The Secret Guide to Dating Monsters: Secret McQueen Story (7 page)

He knew it too, because he lifted me off the ground, using only his grip on my hair, and hung me over the side.

I was pretty sick of vampires thinking they could drop me off things.

He held me out far enough I could feel the whoosh of the subway walls skimming behind me, close enough I worried I would die from being slammed into a pillar rather than falling onto the electrified tracks.

Stupid pigheaded stubbornness kept me from releasing the sword, but with my free hand I dug my fingernails into his arm and held on for dear life. I was glad he was focused on dangling me, because he didn’t see what I saw—a light at the end of the tunnel. We had almost reached the Grand Central platform. I just needed to hold on a few seconds more.

I swung my legs up so the balls of my feet were on the flimsy iron handrail rather than the chains that hung between the cars and offered no useful tension. I bent my knees and prepared for the moment he let go.

I didn’t need to wait long.

He saw the end of the tunnel and opened his hand to drop me but was too late. The stale air of the subway station washed over me as he let me go, and I kicked off from the handrail rather than letting myself fall straight down where I would have been crushed under the train.

My landing was far from graceful. I hit the platform with a thud, rolling onto my broken side as I slid across the floor with the momentum of my dismount. I came to a stop on the edge of the opposite side, a hair away from tumbling over, and remained on the floor, dazed by my luck and the pain shooting through my shoulder. I’d managed to scrape the skin off my elbow and a good length of my leg while skidding over the concrete.

A crowd of late-night commuters were stunned to silence by my dramatic exit from the train. There were a lot more people than I’d hoped to see, since the bulky vampire guard had followed me onto the platform. The train doors opened, and he was joined by the second guard, and one door up Charlie stepped out.

He saw me on the ground, and instead of taking the opportunity to run, he did what most would-be villains did. He decided he wanted to finish me off himself.

When I’d landed, my sword had slipped from my grip and was now teetering precariously on the edge of the abyss between the platform and the electrified rails below. I couldn’t reach it before Charlie got to me. I needed to find a way to get him to focus all his attention on me so I could get within reach of the sword before he noticed where it was. That shouldn’t be too hard.

But where the hell was Holden?

The crowd parted around Charlie, and a few people whispered to one another in hushed tones of recognition. They all stood back and watched. I was no longer blessing their callous, cynical New York hearts.

“So, this is the great Secret McQueen. Death herself.”

“The one and only.” I grimaced.

“Not so mighty now, are you, little girl?”

This was a favorite insult among the vampires. I knew they used it behind my back, but it was only the really stupid ones who called me
little girl
to my face. In Charlie’s case, stupidity was working hand in hand with overconfidence. He believed he had me beat.

Who could blame him, considering I was lying on my back on the floor of a subway station? If I didn’t know better, I would have bet against me too.

The guards were waiting at the fringes, watching their master for any sign they should swoop into action. But for the time being Charlie seemed content to play with me. He got right up close, then placed a foot over my broken clavicle. At first he let it hover, his eyes daring me to give him a reason to press down.

My flat expression mustn’t have been quite what he was hoping for, so he changed his approach. He stepped down hard to see what kind of reaction
that
would get him.

I swallowed my scream this time, but a gurgling moan escaped my lips. Super-strength and super-healing are great, but broken bones don’t heal right away, especially when you keep injuring them. I don’t care how strong you are, if someone steps on your broken shoulder, it
hurts
.

As I looked up at him, my vision blurred and rose-colored tears sprang from my eyes.

“It’s too bad I’ll have to kill you. I would have liked to taste you again.” He put more weight on my shoulder, and the smile on his face told me he was enjoying the whimper it forced out of me.

“What’s stopping you?” I said in a strained gasp. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”

He let up on the pressure on my shoulder, and I was grateful for it. The crowd behind him was getting restless and more than a little worried about what they were witnessing. I guess my pain was too real for them. They calmed down a bit when Charlie and I started talking again, but the whispers were getting louder, and there was a frenzied tone to them. The train we’d arrived on had left the station, and with it all my hopes of a rescue from Holden.

Charlie crouched over me, pinning my arms to my sides with his Prada-clad feet. He turned my face towards him with a hard jerk so I was forced to look him in the eyes.

“I’m going to enjoy killing you,” he told me.

“Not as much as I will.” My meaning was lost on him. He was too focused on my neck and the blood exposed from where I’d been scraped. A vampire with the smell of blood in its nose is like a shark in chum-filled water. Try as they might to ignore it, it was only a matter of time before they would go primitive.

A Queens-bound train pulled into the tunnel just as Charlie’s weight collapsed on top of me as he dove for my neck. The surging wave of air brought in along with the subway rocked my sword into a spin, moving it well outside of my reach and carrying it away from me with each rotation. I watched helplessly as my plan fell to pieces, and winced as Charlie’s teeth pierced my skin for the second time.

I didn’t waste time cursing my luck. Even with Charlie’s weight pinning my arms down, I still had use of one hand. Fumbling under the hem of my dress, I grabbed hold of the holstered switchblade and gripped it firmly in my sweaty palm.

While I contemplated how I might be able to open the knife without accidentally cutting myself, someone stepped on the hilt of the sword, stopping its loud, metallic spin. I hadn’t noticed a second Times Square train arrive, but one was here now. Some of the crowd had decided they’d rather move on than watch me die, and boarded the new train. When they were gone, I could see Tyler standing on the concrete platform, my sword under his shoe.

I couldn’t read the look on his face, but I could have kissed him when he kicked the sword over to my outstretched arm. I grabbed it with my bad hand, but couldn’t swing at Charlie from my current position. He had begun to lap at the open wound like an eager dog, which meant he wasn’t clamped on to me. I took my chance and lifted my head up hard and fast, smashing my skull into his with a sickening crack.

I saw stars but didn’t let myself get slowed down. Charlie sat back, shocked but not permanently damaged. My arms were free, but with him still sitting on my lower half, I needed something more than a headbutt to get him off me. I’d never be able to swing the sword properly from this position.

With a satisfying
click
I snapped open the switchblade, rotating the handle back on itself and avoiding the silver end. I slashed out and caught a still-dazed Charlie across the throat.

“Bitch,” he spat.

He stumbled backwards off me, one hand latched to the new wound I’d opened. I hadn’t nicked anything serious, because he was still able to form words.

Now free from Charlie’s weight, I kicked my legs up, my body following, and landed in a crouch with the sword pointed behind me so I didn’t land on it if I stumbled. The last thing I wanted to do was commit accidental
seppuku
if I broke a heel. Charlie and I rose to a standing position in a mirrored formation. I rotated my wrist, swinging the katana in front of me, and had it angled to the floor, waiting for him to move.

“
Secret
.” This from Tyler, shouting a warning in the same instant one of the guards leaped at me. I raised the sword, slicing it back and forth in a Z pattern, the steel blade making a faint rushing sound as it parted the air in front of me. It also parted the guard, who fell in three neat slabs at my feet.

With the wet, meaty sound of the vampire’s body hitting the platform, the remaining crowd seemed to realize this wasn’t a show. There was an uproar of frightened voices, and someone threw up. If I hadn’t been so impressed by the precision of the blade, I might have been sick too. I wanted to turn my attention back to Charlie, but the final guard still planned to prove his loyalty to his master.

And considering it was the vampire who had nearly thrown me under a train, I was pretty sure he was going to try killing me for purely personal reasons too.

He bellowed at me, making sure I was focused on the six-foot-seven bulk of him. As if I could miss it.

“Bring it on, Baldy,” I said, and made another showy display of windmilling the blade in my hand. It gave him pause. Our eyes locked, and I was sure we both knew how this would end, but where we disagreed was on which of us would be dead.

He charged at me and gained confidence when he avoided my first swing, sliding to a halt against a closed convenience stand. Next to him, beside Charlie, a Coke machine was glowing a merry red and white and completely unaware of its impending demise.

The huge, bald vampire ripped the big metal and plastic box away from the wall as if it weighed nothing, and hurled it at me. I didn’t have a chance to dodge it, but his aim was off due to the bulk of the machine. It glanced off my left side, knocking the wind out of me and bringing me down to one knee. Had he been farther back he could have hit me better, but he was too close and couldn’t get the proper momentum or direction for his toss. As it was, the only thing the hit did was give me a few new bruises. It also made him believe he had the upper hand, now that I was back on the floor.

He chuckled and opened his mouth to say something, but he never got the chance. I rolled forward so I was less than two feet from him, then swung the blade upward from the ground, cleaving him neatly in half, where he and his insides slopped to the floor next to his former colleague.

I wasn’t interested in playing games anymore. I’d stopped caring that we had an audience, most of whom were now in a panic-induced state of shock. My arm hurt like a bitch, and if Charlie had let me kill him back at the hotel, this whole mess could have been avoided. There was going to be hell to pay from the Tribunal later, but at the moment there was only one thing on my mind.

I turned to Charlie, who was standing still in the way only a vampire could, as if he believed by not moving he might avoid being seen. Fear painted his face, and he didn’t mask it. He had nothing clever to say to me as I stalked towards him with slow, deliberate steps. The front of my dress was splattered with blood the last vampire had sprayed on me as he fell. My sword dragged across the tile floor, emitting a loud, eerie squeal that ate away at the silence that had fallen over the crowd.

I stopped about four feet from Charlie, the sword at my side. My vision was clear, my eyes only for him. He was trembling.

“Don’t fight it,” I said, and even to my own ears my voice sounded wrong. It was too calm, too empty. “Don’t fight me anymore.”

He nodded and his legs gave out under him. He collapsed onto his knees and looked up at me with wide, terrified eyes. The look was so honest it gave me a brief pause because it almost made me want to take pity on him.

“Secret?” Tyler’s voice came through like the voice of an often-overlooked angel on my shoulder. “You don’t have to do this.” I don’t know where he’d gotten the gun, but its small size suggested it came from an ankle holster. Out of the corner of my eye I could see he had it trained on me, and in spite of the shake in his voice, his hands were perfectly steady.

He must have thought I was only going to use the sword for defense when he’d kicked it to me.

“You don’t understand.” I raised the blade so it was even with Charlie’s eyes. “He
has
to die.”

“No one else has to die.” The cop in him had replaced the man. I was no longer the girl from our date, just a threat that needed to be neutralized. Funny, because that’s exactly what Charlie was to me.

Reality broke through shock for someone, and first one scream, then another added pointed hiccoughs of noise to the otherwise weighty silence of the standoff between Tyler, myself and Charlie. Tyler loaded a bullet into the chamber of his gun as I pressed the tip of my sword against Charlie’s forehead.

“Don’t be a hero, Tyler.” The voice mirrored what I was thinking, but it was calm and male.

Holden had arrived, and with him a whole crew of vampires who were already busy convincing the panic-stricken crowd they were only extras in a movie. The vampires even had clipboards with official-looking waivers on them. The real power, though, was the thrall they were placing over each and every one of those poor human suckers.

My focus was still all for Charlie, but I could see his terror was slipping away. The arrival of the vampires seemed to promise a stay of execution in his eyes. If he thought this meant he was going to walk away, I was about to show him how wrong he was.

Holden talked Tyler into handing over his gun, and judging by the detective’s dazed expression, he wasn’t going to remember any of this in the morning. My vampire, whose face was a little bruised, must have taken one monster of a beating, because when he looked at the pile of body parts behind me, all I saw in his countenance was satisfaction.

He was
proud
of me.

“Don’t you have a job to do?” He looked past me to Charlie.

“Holden?” Charlie’s voice quivered. “You won’t let her?” His pitiful, helpless mien was back, but my empathy vanished when a new wave of pain rocked my body as my bones attempted to force themselves together. My collarbone would need to be re-broken and set again if it had any hope of healing properly.

“I’d finish you myself if I could,” Holden replied, then led a very compliant Tyler away from the scene.