Damned if I Do (10 page)

Edie

Red flags go up in my mind. It's one thing to meet someone in a glass storefront. It's entirely another to follow them into the dark warehouse behind it. I know nothing about this woman, and she wants us to follow her?

"I don't trust you."

She cocks her head, a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. "Honey, if I wanted to kill you, I would have done that already. You may think you're special, but you haven't been around anywhere near as long as I have."

"We're being cautious," Carl says.

"If you wanna be cautious, honey," the woman says, "don't hang out with his kind." She points to Jude. "Even the supposed good ones always turn on you.
Always.
Maria is a ticking time bomb."

"You know what—" Jude growls.

"I can see why you're here," she interrupts him in a huff. "And I don't like it. You're lucky I don't leave you up here, but I suspect I won't get her downstairs without taking you down there too."

Jude immediately slams his mouth shut with an audible snap.

"Now," the woman says, "Come on down before I get tired of you."

I look back to Carl and Jude, and my cousin gestures for me to go ahead first. "Coward," I mouth to him. He shrugs. I roll my eyes and follow her.

We follow her behind the desk to the facility behind the office. It doesn't seem like the cleanest of places. The flickering fluorescent lights make it look like some sort of nightmare where a madman is running after you with a knife and you can't find the way out.

"I'm Li," the woman tells us without turning around. "I'm Zhi's grandmother, taught him everything he knows, although if you ask him, he says he's better than me."

Finally I have a name for who we are meeting, although I don't have any information on him other than that.

“Is he?” I ask. “Better than you?”

Li gives a short laugh. "Better? Oh yes, honey. I used to fight jianshis back home over forty years ago. I miss that. At least those vampires had the good sense to follow culture conventions. So predictable, unlike the vampires here."

I know from my research that a jianshi is a kind of vampire in Chinese culture, which means that she is a vampire hunter herself. No wonder she doesn't like Jude.

"I'm Carl and the hot vampire is Jude. And this is Edie," my cousin says, pointing between us. "Most people only know her by her last name."

Li chuckles. "The legend becomes bigger than the person, I'm afraid." She gives me a derisive sniff. "Although that ain’t hard compared to you," she says, commenting on my short stature. "How long you been hunting?"

"All my life," I answer. "Professionally…as the Harker…" I feel sick at the distinction, "…five months."

Our eyes meet and she nods sadly. "Five months? Sorry for your loss then, honey. Your mother? Sister?"

"Sister."

She pats my arm, a sympathetic gesture I didn't expect from her. "You'll avenge her, I'm sure."

I'm not so sure about that. But I don't divulge any information. There's something both trustworthy and guarded about Li that I can't quite put my finger on.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Jude whispers next to me as Li takes the lead again.

I look up at him in surprise. "Yeah, I think so."

"I don't like her," he growls.

"I think it's mutual."

He laughs at my comment.

Li glances back wordlessly at our exchange, yet, instead of addressing it, she changes the subject and twirls her finger, indicating the warehouse. "If you've got any clothes with bad stains, you can always bring them here. You wouldn't believe the shit I get out. Zhi's always bad about keeping clean."

Her owning a dry cleaners makes a bit more sense now.

"Ah, here we are."

Li pushes aside a rack of clothing. We're in front of what looks like a supply closet that's on the wall bordering the frozen yogurt shop. It doesn't look like much with a simple lock on the doorknob, which she deftly unlocks with the key she retrieved earlier.

As soon as the door opens though, I see a staircase leading deep into the belly of darkness. A lightbulb on a string hangs above my head and the incandescent light doesn't do much to make it look more inviting. If anything, it looks more sinister.

Li sticks the key into her breast pocket and gives it a reassured pat. "Home sweet home."

I stick my hands into the front of my hoodie pocket, making sure that my stakes are still there. I don't want to go down into the hole with her, however, it feels like I have no choice. Not if I want to find out what they could help me with.

She leads us down into the abyss. When we reach a door at the bottom, I realize that we're in a heavily fortified bunker underneath the strip mall, one that is clad in concrete like a nuclear shelter.

The door in front of us is simple. The only difference between it and the door on the ground floor is a keypad combination lock. Li inputs the code, blocking our view so we can't see. As if we'd want to sneak into
this
creepy space.

What’s even worse, I can sense vampires beyond the door. I can’t explain how it feels other than hearing a sizzle, a buzz in the air. Yet the area is so thick with concrete and steel, I can’t tell how many there are.

Carl tenses next to me and I know he’s thinking the same thing.

The door beeps, the lock opens, and it swings outward, showing what lay beyond.

From what I can tell, it's a bigger, more elaborate version of the weapons room that we have back home. There’s an array of different weapons on one side with full military-grade battle armor hanging in a glass case on the far wall next to another door, a wall full of security monitors with a leather computer chair in front of it, and a seven tier book shelf on the far side.

My attention is on the man in the middle of the room, practicing a kind of martial arts that I recognize as wushu with a nandao, a Chinese broadsword, on top of a gym mat. Though there's plenty of room here for exercise like this, it surprises me. One look tells me that he's Li's grandson. A man in his early twenties, he's only a few inches taller than me, with a shock of black hair, dark eyes, and porcelain skin. He's wiry, not muscular like Jude is, but that doesn't mean he can't drop a person with a punch. He's efficient in all his moves, and he moves with the confidence of someone who knows exactly what he’s doing.

We pause in the doorway, watching him spin and kick on the mat. I'm not that experienced with wushu, but I can tell that he hits each mark with practiced accuracy. The blade shimmers in the light as he thrusts and parries it like it's an extension of his arm.

He's good. Really good.

After a few minutes, during which, I bet, he does some impressive acrobatics for us gawkers, he stops in a lunge facing away from us. He holds the position, huffing from exertion. It's one of those movie moments, where you meet a badass protagonist. Or antagonist.

It annoys me.

Li decides to ruin the moment, much to my delight. "Zhi, you have friends here," she nags in a bored voice. "And your form was terrible on the aerial."

I stifle a snicker, although Carl can't keep his in.

Zhi stiffly stands to his full height, then turns around. I'm struck by how innocent he looks for a vampire hunter. He doesn't have that haunted look like the rest of us have after seeing death so many times. He's either very sheltered or very good at what he does.

I'm guessing the latter.

He smirks. "Like you can do any better,
Nǎ
inai."

Li says something to him in Mandarin, to which he laughs.

He combs a hand through his sweaty hair and bends down to pick up a towel on the floor. He doesn't take his eyes off me once as he does so. "I'm Zhi, by the way."

"Edie," I say, although I know he'll keep calling me Harker. "And that's Carl and Jude."

"I know."

"Yeah, about that. How
do
you know who they are? And how do you know I need help?"

He smiles, although it doesn't quite reach his eyes. "I know everything about you. My family has been watching yours for quite some time. And given your recent actions, and your post on the V-boards, we figured it was time to reach out to you." He holds his hands out, indicating the entire space. "Welcome to the Zhang household." He grins at me. “We’re vampire hunters like you. Only…”

My vampy sense tingles and I see the computer chair in front of the monitors spin around. In it is a leggy, dark-haired vampire of Latina descent who flashes her fangs at us. She gets up from the chair, in stilettos no less, and saunters over to Zhi, whom she towers over.

Carl tenses up beside me. “Shit!” he says under his breath. He’s ready to bolt, entering fight or flight mode.

If she wants to attack us, we have no easy way out.

Instead, the vampire wraps Zhi up in a passionate kiss, holding him there. He reaches up and pulls her tighter to him, as if he’s trying to meld their bodies into one.

What the hell am I watching? I hear Li’s huff of disapproval, so I know this isn’t a sanctioned relationship. Still, I’ve never seen anything like this before.

“Maria,” Jude murmurs beside me, recognizing her. So this is the vampire he met last night.

And still, they kiss in a gratuitous display of affection.

My cheeks burn. I guess this is confirmation about hunters having relationships with vampires. I’d just never seen it before.

My fingers brush against Jude’s, sending shivers down my spine. I don’t know which one of us initiated that contact, but now that we have, I don’t want it to stop.

Would Jude…?

I can’t allow myself to think that though. If I truly care about him, I can’t allow him to get hurt in the future. Like Sam, maybe it’s better if I push him away.

I shift to the other side, breaking contact. He doesn’t reach out for my fingers and I wonder if I was the one touched him first.

Finally, it’s Carl that clears his throat to break up Zhi and Maria’s makeout session, and even then, he has to do it three times before they notice. Maria backs away from the vampire hunter, their fingers still linked together.

“Nice to see you again, Jude,” Maria says in a husky voice.

For some odd reason, jealousy flares up in my stomach. It’s silly. After all, she’s clearly in some sort of relationship with Zhi, so I shouldn’t be worried. And it’s not like Jude’s mine anyway so…

Even still, there’s some sort of familiarity between Maria and Jude that makes me want to tackle her.

“Likewise,” Jude says with a nod.

Maria laughs. I see a tattoo on her neck, a Chinese character, like it’s a brand. “I see you remembered the address. I’d hate to have to share another Bloody Mary with you.”

The jealousy squirms like snakes in my stomach. Li groans and shakes her head, so at least I’m not the only one revolted by this.

“I’m sure you have lots of questions for us,” Zhi says, bringing the conversation back to ground zero.

I refocus my attention back on him. “Yes.” My voice is soft, because I don’t trust it otherwise. "Like, why haven't we heard of you before?" I ask. “Why aren’t you on the V-boards?”

I've met a lot of vampire hunters throughout my life. Many are real-life descendants of vampire hunters from old legends. From Japan to South America to Australia, there are many lines of vampire hunters continuing their ancestors' work, like me, although they aren’t as powerful with magical powers and strength. It's not like we have yearly vampire hunter conferences or anything, but it's always good to know who’s on your side in a fight.

Zhi shrugs. "Because we didn't want to be known. Unlike you guys," he points to me and Carl, "we didn't want to have our identities displayed like a damn Facebook status."

"We don't have this on Facebook," Carl says defensively.

"Might as well," Zhi counters. "As I said, we've been tracking you for quite some time, Harker, especially on those silly message boards of yours. Really, you should up the security on it. A college freshman could hack the system in half an hour."

"Those are extremely secure," my cousin protests.

Zhi shakes his head with a patronizing laugh. "Beg to differ."

Maria grins. “Agreed.”

"Even
I
could get past the security protocols," Li adds, rolling her eyes. "And I can barely operate the microwave."

I watch them, trying to tell if they're bluffing. Carl collaborated with a few programmers within the vampire hunting community to put up the firewalls for the V-boards, working to get them perfectly right and secure. Is our security really that soft?

I can see Carl has the same thoughts running through his head. Neither of us feel particularly safe at the moment.

I swallow thickly. "You said you could help me?"

“I wouldn’t invite you to come down to San Antonio for pleasantries,” Maria says with a smirk.

I think I don’t like her.