“Hey, Brucey,” Darius called out as he snapped his fingers.
The guy’s head came up and around like he’d been trained.
Even with the counter and the sink between them, Bruce had a clear visual shot to the stove, and as his eyes focused properly, Darius lowered the picture into the flame. When the thing was properly burning at the corner, he brought the Kodak-candle back over to the amateur Helmut Newton.
Dropping down onto his haunches, he squared up the photograph between their faces so that he was staring through the hungry curls of orange and yellow. Then he unfurled his dagger hand and put the little bonfire in his open palm. The pain as his skin burned along with the image was a sweet sting that sharpened his purpose, his commitment.
Not that he needed help with that.
On the far side of the tiny fire, the human’s eyes were bugging again—and then there was nothing but gray and black ash, and the smell of chemicals and flesh.
Still maintaining eye contact, Darius put his fore- and middle fingers into the ashes, pushing the soot around until the pads of both were black as night.
Meanwhile, Bruce looked like he was going to piss himself—
Oh, wait. He already had.
Darius switched into the Old Language: “Upon my honor, and the honor of mine bloodline, I mark you as my prey and no other’s, barring the will of the King I serve.” He drew an X over one of the man’s fluttering eyelids. And then the other. “Should you violate your vow unto me, you shall know agony the likes of Dhunhd and beyond under mine hand and mine dagger. So I voweth this night and evermore, in the name of the great Virgin Scribe.”
Darius marked an X over the man’s mouth as well, and went back to English. “I will come for you, out of the darkness. You won’t see me until it’s too late. And I’m going to make you suffer.”
That last word was drawn out until it was a growl, deep in his chest.
Rising to his feet, he loomed over the man. He would have taken the sonofabitch’s life right then and there if he could have. He wanted to see those eyes go dark as the inside of a grave. But he knew Anne wouldn’t approve of the killing. She would want the man to be given a chance to go in peace. Besides, if Bruce were to disappear tonight, she would know who did it and blame herself.
And someone would need to take care of the dog—
“That’s her fucking shoe,” Darius said abruptly.
The errant loafer was on its side, by the dog’s water and food bowls. Teeth marks punctured the leather of the upper part as well as the sole, and the penny was missing from the band in the front.
Darius picked up her property and went over to the door. Opened things back up. Took one last look at the terrified bag of carbon-based molecules who had three crude Xs on his pasty white face.
Sprawled there in his disarrayed, Don Johnson duds, Bruce looked like he’d been in a bar fight. And had lost.
“Try me,” Darius said softly. “Please. I want to kill you so badly right now I can taste your blood on my tongue.”
Stepping out of the apartment, he made sure the door closed quietly. Because really, once you’ve marked a man for death, did you have to be loud about your departure?
Descending the stairs, Darius fantasized once again about ripping the throat that had been in his palm open with his fangs. The specificity of the vision and the relish that accompanied it belied his fundamentally pacifistic-leaning temperament. Unlike so many in the Black Dagger Brotherhood, he was a vampire who was violent only when necessary.
But if anyone wanted to hurt that woman?
They were asking for a very messy corpse.
CHAPTER FIVE
At the end of the following day, Anne reflected that public transportation in any city was always a Venn diagram, an if-this, then-that cobble-together of predetermined routes that had as much to do with efficiency as a mouse in a maze. Sitting three rows behind the bus driver, she stared out a cloudy window. She had about eight minutes left with this leg of her journey. And then about six minutes of walking.
To get to Bruce’s.
Moving her second-best purse higher on her lap, she swayed in the bench seat she had to herself, and winced as her bad hip was forced to bear more than half her weight. The pit in her stomach got worse as the bus trundled on, and when they arrived at her stop, she thought she was going to throw up as the brakes squeaked. Out of the dozen or so people riding with her, she was the only one who disembarked, and she pulled her light coat closer as she emerged onto the sidewalk. Left in the dust, the sweet smell of diesel made her nose tickle as the rest of the passengers were taken farther down the line.
Over to the west, the low sun glowed warm and beautiful at the horizon, and she told herself it was a good omen. In reality, it probably didn’t mean a thing.
God, she wasn’t sure she had the energy to do this. In addition to her normal responsibilities at work, the day had been full of people asking her to explain her injuries. She hadn’t known what to say, and the half-truth that she’d shared with almost everyone had been an exhausting repeat to pull out of her conversational pocket over and over again.
She’d only told the whole story to two people… one of whom had been a mistake. So the entire firm probably knew everything by now.
Well, everything except for her mystery man. She’d kept him totally to herself.
But she couldn’t worry about office gossip. No, she had other things on her mind right now.
One that note, she set off at a limp, and focused on the park that was on her side of the roadway. The tree line kept backing away and coming forward again, the rise and fall as if the collection of maples and oaks were inhaling and exhaling and the cement pavers she was on were its rib cage. Through the pale green new growth, she could see bike riders pedaling along a winding path just inside the city acreage’s limits, and way off in the distance, pedestrians were taking breaks on blankets and playing with dogs.
She envied them their easy lives, even though they were strangers and she knew none of their details.
Then again, that was how window-shopping other peoples’ destinies worked, right?
She stopped when she got to the set of tire tracks that jumped the curb, cut across the sidewalk, and scored the grass in a twin set of deep ruts. The tree that had been impacted was no more than ten or fifteen feet away, the fresh scars in its trunk like gouges in flesh. Pivoting to the road, she pinpointed where she and the BMW had shaken proverbial hands. It was where the skid marks started.
Crossing the street, she stepped over the black rubber stains on the dotted white line separating the outgoing lanes… and then she did the same at the yellow double stripe in the center. After that, she navigated the incoming lanes, and then finally the grassy rise up to Bruce’s building. Entering the breezeway, she felt herself clutch her handbag like there was a weapon in it. Which, of course, there wasn’t.
Out on the far side, in the parking area, his white Datsun was in its spot.
Closing her eyes, she put her hand on the stairwell’s balustrade—
Up on the second floor, a door opened and someone with hard-soled shoes exited an apartment. There was a muffled slam and then the jingle of keys.
Swallowing through a dry throat, Anne backed up onto the doorstep of the building’s first unit—
The waft of perfume was so strong that she had to rub her nose to clear a sneeze, and then a pair of ankle boots came down the steel steps. The blond woman in a bright blue coat walked off without realizing Anne was there, her confident strut taking her out into the parking area on a strident beat. The fact that she got into a red Chevy Chevette that had rainbow stripes down both sides seemed right, and as she drove off, Anne felt another flash of envy.