Harper Allen - Vampaholic

“Middleton wasn’t a job, he was a link in a chain I was following. That chain started in Nebraska with a girl named Mary Lou Gilly,” Rawls said, something smoldering behind the ice of his gaze. “The same chain led me straight here to you.”

I reacted badly to his statement, I admit. Oh, pooh—I’d been reacting badly all day, whether it had been to Terry’s dreary accusations or to Megan and Tash when they’d tried to pull their high-minded intervention in my social activities. But I was getting tired of being everyone’s favorite whipping girl, especially when I was more than a little stressed out with my own private worries.

Not that I expected to spontaneously combust when the first streaks of dawn showed in the sky. As Rawls had noted, lately I’d been finding it harder to function in the daytime, but that was only to be expected with my party-till-the-wee-hours schedule. I’d yet to have the urge to sink my teeth into a handy neck and I’d felt no revulsion when I’d seen him splashing holy water on his wounds.

So maybe Tashy a was right, and the Crosse triplet Zena had marked had gotten a Get-Out-Of-Vamphood-Free card when Megan had killed her. I wanted to believe that, but I couldn’t, and neither could I believe there was a chance Tash had been marked instead of me. Even if I persuaded myself that my inability to stake vampires was due to paralyzing fear, I was still left with two inarguable points.

One was that I knew I was changing.

I’d first known it a few weeks ago, although I’d told myself I was imagining things. I’d also told myself that my decision to move out of the Crosse mansion and take an apartment on my own was totally unrelated to my fears. But during the past week, the feeling had become an almost daily occurrence—a strange sense of dislocation with my own psyche, my own thought patterns, that came and went instantly but left me feeling oddly invaded. I’d tried to chalk the feeling up to my higher-than-normal cocktail consumption, but when Claudia’s crimson-soaked world had called to me tonight and something in me had wanted to answer its call, my fears became bleak certainty. Zena’s twenty-one-year-old legacy was bearing its poisonous fruit. I was turning into what she’d been.

But I had absolutely no intention of thinking about that particular subject until I had a brimming glass of something numbingly alcoholic in my hand.

Thanks to Mr. Tall, Dark and Pissy, however, I wasn’t going to be within hailing distance of a jigger of vodka for a while. To add insult to injury, he was apparently under the impression that I was linked to the late Linda’s divine Dr. M, whose staking apparently had been a labor of love and not one of Rawls’s bounty-hunting commissions; and to some Cornhusker State female with a name that sounded like it had been plucked straight out of a country and western hurtin’ song.

I take back my mea culpa. Under the circumstances, I think I reacted with admirable control to Rawls’s hostile declaration.

“That chain you followed must have had a broken link, Jack,” I said in my most languid drawl. “All I know about Dr. M is what Linda told me before you dusted her, and as for a Mary Lou…Gilly, did you say?” I gave an exaggerated shudder. “Aside from the fact that I’ve never been within a hundred miles of Nebraska, she doesn’t sound like someone I’d have a lot in common with, sweetie. I mean, the name simply screams big hair, a softer-side-of-Sears outfit and shoes with court heels, no?”

“I wouldn’t know about that.” Rawls got to his feet and looked down at me, his expression unreadable. “When I first knew her, she wore rolled-up jeans and Keds. When I ran into her years later, she’d graduated to crotch-high minis and see-through blouses. The last time I saw her she was naked and dead and covered in her own blood.”

His tone was so uninflected that for a second the impact of his words didn’t hit me. Then it did, and I drew in a quick breath. “I’m sorry,” I said inadequately. “For talking like such a shallow bitch, as well as for what happened to her. How did she die?”

“Badly.” His gaze on me was unwavering. “The vamp who killed her liked torturing the hookers he picked up before he finally finished them off, and as a former surgeon, his preferred method was a scalpel. He was a real Mozart with it.”

I closed my eyes. “No wonder you made it your business to track down Middleton and stake him. You…you say he targeted hookers. Is that how—”

“I wasn’t one of her johns, I was her half brother,” Rawls said tightly. “When I was sixteen and big enough to stand up to the bastard who was my stepfather, I beat the crap out of him and walked out. The next time I saw Lou she wasn’t a seven-year-old who hero-worshipped her big brother anymore. She was a fifteen-year-old who’d been selling herself on street corners for a year. She told me to go to hell and got into a Mercedes that pulled up to the curb. After searching all night for her and her john in one fleabag joint after another, the next morning I stood in a blood-spattered motel room and vowed to track down the bastard in the Mercedes who’d hacked her to pieces.” His teeth flashed briefly white in one of his nongrins. “When I made that vow, I didn’t know vampires existed, but since then I’ve become an expert on them. The most important thing I learned was that all trails lead back to an original infector.”

“I can’t imagine how you must have felt in that motel room,” I said, still dwelling on the first part of his account. “If anything ever happened to one of my sisters—” I belatedly took in what he’d just said. “Original infector? Are you talking about me? ” My laugh didn’t sound as amused as I’d meant it to. “Sweetie, that’s utterly ridiculous! If anyone around here was vamp zero, it was a bitch named Zena, and you arrived in Maplesburg about six weeks too late to—”

“I know,” he cut in, “word travels. Your sister took care of her. I also know you aren’t vamp zero.”

“ Such a relief, darling,” I said with a carelessness I didn’t quite feel. He was still cradling his damned nail gun, I noticed, and his finger was only inches from the trigger. “It must be a huge disappointment for you, finding out that Megan beat you to the punch. I’m sure if she’d known Zena was the vamp you’d been tracking for so long she would have let you do the honors,” I commiserated.

“Zena wasn’t the end of the chain, either,” Rawls said flatly.

The man wasn’t just a junkyard dog, he was a junkyard dog with a bone he wouldn’t let go of, I thought in exasperation. “Of course she was. She was a queen and although she was superbly wellpreserved for her age, she was definitely ancient. Whoever the vampyr was who turned her centuries ago, he’s lost in the mists of time.” I slanted my gaze up at him through my lashes. “Now that I’ve cleared up that little misunderstanding for you, would you mind terribly clearing up something for me?” I said carefully. “You said word travels. What exactly is the word on me in the vamp community?”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “That you received the kiss of a vampyr when you were in the cradle. That as the daughter of a Daughter, when you come into your full strength you’ll make Zena’s powers look sick. Even if there hadn’t been a connection between you and the vamp I was hunting, I would have taken the time to search you out and put an end to you. The only reason you’re not dust already is because—”

He stopped abruptly and I narrowed my eyes at him in the same way he’d done to me. “Because I could have killed you when I had the chance. I could have left you to be ripped apart by Claudia and crew. I didn’t do either, and now you’re not so convinced that your information was correct.” But his information was correct, I thought. Or at least, the part about me being marked by Zena was. And if the vamp underground knew that much about me, who was to say they weren’t also right about the rest of it? As the daughter of a Daughter, when you come into your full strength you’ll make Zena’s powers look sick… I wouldn’t think about it until I had that drink I’d promised myself in my hand, I told myself numbly. And instead of a single, it was going to be a double. Make that a triple.