Almost to Die For (26 page)

The electric light glinted off their eyes, like cats’.

Vampires?

If they were, these two did not seem friendly.

I scooped up my books as fast as I could and craned my neck to locate an exit that would let me leave without going past them. But they were already to my table by the time I got my bag zipped and over my shoulder. One of them took my elbow in a vise grip.

“Time to go,” he told me. Then his lip curled as he added, “Princess.”

I tried to pull out of his grasp. “Let me go.”

He hissed, showing me his fangs. His friend shook his head. “Quickly,” the other said, glancing behind himself as though checking for something. “The guard will be here any minute.”

Did he mean Elias?

The other guy wrenched me toward the door. I kicked him in the shins, but to no avail. “Help!” But there was no sign of the computer woman or the barista. I shouted again, louder.

“No use,” the other said, coming up to take me by my other elbow. “We own St. Paul at night.”

Despite my fear, I almost laughed. No wonder St. Paul had a legendary reputation for rolling up its streets at night! People always made excuses about us being very Norwegian or very insular, but now it made a kind of sense. People were hiding from vampires.

I wished there were someone to see me now, when I needed help. Of course, there was no one. Maybe vampires exuded some kind of cloaking spell to keep the few people who might be out from noticing us.

Not knowing what else to do, I went limp, making them drag me out the door. They snarled and spat, but their strength was surprising and they managed to get me out into the street. Even though there was no one in sight, I kept yelling for help. Maybe if Elias was close by, he would hear me.

As panic raced along my veins, I felt coldness move slowly outward from my solar plexus. My heart rate slowed, calming me. A sharp pain in my gums signaled that my fangs had dropped. My limbs felt heavier, and I sensed my captors struggle more to propel me along. The night became less dark, and I was able to kick at their ankles with more precision and force. My vampire powers, apparently, were coming out to play.

They exchanged a worried glance, but tightened their grip.

A semitruck rattled down a distant street, but otherwise it was quiet enough that I could hear the click of the signal light as it switched to “walk.” Parked cars crowded along the curbs, hood to trunk, but their occupants were nowhere in sight.

“Where are you taking me?” I demanded, trying to sound authoritative.

“To your mother, the queen.”

M
y mother, the what?

They couldn’t really mean
my
mother, could they?

“You’re vampires, right?” I asked them, as I continued to try to delay our progress down the street. Their lips curled, so I corrected, “Knights of the dark realm, I mean.”

One of them spat. The other said, “We are knights in the service of the queen.”

Right, these guys were the ones who wanted to be slaves, slaves to the . . . oh my God, to the witches!

Was Mom queen of the witches?

She’d talked on and on about legitimacy and treaties. . . . You didn’t make treaties with just anyone, did you?

“My mother is the queen of witches?”

They looked at me like I had just asked if the night was black. I could almost read the “Duh” behind their eyes. “Of course.”

“But—but,” I sputtered, “there’s not supposed to be hierarchy. . . . It’s—it’s . . .” All just a cover for outsiders, I realized. By the way she bitched about them, the Elder Witches obviously had some power over my mom, but she had a lot of power in the coven. That’s why Mom insisted I had to pass the Initiation before she could explain about Ramses. That’s why Mom was so confident I’d pass, and why she kept insisting I get another chance.

“Holy crap,” I muttered.

They dragged me through a small park the size of a city block. A man-made river gurgled over brass-sculptured waterfalls. Birch trees dropped yellowing heart-shaped leaves on pavement and among the tufts of ornamental grass. We passed under a miniature band shell, and my shouts of protest reverberated enough to scare a squirrel up into a tree and launch a troop of pigeons into flight.

The vampire thugs brought me to the entrance of an office building. It was an older building with a stone facade. Decorative carvings ran along the edges of the windows and the rooftop. Only a few lights shone through small panes.

In order to get me inside, they had to open the door. One of them released his hold on me, which gave me an opportunity to wriggle from their grasp. I wedged my tennis shoes into the edges of the door. Splaying my arms out, I grabbed the frame and held tight. Now that I knew that it was Mom they were taking me to, I fought even harder. No way in hell was I going in there. She’d put another zombie spell on me, at the very least.

At that moment, the cavalry arrived, though it seemed more like a Mafia hit in retrospect.

From somewhere behind me, I heard the squeal of brakes. Car doors opened and slammed shut. Suddenly, the pressure behind me was gone. The guy yanking on my arms looked up in horror and fled. Panting from the exertion of my resistance, I spun around, ready to face whatever new threat had appeared.

Elias held a huge, silvery gun pointed at the chest of my former assailant. Two other men I didn’t recognize held him firmly. I was about to ask Elias what was going on when he made the sign of the cross over the Mormon-looking guy and pulled the trigger.

I cringed, expecting a loud explosion. But the gun must have had a silencer. There was a soft noise, and the guy’s body jerked where the bullet ripped through his chest.

A tiny gasp escaped my throat. I expected the guy to crumble to dust or do a vanish-except-for-his-clothes Obi-Wan Kenobi. Instead, he slumped limply. His eyes stretched wide in horror and shock, unblinking.

He was dead.

Had I been wrong about him? Had he been human after all? My stomach convulsed. The one weird thing was that there was no blood that I could see. You’d think with a gunshot wound at such close range, there’d be spatters everywhere. Did vampires bleed? Maybe he was a vampire, after all?

All I knew was that I felt sick. The longer I stared at the body, the more my stomach gurgled unhappily.

Elias slid his gun into a holster under his coat and made a motion to the two holding the body. They dragged him to the car and, quite unceremoniously, dumped him in the trunk.

Too horrified to really react, I let Elias gently lead me to the car. “We must go, my lady.”

“That guy is dead,” I said. My eyes stayed riveted to the trunk as Elias opened the car door for me. “You killed him. Shot him.”

Elias nodded patiently and helped me into the passenger-side seat. I went with no resistance. “It is regrettable,” he said. “I do not relish dispatching our own, but he chose his fate.”

“So he was a vampire . . . or demon,” I said, feeling strangely relieved. “You can just shoot demons?”

“If you have a special gun,” he said.

“Silver bullets?”

“Magic.” He closed my door. In the rearview mirror, I watched the two other vampires slide into the backseat, and had my first good look at them. One of them was an Asian man with long, flowing hair tied back into a ponytail. The very front of his forehead, where his bangs would be, was shaved. The other vampire was a black man with short-cropped hair. He gave me a wink and a smile when he noticed me watching them both. I returned the smile, though my mind was stuck on the image of a dead man being shoved into the trunk of this very car. I shivered at the thought of being so close to an actual corpse.

The door opened and Elias dropped easily into the driver’s seat. He turned and spoke to the two in the back in Greek. Okay, it could have been Japanese or German, but suffice it to say it wasn’t English and I had no idea what he said. They did, apparently, because they nodded as though in understanding.

“Where’s the other guy? ” I asked. I thought I’d spotted three others before.

“Gal,” Elias corrected lightly as he started the engine. “The lieutenant has gone after your other attacker. With luck, she will stop him before he alerts the queen.”

“Who is my mom—did you know?”

Elias opened his mouth with a look of surprise, but then a commotion from inside the building distracted his attention. I followed his gaze. A group of people could be seen running out the door I’d struggled so hard not to go through. Elias hit the gas. We sped away before they even hit the sidewalk.

“It appears the lieutenant failed,” Elias remarked drily.

The way the lights were timed in downtown, Elias made it only up the block before hitting a red. He hesitated only a second before shooting through the intersection. Even though there was no obvious cross-traffic, I squeezed my eyes shut until we made it across. Then I double-checked my seat belt.

I heard clicks from the back.

When I glanced in the rearview, the Asian guy gave me a better-safe-than-sorry shrug.

“What just happened?”

“I ran a red.”

“No, I meant back there.”

“You were nearly abducted, my lady,” Elias said.

“I know that, but why?”

“That part I don’t know.”

Suddenly, someone appeared in the middle of the street in front of us. Instinctively, Elias hit the brakes. I should’ve known it was a trap. No one is out on the streets of St. Paul after dark. Too late, we discovered the ambush. The moment he stopped, we were surrounded by vampires.

“Time to surrender, Captain.” It was Mom’s voice.

E
lias revved the engine menacingly. I put my hand on the steering wheel. “That’s my mom! Don’t even think about it.” “How about I just back over the ones behind us?”

“Or the ones on the sidewalk,” one of the guys in the backseat suggested.

“Be serious,” I said, though I thought they might have been. I unbuckled my belt. “I’m going out there.”

Elias touched my knee imploringly. “This is a mistake,” he said. “But if you face them, we will stand beside you.”

The two guys in the back nodded. From somewhere, the Asian guy produced an elegant katana and the other a curved scimitar.

What was this, a video game? And anyway, who brings a sword to a gunfight?

The threat, however, was obvious.

“I don’t want a fight. It’s not going to come to violence,” I said. “Maybe I can talk to Mom, get her to understand.”

“That we should be free?” Elias raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps you are a better negotiator than all the emissaries of the dark realm.”

“She’s my mom,” I said, reaching for the latch. “I think I’ve got a bit of pull.”

I hoped I did, because there were a whole lot of them and only four of us. I swallowed and closed the door behind me. The sound bounced hollowly through the tall buildings.

Mom stepped forward. It would have made a better scene if she’d changed into something billowy and queenly, but she still wore her academic drag: a knee-length skirt, sensible shoes, a blouse, and a shapeless coat. Her glasses glinted under the street-lights, obscuring her eyes.

I walked around to the front of the car to meet her. Elias instantly appeared at my side. The other two, literally, watched my back.

A grim smile spread across Mom’s face. “I see you brought me the Praetorian Guard. A nice coup.”

“This is no surrender,” Elias said. “We parley.”

Snickers drifted through the collection of vampires, but Mom raised her hand to stifle them. “Parley accepted,” she said.

“What’s a parley?” I whispered to Elias.

“Think of it as a negotiation on the field of battle,” he said. I noticed he’d taken his gun out of its holster at some point. He held it loosely at his side. It was some sort of semiautomatic. I had no idea how many bullets were in a gun like that, but even if he was a crack shot, I doubted he could take out all the loyalist vampires before they got us.