Crossed (18 page)

“Does my nose deceive me,” Scrythax asked, “or do I smell a Courtney?”

II
 
    
    
IF ERIC IS IN PARIS,
THEN LISETTE IS IN . . .
AS TOLD BY GRETA AND TALBOT

    18    

GRETA:

DADDY’S GIRL

A walking dead man crossed the road at the corner of Fourteenth Street and Vicar Avenue. Shifting position on the roof of the old Greymont Hotel, I held a brass spyglass up to my eye so I could watch the expression on his face. His body looked young, but he wore it like an old man. It revealed him to be a vampire even before he was close enough for the death smell to give him away. Fresh from the kill, blood ran hot through his veins. High on life, but not for long.

If my dad were home I wouldn’t have been able to do this, not actually make the kill. Daddy doesn’t hunt vampires. He only likes to end them when they get in his way. Dad doesn’t like it when I hunt them, either, but he went to Paris without me. He should have known I’d get bored. He even took Mom and Auntie Beatrice with him, but I wasn’t mad.

My prey walked on, eyes on the open lot in which he’d parked. His car was safely stowed in the parking deck at the Pollux next to two others I’d stolen from him. Not seeing it, he panicked. I would have, too, in his place. Three nights running he had gone out, killed, and come back to find his car missing.
This was night number three. He pulled out his cell phone and I took careful aim. Even with vampire strength, a .357 Magnum has a noticeable kick. Guns are wonderful. Bullets won’t kill any vampire more powerful than a Drone, but they sound loud as hell to our preternaturally sensitive ears. That’s why I was wearing earplugs.

Careful to squeeze the trigger, not pull it, I opened fire. My first shot trashed the tiny new Nokia; the second hit him in the left eye. I don’t see with my eyes anymore, ’cause vampirism takes vision to a whole new level of mystic cool, but I’d watched this idiot for three nights and it was clear that he still felt human inside. He was still using his physical brain, the meat brain, and the meat body. That’s why he walked like an old man. Only Daddy pulls that off without looking stupid. This guy was just some schmuck who couldn’t comprehend what he had become.

Sliding the gun into my thigh holster, I leapt from my perch, propelling myself into range, and felt his power. Mom says that vampires show up like little holograms hovering in the air when she sees them, but for me, it’s like a little dossier file opens in my head, complete with a short bio and a snapshot. His name was David. He’d spent the last hundred years as a vampire. He’d kept up with the times through about the seventies. He still listened to disco. I was unimpressed. David was about as strong as me. We were both Vlads, but he was outclassed. I’ve never met a vampire who can do the things I can do. Not even Daddy.

It’s like some mystic law that Vlads and Masters can sense each other, but not me. Nobody senses me unless I want them to. When Dad is around I let people sense me. But when I’m hunting, I keep quiet, tightly drawn into my own head. They assume that I’m a Soldier or a Drone, because they don’t get that telltale head warning. Sucks to be them.

I hit the asphalt, the impact forcing me down on one knee.
He spotted me. Claws sprouted from his fingertips, dark little thorns of bone and blood. Mine are prettier, long sharp fingernails that gleam in the night. The black nail polish goes all the way down to the base. Hard to put it on that way, but half-done claws look trashy.

“Come to Daddy, little girl.” He laughed, a low throaty challenge meant to make him seem menacing. My eyes glowed crimson, lit from within. Only Dad can call me that. It made me wish that I could’ve shot him with
El Alma Perdida,
Daddy’s magic gun, but he’d taken it with him. The ghost inside the revolver doesn’t like me anyway. I can’t see him, but I can tell he thinks I’m weak . . . just like this vampire, David.

Underestimation is a powerful tool. I use it well. The more powerful the vamp, the harder they are to kill. Hunting Drones is no fun at all. Soldiers are okay if they’ve been around awhile, and Masters can be challenging if they’re smart, but nothing beats going after a Vlad. It takes a hunter trial and error to find that one special way to send one of us to our final death, unless that hunter is me. All I have to do is read a Vlad on three successive nights and their special weakness pops into my brain like Christmas morning. It works on everyone, except Daddy.

This was the third night for David, here, and I now knew that he could only be killed by decapitation followed by submersion in running water until his body turned to ash and floated away. I didn’t even need the sack I’d left on the rooftop or the flamethrower that I had stashed in the guard shack. Telly, the parking garage guard, was a smart boy. He didn’t speak much English, but he spoke self-preservation like a native. I did what I wanted there and Telly never complained or said a word. He just smiled and nodded like a good human should. He had a cute butt, too. I wondered why he never asked me out.

I paid too much attention to Telly and David almost laid a claw on me. He was a better fighter than I expected, but far
too slow, and he let my boobs distract him. I always dress to inspire when I’m hunting. Braless in a cut-off white T-shirt that’s a size too small, I was deadly to the best of men that night. A pair of form-fitting black jeans revealed the top of my pelvic bone from the front and a flash of my thong from behind. I planted my combat boot upside David’s head, sending him up and over the guard shack. Telly ran out of the booth and across the street. Part of me hoped he’d be back tomorrow. I’d been thinking of learning Spanish just so I could carry on a conversation with him while I was waiting for a mark.

David caught the edge of the shack with his fingertips, pulling himself gracefully onto the roof.

“Never cede the high ground, little girl,” he told me.

Even blind in one eye and half-deaf, he was cocky.

I drew the Magnum and shot him in the crotch. As he fell off the guard shack, I fired again, splattering the back of his left knee. It wouldn’t hurt long, but I didn’t need long. He lay on his back screaming; I took the opening. My gun clattered to the ground. Before he could stand I was on him.

Straddling David’s waist, I buried my fangs in his throat, tore out a hunk, and spat it onto the asphalt. Secondhand blood crossed my lips and it felt like I was stealing his kill, robbing him of the life he had taken tonight. Just like fruit, blood tastes sweeter when it’s stolen. He struggled, so I put my thumb into his other eye. He shrieked like a baby when it popped, the wetness running out of the socket and covering my hand. It’s good for the skin.

“Let me go and I’ll do anything you want,” he begged. Real men never beg. His daddy should have taught him that.

Blood ran down my chin when I let go of him. “I would,” I lied, “but you did a no-no. You said ‘Come to Daddy,’ but you’re not my daddy.” I smiled sweetly, let my fangs retract, my eyeglow fade. I leaned in as if I might kiss him. “My daddy would crush you like a motherfucking insect!” Eyes aglow,
fangs out, I slammed my forehead into his. Then I announced myself.

It’s something vampires can do, a demonstration of power that only other vamps can feel. They see your power, your age, and in David’s case, he cowered, a typical man, when he felt me. “You still use your meat brain, you useless ass. You still think like a human! You’re a disgrace!” Slicing through his shirt with my foreclaw, I cut all the way through the flesh below, pulling it back, exposing the sternum and pectoral muscles beneath. There’s a sweet spot in the sternum. If you hit it just right, you can crack it in half with one smooth motion. In humans, the good blood is in the veins, but vamps store most of the blood in their hearts. I don’t know how it all fits in there, but it does. I think they do it with magic, the same way they make microwave popcorn.

Cracking his chest reminded me of shelling peanuts back when I was alive. His heart filled my hands and his screams stopped abruptly when I pulled it free of his chest. Still warm, the blood tasted like murder on my tongue. It’s a messy business feeding on another vampire, but it’s not that different from eating crawfish. You just suck the heart instead of the head. If you don’t, you leave all the good stuff behind and it’s hardly worth the effort.

I didn’t notice Telly’s return until he touched my cheek with a warm wet washcloth and started gently wiping the blood from my face. He babbled as he wiped the redness from my chin and neck, hesitantly at first and then with more confidence. Telly thought he had me figured out. What was I in his eyes, some dark goddess that hunts her own kind to protect the humans? It didn’t matter. It would take David some time to repair the damage to his body without blood. I had time. Other nights I usually handed Telly a hundred-dollar bill or gave him a knowing smile; this night his reward got a bit more personal.

When we were done, he sawed David’s head off for me, his eyes tracking me like a heartsick puppy as I hauled the body into the storm sewer to take care of my fellow vampire’s final send-off. I held David under the polluted water. His flesh slowly disintegrated between my fingers and the guilt crept up on me. What Telly and I had done had been fun. It had felt wonderful and it had been a long time since I’d been with a man, but I shouldn’t have done it.