Tantalize (23 page)

“Change back. Um, look human again.”

“Haven’t, you know, you taken a big bite, had your first yet?”

“No.” Once again I was myself, in control and resolved to stay that way. I hoped I could stay that way.

What time was it? Ten? God, what if Kieren had tried to call me at home?

“Ah,” Mitch patted my arm. “You, you gotta get the first one down so the brain, so it lets you go.” He pointed to his head, as if to illustrate. “All that changing . . . You’re a regular girl, oops! Got some good blood somewhere, in the tummy, in the veins, and now you’re, you’re improved and new. But the body, the sys, system, it thinks that way for a while, like a human, but then the feed, it takes over. It takes you, and you’re all good. Once you get the first one. Being a vamp, vampire is all tied up, messed up with um, the, the —”

“Blood.”

“Yep, almost. Nope, wait. Spoke too, too soon. Not just that. The feed, that’s what it is. The bite. Once you get past that, you, you’ll get more of a hold on it, Miss Quincie.”

Was Mitch the one responsible for the lakefront murders?

I glanced at the hand-lettered cardboard at my feet. It read:

“Hocus-pocus,” Mitch added. “Spooky me, spooky you.”

A
hair past 1
A.M.
Tuesday morning. Kieren hadn’t called me back. The longer I waited, the hungrier I got. The shock of Mitch had brought me back to myself, but it would be so easy to slip again. I hadn’t even realized I’d been on the hunt until putting Kieren’s truck into gear, and by then . . . Christ.
Meghan.

I got up from my kitchen table, retraced my path back across the black-and-white checked tile, and opened the freezer door. Using my fingernail, I ripped open the plastic wrap, set two icy, stuck-together chicken legs on a plate, covered it with a paper towel, slid the plate into the microwave, and hit DEFROST.

I had just sworn off the sauce, so to speak, but humans consumed animal blood all the time. Hopefully, it didn’t count. And I needed a fix. Quick.

As the microwave hummed, its interior tray turning, I paced, pausing to run my fingertips along the wall phone, to tangle them in the curly black plastic cord, repressing the urge to rip it out. Where was Kieren, anyway?

I had less than an hour.

The microwave beeped three times, and I removed my sustenance. Courtesy of modern technology, the pale, fleshy poultry legs lay in a pool of watery blood.

Arguing to myself that salmonella wasn’t a burning vampire health concern, I dipped my finger in the liquid and raised it to my lips. The meat repulsed me, but I picked up a leg and licked it like a Popsicle.

The leg was mostly sucked dry when the doorbell rang.

Let it be Kieren, I prayed.

It was Detective Bartok and Detective Matthews.

Self-conscious, I hid my snack behind my back.

“We’re looking for Kieren Morales,” Detective Bartok said from the front step.

“I don’t know where he is,” I replied from the doorway, glad I’d parked the truck a few blocks southwest so Uncle D wouldn’t see it. “Did my uncle call you?”

Matthews, the senior officer, shook his head. “We haven’t talked to him since he came down to the station. Why? Does he have something to tell us?”

I stuck with the truth, so as to trigger their cop instincts as little as possible. “As far as I know, the last either of us talked to APD was when Detective Sanchez called me at Sanguini’s on the third. I remember because it was ten days until the reopening.”

They traded a look.

“And what did Detective Sanchez call regarding?” Bartok asked.

“Well, he said —”

“He?” Matthews interrupted.

I nodded, still hiding the chicken leg.

“We have only one Detective Sanchez on the force,” Detective Bartok explained. “And she’s the mother of three. What did this person say to you?”

I summarized, realizing the caller had likely been following Bradley’s orders. Planting suspicion. God, I was an idiot.

“You still have my card?” Detective Bartok asked. At my second nod, she went on. “Please give us a call if you hear from Mr. Morales, and if someone else claiming to be from the Austin Police Department contacts you, let us know immediately.”

“Okay,” I said. “Does, uh, Kieren know you’re looking for him?” Was it only the vampires I needed to warn him about? I wondered. Or the police, too?

“We’ve left a lot of messages since yesterday,” Detective Matthews said. “We just want to talk to him, that’s all.”

I didn’t believe them. I thought they were ready to make an arrest. But they were nice people. They were trying to serve and protect, to do what they thought needed to be done. For a split second I considered telling them everything I knew. But what if they didn’t believe me? What if my talking somehow made things worse?

“Nice vampire makeup, by the way,” Detective Bartok added. “Very professional. Like in the movies or something.”

I’d almost forgotten how I looked.

“The restaurant’s apparently a real success,” Detective Matthews pitched in. “I used to go there back when it was Fat Lorenzo’s. Best lasagna in the world.”

My dead heart sank. I said good-bye, shut the front door, and tossed the rest of the meat into the trash.

U
ncle Davidson and Ruby walked in the back door, if you could call it walking in. They sort of stumbled, kissing, groping, across the kitchen. High on life, on blood, on love or whatever passed for it.

Arm in arm, they swayed on the tile.

“Shouldn’t you be out hunting, honey?” my uncle asked.

Ruby trailed a finger down his throat, tracing the plump flowers on his Hawaiian shirt. “She’s just a little girl. You wait here, Quincie. We won’t take long —”

“Now, now,” my uncle protested, laughing. “We’ll see about that.”

Vibrant, fed. Both of them. On something heartier than chicken. I wondered if they’d shown up at all for the Sanguini’s dinner shift.

Ruby was wearing one of her damsel-of-the-damned getups, though she’d covered up with a short leather jacket that bordered on tasteful. “You bad, bad man. We have a family obligation.” She chuckled. “We’ll go hunting with you later, love. We’re full now anyway.”

I had to ask. “You killed somebody, didn’t you?”

“Some bodies,” Uncle D replied, beaming at Ruby.

“Your friends with the shiny badges,” she clarified. “We ran into them on their way back to their car.” Ruby glanced at my uncle, mock ashamed. “He’d wanted to bend their ears about your dog-face boy, but —”

“You ate the police?!” I exclaimed.

“Blood lust plus opportunity,” Uncle D said. “Her teeth came in so fast. In the dark, I hardly spotted a flash of fang.”

Ruby had already adapted. Killed, drunk, and put her human face back on. Quite the overachiever, I thought. It was what she’d always wanted, though.

“Relax,” she said. “We got rid of the bodies. No one’s going to find drained cops in the front yard.”

My uncle shot her a reprimanding look. “But the boss won’t approve.”

“It’s not like there aren’t more police where those came from.” Ruby licked her black lips. “APD is already looking for the Wolf. Now, they’ll just assume he’s a cop killer, too. I don’t see where Bradley has much room to whine.”

With that, Ruby pulled Uncle D out of the room, down the hall, and up the stairs. They were moaning before they reached the top, shuffling into his bedroom.

I hoped when he dug into the nightstand drawer for the strawberry-flavored condoms . . . if he’d . . . Did vampires need to worry about disease or birth control? Anyway, if Uncle D opened the drawer, I hoped that he’d be too preoccupied to miss the silver bullets I’d swiped earlier.

Given that I still hadn’t heard from Kieren, I had to go it alone. Destroy the monsters that were a threat to him, hope he made it to the Wolf pack before the police found his trail. It was awful, but in a way, Ruby had done Kieren a favor. It would take awhile for APD to realize their detectives were missing, to send another team out after Kieren. If nothing else, she’d bought him some time.

I slunk into the family room, touched the jar of seashells Daddy had collected a lifetime earlier, whispered an apology. Then I reached behind the nearest throw pillow on the sofa and curled my palm around the butt of Grampa Crimi’s gun.

A
t the kitchen table, I logged on to the Web. Turned out there was one correct way to load a Colt Peacemaker. You were supposed to slide in five bullets and then put the hammer down on the empty chamber. It was sort of an old-fashioned safety, so the gun wouldn’t go off accidentally. If you wanted to shoot it, though, you had to cock the hammer each time. That’s what it meant to call a gun “single action.”

Being that they were vampires, the gun wouldn’t destroy Ruby and Uncle Davidson. I got that. But if I were lucky, a silver bullet would put them out of commission until I had a chance to confront Bradley, who’d be left with only Ian and Jerome. And since they’d sacrificed me, I thought I could pull the trigger. I was ready to call on my inner vampire if that’s what it took to get the job done.

I waited through the gasps, mews, and an unexpected cracking noise until the grandfather clock in the hall chimed a quarter till two. Then I hurried up the stairs and found Uncle D’s door slightly open. I slipped into the room, shameless, the gun drawn in front of me, expecting to see the lovers naked and undulating.

Instead, Uncle Davidson was lying on his stomach, facedown on the bed, a wooden stake protruding from his bleeding back. His neck was raw, too, turned as if the spinal cord had been severed. But that wasn’t the most remarkable thing.

It was Ruby’s body, her face, covered in shiny black fur, long whiskers sprouting from her cheeks. I’d, I’d
known
there was something weird about her!

Mesmerized, I tightened my grip and watched her finish — changing? shifting? —
shifting
into a werecat. The bones broke, rearranging and reknitting. The fur, the transformation, it was like watching slow-motion photography.

She was dazzling, with long, slinky muscles beneath the bristling fur. Soaking wet. All black except the Morticia streak, which had receded to an unnatural white splotch above her right ear. About five feet long from nose to haunches. Sniffing my uncle, lowering her muzzle to lick the blood streaming down his spine, running down either side of his back and into his armpits.