Northern Bites (Aurora Sky: Vampire Hunter, Vol. 2)
Read Northern Bites (Aurora Sky: Vampire Hunter, Vol. 2) Online
Authors: Nikki Jefford
Aurora Sky
Vampire Hunter
Vol. 2, Northern Bites
By Nikki Jefford
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or the author has used them fictitiously.
Copyright © 2013 Nikki Jefford
All rights reserved
Cover design by ©Phatpuppyart.com - Claudia McKinney
Models photographed by Teresa Yeh Photography
Cover typography by Bookish Brunette Designs
Cover models: Gabriella and Alyssa Dearest
Copy Edited by Marcie Turner and Kara Malinczak
Special thanks to beta readers S.M. Boyce, Thomas Winship, and Wynne Channing
Table of Contents
Always Leave Them Wanting More
1
If fate were kind the only thing I’d have to kill tonight is time.
Our target home, one of two, had yet to draw their curtains, lighting the inside like an aquarium as the last traces of daylight receded into the shadows.
The switch from day to dusk happened in a matter of seconds, at least in Alaska, turning everything black and white.
My tennis shoes crunched over
the salted walkway, grinding down pieces so big they felt like small pebbles under my feet. Tennis shoes in winter—not really the best way to keep my toes toasty. Neither was the short pleather jacket, but my parka and winter boots felt too heavy on a mission.
There
was no way our targets lived here. A vamp house with skylights…about as likely as the red, white, and pink Valentine’s Day flag hanging off the garage.
I wanted to ram a dagger
through the limp heart as I passed the stupid flag on the march to the front door. Even if I didn’t eschew vandalism, I couldn’t have. Not since Agent Melcher revoked my right to bear arms.
Melcher’s idea of easing Dante and I back into active duty
came down to assigning us each an informant/stand-in assassin. Our duty, our
only
duty, tonight was to do the poisoning (i.e. get bit) then step aside and let our partner go in for the kill.
“No way, I’m all about follow up,”
Dante said the moment he heard we were on probation.
“You’re lucky we’re
sending you back in the field,” Agent Crist had snapped.
She and Melcher weren’t
very happy with how Dante’s “training” mission with me in Fairbanks resulted in the death of an informant and human, followed by the vampire Renard and his cohorts tracking us down in Anchorage. Of course, Dante missed all that while the Natives in Kotzebue honored his slaying of a rabid vampire with a blanket toss and an all-you-can-eat moose buffet. Dante returned with a bear claw strung from a leather cord around his neck, puffed up like Popeye on spinach until Agents Crist and Melcher lit into him.
Melcher called the incident “
too close for comfort.”
I still didn’t
see the harm in keeping a knife hidden in case things went south. I’d been out of combat training for a week while I recovered from the multiple stabbings Renard’s crony inflicted over my body.
Great way to start my second week at a new school.
Strep throat
. That’s what Melcher’s doctor’s note said.
More like stabbed throat.
If we ended up with the vamp house, I wouldn’t mind stepping aside and letting my
partner
take the beating. To add insult to injury, Melcher assigned Valerie to me and Noel to Dante.
We hadn’t spoken since the moment
we climbed inside Valerie’s red Honda Civic.
Once
our addresses checked out we were free to part ways. The sooner the better.
Two nights
ago, a pizza delivery boy headed out on his route and never returned. The next morning a jogger found his body at Westchester Lagoon, naked and drained. Melcher felt certain the culprit resided at one of the five homes on the boy’s delivery route. When the police questioned them, every resident said they never received their order. The manager at Midnight Pie confirmed that every household on the route had called in to complain that their pizza never arrived.
Dante and Noel were assigned three
of the five addresses, Valerie and I the remaining two. The manager at Midnight Pie could only guess which residence the driver headed to first, though he believed the police’s theory that the boy had been killed in a carjacking before ever reaching the first home.
The
home in front of me did not emit evil. From ten feet away I saw a colorful welcome mat and floral wreath on the door.
Valerie
flipped her head from side to side, sending strawberry-brown waves over the shoulders of her pea coat. She looked older without her usual wench’s costume.
W
e walked in sync, neither of us wanting to follow the other’s lead. As we bumped shoulders to get to the porch, I spoke my first words. “There’s no way this is a vamp house.”
“Could be a cover. You’d be surprised the
lengths some vamps will go to hide their activities. I’ve seen it all.” Valerie lifted her nose. “I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you.”
“Congratulations,” I said, reaching for the doorbell.
Bing, bong
.
A woman in her late thirties came to the door smiling until she noticed the pamphlet in my hand.
“Good evening,” I said cheerfully. “We’re here to talk to you about Christ our Savior.”
“Oh, umm. This really isn’t a good time. We’re about to eat.”
“Is there a better time we could come back?” Valerie asked, suddenly all smiles.
“Umm
…”
My relief at not stumbling upon a vamp house outweighed my embarrassment at interrupting a family’s dinner with our phony solicitation.
Valerie and I stared at the woman with twin smiles.
“I don’t think so, but thanks for stopping by.” The woman quickly closed the door.
“God bless you,” Valerie said sweetly. She rolled her eyes the moment the door slammed shut. “Maybe Dante and Noel are having better luck.”
“They haven’t called,” I said, heading back to Valerie’s
car.
She quickly matched my strides, sprinting for the driver’s side as though we were racing for it. At least Valerie respected the speed limit
, unlike Dante. Thinking about him made me snort. I had a hard time picturing him sitting back while petite Noel rammed a knife in a vamp’s heart. Then again, he’d left me in Fairbanks to do just that without even sticking around. That’s what had gotten us into this mess to begin with.
The Honda’s headlights slipped
across the mailboxes in the next neighborhood. Porch lights dotted the homes up and down the street. All but one house tucked back in the shadows of the yard’s prickly spruce trees.
Valerie came to a stop a
long the curb, three houses from our last address. She stuck her face in front of the review mirror and dabbed gloss on her rouged lips.
I might have kept my mouth shut but then she started rubbing and smacking her lips together.
The thought of those lips all over Fane’s made me want to shove the tube of gloss down her throat. It was bad enough that she blackmailed me into breaking up with him, but Valerie had taken it one step further, reinstating herself as Fane’s bitch the moment I stepped aside…or so my source told me. Fane neither confirmed nor denied this the last time we were together. I might have felt guilty over the way it all went down if he hadn’t moved on so quickly.
“We’re on a mission, not a date,” I snapped.
Valerie’s lips
smacked
as she gave her reflection one last pucker. She shot me a sly look.
“Maybe I have a date afterwards.”
Turns out Melcher had been wise to ban me from carrying a weapon. The temptation to do bodily harm to the vixen could strike me at any moment. Like right now.
For a brief second I hoped we’
d get the vamp house. I wouldn’t mind watching Valerie get roughed up a bit.
“You’re despicable,” I said.
Valerie smiled with her now shiny lips. “All’s fair in love and war.”
“I could report you to Melcher.”
Valerie smirked. “You wouldn’t risk it. You care about Fane too much.”
“More than you, obviously.”
“Get over yourself, Aurora. I’d never rat out Fane. We have too much…
history
.”
As my fingers stretched down my leg, I had to remind myself yet again that I was unarmed.
“You dated him when you knew from the beginning it was forbidden,” I said. “I didn’t realize he was a vampire until later.”