As Anne emerged from the backseat, he approved of the fact that the stocky driver got out from behind the wheel and walked her to her door. On her front stoop, they shared words that did not carry all the way up to him, but going by the way her head lowered and she held that paper bag of her things in tight hands, she seemed both resolute and exhausted.
The driver waited until she was safely inside, the red-painted door shut tight, a light flaring, soft and yellow, inside.
The man who had been such a grudging help hesitated as if he were worried about her. Then he shoved his hands in the front pockets of his pants and stomped off, his perma-frown back in place, that not-half-bad heart clearly heavy under all the gruffness.
After the car took off, Darius stayed where he was. Anne was moving around her home, other lights coming on behind the privacy curtains. The fact that no one could see inside was a good thing. He didn’t like the idea of her being both undefended and highly visible.
Although undefended and not highly visible wasn’t much better.
It was hard to leave. But he had a job to do.
The return trip to that development of apartment buildings was the work of a moment as he had no reason to take the dematerialization in stages. Resuming his corporeality on the lawn where she’d picked up her stuff, he looked back at his car on the far side of the road—and promptly forgot about the BMW he’d loved so much for such a short time.
Stepping into the building’s central pass-through, he took the stairs two at a time. On the second floor’s landing, he did a roundabout at the four closed doors and the three welcome mats. He approached the apartment that didn’t have anything at the foot of its entry.
He knew he had the right one because this was where she had stared as soon as she’d gotten out of the car.
Curling up a fist, he knocked on the door.
The barking from inside the apartment was immediate, and a sharp male voice responded in a harsh tone. A good minute later, things were opened.
The human on the other side was about six feet even, with some manner of light-colored eyes and a hairline that was clearly a little farther back than it had been in his college years. Given his slightly pinched features and trim torso, he was good-looking in the way someone who was almost handsome beat out another guy who was solidly average—and his pale gray suit and pink tie were all Miami Vice without a beach. Or the Testarossa.
“Who the hell are you—”
Darius locked a grip on the front of the man’s throat and pushed. As the guy tap-danced backwards, his arms pinwheeling, his mouth dropping open, the door shut on its own and a brown dog in a crate started to bark.
Darius glanced over at the mutt and bared his fangs—which took care of the noise: The canine instantly submitted to the alpha animal in the room, going down on its belly and putting its head between its paws.
Gagging and choking filled the audio-void.
Slam!
The impact of its owner’s back meeting the far wall of the living area cut off all the defensive flapping and slapping. Still, Darius banged that spine again. And again—
Something fell off a shelf. A book or, no, it was a photograph in a frame.
The dog whimpered as Darius finally cut it with the knock, knock, knockin’ on heaven’s door, and as he let off a little on the squeeze, a deep breath was dragged in. On the wheezing exhale, he put his face forward so that he was nose to nose with his prey. No talking. Instead, he went into the frontal lobe and probed all kinds of memories.
What he saw made him go back to the full-squeeze, his grip getting so tight that the bright red flush and the goldfish gaper of a mouth took on comedy-trope levels. Or horror ones.
Pulling out of that brain, Darius wanted to bare his fangs a second time—and sink them into the piece of shit’s jugular.
Instead, he kept his voice low and deep. “You know Anne?”
Clicking of the tongue. Snuffling. Gulping.
And if those eyes bulged any further, they were going to pop out and turn into projectiles Darius was going to have to duck.
He relaxed some of the pressure again. “Patricia Anne Wurster. You know her.”
“Wh-wh-wh-what—yeah, yeah, I do—”
“You leave her the fuck alone from now on. I catch you anywhere around her, even walking on the same side of the street downtown, I’m going to handle you. Are we clear? You don’t go near her, you don’t call her, you don’t send her a letter or a carrier pigeon. No contact, not after tonight, if you want to stay alive.”
The man pulled in some air. “Who are you?”
“I’m her fairy godmother, that’s who I am. And I will beat you to death, do you understand.” As those eyes went wide again, Darius got even closer. “I will kill you with my bare hands and they will never find your body. You have no more business with her. Nod if you understand me.”
“Wh-what-what—”
Done with the conversation, Darius picked the man up by that throat and threw him across the room. The dead-weight asshole landed half on, half off the sofa, the resulting crack suggesting some vertebra or another was protesting a serious misalignment—and wow, looked like gravity worked on hose bags: The aftermath slide-off-the-padded-arm was as close to boneless as an adult male anything could get, the torso rolling over listlessly, upper limbs flopping, legs tangling, until there was a bump on the carpet.
Darius stalked over to the guy. In the ordinary course of things, when humans and vampires mixed, the fanged side of the equation scrubbed any memory of the interaction. Staying under the radar was always the prime directive. Or almost always.
Amnesia was not how shit was going to go tonight.
Squatting down, Darius relocked on that throat. “I will kill you, do you understand. And I will do it slowly.”
“Who… are you,” came the hoarse response.
“Not what you have to worry about. You want to stay alive, you will never fuck with Anne Wurster again. Now nod, or I’m going to make you respond in the affirmative, and you’re not going to like how that feels.”
The response was vigorous, like the guy had been asked if he wanted a winning lottery ticket. An all-expenses-paid vacation to the Caribbean. A new car.
“Good.”
Darius released his hold and straightened. Then he looked around. The apartment was navy blue and nasty neat, everything in its place, not a newspaper on the coffee table, a stray dish in the galley kitchen, a pee spot on the rug from the dog—
He went over and picked up the photograph that had fallen off its shelf. It was an artsy shot, a black-and-white of a snowed-in field.
“You took this picture?” Darius asked.
The guy pushed himself up a little. Slipped as his hand skidded out from under. “Y-yes. I did.”
“You like photography, then.”
“Ah, yes—”
Darius snapped the frame in half, the glass shattering in his grip and cutting into his palm. Letting the fragments fall to the carpet, he shook out the fragile, glossy print.
The apartment wasn’t all that big, so it was a short trip over to the four-top of gas burners in the kitchen. Cranking the one in the front right on, he glanced back at Bruce Allen McDonaldson Jr.
The guy was just sitting on his ass, his suit jacket wedged up under his armpits, his pink tie over his shoulder—his eyes blinking myopically at some middle distance in front of him. Which was what bullies did when they picked on the wrong person and got their nuts slapped by someone bigger and stronger than they could handle.