Page 4 of Fangbanger

“You could die.”

“Eh.” I wave a hand in the air. “I could die any given night.”

She frowns. “I don’t want to clean up Leah body parts off your lawn.”

I wag my brows. “Lucky for you I don’t have a lawn. Besides, he’s probably a pretty neat eater. The old ones always are.”

Karina makes a face, but I can see her wavering.

“You can have all my stuff,” I wheedle. “Even the truck.”

“I don’t want your stuff,” she bursts out. “Especially not that junker you drive. I want my friend alive.”

“Am I really living now?” I give her a half smile, but she doesn’t smile back. She just pokes at the edge of the paper towel. “I want to do more than think about revenge. I want to get a pet. Not one of the cats you keep trying to foist on me. Maybe try some new baking recipes. Go out more than once a week. Maybe I’ll even join the community board.”

Her brow raise says it all.

“Okay, maybe not that. But you know what I mean. I have a half life. I need a full one. I need to kill him and move on.”

Because she’s my best friend, she knows exactly what killing my parents’ murderer means to me, and instead of questioning why revenge might make me happy, she simply sighs and pushes to stand.

“I got you,” she says, squeezing my arm. “I’ll brew it now. He could hunt you down as soon as this evening.”

“Great,” I say with cheeriness I don’t feel. I’m faking it until I make it, but right now? It feels like I might not live to see tomorrow morning.

3

LEAH

Ispend hours prepping the house, igniting the containment spells in the floorboards with my blood, hoping that the spark of slayer magic in it is enough. My wards are weaker than my great-aunt’s were, and I fear the containment spells won’t be enough. Every time I think about it, I grip the handle of the dagger I inherited from her and force myself to forget. I’ve killed at least fifty vampires in the ten years I’ve been a slayer.

I’ll kill Marcus Antonius too.

I sleep on the couch that day, with the wards wide open. Just an unsuspecting bunny waiting for the big, bad wolf. I have four daggers strapped to me and three ash stakes. The stakes keep digging into my side, but I finally sleep around noon.

I wake with a start around seven p.m. My eyes adjust blearily to the dim light of the living room. I still my breathing. I heard a sound. I know I did. There it is. A squeak of wood in the front hall, then nothing.

If I can hear him, he can hear me. I fight to slow my heart rate and slip off the couch. I know every creaky, ancient floorboard, even with the lights off, and I avoid all of them as I pad barefoot toward the hall. The strongest containment spell is there, under the iron chandelier where the hall branches to the living room and kitchen on one side and the library on the other.

A shadow is cut from the darkness. It stills. I raise my dagger. The weapon is fourteen inches, and I prefer it to the more fragile stakes, especially when my opponent has range. Stakes can’t slash like knives can. They’re best pulled when you’re going for a killing blow. An ash stake through the heart will kill a vampire instantly. A blessed silver dagger will bleed and slow them down.

The darkness blurs, shadow slipping against shadow in the hallway. I feint left, but I’m slammed against the solid wall of the hallway with breath-stealing force. I gasp, a fish out of water about to die a bloody, violent death if she doesn’t recover.

“You,” Marcus Antonius snarls. All I see are fangs the length of my pinky and eyes so silver they seem to act as their own light source. His hand tightens on my wrist.

“Me,” I manage before I break the wristlock and duck, instinct from numerous vampire encounters propelling me under Marcus’s thick left arm. My lungs burn. I’m nearly blind in the dark.

He surely isn’t.

His eyes glow, slowly bleeding black, until all I see is the faintest hint of silver, like the sun’s corona.

My heart is rabbit-quick in my chest, even though I wanted this. I went to sleep hoping for this fight. He came.

It’s too fucking dark. And he’s too quiet.

The stories say he plays with his food. Marcus is a former Roman gladiator. A pit fighter, risen to general. A leader of armies who was never fully tamed. Vicious. Vindictive.

Like all vampires, he must enjoy the taste of fear.