From The Nights Before Christmas © 2010 by Kerry Allen
Chapter Two
The vamp scowling at her was cute in a Yeah, baby, do my taxes, do ‘em hard kind of way. If he’d cracked a smile at her Citizen Kane joke, and if she hadn’t had the life sucked out of her by one of his parasitic cronies less than an hour earlier, Bowe might have dragged him down to the desk and decked his halls. Under the circumstances, however, a guy with no sense of humor who thought biting constituted foreplay just didn’t set her girly bits atingle.
Given the consequences of failing her mission, if her girly bits weren’t atingling, athrobbing, and asinging the “Hallelujah Chorus,” she couldn’t afford to waste what little time she’d been given polishing office furniture with her back.
She sat up. Gravity pulled the coat from her torso, the hat from her head, and the limited supply of blood from her brain. “Aw, fuck. I don’t have time to faint.”
Exhibiting the blatant defiance of her will typically reserved for her big mouth, her body slumped to the side.
A firm hand on the back of her neck stopped her from pitching to the floor and guided her head between her knees. “Keep your head down and breathe.”
Just this once, she would let a man who shoved her head where she didn’t want it to go keep all his appendages. The position did help stabilize her equilibrium, and at least the crotch inches from her face was her own. She breathed as ordered and took her first look at the underwear in which the Council had dressed her while she awaited her sentence—red-and-white striped to match the stockings.
What a relief. She could strike outfit not coordinating from her list of death fears.
When a small head movement didn’t result in the room tipping upside down and going black, she thought it safe to attempt a larger one. She swatted the vampire’s hand away and straightened in stages, giving her heart a second to pump at each elevation. Everything seemed back to baseline except for fatigue rivaling that she’d felt after the Battle of Smithfield, during which she hadn’t stopped for so much as a coffee break for the fifteen days and nights required to slaughter the enemy’s hit squad and have a little chat with the head bitch in charge of the invasion attempt—whereafter she came to be referred to as the headless bitch in charge.
Speaking of bitches…
She trained her narrowed gaze on the girl vamp who’d been foolish enough to tap her. “Who the hell are you calling a fruitcake?”
Girl-vamp’s black-tinted lips twisted in a sneer. “Hey, just pointing out a similarity in your longevity.”
Bowe rubbed the tender spot on her neck. “I’d venture to say I taste a damn sight better.”
Girl-vamp’s eyes glazed with a dreamy, faraway stare. “Yeah. Wow. It was like… like—”
Scowly-vamp’s scowl carved deeper lines into his forehead. “Like something you should have known better than to drink after the first taste.”
“And Bingo was his name-o.” Bowe made a gun of her index finger and pointed it at him. She wasn’t struck dead again, so she assumed that weapon was Council-approved. “But don’t be too hard on her. I’m not one to hold a grudge. Okay, I am, but I’ll make an exception this time.”
Scowly-vamp’s upraised hand cut short Girl-vamp’s response. “Why?”
It was almost like he didn’t trust her. Smart man. Tall, pasty, and handsome with a functioning brain wasn’t a combo she often came across. If she survived beyond Christmas, she might have to come back to get to know him better, become bored and disillusioned by what she learned, and swear off men for another century or three.
Since he seemed to be in charge—and since Girl-vamp stimulated an ill-advised urge to snap bones into itty bitty pieces and see how much screaming it took to rob her of that irritating voice—Bowe directed her explanation to him. “I need help with a little errand.”
The irritating voice said, “Aw, did you fall behind shoveling reindeer poop?”
So many ways to make a death appear accidental, and not one that would sneak past the kind of surveillance keeping tabs on her. Bowe took a deep breath. If she survived beyond Christmas, she’d make a point of spending some quality time with Girl-vamp, too.
She flashed her I-look-forward-to-disemboweling-you smile. “Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn’t make such a generous offer. In fact, I’d have introduced several of your internal organs to my daggers the instant you approached me, simply because the whole faux-Goth teenybopper look you have going on there is an affront to my aesthetic sensibilities.”
Girl-vamp snorted. “You’re a fine one to talk. Your getup’s what all the cheap hookers are wearing this season.”
“Wait a minute.” The third vamp, who hadn’t done much up to that point except stare at her like he’d seen a ghost, redirected his stare to the bare skin between the top of her stockings and the furry hem of her skirt. “That dress was appropriate for handing out candy canes to impressionable little kids a minute ago. Did it shrink?”
Bowe tested the leather band around her waist, far more worried about its snugness than that of the dress. She could barely worm her little finger between it and her body now. “Damn. Is it midnight already?”
Scowly-vamp consulted his wristwatch. “It’s nine o’clock.”
She supposed it was midnight somewhere. How like the Council to forget to mention a minor detail like her deadline being shortened by three hours due to geographic limitations. They probably figured if she was cutting it that close, she had no chance of succeeding anyway.
Or they’d bought a glimpse into the future and knew those three hours were the ones that counted and had no intention of allowing her to succeed.
She hopped off the desk and tugged her hem down as far as it would stretch. “Okay, I have neither the time nor inclination—especially not the time—to dick around with you leeches any longer. You will help, or I will prance my scantily covered ass over to the elven embassy and report a major violation of the Supernatural Interspecies Civility Act of 1974.”
Staring-vamp’s eyes widened. “You’re an elf? A real elf?”
Bowe pointed to her ears. “That or a Vulcan, and I’m not enough of a drag to be the latter.”
Staring-vamp fell quiet again, awed by either her elfhood or her knowledge of Star Trek. His silence created a void Girl-vamp felt compelled to fill. “Shouldn’t you be wearing leaves and bark and making out with a tree or something?”
“Shouldn’t you sparkle?”
Girl-vamp’s growl was music to Bowe’s ears. She had never enjoyed half a book so much. Not only did it provide enough vamp-enraging taunts to last until the end of time, but its enormous popularity completely overshadowed that Lord of the Rings debacle. The sooner humans forgot their misguided impression that elves were prissy little forest wardens with a penchant for unpronounceable words punctuated by unnecessary apostrophes, the less likely they were to be slaughtered en masse by pissed-off elven warriors even more bloodthirsty than vampires.
She tapped a finger against her chin. “Now, what’s a vampire’s sentence for the crime of exsanguinating another supernatural being to the point of death? Oh, right, picking up litter along the interstate. At noon. But look on the really, really bright side. As soon as you dissolve into a bubbling puddle of gravy, you’ll be eligible for parole.”
The muscles freezing the sneer on Girl-vamp’s face went slack.
Staring-vamp laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “How can we help?”
Double the help would be sweet. Bowe wasn’t about to jeopardize it by gloating, at least out loud. “I have to bring the Christmas spirit to some miserable bastard, but I have to find him first. That’s where you come in.”
Staring-vamp shot a sideways glance at Scowly-vamp. “Someone in particular, or will any miserable bastard do?”
Bowe stuck her fingers into her cleavage and withdrew the slip of paper tucked there for safekeeping. “His name’s Harvey Doyle.”
.
From The Nights Before Christmas © 2010 by Kerry Allen
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