Accidentally Dead Read online

  Nina shut her trap—even though she was tempted beyond reason. If he was a vampire, he’d probably been around a lot longer than she had and to wander off with him meant risking ending up vampire meat. Greg himself had said not all vampires were nice. Nothing about this guy seemed right, yet he had all the right answers.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, spiral notepad. “Look. Here’s an address where we can meet. Take some time to think it over, then if you’re willing, meet me there tomorrow night. I’ll bring Lisanne. I’ll call you tomorrow with the time, but you have to keep this quiet. There are members of the clan who wouldn’t take too kindly to me bringing you to her. No questions asked. Just be there.”

  “Wait, why don’t you give me your number, and I’ll call you.”

  “Because it doesn’t work that way.” He shoved the slip of paper at her and disappeared in a blur of flannel before she had the chance to question him further.

  Nina looked down at the paper. Surprise. No name. Just an address located in the business district of Hackensack. She jammed it into her jeans pocket just as Marty came up behind her, out of breath from dancing. “Still scaring men away? Who was that?”

  Suddenly, everything was too much. The noise of the bar, the stench of human food, the swirl of conversations being held around her, garbled and muted, left her overwhelmed. “He was just some jack-off looking to get laid. I dunno. Look, I think I’m gonna blow. I’m a total drag to hang around, and I’m sorry.”

  Marty’s shoulder-length blonde hair bobbed when she cocked her head at Nina, her eyebrows at an upward tilt. “Did you just apologize? Shut. Up. You really are off your game, eh?”

  On impulse, Nina grabbed her and gave her a quick hug, finding the scent of her Bobbie-Sue perfume comforting. She closed her eyes for a second and absorbed it, then let her go clumsily.

  Marty’s head fell back limply, her mouth forming the shape of the letter O.

  Nina placed a hand under her chin and pushed up. “Close your mouth, Marty, and tell Wanda I’m sorry, too.” She waved her fingers over her shoulder as her feet carried her out of the bar.

  Outside, she leaned against the brick of the building, her hand finding the outside pocket of her jeans. She rubbed it, taking comfort in the fact that she had a lead. A small one no doubt, but one nonetheless. She still wasn’t sure if she was going to hook up with him or not. Human men she wasn’t afraid of. Vampire men, if he in fact really was one, might be cause for hesitation.

  So now what? She’d done the right thing by leaving Marty and Wanda because she was shitty company, but she didn’t want to go home either. Not with all those stupid romance novels piled on her couch, a stark reminder of her current conundrum.

  Nina made her way past the clumps of people bundled in their winter clothing and spotted a neon marquee for a dollar discount movie theater. Discount movies were right up her alley because she was now officially dirt poor. Fishing around in her pocket, she found two bucks’ worth of change and plunked it down in front of the cashier.

  The stench of urine, stale buttered popcorn, and sweat greeted her. With the exception of one middle-aged guy, guzzling from a brown paper bag, the theater was empty. Sliding into a seat, she covered her mouth to keep from gagging. This particular newfound superpower she could live without.

  As the credits began to roll, Nina realized she didn’t even know what the hell she’d paid to watch. Slumping down in the seat, she decided it didn’t really matter. It was a distraction, and it was dark and quiet.

  An hour into the movie, Nina was thoroughly disgusted with herself. Beaches. She paid two bloody bucks for Beaches, and she was attempting tears that just wouldn’t flow. She was crying, sorta, at a chick flick. How sissi-fied. It must have to do with the topsy-turvy condition of her life right now. She never cried. She never even came close to feeling like crying. Nina hacked into her hand, swiping at her eyes that refused to shed tears.

  “Well, well, well. Is that an emotion other than pissed off I detect? I didn’t think you had it in you, Nina.” The sultry sounds of her favorite vampire tickled her ears with a direct hit.

  Christ, he was like Visa—everywhere.

  Nina’s spine went ramrod straight as Greg nudged her knees, squeezing in front of her to sit in the seat to her left. Though the contact was limited, it sent a wave of heat along the back of her neck. His dark profile, silhouetted by the light of the screen, held a hint of a satisfied smile.

  “Jesus, how did you find me?”

  Greg pointed to his nose.

  Of course. “Why are you here?”

  “You’re like a fly to one of those bug zappers. I just can’t keep myself from going into the light.” He’d said that without a trace of sarcasm, but another emotion Nina couldn’t pinpoint.

  “Well, I fed, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m still a vampire against my will. So you can go do your night thing in peace.”

  He turned to look at her, the glow of his green eyes somehow calming in the dark, smelly theater. “I think I’ll just stay here with you.”

  She was incredulous. “And watch Beaches?”

  Greg nodded affirmatively, his face serious. “And watch Beaches.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter. I think it’s pretty obvious I can’t run off, because I’m broke. So if you were worried I was going to escape your evil clutches, quit.”

  His laughter wound its way to her ear in a sinful thread of amusement. “My clutches are hardly evil, and you can go wherever you want, Nina.”

  Her body was tense, pressing into the seat to avoid contact. “Yeah, that’s what all people who have a clan say. You don’t want me to be human any more than I want to be a vampire.”

  “And why is that again?”

  “Because you want everyone to be a vampire. You know, the Dr. Evil, maniacal plan thing.”

  “Oh. Right. How about we set aside my maniacal plan for now?”

  “Can you do that? Just set aside something as big as taking over the world,” she joked. Her belief that he wanted to keep her a vampire, which she was clinging to by her new fangs, was beginning to sound dramatic even to her.

  “For tonight, I say we truce. Besides, I’ve been thinking…”

  “About what? Moving on to a new profession of women to bite? Maybe some innocent nursing students?”

  His chuckle slid into her ears, making her shiver. “Um, no. I was thinking there are some things you ought to know about our clan. Now yours, however briefly.”

  “Like?”

  “Like, we have a strict no-turn policy. I’m sure you don’t believe that, but it’s true. We buy our blood from various sources. We don’t grab onto the first neck we see and bite it to feed. I know I’ve said that, but I felt like it needed to be said again. It’s your choice to believe or not, and if you bite someone, you’re on your own. I couldn’t live with myself if you ate your guinea pig. And don’t tell me you didn’t think about it.”

  “Poor Larry,” she mumbled.

  “It’s understandable and an urge you’ll be able to control, given time.”

  “So you really expect me to believe you don’t hunt people down to feed from them?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Oh, how she wanted to believe, and she didn’t even know why. Wait, yes she did. She wanted to believe, because the closer he inched to her in the chair, the more attracted she became to him, aroused by just his arm pressing against hers, and Nina was hoping she couldn’t be this hot for someone who sucked big, fat man hooters. “So I was just an unfortunate incident.” That sat much better with her, although she still thought it was wishful thinking, not fact.

  He chuckled again. Probably the most she’d heard him chuckle in any one encounter they’d shared. “Among other things.”

  “So why don’t you suck necks? I thought that was a vampire’s staple.”

  “Because those of us who belong to my clan want to blend in with everyone else and cause as little trouble as possib
le. We were once where you were, too.”

  “Where I was?”

  His tone lowered, ominous and dark. “Of the unwilling.”

  Hookay. Her anxiety lessened a little more. “So you didn’t really want to be a vampire to begin with?”

  “Ah, no. I don’t think anyone really wants to be one, except maybe a few nuts and the rebels who’ve decided to take their anger out on the world by turning everyone and everything they can sink their incisors into.”

  “So there are vampires who want to rule the world.”

  “Just like there are humans who want to rule the world. We just have an unfair advantage.”

  Nina paused. That definitely wasn’t far off the mark. There were plenty of zealots who bombed shit and started wars because of it. How interesting that these paranormals had the same sorts of political issues and the superpowers to go with them.

  “My clan may not go out of its way to interact with humans, but we don’t want to harm them either. I won’t bite anyone or anything. Unless it’s out of pleasure.” The last he said with a flicker of a smile, sending a ripple of awareness throughout her body.

  “And how do you know everyone in your clan feels the same way?”

  “I don’t. No more than you can believe a politician who stares you in the eye and says he wants world peace, then does the exact opposite once he’s elected. I can tell you, we’ve never had a biting incident in over four hundred years in my clan. Had we, and I was privy to who’d done the biting purposely, hell would ensue, of that you can be sure.”

  Unfortunately, Nina wasn’t sure of anything anymore, though he was damned convincing when he threatened the ensuing of hell. “Wait, if your clan is four hundred years old and you’re almost five hundred…” That meant she’d caught him in a lie.

  He turned to her with a grin, the white of his teeth catching the light from the screen. “It just took time for me to gather the masses and find people who wanted to carry out my evil plan. I floundered for the first hundred years, but then I got my act together, interviewed as many evil freaks as I could, and now, here I am. A clan owner. Who knew?”

  Nina giggled. “I don’t get the clan dynamics at all. You’re allowed to create your own clan?”

  “Allowed should be used loosely here. We’re not disallowed, but we’re not encouraged to leave our creators either.” He held up a hand when he saw she was going to confirm that’s what she’d been saying all along. “Before you get all crazy over that statement, hear me out. No, we’re not encouraged to leave who created us, but you can if you’re willing to stand on your own two feet or if you disagree with a group’s politics. Some vampire rules are hard and fast—some not so much. Anyway, there are those that feel as I do. No one should be forced into this way of life. I’d like to think the clan I’ve created is a haven for those beliefs. We are where we are, and we’ve found a way to accept it. We just want to live out eternity in peace.”

  Shit, he was making her waffle. She wanted to believe he was callous and freaky, yet he sounded soooo credible. “So because Lisanne created you, that was an automatic entry into her clan?”

  He nodded, but said nothing, the muscles of his neck flexing.

  “I’m guessing you didn’t like Lisanne and her clan?”

  The air between them changed, losing the relaxed feeling Greg had set when he’d first sat down. “No. No I didn’t.”

  That sounded like an end of statement, and tonight, Nina didn’t want to fight. Her emotions were seesawing too wildly. She’d hugged Marty, for God’s sake. The world had tipped on its axis, while she clung to the edge of it. “Did you belong to any other clans after Lisanne’s and before you created your own?” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, watching as his face hardened for a moment.

  “I did.”

  “And you didn’t like it?”

  “Nope.”

  His one word answer meant it wasn’t open for discussion. “Why have a clan to begin with? I don’t get it.”

  “Vampires are bestowed with certain gifts, Nina. Like flying and mind reading. Each clan member has strengths and weaknesses. As a whole, we’re far stronger together than apart. We’re all connected mentally to one degree or another. It’s strength in numbers. An all-for-one kind of deal.”

  “Very Three Musketeers,” she teased.

  “I felt differently than the majority of clan members when I was turned. I decided I couldn’t be the only one who felt that way, some were just too afraid to speak up. I figured, what could I lose by giving them a voice? And so I did. I’d be damned if I’d live in fear of anyone’s wrath. We gathered in numbers, rebelled, and here we are four hundred years later. Because our beliefs are much the same, it helps to keep out the riffraff.”

  “What do you people do for work? Does everyone work the graveyard shift? Wanda told me about Svetlanna’s clothing line, but what about the rest of the people? How do you survive?”

  “Most of us have been around a long time. We’ve invested wisely. Some better than others. We just look out for each other.”

  Hence the “come join the clan” deal. “So what else do I need to know to be a part of the clan?” Hellafino, had she just asked that? She didn’t want to be a part of his friggin’ clan.

  “Not much.”

  “Are there rules?”

  “Yep.”

  “Got a handout?”

  “Ah, no.”

  “One more question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “What’s the deal with like hot and cold, not being able to feel pain and the ever-crazy healing yourself?”

  He smiled, the dimples on either side of his mouth deepening. “You’re the living dead now, Nina. It’s rather like being preserved in a lifelike state. So while your organs no longer work and you can’t reproduce or lose a lung—which in your case might not be a bad thing, with that mouth of yours—you still function. As to temperature and pain, all I can tell you is this is the way it’s always been. There are some sensations that are magnified and some that are dulled.”

  Yeah, like that all over hot thing that happened when he was slapped up against her. Hookay, next subject. “So what are these people like? I mean, the people in your clan?”

  “You should come by sometime when you’re not fired up and find out.”

  Yeah, thus showing him and everyone else she was willing to participate in vampire games. Not. Even if she was being swayed to the notion that Greg wasn’t evil, she didn’t do crowds well. “Do you have like picnics and crap?”

  “We have meetings from time to time. We gather, yes.”

  To do what, was the question. “Well, I don’t want to stay a vampire, so I don’t see the point.”

  “But for now, you are a vampire, and it wouldn’t hurt you to find out how you can benefit from the various resources the clan has to offer. Maybe hone a skill or two.”

  Nina still wasn’t comfortable with blood drinking. Flying was a whole other Pandora’s Box. “The skill or two shit still freaks me out. Like the way you disappear. Or the way you break into my apartment.”

  He smiled with a smug lift of his lips.

  “Are they going to hate me?”

  “Who?”

  “This clan of yours.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, you know my friend Marty, right?”

  Greg nodded, making his hair move, filling her nostrils with the scent of his shampoo. She clung to the chair’s arms, sticking her fingers into the plastic cup holder provided by the theater to keep from tugging a lock. “She’s a werewolf.”

  “So I smelled.”

  Nina smiled in spite of herself. “Her now husband’s, then boyfriend’s, pack hated her guts. They didn’t want to have anything to do with her, and they treated her like shit.”

  “Fear of exposure.” His statement was simple and knowing. Clearly he’d experienced some of his own brand of discrimination.

  “Yeah, but there was other stuff, too. Pack politics or
something. Her husband, Keegan, was supposed to mate with some other werewolf, and it pissed the pack off that he didn’t want to.”

  Greg’s body language changed for a blip of a second, making him shift in his chair and cross his legs before his profile relaxed once again. “That happens I suppose, but I’m not a werewolf. I don’t know the intricacies of a pack.”

  “Do you have crazy shit like that going on in your clan? Are they all going to hate me because I was once a human?”

  “We were all human once. In a lycan pack I imagine it’s much different. They can have children and create more werewolves. The pack itself is probably so old, not many were originally human—most were probably born lycan. As a result, I’d imagine they want to keep the bloodlines strong, and their hesitation over your friend, in some jaded old-guard minds, makes sense. But vampires can’t have children, Nina.”

  When he let those words go, she felt a stab of fleeting sorrow. Not that she’d planned to have children anyway—or even get married, but the option had been there, and now it wasn’t. Or might not be, if she couldn’t get the results she’d hoped to from Lisanne. After letting that process in her head, she said, “I wouldn’t have been a very good mother, anyway. I think Lou told you I didn’t have the best example.”

  “You’re not like your mother, Nina.”

  Her chest immediately ached from his words. “She wasn’t all bad. Not always. She had some moments.”

  There had been times when she’d come through for Nina, and those were the memories she chose to keep. Not the ones where she’d show up at their screen door, unwashed, unkempt, and reeking of alcohol, begging her father to let her come home with the same old refrain, “This time’ll be different, Joe. You’ll see. We’ll be a family.” And they were for a week, sometimes as long as a month. Once for almost two months. Nina’s head dipped to her chest, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

  Greg’s hand found hers, wrapping her smaller fingers in the coolness of his. “No, I’m sure she wasn’t. I don’t doubt she loved you. She just had a weakness that not even you could cure.”

  Such a simple statement made it all almost seem okay coming from him. Again, she found her throat closing up, and for a moment, she allowed her hand in his to give her comfort. It was big and secure and sending vibrations of soothing calm. Her inclination to lean her head against his broad shoulder grew, but just then the lights of the theater popped up, glaring and uncomfortable to her sensitive eyes. Neither of them moved, and Nina couldn’t even hazard a glance at him.