Page 14 of Vampires Don't Give Hickeys
Something dark, the demon had warned.
It is not known.
...no slayer has ever lived without the devil and escaped the dark.
I slumped back in the chair, the few bites of pie I’d eaten sitting uncomfortably high in my throat. If I refused the devil, the darkness would come for me within a year, if not sooner.
If not already.
Chapter Five
Marry the devil ordie within a year by the hand of some mysterious...thing. That was hardly a fair choice, and I was sick to death of being boxed into a corner to make choices I didn’t want to.
During my nightly patrol, I went through the motions with two vamps, easily staking them through the hearts with minimal splatter, and they disappeared to wherever they went when death caught up with them a second time. In the back of my head, though, it felt strange taking the cemetery vamps out when I wouldn’t dream of doing that to those next door. It didn’t seem fair.
What separated one group from the other? The fact that I’d allowed one of those vamps between my legs and probably could have easily had another? That they had brains and brawn and didn’t always snap their jaws in my face? Well...yes, but it was more than that. They made me feel special, and not just because I was the slayer. Everything I was, the sum of all my parts, seemed important to them.
I wasn’t sure what to do with this line of thinking, so I stashed it away for later. Good timing, too, because an uneasy feeling skated up my neck. Someone was watching me. I faked like I hadn’t noticed, continuing up the paths of the cemetery on light feet, as my senses burned.
It was probably just a vampire. If it was another demon sent to drag me to hell with a wedding veil on my head, I would revolt on the grounds of lack of creativity. Then I would stab the demon in the throat with my stake. The threat of a forced marriage tended to make me stabbier than usual, but this didn’t feel like a prelude to an ‘I don’t.’ For one, I didn’t smell any brimstone, no matter how hard I sniffed. I didn’t sense any vampires nearby, either, so this strange feeling I had hinted at something...other.
My heart knocked against my ribs and my palms grew clammy. I didn’t want other. Not when it could sink dread into my stomach with thousand-pound barbs. And not when it could kill me like it had every other slayer before my twenty-first birthday.
When I followed the curve of the path around a tall, wide headstone, a man appeared, not there and then there in a blink. I stopped about six feet away from him, both of us instantly assessing. His eyes, neither vampire nor demon but a watery blue, sized me up from head to toe. Long straggly blond hair swept the shoulders of a tan bowling shirt with striped sleeves and Paul stitched across the front. No way did this guy bowl, though. Sometimes you can just tell, the same way you can tell someone’s going to be a dick customer at The Bean Dream before they even opened their mouth.
“Fancy meeting you here.” His voice sounded rusty, unused.
“Sure.” I nodded, willing myself not to back away. “Whatever you say,Paul. What did you do with the guy you stole the shirt from?”
He chuckled, an unpleasant sound that rolled a shiver up my back. “Fancy meeting you here.”
I blinked and rewound the mental tape of the last minute. Yeah. He’d said that already. What kind of game was he playing?
“Okay, well...” I swallowed. “You’re here for nefarious purposes, I’m guessing, so I’m going to start killing you now.”
He drifted forward, making every muscle in my body cringe backward, except he hadn’t moved from his spot. He did it again, pressing toward me and yet staying put. The static noise vibrated out of him as he held my gaze with his.
