Tall, Dark & Fangsome

by Michelle Rowen

I glared at him, fighting the fogginess inside me, and tried to calm down.

  Thierry walked toward the window and glanced outside as he sipped from the steaming mug.

  We were silent for a moment as I tried to figure out what to say or do next. I couldn’t just sit around the house all night waiting for news. That was not in line with my “don’t be a chump” advice from Janie.

  There was a sudden crash as Thierry dropped his coffee mug and it fell to the floor, causing a dark stain on the light beige carpet that George would not be happy to see. He brought his hand up to his forehead.

  I rushed to his side. “What’s wrong?”

  He turned slowly and looked past me at Barry. “What have you done to me?”

  Barry’s expression was unreadable. “You didn’t give me any choice. I’m sorry, master.”

  Thierry collapsed to his knees and I caught him before he fell all the way to the ground.

  “Sarah…” he whispered, then his eyes closed and he went limp.

  I turned to look at Barry with wide eyes. “What did you do?”

  His breathing was so fast his little chest went in and out like an accordion. “Odorless, tasteless garlic tablets. I put a few into his coffee.”

  Garlic. It was a myth that vampires were repelled by the cloves. Actually, garlic knocked us out cold. I’d encountered the stuff in darts that hunters used to hit their targets if they didn’t want an immediate kill. It would render the vampire unconscious for a short time.

  A harmless but very effective tranquilizer.

  I touched Thierry’s face and stroked the dark hair back from his forehead. He’d trusted Barry and the sneaky little bastard had used that to get the upper hand.

  I was so impressed!

  “You need to go,” Barry said. “Before he wakes up.”

  I eyed him. “He’s going to be furious with you about this.”

  “If it’s the difference between saving Amy and sitting here powerless, then I’m willing to take that risk. Now will you go, or what?”

  “Bossy, much?”

  “I know the master only wants to do the right thing, but he refuses to see logic when it involves risking your safety. You’ve quickly become his blind spot.”

  He was right. Thierry couldn’t see past his desire to keep me safe. He’d never let me leave the house tonight even if it meant we were risking Amy’s life.

  Also, he obviously didn’t want me anywhere near Gideon again.

  I leaned over and kissed Thierry softly on the lips, praying that that wouldn’t be the last time I ever kissed him.

  Then I got up and looked at Barry. “Wish me luck.”

  “There’s no time for luck. Just go.”

  “Sheesh. It’s not like I asked you for a hug or something.”

  He glowered at me. “Why are you still here? The master will not be unconscious for long.”

  Good point.

  I turned and pushed the door open and left the house, hoping that everything would work out perfectly. I’d had enough experience to know that was an impossibility, but a girl could dream, couldn’t she?

  Chapter 19

  I headed to Darkside, since that was the last place I’d seen the billionaire vampire hunter in question.

  No one was there. The club was closed for business and deserted.

  My cell phone rang three separate times and I knew by the call display that it was Thierry. I didn’t pick up. He was probably furious with me for leaving. Probably? Make that definitely. I understood his point—my being out on the streets in my current chain-free condition wasn’t the best decision.

  Another understatement.

  Who cares what he thinks? my nightwalker said. That guy is such a drag. He never lets you have any fun.

  “Is that so?” I said aloud. “Not that I’d take any advice from you.”

  I am you, stupid. And I know what you want.

  “And what’s that?”

  To be free. To have fun. You used to have fun, but ever since you met Thierry you’ve been miserable.

  “That has nothing to do with Thierry. That has to do with being a vampire.”

  You know who’s fun? Gideon. He is so sexy and exciting and life with him would be so wickedly awesome.

  “Wickedly awesome?” My evil inner voice sounded like a Valley Girl.

  Yeah. You liked Gideon, didn’t you? You felt sorry for him. More than you should have. And there was something else there as well—a spark of something more. Are those feelings all gone now?

  I gritted my teeth. “They’re gone. He was using me—trying to manipulate me.”

  And it totally worked. You left your “true love” lying on the floor unconscious so you could run out to find Gideon. You’re going to give him exactly what he wants from you.

  “Only to save Amy.”

  Mmm hmm. Sure. Yeah, I believe that. Vamp tramp.

  My jaw tightened. “I don’t care what you think.”

  Well, you should care. As soon as I have the chance, I get to make the decisions, sweetheart. I’m so sick of your taking the lead. I want my moment in the sunlight. Figuratively speaking, of course. No real sunlight. It stings like a bitch, doesn’t it?

  “You can shut up anytime now.”

  Great. Now I was having full-fledged conversations with my inner nightwalker. That wasn’t a good sign. She wasn’t feeling any angst about this situation. She was happy to let the darkness take over completely. She wanted to find Gideon for reasons different from mine. And she couldn’t care less about Amy.

  Is that really how part of me felt? Or was my nightwalker a separate identity completely from who I actually was?

  I guess we’ll soon find out, won’t we? she said inside my head.

  She was a total bitch.

  Hey, no need to be rude.

  I shouldn’t be on the streets in my condition. It was like drinking and driving—risky, dangerous, and insanely stupid. But I held on to one thought: Amy. It was like waiting until after Valentine’s Day to break up with somebody. I had to make sure she was safe before I could let my nightwalker take me over completely.

  Unfortunately, she seemed to want to get an early start. I pushed back at her whenever she raised her ugly head.

  Thierry’s words from earlier rang in my head. “Gideon cherishes your dark side while I restrict it. I suppose you’ll have to decide which of us is correct.”

  Was he just being jealous, as he used to be with Quinn? I already knew which was correct. It’s not as if I was conflicted about what side I was going to take. I loved Thierry. I hated Gideon. It was that simple.

  Yeah, right, my inner voice chimed.

  “Shut. Up.”

  Where the hell was Gideon? And how was I supposed to find him in a city of two and a half million people?

  How about a location spell? my nightwalker suggested helpfully.

  “Last time I checked, I was a vampire, not a witch.”

  A few people on the Front Street sidewalk where I now briskly moved along glanced at me warily as I kept talking to myself like a crazy woman.

  A location spell. A person’s exact location could be pinpointed if you knew someone who could work some hocus-pocus. What’s his name—wizard-boy Steven, aka The Darkness—did a location spell to find out where I lived, didn’t he? Just before he was possessed by a demon and threw me into a wall, that is.

  However, it might be worth it if I could find him.

  But how was I supposed to do that? I didn’t have his phone number. I had no idea how to contact him. And time was running out.

  Check it out, my nightwalker said. A falling star. Why don’t you make a wish, you loser?

  My evil inner voice wasn’t very nice at all.

  I looked up at the sky, dark but clear, showing a full moon and stars like a thousand sparkly diamond rings.

  Normally, I’d wish for a million dollars. Tonight I’d make an exception.

  “I wish I could find Gideon Chase,” I said aloud to the brightest
star I saw. “Pretty please.”

  The star moved to reveal that I’d just wished on an airplane.

  Well, that sucks, my nightwalker said.

  At least we agreed about something.

  “Hey, lady.” Somebody poked me in the arm. I turned around to scowl at my attacker. “Need concert tickets?”

  “Concert tickets?” I repeated. “That’s one thing I actually don’t need right now.”

  “C’mon. They’re cheap. Concert’s already started. You can have ’em for fifty each.”

  The man’s breath smelled like a cross between Cuban cigars and a used litterbox. Pleasant it wasn’t.

  “Not interested,” I told him.

  “Death Suck is the hottest heavy metal band out there. You look like you could use a little excitement tonight.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Forty each. C’mon. Take them off my hands.”

  I was about to open my mouth again to tell him exactly where he could shove the tickets when I froze.

  Did he say Death Suck?

  Did I not already know Death Suck’s biggest fan in the entire Northern Hemisphere?

  Why, I think I did. And Death Suck’s biggest fan just happened to be a teenaged wizard who liked to be called The Darkness, who I already knew had expressed a very keen interest at being at the concert this evening.

  I looked up at the path of the plane I’d wished on and said a silent thank you. Wishing on stars was obviously overrated.

  “Give me the tickets,” I said.

  “Forty each.”

  I narrowed my eyes and held out my hand, reaching down a little into my nightwalker self to pull out my “thrall” ability as though I was searching through a cluttered purse. “Give them to me.”

  His eyes glazed over immediately. “Sure thing,” he said, and he handed me the tickets without further argument. “Enjoy the show.”

  I snatched the tickets away from him. I’d forgotten that the thrall was, hands down, my favorite side effect of being a nightwalker.

  Not that there was anything good about the curse, mind you. But if there was, it would be the thrall. Wonderful, glorious thrall.

  I focused on going into the domed Rogers Centre stadium, getting past security, who saw nothing suspicious about my strolling into a heavy metal concert more than an hour after it had already started. The scent of beer and pretzels and popcorn hit me, along with the very mild scent of weed.

  Vampire nose at full capacity. Check.

  The sound of twenty thousand screaming kids assaulted me, and the grinding whine of guitars and synthesizers hit me like a brick wall as I wandered the seating area, straining my senses, for any sign of the wizard I was looking for.

  “Death suck!” the lead singer screamed into the microphone.

  “Kill them! Stab them! Make them bleed!

  “Tear their hearts out, THEN WE’LL FEED!

  “Suck! Death! DEATH! SUUUCCKKK!”

  Catchy.

  Vampire hearing: not exactly an asset at the moment. Check.

  A quick sweep of the place showed me nothing I could use. This was already taking too long. How would I be able to find him in a crowd of thousands of kids?

  I kept searching until a glance at my watch told me it was just after ten o’clock. I’d already been wandering aimlessly around the concert for way too long.

  Two hours left.

  I made my way down the aisle trying to ignore the music, if you could call it that, and focus on finding Steven. I knew I couldn’t find him the old-fashioned way. It would take forever to look at faces one by one. So I decided to do something a little risky.

  Here we go again, I thought.

  No, I could handle it. Really. I would slide into my nightwalker skin just a little, kind of like testing the temperature of water with your big toe. He’d touched me the last time I saw him. I vividly remembered him wrapping his hand around my throat and trying to squeeze the life out of me. We all had a dark side to deal with, didn’t we?

  “We’re close to the end now,” the demon speaking through Steven had told me yesterday, all red-eyed and scary. “And if you don’t step aside when the blood begins to flow it will devour you whole.”

  When the blood begins to flow?

  Still freaky. And yet, weirdly appetizing, which wasn’t a very calming thought at all.

  Oh, how I missed the days of Chinese food and chocolate cake. The only potential victims then were my thighs.

  In any case, I had to find Steven’s creepy, freaky little ass that I was totally positive was somewhere at this concert. If this didn’t work, I’d just thrall my way past the security guards, grab the microphone from the lead singer, who looked like he’d just been released for a day pass from San Quentin Penitentiary, and yell out his name. I’d done karaoke before in my prevampiric life. I could belt out a little Bonnie Raitt if the situation called for it, no problemo.

  I grasped the railing in front of me and closed my eyes, focusing on Steven’s hand on my throat. The warm scent of his skin. The blood just underneath racing through his veins.

  The stadium shifted after a moment to something more tangible, more alive. I could smell past the light odor of sneaked-in drugs, sweaty armpits, and expensive snacks to something deeper. Twenty thousand hearts beating, pumping blood through their young bodies.

  Twenty thousand tasty treats.

  No. I pushed past that thought as if it was seaweed hanging down in front of me, squishy and unpleasant, getting past that so I was able to focus on one teenager in particular.

  Focus. Weaving my way through the crowd, my senses opening up and searching like fingers lightly brushing over the audience, checking and rechecking, and I knew I was close. So very close…

  “Hey,” somebody said.

  My eyes snapped open and I looked to my side.

  A man stood there checking me out. He wore a black T-shirt with a big white skull and the band’s logo emblazoned across it.

  “Hey, baby,” he said. “Cool black contacts. They so rock.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. They rock like Death Suck rocks!” He thrust his fists into the air. “Wooooo! Death Suck! ROCKS!”

  “Sit down,” I hissed.

  “Okay.” His eyes glazed and he sat down heavily right in the middle of the stairway.

  I fought against the fog that rolled over my senses.

  I’d already fed from two master vampires that day. I didn’t need more blood. I could keep my bitchy little nightwalker at bay for a little longer.

  I had to. It’s not like I had any choice.

  Do or die.

  Like, literally.

  I opened my eyes to see that somebody was looking directly at me, somebody other than the über-fan who had made a lame-ass attempt to hit on me. Just on the other side of the aisle where the fan now sprawled was the very person I’d been trying to find.

  “Hi,” Steven said. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

  He wore a T-shirt identical to the other fan’s shirt, but Steven’s was autographed, and he held a concert program under his arm.

  I waded through the mental haze I saw him through. “You were wondering when I’d show up?”

  He nodded. “I sensed you were near.”

  “Well, that’s convenient, isn’t it?” I drew in an unneeded breath and felt a wave of relief hit me. He was here. It was going to be okay, after all. “You have to help me.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. I need you to find somebody for me. To do a location spell.”

  “Dude,” another kid came up beside Steven. “Who’s the black-eyed babe?”

  My eyes were still black? Not good. Luckily I probably fit in around here. I’d just pump my fists and yell “Death Suck rocks!” if anybody gave me a hard time.

  Or tear their throats out and bathe in their yumtastic blood, my nightwalker suggested.

  Uh, wait. No, no, no, that wasn’t a good thought, to say the very least. Let’s stick with the first one. Only th
e first one.

  “She’s a client,” Steven said.

  “A client?”

  “For my magic shit.”

  “You are the man.” The friend eyed me. “What’s your name, sweetness?”

  I black-eyed him with distaste. “What are you, twelve? Get away from me.”

  “That’s okay,” he replied. “I like my women frisky. I can handle it. And, for the record, I’m almost fifteen.”

  I ignored him and looked at Steven. “So, can you help me?”

  “Oh, yeah.” The friend leered at me. “He’s going to help you, all right. Help you all night long, baby. Uh huh.”

  Maybe I could rip out one throat tonight. I’d promise to make it quick.

  Wait… no. Not even one.

  “Stop that,” Steven told him. “She’s old enough to be my mother.”

  That snapped me out of my nasty nightwalker funk. “Hardly.”

  “Steve, dude, I can handle older women. I’m all about that.”

  “I told you to call me The Darkness.”

  “Don’t be a wiener.”

  Steven scowled. “A wiener? I’m not a wiener. You’re the wiener!”

  I sighed. The fate of my best friend’s life was currently in this wiener’s hands.

  The night was not looking up.

  About three seconds later, Death Suck wrapped up their concert extravaganza and the lights came on. Thousands of blurry-eyed teenagers with damaged hearing began filing out through the exits.

  “Come with me,” Steven said to me.

  His friend snickered. “Yeah, baby. Then you can come with me. Get it? Heh heh.”

  I looked at the kid and channeled my thrall. “Go home, little boy.”

  “Okay, bye.” His eyes glazed. He turned around and left without another word.

  I followed behind Steven, keeping a close eye on the back of his stringy-haired head as we moved through the thick crowd. Finally I managed to clamp my hand down on his shoulder to stop him for a second.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. “Are you going to do the location spell for me?”

  “Maybe. Follow me.”

  He started walking again.

  “About what happened yesterday,” I said. “When you were possessed—”

  He looked at me and his eyes widened a bit. “Yeah. I told you the dark magic had touched you already. I guess it must have recognized you again.”