Recombinant Read online

  CHAPTER 1

  LEA

  “Lea, the mark is outside of Victoria’s Secret, drooling over the displays and scaring the ladies.”

  Calvin’s voice came through with a lot of static in my earpiece. I adjusted it, clearing the white noise. “Cal, what is it with this vamp? He’s a fucking perv, isn’t he?”

  The sound of Calvin’s soft laugh brought a smile to my lips. His laugh was one of the few joys I had left. “Aren’t they all pervs?”

  The words drove a slice of pain through the place where my heart used to beat, and just like that, the smile on my face was gone. “I’m going to see if I can draw him over to the service hallway now.”

  “Remember your perfume, Lea. He’ll smell you a mile off.”

  I ran my hands through my hair, loosening it up so it hung nicely over my bare shoulders. The steel door I stood behind provided a slight reflection. More makeup than I ever willingly wore clung to my skin, highlighting my nearly black eyes and giving my lips the perfect bee-stung look the humans so loved. My raven-black hair fell in waves down my back. Not my usual braid, but that was the thing about hunting. You had to be flexible and use the tools at hand. “What a bunch of nincompoops these young vamps are, so easy to kill.”

  Calvin laughed again and my lips turned up as I opened the door. “You like that word, don’t you?”

  “Word of the week,” I said softly, my boot heels clicking on the concrete floor as I headed away from the steel door. My hand fished into my pocket and pulled out a bottle of perfume. The bottle was marked “Guess,” and not for the first time, I wondered what the answer was. I spritzed it over my shoulders, neck, and hair, the scent sticking to me nicely.

  We were hunting in the Montreal Underground City. The shops inside were decorated to look like full-scale buildings, rooftops and all. This was not our first time here, though. The young vamps had started flocking to the mall over the last few years. They loved it, and I could see why. The mall was open 24/7, so it provided them with the opportunity to avoid the sunlight and pretend they were still human. Which made it an excellent hunting ground for Calvin and me.

  I pushed past a door that led into the main section of the mall. I didn’t need the sign pointing to Victoria’s Secret to lead me to my mark. His scent flooded the air, a combination of fresh blood and chocolate that made my mouth fill with saliva and my fangs extend. I swallowed hard, fighting the desire to open my mouth and let the scent curl over my taste buds.

  “Hold it together,” Cal whispered in my ear. I forcibly slowed my breathing, blocking out the smell of the vampire up ahead.

  “Sorry,” I whispered. “Caught me off guard; haven’t eaten yet today.”

  Calvin grunted and I strode forward, letting my hips sway. Two thin stakes with silver tips rested inside the top of each of my almost thigh-high boots well within reach. But I knew I wouldn’t have to use them out here.

  Nope, my mark was far too hungry to be smart. He was shorter than me by a good bit, his shaved head barely coming to my chin. Tattoos wrapped around his neck and disappeared under a grungy wife-beater tank top that hadn’t seen a wash in years. As I so often did, I wondered what he’d been like before he was turned. This one had the look of a petty thief; he had the marks of it. Probably sold steroids on the side, which would explain the oversized muscles.

  I let my hip bump him as I walked by, lightly, with just enough force to put him off balance. Sufficient to get his attention.

  He spun, and if any human had been watching, it would have looked like he was never standing the other way. Dumb ass; it was a wonder we hadn’t found him sooner. A wonder he was out here at all without his master guiding him.

  His eyes widened as he took me in. I knew what he saw and I helped him along with a little mental projection. A girl with a rack that hovered with gravity-defying perkiness, long black hair perfect for grabbing and wrenching aside as he buried his fangs into the side of her neck, long legs that would wrap around his waist, holding him tightly to her. His mouth dropped open as I sent the detailed thoughts to him. That didn’t work on everyone, but on those without a spine it was a charm I used liberally.

  Like a puppy dog, he fell in behind me, trailing me as I glanced now and again over my shoulder, smiling at him. Carefully, though. It wouldn’t do to show him my fangs just yet.

  Calvin was quiet. He knew if he spoke with the vampire this close, my mark would hear him, and we’d have a fight on our hands.

  Not that I minded. But in the middle of the Underground I wasn’t so keen on dealing with the fallout of so many humans watching two vampires battle it out.

  “Hey, beautiful girl.” The vamp made a grab for me, but I spun lightly away from him, laughing.

  “Oh, I won’t be that easy to catch.” I winked at him, the weight of my false lashes making it a slow, sultry move.

  He licked his lips and I fought not to curl up my nose. Pervs. Calvin was right, they were all pervs.

  I strode forward, seeing the skylight up ahead. The sun was high in the sky outside, and I fought not to cringe away from the pattern the bright beams made on the floor.

  I forced myself to walk through the patch of sun. For a moment, it was warm, a caress of a lover long gone but still desired. That caress quickly turned into a sharp slap, but I stepped out of the light before it could burn me. I raised an eyebrow at the vamp, who lingered just on the other side of the sun falling on the floor. “You coming, big boy?”

  He flashed me a grin that showed a fair amount of fang. Idiot. “I’ve got a place close by...” His eyes narrowed and he lifted his nose, sniffing lightly. Shit, did I not use enough perfume?

  An older man, stooped with age, his long gray hair tied back in a ponytail, shuffled toward us, his cane thumping. “Hey, you two get out of here. It says no loitering.” He smacked his cane against a sign saying just that, then looked at us and let out an exasperated sigh. “Pas flânage!” As if French would help the creature in front of me understand what was about to happen to him.

  But the vamp didn’t even look at him. Nope, he stared at me, his eyes slowly going wide. “You...you’re her, aren’t you? The Cazador.” The Hunter. Yup, that was me. Rather than answer, I leapt across the space, yanking one of the thin stakes from the top of my boot at the same time. But he was as fast as I was and possessed the same super speed I did, and in that split second, he spun and ran.

  “Go get him,” Calvin said in my ear, and I bolted after the vamp. He shot straight through a group of humans, sending them flying like bowling pins. As I streaked past, I heard bones break and cries ring out in the air.

  This guy really was an idiot. Who the hell had made him and sent him out so unprepared?

  Peter. Is this one of yours? I pushed the thought away as soon as it rolled into my head. This was not the time or place to be thinking about the vampire who would have me call him master.

  My mark took three quick corners, and then the sound of his footsteps disappeared. I froze at the third corner. He’d either quit running or fled to higher ground. “Calvin, have you got any cameras up and running?” I asked softly, starting to creep forward. No matter how stupid I thought this vamp was, I wasn’t about to get myself staked because I was overconfident.

  I slid around the corner of the closest shop in a low crouch, ignoring the stares and titters of a group of teenagers. They laughed and pointed at me, but that was all peripheral.

  “He’s climbing the rafters,” Calvin said. I looked up. “The kids are going to see you leap.”

  “And who’s going to believe a bunch of pot-smoking teens?” I muttered. Muscles bunched, I jumped straight into the air, landing lightly on the roof of the shop. I glanced at the teens. Their mouths hung op
en like a school of fish waiting to be fed. I shook my head and jogged along the edge of the roof until I found a place where I could pull myself into the rafters.

  The vamp’s scent curled around my senses, and I followed it like a bloodhound, blocking out everything except the hunt. The chase. And finally the kill that would come.

  Rafters and steel girders flew underneath me as I scrambled through them, picking up speed the closer I got to the vamp. He glanced back, saw me, and let out a scream that turned into a hissing growl.

  I grinned at him, letting him see my fangs this time. “You’re going to die, but not yet, little man.”

  His bravado slipped and he let out a whimper. “Please don’t hurt me.” Definitely a petty thief.

  “He could be bluffing,” Calvin said.

  “I know.”

  But the vamp didn’t come at me. He’d backed himself into a corner and pinned himself down. Young, he was so young and fresh; these were rookie mistakes. Which meant someone was still making vamps despite my warnings.

  “Nincompoops,” I snarled and crawled through the rafters until I was on top of him. He shivered and whimpered, and I knew it was no act. The scent of frightened vampire was its own flavor. Ammonia and shit seemed to pour from his skin, a kickback of the human blood left in him.

  I grabbed his neck and jumped, dropping to the floor with him. Keeping a hand on him, I pushed him ahead of me toward a service hallway door. Using his head as a battering ram, I opened it.

  The old man we’d seen near the skylight hobbled toward us. “Calvin,” I said, “how did you get here so fast?”

  He smiled at me, a whisper of the man he’d been when I’d met him almost fifty years past. “Floor escalators.”

  “Cheater.”

  “Why haven’t you killed him yet?”

  The vamp let out a soft cry, his skin so oily with fear it was hard to hold him. I didn’t want him to touch my clothes; I’d never get the stink out.

  “He’s fresh.”

  Calvin looked him over. “When were you made, boy?”

  The vamp shook his head. “I can’t tell you. They said you would question me.”

  I spun him around to face me and slammed him against the wall. The light above us stuttered. “Who is ‘they’?”

  He shook his head. “No, I can’t tell you. I can’t. I’m not a snitch.”

  I shrugged. “Listen. You are going to tell me everything I want to know. Who made you. What they told you about me. Where your little vamp rookery is. Only then will I stop the pain. Do you understand?”

  His pale blue eyes watered. Almost as if he was going to cry, but that wasn’t possible, unless he was so new that...shit. Tears slipped down his cheeks. Tears dried up about a week after a vamp was made. He had been unleashed on the humans after only a week?

  How bloody stupid were the vamps who’d made him?

  “My flechettes, Calvin,” I said, not taking my eyes off the vamp. The creak of a box, the sound of metal grating against wood. The vamp shivered under my grasp.

  I took one hand from him and held it out to Calvin. He settled the handle of my smallest fletch into my palm. Its razor-sharp blade was so thin, it took a moment for the pain of one of its slices to register. But that changed quickly as the depth of the cuts increased. I glanced back, and it was all the time the vamp needed to make his move.

  “Lea!” Calvin cried out as I was shoved away from the vamp and slammed into the opposite wall. My head bounced against the concrete, but it wasn’t me I was worried about. I wouldn’t break.

  Calvin would.

  He was on the floor, but when I rushed to his side to check on him, he shook me off. “Get him!”

  I didn’t want to leave Cal, but he was right. The vamp was our mark and I couldn’t lose him.

  I didn’t have to go far. He cowered at the end of the hallway. “I know you’re going to kill me, but I’m not betraying my rook.” He slid his hand into his front pocket and pulled out a tiny red pill. I frowned. What the hell was this?

  He popped the pill into his mouth and swallowed. I lifted my eyebrows and walked toward him. “That won’t dull your pain, and it won’t stop me from torturing you. You’re not my first kill, and you won’t be my last. I will wipe you all out. I will cleanse this world of the vampire virus once and for all.”

  He convulsed and then screamed as he fell to his knees. I wasn’t sure if it was an act, but I decided to see how it played out.

  Good thing I did. He flopped onto his back, body arching on the tips of his heels and the back of his head as the skin on his face melted.

  “Holy shit,” Calvin whispered from behind me.

  “Dios mío,” I whispered as I crossed myself, falling back onto my roots. The vampire’s skin lit up like a torch, burning until there was nothing left but ash and a pair of scuffed-up shoes. The smoke triggered the sprinkler system and alarms went off, clanging through the hallways.

  “He’s dead. Let’s get our asses out of here.” Calvin tapped me with his cane. I knew he was right, but I found myself standing over the vamp’s ashes, water dripping down my hair and face. I crouched and touched his shoes. Without another thought as to why my instincts were telling me to do something so weird, I scooped up the boots.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” I said as we strode down the hallway, the sprinklers soaking us through.

  “Why? He’s dead.”

  “But that kind of technology...you and I both know vamps don’t do technology well, not without help. The older they are, the more stuck in their ways they are, unable to adapt. ” I glanced at him. Calvin was my helper, the one who kept me up to date on everything.

  “They always have help.”

  I shook my head and looked at the brand-name, well-worn boots in my hands. Stitched into the tongue were words that meant more than the simple letters that spelled them out.

  Property of Rikers Island.

  I tipped the boot and showed it to Calvin. “What do you think? Wanna go to New York?”

  Calvin laughed and nodded. “New York it is.”

  CHAPTER 2

  RACHEL

  I hated New York City. I’d moved to the city about a year ago, and on nights like this one, I would rather be back in Iraq.

  Flashing lights bounced off the brick buildings around me, exacerbating the dull pounding in my head. I stood on the city sidewalk with a small group of journalists—a familiar enough situation given that these were my people, but something about this scene made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

  I wasn’t even sure why I was there. Lately I had been up to my eyeballs researching my next big story—why the inmate population in several New York prisons was declining despite an increased incarceration rate. That’s what I was doing this evening when I heard the police scanner go off about a homicide at an Upper East Side apartment building.

  It didn’t fit the profile of the other major story I was currently working on—a series of murders—but some instinct steered me to the subway station to check it out. If nothing else, I could get a scoop and make some extra money. If there was any scoop to get. Homicide was literally an everyday occurrence in a city with eight million people as residents and even more as tourists. And despite the fancy address, most were run of the mill murders. Anger, greed, jealousy, lust. Sometimes a switch just flipped in someone and they killed the person closest to them. Or sometimes promises of money or power were enough to sway a person to do the unthinkable. Either way, murder was ugly and brutal. Unfortunately, I was no stranger to death.

  But this one—and several others lately—had just felt different.

  “I hear it’s grisly, Rachel,” the man next to me said. He leaned into my ear, his arm brushing my shoulder longer than was necessary.

  I fought the instinct to cringe. “Oh, yeah?” I knew him, but mostly by reputation. Phil Mahoney wrote for the tabloids. He was scum, both in terms of his irresponsible reporting and his attitude toward women. Still, I could
use information. It wasn’t worth ditching him yet. “What’d you hear?”

  A sleazy grin spread across his face.

  What a waste of a good-looking man. My eyebrows rose as my gaze pierced his. “About the crime scene.”

  His grin didn’t even falter. “A guy said he found his neighbor’s door open. When he investigated, he found the neighbor pushing up daisies on his living room floor. Tons of cuts all over his body.”

  “Again,” I murmured to myself. So my gut had been right yet again.

  “Speaking of daisies, Rachel,” Phil said, “how about I get you a bunch and take you out to dinner when we’re done here?”

  My mouth parted with disgust. “Does that ever work for you?” I wasn’t surprised he was hitting on me. I was used to it. My long blonde hair and blue eyes had always garnered unwanted attention. Even my characteristic lack of makeup did little to dissuade jerks like this guy.

  “What?” he asked in confusion.

  Before I could give him a snappy retort, a cop emerged from the entrance to the apartment building and the reporters around me pushed forward, yelling out questions.

  I rolled my eyes and moved away from the crowd, wondering when they would ever learn. Hell would freeze over before an NYPD cop would offer information to shouting reporters, yet it never stopped them from trying.

  Sticking close to the scene, I made my way to a small group of residents huddled together about twenty feet away. I slid in behind them and eavesdropped.

  “Martin’s really shook up,” a woman said. “He said Eli was naked and lying on his back, slash marks all over his chest and holes in his neck. Blood everywhere.”

  “Holes?” another woman asked.

  “Like snake bites. The pet store half a block down lost one of its giant boa constrictors.”

  The other people in the group groaned and shot down her idea, but my interest was piqued. The wounds fit my serial case; there were slashes and bite marks at the last six crime scenes. But two things about this murder bucked the profile. One, the neighborhood was ten times nicer than the previous crime scenes; and two, there had been a curiously distinct lack of blood at the other scenes. The victims had been drained, although the police would never acknowledge the fact. A coroner’s assistant had told me, on the condition that I not report it.