Jeanne Stein: Chosen

No. There’s another choice.

A voice inside my head.

Kill him.

Kill him?

Where did that come from?

There’s a stirring in my gut. With it comes a startling realization. Whatever instinct is telling me to take this guy’s life is right. Human or not, he’s evil. He’s a threat.

I pause, sniff the wind. He smells of borax soap and bleach.

Not road dirt and sweat like the rest of his biker buddies.

And underneath the soap—the pungent, familiar odor of blood.

Not his.

He spilled blood tonight.

Whose? Is that why Harris is here?

No matter. This is something I can take care of. My head clears in an instant. The headache is gone. A calmness descends.

Something I need to take care of.

I grind my teeth together in anticipation behind lips locked tight. A growl escapes my throat.

When he looks up again, he sees me. The real me. The vampire.

“What’s wrong with your eyes?”

No intimidation in his voice this time. Only confusion and fear. I know why. I know what a vampire’s eyes look like—yellow, glowing, slit pupils. Cat eyes.

The human Anna tries to intervene. She whispers, “Stop. You can’t kill him. He’s human. He’s done you no harm.”

Doesn’t matter. My fists are clenched, the bloodlust runs high. I crouch, approach, slowly, deliberately, as a predator stalks its prey. I enjoy his fear. Taste it on the wind, smell it in the sweat that runs down his face. He’s mesmerized. Can’t look away. A rat and a cobra.

Power runs through me, sweeping away the trepidation and anxiety of before. In its place, eagerness and startling clarity.

The reason I’m here is to kill him .

The reason I sent David away is to kill him .

“Well, well. Look who we have here. Anna W. Strong.”

Harris.

No. Don’t look around. Don’t stop. Kill him. He’s a murderer.

I take another step forward.

“Anna? What’s wrong with you?”

The guy in the window finds his voice. “Help me. The bitch is nuts. Look at her eyes.”

I sense Harris come closer. He can’t know. It stops me. I straighten. Close my eyes. Calm the wild beating of my heart. Jaw relaxes, fists unclench.

When Harris touches my arm, the human Anna is back in control.

“What are you doing here?” He jabs a thumb toward the guy in the window. “I know it’s not him. He hasn’t been charged with anything. Yet.”

“David and I—” I let the explanation hang, drag my eyes toward the window where the guy is being pulled back inside by a couple of cops.

He isn’t protesting.

“Who is he? What’s he done?”

Harris waits until the cops inside yell that they’ve got him before answering. “His name is Joe Black. A couple of hours ago, he murdered his wife and her boyfriend. We got a tip that he rides with the Angels. Took a chance we’d find him here.”

He turns and motions for me to follow. I do, reluctantly, processing the fact that I knew Black had spilled blood before Harris’ words confirmed it.

When we’re back in front of the bar, I ask, “Why are you here, Harris? Out of your jurisdiction, isn’t it?”

He shrugs without answering, instead issuing instructions to the cops holding Black. They cuff him, read him his rights and shove him into a waiting patrol car. The rest of the cops still have their guns trained on the Angels, all facedown on the dirt.

Harris snaps an order and the cops withdraw to their waiting cars.

I watch as the bikers climb silently to their feet and shuffle back into the bar. No one so much as glances in Harris’ direction. They’ve danced this dance before. They know how cops operate. If they’d done anything less than cooperate, the cops would have torn the bar apart. They’d have searched every biker. Guns, dope, illegal contraband. They know what’s at stake. Better to take a little shit from the cops than let things go too far. Unwritten biker code: the good of the many outweighs the good of the one.

In a minute, the music is back on, so loud the building shakes.

The patrol cars pull out. The Ford with Black follows. Harris and I are left alone in the parking lot. He turns his attention to me.

“You didn’t answer my question. What are you doing here?”

Harris is about five feet ten inches of bulldog. Past experience has shown that there’s no way to blow him off. I don’t bother to mention that I’d asked him the same question a minute before. And that he’d ignored it. Instead I reply, “David and I had a job. He’s on his way downtown with the guy now.”

He looks around. “I don’t see your car.”

“What are you, a detective? I was just about to call for a ride.”

He shakes his head. “Your partner left you here? I know you’re a pain in the butt, but I can’t see that overgrown Boy Scout dumping your ass in a biker bar even if you deserved it. Which I have no doubt you did. So what’s the story? Why’d you stay behind?”

There’s no way to explain why I stayed—especially to a human. I’m not sure I can explain it to myself. “Look, you got me. I pissed David off and he left.”

Harris looks surprised at the answer. And aggravated. Which aggravates me. “David knows I can take care of myself. I don’t need anyone to protect me.”

The cynical twist of Harris’ mouth takes a downturn. “I’ll take you back to town. Get in the car.”

His condescending tone sparks a maelstrom of indignation. The instinct to show him just how well I can protect myself is drowned by the more rational desire to get home. I need to think through what happened tonight. I need to talk about it with Lance and see if he has an explanation for a human exerting such influence over me. I might have killed Black if Harris hadn’t appeared. I wanted to. Why? Because I knew he was a killer?

How did I know?

How could I have known? The smell of blood could have meant he was a victim not a killer. And yet, I had no doubt which he was.

Harris is at the car, holding open the door, tapping his foot and frowning like an annoyed parent who caught his kid out after curfew.

It takes all my willpower to resist the desire to grab his foot and dump him on his impatient ass.

I shrug off the impulse.

He’s a human. A cop, no less.

And I can use the ride.

“Okay, okay. Let’s go.”

Harris drops me off at the office. Our entire conversation on the thirty-five-minute ride consisted of Harris asking me if I wanted to go to the office or if he should take me home.

It was a long thirty-five minutes.

At last I’m in the Jag and on the way to the cottage, away from Black’s strange influence and Harris’ annoying air of disapproval. I can think rationally about the night’s events.

The rationality is slow to come.

How could I have been so strongly affected by Black? He was human. Not that humans aren’t capable of evil—I’ve certainly met a few. But he projected evil. So strongly it caused a physical reaction. That’s a disturbing new twist.

Evil. A primitive word.

Why did I pick up on it? Why did I know he had spilled blood? What compelled me to want to kill him on sight?

Maybe Lance can help me figure it out. He’s been a vampire a lot longer than me—seventy years. He’s helped me through other troubling times. The last three months, we’ve gotten closer. Especially after what happened with Williams.

It’s been three months since Williams and I had a confrontation over the death of Ortiz, a vampire he loved like a son. Three months since his wife threatened me because I chose the well-being of another over her husband’s. I’ve stayed away from them both, withdrawn from the supernatural community and kept to myself. My only tie has been to Lance. And Culebra, to feed.