by Sierra Dean
I think it was safe to say, after having been in the world fully human for five years now, I could never go back to my vampire life. It was something I thought about often, especially whenever Desmond brought up turning me into a werewolf again.
Would it be a betrayal to that part of my heritage if I decided to become a wolf and totally abandon my history as a vampire? To this day I was still the only person anyone knew of that had been born a vampire. And I was definitely the only one who had been born as both a vampire and a werewolf.
I had to hope no one else would ever be quite so unlucky as to experience that. Sure, it had had some benefits, and maybe things would be a little easier now that people knew vampires and werewolves were real. But overall, it had been hell.
Yet, it felt so strange to abandon my vampire half. It was as much a part of who I was as the werewolf DNA I still carried. And of course Holden would have gladly bitten me in a heartbeat if I decided I wanted that life back.
I didn’t.
I could never live without the sun again, I knew that much. But I couldn’t bring myself to completely cut off the vampire part. It was like a dead limb still attached to my body, and I couldn’t quite let it go.
Would I be accepted by the vampires if I became a full wolf? I had a hard time imagining they’d treat me the same. Even as a human I had gotten a certain level of scorn from my vampire contemporaries. They were quick to forget I had once been a Tribunal leader and above every single one of them in the hierarchy.
Amazing how things changed when you became human.
I was willing to bet most of the non-supernaturally inclined people I knew, like Mercedes and Tyler, took things like warm sunshine and the color of a sun-dappled flower petal for granted, but damn I would probably never get over it.
About halfway between the hotel and the club, I became aware of someone following me.
It started out as simply a tickle of my overactive paranoia. But it’s only paranoia if you’re wrong, and more often than not, when I thought I was being followed, it was because I was.
The park was busy, New Yorkers hungry to be out and about after a long and especially chilly winter—another point in favor of Los Angeles—so everywhere I looked there were mothers pushing strollers, men and women out for jogs, and tourists getting photos.
The sense something was amiss only came when I glanced over my shoulder to see a man in a dark hoodie walking some distance behind me. He didn’t seem to be in a particular hurry, but he was just off enough I made note of him.
I had a habit of always checking behind myself, and more so now since I’d been pulled through a bathroom wall less than twelve hours ago. Evidently there was no good place in this world to let your guard down.
A half mile of walking later, this time at a faster clip, I looked again and he was still behind me, having increased his own pace to keep up with me.
Well, shit.
I had my gun on me because I wasn’t new to my life, and my knife from the previous evening had been cleaned and put in my boot, but all the same I would have felt a lot better if someone had left a sword lying around somewhere.
There was something about a sword that told people don’t fuck with me in a way a gun didn’t communicate. Maybe it was because carrying a sword around made me look a little unhinged.
As I approached the Greyshot Arch, a low bridge off West Drive, I hoped the choking flow of cyclists and runners would deter him. I hustled along and stopped in the dark sanctuary of the Arch’s shadow, trying to see him as a huge gang of cyclists barrelled past, their tires singing in an organized hum.
The man was no longer on the path.
I waited another few minutes, then the cold and dark started creeping on me, and I exited the other side of the tunnel.
Where naturally the hooded man and four of his previously unseen friends were waiting for me.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“You know, it’s not polite to follow a lady around the park. Or anywhere. Ever,” I said.
“I’ll keep that in mind if I ever happen to meet a lady,” the hoodie-wearing man spat back.
Zing.
It was kind of fun to have someone you had literally never seen before have such a low opinion of you. It meant at some point you’d done something so despicable that a stranger had heard about you and already formed a value judgment.
I was famous!
Plus, I didn’t much care what one random asshole stalker thought about me, so I wasn’t going to go home and cry about having my feelings hurt.
A solo cyclist whizzed by me, reminding me we were in the middle of the busiest path in Central Park on one of the nicest afternoons in six months. Witnesses were absolutely everywhere, so unless these guys wanted to make a really big scene, they would be on their best behavior.
Which probably meant they weren’t going to try to drag me off against my will or violently assault me in front of passersby. Some stone-hearted New Yorkers might ignore a woman in danger, but I felt certain someone would stop and call the cops if five men attempted to beat me up in broad daylight.
Since we were in the sun, they weren’t vampires, which also meant I was in a good position to take one or two of them out if they started something.
I was good. I don’t mean for it to sound braggy or anything, but in order to make up for the missing strength I’d lost when I became human, I had spent the last five years doing a variety of training, from working with a female UFC fighter to hone my hand-to-hand skills, to taking years’ worth of Krav Maga, and spending six months in Malaysia to learn silat from a mahaguru.
I’d taken self-defense, knife defense, kendo—to properly learn how to use my katana and not just slice at things willy-nilly—I’d worked on gun skills that made my immediate close-range target practice look like something out of John Wick but with less puppy murder.
Basically, I had addressed my weaknesses. I wasn’t a master in any one discipline, but I’d taken time to learn a lot of things in the past years. Things that had kept me alive and had broken the bones of many people who wanted me dead.
I might be small, but what is that saying? No, not the Shakespeare one, the Yoda one.
Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you?
No one kicked ass like Yoda kicked ass.
So yeah, I had a good feeling about my odds taking on five guys who seemed like they got through life by looking serious and assuming people would be afraid of them for their bulk.
I’m here to tell you, if you kick a man in the back of the knee, it doesn’t matter if he’s five feet tall or seven feet tall, that motherfucker is going down.
Things just happened to get a lot trickier when it went from one-on-one to five-on-one, but I had trained with that in mind, so now was my chance to put it all into action.
“Gents, I know you’re here to beat the tar out of me, or kill me, or kidnap me, or some combination of the above, but I think we’re rather conspicuous standing out in the open like this.”
As if to illustrate my point, two women jogged past us pushing fancy baby strollers designed for running, and a bike zoomed by them in the opposite direction. The swish-swish-swish of the joggers’ ponytails was a soothing rhythm as it faded out the farther away they got.
The five men exchanged glances before the dude clearly in charge crossed his arms defensively and said, “You think we care about witnesses?”
Aw, false bravado was so cute.
“Yeah, I absolutely think you care about witnesses, and here’s why I know that. For one, you haven’t come any closer to me yet. For twosies, there are a bunch of you, which means someone has sent you, because they know I’m not the kind of person who can be beaten up, kidnapped, or killed very easily. So you guys have a boss. Probably someone who can’t come out on their own in the daylight.”
They exchanged uneasy glances.
I pointed at my head. “I know the whole blonde-hair thing can be misleading, but you know that’s just a v
icious stereotype, right? I’m actually pretty smart.” Depending on who you asked. And whether or not we were talking about book smarts versus Batman-like crime scene awareness.
Not that I was Batman.
“You can tell Davos you tried really hard.”
The main guy, the one who had followed me through the park, gave a thin, humorless smile. “You don’t know Davos well if you think he’ll accept that.”
“In the first hour I met him he almost kidnapped me to use me as demon bait, and it’s been about twelve hours and now he’s sent a bunch of sad goth thugs out to spirit me away. I know all I need to know about Davos.”
“What you might not understand is that he doesn’t take no for an answer.”
“My opinion on being used as a blood keg for your demon party is still a pretty firm hell no.”
“Don’t make this difficult.”
“Not to crib your line here, but you don’t know me very well if you think I’m not going to be difficult. That’s sort of my signature move.”
A young couple passed us, obviously laughing at a shared joke.
“Let’s speak somewhere privately,” the man suggested.
“Sure, just drive your white van up, I’ll climb in. Do you want me to put the hood over my head while I wait?”
“Lady, respectfully, either you come with us, or we stop being patient with you.”
I was about to ask him why I should care about their patience, but then the man looked meaningfully at a little girl running down the path well ahead of her parents, both of whom seemed only half-aware of where she was, like they didn’t have a worry in the world.
I understood the unspoken, loaded threat.
They could grab her or anyone like her and either kill her, run off with her, or use her as a bargaining chip to get me to cooperate. They were resting on the hope that my humanity and common decency outweighed my sense of self-preservation.
And dammit all, they were right.
“I’m not a big fan of you guys.” The problem with where we were was there really wasn’t anything nearby that allowed for privacy. The Greyshot Arch was just one among many paths. And with the green leaves emerging and the warmth in the air, there were too many people around us to risk having this conversation anywhere close.
We were spitting distance from the city proper though, which meant we might have to do what everyone said was a big no-no when it came to being kidnapped: we were going to have to go to a second location.
Grumble, grumble, grumble.
“Follow me, then.” I hefted a big sigh and went back through the tunnel and up a nearby path. I didn’t need to turn around to know they were behind me—I could sense their five bulky bodies without much imagination.
We couldn’t leave the park directly because of the low stone wall along Central Park West, so I navigated us towards the nearest exit at the corner of West 63rd St. and the hustle and bustle of the city streets. Out here everything was louder, busier, and even smelled different than it had under the protection of the branches and quieter paths of the park. I immediately felt like I could be forgotten here and vanish unseen off a sidewalk.
Precisely what these guys wanted.
We were so close to my house I could see the tower of our complex from where I was standing. But if I made a break for it, I was sure they’d grab the nearest person and shove them into traffic, or do something equally awful to prove their point.
It wouldn’t be the first time an innocent life was lost just to make me feel guilty.
I kept walking, familiar with the area well enough to know that privacy was hard to come by. I turned onto West 64th and got about halfway down the block until a twenty-four-hour parking garage appeared on my left. I stopped in front of it and then made a dramatic gesture towards the entrance. “Gentlemen.”
I wasn’t much in the mood to recreate a scene out of the music video for “Bad,” and there would still be people coming and going from the garage, but at least it would limit the availability of potential hostages.
The five men exchanged glances then seemed to decide there wouldn’t be any more difficulty taking me out of a parking garage than a public park, and followed me in.
The light dimmed inside, well out of the sun, replaced by the sickly green glow of overhead fluorescents. We passed row after row of parked cars until I settled on a place near the back where the bulbs had burned out and it was less likely parkers would gravitate this direction.
Things like that were common, little pockets of darkness human beings naturally learned to avoid. It was the world’s way of training us to keep away from trouble, and usually it worked without us even being aware of it. I, on the other hand, tended to head right for those patches of dark and deadly, like the danger-loving dumb-dumb I was.
“All right, let’s make one thing clear here.” I set my bag on the ground, barely remembering I’d been carrying it this whole time. There was an extra knife and bullets inside—you know, lady essentials—but my gun was under my coat in a holster, and my knife was in my boot as always. I was prepared for these guys.
“Sure, enlighten us.”
“You want to take me to Davos. You were willing to hurt innocent people to make that happen. I don’t want to be taken to Davos, and I’m willing to hurt you to make sure I don’t have to go.”
The head guy snickered, and a few of the stooges exchanged amused smirks. Now I was both offended and super ready to kick all their stupid stoogey asses. Bring it on, scumbags.
“It’s cute that you think you can stop us,” the leader said with a smirk.
“Cute is my middle name, buddy.” It was not. Merriweather was my middle name. I had my grandmere to thank for that one. Pretty sure she named me after one of those fairies in Sleeping Beauty, but she insisted that wasn’t the reason. Still, there was no way to convince me otherwise, no matter what she said.
“You guys followed me through the damn park, and you followed me in here because I asked nicely. You might be the dumbest lackeys a vampire has ever hired. In my experience.”
The smirks faded as they realized I wasn’t even a little bit scared of them, so they decided to up the menace.
“We were told to keep a low profile,” one of them said, and was immediately given a look by the leader that clearly meant, I’m not paying you to talk.
“Yeah, nothing says low profile quite like stalking women in a public park.”
“I am sick of listening to her jaw,” another one announced. “Can we knock her out and get this over with?”
A man of action. I could appreciate that.
“You’re welcome to try, kids.” I crooked my fingers at them, inviting the attack.
Prepared for the inevitable moment when one or all of them would charge, I got lighter on my feet. Knowing how they perceived me, I suspected they’d at least initially try to take me one-on-one. Nothing hurt a masculine ego quite like needing backup just to beat up a girl.
Like I anticipated, the leader gave the nod to one of the more wiry guys in the group. I was disappointed I didn’t get to start with the big guy in the back, the bald-headed one who was pushing six and a half feet tall. He looked like he’d be a lot of fun to play with.
The wiry guy lunged for me with an adorable little growl.
I sidestepped, bouncing on the balls of my feet. I would have preferred a lighter shoe for this, but if you can’t do martial arts in high-heeled boots, you’re probably not very good at martial arts.
He spun around, trying not to act surprised his move had failed. His first attack had clearly been meant to grab me around the waist and was a smart approach. This time, he kept himself rigid and came right at me.
Amateur hour.
I weaved under his outstretched arm and elbowed him hard in the gut, then grabbed his arm as he doubled over in pain. I flipped him over so suddenly he was still groaning about his belly even as he slammed back-first onto the concrete. Then, because this was a fight for my life after all, I kept h
old of his arm, straightened it at the joint, and with a practiced yank, dislocated it from the socket.
He wailed.
This was me being nice too. I could have just as easily broken it.
The skinny guy rolled onto his side, mewling in pain and cradling the damaged arm. His belly was probably still hurting too.
I looked back at the four remaining thugs and pointed to the big boy.
“Come on, then. Let’s dance.”
He stared at the man on the ground and looked at his not-so-fearless leader like he wasn’t sure what to do. The leader didn’t seem certain either, but they were here to do a job, so I guess one damaged lackey wasn’t going to deter him.
“Go,” he barked.
The big guy decided to be cinematic about this. He nudged his way through his buddies and slowly stripped off his too-tight leather jacket to give me a personal invitation to his private gun show. His arms were huge. This guy did not skip upper-body days at the gym, bless him. His biceps were covered in old tribal tattoos, and he cracked his knuckles loudly as he dropped the.
“You a tough guy?” I asked him, my tone low and conspiratorial.
“Uh.” He was not expecting banter.
“Big, bad strongman gonna beat up a little girl?”
His gaze moved towards his buddy lying on the ground, who hadn’t even bothered to drag his ass out of the way. The big man sniffed, not sure how to reply.
“I see witticisms are not part of your repertoire. That’s okay. No one is perfect.” As he continued to stare blankly at me, I darted forward and slammed my flat, rigid fingers right into his windpipe.
A long, raspy wheeze escaped his throat, and his eyes went wide.
I took a step to the side, then hooked my foot around his leg and put the slightest pressure on the back of his knee.
He toppled like an imploding Vegas casino.
Now two of the five guys were lying at my feet, and the remaining three really didn’t know what to make of it. They had probably assumed the big guy would flatten me, and that would be that. Sorry to ruin their plans, but I did tell them ahead of time I had no intention of going with them.