Megan’s MINI was still parked next to mine. Obviously she and Tash had been delayed in leaving the club. My plan was to keep the vamp talking until they showed up, but something he’d said puzzled me enough that I didn’t have to fake interest “Hazlitt’s?” I frowned, taking care not to relax my grip on my impromptu stake. “I can remember Grammie Crosse taking me there for ice cream when I was about five or six, but they must have gone out of business at least ten years ago. When did you become a—”
Maybe he’d been trying to keep me talking, too, in the hopes I’d become distracted enough that he could risk a lunge at me. But as it had done with me, something in our conversation triggered a real response from him.
“Crosse? You’re one of the Crosse sisters?” His face had been pale before, another indication that he needed to feed, but now it went so white his acne stood out like beacons. He took a step backward. “Oh, fuck, you’re not Kat, are you?”
“Megan,” I lied immediately. “If you’ve heard of my sister, you’ve heard of me, too, so you know you don’t stand a chance against—”
“Nuh-uh.” He took another step back, his eyes beginning to glow red again. “I can smell a Daughter of Lilith a mile away, and you’re not the vamp killer. You were trying to fuck me up! You were trying to get me to bite you, you bitch!”
“I was trying to make you bite me?” I leaned in, astonishment momentarily overriding my fear. “Is this the undead variation of ‘you know you want it, honey?’ Because I don’t appreciate it when human males try to pull that merde on me, and I’m certainly not about to let an underage, undead vampire—”
“Stay away from me!”
His words came out in a high-pitched snarl. As I stood there, my Manolo clutched in my nerveless hand and fear freezing me to the spot, he backpedalled away from me so fast that his feet got tangled up with each other and he tripped. He scrambled up again, his horror-filled red eyes still locked on mine. Then he turned to run.
I think I saw the stake before he did, but I’d swear he had time to dodge out of the way and save himself. Instead, he seemed to run deliberately into its path.
It came speeding through the near-dark parking lot with unerring accuracy, the deadly tip sinking deep into the left side of his chest, right through the DC part of the gothic AC/DC lettering on his tee. His hands flew to the shaft of wood sticking from him, as if he intended to pull it out.
His glowing eyes met mine again, but instead of the terror that had been in them a second ago, I saw an emotion so out of place that I knew I had to be mistaken. His hands fell away from the stake, his lips drew back from his razor-sharp canines in a death-rictus, the red glow in his eyes dimmed.
Then he turned to ash.
In the past couple of months I’ve seen so many vamps die that you’d think I’d be used to it. My sisters are. Megan stands over her kills grimly, as if she wants their last sight on earth to be the Daughter of Lilith who sent them to hell. Tash is the opposite; she all but does a victory dance around the ashes, and once I saw her kick them. Grandfather Darkheart caught that little performance, too, and in his heavy Carpathian accent gave her a stern lecture that I could tell Tashya tuned out before the second sentence.
I feel agonizing pain. The first time I experienced it, I was sure the vamp had somehow turned my stake against me before he’d died and I’d looked down at myself, expecting to see a yew-wood shaft protruding from my body and dark gouts of blood pouring from the wound.
I felt like that now, but I didn’t bother looking for a wound I knew wasn’t there. Instead, I turned to watch Megan sprinting across the parking lot toward me, Tash right behind her. I took a breath and put on my best bored manner.
“Yay, team. Chalk up another one for the good guys, and all that.” Languidly I pumped the hand holding the Manolo into the air before bending to slip my shoe back onto my foot. “Impressive stake-hurling, sis. Ever think of giving up this vampire-killing gig and trying out for the Olympic javelin toss?”
Megan retrieved her stake and shoved it into the strap holster on her left bicep. “You’ve got a right to be pissed,” she said evenly. “I shouldn’t have interfered with your kill. Sorry, Kat.”
“We saw you standing there like a dummy and we thought you were caught up in his glamyr,” Tashya explained. “Either that, or so scared you were about to wee-wee your panties. Which one was it, Kat?”
I raised my eyebrows and hoped my drawl covered the last remnants of my shakiness. “Gawd, sweeties—scared? Whatever gave you that idea? I simply hoped I wouldn’t have to ruin a perfectly darling pair of Manolos by using one of them as a vamp sticker…and as it turned out, I wouldn’t have had to.” I gave an elaborate shrug. “Your reputation’s spread, Meg. I told the little pisher I was you, and he tripped over his own feet trying to get away.”
“I wondered why he was running,” Megan answered. “And like Tash, I also wondered what you were playing at, standing there and talking to him instead of sending him to hell. You sure he wasn’t using a little glamyr on you without you knowing?”
There it was in her voice again, that repressive tone that she’d seemingly inherited with her life mission of vamp killing, but now it was accentuated with a marked coolness. Not surprising, given our recent contretemps in the club, I supposed. I extracted my car keys from my purse.
“Believe it or not, sister dear, the rest of us aren’t totally incapacitated when we’re facing the undead. In fact, I’ve always suspected I’m a little less susceptible to vamp wiles than you are, but to answer your question, no, his glamyr didn’t work on me.” I turned to unlock my car, adding casually, “He seemed so inept all round it’s a wonder he wasn’t staked a decade or so ago. Since he was a local boy, it positively dented my civic pride.”
I began to get into my MINI, but Megan’s hand shot out and clamped around my arm. I stiffened. She removed it but didn’t apologize. “A local vamp who’s been around for decades? Not possible,” she said flatly. “Maplesburg wasn’t infected until Zena arrived here.”
“So we believed,” I answered. “Apparently we were wrong.”
“You’re wrong,” Tash snapped. “That would mean Maplesburg had already turned when—”
She stopped and I finished her sentence for her. “When Daddy lived here, sweetie? Yes, that’s exactly what it would mean.” I looked away from her frozen face and met Megan’s hard gaze. “If you don’t want to take my word for it, use the resources of Darkheart & Crosse to locate a woman named Bitsy. As a teenager she worked at Hazlitt’s Drugstore before it went out of business, so she’d be in her thirties now, at least. Ask her about a boyfriend she had who was into AC/DC and Clearasil.”
“I will,” Megan said coldly. “And if I find out you’re yanking our chain over this, Kat, you’ll be sorry.” She strode to her car and got in. Tash was already sitting in the front passenger seat. Megan started the ignition and then rolled down the window. “Take this,” she called to me, her tone expressionless. “I always keep a couple of spares in the car. You really shouldn’t be out after dark without one.”
I caught the stake she tossed my way. Even as my fingers closed around it, she was revving her MINI out of the parking lot. I saw the car’s taillights flare red as she came to the stop before the road, and then my sisters were gone.
Ten minutes ago I hadn’t trusted myself to drive. Now I was stone-cold sober. I began again to get into my MINI, and for the second time in as many minutes didn’t complete the action.
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