by Hannah Jayne
“Hey.” Vlad chucked me on the shoulder, his cold fist feeling good against my hot skin. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Things are going to be okay. And your crime-fighting career isn’t total crap. Remember? You caught the bad guy last time.”
“After accusing you and the entire Vampire Empowerment Movement.”
Vlad’s gaze was surprisingly sympathetic. “But you caught the bad guy eventually.”
“By shooting him in the ass.”
“So you need a little weapons work.”
I crossed my arms and shoved my bottom lip out. “I need a lot of work.”
Vlad pushed his laundry basket aside. “You know what I hate? People who feel sorry for themselves. People who can leave the house on a sunny day and not toast up like a charcoal briquette. People who have all the resources they need right in front of them yet systematically refuse to take advantage of them.” He crossed the living room and began rifling through the hall closet.
“What are you talking about?” I said, kicking off my shoes. “Oh my God!” I was on my feet the second Vlad turned around, brandishing the largest sword I’d ever seen. I threw my hands up. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry! I won’t complain!” I felt myself stepping backward, then felt the back of my calves clunking against the couch. “Don’t kill me!”
Vlad’s expression was staid. “I’m not going to kill you, I’m going to help you.”
I crawled up on the couch, eyes wide, heart so used to thunderous pounds I was certain it would never go back to normal. “What are you talking about?”
Vlad jumped into a prissy-looking fighting stance and brandished the sword. “I’m going to teach you how not to shoot an assailant in the ass.”
I straightened up. “You’re going to teach me to shoot with a sword? Even I know that’s not going to work.”
Vlad’s sword dropped and he pushed out an exasperated sigh. “Do you want to learn or not?”
My eyes traveled the cool steel length of the sword. “Really?”
“Don’t say I’ve never done anything for you.”
I stepped up and met Vlad in the center of the room, reaching for the sword. He handed it to me, then went back to the coat closet and pulled one out for himself. I pointed with the sword. “Do we really keep these in there? Because it doesn’t seem like such a good idea.”
“I’ll be sure to have Auntie Nina re-label the contents of the coat closet to include swords.”
I glanced at the razor-thin edge of my sword. “And a warning.”
Chapter Six
Vlad leaned up against me and the chilled wisp that came off his undead body gave me gooseflesh. “Hold it like this,” he said, clamping his hands over mine.
I grinned and looked over my shoulder at Vlad. This is what it must be like to have a brother, I thought.
He narrowed his eyes, the top of his lip turning up into a snarl. “Stop looking at me like that. It’s gross.”
Yep, exactly like a brother.
Once Vlad approved my grip—something between holding a golf club and swinging a softball bat—he stepped away and plucked up his own sword.
I swooshed my sword swashbuckler style and tried out a few pirate “Walk the plank, mateys!” and “Arggghs!” for good measure. “This is fun!”
He just shrugged, ignoring me, feeling the weight of the sword he held, tossing the jeweled handle from hand to hand. “This’ll do.” He pushed himself up and smiled at me. A kindly, affectionate smile. “Let’s spar,” he said.
I felt my eyebrows rise and my bladder fill. “What? Spar? In case you haven’t noticed, Vlad, these are real weapons. Really big real weapons.”
Vlad ran a pale finger up the length of his blade and I watched in horror as the sword sliced his skin neatly. What blood he did have—he had just sucked down two pints evidenced by the bags he was apparently incapable of throwing away—bubbled along the cut line. He licked it away and watched the wound close in on itself, the new skin regenerating immediately.
“I’m out,” I said, dropping my sword. “I can’t do that.” I pointed at his now-perfect skin.
Vlad rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to stab you, Sophie. Or even gut you. I’m going to spar with you. How do you expect to ever learn if you won’t wield a sword?”
“Accidents happen,” I said, crossing my arms in front of my chest. “Accidents happen and limbs are lost and not regenerated.”
“It takes a lot of blood for us to regenerate a limb.” He jumped into fighting stance, sword standing royally in his grip. “I’ll go super easy on you.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“I promise not to cut anything off of you.”
He swished the blade across our filled-with-crap coffee table and a single leaf—cleanly sliced from my plant—fluttered gently to the fake veneer. “Come on,” he taunted.
“Promise not to cut anything off, or almost off, or slightly through? ’Cuz I’m a bleeder.” Vlad’s eyes flashed and I pointed at him. “And if you eat from my sliced-up bloody body, I will haunt the shit out of you until you stake yourself.”
“Are we going to spar or what?”
I sucked in a breath and picked up my sword. “Okay. But I do the swishy stuff and you just stand there.”
“No assailant with a sword is just going to stand there, Sophie.”
“Okay.” I mimicked his wide-legged, bent-knee stance and raised my blade. “Maybe just try blocking me.”
“Okay. But no limbs.”
“’Kay,” I said, doing a twinkle-toes-style boxing dance. I waggled the blade in front of me, liking the weight of it in my hands. I thrust the sword toward Vlad. He did a Matrix-style back bend and avoided my blade. I lunged for his exposed left side. He sidestepped around me.
“You’re pretty decent at this,” he said, impressed.
I shifted my weight. “Maybe I’ve found my niche.”
I tried a few more jabs and Vlad explained how he avoided them. “Okay,” he said, “I want you to aim for my blade. Since swords tend to be the same length, your best bet is knocking your opponent’s weapon from his hand, and then going in for the kill.”
Usually talk of killing made my stomach roil, but now, with the sword in my hand, the idea of beating an opponent exhilarated me. I thrust and Vlad blocked me, our blades clanking together. I was starting to sweat, but Vlad’s only indication of exertion was the flop of dark hair that had loosened from his usually manicured and shellacked hair helmet.
“Try it again,” he said.
I did, and he did.
“See what I did there?” he said, indicating the way he angled his sword to block mine from nearing his body.
“Yeah,” I said, my breath coming in short bursts. “Show me how you did that?”
Vlad grinned and raked a hand through his hair, pushing it back over his forehead. His grin was sweet and boyish, his black eyes reflecting a spark of life I hadn’t seen before. It was heartwarming, even with the sharp angle of his fangs pressed over his bottom lip. He repositioned himself and swung his blade in a graceful arc.
“See? If I come at you like this”—he jabbed—“you block like this.”
I mimicked his smooth arc, feeling my own smile press up my cheeks. “Like this?”
“Perfect.”
“What are you two doing?” Nina stood in the doorway, her label gun at the ready.
“Vlad’s teaching me to sword fight.”
Nina pursed her lips together and nodded. “That’s good. I always say when someone is horrible with a non-lethal weapon like you are with the Taser, you should give them a lethal one.”
“Actually,” Vlad said, “she’s really got the hang of it. She’s quite good.”
As we continued sparring, Nina crossed the room and tore open another box, pulling out a mammoth wheel of glossy label stickers. “I’m halfway through 1910,” she said by way of explanation. Then she put her hands on her hips and stared at us, her sour expression lightening to a small smile. “Wow, you are pre
tty good.”
“Okay, now let’s practice that blocking. I’ll go after you, you block me.”
My palms suddenly seemed sweaty on the grip. “Um, shouldn’t I be wearing some sort of protective gear? Like a sword-proof vest or something?”
Vlad shrugged. “You didn’t think I should when it was the other way around.”
“Yeah, but you’re way more immortal than I am.”
Vlad grinned. “Then let’s hope you were paying attention.”
He jabbed, and I jumped. He thrust, and I blocked. On a lunge, our swords struck each other with so much fury that ChaCha barked at the loud clang and yelped when a tiny spark crowned the clash. I was grinning, dancing wildly, growing confident in my ability.
I was Sophie Lawson: Sword Fighter. I finally really did have a chance to strut my stuff in those leather pants and tight bustiers, and people would no long throw a fit when they saw me toting a sword that never got mentioned again!
“En garde!” I growled with a deep French accent as I jumped onto the arm of the couch.
“En garde!” Vlad repeated, using one hand to twirl his imaginary moustache as he mounted the couch.
Our blades met again and Vlad lunged toward me. “Remember, it’s not all about blocking. It’s about being aware and moving your body, too.”
Sophie Lawson: Sword Fighter was born to do this. It ran in her veins. Her fire-red hair trailed down her back like the blood of so many who had challenged her—and failed . . . is what I was thinking when I took that poorly calculated leap onto the coffee table.
Which broke.
I was so enamored by the sexy clang of metal on metal that the sound of pressboard furniture at decent prices splintering and cracking whooshed right by me. I lost my grip on the sword as I went down. I saw the edge of it fly past me, the blade catching on the light as it spun end over end.
“Knock, knock!”
“No!” Everything dropped into painstakingly slow motion. I lurched forward somehow thinking I could still catch the jeweled handle as it sailed over the chair. I drew my howl out as though the power of my voice alone could slow the weapon’s trajectory as it raced toward Alex’s head.
And then I heard the sickening sound of the blade stopping, lodging itself deep.
Nina clucked her tongue. “We are so never getting our security deposit back.”
I chanced a look up, the tension in my body coiled to the point of physical pain. “Oh, thank God!”
The sword was stuck deep, all right—about a half inch up from the peephole on our front door. A full two inches of the blade poked out of the door’s hall-side, and an inch from that? Alex’s throat. He looked at me with wide eyes—their cornflower blue was clouded with a twinge of terror, and overcome with anger.
“I brought you a peace offering because I felt bad about today,” he said between gritted teeth. “I guess I should have brought dessert, too.”
Nina and I spread out Alex’s Chinese spoils—Nina keeping her distance from the garlic pork, of course—while Vlad and Alex did their best to dislodge Excalibur from the door.
“On the plus side,” Alex said, “you do have a hell of a throwing arm, Lawson.”
I felt a burgeoning sense of pride.
Hey, it was something.
“I thought you were pretty clear on the ‘don’t throw your weapon’ thing after the last incident, though.”
My sense of pride was eaten by a flame of annoyance. “Oh. Did you mean I’m not supposed to throw any of my weapons? Silly me, I must have misunderstood. So hard to keep all these big, important rules in this pretty little head of mine.”
I waggled my head and Nina hid a smile behind a cupped hand. Alex just shot me an unamused glare while Vlad gripped the sword handle, steadied a foot on the door, and gave a herculean yank. When the sword didn’t budge, Vlad skulked to the closet, fished around a bit, and finally emerged.
He hung a dusty Christmas wreath on the speared sword.
“Done and done,” he said, wiping his hands on his pants.
We sat down at the table, Alex and me across from each other, Nina and Vlad working on their dinner blood bags at either end.
“So,” Nina started, her cheeks going hollow as she sucked down her dinner, “are there any updates in the heinous murder case?”
I tried to flash Alex a look—saying what, I’m not entirely sure—but he was elbow deep in egg rolls and chow mein and avoided me.
“No, nothing new.”
Nina shuddered. “Having some crazed killer on the loose like that just gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
“And it’s a total waste often pints.”
I stabbed a hunk of sweet and sour pork and grimaced at Vlad. He gave me a tiny half-snarl that suggested he remembered the human empathy training I shoved down his throat and backpedaled. “And it’s a huge tragedy for those chicks, too.”
“So you guys are pretty convinced it’s a murderer, then?” Alex asked, his eyes trailing from Nina to Vlad.
“As opposed to what?”
“A demon. Or you know”—Alex wiggled his fingers, offering the universal sign for oogedy-boogedies—“other stuff.”
Vlad tossed his empty blood bag and leaned back in his chair with an ineffectual shrug. “Doubt it.”
There was a beat of chow-mein-chewing silence until Nina poked me. “Anything interesting happening at UDA?”
I thought of my useless meeting with Feng. “Um, no, not exactly,” then crunched into an eggroll. “Oh, you know what? Dixon came in to see me.”
Nina visibly brightened, her chest swelling. “Really?” she asked, a single eyebrow cocked seductively, her I-knew-it smile tacked in place. “Did he ask about me? It’s nice that he worries, but he should know by now that he has absolutely no chance with me anymore. No way, that ship has sailed. But”—she brushed her glossy black hair over her shoulder—“I really can’t blame him for carrying the proverbial torch.” She flashed a bloodstained grin and my egg roll turned into a steel fist in the pit of my stomach.
“Actually, no, Neens, he didn’t ask about you.”
Her lip curled into a disgusted glower. “Whatever. So what did he want?”
“A vampire was murdered.”
Everyone at the table—except me—sucked in a collective breath and I suddenly found myself very interested in my food.
“I can’t believe you’re just telling us this now, Sophie.”
“Who was it?” Vlad wanted to know. “Did Dixon tell you what happened?”
I looked up and directly into Alex’s eyes. They were fixed on me—not accusing, but not pleased, either. “Um, I forgot. Well, I didn’t forget forget, it just kind of slipped my mind.”
“So what happened?” Vlad repeated.
“Do you know Octavia?”
“Ugh. I hate her,” Nina groaned. “She’s all prim and proper and ‘oh, I’m Victorian, you should be prop-ah’ and crap. It’s like seriously? Get an afterlife. In this century.”
“It was Octavia who was killed.”
Nina’s coal-black eyes went wide and even darker than normal. “Oh. That’s awful. That poor woman!”
“Uh, question?” Alex raised his chopsticks. “Aren’t vampires—you know, you guys”—he used his sticks to motion to Nina and Vlad—“immortal?”
“No one is truly immortal, Alex,” I said on a sigh, stealing Dixon’s quote.
He cocked his head. “Well, actually . . .”
“But you’re dead. You’re, like, super dead. Heavenly dead,” I explained.
“So are they!” The chopsticks waggled between Nina and Vlad again, launching a hunk of combination fried rice across the table.
“What the hell is heavenly dead?” Vlad wanted to know.
Nina groaned. “Can we not argue who amongst us is dead or more dead or the absolute deadest or,” she paused, scrunching her nose, “heavenly dead, whatever that is, and just get on with it? What happened to Octavia? How was she killed? Does Dixon know anything?”<
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I picked up a napkin, began peeling off strips and rolling them into little balls. “She . . . was beheaded.”
“Beheaded?” Nina breathed.
“Holy crap, is that even possible?” Alex asked.
“It’s one of the only ways to truly kill a vampire. Wooden stake through the heart.” Vlad counted off on his fingers. “Fully engulfed in flames, or . . .” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Beheading. Do they know who did it?”
I shook my head.
Alex wiped his hands on a napkin and rested his elbows on the table. “Not to be insensitive, but isn’t it pretty difficult to do? I mean, you’ve got extra strength, right?”
Vlad’s tongue snaked over one of his fangs. “Yeah. It wouldn’t be easy.”
“Could a human do it?”
“It’s unlikely.”
Alex glanced at me. “Do you think this killing could have anything to do with the Sutro Point homicide?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I mean, that was—you know, breathers, and this was—”
“A werewolf could kill a vampire,” Nina said quietly.
“What was that?”
“A werewolf. Super strength. Chip on its shoulder. A werewolf could kill a vampire.”
“And probably a Kishi demon, too,” I added. “A Kishi demon could kill a vampire. Or a Wendigo, maybe.”
Alex swung toward Nina. “Why would a werewolf kill a vampire?”
“They’re unstable,” Vlad said simply.
“Actually,” Nina said, “it’s pretty unlikely that a werewolf would go after a vampire—or vice versa.”
“Despite what popular media would like you to believe.” Vlad had to put in the VERM’s two cents.
“So the whole vampires-hate-werewolves thing is made up.”
“Not exactly,” Nina said, blinking at Alex.
“It’s just blown out of proportion. The majority of us have no problems with them. They’re fine. They retrieve, roll over, fetch slippers. . . .” Vlad grinned and poked a fang into a second blood bag.