Dressed to Slay

by Harper Allen

“Was mistake not to let me take you easy way. Now you will be dying very hard, my darling.”

  Her voice came from behind me. As I spun around in disbelief, something smashed into the back of my legs. They gave way under me and I went sprawling full-length onto the floor.

  “But life as Daughter is harder, so perhaps death is not so bad, da?”

  I looked up in time to see the iron pipe in Zena’s grip swing down at me and rolled sideways just as it crashed into the spot where I’d been, the force of the blow splitting the wood floor. I forced myself to my hands and knees, the pain in my legs fogging my thoughts. The pipe hadn’t hit me, so why were my hands and arms spattered with blood? Another thick drop appeared on my braced arm and ran in a slow rivulet to the floor. The fogginess in my brain suddenly cleared and I turned my head, letting my gaze travel upward.

  Kat sagged against the chains that bound her, her eyes closed. Blood spilled past her lips and dripped to the floor.

  I stumbled to my feet and saw the length of iron blurring toward me again, but instead of trying to avoid it I ran straight at Zena. My move was stupid enough to take her by surprise. As I slammed into her and drove her backwards, the pipe flew from her hands and clanked metallically to the edge of the stage. Jamming my stake in my belt, I grabbed it.

  “Release her, you bitch!” My vision blinded by tears, I swung the pipe wildly in her direction, rage surging hotly through me as I felt it connect with her upraised arm. “Whatever you did to put her in the hell she’s going through, reverse—”

  My words were choked off as a tight band clamped around my neck, and I felt my feet abruptly leave the floor. I dropped the pipe, my hands flying to my throat to break free of the crushing pressure. As I felt myself rising higher, I looked down and realized Zena was one-handedly lifting me in the air with no visible effort whatsoever.

  “Is as I tell old man,” she hissed, clouds of red drifting across the green of her eyes like oil spreading over water. “Darkheart line is no longer threat. Angelica forgot she was Daughter when babies she loved were in danger, and you do same for sister. I wish often to have lived in time when my kind faced strong enemies, instead of weak and foolish girls!”

  A loud roaring sound began to echo in my ears. My fingers were still clawing at my throat but there was no strength in them. In the growing blackness around me only Zena’s white face stood out, tight with scorn.

  “She knew her kind and mine were only mirror image of each other. She understood her strength came from dark side, and constant temptation not to fully embrace it. You carry her bone and her sinew, but you do not carry her blood!” Her lips pursed. The next moment I felt wetness trickling down my cheek.

  The bitch had spat on me. Outrage pierced my fading consciousness enough for me to rasp out a question. “What are you talking about? Who’s she?”

  Her eyes widened briefly. Then she gave an incredulous laugh. “All the time I am thinking you know! Is why I believe cannot kill you without setting trap, but my fear is all for nothing! You call yourself her Daughter and do not even feel her power in your weapon?”

  I was too far gone to feel her pluck my stake from my belt before it swam into my fading view. Zena held it with the tips of her fingers, as if she didn’t feel comfortable touching it, and as my senses began to shut down the leather-strapped hilt and ivory blade swinging back and forth in front of my eyes blurred until it didn’t look like a stake at all, but like a lithe figure moving swiftly against some unseen opponent.

  And in the same way that I’d seen Tash’s true nature, I suddenly saw my weapon for what it really was.

  Her bone…her sinew. The lost relics of the original Lilith, missing for centuries…I brought my trembling fingers up to touch the stake, my lips moving inaudibly.

  Lilith, be with me.

  Zena tossed it aside and ran a contemptuous finger down my cheek, still holding me aloft with her other hand. “You made wrong choice, nyet?” she whispered, her lips close to mine. “I offered you pleasures with me, but you chose sisters and grandfather. Darkheart cannot save you, and as for sisters, one is dying and other is no match for me.” She held her finger up so I could see the blood glistening on her razor-sharp nail, and slowly licked it. She touched my lips. “Die knowing you saved no one. I kill false Daughter next, then old man. And one with hair like golden roses shall be mine before this night ends.”

  She wanted me to die in pain. She’d seen my anguish over Kat and now she was tripling it, wringing every last drop of agony out of me while she watched the light leave my eyes and the breath leave my body…but she’d overlooked one thing.

  I’m a hereditary Daughter of Lilith. And while I’m as emotional as the next girl, I need to be able to bury those emotions under an impervious glacier of ice when I’m fighting. It took me a while to understand that about myself and even longer to stop feeling like I should apologize for it, but now I’m totally okay with this part of me.

  Of course, at the time that Zena was choking the life out of me, I hadn’t figured all that out. All I knew was that the bitch’s little head-game wasn’t working on me and instead of feeling anguish, I felt a spark of cold anger. Her finger was still tracing my lips. I opened my mouth and bit down on it as hard as I could.

  I guess as a vamp she was more used to biting than being bitten, because her scream sounded like a cross between a steam-whistle and a thousand cats getting their tails stepped on at once. She let go of my neck and I fell to the floor, gulping in as much oxygen as I could to make up for what I’d missed in the past few minutes. As my vision cleared I saw Tash and Darkheart and Van trying to battle their way through the crowd. Glimpsing the almost-hypnotised blankness on the faces ringing the stage, I wondered briefly if Zena had somehow manipulated the crowd to form a wall of bodies. Then I saw my stake lying on the floor by Kat’s chained figure about twenty feet away, and I shut my mind to everything else as I began crawling toward it.

  Zena was still screaming. Queen vampyr though she was, she obviously wasn’t impervious to the shock of seeing her finger hanging from her hand by a strip of flesh. I’d felt bone shatter when I’d bitten her, I thought with cold satisfaction as I dragged myself forward. It was partial payback for the ones I was pretty sure she’d broken in my legs.

  But partial payback was all I was going to get, I realized a moment later as Zena’s screams abruptly stopped.

  “First I open you, neck to belly,” she said in a thick, choked snarl. “Then each organ I slowly remove. You will pray for death a million times before it comes, Daughter of Lilith.”

  I heard her velvet skirt brushing the floor as she advanced upon me from behind, and knew there was no way I could cover the remaining distance to my stake in time. I’d failed everyone who’d been counting on me, I thought bleakly. Darkheart would pay for my failure with his life and Tash with her soul, but the price to Kat would be highest of all—an eternity in hell. I lifted my gaze to her battered face, knowing that this last sight of her would torture me more than any pain Zena could devise.

  My heart seemed to stop in my chest. Kat’s head still hung slackly down and blood still dripped slowly from her mouth, but one purpled and swollen eyelid was open a slit. A sapphire-blue eye, clouded and unfocused, rested dully on me as a faint, pain-filled whisper escaped her.

  “Sweetie…kill the bitch!”

  The toe of a blood-stained Jimmy Choo stiletto nudged forward to touch my fallen stake. Then it flicked weakly sideways, sending the weapon skittering across the floor to me. A sudden gout of scarlet gushed past Kat’s lips and her eyelid closed as I wrapped my hand around the stake and felt the power of Lilith’s bone and sinews against mine…

  And entered fully into the kill-zone.

  Everything seemed to happen instantly after that. My left leg felt broken. The realization passed through my mind as I rose swiftly to my feet, but only as a fact to be noted and dismissed. The pain was even less relevant, so I willed myself to ignore it as I pivoted to face Zena and lu
nged at her. I saw a flash of red velvet as she made a sudden sideways movement, received a quick impression of a second figure blurring across my line of vision, and disregarded both distractions as I completed my lunge at her and thrust my stake at her heart.

  I froze, my gaze locked on melted-chocolate eyes that were only inches away. From the tip of my stake a fine red thread began slowly unravelling in the snowy white of Van’s shirt-front.

  “I fucked up, Megan.” A muscle jumped at the side of his jaw as Zena’s grip tightened on his upper arms, but he didn’t turn his head to look at her standing behind him. “I was trying to get to her before she could finish you off.”

  Zena’s smile was thin with triumph as she looked at me over Van’s shoulder. “I tell you life as Daughter is hard, nyet? Now you see how hard is road you have chosen. Can destroy me only by killing man you love.” Her smile became mocking. “Or maybe you do not love him? Then duty is regretful, but not impossible to carry out.”

  I glanced at her with loathing before looking at Van. The weapon I was holding was only carved bone and tanned sinew, I thought bleakly. How could it suddenly feel so damn heavy?

  “I fell for you from the moment I first saw you,” I told Van, letting my gaze dwell on his sexy mouth, the tiny half moon scar by his lip, his melting eyes.

  With an abruptly powerful shove I thrust my stake through him and into Zena.

  “But I think I always knew you were too good to be true,” I said as his neck arched back in agony and his fangs extended in a death reflex. “The real clincher came tonight when I finally accepted I was the Daughter, not a vampire. I realized the reason why I couldn’t enter my own home had to be because I was holding hands with a vamp at the time.”

  I’ve never been sure whether he heard my last words or not. He turned to dust, and I was left facing Zena.

  She was looking down at the stake puncturing the left breast of her velvet bodice. “Is not fatal,” she whispered. “Is like when Angelica tried to kill me, da?”

  “Nyet, bitch.” I smiled tightly at her. “I don’t expect you to understand, but by finishing the job she started I feel like I’ve won back what you took from me when you killed her. Because of you I never knew Mom. Now that I’m following in her footsteps, I understand what her life was about.”

  She looked up at me, her gaze searing. “But road you are on is already different from Angelica’s. Different and harder, my darling. To end of your days, you will be tortured with knowledge that man you loved was mine, never yours.” The emerald of her eyes bloomed red. “Angelica was lucky enough to die without ever learning same about your father.”

  I stared at her. “You’re lying.” Around her white face her fiery hair began smouldering and then suddenly burst into real flame. Smoke began drifting from her parted red lips, and behind the red sheen of her once-green eyes I saw the hotter red of glowing coals. I started to grab her by the shoulder, but I jerked my hand away just in time to avoid the crackling flames that erupted from the velvet of her dress. “You’re lying!” I repeated, my voice rising. She was completely enveloped in flame now, but behind the curtain of fire her lips curved into a secret smile. “You’re already halfway to hell, bitch! Save yourself a few eternities of damnation by admitting you’re lying about my father being one of your vamp lovers—”

  The flames surrounding her suddenly rushed together. I had an instant’s glimpse of her face, no longer smiling, but crushed and unrecognizable, and then the concentrated ball of fire seemed to consume itself like a sun going supernova. A moment later there was nothing but a few drifting motes of ash, so fragile that they dissipated before they reached the floor.

  As I slowly replaced my stake in my belt, I was aware of the women near the stage moving aside to let Tash and Darkheart through. Behind me, I heard the clank of falling chains, and when I looked around I saw Kat, no longer bound to the striptease pole, lying crumpled on the floor. Her face was free of blood, and the eye that had been so badly swollen shut now looked normal. Tash rushed past me to her, but Darkheart paused.

  “You did well, granddaughter, but inside is pain for detective, da?”

  I shook my head. “He was working with her right up to the end. Earlier this evening, my Daughter senses were telling me to stake him, but I persuaded myself that I was the danger, not him. Go tend to Kat.”

  He nodded slowly, but as he began to turn away I spoke again. “What she said…there was no way it could have been true, could it?”

  “That your father turned vampyr at some point before his death?” Darkheart’s gaze seemed more hooded than usual. “She was lying. David Crosse was good man and he loved your mother. Remember him that way, granddaughter.”

  I made my way outside by using the iron bar that Zena had smashed my leg with as a cane. As the Hot Box’s front doors swung shut behind me, I hobbled around the building away from the lights that festooned the front of the club and eased myself to the ground. I saw moonlight glint on the silver-tipped black hair of the man approaching me, and closed my eyes.

  “I keep thinking about that scar by his mouth,” I said. I didn’t open my eyes, but I could feel him watching me. “He told me he’d gotten it as a boy, when he jumped off a garage roof. I wish I’d asked him before he dusted if that part was true. I’d like to think some of the things he told me were.”

  “He was a vamp,” Mikhail’s voice was emotionless. “Every time you’d been with him I could smell it on you, even if I didn’t know it came from him, and vamps lie like we breathe. He even killed his own kind to keep up the deception.”

  I opened my eyes. “Thank you, Dr. Phil,” I said flatly. “I came out here to be alone, Mikey-baby. No offence, but can you give me some space for a while, maybe go mingle with the other females inside the club? I’ve heard that the first thing most people want to do when they narrowly escape death is to make love, so there’s a good chance you could get lucky tonight.”

  “They don’t remember that they narrowly escaped death.” He looked over his shoulder at the parking lot, where women were heading for their cars. “They think they were at one hell of a great party. I wiped the rest of the evening from their minds.”

  “I should have guessed you had talents I didn’t know about,” I said without interest. “That doesn’t mean you can’t still get lucky, big guy.”

  “That’s not in the cards for me now,” Mikhail said. “I told you earlier tonight that I’d made two mistakes with you. My first was that I thought the coldness I sensed meant you’d received the mark of the vampire. I never did tell you what my second mistake was.”

  “But you’re about to, right?” I looked up at him, my neck muscles throbbing. Everything in my body ached, I thought, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the emptiness I felt in my soul. “Okay, tell me. But then I’d just like to be alone, Mikhail. I’ve had enough of vamps and people for tonight.”

  “What happened between us wasn’t just sex for me. I didn’t intend it to be more, but by the time I realized what was happening to me, it was too late. For me it was a mating.”

  I exhaled. “Mating, sex—what’s the difference?”

  “The difference is that wolves mate for life,” Mikhail shrugged. “It’s just my bad luck that the mate I gave myself to is still in love with the vamp she had to kill tonight.”

  He turned and walked away, leaving me in the shadows. For a long moment I stared into the darkness around me.

  Zena had said I’d made the wrong choice, but I’d never had one to make. I’d done everything I could to turn away from being a Daughter of Lilith, and like Angelica, in the end I’d realized there was no escaping my legacy. But the queen vampyr had been right about one thing: she’d said the road of a Daughter was a hard one. This was my first night walking that road, and already it was almost too hard to endure.

  I closed my eyes to see a boy with a gaze like melted chocolate jump off a roof…and just for a moment, he flew like an angel.

  Putting my arm aro
und the silver-tipped ruff of the wolf who silently returned to sit beside me, I buried my face in his fur and let myself cry.

  Epilogue

  Kat says she doesn’t remember much about that night. Tash says she remembers everything, especially the part where I was such a bitch. But apparently Mikhail’s mind-zap or whatever he calls it worked, and none of the rest of the women, including Mandy Broyhill, who were at the Hot Box recall fighting vamps, dusting vamps or watching queen vamps go up in a big ball of flame.

  It’s just as well—I work better alone. That’s not strictly true, since Mikhail’s always with me in wolf form, and Tash and Darkheart often join me on my nightly excursions around Maplesburg, but although I can face the undead with no qualms, society girls in vamp-killing mode are just too scary.

  What else? Well, Grammie and Popsie are still on their cruise, Darkheart’s dating Liz Dixon—okay, I know I shouldn’t say ewww and feel uncomfortable about my grandfather having a relationship with a woman, but ewww—and Tash has come up with the bright idea of us starting an investigative agency called Darkheart & Crosse to deal with suspected vamp-related cases. I’m not sure how that’s going to work out, but for now I’m going along with it, mainly because Maplesburg still seems to have a sizeable undead population.

  I haven’t said anything to my sisters, but I’ve been worrying about that. I mean, this little town was vamp-free before Zena came, right? And when she died, the ones she created should have been released of her mark, leaving the local Daughter of Lilith without a job.

  Except I keep staking them, night after night. And that makes me wonder whether the crackpot monk’s theory that Darkheart rejected might not be true—the one that insisted the death of a queen vampyr doesn’t lift her curse from her victims. I once thought my vision of stalking Kat and Tash meant that I was a vamp…but what if it really means one of them is?

  Dear Lilith, I pray that the road never gets that hard.