Solomon's Sieve by Victoria Danann, now you can read online.
PROLOGUE
The beach Cape May, New Jersey
Sol
Regrets? Well, sure. Nobody dies without regrets.
The only way to avoid that would be to sleep even less than I did and be rearranging your priorities every minute. Of course, if you rearranged your priorities every minute, then there’d be no time for anything else and, at the end of your life, you’d regret that you’d wasted your time working so hard at trying to reach the finish line without regrets that you never got anything done.
What’s my biggest regret? The first thing that comes to mind isn’t exactly a regret, but more a disappointment. I wish I’d had more time to spend with Farnsworth.
I never expected to find love so late in life. Neither did she. I asked her once why she’d never married. She said she was waiting for the right crusty old bastard to come along. I liked that answer. I liked just about everything about Farnsworth.
All those years I would stop off at the Hub and grab one of those rank strong coffees with a cheese and ham and egg thing they nuked while I waited, which was never long because the way I stared at them made them so fidgety they could hardly wait to give me my order and get me the hell out of their space. Makes me smile just thinking about it.
So every morning I was just steps away from where Farnsworth was in Operations, really running the whole show at Jefferson Unit while I was taking credit for it. Fuck me. She’s one of a kind.
It’s funny to think that all those years she was right there and we just never made that connection. I guess it’s not exactly funny.
Now that I have one foot on the other side, the pieces all fit together better and it’s easier to see things clearly. Got to stop and laugh at my own jokes, because who else is going to? That was funny because I only have one foot. Looks like the damn dune buggy cut off my leg. And my life. I’m bleeding out, listening to the weeping of the only woman I ever loved and that’s the hardest part.
The only reason I can joke about this is because it’s temporary. I can’t stay gone. There’s too much going on.
I was planning to wait until I got back from the first vacation I ever took in my life to inform the interested parties, that would be almost everyone I know, that the great bright promise of curing vampirism with a vaccine… well, it’s not working. And, unfortunately, the conclusion is that it’s not going to work. Ever.
It’s starting to look like it would be easier to rid the world of cockroaches and we all know how that’s going. No one doubts that, in the end, cockroaches will be the last life form left on Earth.
So I don’t have any plans for crossing to the other side and dancing in the sunshine or singing “Kum Ba Yah” with people who don’t have anything better to do. I’m going to lie here and wait until this body gives up the ghost, while this magnificent woman beside me cries her heart out. Then I’m going to raise hel until they find a way to bring me back.
CHAPTER 1
New York
The facilitator looked at him like she’d rather have him thrown out than help him get caught up to speed. Yes. He was late. Yes. He was a mess. “Is that blood on your face?” she’d asked, looking down her nose.
That’s only one of the shitty things that’s likely to happen when you pick the wrong fight in a battle with extra-dimensional assassins. Among others, you could end up locked in a freezing basement cage for hours.
His answer was to stare in bald challenge. “Just tell me where I’m supposed to be.”
She hesitated, but decided it would be less disruptive to the event to go along with the maniac than to cause a scene. “Very well, Mr…,” she looked down at the card, “Nightsong. Everyone will be changing stations in…” she looked at her stop watch, “five, four, three – go to station seven now – two, one.” She raised her voice. “Time everyone! Move on to the next table.”
Raif spotted the number seven and headed in that direction, clearing a path as people took one look and gave him a wide berth. When he got a look at the woman who had just sat down to wait for him at table number seven, he felt his dick jerk and that infuriated him. He flopped into the empty chair seething about the past twenty-four hours, about having to comply with a speed date because he’d lost a bet, about how unsatisfying his work for Black Swan had become, and about the fact that the cutie was getting a response from his pants that was not in line with how tired and dejected he was at the moment.
He refused to look at her. Instead, he looked around the room with a smirk. Speed dating. What could be more ludicrous for a guy like him? He had a progression of pleasure-giving penis piercings, commonly known as a ladder, and a reputation with women that was nothing to be ashamed of. Well, depending on who you talked to. But he’d never been on a “date” in his life.
His present discomfort was his teammate’s idea of a joke, the price of a wager that misfired.
“I’m Mercedes.”
The sound of her voice brought him back. He let his eyes roam over what he could see above the table top slowly, way too slowly for speed dating. It was an intimidation tactic intended to make her uncomfortable, deliberate or not. She was buttoned up all the way to the neck and he thought the closed tight look was out of place on a natural redhead with freckles that seemed to say, “Underneath this disguise, I’m as unruly as the pigment in my skin.”
“Rafael Nightsong.”
Her lips parted and stayed open for a minute, like she was thinking about repeating his name, but she recovered quickly and that look vanished. “So. What do you do?”
“Vampire hunter,” he said as nonchalantly as if the answer had been insurance salesman.
She supposed he must have been attempting some sort of theatrical goth look. The style was outrageous, but those eyes were such a pale shade of blue, framed by midnight black hair and lashes, they drew her in, compelling her to look and preventing her from looking away. One could almost believe that he actually was a vampire hunter.