He quirked his brow. “Way I see it, the very fact that I missed him means that something is workin’ here, making me think I’ve made the right choice,” he observed. “Though I am sorry I wasn’t here when he was, so I could have given him the taste of copper for doing that.” He nodded to my chest, jaw taut.
I laughed. “And you’d do what? Protect my honor? Clue in, baby slayer. He’s centuries older than you, so I’d inevitably be the one protecting your honor.”
He narrowed his gaze. “Doesn’t look to me like you came out on top.”
I changed my gaze. “Honey, I always come out on top,” I purred.
His eyes flickered before they hardened. “You’re gonna tell me about vamps turnin’ people,” he commanded.
My mood changed and I soared forward, pressing one hand against his neck and another at his wrist, exerting enough pressure so his enchanted knife clattered uselessly to the floor. I squeezed just hard enough to obstruct his airway. “You don’t come into my home and command me,” I whispered. “Especially when you have some warped idea that you are any match for me.” I squeezed tighter. “Which you’re not. You’d do well to remember that.”
I let go and he went back on one foot, his breath frantic as his lungs sucked in the oxygen they’d been deprived of. He narrowed his eyes at the floor. I followed his gaze, picking up the knife before he could move. I gritted my teeth at the pain that radiated up my arm with the contact. I pressed my finger to the tip. “You got a witch with serious juice to enchant this,” I said, regarding the knife. The pain was getting close to uncomfortable, especially coupled with my recently healed injuries.
I glanced up to see his intent gaze on me and the knife. He obviously knew what it was meant to do and how it was designed to repel vampires from even touching it. Breaking the skin and drawing blood meant hellish amounts of pain. Puncturing the heart or brain meant death.
Limbs didn’t grow back when cut off with such blades, either.
“Nifty little weapon,” I observed. “I’m sure you can’t pick these up at Slayermart. I’m guessing it’s valuable. A family heirloom, perhaps?”
He didn’t say a word. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe I’d squeezed too hard and damaged his vocal cords.
My bad.
“Though it seems you’re parting with it a lot, considering you let a little human get her sticky hands on it.” I made a tutting noise with my tongue. “You really must keep better watch of your supernatural priceless weapons. I’d hate to see what you did with your keys.” I paused, my eyes turning hard. “I’m also sure it would most likely damage your pride to have to limp back to the clubhouse with your own knife embedded in your midsection, so you should tread carefully with the commands. Better yet, never command me again. You don’t have that right.”
“How the fuck are you still holding that?” he demanded, aghast.
I grinned, tossing it to my other hand so the pain evened out to the bones that had only just healed. “Oh, I’m much stronger than the baby vampires I’m sure you tangle with. You’re hunting big game now, and you’re well out of your depth. I’d advise you go back to the shallow end before you drown,” I warned.
He clenched his teeth. “I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
“Stubborn,” I observed.
“Determined,” he countered.
Commence stare off. It started all serious and death match-like, but somewhere in between it turned carnal. The air charged around us so much you couldn’t cut it, even with his fancy knife.
Then we weren’t staring. We were kissing.
Not romance or soft and sweet. It was a clash of our mouths and tongues. He tasted bitter enough that I yearned for more. He took control in the battle. I let him.
For a moment.
Until the boom echoed in my skull.
Heartbeat.
Human.
I detached immediately, scuttling to the corner of the room, my hand at my mouth.
He stood there, in the middle of the carnage of my living room, eyes wild and on me. I was afraid he might stalk to me once more, but he didn’t. He just stayed there, staring.
“I think it’s time you took that.” I nodded to the knife on the ground. “You know, the weapon your kind uses to fight their formal enemies, AKA me. And you leave.” My voice was strong, firm, detached.
He stayed there for a moment longer, frozen in place, the rapid rise and fall of his chest betraying his emotion.
Mine was locked down tight. That and I didn’t need to breathe.
Then he moved, picking up his knife and turning towards the door.
The thump of his boots did little to drown out his deafening heartbeat. He paused at my front door.
“This isn’t over,” he murmured, low enough that he knew a human couldn’t hear but that I could.
Then he was gone.
“YO, THE WITCH COUNCIL BURNED you at the stake yet, Marty?” I asked while I hustled down Fifth Avenue, my phone glued to my ear.
“Nope. And don’t call me that,” Sophie hissed.
I rolled my eyes underneath my glasses. Even though they covered half my face, the sun still smarted.
I really needed sleep.
It had taken my injuries like three hours to heal. And then another two to feel properly recharged. It felt like human speed.
I’d spent most of my time at the office, working. I didn’t trust myself to even try to catch a nap. I had this weird itch at the back of my neck like someone was watching me. Like I was well overdue for another assassination attempt.
I scratched my neck absently. “Whatever. Look, I need some intel. You are not allowed to laugh at this question,” I ordered.
“I make no such promises.”
Sometimes it was irritating how alike we were. I sighed. “How impossible is it to turn a human?”
There was a pause and no laugh. Which wasn’t good. Laughter meant the whole idea was ludicrous. I’d take the hit to my pride for long-term reassurance.
“Into a vampire?” she clarified.
I nodded.
She seemed to have sensed my nod; maybe that was part of her new witchy powers. I so needed a list of those so I could see which ones suited me to manipulate.
“Who told you?”
I bristled. “How do you know someone told me?”
“Because I know that, had you stumbled on some hybrid or vampire trying to turn someone, you wouldn’t be speaking so calmly nor expecting me to laugh. I’m deducing it was a tip-off that had you calling me.”
I whistled. “You’re not just a pretty face and a handy ball of magic.”
I felt her scowl through the phone.
“So it’s possible? How can that be? I feel like, as a vampire, I should have known about this.” It was long understood that ‘turning’ humans was in the realm of the fantastical. Some love-crazed vampires attempted it in desperation after they’d fallen for a human and wanted to share immortality, but you couldn’t make someone immortal. You could kill them by trying, though. It was so bad that, at one point, the Sector had to outlaw it altogether.
Obviously someone was out there breaking the rules.
Normally I’d be the first to congratulate them on it, but this was leaving a bad taste in my mouth. And it wasn’t to do with the wife beater I’d had for breakfast either.
“No. At least it wasn’t until recently,” Sophie answered. “I’ve heard murmurings about it, but passed it off as junk.”
“Until?” I probed, hearing something in her voice.
She sighed. “Until a client, a human client, had me looking for their son. I found him this morning.”
I heard a rattling of what sounded like a cage in the background and a string of curses.
“You have a human locked up?” I deduced.
“No. I have a vampire locked up.”
“Please tell me it’s a member of my family.”
“Isla, follow the conversation. I know you’re getting old and senile, but even you can pu
t two and two together.”
I scowled. “Watch your mouth, young one. Didn’t anyone ever teach you to respect your elders?”
“Only everyone. And then this smartass, crazy vamp came into my life and told me to ‘fuck ’em all.’”
“Shit,” I muttered. “I did say that.”
There was a pause as I got my thoughts together.
“The vampire I have locked up was, until three days ago, a human,” Sophie said.
I stopped so abruptly a man in a suit with a toupee walked into me.
He scowled up from his phone. “Watch it, lady,” he snarled.
“You watch it before I decide that toupee is crime enough for me to drain you dry,” I returned, smiling with fang.
He blanched and scuttled away.
I turned my attention back to Sophie. “Now, you’re saying you have a fucking turned vampire chained up in your office?” I didn’t wait for her reply. “I’ll be there in ten.”
The clang from the rattling of the bars and the hiss from the human/vampire’s mouth mingled together to create some sort of disturbing melody.
I started at the wild thing, which was bashing its head against the bars, red eyes on Sophie. More accurately, Sophie’s neck.
She was standing beside me, eyes on the same thing as me. It wasn’t human; the elongated fangs and blood-red corneas communicated that. It wasn’t vampire, either, despite the fangs and obvious bloodlust. In all my years I hadn’t seen a vampire like this, even the crazy ones. This was an abomination. I was tempted to call it an animal for the lack of any form of humanity in its eyes, but animals were natural. This was something entirely different. My body revolted from its presence, my blood curling in my veins.
“Is there any specific reason you have a solid steel, reinforced cage in the middle of your office?” I inquired casually, watching as the thing decided to stop smashing its head, trying to yank the bars instead.
Sophie turned her head. “You would not like to know how many times this has come in handy. Paid for itself within a week.”
Her office was in an industrial area of Brooklyn, nestled between warehouses and most likely places where mafia hits took place.
It was cozy.
The room in which her cage resided was decorated in pure Sophie. In other words, rock ’n’ roll.
The cavernous warehouse space was industrial, with exposed beams and brick walls. The glass-walled office in the corner juxtaposed the entire theme, but it worked. A treadmill and flat-screen were in one corner of the room, a huge bookshelf and Union Jack-embroidered chair in the other. Abstract prints littered the walls, my favorite being a sketch of a jewelry-clad wrist holding up a middle finger.
Weirdly, the cage actually suited the whole theme.
“It’s spelled?” I guessed.
She nodded.
“How did you get him in here?” I asked, tilting my head. It was like every ounce of humanity or conscious thought had left him, his red eyes vacant and frantic.
“With love, good thoughts, and fairy dust.”
I turned my head to her.
She grinned. “Okay, with a Taser and maybe a weensy bit of magic,” she admitted.
I gave the cage one more glance. “Can we talk somewhere else?” I requested. “It’s freaking me out.”
Sophie nodded and we headed to her office. I sank down into her matte black sofa, loaded with pillows of contrasting prints. I gratefully took the scotch she offered me.
“Where’d you find him?”
She sat across from me. “Fricking sewers. Draining rats.” She screwed up her nose. “I ruined my favorite combat boots.”
I leaned over and squeezed her hand. “We’ll just take a moment for all of the lost accessories lost in the line of duty,” I whispered, thinking of my bloodstained Jimmy Choos.
After a beat, I thought on it. “It was lucky he was in the sewers. I’m surprised. He’s almost crazy with bloodlust, and letting him loose on the populace would blow the supernatural cat out of the bag. No council, vampire or otherwise could hide that and the multitude of bodies it would create. Not in the age of camera phones.”
This very fact had me suspicious. After five hundred years on Earth I’d learned there was no such thing as luck.
“Yeah, that’s where this gets weird.”
I rose my brow at her. “That’s where this gets weird? The turned vampire with the scary eyes and the fact that it’s the first of its kind is just another day at the office for Sophie Walker?”
I was only half sarcastic; this witch got up to some crazy shit.
Hence why we were friends.
She grinned. “Hear me out. He was contained, like someone had set him up in there, made sure he had just enough rats to keep him fed, though not enough to actually sustain him. But they did, even though all other vamps can’t survive on animal blood. I don’t know how long he’d been in there, or if that”—she nodded through the glass in the direction of the cage—“is a result of being locked in a sewer and starved, but I’m thinking not since he hasn’t been missing long enough to go nutty. I’m guessing insanity is a lovely side effect of turning a human into a vampire.”
I sucked in a breath. “Yeah, though it’s been done now.”
She nodded gravely, knowing this was something pivotal to our race, and the human race by proxy. If it got out that humans could be turned, it would not only screw with millennia of belief, but I’d wager it would result in a lot more of the red-eyed freaks running about.
Which was why it couldn’t get out.
I already had a theory of why they had been created and by whom.
“You find them? Whoever was holding him?”
It was too much to ask, really, to grab not only the first human turned vampire before he could become infamous and the one who created him.
Sophie shook her head. “No. But I’m thinking they might find us since their pet is missing.”
I stood, draining my glass. “Well that’s a good thing, since we can kill them both and pretend this day never happened.” I could only wish, but there was a little more than a one percent chance that this wasn’t connected to the current assignment I was on. I really didn’t need it to be. This was turning out to be complicated enough.
Sophie stood too, looking surprised. “You want to kill them both and bury this?”
“Well duh. Is that not how you want to play it? You want to try and spell him and turn him human again? Can you do that, even with your new juice?” I wandered over to her office bar, contemplating another drink.
“I’ve already tried,” Sophie admitted. “Nada. Only thing I did was seriously wipe myself out. I just figured you’d want to… I don’t know, tell someone. Then we’d have to fight about it.”
“Tell who?” I asked. “All my friends in the vampire community who I’m oh-so-loyal to?” I paused, thinking of the sexy-as-sin king vampire I technically should tell about this. Then I focused on the sexier-than-holier slayer who’d turned up at my apartment, talked about this very situation, and then kissed me. My lips flamed at the memory and I shook them away. Not the time.
The time was never.
Neither the king nor the slayer was getting anywhere near this.
I turned. “You were testing out your funky new magic without me?” I pouted. “Please at least tell me you blew something, or someone, up.”
She laughed. “No such luxury. Need to keep this on the down low, remember.”
“Oh yes. How dull.”
She quirked her brow. “We sure dull is the word we’re going to use right now?”
I shrugged. “It’s all relative. And this could be a touch more exciting. He’s already in a cage. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.”
A crash of metal and gunfire sounded below as shouts echoed up the stairwell.
Sophie rolled her eyes. “You just had to say it, didn’t you?”
I grinned and placed my glass down. Sophie leisurely drained hers and pushed off the sofa
at a lazy pace.
“How many?” she asked conversationally.
I focused on the voices getting closer and the thump of boots on the stairs. “I’d say four,” I replied.
“Supernatural?”
I shook my head. “Human.” The heartbeats were soft flutters against the grating sounds below, but they were unmistakable.
Sophie sighed. “It is like shooting fish in a barrel.” She stepped forward slowly. “I’ve just refurbished my office. Can we try not to break anything?”
I nodded vaguely as I focused on the itch of my spine, freezing as an echoed thump drowned out the sound of them crashing through the last door.
“Slayers,” I said to Sophie’s back.
She turned, her mouth quirking. “Your slayer?”
“He is not my slayer,” I snapped.
“Sure,” she teased. “If he was going to pick you up for a date, he could have just buzzed up, or does he have a flare for the dramatic?”
I scowled and pushed past her. “Shut up and let’s go mince slayer meat.”
Her retort was lost as the men waltzed into the room. Their gait was easy, measured, though the four of them held their bodies and their weapons taut. My gaze traced over them in a millisecond. All stocky and muscled, of varying heights and races. Humans were much of a muchness, cookie cutter versions of each other. Apart from him.
Thorne was heading the little crew. His ice-blue gaze settled on me and his body jerked before he schooled his expression, tightening the grip on the gun hanging at his side.
Though he may have blanked his face, his eyes were locked on me. Electricity seemed to saturate the air as the memory of his lips on mine surfaced.
“Are you guys looking for the S&M club?” Sophie’s voice sounded from beside me. “You got it wrong. That’s next door.” She grinned.
I wrenched myself away from Thorne’s magnetic and stoic gaze to regard the slayer squad. They were all attractive, in the conventional, no-neck, ‘I eat steroids for breakfast’ kind of way. Most were wearing tight tees and fatigues. Apart from Thorne, who was wearing those faded jeans that did wonderful things for his ass.