Jennifer Estep - Spider's Bite

Carlyle walked closer, passing the car Donovan Caine crouched behind. The vampire whistled a soft tune and jingled his car keys in his fingers. He hit a button, and the lights on the BMW flashed once, disabling the alarm and unlocking the doors. Time for me to make my move.

I tiptoed out from behind the back of the SUV and approached Carlyle. The vampire had just hooked his fingers underneath the door handle to pull it open when I called out to him.

“Excuse me, sugar,” I drawled in a soft voice. “Do you have a light? I seem to have misplaced mine. Can’t put a damn thing in the pockets of this miniskirt.”

Carlyle turned toward the sound of my voice, a smile already forming on his face. I quickened my steps, getting into position. I didn’t look like he expected me to, and he frowned, suddenly suspicious.

“Who the hell are you—”

I might have been concerned, if I hadn’t already used the hilt of my knife to coldcock him. The vampire blinked once before his eyes rolled up into the back of his head, and he pitched face-first onto the concrete. To my right, Donovan Caine stepped out from the shadows. Finn appeared from my left.

“Come on.” I leaned down and grabbed the vampire under his arms. “Help me get this blood-sucking bastard into the trunk.”

An hour later, I threw a pitcher of ice water onto Charles Carlyle’s face. The cold shocked the vampire back into consciousness. So did the two hard slaps I laid across his cheeks. The stinging sensation in my palm felt good. Finally, I was doing something about Fletcher’s murder, taking the initiative, instead of reacting to others.

“Wakey, wakey, Chuck,” I said. “Time to rise and shine and spill your guts.”

The vampire’s eyes blinked several times in rapid succession before focusing on me and his surroundings. After loading Chuck into the trunk of our stolen car, we’d driven to the vampire’s home in one of the suburbs on the edge of Northtown, the address Finn had found while digging for info. Nice place. Split-level ranch house, big yard, pool in the back. Being an executive vice president at Halo Industries, even in name only, paid better than I’d thought. So did being the Air elemental’s right-hand man.

Finn, Donovan, and I had let ourselves into the house and dragged Carlyle along with us. Now the three of us stood in what passed for a game room — plasma television bolted to one wall, pool table in the corner, stacks of porn magazines and empty beer bottles everywhere. The only nice thing about the room was the stone fireplace that took up the back wall.

Donovan Caine had used his silverstone handcuffs to bind the vampire to a chair, which I’d dragged into the middle of the room.

Carlyle’s eyes went to me, then to the two men looming behind me, then to the silverstone knife in my hand. “Fuck me,” he muttered.

“Quick on the draw. I like that in a man.”

I felt Donovan Caine’s eyes on me, but I didn’t turn to look at the rugged detective. Instead, I wandered around the room, twirling with my knife so the blade caught the light and flashed it back in Carlyle’s eyes. Time to start playing the game.

“Nice place you have here, Chuck. Very nice. Did you pick it out yourself? Or did the Air elemental?”

The vampire gave me a guarded look. “What do you want?”

I smiled and held his gaze until I was sure he’d noticed just how cold and hard my gray eyes were. Carlyle might think himself to be a big man, but he knew when he was outmatched. His face had already tightened with panic, and the muscles of his arms and shoulders tensed underneath his suit as he discreetly tested the silverstone handcuffs that held him down. Bastard shouldn’t have bothered. He wasn’t going anywhere tonight except into the ground.

“In case you haven’t figured it out, Chuck, let me tell you who I am. The Spider. The assassin you and your boss hired to kill Gordon Giles, then decided to double-cross. I’m sure you recognize my two associates.”

Finn gave him a toothy grin that was almost as scary as my smile. The vamp realized there would be no sympathy there and turned his attention to Donovan Caine, trying to see if he had any kind of friend in the room. But the detective crossed his arms over his chest and put on his flat cop face.

“You’ve been busy, Chuck. Working for the Air elemental, framing me, having your men abduct and beat Finn, then doing the same to the detective. And I didn’t really understand why — until I overheard you and Wayne Stephenson talking tonight at Northern Aggression.” I clucked my tongue. “He’s right, you know. Bitch is crazy if she thinks she’s going to dethrone Mab Monroe as queen bee of Ashland.”

Carlyle didn’t say anything, but agreement flashed in his eyes.

“But you know that already, don’t you, Chuck? You know this won’t end well for her, and you’ve already taken steps to protect yourself.”

The vampire’s eyes narrowed. He’d overcome enough of his initial panic to realize I wasn’t going to kill him — immediately. “What do you want?” he asked again in a stronger voice.

I put my hands on either side of him and leaned down until my cold eyes were level with his. “The flash drive. I want the flash drive. The one Gordon Giles made that contains the information on the embezzlement from Halo Industries. The one your Air elemental boss is so eager to get her hands on. That’s your insurance policy, isn’t it, Chuck? The elemental gets too wacko, and all you have to do is send the information to Mab Monroe. And she’ll take care of the elemental for you.”

Carlyle didn’t respond, but the twitch in his cheek was all the confirmation I needed. The vampire really needed to work on his poker face.

“He’s got the flash drive?” Donovan Caine asked behind me. “You’re sure?”

“Oh, I’m positive,” I replied, never taking my eyes off the vampire. “Tell me where it is, Chuck. Now.”

Carlyle’s eyes flicked off to the left, as if searching for an acceptable lie. His tongue darted out to wet his lips. “Say you’re right. Say I … found the flash drive among Gordon’s things when I was looking through them for the elemental. What’s in it for me if I give it to you?”

“You get to die quickly, Chuck, instead of being tortured. That’s all you get.”

He let out a low snort. “Not much in it for me, then.”

I shrugged. “Depends on how much you like pain.”

I pulled back and brought the tip of my knife up where he could see it. Then I leaned forward again and drew the blade down his cheek, not deep enough to break his skin, but enough for him to feel the cold metal.

Carlyle let out a soft laugh. “You don’t have the balls to—”

I cut him.

I carved a line from one side of his jaw, down his neck, and up to the other. The blade didn’t sever his carotid artery, but the knife went in deep enough for him to really feel it. Blood oozed out of the wound and dropped like crimson tears onto the vampire’s pinstripe suit. I’d just upped the ante in this poker game we were playing.

But Carlyle surprised me. He didn’t start begging or pleading or sobbing for mercy. Instead, the vampire clamped down a scream, his yellow fangs poking out through this lips, before his eyes shifted to the left again. I frowned, wondering why he was looking off to the side, instead of at me or the knife. Wasn’t I scary enough for him? Few things could be more important at the moment to the vampire than the blade I’d just dug into his neck. Precious few. So I turned and followed his line of sight to the fireplace. Hmm.

I used the vampire’s pant leg to clean the blood off my knife and stepped away from him. Relief flashed in Carlyle’s eyes.

“Fuck,” Donovan muttered, staring at the blood on the vampire’s chest. “Did you have to cut him so deep? I thought you wanted answers out of him, not blood.”