Joss wanted to tell him where that knowledge had come from—that it was from the mouth of a vampire he’d once called friend—but he couldn’t. It was too embarrassing, having been duped twice by an undead creature of the night. He wanted Morgan to like him, respect him, admire him. How would Morgan ever do that if he knew that Joss was a Slayer who was incapable of recognizing his natural enemy? No. There was no way he could share the details of his encounter with Vlad with Morgan. Not now. Maybe not ever.
The female vampire turned and exited the door. Morgan tensed. “I have to tail her. You stay on him. Where he goes, you go. If you overhear anything about those vampire brothers, listen in, then hightail it back to base. You got it?”
But he didn’t stick around for Joss’s answer. Before Joss knew it, Morgan had slipped out into the night, leaving him alone in a nightclub in New York City. Unsettled, Joss took a drink of his soda and set the glass down on the small table to his right before turning his attention back to the vampire at the bar.
Except . . . the vampire wasn’t there anymore.
Joss looked quickly around the club, but couldn’t locate his mark anywhere. Frowning, he chastised himself for having lost the beast. But he wasn’t about to go home empty-handed. The vampire hadn’t gone out the door, so he had to be in here somewhere. Joss stood up, grabbed his glass, and headed for the stairs that led to The Vault. A large, meaty hand planted at the center of his chest, and the owner of that hand—who stood over a million feet tall and had shoulders the width of the Catskill Mountains—glared down at him with angry, slanted eyes. “Where you think you’re going, son? In fact, how did you get in here in the first place?”
Joss swallowed hard, a small squeak preceding his reply. “Dorian. Dorian said I could be here.”
The man didn’t remove his hand, but with his free hand, withdrew his cell phone from his inside jacket pocket and flipped it open, pressing a button for a number on speed dial. His eyes stayed on Joss the entire time. “Yes, sir. It seems you have an underage guest in Element, trying to head down to The Vault. He says he’s a friend of yours. His name is . . .”
Joss swallowed again. His throat was beginning to feel like someone had rubbed it over with a fine-grained sandpaper. When he spoke, his words came out in the form of a question, even though he hadn’t intended them to. “Joss?”
The big man nodded. “He says his name is Joss, sir.”
The pause between sentences must have only lasted a few seconds, but to Joss, they dragged on an eternity in length. And the entire time, his heart beat in slow motion. Loud, pounding beats thumping in his ears slowly. Solidly. When the man spoke again, Joss had to resist the urge to bolt. “I see.”
Suddenly the meaty hand released Joss’s chest, and the man’s demeanor changed. He flicked his gaze around the room nervously. “I’m so sorry, sir. I didn’t realize. Of course. Anything he wants, on the house. Yes. I apologize. I will. Right away, sir. Have a nice trip.”
He closed the phone, returning it to his pocket then, and when he spoke to Joss, his voice was gentle and kind. “I’m so sorry, Mr. McMillan. I didn’t realize you were in Dorian’s inner circle. You have to understand my position. Young kid, nightclub full of . . . well . . . I’m so sorry. Anyway, whatever you want, sir. I’ll get it for you. On the house, of course. Courtesy of Dorian.”
Joss could feel his eyebrows threatening to go up in surprise, but he smiled politely and nodded, concealing his utter shock. “Thank you. No hard feelings. Hey, have you seen a blond guy in black leather pants and snakeskin boots around?”
An eager smile appeared on his face. “Do you mean Kaige? He just went downstairs. Do you want me to find him for you?”
Joss shook his head. The last thing he wanted was a vampire to be fully aware that a Slayer was looking for him. “No, I’ll go look for him. Thanks anyway, though.”
As he descended the stairs, Joss’s entire being was enveloped by music with a heavy bass line. It thumped in his chest, down his legs, into the marrow of his bones. The lights were dim, as dim could be, and bodies filled every available inch of space. But something about the scene wasn’t suffocating or intimidating at all. It was invigorating, energizing, and Joss liked the way that it felt.
As he moved through the crowd, people danced around him—some even tried to dance with him. Joss smiled politely and kept moving, his eyes sweeping the large space for any sign of Kaige. When he was just about to give up, he spotted the vampire in question talking to a girl in her midtwenties, who looked like she was falling over herself just to get closer to Kaige. Sometimes, Joss thought, he understood human girls as much as he understood vampires—meaning not at all.
He watched the vampire as casually as he could manage, and eventually, after an hour or so, Kaige grabbed the girl he’d been talking to by the wrist and tugged her toward the back of the club. The look on her face was one of blank obedience. She didn’t seem intoxicated or anything, just like she was floating in some haze. A haze likely put there by a vampire. A cold shiver tickled its way up Joss’s spine. He followed as discreetly as possible, darting between small groups of dancers, and eventually came to a door that was on its way to being closed. Pulling the door open, Joss peered up the dark stairs, running a hesitant hand over the back of his neck. Should he follow? He was just supposed to be gathering information. What if he was walking into some kind of trap?
Or worse. What if he didn’t go up those stairs and an innocent girl was murdered because he didn’t want to take a risk?
Joss stepped through the door and it swung closed behind him, sealing most of the music inside the club, leaving him with the faint sounds of bass still beating in his chest. As he moved up the stairs, he slid his back silently along the wall, traveling up several flights, doing what he could to remain in the shadows. At the top of the stairs was another door, and he placed his ear against it to listen. Nothing. Nothing but the sounds of the night. He took a deep breath, withdrew the stake from his waistband, and pushed the steel door open a crack.
He could only see a small portion of the roof from where he was standing, but he could see the vampire perfectly. Kaige was standing out on the roof, the unwitting, likely mind-controlled girl in his arms. He smiled down at her, his fangs shining in the low light. “Oh, my pretty little one. You should consider yourself special, my pet. It’s not often in recent weeks that I feed in private. I like the thrill of killing you cattle in front of your own kind. It’s rather addictive, that sensation. Every heart around me begins to race, filling my ears with a most delicious rhythm. It’s the sweetest music I’ve ever heard. But I’m happy to forego that song tonight. Your AB negative has me salivating, and I don’t want to share you. Not even with my brothers.”
An emotion crossed his face then. Pain. Intense pain and loss. Kaige was grieving for his brother Boris.
But as quickly as that pain had surfaced, it disappeared again. “Not even in Central Park. Ohhh . . . you’d like it there. Or, at least, I would. It’s the only place where we hunt together, you see. I prefer to hunt as a pack, but Boris . . . well, he’s always insisted that a hunt should be one on one. That it makes the moment more intimate. Of course, Boris is gone now. But I suspect you’d have enjoyed his company in Central Park. You could run free, until he pounced and drank your every drop. But not tonight. Tonight, you’re mine, here and now. Shall we begin?”
Joss’s stomach turned, then hardened with disgust. His fingers tightened around his stake and he pushed gently against the door, opening it farther. He had to get onto the roof, get as close as he could to the beast before it noticed him, and take it down. And standing here eavesdropping wasn’t going to accomplish any of that.
Kaige paused momentarily, a smirk curling on his lips. “Of course, it would be very rude of us not to greet our guest, but then . . . he’s being a bit rude too by lurking in the stairwell, isn’t he?”
Joss grimaced and flung the door open. The steel hit the concrete wall with a loud bang. Kaige t
urned a surprised smile to him. Not surprised because of his presence, but perhaps because he’d been expecting someone else. “Well, well. The Slayers are recruiting younger and younger every year, aren’t they? Must be getting desperate. Not that I can blame them.”
Joss didn’t say anything. Something his encounter with Vlad had taught him was that emotional distance from your mark makes it much easier to take their life. Hesitation is the most dangerous thing that can happen to a Slayer in confrontation, and interacting with the monsters might bring about empathy, which absolutely contributes to hesitancy. Besides that, Joss was human. That put him a few notches above vampire in his book. He’d save his conversation for someone who wasn’t murdering innocents for sport.
When Joss didn’t reply, Kaige said, “You’ve come to kill me, I assume? Mind if I finish my meal first? Even prisoners on death row are given a final meal.”
His tone dripped with sarcasm, and it was all Joss could do to keep from losing his cool.
Joss scanned the roof, and apart from leaping off the edge, there didn’t seem to be an easy manner of escape. Of course, if Boris had taught him anything, it was that vampires could fly.
Reaching to his left, he closed the steel door behind him, its metal sound clanging into the air again. He wasn’t going to engage the beast. Talking wouldn’t help the situation. With his hand gripping so tightly around his stake that his knuckles appeared bleached, he lowered his center of gravity, eyes locked on the vampire, ready to make his move.
Kaige shrugged and opened his mouth, lowering it onto the girl’s neck. But before he could bite, Joss broke into a run. In an instant, Kaige dropped the girl to the ground, ready for the Slayer’s attack.
But Joss had other plans. He threw his stake as hard as he could, and it whipped through the air like a wooden missile, aimed straight for Kaige’s heart.
At the last minute, Kaige pulled back. The stake struck him in the chest, but bounced uselessly off, its energy spent on its flight. Kaige grinned at Joss and moved toward him. Joss frowned at the ineffectiveness of his efforts, but noted that Kaige was moving only as fast as a human might move, which made him wonder if vampires each had different skills, and if maybe one of his was not speed. If his theory was true, then that would mean that vampires weren’t insurmountable foes at all. It just meant that they each could do different things that he had to learn to work around. The thought comforted him some, but then Kaige was on him, ready for a fight.
He grabbed a handful of Joss’s shirt, pulling Joss closer. And for a moment, Joss forgot that his opponent was supernatural at all. He balled up his fist and smashed it into Kaige’s nose. Blood splattered across Kaige’s face and Joss’s fist in an explosion of anguished cries. When Kaige looked at Joss, his eyes were tearing, his fangs fully visible—but this time, not in hunger for the girl’s blood.
Joss moved fast, grabbing Kaige by the wrist, hoping to surprise him. He flipped the vampire over, slamming him on the tar, scaring himself that he was even capable of such a physical act. Out of the corner of Joss’s eye, he noticed a tattoo on Kaige’s arm. It was the same tattoo that had been on Boris’s arm: brothers in arms. Joss’s theory had been correct. Boris had had a brother. Three of them, in fact. And Kaige was one of them.
The moment Kaige hit the ground on his back, Joss was on him, his stake in his hand, the tip pressed firmly against Kaige’s chest. Joss looked at the girl, who had only just begun to stand back up again, completely dazed by what she had witnessed. “Go! Get out of here!”
The girl shook her head, but not in refusal. It was as if she were fighting to wake from a dream. She scrambled to her feet, her chest heaving in panic, and bolted for the door. After struggling with it for a moment, she pulled the door open and disappeared inside. Joss pressed the tip of his stake harder into Kaige’s chest, until the skin broke and crimson bubbled up from within. He leaned closer to the monster’s face, as close as he could without touching. “Now. Tell me where your brothers are.”
Inside Joss’s pocket, his cell phone buzzed to life. Not now, Kat, he thought. Threaten my life later, but not now.
Kaige’s eyes were furious slits, but behind that fury lurked an emotion Joss was certain the creature hadn’t experienced much of in its lifetime: fear. But outweighing that fear was its immense and utter hatred of Joss. It spit in Joss’s face and growled, “Go to hell, Slayer boy.”
“Bad boys go to hell. Especially when they send their sisters there.”
Cecile’s words echoed in Joss’s brain then, just a fleeting, haunting whisper that Joss recognized instantly from a nightmare, but enough to loosen Joss’s grip on his stake.
Spotting his opponent’s moment of distracted weakness, Kaige threw a punch, smashing his fist into Joss’s nose. Joss’s head snapped back, pain exploding through his skull.
Then Kaige threw Joss off of him, sending Joss flying several yards across the rooftop. When Joss hit the tar, pain racked his body. Joss was certain he’d broken a bone or two or maybe all of them, but as he struggled the stand, only his muscles screamed out. And his nose, which hurt more than he ever thought it could.
Before he could fully recover, Kaige slammed into his side, knocking him into the wall. The wind left Joss’s lungs, his chest seizing. For a moment, Joss had a feeling that these might be his last memories, that he might actually die on this roof.
Kaige gripped a handful of his hair and yanked his head to the side, hissing into his ear. “You’ve stolen my meal, Slayer boy. So now I’m afraid you’re going to have to replace it.”
Panic filled every cell in Joss’s body. His heart raced until it was pounding in his ears. He pressed against Kaige, fighting to get free, but the vampire wasn’t budging. Then Kaige laughed at his fear, breath tickling Joss’s ear, and Joss’s panic subsided. He’d trained for this, and panicking wasn’t going to get him out of this situation. Then, in a moment of desperation, Joss had his target.
He lifted his knee as hard as he possibly could, slamming it into a place that no man wanted a knee slammed against. He had no idea if such a maneuver would even bother a vampire, but he had to try. And while Kaige didn’t whimper or cry out or crumble to the ground, he did weaken his grasp enough for Joss to wriggle free. Maybe it had hurt. Or maybe he was just shocked that a Slayer had just kicked him in the balls in some stupid attempt to get free. It didn’t matter to Joss. What mattered was that he had just evened the playing field a little bit more.
“For you, Cecile!” He whipped his arm forward and the vampire caught it before he could make contact. Then Joss swung his other arm—the one holding the stake—with all his might. The silver tip plunged into Kaige’s chest, and the wood in Joss’s hand drove the weapon home. Blood—rich, red, real—poured out over his hand.
He pulled his arm back, freeing the stake. The sound that it made as the wood slid from the creature’s chest tore through Joss’s ears, causing him to cringe a bit. It was something he’d never forget. Blood continued to pour out over his hands, spilling onto the floor. Kaige’s face was frozen in a state of shock. Joss looked from the open, gaping wound in Kaige’s chest to his eyes. “Where are your brothers, Kaige? This has to end. Now.”
Kaige coughed, sputtering some, a deep, gurgling sound escaping his lips. Joss pursed his lips, realizing he was too far gone to give any answers at all. Abraham would be furious.
As the light left Kaige’s eyes and Kaige fell back, Joss watched him, a strange sadness cloaking Joss’s entire being.
He’d taken a life. Granted, it had been the life of a monster, the life of a ruthless murderer. But it was still a life. A life that was no longer moving along in the world, having been blinked out by Joss and his wooden stake.
Sounds of the city at night echoed up around him, but all Joss could hear was the steady beating of his heart. It slowed a bit, calming, as he looked down at his prey. Inside he felt—no, that was the wrong word. He didn’t feel. He simply was.
He stared down at Kaige’s corpse
for a while before crouching beside it, the bottoms of his sneakers turning red as blood pooled around them. He cleaned off his blood-covered stake and hands on a portion of Kaige’s shirt that was still white and as he did, he looked back at Kaige’s face. The brief, curious question of whether or not vampires believed in an afterlife flitted through his mind. Then he stood and slipped the stake into the back of his belt. He probably should have said something—to the corpse, to himself, to the midnight air—but in the end, he moved silently to the door. But before he could reach it, voices found their way up the stairwell. Voices that probably belonged to security guards, to police, to people in uniforms that had the power to make his life very difficult very quickly. Glancing around, Joss rushed to the edge of the building. There was no fire escape, no stairs. Just as he was beginning to consider the repercussions of jumping two stories, he spied a large pipe running from the roof all the way down to the street below.
With a deep breath, Joss flung his leg over the edge of the building’s lip and lowered himself onto the pipe, gripping it as tightly as he was able to. As he dropped from sight, the stairwell voices became the rooftop voices. He shimmied downward as fast as he could, slipping once, but regaining his balance fairly quickly. The moment his feet hit the concrete, he bolted into a run. Outside the club’s front doors were four cop cars, lights flashing red and blue. Uniformed officers, guns in their hands, came out the door, their voices raised in command. Joss swore he heard one of them say something about a murderer. His chest ached as he ran. Was that what he was? A murderer? A killer? A criminal? When all he really wanted to be was a hero. All he really wanted to do was to help people, to save people from the monsters that stalked them. He’d read tons of comics growing up, where heroes like Batman and Spider-Man were looked down on as if they were criminals. Was this the same kind of thing? Was being a good guy or a bad guy merely a matter of point of view?
Was Joss Batman? Or was he the Joker, ready and hungry just to watch the world burn?