In all seriousness he leaned forward. I leaned back, not wanting to be any closer to him.
“Look, pet. You and I are going to have to trust one another to accomplish our objectives. And I’ll make this very, very simple: If you so much as look cross-eyed at me and I even wonder if you’re thinking about betraying me, I’ll kill you. Now, that might not scare you, being the big brave girl you are, but remember this: I followed you home the other night. Got anyone you care about in that barn of a house? Because if you do, then I suggest you make nice with me and do as you’re told. If you cross me, you’ll live long enough to see that house burned to the ground with everyone still inside. So if you ever make a go for me, you’d better be sure you finish me, understand?”
Gulping, I nodded. I understood. Oh God, did I ever.
“Besides”—his voice brightened like a spring day—“I can give you what you want.”
Doubtful. “What could you possibly know about what I want?”
“You want what every abandoned child wants. You want to find your father. But you don’t want a happy reunion, no, not you. You want to kill him.”
I stared at him. He’d spoken aloud what I hadn’t even allowed my subconscious to whisper, and he was right. It was the other reason I hunted vampires, to kill the one who fathered me. More than anything, I wanted to do that for my mother. If I could, I would feel I had in some small way atoned for the circumstances of my birth.
“You…” I could barely speak with all the thoughts flying through my mind. “You can help me find him? How?”
A shrug. “For starters, I might know him. Know a great many undead types, I do. Face it—without me, you’re looking for a needle in a fangstack. Even if I don’t personally know him, I already know more about him than you do.”
“What? How? What?”
He held up a hand to stop my babbling. “Like his age, for example. You’re twenty-one, right?”
“Twenty-two,” I whispered, still reeling. “Last month.”
“Indeed? Then you have the wrong age as well as the wrong address on that fake license of yours.”
He must have gone through my purse. Well, it made sense; he’d also stripped me when I was unconscious. “How do you know it’s a fake?”
“Didn’t we just cover this? I know your real address, and it’s not the one on that license.”
Oh crap. That defeated the purpose of why I’d gotten the phony ID to begin with, in case I ever lost against a vampire and he rifled through my things. I hadn’t wanted one to be able to track down my family. That had been the thought, anyway. Stupid me never expected a vampire to follow me home.
“Come to think of it, pet, you are a liar, possessor of false identification, and a murderer.”
“Your point?” I snapped.
“Not to mention a tease,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Foulmouthed, as well. Yep, you and I will get along famously.”
“Bollocks,” I said succinctly.
He grinned back at me. “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But back to the subject. You said your mum carried you for, what, four months? Five?”
“Five. Why?” I was more than a little curious as to his reasoning. What did that have to do with how old, or how undead, my father was?
He leaned forward. “See, it’s like this. When you’re changed, it takes a few days for some of the human functions to cease completely. Oh, the heartbeat stops right off and the breathing as well, but some of the other things take longer. Tear ducts still work normally for the first day or so before you cry only pink due to the blood-to-water ratio in our bodies. You might even piss once or twice to get it out of your system. But the main point is that he still had swimmers in his sacks.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know, luv. Sperm, if you want to be all technical about it. He still had living sperm in his juice. Now, that’s something which would only be possible if he’d been newly changed. Within a week at most. Right off, then, you can pinpoint almost exactly how old he is, in vampire years. Add that to any recent deaths around that time and place matching his description, and bingo! There’s your dad.”
I was stunned. Just as promised, in a few seconds he’d given me more information than my mother had known all of my life. Maybe, just maybe, I’d stumbled onto a gold mine. If through him I could learn more about my father and killing vampires, and all he wanted in return was to pick the targets…well, then, I could stomach it. If I lived long enough.
“Why do you want to help me find my father? In fact, why do you kill other vampires? They’re your own kind, after all.”
Bones stared at me for a moment before replying. “I’ll help you find your father because I reckon you hate him more than you do me, so it’ll keep you motivated to do what I say. As for why I hunt vampires…you don’t need to bother about that now. You have more than enough to concern yourself with. Suffice it to say some people just need killing, and that goes for vampires as well as humans.”
I still didn’t know why he wanted me to work with him in the first place. Then again, maybe it was all a lie and he was biding his time, intending to rip my throat out when I least suspected it. I didn’t trust this creature, not for a moment, but right now I had no choice but to play along. Find out where this led to. If I was still alive in a week, I’d be amazed.
“Back to the subject at hand, luv. Guns don’t work on us, either. There are only two exceptions to that rule. One, if the bloke is lucky enough to shoot our necks in two and our heads topple off. Decapitation does work; not many things can live without a head, and a head is the only part on a vampire that won’t grow back if you cut it off. Two, if the gun has silver bullets and enough are fired into the heart to destroy it. Now, that’s not as easy as it sounds. No vampire will stand still and pose for you. Likely he’ll be on you and the gun shoved up your arse before any real damage is done. But those silver bullets hurt, so you can use them to slow a vamp down and then stake him. And you’d better be quick with that silver, because you’ll have one very brassed-off vampire on your hands. Strangulation, drowning, none of that does anything. We only breathe about once an hour for preference, and we can go indefinitely without oxygen. Just a breath now and then to put a dab of oxygen in the blood and we’re sound as a pound. Our version of hyperventilating is to breathe once every few minutes. That’s one way to tell a vamp is tiring. He’ll start to breathe a bit to perk up. Electrocution, poisonous gas, ingestible poisons, drugs…none of those work. Got it? Now you know our weaknesses.”
“Are you sure we can’t test some of those theories?”
He wagged a finger at me reprovingly. “None of that, now. You and I are partners, remember? If you start to forget that, maybe you’d best remember the things I just mentioned would work really well on you.”
“It was a joke,” I lied.
He just gave me a look that said he knew better. “The bottom line is that we are very hard to put down. How you’ve managed to plant sixteen of us in the ground is beyond me, but then the world never lacks for fools.”
“Hey.” Piqued, I defended my skills. “I would have had you in pieces if you hadn’t made me drive and then sucker-punched me when I wasn’t looking.”