“Did you know the girl was a vampire?”
“No. She looked like a kid, just wearing pajamas, which I thought wasn’t right, but then I thought maybe she was part of the show and she was just in costume.”
“Have you seen this girl somewhere else?” Sawyer asked.
Trish shook her head. “No, it was the first time. Jack hasn’t seen her before either.”
Sawyer’s cool gray stare settled on Jack for a moment, then darted away. Jack still had his own eyes on me. Watching. Waiting. Although, for what, I couldn’t tell. Around my neck, the opal began to pulse with power and heat. I touched it briefly, drawing Sawyer’s attention. I gave him a look, and he shook his head…
And that was when Jack attacked me.
Five
I leaped from my seat, just in time to avoid the hit from the fifty-five-pound kid. Well, he was supposed to be fifty-five pounds, but the bastard was strong. Too strong.
He clutched at my shoulders, trying to bring his mouth to my throat. I shoved him off me, sending him sliding across the floor. Watts ran around the desk and pulled Trish with him, taking cover behind the mahogany monolith.
Sawyer growled, “Reaver,” at me. It took me a moment to register the command.
“On a kid?”
“He’s not a kid,” he replied in a bored voice. He fell into a defensive stance, lowering his center of gravity and wielding both of his knives like a badass. “He’s been possessed.”
“Like by a demon?” I side stepped Jack as he launched himself at me once more, the sound of his little body slamming into the filing cabinet behind me making me flinch. Whirling, I reached down to my side and willed the sword into existence.
On the far side of the room, I heard Watts gasp, then sputter, “W-Where the hell did she come from?”
Jack launched another assault, this time wrapping his hand around my ponytail and yanking. He wrenched back my head, and I screamed as he ripped off a hank of my hair. It fluttered to the floor like teal feathers around my boots.
“You little bastard,” I swore, aiming a blow at his head with the sword. No, I wasn’t trying to kill the little shit—just knock him unconscious with the pommel. I didn’t know how I knew to do that, only that my hand, and perhaps the sword itself, was guiding me. I was never accepting a magical blade ever again. This shit was unpredictable.
“I hate this sword!” I yelled at Sawyer. He slashed at Jack with his knives, one blade catching on the kid’s shoulder. The scream that came from his throat was no sound a human could ever make.
“You shouldn’t. It’ll save your goddamn life.”
“Fuck you!” I hurled the words at him without any feeling. I was just scared, and when I got scared, I got bitchy. Jack screeched and charged at me. Again. I wacked him in the arm with the flat of the blade, knocking him off course. He slammed into the chairs Sawyer and I had been sitting in, toppling them. The kid recovered in record time, leaping up to his feet and baring his human teeth at me.
“McKenzie!” Sawyer barked. “Do it. He won’t stop until one of you is dead.”
Well, I had no intention of getting killed by a kid today, but I also had no intention of killing a kid. Jack’s shrill battle cry echoed around the room, and I blew a lock of hair from my face. Tightening my grip on Reaver, I held it by my side, ready to react, to actually go through with what Sawyer was frothing at the mouth for me to do.
When he was too close to change course, I held the sword out in front of me with both hands and shut my eyes. The sensation of steel meeting flesh was one I hadn’t felt before, and I could safely say I never wanted to feel it again.
The resistance suddenly fell away, and I peeled one eye open to see Jack disintegrating on the floor of the principal’s office.
“Oh shit,” I mumbled. I turned to Sawyer, who was sheathing his knives.
“Touch the sword to his body, McKenzie. Finish it.”
Biting my bottom lip, I lowered the tip of the blade to his arm. The flesh instantly turned black and began to flake. I blinked, unable to wrap my head around what I’d just done…and that’s when I heard screaming. Trish was wailing over and over again, her eyes on what was left of her brother.
Watts had an arm protectively around her shoulders, and his free hand balled up against his mouth.
“Put the blade away.” Sawyer crouched down beside what was left of Jack, running his fingers through the ashes. “Fascinating.”
“It’s not fascinating,” I barked. “It’s…it’s…” I had no words. What could I say anyway? I hadn’t meant to kill a kid today, but he had attacked me first.
“What happened, Detective Taylor, and who is this woman who attacked my student?” Watts demanded angrily.
“He attacked me first,” I shot back sullenly, glaring at the principal, who was only just seeing me now.
“He wasn’t your student,” Sawyer’s words were calm and oozed authority. “He’d been possessed.”
Watt’s blanched. “Possessed? Possessed by what?”
“A vampire. He’d been made into a Renfield, a vampire’s human slave.”
“A slave?”
He nodded. “A vampire can feed off someone once and not create a slave, but multiple feedings achieve that.” Sawyer turned to Trish. “Has your brother come home with any strange marks in the last few weeks?”
Trish swallowed. “He had two mosquito bites on his wrist last week,” she said softly.
“They weren’t mosquito bites.”
When we arrived back at the station, I took off Reaver and handed it back to Sawyer.
“I don’t want it,” I said when he looked at me strangely.
“Don’t be a fucking baby.”
“It made me invisible!” And there was the real reason. I was short. Life was shit already. Add invisible to the mix, and I was downright savage.
“Yes, and if you hadn’t had it, Jack would’ve
