“I shall see what I can do.”
It was then that I spotted a fire extinguisher bolted to the wall within one of the stores bordering the alley. Hmm… that would come in handy right about now…
Lock hung up without saying goodbye, leaving me on my own while I tracked a lunatic who could literally spit fire. Into the sewer. With rats. And piss and crap. And I’d chosen to wear my good shoes.
Sometimes this job really sucked the big one.
In, like, a really bad way.
Chapter Two
Have you ever been locked inside a crypt?
I have.
And it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
Ahem. That was a joke.
Granted, I’d been half out of my mind with bloodthirst in those early days, so most of the details had been lost on me. I just had the impressions and the bone-deep knowledge that I never wanted to be held captive again.
The sewage tunnels beneath Sacramento’s streets reminded me of that crypt. Stone walls pressed in on every side, so narrow in some places, it felt like I was getting an involuntary stone hug. The smell was the same too. Well, minus the crap and piss, of course. But, it was still damp, moldering, and filled with vermin. Rats scuttled out of my way as I made the trek toward Lawson’s location. They thinned dramatically the closer I got to my quarry.
Lock hadn’t been kidding when he said pyromancers ran hotter than human normal. Humans are pretty damn hot, considering. My infuriatingly analytical partner/mentor had a real talent for understatement. He hadn’t mentioned that getting near Lawson would feel like stepping into the baking interior of an oven.
The tosser.
And I hadn’t worn my heavy-duty deodorant—the one with the antiperspirant. Bummer for Lawson.
The tense and ready curl of my vampire half shrank back from the heat. She’d been eager all night, sensing the imbalance of elixir in my system—I was running things close. Too close. And the vamp within me was hoping tonight was the night I’d finally slip up and we’d become one and the same. She didn’t like the idea of fire much, though. Immolation was one of the only things that could do away with a vampire permanently. That was why it was the Holmwood Associations’ official policy when dealing with rogue bloodsuckers. Destroy the heart, burn the body, and dump the ashes at a crossroads.
The crossroads up the street from my flat had a lot of vampire ash floating around the bus stop.
I reached into my pocket and flipped open a compact and tried to ignore the very attractive reflection staring back at me. I mean, I’d done my cat eye liner perfectly. And how often did that happen?
Regardless, I held the compact low, checking around the corner before proceeding. This little mirror trick was one I tended to use when in unfamiliar territory. Go on one gorgon hunt too many and everything spooks you.
Lawson’s short, stocky frame was thrown into relief by a halogen construction light. He was kneeling over an open crate with the sort of look that accompanied the phrase, ‘my precious’. Only he wasn’t so ugly as Gollum. Thank the stars above. There’s nothing worse than hunting an ugly monster. And getting ugly monster bits all over you.
Within the crate and gleaming in the moonlight were a handful of shiny bronze eggs, stashed within pale green packing peanuts that might have been the exact shade of my eyes.
Swallowing became infinitely more difficult. This mission had just graduated from dangerous to deadly, and not just for Lawson and me. If he started flinging fire, the air would superheat, baking my lungs and his. But worse than all of that, the heat would cause those eggs to hatch, unleashing at least four baby phoenixes into the Sacramento sewage system.
Yeah, no bueno.
Eventually, they’d hit a pocket of bad air and then... kablewy. There goes the neighborhood.
Those eggs needed to be put on ice in the Holmwood Association’s basement until they could be returned to their mother in one of the many extradimensional realms that bump up against ours.
And the only person who was going to make that happen was me. Woo hoo!
It was now or never. If I let the pyromancer work up a head of steam, I was toast, so to speak.
I snapped the compact closed, shoved it into my pants pocket, and hefted the extinguisher I’d filched up onto my shoulder.
I’d left the deli owner two hundred bucks to cover the cost of the extinguisher, the broken window at the back of his shop... and the metal bars I’d bent to get to said windows. Yeah, I’d probably shortchanged him, but it was all the cash I had on me.
Lawson probably didn’t see me around the corner. Vampire speed is always damn impressive, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it burst of motion that leaves you staring at a monster that wasn’t standing there moments before. Even my Vamp Lite version was faster than most supernaturals could manage.
Lawson probably caught a blur of motion, the thud of my boots, and had just enough time to raise a hand, sparks dancing between his grubby fingertips before I was on him, putting my stolen, ahem borrowed, extinguisher to good use.
Lawson’s head made a satisfying crack when it hit the stone wall. I hadn’t used even a fraction of the strength I possessed, so I was certain I hadn’t killed him. And that wasn’t my intention anyway. Lucy Westenra wasn’t a killer. At least, not anymore.
Swinging with my full strength would have either taken his head off or cracked his skull open like an egg. No, after one-hundred-twenty-three years, I knew how not to kill. The tricky part was determining how hard to hit. There’s a thin line between unconscious and comatose. I try not to dance that line too often. Regardless of my own personal beliefs about killing, I can’t collect a bounty when the mark is dead. Or rather, I can’t collect if the mark isn’t a dead thing, to begin with.
Lawson went down like an overweight sack of flower, bits of him bulging out of his plaid overshirt. He’d clearly swiped the clothes from the construction workers above. He’d better pray none of them had died during the robbery, or he’d have years in a fun personalized hell dimension to think on his mistakes. If there was one thing the Holmwood Association detested, it was the loss of human life at the hands of monsters.
And I agreed… wholeheartedly.
But back to Harvey Lawson… he was a troll. Though he didn’t necessarily look like one. I mean, he was tall enough and had ample human blood to pass as human if you didn’t catch him in daylight or squint at him too hard.
Trolls are usually country-folk and not really a danger to more than an unwary child or a stray fox. They’re supernatural hippies, exalting nature and the elements. A few of them took their “save-the-trees” schtick too far and were now classed as low-level terrorists. The file I had on Lawson hadn’t mentioned he was one of the more nature-loving trolls, though. And that meant they’d better raise my pay rate for this little gig. Ten grand or I was going to take this up with Charles.
I was tired of bargain-basement bounties.
As I was contemplating the relative unfairness of my lot in life, Lawson managed to wrap thick, sausage-like fingers around my ankle and wrench me down. It caught me off guard and I didn’t have time to do more than brace myself for the fall. The force twisted my ankle, sending pain spiking up one calf and into my knee, eliciting a small scream. That scream ended in a breathless huff as I impacted the stone floor hard. The eggs in the packing crate rattled together like clinking glass.