Crossed (24 page)

A tiny fleck of blood lifted from my cheek with a tingle not unlike a butterfly on my skin. It rose and flattened against the undercarriage, sinking into it. Fang worked his way across my face, tendrils of blood lifting off in tiny drips and drops. He
went lower, his invisible hunger tickling my skin and tugging at my clothes. Butterfly touches caressed my breasts and traced warm lines along my rib cage. When he reached my groin, the excitement generated more blood and he was forced to focus on that area longer. . . .

I hadn’t expected it to be sensual, much less sexual, so when pleasure built and I came, the orgasm surprised me and I lay back, relaxing in the grip of his power, not quite touching him and yet not quite touching the ground as the remnants of blood splatter rose from my legs, my socks, my shoes. “Far out,” I said eventually, as Fang rolled back, revealing my clean skin, clothes, and hair.

Talbot hovered over me.

“Are you okay?”

I breathed in deeply, a nod to the very human sensations I’d just felt, and let it out in a dramatic postcoital shudder. I closed my eyes and nodded, waiting for my legs to stop shaking.

“I’m fan-fucking-tastic.” I sat up, noticing the pavement beneath me, the way it bit into my skin. “And I have a totally new understanding of autoerotica.”

With a satisfied sigh, I let Talbot help me up, then pushed past him and climbed into Fang. “To the Towers,” I said. Fang pulled away, leaving Talbot behind, and I let my eyes close again. There was no music, just an uncomfortable silence. “Don’t act all weird, Fang.” I patted the stick shift. “It was nice, but I don’t think we should do it again.”

As if signaling his agreement, Fang’s radio clicked on to Radio Disney. Someone who undoubtedly had their own show on the Disney Channel sang songs that were very pop rock and upbeat. I listened halfheartedly, wondering what would happen to Dad if I killed Fang. We hadn’t actually had sex, so I guess it was okay not to kill him, plus Fang is a car and that would be like strangling a vibrator. Still, it might be interesting.
It couldn’t be too hard either, could it? As if triggered by the internal question, the LEGOs in my head snapped into place and I knew how to kill Fang.

He was a
memento mori;
all I had to do was melt him down or completely disassemble him. Knowing how was enough; Dad wouldn’t like it if I killed Fang, and . . .

“Ow.” When I’m stalking a vampire and figuring out how to kill him, it doesn’t usually hurt, but this time pain stabbed through my sinuses like they were being cauterized with silver nitrate. I grunted, grabbing the bridge of my nose; my teeth gritted together.

More LEGOs fell into place, as if the idea of destroying Dad’s
memento mori
and understanding how to do it was all I needed for the right pieces to click together.

I knew how to kill Daddy. I’ve read that there is a moment as a kid when you realize that your parents are going to die one day and leave you all alone. I’d never felt that way before. My daddy was an uber vamp. Not even the sun could kill my daddy. He was forever and he’d always protect me, just like he had from the moment I met him.

Destroying him wouldn’t be easy, but it could be done.
I punched the steering wheel. “Unacceptable!”

We’d barely made it two blocks from the Demon Heart when traffic came to a halt. Policemen were trying to direct traffic, but it was a complete snarl.

“I wonder if the buildings down here are close enough together for you to go off-road . . .”

“Now there’s a possibility.” The light, self-amused voice came from my right. I swiped at it without thinking. My claws passed through something cool and damp, yet ephemeral, and Fang accidentally nudged the yellow Mazda Miata in front of us. The vampire in the seat next to me gazed down at the point where my arm protruded from his chest without disturbing the straight lines of his unbuttoned dress shirt. I wrinkled my
nose in confusion. He could do mist, and fast. The ability was rare—five or six in the world rare—and should have helped me figure out who he was. . . . Oh, yeah. Ebon Winter.

Other than my hand sticking through him, the only sign of his etherealness was a gentle blurring at the edge of his body. His hair, a shockingly vibrant blue, was done in tasteful spikes that appeared styled rather than horripilated. Delicate tattoos covered his face, but they added too much blue and didn’t suit his look. It was close, but not quite right.

Like a scientist examining a bug, he focused on my reaction to his appearance. All sense of bemusement melted from his face, and it reminded me of a bird of prey.

“It’s the tattoos.” His smile returned with a degree of warmth that convinced me for a split second that it had never absented itself. “They don’t work?”

I examined the subtle blue curves, wondering how they’d managed to do such a good baby blue. The basic pattern was designed to subtly enhance his features and complement the blue of his contacts. “They aren’t quite right.”

“I rushed him.” The vampire casually pulled an old-fashioned silver straight razor out of the pocket of his jeans. “My own fault.” He ran his left hand over his face one time and then again. “You’ll have to excuse me for a moment.”

The young girl driving the Miata had climbed out of her car. I only noticed because Winter glanced her way.

“What are you—”

He began to cut and my hand, still extended through his body, clutched convulsively, digging into the upholstery of the passenger’s seat. Tracing the same lines his fingers had outlined, the vampire removed the tattoos, skin and all, with a series of cuts.

“Holy shit!”

Peeling away the skin on his forehead in one large rounded rectangle, he revealed a mass of uncut muscles like thin red
cords. The vampire threw the now excess skin over the windshield past the hood and into the street.

The Miata’s driver opened her mouth to scream, but Winter caught her eye and her mouth froze. In mid-scream, she closed her mouth, looked away, and got back into her car.

“The car will enjoy that,” he said thoughtfully. I didn’t see how Fang would enjoy the girl not screaming, but then I realized he meant his skin. Next he did the left side, flaying the skin next to his eyes and working down along the cheek, exposing the tissue beneath. The muscles there were less uniform than under the forehead, curving in circles near the eyes, yet cutting long straight angles at the cheek. He left the flap attached at the chin and let it fall loose, hanging from his naked cheek. There was no blood, not a drop.

“That’s fucking awesome.” I gripped the steering wheel tightly with my left hand and he began to cut again, on the right side, turning his head a little to give me a better view. He didn’t flinch. His smile never faltering and his eyes never leaving me, he created an exact mirror of what he’d done on the left side of his face.

“The chin is the tricky part.” He made an incision below his lower lip. “I tend to cut too deeply.” Even as he said it, he made his final cut and I saw for the first time the way he would break into vampire speed, making adjustments and slicing away tissue as he pulled to give the illusion that he was easily pulling the skin away. Swapping just that much of his body back and forth to mist, cutting his face off while continuing to ignore my hand, still stuck through his chest, claws gripping the seat cushion. . . .

He tossed the rest of his excised skin to Fang and settled back in his seat. “Did I get it all?”

I nodded, and his eyes flashed red. An eruption of regenerative madness rolled across his skin and his face was whole sans tattoos.

“And you’re just a Soldier?”

“Me?” He laughed between his words, and the sound warmed my stomach. “A Soldier? No, darling. I’m a King if anyone is.”

“But I didn’t feel you.”

His eyebrows went up. “Is that all?” The sense of him hit me all at once, but the dossier was slimmer than what I was used to getting. His name I already knew. That he was a Vlad, I knew as well. That he could sneak up on vampires the same way I could—that was new.

“There,” he said as I withdrew my arm from where it pierced his mist form, “now you’ve sensed me. Two Vlads in a
memento mori,
enjoying the night air. We’re so cute together I may vomit.”

Winter’s voice tickled my ears and made my brain go fuzzy. It didn’t really matter what he said, I just wanted the sound to keep coming out of his mouth.

“Don’t drool now,” he chided, “you haven’t the time.”

“Time?”
I’m not in a hurry.
What was he talking about?

“Of course you’re in a hurry.” He drifted sideways out of the car, straightening, and leaned toward me over the closed car door. His shirt fell open, exposing washboard abs. “You have to change into something appropriate if you’re to be seen at my concert. And you’ll need to bring your sire’s
memento mori
with you if you intend to keep it concealed from Lisette. Who will, I might add, be there.”

He ran his hand casually through his hair. “You need to read her on three successive nights in order to deduce her method of destruction, yes?”

“How did you—?”

“I have an eye for details.”

I took another swing at him, but all it did was generate more laughter while sending portions of his shirt into swirls of mist. “Don’t try to fight me, Greta. It’s not something I do.
If you truly try to end me, then I shall be forced to murder you . . . not a preferable course of events, though I find some of your practices revolting.” He made a grand sweep, indicating Fang. “I mean, frotting yourself to completion against the car? Honestly. It’s akin to masturbating with a matchbox car while wearing your father’s underwear over your nose.”

“I did not frot. It was an accidental thing, and—” I blinked. “You saw that?”

“I’m not the vampire who has thralls watching the Pollux and the Demon Heart, my dear.” He leaned back against the car door. “But that’s not what I’m here about. You’re concerned that you’ve deduced a method by which your father may be destroyed. Now that he’s created a
memento mori,
he’s technically vulnerable.”

“How did you know that?” I took a third swipe at him. Even at top speed, I caught nothing but mist.

“I’m very clever, and if you do that again, I’ll skin you in your sleep and have my mage cast a spell to make the regeneration take a month.”

Ow!

“Fine.” I slumped back in the seat, arms crossed beneath my breasts. “What do you want again?”

“Come to my concert. Sense Lisette. And then I’ll tell you how to make Eric unkillable again.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Do you know which movie is your father’s favorite?”

“Yes,” I said.

“So do I.” He murmured the words under his breath and then he was gone, shooting backward in mist form up into the air like a cloud. “Be at my concert.”

“Where is the concert?” I asked myself, but then I knew. This was Ebon Winter. He’d be on the big stage at the Artiste Unknown, front and center. Where else?

What do you wear to a concert where the man who says he
can make your daddy unkillable is performing? What do you wear to a place like the Artiste Unknown? The solution hit me like a bolt of lightning: Talbot would know.

“Looks like we’re going to a concert,” I told Fang. He pulled forward enough to devour Winter’s discarded flesh, then turned back toward the Pollux, much to the dismay of those in the lanes nearest us.

    24    

TALBOT:

AVERAGE EVERYDAY HERO

Every now and again I wish my dad had been a spider deity, his DNA granting me the ability to swing from rooftop to rooftop instead of the power to Devour. But I make do. From my perch atop the old Mandrake Hotel, I watched Fang driving up the exterior of the Void City Metro Bank building. Tired of the traffic jams from the music festival, Greta and Fang had clearly chosen that building because it stood taller than its neighbors and had widely spaced windows that aligned perfectly from top to bottom.

“That is physically impossible.”

“Says the guy who can turn into a cat and eat beings larger than himself in their entirety without bloating up like a blimp.” Magbidion chattered away in my ear via the Bluetooth headset of my cell.