Dead End Dating (32 page)

What could I say? I was the complete package. Looks and brains. Satisfaction washed through me, followed by a rush of panic as I ducked to the side to avoid being spotted. Seconds ticked by until I felt the vamp’s attention shift back to the woman handcuffed to the bed.

I peaked around the edge in time to see him trail his hands over Melissa’s body. She arched into his touch, tugging at her restraints, her eyes glazed, her face a mask of hunger. She liked what he was doing, and she wanted more.

His hands.

His mouth.

His fangs.

Duh. She’d been vamped. Reduced to a quivering mass of need and only Super Vamp could give her what she so desperately thought she wanted. But it wasn’t real. It was a vampire-induced illusion, and by the time she came to her senses, it would be too late.

She would be a vampire herself. And doomed to the sun’s painful light.

All right, already. Enough with the doom and gloom. Do something.

I moved then, as fast as my preternatural bare feet could carry me, and rushed back around to the front of the house. I said a prayer—and hoped the Big Vamp Upstairs had a free moment—and rang the doorbell.

“Hi.” I smiled brightly when the door swung open and Super Vamp stared back at me. His gaze was dark and hungry and very unhappy. Whew. He hadn’t bitten her yet. “I’m Lil.” My smile widened. “Your neighbor. I’ve been meaning to stop by and welcome you to the neighborhood. You just moved in, right?”

“A few weeks ago. But I won’t be here long. I’m just renting. I travel. On business.”

“That’s no reason to be a stranger.” I smiled again and decided to go for broke. It wasn’t like he wouldn’t know I was a vampire. A born one, for that matter. “It’s so nice to have one of my own kind nearby. I can’t tell you how lonely I’ve been living around here with all these humans.” My voice lowered a notch. “And werewolves.” I shook my head. “And I won’t even mention Mrs. Abercrombie on the corner. You don’t even want to know what she does once the sun goes down. It’s really tough being a vampire these days.”

He stared suspiciously at me before he finally shrugged. “It’s certainly not like the older days.”

“And how long ago would that be?”

“Eight hundred years.”

I whistled, and my mind started to race. If things didn’t work out with Francis, maybe I could turn this guy into viable eternity mate material…Nah. Geeks were one thing. Vicious, murdering vamps…well, who could trust them?

“I’d love to dish. Why don’t I come in and we can have a nice long talk about old times—”

“No. I’m busy. I don’t have time.”

“Not even for a little visit?”

“No.”

“Just settling down to dinner?”

“Something like that.”

“I’ll join you. I hate to eat alone.”

“I like it.”

“Come on.” I made a face. “It’s no fun to eat all by your lonesome.” What was I saying? Vamps always ate alone. Unless you counted the entrée, that is. “Be sociable.”

He stiffened, and his frown deepened. “I don’t want to be sociable.”

“Lighten up.”

“I don’t want to lighten up.” He shook his head. “Listen, get out of here. I like my privacy.” Before I could say another word, he slammed the door shut in my face.

I rang the bell again and it lurched open before the
ding-ding
managed to fade.

“What?” he growled.

“I was wondering if you’d like to buy some Girl Scout cookies.”

“
What?
”

Yeah,
what
?

“I, um, that is, I thought you might want to take them to the office for your, um, colleagues. Or maybe you’ve got a maid or a gardener. Why, I’d bet they would love a box of Thin Mints. Talk about terrific.” When he stared at me as if I’d grown a halo, I rushed on, “Not that I know firsthand. I certainly can’t eat cookies, as you well know. But I do have human acquaintances who say they’re majorly delicious.” Okay, so it sounded lame, but he looked really pissed and I was really nervous and I had to say
something.

“You don’t have any cookies with you.” His gaze swept me from my head to my bare toes.

“Well, no. But I could go and get them. In fact, you could go with me. You can pick out your own.”

“Get lost.” He slammed the door.

I pressed the button again. “I’m taking that as a no,” I told him when he hauled open the door again.

“
Hell,
no.” He slammed the door again.

I was about to lay on the bell again when I heard Ty’s deep voice behind me.

“Where is she?”

I whirled to find him standing so close that my chin bumped his chest. I jumped. “Geez, it’s about time.” I pointed around the house. “She’s back there.”

We reached the wall of windows just in time to see the vampire walk back into the bedroom. He muttered something about “nosy fuckin’ neighbors and Girl Scout cookies” and Ty shot me a
what-the-hell?
glance.

I shrugged. “What can I say? I’m not used to thinking on my feet.”

The vamp moved closer, and Ty drew a very deadly looking forty-caliber Sig from his pocket.

“That’s not going to do anything,” I told him.

“It’s going to slow him down enough for me to subdue him and get some answers.”

“Oh.”

“Step back.” He aimed. The red beam caught the Super Vamp square in the shoulder.

Ty was about to pull the trigger when the doorbell rang.

Everything happened really fast after that.

The vampire flew into a major rage. He whirled. Ty pulled the trigger. Glass shattered. Someone screamed.

And kept screaming.

My mouth opened even wider when I saw Francis framed in the bedroom doorway—wait a second.
Francis?
Evie followed on his heels, and the now-wounded vampire turned on them.

Ty lunged through the broken window, but he was too far away. The wounded vampire grabbed Francis and threw him against the far wall. He grabbed Evie next. She flew through the air and landed in a heap in the corner.

Frank got back up. Evie didn’t.

I reached her limp body just as Francis launched a counterattack (go Francis). He took Murder Vamp down with a running tackle and a head butt to the middle, and Ty joined him.

Ty got the murdering vamp into a choke hold while Francis landed some pretty ballsy punches to the guy’s jaw. Murder Vamp managed to pull his legs up and send Francis flying, then he chomped down on Ty’s arm, which hugged his throat.

I wasn’t exactly sure what happened next. I just knew that one minute Murder Vamp was fighting Ty off him and the next the murdering vamp was flying across the room. (Ty packed quite a punch.) He landed in a tangle of arms and legs at my feet.

That should have been the end of it. It would have been if he’d been human. But no. This guy was a vamp. As in pigheaded. As in he just had to get back up.

He staggered to his feet, and I felt my hand close around a large shard of glass from the shattered window.

“Hey.” I tapped him on the shoulder and he turned on me.

I thrust my hand forward and the glass sank into his chest. He went stiff; his mouth opened and white foam dribbled out (ewww) and then he turned to dust. Flesh. Bones. And poof, he was gone.

I angsted all of five seconds—hey, this guy was E-V-I-L—and then whirled toward my fallen assistant.

“Evie?” I felt for a pulse. It thrummed against my fingertips, and my panic eased.

“What happened?” she asked a few seconds later when her eyelids fluttered open. “Did he hit me?” She glanced around, but there was no
he
to be seen. “Where did he go?”

“It’s a long story.” One I wasn’t about to tell her. “What are you doing here?”

“I couldn’t sit at the office and do nothing while you went after a dangerous murderer. I had to help you.”

“What about Francis?” I motioned toward the vampire who was struggling to free a now squirming Melissa. When Super Vamp had vanished, so had his hold on Melissa. She was now shrieking. Her high-pitched voice nearly drowned out the sounds of approaching sirens.

“He called right after you text-messaged me. I was upset, and I sort of blurted out what was going on. When he found out Melissa had been snatched, he got a little crazy. Did you know he liked her?”

“He mentioned something a while back.” And I’d tried to dissuade him. Human. Vamp. It wasn’t supposed to happen.

“He picked me up,” Evie went on, “and we came to help.”

Melissa’s shrieking faded into a sob as she stared at the vampire uncuffing her left wrist. “You really got crazy”—Melissa stared at Francis—“when you heard I’d been abducted?”

“Well, yeah. You’re nice. I didn’t want anything to happen to you.”

“I didn’t think you liked me. You never called.”

“I didn’t think you wanted me to call.”

“Didn’t Lil tell you…” Her voice trailed off as both pairs of eyes fixed on me.

I shrugged. “People make mistakes, you know. Nobody’s perfect.” I busied myself helping Evie to her feet while Ty went to the front of the house to greet the police.

Humans and vamps. Go figure.

A half hour later, I stood out front in my bare feet at the edge of the driveway with about a dozen neighbors. The house crawled with police and FBI. Yellow crime scene tape surrounded the perimeter. An ambulance sat near the curb. Melissa lay on a nearby stretcher. Two paramedics tended to several small cuts on her arms and torso—courtesy of the shattered window—while Francis held her hand.

Another ambulance was just disappearing around the corner, Evie tucked safely inside. She had a minor concussion, which required twenty-four hours of observation at a nearby hospital.

I’d wanted to go with her, but I’d had to hang around to give a statement. Which, hopefully, I would be able to give sometime this century.

I eyed the cluster of officers near the front door and gave a little wave. “Hey, remember me?”

“How could I forget?” Ty’s deep voice slid into my ears, and I turned to find him standing beside me. “You were really something in there.”

“I didn’t really do anything. I mean, I
did
stake him, but I had no choice. Otherwise, I didn’t do all that much.”

“You screamed. Loud. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a vampire scream before.”

I shrugged. “Just one of my many talents.”

“Seriously, you did good tonight.”

I’d managed to stake another vamp and end his existence without losing my lunch or collapsing into a crying heap. I guess that was sort of good.

Even if it didn’t feel so good.

“Personally,” Ty went on, “I would have stalled with something besides Girl Scout cookies, but hey, that’s just me.”

I smiled despite the strange sadness weighing on my chest. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“Yeah.” He shook his head as if surprised. A grin lifted the corner of his mouth. “It did. It sure as hell did.”

Silence settled between us for a few moments, and I shifted my gaze back to the house. But not my attention. That was centered fully, completely, on the man next to me. And the fact that he stood close, just an inch shy of actually touching me. Awareness zipped up my spine.

“You look cold.” Soft leather slithered over my bare arms as he settled his jacket over my shoulders. His intoxicating aroma surrounded me. “I’d give you my boots,” he went on, “but I don’t think they’d fit. Then again, the cold probably doesn’t really bother you.”

I realized then that Ty didn’t know any more about born vamps than I did about made ones. Which, in this particular case, was a good thing.

“Actually, I am a
little
cold, but I’ll make do.” I snuggled deeper inside the jacket and faked a little teeth chattering. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” He looked as if he wanted to say something else. Or touch me. Or both.

Please!

So maybe the cold
was
getting to me. I was delusional. Out there. I wasn’t supposed to want Ty and he wasn’t supposed to want me and the world just wasn’t supposed to work that way—

“I’ll be back.” Ty’s deep voice cut into my mental rambling and jerked me back to the present.

“Will you?” The case was now solved. Closed. History.

“Sure. I have to give the police a statement and then I need to talk to forensics about the suspect’s body.”

“There is no body.”

“Exactly.” Before I knew what was happening, I felt his lips on my forehead as he gave me a quick kiss. “I’ll be back.”

A girl could only hope.

“So you’re a matchmaker?” one of the neighbors asked after Ty had walked away.

I turned toward her, and she flashed a card that Evie—flat on her back on a gurney—had handed out.

I nodded and she added, “My husband passed away last year and I’ve been meaning to get back into the swing of things. But it’s hard, you know? I mean, dating can be murder.”

My mind raced back through tonight’s events, and I stared down at my blood-spattered tank visible between the edges of Ty’s leather jacket. “You don’t know the half of it.”

T
he pleasure of your company is requested at the commitment ceremony of Mr. Wilson Harvey to Miss Nina Wellburton…