Page 27
Chapter 14
Luca
Rosa is covered in blood, very little of it hers. Her hair is drenched in it, plastered to her skull, her face streaked with red. Her top is torn, one sneaker is gone, and she’s coated in the tell-tale dust of the dead vamps she’s dispatched in the last hour. Sparks are flying from her fingertips, and she’s screaming her fury at the world, eyes wild, trembling with adrenalin after the fight. She is breathtaking. Majestic. Perfect.
I’m watching her from the back of the van, admiring the way the rising sun glints from her blood-slicked skin, the ferocious glow of her green eyes. “Here I am!” she yells, spinning slowly around. “Right here. Come and get me, you coward. You want me? Try and take me, asshole!”
Fuck. I could watch this all day long. I need to remember this sight the next time I’m worried about her. Rosa can be just as much of a monster as I can.
“Who is she talking to, boss?” Matteo asks me. He’s sheltering from the daylight too, and we’re all looking as filthy and battered as her.
“At a guess? Her grandfather. The Grand Ball Sack.”
“He ain’t here.”
“I know that, pal, she’s just … venting, I guess.”
Donatella lets out a little laugh. She’s picking blood from beneath her bright pink nails and has a black eye. “She’s hoping she’s being watched,” she says. “That he has the place under surveillance. She’s not venting. She’s challenging him.”
The thought hadn’t even occurred to me. In fairness, I have been busy. This whole fucked-up mission has been nonstop. We got here just in time, pulling up at the edge of the woods, piling out of the van as the killing crew was getting started. We were too late to help one family, and I know that will live with Rosa for a long time. A mom, dad, two teens, all slaughtered. The vamps responsible were still there, laughing and posing the bodies, taking pictures with their fucking phones.
They lasted maybe three seconds. She blazed right in, a whirl of roundhouse kicks and fury, stakes to the heart before they even had time to realize what was happening.
She had tears in her bright eyes as she finished them, but not for them. For the ones we didn’t save. She looked up, lips set and determined. “We were too late for this family. We were sitting on our asses in Brooklyn when we could have been on our way.”
She sounded angry, and I know it was at herself too. I was about to give her a pep talk when she visibly pulled herself together and added, “Fuck. I can feel bad about that later. Now, I just need to kill them all …”
We did exactly that. We found them scattered in pairs or threes, making their way through back yards, emerging from the woods and scaling fences, too stupid and blind with bloodlust to notice us approaching. Rosa and Donna were a fucking sight to behold, working together in a way that blew my mind. I knew they’d been trained to fight since they were kids, and I’ve been on the receiving end of Rosa’s technique myself on more than one occasion. But seeing them both, a duet of death dancing through the night? Fuck. Unbelievable. Matteo and I left them to it, running along to the next house, seeing two assholes breaking a window at the back.
Matteo grabbed the first one, staked him without comment. I tore the head from the second, blood spurting from his neck like a fountain. As both went up into dust, he grinned at me. “Hey boss? Is it wrong that I enjoyed watching the Seers kick vampire ass … it was, fuck, almost elegant? Is that the right word? Like they’re prima ballerinas stomping all over these dickheads …”
“Yeah. I know what you mean,” I replied, dusting myself down. “Just don’t spend too much time appreciating Rosa’s elegance, or I might get the wrong idea. It wouldn’t end well. Come on, next one down. There’s one on the roof.”
Along we went, all four of us working our way through the big homes that backed onto the woods. There were maybe thirty vamps, but all of them shared the one single brain cell, and none of them was expecting any resistance. They were wolves descending on lambs, pumped up and stupid, never even considering the possibility that they would end up as the prey. Cosca vamps, like Seers, are disciplined, strong, skilled. Trained like soldiers. This bunch of losers? They didn’t stand a chance—just like the sleeping families inside those homes if their plan had worked. We were quick, efficient, fighting when we needed to but ending them as quickly as we could. It was messy but relatively quiet, nipping the massacre in the bud. Before long dawn was coming, and the humans were starting to wake.
Most of them stayed safe, snoozing in their beds, unaware of the fact that they’d so narrowly avoided death. Only one old man saw us, emerging out onto his back lawn in his PJs and a John Deere baseball cap, holding a mug of coffee. He gazed up at the sky, stretching out a sore back as part of his early morning routine. He’d stopped in his tracks, frozen to the spot, just as Donna held back a vamp’s arms and Rosa plunged a stake into his heart. Blood, dust, death.
The old guy opened his mouth, about to yell, but Matteo got there first. Clamped his huge hand over his lips, held him still. Rosa came over, her top dark with blood, the stake still in her hands. “It’s okay,” she whispered, making eye contact with him. “We’re the good guys, honest.”
He hadn’t believed her, and in the end, I dealt with it. Told him he’d seen nothing, that he was going back to bed, that his back wasn’t going to give him any more trouble. He was going to have another few hours’ sleep, the best he’d had for years. Off he went, a little confused but none the worse for wear. He’ll never know how close to death he came.
After that, Matteo and I galloped back to the van. The sun was starting to emerge, and neither of us felt like joining the Dead Vamp Club. Donna and Rosa handled some of the cleanup, and now we are here. Waiting for her to finish venting, or challenging, or whatever the fuck she is doing.
“Isn’t it amazing,” Donna pipes up, “that all these people are slumbering away, probably worrying about things like the bills or their bosses or their grades. They had no clue how close they came to dying tonight. No clue what kind of creatures they share this planet with.”
“Apart from the family that died,” Rosa says, clambering into the van and sliding the door shut behind her. “They found out, didn’t they?”
Her voice is low and grim, and I know she won’t forget this loss for a long time, if ever. She might be covered in gore, she might have helped kill dozens of vamps tonight, and she might be one of the most lethal women I’ve ever met, but her heart is huge, tender, as easily bruised as a ripe peach. I stroke a blood-soaked strand of hair back from her face. “It is sad, but we saved many, cara mia. And I’m hopeful it will be the same story elsewhere.”
She nods, leans in to kiss me. It’s hot and heavy and leaves me predictably hard. “At least I didn’t set you on fire this time,” she says, before climbing through to the driver’s seat. The van has UV-proof glass, but it’s still best that Matteo and I stay in the back and let them drive. All it takes is one mistake, one crack in the windscreen, and we’re in trouble. Donna joins her, and I spot Matteo ogling her ass as she moves. I raise an eyebrow at him, and he shrugs in a “What ya gonna do?” way.
We clean ourselves up a little—baby wipes, the vampire Mafia’s best friend—
and Donatella puts the radio on as we drive. She turns it up to top volume when that “Walking on Sunshine” song plays. The two women sing along full tilt to the chorus, and Matteo even joins in.
“Really?” I ask.
“Yeah? Who doesn’t love Katrina and the Waves, boss?”
