by Eve Paludan
“That’s repulsive,” I said.
“Tell me about it.”
“I don’t recognize his nickname, but I’ll go through the records of my club members and find out who was there that night.”
“You can do that?”
“If he came in the door that night, I’ll know. The doorman logs it into a spreadsheet. And I know the faces of my members.”
“What if he was just hanging around outside, but isn’t a member?”
“I know tattoo artists who are members. Maybe I can find the tattooist who did yours.”
“I was blindfolded for the tattooing part.”
“That makes it tougher, but there’s forensic evidence.”
“What do you mean?”
“The bite mark tattoo on your neck.”
“How do you propose to get teeth marks from your club members?” she asked.
“I’ll think of something.”
It finally seemed like a good time to do it, so I leaned forward to kiss her. But in that same moment something hit the living room window hard enough to implode it.
A million sparkly glass shards rained down upon us.
The burglar alarm went off.
Chapter 6
As the curtain rod fell, sunlight poured into the room, searing our white skin and blistering it.
Justine screamed as two flying vampires—huge primitive birds with black and blue feathers—opened silver-tipped talons and dropped their backpacks on my living room carpet. They quickly transformed into two naked men with silver weapons.
Had I been alone, I would have taken on the ancient vampires right then. Instead, I grabbed Justine’s hand and shouted, “Run!”
I dragged her through the broken glass as we bounded down the hall toward my bedroom—I slammed and locked the solid-steel door and set a security bar across it.
“This is my safe room. That door should hold, but stay behind me.” I smacked my palm on a hidden compartment in the wall. It popped open to reveal a handgun. I grabbed it, released the safety.
“That won’t do any good.”
“Silver bullets.”
“Good call.” She lifted her shirt to reveal a thigh scabbard on both legs, each with a blade in it.
“You armed yourself to come in the living room with me?”
“I almost always wear concealed weapons. So should you. You had to run all the way to your bedroom for your weapon. What’s that about?”
“Good point.”
She pulled the silver knives by their Lucite handles and grasped one in each hand.
“Ambidextrous?” I asked.
“With hands and feet.”
“Good to know.”
The vampires pounded harder against the door. They must have been hitting it with their shoulders.
“Great door,” she said. “By the way. Fight dirty. They do.”
My body was taut and ready, just in case. “You know them?”
“They’re my stalkers. I thought I gave them the slip at the Bellagio earlier, but they must have followed me from Vegas—”
An explosion blew off the door and we ducked the flying debris.
The naked vampires, brandishing silver katanas, rushed us.
I squeezed off a shot and hit one of them in the carotid artery. He dropped like a stone, his body thumping as it hit the floor.
At the same time, Justine threw a knife and hit the second assailant square in the shoulder. He tripped and rammed into me with the flat side of his katana, but knocked away my gun. It skittered across the floor and under the bed.
“Fang!” Justine threw me her remaining knife.
I caught it by the handle and rammed it upward through the hand of the remaining attacker.
He shrieked and backed off as Justine used a spinning kick to clothesline his feet out from under him.
Now on his knees, he tried to get up, but Justine quickly rolled under the bed and came out shooting. Her first shot made a spurting hole in his thigh and he was down on the floor again.
I jumped on the screaming guy, underestimating his ability to fight while wounded. He mashed my eye with his fist. I hollered when I saw stars and heard my orbital bone crack, then tasted blood as my eyebrow split. In agonizing pain, I spit in his eye, then kneed him in the groin. Twice.
He clutched his groin and drew up his knees, bellowing like a bull.
Justine and I jumped him. She grabbed one of his ears and held him to the floor, while I stuck her silver knife into his throat. A gurgling sound erupted as I cut it from ear to ear.
Even though the vampire assassin was dead, Justine stood above him and emptied the gun into him until the only sounds were the clicks of the trigger. She and I stood for a minute, surveying the damage to our two assailants, to the room, and to each other.
“How do I look?” I asked.
“Like you better postpone your cover shoot for GQ magazine.” She rubbed her purpling jaw. “Son of a—”
“You have a broken jaw?”
She paused, working her jaw back and forth. “It’s just bruised. He sure hit me hard, though.”
“You did some impressive kicking and punching of your own.”
“Survival of the fittest.”
I smiled. “Ow.”
“Hurts when you smile?”
“Yeah.”
“Me, too. I wish I could see myself in a mirror. I must look like something the cat dragged home.”
“It must suck to be a lady vampire and not be able to see yourself in a mirror,” I said. “But don’t worry, you look gorgeous.”
She grinned. “Liar.”
I examined what was left of my bedroom doorframe. “I didn’t expect them to use plastic explosives,” I said. “My steel door is toast now.”
“Good thing you dropped the first guy with a bullet. I’m impressed.”
“Lucky shot.” I shook my head. “You gonna be okay?”
“I will. We vampires are self-healing. A drink of blood. A lot of sleep. Time passing.”
“Good thing. Hey, I really liked the part where you rolled under the bed after the gun and came out shooting like Rambo.”
“I go nuts when someone hits me.”
“Me, too. I don’t know how you slid under the bed like that, though.”
“Limbo dance finalist, spring break, freshman year of college. Plus, I’m skinny.”
“Svelte,” I corrected her. “Like Audrey Hepburn. With great breasts.”
“That’s what you noticed in the middle of all that?”
“Hard not to.”
She looked down, tucked her breasts into the torn shirt and wiped her bloody mouth on the back of her hand. “I’m usually much classier than this in a fight.”
“No worries. I’m sure it gave you an advantage.” I licked my thumb and wiped blood off her cheekbone.
“That’s gross, Fang.”
“Sorry, my mom used to do that to me. Back in the day.”
“So did my mom, but you don’t see me putting my saliva on you.”
We both laughed and both said, “Oww!”
“Well, Justine, this was a worst-case scenario.”
“No. The worst-case scenario would have been our deaths.”
“But now, we have to dump these bodies. I need to rent a boat.”
“Don’t bother,” she said.
“Why not?”
“I’ll get rid of the bodies in the ocean. I do it all the time.”
“This is a regular thing?”
She put her hands on her hips. “I don’t have a belt with notches or anything, but I swear, all of my killings were in self-defense.”
Sheesh. “How do you dump bodies in the ocean without a boat?”
Justine shrugged. “I fly.”
Chapter 7
“I didn’t expect that.”
“No one does. I know that very few vampires can fly. I don’t know why I can.”
“You really don’t know?”
“No.” She loo
ked away for a second. “I lied about taking a plane here and the airline losing my luggage. I flew to Echo Park under my own power and carried my laptop bag with a toothbrush and panties in one talon and my purse in the other.”
“Why lie?”
She tilted her head. “My special abilities are on a need-to-know basis.”
“And I needed to know?”
“Yes.”
“Because you can transform and fly, it means a powerful ancient vampire created you.”
“There’s a clue.” I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or not.
“It narrows the field, not that I have a list of ancient winged vampires.”
“Are we talking about Dracula?” She angled her chin upward and arched a brow.
“I wouldn’t assume it was him who put the bite on you.” I didn’t want to tell her that I was acquainted with Dracula—he had too many enemies for me to bandy his name about until I knew more about her own alliances.
I cleared my throat. “So, about the bodies…”
“After dark, I’ll fly out past the oil rigs and… ker-splash. Same as always.”
“I wish I could fly. I’d help you.” I squinted at the broken window in the other room and the sunlight streaming into the living room. “Do you have any more stalkers I should know about?”
She rolled her eyes. “An endless supply. If I had a dollar for every one…”
“That’s not good.” I sighed. “I think we can handle any more that show up, as long as we aren’t asleep. I’m out of silver bullets—”
“Sorry I used all your ammo. I wanted to make sure he was really dead. Because vampires don’t have to breathe, they can sometimes fake their own deaths and get up later to cause more trouble.”
“Thanks for making sure he was really dead. Anyway, you’re still armed and dangerous and I have their weapons.” I ran my hand through my hair—glass fell out and shimmered to the floor.
She shook herself like a wet dog and glass tinkled off her, too.
“I better make a phone call,” I said.
“I’ll step away.”
“No, we need to stick together in case they send their round-two assassins.”
She nodded. “I’m tired and cranky. I’m not a morning person.”
“No vampires are. I’m a weakling until sunset. From midnight to three are my prime hours of power.”
“Same. Who’re you calling?”
“My favorite morning person.”
I phoned him.
“Good morning, Fang!” Kingsley answered cheerfully in his baritone voice. “Why aren’t you asleep at this glorious hour?”
“You’re so darn cheerful. Anyway, I’ve got two cold ones at my Malibu place—not the good kind of cold ones either.”
“Damn. What happened?”
“At dawn, two vampires in their winged forms crashed through my living room window. They attacked us.”
“Us?”
“I brought home a new vampiress friend. Just as we were getting hunkered down for a day sleep, we were attacked.”
“Nice way to make a first impression,” Kingsley said drily.
“Actually, she said they were her stalkers.”
“Stalkers?”
“It’s apparently ongoing. They followed us here by air from the blood club as I was driving us to Malibu.”
“That sucks.”
“And not in the good way. We dispatched them and will get rid of their bodies later.”
“Sounds like you have a plan for that part.”
“She does.”
“Are either of you badly hurt?”
“We’ll be all right after a good sleep.”
“What can I do for you then?”
“We need a day sleep guardian. I’ve got a broken window, a bombed bedroom door, and sunlight pouring into the living room. We need to get to sleep so we can heal up. We both got banged up quite a bit.”
“Ouch. So, do you need me to play babysitter?”
“Just till sunset.”
He blew out a long breath. “I’d come, but I have court in fifteen minutes. I’m defending a troll accused of murder.”
“Did you say a troll?”
“A bridge over the Los Angeles River is involved and it’s my first troll case.”
“Did he eat a gruff billy goat?”
“Not funny. The vic was a wannabe terrorist with a bomb. My client, the troll, actually saved thousands of lives by taking down the perp who was going to blow up ‘his’ bridge.”
“Weird defense case.”
“Tell me about it. The trial starts this morning and if something goes amiss in my defense strategy, he could get life in prison. For a troll, that’s a very long time. Or he could get the death penalty.”
“What you’re doing is critical, but I really need you until sunset, Kingsley.”
“I know, bro. You’re vulnerable and you can’t leave your place while the sun is shining.”
“Exactly.”
“I’ll ask for a continuance. If the judge grants it, I’ll come.”
“Thanks. Let me know.”
Chapter 8
What a crime scene it was.
There was broken glass, smashed furniture and dark-maroon vampire blood—some of it ours—spattered from one end of the living room to the other. There was more blood smeared down the hallway and floors, and blood tracked into the bedroom. There were even arcs of blood on the ceiling. I had a huge mess to clean up when we woke up from our day sleep.
Plus, we had the contents of the intruders’ backpacks spread out on the kitchen counter, trying to figure out who they were.
“No ID,” I said.
“Assassins don’t carry ID,” she said.
“Right.”
While she sorted through various items, I noticed something.
“Look.” I pointed to their hands. “I think I know what one of those rings does.”
“What?”
“Lets them go out into the sunshine.”
“Even if that’s true, those rings may have compulsions attached to them.”
“I really want a ring that lets me go out into the daylight, with no strings.” I looked longingly at the rings.
“There are always strings. There’s nothing I can think of that would make me even try on one of those rings,” Justine said.
“Aren’t you curious?”
She shuddered. “Be very afraid of those rings.”
“Lord of the Rings and ‘my precious’ kind of fear?”
“I’m serious, Fang.”
“Isn’t it tempting to yank off the rings and take them for a spin?”
“Not for me. What if I turned into a vampire hag with an eternal curse on me?”
“Killjoy.” I got out a Costco-sized roll of kitchen wrap and carefully wrapped their ringed hands in layers of clear plastic. I knew she was right about being cautious, but that didn’t satisfy my curiosity.
Justine narrowed her eyes at me. “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not worth the risk to lose your soul over a stupid ring that merely lets you go into the daylight, but subsequently binds you to some unknown dark master.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’m pretty sure I do. Anyway, these guys reek so badly that I don’t want to wear anything that they wore. They probably haven’t showered for years. A normal vampire is usually pretty clean. At our worst, we might smell a little mushroom-y, but we do shower and take care of our skin. These bristly, crusty guys have that aversion to soap and water that raises a red flag for me about the rings.”
That part seemed true. We almost had to hold our noses as we went through the rest of the stuff from their backpacks.
We inspected the weird junk. “I don’t get it. A dozen or so red candles—”
“Thirteen,” Justine said.
“A willow branch?”
“A wand, properly called an athame.”
“These liquids in those brown bottles?” I sn
iffed a cork. “This one smells like Earl Grey tea.”
She sniffed. “Bergamot oil. Good nose.”
“What’s this other stuff?”
“Frankincense. Mugwort. Mustard seeds in a glass heart pendant. Bat bones.”
“Bat bones?”
“There are a couple of things missing, namely, an altar and a couple of other herbs.” She paused. “I think these assassins were vampire witches and this stuff is for a making a spell for calling up ancient vampires.”
“If I want an ancient vampire to appear, I don’t have to cast a spell. I just have to summon him.”
She folded her arms in disbelief. “He has a cell phone?”
“No. I just have to say his name. And mean it.”
“Impressive. How did you meet?”
“He was my ally when we met in Vegas where you first saw me.” I thought for a moment. “I don’t think he was the ancient one who sent these minions after you.”
“Why would you say that?”
“He would never send underlings alone on a kill mission. He would come himself or accompany them, but he wouldn’t just send out the vampire equivalent of two Star Trek red shirts.”
She nodded.
“Besides, explosives aren’t his style at all.” I paused. “So, why did these two vampires follow you and try to kill us?”
She shrugged. “Even though my creator got bored with me and turned me loose, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want anyone else to have me either.”
A spear of anxiety pricked my abs. “Wait. Are you talking about me?”
“It’s more complicated than you being a possible rival for my attentions.”
“How complicated?”
“Complicated enough to get us killed next time. We need help. I saw you fight with Dracula in Vegas. You should summon him.”
A red flag went up in my head, but I played it close to the vest. “Whatever it is, I’ll handle it. I prefer not to call in the big guns.”
“That could be a fatal mistake.” She sighed. “I’m sorry to have brought all this trouble to your house. I’ll understand if you kick me to the curb at sunset.”
“I would never do that.”
“Why not?”
“If you went away, I’d never have the chance to find out what might have happened next.”