Min's Vampire (33 page)

She got out of the cab and set Brutus
on the ground. She listened to the cab drive off as she and Brutus
walked quickly toward the park. She must have been walking pretty
quietly, because Sam was muttering to himself, and didn’t seem to
know she was approaching.

But Shylock noticed, and whined
affectionately when he spied her coming.

Sam turned, the look on his face
turning from surprised to happy in a heartbeat. But she saw that
something long and shiny had been in his hand, and now wasn’t. Just
that fast.

He stood and was about to say
something, but just didn’t seem able to do so. It was comical, and
endearing, and a couple of days ago it might have been disastrous.
If he’d gotten tongue tied, then her nerves would’ve jumbled, and
she would’ve been tongue tied too. Or worse, she might have started
babbling. But instead she smiled and said, “Waiting for
me?”

His handsome Anglo Saxon face blushed,
and a guilty smile lit up his face. She loved his smile. It was
boyish yet masculine at the same time. It didn’t hurt that it
belonged to such a great-looking man.

He had broad shoulders, a well-muscled
body, and straight brown hair long enough to brush his shoulders.
Not to mention his hazel eyes. They changed with his mood, or what
he was looking at. And as he looked at her they changed from a cool
blue to a radiant green.

“
Yeah…I missed you last
night. I was home but you weren’t.”

Andy didn’t take her eyes from his,
just shrugged. “I had a family thing across town. Stayed overnight
with my mother and sister.”

A relieved look shown on his face, for
just a moment, and then he covered it up with a hasty smile. “Good,
I mean, it’s good you get along well with your family. Family’s
important.”

Absently he rubbed his hand over his
mouth, obviously thinking over what he was going to say next. But
Andy noticed something peculiar. A ring, old and gold, and topped
off with a ruby and diamond insignia. She’d seen this emblem
before, in books, and had always thought they were either remnants
of a forgotten time, or simply fiction.

But standing across from Sam, the moon
shining down upon them, she knew he wasn’t just some pretender. The
light made him shine just a little more than anything else. An
inner light she had somehow ignored up until then.

Faith.

No, he was the real deal. An honest to
goodness Knight of the Cross.

Andy gasped as this realization hit her
brain. She was a star—or a piece of one—fallen to earth and was now
human. Well, human with a bunch of unknown powers. And she had a
huge crush on her neighbor…and he was a freaking Holy Knight of the
Cross, a crusader, a fist of god.

“
What’s wrong?” Sam’s
expression had turned alarmed.

Andy realized she’d been holding her
breath. She let it out, took another deep breath and smiled, more
to herself.

Any other day this might have all been
too much for her to handle. But today, after the couple of days
she’d had, it just didn’t seem like that big of a deal.

She walked past Sam and sat down at the
picnic table, letting Brutus pounce around on his leash.

“
Nothing,” she said. She
decided to let him tell her about his real job in his own time. She
knew that secrets were tricky things, and that they were usually
kept for a good reason. She leaned back against the wood of the
table and extended her arm to point at the bench left beside
her.

“
Want to sit and talk for a
bit?”

Sam’s face lit up again, and he quickly
sat down beside her. “So,” he said, “do you come here
often?”

Andy laughed. “All the time. I like the
swings the best.”

***End***

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Better Off Dead

A Lucy Hart DEATHDEALER Novel

~*~

Stella Blaze

Copyright 2012, 2016

Previously published as Last Rites

Smashwords Edition

Edited by Stephanie T. Lott (aka
Bibliophile
)

This ebook is licensed for your personal
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you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not
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and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work
of this author.

Chapter 1

SOMETHING glinted out in the cool
September night and caught Lucy Hart’s eye. She peered out the
large picture window over the kitchen sink and scanned the area
between the swimming pool and the cabana house. Just trees and
perfectly manicured privacy hedges, and a cluster of swaying
hibiscus.

Speaking of perfectly manicured, she
spotted a chip in her own manicure—she would need to duck out on
second period study hall to get it repaired. She’d go before school
but her nail salon didn’t open its doors until nine.

She gazed out the window again to the
thicket surrounding the back yard. She had always been able to see
extremely well in the dark. Just some freak genetic quirk—handy in
haunted houses on Halloween, or when rolling blackouts intruded on
California life.

“
Weird…” she said as she
turned her attention to her near empty can of diet Coke.

“
Talk about weird!” Tara
exclaimed dramatically. She had scarlet and gold paint not only
speckled on her nails, in her golden blond hair, but smeared on her
white Sketchers and a smudge on her cheek. “Did you see Kara Strom
today at lunch? She was totally trying to move her skanky butt in
on Drew!”

She rolled her eyes as she gulped the
last of her diet Coke, tossed it in the trash can and retrieved
another cold can from the refrigerator. “Sorry, didn’t see your
name monogrammed on the boy.”

Tara made that little noise, like she
was choking on a peanut, and she knew she’d pressed the right
button to get her off the subject. She certainly wasn’t going to
spend twenty minutes listening to Tara vent about a boy she had
only gone to one minor dance with. It wasn’t even a formal. And
since Tara was her number two on the cheer squad, she had pressing
business to discuss before she went upstairs to the more
entertaining possibility waiting in her bedroom.

“
Everything cleaned up?” She
pulled her long mahogany tresses back in a casual ponytail and tied
it back with a silver hair-band.

Tara shook the unhappy look off her
face and replaced it with a sycophantic smile. “Yep. I got all the
paint off your mom’s floor, the other girls took the banners to the
gymnasium for tomorrow, and I took everything else out to the
trash.”

The entire cheer squad had been there
creating lavish, cloyingly spirited banners for the pep rally at
the end of school tomorrow. She had supervised while the other
girls had done all the painting and cutting and hot-glue gunning.
Tara had supervised, and obviously participated in, the cleanup
while she changed into her nightshirt.

“
Did you tell Mellissa she’s
on probation?” Lucy asked. “She has to cut ten pounds. Her skirt is
starting to ride up and everything.”

She watched the naughty smile spread
across Tara’s lips. “She was in tears. Maybe we should tell her
fifteen pounds, see if we can’t make her into an Olsen twin.” She
giggled wickedly.

She ran her finger over the outside of
her diet Coke can, picking up the condensation on her fingertip.
“She’s not the only one who needs to trim a few pounds. I’ve still
got knee marks on my back from this afternoon’s
practice…Tara!”

“
Me?” She made that little
choking sound again, and she sniffled. The color drained from her
face. “But I’m the smallest girl on the team.”

Which she was, thus she was always the
apex of their cheerleader pyramids. And since by size Lucy was on
the very next level, she knew without a doubt that somewhere on
that birdlike frame Tara had packed on some pounds.

“
I expect you to lose it by
next week’s game.” Lucy gently ushered Tara from the kitchen and
pushed her down the hall to the foyer, and the front door. “So that
means a dry bran muffin for breakfast, a tuna salad sandwich on
wheat for lunch, and a salad with light dressing on the side for
dinner. Got it?”

Tara’s intake of breath rattled. “I
will… I promise.”

Lucy smiled. It was just too easy to
manipulate people.

“
Okay, good. Then I’ll see
you in first period and we can go over exactly how much you need to
lose. Night-night!” She shut the door in Tara’s face, turned on her
heel and returned to the kitchen. She let her mind wander upstairs
to where her boyfriend waited in her bedroom.

She’d just changed into her Stanford
nightshirt when Jeff had knocked on her window, teetering
perilously from a trellis of bougainvillea. The nightshirt was just
an oversized men’s Stanford embossed T-shirt her daddy had picked
up at his last class reunion. It was his alma mater, and he wanted
her to matriculate there as well.

Her grades were excellent, and she had
quite the resume of extracurricular activities—and since her father
was an alumnus of their law school, and rich as sin, she felt she
was a shoe in.

She’d left Jeff alone so he could
deliberate whether he wanted to do as she commanded, or leave the
way he came: through the window, and without even a kiss goodnight.
She was certain he would obey—when it came right down to it, guys
always conceded. Their pride almost never precluded them from
embarrassing acts of degradation, especially if they were
horny.

She grabbed her diet Coke and her
phone, and right before she clicked off the kitchen lights she
glanced out the window again. A dark figure stood by the privacy
hedge, billowing in the Santa Anna winds like a pitch black swath
of night. It was so much darker than anything else. She shivered as
her hand touched something soft.

She gasped and jerked her gaze to what
she’d touched. Her mother’s orange tabby cat purred up at her from
his perch on the counter by the light switch. His green eyes
sparkled, begging her for attention.

“
Tigger!” She turned back to
the window and found the yard vacant once more. She looked harder,
held her breath then slowly let it out as relief spread through
her. Nothing or no one looked back.

She shook her head and gave the tabby
a quick scratch from behind his ears down his back, and then
clicked off the lights.

Weird the things you think you see
when you look out into darkness.

Heading upstairs she passed by her
door, purposely wanting to say good night to her parents before
they decided to knock on her door and ruin her little boyfriend
fashion show. She couldn’t dim the grin that thought gave her as
she leaned against the doorframe of her parents’ bedroom. It was
huge, even bigger than her room—and the master bathroom was to die
for.

She’d asked them…well… back when she
was twelve she’d demanded they swap rooms with her, but that was
one of the few things her father, Adam Hart, would not budge
on.

“
Turning in?” her mother
said in her singsong voice, a tennis equipment catalogue spread in
her lap. Tennis and its many very expensive accessories were her
mother’s most recent obsession. Lucy cringed every time she saw her
mother’s fuller figure packed into some little white tennis
dress.

She should try black…it’s
always slimming, and out in the hot sun it might just help her burn
off some weight.

She gave her mother an innocent smile
and said, “Me sleepy… yawn…” and brought her hand up to pantomime
quelling an actual yawn.

Her father stepped out of the master
bath and his face lit up—as usual—the instant he looked at her.
He’d taken off his suit jacket, but still had his tie on, which
meant he had some briefs or something lawyerly to look over before
he turned in.

That meant she would need to keep Jeff
quiet. She’d had Jeff in her bedroom before without incident. The
bathroom and a linen closet were both positioned between their room
and hers. With her door shut nothing much could be
heard.

Her father stepped up and pecked her
affectionately on the cheek. “Good night, my little
girl.”

She pretended his calling her a little
girl still, even though she was a senior in high school, was
gross—but secretly she loved it every time he said it.

And she loved his
aftershave—Lagerfeld—and she inhaled a long whiff of it before she
blew her mother a kiss and retreated down the hall to her
room.

She passed by her brother Seth’s
closed door. The sign tacked to the door read to “KEEP OUT!” and
she found it infinitely easy to honor his request. They hadn’t had
anything in common besides their parents since she was
thirteen.