Chapter 31 #2
The girl turns, eyes clear. Not on any poppy. “Can we help you?”
“Keep moving,” the vampire urges. His fangs slip out as he eyes her neck, and my entire body tenses with my swirling bloodlust. A leech like this needs wood.
As if he’s read my mind, Deacon rips a plank from one of the townhome’s boarded-up windows and hands it to me.
I snap the beam over my knee and am left with a perfect shard.
I aim to strike quickly, but the vampire is just as fast. He grabs the girl around the waist and uses her as a human shield.
My reflexes yank back the stake with a second to spare.
“Shame on you,” I hiss.
“She just smells so good,” he mutters. “Her blood will be even sweeter.”
Somehow, the girl kept her cool when I leveled a weapon at her date, but the mention of blood is enough to send her squirming and kicking in fear. The vampire holds her against him, withstanding her blows, and tries to drive his fangs into her neck as she thrashes.
Deacon slips behind the vamp and rips him off her in one smooth yank.
He tosses the guy into the stairs of the apartment building as if he were a crumb flicked from a table.
I lunge and land my stake. Right to the heart—layers of cold flesh and weathered tendons giving way. I soak up every second of it.
When I’m knuckle deep in the vampire’s chest cavity, the pain recedes. The fog of red vision too. The vampire groans out one last exhale and slumps to the ground.
Behind him, the prostitute is stone-still, eyes so wide I fear they may pop from her head. “Hey,” I say, moving toward her slowly. This girl didn’t just learn vampires are real, she almost had her neck ripped out. “Everything is fine.”
Out of the corner of my eye I spy Deacon crouch down with a lighter. A second later the vamp is engulfed in roaring flames. Deacon lights the cigarette from behind his ear with the blaze licking up from the body.
“Oh god,” the girl says, over and over, staring at the flames. “Oh god.” There’s a vaguely Southern twang to her voice. “Vampires? That was a vampire.”
I try to hold her eyeline. I don’t want to touch her without her permission, but I don’t want her to run away. “What’s your name?”
“Piper,” she says, jaw tight. Her eyes are still on the spot where the vampire died, even as the flames cool, leaving nothing behind but scorched pavement.
“Piper, it’s all fine now. You’re safe.” I glance up at Deacon. “Aren’t you going to glamour her? Erase her memory?”
“What?” Piper snaps.
“ ’Course not.” Deacon blows out a cloud of smoke, stepping closer but still keeping a mindful distance. “You got a job, kid?”
Piper folds her hands across her goose bump–flecked chest. “Uh, yeah I got a job.”
“You got a job where you don’t have to screw bloodsuckers for money?”
“Deacon.”
But there’s a twist in Piper’s lips. This girl is not as fragile as I’d been treating her. “I didn’t know he was gonna try to suck my blood. I would have charged extra for that.”
Deacon releases a dark chuckle and I try to do the same, but my heart is still straining for what this girl must have been through to rally this quickly after learning something so awful exists…She’s probably seen her fair share of horrors.
“Can you dance? Wash dishes? Pour drinks?”
I can’t help the way my eyes swing up to Deacon. I’m sure I’m looking at him like he just climbed out of a well with a soaked puppy under his arm. But he doesn’t even glance at me.
Piper narrows her eyes before standing a bit straighter. “All three.”
“Come work in my club. Room and board’s included. Pay’s decent. Nobody’ll lay a hand on you.”
She purses her lips. Too street-smart to take an offer that generous. “You one of those blood-drinking things too?”
“Only when people make me mad,” Deacon says, teeth flashing in the night.
“He’s not.” I press a hand to his chest, expecting Piper to cower…but she only laughs. He’s messing with her, and she knows it.
“Go on,” he says to her. “It’s called Fever Dream. Ask for Ward. Tell him the White Stag sent you.”
Her eyes go round as dinner plates. “You’re the White Stag?”
I sigh. “Please don’t feed his ego.”
Piper schools her face and stores away any further awe. “Thank you,” she says, swiping her bag from where it fell on the ground and heading off in the direction of the club.
We watch her hustle through the streets. The night is more temperate as spring inches closer. The city is as close to silent as it ever gets.
“See?” Deacon drawls.
I twist to meet his eyes. “See what? And if you mention Taxi Driver, or some young prostitute you shared with Ivan the Terrible, I swear to god—”
“It’s a gift. You always talk about being an aeon like it’s a terminal illness. But you’re good at what you do, and what you do is fun. That’s not a bad setup.”
For some reason, the pure terror shining in Sophia’s eyes as I brutalized that werewolf comes to mind. Shame licks down my spine. “I almost killed you.”
Deacon scoffs. “You wouldn’t have gotten close—”
“I had to stab you in a powder room. Does that sound like a gift?”
But Deacon swats away my words, tossing his cigarette onto the ground and stubbing it out with his shoe. “That was the parasite in your back feeding off your rage. I’m talking about you. What you are. Being a hunter. Being an aeon. Saving damsels and kissing babies.”