I was going to be young and hot looking forever,

all in return for a few minor drawbacks, like not being able to take sunlight – who does, these days? I secretly thought I’d got the best deal of all…until half an hour ago.

That’s when the hunger came over me for the first time.

So here I am, standing in the dark on the bell tower of St Jude’s Episcopalian church. Just one step and the ones I love will be safe from me. But maybe it’s fitting that Jude is the patron saint of lost causes, because I don’t think I can take that last step.

And oh, God…

I can feel the hunger coming on again.

On their twenty-first birthday, the sexy and stylish Crosse triplets discover their mother was a vampire slayer – and that each of them is destined to carry on their family’s legacy with the dark side.

A new mini-series from author

Harper Allen

Darkheart & Crosse

Follow each triplet’s story:

Dressed to Slay – February 2010 Unveiled family secrets lead sophisticated Megan Crosse into the world of shapeshifters and slayers.

Vampaholic – March 2010 Sexy Kat Crosse fears her dark future as a vampire until a special encounter reveals her true fate.

Dead Is the New Black – April 2010 Cursed by her own blood, wild child Tash Crosse leaves her family, only to learn her death might save them all.

Harper Allen, her husband and their menagerie of cats and dogs divide their time between a home in the country and a house in town. She grew up reading Stephen King, John D MacDonald and John Steinbeck, among others, and has them to blame for her lifelong passion for reading and writing.

Dead is The New Black

BY

Harper Allen

MILLS & BOON

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Tara

Prologue

One step, and everything’s finished—the pain and the guilt and the cold, sickening fear washing over me, making my grip slick with sweat and turning my legs to rubber. With one step this nightmarish hunger ends, too. But I don’t know if I have the nerve to take that step off this ledge into the darkness. Apparently I’m also a coward, among other things.

Or maybe I’m still in denial. I can’t help thinking that this isn’t the way my life was supposed to turn out, even though I finally understand that whining about fair and unfair is useless. But still. I mean, I should have been Mrs. Dr. Todd by now, right? I should have had the triplet wedding thing with my sisters, Megan and Katherine: summer brides, the three of us, ready to say the vows that would have ensured us the same uneventful life Grammie Crosse has. We would have been on the Maplesburg Hospital committee. We’d have played tennis at the Maplesburg country club. Megan would have hosted parties with her investment-banker hubbie, Dean, Kat would have done the same for Lance as he climbed the ladder at his corporate law firm and I would have played the part of a cosmetic surgeon’s wife to perfection. And if once in a while we lay awake in the middle of the night and asked ourselves if this was all there was to life…well, remembering the nightmares we had when we were kids would answer that question for us.

But instead of getting married a few months ago we ended up having to stake our fiancés the night before Megan’s wedding.

It’s a long story, and in my current position I’m not sure I’ll have time to finish it. I’ll just say that our fiancés were turned into vamps by a bitch called Zena, the Queen Vampyr who killed our father, David Crosse, and Angelica Dzarchertzyn, our mother—for those of you who don’t know, our mother was a Daughter of Lilith, a hereditary vampire killer—when we were babies. Carrying out his vow to his dying daughter, Angelica’s father, Anton, made sure his triplet granddaughters had a normal American childhood by placing us with Grammie and Popsie Crosse.

So for the next twenty years Megan and Kat and I were adored, shop-till-we-dropped princesses in a small upstate New York town. Our closest encounter with a vamp was on a box of Count Chocula cereal and in barely remembered nightmares from our childhood. But then we turned twenty-one and Zena tracked us down to Maplesburg.

Which is when our perfect world was torn apart, never to be put back together again.

As I say, I don’t want to dwell on the dreary details, mainly because I hate thinking about how dumb I was back then. When Anton Dzarchertzyn—Grandfather Darkheart, as he said we should call him—showed up on our doorstep the night we staked Lance and Todd and Dean, and told us the truth about how our mother had lived and died, I was convinced I would turn out to be the Crosse triplet who’d inherited Angelica’s Daughter of Lilith destiny. I was equally convinced that Megan would fulfill Darkheart’s other prediction.

Our mother had died trying to save her babies from Zena. She’d failed. One of us bore the mark of the Queen Vampyr and would turn vamp herself during her twenty-first year.

My theory about Megan being the vamp and me being the Daughter was blown out of the water during our final battle with Zena, when Megan proved herself to be the true inheritor of Mom’s title. So I fell back on theory number two: that Kat, the languidly sexy middle Crosse sister—born half an hour before me and twenty minutes after Kat—was the one Zena had marked when we were babies.

Wrong again. When we went up against Master Vamp Cyrus Kane, Kat learned that her legacy didn’t come from Mom or Zena, it came from our father, a Healer who’d been able to restore the souls of vamps and turn them back into the humans they’d once been. And after that revelation, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who among us was left to turn fang-girl.

Me. Little Tashie Crosse. The shallow sister, the bratty sister, the sister who hadn’t grown up, according to Megan and Kat. The sister who now never would.

I was going to be young and hot-looking forever. I’d never need Botox or have to trade in my Manolos for double-width Naturalizers, all in return for a few minor drawbacks like not being able to take sunlight—who does, these days?—and cringing if some insensitive clod shoved a crucifix in my face. All in all, I secretly thought I’d gotten the best deal of all…until half an hour ago.

That’s when the hunger came over me for the first time and I understood what being undead was really all about.

It’s about killing. Killing for the love of killing, killing for the sheer, unholy joy of it, killing because killing’s better than sex, better than breathing, better than falling in love. I knew instinctively that making the kill last by torturing the victim would notch the thrill up even higher, and choosing a victim close to me would be a rush of dark nirvana.

I wanted to kill Kat. When I’d had my fill of her blood and her body had been torn beyond recognition, I wanted to take on Megan. Daughter of Lilith or no, I didn’t think she’d be able to stake me before I overpowered her. Grandfather Darkheart would have been next, and then I would have contented myself with acquaintances and strangers, biding my time until the two people I loved most returned from the months-long cruise they were on.

Welcome home, Grammie. Your darling Tashya’s missed you, Popsie.

Just for a moment the vision of killing them had been so clear in my mind that it had seemed like I’d already done it, and the horror that rushed through me had beaten back the hunger, breaking its hold on me. But it’ll be back, and when it comes a second time I don’t know if I’ll be strong enough to fight it off again.

So here I am, standing in the dark on the highest point in Maplesburg, which happens to be the bell tower of St. Jude’s, the Episcopalian church where I was baptized. There was no problem sneaking in—Maplesburg churches still remain unlocked after-hours for the benefit of any sinners looking for redemption, and I didn’t have to go through the church proper to get to the tower staircase. I won’t have any problem getting out, either, as long as I can bring myself to do what I have to do.

Just one step into thin air and it’ll all be over. Just one step and the ones I love will be safe from me. But maybe it’s fitting that Jude is the patron saint of lost causes, because I don’t think I can take that last step.

And oh, God…

I can feel the hunger coming on again.

Chapter 1

When I bumped into the muttering derelict with the shopping cart glaring at me through his tangle of matted hair I knew I’d hit rock bottom. Worse yet, I didn’t care. Well, okay, I cared. I was so worried that someone I knew might see me that I was in disguise, which explained the short brunette wig bulging out like the Elephant Man’s cranium where I’d crammed in my own hair. I’d pulled a trenchcoat over the mint-green Beth Bowley summer-weight cashmere sweater and short, tiered silk skirt I had on. I also wore dark sunglasses, although maybe they weren’t the smartest idea, since it was eleven at night and I was in a dim alleyway. In the five blocks from where I’d parked my noticeable white Mini I’d walked into two fire hydrants, almost stumbled off the curb into the gutter and now I’d nearly knocked an old street loony off his feet.

But rock bottom or not, I was so churned up with anticipation and nerves that I was shaking. When the weird cat lady who lives in the apartment above mine had told me about old man Schneider and his after-hours service, she’d warned me he sometimes ran out of product. Actually, as I learned during that same conversation, her name was Kathy Lehman, but I couldn’t shake the habit of calling her Weird Cat Lady in my mind, mainly because she was weird and had about twenty cats. In fact, I’d met one of her feline buddies before I met her.

How it happened was this way: I was just passing the Dumpster behind my building earlier in the evening, wondering whether I should run back into the rundown building I’d been calling home for the past few weeks and change into something less dressy than the Chloé skirt and silk-knit sleeveless top I was wearing. I was also making a mental note to buy a pair of Doc Martens, since the Ferragamo slides I had on, although adorable, definitely weren’t the right footwear for what I had in mind. Then I saw the rat, a husky brute that looked as if it could take on Dobermans and win, and all thoughts of clothes and shoes left me.

It was the first time I’d tried what I was about to do, but desperation made me cunning. I held my breath—a trick that’s become easier and easier lately—and remained motionless. The rat’s whiskers twitched cautiously as he sniffed the air. Then he began scurrying toward the Dumpster. I waited until he was only inches away before I lunged.

I had the sucker, I swear it. I could feel him twisting in my grasp, trying to get his head close enough to my clutching hands to rip some flesh from me. Two red-hot trails exploded down my bare arms and an unearthly yowl split the darkness, startling me so much that I let go.

Mr. Rat streaked toward the hole in the side of the building he’d come out of. I threw myself after him like a baseball player sliding into home plate, my hands outstretched, my silk top shredding on broken pavement and the heel of one of my Ferragamos snapping as I made my leap.

I slammed headfirst into the wall. The mangy tomcat beside me slammed into it at the same time.

“You’ve killed Bojangles!” The screech startled me more than the yowl had, and the apparition that appeared out of the gloom almost stopped my heart. Then I recognized the figure with the frizzy, waistlength gray hair swooping toward the tomcat as my elusive upstairs neighbor.

“I didn’t kill him,” I denied, getting to my feet and preparing to beat a hasty retreat. The last thing I wanted was to answer questions about why I was staking out a Dumpster. “I…I tripped over him. I was just walking along minding my own business and I—”

Bojangles chose that moment to prove he was alive by letting loose with another enraged yowl. He sprang from Weird Cat Lady’s arms and took off around the side of the building.

“See, he’s fine.” I gave his mistress a nervous smile. “Well, it was certainly nice meeting you, but I really must be—” “I should have realized. You were fighting Bo-Bo over a rat.” Her voice dropped from its previous screech, and I thought I could hear a note of pity in it.

“Excuse me?” I hoped my laugh sounded suitably incredulous. “Why would I fight your fleabag cat over a rat?”

“For the same reason I’ve trained Bojangles and the rest of my strays to catch them and bring them to me,” WCL said, the compassion in her tone now unmistakable. “Because you don’t want to kill humans to feed your blood hunger. You’re a vamp like me, aren’t you?”

I opened my mouth to give her a cool brush-off, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, I heard myself utter a choking gasp. Worse, the gasp was immediately accompanied by the wet feel of big, fat tears welling up from my eyes.

Let’s get one thing straight—with my baby-blue eyes and strawberry-blond curls I may look fragile and sensitive, and I’m not above batting said eyes and tossing said curls at any hapless male who shows up as an interesting blip on my personal radar screen. I’ve also perfected the art of instant tears, Swarovski droplets that tremble on my lashes but never get to the point where they smear my Urban Decay mascara. But—and I’ll totally deny this if it ever gets out—I’m really as tough as old boots, to borrow one of Popsie’s favorite phrases. I’ve had to be, growing up with Megan and Kat as my sisters. I mean, Meg’s beautiful and smart and doesn’t take crap from anyone, and Kat simply sizzles with sexiness. They’re a hard act to follow, and if I had an ounce of fragility in me my ego would have been completely crushed by now.

Which it’s not, thank you very much. Well, not until I dissolved into a weepy pool of tears and clogged nose and embarrassing spitty stuff running from the corners of my mouth as my choked gasps became full-blown howls of misery. I whooped and coughed and shuddered and tried again to speak, but only managed something that sounded like, “Nuh, nuh…nuh fair! Nuh…bell tower! But nuh…nuh chickened out!”

Not my most shining moment. I wouldn’t have blamed Weird Cat Lady for thinking she’d run into someone even weirder than herself and leaving me to finish dissolving by the Dumpster all by my lonesome, but she didn’t. She hauled me inside and upstairs to her apartment, sat me down at her kitchen table while she brewed some tea and waited until I was vaguely coherent again.

“Firstly, you’re not a chicken just because you didn’t kill yourself,” she said, setting a mug in front of me and bending down to stroke the sea of cats twining around her ankles. “Drink this, it’s got goldenseal and Moroccan mint in it. I came up with the basic recipe when I started going through menopause to control my hot flashes, but after I turned vamp I found if I tweaked the ingredients a little it helped with the blood cravings.”

I took a sip and tried not to gag. “Nice,” I said, still snuffling.

She gave me a grin that made me look past her gray hair to the girl she must have been thirty years earlier. “You lie like Nixon,” she declared. “It tastes like hell and I know it, but when my inner thermostat jacks up twenty degrees I’ll gulp down anything to get relief. Same goes for the hunger. It’s bad enough that a vegetarian like me is drinking rat blood, but after all these years of protesting wars and violence, there’s no way Kathy Lehman’s going to take a human life just because some dickhead old boyfriend showed up one night and turned me into a vampire. I’ll walk into the sunlight before I do that.” She frowned. “Which leads me to the question of why you didn’t try that route, instead of jumping from a church tower. And how did you manage to get into a church, anyway?”

I choked down another sip of tea. “Vamphood seems to be working differently on me than it does with everyone else. I can still go out in the day without flash-frying and I don’t appear to be banned yet from entering a church. I guess it’s got something to do with the way I was marked.” I saw the question in her eyes and stifled a sigh. “Queen Vampyr. I was a baby. The curse was supposed to kick in during my twenty-first year, which it did a few weeks ago, but the hunger only hit me tonight.”

“And you immediately wanted to tear your nearest and dearest from limb to limb?” Kathy Lehman said shrewdly. “Been there, almost did that. I fought the impulse and made do with rat blood. But since you’re not a crazy cat lady like me, you might have to go a different route.” She tipped her head to one side. “There are a few of us around, you know—vamps who’ve vowed to find any alternative to embracing the darkness. We’ve even formed our own unofficial support group that meets every Tuesday in the basement of the local union hall. Drop by if you feel the need.”

I tried to keep my thoughts from my expression, since my thoughts were running along the lines of, sweet of you to offer, but I think I’d rather stake myself, thanks. “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, trying to wipe out the image I’d just had of myself saying, “Hi, my name’s Tashya and I’m a vampire,” and having a roomful of enthusiastically cheerful strangers chorus back, “Hi, Tashya!”

“You do that.” Again Kathy smiled, as if she could read my mind. “But right now I’m guessing you’d like some more concrete help.” Rising from the table, she turned to her refrigerator and ripped a page from a cat memo pad hanging from a cat magnet. Scribbling something on it, she handed it to me. “Go to this address. It’s a butcher shop and it’ll be closed at this time of night, naturally, but old man Schneider does a booming after-hours business in the alleyway at the back of the store. Try to get there as early as possible because he sometimes runs out.”

I glanced at the scrap of paper in my hand. “Not that I don’t appreciate the grocery tip, but how does buying a couple of black-market T-bones help me?”

“Old man Schneider’s after-hours business isn’t in meat, it’s in pig’s blood,” Kathy said bluntly. “He sells it in quart bags, like milk, at twenty bucks a pop.”

This time I wasn’t able to hide my reaction. “Ewww,” I said in disgust. “Blood in a bag?”

“Would you prefer it free-range from a human?” she asked wryly. “If you think you can handle the hunger any other way, you’re wrong. Sooner or later you’re going to kill—” She broke off abruptly as a thump, like something jumping through an open window, sounded from the adjacent room. The next moment Bojangles swaggered into the kitchen, a dead rat in his jaws. With feline pride he deposited it at his mistress’s feet.

I realized two things simultaneously: one, I didn’t want to see what happened next; and two, the rat didn’t look as unappetizing to me as it should. I swallowed the sudden nausea that rose in me and backed toward the door. “I can see you’re about to sit down to dinner, so I’ll leave you to it,” I said quickly. “Thanks for the advice and the tea and for—”

“Good cat.” Kathy wasn’t listening to me. She scooped the limp gray body from the floor and gave the battle-scarred tom a distracted pat. Her voice sounded thicker and deeper. “I’ll save the head for you as usual, Bo-Bo.”

Her teeth began to lengthen past her bottom lip as she brought the dead rat to her mouth. I turned and fled, clutching the scrap of paper in my hand.

Chapter 2

It wasn’t the scene in WCL’s kitchen that night that made me change my mind about buying take-out blood-in-a-bag, it was the realization that if Mr. Bojangles hadn’t butted in when he had during our tussle by the Dumpster, it could have been me chowing down on a rat hors d’oeuvre. I take back what I said about standing in line in a garbage-strewn alleyway being rock bottom—the alternative would have been worse.

Famous last words.

“It’s okay, Joe, she didn’t mean to barge into you like that,” a girl’s voice behind me called after the old man with the shopping cart. “Hey, Mata Hari, wanna move your butt?” The owner of the voice poked me in the ribs as she asked the terse question.

I lowered my sunglasses at her. “Do you have a problem?” I asked coolly.

She jerked her head at the fast-retreating old man. “Besides the fact that you almost knocked down Crazy Joe? Yeah, my problem is that the line’s moving and you aren’t. I don’t particularly want to get in a rumble with a bunch of wannabes who might think it’d be a hoot to cut in ahead of us.”

“Wannabes?” Frowning, I began to close the gap in front of me, only to realize it wasn’t there anymore. To be exact, it had been filled by four black-clad figures standing with their backs to me.

“Great. Just fuckin’ great.” The girl behind me spoke again, her tone bitterly resigned. I turned and studied her in growing irritation. She looked about my age, but that was all we had in common. She was a few inches shorter than my five-seven, and the vintage punk-rock T-shirt and ripped khaki cargos she was wearing didn’t hide her compact toughness. Her hair was white-blond with dark roots, carelessly hacked into short spikes that stood up like two-tone chicken feathers around her head. Her eyes glared green at me.

“You gonna tell them to get outta here or do I have to?” She didn’t bother waiting for my reply, but stepped in front of me, tapping the nearest black-clad shoulder. “Yo, buddy,” she snapped. “Haul your ass to the back of the line and take your friends with you.”

Slowly the four figures turned to face her, moving apart so that they flanked us. Four pairs of red eyes stared menacingly out of four dead-white faces, and when the one whose shoulder had been tapped spoke, his lifted upper lip revealed razor-sharp fangs.

“We need blood,” he said in a low, emotionless voice that seemed too deep for his Ichabod Cranelike frame. He was older than his companions and it was obvious he was their spokes-vamp. “Force us, and we’ll take it from you, human.”

“Slice the bitch, Viktor!” The teenaged vamp beside him had skanky black hair extensions falling nearly to her waist. She carried through her dubious style sense with a black-and-red bustier that showed way too much bobbing cleavage, leather boots climbing halfway up her non-toned thighs and torn fishnet stockings. The whole ensemble was finished off with a Dead and Loving It tattoo inked on her slightly pouchy stomach. If I’d been feeling more charitable I might have taken her aside and suggested she try a few sit-ups or maybe look into Pilates, but her outburst to Viktor had kind of turned me off the feeling-charitable-toward-her thing.

It had turned punk-girl off, too, and from her attitude so far I was guessing she hadn’t had an abundance of charitable feelings in the first place. She flicked a glance at the teen vamp’s soft midriff and shook her head. “Chickie-poo, I’d find it easier to believe you were a dedicated blood-drinker if you weren’t flaunting that burgers-and-shakes tummy at us. Dead and Loving It? I’m Lovin’ It would have been more appropriate.”

“Hey, nobody talks to my girlfriend, Cindy, like that!” The second female vamp had Manic Panic red hair and a smear of black lipstick on one of her fangs. She was dressed like her friend and I realized that their outfits seemed somehow familiar to me, although for the moment I couldn’t think why. She turned to Viktor. “I know you said we weren’t ready to drink from a human source yet, Master, but if you want to, like, slake your thirst with these vermin, please don’t hold back on our unworthy accounts.”

“Speak for yourself, Trudy,” the second male in the group interjected, his red gaze focusing on me. He had a face like a ferret, if ferrets wore lip studs. And tongue studs, I noted with an inner shudder as he gave Viktor a defiant shrug. “I owe you for turning me, dude, but I don’t see why I have to take orders from you forever. Screw lining up for pig’s blood—I’m ready for the real thing. I’ll drain this bitch and leave the blonde to you.” He glanced at punk-girl. “Sorry, babe, but I’m not into dykes.”

“My name’s not babe, it’s Brooklyn,” punk-girl said with a cold smile. “And if you meant the dyke remark as a slam, it wasn’t. I’m here, I’m queer, and damn glad of it when I run into a primo specimen of the male sex like you.” She switched her attention back to Viktor. “Sweet little scam you’re running. I normally wouldn’t care less that you get your rocks off by playing mentor-vamp to the teen goth set, but you and I both know you don’t need what old man Schneider’s selling.” She glanced past Viktor and scowled. “He’s down to the last few bags. I don’t plan on letting a line-jumping imposter screw me out of my daily corpuscle fix, so either walk away politely or I’m going to have to go all Lady Dracula on your ass. What’s it gonna be, waxteeth?”

Now, here’s the thing: I know that as a vamp myself, other bloodsuckers should hold no fear for me. I mean, the whole taboo about us not being able to feed from each other, right? Except I still think of myself as Tashya Crosse, normal American girl, and when I’m confronted by pointy teeth and red eyes my automatic thought processes go something like, a) damn, where’s my stake; b) damn, where’s my Daughter of Lilith sister and c) damn, how fast can I run in these frikkin’ heels. So while I admired her cojones, I wasn’t real happy about Brooklyn throwing down the gauntlet to the hungry-looking Viktor, especially since I was pretty sure she’d gotten one vital detail wrong.

“Uh, Brook?” I said, edging closer to her and speaking out of the side of my mouth. “Not to quibble, but they’re not wax. His teeth, I mean. If they were, the sharp parts would have gone kind of round and melty by now, no? Just a thought,” I added in an undertone.

“Good point, Mata Hari.” She rolled her eyes. “Wax, plastic, whatever, he’s not one of us. Don’t tell me you can’t smell the reek of human coming off him and his pathetic posse.” She took in my blank look and scowled at me—I was beginning to understand that scowling was her default expression. “Pork barbeque, kind of, with maybe a whiff of mesquite? That’s what humans smell like to me, anyway, which might be a partial explanation of why I haven’t let myself feed on them yet. When you’re raised by a Jewish baba as strict as my grandmother, God rest her, you don’t even go for simulated bacon bits on your Caesar salad—and don’t even ask how I justify pig’s blood, because that’s where my dear, departed Baba and I part ways. You really can’t smell them?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “Just what kind of vamp are—”

“What you smell can only be your own wretched humanity,” Viktor broke in, “but as tempted as I am to spill your blood in the dust, I will spare your life this time. Restraint is an exquisite lesson to learn, my young friends,” he intoned to Trudy and Cindy and Stud-Tongue. “Watch well and learn how we Dark Ones master our impulses.”

Beside me Brooklyn made a sound that could have been a snort but if Viktor heard, he chose to ignore it—a further demonstration of his iron control, I supposed. He stepped out of line, Trudy and Cindy falling in behind him, although from their pissed-off pouts they weren’t thrilled about their undead leader’s decision. The thought crossed my mind that Brooklyn was the coolest vamp I’d yet met—I mean, come on, the woman had that whole funky, don’t-mess-with-me aura, plus she was gay. Plus she had those minty-green eyes. Plus under the ratty tee she was wearing, her body looked to-die-for buff and…anyway, despite the fact that I didn’t buy her barbeque theory about Viktor being human, I was thinking about how totally cool she was and wondering whether her lips were naturally that Scarlett Johanssonish or if she’d had collagen injections, when something happened that yanked my attention back to the here and now.

Actually, a whole bunch of things happened. But since they all happened at almost the same time, they’re lumped together in my recollection as one big near disaster.

In order, here’s how said near disaster went down. First, Stud-Tongue decided to skip the impulse-controlling lesson Viktor had decided to demonstrate to his pupil-vamps. Second, he lunged at his chosen blood-buffet—little ol’ moi, of course. His maneuver took me by surprise, although not because I was still looking at Brooklyn’s lips. A second earlier I’d wrenched my gaze away from her and was idly scanning the alleyway when a movement in the shadows snagged my attention. I realized that while I’d been staring at Brooklyn, someone else had been staring at me. I caught a glimpse of navy-blue eyes under straight brows, a strong mouth curved with amusement and an incongruous froth of white lace against a dark collar and cuffs. But like I said, right then Stud-Tongue attempted to chow down on my neck, diverting my attention from Mr. Tall, Dark and Blue-Eyed lurking in the shadows.

Brooklyn later told me I’d moved so fast that I’d actually blurred. Then she frowned and said it was more like I’d been in one place one moment and in a totally different one the next, like Sonny Chiba in The Street Fighter’s Last Revenge, her all-time favorite kung-fu movie. After she dragged me to see The Street Fighter’s Last Revenge one night, I asked her if my mouth had moved independently from the words that had come out of it, also like in TSFLR, and she said no, but that was probably because I was absolutely silent throughout the whole encounter with Stud-Tongue.

“Silent and expressionless,” she added, looking away from me. And my eyes had been black, empty holes.

Obviously if I’d known any of that at the time it would have creeped me out, but I didn’t. In fact, I don’t recall thinking anything in the split second that it took for me to nearly kill Stud-Tongue. All I remember is that I seemed to be looking at the scene that was unfolding as if I was watching through a blood-smeared window. I saw the sleeve of my trench coat slide through a dark-red fog, saw my own fingers close around Stud-Tongue’s neck, saw the triumph in his eyes turn to terror. The red stain obscuring my vision darkened to black and my focus narrowed in on the throbbing vein under my pressing thumb.

It beat like a heart. I could hear blood surging through it like ocean waves rising and falling onto wet, black sand. I felt an answering surge come from deep inside me, and as I brought my mouth to that hypnotically pulsing vein and bared my lengthening fangs, the hunger I’d pushed back earlier that evening came roaring back, stronger than ever.

The tips of my fangs pierced flesh. I began to drive them in deeper, anticipating the hotly orgasmic rush of blood flooding into my mouth.

And then I was flat on my back on the pavement, my jaw feeling as if it had been broken and a solid weight bearing down on me. “Leash it!” Brooklyn snarled, bending forward from her squatting position on my chest and thrusting her face into mine. “You’re here tonight for the same reason we all are—because you’re trying to fight the hunger. Not that I care about this scumbag, but he’s not worth losing your soul over! Besides, the freakin’ Daughter sometimes patrols this area. I hear she’s inclined to stake first and ask questions after, so unless you want a hunk of wood through your heart, you’d better get a grip, Mata Hari!”

Her warning wasn’t necessary. The pain from her roundhouse punch to my jaw had broken through the red fog that had surrounded me. Shaking my head to clear it, I saw Stud-Tongue and Viktor and the two females rapidly take their leave and suddenly realized why Trudy and Cindy’s outfits had seemed familiar.

“Omigod, they’re bad Zena clones,” I muttered. “The bustiers, the fishnets—they’re practically channeling the bitch. What’s that about?”

“Who cares,” Brooklyn said impatiently. “All I want to know is whether your hunger’s abated. If you lose control—”

“Since her death at the hands of the Darkheart Daughter, the Russian Queen Vampyr has become somewhat of a legend, madam. A dark legend, to be sure, but the foolish can be indiscriminate in their emulation. May I help you to your feet?”

In the dust and dirt of the alleyway, the riding boots standing a few inches away from me looked out of place. They were black leather, polished to a mirrored gleam. Still lying on my back, I let my gaze travel upward past the boots, past the dark blue trousers that rose out of them, past the militarycut blue sleeve extended gallantly toward me, lace spilling from its cuff.

Two words: Yum. Yes, that’s just one word, but I said it twice, as in yum, yum. And I’m not sure I didn’t say it out loud.

You know those nights when you’re lying in bed not sleeping because you just had a fight with your boyfriend and you’re thinking all men are jerks? And you decide that if you’d been given the job, you totally could have created a better male sex and you start imagining what that perfect man would be like? And a little later when you’ve got a clear picture of your perfect-man creation in your mind—for some reason mine always ends up looking slightly Hugh Jackman-y—you kind of glance sideways at the nightstand beside your bed and without really meaning to, you find yourself opening the drawer and reaching for Mr. Love-Bunny, into whom you just put fresh batteries a couple of days ago…

All right, I’m back, and if you’re not I’m going on without you. My point is that Mr. Tall, Dark and Blue-Eyed was even better than any perfect man I’d ever imagined…although he did kind of have the Hugh Jackman thing going on, especially around his mouth. A strand of black hair grazed the straight, dark eyebrows I’d noticed earlier and brushed against thick, spiky lashes I hadn’t noticed in my brief glance before Stud-Tongue had embarked on his short-lived career as a working vamp. The aforementioned mouth was chiseled and lush at the same time, and just looking at his lips made me want to bite them—not in a fang-girl way but in a nipping-at-them-in-between-getting-kissed-by-them way. Right now they were smiling at me, revealing a gleam of white teeth that seemed dazzling in the shadows of the alleyway.

“My friend doesn’t need your help, thanks.” Brooklyn yanked me up by my wrist as she rose and brought her face to mine. “Sorry about hauling off and slugging you the way I did, Mata Hari,” she said in the softest tone I’d heard her use so far.

I winced as her fingertips gently touched my jawline. “Um, ow,” I said on an indrawn breath. “And since we went straight to the hauling off and slugging phase in our relationship, we bypassed the hi, my name is Tashya part, so, hi, my name’s Tashya.”

“Hi, Tashya. Mine’s Brooklyn Steinberg.” The corners of her mouth quirked sexily upward as she stepped back. “But I’m not sure Mata Hari didn’t go better with the whole incognito trench coat and wig look you’ve got going on there. By the way, you might want to straighten that happenin’ First Lady hairdo before the bangs end up at the back of your head.”

I’d forgotten about the damn wig, but now she’d reminded me I realized I might as well ditch it. I’d only worn the thing in an attempt to keep a low profile, and if trying to rip Stud-Tongue’s jugular out hadn’t turned that into an impossibility, being on the receiving end of a girl-on-girl smackdown certainly had. I pulled off my brunette bob and shook out my own curls, going for a slow-mo shampoo-advertisement effect as I turned to include Mr.Tall, Dark Etc. in our little social circle—merely out of common courtesy, of course, and not for any less admirable reason like wanting to put the moves on him.

“So you think Trudy and Cindy were dressed the way they were because they’re members in good standing of the local Zena-Skank-Mistress-of-the-Universe fan club?” I shook my head again just in case he hadn’t caught the full effect the first time. “How do you explain the fangs and the red eyes?”

“Wax, like I told you, and the eyes were colored contacts. The line’s moving, Tash,” Brooklyn broke in. She directed a cold look at our companion. “I could go into a whole riff on the fact that for someone who’s doing a Queer-Eye on other people’s clothes you’re wearing a pretty weird-ass outfit yourself, stranger, but instead I’ll just tell you what I told Vik-baby—move it or lose it.”

“My apologies for putting you in the position of not having a name by which to address me, madam.” Instead of taking offense at Brooklyn’s brusqueness, he obligingly stepped aside. “Allow me to rectify my omission, ladies. Heath Lockridge, late of the First New York Muskets.” I was concentrating so hard on not going into total meltdown at his adorable English-type way of speaking that I barely took in what he was saying. “Your theory about our hastily departed friends is admirable but wrong, I fear. The cadaverous Viktor is what is called an orthodontist, I understand, recently arrived in town upon the sad demise of his uncle, also a practitioner in the field. I am no expert on the profession, madam, but I have been told ’tis no very great matter for one such as he to outfit himself and other nonimmortals with a set of retractable canines, although he seems to have let his followers believe they received the gift of fangs from his vampyr bite.”

For a moment I forgot to flirt. “Omigod, he must be Dr. Maisel’s nephew. My sis—” I caught myself “—I mean, the local Daughter of Lilith and her Healer sister staked Maisel and his witchy wife after they turned vamp. Not that I was there or anything,” I added hastily as I stepped forward into the spill of illumination coming from the open exit door of a building backing onto the alley.

In the doorway stood a stocky older man wearing a stained butcher’s apron and holding a clear, sealed bag whose contents gleamed ruby in the light. Suddenly nervous, I passed over the twenty-dollar bill Kathy Lehman had advised me was the inflated price Schneider charged for his disgusting product, but as I reached for the bag a wave of nausea swept over me.

“Sorry, lady, but some precautions I haff to take, ja?”

His breath wafting a withering blast of garlic over me, old man Schneider shrugged in heavy unconcern as my fingers closed weakly over the bag. I felt Heath’s grip on my shoulder and took a staggering step away before turning back to wait for Brooklyn, then a different sensation rose up in me. As the hunger flooded through me for the third time that night, I shrugged off Heath’s steadying hand.

“I’m okay,” I said thickly—and if you’re wondering why thickly, all I can say is you try talking when your eye-teeth are in the process of lengthening past your bottom lip. I gave up all pretence of politeness and sunk my canines into the plastic, ripping a jagged hole in one corner. “Just need to take a little nip of the good stuff here—”

“Damn, it’s a setup!”

Brooklyn’s words sent a chill of fear through me, but the hunger overrode all other emotions. I slurped down a mouthful of blood—

Okay, let’s lay down some ground rules here before I go any further. Yes, I know how totally gross that last sentence sounded, and yes, I know there’s no way I can describe the taste or the smell or the exquisite sensations I felt while I was glugging back my happy snack of pig’s blood so that anyone who isn’t a vampire can understand—and by understand I basically mean not toss your cookies at the very thought. So you’re just going to have to take it on faith, the stuff was ambrosia to me. I didn’t even want to waste the part that was trickling down my chin, so as I reluctantly lowered my bag o’blood and met Brooklyn’s alarmed eyes I used the back of my hand to smear the spilled residue toward my mouth.

“Setup?” I looked quickly about, but I couldn’t see anything that might have alerted her. “Who set us up and how?”

Her gaze traveled coldly over me. “Shove the innocent act, Mata Hari, your cover’s blown. You shoulda kept the bad wig on, or at least stayed in the shadows. You’re Natashya Crosse, the sister of the Daughter and the Healer, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, she is, vamp. Wanna make something of it?”

The measured challenge came from behind me. I whirled around, my heart sinking as I saw the two people I least wanted to encounter tonight.

Megan—she was the one who’d spoken—was wearing your basic Daughter of Lilith black and carrying your basic Daughter of Lilith stake. Kat had never bought into the Healer-Nurturing-Soul-Mother look, so she was dressed as she always was, in something slinky and designer and drop-dead sexy. But their expressions as they looked at me were identical, and I suddenly felt like an old wino chugging from a bottle of Woolite.

“Oh, sweetie, no,” Kat said, her husky voice breaking with appalled compassion.

“Dammit, Tash, you told us you were controlling the hunger!” Megan accused.

“They didn’t know you were here tonight?” Brooklyn’s tone lost its edge. She stepped in front of me and whipped out a tissue. “All down your freakin’ chin, babe,” she murmured as she dabbed at my face before turning to my sisters. “She is controlling it, and if you two weren’t such holier-than-thou bitches, you’d realize that,” she snapped.

I didn’t see Megan’s and Kat’s reactions. I was too busy scanning the alleyway for Heath. He’d been beside me only a moment ago, and I hadn’t seen him leave.

But he was gone. And at the far end of the alleyway I saw a bat rise swiftly over the rooftops and disappear.

Chapter 3

“Oh, shit. Heads up, Tashya—dude with weapon at five o’clock,” Brooklyn said under her breath as a figure detached itself from the shadows and moved to Kat’s side. Her eyes narrowed. “And is that a friggin’ wolf?”

“Holier than thou?” Megan said ominously as her hand fell to the wolf’s silver-tipped black ruff. She kept her gaze on Brooklyn. “I guess we are at that, seeing as how you’re about to go straight to hell, vamp. Step away from her, Tash.”

I heard a door slam and the sound of a dead bolt shooting into its lock. Glancing sideways, I saw old man Schneider had decided discretion was the better part of valor and had closed up shop for the evening. Which was understandable enough, since his clientele had melted away into the darkness during the past few seconds, leaving only me and Brooklyn and the muttering derelict Brook had called Crazy Joe, who’d returned and was now pawing through a garbage can, oblivious to the drama being enacted a few feet away from him. My humiliation at Megan and Kat finding me here was replaced by anger.

“The dude with the nail gun that shoots silver-tipped nails is Kat’s ex-con main squeeze, Jack Rawls. And the wolf’s a shapeshifter named Mikhail. Rumor has it Megan lets him sleep on her bed if he’s been a good dog,” I told Brooklyn, loudly enough for Megan to hear. I switched my attention to my sisters. “No one’s going to hell tonight, Meg,” I declared. “I hear you’ve patrolled this alley before, so you know damn well that the vamps who come here don’t feed off humans. Take your pointy stick and go home, and tell the rest of your little gang they’re not wanted, either. That includes you, Kat.”

“There’s no such thing as a vamp that doesn’t feed off humans.” Beside Kat, Jack’s finger tightened on the nail gun’s trigger. “Only vamps that haven’t fed off humans yet.”

“Sweetie, you know your killer instinct’s one of the things I adore about you, but you’re aiming at my little sister,” Kat drawled. “If you dust her I’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth, so dial it down, comprendes? Megan, Tash was just being her usual bratty self with that remark about Mikhail. Lower your stake before Darkheart gets here.”

“Grandfather’s with you?” I thrust my bag of blood at Brooklyn, almost spilling it in my agitation. “Take this. No, don’t just hold it in front of you for everyone to see, stash it somewhere!”

She stared at me. “What’s with you? Your big sisters show up and ten seconds later you’re emotional wreckage?”

“They’re only my big sisters by a matter of minutes,” I said distractedly. “We’re triplets. Just hide the blood, okay, Brook? Kat, I can’t believe you let Megan do this! I’ll bet I know what this is about—our Daughter of Lilith sister’s decided I’m not pulling my weight at Darkheart & Crosse and she’s trying to get me booted from the agency. But since she doesn’t have the guts to Trump me herself, she accidentally-on-purpose arranged for Grandfather Darkheart to see how far down Vamp Avenue I’ve travelled in the past few weeks so he has to tell me I’m fired! All I can say is that when Grammie and Popsie finally come home, you two are going to be in major shit, so there!”

My arms folded across my chest in triumph, I turned to Brooklyn. “Darkheart & Crosse was my brainwave,” I informed her. “After Zena got dusted I figured there’d be a need for an agency that specialized in vampire-related investigations, and I was totally right, but since Megan became a Daughter it’s all about her. She can’t stand that the business I thought up is threatening to overshadow her Daughter of Lilith activities.” I waited for Brooklyn’s reaction but when it came it wasn’t what I’d expected.

“Too bad, babe.” In her ice-green eyes I saw a glimmer of something that looked like disappointment. She held out my bag of blood. “I’m outta here.”

“So am I,” I said, glancing defiantly in Megan’s direction. “You want to hit an after-hours club together, maybe see if we can find a couple of interesting guys? Or in your case, girl,” I amended.

“I thought I had,” Brooklyn said. “Looks like I was wrong. Stay out of the sunlight, Mata Hari.” She turned to go, but then she hesitated. “I sometimes wonder why I got vamped, you know? Like why me, a nice Jewish girl who was good to her Bubbe, kind to small children, only bought lattes made from fair-trade coffee beans? Hell, I’ve got a sister, too—a twin, and except that she’s straight the two of us could be clones. Yet I got turned and Xandra didn’t. I haven’t figured it out yet.” She shrugged. “But if life’s supposed to be more than just a series of random shitstorms, maybe the reason why you received this fun bonus from fate is because being a vamp is your only chance of becoming a real person. I really hope that happens for you, babe. Vamp or not, the little I saw of who you could be was a hell of a lot more intriguing than the bratty younger sister of the Daughter and the Healer.”

In my own defence, I’d like to point out that it had been a long night, what with chickening out of killing myself, playing tug-of-rat with a cat and nearly getting bitten by Stud-Tongue. Not to mention receiving a wicked uppercut to my jaw from my new best friend, finding and losing the man of my fantasies and having my sisters discover I’d progressed to drinking blood. All in all, I wasn’t in the mood to thank Brook for her assessment of me and thoughtfully ask myself if any of what she’d said could be true. I was more in the mood to yell the meanest things I could think of at her as she walked away from me.

Which is what I did, and to this day I wish I could call back the words I flung after her.

“You mean I won’t have to think of a polite way to tell you I don’t appreciate being pawed on the slightest pretext by another woman, babe?” I gave a short laugh. “News flash, Punk-girl—that’s not a tragedy, that’s a relief! Even if I were gay, you’re so not my type, with that dark-root look you’ve got going with your hair and that Salvation Army look you’ve got going with your clothes!” I raised my voice as she slipped into the shadows between two buildings and disappeared from my view without ever having looked back. “And another thing—”

Something brushed against my hair and fell to my shoulders. Startled, I looked down at myself and saw the starry shapes of small, white flowers against the black of my trenchcoat. Then the nausea hit me, ten times more powerfully than it had in reaction to old man Schneider’s garlic breath, and I realized what the flowers were.

“Wild garlic!” I choked the words out as I fell to my knees. “Get it off me!”

“Is unfortunate necessity, Granddaughter.” As the Russian-accented words reached my ears, my blurred vision made out the bulky shape of a caped figure reeling in the excess length of his wild-garlic lasso as he approached me. “Do not worry, this is not trap to stake you,” he said with hearty reassurance.

“Tha’s…good to know…” I mumbled as I pitched face-forward onto the ground and lost consciousness at Darkheart’s feet.

“It’s worse than we thought.” As I struggled upward through the fog surrounding me, I heard Kat’s worried voice coming from a long way away. “She keeps her shoes in a plastic garbage bag—Manolos, Jimmy Choos, all jumbled up together in a big pile! How could she?”

“What more proof do we need that she’s totally deteriorated? And if you think that’s bad, take a look at what I found under her bed, covered with dust bunnies.” Megan didn’t sound worried, she sounded pissed off. “My cream Chanel jacket, the one she swore she hadn’t borrowed.”

“Refrigerator is disaster area. Bag of stale doughnuts, two cartons take-out Chinese food, old slices pizza. In cupboards are cookies and candy bars.” The fog around me lifted enough for me to hear Darkheart sigh heavily. “Is typical symptom. She fights blood hunger but other cravings come upon her.”

They’d brought me to my own apartment, I realized, and while I’d been dead to the world my sisters and my grandfather—I couldn’t hear Mikhail or Jack, so I assumed they’d been left on patrol—had been searching the place. Outrage flickered in me but I still felt too lethargic to move.

“You mean she gets the munchies?” Kat’s tone went from worried to appalled. “The poor sweetie, she’s going to blimp out if she keeps this up. Honestly, Meg, if I can’t attempt a Heal on my own sister—”

Her words were like an icy wind blowing the last of my grogginess away. I sat bolt upright, realizing as I did that I was no longer bound by Darkheart’s garlic lasso, and the next moment I was racing across the room to the window that looked out onto the metal fire escape. I was steps away from it when I saw the wreath tacked to the sill, its starry white flowers wafting their deadly scent toward me. I changed direction in mid-dash and made for the door, only to see another garlic wreath festooning that escape route. Blindly I headed for my bedroom. The window by my bed didn’t open onto a handy fire escape, it looked out over the Dumpster that had been the scene of my embarrassing tussle with Bojangles, but although I hadn’t been able to bring myself to jump from St. Jude’s bell tower earlier this evening I thought I could manage a three-story drop into a pile of reeking refuse.

Given what the alternative was.

I came to a screeching halt. Megan was standing in the bedroom doorway, her stake in her hand. “You wouldn’t, Meg,” I said hollowly.

She looked thoughtful. “Probably not, brat. But do you really want to find out?”

“Sweetie, calm down.” I spun around to see Kat advancing on me, her perfect features shadowed with compassion. “As Darkheart said, we’re not planning a staking. This little get-together’s more along the lines of a—”

“Stay away from me, Kat!” I hissed, shrinking from her. In chagrin I realized my fangs were lengthening, and I tried to keep my top lip immobile—a look that might have worked for Humphrey Bogart, but which I was pretty sure wasn’t working for me. “I know what this is! It’s an intervention, and you can forget it—I’m not risking an attempted Heal unless you can guarantee it won’t go bad, sending me straight to hell and eternal damnation. But you can’t guarantee that, can you?”

Kat tossed a swath of silver-blond hair from her shoulders. I could see she was trying to hold on to her I’m-a-Healer-so-I-feel-love-for-all-living-things-even-the-undead serenity and fighting a sisterly impulse to snap at me. “Merde, sweetie, that’s only happened a handful of times in the whole history of Healing, and when it has it’s usually—”

“It’s usually been when the prospective Healee bears the mark of a Queen Vampyr,” I broke in. “Hmmm…who do we know like that? Oh, that’s right—me!”

I was backing away from her as I spoke, but I froze when I felt something sharp in my back, just below my left shoulderblade. I kept my gaze straight ahead. “Stake?”

“Yup,” Megan agreed from behind me. “I told you two she’d make a piss-poor candidate,” she said laconically to Darkheart and Kat. “Face it, Kat, we’ve always known our little sister’s got a few tiny character flaws, starting with being spoiled, self-involved and immature. Even her punky vamp friend’s figured her out. I say we drop this ridiculous plan.”

Her character assassination of me aside, I told myself, Megan was arguing my case for me. I should probably keep my mouth shut. Ignoring my own advice, I turned around and glared at her. “Ever since you’ve taken on the role of a Daughter of Lilith you’ve been a royal pain in the butt, Meg. You’re the self-involved one!”

“Really?” she said thinly. “Tell me, when you did your midnight flit from the Crosse mansion last week after we got that letter from Cyrus Kane, did it occur to you that we’d be worried sick when we found you gone? We wasted three patrol nights tracking you down to this crappy apartment and when we did I wanted to read you the riot act for scaring us the way you did, but Darkheart—” she nodded at Grandfather, who remained silent “—insisted we give you time to adjust to the realization that you were the one Zena marked when we were babies.”

“Of all the ingratitude!” I sputtered. “You’re on my case because I left home before I—” I stopped abruptly and Megan’s gaze narrowed.

“Before you what?”

Before I killed you and Kat, I told her silently. Before I slaughtered Darkheart and Mikhail and Jack. Before the hunger became stronger than I could handle, the way it almost did tonight. Once upon a time I would have blurted out the truth to her, I thought, taking in the firm line of her mouth, the hard steadiness that hadn’t been in her gaze before she’d become a Daughter. But now I couldn’t know for sure if she’d react to my confession as a sister…or as the sworn enemy of me and my kind.

“Before I went out of my mind with boredom,” I said with a shrug. “I mean, things around here are getting so same old, same old. First Zena shows up in Maplesburg and you stake her, then Kane shows up and Kat Heals him—and by the way, Kat,” I added in an aside, “Cyrus fleeing to the ends of the earth all tortured with guilt over his evil past and dying in a Buddhist monastery isn’t the most reassuring demonstration of the benefits of a Heal. No wonder you don’t have vamps lining up to take advantage of the oh-so-special gift you inherited from Daddy Dearest.”

“Firstly, Kane didn’t die from being Healed, he was murdered,” Kat said sharply. “And the vamp that infiltrated the monastery and killed him was the same one he tried to warn us about in the letter the monks forwarded to us after his death—Lady Jasmine Melrose, the bitch who turned him centuries ago right here in Maplesburg. Secondly, what’s with the ‘Daddy Dearest’ merde? Finding out that there’s a possibility our father didn’t die twenty years ago when Zena targeted Angelica should have made you as happy as it did Megan and me, but ever since we read that postscript to Kane’s letter—”

“‘David Crosse lives’,” I quoted impatiently. “And it wasn’t Kane’s postscript, it was tacked onto the end of his letter by Jasmine, along with her heads-up to us about how she’s coming to Maplesburg. But she hasn’t shown up here, has she? And if her news-flash about Daddy Dearest was true, why hasn’t he contacted us in all these years?”

“That’s what Gospodin Darkheart has requested me to find out. My family’s business contacts in former Soviet Socialist Republic have spent past week questioning peasants in mountainous Carpathian region in attempt to learn what happened to David Crosse after night when Zena left him for dead. Trail is understandably cold after so long and so far is few results, but still is hope we will learn something.”

The unfamiliar voice came from behind me, and I turned in quick alarm to see a man standing in the open doorway of my apartment. Under other circumstances I might have let my gaze linger on him, but right now—well, okay, maybe I did let my gaze linger. Not for long, but enough to make a snap assessment of the man’s attributes, which included about six foot five inches of tanned, hard-muscled male dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, close-cropped hair even paler than Kat’s platinum shade and icy blue eyes that ignored everyone else in the room and remained fixed on me. He looked to be around twenty-eight or twenty-nine, and from his accent it wasn’t hard to guess he was one of the Russians living in New York that Mikhail had called on during our final battle against Cyrus Kane and his vamp army.

All of which didn’t explain what he was doing in my apartment and why he seemed to be more in the loop than I was when it came to my family’s private business.

One of Grammie’s most cherished dictums is that one should always be polite and considerate to guests. Grammie’d never had a massive blond know-it-all Russian dropped on her from out of the blue, I thought wrathfully as I turned on Megan and Kat. “Who’s he?” I demanded, jerking my thumb at the Russian. “And what does he mean, his family’s been looking into David Crosse’s whereabouts? Is Darkheart & Crosse running investigations I don’t know about now?”

“Name is Dmitri Malkovich,” the blond giant said before my sisters could answer. “Search for Gospodin Crosse is not official agency business. Is undertaken by my family in attempt to repay your grandfather for great service he has done us in old country when he saved my sister Anya from vampyr attack. Cousins in Mother Russia are mafya, have many contacts and ways to find out things.” He frowned. “How is said mafya in America?”

“Mafia,” Megan said briefly. “And it’s probably wiser to tell people they’re in waste management or something like that.” She turned her attention back to me. “You’ve got no one but yourself to blame for the fact that you’re out of touch with what’s happening at the agency, Tash. You saw what happened to us when we thought we were the ones Zena marked and isolated ourselves, so why are you making the same mistake we did?”

“Maybe because it’s no fun to be around you anymore?” I said, raising my eyebrows at the stake she was still pointing my way. “Gawd, Meg, it’s like you and Kat have forgotten how to have a good time. It’s all staking and Healing and punching the clock at Darkheart & Crosse—is it such a crime to want to party or go shopping once in a while?”

“I party every night, sweetie,” Kat drawled. “As the owner of Maplesburg’s hottest club, that’s part of my job description, no? You could have dropped by the Hot Box anytime, but maybe hanging out in an alleyway is more your idea of fun.”

“Frankly, it is,” I shot back. “You just said it yourself—when you’re at the Hot Box you’re working, not ready to chill with your sis over a couple of cocktails. Besides, I still remember it as it was when Zena owned it. You nearly died there, Kat.”

“Yes, but she didn’t,” Megan said evenly. “Zena did. So forgive me if I don’t buy your sudden sensitivity, Tashya. I think the truth is that you’re having way too much fun cutting loose for the first time in your life and you don’t care that walking away from your family is the price. I guess we should be thankful that you haven’t totally embraced your vamphood.” She paused. “So far,” she added harshly. “I never want to have to hunt you down, sis, so don’t do anything that might make that happen. Let’s leave, Kat. I told you we were wasting our time trying to talk to her.”

I stared at her as she strode to the door, feeling as though she’d just slapped me in the face. Then I looked quickly away, hoping that my blubathon at Kathy Lehman’s had depleted my tear ducts for the evening, and realizing it hadn’t when I felt a sharp prickle behind my eyelids. Strangely enough, it wasn’t Megan’s barely veiled threat of staking me that hurt most, it was her attitude. She was trying her hardest to convince Kat and Darkheart that I wasn’t worth attempting a Heal.

She was trying too hard, I realized a heartbeat later. Even as I wondered why she was in such a hurry to hustle Kat and my grandfather out before the three of them could attempt what they’d obviously come here to do, Darkheart addressed me for the first time since he’d arrived.

“Is much talk of Queen Vampyr among those you meet?” His question was abrupt and his gaze on me was sharp. “Perhaps tonight you hear rumors, da?”

“Sorry, nyet,” I informed him. “I mean, Zena was a big deal to us, sure, but after her death the ordinary Joe Vamp in Maplesburg got on with his undead life.” I remembered Trudy and Cindy. “Her style sense lives on, though. Does that count?”

“Not Zena, the new queen.” Megan turned from the apartment door, her hand slipping from the doorknob. Her voice was low, as if she was reluctant to speak at all. “Lady Jasmine.”

“The Cruel,” added Kat in the same reluctant tone.

I rolled my eyes. “What’s with these queen vamps? Zena billed herself as ‘the Horrible,’ now Jasmine’s calling herself ‘the Cruel’—I mean, talk about shameless self-promotion—”

“She does not call herself cruel,” Darkheart interrupted. “She has earned that name from others.”

“And comparing Zena to her is like comparing a housecat to a saber-toothed tiger,” Megan said bleakly. “Except for what Cyrus told us in his letter we don’t know much about her, but we know she’s one of the strongest vampyrs in existence. And from what Kat learned from a vamp she Healed two nights ago, we also suspect she’s already arrived in Maplesburg.”

“Now I get it.” I looked from one to another—Megan, grim and unsmiling, Kat, her eyes shadowed with concern, Darkheart, his expression closed. I was aware that Dmitri’s ice-blue gaze was still fixed on me but I ignored him. “That’s why you’ve decided to spring an intervention on me. You’re afraid if I run into Ms. SuperVamp I’ll go over to her side, me being so immature and self-involved and everything.” I divided my glare among the three of them. “The answer’s still no. Nyet. Non. Nada. I’m not—”

“Nada means nothing, not no,” Megan said. “And that’s not all you’ve got wrong, brat. We didn’t come here to attempt a Heal on you tonight, we—” Her gaze shifted away, but with a visible effort she forced it to meet mine again. “We came here for the opposite reason.”

“Only way to learn more about new Queen is to have spy in her camp,” Darkheart rumbled. “We need you to stay vampyr, Granddaughter. Your sisters are not happy with plan, but—”

“Damn straight I’m not happy with the plan. In case you’ve forgotten, what’s at stake here is Tashya’s soul!” Megan exploded, swinging toward Darkheart. “She’s no match for either Lady Jasmine or her first lieutenant!”

“Oh, right, nobody’s worthy of going up against the bad guys except you.” I loaded my tone with sarcasm. “You seem to have forgotten that I’ve dusted more than a few vamps in my time, Meggypoo, including some of Zena’s toughest—” I stopped suddenly, a terrible suspicion filling me. “First lieutenant?” I asked in a small voice.

“One of cadre of Revolutionary War soldiers Jasmine turned the last time she was in Maplesburg, over two hundred years ago,” Dmitri butted in. “Man is charming, handsome and irresistible, but is big mistake to let that fool you.”

His gaze went glacier-cold. “Heath Lockridge is one of most dangerous vampyrs in existence. We must kill him soon as possible.”

Chapter 4

I nearly blew it right then and there. “What total merde, to borrow a phrase of Kat’s,” I said with a disbelieving laugh. “Heath Lockridge, one of the most dangerous vamps in existence? The man’s a dream come true—polite, gorgeous, and that adorable kind-of-English accent he has is a whole lot sexier than some I could mention.” I glanced scornfully in Dmitri’s direction before returning my attention to Megan and Kat. “Sorry, ladies, you’ve obviously made a huge mistake. Even if you’re right and Lady Jasmine’s in Maplesburg, there’s no way Heath’s her first lieutenant.”

“And how would you know?” Megan asked in the new I’m-a-Daughter-so-don’t-fuck-with-me tone of voice she’d been using way too often lately.

I gave her a pitying smile. “Because I—” I stopped, choking back the met him part of my sentence and realizing I’d just walked into a trap.

Although I suppose if you’re going with the definition of a trap being something that’s set by someone, it wasn’t actually a trap, since a few seconds ago Meg and Kat hadn’t had a clue that I’d actually made the acquaintance of the dishy Heath Lockridge. In other words, I guess you could say it was more like me opening my big mouth without thinking first, which is something I’ve been doing from about the age of eleven months, apparently. According to Grammie, the day her three granddaughters learned to talk, Megan’s first word was “Mama,” Kat spoke a moment later by uttering “Da-Da” and I went redfaced with rage at the attention being lavished on my sisters and bellowed “Ka-Ka!” at the top of my lungs. And that’s pretty much how I’ve been ever since, Meg and Kat being such tough acts to compete with.

But this time my talk-first-think-later impulse had potentially direr results than usual, like possibly leading Megan and her ever-handy stake to Heath. I had to go into damage-control mode, and fast.

“Because I’m a patriot,” I said icily. “I refuse to believe that anyone noble enough to fight for our country’s independence would have switched their allegiance to some titled English vamp-tramp.”

“Nice save, sweetie,” Kat said, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. “But how do you know this Heath Lockridge is gorgeous and polite? Come to that, how do you know how he sounds when he speaks?”

She had me there. I had no alternative but to use my most infallible weapon, the one that always defeats Meg and Kat—my dumb-Tash act. I rolled my eyes in exasperation. “Hello, you saw the movie when I did, right? The one where all the Colonials were sexy and good-looking and wore loose, white shirts unbuttoned down to their six-pack abs, and all the Britishers were haughty and really mean and sweated a lot in red wool? Do you think Holly-wood just makes up that stuff?”

The suspicion in Kat’s gaze was replaced with amusement. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Megan’s grip on her stake relax, and when she spoke her tone was tinged with exasperation. “News-flash, brat—the movies aren’t real life. And just because Lockridge fought on the right side when he was human doesn’t mean all bets weren’t off once he became undead, courtesy of Jasmine.” She turned to Darkheart. “I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. If Kat or I could pass ourselves off as part of the vamp community and infiltrate Lady Jasmine’s inner circle to find out where her daytime lair is, we would, but we can’t ask Tash to. We’ll just have to keep hoping we run across a vamp informant who can tell us what we need to know.”

Kat nodded. “Meanwhile, I think I should attempt a Heal on her. We all agree this situation’s gone far enough, no?” Her gaze swept my apartment, taking in the haphazard clutter of shoes, the cream Chanel jacket festooned with dust bunnies that Megan had slung over the back of a chair, the half-devoured box of Mallomars on my kitchenette counter.

“Heal will not work,” declared Darkheart decisively. “Is only possible if Natashya has completely turned into vampyr, and that is not yet case. Da, Granddaughter?” he asked, his salt-and-pepper brows drawing together as he turned his eagle gaze on me. “Liz says she saw you yesterday at mall. You still have no trouble with daylight?”

“None at all,” I said swiftly, if not entirely truth-fully, sending a silent vote of thanks to Liz Dixon, a fifty-something local art gallery owner who’d become my grandfather’s girlfriend when she’d aided us in the fight against Zena (note to self: must try to see Darkheart having a girlfriend as healthy and positive instead of ooky). Liz had obviously neglected to tell him that when she’d seen me I’d been wearing enormous D&G sunglasses that covered half my face, a flowing silk scarf tied Jackie Kennedy-style around my head and neck and a long-sleeved Prada blouse with linen slacks. Not exactly bundled up in multiple layers like the derelict Brooklyn had called Crazy Joe, but I’d certainly made sure that no part of my skin was exposed to the light. Merely as a precaution, of course, and the slight tingle I’d felt as I’d hurried from my car’s window-tinted interior to the mall’s entrance doors had probably been my imagination.

“You’d tell us if the situation started to change, wouldn’t you, brat?” Megan asked, giving me a hard stare. “You haven’t always been all that forth-coming in the past, but this isn’t like the time you were seeing that hot guy with the Harley and hiding it from Kat and me, or when you tried to change your biology grade on your report card. We need to know how far along Vamp Avenue you’ve come, because at some point Kat is going to have to attempt a Heal on you.” She’d switched from her Daughter tone of voice to her big sister one. In the mood I was in, they were both equally irritating.

“I get it, all right?” I said waspishly. “Gawd, Meg, give it a rest. I know I should have told you I was starting to have cravings and I’m sorry you had to find out the way you did, but it’s not like you caught me with my fangs sunk into someone’s neck. I was buying from a legitimate butcher, for heaven’s sake. In some parts of the world they eat blood sausage on a regular basis, so I don’t see that my little snack tonight was such a big deal.”

“Is true. In Russia is called krvavica and many people like taste. My mother used to make often for breakfast.” Dmitri had been silent for so long I’d almost forgotten him. I gave him a surprised glance, although I wasn’t totally sure whether my surprise was over the fact that he was defending me or because I couldn’t imagine him as a little boy with a mother. His blue gaze darkened. “Still, was blood,” he said, his chiseled-from-permafrost features tightening in distaste. “To me was disgusting.”

“Really? Mikhail loves krvavica,” Megan said thinly.

“Is because he is oboroten,” Dmitri replied with a shrug of his linebacker shoulders that briefly stretched his black T-shirt over the tectonic plates of muscle that made up his torso. “As you say in America, a manimal, da?”

This time my glance locked with Kat’s, and I saw she was stifling the same unworthy impulse to laugh as I was. Dmitri couldn’t know it, but as far as Megan was concerned he’d just used the single worst term he could have chosen to describe her occasionally fur-bearing boyfriend.

“As we say in America, a shapeshifter,” she corrected coldly. “And speaking of Mikhail, if we’re finished here I think we should rejoin him and Jack on patrol. Kat, you coming?”

“Yes, but some nights I don’t know why I bother,” Kat drawled. “When I was a ballbreaking bitch, men were falling over themselves to take me up on my offers, but now I’ve gone all altruistic Healer-chick and just want to save them from an eternity in hell, most of the time they’d rather take their chances with your stake. Still, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, no?” She began strolling to the door, but then turned back to me. “Sweetie,” she said firmly. “The shoes. Get them out of the garbage bag, okay?”

“And if my Dolce sweater that you didn’t borrow is somewhere here underneath all this mess, have it dry-cleaned and give it back to me,” Megan added. “Grandfather, do you want to accompany us on patrol for a few more hours?”

“Nyet, is late for old man like me. Also, Liz asked me to drop by her apartment tonight for glass of wine. I may stay over, so do not worry if I am not home tomorrow morning,” Darkheart said complacently while I tried to forget the Bed, Bath & Beyond shopping bag overflowing with black satin sheets I’d seen Liz carrying when we’d run into each other at the mall. “I will collect garlic wreaths first and then leave.”

“You go, tovaritch. I will collect wreaths,” Dmitri offered, which I suppose was nice of him but not what I wanted to hear. Unfortunately for me, however, Darkheart accepted with alacrity and within minutes I was alone with Russia’s answer to Paul Bunyan, watching him de-festoon my apartment of wild garlic while I tried not to breathe in the, to me, nauseating scent of the small white flowers.

“You lie to sisters and grandfather,” Dmitri said without preamble as he deftly wound Darkheart’s garland lasso around one pumped forearm. His Siberian-blue gaze flicked to me before he turned his attention back to his task. “You have met Jasmine’s lieutenant, da?”

Now, along with the speaking-before-I-think thing I’ve developed growing up with Megan and Kat, I also credit them for my ability to lie at the drop of a hat. It’s a necessary talent, believe me, when you’re saddled with a sister who feels it’s her moral duty to force you to confess when you’ve had some unfortunate accident like breaking Grammie’s favorite Lladro figurine, and another sister who doesn’t see why she should take the heat for said Lladro breakage when she didn’t do it. So if Dmitri had thought he could startle me into the truth with his unexpected accusation, he was sadly mistaken.

“Of course I haven’t met him!” I said, putting a hefty amount of outraged virtue into my tone. “I don’t believe your nerve! What gives you the right to accuse me of lying to my family?”

“This is America, nyet? I have right to say truth when is in front of my eyes,” Dmitri replied, seemingly unperturbed by my impressive outburst. He finished winding up the garland and set it on the back of the sofa. “Besides,” he added calmly, “I cannot stand by and see future Gospozha Malkovich take dangerous risks.”

It took a moment for his words to sink in and when they did I thought I must have misheard him. “Gospozha? Isn’t that Russian for the missus?” I said dubiously.

His back toward me, he nodded as he untacked the last wreath from the window frame. “Da, is correct. From first time I saw you I had strong feeling inside me that you would lead me to my sud’ba, so must be that you and I will be couple one day. These strong feelings that come to me are never wrong,” he said, turning from the window and laying the wreath beside the garland. “My babushka was cygan and from her I inherit gift of knowing future.”

I held up a hand. “Whoa, nellieski,” I said firmly. “We’ve got a lost-in-translation situation happening here. I still think I must be wrong on the gospozha part, but forget that for a minute. What’s a sud’ba, who’s a cygan, and isn’t a babushka some kind of shawl for old ladies to wrap around their heads?”

“Sud’ba is fate. Cygan means in America gypsy, and babushka is grandmother. You are not wrong on gospozha.” His garlic-gathering completed, Dmitri stood facing me, his jeans-clad legs planted slightly apart on the cruddy carpet covering the living-room floor and his arms crossed over his chest so that his biceps came close to ripping the seams of his T-shirt’s sleeves. I was so rattled by what he’d just said that for a moment all I could think was that when he stood that way he looked exactly like the Jolly Green Giant, if the Jolly Green Giant wasn’t green, but blond and tanned and wasn’t jolly but about to stomp the tiny valley-dwellers by his feet to puree.

Then I got ahold of myself. “So when you first laid eyes on me half an hour ago, you knew you and I would do the till-death-us-do-part thing,” I clarified, “because your grandmother was a gypsy and you inherited her crystal ball abilities. Do I finally have it right?” I asked politely.

“Da, except first time I saw you was not half hour ago, but night of battle against Kane and his army,” Dmitri began, but at that point I dropped my pretence of politeness and let the fury that had been bubbling up inside me boil over in a scalding flood.

“Are you insane?” I yelled, striding toward him and grabbing him by his biceps. I tried to give him a shake, but it was like trying to shake concrete. My anger grew. “I don’t know you! I don’t want to know you! The only connection between you and me is that you’re using your family’s underworld contacts to look for my father and as far as I’m concerned, that’s no connection at all! So screw your sud’ba and the cygan it rode in on, Dmitri—not only won’t I be walking down the aisle with you anytime soon, but I want you out of my apartment right now!”

“Your act is good.” With a quick flexing of his muscles he broke my grip on him. “You shout loudly instead of answering my questions, but your anger is enough answer. You have met with vampyr called Lockridge. What I need to know now is whether he already has hold over you.” His gaze chilled to a subzero blue. “You have slept with him?”

My attempt to slap his face was a purely reflexive action, but his reflexes made mine look like I was moving through molasses. My hand was still inches from his cheek when I felt his grip wrap around my wrist. I glared at him, frustration mixing with my rage.

“Maybe it’s different in Russia,” I snapped, “but here in the good old U.S. of A. when a man deserves what’s coming to him he’s supposed to take it. Let go of my wrist, you lug.”

“Not until you answer, l’ubimaya,” he said evenly. “Is vital I know truth on this matter. Has he had you yet?”

The way he said it made it sound all earthy and raw and uncivilized, and suddenly there was something else mixed in with my anger and frustration.

Dmitri Malkovich was a pain in the butt. I didn’t want him in my apartment, I didn’t want him poking around in my life and I totally didn’t buy in to his crazy assertion that the two of us were bound together by some mystical gypsy fate. But there was no denying it, the man was incredibly hot, I thought as his gaze held mine. Every inch of him was solid muscle. His T-shirt fitted him like a glove, his jeans were taut in all the right places, and even though blond men weren’t usually my type I couldn’t help but appreciate how sexily his hair and eyes contrasted with his dark lashes and eyebrows and the tan of his skin.

A couple of hours ago I’d been drooling over the delicious Heath Lockridge. Now I was wondering how it would be with a hard, tall Russian. Not only was I turning into a vampire, I was well on my way to becoming a complete slut, I thought in selfdisgust, and it was all the fault of the man standing in front of me holding my wrist in his viselike grip.

Comrade Malkovich needed to be taught a lesson. Luckily, he’d handed me the perfect weapon for doing just that.

“Of course Heath’s had me, sweetie,” I said, channeling Kat at her most ball-breaking. I widened my baby-blues at him and gave my strawberry-blond curls a careless toss. “Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this, seeing as how you say we’re fated to be an item, but he’s had me standing up, lying down and every which way in between. One thing puzzles me, though.” I tipped my head and scrunched up my nose adorably, as if I were struggling with a problem I couldn’t quite figure out. I felt Dmitri’s fingers tighten on my wrist, and hid my smile.

“What is this puzzling thing?” His tone was clipped. “Is it that you do not understand how you can find attraction to vampyr? Answer is easy. He uses glamyr against you to make you think you like being bedded by him. Is usual trick of undead to seduce—”

“Oh, he didn’t glamyr me into being bedded by him,” I said with a husky little laugh. “I practically threw myself at the poor man. I mean, he’s totally gorgeous and sexy and dreamy, so why wouldn’t I? No, what’s puzzling me is how in the world those Revolutionary War soldiers ever came to be known as Minutemen, because if Heath’s any example I think they should have been called Three-Hour Men. Or maybe All-Night-Long Men. Or—”

“Enough talk about vampyr who should have been dead two centuries ago,” Dmitri said hoarsely. “I show you what it is like having man with heartbeat make love to you, l’ubimaya!”

Okay, I know what you’re thinking and it goes something along the lines of, Girlfriend, how skanky can you get? You totally set up this situation so it would turn out exactly how it did, and to that my answer is, I did not. Not consciously, anyway, although I suppose somewhere in the murky depths of my mind I knew I was striking a match and tossing it into a big, exciting pool of gasoline. I will admit this: when Dmitri pulled me to him with a hoarse Russian oath and his mouth came down on mine, little Tashie Crosse sure wasn’t complaining for the first few minutes.

He kissed with the same single-minded determination he probably gave to bench-pressing small cars, and if that doesn’t sound all that sexy, just think about it. Here was this strapping hunk of blond male and every fiber of his being was concentrated on bringing me to miniorgasm with just his mouth and his tongue. And when I say his tongue, he didn’t use it merely to kiss me.

“First time I saw you, I thought you were warrior princess from Russian fairy tale,” he muttered against my lips. “You were staking vampyr during battle against Kane’s army. Your hair was like Siberian gold and that night you come to me in my dreams.”

He broke off to cover my mouth with his again, his tongue moving masterfully into me while his wide-spread hands slid over my arms to the buttoned vee-opening of my sweater. Before I could say, “Don’t snag the cashmere,” I realized he’d deftly slipped open the first three flower-shaped buttons and was using the same impressive sleight-of-hand to push the pink lace straps of my La Perla push-up bra off my shoulders. I broke off our kiss with a gasp.

“Tell me what happened between us in those dreams,” I said breathlessly, my knees turning to jelly and my top teeth sinking into my lower lip as a kaleidoscope of sensations swirled through me.

Call me psychic, but I bet I know what you’re thinking this time, too. Yes, asking Dmitri to get me all hot and bothered with the details of his wet dream about me didn’t exactly jibe with the fact that I’d been furious with him a few minutes ago.

Confession time, ladies…except if one word of this ever leaks out to Meg or Kat, I’m totally denying this conversation ever took place. So where was I? Oh, right—confessing. Well, the truth is that I’ve never really seen what the big deal is with sex.

And now I’ll give all of you a minute to pick yourselves up off the floor.

Everyone over their shock/hilarity/pity-mixed-with-a-smidge-of-revulsion? Good, because there’s an explanation for my lack of enthusiasm for the horizontal mambo, and that explanation can be covered in two words.

Word one: Todd.

Word two: Whitmore.

Okay, maybe it should be three words: Dr. Todd Whitmore, because even as I stood over the dust pile that had been Toddie on the night before Megan’s wedding-that-never-happened, holding the bedpost I’d just used to stake him with, I realized I’d never really been in love with him, I’d been in love with the idea of marrying an up-and-coming cosmetic surgeon.

And part of the reason I’d never been in love with him was that he was an absolute yawn in bed. He didn’t think so, of course. On the two dismal occasions we did it, Dr. Todd flailed away with all the spasmodic jerking of a landed small-mouth bass on a fishing dock until he sweatily collapsed on me. When he finally rolled off me he shot me a confident smile, told me I was one lucky girl and headed for the shower with an over-the-shoulder observation that he’d heard there were classes in oral sex for women these days, and had I ever thought of supplying myself with a couple of bananas and signing up for one.

Shortly after my second mind-numbingly boring encounter between the sheets with my fiancé, I informed him I’d decided our upcoming union was too sacred to be tainted by premarital sex. I realize now that he only let me have my way on that point because he was dropping his trousers for every nurse and female lab technician under the age of fifty in Maplesburg Hospital, and not getting it from me didn’t cramp his style in the least.

So anyway, with the late and unlamented Dr. Todd as my only experience with the wonderful world of carnal knowledge—I’m not counting the few inept episodes in the backseats of cars I had in high school—is it any wonder that lately my most fulfilling sexual encounters involved a vibrating bunny with purple vinyl ears?

Which brings me back to the epiphany I was having while Dmitri’s tongue brought me to the edge of something I’d previously dismissed as an urban legend, at least if we’re talking without Mr. Love-Bunny. That’s right, the Big O.

“Tell me what you did to me in those dreams, Dmitri, and don’t leave anything out,” I gasped. “I want to hear every X-rated detail.”

“X-rated is like Americanic movies with violence or sex, da?” he muttered as he bent his head to the hollow between my breasts. His tongue left a trail of heat where it touched me.

“Da,” I managed to say as I felt myself being swept closer to total surrender. With his head bent in front of me as it was, I could see the muscles of his back rippling beneath his hide like strong underwater currents. A smudge of something dark broke the even tan of his skin just past his hairline at the nape of his neck.

“I understand,” he said hoarsely, his breath against me sending minishockwaves through my nerve endings. “Increases pleasure, nyet? Is also same with me when I think of dream I had. You and I were in forest at dusk making love. I had taken off all your clothing and was standing over you…

“And then what?” I panted.

Dmitri lifted his head, his gaze like blue fire. “And then sun went below horizon and horde of vampyrs set upon us. I snatched up broken branch and used it as stake against them and when I had chance to look I saw you were doing same thing. Your hair was like gold crown around your head and your naked limbs were like palest Karelian marble, and you staked vampyr after vampyr with terrible mercilessness. You were magnificent, l’ubimaya. I woke up with sheets thrown off bed and great throbbing in—”

“What?” I asked, easing my grip on his shoulders and frowning at him.

“I wake up with great throbbing in my heart from knowledge I must see you again,” Dmitri said, his tone low and charged with emotion. He began to bend his head to my breast again, but I yanked up my La Perla bra straps and took a quick step back.

“No, the other part,” I said. “That’s what gets your rocks off about me—that I kill vamps?”

“Da.” He nodded, his eyes still lit with blue fire as he gazed at me. “You are not ordinary woman. You are brave, you are warrior, you are—”

“I’m a vamp,” I said flatly. “Or turning into one, at least. Since you’re so much in favor of staking them, I should be the last woman you’d be attracted to.”

“When time comes sister can perform Heal on you,” Dmitri asserted. “Will not interfere with our destiny, l’ubimaya. Is in your blood to kill vampyrs, just as is in mine. After we destroy Jasmine and her lieutenant we will look for others to wipe out. You and I will be perfectly matched team—both of us strong, both brave, both great fighters.”

“Well-matched, maybe,” I informed him, taking another step back. “Not a perfect match, though.”

He frowned. “I do not understand.”

I widened my eyes. “Well, if the two of us faced off, I doubt the fight would end in a draw. I mean, either you’d beat the crap out of me or I’d beat the crap out of you, right?”

The granite planes of his face relaxed into a faint smile. “We would never be on opposite sides, l’ubimaya. But if such impossible thing did happen, would not be fair fight. You are warrior princess, but I am big and strong man.”

“I guess you’re right, it wouldn’t be a fair fight,” I said, batting my baby blues at him. “Unless you even up the odds with a stake or some holy water, a contest between a vamp and a big Russian lug never is, but I’m still kind of eager to see how badly I can kick your ass, Dmitri.”

Even as his ice-blue gaze narrowed in sudden comprehension, I hauled off and socked him a good one on the side of his chiseled jaw.

Chapter 5

“Fuck!” Dmitri swore as he rocked back on his heels from my blow. I spared a split-second to note that he seemed to have at least one English word down pat before I pivoted sideways on the balls of my feet and slammed my elbow into his solar plexus. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

From the jarring impact I felt in my elbow he’d obviously had time to tighten his abs to steel-plate rigidity, but I could tell from the hiss in his tone that I’d knocked the air out of him. He lunged for me. “If it was something I said, let’s talk, but—” A shutter slammed down behind his eyes. As I dodged out of his reach he went on swiftly, “But this is complete bezumnyj! I do not even know what I have done to anger you. Did I misunderstand? Did you not want me to make l’ubov to you?”

“Oh, I wanted you to make loo-bov to me, all right,” I said tersely, bringing one leg in close to my body and then kicking it explosively toward him in a nifty maneuver I’d learned during the Unarmed Combat 101 classes Darkheart had put Megan and Kat and me through when he’d been teaching us to fight vamps. Sometime in the past few seconds I’d slipped out of my strappy Gina sandals, which was just as well for Dmitri because their wicked stilettos would have turned him into a man-size block of Swiss cheese within minutes. As it was, having my bare foot crash into his ribs like a piledriver merely sent him sprawling to the floor. “But let’s not talk about that right now. Tell me, comrade, what happened to the borscht-and-black bread accent a minute ago?”

While I was posing my question I reached down, intending to pull him up so I could take another punch at him, but this time he was ready for me. Bounding quickly to his feet, Dmitri struck my blow aside with one big hand. “I do not understand what you mean,” he said, scowling. “Natashya, this is total ridiculous and I will not fight you. Why are you doing this?”

“Good question,” I said, feinting a sudden movement to his left. He reacted as I’d hoped. As he stepped quickly to his right I brought my clasped fists up under the point of his chin. His head snapped back, and for a moment I saw anger flash behind the fake bewilderment of his gaze.

And he was faking—I knew that as unquestioningly as I’d suddenly known a couple of minutes ago that he was my enemy and had gone into attack mode on him. There was a difference between those two pieces of knowledge, however. The first had come to me when he’d slipped up and dropped his “must kill Moose and Squirrel” way of talking for a fatal second while he’d still been off-balance from my unexpected punch, but I didn’t have a clue as to what had set off the sudden alarm bells in my head while he’d been kissing me.

All I knew was that I hadn’t been able to ignore them.

“Enough!” When my clasped fists had made contact with his chin Dmitri had staggered backward a couple of steps. Now he steadied himself and his mouth drew into a grim line. “I have told you I will not fight you, l’ubimaya, but I cannot allow you to continue this foolish—”

“What does that mean, looby my-ah?” I interrupted. “No, don’t tell me, let me guess. Bitch?” My foot lashed out again, this time catching him squarely on the upper thigh. He inhaled sharply. “Is it another word for vampire? Or as you and Darkheart pronounce it, wampeer?” I said sarcastically. “Of course, you only say vampyr when you’re pretending to have trouble with the language, don’t you? Know what, handsome? I wouldn’t be surprised to learn you’re not even Russian.”

“Was born in Stalingrad, city of heroes,” Dmitri said stiffly. “Is insult you suggest this is lie, but I will forgive. L’ubimaya means sweetheart, and since this is how I feel for you I cannot let you continue doing things you will regret later. I am sorry, Natashya, but this is for own good.”

Why is it that when people tell you it’s for your own good, it always turns out to be something bad? I should have been expecting Dmitri’s sudden move but I wasn’t, which kind of bothers me when I reflect that “Shit, why didn’t I see that coming?” is probably the last thought a lot of vamps have before they’re swept into the big dust bin in hell.

And even though his plan was to immobilize me, not dust me, when the wild garlic lasso dropped over my head and shoulders and cinched tight around my upper body, pinning my arms to my sides, I still would have been in deep doo-doo…if it had worked.

“Nausea you feel is regrettable but unavoidable,” Dmitri said as he began walking toward me, reeling in the slack end of the garlic garland like a cowboy walking toward a roped steer. “In moment you will lose consciousness, so will not be so bad for you. Then I will call Darkheart and he will decide if is time to attempt Heal.”

“Is that Plan A?” I asked curiously. “Because if the whole thing hinges on the me-feeling-nauseous-and-blacking-out part, you’d better hope you have a Plan B, comrade.”

“What do you—”

I didn’t let him finish. Even as he took his next step toward me I grabbed hold of the woven strands of garlic that bound me and ripped them apart. Dmitri froze and his gaze met mine.

“It’s not possible,” he said tonelessly. “You’re a vamp, or near enough. Garlic’s your fucking kryptonite.”

“I know.” Deliberately I took a half step toward him and saw wariness flicker across his hard features. “I can’t explain it, either, especially since I felt like I was dying when Darkheart used it against me earlier this evening. But now…” I held up one of the tiny white flowers and inhaled deeply. Wrinkling my nose in distaste, I tossed the blossom aside. “Okay, I still think it smells yucky, but I never was all that crazy about garlic. The point is, it’s not kryptonite to me anymore. No wonder you’re worried enough to have forgotten to keep up your act, comrade,” I added, taking another step toward him.

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