Vampires Dead Ahead

THREE


SOME PEOPLE ARE LIKE SLINKIES: NOT REALLY GOOD FOR ANYTHING, BUT THEY STILL BRING A SMILE TO YOUR FACE WHEN YOU PUSH THEM DOWN A FLIGHT OF STAIRS.


“What are Slinkies?” my brother, Tristan, asked as he looked from Olivia’s T-shirt to me. The early-evening wind tossed his cobalt-blue hair around his face. With his equally blue skin he would be difficult for New Yorkers to see at night, as long as he stayed to the shadows.

I laughed. “I’ll get you a Slinky of your own.”

“And then I can demonstrate,” Olivia, my PI partner of almost two years, said with a decidedly evil look in her dark eyes.

“Only with the Slinky.” I elbowed her. “Not by pushing Tristan down the stairs.”

“What’s the fun in that?” Olivia looked at him then at me again, devious expression still intact. “If not Tristan, how about we push Colin—”

“Not.” I lightly punched her shoulder.

Olivia was six inches shorter than my five-eight, but a dynamo of a petite package. A martial arts expert and former NYPD officer on the SWAT team—not to mention that she’d grown up with five sisters—Olivia DeSantos was a force to be reckoned with.

She gave a nod in Tristan’s direction. He had tilted his head back and was scenting something on the night breeze. Probably a lot of somethings, since this was New York City.

“He won’t stop looking at my boobs.” She put her hands on her hips. “I feel objectified,” she added with total innocence in her voice.

I laughed and gestured to her melon-size breasts. “They don’t grow them that big in Otherworld.”

With her flawless dark silk skin and her exotic looks, that probably wasn’t the only thing Tristan had been looking at. Olivia was half Kenyan and half Puerto Rican, a stunning combination. I’d noticed Tristan watching her when he didn’t think she was paying attention.

Olivia’s penchant for wearing T-shirts with amusing sayings, as well as jeans and Keds sneakers, didn’t take anything away from her sensual looks. Once she started talking, though, everyone saw Olivia in a far different way—a tough streetwise cop turned private investigator who jumped into everything as if she were bulletproof.

“So …” Olivia gave me a sly look. “How’s the fire-breathing hunk?”

My cheeks burned as if the fire-breathing hunk had scorched them with his flames. I turned away before forcing myself to look at her again.

“I’m not sure I want a relationship right now.” I cleared my throat. “I have a lot to think about.”

Olivia surprisingly didn’t give any kind of smart-ass remark. “Fair enough.”

“Adam found someone,” I said. “He stopped by tonight to tell me.”

“She’s a ballerina.” Olivia studied me. “I helped Boyd out with some information on his last case. She was his case.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I wasn’t sure whether I should feel hurt or appreciative.

Olivia’s gaze remained firm. “I thought about it and I really wanted to. But it just didn’t seem right. It was so hard not to say anything. Still, I figured it was his job to tell you, not mine.”

Slowly I nodded. “You’re right. It was better coming from him. Thank you.”

She tilted her head. “Are you okay with it?”

“Yes.” I smiled. “I want the best for Adam. And if it’s this ballerina, then that’s great.”

From the corner of my eye I saw my brother stepping off the curb—right in front of a taxi.

“Tristan!” I lunged toward him, grabbed his arm, and jerked him back onto the sidewalk.

The cab’s horn blared and the whoosh of air as it passed blew my hair out of my face. I released Tristan’s arm and held my hand to my pounding heart. “You can’t step in front of moving vehicles. You’ll get flattened.” I added, “Not to mention a big blue guy might have freaked out the cabdriver.”

Olivia gave an unladylike snort. “You’re talking about New York City cabdrivers. Nothing freaks them out.”

He gave me a sheepish look. “This place is most unlike Otherworld.”

“No kidding.” I grimaced. It was Tristan’s first excursion in preparation for becoming a Night Tracker. He was leaving in the morning for his training in Chicago.

“You need to get used to Manhattan before we turn you loose on the city,” I continued. “That means be careful. Besides, Father would kill me if anything happens to you after we finally got you back.”

It’ll be a while before he’ll be an effective Tracker, I thought. Almost gets hit by a car …

My brother looped his arm around my shoulders, his blue flesh looking darker against my pale amethyst skin. Drow have skin tones ranging from blue to purple to dark gray—all shades that blend in with the night and shadows.

Tristan gave my shoulders a light squeeze. “I still cannot believe how much you have grown, little sister,” he said in the language of the Dark Elves. His English was perfect thanks to my human mother teaching him when he was young, and he could read and write the language just as easily.

“I’m not so little anymore.” I smiled. “Especially now that we’re the same age.”

“It doesn’t matter that time did not pass for me when I was captured in the stone,” he said. “You will always be my little sister.”

We were both twenty-seven now, a fact that was strange to us since I had been five when he was taken from my family by Zombies. Fortunately all that was history now, and I had Tristan back.

“I know you want to look around,” I said. “But stay close and don’t get off the sidewalk.”

Tristan grinned, squeezed me to him one more time, then released me and walked to the storefront window of a camera shop. It was close to midnight and the traffic wasn’t too bad where we were on Amsterdam Avenue.

“So Rodán wants to give you more responsibilities than you already have,” Olivia said when Tristan turned his attention toward a traffic signal that had just turned red.

As I nodded, Olivia shook her head. “I think you’re the best they’ve got,” she said. “But what do you think you are, Superwoman? Like you don’t have enough to do with running a PI office and being a Tracker.”

“I haven’t decided anything yet.” As we stood at a crosswalk, I frowned and met her gaze. “I just don’t know if I want to take on that kind of leadership role. There would be a lot that goes along with it, maybe more than I realize.”

“No kidding,” Olivia said. “But if you want to do it, go for it. You’d be damn good.”

I heard the faint vibration of Olivia’s cell phone and she drew it out of the phone holster at her hip. Her features subtly changed when she checked the caller ID screen.

I cocked my head. The expression on her face had been one of genuine pleasure, in a way that I’d never seen from Olivia before.

She held the phone to her ear. “Hey, Scott.”

My eyebrows rose. Olivia’s tone had a sensual edge to it that surprised me.

With my Elvin hearing I could have eavesdropped and listened to “Scott,” but I never intentionally violated a friend’s privacy.

“Perfect,” she said after a moment. “Everything will be waiting.” She lowered her voice, but I still couldn’t help hearing her add, “Especially me.”

Olivia tucked her cell phone back in its holster as she turned around to face me. “What?” The tone of her voice and her expression were now more like the Olivia I knew and loved.

“Am I being left out of everything now? Since when did you start seeing someone named Scott?” I put my hands on my hips. “And since when did you start to look and sound sappy over a guy?”

“I did not look or sound sappy.” Olivia narrowed her eyes at me. “It’s just a guy I met a couple of weeks ago at the dojo.” She was a black belt in karate and worked out regularly in Midtown.

“You’ve been dating a guy for two weeks and haven’t mentioned him?” I gave an incredulous look. “You’ve been holding out on me.”

“It’s nothing.” She shrugged. “We’ve mostly been working out together.”

“I caught that word,” I folded my arms across my chest. “Mostly. So what else do you do?”

“We’ve been out a couple of times,” Olivia said.

“What’s he like?” I asked, letting my arms fall to my sides again. “Come on. Tell me.”

“Fun. Outgoing.” She smirked. “Kinky.”

I laughed. “Only two weeks and that’s a word you’d use to describe this guy you’ve been hiding away. Kinky?”

Olivia shrugged again. “You asked and you said I’ve been holding out on you.”

I opened my mouth to attempt to get her to elaborate. A tingling sensation ran down my spine.

“Time to track,” I said. “I sense some Metamorphs doing what they do best—getting into trouble.”