On the Hunt (34 page)

I dialed Vlad and he picked up before the first ring had even completed. “Another dead breather drop in your lap, Auntie?”

“Turns out Wendi is a lot less dead than previously thought.”

“What?”

“Halfling,” I said. “She came after Pike and then took off.”

“Did she feed?”

“Not on Pike, but she took off.”

“You let her go?” I could hear the incredulity in Vlad’s voice.

“No, I didn’t just let her go, she took off.”

“Well, on the one hand, no one is going to suspect you of being a murderess since there was technically no murder.” He seemed pleased.

“And on the other hand, I’ve just allowed a hungry Halfling to take Manhattan.”

Vlad paused. “Yeah, that’s going to be a rather significant problem.”

“So we’ve got a Halfling to kill. Be outside. We’re on our way.”

I hung up the phone.

“We’re going to kill her?” Pike asked incredulously.

“Technically, she’s already dead. Let’s go.”

Vlad was waiting outside for us—shaded by the awning for the Hungarian bakery that covered our first floor, of course—by the time we pulled up to the apartment. He stepped out from the shadows and Pike and I both started, mouths dropped open.

It’s obvious that I got the LaShay fashion gene both by my career and by the fact that my nephew, by all accounts, dresses like a cross between Bela Lugosi and the Count from
Sesame Street
. The brocade vests and ridiculous ascots are a throwback from the time of vampire empowerment, before the vampire was raped in modern media, when people feared and revered us. A time far before people painted us as emotionally abusive sparklers or overly broody jackasses who routinely went ashes-to-ashes at the hands of a spunky blond slayer. However, this was beyond Vlad’s normal poor clothing choices.

He pulled open the car door and settled himself in the backseat. Both Pike and I swung around.

“Are you really carrying a bow and arrow?” Pike asked him.

Vlad looked down at the bow in his hand as though it were the most normal accessory on earth.

“I’m just carrying the bow. The arrows are in my quiver.”

He turned sideways, showing off a clutch of feathery arrows bound in what looked like a FedEx tube. He grinned. “Let’s get vampire hunting.”

Pike leaned forward, hands spread in front of him. “Wait, wait, so you guys are used to this? Isn’t vampire hunting like cannibalism?”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t birds eat their young?”

He threaded his arms in front of his chest and glared at me. “No, but they have been known to attack random others.”

“Guys, guys,” Vlad said, trying to edge between the two of us from the backseat. “Please dispense with the foreplay on your own time. We need to find the supervamp.”

Now I glared.

“What? Supermodel vamp? Vampmodel? I’m looking for a catch phrase here, people. I think I could get a reality show.”

I rolled my eyes. “You can’t be seen on film.”

“Always the negative one, aren’t you, Auntie?”

Pike started the car. “Okay, where to?”

I pulled out my phone and started to navigate. “We should probably start at Wendi’s apartment. There’s a good chance she’ll go back there, especially if she hasn’t fully realized what’s going on yet. Make a left up here.”

“So does this kind of shit happen often?”

I bit my bottom lip. “No, not really.” Then, “Probably more often than it should. Three more blocks, then it should be on the right.”

“What happens if she’s not here?” Pike wanted to know. “Is there like, some kind of vampire community meeting house or something?”

“Oh, you mean our clubhouse? Yes. We all meet under the folds of the Statue of Liberty’s dress.”

Vlad snorted but Pike glared. “No need to be all snarky. Where I’m from, we’re pretty much the only otherworldly creatures around.”

“Yeah,” Vlad said with a nod. “Lotta sun in your neck of the woods. Tends to be bothersome with all the bursting into flames and stuff. And also, vampires can’t swim.”

“They can’t?”

Vlad and I both shook our heads. “Nope.”

“Fascinating.”

“I can’t believe whoever sired her left her there. It’s just bad form,” Vlad said, shaking his head.

“Why do you think we’re after her?”

Pike slammed on the brakes and gaped at me. “Wait. We’re risking our lives to take down a snappy little vamp because it’s bad form to leave her?”

“Vampires have a very strict honor code, Pike. There’s a certain social code by which we all must abide in order to function in society.”

Vlad leaned over the seat back. “And also, a single Halfling or vampire left to her own devices can decimate whole towns in a matter of hours.”

Pike stepped on the gas again, though more slowly this time. He looked pale. “Hours? Really?”

Vlad nodded. “Absolutely. I speak from experience.” He broke out in an ear-to-ear grin and chucked me on the shoulder. “Remember that one girl? Three towns and a water park. That little thing was fast. Slipped right through my fingers.”

Pike swallowed and scooched up in his chair a half inch.

“We’re close,” I said.

“Can you sense it or something?” Pike asked.

I held up my phone, Google map illuminated on the face. “Yeah. I can sense it. It’s right here.”

Pike pulled the car to a stop in front of a squat, soot-colored building nearly set right on the curb. I recognized the stop instantly; I had dropped a few of my models there in the past. It was a little hovel in an ancient building that rented solely to artists and models. The place was run-down, with threadbare carpets and a single, broken-down cargo elevator. The fading wallpaper was yellow with nicotine stains, and the scent of cigarette smoke was as much a part of the scenery as anything else. Mail was strewn around the front hallway, a litany of fat, glossy fashion magazines, overdue bills, and tear sheets.

I glanced down at my phone. “She’s on the second floor.”

We walked up the stairs single file and stopped in front of Wendi’s door.

“What do we do?” Pike asked. “Do we just knock, like, ‘hello, we’re here to rightfully kill you’ or something?”

Vlad drew a ridiculously long arrow from his quiver and fumbled it against his bow.

“You’re both a bunch of asshats. Let me do the talking.”

I knocked and waited, running through possible introductory lines in my head: “Hey, Wendi, sorry about the firing yesterday, and by the way, you’re a little too undead for my taste. Please present your chest so that my idiot nephew can drive a wooden stake through it.”

It was as good as anything else I could come up with.

“Hello?”

The voice was small and meek and coming from behind us. We turned as the strange motley crew that we were and stared down the speaker. She was tiny, five foot one at best, with ink black hair that fell into enormous deep-set green eyes. They were trimmed with enviably long lashes and when she blinked, she looked even more innocently sweet, like a Disney character ready to burst into song or ask us on a quest at any moment.

“Can I help you?”

“Uh, we’re looking for Wendi,” I said. “She lives here, right?”

The girl nodded. “Yeah, she does. I’m her roommate, Celeste.”

Celeste cut directly through us and sank her key into the lock. We followed her into the house. “Wendi? Some people are here for you.”

“I’m her boss, actually, Nina LaShay.” I offered a hand. “Well, I was her boss. And these are Pike, our photographer and”—I narrowed my eyes at Vlad, who swung his quiver and bow behind him—“Robin Hood.”

Vlad was so adept at slipping into glamours—and he did have the uncanny ability to make mere mortal girls swoon with just the ruffle of his ascot even without the glamour. Whatever it was, it was working on Celeste, and her eyes inched open even wider before her lips pressed together into a tiny heart shape.

“It doesn’t seem like Wendi is here,” I said, stepping between Vlad and Celeste and breaking the spell.

Celeste frowned. “She should be. She called me twenty minutes ago and said she was waiting here for me.”

A protective instinct washed over me. Celeste was small enough to crush with my pinkie, and those leaf-green eyes were so warm and trusting. I knew why Wendi wanted Celeste to come to her, and I knew the second she sucked the life out of those wide green eyes that Wendi would turn into something darker, something awful . . . something that lies at the pit of us all: evil. New evil, evil sucked from innocence, is deep and unwieldy and cannot be tamed.

It can only be killed.

“You need to get out of here,” Vlad said, and I knew he saw the vulnerability in her as well.

Celeste cocked her head, her eyes genuinely puzzled as she went from Pike to Vlad, and back to me. “No. Wendi is probably just in her bedroom.”

She had the door open before we could stop her, and the scream she let out was raw and primitive, the kind of bloodcurdling that needled into your brain and hung there long after the screamer had stopped.

“Oh, my God.”

Pike was in front of me, striding into the room. It seemed to be about the size of a matchbox, but I’m not sure if that was because of the three disheveled twin beds shoved against the walls or because of the arc of blood splatter that covered them all. It was still dripping and fresh, and the raw-meat smell of torn flesh was overwhelming. I saw in my periphery Vlad taking a step forward and I pushed him back. “Wait,” I growled.

“Call nine-one-one,” Pike yelled. He was hunched on the floor, and once I tore my eyes from the blood, I saw that he was cradling a young woman. Her eyes were open and cloudy, but her eyelashes fluttered and she was still breathing, each breath ragged and painful sounding. Her hands were pressed up against the gaping wound at her neck and she held something there, too—a blood-soaked pillow or crumple of bed sheet. She was trembling and a light sheet of sweat broke out over her thin body. Her eyes were terrified, skidding from Pike to me to Celeste, a single tear pool and dripping over her cheek. She opened her mouth but Pike shook his head. “No, don’t speak. We’re going to get you help.”

Vlad appeared behind me again, a wisp of ice-cold air coming off his body.

“Ambulance is on the way.”

“Allison! Allison, what happened?” Celeste was in the room, the soaked carpet making a squishing sound as she fell to her knees. “Who did this?” Her little body was racked with tears and I folded down next to her, pulling her to me in my best effort at a comforting hug.

Pike shot me a glance and I knew what he was thinking: There was no way Allison would survive until an ambulance came. Allison herself looked up at us as if she knew, too, her head lolling to one side, her lips working, nothing but tiny, ineffectual gasps of air.

“Wendi,” she finally said, her breathy voice nearly inaudible. “It was Wendi.” Allison’s whole body spasmed and her trembling finally stopped. Her hands fell from the wound at her neck and flopped down behind her, the piece of cloth still balanced in her clawed fingers.

We shut the door behind Allison while we waited for the ambulance to catch up with its siren.

“So Wendi killed her roommate?” Pike whispered to me. “Why? Why not a stranger?”

“Opportunity,” I said. “Trust. And maybe she’s trying to ruin my runway show.”

Pike groaned.

“What? People kill for less every day.”

Celeste was standing in the center of the room, utterly lost. I guided her to the couch where she crumpled, instantly curling herself into Vlad, who had abandoned his quiver and bow and stretched an arm across her shoulders. He snuggled Celeste close and cooed to her, the motion so natural and full of concern that it made my heart hurt, made me wish that Vlad could really feel, could really love someone like Celeste and have her love him in return.

“So that’s what a Halfling can do, huh?” Pike’s face was drawn and slightly ashen.

“That’s only the beginning,” I said, feeling my own stomach start to turn. I glanced back at Celeste, who was crying, her tiny shoulders shuddering, her hands pressed against her eyes. She pulled her feet up underneath her, Allison’s blood dried in smears up her naked calves. “We have to find Wendi.”

I knelt in front of Celeste, placing my hands on her knees. She jerked from me. “Sorry. Your hands are so cold.” She glanced up at Vlad. “Yours, too.”

“Circulation problem,” Vlad and I said in unison.

I pressed my hands into my pockets while Vlad tried to unwind himself from Celeste; she just snuggled closer to him. “It’s okay,” she whispered.

“Celeste, where do you think Wendi went?”

“Wendi?” She blinked. “Why?”

I tried to think of how best to word “your roommate is an undead bastion of hell who will tear the throats out of anyone in her wake.” Turns out, there’s just no good way. “If Wendi did this, she might do it again.”

Celeste shook her head, her dark hair swirling around her shoulders. “She couldn’t have done this. Not Wendi.”

“Please. Can you just tell us where you think she may have gone?”

“I don’t know. I don’t—she wasn’t working, so . . .” She worried her bottom lip. “Maybe Ruby?”

“Who’s Ruby?” Pike asked.

“Ruby is a place. It’s a bar. She has been there almost every night. She met some guy there. His name was . . .” Her eyes rolled upward as though the answer might be on the ceiling. “I can’t remember. Oh, I think the ambulance is here.”

I could feel my cheeks flush—a feat seeing as I hadn’t eaten since breakfast—when I thought of Moyer showing up again, finding me and Pike
again
.

“We should go.”

Celeste’s eyes grew. “What?”

“Uh, we should go downstairs and tell the paramedics what apartment you’re in.” I stood, Pike following behind. “Vlad?”