Something Secret This Way Comes: Secret McQueen, Book 1 (2 page)

“Bitch.”

I smacked him with the gun. “Ask.”

The part coming next was my favorite. It was a moment six years and many, many dead vampires in the making, and I never got tired of it.

“Who are you?” His voice was strained, though he would have his full strength back in an instant.

“My name is Secret McQueen.”

His eyes widened for the briefest of seconds, and I knew he recognized my name. It had an almost legendary status among the undead. Newborn vampires came to know it right away, because to be introduced, in person, to the owner of it, meant that you were dead. Well and truly dead. The forever kind, not the fun, false-immortality kind of death that vampires luxuriated in.

Knowing who I was, he understood I meant business.

“He told me about you.” And then, to my surprise, he smiled. “Oh, he will be so very pleased with me.”

Chapter Three

Some people might wonder what would lead a girl to chase a vampire through the heart of New York City, and why that same girl would risk her own life to point a gun at a newborn vampire in the middle of Central Park.

This would also bring up the messy question of why I can outrun a vampire, and why I have the occasional unrealized urge to hunt down humans from time to time.

The all-too-easy answer would be to tell you that I’m a half-vampire bounty hunter who takes out rogue vampires at the request of the vampire council.

And, yes, that is the
easy
answer. Problem is, I’m a little more than just a half-vampire. While logic might suggest that my remaining half would be human, it is not. I am, to the best of my knowledge, the world’s only half-vampire, half-werewolf hybrid. I was born this way; it was not by any choice of my own.

My mixed heritage was not of interest to the newborn vampire in front of me, because it was a well-guarded secret. What had piqued his interest was my name and the reputation that went with it. What had me worried, though, was how pleased he was to be making my acquaintance. I was willing to play along with him for the time being, as I was keen to know who had been telling him about me. The vampire in front of me was obviously not a sanctioned birth. The fact he was out in public so soon after rising and chasing an innocent girl through the heart of the city told me this.

So even though this vampire would not be considered a clean kill by council standards, he might be able to lead me to the one who made him, and that was who I wanted. That vampire was a rogue against the council and someone worth hunting.

According to a centuries-old law, all new vampires are turned only by decree of the vampire council. Becoming a vampire in this day and age is the paperwork equivalent to being sworn in to senate. The problem is rogues, those vampires who didn’t respect the council and wanted to return to the old ways—the days when vampires were believed in and feared, and had the power to do what they wanted without yielding to the rules of a governing body. Rogues didn’t like hiding from humans and pandering to the rules of a human society. They didn’t seem to remember that there was never a time in history where vampires were an actual ruling class. Instead they had their own version of the good old days, of hunting peasants or living in legendary castles. The really old ones passed these golden-years stories onto the younger ones, and suddenly all these Enlightenment era and New Colonial vampires got it in their heads to challenge the governing laws, espousing ideals of a lifestyle they hadn’t lived themselves.

They turned humans, buried them, and when the new vampires awoke, often sharing a coffin with a fresh dead body, they went mad, dug their way free and had all the urges and needs of an animal.

Then there’s the other thing about new vampires that annoys me to no end—they’re a lot like children. They’re inherently curious, disrespectful unless taught to be otherwise and blissfully unaware of their own mortality. This one in particular had all the traits of a rebellious and highly irritating little boy. The kind that screams in stores and kicks and bites. Only getting bitten by this child could kill you.

Child or animal, a newborn rogue vampire is no fun whatsoever to deal with. They cannot, under most circumstances, be reasoned with on any level. But I really wanted him to clarify what he meant when he said,
he will be so very pleased with me.
They say curiosity killed the cat, but I needed to know who made him. Guess it’s a good thing I was part wolf and not part cat.

“What is your name?” I figured if I could at least get a little intel while he was momentarily at ease, I’d have something to bring back to the council. The Tribunal, the leaders of the vampire council, wouldn’t be happy to see me a third time under these same conditions, and the feeling was mutual. If I killed this rogue, which I had no doubt I’d be forced to, I wanted an olive branch to bring to the Tribunal. Something good to justify my blatant disregard for council law.

He was still thinking about this question, his features clouded over with genuine confusion.

“Henry,” he said after a pause that felt endless. “I was Henry Davies.”

“Was. You do understand, then?” I never could figure out why, but a vast number of newborns did not understand that their new powers came with certain sacrifices, namely their pulse. Being a vampire was such a thrill until you realized you weren’t actually alive anymore. That pesky blood-drinking thing was also pretty hard for some of them to swallow, no pun intended.

“That I’m dead?”

“Yes.”

He rolled his eyes, clearly thinking me a moron for asking such an obvious question. “He told me it would all be different.”

Sometimes I really hated vampires. It’s ingrained in their psyche to be as vague as possible.

“Henry, who is
he
?”

“He is the one who made me.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious. Does your master have a name?”

Henry’s gaze locked on mine, and there was a moment of hesitation when I thought he might be about to give me an answer. The flicker of humanity was gone as fast as it appeared, leaving only a dismissive sneer. I knew that look well enough. He was thinking about what I might taste like. He wasn’t planning on answering me; he was more or less deciding on how long he would wait before he ate me.

Or, more specifically, before he tried.

“Henry, I suggest answering my question, because if I so much as see fangs, I will kill you.”

He laughed. The son of a bitch actually laughed at me. Just further proof on how young he was. No established, educated vampire would ever laugh in my face, especially not when they knew for certain who I was. They might joke behind my back, calling me “little vampire hunter” and pretending I wasn’t as scary as rumors would have them all believe. But when faced with me, a rogue vampire knew the end was near.

I may not look like much, but I don’t have my job based on my appearances. I kill vampires, it’s what I do, and not just any five-four blonde girl could pull it off. I get why he’d laugh, because at first glance I might come across more like a damsel in distress than a killer. In most cases it worked in my favor, but it got frustrating trying to intimidate vampires who refused to take me seriously.

In the distance I heard sirens, and I hoped to hell it meant the girl had made it to a pay phone or had at least found someone to call the police for her while she cried. And she would cry, for days most likely.

In the meantime, if those sirens were in fact for the girl in the broken heels, I didn’t have much time to play games with Henry. Human police officers didn’t handle supernatural stuff all that well.

The word denial comes to mind. They were always so willing to ignore the most obvious explanation in lieu of overly contrived answers which shut out the option of the irregular. Occam’s razor did not appear to apply in the case of humans, especially human police.

“Henry, we don’t have time for this. I need you to tell me who made you, or I let that girl identify you to the police and you spend the night downtown in a cell.” This particular threat held more weight with new vampires. I didn’t think Henry would really get it, but it was worth a shot.

“I’m not afraid of the police,” he said with a snort. In this instance he was justified in his dismissal of law enforcement, and he and I both knew it.

Henry had a lot of cocky swagger for a new vamp, and it was beginning to narrow down the options in my mind for his sire, but I needed a name if I was going to get a warrant. Killing rogues was an awful lot like bringing down drug kingpins. It was one thing to get the lowest level thugs, but quite another to get the master sire. It’s almost impossible to find a master’s master’s master. The council and I were both looking to find the names of the old ones, the ones we suspected but dare not accuse without evidence.

“You might want to consider the fact that all police-station cells now have windows.”

“So?”

“So, you’re not immune to sunlight anymore. And telling me what I want to know is going to be a hell of a lot better than waking up as nothing more than a pile of ashes.”

Henry was starting to get bored with our conversation. His eyes were wandering and he was licking his lips. Then a dark shadow of a thought crossed over his face, stirring the inky depths of his black eyes, making them glimmer in an unpleasant way. His brows narrowed, and he turned his attention back to me, smirking.

Henry chuckled. “He told me about you. Secret McQueen, big bad vampire hunter. He told me I shouldn’t cross you. He said that you were dangerous.” He was laughing with unrestrained scorn now, amused by his own joke. But he was also giving me clues. His direct sire was a rogue who knew me. Probably one I’d crossed before.

“You have a wise sire, Henry, now tell me his name.”

“No.”

In a flash Henry went from aloof to attack, and he had my free wrist in his hand, his gaping mouth going for my throat.

Idiot, the throat was such a clichéd move. Had he bitten into my wrist while he had the option, I might have been in trouble. The intensity of his attack did, however, manage to topple us, and his weight landed on me with hefty force once again. Henry, with his solid mass of vampire hunger, outweighed me by about a hundred pounds. I used a considerable amount more strength than he probably anticipated I had to bring the arm he was holding across my chest to block his attack on my neck. He was so certain of himself he bit his own arm by accident while gnashing for my skin.

He howled in sudden shock.

“Hurts doesn’t it? Being bitten by a vampire when you’re not in the thrall.”

“You will know soon, girl,” he snarled, spit flying from his mouth, his eyes deep black with rage.

He dove in to bite me again, but I dodged faster than he was prepared for. As he lunged to bite, I jammed my gun into his open mouth, a bullet loaded in the chamber and my finger trembling on the trigger.

“I already know what it feels like, asshole. Now tell me the name or I pull this trigger.” I knew I was going to do it whether he told me or not.

His lips moved around the barrel. I pulled out the gun and pressed it in one swift motion under his chin. Henry licked around his mouth, tasting where my gun had been. He touched his fangs with the tip of his tongue, as if savoring the memory of something delicious, and choked out a laugh.

“My master will be thrilled to know that one of his own was responsible for the death of the great Secret McQueen. And he will be even more impressed to know that you died without ever knowing who he was. Because I will never tell you, not even when I eat your still-beating heart right out of your chest.”

And then he spit in my face.

Chapter Four

The one benefit to having someone else’s saliva on your face, if it’s possible to find one, is that it makes it a lot harder for the blood to stick.

When the back of Henry’s head came off and rained its contents over us, I was able to wipe the worst of it out of my eyes. I shoved his now literally dead weight off me and knelt next to the corpse.

If his sire was who I thought it was, there would be another way to tell. I only knew of one master sire who would be exceptionally thrilled to see me dead. I tugged down the neck of Henry’s shirt, and sure enough, though scabbed over from healing, there was my proof.

A set of bite marks, ragged and painful looking, but with an unmistakable gap where one of the fang punctures should be. A gap which would match to a missing tooth. One that I had knocked out six years earlier while fighting for my life against the first master vampire I’d ever tried to kill.

“Son of a bitch.” I sucked in a breath of cold air and cast a look behind me, a paranoid but somehow necessary gesture to confirm he wasn’t there.

It all made sense now. The attitude and the smug certainty. The cocksure way he had gone right after that girl. He truly was his father’s son.

“Fuck me. Shit.” I was hissing now, forcing words through gritted teeth. If I could have been more intelligible, I’m sure something a bit more eloquent might be said, but right then all I could think of were curses, and I strung them together with blasphemous intensity. From inside my jacket I pulled out my cell phone and a small flashlight. I hit number two on the speed dial and flicked on the flashlight with my teeth.

“This is a late check in, McQueen.”

“I need a pick up outside Columbus Circle. As soon as you can be there. Don’t bring the nice upholstery. I’m messy.”

A pause. “Who?”

“It wasn’t sanctioned. I’m going to call Holden, have him alert the fucking Tribunal. But it doesn’t matter, Keaty. You have no idea whose seed this guy was.”

A longer pause. Francis Keats would not guess, but I suspected from the tone in my voice that he knew all too well who I was talking about.

I was looking through the grass with my flashlight, waiting for it to… There it was, a glint of metal. I picked up the bullet and put it in my pocket with the casing I’d already collected. There was no time for me to hide the body, so I had to hope the girl was too shaken to be specific about our location. Even if they did find him, the body would be nothing more than dust by sunrise. Bullets, however, did not simply disintegrate.