Finally I was able to stand up unsteadily. But I felt frozen in place as I watched the straight-out-of-a-horror-movie scene before me. I’d changed my mind. Didn’t want their help anymore. Nope. And what had he said before? They’d deal with me in a moment?
Gordon was no longer screaming or begging for his life. He’d stopped moaning. Stopped moving. In fact, he appeared to be disintegrating. The more they stabbed at his prone body, the less there seemed to be of him, until finally there was nothing but his empty clothes lying in the middle of a nasty dark stain on the road.
Then White-teeth turned to me. I shuffled backward a painful step at a time. My brain was screaming for me to run, and I finally decided that was the best idea I’d had all night. I turned around, but Stringy-hair had quietly moved to stand behind me. He grinned as he put his now-bloody wooden spike back in his belt, then grabbed my wrists to pull me closer to him. I tried to twist away.
“Where do you think you’re going, vampire?” His breath smelled like rotten eggs.
I wanted to argue, to tell him I wasn’t a vampire because vampires didn’t exist. I also wanted to tell him to invest in a good mouthwash. But I still couldn’t find my voice. A hot tear slipped down my cheek as I looked at the other two men and took in a shuddery gulp of air. I had a funny feeling these guys wanted to add more stains to my ruined dress than the grass and the dirt that were already on it.
I wished I had another shoe to throw.
“Look at her; she’s petrified,” White-teeth said with amusement.
“She’s new,” Burly answered. “It’s almost cruel to exterminate her so soon. She looks like she might be fun. Check out those legs. Can’t it wait till the morning?”
White-teeth’s smile widened. “Yeah. Maybe we can wait a bit. What do you say, darlin‘? Want to buy yourself a little time?”
“In your dreams,” I managed to hiss at him.
He laughed. “There is only one answer, darlin‘, and that is whatever I say it is. Now come here, or else.”
I decided I’d rather have the “or else.” The man who’d seemed so attractive when I’d first bumped into him, my potential hero, now was grotesquely ugly to me. His face was splattered with Gordon’s blood.
I tried to pull away from Stringy-hair, but he held tight to my wrists, leering at me.
“Nice try,” he said, grinning.
I shrugged at him, then kneed him hard in the groin. He let go of my wrists immediately. I glanced over my shoulder at White-teeth, then, ignoring the searing pain in my ankle, darted away from them.
While Stringy-hair moaned in agony, Burly made an annoyed noise and said, “It’s never easy, is it?” Then boots slapped against the pavement as they started to chase after me.
Everything looked different late at night, and there was barely any light to help me figure out where the hell I was. I knew the Bloor Viaduct, a tall bridge that went over the Don River, wasn’t too far away. If I could get to the other side of the bridge, I could find a phone, find somebody who could help me.
How much longer I could keep running was the question. My lungs burned, and with my twisted ankle I was doing more of a fast limp than an all-out run. Also, my feet, without the protection of any shoes, were screaming for me to stop. But I knew if I stopped, that would be it. They’d kill me like they’d killed Gordon. Or worse. I shuddered when I thought of how that stringy-haired freak had leered at me. I had to keep running. There was no other choice.
I was actually surprised the men hadn’t caught up to me. In fact, I didn’t even hear them behind me anymore. My pace slowed, but only for a moment. I braved a quick glance over my shoulder.
I was now in the middle of a park. I could hear traffic, so that meant I wasn’t far from Bloor Street
, but I couldn’t see anything but trees surrounding me. I was all alone.
I skidded to a halt and was breathing so fast and shallow I was certain that I’d begin to hyperventilate.
They must have given up. Maybe I’d been too fast for them. I had been going to the gym a little more than normal lately, to get into bikini shape for my big, expensive trip to Puerto Vallarta. Amy and I had been planning it for nearly a year, and now it was just a month away. That had to be it. I was in amazing shape. Just as fit and dangerous as that chick from the Terminator movies.
Then I heard the rev of an engine and the squealing of tires. A Jeep lurched onto the road in the distance, spraying gravel under its wheels.
Outrun that, Terminator, I thought as the panic rose again in my chest.
Dammit.
I could hear them, the men I’d stupidly thought I’d escaped. They were hooting and hollering as they bore down on me. This must have been their idea of a good time.
I finally made it to the bridge. In the distance I could see the Toronto skyline.
I kept running, ignoring the pain. The concrete sidewalk that ran along one side of the bridge felt cool through my torn nylons and cut-up feet. I looked around, hoping that somebody might stop to help me, but car after car whizzed by without even slowing down for a second glance. When I stepped out into the bridge’s traffic to try to flag someone down, a driver blasted his horn and swerved, narrowly missing me. I scrambled back onto the sidewalk.
It looked like it was just going to be me, White-teeth, and the boys.
And the dark shadow of a figure balanced on one of the bridge’s metal suspension beams. He stood on the other side of what was called the “veil”—thin, evenly spaced metal rods put up to prevent anyone from climbing over the barrier and leaping to their death. But I saw that a section of the veil was now warped, stretched wide enough to allow someone to get through. This was where I quickly scrambled up and squeezed through so I stood near the stranger, my back against the barrier. Behind me, I heard the Jeep skid to a halt and the doors slam as the men got out to chase after me on foot.
“Hey!” I called out to the figure. He wore a long coat that whipped about in the cold wind. He looked like an ornament on the front of a pirate ship. Or maybe even Kate Winslet flying at the front of the Titanic—only not as perky. And certainly not as female.
“Go away.” His deep voice was sullen.
“Holy crap, this is high up, isn’t it?” I inched closer to where he stood on the beam. “Help me!”
“Help yourself. Can you not see I’m planning to kill myself here?” the man said, looking down at the dark water far below us.
“Help me first and then kill yourself,” I reasoned.
I was close enough to glimpse his face. He looked to be in his mid-thirties and was dressed from head to toe in black. If I actually had a moment to consider his looks in my current life-or-death situation, I’d say he was really hot. But he looked completely miserable. Whether he looked miserable because he wanted to kill himself or because he’d been interrupted, I wasn’t sure.
“A friend of yours?” White-teeth’s voice came from behind me, just on the other side of the veil of bars.
I braced myself and turned my head to look at him. “A good friend. And he’s going to kick your ass if you don’t leave me the hell alone.”
He gave me a very unfriendly smile. “That I’d like to see.”
From his perch, the stranger glanced at us without much interest. He seemed oblivious to the fact that we were hundreds of feet in the air. I saw his gaze move to my neck, and I touched it gingerly.
“Vampire hunters,” he said.
“Who wants to know?” White-teeth took a cigar from his leather jacket pocket and lit it. He must have felt he had all the time in the world.
I carefully inched even closer to the stranger. Even though he was suicidal and therefore probably just as crazy as anyone else I’d had the misfortune of meeting that evening, he was currently my best bet to get out of this in one piece.
“It doesn’t matter who I am,” the stranger replied to White-teeth. “You are invading my personal space. Kindly take your business elsewhere.”
White-teeth glowere
d at him. “We’ve just come to claim this little piece of vampire ass and we’ll be on our way, so you can get back to”—he looked around— “whatever it was you were doing.”
I grabbed the hem of the stranger’s coat and held on for dear life. “Don’t let them hurt me. Please.”
He yanked his coat away from me. “I don’t want anything to do with this.”
“Too late.”
White-teeth had started to squeeze through a section in the cement at knee level that wasn’t protected by the veil, his cigar clenched between his teeth. “Here I was going to be a gentleman and kill you quick. Well, sort of quick. Now I’m going to take all the time in the world to tear you apart. You’re going to feel every second of it.”
White-teeth was halfway through and reached out for me. I yanked away from him, spun around, and kicked him with my bare foot. There was a sickeningly wet squish as my big toe met his left eye. It was the most disgusting thing I’d ever felt.
He screamed in pain and clutched at his face. The cigar fell out of his mouth and down to the river below. I lost my footing, but before I could fall, the stranger reached out and grabbed me around my waist, pulling me safely against him.
“Thank you.” I barely got the words out, my teeth were chattering so hard. “I thought you weren’t going to help me.”
“Reflex,” he said.
The two vampire hunters who weren’t currently howling in pain—although Stringy-hair looked a little tender from the groin incident—pulled their injured friend away from the opening and started to climb through themselves.
The stranger looked down at the black water. “I suppose we’ll have to jump.”
I raised my eyebrows and clung to him as the hunters grabbed at my legs. “Wasn’t that your original plan? And wasn’t your original plan to kill yourself?”
“With my luck tonight, the fall won’t kill me,” he replied, bringing an arm around my waist. “But you just might.”
He pushed off from the bridge and we fell for what felt like a very long time before disappearing into the cold black water.
Chapter 2
I struggled to keep up with the stranger after we scrambled like drowned rats out of the freezing-cold Don River and up a steep grassy hill. He walked so fast it was as if he didn’t want me to follow him. But what else was I supposed to do? He’d just saved my life. The least he could do was make sure I was still in one piece. One scared, shaking, drippy piece.
So far there hadn’t been any sign of the creeps who’d tried to kill me. Maybe we’d lost them. I guess they didn’t want to jump into the water after us. Can’t say I blamed them for that.
That was one hell of a fall. How we’d survived was another story, but it didn’t really matter. I was okay. Now I was in need of a phone, a taxi, a police report, and a long, hot shower. Not necessarily in that order.
“Hey, wait up!” I called after “Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Dripping-Wet.”
All I’d seen of him after our impromptu swim was the back of his head moving swiftly away from me, so I was surprised when he actually stopped in his tracks. His broad shoulders went up and down as if he’d just let out a long sigh.
He turned to face me. “What now?”
“Where are you going?”
“Home. I suggest you do the same. Go find your sire and be on your way.”
“My what?”
“Your sire.”
“What’s that?”
He nodded toward my neck. “Whoever gave you that hickey there. You’ll need your sire to show you the ropes.”
I touched my neck and winced. “Those bastards killed the guy who did this.” I got a lump in my throat as I said it. What they’d done to Gordon played like an instant replay over and over in my mind. A few tears made a reappearance and I wiped them away with my wet sleeve. “He was a jerk, a total nutcase, but he didn’t deserve… that. They killed him and they were going to do the same to me. It was horrible.”
“They killed your sire,” the stranger repeated. He didn’t say anything else. He just stared at me.
I began to feel uncomfortable. Well, more than I already was, that is. I decided that going home was an excellent idea. I could call the cops from there.
“Did you drink from him?” he finally asked.
“What?”
He sighed. “Did you drink from your sire before he was slain?”
“I had a few margaritas with dinner.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
I blinked. “Then no. No drinking was done after dinner. Look, thanks for…” I didn’t know exactly what to call our plunge to safety. I glanced back in the direction of the bridge. “For the thing back there.”
He didn’t answer.
I shoved my hands into the soggy pockets of my leather jacket. Dirt was one thing, but water was another. It was probably ruined now, too. Just my damn luck. I forced a feeble grin before I started walking away from the stranger.
“Wait,” he called after I’d gone half a block. “Are you certain that your sire is dead?”
“Positive,” I said grimly. I pictured the empty clothes in my mind. What had happened to the body? Probably just my eyes playing tricks on me. It was a dark night, and the margaritas with dinner had been doubles.
“What’s your name?” He walked toward me.
I hesitated before answering. I’d had enough. I just wanted to go home now. “Sarah,” I said. “Sarah Dearly.”
His expression was tense, as if he was fighting an inner battle of some kind. I shouldn’t be hanging out with this guy, I thought to myself. I didn’t care if he did save my life. He was trying to kill himself, or at least that’s what he had said. Not normal, sane behavior, in any case.
“Did your sire explain anything to you before he was murdered?”
“I don’t know why you keep calling him my sire. He was my date. A blind date, if you want to know the truth.”
“Fine. Did your… date… explain anything to you?”
“About what?”
“About your neck and what it means.”
I absently reached up to touch my wound and flinched.
“He said that he was a vampire and now I was one, too.”
The stranger nodded. “Well, that’s a start. And then?”
“Then I sprayed him with pepper spray and ran away. He was out of his mind.”
He frowned at me. “He wasn’t lying.”
“No, I’m sure he believed what he was saying. That’s one of the signs of being crazy, isn’t it?”
The stranger came nearer to me, and I studied him up close for the first time. His handsome face was very pale in the moonlight and his eyes appeared to be silver, able to reflect what little light there was the way a cat’s might.
When he spoke, I noticed the fangs.
“You are a vampire, Sarah. He wasn’t crazy.”
I had the can of pepper spray from my wet purse back in my hand in a flash. I held it up to his face. “Get away from me right now.”
“Your only link to your new world has been killed. You need to listen to me if you want to survive.”
“Vampires don’t exist.” My voice was firm, but my insides felt like jelly.
“Yes, we do.”
I pressed down on the spray’s trigger button, but it flew out of my hand as the stranger effortlessly knocked it away. He grabbed my shoulders and I started fighting for my life, scratching and clawing at him like a wild animal.
“Stop it,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
It was impossible to fight him. He was so strong that I could barely move. Hot tears coursed down my cheeks and I was exhausted from fighting, from running, from denying what I was hearing.
My neck throbbed. I let my arms drop loosely to my sides. My head began to swim and I saw colors exploding as they had when Gordon hit me. I tried to focus on the stranger, his arms now the only thing keeping me from falling backward onto the cold, hard pavement.
“It’s okay
.” His voice suddenly sounded miles away. Distant and fading. “I’ll take care of you.”
The world went black.
I opened my eyes. I was sprawled on a leather sofa in a dark, unfamiliar room. I sat up slowly. My head ached as if I had the worst hangover of my life.
That sure was one crazy dream.
I looked around. Where the hell am I?
There was a rustle to my left and a door opened. The stranger emerged from what looked like a kitchen area. He held a glass of water in his hand and he didn’t smile when he saw I was awake.
Ah. Must still be dreaming. Sure felt real, though.
“Who are you?” I moved as far away from him as the sofa would allow. My voice croaked as if I’d been asleep for a while. Which was strange, since I’d never dreamed that I was sleeping before.
“My name is Thierry de Bennicoeur,” he said.
“French.”
“Originally.”
“You don’t have an accent.”
“Not anymore.”
“And you’re a vampire.”
“Yes.”
“Where are we?”
“My house.”
He was a man of few words. I searched my mind for something else to say. If I stayed silent too long, I might start panicking again. I didn’t care if this was a dream; it was a weird one.
“Why were you trying to kill yourself?” I asked absently.
He stared at me for a moment but ignored the question. “How do you feel right now?”
“Like I went out drinking and a bus hit me. I want to go home.” I made a move to stand up, but the flashing pain in my head stopped me cold. Were you supposed to feel pain in a dream? Didn’t seem right.
“We need to take care of something first,” Thierry said.
“What?” I glanced at him and my eyes widened when I saw a sharp knife in his hand. “What the hell are you planning on doing with that?”
He raised an eyebrow at my panicked tone. My eyes widened even more when I saw him drag the blade across his wrist.
Holy shit! He was going to finish killing himself right in front of me. That was so sick.