Night Huntress 07 - This Side of the Grave (9 page)

Not an unbeatable opponent, but not one to half-ass my efforts with, either. I set my elbow on the table, not needing to do any more prep because my halter top didn’t have sleeves. All around us, bets were being placed. It amused me to hear my low odds.

The vampire’s hand curled around mine as he placed his arm on the table, having to bend a little due to his greater height. His grip was firm but not punishing, raising my opinion of him a notch. A schmuck would’ve ground my fingers in his fist trying to make a point.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Verses shoulder his way to the front of the other onlookers. He was probably wishing he hadn’t let us in after all.

“Count of three?” I suggested to the vampire.

Blue eyes tinged with emerald met mine.
“Why not?”

Calls of “Show her what you’re made of, Nitro!” and “Knock her on her pretty ass!” rang out when I began to count, never taking my eyes from my opponent. As soon as the word
three
left my lips, that previously steady grip tightened and Nitro hammered his hand downward, going for the quick win with a blast of inhuman strength.

Except our arms stayed in their same vertical position.
Nitro’s biceps bulged almost as much as his gaze when his efforts didn’t move my arm so much as an inch. I flashed him a smile as I held my position, mentally counting to ten before I began to edge his arm in a slow, steady arc downward. After all, I didn’t want to embarrass him by slamming his hand on the table before he’d even realized what happened. It wasn’t Nitro’s fault he had no idea I’d been born with unusual strength, or that I still had some of
Bones’s
power in me from drinking his blood. Poor burly vampire didn’t stand a chance.

Murmurs rose from the crowd, drowning out even the music as Nitro’s arm inched closer to the table. Lines formed in his face and a harsh grunt escaped him as he put more effort into holding me off. I let him raise his arm up a few inches—the male ego was such a
fragile
thing, after all—before sending it down onto the table with a thunk hard enough to crack the Formica.

We’ll have to pay for that before we leave
, I thought amidst the burst of surprised exclamations from the watchers around us.

Nitro stared at his arm in disbelief. Then his gaze swung back up to me even as I disentangled my grip and shook the temporary numbness out of my hand. He’d really gone all out those last few seconds.

“How the
hell
did you get to be so strong?” he demanded. “You can’t be
more’n
a year undead!”

“Good guess,” I remarked. “It’ll be a year this fall, actually, but I’ll tell you a secret—I had vampire strength long before that.”

His brows drew together in a frown. Then comprehension dawned and Nitro laughed.
“Red hair, beautiful, and badass.
You
must be the Reaper.”

I grinned. “Call me Cat.”

He glanced at Bones next, drawing the obvious connection as to who he had to be. Bones didn’t notice; he was too busy collecting his winnings. Comments like “Ah, that’s splendid,” and “Better luck next time, lads” came from him. By the time he sauntered over, he had a thick stack of bills in his hands. Most vampires were slow on catching what they considered the “new” credit card trend and still carried cash.

“Leave it to you to find a way to make a profit off this,” I noted in amusement.

His mouth curled. “Fortune favors the bold.”

Nitro shook his head as he looked back at us. “Guess it’s time for me to pay up, too.” Then he walked over to where his friends stood, pulling the reporter out from behind the wall of vampires. He gave him a light shove that nevertheless had him landing in an ungainly heap near my feet.

“All yours, Reaper,” he drawled.

I ticked my hand off my brow in a jaunty salute.
“Pleasure doing business with you, Nitro.”

That earned me a laugh. “Next time, I’ll know better than to fall for your innocent little female act.”

“Don’t feel bad, mate,” Bones replied. “She fooled me with the same thing the first time we met, right up until I saw her kill a vampire seven times her age.”

Then Bones went over to the nearest bar and slapped his bundle of cash onto it. “Drinks are on me until this runs out,” he announced, to a rousing round of applause. I caught his wink to Verses next and the ghoul’s wry shake of his head. It probably didn’t come close to making up for the damage we’d caused the last time we were here, but it was a start.

With another chuckle, Nitro and his group walked away to place their drink orders. Around us, the onlookers faded as people went back to dancing, drinking, or whatever it was they’d been doing before this all started. I looked down at the man who was slowly getting up from the floor, sandy-brown hair mussed from his earlier struggles.

Yep, this was who we’d come here for.

“Hi,
Timmie
,” I said in a low voice.

His head whipped up, revealing a face with five o’clock shadow on his jaw and faint lines around his eyes and mouth. He looked different from the gangly boy who’d been my neighbor seven years ago when I was a college student by day and a vampire hunter by night. In addition to the stubble on his face, the laugh lines, and his hair being longer, his frame had also filled out to a stockier, more muscular physique.
Getting older looks good on him
, I mused.

“How do you
… ?
” he began. Then his voice died away while his eyes widened.

“Cathy?” he managed. He looked me up and down, his shocked expression changing into a smile that wreathed his face. “Cathy! I
knew
you weren’t dead!”

Timmie
continued to stare at me with
a mixture of glee and disbelief. I smiled back, happy to see hints of the boy I’d been friends with amidst the differences in the man in front of me. When Tate told me
Timmie
was the troublesome reporter we needed to collect tonight, I’d been stunned, but pleased at the thought of seeing him again.

“I can’t believe it,”
Timmie
marveled. “You look
exactly
the same, except, uh, you didn’t use to dress like that before,” he added as goggled at my outfit. Then he made as if to hug me, but stopped when he noticed the man striding up to my side.

“You!”
Timmy burst out, losing the smile while he blanched. “God, Cathy, you’re still
with
him?”

I smothered a laugh at the incredulity in his tone.
“Yep.
Married him, too.”

Bones gave
Timmie
a grin that managed to be predatory even though he didn’t flash any fang. “She does indeed look very fetching, but if you continue with that particular line of thought, I’ll neuter you for real this time.”

Timmie’s
cheeks reddened. “I—I didn’t… I mean, I wouldn’t…” Then his eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute. You don’t look any different, either, except your hair’s dark now.
Neither
of you look a day older than the last time I saw you.”

Fear wafted from him as he looked back and forth between me and Bones, putting it all together with what he’d learned about this club. I watched him closely as I waited. The
Timmie
I’d known had been open-minded and kind, albeit ignorant about the undead like everyone else. How much of
who
he used to be was still left in the person in front of me? Had the years changed not just his appearance, but his tolerance as well?

“I’m right about all of it, aren’t I?” he asked at last, very softly. “Some of these people… they’re not human.”

“No, they’re not,” I answered in a steady tone.

His face paled even more as he looked around at the people by the nearest bar. On the surface, nothing about them looked different from patrons gathered around any other bar, especially since
Timmie
couldn’t see the handful of ghosts circling over the last seat on the left. But every so often, emerald would glint from a person’s gaze. Or someone would move with
a quickness
that
Timmie’s
subconscious would register even if his eyes couldn’t follow.

Finally his shoulders squared as he looked back at me and Bones. “You two aren’t human, either.”
A statement, not a question.

“No,” I said gently. “We’re not.”

He shook his head like he was trying to clear it. “Those guys, the ones who grabbed me… they were gonna eat me?”

No use lying about that, either.
“Oh yeah.
Definitely.”

He glanced at Bones. “But you won’t.”

Bones arched a brow as if disputing that. I elbowed him while I said, “No,
Timmie
, he won’t. Neither of us will hurt you.”

“Tim,” he replied, then gave me a wry smile. “No one’s called me
Timmie
in years.”

I smiled back. “Sure. And it’s Cat, by the way.”

“Cat.” That wry smile remained. “Guess it suits you better than Cathy.”

“No,” Bones said.

Timmie’s
—
Tim’s
—smile faded. I glanced at Bones in confusion. “No what? You think I look like a Cathy?”

“No to what he’s about to ask you,” Bones replied. “You already owe her for saving you from those other blokes. Don’t thank her by asking for another large favor.”

Tim clapped his arms around his head. “My God, you can really hear
… ?
Well, stop it!”

Bones laughed outright. I had to admit
Timmie
did look funny clutching his head, but I didn’t join in
Bones’s
chuckles.

“Try wrapping
tinfoil around your
nog
next, see
if that works better,” he suggested devilishly.

I gave Bones a sharp
look,
sorry he couldn’t read
my
mind anymore to hear my mental reprimand. “Stop it. I might have been tempted to do the same thing myself when I knew certain people could eavesdrop in my head.”

Tim let his arms down. “I don’t care what he says, you gotta help me,” he got out in a rush.

Bones rolled his eyes and then gave Tim a glare that would have struck most people mute out of terror. “Right thick, aren’t you? Let’s see if I can’t explain my position better outside.”

Off the premises, where violence was allowed? “Don’t even think about it,” I drew out warningly.

“Not for that,” he replied, though his mouth twitched in a way that said the thought
had
crossed his mind. “Believe me, Kitten, you’ll have wasted your time saving him before if others hear what he’s about to ask you.”

That didn’t sound promising. But I needed
Timmie
—dammit, Tim!—for something, too, so I’d hear out his request. Didn’t guarantee I’d agree to whatever he wanted, but I’d listen.

“Okay. Let’s go outside and talk.”

Timmie
gave Bones and me a speculative glance. “Before we go, I gotta know: If mind-reading abilities are real, there’s something else I wondered if fiction got right about vampires—”

“Ask me if I sparkle and I’ll kill you where you stand,” Bones cut him off with utmost seriousness.

“Not that.”
Timmie’s
mouth quirked before his expression became serious and, oddly, hopeful. “When I go back to my apartment, is it true that, uh, your kind can’t come inside?”

I hated to destroy his sense of safety, but believing that would only be dangerous for him.

“Sorry, that’s a myth. Vampires don’t need to be invited to go anywhere they want to.” I didn’t add that we’d already been in his apartment earlier, finding out from his roommate where
Timmie
would be tonight. Not that the young man remembered Bones and me questioning him once we’d given him a few flashes of our gaze, but I thought that was more information than
Timmie
could handle at the moment.

He was silent. “Shit,”
Timmie
said at last, with heartfelt emphasis.

I nodded. Sometimes, that word summed things up better than I ever could.

“Let’s go, before people start to wonder what we’re blathering on about,” Bones said, inclining his head toward the door.

We walked past the crowded parking lot toward the empty one ahead. It was far enough away from the real entrance of Bite that no one should be able to overhear us, aside from Tiny and Band-Aid, who still kept watch in their car. I couldn’t hear his thoughts, but
Timmie’s
scent was a mix of excitement, fear, and determination. Whatever he wanted to ask meant a great deal to him.

“Look, if your girlfriend vanished after sniffing around looking for proof about vampires, chances are she’s dead,” Bones stated once we reached the chain-link gate.

I winced at his bluntness.
Timmie
also looked shaken, but then he raised his chin. “Nadia’s not my girlfriend, and I don’t believe she’s dead. You don’t know her. She’s my best freelance reporter because she can charm
any
one into doing what she wants.”

Bones snorted. “I don’t care if she was Helen of Troy and Scheherazade combined, obviously someone caught her and wasn’t pleased about her snooping. The fact that she wasn’t sent back to you afterward with her memory erased and a new desire to quit reporting doesn’t bode well for her.”