“Well.” To give Huske credit, he shifted from fear to schmooze in less than a heartbeat, backing up a few creaking sandal-steps. His hand twitched, as if he wanted to wipe it on his expensive navy fleece vest and stopped just in time. “Yeah. So, you… wow. Okay, so you see the biologicals are tricky, but we’ve got some very promising work. What I had in mind was a partnership.”
The kind I thought I had with my finder?Simone listened to their pulses, all galloping along. One guy had a congenital heart murmur, the sound a whooshing rasp; another was clearly on steroids, a metallic edge to the high pops of his cardiac muscle slamming shut. It was amazing what you could tell just from that single sound, a pump working from before birth, day in day out until the ghost gave up through accident, injury, disease.
How long would her own significantly slower pulse last? “I’m not big on team projects.” Simone suddenly wanted to be out of this empty, echoing ballroom full of nervous men—especially the ones with rifles. Were they vamp hunters? She wasfairlysure anything up to the experimental fragmenting ammunition wouldn’t be a problem, but if this guy had indeed done his research, he might also have supplied his backup with some fancy bullets.
She could get through the door behind her in a twinkling, or maybe right through the glass wall to her right. It had to be hardened in some way, like skyscraper-sheathing, and the drop afterward might be uncomfortable.
Reallyuncomfortable.
“It’s like this.” Huske stuck his thumbs in the vest’s side pockets, a habitual pose from his publicity pictures. “The same work you’re doing with Barry here, but justslightlydifferent. We need research subjects.”
Is this dumbass for real?“What, you want me to go in with a clipboard and interview them? It doesn’t work that way. Vamps are fast, they’re mean, and…” She tried to think of John interacting with this guy, and drew a complete blank along with the urge to laugh.
Nervously. At length, and very close to screaming.
“Well, yeah, and they’re cautious. No human team can get near ’em the way you do—believe me, we’ve tried for a few years now. Anyway, all you’d have to do is bring them to a predetermined point, and thenpow!” Now Huske’s hands jerked up, spreading, another familiar public-relations mannerism. “We’ve got some techniques for, like, getting them relaxed. We take some samples, administer some tests. It’ll move us along like lightning.”
He was warming to his presentation, his pulse easing. No change in the security detail, but that was to be expected. The only wrong note was Barry, sweating freely, jittering, eyes popped and gaze roving. He looked like a man undergoing either forced detox or a nightmare; of everyone in the room he knewexactlywhat a vamp could do, and how dangerous it was being so close to one.
Even her.
“You want to use me as bait?” It wasn’t that different than her usual operation, sure.
But Simone still didn’t like the idea.
“Oh, no, no. Justencouragethem to cooperate, you see? Look, you know first-hand how stunning the physical effects are, right? Strength, speed, cell regeneration, and that’s just for starters. It’s the next step in human evolution.” Huske was really getting into his rhythm; Simone stared, wondering if her ears had gone haywire. “It’s all right there in the folklore. Blood is life, and all that—and imagine the patents. What if it’s not aninfection, but aperfection?”
He’s nuts.He was looking to profit off the monsters after all. It was almost depressing to have her suspicions brought to life. Nobody was ever disappointed by expecting the worst, after all—make that the second and final piece of wisdom she agreed with her ex-husband about.
Simone had to close her mouth with a snap before actual words would form. “You know what vamps can do. You must’ve seen it—Barry, you’ve shown him the files, haven’t you?”
“Vamps!” Blinking rapidly, Huske beamed at her. “I love it. Man, some of my friends, they refuse to believe in the weird shit. My head PR girl Shelly, she’s always telling me not to talk about things going bump in the night. I used to think people had a right to know, right? But they don’t want to. Sheep, right? Just sheeple.”
I’ve had about enough of this. It hadn’t yet been an hour, but oh well. “Well, this is certainly… an idea.” She hated having to use the placating, plastered-on smile; at least the old vampire didn’t yammer on like a fucking car salesman. “Thanks, I’ll think about it. If I decide to take the job, I’ll let Barry know.”
She turned, disliking the slight grab of her bootsoles against the floor’s protective coating, and headed for the door. Her back itched, her attention settling on the rifles.
“Wait.” Clearly, Huske was used to a very different reaction, everyone nodding and telling him how handsome, smart, wonderful he was. “No, just wait a second. Barry, for Chrissake, tell her to wait.”
“Janie?” Barry, sounding strangled. “Janie,please.”
Oh, hell. She’d thought of her finder as an anomaly—the single, solitary creature who might be called a ‘friend’ once she walked away from her old life. He’d been the one to pay her first bounty, posted on a dark web forum holding what she thought was a little less bullshit than the rest; developing enough mutual trust for video chat had been a long, careful two-year dance. He’d been her only real, unfeigned human contact since the night she’d been attacked.
Simone wasn’t quite proud of the bounties—they were, after all, murder—but to suspect that maybe the real money hadn’t been in getting rid of rampaging nighttime monsters but instead trackingherwas still a punch to the gut.
A whisper of cloth, as if Huske was windmilling his arms. Maybe an obscene gesture at her retreating back, tale as old as time, a man unhappy at rejection. A curiouspoplike a champagne cork bursting free, and the strange thought that the billionaire was about to throw a predawn party just summed up the sheer unreality of the past few days.
Even for her own nighttime existence populated with crazy shit, this was fuckingabsurd.
A spear of ice jabbed deep into her back. It dilated, a burning cramp; Simone sucked in a breath to cuss—how had any of the humans gotten close enough to stab her?—before a giant seizure raced up her spine, turned her arms and legs to noodles, and the room wheeled around her in eerie slow motion.
What. The hell.
A bump, a metallic squawk-jangle. She was lifted, head lolling, and the cramps wereawful. Worst was the way her throat was a pinhole, only allowing a single straw’s worth of passage to air she suddenly, desperately needed. A slow, horrid thumping inside her ribs, watery and ragged, was definitely her own heartbeat.
She was still wondering what the fuck had happened when there was a whoosh, a mechanical chime—elevator, she realized dimly—and another rattling. Huske’s face, sheened with heavy glimmering moisture, swam into view. The edges of her vision wavered and blurred; the burning was so bad, a raging fever almost like during the initial transition to full vamp, every part of her afire while bones creak-cracked and moved around, nerves screaming relentlessly, and the thirst, the awful throatcut scorching?—
Wait. No thirst, something else, what is this?