of the remaining four blocks to Studio Three. She stopped there, still a block away. She could see the spot on the sidewalk where the spineless little mortal had been shot down.
She frowned and wondered if she was starting to think a little bit too much like Rhiannon. But then, there was no such thing as too much, in her opinion. Rhiannon was Brigit’s hero. She wanted to be as much like the ageless, timeless vampiress as possible. And even then, she knew she would never compare.
Rhiannon was surely one of the most powerful of her kind, and there was no doubt she was the most arrogant. She was impatient, demanding, intolerant of weakness or whining and she had a temper that could easily explode into violence. But she was good. Deep down, she was good.
Brigit wasn’t. She was the bad twin, always had been. Her brother had been born with the power to heal, to restore life. He’d restored hers—she’d been stillborn. Blue, until he’d wrapped his tiny hand around her fingers, or so the story went.
She, on the other hand, had been born with an opposing power. One she’d been sternly warned not to use, not to play with, not to demonstrate—ever. J.W. was the good one, the hero, the healer, the guy in the white hat. Brigit was little more than a Disney villainess. Every story needed one, after all. She’d accepted her dark nature long ago. She did what she wanted, when she wanted and she made no apologies. There was no point trying to be good. She hadn’t been born with a calling, the way her saintly twin had.
Rhiannon had been the only person in Brigit’s life to encourage her to develop her power. In secret, without the knowledge of her vampire father, Edgar—who preferred to be called Edge, and really, who could blame him?—and her half-vamp, half-mortal mother, Amber Lily—who would have had a breakdown if she’d known, that was how good and pure she was. As a result, she’d become very good at destroying things. Very good. Rhiannon had told her many times that her power, her gift, was every bit as important as her brother’s.
There can be no creation without destruction, child. No life without death. Except for us, of course. No healing power without an illness or injury to heal. Never forget that. He might be the sun, little one, but you, my darling, darkling Brigit…you are the moon.
Brigit smiled as Rhiannon’s deep voice resonated through her mind. Oh, it was bull, of course. Rhiannon only loved her because she was a rebel, a mini-me to the great high priestess. And because her powers of destruction made Rhiannon’s pale by comparison.
Still, she appreciated the lies. They’d made her feel a bit more accepted, more worthy.
Pulling herself back to the task at hand, Brigit resumed eyeing the police tape and uniformed cops up ahead. They’d blocked off that section of the street with sawhorses painted in barber pole stripes, from the spot where Lucy had fallen to the far side of the building where the killings had gone down. The alley where Lucy thought her bag had landed was beyond the barricades. Brigit supposed she could create a distraction, then dash in there. But if she had to do any digging through trash to find it, she was likely going to be caught. And she would really hate to have to kill anyone today. What with brother-dearest home doing his best Jesus Christ impersonation, she had to at least try to refrain from playing the role of Lucifer.
There was another alley running beside the building just this side of Studio Three. A Chinese restaurant and camera supply store flanked it. Seeing no other choice, she made sure no one was noticing her and ducked into it, intending to follow it to the end, pop out a block over and approach the alley she needed from behind.
She only got halfway along it, though, when a man sitting on the ground shook a battered paper coffee cup at her. “Spare change?” he asked.
She pressed her lips together in distaste. He smelled to high heaven; even a full-blooded sensory-deprived mortal would have curled her lip in revulsion at his stench. And his milky sightless eyes were all matted together, dried goo in his long lashes. He had salt-and-pepper whiskers that had an ecosystem of their own going on in their depths, and a splotch of white foam in one corner of his lips.