Now or Never: Wizards of Nevermore (28 page)

She let go of me, then dropped to her knees next to my cot. “Something just whooshed by our tent.”

I leaned up on one elbow and stared at her sleepily. “Like ‘death on swift wings’? Ugh. You’re not gonna throw quotes from
The Mummy
at me, are you? I told you to knock that shit off.”

“You are the worst waker-upper ever,” she whispered harshly. “I’m telling you, someone is out there.”

“Okay, okay.” The real fear in her tone was almost like a cold dash of water to the face. Almost. I really was a bad waker-upper. I rolled off the cot on the other side, then reached under my pillow and took out my subcompact Beretta. It was loaded with thirteen 9 mm rounds.

“Sleeping with a loaded gun under your pillow?” she asked. “Really?”

“Relax. It has a manual safety and a decocker.”

She snorted. “A what?”

“Decocker,” I repeated. “It’s a lever that lets the hammer—”

“I don’t care.” She smirked. “I just wanted to see if you’d say it again.”

“I hate you,” I said, feeling surly. “Go get Tikka.”

“Or not.” Dove imperiously pointed a finger at me. “You shouldn’t name weaponry, you know that?”

“She already had the name.”

“Nor should guns have gender. Personalizing the—”

“Look, kid,” I interrupted. “Giving someone a dirty look doesn’t exactly have stopping power—not even one of your patented I-wish-you-were-dead specialties. Get the fucking rifle.”

“Whatever,” she hissed at me. Then she flopped to her belly and crawled toward the footlocker that housed the rifle and other, more precious gear. As she pulled out the weapon and the box of bullets, I glanced around. A single lantern cast a muted glow in our tent. Dove wouldn’t admit it, but she was scared of the dark. Why she was studying to be an archaeologist, a profession where exploring dark, cramped, and airless spaces was the norm, was beyond me.

As Miss Quiet as a Raging Storm rattled around trying to get the rifle loaded, I crept to the tent flap and peeked outside.

It only took a few seconds for my eyesight to adjust. The campfire had been doused, and the supplies put away. No one was prowling around. Still, it was ungodly quiet. The hair rose on the nape of my neck.

“Dove,” I whispered as I turned around.

I gasped.

A tall, lean man held Dove by the neck in one hand,
and the rifle in his other. How the hell had he gotten into the tent? He could’ve easily passed for one of my grad students, except he was dressed like fucking Indiana Jones, right down to the fedora and a faded leather duster. Seriously? We were getting jacked by a Harrison Ford wannabe?

He was too lithe to have the strength to hold my terrified assistant a foot off the ground, but he was doing it. He wasn’t even breaking a sweat.
What the—
I nearly pissed myself. He wasn’t even
breathing.
He was unnaturally pale, his eyes as dark as midnight. His black hair shone like a raven’s wing. When he smiled, he revealed a set of sharp, ugly fangs.

Okay. I probably should’ve considered Dove’s position on vampires with a little less skepticism. From my crouched position, I pointed the Beretta at his face.

“Vampire,” said Dove, her voice choked and her eyes wide. Fear emanated from her in waves. Or maybe that was me, because I was more terrified than I’d ever been in my life. And I’d once thrown down with a Kardashian for a Bottega Veneta leather handbag (in butterscotch cream, if you were wondering), and won.

“Put her down!”

“Or what?” he asked, his voice thick with an accent I couldn’t place. “She’s merely the appetizer. You, my fine Amazon, are the meal.”

“That’s the worse pick-up line I’ve ever heard.”

He grinned, and then he opened his mouth, showing
off those awful, sharp fangs, and jerked Dove downward, aiming for her neck. She tried to struggle, but it was like watching a ribbon wrestle with the wind.

Shit!
I lowered the gun and shot out his knees. The sharp crack of the pistol firing echoed in the tent even after the bullets thudded into his patellas.

He screamed in pain and outrage as he buckled, dropping Dove and the rifle. She grabbed Tikka, and hauled ass toward me.

“You have to remove his head,” she cried. “Sever it! Sever it!”

“These are bullets, not hacksaws,” I said as she scrambled behind me. “He’s down, all right?”

“Not for long. He’s the undead!” She wrestled with Tikka, then cursed. “It’s not even loaded. I couldn’t get the stupid bullets in before that asshole grabbed me.”

“I will rend your muscles from your bones,” said the dude, his gaze vitriolic. “You will die slowly as I feast upon you.”

“And you thought me quoting
The Mummy
was bad?” murmured Dove.

“Go get Ax,” I told Dove.

“The hell,” she said. “We have to find something that will cut through a big, fat, stupid, undead neck.”

“I’m not saying he’s
not
a vampire,” I said. Sweat dripped down my temple, but the gun I’d trained on No Knees didn’t waver. “But is decapitation really the way to go here?”

“The only way to kill a vampire is to take off his head or expose him to intense light. It says so in
Vampires Are Real!
”

“Oh, my God. That Theodora Monroe book? Really? That’s like taking advice from the Winchester brothers.”

“And you know exactly
what
about supernatural creatures?”

“Silence!” bellowed the vampire as he wobbled to his feet. His pants were shredded and bloody, but his knees were nearly knitted back together. “You are both imbeciles. And you talk too much.”

“Holy shit!” screamed Dove. “Holy fucking shit!”

I shot at him again, but he moved in a blur of motion. He was coming for us, so I shoved Dove to the side, and started shooting randomly. Yeah. That worked out well.

Then
I
was shoved to the side, and I flew backward, landing next to an outraged Dove. We watched, open-mouthed, as a huge black wolf leapt into the air, howling in triumph.

We both scrambled toward my cot and stayed at the edge of it. We couldn’t see the vampire, but it was obvious the wolf could. He landed on the bastard’s chest and knocked him to the ground. It was a short, brutal fight that ended when the animal tore out the vampire’s throat.

The undead version of Indiana Jones went limp. Blood pooled in the sand around the ravaged neck.

Dove and I looked at each other, then back at the scene that seemed right out of a horror movie.

As if a vampire and a supersized undead-killing wolf showing up in my tent wasn’t fantastical enough—and weren’t vampires supposed to take wolf form, or something? I was rusty on preternatural mythology—our black-furred rescuer then padded to a nearby space and morphed into a man.

It wasn’t like a transformation you might see on a late-night werewolf flick. It was sorta…magical, I suppose. His fur rippled into skin; his limbs stretched and plumped into human arms and legs. And long, silky black hair fell over his shoulders.

Also, he was naked.

Very, very naked.

He claimed one of my discarded T-shirts that was lying near the foot locker, and rubbed his face. I realized he was wiping off the vampire’s blood. Then he returned to the dead guy, and wrenched off the head. The fedora fell off and rolled toward Dove’s cot. The wolf tossed down the head next to its body.

Within seconds, the vampire parts turned to ash.

Dove and I shared a holy-shit-did-that-just-really-happen look.

“I call the duster,” said Dove in a strangled voice.

“That baby’s mine,” I said.

“Fine. I get the hat.”

“Whatever, Indiana.”

“Are you all right?” The man walked toward us, and stopped on the other side of the cot, his expression a mask of concern as he studied our faces. He had the most amazing jade green eyes. I didn’t even know eyes could be that color. He was gorgeous. Huge, muscled, beautiful. Well, except for the blood that streaked him from neck to…

“Is that real?” asked Dove in a reverent voice. “Because that’s the biggest dick I’ve ever seen.”

“He can hear you,” I said. Then in a low voice, I added, “Don’t you even think about taking dibs, you bitch.”

“Then you are okay,” he said drily. He grabbed the blanket from my cot and wrapped it around his waist. “My name is Drake.”

“Moira Jameson,” I said. “This is Dove.”

“
Just
Dove,” she said severely, as though to forestall any questions about a last name.

He inclined his head. “I must say, you handle yourselves very well. Not many humans are so…well, accepting of parakind.”

“Parakind?”

“A general term. But in this case, I speak of the
droch fola
,” he said, pointing at the pile of ash that was currently messing up my new duster. “And me, of course. The werewolf.”

“Just another day in the desert,” I said. I was starting to get the shakes. See, I was great at crisis-in-the-moment. But the aftershocks got me every time.

“Ah.” He tilted his head, and offered a wicked grin. “It’s really too bad.”

“What is?” I asked.

“You will not remember anything that happened tonight.” He gave me a long look, one that sparkled with regret. “And you will not remember me.”