It passed under one of the lot’s two feeble lights, and my heart sank. The vehicle’s windows were black—not merely tinted, but blotchy black, as if someone had applied the contents of a can of matte paint to the interior of the windows. That could only mean one thing.
“Shit.” I was too tired to bother translating my comment into French. “Vamp transport.”
It had to be. The car had moved out of the pool of light and was now rolling through the dark again, a hulking, dated silhouette. A certain type of vamp seemed to go for vintage vehicles; probably, as Megan’s Mikhail had once informed my sisters and me, because the trunks of older cars were roomy enough to make a comfortable daytime resting place if necessary. “Also,” he’d added with a significant glance at the matching MINIs that had been Popsie Crosse’s most recent birthday gifts to us, “because those old Detroit tanks can ram most newer vehicles off the road. At that point, sitting in a ditch in your car, you’re the equivalent of a can of Dinty Moore beef stew to a hungry vamp.”
“Which means that making a run for it in the MINI might be a teensy bit rash,” I told myself out loud as the car rumbled closer. “I’ll never make the three miles to town before he catches up with me, so what other options do I have?” I forced a casualness to my solitary conversation, hoping to keep my growing terror at bay. “The obvious one is to stake him. On the plus side, I was Grandfather Darkheart’s star pupil when he was training Megan and Tash and me in the finer points of vamp sticking. On the negative side, when it came down to doing it for real during the battle at the Hot Box with Zena and her followers, I—”
I didn’t finish my sentence, but I couldn’t shut off my thoughts. I had been Anton’s star pupil, so much so that I’d been secretly sure I was the Crosse triplet who’d inherited my mother’s vamp-killing legacy and would be the next Daughter of Lilith. My first kill had ripped that fantasy from me forever.
When Zena had loosed her pack of undead on us that night, I’d taken up a fighting stance like a vampire-killing Joan of Arc, knowing I was fulfilling the destiny that had been written for me long before my birth. The first vamp that had rushed me hadn’t stood a chance. I’d been so confident of my powers that I’d let him come close enough to grab me, but as he’d leaned in to slash at my throat I’d thrust my stake into his heart. In triumph I’d looked into his eyes, wanting to see him die.
Instead, I saw him being born.
It had been like watching a movie, except I wasn’t watching it, I was living it. And although only a split second could have elapsed between the time I staked him and the moment he fell away into dust, I experienced his whole life. I stood in the delivery room as he came into the world. I was on the sidewalk watching him take a tumble from his trike, inside the pet shop as he pointed out the puppy he wanted, with him on his first day at school when he wet his pants and tried to hide it.
I saw him fall in love.
I saw him graduate.
I saw him being attacked in an alleyway one night by the vampire who turned him.
I saw his first kill, his final kill…and then I saw myself standing over him, my hand still on the stake lodged in his body. Terror and agony ripped through me, both overwhelmed by an agonizing sense of loss. In the moment that he turned to dust I knew the truth. His death was mine. Part of me would follow him down to hell.
I forced myself to take on the second vamp who came at me, a female, and went through the whole process all over again, but during my third kill something broke in me and Zena made her move against me. Since her move consisted of sending me to hell, I don’t think it’s too surprising that for the most part I’ve blanked out that unpleasant interlude. I don’t have any trouble remembering what happened when I finally came back to full consciousness, however: the battle was over, Zena had been vanquished and Megan had proved herself to be a true Daughter of Lilith.
I’d received proof, too. I’d walked into the Hot Box wanting only to kill vampires. When I left hours later I finally understood a favorite quote of Popsie’s, one he’d told me he’d read in an old cartoon: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
I’d seen the enemy. I’d felt the blood tie between me and them—a blood tie forged years ago when a queen vampyr had marked a Daughter of Lilith’s baby. I hadn’t turned yet, but if Grandfather Darkheart was correct and the kiss of the vampire bore fruit in her victim’s twenty-first year, I would soon.
But until I did I had to assume I was as vulnerable to being killed by a vamp as any normal human would be.
“Which brings me back to my original problem, no?” I muttered now as I steadied myself against my MINI and thrust all future problems aside to deal with my current one. “If it’s a question of my survival, am I capable of staking the son of a bitch?”
I was about to find out the answer to that question. The vehicle came to a stop about twenty feet away from me, its engine idling with a heavy rumble I could feel through the spike heels of my shoes, its chrome grille glittering ominously. I waited for my gentleman caller—a car like that simply had to belong to a male vamp, I thought—to get out, saunter over to me and flash fangs.
The black-painted driver’s window rolled down. Something projected from it and I shifted position slightly to see what it was.
Thunk-whap!
The metallic sound exploded right next to me and adrenaline kicked through me like a double shot of one-hundred-proof vodka. I’d been set up, I thought hollowly, appalled at my own carelessness. A second vamp had apparently landed on my MINI while I’d been watching the approach of the one in the car. Stake in hand, I whirled to face my attacker.
There was no one on the MINI. A nerveracking possibility flashed into my mind and I dropped to my knees, stake at the ready, my gaze scanning the pavement under the car.
Thunk-whap!
Pain blazed through my right hand, and my stake clattered to the ground. Instinctively I tried to cradle my hand to my body to ease the agony, but trying to move it sent a sickening wave of fresh pain through me. In confusion I looked at my hand.
At first I didn’t understand what I was staring at. My fingers were outstretched on the driver’s door of my car, every tendon on the back of my right hand standing out in sharp relief. Blood ran down my wrist onto the glossy white paintwork of the MINI, and between my index and middle fingers something gleamed silver in the half light.
I suddenly recognized the silver gleam for what it was, and shock slammed the breath from my lungs. I’d wanted a drink earlier. Now I needed one, if only to numb the horror of what I was seeing.
The object spiked through the web of skin between the fingers on my hand into the car’s door…was a nail.
Chapter 3
“Damn.” The low-voiced oath came from the direction of the idling car. I heard the sound of the vehicle’s door being opened and the scrape of shoes on the pavement. After my first sickened glance at the nail through my hand I’d turned away, but now I made myself look at it again.
There’s something about seeing yourself as a carpentry project that makes a girl want to throw up. I forced back the bile that rose in my throat and tried to pull the nail out with my free hand.
It wouldn’t budge. I pulled harder, my grip slick with my own blood, but the nail was firmly lodged into the MINI’s door panel. From the sound of his unhurried tread, the vamp wasn’t in any ravenous rush but even so, I had only seconds to free myself.
I’d lived through Brazilian waxes. What I had to do next couldn’t be more excruciating, could it?