Better Off Dead (21 page)

The blonde stood back up and looked down on Lucy with a pleased smile spreading across her face.  “You’re draining, whore!”

Lucy felt the heat rekindle inside her skull.  She didn’t like being called names.  Especially whore—she was still a virgin for pity’s sake.

“It might take me a moment or two to get to you,” fang chick growled, “but you’ll be dead a hell of a lot longer.”  She charged Lucy again, fangs bared, her face contorted and twisted with hate.

“Stop!”  Lucy said, holding her hand out, feeling the burning in her head move down her arm and out through her fingertips.  The blonde stopped in her tracks again, but this time she kept pressing, as if she were pushing against a wall.  Lucy could feel the last of her strength fade, both her hands now desperately trying to hold her up from the ground.  She felt the blonde’s hand grab hold of the back of her neck, pulling her up by her hair and tossing her back against the wall.

For just an instant Lucy was staring into those cold blue eyes again, and the voice in her head didn’t have to say anything: she knew she was dead. 

Out of nowhere a man’s hand came out of the darkness, grabbed the blonde’s shoulder and yanked her off Lucy.  Lucy didn’t know what was more fantastic or impossible.  The blonde flew backward through the air, landing gracefully on top of a dumpster.  She stood there, her hands on her hips, her chilly eyes looked hurt but still angry.  That was pretty unbelievable. 

What was even more unbelievable was who’d thrown her: Gabriel stood there in his good suit, his appearance hadn’t changed much in the last few minutes, but there was something changed about him. 

He felt dangerous.

“Delia, what the hell are you doing?” he growled.

Delia?
  Lucy’s eyes bugged out until they felt like they ready to pop right out of their sockets. 
Oh, the
actual
girlfriend.
  Lucy shook her head. 
Does Gabe know he’s dating a vampire?

Okay, you just said she’s a vampire!  A vampire?  It can’t be…

“Don’t act thick!”  Delia’s voice was harsh and metallic, her eyes blazed like sapphire blue fire.  “It doesn’t suit you.”

“This was your idea, remember?  You thought that if I had a fake wife, then we could be together…in secret.”

Delia crouched as if she were about to pounce on Gabriel.  Lucy was afraid she might hurt him.  She wanted to stand up and protect him, but she could barely keep herself from falling to the ground.

“Your whore is mine to kill.”  Delia flung herself at Lucy again.  Gabriel caught hold of her in mid-air and pinned her to him. 

“Nothing happened!”  Gabriel shouted in her face, holding her by the wrists.

“I can smell you on her…”  She took a long, angry sniff of him.  “And her on you…you kissed her, you asshole!”

Almost effortlessly she flung Gabriel away from her and into a garbage dumpster. 

Lucy shrieked in horror—
he can’t be dead
—but before she could pull herself to her feet Gabriel was back on his feet and leaping across the alley.  He grabbed Delia by both shoulders as he pulled her away from Lucy.  They pushed and pulled at each other and fell cold pavement of the alley.  Delia struck Gabriel and he sailed down the alley, hitting hard, yet rolling onto all fours, his face now straining with anger, a snarl ripping through his bared teeth.

He’s not a vampire…
Lucy knew that.  She was flashing back to him standing in the sunlight with her, numerous times.

“I won’t let you hurt her…”  Lucy could swear she saw his body ripple, stretching the fabric of his suit.  “She was just playing her part, as was I.”

“You’re siding with the blood sack?”  Her expression held revulsion and shock as she walked closer to him.  “You really are just a dog!”  She charged him, her hands now fists as she streaked forward and rammed right into him, flipping them both over.

Suddenly Gabriel’s form shifted, expanding as he flipped over atop Delia, his suit shredding away from him as a giant wolf took his place.  No, not a wolf.  It was too big.  Almost twice the size Gabriel had been, and from the neck down it was shaped almost like a human…except for the pitch black fur, and the giant sharp looking claws.

Nope, not a vampire.

And unbelievably Delia grabbed the wolf around the neck and picked him up and threw him off her.  She sprung to her feet and raced after him.  They collided with a sickening crunch.

Lucy was still trying to pick herself up off the pavement when someone pulled her up by her armpits and set her gently against a particularly warm, soft wall.  She looked up and Micah grinned down at her—he was the wall she was leaning against.

“You okay?”

“What’s going on?”  She looked over to where the wolf and Delia were fighting, crashing into dumpsters, breaking windows.

“Yeah,” Micah said wistfully as they both watched the battle.  “They really need to get a room.”

Dante Enoch was now on the other side of her.  He stared disapprovingly at the skirmishing lovers.  “Just typical.”

Lucy took a long, slow breath, and then shook her head in confusion.  “So vampires and werewolves…they’re real?”

“And much more, Ms. Hart.” Dante murmured.

Micah chimed in happily.  “And our two species have been enemies for thousands of years—”

“It’s not that simple,” Dante said, his gaze still on Gabriel and Delia.  “We’ve enjoyed two centuries of peace.  A truce, if you would.  And if either king found out of this, war would be inevitable.”

“And that would be—” Micah stopped in mid-sentence, Dante’s stern gaze making him gulp and choose an obviously more serious last word.  “Bad…it would be bad.”
             

Out of nowhere a man appeared beside Micah.  He was pale and blond, with cool blue eyes and the most expressionless face.  His hair was slicked back from his face, and was long enough to be in a ponytail that fell halfway down his back.

Without having to ask, Lucy knew he was a vampire too.  She could feel the same cold dead feeling radiating from him as from Delia.

“Your sister and Gabriel are making a mess out of this alley.”  Micah was chuckling as he said it.

“Yes, Vin,” Dante said stiffly, as if speaking to the vampire was a hardship. “Would you be so kind as to rein Delia in?”

The blond vampire slid a cold glance Dante’s way, and then walked confidently over to the battling couple.  He waited a beat as they pushed away from each other, and before they had a chance to latch onto each other again he put himself between the two.  He held a hand up to warn off the werewolf, and then he turned to his sister.

“You have to stop this.”

“Mind your own business!”  She moved to try and pass him, but he kept himself in front of her. 

“Think, Delia.  You’re fighting your lover.”

The word lover struck Lucy quite literally in the heart.  She’d never thought one word could cause her actual physical pain, but there it was.  One little word, not even a very long one, and she felt it stab through her like a knife.  She forced herself to take a deep, painful breath—it felt as if the knife in her heart was really there—and then she let it out. 

Tears burnt at the backs of her eyes, threatening to fill her eyes with their hot wetness.  But Lucy clamped her eyes shut on them.  She would not start crying, not for something so impossibly wrong.  It had been just a job—being Gabriel’s fiancée, a means to an end—and she needed to get back to thinking that way, to believing it.

Vin’s voice cut through Lucy’s reverie.  “What if you hurt him?”

“He’s…he’s…”  Delia was pointing at Gabriel.  Her blue eyes welled up with tears, her harsh voice faltering as she looked from her brother to Gabriel
.  At least she had a real reason to be crying.
 

“And her!”  She was now thrusting her finger in Lucy’s direction, and even though she was still crying, the hatred in those water blue eyes was scorching. 

“But he’s in love with you, Delia.”

Lucy hadn’t noticed, but Gabriel had shifted back to his human form, and now he was moving to Vin’s side, his face full of affection, his eyes beseeching.

Lucy suddenly looked away, embarrassed: Gabriel was naked, not a stitch of clothing on him, just a thin sheen of sweat that made his skin glisten, and made every curve and cut of his body stand out.

“I’m only doing this for you.”  Gabriel’s voice was rough and thick.

Delia sobbed into her hands.  “I know, I know.  I just didn’t realize…”

“That I’d have to act the part of an engaged man?”  Gabriel walked steadily toward her until he had her shoulders in his hands—just as he’d held Lucy’s only a few minutes ago.

Delia crumpled into his bare arms and buried her face into the flesh of his chest.  “I didn’t realize it would hurt so much.”

“Freaking love birds!”  Micah growled with a smile on his handsome face.

“We should leave them alone,” Dante said.   

Lucy looked over to Delia and Gabriel.  He held her in his arms, whispering things to her, stroking her golden hair.  Most of him was obscured by Delia’s body pressing against his, but his shoulders and chest were luminous in their nakedness.

Lucy’s gaze flicked over to Vin and she was surprised to find he was staring right at her, his blue eyes not a bit cold—he was looking at her as if he wanted to eat her.

Which he just might want to…
Lucy turned as Dante and Micah helped her walk, each lending her an arm.  Which was good.  Her legs were like rubber, and her knees kept knocking.

“So,” Lucy said as she walked along between the two werewolves, desperately trying to push the bewildering tangle of emotions out of her head.  “Is there anyone that doesn’t know about this little…?”

“Shit storm?”  Micah chortled.

“Arrangement?”  Dante corrected.

“Yeah…that.”

“Well,” Dante said.  “Gabriel’s parents, and of course Delia’s.”

“And anyone that might want Gabriel dead.”  Micah seemed to ponder this.  “You’d be surprised how many.”

Lucy felt the pressure and tension evaporate when they stepped out of the cramped little alley and stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of La Companion Refectory.  A sly north wind blew around and through them, making Lucy feel unaccountably better.  She pulled her arms gently free from Dante’s and Micah’s grasp.  “I’m going to need more money,” she announced.  She looked right into Dante’s light brown eyes.  “That alright with you?”

Dante and Micah exchanged a smile as Dante nodded.  “You might just be the right girl for this job after all.”

LUCY
sat in the dim light that shone from the small wall lamp over the stove.  It had red roosters on its shade.  Her coffee had turned cold long ago, yet she still held the cup in her hand.  Her arm lay limply against the waxy plastic of the tablecloth covering her grandmother’s kitchen table.  Too many things drifted and raced and throbbed in her head.  Each thought sizzled with its own heat, pulled at her with its own weight. 

There was the kiss: the feel, the taste and scent of that memory, when Gabriel had held her and kissed her in front of his entire family.  It hadn’t felt like just part of the act, the game.  But it was connected to the little spectacle in the alley.  How she’d almost been killed.  How his real lady love had nearly strangled her to death.  Maybe she was even going to tear her throat out?  That’s what vampire’s did, wasn’t it?

And Lucy couldn’t blame her.  She wasn’t really anything to Gabriel, not anything real, and she felt jealousy flaring hot and unwanted in her soul, in her heart—all for a man she really didn’t know.  No, she couldn’t blame the vampire for her reaction.

She actually smelt Lucy on Gabriel, and the other way around—and she’d been able to smell their want, their lust for each other.

Creepy!

Lucy shook her head, sitting there in the dim warmth of the kitchen.  She felt so safe in her grandmother’s kitchen.  She wanted her to be there with her, more than anything, so she could tell her about the crazy, horrific things that had been happening to her.  But she couldn’t. 

For one thing how could she tell her sainted grandmother there were such things as werewolves and vampires…and who knew what else? 

Gram
would lock me up for sure.

But then a really terrifying thought crossed Lucy’s mind, sending a chill up her spine and making her stomach sink to her buttery Italian leather heels:
I’d have to tell her that the werewolf was my fiancé…

Hell no!
  Lucy would rather face a battalion of love scorned vampires than have to tell her grandmother that she had been engaged for the last month…and hiding it, and lying about it…and that she was being paid to do so.

Nope.  Gram would kill me for sure.  Repeatedly.

She finally got up and poured the cold coffee out into the sink, washed the mug and set it on the drain-board to dry.  She dried her hands on a dish towel and then noticed she was still wearing the red silk dress.  There was amazingly little damage from her violent encounter with the vampire.  A smudge here, a beveling in the threading there, but overall the dress could be mended, and after dry cleaning it would be as good as new.  But did she really want to wear it again?  It had seemed so beautiful and romantic looking, and she’d felt so wonderful in it, like she was in a chic, modern-day fairytale.  But after what had happened to her while she was wearing it, she wasn’t so sure anymore—the monsters in the fairytale being real made the tale less alluring.