Vampire's Shade 1 (Vampire's Shade Collection)

by Vivienne Neas

  Chapter 12

  I got a call from the workshop telling me my bike was ready. I stopped by and picked it up. I wasn’t going to spend more time without my bike, come what may.

  I looked up at the sky. The sun was low, touching the horizon. It was time I met Connor. Unease swirled in my stomach like nausea. What was I doing? I couldn’t keep doing this. I had to go there and kill him. Get it over with.

  Yes. That was what I would do.

  I drove to Mulberry Street and sat in the road, one finger stroking the stake absently while I turned everything over in my head. I was going to march in there and stab the stake into his heart, breaking my promise, because that was what I did. I broke things. Or maybe I was going to use my Smith & Wesson and blow his head off. Either way, I was going to do this.

  I closed my eyes and breathed, ready to walk up to him and finish the job… but when I sent my feelers out, the house was empty. Connor wasn’t home.

  Disappointment lodged in my chest and dragged me down like something made of lead. I wouldn’t get to see him, then. I wasn’t sure why I was upset. Was it because I couldn’t see him, or because I wouldn’t get the chance to kill him? We had an appointment. Wasn’t I important enough?

  I started the bike and flew down the street, embracing the roar of the engine and the hum of speed in my blood. Not tonight. I wouldn’t have to kill him tonight. But at some point, I’d have to.

  I swallowed hard. This was my most difficult job to date, and killing people was particularly easy, as a rule.

  The office was cold and dark when I arrived just before midnight. I parked a block away so my bike’s engine wouldn’t announce my arrival. I wasn’t a girl who liked an entrance. I was wearing my leathers, and I felt comfortable and at home in my body again.

  I climbed the stairs, trying to ignore the pain every time I bent my leg. When I got to the second floor, I walked through Sonya’s deserted office and into Ruben’s. Apparently she did take a break now and then.

  A dim lamp on Ruben’s desk was the only source of light in the room. He was sitting at his desk looking worn and haggard, like a lifetime had passed between this afternoon’s meeting and now. The faint smell of alcohol hung in the air.

  “Don’t you just look like a ray of sunshine,” I said to him.

  He looked at me like he wasn’t fully registering my presence.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  My back was up immediately, and I opened my senses. I’d been careless. The office had never been a danger zone. But now a thin trace of terror was hanging in the air. Ruben’s terror, although it seemed like something had him subdued. The alcohol smell was also a ruse. Something that was intended to throw me off.

  A dark shadow stepped out of a corner, and I jumped. The feeling intensified. The man was tall, wearing a black duster like a cowboy in the movies and black wraparound sunglasses. His skin and hair were pale, and he wasn’t a man at all. This was a vampire. No wonder Ruben looked like death warmed over. He didn’t usually come face-to-face with the underworld, not like this.

  Another shadow appeared behind me. The only reason I knew it was there was that I had smelled it before it moved. I couldn’t see it, but I felt it coming closer.

  “Stop right there,” I said in a low voice filled with warning.

  The first vampire chuckled. “So, this is your assassin? A woman? No wonder she hasn’t been able to get the job done.”

  “I wouldn’t be so quick with the insults, if I were you,” I said. Ruben didn’t respond.

  The thigh sheath and the guns on my side and at my back were all but burning against my skin. My fingers were itching to use them, but I wasn’t going to rush things. With two big vampires, me and a defenseless human in a small office, it was better not to jump right into fighting if it wasn’t necessary. Bloodshed needed space… and preferably, the lack of a human audience.

  “You want O’Neill dead,” I said matter-of-factly.

  The vampire nodded. I was aware of his partner moving around the office, probably listening and feeling for the presence of people or other vampires.

  “You’re not doing what we asked,” the vampire said. “We’re becoming impatient.”

  “Why do you need me to do it?” I asked. “You look like you have what it takes to do it yourself.”

  The vampire gave a low, evil laugh that danced across my skin, and I broke out in shivers. This vampire was powerful, more so than the ones I’d been hunting for so long. More powerful than my father had ever been. Where did the vampires like this hang out? I realized I’d been dealing with the bottom of the food chain.

  “Let’s just say it’s in our best interest not to be tied to the murder.”

  “She’s on the case. I told you.” Ruben spoke for the first time. His voice was dull, without inflection or emotion.

  The vampire ignored him. “He wasn’t supposed to live through the change, but he did. Now you need to get rid of him.”

  So they were the ones who had dumped Connor in the alley.

  “He’s getting away from you, isn’t he?” I asked. My tone was mocking, and I smiled although none of this was friendly. “You can’t find him, and it’s ticking you off that you have to ask for help.”

  The vampire in front of me scowled and the air turned ice cold around us. Frost formed on the inside of the window and crawled up the lamp stand. I shivered. Vampires this strong could only be masters. They were old, very old, and they had far more control than the everyday newbies I dealt with.

  “You should know better than to mock me,” the vampire said in a hiss, his voice spitting. I could almost feel it on my skin.

  “It looks like she needs some motivation,” the other vampire said in a gravelly voice that sent a bolt of fear through my body.

  His eyes slid to Ruben, and I readied myself to grab my gun the moment something happened. Instead, the first vampire laughed again, like I was a child who was trying to play grownup games.

  “You’ve met Celia,” the vampire said, and that icy finger traced the outlines of my body when he mentioned her name. I nodded slowly. He wasn’t talking about the reporter she’d come disguised as. He was referring to the woman who had been playing games with me. The cat.

  “I can’t say it was a pleasure. She needs to be put on a leash.”

  “She’s perfectly in control. She only does what we tell her to. She’s more like… a pet.”

  “A pet that needs to be put down,” I spat.

  I glanced at Ruben. He was hanging on to his desk, staring at nothing. I could smell his fear, but his face was calm. They had him under some sort of spell that kept him almost drugged. If he’d been left to his own devices, he would probably have panicked or tried to escape. Or worse. People turn crazy when fear takes over.

  The other vampire, the one who wasn’t the obvious leader, pointed a gun at Ruben. So they had guns too. And they were faster than I was. I wondered if I jumped at them, if I would be faster than a bullet in getting to Ruben.

  “You have a lot of anger in you,” the leader said. Apparently, he could smell my emotions better than I could smell his. He waved at his friend, and the other vampire lowered his gun. I felt like I could breathe again. Threatening Ruben’s life was foul play. “I don’t know if that will be enough.”

  “Enough for what?” I asked. My voice was hard, and I imagined grabbing my S&W and blowing his head off.

  “Enough to save her.”

  Fear rippled through my body, and suddenly every thought of violence was gone, replaced by an image of my sister’s face. The smell of fear permeated the room, sour and vile, and the vampires both laughed.

  “Yes, that’s the one. Your sister, I believe. You’ve worked hard to cover her up, but we found out anyway.”

  “Don’t you dare!” I shouted. All my control was gone now. I was crazy with fear.

  I pulled out my gun and pointed it at the vampire in front of me. They were both strong enough to ove
rpower me. They could have beaten me to a pulp right there, and no training in the world would have prepared me. They could have killed me in an instant. But neither of them moved. The vampire I was aiming at was surprisingly calm looking down the barrel of a gun that could finish him, but that was because he knew as well as I that shooting him wasn’t going save Aspen. And if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t do it.

  “Finish the job, and we’ll leave you alone,” the second vampire said. “It’s not difficult. A life for a life. Take Connor’s, we’ll spare hers, or you can have it the other way around. You let us know which you prefer.”

  They both dematerialized with a whoosh that blew Ruben’s papers off his desk. The small office, filled with their presence until now, was suddenly cold and empty.

  Ruben’s eyes lost their glazed quality, and he looked up at me. “God, I hate it when they do that to me.”

  “I gather that wasn’t the first time,” I said.

  Ruben shook his head. “I told you they were dangerous. Just finish the job, Adele. Dammit.” He pushed himself upright in his chair and rubbed his eyes. Then he dragged his hands down over his cheeks, distorting his face for a second.

  I looked at Ruben, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. It was like I’d turned to lead. I doubled over, clamping my arms over my stomach, trying to stop the terrible pain that sliced through me. My head spun, and I felt like I was going to throw up.

  “They’re going to kill her,” I gasped, dry heaving. There were no tears, only the fear making my blood thick in my veins and forcing my body into the kind of submission I’d only felt once before, when my sister had nearly died the first time.

  “Come on, Adele,” Ruben said, tugging at my arm, trying to pull me back to reality. “Keep it together.” He sounded panicked. That made two of us. “Just kill him, and then it will all be over.”

  He was right. The panic left my body as quickly as it had come, and I unfolded myself, peeling myself off the floor. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, finding all my pieces and forcing them back together.

  “I need to go,” I said, sounding controlled again.

  “You know, this is the first time I’ve ever seen you lose it,” he said.

  “We all have our demons, Ruben. I’m sure you have things in your life that reduce you to a puddle of fear.”

  Ruben nodded. “After this, vampires,” he said.

  I walked out into the night, the air filling my lungs as if I had never breathed before. The open sky above me was freedom after the jail the little office had become. I looked at the time. It was one o’clock, but I took a chance and dialed anyway. Aspen’s sleepy voice answered just before the phone would have rolled over to voicemail.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I’m fine,” she said, and yawned.

  Relief flooded my body, and I felt like my knees would buckle under my weight.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Nothing, angel. Go back to bed.”

  “You’ve only ever called me that when something was really wrong.”

  “I’m taking care of it,” I said, and hung up.

  Because I was. I was going to save my sister. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind about whom I would choose when it came down to it. Aspen would win out every single time, no matter how much Connor amused me. No matter how human I felt around him. Because at the end of the day, if Aspen died, I would die. Life without her was no life at all. For Aspen to live, for me to live, Connor had to die. He was just a vampire, anyway.

  I found my bike and got on, then kicked the engine to life. I rolled out, determined to finish what I’d started.

  It wasn’t far to Mulberry Street, and when I reached the top of the street, most of the homes were filled with sleeping bodies. Their resting states reached out to me with long fingers that reminded me how tired I was. It wasn’t the kind of tired that I could fix with sleep. This was the kind of tired that had built up over a lifetime of doing things that never brought me peace.

  When I reached number 13, it was quiet and dark. The jasmine in the air pinched my nose and I was annoyed with it, wishing it would go away. I killed the motor and popped out the kickstand, then left the bike in the driveway.

  I made my way into the house. It was still empty; I’d felt that the moment I set foot in the yard. That had been a saving grace for me earlier tonight, but now the tables were turned and he was lucky – if he was here, he’d be dead in three seconds. But he’d come back eventually, and until he did I wasn’t leaving.

  Clyde was in the kitchen again when I walked in, and he mewed. I hopped up onto the counter and settled in the corner where a tall cabinet rose up. The cat rubbed up against my arm, purring.

  “Two-face,” I said softly, but I scratched the cat behind his ears. It was nice to have a living being close to me. The warmth was comforting, and I felt safer than I had all night.

  I leaned against the tall cabinet, my head resting against the wood. My head felt heavy, suddenly, and I closed my eyes.

  I was jolted awake by the grating sound of shutters rolling into place. The house was locking down in anticipation of dawn. I panicked. I’d fallen asleep, and I hadn’t heard a thing. Clyde was on my lap, head lolling off the side, fast asleep.

  I strained my ears, trying to hear past the grating sound whether someone was home, but I heard and felt nothing. The shutters were probably time-controlled. I looked at my phone. The battery was low. The time told me it would be dawn in about ten minutes.

  “Are you ready to tango?” I asked Clyde, and scratched his neck softly. The cat started purring softly again, and I wondered if he would still like me after I killed his master.

  The front door clicked, and I felt Connor come home before I saw him. His aura was like a sweet mist at dawn, before the sun drove it away. Fresh, unscathed, unpolluted. I wrapped my fingers around the stake at my side and crouched, ready to lunge for him when he walked through the door.

  He walked in without switching on the light, which made it easier for me to stay concealed until the last moment. He heard me before I moved, but I was quick enough, and I had the element of surprise on my side. I had him up against the wall, my arm against his throat again, just like before. The pointed end of my stake was pressed to his chest, dimpling into it. I should have stabbed him right away, but something had stopped me again.

  “You promised not to bring the stake,” he said softly.

  “You were supposed to meet me at sunset,” I countered.

  “I had to take care of something, and I didn’t know how to contact you.”

  “Well, that’s too bad.” I pressed my arm harder against his throat. He gasped for air, and his breathing was raspy. I could feel it against my arm.

  “Does it deserve you trying to kill me?” he asked. He still wasn’t scared.

  Tears suddenly sprang to my eyes, and I snarled at him through clenched teeth because he’d managed to make me cry. I never cried.

  “I can’t lose her, okay? If I let you live, she dies.”

  The tears were streaming down my cheeks now, and I felt ashamed. I pressed the stake harder against the soft flesh between his ribs.

  He looked me in the eye, and his dark ocean-colored eyes bored right into my soul. Why the hell wasn’t he afraid of me? Didn’t he believe I was going to kill him?

  Didn’t I?

  “I’ll do it!” I cried out, threatening, pushing against his chest hard enough to leave a bruise. My whole body was tense, muscles aching with the strain of keeping myself together.

  Connor didn’t say anything. He didn’t try to fight. His eyes were on me, and they were so soft I felt like I was going to break open and everything that was trapped inside was going to fall out. The atmosphere around us changed, became thick again. Thick and warm and… safe. I hadn’t felt like this since I was a little girl.

  “Don’t do this,” Connor said softly.

  The atmosphere wrapped us in a cocoon, a
nd I was suddenly aware how close our bodies were together, how gentle his eyes were.

  I opened my hand, and the stake clattered to the floor. Slowly I eased off with my arm, then buried my face in my hands. Connor didn’t move away from me; his warmth stayed exactly where it was. He lifted his hands and cupped my cheeks. He moved slowly, like I was a scared animal that he didn’t want to startle. His face inched closer to mine, and the next thing I knew, his lips were coming down on mine, and he kissed me.

  Electricity shot through my body. My skin tingled with the sensation. The tips of his fangs were on my bottom lip, his mouth had covered mine, and he had reduced me to a melting mess. I wasn’t a vampire hunter who wore leather and carried guns and killed for a living. I was a damsel in distress who had been running from my own personal hell all my life, and inwardly I was begging Connor to save me.

  His kissing became urgent, his arm wrapping around my body. The gun at my back bit into my flesh, and the one under my jacket pushed against my ribs. I stopped Connor and pulled them both out, then laid them on the counter.

  He raised his eyebrows. “I see you brought backup. In case the stake didn’t work?”

  “Standard issue vampire-hunter kit,” I said.

  He didn’t let me keep talking. He pulled me harshly against his body and kissed me hard. We tumbled through the house, knocking things off shelves and tabletops and banging doors until we finally made it to his bedroom. We collapsed onto the bed, his body on top of mine, and I could feel his muscles ripple underneath his skin. His body was hard and capable, even though he had never used it against me to save himself. He was only using it now to save me.

  He undressed me until I was naked. In the almost-black room I could feel his gaze on me, tracing every inch of my body. I knew he had night vision that was better than mine and that he could see me perfectly. I could smell his arousal, his lust for me, in the room around us. It wrapped around me like a cloak, and my body responded to him.

  He lowered himself onto me, and everything else was forgotten. He managed to clear my mind and work my body into a state of ecstasy, making me forget where my body ended and his began.

  And afterward, when everything was over and I lay in the crook of his arm, listening to the drumbeat of his heart, running my forefinger over the tips of his fangs, I fell asleep.

  For the first time in sixteen years, I didn’t have a gun under my pillow.