Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
Justice and protection were hard work.
The thought burrowed in and stayed with her while Claire sat at yet another bar in yet another overstimulating human club.
The music was especially loud, bass pulsing against her earplugs.
All her senses demanded that she get out of here, away from the warm humans who often broke a sweat as they danced.
Twice tonight, someone had bumped into her. But she couldn’t leave.
She’d already caught the wrong man’s eye.
He’d introduced himself as Eric. He’d bought her a drink after she’d declined his offer, so she hadn’t touched it, partly to see what he’d do. Eric had laughed it off, but the laughter didn’t reach his eyes.
When he said, “No worries, I’m a nice guy,” the slight tension around his mouth gave away his lie, but human eyesight wouldn’t have caught it.
Claire agreed when he suggested going for a drive. His eyes held an uncommon sharpness, rapt on her every move, so she tempered her tipsiness act with more care than usual as they walked to his car.
“It’s nicer out here,” she said. “Kind of loud in there.”
“Exactly,” Eric said.
She slid into the passenger seat and set her purse on the floor.
By the time he got in behind the wheel, he was telegraphing his intentions with the direction of a glance, the unconscious twitch of his hand toward his feet.
Not to mention Claire’s hearing could pick up the low hum of the object he’d hidden on the floor beside the pedals.
Human civilians often assumed a stun gun was the best way to subdue a vampire or wolf. Most of them didn’t know a vampire would require half a dozen simultaneous shocks to go down. A wolf, at least double that. But this guy wasn’t intending to subdue a vampire.
The comfort of rage took over her whole body, but she couldn’t let it out, not yet. First she had to let Eric shock her. Had to capture it on the body cam. It would hurt, but she’d be fine. Unlike the human woman he thought she was.
“Could we go to the park?” she said. “It’s only five minutes from here, and it’s so nice at night.”
“I’ve got a better idea. Let me show you.” He reached down to the floor and came back up with the gun leveled straight at her.
“No,” she said for the camera, though consent would hardly be an issue with this case, and then, before she could form another thought, he pulled the trigger, and the dart sank into her skin just below her neck, lodging against her left collarbone.
Heat and pain. Burning her skin. Turning her brain into a fireball.
He hadn’t released the trigger.
Claire grabbed the barb, yanked it out of her, and threw it back at him. It bounced off his shirt onto the floor, attached by wire to the gun. Mouth falling open, he dropped the gun, and Claire picked it up. She crushed it in her hand, showed him the pieces, then let them fall.
“I said no, Eric.”
“What…? Who…? How…?”
“If you give it some thought, I bet you can answer all those questions for yourself.” She retrieved zip-ties from her purse, bound him to the steering wheel, and tossed his keys out the door, into the overgrowth at the edge of the parking lot.
“I didn’t know you were a vampire,” he said, as if offending her were the worst thing he’d done tonight.
“Of course not. You only assault human women.”
“You’d better let me go. This is false imprisonment.”
She gave him the most exaggerated, bored eye roll she could muster while her collarbone continued to burn and sting. “You must be a real novice at this if you think defending myself is going to get me in trouble.”
“I’m not a novice!” he snapped.
She stared at him, only partly acting. She’d never recorded such a clear admission before. In another instant he realized what he said, and his mouth curved in the smile that didn’t find his eyes, that flattened them instead. Claire could only hope the camera captured this too.
“I think that’s a wrap,” she said.
“What?”
She got to work on her normal procedure with the camera’s drive—gloves on, gaudy pin removed, drive ejected and placed in manila envelope.
Eric jerked his hands against the steering wheel.
Then he spit on her. Most of the saliva landed on her bare forearm above her glove.
She held his gaze as she pressed the envelope flap to her arm and used the moisture to seal the envelope.
“I was going to tell you to lick this,” she said. “Never mind.”
He tried to lunge at her, but she exited the car, envelope in hand.
This one didn’t feel safe to leave anywhere near the assailant.
He might start beeping the horn, get someone to free him before the police could arrive.
Purse slung over her shoulder, Claire strode down the sidewalk until she was out of his sightline. Then she pulled out her phone.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
“Hi, it’s your friendly neighborhood vampire. There’s a guy zip-tied to his steering wheel in the parking lot of Luxe Lounge. He’s in a dark-blue Honda, plate number WIV-904. His name is Eric, and he attempted to assault me about five minutes ago.”
“Okay, ma’am, and are you in a safe place now?”
“I’m fine. You’ll find the body cam footage of the attempted assault in a sealed manila envelope in the FedEx box across the street.” She dug a pen out of her purse as she walked. “I’ll write ‘Police’ on it.”
“I have a car en route now, ma’am. It would be great if you’d wait for the officer to arrive, if you’d give him a statement.”
The way she said it… “You’ve talked to me before.”
“I have,” the dispatcher said.
“Then you know I’m already gone. Thanks for the work you do.”
After a pause, the female voice came a little more quietly. “Right back at you.”
Claire hung up and went into full-speed mode.
She wrote on the envelope, darted across the street, deposited it into the drop-off box.
Then she darted back to the club, straight past Eric’s car.
He never saw her. He was trying to bite through the zip-ties, apparently determined not to beep the horn for help.
In the next second she was inside her own car, which she’d parked in the employee lot behind the building.
She took the narrow driveway that snaked behind two restaurants before opening onto the main road.
Most of the streetlights along the route were out, and she passed not a single car or pedestrian.
A few miles from home, she surprised herself by pulling into the empty, well-lit lot of the library.
She put the car in park and sat idle, leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes.
She had brought down one more of them. Maybe saved his future victims. Satisfaction tugged her mouth into a smile, but then it pulled again, this time to hold back tears.
She was lonely.
She wanted to put the car back in drive and go see her boyfriend. Kiss him, let him hold her, listen to a good album on his sound system, listen to him play their song on his piano.
She had to stop this. She wasn’t lonely. She was independent.
She dug into an inner pocket of her purse for the contact lens holder and pinched them from her eyes. So much better. She tugged off the wig, then glanced at the dashboard clock. After one in the morning.
Her phone buzzed in her purse, and she fished it out and gave a little sigh.
Had he somehow sensed her mood from across town?
Her thumb was about to accept the call, but…
no. She couldn’t talk to Tai right now. Not without spilling everything.
When the call went to voicemail, a notification popped up.
This was his second call in an hour. And this time, he left a message.
“Claire, it’s me. We need to talk. Please, tonight, any time you get this, I’ll be home, and we need to talk.”
Home. Yes. But he sounded…off.
She started driving, not toward her home but his. Meanwhile she called him and set her phone into the middle console.
“Claire.”
Yeah, definitely not okay. “I got your voicemail. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I just… Are you okay?”
He really had known somehow. “I’m fine, but I guess I’m kind of lonely tonight. Why did you say we need to talk?”
“It’s…a lot. Could I come over?”
“No, I’d rather… Could I come to you? You said you’re home, and I’m already out.”
“I’m here. Come to me.”
Come to me. How she longed to. In every way. Home to him, with him, forever. Bloodbound forever.
What if tonight was the night? If the big topic was his epiphany, showing him how strong and safe he was, making him ready to seal their centuries?
Already on the way, she reached his condo in about ten minutes.
When she hit the buzzer for the top floor—his floor—his voice came through the intercom next to the locked doors within two seconds.
“Claire?”
“It’s me.”
The buzzer made her flinch as always, its volume set for human ears. The door unlocked. Claire crossed the lobby to the elevator, then entered the six-digit passcode for Tai’s floor. In half a minute, it opened, and she stepped into Tai’s foyer…where Tai stood waiting.
He’d been in the shower recently. His hair was barely damp, still tousled from a towel-drying. He was barefoot in black sweatpants and a maple-brown hoodie adorned with the words jukebox the ghost in a swirly font.
Before she could take another step, Tai darted to her side and tipped her chin with one gentle finger. He reached toward the torn skin at her collarbone, his fingers stopping in time to hover above the wound.
“What is this?”
“It’s nothing.”
The denial came out of habit. She knew he’d press for an answer.
She wouldn’t have come to him like this if she weren’t ready to tell him.
For the first time, the secret began to ache inside her, clawing to come out.
Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe tonight wasn’t about becoming bloodbound to the man she loved.
Maybe it was about trusting that man with her final, sharpest piece.