Blood Kiss Read online

  The shrill ringing of the telephone on the nightstand beside the bed surprised me and nearly forced the issue. I almost dropped the mallet, then pulled it back just in time and climbed off the bed. I'm one of the few people I know who prefers a landline to a cell phone. But hey, nobody can track you with a landline—I like to remain as antonymous as possible.

  “Thanks.” Michael’s lips barely moved but I caught a flash of the sharpened points of his new fangs anyway.

  Oh, I was going to regret this, I just knew it.

  His eyes fluttered shut again and he resumed his supernaturally slow breathing.

  I grabbed for the telephone and picked up on the fourth ring.

  “Child, it is I.” That’s how The Monsignor always identifies himself. I would know that pale, whispery voice anywhere.

  “Father,” I said formally. “How can I be of service to you?” I think of him as ‘The Monsignor’, but he prefers me to call him by a more informal title. Since he’s a priest and had never told me his name, this works for both of us.

  “I know what you are about my child,” he said.

  A shiver ran down my spine. How could he know?

  The Monsignor wore a hooded cloak that was cardinal red so I had never seen his face but more than once I had suspected he had eyes in the back of his head. He always seemed to know exactly where I was and what I was doing.

  No matter how remote, or how difficult and dangerous my assignment was, he always called in a spare moment with quiet advice and affirmation. But this time I wasn’t glad to hear his whispery voice.

  This time I felt like a little girl caught with her hand in the cookie-jar.

  “I was about to stake him, Father,” I said. “I know I shouldn’t have brought him back to the house but—”

  “Do not,” he interrupted me, a note of command in his voice.

  To say I was surprised would be an understatement.

  “Don’t stake him?” I asked, stupidly. It was as though he had asked me not to breathe.

  “Bring him to me,” he said. “The usual location.”

  The usual location was a burned out Catholic church in the bad part of town where two of the confessional booths were still intact. The booths were where he gave me my assignments, as though they were penances for sins I had committed.

  “Father, he’s in the deep sleep right now,” I objected. “He probably won’t wake for another two hours or so and then he’s going to be hard to control.”

  That was an understatement. Michael would be a raving lunatic, looking for blood, but The Monsignor already knew that. It wasn’t my place to remind him.

  “Do whatever is necessary to restrain him and bring him to me within two hours of his waking. I have every faith in you, my child.”

  There was a dry click and the dial tone rang in my ear.

  I put the handset down on its cradle with a feeling of unease. Why would The Monsignor want me to bring him a fledgling vampire at five o’clock in the morning? There would be only an hour until dawn—did he intend to incinerate the new vamp as a kind of warning to the others?

  He had never to my knowledge done anything like that before. I was his hand of vengeance, or so he always told me.

  Why was he taking matters into his own hands now?

  The Monsignor had been my mentor since the horrible day I walked in and saw the carnage that was what remained of my Uncle Harry. He had banished the vamps that were ripping at my uncle’s throat with a flick of his hand. They ran in panic at the power in his soft, terrible voice.

  Then he stood over me while I grieved and held my uncle, the man who had trained me—the only man who’d ever loved me.

  I could still remember the terror and pain in Uncle Harry’s blood-stained face as The Monsignor leaned over him and gave him last rites.

  Sometimes that vivid mental image still woke me up at nights, sweating and crying with a scream lodged halfway down my throat.

  The Monsignor told me he had been my uncle’s mentor and that he would be mine as well. He started giving me assignments—sent me after the Elders of the foremost vampire families and told me how best to get at them and kill them.

  He seemed to have an endless supply of knowledge and an endless supply of money. He bankrolled all of my killing expeditions from the limitless funds of the Church which had deep pockets where eradicating evil is concerned.

  At The Monsignor’s urging I gave up my part time job as a vet tech and my dream of getting into veterinary school and devoted my life full time to slaying. Uncle Harry had always told me that I shouldn’t make killing vamps my entire life, but I told myself he would have wanted me to get vengeance for his death.

  It was the lust for vengeance that drove me so hard, kept me up at nights looking for just one more kill.

  I looked down at Michael Moran lying still and breathless on my bed—he was a beautiful shell waiting to be filled with evil. And yet my boss wanted me to bring him in, for God knew what purpose.

  So when he woke up I had to be prepared.

  Chapter Four

  The next time Michael's long lashes fluttered was about five fifteen in the morning. Most people would have been drop dead tired but I was still okay.

  I’m used to pulling all-nighters, it pretty much comes with my job.

  An hour or so after dawn, I knew I was going to crash and burn but I was pretty sure this whole mess would be resolved one way or another by then.

  His eyes opened, looking vivid in a way that had nothing to do with getting a nice nap. They had the vampire glow to them now—a kind of luminescent clarity that most humans miss because they don’t know what they’re looking at. Most of the time if they encounter a vampire and live to tell the tale, they think the person they were talking to had on some kind of colored contacts.

  Michael looked up at me, confused at first, but understanding returned to his softly glowing eyes quickly. I was waiting for him to pop off the bed and go for my jugular but instead he spoke.

  “You’re the girl from the ER. The one with the pretty face and the hard eyes. Kate.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Nice to know you remember me.”

  Actually it was a pretty fair assessment although his crack about my ‘hard eyes’ hurt a little. But if he’d seen some of the things I had, he would’ve had hard eyes too.

  Being a slayer makes you jaded in a hurry.

  “Um, do you mind not pointing that thing at me?”

  He was staring at my crossbow—a retractable kind with a flexible aluminum frame I’d had custom made to fit my grip. I could hold and fire it with one hand which left my other hand free for dishing out holy water.

  The bow was loaded with razor sharp glass tipped arrows filled with the same mixture of silver nitrate and holy water I put in the hollow points I used in my Glock. A gun is nice and the bullets will really slow a vamp down, but the arrows held more of my special mixture and were harder to get out since they were barbed.

  “Please?” Michael asked politely, nodding at the bow again.

  I lowered the crossbow a fraction of an inch and looked at him. I’d seen plenty of awakenings to darkness—sometimes down in a coven you can’t get all the new leeches before they wake up although God knows I tried.

  I had never seen a fledgling vamp talk coherently, let alone say ‘please.’

  “Aren’t you thirsty?” I asked bluntly, still keeping the bow ready.

  He coughed.

  “My throat is a little bit dry, I guess. Do you have any water? But not the kind that stings—what was in that stuff, anyway?” He frowned at me, his light brown eyebrows drawing together.

  “That was holy water. And it only stings if you’re a vampire.”

  “Oh, right. The vampire thing. Is that why you did this?” He gestured with his head at the steel and silver manacles I had around his wrists and ankles.

  I wasn’t taking any chances.

  “The vampire thing?” I looked at him warily. “Are you saying you don