soul!” Megan exploded, swinging toward Darkheart. “She’s no match for either Lady Jasmine or her first lieutenant!”
“Oh, right, nobody’s worthy of going up against the bad guys except you.” I loaded my tone with sarcasm. “You seem to have forgotten that I’ve dusted more than a few vamps in my time, Meggypoo, including some of Zena’s toughest—” I stopped suddenly, a terrible suspicion filling me. “First lieutenant?” I asked in a small voice.
“One of cadre of Revolutionary War soldiers Jasmine turned the last time she was in Maplesburg, over two hundred years ago,” Dmitri butted in. “Man is charming, handsome and irresistible, but is big mistake to let that fool you.”
His gaze went glacier-cold. “Heath Lockridge is one of most dangerous vampyrs in existence. We must kill him soon as possible.”
Chapter 4
I nearly blew it right then and there. “What total merde, to borrow a phrase of Kat’s,” I said with a disbelieving laugh. “Heath Lockridge, one of the most dangerous vamps in existence? The man’s a dream come true—polite, gorgeous, and that adorable kind-of-English accent he has is a whole lot sexier than some I could mention.” I glanced scornfully in Dmitri’s direction before returning my attention to Megan and Kat. “Sorry, ladies, you’ve obviously made a huge mistake. Even if you’re right and Lady Jasmine’s in Maplesburg, there’s no way Heath’s her first lieutenant.”
“And how would you know?” Megan asked in the new I’m-a-Daughter-so-don’t-fuck-with-me tone of voice she’d been using way too often lately.
I gave her a pitying smile. “Because I—” I stopped, choking back the met him part of my sentence and realizing I’d just walked into a trap.
Although I suppose if you’re going with the definition of a trap being something that’s set by someone, it wasn’t actually a trap, since a few seconds ago Meg and Kat hadn’t had a clue that I’d actually made the acquaintance of the dishy Heath Lockridge. In other words, I guess you could say it was more like me opening my big mouth without thinking first, which is something I’ve been doing from about the age of eleven months, apparently. According to Grammie, the day her three granddaughters learned to talk, Megan’s first word was “Mama,” Kat spoke a moment later by uttering “Da-Da” and I went redfaced with rage at the attention being lavished on my sisters and bellowed “Ka-Ka!” at the top of my lungs. And that’s pretty much how I’ve been ever since, Meg and Kat being such tough acts to compete with.
But this time my talk-first-think-later impulse had potentially direr results than usual, like possibly leading Megan and her ever-handy stake to Heath. I had to go into damage-control mode, and fast.
“Because I’m a patriot,” I said icily. “I refuse to believe that anyone noble enough to fight for our country’s independence would have switched their allegiance to some titled English vamp-tramp.”
“Nice save, sweetie,” Kat said, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. “But how do you know this Heath Lockridge is gorgeous and polite? Come to that, how do you know how he sounds when he speaks?”
She had me there. I had no alternative but to use my most infallible weapon, the one that always defeats Meg and Kat—my dumb-Tash act. I rolled my eyes in exasperation. “Hello, you saw the movie when I did, right? The one where all the Colonials were sexy and good-looking and wore loose, white shirts unbuttoned down to their six-pack abs, and all the Britishers were haughty and really mean and sweated a lot in red wool? Do you think Holly-wood just makes up that stuff?”
The suspicion in Kat’s gaze was replaced with amusement. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Megan’s grip on her stake relax, and when she spoke her tone was tinged with exasperation. “News-flash, brat—the movies aren’t real life. And just because Lockridge fought on the right side when he was human doesn’t mean all bets weren’t off once he became undead, courtesy of Jasmine.” She turned to Darkheart. “I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. If Kat or I could pass ourselves off as part of the vamp community and infiltrate Lady Jasmine’s inner circle to find out where her daytime lair is, we would, but we can’t ask Tash to. We’ll just have to keep hoping we run across a vamp informant who can tell us what we need to know.”
Kat nodded. “Meanwhile, I think I should attempt a Heal on her. We all agree this situation’s gone far enough, no?” Her gaze swept my apartment, taking in the haphazard clutter of shoes, the cream Chanel jacket festooned with dust bunnies that Megan had slung over the back of a chair, the half-devoured box of Mallomars on my kitchenette counter.
“Heal will not work,” declared Darkheart decisively. “Is only possible if Natashya has completely turned into vampyr, and that is not yet case. Da, Granddaughter?” he asked, his salt-and-pepper brows drawing together as he turned his eagle gaze on me. “Liz says she saw you yesterday at mall. You still have no trouble with daylight?”
“None at all,” I said swiftly, if not entirely truth-fully, sending a silent vote of thanks to Liz Dixon, a fifty-something local art gallery owner who’d become my grandfather’s girlfriend when she’d aided us in the fight against Zena (note to self: must try to see Darkheart having a girlfriend as healthy and positive instead of ooky). Liz had obviously neglected to tell him that when she’d seen me I’d been wearing enormous D&G sunglasses that covered half my face, a flowing silk scarf tied Jackie Kennedy-style around my head and neck and a long-sleeved Prada blouse with linen slacks. Not exactly bundled up in multiple layers like the derelict Brooklyn had called Crazy Joe, but I’d certainly made sure that no part of my skin was exposed to the light. Merely as a precaution, of course, and the slight tingle I’d felt as I’d hurried from my car’s window-tinted interior to the mall’s entrance doors had probably been my imagination.
“You’d tell us if the situation started to change, wouldn’t you, brat?” Megan asked, giving me a hard stare. “You haven’t always been all that forth-coming in the past, but this isn’t like the time you were seeing that hot guy with the Harley and hiding it from Kat and me, or when you tried to change your biology grade on your report card. We need to know how far along Vamp Avenue you’ve come, because at some point Kat is going to have to attempt a Heal on you.” She’d switched from her Daughter tone of voice to her big sister one. In the mood I was in, they were both equally irritating.
“I get it, all right?” I said waspishly. “Gawd, Meg, give it a rest. I know I should have told you I was starting to have cravings and I’m sorry you had to find out the way you did, but it’s not like you caught me with my fangs sunk into someone’s neck. I was buying from a legitimate butcher, for heaven’s sake. In some parts of the world they eat blood sausage on a regular basis, so I don’t see that my little snack tonight was such a big deal.”
“Is true. In Russia is called krvavica and many people like taste. My mother used to make often for breakfast.” Dmitri had been silent for so long I’d almost forgotten him. I gave him a surprised glance, although I wasn’t totally sure whether my surprise was over the fact that he was defending me or because I couldn’t imagine him as a little boy with a mother. His blue gaze darkened. “Still, was blood,” he said, his chiseled-from-permafrost features tightening in distaste. “To me was disgusting.”
“Really? Mikhail loves krvavica,” Megan said thinly.
“Is because he is oboroten,” Dmitri replied with a shrug of his linebacker shoulders that briefly stretched his black T-shirt over the tectonic plates of muscle that made up his torso. “As you say in America, a manimal, da?”
This
