Bollocks!
Movement to my left.
Shit! I braced myself, hands up, and ready for some melee action. Spear or not, I’d kick as much arse as I could with my fists and feet. I’d been trained well by my gravity-defying boyfriend, and I was a keen apprentice in all things head-busting.
A limb poked out of an alcove.
“I see you! Bring it! Stop hiding, and let’s do this.
“Jake?”
“Sonny?”
The thieving git stepped out of the alcove, the weak light revealing his bony features. His forked tongue darted out from his slightly parted lips.
Sonny the Snake was pale as snow, his hair a dirty blond, eyes a dark brown. Creases of a hard life on the streets decorated his face. He scratched at his scruffy beard, that rattlesnake tail dragging behind him.
I folded my arms across my chest. “Well, look who it is.”
He shuffled forward. “What’re you doing down here?”
Sonny was a Londoner like me, but from the south where I was from the east. He’d ended up in Amsterdam years ago after a bad breakup with an ex-girlfriend, never to leave this city since.
“What’re you doing running to Brem?” I demanded. “You’re such a dick head.”
“Don’t call me that! You were chasing me!”
“Yeah, because you stole from Mila!”
“I needed some luck to change my life up. Sick of the same old shit.”
“I’m sick of your same old shit too.”
“Whatever, Jake. You don’t know what it’s like living the life I do.”
“All I know is you’re a pain in the arse.”
He shrugged. “I want to change.”
“So you steal from an alchemist who we’re now gonna have to talk out of frying your balls? Then you come to Brem. Your brain not working? Not that it ever did. There’s better ways to try and change things.”
Man, I was coming across as holier-than-thou. That wasn’t my thing at all. We all have dark shit, and I’d had my fair share of it in the past—being a former junkie who’d messed up his life so hard. But Sonny just wound me up.
“You know what?” I said. “It’s your life. But do you think you could live it in a way that stops me and Dean getting tangled up in your mess?”
“Whatever.”
Okay, I was done with this. “Pout all you want. I don’t care.”
He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his green jacket. “What you doing down here?”
“Got my arse handed to me.”
“You pissed off Brem?”
“Yep.”
“Great.”
Ha! He was getting the hump with me? “I take it you didn’t bargain very well?”
“He’s thinking about the deal.”
“What deal’s that?” I asked.
“Bringing me into the fold.”
Oh, bollocks. “As a vamp? Is that what you want?”
“Why not? You live forever, and he could use my thieving skills.”
“Sonny, those skills ain’t that great. Why do you think you always get caught?”
He scowled. “Yeah, but I’ll have vamp speed and strength. Try catching me then!”
“If you survive the change.”
“I will.”
“There’s no guarantee. We’ll still catch you.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Will so.”
“Brem will have my back.”
“He’ll never have your back, and he won’t ever make you a vampire. He’ll lock you down, get you to do so much dirty work until you’re too old. Then you’ll end up on the street with as much as you’ve got now. Brem isn’t the way forward for you. And you’re never seeing that stone again.”
“You don’t know anything, Jake.”
“Why would he turn you into a vamp and let you run around with the stone?”
“I’ll be his, and he’ll reward me, and the likes of you will never get the better of me again.” He jutted a dirty finger at me. “Someone needs to burn your crappy business to the ground. Always spoiling everything, all the little pussies of the city coming crying to you two for help. Wah, wah, wah! Someone stole my stone. Mila’s a bitch. Fuck her. Fuck you.”
Right. Okay. Time to not give him an uppercut for being a complete knob. Nope. High road. High road. Well, as high as I could go. “You keep daydreaming, mate. Fact is, that stone is going back to Mila, and your blood-sucking fantasy ain’t coming true. You haven’t stopped to think why you’re down in this stink hole and not upstairs cutting deals, have you?”
“He’s hiding me from you.”
I stifled a laugh. “Too funny.”
“You’re one nasty cu—”
“What’s that noise?”
It was a groan from somewhere in the dark.
“What noise?”
It came again. “That fucking noise.”
The shuffling of feet, another groan. It was coming from my right.
“What is that?” Sonny said.
Now, he hears it. “Do you have any idea how we get out of here?”
“No, Brem just dropped me in.”
“Nice of him.”
“He had to move quick to hide me from you.”
What a delusional prat. “So, you’re as clueless as I am. Great.”
That shuffling was getting closer, the groaning more guttural.
Shit.
“Sonny, get ready to run.”
“What? Why?” He didn’t look so sure of himself now, terror written all over his face.
The maker of the noise shuffled out of the dark.
The man was naked and emaciated. His gray skin was stretched over bone, every jut of bone painfully visible. His eyes were red, his fingernails and toenails claw-like monstrosities infected with fungus and yellow as hell. The man paused, fixing his scarlet gaze on me.
“Jake?” Sonny said.
I should’ve guessed this straight away. I’d never encountered a broken vamp, only read about them. Nothing but blood-thirsty killing machines, zombies with fangs.
“Shit! Shit!”
“What the fuck is that?” Sonny asked.
“Run!”
I tore off, Sonny right behind me. The vampire shrieked, the ear-splitting pitch reverberating off the walls. I’d heard some messed up screams before, but this was something else. The sound of agony, of hunger, of death.
Why the hell would anyone want to keep it living, or non-living?
It wasn’t shuffling now but running, those claws scraping the ground like knives.
At the end of the
