Unlocked after all, because monthly inspections were due any day now. Another case of Beatrice paying attention to minutiae other people considered boring, though there was nobody nearby to be amazed at her halfass criminal prowess.
The learning curves for supervillains and monster hunters were no doubt steeply parallel. Bea choked on a small, forlorn laugh. No matter what else, she’d accomplished this much. Her brother was avenged and she’d removed a great evil from the world.
Hadn’t she?
The stairwell was dark as the grave and cold as fuck, though she was distinctly relieved to get out of the wind. Bea’s palms slipped on chilly metal banister as she felt her way down, so feverish the thought of crouching to rest her forehead against it sounded wonderful.
“Keep moving,” she mumbled, echoing Jared’s voice in her head. “Just keep moving, that’s the thing.”
The stake had gone in cleanly. All the way through, though? Or could you just wiggle it into the pericardium and that was good enough? The ribs were the bitch, really. She could make a little song about that—a blues number, a lone guitar giving a chop or two behind her while she wailed about practice sending big sharpened dowels into sides of half-frozen beef.
You must have done it right. Maybe he’ll poof once the sun rises—does that door face east? Worry about that later.
Descent took far longer than she ever could have imagined, the lightless well full of murmuring echoes. Bea counted stairs and landings as best she could, feeling along the wall side of every turn with her right foot. Eventually she nearly tripped over the backpack, and the thought that she might break her own fool neck falling in the darkness was so grimly hilarious she crouched, clinging to the banister, and broke into a fit of sobbing laughter which did not echo only because she buried her mouth in the crook of her elbow, muffling the sound.
She’d practiced changing with her eyes closed, but it was a different thing entirely to perform while shivering, listening to the wind rattling a fire door several flights above, and expecting at any moment the blare of alarms—or worse.
You’re half-naked in a stairwell after murdering something that looks like a man, dare I ask what could be worse?
“Easy, you smug sonofabitch,” Bea whispered. “That door opening.”
The trouble was having to know stinking little green men in loincloths and centuries-old bloodsuckers with dark eyes, sandy hair, and a penchant for three-piece suits existed. Once those became facts, all sorts of other things started to sound plausible, from Sasquatch to aliens, Hookhand to staircases in the woods. Bea buttoned her jeans and let out a shaky sigh of relief. Her knee stung—she’d scraped it somehow, either in landing on the elevator floor or tripping over a monster’s legs.
Really, the way the guy dressed was painful. Too young to be so retro, though if you didn’t know he was a bloodsucking monster she supposed it would have been kind of charming except for that haircut. Even the conversation had been nearly flawless—he was a helluva flirt, though with a laughably East Coast prep-boy accent, and Bea had been surprised at her own wisecracks, the lingering eye contact.
Her college friends would be proud; Sami and Felicia had given her endless lessons in how attractive self-confidence could be, how she didn’t have to shoot herself in the foot by assuming no guy would ever want Jared Dunlevy’s silly little sister. She’d done both her former besties proud, catching a monster’s eye, pretending to be fascinated, reeling him in.
All while the cold iron of hatred burned her chest and her heart triphammered, seeing that unmistakable profile again. Even if she hadn’t glimpsed him crouching over Jared’s body in person, she’d gone over the footage from the camera mounted on that post outside the old deteriorating stable so often his face was burned into memory. He was a little different in living color, but that just made it easier to pretend, to play the game.
Girl, you’re one hell of an actress. He bought it...a little too well, but he bought it.
That was the problem. It had gone without a hitch, almost as if he understood the plan. Every conversational turn, every shy smile, every half-simulated gulp of domestic white wine served because the pre-Halloween party was for business networking instead of real fun, all had been perfectly answered. Like a well-rehearsed dance number, as a matter of fact.
She tied the hightop black sneakers by touch, stuffed the Saratravas into the backpack atop the crumpled dress, and followed them with the bra. If she was going to be arrested or chased down the stairs by an angry bloodsucking thing, she would at least die unconstrained.
Get moving. She closed her eyes, breathed a quick Hail Mary fulla grace like Don was always doing, and stood, settling backpack straps over her shoulders. Her thumb found a black plastic switch; she pressed it, heard the click loud and clear. When she opened one eye, cautiously, she found the flashlight worked.
The single small beam of light did wonders for her nerves. Even the far-above fire door’s rattling was somehow muted, driven back by the fact that she could now see painted concrete, the rough antislip strips on the stairs, the dimensions of the landing she had thankfully not fallen off.
You’ve got this far, you’re doing great. Let’s go.
“Get this circus rolling,” she whispered, and set off down the stairs. Only forty more floors to go, then she could slip along a short corridor to another set of elevators—for internal business-tenant travel, and bound to be far less luxurious than the one she’d allowed herself to be ‘persuaded’ into when the monster said, Would you like to see something special?
Well, she had. In that the night was an unqualified success, amen and yes ma’am, as Jared might say.
Bea gasped in great jagged gulps, black rubber waterproof flashlight in one aching fist, her other hand wanting to convulsively squeeze the banister every few steps. She forced her fingertips to glide, counted to twenty over and over inside her head, and struggled to get her lungs under control so she wouldn’t be wheezing in the next elevator she had to endure. She felt a lot like throwing up.
But it was done.
CHAPTER 2
It had been many a mortal year since Lukas had felt even mildly...interested. The hawthorn stake was a thing of beauty, and she had applied it with no little force. He eased the sharpened, oiled point free, inhaling softly as ageless flesh reknit, and hoped he had done well.
It would have been churlish to laugh, either at the quaintness of the method or the obvious enthusiasm with which she deployed it. The lady wished him dead; very well, he would temporarily play along. A gift only he could grant, the first of many.
He had almost lost control as her body slithered free of his, almost moved to protest the separation. Had listened to her fumbling passage, held himself perfectly still and unbreathing, body and mind both in abeyance. A hunter’s trick, waiting until certain of prey’s temporary escape.
Anticipating a reunion was bittersweet, for she would be startled at his reappearance—possibly enough to do herself some harm. Yet it had to happen soon, for he was uneasy at letting her wander. She had achieved her goal, very well.
