“You know why.”
“Why?”
I let out a frustrated groan. “You’re really annoying sometimes, even in my dreams. You know that?”
His lips quirked. “If I am, then you must cherish my annoying ways. I could be anything you want me to be here, but you choose to make me just as I am when you’re awake.”
He was right. My throat tightened. “I miss you.”
Dream-Thierry was about to kiss me, but before his lips touched mine, he faded away just like a ghost before my eyes.
My eyes popped open. I was awake. For real this time.
Same place, same darkness, but definitely awake and the wooziness was finally disappearing. I sucked in the stale air and craned my neck to look around, finding nothing helpful. “What is this place?”
“Tunnels,” a voice—unfamiliar and female this time—replied. “Storm drains, to be precise. It’s one of the City of Sin’s many secrets. There’s three hundred miles of these crisscrossing beneath the city. Fun, right?”
Every muscle in my body tensed at her conversational tone. “Who are you?”
“I’d say I’m a friend, but that would be a lie.”
I saw her outline but not much else as she swept past me. I cast another glance toward Victoria, but she was still out cold. Same garlic dart, but she was much smaller than me, so it would take that much longer for her to recover. Poor kid. She was going to have one hell of a headache when she woke up.
“Are you a hunter?” I demanded, forcing myself to sound strong and in control when, given my current tied-up position, I was anything but.
She snorted. “Hardly.”
“But the hunter who darted us—”
“Oh, yeah. He brought you down here and tied you up. Murmured something about getting his friend. Probably thinks this is an abandoned spot he magically discovered where he can torture his victims in peace and quiet. Wrong.”
Fear snaked through me at the thought that the hunter would be back with reinforcements, and I was at a distinct disadvantage at the moment thanks to these ropes. Victoria, even though she was old enough to be my great-grandmother, was still just a six-year-old kid I’d promised to look after. If something happened to her, it would be completely my fault.
Charles would kill me. And from what I’d been guessing, he’d been practicing.
Actually, he wouldn’t get the chance to kill me. I’m sure the hunter would check that off his to-do list right when he got back. And bringing me somewhere like this made me think he wanted to take a long time doing it.
I shuddered at the thought.
I needed to protect both myself and Victoria and get us out of here before those hunters returned.
“Okay,” I forced out. “So you’re not a hunter. But you’re not a friend, either. However, you have come across two people in major need of help. Are you going to do something about that?”
“Haven’t decided yet.”
I pushed back against my frustration and circling panic. “Again, I’m going to go ahead and ask: Who are you?”
“My name’s Charlotte. Nice to meet you.” Her form moved closer to me and she reached up toward a dangling bare lightbulb to switch it on. Light bled into the dark area, helping me to see much better than before.
I blinked a couple of times as my eyes got used to the new amount of light and then looked toward Charlotte.
Death itself looked back at me.
Chapter 11
Okay, maybe I was being overly dramatic. But not by much.
At first glance, she looked like a bone-thin Goth teenager. Maybe seventeen or eighteen at the most, dressed in black, her bare arms covered in tattoos. Apart from the ink, her skin was smooth and unblemished, but pale. Inhumanly pale. Her long, pin-straight hair was platinum blond with black and purple streaks. And her eyes were black. Those black eyes glittered at me in the semidarkness.
“You’re a vampire,” I said. One who, by the looks of it, didn’t do much work to fit in with regular human society.
“Yup.” She drew closer so I could see the look of contempt she was giving me.
“Are you hungry?” Her eyes were the same black as a vampire who’d pushed him- or herself past the point of normal hunger pains. “Your eyes…”
“I’m always hungry. But my eyes are like this since I live underground. Sustained darkness makes them go like this all the time.” She reached forward and pushed at my upper lip to show my fangs. “I thought so. You’re a vampire, too.”
I wrenched away from her curious touch. “You live down here? Are there more of you?”
“Sure. Some vampires. Some humans. Lots of rats. Home sweet home.”
She was a subterranean vampire street kid. With a bad attitude. And she was currently my only hope of getting me and Victoria out of here in one piece.
“You said your eyes are like that all the time. How long have you been down here?”
“Long enough.” Her lips stretched into an unpleasant smile. “You must be new if you don’t know this little fact. If a vamp stays out of the sun for a few months it’s nearly impossible to go back outside during the day. It’s killer on the eyeballs, and our skin gets really sensitive—burns with any exposure to sunlight…hurts like hell. Would take a long, painful time to get used to it again. It’s easier to stay hidden during the day and come out at night.”
I’d honestly never heard of this before. I loved sunlight, even if I found it draining. I couldn’t imagine staying away from it for months. Not voluntarily, anyway.
I inhaled some of that stale air. “Can I do anything to help you?”
She blinked those big black eyes with surprise and cocked her head to the side. “Help me?”
“I mean…yeah. If I can do anything, I will.” Even with the bad attitude, I felt the loneliness emanating off her in waves. There might be other vampires who chose to live under the city in the darkness, but I wondered how many she considered friends.
“You mean that, don’t you?”
“I don’t usually say things I don’t mean.”
“I don’t want your help. You’re obviously helpless, given your situation.” Her gaze moved over the ropes and flicked to Victoria. “Honestly, do you have absolutely no survival instincts at all?”
“I’ve been working on it.” But her words did make me flinch. Ever since my conversation with Laura I’d been worried that I was like her—helpless and vulnerable if I didn’t have someone around to protect me. My current situation hadn’t exactly set my mind at ease about that.
“I bet you don’t even know how lucky you are, do you?”
I snorted at that. Couldn’t help it. “Lucky? Trust me, Charlotte, I’m one of the least lucky people I know.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I mean, you obviously have had some hard knocks. You getting dragged down here and tied up proves that. But otherwise…” Another sweeping appraisal. “You’re well dressed, well groomed, and that rock on your finger means somebody up there cares about you.” Her black eyes snapped to mine and I saw endless depths of envy there. “Like I said, you’re lucky.”
She was right, I was lucky in so many ways. Sometimes I forgot to be grateful for what I had. This—well, this would work as a nice reminder. If I survived it.
“I need your help, Charlotte,” I said evenly, holding her gaze. “Help me get out of here and I will do whatever I can to help you in return. If you want me to.”
She eyed me. “I don’t know if I care one way or the other about what happens to you.”
My throat tightened. “If that was true, you’d already have walked away from me. But you haven’t. You’re a good person—I know you are. You won’t leave us here to die.”
“I won’t?”
“No, you won’t.”
She smiled and it looked really genuine this time. Then the pleasant expression on her pale face fell. “Wrong.”
She flicked off the light and walked away.
Damn.
I ne
ver said I was the best judge of character.
Silence and the bitter taste of disappointment reigned for what felt like an eternity, but was probably only twenty minutes or so. My thoughts raced and the darkness felt like a living thing pressing in on every side of me. Finally, I heard a rustle next to me as Victoria woke up.
“Urrum mphhh,” her little voice squeaked out.
I sighed. “You took the words right out of my mouth.”
“Wha—? What’s happening? Where are we? Ohhh, my head!”
Concern twisted inside me. It was bad enough for me to take that garlic dart, let alone this little girl. “It gets better. Just give it a minute.”
“I’m going to kill you,” she growled.
“I thought you might say something like that.”
“Where’s the hunter?”
“I don’t know.” I was trying really, really hard not to panic, but with every passing moment it grew more difficult to stay calm.
Charlotte was long gone. She’d stayed just long enough to make me believe she might help, and then disappeared into the darkness.
I bit back my fear and disappointment, and tried to figure out a plan B.
“These ropes are made with silver,” Victoria commented after a moment.
“Yup.”
“So what you’re basically saying is that we’re sitting ducks.”
“Quack.” I refused to let my voice tremble. I had to be strong.
“I’m going to miss my hair appointment.” She sounded mad, but I now heard an edge of panic there as well.
“I think you already did. I have a feeling we’ve been down here for a while.”
“Did I mention that I’m going to kill you?”
“Yes, you said that already.”
“Wonderful,” she said dryly. “And just for the record while we’re waiting to die, puppy, Charles is not a serial killer.”
I pressed my lips together. “If you say so.”
“Charles has looked after me for forty years—he’s like a real father to me after all this time. I trust him with my life. If I’d been with him today, this wouldn’t have happened.”
I tugged on my restraints, but the silver burned too much. How was I going to get us out of here before the hunters got back?
“Right. If he wasn’t off doing his mysterious errands around Las Vegas. I mean, seriously. What kind of errands does someone need to do in Vegas? Someone with a blood addiction and a penchant for violence?”
“It’s not him.” Even so, the tiniest edge of doubt had crept into her voice as if she’d been thinking over my admittedly shaky evidence.
“But you think it might be,” I pressed. “Just a little.”
“I don’t know. Do you think that sourpuss could have had Bernard killed?”
I hissed out a sigh. “No.”
“Just no? Not…maybe?”
“He didn’t. I know Thierry.” Not nearly as much as I wanted to, but enough. “It wasn’t him.”
“Then it’s too bad he’s going to die for it anyway, isn’t it?”
Before I could reply to that tactless statement, I heard the vampire hunters approaching and every muscle in my body tensed. Their telltale heavy boots gave them away. You’d think they’d walk quietly so they could sneak up on their prey, but since their prey were already trussed up like a couple of fanged turkeys, I guess they decided that stealth was not necessary.
Flashlights shone on my face and I winced at the sudden light, trying not to let any fear show in my eyes.
“Oh, man, you’re right. She’s a looker.” The flashlight then moved toward Victoria. “A kid? That’s going to be weird, man. I’ve never slayed a kid before.”
“It’s a vampire, not a kid,” the hunter who’d darted us replied.
“Still. It gives me the creeps.”
The flashlight returned to my face and I’d plastered a fake but confident smile on my lips, avoiding baring my fangs, small though they were. “So, let’s talk about this, boys.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
I commanded myself to be brave. “Oh, I don’t know. Stuff. Like how awesome you two are. You totally win.”
“Win what?”
“The prize,” I said as if it should be obvious. “You know how they have secret shoppers in department stores who report on how the salesclerks do with customers? Well, we’re a team of secret vampires who test the skills of fantastic hunters. All you need to do is let us go and we’ll report to your superiors about how amazing you are.”
“That sounds great,” the new hunter said.
“Don’t be an idiot,” the first hunter snapped. “She’s trying to fool you. There are no secret vampires.”
“How do you know, Shane? I mean, if everybody knew about them, they wouldn’t be secret, would they?”
I liked slow-witted hunters. Too bad I didn’t have two of them to work with today.
The flashlight shone on the sharp silver blade one of these guys held. I suddenly couldn’t look anywhere else.
“Her fiancé has money,” Victoria offered shakily. “He’ll pay big bucks if you let us go.”
“The kid speaks,” the dim hunter said with a smile. “She’s so adorable. She looks like that—what’s her name?—Shirley Temple. From the old movies. Hey, is that you, Shirley? You stayed the same age all these years?”
“Sure, that’s me,” Victoria chirped immediately, not missing a beat. “Adorable, right? I can sing a song for you if you’d like. ‘Good Ship Lollipop’? Remember that one?”
“That would be delightful!”
The flashlight shone on the stupid hunter’s face. “Seriously, Dan. Shut up.”
The second flashlight shone on the other’s face. “Why do you always have to ruin my fun?”
“Fun is what I brought you down here for, dumbass. Singing isn’t a part of it.” Shane moved toward me, shining his flashlight right on my face. “So here we are, pretty little vampire.”
“What do you want?” I asked without humor. My throat was tight. “Money?”
“Money’s never really held much appeal for me.”
“Spoken like someone who comes from it.”
“Good guess.” He stroked the hair off my forehead. His touch made me shudder with disgust. Quite honestly, he wasn’t a bad-looking guy. My guess was that this was a rich kid who’d picked up a hobby that filled his boring days—someone who liked to kill just for the sport of it. From my brief experience as one of the hunted, those were the absolute worst kind.
His friend I might be able to manipulate. Shane, the vampire hunter whose trust fund helped buy his wooden stakes, was another story.
This wasn’t going well at all. “I’ve never hurt anyone. I know you see the fangs and you think I’m a threat, but you’re wrong.”
“Sure. And what about the trail of dead bodies left around the city this week with fang marks in their necks? That’s the doing of just another nice, nonthreatening gal like you, right?”
So news of the serial killer’s victims had reached the hunters. I wasn’t too surprised by that. Hunters were hateful, but resourceful. And they loved to gossip as much as blue-haired grannies. “Are you looking for whoever did it?”
“As far as I’m concerned, the one who did it is tied up right here in front of me.” He cupped my cheek and dragged his thumb across my bottom lip. “Looking all cute and innocent.”
“You’re right,” Victoria growled, sounding as dangerous as a fierce kitten. “Sarah plays innocent, but she’s a beast. Better watch out. You’re close enough that she could tear off your hand with her teeth if she wanted to.”
Shane yanked his hand away from me a split second later. Victoria’s threat proved that this hunter could be intimidated by a vampire he’d tied up.
I couldn’t do anything about it since I couldn’t freaking move, but it was still interesting. Extra speed and strength, or even the ability to see in the dark, did me absolutely no good right now, not until these rop
es came off. My only weapon was my words. I had to choose them very wisely.
“There’s more like me,” I said evenly, channeling what little confidence I had left into my voice. If Shane was legitimately afraid of vampires, I might be able to work with that. “I’m in constant contact with them thanks to my…vampire telepathy. I’ve waited until you got back to call them in. They’re almost here and they’re going to hurt you very badly. And maybe, eventually, if you’re really lucky, we’ll let you die.”
Both hunters shuddered at the threat. Then they cast their flashlights off to the left and I followed the track of the beams to an opening that led to a set of stairs.
Exit stage left. Noted for future reference.
“Not long at all,” I said again, trying my hardest to keep my voice steady. “I think I can hear them coming through the darkness. You’ll never see them until it’s too late.”
“Shane…”
“Just relax. She’s bluffing.”
“I don’t want my throat torn out by a vampire.” There was genuine fear in Dan’s voice.
Even though I was absolutely, positively not any more evil than I was when I was human, there was something exciting about eliciting the fear of an enemy. I could taste it, smell it, feel it. And somehow, on some deep level, I liked it. Especially when it came to these two.
The bright flashlight shone on my face again and I winced. Shane didn’t look the least bit afraid anymore. He looked like a rich kid ready to unwrap his latest expensive toy. But now he’d just be extra careful not to get a paper cut while he did it.
“So, vampire,” he began, drawing closer. Confidence had filled his hateful expression again and a cold line of perspiration slid between my shoulder blades. “I think you’re all talk. You’re not telepathic. And I know that silver keeps you pinned like a butterfly on a board. You’re bluffing. And it’s not working.” He twisted a piece of my hair around his finger and tugged on it painfully. His flashlight shone down onto my hand. “Engaged, are you? Do you think he’ll miss you when you’re gone?”
“Any second now,” I said, struggling not give in to despair as my heart thundered in my chest. “Vampirepalooza. All over you.”