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What the hell? she thought again. This didn’t make any sense.

  She turned her head and glanced to her left. Nothing. Then she turned to the right and saw him standing at the end of the street, still staring at her. It was almost as if he was daring her to give chase.

  Trina closed her eyes for a second, trying to get a feel for him but there were too many other smells and people getting in the way of her senses. Still, she could definitely feel the vibrations of vampire in the cold air around her, from somewhere.

  The best thing to do was to follow. After all, if he was a vamp, she needed to take care of him. And before she did, he might be able to give her information that would prove or disprove Tomas’s claim.

  She walked toward the hooded man, keeping a steady pace, her footsteps echoing around her. She peered over her shoulder every now and then to ensure she wasn’t being followed. After all, this could be a trap, and it didn’t have to be vampiric. Humans enjoyed toying with their prey just as much as vampires.

  The man reached the end of the street and turned left. Trina quickly followed and found herself in a much quieter area. There were no cars here, though she could see the glare of oncoming headlights stopped at the lights in the distance.

  She looked down the seemingly empty sidewalk until her eyes blurred and damned them for being so weak when she needed them the most. What had happened to the hooded man?

  She stood quietly for a few minutes, in case someone decided to surprise her. Only the familiar slurp of bloodsucking now filled the background.

  Her stomach turned. She hated vamps who slurped like they were drinking a milkshake.

  What game was this hooded guy playing? Was he a vampire who wanted her to find him feeding on someone? She couldn’t help thinking about his sudden appearance.

  Trina took a deep breath, exhaled and followed the sound and scent of the vampire. With every step, her pulse quickened, pushing the beat of her heart against her ribs a little harder and setting her adrenaline on fire. Confrontations always fueled her with strength and gave her a sense of righteous power. She’d be a liar if she said she didn’t enjoy the challenge every time it popped into her path.

  Besides, she was now close enough to feel this wasn’t some idiot newbie. The strong push of age seemed to drip from the vamp, and she couldn’t wait to bag him.

  She quickened her step, treading as lightly as she could, until she finally spotted a dead-end alley. A vampire stood in a crevice housing a filthy Dumpster, shielding him from the street.

  What the hell is going on? The vampire wasn’t the hooded man, she was sure of it. So who was this ? Was it possible the hooded man had actually led her to a vampire?

  Trina gagged at the smell rolling off the Dumpster, made so much worse when it mingled with the odor of blood, but didn’t stop her approach. As she drew closer, she noticed the vamp holding a victim against his chest, sucking away as if he hadn’t drank in years. The vamp’s frenzied feeding was echoed in his satisfied groans, and it made her as sick as the stench of garbage. She also suspected that the human was already dead. He hung from the vamp’s arms like a weightless rag, head lolling to the side, giving the vampire more room to bite.

  “Hey!” Her voice echoed up the enclosed alley.

  The vampire continued slurping, as if she wasn’t even there.

  “Hey, freak, I’m talking to you!” She raised her voice, but it didn’t seem to make a difference, so Trina stepped close enough to smack him on the side of the head with her palm.

  An angry screech filled the silence. He finally stopped drinking long enough to say, “You’re too late.”

  “Too late for what?” she asked, her heart beating so fast she could feel the excitement of what she was about to do crawl up her spine. This wasn’t the hooded man she’d chased down the street, so where was he? She could also see that he wasn’t the vamp’s victim either.

  She’d worry about him later. If she bagged this vamp, she’d be able to kiss away the need for glasses for a long while.

  “You’re too late because he’s already turning.” A slow chuckle turned into laughter as the old vamp lifted his head and met Trina’s gaze. His eyes were as dark as night and glistened like a demon’s. Greasy, curly black hair framed his hollow cheeks. His thin mouth was covered with blood as he flashed pointy fangs while he laughed. He was so emaciated she wondered if he had any strength left at all.

  “Here, catch!”

  Before Trina had a chance to react, the vampire shoved his victim at her, sending her sprawling on her ass beneath a bloody, dying man. She tried to squirm out from beneath the man’s dead weight, but it was too late. The vamp had already raced down the alley and was scaling the brick wall that should have blocked him. He might look pale and skinny, but obviously he was still very powerful.

  And I’ve just lost him!

  “Shit.” She pushed the man off her body. Her jacket was ruined, stained with blood. Blood happened to be one of the hardest things to get off clothes, and she couldn’t afford to replace every article she wore after each confrontation. Sometimes she felt as if that was all she spent her hard-earned money on. No wonder she never had a cent to her name.

  There should be some sort of clothing concession from the Church. Then again, they barely paid for her services as it was.

  “Mmm, you smell pretty,” the man, who’d just recently been a victim, said. He crawled on top of her, licking his lips and staring hungrily at her.

  “Get off me,” she spat.

  “But I want to taste your blood. I’m so hungry.” The whole right side of his neck and shoulder were raw and bloodstained. She could see the tendons and muscles work every time he moved or spoke.

  Oh, shit. That’s what the jerk meant. This poor bastard had already been turned, but it shouldn’t have happened this fast. She glanced toward the wall to see the vamp scampering away like some sort of spider. He paused at the top of the brick wall, his nose lifted into the air until his beady eyes zeroed in on her. She didn’t look away, kept looking at him, grateful her eyes were at least good enough for her to notice the sudden change in his mannerism. He lingered, hands gripping the wall to keep him steady, even if he looked just about ready to jump down and return to where she stood.

  Could he be the rogue vampire Tomas had mentioned? If so, maybe he got a thrill out of making new vamps and setting them loose in suburbia. It would explain the appearance of so many newbies, but it didn’t explain who took care of them afterwards. That was probably where the vigilante came into the picture.

  “So it’s true,” he whispered into the wind. “You do exist.”

  Trina waited, her heart pounding as she waited for her Allure to drag him back down, and kept a hand on the new vamp so he wouldn’t chomp on her. Come on, you old bastard, come to me.

  The vamp hesitated a moment longer, before shaking his head, grunting and disappearing down the other side of the wall.

  Shit! No matter how long it took, she’d eventually hunt the bastard vamp down and get her answers. There was no way she’d let any vampire keep doing this, especially now that she knew how ancient he was.

  The recently dead man stopped his approach just near her knees, long enough to curl up into a ball and clutch his stomach. “I’m so hungry it hurts . . . and you smell . . . so nice,” the newly created vampire whispered.

  That old bastard’s mine, but first I need to put this one out of its misery.

  Trina withdrew the stake from the waistband of her jeans and jammed it into the guy’s chest. One less vampire in the world is always a good thing.

  Chapter Six

  Doug pushed back his hood and watched the action taking place in the alley below where he perched on the roof. He hated to admit it, but he’d hoped Trina would pounce on the vampire he’d so easily led her to and finish him off on the spot—easy, clean, and efficient. No time to think, just react. After all, that’s the kind of rep she had. But, to his great disappointment, she hadn’t. It wasn’t, however, a complete
waste of his time. At least she now knew what was going on right under her nose.

  It made him wonder why she hadn’t stumbled on Luis Gallego before. Then again, Luis wasn’t stupid. He’d probably heard the same whispers Doug had about the vampire-slayer myth and had stayed out of her way.

  Most might not know her by name, but Trina’s legend was something all vampires heard about at one time or another during their long existence. Few of them believed it, and the ones who were unlucky enough to find out the truth didn’t live to tell the story.

  Well, none but me.

  The other night, Doug managed to skirt her full attention. But how long could he keep that up? The fact he wasn’t a standard suck-on-the-humans-and-kill-them type of vampire kept him from making all of Trina’s alarm bells go off. However, ultimately, a vampire was a vampire, and he wouldn’t be able to resist her forever. Still, if he stayed focused and kept his control in check whenever he was near her, he might survive this.

  Tonight, he planned to tell her about the vampire throwing everything off balance.

  Doug had no doubt that she would’ve already sensed how old Luis was, and, actually, he was counting on it. After all, if the rumors about Trina were true, Luis was as old as she. He’d been turned during the Spanish Inquisition, just as legend claimed Trina had been created during that time to combat the threat of vampirism. But unlike Luis, Trina had never veered from her path.

  Doug couldn’t help wondering what had driven Luis over the edge. Luis had always used his vampiric existence to his advantage and had become a well-respected vampire who’d travelled to every corner of the world. He’d achieved a lot in the dark, by teaching his fellow vampires how to easily blend and feed from humans without the need to massacre or accidentally turn them. This made the situation Luis was now in so much harder to understand. How did a vampire who encouraged others against violence for so long now become the instigator of so much?

  Yet, during the last decade Luis had started changing his tune by doing crazy, careless, almost suicidal things, such as pushing the time he stayed outside until his skin burned, but stepping back into the safety of the shadows just in time to survive. He would heal and then do it all over again the next morning, as if he wanted to tempt fate.

  Doug shook his head, feeling a sense of both satisfaction and loss. Alive, Luis had become a danger to the existence of vampires, but he was a man whom Doug had admired for centuries. No one knew what had happened to Luis along the way. Some suggested he was going senile because he was bored, which wasn’t as common as it might sound. Although Luis was the oldest vampire Doug knew, there were plenty of vampires who were a lot older, and they never found the need to act so stupidly or dangerously.

  Someone had to put a stop to this madness. He’d heard other vampires had tried, but Luis was too cunning and had bested them all. When Doug heard the rumors about Luis, he’d decided to track his old friend down and see for himself what was going on. He’d found Luis in the suburbs of Sydney, and when they met, Luis had seemed so normal, just like the vamp Doug had known for so long. But Doug had sensed that something wasn’t right with Luis. Sure, the old vamp tried to act normal when they stopped by the local pub and caught up on the good ol’ days while pretending to drink beer, but there was something off kilter in Luis’s behavior. So after they left the pub and said their goodbyes, Doug followed Luis and saw the horrifying truth for himself. Luis attacked human after human, drinking a little of their blood before forcing some of his own on them.

  Unable to hide behind denial any longer, Doug had followed Luis and eliminated a bunch of Luis’s newbies himself. They’d deserved mercy, because a vampire who was left to his own devices so early in his turning would be disastrous to all of them. But as Luis continued to create newbies night after night and Doug destroyed them, he’d decided to try something different by taking the new vamps under his wing. He’d hoped to teach them the ropes so they’d understand what being a vampire really entailed. He’d tried that with Cell, but the experiment had failed miserably.

  That’s when he’d finally accepted the truth­—Luis had to be destroyed. Unfortunately, he couldn’t kill him because he was so much younger than Luis. There was some kind of compulsion that stopped a vampire from killing another who was a lot older than himself. Then he’d stumbled upon Trina. While chasing after a newbie, she had jumped out of nowhere and stabbed the vampire with a wooden stake.

  At first Doug hadn’t known what to think about the woman. Then he’d done some research and found vague references to a female slayer with roots firmly set in the Spanish inquisition era, where she was apparently made by some ambitious Inquisitors wanting to alleviate the threat of bloodsuckers from the world. The details were sketchy, but they matched the rumors within the vampire community about a woman who could wipe out vampires and then used the dead vampire’s strength against the rest of them. No one knew exactly how it was possible, but there was mention of Allure, strength, and an inherent need to demolish anything vampiric. It was also rumored that she still had ties to the Church.

  Doug shook his head, trying to clear the thoughts from his mind so he could concentrate on watching Trina from the rooftop where he was perched. She was caught up in taking care of Luis’s latest creation and hadn’t even noticed she had an intrigued spectator.

  He surveyed the ground below, searching for Luis, but he didn’t find him. Luis had scaled the wall like an insect, as most vamps could do, but he had paused for the briefest of time. Enough to confirm he also recognized who and what Trina was. Luis wasn’t here now, so it was safe for Doug to approach Trina without Luis either interfering or figuring out what Doug was up to.

  He hesitated for a second, wondering if he should show himself to Trina. Would it be a good idea to let her know it had been him on the street leading the way? What were the possible outcomes of him meeting with her? The answer to that question was simple. Either she’d figure out what he was and take him out of the equation, or they could agree to work together and get rid of this one common enemy.

  He had a lot to lose, mostly his life, but if he was going to stop Luis it was a risk he had to take. Before he could change his mind, Doug jumped off the roof and landed with a thump behind her.

  Trina flinched, as if startled, but she didn’t turn away from the vampire already decomposing at her feet. She kept her back to Doug but he’d seen the weapon in her hand and wasn’t about to risk getting stabbed through the heart with a wooden stake. If he got killed now he wouldn’t get the chance to stop more innocent people from dying.

  “Hey, it’s Trina, right?” he said slowly, keeping his distance. “I read your name tag the other night.”

  She twirled around to face him so fast that he took a step back, but it wasn’t in time to stop her from pressing the end of her wooden stake against the side of his neck.

  Trina glared at him through narrowed eyes, pinning him against the wall.

  Doug leaned his head back, trying to keep the sharp, wooden point from piercing his skin, and said, “Whoa, calm down. I’m not going to hurt you.” No matter how he’d chosen to live his life, her choice of weapon would send him to the vampiric afterlife.

  Trina’s dark eyes glistened in the dark as recognition washed over her. “You! I remember you.” She tightened her grip on his shoulder, pressing the stake a little closer to his throat. “You’re the guy from the store who’s into pink earphones. What’re you doing here?” The suspicion on her face was hard to miss.

  “Mostly, I’m here for the entertainment,” he said, trying to keep his breathing shallow so he wouldn’t inhale a dangerous amount of her scent. She smelled so sweet and alluring. It would be so easy to give in to her, to follow her wherever she went like a lost puppy.

  No, stop it! He tried to shake the intoxicating thoughts from his head. If he didn’t get a grip, she’d use that stake on him.

  “So you saw what just happened?” she asked, suspiciously.

  “I watched you let an o
ld vampire get away.”

  Trina dropped her grip on him and stepped back, but she didn’t pocket the stake. “So you’re the vigilante who’s running around trying to keep a lid on the vampire population.”

  “To be honest, I thought that was you.” He had to play it safe. He wanted to gain her trust without coming across as a manipulator. He wasn’t entirely using her, just needed her to clean out the trash while he kept an eye on her. He had to admit that watching Trina was rather entertaining.

  “Very funny,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’m not blind. I saw you across the street. You led me here. You wanted me to find that ancient vamp dude, didn’t you?”

  Doug shrugged. “I wanted you to understand the situation a little better. This is serious, and it’s getting out of control. I might need your help.”

  “Is this a test?”

  He shrugged and stepped away from the wall. “Why aren’t you doing your job properly?”

  She rolled her shoulders, still gripping the length of wood so tightly that it turned her knuckles white. “Who says this is my job? I work at a stationery store.”

  “Yes, and that’s a nice cover, by the way.”

  “It’s not a cover.”

  “Sure it is. Every superhero’s got one. And yours is to blend into society and pretend to live a boring life, while you secretly battle the evil on the streets. I have to admit the cover’s effective, even if it is a little bland.”

  Trina rolled her eyes. “That’s not even funny.”

  “I wasn’t joking.” She sure was a hard egg to crack. He couldn’t help smiling. After what he’d seen and heard about her, he wouldn’t have expected differently from her.

  “You better not be following me around. I don’t react well to stalkers.”

  Doug sensed the acceleration of her heartbeat. It seemed to be drumming a little louder than it had a minute ago. Was it because he’d seen her kill a vampire and exposed her biggest secret? Or was he as attractive to her as she was to him? Of course, the latter was just wishful thinking on his part, but that didn’t stop him from staring at her pink lips as she pressed them together. He fought the urge to grab her in his arms and kiss her, and then he’d . . .