by Hannah Jayne
“I need a drink.”
It was my voice, but my lips didn’t move. I didn’t make them move, didn’t feel them move. But I was still talking.
“A drink, please.”
“We have to finish off your friends,” he whispered.
I don’t remember moving, but I saw the walls of the warehouse bob as I nodded my head. Dixon took a single fingernail and sliced at the duct tape that hugged my left arm. My arm swung free, the handcuff flopping against my thigh.
“Thirsty,” I said again, trying desperately to wet my lips.
Dixon cocked an eyebrow, then opened his coat and pulled out a gun. From somewhere deep down, I know I should have been terrified. Something—someone—in my gut was urging me to fight, but I was so tired, and so thirsty. I just stared while Dixon popped that single silver bullet into the gun. “Hold it now,” he said, pressing it into my hand.
I felt my hand, alien to me, tightening around the grip of the gun.
“Drink.”
Dixon smiled and his tongue curled around one angled fang. It was razor sharp. He moved his tongue, pressing the edge of his fang against the bottom of his lip. I heard the pop of the skin. I heard the rush of the blood as it bubbled toward the fresh wound.
I needed it.
“Thirsty,” I mumbled again.
More smiling. More swirling of the coppers and golds in his eyes. I remembered that my grandmother had a clock that would swirl like that....
I heard his fang slide out from his flesh. Could smell the musty, metallic scent of his blood. It filled me. I wanted it.
Dixon pulled me closer as the blood bubbled on his lower lip. He brought his head down, his lips coming to meet mine. I wanted to help, to bring myself to him, but I couldn’t; everything was heavy. I tried anyway and my arm flopped loose, listless, like a rag doll’s. It swung behind me, the metal bracelet cuff clanking against the metal folding chair.
The sound was startling.
It stopped the warm rush of blood, wrenched open my heavy eyelids.
“What the hell are you doing?” I cringed as Dixon’s blood dropped on my chin. I squirmed to get him to loosen his grip but he dug in, pressing his lips toward mine.
“Look at me,” he growled.
“No!”
“Look at me!” The rumble came from his chest; it was so low, I felt it rush through my entire body.
The glamours . . .
I backhanded Dixon as hard as I could, the muzzle of the gun digging into his belly. It didn’t hurt him, but he was startled enough to jostle backward and I was fast enough to yank the gun, steady it, and aim it directly at Alex.
Dixon grinned at me. “You’re going to send your fallen angel back to hell?” He blinked, his eyes spinning once again. I felt my lips snake into a smile, then I cut my eyes to Alex, Dixon’s gun leveled right between his eyes.
“Duck!” I screamed, squeezing the trigger.
Alex and Nicco peeled down, one a half second after the other. Alex tumbled forward, his head smacking hard against the concrete. Nicco was the late one, and Feng’s silver bullet pierced cleanly through his heart. His lifeless body crumbled over Alex’s.
I stifled a nervous sob while Dixon looked surprised and vaguely pleased. I tossed the empty gun, hearing it slide across the cement, then dove for the pallets, yanking off a strip of wood.
“I didn’t know you had any kind of fight in you, Ms. Lawson,” Dixon said, licking his lips excitedly. “I love it when breathers fight. Gets their blood pumping. Tastes delicious. Nice shot, too. Guess that target practice is really paying off.”
I gripped the piece of wood and steadied myself. “I thought you weren’t going to kill me.”
“Be nice,” he said slyly, “and the offer is back on the table. Immortality.”
He rushed me and I used his momentum against him, planting a foot and sweeping his knees with the pallet piece. I grunted and swung with as much strength and anger and hate as I could muster. I saw the blank, gaping faces of the women on the trail, of Tia Shively, of the ruined patrons of the delicatessen.
“No one is truly immortal, Dixon.”
I felt the wood piece make contact. It didn’t slice the way Vlad’s sword would have, but Dixon’s feet went out from under him and I heard the thud of his full body weight smacking against the cement floor. Had he any air in his lungs, it would have oafed out.
“Get back here!”
I used the wood piece as Vlad had taught me and swatted at Dixon’s arms, blocking his reach as he rolled onto his knees and lunged for me. He was fast, but I was smart and for the first time in my life, confident. I lurched backward and tossed the folding chair at him, hearing the clatter of the metal as it tumbled over him.
“I’m going to kill you slowly,” Dixon roared.
I looked over my shoulder and Dixon was a hairbreadth away, his fingertips reaching out, just grazing my throat.
He pitched backward when Alex’s arms circled his neck, his hands still bound by the duct tape. Dixon’s fingers wrapped around Alex’s wrists and I heard the sickening sound of bones cracking, of Alex howling. I scanned the warehouse, my eyes going over Nicco’s crumpled form and Sampson, chained, unmoving on the warehouse floor.
I felt the heft of the wooden stake in my hand and Dixon’s eyes flashed with obvious amusement.
His eyes narrowed as the stake came at him, my grip sure.
“Go to hell, Dixon.”
Chapter Fourteen
I was sitting in the San Francisco Memorial emergency room, flanked by Nina and Vlad, both of them staring on incredulously as I finished telling them the events of the night.
“That’s unbelievable,” Nina said, shaking her head. Her hair was pulled back in a wet ponytail that was soaking through her T-shirt. Once the heat wave had broken and the sky opened up, the city streets became engorged with people celebrating the rain. They threw their arms up and stomped through puddles; to the casual observer it may have looked like a rain dance.
To the rest of us, it was a vampire-heavy group, celebrating the end of sunshine internment.
“So Sampson is okay,” Nina asked.
“Yeah, thanks to that werewolf super-speed healing thing. But Nicco . . .”
“Through the heart? I’m impressed, Soph. The heart is a much smaller target than the ass.”
“Um, thank you?” I bit my bottom lip. “But hey, I’m really sorry about—”
“You’re sorry you had to kill our boss?”
I stiffened and Vlad bristled; the woman sitting next to Nina perked up, her eyes growing wide.
“Don’t worry,” Nina whispered to her. “He was evil. I knew it the whole time.”
“Alex Grace?” A white-coated doctor stepped into the waiting room and I sprang up.
“I’m here for Alex.”
The doctor looked me up and down. I had cleaned up as much as I could, but there wasn’t much I could do to hide the bruises and the half of my skull that was as bald as a cantaloupe.
“Rough night?” the doctor asked.
I cocked my head. “Actually, it was okay. Through here?”
I pulled back the curtain and poked my head in on Alex, who was stretched out on a cot. He grinned when he saw me, his arm in an enormous cast, a bulbous bruise purpling above his eye.
“Wow,” I breathed, “What happened to you?”
“Very funny.”
I lingered at the end of the bed until Alex beckoned me with his free arm. “Come here.”
I swallowed and stayed where I was. “Am I coming in to see my colleague or my friend?”
Alex sighed. “Lawson, you came this close”—he held his forefinger and thumb a millimeter apart—“to shooting me. We’d better be friends.”
I felt my grin pushing up to my earlobes.
“How’s Sampson doing?”
I nodded. “He’s fine. He took quite a beating so he’s not healing as quickly as normal, but he’s doing good. And word is already spread through the
Underworld about Dixon and about Sampson coming back.”
“Wow. That was fast.” Alex shifted in his bed, his sheets falling down, exposing his naked chest.
I sucked in a shaky breath, but got a jolt of adrenaline, and tickled my fingers up Alex’s chest. “It’s too bad we’re just friends and you’re in a cast. . . .”
Alex’s eyes flashed, his lips kicking up into that cocky half smile. “Oh yeah, why’s that?”
I reached under the bed. “Because somebunny at San Francisco Memorial loves you.” I planted the bunny-eared hat on his head and grinned.
Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of
Hannah Jayne’s next Sophie Lawson novel
UNDER A SPELL
coming in August 2013 from Kensington Publishing!
“You want me to do what?”
In all my years as the only breathing employee at the Underworld Detection Agency, I’ve been asked to do a lot of things—hobgoblin slobbery, life-or-death, blood-and-flesh kind of things. But this? This took the cake.
Pete Sampson leaned back in his leather chair, and though I usually beamed with pride when he did that—as I had been instrumental in getting him reinstated as head of the UDA—this time, I couldn’t. My stomach was a firm, black knot and heat surged through every inch of my body as he looked up at me expectantly.
“I really thought you would be excited to visit your old stomping grounds.”
My knees went Jell-O wobbly then and I thumped back into Sampson’s visitor’s chair. I yanked a strand of hair out of my already-messy ponytail—my hair had been butchered by a neurotic hoarder not too long ago and was just starting to reach ponytail status—and wrapped it around my finger until the tip turned white.
“Excited? To return to the source of my deepest angst, my inner-turmoil—to the brick walls that can only be described as a fiery, brimstony hell?”
Sampson cocked an eyebrow. “It’s just high school, Sophie.”
“Exactly.”
Most people would say that high school is the most traumatic time in their lives—myself included. And since in the last few years I’d been shot at, stabbed, hung by my ankles, almost eaten, and sexually harassed by an odoriferous troll, most traumatic took on a whole new significance.
“Isn’t there anything else we can do? Anything I can do? And I’m talking human sacrifice, demon sacrifice, total surrender of my Baskin Robbins punch card.”
“Sophie,” Sampson started.
“Wait.” I held up a hand. “Are we sure we have to go in at all? And why me, specifically? I mean”—I rifled through my purse and pulled out a wrinkled business card—“it’s been a while since you’ve been back at the Agency, Sampson. See?” I slid the card across the desk to him. “It says right there: Sophie Lawson, Fallen Angels Division.” I stabbed at my name on the card as though that would somehow give my title more emphasis. “Does this case have anything to do with fallen angels? Because if not, I’m sure there are other UDA employees who would be excellent in this investigation. And then I would be able to really focus on my current position.”
Granted, my position more often than not found me pinning a big baddie to a corkboard or locked in a public restroom sans clothes, but still.
Sampson stacked my business card on top of a manila file folder and pressed the whole package toward me.
“You should go in because you know the high school.”
“I’ll draw you a map.” I narrowed my eyes, challenging.
“And because everyone else around here—” Sampson gestured to the open office and I refused to look, knowing that I would be staring into the cold, flat eyes of the undead—and the occasional unhelpful centaur. “Well, everyone else would have trouble passing. Besides, it’s not like you’re going in alone.”
“I’m not worried about that. And hey, I’m flattered, but there really is no way I’m going to pass as a student.”
Though I’m only five-three (if I fudge it, stand on a phone book and stretch), often wear my fire-engine red hair in two sloppy braids, and have, much to my best friend’s chagrin, been known to wear SpongeBob SquarePants pajama bottoms out to walk the dog, it had been a long time since anyone mistook me for anything more than a fashionably misguided adult.
“You’re not going in as a student. You’re going in as a teacher. A substitute.”
I felt as though all the blood in my body had drained out onto the brand-new industrial grade carpet. Because the only thing worse than being a high school student is being a high school substitute teacher.
My left eye started to twitch. “A substitute teacher?”
My mind flooded with thumbtacks on desk chairs and Saran Wrap over the toilets in the teacher’s lounge. Suddenly, I longed for my cozy Underworld Detection Agency job, where no one touched my wedged-between-two-blood-bags bologna sandwich and a bitchy band of ill-tempered pixies roamed the halls.
“A substitute teacher,” I repeated, “who saves the world?”
Sampson’s shrug was one of those “hey, pal, take one for the team” kind of shrugs and I felt anger simmering in my gut.
“You can ‘teach’”—he made air quotes that made me nauseous—“any class you’d like. Provided it’s in the approved curriculum. And not already assigned.”
I felt my lip curl into an annoyed snarl when Sampson shot me a sparkly-eyed smile as if being given the choice to teach freshman algebra or senior anatomy was a tremendous perk.
“If this high school isn’t about to slide into the depths of hell or in the process of being overrun by an army of undead mean girls, I’m going to need a raise. A significant one,” I said, my voice low. “And a vacation.”
Sampson nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“So,” I said, my eyebrows raised.
“Do you remember last year when a body was found on the Mercy High campus?” Sampson asked.
My tongue went heavy in my mouth. Though I was well-used to the walking undead and the newly staked, the death of a young kid—a breather who would stay dead—made my skin prick painfully. I nodded.
“That’s what this is about?
Sampson didn’t answer me.
“Her name was Elizabeth Thompson, right?”
It had been all over the papers: a local student mysteriously vanishing from an exclusive—and, before that day, safe—high school campus. A week later, her body had been discovered dumped near Fort Cronkhite, an old military installation on the Marin side of the Golden Gate Bridge. Though the story was told and retold—in the Chronicle, the Guardian—and the Mercy High School campus was overrun with reporters for the better part of a semester, there weren’t a lot of details in the case. Or at least not a lot were leaked to the press.
“That murder was never solved,” Sampson said, as he slid the file folder over to me.
“Didn’t someone confess? Some guy in jail? He was a tweaker; said something about trying to sacrifice her.” The thought shot white-hot heat down my spine, but I tried my best to push past it. “I still don’t have to see what this has to do with the high school. Or with me having to go into it. I followed the case pretty closely”—I was somewhat of a Court TV or pretty much anything-TV junkie—“and I don’t remember any tie-back. I mean, the girl was found in Marin.”
“She was dumped in one of the tunnels at Battery Townsley.”
I shuddered. “People go through there all the time.”
“Her killer obviously wasn’t concerned about keeping Elizabeth secret.”
I shook my head. “I still don’t understand what this has to do with us—with the Underworld. Everything about it screams human.”
Sampson gestured to the folders and I swallowed slowly, then looked down at them. Directly in front of me was a black-and-white photo of a smiling teenager—all perfect teeth and glossy hair—and it made my stomach roil even more. My high school picture was braces doing their darnedest to hold back a mouthful of Chiclet teeth and hair that shot straight out, prompting my cl
assmates to announce that my styling tools were a fork and an electrical socket. I yanked my hand back when I realized I was subconsciously patting my semi-smoothed hair.
“What? The prom queen—” I stopped and sucked in a sharp breath when my eyes caught the headline plastered over the photo: MERCY HIGH STUDENT MISSING.
I scanned quickly.
Mercy High School student Alyssa Rand disappeared Monday afternoon. Erica Rand, Alyssa’s mother, said that she last saw her daughter when she boarded the number 57 bus for Mercy as she always did; teachers confirmed that Alyssa attended her classes through lunch period, but did not show up for afternoon classes. Police are taking student statements and a conservative approach, unsure yet whether to classify Alyssa as a runaway or an abductee.
I looked up, frowning. “I don’t understand. I mean, it’s horrible, but we don’t even know if she’s really missing.”
“She is, Sophie.”
Sampson pressed his lips together and sighed, his shoulders falling in that way that let me know that he wasn’t telling me everything. “There has been talk of a coven on campus.”
Relief washed over me and I sort of chuckled. “Sampson, every high school has a coven on campus! It’s called disgruntled teenage girls with black dye jobs and too much angst-y time on their hands pretending to read tea leaves and shoot you the evil eye.” I waved the article in my hand. “I don’t see how one has to do with the other.”
“When Elizabeth Thompson was found last year, she was in the center of a chalked pentagram. Black candles at the points.”
I licked my suddenly dry lips. “They didn’t mention that in the paper or on the news.” There was a beat of silence in which Sampson held my eye; finally, I rolled mine with a soft, snorting laugh. “Wait—they think it was witchcraft? Have you seen The Craft? Teen Witch? That’s Freak Out Your Parents With Wicca 101.”
“She had an incantation carved into her flesh.”
I blinked. “Carved?”
“I consulted both Kale and Lorraine.”