Мишель Роуэн - Bitten & Smitten

Then White-teeth turned to me. I shuffled backward a painful step at a time. My brain was screaming for me to run, and I finally decided that was the best idea I’d had all night. I turned around, but Stringy-hair had quietly moved to stand behind me. He grinned as he put his now-bloody wooden spike back in his belt, then grabbed my wrists to pull me closer to him. I tried to twist away.

“Where do you think you’re going, vampire?” His breath smelled like rotten eggs.

I wanted to argue, to tell him I wasn’t a vampire because vampires didn’t exist. I also wanted to tell him to invest in a good mouthwash. But I still couldn’t find my voice. A hot tear slipped down my cheek as I looked at the other two men and took in a shuddery gulp of air. I had a funny feeling these guys wanted to add more stains to my ruined dress than the grass and the dirt that were already on it. I wished I had another shoe to throw.

“Look at her; she’s petrified,” White-teeth said with amusement.

“She’s new,” Burly answered. “It’s almost cruel to exterminate her so soon. She looks like she might be fun. Check out those legs. Can’t it wait till the morning?”

White-teeth’s smile widened. “Yeah. Maybe we can wait a bit. What do you say, darlin‘? Want to buy yourself a little time?”

“In your dreams,” I managed to hiss at him.

He laughed. “There is only one answer, darlin‘, and that is whatever I say it is. Now come here, or else.”

I decided I’d rather have the “or else.” The man who’d seemed so attractive when I’d first bumped into him, my potential hero, now was grotesquely ugly to me. His face was splattered with Gordon’s blood.

I tried to pull away from Stringy-hair, but he held tight to my wrists, leering at me.

“Nice try,” he said, grinning.

I shrugged at him, then kneed him hard in the groin. He let go of my wrists immediately. I glanced over my shoulder at White-teeth, then, ignoring the searing pain in my ankle, darted away from them.

While Stringy-hair moaned in agony, Burly made an annoyed noise and said, “It’s never easy, is it?” Then boots slapped against the pavement as they started to chase after me.

Everything looked different late at night, and there was barely any light to help me figure out where the hell I was. I knew the Bloor Viaduct, a tall bridge that went over the Don River, wasn’t too far away. If I could get to the other side of the bridge, I could find a phone, find somebody who could help me. How much longer I could keep running was the question. My lungs burned, and with my twisted ankle I was doing more of a fast limp than an all-out run. Also, my feet, without the protection of any shoes, were screaming for me to stop. But I knew if I stopped, that would be it. They’d kill me like they’d killed Gordon. Or worse. I shuddered when I thought of how that stringy-haired freak had leered at me. I had to keep running. There was no other choice. I was actually surprised the men hadn’t caught up to me. In fact, I didn’t even hear them behind me anymore. My pace slowed, but only for a moment. I braved a quick glance over my shoulder. I was now in the middle of a park. I could hear traffic, so that meant I wasn’t far from Bloor Street, but I couldn’t see anything but trees surrounding me. I was all alone. I skidded to a halt and was breathing so fast and shallow I was certain that I’d begin to hyperventilate. They must have given up. Maybe I’d been too fast for them. I had been going to the gym a little more than normal lately, to get into bikini shape for my big, expensive trip to Puerto Vallarta. Amy and I had been planning it for nearly a year, and now it was just a month away. That had to be it. I was in amazing shape. Just as fit and dangerous as that chick from the Terminator movies. Then I heard the rev of an engine and the squealing of tires. A Jeep lurched onto the road in the distance, spraying gravel under its wheels. Outrun that, Terminator , I thought as the panic rose again in my chest.

Dammit.

I could hear them, the men I’d stupidly thought I’d escaped. They were hooting and hollering as they bore down on me. This must have been their idea of a good time. I finally made it to the bridge. In the distance I could see the Toronto skyline. I kept running, ignoring the pain. The concrete sidewalk that ran along one side of the bridge felt cool through my torn nylons and cut-up feet. I looked around, hoping that somebody might stop to help me, but car after car whizzed by without even slowing down for a second glance. When I stepped out into the bridge’s traffic to try to flag someone down, a driver blasted his horn and swerved, narrowly missing me. I scrambled back onto the sidewalk. It looked like it was just going to be me, White-teeth, and the boys. And the dark shadow of a figure balanced on one of the bridge’s metal suspension beams.

He stood on the other side of what was called the “veil”—thin, evenly spaced metal rods put up to prevent anyone from climbing over the barrier and leaping to their death. But I saw that a section of the veil was now warped, stretched wide enough to allow someone to get through. This was where I quickly scrambled up and squeezed through so I stood near the stranger, my back against the barrier. Behind me, I heard the Jeep skid to a halt and the doors slam as the men got out to chase after me on foot.

“Hey!” I called out to the figure. He wore a long coat that whipped about in the cold wind. He looked like an ornament on the front of a pirate ship. Or maybe even Kate Winslet flying at the front of the Titanic—only not as perky. And certainly not as female.

“Go away.” His deep voice was sullen.

“Holy crap, this is high up, isn’t it?” I inched closer to where he stood on the beam. “Help me!”

“Help yourself. Can you not see I’m planning to kill myself here?” the man said, looking down at the dark water far below us.

“Help me first and then kill yourself,” I reasoned.

I was close enough to glimpse his face. He looked to be in his mid-thirties and was dressed from head to toe in black. If I actually had a moment to consider his looks in my current life-or-death situation, I’d say he was really hot. But he looked completely miserable. Whether he looked miserable because he wanted to kill himself or because he’d been interrupted, I wasn’t sure.

“A friend of yours?” White-teeth’s voice came from behind me, just on the other side of the veil of bars.

I braced myself and turned my head to look at him. “A good friend. And he’s going to kick your ass if you don’t leave me the hell alone.”

He gave me a very unfriendly smile. “That I’d like to see.”

From his perch, the stranger glanced at us without much interest. He seemed oblivious to the fact that we were hundreds of feet in the air. I saw his gaze move to my neck, and I touched it gingerly.

“Vampire hunters,” he said.

“Who wants to know?” White-teeth took a cigar from his leather jacket pocket and lit it. He must have felt he had all the time in the world.

I carefully inched even closer to the stranger. Even though he was suicidal and therefore probably just as crazy as anyone else I’d had the misfortune of meeting that evening, he was currently my best bet to get out of this in one piece.

“It doesn’t matter who I am,” the stranger replied to White-teeth. “You are invading my personal space. Kindly take your business elsewhere.”

White-teeth glowered at him. “We’ve just come to claim this little piece of vampire ass and we’ll be on our way, so you can get back to”—he looked around— “whatever it was you were doing.”

I grabbed the hem of the stranger’s coat and held on for dear life. “Don’t let them hurt me. Please.”