Reborn to Bite (Vampire Shadows Book 1) (3 page)

Sabine stopped and glared at him, fighting not to stare at the throbbing pulse in his neck that seemed to dance a staccato ballet just for her. It reminded her of a little lighthouse, showing the way home.

She shook herself and looked up to his eyes. She ground her teeth, wondering which of the million things she wanted to say would be the most appropriate, before one spilled from her mouth. "Are you fucking mental?"

"I got evicted. I guess one too many checks got lost in the mail," he said. Then he smiled and cooed at her, reaching a hand toward her dirty hair. "Baby, I think we're meant for each other."

Sabine dodged his hand and licked her fangs as they descended again. She had just gotten them back in, too. She thought about how if anyone on the planet deserved to be bitten by a vampire, it was the two-timing leech standing between her and her apartment door. She'd need some time to find the vampires who'd taken her life – not once, but twice – and she'd need a regular donor while she searched. She'd need to learn what she could do. Chad's lack of morality and conscience meant he'd make a great training dummy. Best of all, nobody would come looking for him. People tended to avoid him. Chad didn't deserve the trust she had once given him. She smiled, thinking that he deserved the monster she had become. Maybe he
was
meant for her.

"You know what Chad? I think you may have a point."

Or two…

"Happy Anniversary, Fangs," Sabine said, holding a glass of Tequila to the predawn sky.

Fangs, the rooftop cat, watched her with curious eyes. He purred from his spot next to her on the lounge chair as she downed the shot of tequila.

She shrugged at him. "What? Haven't you ever seen a vampire drink tequila before?"

Fangs flicked his tail in accusation.

"I know what you're thinking," Sabine said, even though she didn't really know. Other people's thoughts constantly intruded, but the little kitty never added to their noise. She pointed at the glass. "This is what got me in trouble last year to begin with."

She tossed the glass off the side of the building and rubbed Fangs behind the ear. The alley behind the building echoed with the tiny sound of a shot glass breaking more than a hundred feet below them. Sabine stretched and listened to the sounds of the city in its predawn slumber, under a foggy blanket of fading stars. She adjusted the lounge chair's throw pillows and settled in, taking a deep breath that she didn't need for the sole purpose of a dramatic sigh. The dazzling panorama of the San Francisco skyline from her rooftop sanctuary did wonders to calm her mood.

Another failed night hunting vampires. One year had passed. The night before Halloween again, and she had yet to find any other vampires. Regina and Michaela had disappeared. Doug lived in this building, at least according to the PI she'd hired. She'd moved in six months before becoming a vampire, in hopes of sighting him, but he'd disappeared too. She'd convinced the landlord to let her pay Doug’s rent after someone came and reported that Doug wouldn't be back, even though all his stuff was still there.

Her Louis Vuitton boots hadn't shown up on eBay or Craigslist, either.

She'd been watching.

Fangs assumed his standard position on her lap, probably because she was wearing black jeans and he could leave fur graffiti. He reached a lazy paw over her orange "BATTITUDE" T-shirt and flexed his claws. His warmth felt good, even though the pitter-pat of his little heartbeat had her own fangs stretching in her mouth. She mentally chastised her thirst.
The cat is off limits
.

Sabine sighed. If it weren't for all the negatives to being a blood-sucking monster, she'd be a huge fan of her current state. Drinking blood wasn't so bad once she got used to it. But she'd had to box all her silver jewelry because it burned her skin. Crosses made her eyes itch. She'd taken to wearing a gold one, since she could. She used to love garlic, but now even the smell of it made her nose tickle. She couldn't keep down solid food, and she missed food almost as much as the sunlight she hadn't seen all year. Whenever dawn came close, she'd feel like lead weights were hauling her down.

How many mornings had she gone to bed wishing she could be normal again? She found solace in nightly vampire hunts, dressed in skimpy outfits under a trench coat with a short Japanese
wakizashi
sword hidden in a sewn-in sheath in the spine. Starting every night with Kendo lessons helped her prepare to use the sword against another vampire. She'd had it silver-plated with some of the money from her inheritance, and knew from trying it on her finger that its damage healed human-slow. "VanHelsing451" on the vampire hunter forums had found vampires in Oakland and Sausalito, but she got an intensely weird feeling when she tried to cross the bridges.

Most nights she got propositioned by sleazeballs. She had finally learned some mind control tricks by practicing on Chad, which helped when she ended up biting the ones who wouldn't take "no" for an answer to their propositioning, or the ones that tried to mug her.

Feed
, the thirst whispered.

Shut up and die.

She stared at the skyline before lifting the Tequila bottle in salute. Dawn would come soon, and vampires would be tucked away for the night. She should be too, but depression and frustration gnawed at her. The tequila burned as she drank it, adding to the half bottle in her gut already. Her body tolerated the liquid as "non-blood" that didn't satisfy the thirst, but other than that it had no effect. Her mother had been a drunk. Sabine had been headed that way herself after her parents died. Then she had decided to sober up and find Doug.

"Eighteen months sober!" She smiled. Chalk up another good thing about being a vampire.

She lifted Fangs off and got up. Tossing her long dark-brown hair aside, she gazed over the side of the building to contemplate the drop. She rested her chin on her forearms and tipped the last bottle from her liquor collection to watch it fall to the alley below. It crashed in the empty dumpster, joining the shot glass. She'd start her second year as a vampire with a clean slate.

A divot in the alley's asphalt, bearing an uncanny resemblance to a negative of her face, mocked her from beside the dumpster.

Somebody really needs to fix that.
Turning away from the ledge, she called out to her former boyfriend. "Chad!"

Her blond minion scampered over the pipes and ducts from the spot where she'd left him by the roof access door. "Ooh la la! What's a gorgeous babe like you doing up here?"

She shook her head. Part of her regretted using him for memory wipe practice so many times. "Do you remember anything about the last year? About living with me?"

"I lived with you?"

Sabine breathed a sigh of relief. She could read his thoughts, and knew the last year was a blur to him. After discovering how many times he'd cheated on her, and the truth behind his lies, she had only a smidgeon of remorse for fucking up his mind.

"No, Chad. You lived with Karma. She can be a real bitch. But now you're going to say goodbye, go find a job, and forget I ever existed, 'kay?"

"Okay, bye!" Chad smiled and climbed back over the pipes.

Sabine listened to him leave the rooftop, trot down the flights of stairs and walk out the building, whistling as he went. Gotta love vampire hearing. Sometimes.

Feed.

Sabine ignored the cramp tying her stomach in a knot.
You're a shitty companion, you know that?

Tires squealed on the pavement a few blocks away, and a car engine revved, getting closer. Predawn was too early to be rushing to get someplace. Even the stockbrokers weren't up yet.

A car screeched to a stop below, sounding like it was on her street.

Sabine rested back on her pillows. Her ears twitched at the sound of footsteps in the stairwell a dozen stories below. A pair of men's shoes pounding up the stairs in a hurry was definitely not normal at oh-dark-thirty in the morning. None of the residents of this building would have the energy to take the stairs two at a time. A dragging sound accompanied the footsteps.

Was someone coming for her?

A thrill ran through her body. Maybe it was a vampire! She jumped to her feet, wishing she had her sword. Her gear was back in her apartment, so she'd have to rely on her fists.

The roof access stairwell door opened. The muffled sound of pleading, and elevated heartbeats came from the other side of the roof.

Sabine sighed. Heartbeats meant not vampires. She couldn't catch a break.

A deep voice interrupted her thoughts. "Shut up. You had your chance to play ball. Now you're going to see what happens when you defy us."

Curiosity got the better of Sabine, and she tiptoed along the ledge of the roof, circling around to the front of the stairwell to get a look at the intruders in her sanctuary. She watched as a tall man with broad shoulders pushed a gagged man with tied hands toward the front of the building. Was this poor guy going to get executed? She couldn't just let that happen.

She hopped down to the flat roof, her boots crunching on the small gravel. "Hey guys, what'cha doin'?" Maybe they were play-acting. It was the morning of Halloween, after all.

The big guy turned and pulled a huge pistol from a shoulder holster under his jacket. "Get over here, bitch."

Sabine raised her hands. "If you shoot me, don't you think someone will hear the noise?"

The goon shook his head and released the other man to point at the little canister on the tip of the pistol. "Silencer, stupid. Now get your ass over here."

Sabine strolled toward them, a smile playing on her face. She made sure to keep her lips closed so the goon wouldn't see her fangs.

"You're mighty casual about having a gun pointed at you."

Sabine shrugged. Telling him that this was the forty-third time someone had pulled a gun on her this year might sound too much like bragging. Should she tell him that she was running out of space in her closet for old shoe boxes filled with guns? He probably wouldn't care.

The man with the gag turned to face Sabine. The predawn sky reflected in his eyes as they tried to adjust to the dark and see her. His expression was one of concern, and then shock as their gazes met.

Sabine's heart thumped in her chest. "Oh my God! Dougie?" She clasped a hand over her mouth, and stared in shock. He was no longer the bleach-blond dorky kid she had last seen at High School Grad Night. His hair was darker, almost brown, and he was leaner and stronger. He had transformed into a man.

Her heart thumped again.

Doug's deep blue eyes danced between her and the rooftop door, pleading. Did he want her to run? She couldn't hear his thoughts. That was so unusual that it shocked her for a moment. The goon's thoughts were clear as day. This human named Doug would die, so the pack's existence would remain secret. The
werewolf
pack. She stepped closer, and Doug shook his head no.

The goon smelled of musk and woodlands, and his smile showed very sharp looking teeth. They looked like an animal's. The guy grabbed Sabine's left wrist, feeling smug.

She couldn't use mind control with Doug watching, so she'd have to do this the hard way. She moved with the speed of thought.
Grab arm, twist. Glide under. Pull up. His feet leave the ground.
She heard the hammer click and the puff of the silencer, and felt a bullet pass too close to her as the goon rotated through the air.
Twist him forward to land face-down, almost two full rotations in the air.
She pounced on his back as he hit the rooftop. She wedged a knee against him and twisted his arm up until the joint popped.
There. A normal human could have done that, right?

The goon tried to free the gun trapped under his body. Sabine punched him in the nerve at his elbow, numbing his arm.

Doug took off his gag and popped the zip-tie holding his wrists with a quick movement against his hips. He lowered himself so he could get a better look at Sabine, eyes wide. "Sabine? What do you think you're doing?"

The goon nodded, rubbing his face against the rocky tar paper covering the roof. "Listen to the Doc,
Sabine
."

She speared Doug with a glare, then looked away when she realized her fangs would show when she spoke. Her hair formed a dark wavy curtain around her face. "You don't like the idea of being rescued by a girl?"

The goon tried to toss Sabine off, but she punched him in the temple. His head was a few inches off the surface of the roof, so the force of her punch made his skull bounce off the surface. He groaned into unconsciousness. A drop of blood oozed from his head, and Sabine took a deep breath as she savored the call of the plasma dinner bell. With a growl, she fought back the blood lust.

Doug wrung his hands as he stood, not seeing the fangs or Sabine's fully dilated eyes. "It's not that, damn it! Tony here works for some very bad guys. If they find out you did this, you'll be in worse shit than I am!"

Sabine rolled Tony over and grabbed his gun. With the silencer, it was the size of her forearm. She wondered if Tony was compensating for something.

The smell of Tony's blood intoxicated her. So wild. So different. Like untamed wilderness.

Feed!

She wavered, dizzy from fighting the thirst. She looked away from Doug while trying to retract her fangs. Did he know they were werewolves? "I don't get it. Why are you in deep shit with bad guys, Doug?"

Doug looked down at Tony and then out over the city. He shook his head and shrugged. "It's a long story, and we don't have any time. Tony's partner will come looking for him in a few minutes when I don't end up on the pavement down there."

Sabine shrugged, looking at the glow on the horizon across the bay. It would be dawn soon, and she could feel the old familiar lethargy competing with her thirst. Sabine sensed Tony's consciousness returning, and she released a little of her newest discovery. The dark energy at her core – the source of her vampiric glamour power – burst out and forced Tony to sleep.

"Did you feel that?" Doug asked.

Sabine almost choked, and turned to him. Had he felt her power? She'd used too much energy again. She could never get the right amount. Doug was searching the horizon in every direction, so he hadn't figured out it had come from her. She chose to ignore him and frisked the werewolf. She took out his wallet and read the driver's license so Doug wouldn't know how she knew more about Tony than she should.

"Tony Diamato from Daly City," she read. She put the driver's license and wallet back where she'd found them. She stood and looked Doug over in the dim predawn light. "Let's go inside. Maybe I can help."