Wicked Thing (C.O.A Series Book 2) (29 page)

She was intrigued
…
How many could there possibly be in this one little house?

Grey got out of the car, closed the door as quietly as he could, took a couple of wooden daggers from Frost, and asserted, “I’ve got it.”

Frost looked at them and stated, “No witnesses.”

That was the polite way of saying, be as quiet as possible while you murder a house full of people or we’ll have to kill an innocent bystander. Lexy leaned into the truck, grabbed a bobby-pin out of her purse and calmly strolled up to the front door. There was a tiny window at the top of the front door and it appeared to be covered with tinfoil from the inside.
This place must only have one bedroom.
All of the blinds would be drawn to shield the houses inhabitants from sunlight so it would be pointless to sneak around and peek through windows. Lexy stuck the bobby-pin into the lock and maneuvered it around for a second, unlocking it and then she tried the door, it was still locked.
Use logic Lexy. They’d have ten locks down either door, getting into the house the stealth way would take too long.
The windows would lead to the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom and the bathroom. If the place was full of Lampir, entering through the bathroom would be her best bet. She strolled around the exterior of the house. The bathroom window was definitely too small to fit through. If she broke a window to the other rooms, she’d wake them up long before she made it inside. She didn’t see a version of this Correction that wouldn’t come with mortal casualties.
Brains before brawn. What should she do? She could try to slip one of the windows out of its frame. No, that wouldn’t work, they’d start screaming and scatter as they burned and the neighbors would be outside in two seconds flat. She saw no other choice.
Lexy strolled up to the front door, looked into the mail box, snagged a letter out of it and rapped her knuckle lightly on the door.

Grey dove around the side of the house and Frost stepped back into the bushes as she knocked for a second time. The door opened to reveal a pale heavy set elderly woman in a fabulous zebra print moo-moo.
Interesting.
Lexy smiled politely and said, “Hello, I just moved in about a block over. I think I’ve been delivered your mail. It’s crazy, I know, I don’t even live on the same block.”

The sluggishly tired looking lady gave her a strange look as she questioned, “You do know it’s five am in the morning?”

“Is it really that early? I apologize, sometimes I forget everyone isn’t an early riser like I am.” Lexy innocently replied as she shot her another well-acted smile. Lexy noticed the tell-tale puncture marks on the lady’s neck.
There was an open bathroom door right behind her.
She gave her another disarming smile and whispered, “I know it’s a strange thing to ask but I think I ate something bad last night. I don’t think I’ll make it home without having an accident. Would it be terrible of me to ask if I could come in and use your bathroom quickly? I’ll be super-fast. I swear, you won’t even know I was here.”

The lady in wild zebra print hesitated for a second, before she whispered, “Alright, but please be as quiet as you can be. Trust me, you do not want to wake up the rest of the household.”

Lexy grinned.
My, my, what a strange way to word that last sentence?
The presumed owner of the house stepped out of the way and Lexy maneuvered around her and into the house with little more than the sound of quiet knocking.
She was almost impressed with herself.
The second the lady in zebra print closed the front door, Lexy grabbed her in a sleeper hold. She held her there as she violently struggled for air until her body became limp and her knees buckled, then she gently placed her on the floor without making a sound. Lexy took note of the two closed doors on either side of her.
Man, she was absolutely exhausted.
The décor of this house was definitely not disarming. As a matter of fact, it was creepy as hell. There were tiny porcelain figurines of children with cherub faces in lederhosen in various poses and they were on shelves that lined the entrance.
It was weird and she’d seen some seriously crazy shit.
Lexy had no coin to toss so she went with her intuition by choosing the door on her right. She carefully turned the knob, without making the faintest noise and stepped into the room. There were easily thirty people asleep on the floor and lounged across a plastic protected couch.
On the bright side, the old lady’s sofa wasn’t going to be destroyed by blood this morning. Not that it would matter once they burned the house down to cover up the evidence.
Lexy stood in the doorway surveying the occupants of the room, their auras were faint. She was relieved that they hadn’t asked her to sort them out; it would be too difficult to tell the full Lampir from the still partially mortal ones. She’d know who was what after she killed them all, because the fully turned Lampir would turn to dust and the partially turned bodies would require disposal. Snuffing them all out while they slept, seemed cold, but it would save any noisy neighbors from adding themselves to the death toll on this day. Lexy knew stabbing them in the heart first also would not be an option. She’d have to snap their necks, rendering them silent. This would buy her the time to stake them all without the screaming and drama. She’d only have a matter of minutes until they were all healed to complete the job.

So, one by one Lexy snapped their necks, without waking a soul and then she proceeded to methodically stake every last one of them. Some solidified and turned to ash, but in the end, only three of them were left as mortal shells. Lexy was not upset about the loss of mortal life for she knew she’d managed to save three mortal souls on this day. If they were more mortal than Lampir they’d probably already been sent back through the hall of souls to be reborn. Lexy stood in front of the twenty-seven piles of ash and three soulless corpses and smiled as she thought,
Maybe, she’d actually have time for a quick nap before the next job?

Wait a minute…this was far too easy
. With ironic timing she felt a surge of pain as something smoked her across the back of her head. The room wavered and went black. Her last thought as she lost consciousness was,
I totally didn’t check the other room.

Lexy heard the hum of conversation as she awoke but remained silent and kept her eyes closed, knowing she could give herself a moment to figure things out if she played dead. Without even opening her eyes she knew her wrists had been restrained behind her back with some kind of tape.
It was usually duct tape.
This was always a laughable moment. Using duct tape to restrain an immortal was easily comparable to using toilet paper to restrain a mortal. The being behind that decision was definitely not the sharpest pencil in the drawer. There were multiple voices in the room and it went without saying that they were seriously pissed about her murder spree. She listened to the conversation for a minute or two longer and deduced that they thought she was involved in the mass murder of their fellow Lampir but did not know she’d done the deed all by herself. Lexy smiled, knowing they probably knew nothing about anything. She might as well open her eyes and see what she was dealing with. Lexy opened her eyes and grinned.
Well, shit. There were at least twenty more fumingly furious Lampir
.
She knew it had been far too easy.
They were busy ignorantly brawling and shoving each other around. Some of them were hissing and gnashing their teeth like wild animals infected with rabies. They were all slightly deformed looking. Lampir were usually quite attractive and eloquently mannered, but not these ones. These monstrosities had spittle flying everywhere.
What in hell? This wasn’t how Lampir were supposed to act?
She’d known plenty of Lampir over the years and they could easily pass for mortal, but these guys were obviously the missing links of the Lampir species.
These things were not normal Lampir. These were something else
.
Once again they’d sent her into a situation with only half of the story.

Their behavior was more than moderately amusing. They really weren’t paying any attention to her at all. What kind of bad guy doesn’t have at least one person out of what looks like around twenty watching the hostage?
Lexy was pretty sure she could just rip the tape off, stand up and stroll right out of the room without any of these infected looking creatures even noticing, but she was supposed to kill them all. That was the job.
Maybe, this is an infection within the Lampir species?

A much darker looking version of the robust woman in zebra print appeared in the doorway with fangs, a distorted face and long clawed nails. The beast spat everywhere as she growled, “That’s enough.”

Lexy winced as an unusually large amount of spittle sprayed directly at her face.
So, gross.
The others were instantly silenced and it appeared that the harmless looking woman that answered the door for her was the one in charge.
She’d made a mistake in assuming the woman had been mortal because she’d greeted her at the door
.
She was far too tired to be doing this today
. Lexy met the woman’s hostile expression with a calm one as she casually enquired, “Just out of curiosity, what in the hell are these things?”

The woman in zebra print smiled at her as she hobbled towards her completely deformed by the transformation. One of her legs appeared to be twisted in the opposite direction. With an eerie sweetness in her tone she shuffled closer, stared directly into her eyes and as her pupils became large onyx orbs she whispered, “You will tell me where the rest of your army went.”

She was obviously trying to compel the truth out of her. It was kind adorable.
Lexy gave her a strange look and replied, “I’ve never needed an army.”

The woman had begun to jerk and spasm as she paced back and forth.
Was this an attempt to intimidate her?
The fact that she was wearing a silky zebra print moo-moo made intimidation unlikely but the sight of the material of her moo-moo flowing behind her while she writhed and twisted made her look like a creepy animated Disney villain.

The elderly lady paused directly in front of Lexy, and slowly reached out a deformed savaged gnarly fingertip and stroked her arm with one of her nails. More spittle sprayed directly at Lexy’s face as she hissed, “I will make your death tolerable if you tell me the truth. Where are the rest of your men?”

Where are the rest of your men? Now, that was just offensive
. Lexy glanced down at where the woman’s razor sharp nail had sliced a trail down her arm. A thin stream of blood oozed from the wound before it closed up.
There was a light film of moisture all over her and that was just nasty.
Lexy curtly replied, “I’m alone and you’ve found yourself in an unfortunate situation. You’re obviously doing something sketchy here with these backwoods looking Lampir. I’m honestly not even the slightest bit concerned for my safety here but you should be.” Lexy casually tore off the tape that bound her. The woman stepped away from her, appearing to be intrigued by her strength. Lexy stood up and peeled the tape from her wrists as effortlessly as tearing masking tape from a birthday present. She grinned because it was pink camo duct tape she’d been restrained with and that was kind of awesome. Lexy removed one of the wooden daggers from her pants, cleared her throat and announced, “So, I’m going to have to kill you all now. I’d like to say it’s not personal but the truth is that all of this saliva you guys have going on is just annoying the hell out of me.”

The woman in zebra print shrieked, “Kill her!” The swarm of savage beings surged at her and all Lexy saw was a hoard of gnashing teeth and flying spittle as she commenced breaking necks. Once again knowing she was seriously outnumbered and that these wooden daggers always took a minute to work.
What in the hell were these things on? They were strong and amped right up.
She’d lost count of how many times she’d been chomped on and tossed into walls, and it was only five minutes into the fight. The backwoods Lampir in zebra print rifled her over the plastic covered couch and Lexy landed with a thud on the floor behind it
. Shit, she was getting her ass kicked by these freaks. Well, she couldn’t allow that to happen
. Lexy stood up, dusted herself off and flippantly stated, “Is that all you’ve got?”
Hot damn, she was dizzy
.
She’d probably lost a lot of blood. It was more than that
…
It felt like the room was spinning. This wasn’t blood loss. It was something else. Did these assholes have venom?
One of them chomped down on her arm. Lexy grimaced as she launched the screeching salivating wasteland looking being across the room just as another tackled her and sunk its fangs into her throat from behind.
Shit.
She grabbed the salivating beast by it’s head, swung it over her shoulder and as she flipped it, the shocked creature released it jaws. Lexy could feel the warmth of her blood as it flowed from her throat. If they’d hit an artery she’d bleed out before she had the opportunity to finish them all off.
Nothing was working out as it was supposed to today.
Within two minutes she had them all down and she was valiantly trying to stake them one by one as Frost strolled in dragging zebra print lady’s body behind him.

He declared, “I caught this one trying to escape.”

Lexy stumbled and mumbled, “You’re going to have to kill it.” And she blacked out from a mixture of blood loss, and exhaustion.

The first sound she heard was the humming of tires and the sound of Grey’s steady breathing. Lexy opened her eyes, knowing in an instant that she was on a bunk in Markus’s motorhome. She closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

Chapter 17
Just a little bit of Stalking

L
exy felt something land on top of the covers and she opened one eye, forgetting where she was for a moment. It was a bag with two wrapped up subs in it and Grey wasn’t lying beside her anymore.

Jenna’s voice announced, “Rise and shine, nap time is over my drugged up friend. We’ve already finished the next job. You and Grey have to head back to watch over and probably bail out the five newbies while we travel up north for another job.”