Gypsy Magic - J.R. Rain Page 0,82

an oven.

The tosser.

And I hadn’t worn my heavy-duty deodorant—the one with the antiperspirant. Bummer for Lawson.

The tense and ready curl of my vampire half shrank back from the heat. She’d been eager all night, sensing the imbalance of elixir in my system—I was running things close. Too close. And the vamp within me was hoping tonight was the night I’d finally slip up and we’d become one and the same. She didn’t like the idea of fire much, though. Immolation was one of the only things that could do away with a vampire permanently. That was why it was the Holmwood Associations’ official policy when dealing with rogue bloodsuckers. Destroy the heart, burn the body, and dump the ashes at a crossroads.

The crossroads up the street from my flat had a lot of vampire ash floating around the bus stop.

I reached into my pocket and flipped open a compact and tried to ignore the very attractive reflection staring back at me. I mean, I’d done my cat eye liner perfectly. And how often did that happen?

Regardless, I held the compact low, checking around the corner before proceeding. This little mirror trick was one I tended to use when in unfamiliar territory. Go on one gorgon hunt too many and everything spooks you.

Lawson’s short, stocky frame was thrown into relief by a halogen construction light. He was kneeling over an open crate with the sort of look that accompanied the phrase, ‘my precious’. Only he wasn’t so ugly as Gollum. Thank the stars above. There’s nothing worse than hunting an ugly monster. And getting ugly monster bits all over you.

Within the crate and gleaming in the moonlight were a handful of shiny bronze eggs, stashed within pale green packing peanuts that might have been the exact shade of my eyes.

Swallowing became infinitely more difficult. This mission had just graduated from dangerous to deadly, and not just for Lawson and me. If he started flinging fire, the air would superheat, baking my lungs and his. But worse than all of that, the heat would cause those eggs to hatch, unleashing at least four baby phoenixes into the Sacramento sewage system.

Yeah, no bueno.

Eventually, they’d hit a pocket of bad air and then... kablewy. There goes the neighborhood.

Those eggs needed to be put on ice in the Holmwood Association’s basement until they could be returned to their mother in one of the many extradimensional realms that bump up against ours.

And the only person who was going to make that happen was me. Woo hoo!

It was now or never. If I let the pyromancer work up a head of steam, I was toast, so to speak.

I snapped the compact closed, shoved it into my pants pocket, and hefted the extinguisher I’d filched up onto my shoulder.

I’d left the deli owner two hundred bucks to cover the cost of the extinguisher, the broken window at the back of his shop... and the metal bars I’d bent to get to said windows. Yeah, I’d probably shortchanged him, but it was all the cash I had on me.

Lawson probably didn’t see me around the corner. Vampire speed is always damn impressive, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it burst of motion that leaves you staring at a monster that wasn’t standing there moments before. Even my Vamp Lite version was faster than most supernaturals could manage.

Lawson probably caught a blur of motion, the thud of my boots, and had just enough time to raise a hand, sparks dancing between his grubby fingertips before I was on him, putting my stolen, ahem borrowed, extinguisher to good use.

Lawson’s head made a satisfying crack when it hit the stone wall. I hadn’t used even a fraction of the strength I possessed, so I was certain I hadn’t killed him. And that wasn’t my intention anyway. Lucy Westenra wasn’t a killer. At least, not anymore.

Swinging with my full strength would have either taken his head off or cracked his skull open like an egg. No, after one-hundred-twenty-three years, I knew how not to kill. The tricky part was determining how hard to hit. There’s a thin line between unconscious and comatose. I try not to dance that line too often. Regardless of my own personal beliefs about killing, I can’t collect a bounty when the mark is dead. Or rather, I can’t collect if the mark isn’t a dead thing, to begin with.

Lawson went down like an overweight sack of flower, bits of him bulging out of his plaid overshirt. He’d clearly swiped the clothes from the