Beautiful Danger

This time he avoided her kick but released her as he backed away. Chuckling, and wielding what he knew was a deadly titanium stake, he lunged and wrapped himself about her back. The force of their collision knocked her to the ground, facedown with her palms to the tarmac.

Straddling her, Domingos shoved the stake against the base of her skull, execution style. He’d never slain a mortal, but he’d make an exception this night.

“Why are you following me?” Stupid question. If she was a hunter, the answer was obvious. “Where’d you get this fancy stake, eh? The Order doesn’t hand these out as Halloween treats.”

“It’s mine!” Her hand slashed backward, cutting across his forearm.

The blade she held cut deep, and Domingos jerked his fist away from her skull. Forcing up a hip, she managed to twist onto her back beneath him, and slashed the blade again. He slapped a hand about her wrist to contain the flailing weapon. It looked like brass knuckles, with a blade cupped in the palm.

Strong and determined, this one. Dark bangs hung to eyes of a color he could not discern in the darkness. Dirt blushed her cheeks. She smelled like brightness and courage. At her neck the blades on her collar glinted with moonlight.

In Domingos’s brain, the phoenix performed a maniacal jig to celebrate his stolen survival instincts.

“You’re Order of the Stake,” he said. “Good for you, little girl. I didn’t know they were knighting chicks these days. Too bad you die tonight.”

“If I die, I’m taking you with me.”

The violin ceased tormenting his brain. The sound of her heartbeat thundered into focus. And suddenly—Domingos heard his own heartbeat, which he hadn’t noticed for weeks. Why was that? The woman’s fierce gaze didn’t mesmerize, but instead pierced his heart without aid of a weapon. That pain he felt more deeply than he had the knife.

He crushed her wrist and gave her hand a shake, and the blade looped about her fingers dropped to the cobbles with a clatter. Still she resisted, willing to fight to the end. He liked that. Most women would scream and beg for mercy. And he wanted to hear her beg.

“Mercy,” he hissed. “Ask for it.”

“Fuck you, longtooth!”

“You’re one tough mortal. Why are you after me? I thought the Order didn’t stake vamps unless provoked? I have done nothing to bring harm to mortals.”

“This conversation is over.”

He took a blade in his back. She’d kicked him with those nasty boots. And now she wrestled to get the stake from him. Domingos released his prize and propelled himself over her head, landing deftly on the tarmac, and ran out into the main street.

She twisted up to a running pursuit, slashing the deadly stake toward him. Moonlight gleamed on her long black hair queued in a ponytail and at the bladed collar. Focused grit tightened her face, yet her lips were so red. Sensual.

Domingos stood but a kiss away from death.

He didn’t have time for death.

“Adieu, my pretty little hunter.” He bowed, danced a few steps to the side and just as the stake whisked the air near his cheek, he leaped to a rooftop.

Standing at the tiled edge, he looked down over the frustrated hunter. She flipped him off. He made a motion to capture the gesture and smashed it against his heart.

“Until we meet again!” he called, and hurried across the tiles until her heartbeat faded from his senses and only the violin caterwauled in his brain.

Chapter 2

Lark marched purposefully north. The vampire had gotten the better of her. And how had that happened? She’d had him. And then she had not.

This was her first failure since she’d been knighted into the Order six months earlier. The night wasn’t over yet, so she wasn’t about to call this one in the vampire’s favor.

He might be tracking across the rooftops now, but he had to come down sometime. And he’d taken off in this direction. She couldn’t see or hear him, but so far, the line of same-level houses with mansard roofs continued.

Stake held firmly at her side, she kept her head up, and ears honed for noises above and behind her. The titanium cylinder housed a spring-loaded stake. She had only to slam the cylinder against the vampire’s chest, right over his heart, click the release paddles and wham. Dead vampire.

This kill would be number seventy-two. She was less than a third of the way to her goal.

“Three hundred sixty-six,” she muttered sharply.

He’d had opportunity to use the stake on her when she’d felt the cold metal pressed against the back of her neck. Stupid creature. He would regret not using that one and only chance.

The block ended, and she looked around, scanning the rooftops populated with bird droppings, sooted gargoyles and ancient slate tiles. Paris at night was crisp, dry and noisy with traffic. There were stars above, somewhere, but the City of Light dulled their twinkle. He couldn’t have gotten down, crossed the street and disappeared.

Well, he could have, but she would have noticed. He had been chuckling to himself, for heaven’s sake. The vamp was not in any way stealth. And he’d been barefoot. What was that about? Truly, he must be mad, as Principal Caufield believed him to be.

Didn’t matter. One vampire, be he tattered and barefoot or cloaked in finery and charm, was the same as the next to her.

Crossing at a light, Lark holstered the stake at her hip and insinuated herself into a crowd of hipsters that lingered outside a nightclub blasting out technopunk loud enough to frizz her eyelashes. If the vampire wanted to lose her, he’d go where the crowds were.

Lark didn’t like rubbing elbows with all these free and happy drunk people, so she slipped into an alley. Near the end, puffs of smoke signaled someone standing alone sucking on a grit.

She walked swiftly, head up, and fierce mien carrying her slender frame as if she were a quarterback headed for the end zone. No one would mess with her. Until a man flicked the half-smoked cigarette and it careened through the air and landed on the cobblestones before her steel-toed boots.

Lark stopped before the smoldering ember and slammed her hands to her hips. Her forefinger touched the stake. In her left hand she’d concealed brass knuckles that were bladed on the palm side.

“Hey, demoiselle, you are lonely.” It wasn’t a question.

Lark rolled her eyes. Smoke and whiskey shrouded the man. The scent was obnoxious. But beyond the normal smells she’d expect from a patron lingering near a nightclub, something deeper clung to him. Wild and feral.

And then she sensed others. Two to her right and one to her left.

Shit.

“What do you say, boys?” the whiskey-scented man asked. “We need a little fun before we go for a run, eh? Too bad the full moon ain’t out.”

Lark bit her bottom lip. Werewolves? They gave off a distinctive aura that she sensed, more alpha than most mortal men were capable of. They had better not be from the Levallois pack, or she would insist on double her pay for enduring these half-wits when finally she had slain the longtooth.

“I’m not into dogs,” she said, and turned quickly, backing up to hold a firm stance with the open alley behind her.

A pack of four stood before her. Double shit. All of them looked like bodybuilders, arms flexed out at their sides, and wearing muscle shirts and blue jeans that enhanced their meaty, rugged builds. Wolves were rowdy but usually never gave her problems. They couldn’t know what she was—that she was trying to help them.

She didn’t need them to know.

Holding out her hand, she revealed the blade tucked against her palm, and bent it in a come-get-me gesture. She didn’t go so far as to say “bring it,” but she was thinking it.

“Oh, she’s spunky! Henri, you hold her down.”

“With pleasure.” A brutish blond wolf lunged for her.

Lark slashed her blade across his cheek and stepped aside to avoid the blood spatter. The wolves saw the gaping wound on their buddy’s cheek and charged all at once.