The Darkest Kiss (30 page)

Then laughter, soft and mocking.

The bitch
definitely
knew we were here.

I stepped forward and kicked the door open. On the other side, nothing but the darkness of a large room was revealed. I waited until the door had whooshed back toward us, then dove through the opening, coming back up onto one knee and quickly scanning the room. No bakeneko. Just her scent riding the heavy, musty air.

“She’s definitely playing,” I said softly, as Kade came through the door.

“I don’t care what she does, as long as we kill her at the end of it.” He nodded toward the stairs at the far end of the room. “She gone up that?”

“Smells like it.”

“Then let’s go.”

He led the way, his footsteps echoing across the silence. There was no point in being silent any longer. She knew we were here, and given a cat’s hearing had to be as sharp as a wolf’s, she would probably hear us regardless of how quiet we were.

We raced up the steps and ended up in a corridor that was long, thin, and even darker than the room below. There were eight doors leading off the corridor, and a larger, double set waiting at the far end.

“This place is a fucking maze,” Kade muttered, disgust in his voice. “Though our quarry seems to have run straight toward the door at the end.”

“‘Seems’ being the operative word,” I said, not trusting the fact that it was slightly open one little bit. I drew my gaze back to the nearest rooms. “Though infrared isn’t bringing up any life-heat close by.”

“The bitch is here
somewhere,
so let’s go find her.”

He strode forward, seemingly free of the fear that was twisting my stomach. It was weird. I mean, I’d faced things far worse than this bakeneko, and yet I was practically shaking at the thought of confronting her.

Maybe it was simply the knowledge of what she could do.

Being dead was one thing. We all had to go sometime, after all. But being dead and having your soul
eaten
was another matter entirely. I wasn’t at all sure that I believed in reincarnation, but I sure as hell wanted my soul to hang around and find out.

We moved forward as before, checking each room thoroughly before continuing on. Despite my fears, there were no traps waiting in any of them.

But the cat smell was getting stronger.

Which meant we were getting closer.

I stopped at the ajar door and glanced at Kade. He pointed at me, then to the right, and raised five fingers. I nodded and sucked in a breath, releasing it silently as I counted.

At five, we kicked out the doors and ran through—me to the right, Kade to the left.

The room was large and filled with windows, but the light seeping in was yellow and dusky. There were plenty of shadows for a cat to hide in.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement. I twisted around and sighted, the whine of the laser cutting through the silence as my finger pressed against it. I released it when I saw that it was something small and furry with a very long tail.

Not a cat. More likely a rat.

I blew out a breath and continued on, keeping to walls and running low. Kade was on the other side, keeping pace with me simply because I wasn’t moving at vampire speed. The whine of his laser was a sharp echo of mine.

Again, something moved in the shadow. I swung the laser around, but it was only another rat, scampering along the wall.

Which was odd. We weren’t anywhere near the rats to scare them, so if they were running from the cat, why couldn’t we damn well see her?

Even under infrared, there was no sign of life other than the rats.

Then it hit me.

The bakeneko could change sizes. Why wouldn’t she be able to go smaller than a tabby as well as larger?

I stopped and swung round.

Saw something big and black emerging out of the shadows where the rat had just been.

“Kade! Behind you!”

I fired the laser even as I screamed the warning, but the bakeneko was moving way too fast. She’d consumed a lot of souls, and now she was faster than anything I’d ever seen before.

It didn’t matter. I kept hitting the trigger.

And kept missing.

Kade twisted around and fired blindly. The shot scoured the creature’s side and she screamed—a high sound of fury that made my ears ache.

Then she was on him, her sheer weight and speed flinging them both backward, until all I could see was a fighting ball of black and brown.

I swore and raced across the room. They were still rolling, tumbling, across the filthy concrete floor, but Kade had somehow managed to get his hands around the creature’s neck. The corded muscles in his arms were evidence enough of the strength he was using to try to strangle her, but he seemed to be achieving little more than holding her wickedly sharp teeth away from his throat. And all the while, her claws were ripping at him everywhere else.

I couldn’t risk a shot. Like before, I could kill Kade as easily as I could kill the bakeneko. So I reached out and grabbed her tail instead.

“Hey, bitch, try tackling someone in your own species group for a change.”

I hauled back as hard as I could, and ripped her away from Kade. But she came away fighting, twisting around and slashing with her claws. I ducked the blows and flung her sideways with all my might. Then I fired the laser.

This time, I hit the bitch.

The bright beam scoured another trench down her side then flung itself toward a rear leg, slicing through flesh and sinew. The burnt smell of fur and skin tainted the air, but even as I pressed the trigger to fire again, the bakeneko was on the move, her speed seemingly un-hampered by the wound.

Kade, bleeding from a dozen different wounds, scrambled to his feet and ran to the left. He swooped up his laser and pressed the trigger, but with the creature running at full speed, neither of us were having much luck. She crashed through the door at the far end of the room and disappeared.

“She’s playing hide-and-seek,” he said. Blood poured down his arm and both legs, and his stomach had several deep slashes. When combined with the still-raw—but no longer bleeding—wound he’d received in the apartment, he wasn’t a pretty sight.

“You’d better shift shape to stop the bleeding,” I said, “Iktar should be here by now. Go find him while I track the creature.”

“Fuck that.” He snorted softly. “You think I’m going to let you go after that thing alone? You’ve got rocks in your head, sweetheart.”

I might have rocks, but I was swifter and faster than he was. I was also less injured. “Kade, we need help to bring her down.”

“Iktar can track emotions as well as I can. He’ll find us quick enough. Move, Riley.”

There was no point in arguing.
That
was obvious not only in his tone, but in the anger in his eyes. He wanted to bring this creature down
bad
.

I ran forward, following the scent of cat and burned flesh. Power shimmered across my senses as Kade shifted shape to stop the bleeding, then the sound of his footsteps echoed as he followed.

We crashed into the next room. The bakeneko was nowhere to be seen, but there were several shimmers of life crouching in the corners.

“The bitch is playing rats again.”

I raised the laser and fired at the nearest nest. High-pitched squeals met the assault, and those rats I didn’t kill went scattering.

One of them was faster than the rest, and it was running—changing and growing, until it once more resembled a big cat. And she was running straight at Kade again. We fired, the twin beams of blue cutting across the grimy shadows, missing the bakeneko but cleaning up everything else. Windows, walls, rats.

She launched herself in the air, her body little more than a blur of black.

“Kade!” I screamed, a warning he didn’t really need.

He threw himself sideways, but the giant cat’s paw hit him mid-leap, sending him flying straight at one of the grimy windows. Glass shattered, then Kade was gone.

I swore and fired the weapon, keeping my finger on the trigger and sending a continuous beam the bakeneko’s way. The laser grew hotter in my hands, until it was almost impossible to hold, but it didn’t do much good. The bitch was moving faster than any vampire, and while I left a trail of burned and smoking brick, plaster, and debris, the bakeneko remained whole.

As the red light began to flash on the weapon, warning that its charge was failing, I backed toward a wall and looked around for another weapon.

Unless I wanted to slap her senseless with a dead rat, there wasn’t much here.

The laser finally gave out, the bright beam dying with little fanfare. I shoved the overheated weapon away and flexed my fingers. It looked like I’d have to do this the hard way—at least until Kade and Iktar got here.

The bakeneko finally stopped moving, her form shifting as she took on human shape again. But it seemed to take her longer than before. Maybe the energy she was expending was finally taking a toll.

“You,” she said. “I shall eat. Your flesh smells sweet.”

Her voice was low and oddly scratchy—the voice of someone not used to controlling vocal cords. It made me wonder how she’d kept up the facade of being Alana Burns for a whole night. But there again, maybe there’d been no need for her to say much. She’d been with a politician, after all, and they were notorious for loving the sound of their own voices.

I shifted my stance a little, my weight on my toes so I could move fast if needed. Although I was more than happy to keep her talking until the cavalry came to the rescue—in fact, I had to. I couldn’t risk letting her escape. There’d been too many deaths—and too many souls lost—already.

Besides, I’d rather fight with words than fists. I had enough scars as it was.

“So why me?” I said, watching her eyes and ignoring the satisfied smile teasing her lips. “Why not the man you threw out the window? He tastes a whole lot better than me, trust me on that.”

“He is not a pale one. It is the pale ones I must kill.” She began to walk toward me, the lazy smile on her lips growing. A cat playing with its prey.

I flexed my fingers, trying to ease the tension winding through my muscles. “Why only us pale types? That hardly seems fair.”

“Pale women killed my mistress. She hated them, and they killed her.”

“Your mistress was killed by a vampire out for revenge. Her death had nothing to do with any of the other people.”

Or me. But I don’t think the bakeneko cared. Her quest for vengeance had slipped into outright lust for murder.

She was halfway across the room now, her strides long and rolling. There was no tension in her shoulders, no sign that she expected any sort of fight—like she expected me to be a quick and easy kill. And maybe I would be—this bitch might not be stronger than a god of death, but she was certainly faster.

“No,” she said. “They took everything from her. They stole her life, so I steal theirs.”

“And the men you killed?”

“She hated them. Hated what they did to her.” A languid smile drifted across her lips. “I used them like they used her.”

Like a cat should talk about behavior when they treated the whole world as underlings. “She was a Trollop. How else would they treat her?”

The bakeneko frowned. “I don’t know this word.”

“It means she was little better than a filthy cat in heat, and she was treated as such.”

The bakeneko’s eyes darkened. “For that, I rip you apart slow—”

The words were barely out of her mouth when I leapt at her. I had to—catching her by surprise was my only real hope of doing some serious damage. I had time to see her eyes widen slightly, then I hit her head-on, knocking her down and sideways. We both hit the ground hard, but I rolled to my feet quickly and hit her again, one foot smashing her in the face and mashing her nose flat, the other catching her in the throat. She staggered back, making a gurgling sound, the smirk disappearing under a cloud of anger and pain. I hit the concrete and again pushed upward. The bakeneko’s shape was shifting again, becoming a cat from the feet up. But the shapeshift wasn’t as fast as before, so maybe the constant fighting and the wounds I’d inflicted on her were beginning to take their toll. Even so, I didn’t want to see her in cat shape. Paws that could become the size of buckets held no appeal at all. Not when I had to fight against them, anyway.

I swore and lunged forward, grabbing her arm and twisting it with all my might. She snarled, a sound that came out only half human, then slashed at me with a hand that was partially clawed, ripping through my coat and down into skin. I gritted my teeth against the scream that careened up my throat, but held on to her arm and gave it another twist. Bone shattered and suddenly her left arm was hanging useless. One less weapon to worry about.

She hit me again, knocking me sideways. I staggered several steps before I caught my balance. But by then, she’d attained her full cat shape. And she was leaping straight for my throat.

I dove out of reach and rolled to my feet, then twisted around, lashing out with one booted foot, smashing the heel across her mouth. Flesh and bone gave way under the force of the blow and blood flew.