Tall, Dark & Fangsome ib-5 Read online

  Only a desire to feed.

  Horror movie: table for one.

  Being a nightwalker was scary as hell, but that was the rational Sarah talking. Without the chain I wasn’t all that rational. But I was still in control.

  At least, for short periods of time.

  Hopefully this wouldn’t take very long.

  Chapter 2

  One of the hunters leered at the terrified fledgling. “You have a nice body for a bloodsucker.”

  “Leave me alone!” Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “She is mighty pretty,” the other hunter agreed. “Fresh, too. I’d say the evil thing is less than a week old. She doesn’t even have her fangs yet.”

  “Vampires aren’t evil! Please, you have to believe me.”

  “Sure, we believe you.” The hunters exchanged a droll look. “She’s not even denying being a vamp. That makes it way simpler. No unfortunate mistakes.”

  “Please, don’t hurt me,” she begged.

  “Do you want to see my stake, honey? I’ll bet it’s the biggest you’ve ever seen.”

  “I highly doubt that,” I said dryly from behind them.

  They turned to look at me.

  It was dark in the alley, but I could see them as clear as day. Nightwalker eyesight was better than night-vision goggles. One had a bald head and a precisely shaved goatee and the other had long shaggy hair that touched his shoulders and an angry-looking scar on his right cheekbone. They held no fear in their eyes as they looked me up and down.

  “One for me and one for you,” Baldy said to his friend. “This is going to be a fun night.”

  “Wouldn’t count on that.” My attention drifted from his ugly face to the subtle throb at the side of his throat. I sensed the blood racing through his veins just below the surface.

  My senses were way more acute in nightwalker mode. It was as helpful as it was distracting.

  “Check out her eyes,” the second hunter hissed, and I could finally detect a trace of fear in his voice. “They’re black. She must be really hungry. That’s not good.”

  “Don’t be such a wimp,” Baldy scoffed. He pulled his allegedly monstrous-sized stake out of a holder on his belt—as expected, not all that impressive—and confidently approached me.

  “See this?” He indicated the stake. “Do you know how many bloodsuckers I’ve killed with this thing? It’s my lucky stake. I whittled it myself.”

  I rolled my pitch-black eyes. “You’re a regular Martha Stewart. Do you keep a scrapbook, too?”

  “Shut up, bitch.”

  “Please help me!” The fledgling’s voice shook, her attention now fully focused on her potential rescuer, aka: me.

  “Just a minute.” I felt bad for her—this small, pale, shivering thing with really bad hair and supremely tacky shoes. A couple of months ago that was me. Except for the bad hair and shoes, of course.

  The bald hunter laughed. “You’re going to help her? Is that why you’re here? To rescue one of your own kind? How sweet.”

  “Why do hunters talk so much?” I asked. “All talk, no action. Yawn.”

  “Dude,” the shaggier of the two said. “Didn’t you hear me? Her eyes are black. She’s dangerous. Don’t provoke her. Maybe we should take off. I don’t feel good about this.”

  “Your friend is way smarter than he looks.” I couldn’t stop studying Baldy’s deliciously exposed throat above the line of his leather jacket. “Why don’t I give you a chance? Leave now with the promise to never kill another vampire and we won’t have a problem.”

  Baldy laughed louder at that. “Who the hell do you think you are, bitch?”

  “I’m the Slayer of Slayers, asshole. Ever heard of me?”

  That stopped him for a moment as he recognized my well-known nickname. His eyes widened a fraction and he took a step back so he could study me from my low-heeled, knee-high black boots—fashionable yet easy to run in; an important combo for any female vamp—past my casual yet sparkly outfit of a short black skirt and silver lamé tank top, to my shoulder-length brown hair, currently tucked firmly behind my ears. Since the cold was only a minor annoyance for me now, I’d left my coat inside the club.

  A slow, confident smile spread across his features. “I heard that rep of yours was only a rumor. So if you’re trying to scare me you’ve failed. The only question is, when I slay you, are you still young enough to leave a body behind for me to prove I was the one to do it, or are you more ancient than you look?”

  Vampires die in one of two ways. Those over a hundred years old turn to goo. Those under a hundred leave a corpse behind. According to my recent research it seemed to have something to do with human lifetimes. If vamps lived beyond what would naturally have been their allotted years, then their bodies disintegrated when they were killed. The stains were nearly impossible to remove from carpeting or clothing. Believe me, I’d tried.

  “Oh, it was a rumor,” I agreed. “But I’ve had a few changes in my life recently that have altered a few things. I’m not quite as helpless as I might look.”

  “All I see is a disgusting black-eyed monster who needs to die.”

  “Sticks and stones, cue ball.”

  “I’m going to kill you.” He raised the stake.

  “Drop it,” I said very firmly, holding eye contact with him.

  He dropped the weapon and then looked down at it with confusion. “What the hell?”

  One of my abilities as a nightwalker was mind control over weak-minded humans. Amy called it my “thrall.” I could tell with a glance that this guy might have lots of muscles on the surface, but cotton balls between his temples. The thrall didn’t work on everybody, but it was a neat trick when it did.

  “Why are you taunting her?” Shaggy whimpered. “We gotta get out of here, man. Now!”

  Instead of taking his friend’s wise advice, Baldy lunged at me. I easily grabbed him by his throat and he gasped for breath as I dug my fingernails in on either side of his Adam’s apple.

  My vision narrowed and some more of my nightwalker’s darkness bled through into my conscious mind.

  Kill him, it suggested in a helpful manner.

  “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you,” I said evenly.

  The hunter replied with a gurgle. His face was turning purple.

  It would be so easy to squash this pathetic excuse for a human as if he were no more than an annoying insect.

  The unexpectedly dark, murderous thought made me falter a bit and loosen my hold on him. I wasn’t a killer. I hadn’t planned on doing anything but scaring the crap out of these two—although, I hoped, not literally—before I sent them scurrying away.

  “Let him go!” Shaggy pleaded, obviously convinced I was about to tear his friend’s throat out with a flick of my wrist. “Don’t kill him. Please!”

  “Why not?” I grappled for control of myself and knew it was my nightwalker’s fault. She really wanted to kill this guy. After all, hunters didn’t care who they killed. Would it really be that big a loss?

  Shaggy was crying openly now. “Because… because I love him! I love you, Mark! I’m sorry I never told you. I’ve been waiting for the right moment, but it never happened. I can’t lose you. Not now. Not like this!”

  There was complete silence in the alley for a long moment.

  And then, “I love… you… too, Cal.”

  I raised an eyebrow. Wasn’t expecting that. I loosened my grip on Baldy’s throat a little more.

  Vampire hunters in love. Terrific.

  “You… you love me?” Cal sounded surprised. “Since when?”

  “Since we… first met… at Clancy’s.” He gasped for breath. “Remember the eighteen beers… we drank… that night? The game of pool? Comparing our… kill counts?”

  Cal’s expression turned wistful. “Like it was only yesterday.” He looked pleadingly at me.

  “Please, let him go. We’ll leave this city forever. We promise, don’t we, Mark?”

  Mark struggled to n
od. “Yeah, we promise.”

  I eyed him skeptically. “Seriously?”

  He nodded. “Maybe we could go to Los Angeles, or something. Open a little Oceanside bar. It’s always been a dream of mine.”

  Their eyes met. “That sounds really nice,” Cal agreed.

  After another moment, I released Mark. The red imprint of my hand on his throat was oddly satisfying.

  “Fine,” my voice was shaky. “Go. I won’t try to stop you. But I swear, if I see you in town after tonight, then all bets are off.”

  The two hunters embraced and then ran out of the alley together.

  What the hell was this? I thought. A freaking romance novel?

  I felt a warm hand on my arm. It was the fledgling.

  “Thank you! That was so amazing. You’re so strong and brave.”

  I cleared my throat. “It’s a work in progress, but thanks.” I opened my purse and reached inside to retrieve my chain with trembling fingers, knowing I had to get it back on ASAP.

  Every moment it was off my neck was a risk—as evidenced by my nearly killing the hunter.

  And he would have totally deserved it, my inner nightwalker reminded me.

  Exactly.

  I frowned at the thought.

  I paused to look at the fledgling. “You need to be more careful out here all alone, you know. It’s dangerous.”

  “My sire—” Her voice hitched and she covered her face with her hands and began to sob.

  “He… he doesn’t want me anymore. I wanted to be with him forever but now I’m all alone.”

  “It’ll get better.”

  She shook her head. “Maybe the hunters should have killed me. They almost did.” She reached up to her forehead, which had a small gash on it, and pulled her hand away to inspect the blood. “They whacked me pretty hard.”

  A sensation of warmth and wooziness moved through me.

  “Well…” I braced my shoulder against the wall to steady myself. “You need to be more careful. It’s too bad your sire was a jerk, but it happens. Find some new friends to help you out—”

  “Like you?” she asked hopefully.

  My head felt very cloudy. “Like me, or there are… there are lots of other helpful vamps in the city.” I swallowed hard. “It’s really warm out tonight, isn’t it?”

  “It’s February.”

  “Hot for February.”

  The fledgling looked at me strangely. “Are you feeling all right?”

  My purse dropped to the ground as the warmth continued to course through me. “I’m just fine.”

  She squinted at me. “Your black eyes are a bit freaky.”

  The slight cloudiness in my mind turned to thick fog.

  “Black eyes are a warning sign. Even the nicest vampires are dangerous when their eyes turn black. Consider that your first lesson in survival.”

  Something in the tone of my voice made her take a quick step away from me. She was trembling again.

  “Uh…” She gulped. “So I think I’m going to, like, leave now.”

  She gave me a look that could only be described as fearful and then nervously began to walk around me. I reached out and grabbed her by the throat much as I’d done before with the hunter. She made a scared, strangled sound.

  The blood flowed from her forehead like honey. So warm, so alive… so tempting. My vision narrowed more than it already had.

  “P-please…” she stuttered. “Please d-don’t hurt me.”

  Why did she think I was going to hurt her?

  Because you are going to hurt her, the nightwalker inside me said.

  It was as if I could see myself, but from miles away. The rational me was far away now and I was yelling and frantically waving my arms, scared for the girl, scared for myself. My chain had been off for too long. My nightwalker had taken control now—and she was very hungry.

  I pushed the fledgling up against the wall, focused only on one thing—the gentle pulse at the side of her throat. I felt my fangs elongate. Normally a vampire’s fangs were small and barely noticeable—sharper than a human’s canines, but nothing that would raise any alarms if you didn’t know what you were looking at.

  But a hungry vampire… well, that was a different story. Whether at her core she was a good vamp or a bad vamp, the hunger that raced through her body turned her fangs into the perfect weapon meant to sink into soft, warm skin to get what she desired most.

  Human blood was necessary for survival, but vampire blood was addictive and decadent—

  like dessert, like alcohol, like a drug.

  And no matter how much the normal me screamed or fought, the nightwalker’s need to feed would win out. It was clear, focused, and so very natural. And there was no way to predict if the fledgling would survive when it was all said and done. Not tonight. Not with the way I currently felt.

  My lips peeled back from sharp fangs as I pushed the fledgling’s head to the side, swept back evidence of her bad dye job, and grazed the surface of her skin.

  The very next moment something yanked me away from her and I staggered across the alley. I turned with a hiss. There was a dark figure standing in the shadows.

  He wore a red mask that covered most of his face.

  The man glanced at the fledgling. “Leave now.”

  Without needing to be told twice, my potentially delicious bleached blond meal ran out of the alley. I couldn’t see straight. I was so hungry. It blinded me to everything else. My thoughts were cloudy and my darkened gaze now locked on the stranger’s throat.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he said, his voice low.

  But I was thinking about it—in my foggy kind of way. The anger at being interrupted filled me and I clenched my fists at my sides. I moved toward him, my focus never leaving the side of his neck. “Let me guess. You’re the Red Devil? The real one?”

  He took a step further into shadow so all I could see was his outline. “I am.”

  “So that means you’re my bodyguard now.”

  “Correct.”

  “I don’t need a bodyguard.” My eyes narrowed. “As you can see.”

  “All I see is a stupid woman who should be wearing the gold chain that dampens behavior like this. You could have killed that fledgling.”

  Stupid? A flash of anger cut through me. Did a pathetic excuse for a vampire vigilante just call me stupid?

  I really didn’t like it when people called me stupid.

  “You need to mind your own business,” I hissed through clenched teeth.

  “This is my business.”

  Normally—since Thierry hadn’t exactly been very forthcoming with the details—I would have been curious to know more about who this guy was and where he came from, but I’d had enough talking. I walked directly toward him. He glared down at me through his mask. I registered nothing except his heartbeat and the knowledge that warm blood coursed just beneath his skin. Everything else was background noise. I slid my hands up his firm chest and he didn’t resist or try to pull away.

  I went up on tiptoes to whisper into his ear. “I bet you taste very good.”

  The moment before my fangs would have sunk into his throat, his hands came around my upper arms like iron vises. He pushed me away, turned me around, and before I could do anything about it, he slammed me up against the cold hard wall.

  I tried to fight him, but I was in an awkward position. He crouched for a moment and then got back to his feet. Something cold and thin pressed against my throat.

  My eyes widened. Was he going to strangle me? Maybe try to decapitate me? According to my research, that was one of the most effective methods to kill a vampire if you didn’t mind the wet work.

  But nothing painful happened. The very next moment he let me go. I felt at my throat to find the gold chain he must have retrieved from my open purse on the ground and put back on me. The hunger and darkness left in a near-painful whoosh and my knees buckled.

  I had to fight to remain standing.

  The Red Devil�
�s back was now toward me.

  “Don’t let this happen again,” he growled.

  When he left, I sank to the ground, one hand on my chain and the other over my mouth to cover my shock.

  Shit. That was close. That was too damned close. I’d been mad about what the Red Devil had said before, calling me stupid. But he was absolutely right.

  I could have killed that girl. And if he hadn’t stopped me I think I would have.

  So much for coming to her rescue.

  Chapter 3

  S arah!” George exclaimed when I returned to the club. “We’ve been worried about you.”

  I glanced at Amy, who was still on the dance floor, attempting an awkward, high-heeled version of the Running Man. “Yeah, it looks like it.”

  “Amy hides her concern really well. Where have you been?”

  Secretly meeting with Thierry. Trying to save an innocent, but badly dressed fledgling.

  Going homicidal and nearly making the fledgling more than just a fashion victim. Getting reamed out by the Red Devil.

  All of the above.

  “I was in the washroom,” I told him instead.

  “For twenty minutes?”

  I put a hand over my stomach. “You do not want to know the details. Trust me.”

  He made a sour face. “Forget I asked.”

  I would never take my chain off again. Ever. Stamped it, no erasies. I twisted my finger around the very necessary piece of jewelry.

  George gave me a thorough look. “Now that you mention it, you don’t look so good.”

  “Really?” I said dryly. “Because I feel like a million bucks.”

  He crossed his arms. “Then the inflation rate is not in your favor. Do you want to leave?

  Had enough with the partying for one night?”

  I let out a long, shuddery breath. “To put it mildly.”

  I felt sick and ashamed by what had happened. And sweaty. And miserable. And horrifically embarrassed. And scared. And… well, that basically covered it.

  That was a whole smorgasbord of emotions to deal with at one time so I knew the stress showing through on my face was impossible to hide.

  Amy pranced off the dance floor and made a beeline over to us. “Hey! You’re back. Want to dance?”