The two men exchanged a look.
Death growled.
His sidekick interjected. “Remember, sire, she is more useful now than she is dead.”
I shot Death a smug smile, crossing my arms. “Ya hear that? Jeeves thinks I’m useful.”
I set my hands on my hips and tapped my foot. “Well? Are we taking a car, or a hellish carriage drawn by your demonic hell horses?”
4
The vampire was duly impressed by the limo, bouncing around and finding every secret compartment and button she could press. She seemed less like a bloodsucking monster and more like a hyper juvenile on her first joyride. I sat in the back with my legs crossed, one arm stretched along the seat. I never took my eyes off her. She resembled a scrappy urchin child, but I knew better than to be taken in by emotion or appearances. And I absolutely refused to succumb to her siren-like draw, no matter how it called to me.
People were all the same; vampires were worse. Full of hubris, drunk with power, and an unending hunger for death. That was my territory, and I wouldn’t stand for these creatures to interfere with the natural process of life or endanger souls.
Yet the sekhor seemed to have no designs to escape as she popped from seat to seat, landing on the side bench.
As the vampire pulled out a crystal glass by a decanter of scotch older than this city, she said matter-of-factly, “I’m hungry. If you turn around and drive east ten minutes, I know a sewer brimming with rats.”
In the seat across from her, Timothy dragged his attention away from his tablet. “Is that how you’ve been surviving?”
“Yeah.” She rolled the glass in her hand. “They do the trick in a pinch,” she mumbled with a grimace. Then she looked up at me from under her lashes and an electric current zinged through me. “What did you think? That I ate people?”
Timothy responded, while I continued to hold her gaze. “That is usually the case with sekhors.”
“I don’t know what the blood bag a sekhor is, but I’m not a monster.” There was defensiveness in her voice. We’d offended her.
Intriguing.
“Yes—well,” Timothy said, losing his composure for a moment. “No need. I will make the appropriate arrangements.”
She looked back down at the glass in her hands before returning it to the drink compartment. “So what do I call you?” she asked. “Death?”
“Yes,” I said without pause.
She snorted and pushed her long, stringy hair away from her face. “Yeah, no. How about I call you D? Short for Death?”
I forced breath out through my nose. “If you insist, you may call me Grim.”
“No need to get huffy, G,” she declared before turning to Timothy, who was doing his damnedest not to laugh. If he weren’t so valuable and we hadn’t known each other for almost as long as time itself, I would have let him know his humor displeased me.
“And you are?” she asked him.
My number two straightened. “You may call me Timothy.”
“So you’re what, like his secretary?” She hooked a thumb at me.
Timothy’s nose wrinkled. “I consider myself to be his aide.”
“Right, sorry,” she said, her finger finding the button to the window. “We don’t say secretary anymore, do we?” Her eyes met mine with the expression of a guilty child, and I knew she was considering pressing it.
If she thought she could escape through the open window of this limo, I’d be forced to change tactics to make sure she stayed where I wanted her. She wouldn’t like my methods. I was known to be punishing. Still, instead of saying anything, I waited to see what she would do.
Her finger slid away from the button, and she moved to the seat all the way at the other end of the limo as if finding something interesting over there.
“And what should we call you?” Timothy rolled a hand.
“I…” she faltered.
