Kelly Meding - Wrong Side of Dead

Which meant the bodies of the once innocent were piling up, and their makers had to be stopped. Of all the minor disasters plaguing the city, this was our most pressing. And the most personal, given the former Hunter who was helping to organize it.

“Where’s the party?” I asked.

“Meeting on the roof,” he replied. “For a brief inspection, I assume, before reporting the location to the chosen candidates.”

“Awesome. What time is it?”

Phin checked his cell phone. “Eleven-twenty.”

Good, we had a little time. “Quince, I want you and the other plants to stay down here just in case things get rowdy. Phin and I will let team one know, then head up to the roof.”

Quince nodded, laughed like I’d just told the funniest joke ever, then melted back into the crowd. He was a damned good actor, for a vampire.

Phin crowded in and pressed his forehead to mine, like a lover going in for a kiss. His familiar scent, wild and clean like a raging mountain river, settled around me. “Think he’ll show for the roof meet?” he asked, mouth mere inches from mine.

“Hope so,” I replied, “but I’m not counting on it.” I was keenly aware of Phin’s warmth and of every place our skin touched. I missed this kind of contact with a man—one man in particular, who made me crazy in the best and worst ways. But I couldn’t waste time missing Wyatt, or mourning our broken relationship. I had a damned job to do.

“I’ll go tell Marcus,” Phin said. “Meet me by the roof access.”

“Okay.”

I lingered against the wall for the length of a song. That should be enough time for Phin to track down Marcus and Kismet and let them in on the new plan. The music changed. I eyed a path toward the far end of the warehouse where the stairwell (according to the blueprints) was located, aware of the pulsing throng between me and it.

Which was why I didn’t notice my shadow until he’d sidled up next to me, leaning casually against the wall like he belonged there. I shifted sideways, prepared to tell him to get lost, and froze. Shit .

“Hey, Evy.”

He’d taken care to dye his hair back to its natural shade of brown, and donned a pair of lavender-tinted sunglasses to obscure the new shimmer to his eyes, but the face was the same. Felix Diggory, former Hunter and two-week-old half-Blood, grinned at me, his unfiled fangs gleaming brightly under the constantly shifting lights.

I wasn’t sure how I’d react when I saw him again. I expected anger, grief, maybe even a little bit of shame, since I was there the night Felix got infected. Instead, all I felt was relief. Relief that he was here and I had the chance to correct my mistake. The mistake that allowed him to run free in the first place.

I’d been cooped up for weeks, training to gain back what I’d lost when Thackery tortured me. All I’d wanted was a few hours in the city to kick back, eat a hamburger with Milo and Felix, and enjoy a conversation that didn’t revolve around tactics, weapons, or inter-species peace. Then we three made the idiotic decision to follow some Halfies onto a bus—no weapons, no plan, no backup.

It was no wonder only two of us got off that bus still human.

“Hey, Felix,” I said.

“You look good. Still training?”

“Yeah, getting back into fighting form.”

He dragged his tongue along the front teeth between his fangs, as if he thought I hadn’t noticed them. “Saw you with Phineas earlier. You two on a date or are you working?”

I considered lying—for about three seconds. “Working. Looking for you, actually.”

“Me?” He tilted his head. “I’m flattered.”

“Don’t be. You know why we’re here.”

His mouth quirked at the corners. “Because I’m a big, bad Halfie now, and therefore must be slaughtered with extreme prejudice?”

“Bingo.”

“Good luck with that.”

“You don’t think I can take you?”

“The last time I saw you, you couldn’t take a house cat.”

Okay, it was a challenge, then. Good. I needed to get him out of the warehouse and away from hundreds of potential human shields—or victims. Rumors were circulating. The newspapers were printing stories full of incomplete information, speculating on mutilated bodies and the extraordinary number of missing persons. People weren’t stupid, no matter what we did to try to convince them it was business as usual. I couldn’t kill Felix in front of so many witnesses without causing a huge mess—and not just of the spilled-blood variety.

I shifted my stance and pulled back my shoulders. “I might surprise you. I killed three Halfies just last week, all by my little old self.”

He chuckled. “Good for you, Evy,” he said, then let his gaze scan the crowd. “So who’s here with you? I know you and Phineas can’t be out hunting by yourselves.”

“Marcus and Gina are here, and some new guys you don’t know.”

His attention snapped back to me. Eyebrows arched and lips slightly parted, he was caught somewhere between surprise and excitement. “Gina’s here? Really?”

The eagerness in those words broke my heart a little bit. Gina Kismet had been his boss, his Handler, for a little over two years. Their entire Triad had been very close, and losing Felix to infection had devastated all of them—Gina, Tybalt Monahan, and especially Milo Gant, whose feelings for Felix had once extended far beyond simple friendship.

“Yeah, she’s here somewhere,” I said. I didn’t bother trying to be casual as I scanned the crowd myself, looking for familiar faces. But we were tucked against a wall with a sea of people in front of us, and the lights made it difficult to see far or well.

“I wish I had time to say hello, since I never got the chance to say good-bye.”

The last thing Gina needed was to see him like this, but I kept my disagreement to myself. “Someplace else you need to be?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, but you do realize that’s not going to happen, yeah?”

In an instant, the predatory intensity was back. His nostrils flared, and he parted his lips just enough to let the tips of his fangs show. “You couldn’t kill me the last time.”

“I wasn’t myself the last time.”

“So what do you propose? We duke it out right here on the dance floor?”

He was playing along nicely. “I was thinking the roof. You and me.”

Felix cocked his head. His curious expression was so much like his old self that my heart hurt, and it made it difficult to remember this was no longer a man, but a monster. “Let me guess,” he said. “I win, and I get bragging rights on finally killing the unkillable Evy Stone.”

I shrugged one shoulder. “As long as you promise to kill me and not infect me.”

“You survived infection once before.”

True, and I would probably survive it again. A unique healing ability, gifted to me by a gnome, helped me battle the vampire parasite, which infects humans and turns them into Halfies. The ability also helped me survive too many near-fatal wounds in the three months since I died and was magically resurrected into my current body. An ability that part of me wished had been physical—something that could be duplicated and used to help others who were wounded or dying.

Because sometimes being the one who always survives when your friends die all around you really sucks. “Then I guess we’re both fighting to kill,” I said.

He ran his tongue along his front teeth, between his fangs. He didn’t seem particularly pleased by our inevitable throw-down. “Guess so. And I kind of still owe you.”

“For what?”

“For punching me in the head the night of the factory fire.”

I snorted. “Somehow I think getting blown up in that fire is payback enough.”