The Vampire Hunter

She walked with a sensuous sway to her hips that he could imagine shifting side to side between his roaming hands as he danced with her. Kaz learned a lot about a person when dancing with them. It was safe, too, when surrounded by others on the dance floor and not all alone. Alone was fine, but only after he got to know the girl. Which, unfortunately, happened rarely due to his job. Ash in his hair and bloody stakes littering his apartment tended to turn them off.

A few groans alerted Kaz. He tugged out a stake with his right hand, and reached for another with his left—missing. He patted his hip where the stake was holstered—

No stake? He swung his gaze about, sweeping the tarmac, even as the first vampire rose to his feet. Had it fallen out when he’d been fighting? Had one of the vamps grabbed if off him?

The only one who had been close enough...

“Is that so?”

He chuckled and swung toward the vampire, a direct hit dusting the air with a fog of dark vamp ash. Before the other two could even rise, Kaz jumped over each one, planted the stake over their heart and finished them in succession. Four kills.

“But no closer to the prize,” he muttered. For he was on a specific mission that required he locate a one-fanged vampire who had murdered innocents.

A glance down the street didn’t spy Zoë. Kaz patted his back pocket, ensuring his wallet was still there.

“Interesting.”

She hadn’t gone for the cash, but instead for the one thing he should never allow to fall into the hands of the uninitiated. She’d called him her rescuing knight? The woman had no idea she’d gotten his title correct.

And the distraction of that kiss wasn’t putting him any closer to the vamp he needed to get his hands on. He hadn’t much to go on, but how many one-fanged vampires could there be in Paris?

Once he found the culprit, he needed to go deeper, to the source behind the vampire’s attack. Someone was trafficking in a dangerously addictive substance in the city of Paris. Similar to faery dust but more like faery dust times ten. Humans were not safe from the addicted vampires who went after them.

“I will put a stop to it,” he muttered, and strode down the street in Zoë’s wake. “First I need to get that stake back. But not until I figure out what cerulean is.”

* * *

Sid sat on the marble worktable, his big green eyes intent on every move Zoë made beneath the glass cupola capping her little tower in the sky. Purrs filled the room; the cat’s resonance harmonized with Zoë’s work.

The seventeenth-century mansion she lived in was narrow, yet high, soaring three stories. The third-floor tower room had confirmed her decision to buy the place five years ago. Perfect for a spell room. The curved, paned-glass roof let in the moonlight and opened the room to receive from the elements of air, earth and water.

She practiced all elemental magic, save for fire, a witch’s worst enemy. Though some witches were talented with fire magic, Zoë had decided to focus on a more powerful magic that could alter the molecules of any object, even living, breathing flesh. Such magic was her father’s specialty, and he’d taught her the basics before he’d had to go into hiding a decade earlier.

Because of his chosen study, the witches of the Light had declared her father, Pierre Guillebeaux, warlock. The Light did not approve of molecular magic. Witches must not alter living beings in any way beyond using magic to speed up the body’s natural healing process. Only shapeshifters and demons were sanctioned to physically alter their bodies. But Zoë’s father believed in the healing capabilities of his magic—that someone could heal himself or herself or otherwise alter their very being—something no witch was able to do. Instead of sacrificing the study of it, he had willingly become warlock.

She missed him. Though she hadn’t seen him in ten years, she knew, wherever he was, he was well, yet that didn’t dispel the emptiness in her heart. Since her mother’s death when she was thirteen, her father was her only family, and though she had many friends, she craved an intimate relationship.

In the center of her spell room, before the round, marble-topped worktable, she carefully went about the process of alchemizing the faery ichor that was delivered once a week from an unnamed, but obnoxious source. Zoë didn’t have to like the delivery girl; she just had to take the ichor and in return hand over the finished product. It was a smooth system that had been working for the few weeks she’d been engaged in this endeavor.

The vampire Mauritius, leader of tribe Anière, had been buying her blend to distribute to his fellow vampires. He had seemed eager to spread it around, assuring her it would do well within the vampire community. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her blend—which was to be expected in this neighborhood that overlapped FaeryTown—so Zoë was kept fairly busy producing the concoction.

But it must be fresh, and only produced in small amounts. That ensured efficacy. The shelf life was about a week, she figured, though she hadn’t done field experiments to verify that, and had only her best friend’s usage report to judge how well it actually worked.

“I can’t wait to see Luc,” she whispered.

She leaned forward next to Sid to watch the ichor in the alembic dance and coruscate as if stars captured under glass.

It had been two weeks since her best friend, Luc, had been around for a visit. He had been her guinea pig for the dust blend. Luc mentioned her project to his tribe leader, and Mauritius had been very interested.

Zoë set the kitchen timer for four minutes. She had to let the dust formulate a short time before adding the key ingredient.

Noticing the backpack she’d hastily dropped beside the door, she spied the steel cylinder spilling out that she’d nicked from her rescuer. So she had a habit of snatching things. It was a better vice than drinking or practicing malefic magic, wasn’t it?

She retrieved the cylinder and looked it over. Was it some kind of weapon? On second thought, it might not be steel. It was light, almost like aluminum, but she suspected the metal was strong and wouldn’t dent. It didn’t have a product name or brand anywhere on it. On one end was impressed a symbol of four pointed bars crossed over one another in the center of a circle.

The opposite end showed a cross slit that might open if some kind of button were pushed. Narrow black pads about three inches long stretched each side of the cylinder, like grips, and when she squeezed—

A sharp tip pinioned out the end of the column with such force that Zoë let out a gasp and dropped it. The deadly thing skimmed her boots, cutting a scar in the aged black leather, and clattered onto the white tiled floor.

She bent to grab it—but didn’t touch it. Its apparent use grew obvious now that the tip was fully ejected.

“A stake?”

It looked like a weapon some kind of hunter might use to stake vampires. What other purpose would it serve?

“He had been a skilled fighter. Hmm...Kaz,” she whispered, her thoughts wandering.

He’d reminded her of an action-movie hero. He hadn’t looked vampire or werewolf, though she would expect as much only because of the crowd with whom she normally hung around. He must have been human, because the others who had fallen at his fist had looked like standard street thugs.

There were times Zoë preferred vampires to humans. At least with vampires she knew where she stood—either as a friend or lunch. Humans were a mixed bag of nothing but misplaced mischief and accidental danger. Humans generally didn’t appeal to her, yet never had one shown her such chivalry. In those moments after she had stumbled onto the fight, she had felt the damsel.

Standing amongst the men, Kaz had been outfitted in a sleek, black leather duster coat and dark clothing. Night shadows had concealed most of his face, save for bulletlike eyes that had homed in to Zoë as if there were no other place he could see. He’d tilted his head, catching the moonlight on his devastating smirk and then had shouted for her to leave. The hero protecting the damsel.

His voice had been rough and deep, yet had eased into Zoë’s pores with a soul-stirring tingle. He’d spoken English, though it had been accented with something other than her native French. German, to guess from his surname Rothstein. His brown eyes had moved over her face, landing on her lips, and then along the scar that curled across one cheek—yet hadn’t lingered there—till finally they’d locked onto her gaze.

If only the moonlight had been stronger, she may have seen much more, and might have gazed for endless hours at the sexy man who had defended her with muscle and might.

The timer dinged and Zoë shot upright, leaving the stake on the floor. The next part of the blend recipe must be enacted immediately.

“Now for the magic.”

She tapped the glass with her matte-black-polished fingernails that were tipped in white. A smidge of secret potion was added to the faery ichor from a long, narrow vial—tap, tap, the iridescent particles fluttered into the alembic—and then she recited the spell that she’d worked for months to perfect after dozens of hours studying the family grimoire.

“Feé substitutuary lente.”

This kind of molecular magic tended to zap her energy. All other magics barely taxed her system, though she did have difficulty wielding any magic in public. Call it a lack of confidence, or never having been taught to use her magic around others.

“Dissimulate,” was the final word.

The ichor in the alembic turned purple and she knew the process had been a success. Now she need only reduce the ichor to dust, package it in vials and hand it over to Mauritius’s courier, who always arrived on Sunday morning, bright and early, despite the fact she was a vampiress.

Reaching for a tray of glass vials, Zoë paused and tilted her head to listen. She eyed Sid. The cat’s ears also perked.

Someone knocking on her front door after midnight?

“Unusual. Absolutely unprecedented, actually.”

Leaving the spell room, she carefully locked it with a snap of her fingers. Sid pussyfooted in her wake down the iron spiral stairs that landed but a few paces from the front door, and assumed his protective stance behind her legs.