Accidentally Dead Read online

  Greg followed closely behind, like a bad case of crotch rot. She just couldn’t shake him. “Haven’t you done enough damage? Lou likes you now, but I don’t. Or does that matter to you even a little? Have some pride and get off my back already.”

  “You liked me better on your lips, didn’t you?” His question made him laugh, and that laughter grated on her raw nerve endings. She felt vulnerable. Not just because of the kiss, but because he knew way more than she wanted him to about her life. To call it embarrassing was to call World War II a wee squabble. She didn’t need Lou to explain why she was the adult she was, and she didn’t need some vampire kissing the shit out of her and making her think naughty thoughts when she had some serious de-vampiring to do.

  Nina stopped under the streetlamp, digging her toes into the pothole in the uneven sidewalk. She eyeballed him. “I just want you to go home and let me be, okay? I don’t want to be like you. I don’t. I want my life back, and I’m going to find some way to do that. Now stop following me around, showing up unannounced, and let me be. No hard feelings and all, but I don’t want to join your clan.”

  His face took on a serious slant, the muscles in his jaw and cheek twitched. Jamming his hands into his coat pocket, Greg scanned her eyes. “You have to drink, Nina. I’m not doing this to hassle the shit out of you because I like it, trust me. I have far better ways to spend my evenings. But you do keep reminding me I bit you. It seems I at least owe you what you need to stay upright until you finish this damned stupid quest to find your way back to the land of the mortal. So just take the blood.”

  Far better ways to spend his evenings, eh? She let go of the rest of his speech, let go of the fact he’d called her desire to be human stupid. What she found gnawing at her was, what exactly was a far better way to spend the evening than with her and Lou’s pot roast?

  Things to ponder…

  And if he didn’t stop winging that blood around like some damned dangling carrot, she was going to scream. A girl could only resist so much temptation. Rather than engage further, she pivoted on her heel and headed home.

  With Greg in tow.

  Simpleton.

  When they reached her apartment building, Greg grabbed her arm, keeping her from stomping up the steps and away from him. “Take the blood, Nina. I’m not kidding even a little when I tell you, you need it. Look at the schedule your friend Marty wrote down for you.” He looked at the large, square face of the watch on his wrist. “In about five minutes your hunger pangs will hit you harder than they have all night. You really should be having far more feedings than you are, but if you don’t want to black out, you’ll feed. Not feeding can be a very painful way to go…”

  Nina turned to look over her shoulder at him. Those lips that had turned her to so much butter weren’t smiling anymore. They didn’t even have that hint of smug arrogance flitting across them. They were a thin line of oh, so serious. And, as if the maestro had said “strike up the band,” her head began to bang like a two dollar whore.

  It sort of hit her all at once as she looked at him, his dark hair slick and silky, his face grave and tense, his tall form strong and confident.

  She was a vampire.

  For now, anyway, and if she continued to make herself suffer because she was a pansy-ass that couldn’t come to terms with her reality, she’d kick the can. She couldn’t do that if she hoped to find a way out of this. She’d only grow weaker, and the word weak just wasn’t in her color wheel. Already her knees felt like they might buckle, and her hands shook just from thinking of holding the packet of blood. Cheerist, she was hungry.

  Lifting her chin, Nina murmured, “Okay. Give it to me.”

  He dug in his jacket pocket and pulled it out, plopping it into her hand without another word. “Be well, fledgling,” was all he said before he disappeared into the thick of the black night.

  The imprint of his hand on her arm, light, but firm, now gone, was replaced by depletion. Going to Lou’s with him, pretending he was her boyfriend, had wrung her out. Not to mention the kiss…which was now a strictly forbidden thought.

  She trudged up the steps with heavy feet and a mouth dryer than the Mohave. Safely inside her apartment, Nina tore open the packet with her teeth and guzzled its contents in two swallows. Immediately the world was no longer like trying to walk underwater, trudging through a sandy-bottomed ocean. It had shape and texture, color and vivid sounds.

  And that meant she had work to do.

  Nina dragged her laptop out from under a pile of clothes and hit Google.

  “MARTY?”

  “Jesus, Nina,” Marty whispered with a distinctly hushed anxiety. Nina sensed her nervousness even through her cell phone’s earpiece.

  “Why are you taking the Lord’s name in vain with that tone?”

  “Because this is crazy.”

  “Yeah, well call me crazy for not wanting to go begging for blood from a guy who wants everyone to be vampires.”

  “Oh, you do not either have to beg, Nina. All you have to do is ask, and I know—believe me I know—how hard that is for a mule like you, but it doesn’t have to be a big deal. You don’t always have to wear your independence on your chest, like some kind of medal. We’re all well aware you can hop on one foot while you slap someone around and verbally abuse them all in one free-for-all, but this is far more serious than proving to the world you don’t need anybody. Just ask for help. It’s easy. You just say, ‘Hey, Greg, got blood?’ And by the way, you just can’t convince me he bit you purposely.”

  Nina shoved her free hand into the pocket of her trench coat and grimaced. After a long night of scouring the Internet and Googling every bloody paranormal species she could find, she’d come up with nada in the way of reversion. Her choices were limited. This had to be done. “This has nothing to do with my independence and everything to do with not wanting to hook up with a bunch of people that call themselves a clan. That word alone should disturb even the biggest loon. If I ask them for anthing, they’re going to want something in return eventually, and Christ only knows what that’ll be. And it might not be a big deal to you, but it is to me. Forget all of that. Did you get it?”

  “Yeah, I got it.” Her voice lowered.

  “Good deal.” Nina lowered her voice, too.

  “This makes me really nervous, Nina.”

  “Marty?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why the fuck are we whispering?”

  Her response was shaky and rambling. “I don’t know! Maybe because I’m aiding and abetting a potential criminal? Don’t you ever, ever in this lifetime, or however many you end up having, tell me I’m not a good friend to you, Nina Blackman. I wouldn’t do this for just anyone.”

  “Oh, would you just quit with the self-sacrifice speech and give it to me? I know you’re doing me a huge solid, okay? I promise to make it up to you by spreading your color wheels of life as far as the eye can see. Now give me the address, so I can get this over with. I’m a friggin’ wreck.” Nina tugged on her ponytail as she moved down the sidewalk, looking to either side to see if anyone was listening to her conversation.

  “Ohhhhhhhh, honey, are you okay? Do you need me? You know I can be there in a matter of less than two hours.” Marty’s immediate sympathy made her grind her teeth. While Nina knew Marty only did it because her heart was bigger than the Pacific, she didn’t want to be coddled. She wanted to be fed. Now.

  “No, Marty. I’m okay. Just tired is all, and I really appreciate what you did. Thank the head dog for me, would ya?” If not for Keegan, Nina wouldn’t have stood a chance in hell of finding someone to hook her up like this. “Now give me the address, please,” she tacked on because she realized she sounded completely ungrateful for something so magnanimous.

  “It’s right by the karaoke bar.” Marty rattled off the location, what the dude looked like, and then a warning. “And be careful, would you? I couldn’t live with myself if you ended up hurt.”

  “Puulease. Are you forgetting where I gr
ew up? Not to mention I’m a vampire now. I’ll be fine. I’m meeting Wanda right after at my place to do some more research. If I don’t show up, I’m sure she’ll call you. Now stop worrying about me and go scratch the head dog’s ears. Bye.” Nina hung up before Marty could make her any more nervous than she was already.

  She was going to do something very illegal, but it was her only choice. Asking Greg for any more help was out of the question. Especially seeing as she couldn’t seem to erase that kiss from her brain, even if she used a hand sander on it. This strange attraction to the man who’d wreaked havoc in her life was a little too Patty Hearst-ish for her.

  The sidewalk was littered with people she couldn’t help but eye suspiciously. The air smelled of hot dogs and burritos and the stench of alcohol. It made her stomach do that flippy thing when the scent of so much food assaulted her senses.

  Thank Jesus for Keegan, she thought briefly, crossing the street with a purposeful stride. When she’d formulated this plan in her head it had made perfect sense just before sunrise.

  Keegan must know others like himself, she’d thought. He was a werewolf. Surely the paranormal must know one another, even if they were a different species, and that meant he must know others like Greg. Wouldn’t they have like some paranormal network or something? If Keegan could find someone who knew some vampires, she’d be able to make a connection.

  How hard could it be to find some blood? As it turned out, Keegan did know “people” and he’d hooked her up, not quite in the manner she’d anticipated, and begrudgingly, but he just couldn’t resist Marty and those big, blue eyes when she’d pleaded Nina’s case. He’d even offered to come and watch the deal go down for Nina’s safety. But she didn’t want her friends involved more than they had to be.

  Anyway, at sunrise this plan had seemed like she’d just reinvented the wheel. Tonight at seven? Not so much.

  When she reached her destination, her mouth went dry. God, this must’ve been what it had been like for her mother. Why she’d compared her experience to her mother’s, she couldn’t say, other than hooking up to buy blood smacked a little too much of buying drugs.

  But Nina didn’t need drugs to get through a day. She did need blood to survive, and that soothed her conscience for what she was about to do.

  “Hey, you Raquel?” a young, twentyish voice said from behind her.

  Nina fought a snort. Raquel had been Marty’s brilliant idea for a code name. So she was untraceable and all that covert Charlie’s Angels’ undercover crap.

  She turned around to find herself face-to-face with a guy who was nothing like the greasy-haired, shabbily clothed criminal she’d expected. He looked more like a college kid. His jeans slung low over his hips, and he wore a tall T, red with the phrase “Walk It Out” emblazoned across the front peeking out from beneath his bulky, black down jacket. His dirty brown hair brushed over the left side of his forehead to hang in his eyes, and he had but a wisp of a few hairs on his chin. He was all of maybe twenty. Not nearly as scary as she’d expected. Yet he was selling blood.

  Blood.

  Fucking hell. She was really buying blood. Blood whose origins were unknown. Blood from a kid who could almost be her kid. Her feet shuffled nervously, and her eyes darted in every direction to see if they were being watched. “Yeah. That’s me, um, Raquel. You got the stuff?”

  “You got the cash?”

  Did she have the cash…she had it all right. She’d emptied what she had left in her bank account, money that was supposed to go to her damned rent, just so she could feed. “Yeah, I got the cash. Show me the stuff.”

  “Show me the cash.”

  Nina rolled her eyes at him with impatience and dug in her coat pocket to pull out a wad of bills. “See?” She held it up in the light of the neon sign alongside the karaoke bar she, Wanda, and Marty went to, flipping her fingers through it, making the bills fan out. “Now show me the stuff.”

  He dug in his down jacket and dragged it out. “See?” he parroted back.

  “Even swap?”

  He held out his hand. “Yeah.”

  Nina grabbed the blood with hands that trembled, shoving the money at the palm he jabbed in her direction. Her mouth was dry again.

  “You think you’ll need my services again? I’ll give ya my cell number.”

  Christ and a sidecar, she sure hoped not. This whole deal felt dirty—lowdown. Where did a kid like this get blood anyway? Scratch that. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t plan on being a vampire longer than she had to in order to find out. For now, she’d ignore the possibility that she’d need more blood—ever. “I hope the fuck not, my friend.”

  “Can I ask ya somethin’?”

  Nina fingered the packet with anxious hands, jamming it into her trench coat pocket. She just wanted to get gone. Experience told her to keep her guard up. “Depends on what you wanna ask.”

  “What kind of freaky stuff you doin’ that involves blood, anyway?Does it have some weird shit to do with sex or somethin’?”

  Oh, the young and misinformed, still at the stage of his life where everything, even black market blood buying, had to do with sex. “No. I use it for, well…for rituals, if you know what I mean…” She trailed off evasively, whispering the words and narrowing her eyes to give them an evil glint. She didn’t need anyone knowing what she needed the blood for.

  He threw his hands up, backing away from her. “It’s coo,” he said in the way some kids did these days. Without the letter L, and like nothing was a big deal. Not even selling blood. “You know where to find me if you need more. Later.” He scurried away and into the darkness, leaving as quickly as he’d arrived.

  Nina pivoted on her heel and headed back toward her apartment, utterly humiliated that she was so soothed just by the mere presence of the packet in her coat pocket. Like some junkie who was about to get her fix.

  Wanda’s car was outside when she arrived, adding to her relief. She’d never be able to vocalize it, but she was grateful for Wanda and the help she so generously offered without a thought. Wanda was convinced they’d find something if they kept looking hard enough. It just hadn’t popped out at them yet.

  Her cell phone chirped the arrival of a message. Damn her cell phone company. She could never get a decent signal in some parts of Hackensack. When she flipped it open, the caller ID classified the number as private, and when she called her voice mail, whoever it was had hung up. She wondered with a brief giddiness if it was Greg, then dismissed it. He didn’t have her number, and even if he’d somehow gotten hold of it from her crazy friends, she shouldn’t be even remotely giddy about it.

  On to finding a solution to this. There had to be something…

  Pacifying herself with that thought, Nina dragged herself through her apartment door and waved a weak hand at Wanda in greeting.

  Wanda smiled wanly, assessing Nina and clucking her tongue. “Oh, my. You’re paler than pale. You need to feed. Did you get it?”

  Nina held up the blood and waved it under Wanda’s pert nose. She wrinkled it in response. “Okay, I see it. Now put it away, please.” She went to the couch and patted a hand on the stack of books she’d brought, which were nestled against the pillows. “I brought every book I have and got a ton from the library. Let’s hope we can get to the bottom of this.”

  Nina began to laugh as she read some of the titles of the books out loud. “Night Master? Night Warrior? Moons of Desire? Oh, Jesus, Nipped by Desire? Please, please tell me I didn’t just read that. I can’t believe you read this shit, Wanda.”

  Her eyebrow arched upward, her face flushing a pretty pink. “Joke all you like, but they have been helpful, now haven’t they? I mean, you wouldn’t have known about the sun if not for me, and then you would have burned to a crisp the first time you went outside. A crisp, Nina. Make fun all you like, but some of the people that write these romance novels are right on the money. Which would freak me out if I let myself think about it too long. Where they come up with some of this a
nd call it fiction is beyond me. If they only knew how accurate they really are, huh?”

  She shook her head and shooed Nina with a hand, bending her head and grabbing a book. “Now quit with the snarky comments, go drink your dinner, and shut up. I’ll start flipping through these to see if we can find out anything else.” Plunking down on the couch, Wanda smoothed a hand over her crisp black, pencil-straight skirt and straightened the collar on her emerald green silk blouse while reaching into her purse on the floor and coming up with a yellow highlighter.

  “It’s cheesy, Wanda,” Nina mocked with a snicker over her shoulder, heading for her kitchen and grabbing her favorite mug from the cabinet. She cut the bag open with a pair of scissors and eyed the mug hungrily. “Oh, Sebassssstion, fifteenth Duke slash Lord of the Manor slash King of Yorkshire Pudding, I luuurrve you. Put your hot, hard rocket ship of love in me before I explooooode,” Nina taunted with sardonic laughter.

  “Oh, knock it off, Nina. It’s not like that at all. And stop calling me cheesy. So I like a good escape. Sue me. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to experience something you couldn’t in real life. Um, er, with the exception of you and Marty, that is. How you two managed this is too surreal for words…”

  Wanda’s voice tapered off, as Nina focused on the cup of blood that so desperately asked to be drunk. Her lips wrapped around the rim of the cup with anticipation, but the first sip had an odd tang to it she hadn’t experienced when she’d drunk the blood Greg had supplied her with. She rolled it around on her tongue like the finest of wine connoisseurs. It didn’t at all compare to the blood he’d given her. It was rather like drinking a flat Pepsi.

  Huh.

  Maybe blood was like cuts of beef or brands of wine, and they varied in taste, she thought, shrugging her shoulders.

  With one long swig, she emptied it, slapping the cup down on the counter with a satisfied thunk and wiping the back of her hand over her mouth. She made a semisatisfied “ahhh” noise and smiled.