Fangtastic (10 page)

Luckily or unluckily, my very scent was a distraction. For the second night in a row, I was doomed to smell like a smokehouse. I wished I had the superpower of clean. “Got a brush and some wipes?” I asked Bobby, flashing back to the night I'd dug my way out of the grave.

“Glove compartment,” he said with a smile.

I dug around and did the best I could with what I could find. I rolled my sleeves up to cover the blood I'd wiped from my forehead, unbuttoned an extra button on the blouse to distract from anything I missed and figured I was as ready as I was going to get.

“You going for an interview or a date?” Bobby asked.

“Date,” I answered, poking at him. “Want to come along? I might need backup.”

“The guy's a
dentist
,”
Bobby scoffed.

“Ever seen
Little Shop of Horrors
?”

He huffed. “I'm already your chauffeur. I might as well be your muscle too. Nothing I like better than watching you make eyes at some other guy.”

“You know I only have eyes for you,” I answered as he started up the car. It scared me because it was very nearly true.

I looked away from him so he'd break eye contact and focus on pulling out onto the road …
and
because I didn't want him to know I was sincere. I had to keep him on his toes. Guys get comfy and all of the sudden they're taking you for granted, showing up empty-handed for dates—no flowers or candies or, better yet, sparklies, or missing dates altogether for brews and bromance with their buds …

We hit the wine bar at 10:59, and I jumped out before the car even shut off to make sure I got to Hunter in time. He sat at a corner booth, back to the wall so he could watch the whole room, just like Bobby had the night before. On the table in front of him was a nearly empty bottle and a wine glass the size of a small fishbowl, with about an inch of something that looked like blood but probably wasn't. A hostess tried to seat me as I entered, but I waved her off and made a beeline for Hunter.

Behind me, I heard Bobby come in and chat with the hostess, who needed to see some ID before she'd seat him. Sometimes I forgot we were still supposed to be teens …
were
teens, except that I totally felt so much older than my old, pre-vamp self. Maybe it was even showing on my face, since the hostess hadn't carded
me.
Spy games, death, and destruction will do that to a girl. The double D's—death and destruction—made me think of the Radner place, and that made me think of … I immediately pushed it out of my head again. I could self-destruct later.

I pasted on a smile and stood beside Hunter's booth. “Is this seat taken?”

He'd been watching me since I entered, but it took him a beat to focus on my face, either because of the booze or because he'd seen something he liked below the neckline.

“No, please sit.”

He was clearly expecting me to take the seat across from him, but I'd been jumped from behind once that night, and it was enough. I scooted him in and sat close enough to feel his heat. It was one thing I missed about being human—that warmth. Not that the cold really affected me anymore, but that roasty toasty feeling, like when you just wake up from a good sleep, all bundled under the covers … gone.

Hunter took a sip of his blood-red wine and swirled it around in his mouth for a second before swallowing.

“Look,” he said when he wouldn't dribble, “I've already been through this conversation about six times on my own while I was waiting for you. What do you say we cut right to the chase?”

“Works for me.” Especially given my level of exhaustion and my absolute commitment to getting the bastards responsible as soon as inhumanly possible.

“Good. What is it you want?” he asked.

“All the dirt you have on Dion, his associates, and the vampires behind the Tower.”

His eyes widened. “But you're one of them.”

“Yes and no.”

He studied me, wary now. “What do I get in return?”

I studied him back. “What do you want?”

“Eternal life. I want you to bite me and do … whatever it is you do so that I'll become one of you when I die.”

I drew back from him despite his warmth. “Let's say that's even possible. Have you really thought about it? You won't be able to walk in the light. It'd kill your practice, because even if you cater to the night owls, you can't risk infecting your patients all unknowing if you nick yourself on something. How will you get by?”

“I'll worry about that later, after I'm dead. But I'll live a normal life until then, right? Knowing I'll rise again, I can plan—smart investments, a living will, that sort of thing. By the time I die, making a living won't be a problem.”

“No, you'll have all-new problems, like sunlight and stakes.”

“
You
did it,” he said, eyes flashing.

“No, it was done
to
me.” And look where I was now. Federal flunky—kicking butts and leaving them to burn in a fiery inferno. No, no, no, I didn't know that for sure. Maybe she'd gotten out. Maybe—

His eyes lost some of their burn. “I'm sorry you got turned against your will.”

I shrugged, letting him buy that explanation for my pain. “Not your fault. But why ask me? Why not go to the devils you know?”

He looked away. “They won't do it. They won't even hear me out. Rules, they say. Maybe after a lifetime of service … ”

“Seems a small price to pay for eternity.”

“But, like you say, I have a life.”

“So you want to have your cake and eat it too. Why didn't you join Dion's group, then? Aren't they promising a path to eternity?” That was totally the theory, anyway, given the cult of Dionysus and that whole life-from-death discussion.

“You know what they say—the road to hell is paved with large intestines.” He stopped at the look on my face. “Sorry, bad joke. What I'm trying to say is that their path seems to involve a blood war.”

“Go on.”

He sat back in the booth and crossed his arms. “You haven't made me any promises yet. I'm not saying another word until we have a deal.”

Stupid smart people.

“You
do
realize I could just mesmerize you, right? Force you to tell me what I want to know.” I wasn't so sure my mojo was up to it, actually, but he didn't have to know that.

Hunter looked smug. “That's why we're meeting in a bar.”

“Huh?”

“Too hard to mesmerize someone under the influence.”

“Where did you come up with that?”

“P. N. Elrod—
The Vampire Files
.”

“What vampire files?”

“
Hers
.”

“Huh? Nevermind. Look, here's the deal. You give me something I can use to catch Dion and I'll turn you.”

“Tonight?”

“If I catch him tonight,” I answered. My fingers were crossed, so it wasn't really binding.

Hunter gave me a hard look, trying to judge if I was telling the truth, if I could be trusted. I gave him my best innocent face.

“Want me to pinky swear?” I asked. It didn't cost me anything. If the vampire myths could be believed, I didn't have a soul to soil. As long as he didn't make me swear on a stack of Bibles, I was golden.

“Fine, but I want a taste.”

I'd seen what my blood could do back in New York when it healed up a goth guy who'd been beaten into a coma. Just drinking my blood wouldn't transform Hunter—there had to be a give-and-take between us, as in
you scratch my back,
I'll scratch yours
…
and drink your blood
.

“Talk first.”

Hunter shrugged and took a sip of his wine, forgetting to roll it around in his mouth before swallowing this time, and asked, “What do you want to know?”

“Everything. I keep hearing that Dion ‘changed.' Tell me all about him, before and after.”

The waitress came by to ask if we wanted another glass for me and to let us know that the kitchen would be closing in half an hour. I accepted the glass, just for appearances, but declined the menu and she went away. Hunter didn't watch her go, which would have been totally sweet if we'd been on a date. His eyes also hadn't dropped to my cleavage more than three or four times. He was a regular gentleman.

“Before the change … well, Dion was kind of a geek,” he told me.
Okay
, I thought,
that was like the pot calling the kettle whacked
. “He did something with electronics, I think,” Hunter went on. “And he was kind of on the fringes of the Burgess Brigade. I mean, he hung with us and all, mostly sniffing around Kali, but he never received a formal invitation to join the clan. Then he started working for Xander … ”

“Wait,” I cut in. “Kali? Xander? Pretend I don't have any idea what you're talking about.”
Yeah, just pretend
.

“I think Kali's real name is Kelly. That was her family Dion went after. It was all over the news.”

Kelly Swinter. Okay, I was with him so far. “And Xander?”

“If he's got a last name, I don't know it. He's one of them … I mean, of
you
.”

Funny that Selene had left out that little piece of information about Dion's employment. I wondered how it fit in. Had Dion stolen something from the vamps, so they wanted him alive to lead them to it? Was there something he knew that they wanted to beat out of him?

“So working for Xander changed him?” I asked.

“Not at first. At first, he was still, well,
him
.
Maybe a little cockier than usual.”

“Because he'd taken the deal you mentioned? Servitude in exchange for the eternal kiss?”

“Yeah, and because he thought it gave him some kind of status, working for
them
.
When he disappeared, I thought the vamps were behind it. They aren't exactly out of the coffin, and there he was shooting his mouth off. Not that most people would listen, only those of us who'd figured it out. The true believers.”

“
Were
they behind it?”

Hunter's eyes searched the shadowy bar as if nervous that we'd be overheard, but no one was nearby. Only Bobby, with his super-vamp hearing, was close enough to pick up the conversation from where he sat at a table that let him see both us and the door, but Hunter bypassed him given his assumptions about human hearing range.

His gaze came back to me, those moss-green eyes almost black in the low light. “I don't know. He wouldn't say anything about where he'd been when he came back, but it was like he was a different person. Arrogant instead of just cocky; driven instead of desperate; a leader instead of a follower. That was when he started spouting the crazy ideas that got him banished.”

“What do you think happened to him while he was gone?”

“I don't know, but it was enough to scare the daylights out of me. Uh, no pun intended.”

“It didn't scare you enough to keep you away from the club.”

The look he gave me said he had no idea why it should. “That's where my people are.”

“Um, okay, so when Dion went off on his own, he took others with him?”

“He'd already started … I don't know what you'd call it. Recruiting? He talked about rising up, a blood tide, a sea of change … all kinds of crazy clichés. I tried to talk to him, but he was … I don't know,
different
.
Driven. Like a man on a mission.”

“So you think he was, what, possessed? Touched in the head?”

“I don't know what I think.
Something
happened to him. Whatever it was turned him into a killer.”

A shiver went up my spine like a black cat had just walked over my grave, which was just silly since I wasn't even in it any more. I looked around the bar, searching for the source of the feeling, and met Selene's cold dark eyes.
Selene. Here.

Wherever she'd come from, she had both hands on Bobby's shoulders, holding him in his seat. He hadn't sent me a mental message, so I figured it wasn't anything he couldn't handle, at least for the moment, but—

Hunter noticed my preoccupation, followed my gaze, and froze. I mean, he hadn't been all that animated before, but this was the stillness of the rabbit in the meadow, hoping the hawk wouldn't notice him. He must have recognized Selene from the club.

“Shit,” he said under his breath.

I put a hand on his arm, and he flinched like I'd struck him. “Don't worry. They want me to find Dion. You've only been helping me do it.”

From the white all around his eyes, he wasn't taking much comfort in that. “I've got to go. I'll take a rain check on that blood.” He tried to slip out, but I was in his way. “Please,” he said, his eyes meeting mine.

I took pity and let him escape.

“Join us,” Selene asked, barely sparing Hunter a glance as he fled the scene. It wasn't a question, and I didn't take it as one.

I tossed some money down on Hunter's table and went to face down Selene.

“Sit,” she ordered.

“I'd rather stand, thanks.”

She eyed me coldly, but I didn't take it personally. “If I'd wanted to hurt you, you'd be begging for mercy by now,” she informed me. “I want a progress report. I understand you had Dion in your sights earlier tonight. You let him slip away.”

“I didn't
let
him do anything,” I bit out. “He had a woman hostage, an ambush waiting to spring, and a house burning down around us. It was a trap.”