Harper Allen - Vampaholic

I threw back my head and screamed as whitehot agony seared its way through my flesh. I felt the pain, like a barb of fire, reach the wall of my heart and tear through it as easily as jagged glass slashing tissue paper. It sunk deep and began to tug me down into a blackness that wasn’t really black at all, but the dark, jelled red of spilled blood.

My grip slid away from the blond vamp’s arms. As I felt my backward fall halted by something I saw her screaming jaws turn to dust, but her blue eyes, wide with horror, were still fixed on me. Then they, too, disintegrated and there was nothing but a pile of ash by my feet.

I realized I was sagging against the door of Rawls’s car. I also realized that the terrible pain in my heart had vanished. Shakily I pushed away from the car and looked down at myself, but there was no sign of the bloody nail I’d felt tearing through me.

Something cold and hard clamped around my wrist, sending a spike of panic through me as I belatedly remembered the third vamp. I spun around to face Rawls just as he racheted the other half of the handcuffs onto the door handle of his vehicle.

“Three down,” he rasped. The gaze he leveled on me was partially obscured by the skein of blood running from a ragged gash above his smoky green eyes. “One to go, vamp.”

“Ever had a wet dream, sweetie?” From my uncomfortable sitting position on the asphalt by the car I looked at Rawls, ten feet away and hunkered over his disassembled nail gun. Giving no sign he’d heard my question, he picked up one of the metal components and began wiping it with an oily rag. I briefly debated with myself whether to make some pertinent comment about phallic symbols and weapons, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

This was turning out to be the longest night I’d ever spent with a man, and not in a good way. When I’d first found myself cuffed to the car, I’d indulged in an impressive but ultimately futile display of outrage. After an hour I’d subsided into cold silence. When I’d realized my silence wasn’t getting through to Rawls, I’d tried reasonable discourse, then shifted tactics and resorted to threats; later still, I’d descended to insults. For the past three hours I’d been mentally maxing out my credit cards at Bloomies, Saks and Neiman’s, but now my fantasy shopping spree had come to an end.

I tried again. “How about a screaming orgasm?” I let the tip of my tongue trace my top lip. “Mmmm…I love those. Then again, I also adore a long, slow screw up against a cold, hard wall, but as a male, you’re probably more partial to a blow job, n’est ce pas? ”

Rawls set down the rag and began reassembling the nail gun. I sighed.

“A Long, Slow Screw being made with sloe gin, Galliano and Southern Comfort, of course; and a Blow Job being Kahlúa, Baileys and vodka in a shot glass topped with whipped cream and a maraschino cherry,” I elaborated. “If the cherry stem’s tied into a knot when you set down the empty glass, you get your next drink free. A talented girl can keep the cocktails flowing all night with that trick, as I know from personal experience.”

Jack stood and turned away from me, bringing the gun into firing position and holding down the trigger. I clapped my free hand against my left ear, but even after he quit firing my right ear was still ringing. My earlier fury flared up again.

“Why do you have to be such a junkyard dog, Rawls?” I snapped. “I could have left you to those bitches, but instead I turned back to help you. Next thing I know, you’re telling me we’re going to wait here until dawn to see if I flash fry when the sun comes up because you still think I could be one of them. Aside from nearly getting my throat ripped open by Claudia, what more proof did you want that I was on your side?” I didn’t expect an answer, but he surprised me.

“Seeing you stake one of them. And if you’d never met them, how do you know the blonde’s name?”

I raised my eyebrows. “ Merde, sweetie, don’t tell me you didn’t realize who they’d made themselves into, thanks to some expert nipping and tucking.” At his scowl I sighed again, my anger dissipating into resignation. “Naturally you didn’t. You’re a hetero male, and from the Corn Belt to boot, I’m guessing. The only way you might have recognized who Claudia, Naomi and Linda were impersonating would be if they put supermodels on feed-store calendars. And if you never met them, how did they know your name?”

“A lot of vamps know the name of Jack Rawls,” he answered briefly, lowering himself to the ground and extending his jeans-clad legs in front of him. He leaned back against the MINI, closing his eyes and folding his arms across his chest.

I ignored his none-too-subtle hint. “Vamps know of you because you’re a bounty hunter, you mean?” I persisted. “Since the subject’s come up, exactly how does that work? Who pays the bounty when you hunt down a vamp?”

“The families of victims.” He didn’t open his eyes. “They pay me what they can. Sometimes that’s just gas money to make it to the next town.”

“How deliciously Sir Lancelot of you, sweetie,” I said, a trifle acerbically, “but I hope you got more than your mileage for this job. Forget the fact that I came close to being a vamp snack, since you’re convinced I’m going to end up as a big pile of dust anyway, but if that slash over your eye had been any longer or the one on your bicep any deeper, Claudia and her posse would have ended your career tonight.”

I wasn’t totally convinced of what I’d just said. Being attacked by three vengeful vampires would put any other man down for the count, but except for a hiss of indrawn breath as he’d splashed holy water over his wounds from a plastic soda bottle he’d retrieved from his car, Rawls’s demeanor had remained grimly stoic. His dark T-shirt was soaked even darker in places with his own blood, one knee of his jeans was ripped to show pavementtorn skin beneath, and there was a growing lump on the cheekbone under his left eye. True, I had a collection of assorted scrapes and bruises, too, the worst being my hand, although by now the pain had subsided into a dull throbbing. I hadn’t rated holy water, but Rawls had supplied me with peroxide and some gauze to bind it with. The thing was, I had the feeling this was how Jack Rawls usually looked—like he’d just had the shit kicked out of him in a back-alley fight but had left the other guy looking worse.

He really was a junkyard dog—snarling, tough and way too dangerous to pat. A cautious woman would have heeded the conventional wisdom of letting sleeping canines lie, I suppose, but I’ve always found caution and conventionality très overrated qualities.

More important, I needed to keep talking. Talking meant I didn’t have to think about the glimpse of Claudia’s crimson world she’d shared with me just before she turned to ash.

“If the divine Dr. M was their cosmetic surgeon, I can understand why he inspired such fanatical devotion in his patients. Honestly, darling, staking a man with that kind of talent is like staking Mozart. Couldn’t you have made an exception in his case and just put him under house arrest or—”

“Dr. M?” Rawls’s eyes snapped open. “Dr. Middleton?”

I’d finally caught his attention. It was a trifle ego-shattering that my exposed curves hadn’t been able to accomplish that feat, but at least I’d come up with something he found more interesting than sleep. “Linda simply called him the ‘divine Dr. M.’ Apparently, he was one of your past kills, which is why the three of them swore to hunt you down and take their revenge. As I say, I hope the good doctor was one bounty-hunting job that involved more than gas money—”