Smoke (The Slayer Chronicles Book 1), Page 2

  I should know. It happened to my own sister.

  Once the transformation was complete, drakes usually had scales and claws, even though they kept their humanoid form. They needed meat to stay alive—didn’t have to be dragon meat, though. Any meat would do.

  “Well, anyway,” said Juniper, “they got in touch with me. They want to work with a couple of slayers. We give them all the dragons we kill exclusively and they pay us bank. It’s perfect. No dealing with any other middle men, just cold, hard cash.”

  “Why you telling me about this?”

  “Well, I don’t want to be with any of the other guys out there,” she said. “Other slayers would probably double-cross me, or steal from me. I can’t trust just anyone. I trust you.”

  “Really?” I arched an eyebrow.

  “Well, I mean, you got principles,” she said. “Makes you trustworthy.”

  “You know I can’t commit to exclusively giving them corpses,” I said.

  “Because you’re still waiting around while dragon families pick them up?” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. Penny helped me work it all out. She’d created a website for families of missing dragons to post photos of their loved ones in dragon form. Whenever I found a match, I contacted the family of the dead dragon. I didn’t tend to tell them that I’d killed the dragon, however. Instead I lied, said that I’d found the body. It was better that way for both of us.

  “But that’s stupid,” she said.

  “It’s the right thing to do.”

  She sighed. “Come on, Clarke. What about that sister of yours? She’s always in trouble. Expensive trouble. You need money to deal with that.”

  It was true that Gina was a problem. Being a drake was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to her. But she’d been through a lot. We hadn’t had easy lives, she and I.

  I shrugged. “I manage.”

  “You want to live in that dump of an apartment for the rest of your life?”

  “Look, I can’t help you,” I said. “Find someone else.”

  She glared at me. Then she flounced off the barstool. “Thanks for nothing, Clarke.”

  I winked at her. “Anytime.”

  Her eyes flashed. “You…” She clenched her hands into fists. “God.” And then she turned on her heel and stalked off into the depths of the bar.

  I sipped at my beer. Ah. Limey. Fizzy. Perfection.

  Time passed.

  I finished my beer, and no one else approached me. I was persona non grata in this place these days, not that I’d ever been Miss Popular. The bar happened to be a favorite of drakes as well as slayers—a strange sort of mix. Two drakes sat down at the bar, only leaving a few stools between us. One had green scales starting on his forehead and moving down over his cheeks. His ears were reptilian—nothing more than holes in his skull. The other looked human enough, but when he caught my glance for a second, his eyes were yellow, like a snake’s.

  I nodded at them both and tried to decide whether I wanted another drink or not.

  Then my phone rang.

  I dug it out of my pocket and looked at the screen. It was my sister. Geez. I put the phone to my ear. “What is it now, Gina?”

  “Clarke, I need you,” said my sister’s tear-filled voice over the phone.

  So, what else was new? “What happened?”

  “I tried to get out, to get away from him, but I’m so weak.” She started to sob again.

  I sat up straight. “What? What happened?”

  “He took too much,” Gina whispered. “I told him to stop, but he didn’t listen. He might be coming after me. I don’t know. I think I lost him.”

  I slapped money on the bar, enough to cover my beer. “A vampire? Were you selling your blood again?”

  “Don’t lecture me, Clarke,” she said. “Just come get me. Please.”

  I was already up and halfway to the door. “Where are you?”

  * * *

  When I went after rogues, I was always armed with the slayer’s weapon of choice—a bow and arrows. There were a lot of reasons why slayers used them. They were easy to buy. There was no need to acquire a license or prove that one had never been arrested for a crime. An arrow caused less damage to the dragon’s body than a bullet, and most slayers wanted as much of the body intact and sellable as possible.

  But bringing a bow and arrow to fight with a vampire didn’t make a lick of sense. Vampires could only be killed two ways—decapitation or fire. You could shoot a vampire full of arrows, and it wouldn’t make any difference.

  Vampires became vampires by dying with dragon blood in their system. They only stayed alive afterward by drinking blood (any blood, didn’t have to be dragon blood). But that was because they were technically dead. It was only magic that kept them alive. However, the blood of humans and animals didn’t give the vampires any usable magic. If they wanted to be able to do nifty tricks like compel people to do their bidding or move objects with their minds, they needed magic blood. Dragon blood was the best, but if they couldn’t find dragon blood, drake blood worked nearly as well.

  My stupid sister could never hold down a proper job, and so she was always doing stuff like selling her blood to vampires for money. It was dangerous as hell. In the minds of lots of people, it made her little better than a prostitute. Of course, I didn’t think so. She was my sister. But I didn’t approve either.

  This was not the first time this had happened.

  I tried to help her, but my sister wouldn’t stop—couldn’t stop—because she was addicted to dragon meat. They called the stuff dice on the street (short for slice and dice) and every bit of money that crossed Gina’s hands eventually went to getting more dice.

  She used to live with me long term, but she kept taking my stuff and selling it for dice, and I ended up having to kick her out.

  Still, she was my sister, and I couldn’t let her get hurt or starve or… or die.

  Damn it.

  When she called me, I always came. And if it was really bad, I always let her crash with me. When we were younger, I had failed to protect her once, and she had never been the same, and I didn’t know if there was any way she could be healed. Deep inside, she was so broken.

  Anyway, I wasn’t standing outside the place where Gina was with a bow and arrows. Instead, I had a big, wicked knife. The blade was over two feet long, and it was curved. It was very, very sharp. I wasn’t as good with it as I was with my bow, but I could take a vampire on if I had to.

  I had a talisman around my neck, just something simple. Having a bit of magic on me meant that I was impervious to compulsion. Compulsion only worked on someone with no magic at all.

  That meant I only had to contend with the telekinesis. Because this vamp would be all hyped up on my sister’s blood, practically leaking magic.

  Not that I was worried.

  Worrying about a fight only made me sloppy. I found that it was a mind over matter sort of thing. Being confident meant that I stood a far better chance. Maybe it wasn’t true for other people, but it was for me. The right mindset was critical.

  So, even if it might have been quite rational to be worried, I squelched that feeling, buried it under layers of bravado. And when it wiggled its way to the surface, I shut it down with a vengeance.

  I entered the building where Gina was. It was an apartment building in the crappy part of town, and the apartments weren’t in great shape either. The building itself looked as if it might have been built in the 1920s. The molding on the ceiling had a definite Art Noveau feel. The flourishes were covered in peeling paint and light overhead in the foyer was buzzing and flickering, so the place had seen its better days.

  To my left and my right were two doors, each with numbers on them, (one and two respectively) each shut tight. Against one wall, a staircase ascended to the second floor. I started to climb.

  I found Gina on the second floor landing, hugging her knees to her chest, still crying.

  I knelt down next to her. “Hey.�
��

  She looked up. “Clarke?” Her face lit up in relief.

  “What are you thinking, sitting right here in the open when you know he might be coming after you?” I said.

  She pointed up the steps.

  I let my gaze follow her finger, and I saw a splash of red on one of the steps above us.

  “I cut him,” said Gina. “I tried to get his head, but I’m so weak.”

  I straightened, raising my knife, and I started to creep up the steps. “He’s up here?”

  She didn’t answer.

  But it didn’t matter, because as I turned the corner, I saw more blood, spilling down the steps. And there was a man, face down on the third floor landing, one arm dangling out over the steps.

  He wasn’t moving.

  Well, that didn’t mean anything. Maybe Clarke had stunned him, or maybe he was so high on drinking her blood that he was just lying there, enjoying it, and he didn’t care that he was bleeding.

  I wasn’t going to take any chances. I lifted the knife above my head with both hands, planning to bring it down on his neck, just like chopping wood.

  And it felt as if an iron band had closed around my neck.

  I choked.

  The vampire rolled over, laughing. He gestured with one hand, and the band around my neck tightened. He was using magic to strangle me.

  I didn’t have any magic of my own. The talisman around my neck was only for protection. I didn’t know how to use it for anything else.

  Without air, everything seemed to slow down. The knife I was carrying felt very heavy. My eyes seemed to be bulging, as if the lack of breath was making my skull expand.

  The vampire sat up, grinning at me. “I heard her call you. She was tasty, but I’m still thirsty. I thought that a nice little nightcap might be in order.”

  It was illegal for vampires to drink blood from people, but that was hardly enforced. The police weren’t equipped to deal with vampires.

  My vision was starting to swim. My chest hurt. My lungs were screaming for air. I tried to lift the knife. Nothing happened.

  “I don’t want to kill you, sweetheart,” said the vampire. “I like the blood pumping from the heart. Just go to sleep.”

  I tried to lift the knife again. It moved an inch.

  The vampire didn’t seem to notice. “Should I drink from your neck? Your wrist? Which vein should I tap, hmm? Got a preference?” He giggled. “Oops, I forgot you can’t talk.”

  I summoned all my strength, focusing on the knife. I brought it up all at once, and slashed at the vampire. My aim wasn’t great. I caught his cheek, making a shallow cut below his cheekbone.

  He winced, backing up, hand going up to the cut. And it startled him, so he lost control of his magic.

  I could breathe. I gasped noisily, drawing as much air into my lungs as I could. There was no time to lose. I couldn’t sit here and catch my breath.

  He was angry now, and he want to hurt me even more than he’d wanted it before.

  I thrust the knife at the vamp, burying it inches in the soft skin of his belly.

  He shrieked. He threw out his hand and with it, his magic.

  I was picked up and flung backwards, down the steps. I tumbled over and over myself twice, before coming to a stop on the second floor landing. I still had the knife in my hand, but all the tumbling meant that I’d cut myself. I was bleeding from my thigh, and there was a cut in my jeans as well.

  The vampire hissed. “Your blood smells delicious.” He clambered down the steps toward me.

  I pushed up to my feet, picking up the knife.

  He was there, fangs out, reaching for me—

  I thrust the blade into his chest.

  He let out a sickly grunt.

  I pulled the knife from the wound as quick as I could.

  The vampire reached out with one hand.

  No, no, I thought. You can’t be allowed to use your damned magic. I swung the knife and connected. The blade sliced through his neck cleanly.

  He made an expression of confusion, of concern. And then his head toppled off his body.

  Damn it. Now, I was going to have to clean this up.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “I can’t be going around killing vampires all the time,” I was saying to my sister. We were back at my apartment some time later. “You know that if he had ties to any of the gangs around here, and they find out what I did, they’ll be out for my blood.” Literally. They’d drain me dry and kill me.

  Gina was munching on her second hamburger. She was weak, and she needed meat to feel better. “You dumped the body. No one’s going to find it.”

  “I hope not,” I said.

  She set down her burger. “Hey, thanks, Clarke. I think he was going to kill me.”

  I rubbed my forehead.

  “Really, I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  I sat down next to her. “I get that you’re grateful, Gina, but this is the kind of thing that can’t go on. You need to stop selling your blood to vampires.”

  “I know.” She started eating again.

  “But you’ll do it again, anyway, won’t you?”

  “I don’t want to,” she said. “I just run out of money so fast. Even when I hold down a job for a while, the money just… goes.”

  “It doesn’t go. You spend it,” I said.

  She set down the burger and picked at the bun. “I know.”

  “On dice,” I said.

  She took the bun off the burger completely and shoved the patty in her mouth. She chewed.

  “Damn it, Gina,” I said. I got up off the couch and crossed into my kitchen, which was really just a corner of the living room with a sink and a stove and refrigerator and barely any counter space. I opened the refrigerator and got out a Corona. “What am I supposed to do, huh?”

  “I want to get clean,” she said. “I do. But it’s hard.”

  I popped the top off the beer. I felt a stab of sympathy for her. I knew that the dice addiction was not easy to kick. I’d tried to help her go cold turkey before. She’d gotten so pale. Her lips had lost all color. And then she’d gotten this fever. It raged in her body, burning her up from the inside. It had terrified me. And after all that, she’d sneaked out while I was sleeping and gotten more dice anyway.

  “Look,” she said, “I was thinking that maybe it’s because I try to get clean on my own. Maybe if I went somewhere—”

  “The hospital?” I said.

  “No, not the hospital. They treat drakes like hell there,” she said. It was true. Most humans trained in medicine knew nothing about drake physiology. There wasn’t much reason to, considering drakes didn’t age or get sick, and they tended to heal quickly from wounds.

  “Where else?”

  “There’s a place I keep hearing about,” she said. “It’s a rehabilitation facility for magical creatures. They opened to help out dragon youth with problems with heroin and cocaine, but they’ve recently branched out into dice addiction. It’s a really nice place.”

  “They used to cater to dragons?” I said. “How much does that place cost?”

  “Well, I know it’s not cheap,” she said. “Just forget about it. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  I took a long swig of beer. I yanked my phone out of my pocket and pulled up my browser. “What’s the name of this place again?”

  “Magnolia Center.”

  I looked it up and was on the website in seconds. It did look nice. Looked like a paradise. I checked the rates. Geez.

  And then I looked up at my sister and thought about Naelen Spencer standing in my living room, begging me to name my price. Sure, his mission was incredibly stupid. And sure, his sister was never going to be cured. But maybe he was right. Maybe it wasn’t my business what he did once he captured the dragon. Maybe I was being an idiot.

  I put the phone back in my pocket. “You’re going.”

  “What?” said Gina.

  “You want to go to that facility,
right? Well, I’m going to make it happen.”

  “How?” she said.

  “Don’t worry about that,” I said. I pointed at her. “You have one thing to worry about now, and one thing only. And that’s getting better.”

  * * *

  I had Gina sleep in my bedroom, and I took the couch in the living room, because I wasn’t chancing her running out on me and going off to get high again. If she got up, I’d hear her, and I’d stop her.

  But she didn’t get up. Slept soundly all night, and into the late morning, which was when I typically woke up.

  At 10:30, when I got up and moving, I checked the bedroom, and she was still there. I threw on the clothes I’d been wearing the night before. Yawning and stretching, I made my way out into the kitchen and measured out some coffee into my little one-pot brewer.

  I put in the water and turned it on.

  After I had my coffee, I was going to figure out how the heck I would make this work.

  I realized that I didn’t even know how to get in touch with Naelen. If I called his office, I thought the chance of his secretary actually putting me in touch with him was slim to none. I didn’t have a personal number for him. I didn’t have any idea what the heck I should be doing.

  But I couldn’t think that through without caffeine. I gazed at the coffee pot, watching the brown liquid drip down into the pot at a maddeningly slow pace. Faster, I thought at it.

  Luckily, I hadn’t overdone it on the Coronas last night, not that I usually did. I drank a little beer now and then, but I didn’t tend to get much more than buzzed. I was happy to keep it under three beers a night. I didn’t like the way it felt when I was very drunk. It made me vulnerable. I couldn’t fight if I was trashed. I didn’t have a lot of enemies, exactly, but I wasn’t universally liked either. I needed to stay sharp.

  The pot was halfway full.

  Come on, come on, I thought. The scent of coffee had filled my entire apartment, and it was heavenly. I loved the smell of coffee. I wasn’t much for froufrou girly stuff like air fresheners or room sprays or things like that. But if I could find a coffee-scented one, I might very well use it all the time.