Fangbanger (Well-Slayed #2)

Chapter 1

LEAH

Ican’t remember a time I didn’t think about killing Marcus Antonius. I am twenty-eight years old and I’ve fantasized about killing a man approximately sixty times my age.

Well, not a man.

A vampire.

One I’m currently hunting on a drizzly October evening in a half-empty gravel parking lot.

The vampire who killed my parents one blood-soaked evening twenty years ago.

The vampire whose presence I alerted them to.

The one I was convinced needed help. A hiker, I thought.

A fucking hiker. I was so young and so foolish and so demanding, kicking their seats and pointing him out on the side of the road.

Part of me thought I’d never find him.

Until tonight. Finally. I’ve tracked him to a vampire club fifty miles from my small town of Silver Falls, NY. I crouch behind my beat-up old Ford and watch him face off with another vampire across the parking lot.

It’s really him. It has to be. No other vampire carries a sword like that. It’s five feet of killing steel that juts above his powerful shoulders. I recognize the arrogant tilt of his head and the cruel set of his mouth from the single time I spied him on a hunt, before he flashed away.

Marcus is massive in a way that threatens violence. Not an ounce of visible softness in his face or his body. No hesitation in the flatness of his black gaze or the fangs that extend from his upper jaw.

I’ve read every book with a mention of Marcus Antonius, Roman gladiator-turned-vampire.

I’ve dug up every vampire bedtime story that mentions a brutal gladiator who will hunt you relentlessly if you don’t finish your blood.

I’ve gone farther and farther from home in the limited time I have to hunt him between jobs, and I feel every one of those midnight miles as I sink toward the gravel, my knees aching in protest.

My slayer senses warn me that the vampire Marcus is facing off against is older than he is.

He slouches across the gravel with casual bravado, clad in a burgundy suit, and oozing strength.

Their power batters my senses—cool and confident from the suit-clad vamp and surprisingly hot and turbulent from Marcus, who wears some sort of all-black hunting garb.

The weight of their ages presses on my shoulders.

They eye each other. The older vamp came to defend himself, but Marcus? He has murder in his eyes. The kill is personal, and his opponent doesn’t stand a chance.

And, I realize as I watch Marcus move with lethal grace, neither do I.

He’s so fast he blurs. Twice as fast as I am. No, faster. Three times at least. I ran my high school hundred-yard dash in eight seconds. The weres ran it in four. Marcus clears a hundred yards in two seconds flat. He’s going for the throat, and I feel a brief flash of disappointment.

It’s so obvious. The older vamp’s fangs are extended and his hands are claws. Whoever is stronger will win.

At the last second, Marcus feints and circles his opponent.

In the space between blinks, he’s wrapped an arm around the other vampire’s throat.

The muscles of his arms bulge. He’s straining hard enough to tear sheet metal in half, but he’s determined, and he’s caught the older one by surprise.

His opponent is lifted from the ground, before Marcus snarls something about coming back later and rips out his throat.

It’s over in seconds. Marcus wipes his mouth absently with the hem of his shirt, and I catch sight of a honed warrior’s body. I shiver and sink deeper behind the truck, even as my body trembles with the desire to leap from the shadows.

Do not, Leah. Your parents didn’t die so you could be murdered by their killer.

My hand shakes. Tonight is about reconnaissance, about planning, I remind myself.

If I attack Marcus like this, when bloodlust rides him and with no preparation, I’ll die. I know I will. I’ve never killed a vampire as old him. Marcus just murdered one of his kind with barely any effort.

He’s an apex predator.

I have four stakes, two daggers, and some homemade fire globes, but they’ll only slow him down and piss him off.

No magic. A middling amount of strength and speed for a slayer.

Everything I’ve learned for the past decade has been on my own, and the key to my ability to win fights is determination and planning.

The edge of my silver-clad ash stake digs into my palm as I wrestle with myself. His back is to me as he drags the body behind a dumpster. We are bound to hide our existence from humans, a rule Marcus has nearly broken with his very public fight.

I watch him move, all liquid joints and a fighter’s grace. I’ll need to fight him at the house, where I’m strongest. Where I have my family’s weapons and spells I can ignite with my blood.

Another shallow breath brings me his scent.

It’s woodsy and spicy. Not…unpleasant. I guess. I take another quick sniff. It reminds me of how they describe male cologne on perfume commercials, like a scent could be more than air and molecules.

Something strange thrums in my chest. Marcus straightens from where he’s riffling through the pockets of the corpse. His head whips around.

I go cold.

He can’t see me behind the truck, but it feels like he can.

I am eight years old again and trembling, in a car much smaller than my truck, covered in a scratchy, musty blanket.

The edge of the seat digs into my shoulder.

I whimper, just to cover the sounds of killing.

I know I shouldn’t peek, but the screams are so loud, and I’m so scared that hiding doesn’t feel like a real option. I have to know what I’m facing.

The edge of my stake digging in to my palm pulls me out of the memory. I draw a raspy breath and force my throat to loosen.

Marcus’s eyes seem to burn silver in the night.

That thrumming strengthens, vibrating my ribs. It draws my eyes to the breadth of his chest and the soft pout of his lower lip. I have a brief impulse to walk forward and touch him, and I grit my teeth against it.

Maybe it’s my magic. I shake my head. Right. After twenty years of trying, now it appears? Be real, Leah. My family’s magic died with my great-aunt and my parents. I have my stakes and my wits and my ability to plan, and that’s it. This is a vampire’s power to draw prey, nothing more.

I fumble for my pocket and pull out a bag of lemon verbena. I shake it on the ground to hide my scent.

After what feels like far too long with his gaze locked on my truck, Marcus disappears into the night. I rise from my crouch, my legs nearly numb, and jog forward over the gravel. I drop to my hands and knees and hunt for something I can take. Anything.

There.

A piece of leather. It looks like it came off the jacket he was wearing. I slip it into my pocket and jog numbly back to the truck.

I downshift out of the parking lot, then upshift for the highway and the long drive home. I have to kill him, even if it feels impossible.