Bring On the Night (2 page)

Something shifted on the far side of the warehouse. Something big.

The vampire shot forward in a dim blur, his long leather coat fanning out behind him, making him look like a linebacker with wings.

I stood my ground. (Or by some accounts, I froze like a deer in the proverbial headlights, but who’s to quibble?) Before I could blink, he was almost upon me. My hands came up to defend my throat.

Then the bloodsucking behemoth slid to a stop. His nose crinkled. “What the—?”

“Hiyah!” A figure in black dropped between us, feet and fists blurring. Bone cracked against bone.

The vampire grunted and lurched back, then wiped his face and reset his stance. His attacker shrieked again, her black ponytail dancing behind her as she hand-springed into a double kick to his face.

He blocked her next blows easily. I sidled around them, waiting for her to distract him enough for me to escape.

Finally the vampire dropped his arms. “Okay, time out.”

The girl leaped forward and stabbed his chest with her wooden stake. He gaped at it protruding from his shirt.

“I did it!” she gasped. “You’re dead.”

His thick brown hand flashed to her neck. “After you, sweetheart.”

He drove her backward, her heels slipping on the concrete, until she slammed into the crate. She gurgled and squeaked, clawing at his wrist. Her eyes popped wide as her error no doubt dawned on her. Vampires don’t die until you pull out the stake.

Which I
swear
I was about to do when the whistle blew.

Sergeant Kaplan stepped out from behind another crate, scribbling on her clipboard. Her slicked-back gray-blond hair glittered in the faint ceiling light.

“Recruit!” She stalked toward my partner Tina as the vampire released her. “What’s the first precept of the Control?”

Tina massaged the front of her throat and coughed out her response. “Cooperation before coercion. But he was—”

“Were you asleep the day we taught defensive maneuvers?”

“I was defending
her
!” She pointed at me. “He was about to attack.”

“Captain Fox was clearly slowing down. Your blows were sufficient to stop him, but the staking was overkill.”

“Overkill without the kill.” The hulking vampire yanked out the stake and tossed it at Tina’s feet. Then Captain Fox unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a thick flak jacket. The first two-inch layer was penetrable, to simulate a real staking. A red oval was drawn on the dark gray vest, indicating the location of his heart. Tina’s stake hole lay outside the oval. Swing and a miss.

In real life, she’d be dead. If I’d tried to pull out the stake to finish the kill, I’d be dead. But if I’d run while he was taking a victory sip, I’d probably have survived.

I was mentally filing this information when the sergeant turned to me. “Griffin.” Kaplan scrunched up her face. “Good
God, what’s that smell?”

I offered my wrist to her nose. “This new Italian fragrance, all the rage in Milan.”

Kaplan took a swift step back. “That’s why Captain Fox slowed down as he approached you.” She gave me a begrudging nod. “Good thinking.”

Tina shook her finger at me as she spoke to the sergeant. “Agent Griffin didn’t have her stake deployed.”

“She’s not an agent yet, recruit, and neither are you.” Kaplan turned her ego-piercing gaze on me. “Why was your stake in its holster?”

I straightened my posture to answer, banishing all remnants of smirk. A little piece of me died every time I gave in to the quasi-military bullshit. But if I didn’t fulfill my duties, they could take away a much bigger piece of me, the piece that made life complete.

“Sergeant,” I said, “a direct threat can provoke an otherwise harmless vampire to attack. I lack the fighting skills to defeat him, so if we engaged in combat, I’d be killed. I therefore concluded that the best strategy would be to deter an attempt to drink my blood.” I glanced at her. “Hence the pizza wipe.”

“And if that strategy had failed?”

I paused. “Offer him a bib and a straw?”

“Yoosie lover,” Tina hissed.

Captain Fox sent her a look that would freeze an open flame. I tried not to laugh at Tina’s bureau slang for vampire. “UCE,” pronounced “yoosie,” stood for undead corporeal entity. She’d never used the slur when she and Captain Fox were secretly sleeping together, back before she joined the Control and he broke up with her, per agency rules.

“No one asked your opinion,” Kaplan growled at Tina,
then spoke to me again. “Your flippancy is not appreciated.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. After three and a half weeks of orientation with the Control (shorthand for the International Agency for the Control and Management of Undead Corporeal Entities), I had failed to give it a sense of humor.

“Furthermore,” Kaplan continued speaking to me, “you abandoned your partner in the middle of a fight.”

“I was just about to step in and—”

“Step in? He would’ve killed her before you could ‘step in.’ You must act without thinking. Defending your fellow agents must be a reflex, not a decision.”

Tina and I exchanged a look, and I knew she’d never risk her ass for me unless she knew she’d get a medal. All the trust-building teamwork exercises in the world couldn’t overcome the fact that she hated what I was—and what I wasn’t.

“However,” Kaplan continued, “you’re right about one thing. Losing a bit of blood is better than losing your life.” As Tina began to voice her disapproval, Kaplan cut her off. “Do you have a problem with our mission?”

That shut Tina up. For centuries, the Control had been little more than a band of vampire hunters, bent on extinguishing the undead. But since 1897 (according to the IACMUCE field manual), the agency’s mission has been to balance the safety and well-being of humans
and
vampires.

By this point I’d realized that the Control’s unofficial motto was “Whatever it takes.” I admired their pragmatism—when it wasn’t screwing over me or my loved ones.

Tina bowed her head, the corners of her mouth all twitchy tight. “I’m sorry for my mistake, Sergeant.”

“Don’t be sorry for your mistakes. You’re here to learn.”
Kaplan closed her clipboard with a loud clack. “Be sorry for your pride.”

A muscle in Tina’s jaw jumped. “Yes, Sergeant.”

“And you”—Kaplan pointed her pen at me—“take a shower.”

I walked back to my dorm across the central commons of the Control’s regional headquarters. The grass, which during the day mixed winter browns with spring greens, glowed in shades of gray in the moonlight.

The vampire Control agent Elijah, aka Captain Fox, strolled ten feet to my right, upwind. One of his strides equaled two of mine, so I had to hustle to keep up.

“Good thinking,” he rumbled, “with the pizza.”

“Next best thing to bug spray.”

Garlic has no special powers, but a vampire’s acute sense of smell means that any strong scent turns them off—chemical products being the worst.

“It wouldn’t have stopped me if I was really thirsty.” Elijah checked the buttons of his black uniform shirt. “But people like you already know that.”

“People like me?”

“Yoosie lovers,” he said with a scoff. “As your partner calls you.”

If he thought Tina wouldn’t tell anyone about their affair, he was naïve to the oversharing ways of women. While Tina and I weren’t exactly buds, we’d hung out on occasion, since she was one of my best friend Lori’s bridesmaids. As the maid of honor, I felt it my diplomatic duty to offer to be Tina’s orientation roommate and training partner, though I knew we weren’t exactly a match
made in heaven. More like a match made in sitcoms.

Sure enough, the better we knew each other, the worse we got along. Between Tina’s breakup with Elijah and her discovery that I pretty much believed in nothing, she’d been hell to live and work with.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” I told Elijah, “but I’m not my boyfriend’s donor. I’m my boyfriend’s girlfriend.”

He angled a glance at me, the whites of his eyes flashing under his black cap. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Huh.” He turned down the path for the vampires’ quarters. “Poor guy,” I heard him mutter under his breath.

I watched him go, marveling at the grace and precision of his step despite his enormous bulk. Other than that brief fling with Tina, Elijah tended to keep a respectful distance from humans, no matter how they smelled. His size and strength meant he didn’t need fangs to intimidate. He didn’t just look like a linebacker—he’d actually been one for the Cleveland Browns before he was vamped in the late seventies.

I jogged the rest of the way to my dorm room so I could catch the aforementioned poor guy’s show.

A clock radio sat on the nightstand between the twin beds. I switched it on to hear the closing strains of the Boomtown Rats’ “Looking After No. 1.” As usual, Regina’s Goth/punk
Drastic Plastic
show was running over into her progeny Shane’s midnight hour. I peeled off my dull black training jacket as the music faded.

“Happy Saturday, my friends.” Shane’s voice crawled out of the little speaker, so deep and soothing my knees turned to jelly. I sank onto the bed, forgetting my own reek. “It’s two minutes past midnight here at 94.3 FM WVMP, the Lifeblood of Rock ’n’ Roll. We’ve got forty-six degrees here
in Sherwood, fifty in Baltimore, and fifty-two in Washington, with clear skies all over the map.”

The mountains between the Control’s regional headquarters and our hometown of Sherwood weakened the station’s signal, but I still felt like he was speaking straight to me.

“The Easter Bunny has left the South Pole and will be heading your way in twenty-four hours—so, kids, behave yourselves. This next one goes out to all the secret agents. Give me a call and tell me a secret.”

I was dialing his cell number before the opening bars of R.E.M.’s “Orange Crush” were even finished.

He picked up after the first ring. “Come home. Now.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing in particular. Everything in general.” He let out a long sigh, and I could picture him leaning back in his chair and propping his feet on the studio table. “I miss you, Ciara.”

After almost three years, I still got that zing across the back of my shoulders every time Shane said my name. Like it was created to be uttered by him, perfectly pronounced (
KEER
-ahh) with just the right amount of breath.

“I miss you, too, but the month is almost up. Besides, the way I smell, you’re better off missing me.” I described the unclassified parts of my latest training session.

“Sounds like you got high marks,” he said.

“I ace strategic thinking.” I massaged my shoulder, sore from yesterday’s push-up marathon. “But I suck at teamwork and martial arts. I barely passed my tae kwon do final. On the plus side, I learned the Korean word for ‘doofus.’”

His laughter came low and rich, making me twist the blanket with the desire to hear it in person. Preferably naked.

“How’s Dexter?” I asked him.

“Same as usual. Cold and furry.”

I missed my dog almost more than I missed my boyfriend. At least I could talk to Shane on the phone or get his messages. Dexter’s vampirism—developed years ago in a Control laboratory—made him smarter than the average pooch, but he wasn’t big on texting.

“He’ll be psyched to see you Sunday night,” Shane added. “You’d better wear a life jacket so you don’t drown in drool.”

I laughed at the image, to ease the stab of homesickness in my chest. “I can’t wait to sleep in our bed again. And not sleep in it.” When he didn’t answer after a few moments, I prompted him. “Get it? Not sleep? In a bed? Hubba-hubba?”

“Sorry.” His voice hushed. “Jim just walked by the studio.”

“How did he look?”

“Bloody.”

I rubbed my temple, where a headache the size and shape of a certain hippie vampire was forming. “What if a cop had seen him driving back from his donor’s like that?”

“We’ve pointed that out, but he won’t listen.”

“If he doesn’t knock it off, we’ll have to get him some help.”

Shane snorted. “Spoken like a true Control agent.”

“Jim isn’t just risking himself—his recklessness could blow everyone’s cover and show the world that vampires exist. That means the end of all of you, and the station, too.”

“I know.” He let out a long sigh. “We’ll try again. But Jim’s not the best candidate for an intervention. It’s more likely to drive him over the edge.”

A key turned in the lock. Tina shoved open the door, banging it against the wall. Her face crumpled in disgust when she saw me. “You still haven’t showered?”

I angled my shoulder away from her. “Shane, I gotta go wash up. See you soon.”

“I’ll wake you when I get home from work,” he said, his voice rich with promise. “After three.”

“Please do,” I said after a long moment, when I could scrub my voice of all tension and speak of April 5 as if it were just another Monday. As if it were just the beginning of another work week.

As if it weren’t the fifteenth anniversary of the death and resurrection of Shane McAllister.

After showering, I returned to my room to find Tina sitting up in bed, writing on a legal pad. Her heavy dark brows pinched together, and her lips folded under her teeth so hard I expected them to bleed.

I collapsed in bed with one of the textbooks for my History of Eastern Europe class, my last course at Sherwood College before graduation. My professor had let me off for Control orientation, and here I was repaying him by falling way behind in assigned reading.

Unfortunately, the rhythmic scratching of Tina’s pen soon lulled me into drowsiness.

Just as I was falling asleep, she slapped down her notepad. “Goddamn fucking precepts.”

When she left the room to go to the bathroom, I crept over to her bed and looked at the legal pad. So far she had written in long hand, “Cooperation before coercion” one hundred and seventy-three times. The repetitions grew shakier as they continued.

“Ouch,” I muttered. “Not just old-school punishment. Grade school.”

I took a small towel into the bathroom and soaked it at the faucet, avoiding Tina’s glare in the mirror. She was using her left hand to brush her teeth, her right hand no doubt sore from scribbling.