LITMIR.BIZ

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saw leather and flying hair and yanked hard on a long black strand that whipped me across the face, pulling the Naomi clone off balance, but before I could shove my stake at her, the swatch of hair I was clutching parted from its owner. She glanced over her shoulder at me, her gaze a fiery red.

      “Extensions, love,” she hissed malevolently. “When we’re finished with the fucking bounty hunter, I’ll strangle you with one of them.”

      She turned her attention back to Rawls, who was on his knees now, the useless nail gun still in his hands. Bounty hunter? I thought, grabbing at the nearest piece of leather. It was pink and ended in a clawing hand that had just raked Rawls across his face. Blood dripped from the polished nails of the redhead as she whirled to face me.

      “You picked the wrong man to go parking with tonight, honey,” she snarled. “Now you’re going to pay for it.”

      Her words were a definite cue to use the stake I was holding. I began to drive it toward her with all my strength and then the very thing I’d feared might happen, did happen.

      My grip suddenly went weak and my arm felt nerveless, the way it had once when I’d been partnered with Tashya at doubles tennis and she’d whacked my elbow with her racket. As I saw the redhead’s fangs rushing at me I tried desperately to hold onto the stake, but instead I watched it detach from my hand, falling end over end to the pavement in what seemed to be dreamy slow motion. It bounced once and came to rest by the toe of one of my Manolos.

      Time stopped. Or maybe just my heart did. Then it started up again, and as I snapped my gaze to the two razorlike canines slicing toward my neck, my numb-with-terror brain came up with the three words that saved my life.

      “Galliano for Dior?”

      As abruptly as if she’d run into an invisible wall, the redhead halted. Her glance flicked from me to her outfit and back again. “You know your designers,” she said, surprise edging out the snarl in her tone.

      “Oh, please, sweetie,” I demurred, “the man’s a master at cut and detail. He might as well scrawl his signature across everything he creates, no?”

      I sounded calm. I even sounded languidly bored. Somewhere deep inside me the real Kat Crosse was gibbering with fear, but the primitive will to survive that exists in everyone had switched me onto fashionista autopilot.

      I don’t think I could have stayed on autopilot for long, but as it turned out, I didn’t have to.

      “That’s exactly how I feel!” the redhead agreed. “Damn, I almost wish I didn’t have to rip you from limb to limb. But after Jackie boy staked our divine Dr. M, the three of us swore we’d get our revenge. Like I said, honey, you just picked the wrong man to get naked with—”

      Her sentence broke off in a sharp intake of breath, and she flung back her head so far that the cords in her neck stood out like garroting wire. I was still on autopilot enough to realize that with tendons as visible as that, Linda wasn’t as young as I’d first thought, and when I noted the nearly invisible line under her jaw, everything fell into place.

      I didn’t have the luxury of dwelling on my discovery, however, because the next thing I noticed about the redhead was the silver tip of the nail punched through the pink leather of her catsuit.

      And at that point I went off autopilot with a vengeance.

      “Frederick’s of Hollywood?” I exploded, thrusting my face close to hers. “Sweetie, I wouldn’t be caught dead in—”

      There’s something basically unsatisfying about screaming at a pile of dust, even if said pile of dust is still vaguely recognizable as the bitch who insulted you. I choked off my defence of my lingerie just as the Linda vamp dissolved into nothingness in front of me, revealing the hatefilled expression of the blonde standing behind her.

      “You staked my friend!” The Claudia clone didn’t look much like the supermodel she’d been impersonating anymore. As her top lip lifted and her jaws flew open to accommodate her horrifically lengthening canines, I caught a glimpse of the same faint scarring on her milky skin that I’d seen on the redhead, but then she was upon me and I gave up noticing details in favor of fighting for my life.

      Except fighting for my life was impossible, with my only weapon—a weapon I hadn’t been able to bring myself to use, although Claudia didn’t seem to know that—lying on the ground somewhere near my feet. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of black leather launch itself at Rawls, and I gave up hoping that the Jack cavalry would save me a second time.

      The blonde grabbed me by my bare shoulders and went for my jugular. I did the only thing I could and grabbed her by her arms in a vain effort to push her from me.

      “No!” The denial rushed from each of us on identical smothered gasps. Eyes as blue as heaven met mine as Claudia and I froze into immobility.

      Crimson world. Blood was everywhere…and it was beautiful. Gouts of it flew up from the man who’d abused the child she’d been long ago; fountains of it sprayed from a date-raping fraternity boy; a slow trickle of it ran from the eyes of the dead tycoon who’d married her and then discarded her for his next trophy wife. As a vamp she’d found the power she hadn’t had as a human and even if the price was her eternal soul, she would never, ever give up that pow—

      I threw back my head and screamed as whitehot agony seared its way through my flesh. I felt the pain, like a barb of fire, reach the wall of my heart and tear through it as easily as jagged glass slashing tissue paper. It sunk deep and began to tug me down into a blackness that wasn’t really black at all, but the dark, jelled red of spilled blood.

      My grip slid away from the blond vamp’s arms. As I felt my backward fall halted by something I saw her screaming jaws turn to dust, but her blue eyes, wide with horror, were still fixed on me. Then they, too, disintegrated and there was nothing but a pile of ash by my feet.

      I realized I was sagging against the door of Rawls’s car. I also realized that the terrible pain in my heart had vanished. Shakily I pushed away from the car and looked down at myself, but there was no sign of the bloody nail I’d felt tearing through me.

      Something cold and hard clamped around my wrist, sending a spike of panic through me as I belatedly remembered the third vamp. I spun around to face Rawls just as he racheted the other half of the handcuffs onto the door handle of his vehicle.

      “Three down,” he rasped. The gaze he leveled on me was partially obscured by the skein of blood running from a ragged gash above his smoky green eyes. “One to go, vamp.”

       Chapter 5

      “Ever had a wet dream, sweetie?” From my uncomfortable sitting position on the asphalt by the car I looked at Rawls, ten feet away and hunkered over his disassembled nail gun. Giving no sign he’d heard my question, he picked up one of the metal components and began wiping it with an oily rag. I briefly debated with myself whether to make some pertinent comment about phallic symbols and weapons, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

      This was turning out to be the longest night I’d ever spent with a man, and not in a good way. When I’d first found myself cuffed to the car, I’d indulged in an impressive but ultimately futile display of outrage. After an hour I’d subsided into cold silence. When I’d realized my silence wasn’t getting through to Rawls, I’d tried reasonable discourse, then shifted tactics and resorted to threats; later still, I’d descended to insults. For the past three hours I’d been mentally maxing out my credit cards at Bloomies, Saks and Neiman’s, but now my fantasy shopping spree had come to an end.

      I tried again. “How about a screaming orgasm?” I let the tip of my tongue trace my top lip. “Mmmm…I love those. Then again, I also adore a long, slow screw up against a cold, hard wall, but as a male, you’re probably more partial to a blow job, n’est ce pas?”

      Rawls set down the rag and began reassembling the

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