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For the time being, at least, he seemed content to believe that I was a more than equal trade for the girl he’d been chasing. Who could blame him? As far as he knew, she and I were both warm-blooded girls out in the park alone, waiting to be somebody’s perfect victim. I may not
have been bathed in the rich smell of fear, and my outfit was a far cry from her provocative dress, but when it came time for a blood-crazed vampire to feed, she and I might as well have been the same. All a vampire needed was a neck and a pulse.
The major problem with my current situation was that my gun was tucked into the back of my jeans, which meant, as a result of my being pinned down, it was now being crushed into the small of my back.
I needed to get on top of him. Oh, if I only had a nickel for every time that had been my solution for things.
His teeth grazed my collarbone, slicing the skin and jarring me out of my inappropriate musings. As luck would have it my intuition had been correct—he was a newborn and he was sloppy. A full-grown vampire would have tried to latch on at the first sight of blood, but this one didn’t even seem aware of what he’d done. Unfortunately, the open wound also meant there was the smell of fresh plasma sitting right under his nose, and his ignorance was short-lived.
He stopped snarling and, in a moment of bewildered stupidity, stared at the wound he had made as if he didn’t know how it had gotten there.
I took what might be the only opportunity I’d get and used his unguarded distraction to my advantage by punching him across his cheek as hard as my body would allow. That hit, if inflicted on a grown human male, would have broken his teeth out the other side of his face and turned the cartilage in his nose into pulp. As it was I heard the vampire’s jaw crack, and he sat back off me, blinking with mute surprise.
He snarled and made to dive at me again, but I’d had all the time I needed. My gun was drawn, armed and pressed against his forehead before he even had a chance to cross the miniscule distance between us. I scrambled to my feet, the gun still trained on him, not wanting to remain on the ground if this went south.
The vampire had to cross his eyes to get a look at what I had fixed on him, and it would have been comical except for what followed. He gave a short, hoarse laugh, a sound that should be uniquely human if not for the icy edge to it.
“Do you know what I am, little girl?”
To anyone else, this dismissal would have been unnerving. I wasn’t too concerned with his bravado, however. I was more interested in his reaction to my weapon. He wasn’t frightened of my gun in the least, and that would prove to be his undoing. It was why I used a gun in the first place—vampires didn’t see them as a serious threat and let their guard down. All it takes is turning one smug vampire’s head into a pulpy red mass before the rest realize how effective a gun can be for killing almost anything.
“Enlighten me. ” I smiled with emphasized innocence, widening my brown eyes for a doe-eyed look that the vamps tended to love.
The truth was, as much as I’d like to kill him, I technically couldn’t. But if it came down to it, I wanted to be able to face the shitstorm that would follow with as much useful information as possible. Since he was so new, there was a chance I might be able to pump him for a little information before I was forced to pull the trigger.
“I am your darkest nightmare. I am your death. ”
Wow, someone had definitely given him the Introduction to Sounding Like a Poncy Asshole seminar before sending him out into the world. I rolled my eyes at his speech, which reeked like an old Lugosi movie.
“You’re a fucking baby,” I said, not even a hint of awed, cowering fear in my words.
That got his attention.
“I will rip your head off and bathe in your still-hot blood. ” He didn’t sound as arrogant this time, but I had to give him credit for his continued efforts.
“No. You won’t. ” I said it as matter-of-factly as one might say New York is a big city. “You’re what? Three days old, maybe? You’re not even a blip. You’re nothing. For all the vampire world cares, you might as well still have a pulse. Talk as big as you want, but I’m not the one who should be scared. ”
He stood up and I tensed, my finger tightening on the trigger a fraction of an inch. His new position brought him to almost a foot taller than me, but I didn’t lower my weapon, and I didn’t back down. He saw now that I was well aware of what he was. Most people didn’t even believe in vampires, let alone utter their name with such nonchalance. He raised a brow at me and waited.
“Why don’t you ask me what I am?” I pressed the gun into his forehead harder.
He scoffed. “You are my dinner. Or perhaps I will turn you, bind you to me and have you every day until you wished you were dead. ”
It was my turn to make a noise of disgusted annoyance and roll my eyes again. If he didn’t stop with this ridiculous, ostentatious performance, I was going to strain something.
“You wouldn’t know how to turn me even if you wanted to. You’re so young, you wouldn’t be able to stop. You’d drink too much and kill me before you could figure out which of your own arteries to open. ” The sun would be up in a few hours, and though the night was still on my side, I didn’t particularly want to let this drag on much longer for either of us. “Now go ahead…ask who I am. ”
He ignored me and tried to bat the gun away. I brought my knee up with a hard thrust and caught him in the groin, which was still excruciating even if you were undead, and replaced the gun at his temple when he collapsed. “Ask. ”
“Bitch. ”
I smacked him with the gun. “Ask. ”
The part coming next was my favorite. It was a moment six years and many, many dead vampires in the making, and I never got tired of it.
“Who are you?” His voice was strained, though he would have his full strength back in an instant.
“My name is Secret McQueen. ”
