Twice Cursed (22 page)

The vampire nodded again, his eyes
moving from Lily to the wolf and back again. They were full of
fear, and Lily’s heart squeezed. He was so young, and he was facing
death all over again, but this time there was no deposit, no
return. A twice cursed vampire.

“
We need information, and I
think you just might be the one to give it to us. There have been a
number of serious attacks…” The vampire’s eyes widened, and Lily
stopped midsentence. She glanced over at Jack who chuffed
again.

She shifted her gaze back to the
vampire and crossed her arms loosely in front of her chest. They
needed the information, but he was terrorized enough already. The
last thing they needed was for the knowledge to die with him
because of fear. The incongruity of the situation hit her, as she
looked at the poor kid. Vampires, as a rule, were the ones doing
the terrorizing, but any idea of payback being a real bitch was
lost, as she watched the spectrum of emotion shadow the young
vampire’s face.

“
I guess by that look, you
know what I’m talking about. Here’s the deal…I have this gift. I
can sometimes see things that have happened in the past, and that
helps me piece things together to find the cause. I have a strong
suspicion your lady friends are involved somehow. Something’s wrong
with them, but I think you already know that, too.”

Jack whined, covering his nose with
one paw and then chuffing harder out his nose and mouth.

Lily smelled it too. The vampire’s
body was giving off a nasty odor, the same rancid smell as the
redhead, only to a lesser degree. The older vampire smelled the
worst, like true rot, and Lily wondered if it meant whatever this
was, was occurring in stages.

She looked back at the vampire. “You
strike me as reasonable, even though you don’t have much choice.
I’m willing to bet that you’ve made the connection between what’s
wrong with them and why you’re not healing. It’s why you want to
die.”

The vampire’s eyes were like saucers
now, and he nodded slowly, blood tears misting his eyes like a red
film and spilling over onto his already streaked face.

“
I told you, I see things
that have happened in the past, but when it comes to supernatural
beings, I can sometimes read their thoughts. That’s what I want you
to help me with. I want to see what you’ve seen. Hear what you’ve
heard. That way maybe you can help us stop this from happening
again—to anyone.”

Lily squatted down slowly, her eyes
never leaving the vampire. “You try anything, and my wolf friend
will gladly give you your death wish, and I guarantee it won’t be
pretty. Got it?”

The vampire nodded, trying to exhale,
but a gurgle of bloody bubbles was all he could manage.

From the side, Lily lifted the
vampire’s head and fit her coat under its head. Blood pooled,
seeping into the soft leather, but at this point, she didn’t care.
She moved to sit back, except the vampire’s hand shot out from the
side, grabbing her forearm. He squeezed, not enough to crush bone,
but enough to let her know the urgency of time. He was dying, and
his eyes searched hers in fear, searching for answers and a way to
absolution.

Jack leaped forward, foam dripping
from his mouth as he growled and snapped. Lily held up her other
hand. “It’s okay, Jack. He’s just afraid. He knows he doesn’t have
much time, and he’s telling me to hurry before it’s too
late.”

Jack growled an acknowledgement but
stayed close, nevertheless.

Lily covered the vampire’s hand with
hers, and closed her eyes, knowing Jack was primed and ready for
the kill should anything happen.

She focused on the image of the
vampire in her head, and followed the thread to the opening he had
left for her in his own mind. The vampire met her there at the
aperture and invited her in. The irony of the gesture registered in
the back of her mind. Vampire’s needed an invitation before
crossing a threshold, and here she was, invited to enter his
mind.

The vampire’s image changed the minute
Lily’s mind merged with his. Suddenly he was young, as handsome as
any one of the teenage heartthrobs gracing the cover of pop
magazines. He greeted her with a smile, his fangs peeking out, just
grazing the top of his lower lip.

“
What’s your name?”
Lily asked, watching her words flutter like
feathers in the air.

“
Michael.”

She nodded, more in acknowledgement
than greeting. This wasn’t a social call.

Without a word, he raised his arm, and
they were surrounded at once by images on all sides, the vampiric
version of Disney’s circle-vision 360. Lily’s mind reeled with the
onslaught of his memories in full color, sound, motion and smell.
Her stomach flip-flopped, churning much in the same way it had at
the crime scene. It had to be the way the vampire mind worked, how
it processed information at the speed of light and sound that
caused such vertigo.

Michael showed her glimpses of his
human life, the ordinary day to day of school and friends. Then the
scene shifted to the night he met the redheaded vampire. How she
lured him from the club’s dance floor into the bathroom with the
promise of quick sex, only to leave him on the tiled floor covered
in blood and writhing in pain, as the conversion began.

Lily’s heart clenched, realizing
Michael’s own naiveté had been the means to his lost innocence and
stolen life. How many other youths had fallen victims to their own
stupid belief of, ‘that will never happen to me’? With this
creature on the loose, odds were, the stats would increase
substantially if they didn’t get to the source fast
enough.

The scene shifted again, and this time
Lily was no longer a spectator. She was there in a dark tunnel with
the young vampire, the only sound, the echo of water dripping from
the vaulted ceiling as they pressed themselves further into the
stone. Following some sort of trail, they moved silently through
the passage and out onto the great lawn of New York’s Central
Park.

Even through the scent of dank water,
Michael’s newly heightened vampiric sense of smell told them the
creature was close. He had found the redhead who had changed him
and left him for dead.

From the upper most part of the
Bethesda Terrace, they spotted the creature. But she wasn’t alone.
The older one was with her, and they moved quickly, making their
way past the pond toward the trees, but morning was still too far
off for them to be heading for cover. What was making them move
like that at this hour?

For Lily, it was obvious. These
predators were also prey. Tracked and hunted, but by
whom?

Her eyes snapped open as she slid out
of the vampire’s mind. He let go of her arm and slumped back onto
the soft leather of her coat.

“
You did well, Michael,
thank you,” Lily whispered, patting his hand. As she moved to push
herself to standing, the vampire’s hand shot out once more, but
this time it was to grab the stake from Lily’s hand.

She fell backward with a
soft
whoomph,
throwing her arms up to protect herself from his
strike.

Michael raised the stake in both
hands, but instead, turned the pointed edge toward his own chest.
Jack lunged as Lily scrambled to her knees, the realization of what
he was about to do dawning on them both.

“
No!” she shouted, but it
was too late. The young vampire plunged the sharpened tip straight
into his heart.

A rough gasp gurgled up from his
ruined throat, but a ghost of a smile touched his lips as he
slumped down, his body crumpling to ash.

“
Michael!” Lily cried,
hunched over the molded cinders, but afraid to touch what was left.
His silhouetted shape mimicked the bodies found in Pompeii, frozen
in volcanic soot at the foot of Mt. Vesuvius.

Her chin dropped to her
chest, and her throat tightened as she whispered a quick prayer,
Jack whining beside her in reply. The wind surged, encircling
Michael’s form and whirling the ashes into a mini vortex, before
blowing them away like so much New York soot. The words
“Thank you,”
feathered
across Lily’s mind, and then all was silent.

Jack padded closer, nudging her
shoulder with his muzzle. She ran her fingers through his silvery
fur, the residual breeze drying her cold tears. “Did you
see?”

“
Yeah. Thanks for leaving
the channel open. Poor guy. Almost makes me sorry for him,”
he sighed across her mind.

“
I know what you
mean.”

“
Your coat’s
ruined.”

“
Wicked ruined,” she said,
mimicking his Maine accent. “Sorry about your clothes.”

Jack chuffed at the torn
pieces of fabric blown all over the sidewalk and the street.
“Yeah, well. All in a day’s work, but at least I
saved the Jacket and tie.”

“
That you did,” she said, a
wiping the wet soot from her face with the back of her
hand.

Come on, I’ll let you walk
me home.”

“
No leash?”

“
Hey…don’t push it,”
he lifted his muzzle and looked at her with his
dark, silver-rimmed eyes.
“You do realize
all bets are off. You need to call Sean when we get
home.”

“
I know,” she answered
softly, picking up the bloodied jacket and giving it a good shake,
biting the inside of her cheek trying not to cry.

“
Jesus, Lil’, if you’re
going to continue in this kind of work, you need to stop wearing
your heart on your sleeve. What happened to that boy had nothing to
do with you, but because of you, hopefully something good will come
of it.”

“
One can only hope,” she
said with a sigh, refolding her coat before squatting to reach for
her purse.

“
I’m serious, and you’d
better think about it before you call Sean. He hears that tone in
your voice and he’s going to go ape shit. A shot of Jamison’s and a
hot shower will help put things in perspective. I’ll even
pour.”

She smiled, pulling at his fur. “Hair
of the dog, huh?”

“
Ayuh.”

Chuckling, she put her hands on her
knees, and pushed herself to standing. “Okay then, Fido, let’s go
home.”

Chapter Nine

***

From dense cover, Rafe Miller studied
the big wolf as he paced frantically just outside the forest. The
wolf’s body language spoke volumes, or at least it did to the
tracker’s trained eye. The animal was tense, distracted, and the
tracker chuckled, watching and waiting.

“
Like a caged beast,” he
mused. But it didn’t take much skill to guess why. The wolf’s
obvious distress had everything to do with the full moon riding
high in the night sky, but Miller’s calculated guess was that it
had more to do with the human girl highlighted in the dossier
Edward Parr had given him. This particular wolf was the Alpha of
the much-scrutinized experimental compound of Weres, and Parr
wanted him watched.

Miller had earned the
nickname
cat’s eye
for his expertise in surveillance. He was a rare breed, even
as a half-blood. As unusual as it was for a Were Cougar to breed
outside its kind, it was even more unusual for half-blood offspring
to inherit full-blooded traits. The tracker took full advantage of
the anomaly, using it to add to his mystique.

In the Pacific Northwest, cougars were
the ghost walkers of American folklore, secretive and rarely seen.
Miller was the best in the country when it came to keeping secrets
and keeping tabs, and for some reason, Parr wanted him to keep a
close eye on Leighton.

Camouflaged, the cat’s sandy brown fur
blended perfectly against the weather worn bark of the fallen trees
surrounding him. In cougar form, Miller took full advantage of his
feline nature, its sharp nocturnal vision and acute
hearing.

Surprisingly, he’d been able to track
the large wolf without detection, and though he would love to claim
his expertise, the fact was, a wolf’s sense of smell was just as
keen as a cat, a detail that made this situation remarkably
telling.

Slinking through the scrub, he
followed his gut instinct as well as the Alpha wolf. The night was
freezing. But, orders were orders, and Parr was willing to pay
extra for this kind of surveillance. He also promised a huge bonus
if Miller seized the opportunity to dispose of Leighton, should the
chance present itself. No questions asked.

There could be no dirt on
the politician’s lily-white hands. The big cat hissed
quietly.
Lily
.
That was the name of the human causing all the problems. Not that
he cared one way or the other. A job was a job, and from the look
of things, she had the Alpha so torqued it was going to make this
an easy kill.
I’ll have his throat ripped
out before he even knows I’m here.

Nose up, the cougar sniffed
the bitter cold air and took off. Keeping low to the ground, he
kept his distance from the wolf and his mind on the payoff. He
couldn’t care less about the reasons behind the job. Parr would pay
through the nose for his services, of that he’d make sure. The
politician was a fraud, despite his polished appearance, and the
cat saw through his carefully cultivated pretense. He wasn’t to be
trusted. Lifting his face to the full moon, the sandy gray feline
smiled like a Cheshire cat.
Fuck with me,
expect to get clawed
.