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I was gaining on her and, before I realized it, had caught up. Grabbing her by the arm, I whirled her around to face me. She snarled. My enemy. My friend. The mirror of what I could become.
“Oh Sassy, I’m so sorry. But I promised. You’d hate who you’ve become, if you were stil in there.” And even as she clawed at me, leaving one long scratch down my face, I brought the stake down on her heart, piercing the Chanel suit, piercing the flesh, driving it deep into her. What started as a bloodstain was fol owed in seconds by dust and ashes as she let out one long shriek and vanished before my eyes into a smal brown stain against the snow. I knelt beside the pile of ashes.
“What was life has crumbled. What was form, now fal s away. Mortal chains unbind and the soul is lifted free. May you find your way to the ancestors. May you find your path to the gods. May your bravery and courage be remembered in song and story. May your parents be proud, and may your children carry your birthright. Sleep, and wander no more.”
Our prayer for the dead. We’d had to say it far more than we ever wanted to the past year. But now Sassy was with her ancestors, and, hopeful y, her daughter, whom she’d mourned al these years. Tears slid down my cheeks, and I dashed them away. The Sassy I knew would have handed me one of her crimson handkerchiefs to dry my eyes and not make a mess on my clothing. The Sassy I knew would have. . .
“Thank you, Menol y . . .” The voice trailed on the wind as it crossed past me. I whirled to find myself facing a faint figure, translucent against the snow.
“What . . . Sassy?” She was there, large as life, but pale and misty. I noticed that her hair was a bril iant blond, and she looked younger. A little girl stood by her side, holding her hand, and on the girl’s other side, Janet—as a young woman, vibrant and smiling. The child had Sassy’s nose and eyes.
“Oh, Sassy . . . you found them both.”
Sassy tilted her head to the side. “Thank you,” she said again, her voice a whisper on the breeze. “I can go now. I can leave. And look—” She opened her mouth to smile. No fangs. The vampire within her was gone, destroyed by death.
Smiling through my tears, I pushed to my feet and raised my fingers to my lips, blowing her a kiss. She caught it, then slowly turned and, hand in hand with Janet and her little girl, walked away, vanishing into oblivion. Where she’d been standing lay a neatly folded linen handkerchief, crimson red, with a bloodred rose across it.
I picked both up, pressing the handkerchief to my lips. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, and tucked it in my pocket.
I silently returned to the house and tidied up, tossing the broken furniture. Then, flipping through the address book on her writing desk, I looked up the name of her lawyer. He knew she was a vampire, and—like most of us who kept property—she’d provided for the possibility of her being staked.
I put in a quick cal to him, fil ed him in on the circumstances, and asked him to see that Janet was given a decent burial, and if he would cal me when it was scheduled. It wasn’t against the law for a vampire to kil another vampire, so I had nothing to worry about concerning Sassy’s death.
Her name would be stricken from the vampire rosters the government kept, if she had registered, and that would be that.
He thanked me, took my number, and hung up.
Looking around one last time, I let out a long breath and then softly locked the door and drove back to the bar. It was done. I’d kil ed a friend. I’d also kil ed a monster primed to take on the world. As far as nights go, this one ranked right up there on the suckometer.
I entered the bar through the back. I was covered with dust and blood and stil had a few wounds from the fight with Sassy that were healing up. They’d vanish soon, unlike the scars Dredge had left on me before I died.
Heading for my office, I intended to wash up and then change before heading out to see how Derrick was doing. What with the early rising thanks to the sun setting earlier, even though I’d been through the haunting, talked to Wade, and staked Sassy, it was stil only a few minutes past eleven and the bar wouldn’t close until two A.M. But as I opened the back door, I heard a commotion out front. The gates wouldn’t help when we were open.
With a groan—couldn’t I have one moment without incident tonight?—I pushed along the hal and entered the main bar. Derrick was standing there with the shotgun out, pointed at a group of about five leather-clad bikers. Chrysandra had the telephone in hand, eyeing Viper, one of the bikers who had been a customer off and on over the past year. He was pointing a Natchez bowie knife at her heart, barely touching her chest. The blade itself was over eleven inches long and it gleamed, sharp and ready to pierce.
“I see we have a standoff,” I said, coming up beside Derrick. No doubt they had a few stakes in their packs, just waiting for the likes of me. “Whatcha doing, Viper? Why are you threatening my waitress?”
His gaze flickered toward me. “Menol y . . . It’s you we want. Come along quietly and everyone else earns a get-out-of-jail-free card.”
Oh joy, just what I needed. A Buffy-wannabe in a biker suit.
“Can’t we have a civil conversation? I haven’t done a damned thing to bother you. You’ve sat at my counter, drinking booze and talking to me, and yet tonight you come into my bar and threaten me, my staff, and my patrons? What’s wrong with this picture, dude?”
He gave me a once-over, and I saw exactly what he thought of vampires. At least now. Good ol’
boys were transparent as hel , whether they wore overal s or leather and chains. Viper and his buddies had no doubt heard the news and decided to help the cops by kil ing every vampire in the area.
“How many of us are you planning on dusting? How many do you think you can possibly get through before we get to you? You can get away with murdering us, but when we hurt you, at least self-defense wil play into our trial. You have no excuse. Here I am, running a legitimate business that’s bringing in money for the city, and you boys just can’t wait to spoil things.”
I leaped up to land on the bar. Staring them down, I gave Chrysandra a faint shake of the head.
Stand still, don’t try anything. I hoped she caught my meaning. “What happened? You just hear the news that there’s a vampire serial kil er out there—a male, I might add—and decide that every vamp has to pay?”
He shuffled his feet, and color began to rise in his cheeks.
“You’re a regular reader of the Seattle Tattler, too. Am I right? You hooked up with Andy Gambit and Taggart Jones?”
Mr. Bowie Knife blinked. “Those freaks? No. They don’t like us, either.”
