I kicked him in the chest, knocking him backward on his ass before he sprawled out across the ground. There was no one else in the alley. My biggest prey had run.
I cursed as I flipped my sword around in my hand, preparing my grip. I ran my knife across the thigh of my jeans, cleaning his blood off the blade, before I slipped it back into the sheath.
Wrapping both hands around the hilt of my sword, I cleaved it down at his throat, striking his head from his body. This time, the sword sliced cleanly through and the blade struck the cement beneath. Blood splattered across my sneakers.
That was why I always wore black. That, and Elly always told me black is classy and sophisticated.
Lord knew I could use any help I could get with being classy and sophisticated.
My skin prickled down my neck. Someone was watching me. I kept my grip tight on my sword.
When I looked up, my prey was dangling from the top of the brick building. His wind-milling legs slammed frantically into the brick wall over and over.
A dark-haired man gripped the collar of the vampire who’d escaped me. He crouched easily at the edge of the roof, his face relaxed as he dangled my vampire from five stories up. The vamp bucked hard to escape his grip, despite the distance between him and the concrete.
“Did you lose something?” he called. Even at a distance, he sounded mocking.
“I was about to hunt him down again.” What the hell was he? No human would be that comfortable on the edge of a roof like that, gripping a kicking burden. For some reason, the vampire wasn’t screaming. “But thanks for the help?”
“No problem. Want me to toss him down?”
“Sure.”
The vampire didn’t scream as he plummeted to the ground. The fall wouldn’t kill something like him, but both his legs shattered when he landed.
I studied the fallen vampire. He couldn’t seem to open his mouth to scream, even though his eyes were wide with desperation.
“You look as scared as your victims must have felt,” I told him.
I don’t love vampires on a good day, but ones like this? Who preyed exclusively on kids? When I was tracking him, I’d found one of the bodies, twisted and broken and so goddamn small it would haunt me at night.
I’d make this vamp’s death slow, if I were inclined to be inefficient.
But it was his lucky day; I never wasted my time. There were always more monsters to kill.
I whirled with the sword and cleaved his head from his shoulders. The head bounced across the pavement.
The man on the rooftop started to clap slowly.
I looked back up at him. He stood comfortably at the edge of the rooftop, his toes hanging over the side as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
He stopped clapping and put his hands in his pockets. Just the way he stood suggested he was an arrogant bastard, with his broad shoulders and tall, powerfully muscled frame.
“Who are you?” I shouted. We could start there, even though I was also very curious about my follow-on question, which was a toss-up between what the hell do you want and why the hell are you talking to me?
“Duncan.” There was an edge in his voice, as if I were a bit stupid.
Had I met this clown before? I was losing sight of him in the glare of the morning sun, so I cupped my hand over my eyes. I groaned at the light. Maybe I was crossing from drunk to hungover rather rapidly.
Police sirens blared in the distance.
He lifted his hand, beckoning me onto the rooftop, and I stared at him like he was a lunatic. No one beckoned me anywhere. He said, “Let’s take this conversation somewhere that your arrest isn’t imminent.”
“I don’t know that I want to talk to you.” But curiosity had driven me for the past five years; first I’d been desperate to understand where I’d come from, and then I’d thrown myself into making sense of a world I didn’t remember. I sheathed my sword.
“You do,” he said. “I know you, Alisa.”
Did he know me or know me? Did Duncan know the old Alisa, the one I didn’t?
I’d tried to let go of my need to make sense of my past. The depth of my need to understand who I was, where I’d come from, felt dangerous. In so many ways, I was reckless with my life, but I needed to be careful with this random man who was trying to entice me into…something.
I backed across the alley, gauging the distance to the bottom of the fire ladder mounted on the building where he stood. I took a deep breath and exhaled.
Then I raced as fast I could, jumping against the brick wall, before propelling myself toward the bottom of the ladder. I caught it with both hands and swung myself up, then climbed quickly until I reached the rooftop.
When I clambered up next to him, he watched me appraisingly. There was nothing friendly in the way he narrowed his eyes, studying me with intensity that sent a prickle down my spine. But now I was close enough to get a good look at his face.
He was unreasonably handsome. His cheekbones were high, his cheeks hollow beneath them. His eyes were an eerie light blue, lushly lashed, in contrast with the black hair that fell to his shoulders. His skin was almost unnaturally perfect, as if he was airbrushed, and intricate tattoos that must spread across that powerful chest peeked from the torn collar of his shirt. Either that shirt was a fashion statement, or the vamp had tried to put up a fight.
“I don’t know you.” And I would remember him, if I’d met him in the last five years.
He cocked his head to one side, studying me. “You don’t remember anything, do you? Not your childhood, not your home, not your misspent youth.”
“Was my youth misspent?” I rubbed my hand across my head, which was beginning to pound. “I’ve been trying to misspend my twenties. Good to know I’ve got some practice.”
He looked me over just as curiously as I was looking at him. “At first, this Hunting business made me assume you were trying to help the humans as penance for your sins. But I suppose you would find your way into any career field that involved death and destruction.”
“You’ve been following me?” I demanded.
I should probably just kill him now. But he didn’t give me that creepy vibe up the back of my neck; I felt safe enough with him. Just… irritated.
And I also felt a flutter of nerves, an odd reeling in my stomach and a flush of desire that heated my skin. I bit my lip. I spent a lot of time around good-looking, well-built Hunters and I never felt these stirrings. This man was too damned pretty.
His brows rose as if that were ridiculous. “No. I’ve been trying to track you. You’ve been missing for a long time.”
I couldn’t stop staring at him, and I wanted to know what the hell he was talking about, both of which made me feel hot and self-conscious. I forced myself to meet that mocking gaze. “Last chance before I get bored and wander off. Who the hell are you?”
“You’re not going to just wander off.” He crossed his arms over that broad chest, still holding my gaze. I tried not to notice the way the movement pulled what was left of his shirt lower, revealing the dark lines of hounds and runes tattooed across his chiseled pecs. A perfectly shaped brown nipple winked at me before it was covered by his thick bicep, not that I was looking. “You’ve never had any control over your curiosity.”
God, what a twit. He wanted me to think he knew something I didn’t. My desire to uncover my past was a vulnerability, and I wasn’t about to let some random jerk—no matter how beautiful—control me.