Staked Read online

  His jaws touched my throat and the barrel of the gun touched his forehead. It charred his fur slightly and he drew back. I had almost been too slow.

  “How?” said William. “A vampire can’t hold—”

  “They can if they wear gloves and don’t mind it burning the crap out of them.”

  “You aren’t wearing gloves.”

  “I’m an exception,” I said. “I have it on good authority that John Paul Courtney was my great, great, great-granddad or granduncle…or something like that.

  “You see, someone has been trying pretty damn hard to maneuver us into this position. At first, I thought it was because I killed your son, but actually I didn’t. I don’t know who I killed. He was dressed like a bum, had already killed two other vamps, and jumped me in an alley.”

  “Fergus.” William spat the name out like it tasted bad. “No wonder I couldn’t get in touch with him. He’s no packmate of ours. He’s an outcast and a murderer. He’ll do anything for money.”

  “Greta,” I called over my shoulder to her. “I’m supposed to remember that name, for some reason. Do you—” Then it clicked. The check! Thirty thousand dollars written to a Fergus…something…a check on which Roger forged my name. Bastard. “Well, that explains that. So Roger hired Fergus to jump me in the alley. He got Brian to maneuver me into position and…Where was I?”

  “You didn’t do it,” Greta answered from the porch.

  “Right. I…Do you mind backing up a few steps?” I asked William. “Your breath smells like Alpo.”

  William withdrew slightly, growling low, ears flattened against his head. “You cannot escape.”

  “I know, I know,” I said. “You and your pack will call up more goons from the Lycan Diocese to hunt me down. Blah blah blah.”

  “Do not mock me, vampire.”

  “Sorry,” I said. I cleared my throat. “Okay, so then I thought that I was being used as a fall guy, that the boyfriend of the vampire who killed your son had framed me to protect his girlfriend, the theory being that I would probably kill you and even if I didn’t…well, once you killed me you would think the whole deal was over and move on with your life.

  “But then I found out about El Alma Perdida.” I leaned against the wall. It was hard to read William’s expression, but since he was listening I kept on talking. “How likely is it that I just happened to stumble into a mess involving an Alpha werewolf, one that I might need all different sorts of silver to kill—blessed, magic, inherited, cherry-flavored, the whole bit, and then wind up with all of it neatly packaged in one gun?

  “Now…I happen to believe the whole John Paul Courtney thing. I kind of like the idea that I’m related to a badass cowboy werewolf hunter. But that someone would just happen to be using his special gun, that they would just happen to leave a bullet behind so that I could find that gun? It’s just too much coincidence.”

  “You have another explanation?” he growled.

  “Yeah, yeah, I do. You know a vampire named Roger, right?”

  William growled low in his throat. “Roger Malcolm. He dared to come here, to ask us to sell him our land. He—”

  I cut him off. “That’s the guy. I think the whole reason I’m down here is because Roger wants me to kill you and enough of your pack that he can bring in some hired muscle and dispose of the rest, snatch the property out from under any relatives you might have, and build his little fancy-schmantsy vampire lake resort.”

  “And are you here because you wish to protect this ‘friend’? Because he is also the one who told us where we could find you the other night.”

  “Me?” I asked. “Hell, no! Yes, I was planning to kill you, but that’s only because after the stunts you’ve pulled trying to get back at me, I didn’t think we’d be able to talk things over. I expected to kill you with the magic gun and then to have to kill your pack so that they’d leave me alone.” He bristled at that.

  “Now that we’re talking, though, we’ve got options. I figure we can do this one of two ways. Way one I call ‘the bad plan.’ You don’t believe me and I see how many of you I can kill before you take me down. Then, being a Vlad, I keep coming back over and over again. You get the idea.

  “Way two, which I must say I prefer, I call ‘the give the bastard what he deserves plan.’ About forty of your pack members keep Greta as collateral, unharmed, and the rest of us go pay Roger a little visit.”

  “Dad,” Greta protested. “You can’t trust them. They’ll try to eat me.”

  “Not if he promises they won’t,” I told her.

  “Dad, no.”

  “Do it and I’ll let you move back into the Pollux,” I said cajolingly. “You can have one of the dressing rooms all to yourself.”

  Greta bit her lip, considering it. With Kyle gone, if I let her move in, she knew I’d let her stay. “And I get to hunt for a whole week, however I want, and you won’t complain or be mad about how much I eat.”

  “Deal,” I told her. I inclined my head slightly toward William. “What do you say?”

  William resumed his human form. I’d seen other werewolves change back before, the fangs receding and new teeth growing in to fill the bloody holes. In contrast, William’s reversion seemed painless. The fur around his eyes lit up from within, spreading outward across his body until the only thing not illuminated were those fierce eyes, the glow obscuring the rest of him. The outline changed, became that of a man. The glow receded and he stood before me in jeans and a white T-shirt, wearing loafers without socks. Very cool. “Assuming I agree to this, what happens after?”

  “You let Greta go, deliver her safely to the Pollux—at night,” I emphasized, “and agree to stay out of my way in exchange for me staying out of yours.”

  “In other words, a return to the status quo.”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t speak for the Lycan Diocese,” William replied, “but I can attempt to explain. I can call off my pack, but you killed Reverend. He was a member of Deacon’s pack. Even if the Lycan Diocese decides to forgive you…”

  “I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it,” I told him.

  “William,” one of the others snarled in protest. “He killed Lucas and—”

  “Silence,” William snapped. “He will pay for his sins. All we do here is agree to let the Lord handle his punishment. If what he says is true, then we attacked him mistakenly.”

  They argued for twenty minutes, but eventually he convinced them. He convinced me that he could be trusted, too, especially when the packmates he picked to keep an eye on Greta were all wolves who had raised their voices in support of his plan.

  The werewolves ferried us to the marina in a pontoon boat, then William let me ride in the back of his pickup, intending to drop me off at my car. We had to make new plans when we got to the abandoned house, though. It seemed Tabitha had decided to take the car with her when she left.

  I waved again at the security guards still standing in front of Sable Oaks. This time I got a reaction. They stared openmouthed and called for backup. I think they thought we were invading. With a mutual laugh shared between me and my temporary allies, we drove on.

  Which left me with one last problem: Did I really want to help these werewolves kill Roger?

  33

  TABITHA:

  TIDYING UP

  No one was supposed to be at the Demon Heart, but when I pulled around back to park, I saw Marilyn’s old Buick in its usual spot, second closest to the door. She always saved the first spot for Eric. I pulled into his parking place and wondered how the fight was going. Had Eric and Greta slaughtered all the werewolves yet? I couldn’t imagine the werewolves winning.

  Inside the club, all the lights were off except for a narrow band shining out from underneath the door in the main office. The weak thud of Marilyn’s heartbeat thumped in my ears, the acrid smell of her cigarette assaulting my nostrils. The door to Eric’s bedroom was open. The light snapped on at a touch and I started unpacking my things from Eric’s
chest of drawers.

  I pulled my suitcase from his closet, but I knew everything wouldn’t fit. I’d accumulated too much stuff. He’d been so free with money that I now had six times the number of outfits I’d moved in with. My lingerie alone could have filled the suitcase. Packing up my favorites and my jewelry seemed the best way to go. I set aside the blue dress that I’d worn for Eric’s birthday and the diamond necklace. I wanted to be wearing them when I saw Phillip.

  I went into the bathroom and willed myself to seem alive, my heart to beat, my blood to flow, and most of all for my reflection to appear in the mirror. Doing so diminished my other senses, the sound of my own heart and the blood rushing through my veins drowning out external sounds to near-human levels.

  I stripped out of my clothes and studied the figure in the glass. No fat. No cellulite. My breasts were firm and full, and, unlike some dancers, completely natural. The slight sag that gravity normally gave them had been banished by vampirism. My tummy was flat, my muscles toned, and looking over my shoulder verified that my butt was tight and heart-shaped. My long black hair was healthy; it had body and bounce. What was not to love?

  I didn’t hear her come into the room, but I smelled the smoke.

  “That’s not the problem,” Marilyn said. Her cigarette was out, but the scent clung to her, a cloud of stench.

  “Don’t you knock?” I reached down for my panties, embarrassed by her presence even though I’d shown my body to thousands of perfect strangers.

  “When I feel like it,” she said, cackling. “I’m old. People overlook things when you’re old.”

  “Well, I don’t. I—”

  “You decided to leave him?” she asked, pointing to the suitcase. Her eyes loomed large behind her glasses. She wasn’t wearing her false teeth, and it changed the timbre of her voice.

  “Yes.” Not for long, though, I thought. He’ll come after me. I walked past her and retrieved my blue dress.

  “He won’t.” Marilyn sat on the edge of the bed, a withered old woman, a witch reading my mind. She smiled a pursed-lip toothless smile at my surprise.

  “How did you—”

  “I know him better than anybody,” Marilyn told me, crossing her arms. There was no sling, no cast. “Better than Roger ever suspected.” A cough took her, a series of long wracking painful rasps. “I know you, too, because you’re a woman who loves him. We have that in common.” She stood up, slow and creaking. “So I feel I should tell you this. He won’t chase you, but he does love you.”

  We had that in common?

  “But you hate him,” I protested, forgetting the dress in my hand as I gestured with it. “He disgusts you.”

  “You don’t know me,” Marilyn said. She started folding some of my things, putting them neatly into the suitcase. “And you don’t know him, either.

  “Do you know what his hopes and dreams were when he was alive? Did you see him come back from the Second World War, a man who hadn’t believed in killing, but who had believed in doing what was right? We were just friends, then. He was too stupid to realize that when I said I was saving myself for marriage, what I really meant was saving myself for him.”

  She didn’t cry; as emotional as her words were, she snapped them off bitterly. “Did you ever hear him play the piano? Did you even know he could? Did you hold his head in your lap on the day you were supposed to be married to him and cry because he’d been ruined, too?”

  “You know I haven’t. I wasn’t even born then.”

  “I know.” Marilyn’s head sagged. “You’re young and you’re stupid and you think you can treat an eighty-two-year-old man like a teenager. You expect him to run after you, but he can’t.”

  “I don’t know what else to do,” I shouted. “It’s like he wants me to leave, but I know he still cares about me. I’ve seen him decide to be cruel on purpose and push me away—”

  Marilyn slapped me and I slapped her back, the blow spinning her all the way around before she dropped to the ground like a sack of old laundry. Her glasses landed on the bed and I thought that I had killed her.

  “Oh my God. Marilyn.” I touched her shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I—” And then she slapped me again, her laugh sharp and abrasive, cawing crowlike laughter. I reeled away from her and she grinned, her fierce eyes challenging me. My fingernails had cut her skin when I’d struck her, but the wounds weren’t bleeding, they were creeping closed.

  “You have to stay and fight for him and you have to win. You have to get Greta on your side and you have to protect him, like I tried to do, but you have to succeed.”

  “Protect him from what? Himself?” I asked.

  Marilyn pulled herself up and reached for the top of her blouse. I thought she was hiding a cross, that she was going to use it on me, but instead, she opened the top button, baring part of a wrinkled, drooping breast, upon which she had a small tattoo of a frog. “Do you see?” she asked. “Talbot told me you killed Veruca. You might have seen, when she died.”

  “She turned to dust, Marilyn.”

  “Never mind.” Marilyn closed her blouse, deflated, as she spoke. “I can’t…he won’t let me say more.”

  “Who won’t?” I asked. As if in answer to my question, Roger popped up in my mind, seemingly holographic like the vampires at the Highland Towers. He was less powerful than me and had been a vampire for forty-three years. He was shocked to see me, but not as shocked as I was to see his companion. He was walking down Thirteenth Street talking to a young woman who was the spitting image of Rachel. They were arguing and he seemed nervous, almost afraid.

  “Nice tits,” he said to me and I broke the contact.

  “I’ve gotta go,” I told Marilyn. I slipped the blue dress over my head and darted barefooted out the front door.

  They’d reached the front of the Pollux by the time I got there. The girl who looked like Rachel wore tight black hip huggers and a midriff top. A small gold padlock hung from her choker and she wore a jade bracelet on her left wrist. Except for the hair, which had been highlighted in blondes and reds, she was Rachel’s twin. She smirked when she saw me.

  “Hi, slut,” she said. “Where ya been?”

  Even her voice was Rachel’s. But I’d seen her open casket. I’d watched them lower her into the ground.

  “Rachel?” I whispered. “But…but you died.”

  “Anyone can get a second chance aboveground, Tab. You just have to be willing to do absolutely anything to get it. Third chances are harder. But I died human, so my path didn’t require any special ingredients that I didn’t have with me. It’s not easy to close the deal when your soul is already hellbound and on-site, but it can be done.”

  “Rachel wouldn’t have gone to hell,” I told the look-alike. “She was just a kid.”

  The smile on her lips was in that uncertain territory between sweet and malicious. “That’s cute, Tab. I’m flattered.” She turned to Roger. “She gets to leave.”

  “Like you could stop me anyway,” I snapped.

  “Kill her,” Roger suggested.

  I honestly don’t know whether he was talking to her or to me, but the Rachel look-alike answered him. “If I do, he’ll know I did it, because you insisted that I link with him, make him think he’d made me his thrall. I’m not like your wrinkled-up old fuck puppet, Roger. I’m a witch and you’re just a frickin’ Master vampire. You can’t control me.”

  Roger opened his mouth to reply, but I beat him to it. “So that’s how you look like my sister? You used magic?” I popped my claws. “Well, stay back, witch, because I’m not just a ‘frickin’ Master.’ I’m a Vlad.”

  The witch laughed like a wicked child, eyes sparkling as if she enjoyed a challenge. “Don’t tempt me, sis.”

  “Do it,” Roger urged her. He reached out to her, but drew his hand back before he made contact. He feared her. She sensed it and her nostrils flared. He stammered, “I didn’t—”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Watch it, dead boy. I’m only helping you out because it will
help pay my debt. My real boss got me out of hell. You did squat. He said to help you with Eric. Tabitha is not part of the deal.”

  “You guys are going to try and take Eric on?” I asked incredulously. “The two of you?”

  “Roger thinks he is,” the woman who claimed to be Rachel answered. “Which is a total joke. I mean, let’s be serious. In a fight, even you would kick Roger’s ass.”

  “That’s why you’re here,” Roger said angrily. “You have to help me.”

  “Not in a fight. Your contract for assistance specifies non-combat. If you want more, you’ll have to work it out with my boss.” The witch tapped Roger on the nose with her index finger like he was a particularly dumb child. “If he was really just a Vlad, then I might’ve helped you out. My magic would have had him wrapped around my little finger in under a minute.” She ran her hand along Roger’s shoulder and he relaxed visibly. The scent of freshly baked cinnamon rolls washed over me, but I couldn’t tell where it came from. “But as it is, I have to go all out to influence him even a little bit. I could barely keep him from flying to the other side of the interstate after that mess at the lake. He nearly didn’t make it to the right house. So, I’m sorry, but you’re on your own.”

  “Which,” the woman turned her attention to me and began massaging Roger’s shoulders as she spoke, “is why Roger, here, is going to get his undead ass handed to him tonight.”

  “He won’t kill me,” Roger objected, shoving her away with some difficulty, trying to regain his composure.

  “Oh yes, he will,” the witch countered. “Because you refuse to believe that Eric is an Emperor, not a Vlad. I get why. Accepting what he is means you have to accept that you helped Eric become more powerful than you will ever be, even though you didn’t mean to do it.”

  Emperor, my ass. “You’re both nuts,” I said finally. “And you,” I added, pointing at the Rachel look-alike. “I don’t know who you are, witch, or what spell you’re using, but you are definitely not my sister.”