Page 9 of Fangbanger

“I saw you. Your mouth was bloody. You hunched over them like an animal.”

I look now. His face is granite-hewn. His eyes are black. “What was I wearing?”

“A long black trench coat. That’s all I saw.”

His lids flutter shut, and his lips move silently before he says, “That wasn’t me. That was my brother.”

“You lie.” The words are wrenched from me.

“I cannot lie. You know that.” His voice seems nearly gentle.

I don’t want his sympathy. I screw my eyes shut, knowing a vampire cannot lie and still refusing to believe it. I push against the stone futilely, an animal sound coming from my throat. I want to curl against the hurt, the way I would after the nightmares I had as a girl. Twenty years. Twenty fucking years of this and I was wrong. How can that—how could I—my breath is shallow.

“My brother is hunting me. As I hunt him.”

The words cut my thoughts short, before they restart.

“So what?”

I have no use for the politics of vampires. Not when this truth has upended my existence.

“Don’t you want him to die?”

My eyes pop open.

The wheel of my thoughts latches on to his words, to the possibility that this hurt can be forged into action. Anything to not feel it so acutely. Anything to bury it.

His brother left me alone in the world until my great-aunt took me in. He’s the reason I have nothing but memories.

I want it so badly that shivers race up my spine.

Do I want it enough to bargain with a vampire?

“You can help me kill him,” he says softly. “Slayer. Look at me. Partner with me. Get the redemption you seek. Let me move the stone.”

“What do you want in exchange?”

“You remove the stake now. You remove the spell once my brother is dead.”

Marcus’s heartbreakingly beautiful face is still impassive, but he must want the spell removed very badly to make this deal. He must want desperately to survive.

He’s not my parents’ killer.

“Deal.”

5

MARCUS

Fucking slayer. My thoughts are dark as I follow her into her bizarre kitchen. The spell tugs at my chest. It tempts me to stand closer to her, to take breaths I don’t need just to pull her scent across my tongue.

I will do anything to rid myself of it. Anything to survive. Even partner with her. But the second this spell is gone, she’s dead, I vow to myself. I might not be able to lie, but I can certainly betray her.

The slayer slides me a glance from under her thick lashes, and I purposely give her nothing. I do not trust her, and I assume she plans to betray me as well. I search her face for any sign that she feels this unwilling attachment, but I am out of practice with reading humans.

She runs her hand under the tap and winces. I look away before I can watch her waste more blood down the drain. I snap my mouth shut against the throb of my fangs.

Her kitchen is impractical, full of plants and books. This home would be impossible to defend in a siege. It is all nooks and crannies and softness. Numerous places for enemies to hide. Objects that serve no real purpose except to gather dust and make defense more complicated. A couch that seems absurdly large for one person. A painting on the wall where I would hang a sword. More proof she is bad at her job. She is weak and foolish for drawing me here, for casting a spell such as this, for making herself prey.