Biting Bad: A Chicagoland Vampires Novel (5 page)

All four gazes turned to us.

“Mallory Delancey Carmichael,” I muttered, swallowing down a sudden bolt of fear. I might have been a vampire, but the rioters had inches and pounds on me, too. And a lot more hatred.

The guy with the pointy hair glared at us, lip curled. “You got a problem, bitch?”

The harshness of the word cut right through the fear. I gave him an Ethan Sullivan–worthy eyebrow arching.

“What did he just say?”

“Oh, no he didn’t,” Mallory whispered. “Go kick his ass.”

Easy for her to say, since I wasn’t supposed to let her do anything. But it was too late to back down now; she’d set the wheels in motion.

Resigned to my fate, I shook out my shoulders, blew out a breath to calm my nerves, and put on my best suit of vampire moxie. “Keep an eye on the main group, and let me know if they get too close for us to get to the car. We can’t take on an entire mob, not alone.”

Mallory nodded.

I rolled my hips into a saunter that kept their gazes on me as I approached them.

“Um. Did you call me a bitch?”

Haircut and Dragon looked at each other and snorted, then bumped fists like they’d scored points by using a one-syllable word.

“I did,” Haircut said. “What are you gonna do about it?”

I ignored the question and looked at the kids. “These guys hassling you?”

“They like vampires,” Dragon said, as if that explained and justified their attitudes.

Frankly, the kids didn’t look like they cared either way about vampires. They just looked scared, and eager to get the hell out of Wicker Park.

“We just, you know, think people should get a fair shake,” said the more heavyset kid, nervously scratching his arm as he did it.

I couldn’t imagine the moxie it had taken to get out those words in the face of two bullies, and I wanted to reach out and hug him for the bravery. But that was not what I was here for.

“Fuck you,” said Haircut.

“Yeah,” Dragon agreed.

But the kid had spoken his peace; he had found his courage. He wasn’t about to back down, either.

“You’re an asshole, you know that?” He tugged at the front of his jacket. “You think beating the shit out of me makes you brave? It doesn’t. It makes you an idiot. So beat me up if you want to, if that’s gonna make you feel better. But at the end of the day, I know who I am. And you don’t know shit.”

Haircut might not have known shit, but he knew when he was pissed off. He reached out to grab the kid by the collar . . . but he wasn’t fast enough for me.

In the split second before his fingers grasped fabric, I reached out and snagged his hand. He froze in shock—that someone had thought to defy him, and that I’d done it so easily.

“Here’s the ironic thing,” I said. “I’m a vampire. And these guys”—I gestured to the kids—“are on my side. You, as it turns out, are not.”

I gave his wrist a gentle squeeze. Not enough to break bones, but enough to let him know I was really and truly different, and I was very serious.

“Bitch,” he muttered, but he didn’t move his gaze from his wrist. Beads of sweat had begun to dot his brow. “Do something, Joe!”

Joe, otherwise known as Dragon, lifted up his shirt, showing off bony hip bones and a matte black handgun stuffed into the waistband of his pants.

“Oh shit,” said the second kid, the quieter one. “We don’t want any trouble. We’re just walking home.”

My blood ran cold. How had I missed his weapon, the telltale vibration of the gun? Not that the reason mattered now. The only thing that mattered was getting the kids out of here safe and sound.

Bluff,
I told myself, even as my heart beat so loud I could hear it pounding in my ears.

“Here’s how we’re going to play this,” I said, gathering up as much bravado as I could muster. “I’m going to let this guy go, and you’re going to lower your shirt over that gun again. And you guys are going to walk away.”

Joe laughed. “You think I’m afraid of you?”

Alpha predator,
I reminded myself.
Top of the food chain.

I let my eyes silver and my fangs descend, and I looked back at Joe with hunger in my eyes. Since dinner had been interrupted, I didn’t need to fake it.

His eyes grew wide with fear, but only for an instant. He was a guy in his twenties with a gun at the ready, and he was better at bravado than I was. His eyes grew cold, hinting at hatred.

“You okay over there?” Mallory asked. But being a good girl—tonight anyway—she didn’t move from her designated spot.

Maybe, I thought, I could use her in this little game of ours. She’d started it, after all.

“Your little friend is calling you,” Haircut said. But since he was still on the ground, his wrist bent in my hand, I didn’t pay him much mind. It was Joe and the gun that worried me.

“You think I’m scary,” I said. “Granted, I’m pretty strong. But I have nothing on her.”

“She don’t look that strong,” Joe said.

I grimaced. “I guess you don’t know what she is.”

All four of them looked back at her, obviously not intimidated by the petite chick with blue hair. If only they knew the truth . . . Of course, I couldn’t actually let them know the truth, so I fudged a little more.

“She’s a death reaper.”

“Bullshit,” Joe said.

“Nah,” said the guy who’d stood up to the bully, watching me closely. “She’s—she’s right. That girl is a death . . .”

“Reaper,” I filled in, since he was obviously following my lead. I really did like this kid. “Death reaper. Talks to the dead, reanimates them if necessary, points out the evil men and women who don’t deserve to live.”

“And then what?” the quiet kid asked.

I answered with a gesture, a finger drawn across my neck like a blade.

“That is some serious bullshit,” Joe said again, but he didn’t sound nearly so convinced this time. “Girls can’t really do that.”

“That girl can,” I said. I leaned forward and lowered my voice just a bit. “Have you ever been walking down the street at night, and you think you hear footsteps behind you? Maybe you walk a little bit longer while your heart beats like a timpani drum in your chest. You think you’re imagining it, so you keep walking. But the footsteps start up again. Step by step by step. And you stop, and you turn around, and there’s nothing there. No sign of anything in the street. Just lights and shadows. But you know, sure as you know anything, that you weren’t out there alone.”

They were frozen, eyes on me but glazed, as if they were remembering their own experiences. I pressed on.

“Or maybe you’re home alone, and you talk to someone in the next room, because you saw their shadow pass. When they don’t answer, you go look . . . and the room is empty. It had been empty the entire time. But in your spine, you can feel it. You know you weren’t alone. And when you try to go to sleep, when you close your eyes, you can feel them—you can feel
her
—at the foot of your bed, watching you sleep.”

Slowly, for maximum effect, I slid my gaze to Mallory. “She is the stuff nightmares are made of. She haunts the minds of the living and the dead, and she sees evil where it lurks. And now she knows who you are.”

Because in this fictional telling of mine, Mallory was a Grim Reaper/Santa Claus mashup. That wasn’t anywhere close to the truth, of course, but it was enough to change Joe’s mind. He dropped the shirt over his gun again.

“You can’t do this,” Haircut said weakly, but the fight had gone out of him.

“I can, and I did,” I reminded him. “I’m going to let you go, and I’ll give you a ten-second head start. Because we like the chase,” I added with a delectable whisper. “But remember—even if you don’t see her, you’ll feel the hairs on the back of your neck rise, and you’ll know she’s there.”

I let go of Haircut’s wrist. He jumped up and ran down the street, away from the rioters. Joe followed him without looking back.

For a moment, the kids and I stood there in silence.

“That stuff all true?” the talker tremulously asked.

I looked back at him. “Yes and no. The truth is much less scary, and much more scary at the same time. What’s your name?”

“Aaron.” He gestured toward his quieter friend. “That’s Sam.”

I nodded. “You said good stuff, Aaron. Honest stuff. You’re one of the good ones. Don’t ever let anyone tell you different, okay?”

Aaron nodded shyly.

“Merit!” Mallory said in a squeaking whisper from her corner, eyes darting to a threat I couldn’t yet see. “They’re coming. We need to
go
! Now!”

I closed my eyes to clear my head from adrenaline and silvering, then looked back at the boys when I was sure they were normal again. “You should get going. I gave the guys a scare, but I’m sure I didn’t change their minds about vampires or the people who support them.”

“Our car’s right there,” said Sam, his nervous gaze still on my mouth. I supposed the hint of fang had made an impression, and not one he was likely to forget any time soon.

“Then go,” I said, and they took off. The boys ran up the block, then climbed into the smallest car I’d ever seen—clown cars would have marveled—and zoomed up the block with an engine that sounded like a vacuum cleaner.

My good deed done, I ran back to Mallory and peeked around the corner into the street.

It didn’t look good.

The rioters had reached us, the world’s worst parade.

I tried to put on a happy face, but there wasn’t much point in it.

“Shall we haul ass?”

“Let’s do it.”

We popped back into the street and ran full out until we got to the car.

“Unlock it,” Mallory said, jiggling the door handle on her side. As if that ever sped up the process.

“Working on it,” I said, fumbling to get the keys into the door lock. But adrenaline and anticipation made me clumsy. We were so close. So close to zooming safely away, and to my getting Mallory safely home again without a magical incident.

But not close enough.

“Hey, ladies!” said a male voice behind us.

I glanced back. He was probably twenty-five, with pale skin, blond hair, and a skinny and mean demeanor. He carried a bowie knife in one hand and a hockey stick in the other.

We tried to ignore him, but he wouldn’t be ignored.

“Hey, I’m talking to you! You good girls with us in our fight for human rights?”

His prejudices were so irrational he didn’t even realize he was attempting to add supernaturals to his posse.

Mallory’s eyes narrowed. Clearly, she itched to slap the stupid out of him.

“Human rights!” shouted two more humans nearby. “Down with fangs! Chicago doesn’t need them, and Chicago sure as fuck doesn’t want them!”

The guy looked at Mallory. “How about you, Blue? You on our side? Justice and truth and no more fucking vampires? Who needs ’em, right?”

His voice was teasing, his words flirty . . . and quite the wrong things to say. He reached out and put a wiry hand on the Volvo.

Mallory’s eyes narrowed at the threat, and the air prickled around her. Her magic was rising.

“No more fucking vampires,” I pleasantly agreed, then smiled at the guy, who was making himself at home on the hood of the car. Keeping my gaze on him, I made a blind effort with the key.

“You live around here?”

“Used to. Moved away.” Finally, the key found home, and the lock clicked open. “Sorry, but we need to get going, so . . .”

He looked at me for a moment, eyes narrowing as he realized he’d been handily rejected. And because he couldn’t fathom the possibility that anyone would reject him, he immediately decided there was something wrong with us.

He tapped the blade of the knife against the hood. “You like fangs? You think that’s hot?”

“I think you should get off my car so my friend and I can leave.”

He flipped the knife in his hand so its point was facing me, and he leaned in closer. “I think you need to learn some respect.”

Mallory’s hands began to shake, her body vibrating with energy. She crossed her arms, tucking in her hands. She gnawed on her lip, banked anger in her expression, all of it directed at the guy who was hassling me.

She wanted to kick his ass.

She wasn’t the only one.

“I know plenty about respect,” I said. “But really, we need to go.”

“Who the fuck do you think you are? Do you know what we just did?” He gestured back toward the column of smoke rising behind us. “We brought a building down. They think they’re powerful? The vampires? Fuck them. Fuck them. Clean Chicago!” he yelled out, raising his arms to gather more of the rioters around him—and around us. They came with their weapons and began to surround us, drumming them on the Volvo to the beat of their own hate-filled symphony.

“You ready to go now?” asked the hateful one, the man who’d started the drama.

He slammed his hockey stick down on the hood, leaving a two-foot-long dent in her otherwise unmarred steel.

“What the hell!” I said, my own emotions breaking through the faux-human barrier I’d erected. I squeezed my hands into fists to keep from throttling him, from attacking humans in the middle of a street surrounded by witnesses, and no matter the justification. “That’s my car!”

“Yeah? What the fuck are you going to do about it?” He hit the windshield, a crack spreading from side to side.

“Maybe it’s not her you need to worry about.”

We both looked at Mallory, who’d spoken those ominous words. She’d pulled off her knitted cap, and the tendrils of blue hair that had escaped her braid floated around her face in the cloud of magic. That cloud wasn’t visible, but I could feel it, as though I were standing inches away from high-voltage wires.

“You got something to say about it, blue hair?”

“Mallory,” I warned, but she was staring at him, giving him a look you might have expected from a genius to the man who’d just asked the world’s stupidest question.

“As a matter of fact,” she said, “I do.”

She blinked . . . and so did a streetlight across the street. It flashed and crackled with light, loudly enough to make even the fearless rioters flinch. Another second of staring, and the light exploded—sending a shower of green and orange sparks into the air. Chaos erupted, and we took full advantage.