night moves - a holden chancery story (2 page)

Holden sighed.

“Independent contractors.” With a dramatic roll of the eyes, he jerked his head at her to indicate she should follow him. She snorted. “Girl, if I was going to kill you, you’d be dead.”

“Unlikely.”

In a flash, Holden grabbed her by the wrist and spun her around, forcing her face first against the side of a nearby building. He wasn’t trying to hurt her, just show her how easily he could. Tightening his grip on her, he waited until she let out a small yelp of pain before releasing her.

“If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead,” he repeated.

This time she didn’t argue. She wrestled her hand away from him, rubbing her wrist, a petulant expression on her face. Good. An annoyed would-be slayer might survive. A cocky one would be dead before sunrise.

“So you think you’ve got what it takes to kill the big, bad undead, do you?” He rolled his eyes. He might not be two hundred years old yet, but that was plenty enough time for him to have seen dozens of vampire hunters come and go. And the way they went was never pretty.

“Blood-sucking assholes.” Her lip curled with disdain.

“Let me guess. Vampire killed your brother or something? You figured you’d hit the streets, hunt some vamps, and kill us all like we killed him. How close am I?”

She fidgeted uncomfortably, and he thought she might avoid the question altogether, but she said, “It was my sister.”

“Come on, then. Let me buy you a coffee and tell you a couple things.”

“Why would I come with you? I just tried to kill you.”

“
Tried
. And failed spectacularly. If you’d pulled that with a rogue, you would be a husk right now.”

“A rogue?”

Holden bristled. This girl knew
nothing
. Yet somehow she’d known what he was. Either someone had sent her after him, or she had a natural gift. If it was the latter, she’d need guidance. If it was the former, he wanted to know who had it in for him.

Either way he wanted to talk to her.

“Look, believe it or not I think you’re probably well-intentioned. Stupid, but well-intentioned. I might be able to help you stay alive at this game longer than one night, if you’ll let me.”

“Why would you help me? Especially after…” Felicia nodded at his stomach. Though the wound was no longer visible, he got her meaning.

“Some vampires aren’t such nice guys. And those vampires would have used your inexperience against you. You’d be someone’s midnight snack right now.”

“I don’t know why you care.”

Honestly, neither did he. The girl
had
tried to gut him. Not the kind of behavior that would typically endear a young lady to him. Perhaps he was going soft in his old age. More likely, though, he knew what might happen to her if word got around that a pretty young thing was out on the streets trying to make a slayer of herself with no training.

He couldn’t let that happen.

Plus, maybe if she survived, she would replace his shirt. It would be the polite thing to do.

Inside a small coffee shop with far-too-bright lights, Felicia shifted uncomfortably on the plastic-covered banquette seat. Holden knew it would take more than a cup of coffee and a short stack of pancakes to earn her trust, but he figured it was a good enough place to start.

“Is Felicia your real name?” he asked.

“Is Holden yours?”

He nodded. “Since the day my mother gave birth to me in a South London whorehouseI think it was my father’s last name, but she never told me.”

Felicia winced. Good, honesty and personal details would throw her off. It was important for her to know that drinking blood and having no pulse didn’t make him a monster. He was still a person with a rich, complicated personal history. One that might make most polite people change the subject.

Holden hadn’t always been so metropolitan. He’d spent much of his human life fighting tooth and nail for scraps of bread and kitchen waste, and worked for next to nothing as a farmhand. It hadn’t been a romantic upbringing. The ways of the world had been so mysterious to him, that when he met his sire Rebecca in London, she didn’t even need to enthrall him to make him follow her into that dark alley.

He’d been a lost cause from the second she batted her long lashes at him and purred a
bonjour
in her rich French accent.

Rebecca was the kind of maker vampires considered themselves lucky to have. Beautiful and poised, and willing to stick around for the ugly parts of the change. She had been the one to introduce him to a lifestyle of wealth and class. But she was also ruthless and violent, and didn’t believe human beings were worth much more than the blood that animated them. She based her siring decisions solely on appearance, transforming the beauties she wanted in her menagerie, and leaving the less beautiful to die.

Several of Rebecca’s conquests had already been cruel when she found them, as pretty people often could be. As a result many of her offspring had a nasty streak that only got worse when they became vampires. Holden himself remained kind, but his closest brother, Charlie, had a soul black to the marrow. If not for the rules of the Tribunal governing what vampires could and could not do in public, Charlie might have a run a killing spree across Europe that would put a plague rat to shame.

Felicia had been speaking, but lost in thought, Holden missed most of it.

“What’s a rogue?” she asked, giving him a place to jump in. She was holding her coffee cup with both hands, as though trying to absorb its warmth through her palms. Compared to the confident, poised woman he’d met at the gallery, she seemed much younger now.

“Vampires exist under a specific set of laws. We have a governing body called the Tribunal that determines the best course of action to keep human beings from finding out we exist, and of course their immediate need to kill us all once they learn the truth. For the most part, vampires abide by those laws, because they are what helps us survive.”

“
For the most part
.”

“There are vampires out there who believe we were better off before the laws. Those who think because we’re stronger and live longer that we are better. They forget we were all once humans, too, and are far more interested in killing than they are with blending in.”

“Rogues?”

Holden nodded. “Usually it’s baby vamps.”

“
Babies
?” Her eyes widened with horror and he realized she thought he meant the word literally.

“Sorry. I should clarify. Baby vampires are the newly undead. Those freshly turned who don’t know better. In those cases we can sometimes straighten them up before they take things too far.”

“And if you can’t?”

“We have people who will deal with them.” He jerked his chin at her. “People like you. Non-vampires with great ability who take care of them for us.”

Up until that moment he hadn’t considered bringing Felicia to the Tribunal. But the longer he sat with her, the more he came to like the idea. She was too green for it right now. Juan Carlos would laugh him out of the room before Sig and Daria could politely say no. But with a little training and some better knowledge of what she was up against, she might become a suitable bounty hunter for the Tribunal.

“Did you know what I was when you saw me at the gallery?” He poured some cream into his coffee so he could watch the white clouds billow up in the black liquid. Simple pleasures didn’t end just because he didn’t like to drink the stuff anymore. He still enjoyed the sights and smells of it. Cream had been a luxury he once couldn’t afford in his life.

Felicia glanced out the window, not answering him immediately. Information was sometimes the only currency a person had, and he could tell she wasn’t sure if she wanted to give in yet. At last she made up her mind and looked back at him. “Yeah, I did.”

“Did you know because someone told you?”

Her brows knit together in an adorable look of consternation He’d offended her. Thirty minutes earlier she had jammed a knife between his ribs, yet here he was offending her. The world could be a funny thing.

“I just knew, okay?”

Nice try, but no
. “Not good enough. Tell me how you knew.”

Felicia sighed and sat back in the booth seat, staring out the window once again. A fine film of grease had turned the glass opaque, causing the bright lights beyond to blur.

“It’s your skin.”

“Because I’m pale?” He snorted, shaking his head. “A lot of people are pale. I’m not exactly white as the driven snow, here.”

Felicia sipped her coffee and smiled at him. Something about the expression made him think she was laughing at him rather than actually showing happiness. “Yes, you’re pale, but that’s not it.” She traced her fingernail along her throat. “You were hungry. You wanted to feed.”

“And?” He was interested now. He’d never known he had a hunger tell, some visible sign he was on the hunt for a meal. If there was something he was doing, it would be a smart thing to correct.

“Your veins. I’ve noticed when vampires haven’t fed, their veins start to bulge.”

Holden’s hand lifted to mirror hers, and he touched his throat. Sure enough, the skin felt thinner, and the veins stood out markedly.

Felicia went on. “I think it’s an aging thing. The same thing happens to the veins of the elderly. Your bodies start to age more rapidly when you don’t eat, like you’re going to decompose.”

Having seen what happened to vampires who were denied food, Holden could attest she wasn’t far off. But how could she make that kind of assumption?

His expression must have given away what he was thinking because she gave a half shrug and let her hand drop to the table. “I used to be a nurse. Once. I know a thing or two about how the body is supposed to work.”

“So you’ve seen enough vampires you can recognize them on sight, but I’m the first one you’ve ever confronted.”

Her silence was all the confirmation he needed.

“Why me?”

“Honestly?”

“I think we’re past the point of polite lies, don’t you?”

She nodded. “You didn’t seem all that tough.”

Whatever answer he’d been expecting from her, this wasn’t it. He hadn’t known what he thought she would say, but
you didn’t seem all that tough
wasn’t even in his top-ten list of potentials.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re pretty. You hang around art galleries and wear Armani.”

“Let me guess, the guy who killed your sister was some monstrous former biker who was about seven feet tall and weighed three fifty?” Holden snorted and ignored how uncomfortable the topic made her. “Not tough. Now I’ve heard everything.”

Felicia blushed. “If it makes you feel any better, clearly I was wrong.”

“I think it’s safe to say you’ve got a lot of things wrong, little one.” Holden slid out of the booth and tossed a twenty on the table.

“Wait, where are you going?” Felicia’s embarrassment melted into panic. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I thought you were going to tell me more about vampires.” Her tone dropped low at the end, so the last word was almost a whisper.

“I don’t think talking is going to help you.”

“But—”

“I’m going to have to show you.”

Chapter Three

Bold splashes of color crisscrossed the entirety of the subway platform at Canal Street, creating an oppressive wall of tags that loomed over Holden and Felicia as they waited for the train.

Felicia had her arms wrapped nervously around her middle, and Holden could tell his presence wasn’t doing anything to soothe her. This late at night it didn’t matter where in the city they were, the subways were unsafe. Especially for a beautiful young woman wearing an expensive dress.

Holden’s own attire would be an invitation for trouble, if he hadn’t undone his coat to expose his bloodied midsection. Now, instead of an upper-class couple with no sense of self-preservation, he looked like a serial killer in a nice suit leading his next victim to certain death.

Somehow that was the better of two options.

Metal crashed against concrete somewhere nearby, and Felicia jumped.

“Try to relax.”

She shot him a withering glare. “
Try to relax
,” she snipped back. “Easy thing to say when you’re immortal and have superhuman strength.”

“And yet you thought I wasn’t tough enough.” He smirked at her and stuffed his hands into his pockets. On the other side of the platform a young kid with stringy blond hair and filthy clothes was watching them hungrily. Holden knew what they represented to him: money, another fix, easy prey.

It was how Holden eyed up girls at Studio 54 during its heyday. Those girls had tasted like sex and stardust, the human incarnation of champagne bubbles. God bless them.

The street kid was eying the distance between them, trying to decide if it was worth it to make the trip around to them before the next train arrived. Felicia had noticed their observer as well, and was fidgeting more than before.

“Stop,” Holden warned. “It makes you look like prey.”

Felicia froze, immediately halting her uneasy swaying. She relaxed her arms and straightened her posture, and suddenly looked like someone not to be messed with. She was still trembling, but no one else would notice if they weren’t right next to her.

Squealing brakes and a faint rumble announced the arrival of an incoming Northbound 1 train. Holden gave the kid a smug flip of the bird, and the punk bared blackened teeth at him.

Not having to feed off that guttersnipe was the best thing to happen to Holden’s night since he’d left the gallery. Heroin wasn’t the party it was cracked up to be once it hit the blood. It tasted of paint thinner and dead-eyed reality. There was no joy in it whatsoever.

With a hand on the small of her back, Holden guided Felicia onto the closest subway car, and the doors sighed closed behind him. The interior of the car was layered with more spray-painted tags and obscene drawings, and the air was thick with the stench of cigarette smoke and urine.

Holden wasn’t a fan of small spaces like this. He hated the reminder of how disgusting human beings were capable of being.