Netherworld: Drop Dead Sexy (2 page)

“Poor little thing.”

“Is that a person?” No wonder I didn’t
want to look at it. My subconscious had known it was a dead body. I
inched a little closer, fascinated despite myself. Buck the deputy
still leaned up against the tree, though he’d stopped barfing. I
didn’t want to see the corpse’s face, but curiosity got the better
of me.

The splash of teal was a dress. It had
gold and burgundy trim, the skirt rumpled up to the
black-stockinged knees of the dead woman. “Hey, I have a dress that
looks like that,” I told Dan.

“I know,” he said softly. “You’re
wearing it.”

I looked down at myself. Darn if I
wasn’t wearing that dress, a favorite of mine. I’d gotten it on
sale, marked down from $150 to just 40 bucks. Lucky me. The
matching jacket, like my shoes, was missing.

Lana whispered loudly to Taylor. “She
doesn’t know.”

Something in the psychic’s voice gave
me a jolt of alarm. I suddenly needed to see the dead woman lying
on the ground. I had to see her face after all. I started towards
Sheriff Grayson.

Dan grabbed me and pulled me close.
“You don’t want to do that, baby girl.”

“Why not? You said they can’t see me. I
won’t get in trouble.”

“They can’t see your spirit.” He nodded
at the body. “You’ve probably been out here several days,
Brandilynn. It’s been warm and raining. They’re just lucky the wild
pigs didn’t find you yet.”

Oh, this dream was so not turning out,
not even with Dan the Marlboro Man holding me tight against his
broad chest. “You’re saying that’s me over there? That body is
mine?”

Lana pulled a tissue from her pocket
and dabbed at her eyes. To Taylor she whispered, “Dan’s telling her
now. This is not going to be good.”

Dan’s hand snared my chin, forcing me
to look at him. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but you’re dead. The Fulton
Falls Ripper got you.”

I snorted, ignoring the sick twist in
my gut. “This is the nuttiest dream I ever had.”

When Dan didn’t let me go, when his
chocolate eyes remained locked on mine, when his arm tightened
almost painfully around my waist, it took all I had to quell the
rising panic. I jabbered to hold the terror at bay. “The Ripper
only kills prostitutes. I’m

an escort. I don’t sleep with all my
customers. Shoot, I don’t sleep with even ten percent of my
customers. I sure as heck don’t do vampires. I’m not a
whore.”

“She thinks she’s dreaming.”

I jerked my head free of Dan’s grip and
twisted around to glare at the leaky-eyed Lana. “Would you stop
with the play-by-play? Gosh, you’re like John Madden over
there.”

I pushed away from Dan, and he
reluctantly let me go. Good thing; it spared him from me punching
him in the mouth. Of course, with those rugged good looks, a bloody
lip would only enhance his uber-manliness.

I stomped over to body and discovered
the woman lay facedown. No way to prove it wasn’t me beyond all
doubt. Yeah, the dress looked just like the one I wore right now.
So what? I’d bought it off the clearance rack last fall. Who knew
how many women owned the same dress?

The black hose with the sexy seam up
the back were like mine too. Didn’t prove a thing. The rumpled
skirt hid my favorite garter belt … or it would have, had it been
me. It couldn’t be me though, because the body looked thicker than
mine. In fact, it pushed hard at the seams of the dress. I worked
hard to maintain my size four figure. Of course the body had
bloated, but someone my size wouldn’t get that big,
right?

The woman’s terribly frizzed hair
matched my shade of copper penny red. I always iron my hair after
spraying it into submission with three different smoothing
products. Southeast Georgia’s humidity plays heck with a girl’s
tresses. I would never walk out of my apartment with my hair
looking like that.

“Sorry, but I don’t really see it,” I
said out loud. “I guess I can understand how you might think it’s
me, since you don’t know me. And even if it was, I can be dead in a
dream and it won’t matter.”

My cheeks tickled something fierce. I
rubbed at them, surprised to find wetness on my hands. Why was I
crying? It was just a dream. Just a stupid nightmare that had been
going on and on for what felt like forever now.

Just a dream.

Dan gathered me in his big, strong arms
again from behind. “Let’s go, baby girl.”

Lana spoke softly. “Go with Dan,
sweetie. It’s all over now. You’re going to be okay.”

Taylor added, “Death isn’t the end.
You’ll see.”

Dan’s breath warmed my ear. “Hold on
and don’t let go. This’ll only take a sec.”

Suddenly the world around me blurred in
the muted earth tones of brown and green and froze in a smear.
Then, as if someone had thrown a bucket of multicolored paint over
our surroundings, hues of golden sunlight mixed with ivory splashed
around me.

Chapter Two

Our surroundings solidified into a
library that looked familiar, though I was sure I’d never been in
it before. Lamps cast soft gold illumination over the long wooden
tables that marched in a row down the center of the main room.
Banks of gleaming wooden shelves filled with books surrounded us.
An older woman stood before one shelf, reading a slim book. I
blinked to see she wore Victorian-era clothing. Perhaps she was
part of a presentation?

I continued my examination of my
surroundings, turning a slow circle. I identified the familiar
comforting musty smell from my childhood when I’d go to children’s
story time. I also scented an undertone of smoke, as if someone had
burned paper recently.

I could have spent hours sitting on the
nearby leather couch, reading everything in sight. Cozy, welcoming
and eerily familiar. I fell in love with the place right off the
bat.

“Where are we?” I asked Dan.

He released me, stepped back and looked
around the room with an aura of contentment. “It’s the original
Fulton Falls library.”

I looked around, now recognizing the
room from the pictures that decorated the only library I’d ever
known in Fulton Falls. “That burned down decades ago in the Big
Fire of ’36.”

“Right. The current Fulton Falls is
built on top of the old Fulton Falls.”

“You mean we’re
underground?”

“Right.”

I listened hard, noting the silence. I
heard a faraway hum, the whisper of traffic noise coming from a
great distance. That was all.

Were we breathing? I watched Dan to see
if his chest rose and fell. He looked back at me, his expression
calmly waiting. I couldn’t tell if he breathed or not. And I … I
couldn’t sense my own respiration. No flow of air moved my chest. I
waited for my heart to lurch in fear, but it too refused to
announce itself.

I’ve never been one to shrink from bad
news, even when every cell of my being screams for me to run like
all get out. I would face this head on too. “Am I dead?”

Dan took my hand and tugged me to the
couch. We sat next to each other, close enough that our thighs
touched. He put an arm around my shoulders. “You really are dead,
Brandilynn. I’m sorry.”

I looked at him. Felt him beside me. I
sensed pressure, the sensation of touch, but no warmth from him.
“You’re dead too?”

“For the last 22 years.”

Dead. I felt the truth of it. I wasn’t
having a nightmare. I, Brandilynn Payson, had died. Been murdered,
in fact, by the vampire serial killer who left his drained victims
in the pine farms all over Ford County.

But it made no sense that I had crossed
paths with the Fulton Falls Ripper. I should have been safe because
I wasn’t a street prostitute. I worked as an escort whose clients
were the most powerful men in Fulton Falls, as well as the rest of
the state of Georgia. I wasn’t one of those pathetic blood groupies
who offered themselves to the long-toothed. Still, the evil had
somehow found me.

I was dead.

Okay, I’m not in pain, and I’m not
burning in Hell. This isn’t so bad. I can handle it, right? Yep,
Miss Brandilynn is still here and still rocking this joint. No
problem.

Sure. No problem at all.

To Dan I said, “This is screwy as heck.
We’re ghosts?”

He nodded and watched me, as if waiting
for me to fly apart in a flood of tears.

Not me. Brandilynn Payson had her big
girl panties on. I may shed a few tears once in awhile, but I’m no
wuss.

“I was killed by the Fulton Falls
Ripper?”

“That’s right.” His arm tightened even
more.

I thought about it really hard. I felt
myself frown and automatically stopped. No frown lines. Then I
almost laughed. I was dead. No need to worry about looking my best
to survive now. Survival was a thing of the past.

“I don’t remember being killed,” I told
Dan. “You know, I can remember my day-to-day routine just fine. But
I can’t remember anything in particular right now.”

He nodded, his expression grave.
“Traumatic death often results in memory loss of the
event.”

I had the urge to kiss the seriousness
right off his face. He honestly looked that scrumptious. And sex
would be a wonderful way to delay thinking too hard about the
implications of my situation. Distraction beckoned, wanting to
replace the rising terror. Yes, it was much better to contemplate
screwing the man beside me. I dove headlong into the simplicity of
lust.

Dead and horny. How weird can a girl
be?

Fortunately, Dan felt awesomely right
as he held me. Bless his heart, he tried to shield me from the
worst news a person can get.

It hit me again. I’m dead.

I really needed to not think about
that.

Dan stroked my hair. He said, “We need
to try to recover your memory of what happened so we can catch the
killer and bring him to justice.”

I had a vision of Marlboro Man riding
the wild frontier, searching for the varmint who laid low poor
little Brandilynn Payson, the saloon girl with a heart of gold. I
couldn’t help but snicker. The notion of a ghost posse catching a
killer tickled me. “What do you do with him when you catch him?
String him up from a ghost tree?”

Dan chuckled at me. “There’s a more
permanent solution to that problem, especially since the killer is
most definitely a vampire.”

“Which is?”

Another voice answered me. “We stake
his ass and burn him to ashes.”

I looked up. My eyes widened, startled
to see a man leaning on one of the long reading tables that stood
nearby. I froze like a statue as I recognized Tristan Keith, ruler
of the Fulton Falls vampire clutch.

I do not mix with paranormals, or as we
refer to them, paras. Especially not vampires. The undead creep me
out.

Were-creatures are scary too, and I’d
probably flip out if confronted with a dragon, harpy or gargoyle.
But when it comes to flat-out scary, vampires take the cake. It
certainly didn’t help my present frame of mind to realize one had
killed me.

Which brought up a new concern: how had
I ended up in the company of one to get murdered? I would have
never been an escort for one. It’s even in my contract. I might
have been on a human client’s arm at a party where vampires
attended, but I would have kept my distance from the bloodthirsty
monsters.

Dan stood, helping me to my feet.
“Tristan, this is Brandilynn Payson. Brandilynn, Tristan
Keith.

Tristan stepped forward, his hand
extended. “I’m sure it’s no pleasure for you, Miss Payson, but may
I say I’m thrilled to see you. Good work finding her,
Dan.”

I looked at my town’s most well-known
vampire with trepidation. I had to admit he didn’t look terribly
vampy. In fact, he looked normal. His hair was short in an
old-fashioned haircut typical of the 1920’s, the decade he’d become
a vampire. Clean-shaven, looking not a day over 30, with sharp,
handsome features. Not rugged and somehow worn like Dan, but
elegantly masculine in the way of old-time movie actors like Errol
Flynn and Clark Gable.

Okay, I’ll admit it. The darn
bloodsucker looked as scrumptious as my Marlboro Man. I couldn’t
discern the slightest bit of undead about him. He inspired visions
of naughtiness dancing in my head.

I hesitantly accepted his hand. In a
move that made me catch my breath in appreciation, he kissed the
back of mine. No one did that these days, and I was impressed. Mr.
Keith had charm to spare.

Of course vampires are known for their
abilities to seduce. That’s why so many of us humans fear their
kind. As a mortal, one could never truly know the trouble she was
getting into until it was too late and she was woozy from a lack of
blood.

Or dead.

I pulled my hand free of Tristan’s. I
wondered why I feared him. After all, didn’t being dead mean I had
nothing left to lose? It wasn’t as if he could kill me
again.

“I thought vampires could only come out
at night,” I said.