?” I asked, as he went for his gun. I’d expected that, and mine was out before he’d completed the gesture. The reflexes aren’t a myth, or I’d have been dead a long time ago.
He looked at my Glock. It’s a.45. He’d pulled out a tiny little.22.
“Size really does matter,” I observed, and he scowled.
“Oh for—Go get help!” Raymond ordered.
The vamp’s eyes shifted back to his master, and some of his initial panic returned. “But sir. Lord Cheung is here!”
“What?” Raymond suddenly looked more freaked out than when I’d decapitated him. “But he’s not due until midnight!”
“I believe his plane arrived early.” The vamp’s eyes kept flicking back and forth between the two parts of the boss, as if unsure which one he should be addressing. He finally settled on the head. “He commands your presence, sir.”
“Oh, shit! Oh, shit!” Now Raymond was the one looking around wildly.
“What’s your master doing here?” I demanded.
But Ray wasn’t listening. “If he’s here early it must mean—Oh, shit!” His body gave a sudden heave and wrenched itself off the floor, only to stumble into the side of the sink, slip on some blood and go back down.
“Must mean what?”
“That you’re too late! He’s going to kill me before the Senate gets the chance!”
“That’s why you were cowering in the bathroom?” For once, I hadn’t had to go round the perp up. He’d already been in here when I arrived. I’d thought it convenient, but I had wondered. It’s not like vamps actually need to use the facilities.
He shot me a purely venomous look. “I wasn’t cowering! I needed someplace quiet to think. To figure out how—” His lips abruptly snapped shut, and those pale eyes narrowed on my face.
I sighed. Why did I get the feeling that this nice, easy assignment had just gone pear-shaped? “And your master wants to kill you because…?”
“There may have been a slight… misunderstanding… about some merchandise.”
“You stole from the vampire mafia?”
“Something was misplaced, and it wasn’t my fault!”
“Of course not.”
“Look, all you need to know is that—” He stopped, staring past me at the guard. “What are you doing?”
The vamp looked at the gun he’d aimed at my head. “I’m going to kill her?”
Raymond rolled his eyes. “Oh, for the love of—Can you at least try to keep up?”
The vamp lowered the weapon and stood there looking awkward.
“What do I need to know?” I prompted.
“That there’s not one portal,” Ray said hurriedly. “There’s a whole network, and I know where they are. Well, most of them. More than you’re likely to find on your own—that’s for sure. You get me out of this, and I talk. You leave me here and I die, and don’t think you’re going to find anyone else to squeal!”
Great. I should have known Mircea wouldn’t give me two easy jobs in a row. But this was going to be a real bitch. For one thing, it meant I couldn’t leave the body behind as I’d planned. Ray was already decapitated; all his master had to do to be rid of him was to stake the heart. And a lumbering corpse was going to be a bit harder to hide than a head in a bag.
And for another, there was Cheung. The job had been to kidnap a fifth- level screwup, not to face a first- level master and who knew how many subordinates. The only smart thing to do was to wish Ray good luck and get the hell out.
And that was exactly what I would have done, except I didn’t think Mircea was going to be too pleased if I showed up empty-handed. I needed this job and I needed his help. I was going to have to come up with something.
My knife was still protruding from the vamp’s chest. I ripped it out and looked up at the bouncer. “If I provide a distraction, can you get your boss’s body past Cheung’s men?”
The vamp didn’t reply, but Raymond’s eyebrows lowered. “What do you mean, my body? Why can’t he take all of—”
“Because I don’t trust you. I’ll get you out of here, but it’s the same deal as before. Your family takes the body, and I get the head. If you’re not playing me, the two of you get reunited. Otherwise—”
“All right! All right!” Raymond glanced at the bouncer, who was just standing there. He sighed and the fingers on his body snapped. “Hello! Answer her!”
“Sir, Lord Cheung specifically instructed me to bring you to him.”
“So stall him!”
“Sir, I can’t.” And it was obvious he meant that literally. Tendons were sticking out like cords on either side of his neck, his face was red and he was sweating small drops of blood. Conflicting orders play havoc with baby vamps, and this one was a couple decades dead at best. “He said we were to bring you to him immediately—”
“We?”
“He instructed the family to find you as soon as he came in—”
“And as your master’s master, he can command you,” I finished for him. Well, shit, to borrow Ray’s favorite word.
“Fight it!” Raymond ordered, like the guy wasn’t already trying. The bouncer nodded, but at the same time, he stooped, picked up his boss’s body and heaved it over one shoulder. More thick, sludgy blood spattered the dingy tiles. “What are you doing?” Raymond demanded shrilly.
“I’m sorry, sir.” The vamp looked miserable, and his voice was trembling, but he nonetheless started for the door.
“He’s not even a master,” I pointed out. “He can’t fight it, Ray!”
“Shit!”
That was less than helpful, so I grabbed baby vamp by the belt. He wrenched the door open anyway, so I swung him around and put my back to it, slamming it shut. At the same time, Ray’s foot kicked out and clipped him on the knee; the guy slipped on blood, and they hit the floor.
As soon as they were down, Ray hit the vamp in the neck, kneed him in the groin and tore out of his hold. He scuttled into a stall and flipped the lock—why, I don’t know. Its side was the usual ugly green metal with a graffiti rash, which might as well have been rice paper for all the good it did. The bouncer leapt to his feet and punched a hole through it with his fist.
I moved to assist, but never got the chance. There was some pretty violent banging for a minute, and then a tearing sound. Finally the stall door flew open, and Ray’s shirtless body emerged and started bitch-slapping everything in sight.
His aim was off, probably due to the difficulty of having his eyes on the other side of the room, but he made up for it with sheer determination. A condom dispenser went flying, and a urinal got a blow that severed a pipe, sending a gush of water spearing across the room. A lucky blow pushed the baby vamp back into me, and I grabbed the opportunity and his throat.
A choke hold isn’t really much use on vamps since they don’t need to breathe. But he was new enough that he instinctively clutched my arms, trying in vain to break my grip. It didn’t work, which seemed to startle him.
“Is there anyone who didn’t hear Cheung’s command?” I demanded, as he struggled and gurgled and didn’t tell me shit. He finally wised up and elbowed me in the gut, and I lost patience. I shoved him away and grabbed the bowie out of my bag. When he started for me again, I pinned him to the wall with it.
He stared down at the bone handle, eyes huge and disbelieving. “It’s not wood. You’ll live,” I told him tersely. It was more than Ray and I were
going to do if we didn’t get gone. I plucked the head out of the sink, wrapped it in the towels I’d brought along and dropped it in the duffel.
“What the hell?” Ray demanded indignantly.
“How did you think I was planning to get you out?” I asked, stripping off my jacket.
I threw it over the body’s torso and stepped back to check out the effect. It looked a lot like a headless corpse with a jacket over it. I bunched up a towel and shoved it underneath, trying to approximate a head. It remained more hide-the-victim than staggering drunk, but it would have to do. I grabbed the duffel, flung an arm around the body’s waist and kicked open the door.
Outside of the restroom’s fluorescent glare, the club was dusk blue and dim, like the color put in public toilets to stop junkies from finding a vein. It silvered the graffiti sprayed on the raw brick walls and painted my skin cadaver white. But it helped us blend in with the sea of bodies gyrating in a pulsing mass on the old warehouse floor.
A quick glance around the room showed me shadows flowing along the walls, blocking off the side doors, and others cutting through the crowd like sharks. It was an apt image, since the smell of blood would draw them to us within seconds even through the soup of perfume, alcohol and body odor in the air. It looked like Cheung wasn’t planning to make this easy.
I headed for the nearest exit as fast as Ray’s stumbling feet would go, but had to stop short. Two large shadows were standing beside the doors. The first had a gun bulge under his sleek black coat; the other looked like a weapon would be an insult to his hulking masculinity. But he was probably faster than he looked. Not all giants are lumbering, at least not when they’re also master vampires.
My every instinct said attack, but my instincts always say that. And right now it wouldn’t be smart. On my own, two was doable, even two masters. But I wasn’t on my own. And a fight would allow the rest of the family time to zero in on our location.
There was some muffled foul language from the duffel. I gave it a poke. “Settle down!”
“Let me out! I’m suffocating in here!”
“You don’t have lungs.”
“I’m going to puke in this thing.”
“You don’t have a stomach, either,” I told him, steering the body over to the wall. I unzipped the bag and a big nose popped out. “Gah! What the hell have you been carrying in this thing?”
“It’s my gym bag.”
“It smells like something died in here!”
“If we don’t get out of here soon, something might,” I told him grimly. “The main exits are guarded. Tell me you’ve got a secret way out.”
“Do you have any idea what those cost?”
Of course. I would decide to kidnap the only vamp dumb enough to skimp on the necessities. “A back door, then!”
“There’s a courtyard behind the bar, but it’s just a space between buildings. There’s no exit that way.”
“There’s about to be.”
We booked it back across the club, wove through the five-person-thick crowd around the bar and pushed through a door. The storeroom proved to be a claustrophobic brick rectangle, with no windows and only a narrow aisle between shelves. But a small breeze drifted through a slightly ajar back door.
I pushed it open and found myself in a narrow courtyard containing broken pallets, bags of garbage and a couple cats. Their eyes glowed at me for an instant before they scampered up a fire escape to safety. On every side, buildings rose tall and dark, hemming us in, as Ray had said. The shortest was three stories, and while I might have scaled it on my own, I couldn’t do it towing a half-dead vampire.
It looked like the only way out was the one the cats had taken.
I tugged on the pull-down ladder, wondering how I was going to get Ray’s well-padded ass up four flights. And then I wondered if I’d get him up at all when the structure shrieked in protest and refused to budge. Decades’ worth of rust clung to my hands and sent a cloud of red flakes into the air. The ladder probably hadn’t been touched since the building was erected, maybe a century ago.
It finally came down, but it wasn’t wide enough for me to haul anybody up alongside me, and I doubted it would hold the weight of two adults anyway. So I sent the body up first. Its coordination was about what you’d expect for someone without a head, and it didn’t help that the stairs shuddered with every step. But amazingly, they looked like they might hold.
Of course, the universe wasted no time in punishing me for that nanosecond of optimism. Halfway up the second landing, a scream of overstressed metal echoed around the courtyard and a hail of old bolts came rattling down. The fire escape tore away from the building on one side and sagged out into the air.
The body stopped, quivering in fear, and one look at Raymond’s face showed why. The two parts were obviously in some sort of communication, or it wouldn’t have been able to move. But the only thing being communicated at the moment was terror.
So I slapped him.
Furious blue eyes swiveled up to mine. “Wasn’t beheading me enough?”
“Move. Or you’re going to be headless permanently,” I hissed.
Ray’s eyes swung back to his body, which had slumped over like the corpse it was, causing my jacket to begin to slide off. I moved forward to catch it, and thereby narrowly missed being skewered by a spear of metal that fell off the building. It took out the awning over the back door instead, crumpling the heavy aluminum like paper before slamming into the paving stones.
Ray gave a startled yelp, but the near miss got his body moving again. And this time, he wasn’t messing around. Freedom was a few steps away, and he went for it, taking the last few flights with the fire escape collapsing under him. He leapt into the air on its final shudder and grabbed the edge of the roof next door, dangling there precariously.
I didn’t wait around to find out if he made it. Rusted metal rattled down the old bricks and exploded against the paving stones, flinging shrapnel everywhere. Along with it went a crashing cacophony of sound loud enough to wake the dead—and that included the dead searching for us.
CHAPTER 11
Grabbing the duffel, I headed back across the courtyard at a run, leaping over fallen pieces while trying to dodge the ones still raining down. Something hit my right shoulder like a hammer blow, but I couldn’t waste time seeing how bad it was. I charged back through the storeroom and burst through the door—just in time to see half a dozen vamps converging on it.
I ducked back inside and slammed it behind me. It was sturdy old oak—probably a relic from the club’s original incarnation as a factory—but that would buy us seconds at best. Maybe they hadn’t seen us, I thought hysterically, before doing a Ray and throwing the lock.
“Did you see that?” Raymond sounded vaguely awed. “Did you see what I did?”
“What’s on the other side of this wall?” I asked breathlessly.
“I was like… like Superman or something! I almost flew—” He broke off as the door shuddered under a heavy blow. So much for hoping they hadn’t seen us.
“Ray! I need to know—”
“My office is next door. Why?”
“You’re going to need to redecorate.” I pulled a wad of explosive putty out of one of the duffel’s side compartments and worked to get the wrapping off.
“What’s that?”
“Something I planned to use on the portal.” It was the latest thing, specifically designed to use an energy sink’s own power against it. But it ought to do a pretty good job on the wall, too. I tore off a small piece and slapped it in place.
Ray stared at it, his small eyes wide. “Are you kidding me? This is an old building. You’ll bring it down on our heads!” He paused for a moment. “And that’s all I got left!”
“I’m not using that much,” I told him, tugging my jacket back on for protection. I retreated to the other side of the room, threw up an arm to shield my face and pulled my Glock—only to have a leg smash through the bottom half of the door and kick it out
of my hand.
So I grabbed my backup Smith & Wesson and emptied a clip into the vamp, but other than shredding the guy’s trousers, it didn’t have much effect. His flesh absorbed the bullets like water before forcing them out again, the wounds closing almost as soon as they were formed. He was obviously a master; all I was doing was pissing him off.
As he demonstrated by shooting a basketball-sized hole in the top of the door. For once, I didn’t feel like complaining about my lack of height. If I’d been a couple inches taller, Raymond wouldn’t have been the only one missing a head.
And then a cascade of bullets from a machine gun came through the hole, kind of negating the height advantage. Raymond was screaming, despite the fact that I’d hit the cement floor in front of the door, flattening us out. That didn’t stop the stream of bullets, but it allowed me to reach through the hole in the door, grab our attacker’s leg and pull.
He hit the floor, and I jerked him through the opening. I’d pulled a stake out of my jacket, but I didn’t need it; one of the tough old pieces of the splintered door did the job for me. Another vamp yanked him back out, using his body to snap off the remaining shards, and slid through the cleared gap as quick as if he’d been oiled.
I’d hopped back to my feet, but he used the shotgun he’d brought along to sweep my legs out from under me. He tried to bring the butt down on my head, but I jerked aside, got a foot in his sternum and shoved. He staggered into the far wall, and I dove for my Glock. My hand closed on it just as I heard the distinctive sound of a shotgun cock. I looked up to see it leveled on me, and the vamp grinning.
“Mine,” he told the others, who were jockeying for position at the new porthole in the door. He noticed my little gun and his lip curled. He spread his arms wide. “Go ahead,” he told me. “Give it your best shot.”
So I did.
A second later I had a room full of smoke, a jacket coated with vampire bits and a three-foot fissure in the bricks. The bullet had passed through the center of the vamp’s chest and hit the patch, setting off the equivalent of half a stick of dynamite. I glanced at the remaining vamps, who were gaping at my weapon. “Okay. Size doesn’t always matter.”