Ty threw all of his strength into one final roll, pinning his attacker beneath him in a fluid, lightning-quick movement, and used his claws to pin him by the throat to the ground. The move was an old one of his, well practiced, and Ty hissed, triumphant, when the other vampire stilled instantly beneath him. Claws pierced flesh, puncturing the tender skin just enough to cause intense pain but not true damage.
He might have just finished it then had he not gotten a good look at his attacker first. When he did, vicious pleasure turned to sick pity in one sluggish beat of his ancient heart.
“Gods, man,” he hissed before he could think better of it. “Who did this to you?”
He had seen this sort of cruelty before, though it had been centuries. The vampire beneath him was a shell of a human, an animated corpse that had begun to decompose while he still drew breath. Waxy skin stretched taut over jutting bones. What hair remained on his balding head was patchy and fine. The body beneath him felt like a bag of bones, while the eyes that watched him bulged madly. Thin lips were peeled back over yellowed fangs.
No vampire would deny himself to the point where he became a hunger-crazed zombie, falling apart but unable to die, thinking only of food. But he had seen this done to vampires who had displeased their masters, chained in dungeons until they went mad with hunger for the crime of trying to subvert the order of things in the world of night. And, occasionally, those so-called gutterbloods who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, who had crossed paths with bored, entitled, and incredibly sadistic highbloods, merited the treatment for no other crime but existing.
The practice had fallen out of use, Ty had thought. But apparently not all the way.
“Don’t matter,” the specter hissed, panting. “I smell your blood, kitty. It’ll do. Give us a drop, will you? Just… a drop… ah, Lucifer’s eyes, but it hurts!”
Wave after wave of revolting stench rolled off the pathetic creature that lay beneath Ty, but he forced his revulsion to the back of his mind. There was something wrong about this man, this attack. And before he put this creature out of his misery, which he would have to do, he wanted answers.
“Tell me who did this to you, and I’ll see that you are fed,” Ty lied softly.
The other vampire hissed out a laugh, part pain, part madness. But the trace of sanity that remained inside him seemed to emerge, if only briefly. “Lies. Pretty lies. He said you’d say that. But it’s too late for me. I done what I was told. I’ll kill you and feed, or die trying.” The face contorted in agony. “I won’t go back in the dark again… not in the dark, not in the chains…”
Ty’s eyes narrowed, even as pity threatened to derail him. Pity had no place in his world, he reminded himself. The strong survived. The weak would always fall. And if a man wasn’t careful, he could go right down with them for nothing more than a moment’s compassion.
“He who? You were sent to hunt me?”
The sick grin was accompanied by a giggle that was near to weeping, and sanity departed again, likely for good. “Not you, stupid bugger. Stupid, stupid kitty. But I kept you busy, didn’t I? No more dark dungeons for me, no more hunger. Stupid stupid stupid to leave the pretty thing aaaaaaaall alone…”
Ty sucked in a breath. Lily. He’d fallen right into such a simple trap. But how could he not have known he was being watched? He always sensed such things, always knew. However, he had never let himself get so preoccupied with a woman before, he thought with an unpleasant twist of guilt. Naturally, the one time he did, it could well cost him everything. Such had been the tale of his sorry existence.
It took all of Ty’s willpower not to bolt right then, to run off into the darkness in pursuit of whatever else hunted Lily, for he had no doubt that he or she would be far more formidable an adversary than this miserable wretch of a decoy. But business left unfinished was business that often came back to bite you in the end. His grip tightened on the vampire’s thin neck. On a whim, he yanked down the collar of the man’s moldering shirt. The mark there was dark against the pale and waxen flesh, and it confirmed what his gut had already told him.
The Shades did not constitute a bloodline. Humans would have called them a gang, though a vampire would have found that description ill-fitting at best. The Shades came from all walks of the underworld, though mainly from varying levels of the gutter, trained to be masters at their illicit trades. They were the aristocracy of thieves and murderers, both feared and respected by even the highbloods. This one seemed to have a dash of almost every lesser bloodline going, making for a fascinatingly intricate mark. But beside it, small and deceptively simple, was the telltale tattoo that was inked upon initiation into the Shades: a small black crescent moon. Blood did not create the mark of a Shade, but only death would remove it.
A voice from deep in his past returned to whisper from the depths of his mind: “We’re all killers, Ty. Why not join us and be revered for it? It’s the only way a cat can live like a king.”
He pushed it away, locked it back in the recesses of his memory where it belonged. How disappointed the fledgling vampire who’d rejected that offer would be in what Ty had become, which was little different than all he’d denied, save for the dangerously thin veneer of respectability.
“You must have pissed off your masters terribly to be punished like this,” Ty said aloud. “And someone big must have hired them—assassination is still one of the most expensive services at the House of Shadows, yeah?”
He didn’t expect an answer, and he didn’t get one. No matter how far gone this vampire was, he wouldn’t tell. They almost never did. Bloody Shades.“Peace, brother,” Ty said as the other vampire began to thrash beneath him, making a final attempt to throw Ty off and gain the upper hand. Or perhaps he just wanted Ty to end it for him. If that was the case, his wish was quickly granted. With a flash of a blade that Tynan had carried with him from his first life into this one, head and body were sundered.
And by the time the decaying body burst into flames seconds later, Ty was nothing more than a black blur, streaking into the night. Praying to a god he no longer believed in that he wasn’t too late.
Lily pulled into her driveway with no recollection of how she’d managed to drive herself home. The entire trip was like something out of a nightmare, her body on autopilot while all she saw in her mind was Ty’s burning eyes and gleaming fangs, and all she could hear was that unearthly voice telling her to run.
She’d nearly taken a detour dozens of times, wanting to head for anywhere but where he’d told her to go. What stopped her was what Ty had said about being responsible for losing people. She wouldn’t risk anyone else.
That didn’t mean she didn’t want to run… but there didn’t seem to be anywhere to run to.
Lily got out of the car, shaking like a leaf. Somehow, though, she made it to the front door, where she fumbled around with her keys for precious seconds, alone there on her quiet street. And, of course, she’d forgotten to turn on her porch light. Again.
“Come on,” she muttered, feeling terror trying to return in full force, tickling the back of her throat with icy fingers. Finally, she managed to drive the correct key home and turn it in the lock with a gasp of relief. The sharp click brought with it a burst of reassurance. Here was sanity. Here was some measure of safety. Quickly, Lily stumbled into the lit entry hall and slammed the front door shut behind her, then flipped the dead bolt.
I’m home. I’m safe. I’m home.
She turned, dropping her messenger bag beside the coat rack in the hall, and closed her eyes for a moment. She needed to center herself, to let the horror recede in the comforting presence of the familiar.
“I’m okay,” she said aloud, her voice sounding thin and shaken. “Everything’s okay now,” she continued, more firmly. Then she opened her eyes, squared her shoulders, and moved toward the arched entrance that led to the open space of the kitchen and family room. Her footsteps tapped reassuringly across the wood floor.
With the return of normalcy, fear became anger.
Hell with this, she thought as her world began to right itself, and doubt about what she’d actually seen began to creep in. She was not a victim. She needed a plan. So the first step, the most logical step, was to call the cops. There was no way she was just going to sit here and wait for something awful to happen when there was a police station not two miles away. Tynan had obviously been stalking her. That much she knew for certain. Everything else, well… It was possible, even probable, that he’d been trying to scare her. She hadn’t actually seen anyone else out there by the parking lot, had she? As for the glowing eyes and the fangs, someone clever enough, and sick enough, could have manufactured effects like that.
Humiliation twisted in Lily’s stomach.
“God, I’m an idiot,” she said. She’d been such an easy mark.
She reached to flip on the light, but as soon as the room brightened, she wished that she’d driven directly to the police station.
But it was far too late for that now.
He watched her from where he’d arranged himself in a chair at her little kitchen table, a bemused expression on a pale, handsome face that would have been the picture of friendly innocence but for the hunger that gleamed in eyes that looked blue one second, red the next.
“You’re being a little hard on yourself, don’t you think?” the man said in smooth, cultured tones that matched the elegant picture he presented. Crisp khaki pants, pressed button-down shirt, shoes that gleamed with polish. Not a hair was out of place. One foot rested casually on the opposite knee, and his hands, as pale as his face, were folded gently in his lap. A black wool overcoat was folded neatly over the back of one of the other chairs. He could have just come from a business meeting.
Apart from the fact that he was utterly terrifying.
When Lily said nothing, only stared at him with her mouth and throat going dry, he sighed.
“Not even a hello? Well. You may not be an idiot, but you’re certainly lacking in manners.”