Dead Perfect

by Amanda Ashley

  She looked up as a man sat down beside her. He smiled, then pointed with his chin at her drink. “Can I buy you another?”

  “No, thank you.”

  He lifted a hand. “Hey, no problem. You just looked a little down. I thought you might like some company.”

  He had a nice voice, blond hair, and dark brown eyes. What harm could it do to share a drink with him?

  “Are you sure you won’t change your mind?” he coaxed, as if sensing her indecision.

  “Well, I would like another.”

  “What are you drinking?” he asked, signaling for the bartender.

  “A virgin pineapple daiquiri.”

  He ordered her drink and a scotch and water for himself, then held out his hand. “I’m Anton.”

  “Cara.” She hesitated a moment before taking his hand. Though she had been on her share of dates, she tended to be shy around strangers. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe because she had never forgotten her father’s warning that he had “ruthless enemies.” Still, she told herself there was nothing to worry about. Frank was here.

  Anton’s grip was firm, his skin warm. “Do you come here often?”

  “No, this is my first time. I was just passing by and I heard the music and…” She shrugged. “I thought it might cheer me up.”

  “If you tell me what’s got you feeling so blue, I might be able to help.”

  “I don’t think so, but thanks for offering.”

  Cara glanced out at the dance floor as the lights dimmed. The music, which had been upbeat, changed to something slow and sensual with a dark, sexual undertone. It called to something earthy deep within her.

  “Would you like to dance?” Anton asked.

  Again, she hesitated a moment before agreeing.

  Anton took her by the hand and led her out onto the floor. “So,” he said, taking her in his arms. “Tell me about yourself.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Let’s see. What do you like to do for fun? Do you work, or are you an heiress? Who’s your favorite singer? And, most important of all, are you a chocoholic like every other woman I’ve ever met?”

  She laughed. “Guilty on the chocolate,” she said, and then frowned as she realized she had never seen her mother eat or drink anything chocolate. Even the most rigid dieters cheated every now and then.

  “Did I say something wrong?” he asked.

  “No. I work at the library, and I don’t really have a favorite singer.” She didn’t tell him that she was, in fact, an heiress. After all, he was a stranger and she wasn’t a fool. Not that she had anything to worry about, not with Frank Di Giorgio sitting at the far end of the bar watching her like a hawk.

  “You’re a librarian?” Anton exclaimed.

  “Is something wrong with that?”

  “No, no, but…well, you’re a knock-out. I sort of thought you might be a model or an actress.”

  Cara smiled, flattered in spite of herself. “Disappointed?”

  “Not at all.”

  When the music ended, he escorted her back to their seats. Their drinks were waiting for them. Cara sipped hers, thinking how glad she was she had stopped in here tonight. Di Girorgio had tried to dissuade her, but she had insisted. Once inside, she almost hadn’t stayed, it was such a strange place. For one thing, she was the only one in the place who wasn’t wearing black. Voodoo masks and ancient Indian burial masks decorated the walls. Tall black candles flickered in wrought iron sconces, casting eerie shadows over the faces of the patrons; a good number of them wore long black cloaks or capes with hoods.

  “So,” Anton said, “what do you think of the Nocturne?”

  “I’m not sure. Why is everyone wearing black?”

  “This is a Goth hangout.”

  “Oh! Silly me, I should have guessed.”

  He grinned at her. “I take it you’re not into the Goth scene.”

  “Not really,” she replied, and then frowned, thinking that her father would be right at home in a place like this. He had an affinity for dark clothing, and he had a long black cloak. But it was more than that. From time to time, she had sensed a darkness in her father that she couldn’t explain and didn’t understand.

  Cara finished her drink, then looked at her watch, surprised to find it was so late. “I should be going,” she said reluctantly. “My folks will be worried.”

  “Don’t tell me you still live at home with mom and dad!”

  Cara shrugged. “I like it there.” And she did, although sometimes, especially when the days were long and the nights were short, it was like living alone.

  “One more dance?” he coaxed.

  “I don’t think so. I really need to go,” she said, and then wondered why she had to be home before midnight. She wasn’t a child anymore. Why did she still have a curfew? Lately, she’d had so many questions about the way she lived. Why did she still live at home? Why did she still need a bodyguard? She was twenty-two years old and no one had ever tried to kidnap her or molest her or so much as given her a dirty look. Of course, Di Giorgio was probably responsible for that. A man would have to be crazy to try anything with The Hulk lurking in the background. Still, maybe it was time to sit her folks down and ask the questions that had been plaguing her more and more in the last few months.

  “Thank you for the drink and the dance,” she said, rising.

  “Any chance you’ll be here tomorrow night about this time?” he asked.

  She tilted her head to the side, considering it, and then smiled. “I’d say the odds were good.”

  “Great. I’ll see you then.”

  Leaning back against the bar, Anton Bouchard watched his enemy’s daughter leave the bar, followed by a big bear of a man who looked as if he could easily take on every other man in the place without breaking a sweat.

  Anton grunted softly, thinking how pleased his mother would be when he told her he had put the first part of her plan into operation.

  DEAD SEXY

  The city in in a panic. In the still of the night,

  a vicious killer is leaving a trail of

  mutilated bodies drained of blood.

  A chilling M.O. that puts ex-vampire hunter

  Reagan Delaney on the case,

  her gun clip packed with silver bullets,

  her instinctss edgy.

  But the victims are both human and Undead,

  and the clues are as confusing as the

  vampire who may be her best ally—she hopes…

  They called it You Bet Your Life Park, because that’s what you were doing if you lingered inside the park after sundown, betting your life that you’d get out again. It had been a nice quiet neighborhood once upon a time, and it still was, during the day. Modern, high-rise condos enclosed the park on three sides. Visitors to the city often remarked on the fact that most of the buildings didn’t have any windows. A large outdoor pool was located in the middle of the park. The local kids went swimming there in the summertime. There was also a pizza parlor, a video game arcade, and a couple of small stores that sold groceries, ice, and gas to those who had need of such things.

  Large signs were posted at regular intervals throughout the park warning visitors to vacate the premises well before sunset. Smart people paid attention to the signs. Dumb ones were rarely heard from again, because the condos and apartments that encompassed You Bet Your Life Park were a sanctuary for the Undead. A supernaturally charged force field surrounded the outer perimeter of the apartment complex and the park, thereby preventing the vampires from leaving the area and wandering through the city.

  Regan Delaney didn’t have any idea how the force field worked or what it was made of. All she knew was that it kept the vamps inside but had no negative effect on humans. It was against the law to destroy vampires these days, unless you found one outside the park, but the force field made that impossible. Any vampire who wished to leave the park and move to a protected area in another part of the country had to apply for a permit and be transpo
rted, by day, by a company equipped to handle that kind of thing. What Regan found the hardest to accept was that vampires were now considered an endangered species, like tigers, elephants, and marine turtles, and as such, they had to be protected from human predators. The very thought was ludicrous!

  It hadn’t always been so, of course. In her grandfather’s day, vampires had been looked upon as vermin, the scum of the earth. Bounties had been placed on them and they had been hunted ruthlessly. Many of the known vampires had been destroyed. Then, about five years ago, the bleeding hearts had started crying about how sad it was to kill all those poor misunderstood creatures of the night. After all, the bleeding hearts argued, even vampires had rights. Besides, they were also human beings and deserved to be treated with respect. To Regan’s astonishment, sympathy for the vampires had grown and vampires had been given immunity, of a sort, and put into protective custody in places like You Bet Your Life Park. And since the Undead could no longer hunt in the city, the law had decided to put the vampires to good use. For a brief period of time, criminals sentenced to death had been given to the vampires.

  The thought still made Regan cringe. Though she had no love for murderers, rapists, or child molesters, she couldn’t, in good conscience, condone throwing them to the vamps. She didn’t have to worry for long. In less than a year, the same bleeding-heart liberals who had felt sorry for the poor, misunderstood vampires began feeling sorry for the poor unfortunate criminals who had become their prey, and so a new law had been passed and criminals were again disposed of more humanely, by lethal injection.

  Unfortunately, the new law had left the Undead with no ready food supply. In order to appease their hunger and keep them from killing each other, blood banks had agreed to donate whole blood to the vampire community until synthetic plasma could be developed. In a few months, Locke Pharmaceuticals invented something called Synthetic Type O that was reported to taste and smell the same as the real thing. A variety of blood types soon followed, though Type O remained the most popular.

  Taking a deep breath, Regan shook off thoughts of the past and stared at the lifeless body sprawled at her feet. Apparently, one of the vampires had tired of surviving on Synthetic Type O. She felt a wave of pity for the dead man. In life, he had been a middle-aged man with sandy brown hair and a trim mustache. He might even have been handsome. Now his face was set in a rictus of horror. His heart, throat, and liver had been savagely ripped away, and there wasn’t enough blood left in his body to fill an eyedropper. The corpse had been found under a bush by a couple who had been leaving the Park just before sunset. From the looks of it, the victim had been killed the night before.

  “Hey, Reggie.”

  Regan looked away from the body and into the deep gray eyes of Sergeant Michael Flynn. Flynn was a good cop, honest, hardworking, and straightforward, a rarity in this day and age. He was a handsome man in his mid-thirties, with a shock of dark red hair and a dimple in his left cheek. She had gone out on a number of dates with Mike in the last few months. He was fun to be with and she enjoyed his company. She knew Mike was eager to take their relationship to the next level, but she wasn’t ready for that, not yet. She cared for him. She admired him. She loved him, but she wasn’t in love with him. It was because he was the best friend she had in the city that she didn’t want to complicate their friendship, or worse, jeopardize it, by going to bed with him. She had seen it happen all too often, a perfectly good friendship ruined when two people decided to sleep together.

  “So,” Flynn said, “definitely a vampire kill, right?”

  “Looks that way,” Regan agreed, but she wasn’t sure. She had seen vampire kills before. The complete lack of blood pointed to a vampire, but the fact that the victim’s heart, throat, and liver had been ripped out disturbed her. She had never known a vampire to take anything but blood from its prey.

  “So, you about through here?” Flynn asked.

  “What? Oh, sure.” She wasn’t a cop and she had no real authority on the scene, but in the past, whenever the department received a call about a suspected vampire killing, they had asked her to come out and take a look. She had been a vampire hunter in those days, and a darn good one, but that had been back in the good old days, before vampires became “protected” and put her out of a job. Fortunately, she had a tidy little inheritance from her grandfather, though it wouldn’t last much longer if she didn’t find another job soon.

  “I’ll call you next week,” Flynn said with a wink.

  Regan nodded, then moved away from the scene so the forensic boys could get to work. It gave her an edgy feeling, being in the park after the sun went down, though she supposed there were enough cops in the area to keep her reasonably safe from the monsters. At any rate, it felt good to be part of a criminal investigation again, good to feel needed. Still, she couldn’t help feeling guilty that she would be out of work in a heartbeat as soon as they caught the killer.

  She remembered the first time the department had requested her expertise. Even now, years later, the thought made her wince with embarrassment. After all the classes she had taken at the Police Academy, she had been convinced she was prepared for anything, but no amount of training could have prepared her for the reality of seeing that first fresh vampire kill. At the Academy, the bodies had been dummies and, while they had been realistic, they hadn’t come close to the real thing. Regan had turned away and covered her mouth, trying in vain to keep her dinner down. It had been Michael who had come to her aid, who had offered her a handkerchief and assured her that it happened to everyone sooner or later. They had been friends from that night forward.

  Now, she stood in the shadows, watching two men wearing masks and gloves slip the body into a black plastic bag for the trip to the morgue while the forensic team tagged and bagged possible evidence from the scene. Maybe they would get lucky downtown, but she didn’t think so. She had a hunch that whoever had perpetrated the crime knew exactly what he was doing and that whatever evidence he had left behind, if any, would be useless.

  Regan watched the ambulance pull away from the curb. Once the body had been thoroughly examined, the medical examiner would take the necessary steps to ensure that the corpse didn’t rise as a new vampire tomorrow night. She didn’t envy him the job, but if there was one thing the city didn’t need, it was another vampire.

  Regan was jotting down a few notes when she felt a shiver run down her spine. Not the “gee, it’s cold outside” kind of shiver but the “you’d better be careful, there’s a monster close by” kind.

  Making a slow turn, she peered into the darkness as every instinct for self-preservation that she possessed screamed a warning.

  If he hadn’t moved, she never would have seen him.

  He emerged from the shadowy darkness on cat-silent feet. “Do not be afraid,” he said. “I mean you no harm.”

  His voice was like thick molasses covered in dark chocolate, so deep and sinfully rich, she could feel herself gaining weight just listening to him speak.

  “Right.” She slipped her hand into the pocket of her jacket, her fingers curling around the trigger of a snub-nosed pistol. She never left home without it. The gun was loaded with five silver bullets that had been dipped in holy water. The hammer rested on an empty chamber. “That’s why you’re sneaking up on me.”

  The corner of his sensual mouth lifted in a lazy half-smile. “If I wanted you dead, my lovely one, you would be dead.”

  Regan believed him. He spoke with the kind of calm assurance that left no room for doubt.

  DESIRE AFTER DARK

  Cursed to an eternity of darkness,

  Antonio Battista has wandered the earth,

  satisfying his hunger with countless women,

  letting none find a place in his heart.

  But Victoria Cavendish is different.

  “You wish something?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No. Good night.”

  She started past him only to be stayed by the light touch of
his hand on her shoulder. She could have walked on by. He wasn’t holding her, but she stopped, her heart rate accelerating when she looked up and met his gaze.

  Time slowed, could have ceased to exist for all she knew or cared. She was aware of nothing but the man standing beside her. His dark blue gaze melded with hers, igniting a flame that started deep within her and spread with all the rapidity of a wildfire fanned by a high wind.

  Heart pounding, she looked at him, and waited.

  He didn’t make her wait too long.

  He murmured to her softly in a language she didn’t understand, then swept her into his arms and kissed her, a long searing kiss that burned away the memory of every other man she had ever known, until she knew only him, saw only him. Wanted only him.

  He deepened the kiss, his tongue teasing her lips, sending flames along every nerve, igniting a need so primal, so volatile, she thought she might explode. She pressed her body to his, hating the layers of cloth that separated his flesh from hers. She had never reacted to a man’s kisses like this before, never felt such an overwhelming need to touch and be touched. A distant part of her mind questioned her ill-conceived desire for a man she hardly knew, but she paid no heed. Nothing mattered now but his arms holding her close, his mouth on hers.

  Battista groaned low in his throat. He had to stop this now, while he could, before his lust for blood overcame his desire for her sweet flesh. The two were closely interwoven, the one fueling the other. He knew he should let her go before it was too late, before his hunger overcame his good sense, before he succumbed to the need burning through him. He could scarcely remember the last time he had embraced a woman he had not regarded as prey. But this woman was more than mere sustenance. Her body fit his perfectly, her voice sang to his soul, her gaze warmed the cold dark places in his heart, shone like the sun in the depths of his hell-bound spirit.