I bit my lip to hide my smile at the open insult. Selene didn’t react to it, too well bred for that. I should know, as she was the daughter my mother wished she had—in other words, a murderous shrew with a borderline personality disorder who made it her life’s work to claw her way to the top.
We went to Mortimeus together, the vampire version of college. Only with more blood and less keggers.
We weren’t friends.
“Well, I pride myself on being unique,” I replied evenly.
His brows rose slightly, but other than that his handsome face remained impassive. “That you are,” he agreed.
I frowned slightly at the interest in his gaze and at my reaction to it. As in, I didn’t want to stab myself in the eye to escape this conversation, even with Selene’s glare in the mix. I was enjoying his presence.
Luckily I didn’t have to continue the small talk with the disconcerting monarch, since a barrage of gunfire and bloodcurdling screams interrupted it. Someone was obviously looking out for me.
Out of nowhere, four vampires in black suits surrounded the king, fangs out, clutching copper blades.
The king’s eyes turned to stone and his gaze darted to the open bar area, the smell of fresh blood filtering from it. His stare was calculating and calm, much like a soldier would assess the situation.
“What do we have?” he asked amongst the spattering of gunfire and continued screams of the previously serene and composed patrons. Most aristocratic vampires were cowards, only preying on those who couldn’t fight back.
Me? The only fun was fighting creatures who could fight back.
“Attack from all entrances and exits, unknown amount of hostiles,” the one closest to him replied, pausing as he listened to the device in his ear. “Assailants are of an unknown species. We have a report of a werewolf in the lobby while others describe vampires.”
The king’s gaze hardened with a glazed film that I recognized. He was preparing for a fight.
I was impressed at not only this look but at the impression that this wasn’t the first time the king had fought. Though monarchs were of a different class than the softer ‘great’ families that served them, they needed to be strong enough to kill their previous rulers.
Selene whimpered, but everyone ignored her.
This wasn’t good. The Majestic had stood for as long as Manhattan had, a pillar of vampire society and a justifiable Switzerland throughout any civil wars or infighting between families. Only human blood was to be spilled there.
Until now.
And reports of vampires and werewolves working together? Not good at all.
The uncertain times that we had been living in for the past decade seemed to be defining themselves more concretely, with the smell of war filtering through the perfumed air of the Majestic.
I yanked two matching copper blades from the inside of my boots and braced myself for the battle.
The king glanced at my blades and where they came from with a slightly raised brow.
I shrugged. “Necessary when meeting my parents for drinks.”
He shook his head. “Unique,” he muttered to himself.
Selene tugged at his sleeve. “Why aren’t we running?” she whined. Her eyes darted to the king’s guards, who were surveying the room. We were slightly removed from the general populace, so we could only hear the attack happening in the main room, smell the blood and death. We had yet to embrace it.
“Shouldn’t you be ushering your king to safety?” she snapped.
I rolled my eyes.
The king regarded her evenly, then backhanded her with enough force to send her crumpling to the ground unconscious.
Right on.
I didn’t have much time to bathe in that moment because a werewolf chose to come barreling into me, slamming into my midsection and sending me flying into the booth I’d just vacated. Even the wet dog smell and the snapping of teeth at my jugular were preferable to the company I had just enjoyed in the same booth minutes before.
I slammed my first blade into the shoulder section of the giant creature and reveled in the yelp of pain. When it was distracted, it gave me enough wiggle room to move to snap its neck. It fell limp against me instantly, the dead weight pressing my back painfully into the shattered glass on the table. I pushed it off me, jumping back to the Persian carpet that had become a bloodstained battlefield. The king’s guards were fighting off attacks from every side. And instead of hiding behind them, the king was front and center. His body jerked as a barrage of gunfire scattered the area, a bullet finding purchase in his flesh. I darted forward to yank the gun out of the shooter’s hands.
“Bringing a gun to a fang fight?” I hissed at the masked vampire as I crushed the weapon in my grip. “That’s just bad form.” Then I snapped his neck. It would take him out of action for a good ten minutes, hopefully half the length of the battle.
Battles between immortals rarely lasted for an extended amount of time. To human eyes, it would have been little more than a blur and a cacophony of noise and blood.
More gunfire roared through the thumps and tearing of flesh. Fire erupted in my shoulder, the realization that they were using copper rounds pissing me right off.
Ambushing a sacred and historical landmark and bringing weapons? The youth were really cheapening a good fight. After dispatching another two vampires and plugging them with their own weapons, I glanced back to who I guessed the reason for the attack was. The king was holding his own with not a hair out of place, apart from the blood staining his neck where the bullet had hit him.
Close. If that had gone through his skull it might have been bye-bye monarch.
A flash of movement behind him caught my eye. Selene had woken up, and obviously didn’t take kindly to be ignored, if the gun directed at the king’s temple was anything to go by. He was still distracted and didn’t count the pale socialite as a threat, the vampires with guns and pet werewolves more pressing in his mind. She grinned wickedly at that realization. Though she wasn’t grinning when I snapped the bones in her wrist, causing the gun to tumble to the floor and her to cry out in pain.
“Assassinating the king, Selene?” I asked conversationally. “What would your mother say?” I didn’t wait for a response, just slammed my fist into her chest, satisfied as her rib cage shattered with the force of my blow. She tumbled to the ground, immobile.
I grinned at her prone form as the battle quieted around me.
Then, as if someone flicked a switch, silence reigned. It was how it usually ended; nothing like the movies, with dramatic openings and closings and cries of victory. Death was rarely triumphant, even for the victorious. There was only one true victor in a fight—the shadow that lurked at the corners, taking the fallen into its embrace.
The king’s icy presence tickled the side of my arm. I continued to consider Selene, frowning. “You really need to pick better dates, Your Highness,” I said, breaking the silence.
His emerald gaze was no longer empty with his practiced coldness. Instead it glowed, full of the blood that had been spilled. As it settled over me, it danced with the own sparkling in my veins. A fight did that to you. As did the gaze of a hot vampire king, if I were being honest.
He searched my face, ignoring the chaos that had settled in around as his guards snatched up groaning bodies and such. “I had you pegged as a lover, not a fighter,” he rasped.
I grinned, letting my fangs brush my top lip in a brutal caress. “Oh baby, I’m both.”
Before I could get in any more trouble and ruin my boots, I darted out of the room, dodging fallen bodies as I did. I was only successful because it was likely the last thing the king expected me to do. He’d probably assumed I’d erupt in feminine hysterics or use me saving his life as currency to further my position in society.
But what could I say? I’m unique.
One week later
“Hey, Lewis, what have you got for me today?” I strutted through the door the detective held open for me, w
andering around his office as he closed it.
I picked up a document at random from his stacks, frowning at the coroner’s report. I was just getting to the part about unusual toxins in the blood when the paper was snatched from my hand.
“That’s confidential,” Lewis snapped, frowning at me and rounding his desk.
“Touchy.” I rolled my eyes and sat across from him, crossing my legs.
His eyes flickered to my bare pins before moving his gaze up my body. It wasn’t appreciative like the rest of the men, and some women, in the station had been. He didn’t think of me that way. He knew what I was. What I really was, apart from a knockout redhead with decent tits, an immaculate fashion sense and a great ass.
And fangs.
He focused on the fangs.
Let’s just say the great detective was not exactly turned on by the fact that I drank blood to keep that ass fed.
“Must you dress like that when you come here?” he growled, stacking the papers scattered across his messy desk in an attempt to get them out of my reach.
I glanced down to my white pencil skirt, strappy Manolos and sleeveless gray silk blouse. “Like what? A model? Fashionista? Sex symbol?”
He shook his head. “You’re drawing attention.”
I grinned. “Well, of course I am. I exist.”
“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath, running his hands through his graying hair. The detective was pushing forty and although he was pretty well maintained in the body department, he wore his age and exhaustion on his face. It was as if ten years had passed since I’d seen him last, not a month.
“When was the last time you caught some z’s, detective? Or at least snorted some cocaine?”
He glared at me. “We’re understaffed and there’s been numerous unsolved murders around the city. The grisly kind. The kind that even seasoned detectives have been shocked by. Not to mention missing persons.” He gave me a look, one full of accusation.
I held my hands up. “Hey, don’t look at me. I clean up after myself. Or, more accurately, I call the person to clean up after me.”
Technically I could get seriously punished for even speaking to a human about such things, but what could I say? I didn’t give a shit.
“That doesn’t mean your kind is not responsible for these depraved acts,” he hissed, his eyes haunted.
I bristled and leaned forward, laying my hands on his desk. “Depravity isn’t uniquely a vampire condition,” I informed him. I grabbed the closest file on the messy desk, running my eyes over the report on a couple of teenagers torturing and killing a homeless man. I met Lewis’s eyes. “In fact, if we got down to it, you’d find that humans might have the monopoly over that. Even the most sadistic vampires kill for an underlying reason—sustenance. Their methods may be flawed and archaic, but there is some natural explanation.” I held up the file I was clutching. “Humans, on the other hand, have slaughtered each other through the centuries for what god they worship, the color of their skin or for resources. That in itself is cause for you to maybe rethink your unwavering hatred for the undead and check out the living.”
He regarded me, his eyes not giving away much. “I don’t have an unwavering hatred for you, Isla,” he said quietly.
I restrained my surprise at the warmth in his tone.
Lewis and I went way back—twenty years, in fact. I’d been minding my own business, out for a stroll to grab a bite, when I was accosted by a group of miscreants with less-than-noble intentions. I’d decided they were a perfect dinner and went about ensuring they wouldn’t try and gang rape a woman alone in an alley in the near future. Unfortunately, a rookie cop had stumbled upon the scene and witnessed too much.
His eyes and the way they danced with shock and disgust and the tiniest bit of excitement told me he’d seen it all. They weren’t focused on the three men lying tangled at my feet. No, they were on me and, more precisely, my fangs.
I retracted them and wiped the underside of my lip with my thumb.
“I couldn’t convince you to turn around and go about your life like you didn’t just see that, can I?” I asked hopefully.
His silence served as my answer.
“Great,” I muttered.
Before he had the chance to do anything like use the gun at his hip, I darted forward, clutching his arm and dragging him into the empty warehouse beside the alley.
He reared back the second we stood in the middle of the cavernous room, smelling faintly of urine and narcotics. A quick scan told me that the homeless humans using the place as lodging weren’t currently in residence. Thankfully.
The young cop with a baby face and a spotless uniform looked like he might throw up.
“Hold your breakfast there, Officer. No one wants regurgitated doughnuts ruining your shiny shoes.”
He didn’t hear me, probably trying to get his bearings. Instead of spending time looking for them, he did what all humans seemed to do, reaching for a weapon instead of sense.
The hand holding the gun was shaking uncontrollably. If he managed to squeeze off a shot, it wasn’t likely to hit me, even though I was standing a few feet in front of him.
“You’re….”
I folded my arms. “A vampire,” I finished for him.
That word succeeded in sucking all sound from the room. His heart even skipped a beat.
The officer took time to digest. Think on it. Though he didn’t lower his gun.
“This… this is unbelievable,” he stammered, finally. His voice echoed through the room and if his hand hadn’t been shaking and heart not been pumping frantically I would have been under the impression he was calm. His voice was, at least.
I did appreciate that he didn’t cry or scream or shout ‘Back, devil.’ I’d gotten all three a multitude of times.
I gave him a look. “No, it’s incredibly believable, which is what makes you reject it with all of the force of your incredibly narrow mind. We aren’t aliens from outer space, nor are we disfigured monsters. We’re touchable within your human narrative. We look like you, talk like you, like the same TV shows. We just live a lot longer and feed on blood instead of burgers. Don’t get me wrong, a double cheeseburger is pretty darn good, but it’s not going to keep me immortal. We need the essence of what makes you mortal to do that.”
His body was frozen, though his trigger finger twitched slightly.
I grinned. “Try it.”
His brows furrowed. “What?”
I nodded to his belt. “Plug me with the entire clip, if that’s what you need to do to grasp a concept that isn’t exactly outside the realm of possibility. That’s what makes it so impossible.”
He regarded me, his grip still tight on the gun.
It could go either way, I wagered. I’d seen a lot of humans, good, bad and everything in between. They were almost never always completely ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ I was loath to believe in such concepts, similar to how this cop wasn’t going to believe I was four hundred and forty years older than him. Such ideas belonged in fairytales, alongside tales of bloodsucking monsters. Only one thing existed in the ‘real’ world, and it wasn’t the good and evil binary. Even bloodsucking monsters were more realistic than that, if you thought on it long enough.
But this guy, he was the closest to the fantastical concept of ‘good’ that I’d encountered. I’d been around enough humans to smell the depravity seeping from their pores. Decency was just as easy to spot, even if it was decidedly rarer. Every instinct was telling him to shoot me, but he was fighting it. His eyes were weathered and old for such a young rookie, but not yet hardened by the horrors he’d no doubt encounter if he lived through this.
“I’m not shootin’ an unarmed woman,” he gritted out finally, his posture relaxing slightly as he lowered the gun.
“I don’t need weapons to kill you, rookie,” I told him before stepping forward, letting my mouth open and my fangs elongate.
His eyes widened and he went back on one foot as if to scuttle back, but he
stopped there, holding his ground.
I grinned at him. “Stubborn, brave, or stupid,” I observed, retracting my fangs. “All three would have gotten you killed if you had been in the company of any vampire but me.” I glanced to his gun and then the eyes that, if I weren’t mistaken, seemed to have hardened within the length of our conversation that no doubt blew his tiny, ordered mind. “I get that it’s a lot to swallow—pardon the pun.” I winked. “But this”—I gestured around the room—“the world, is so much more than you see through those blurry mortal eyes. You’re blind because we want you to be, and more importantly because you want to be .Your alternative, entertaining ideas about immortal beings – the supernatural underpinning and influencing all of the history you’ve thought you humans were responsible for?” I shook my head. “That would not go well with you trying to find understanding in the world. Plus, your mortality is of enough trouble for you. Finding that there are those not plagued with that burden might just get you angry enough to decide to wipe out those who have the gift of eternal life.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Which would not end well. Bit of advice for free. You know that what goes bump in the night can drain you dry in the blink of an eye, so don’t decide to be a hero and go on some sort of mission to save mankind. It’s not possible. Plus, saving mankind is not going after the supernatural, but fighting mankind itself. Your species seems intent on killing itself. Wars, diseases, murder, global warming, you’re doing everything in your power to make sure your life span is even shorter than it already is. Which doesn’t bode well for people like me, who need at least some humans around, you know, to snack on, and to give me fabulous shoes. So, how about we make a deal? You hand me over every human you can’t lock away and I’ll make sure they pay.”