Phaze Fantasies Volume 4 Read online

  "They want us dead,” Tala corrected. “This is about eliminating their greatest threats."

  Scott snorted. “No offense, sweetheart, but you're not exactly—"

  The rest of it was cut off when Tala flew past Ryan, a blur of motion, and slammed the heel of her hand into Scott's solar plexus. The larger man choked and stumbled backward, not quite falling but losing enough of his balance to allow Tala to do a leg sweep that landed Scott on his ass. The heel of her boot came down on his throat, and the fury in her dark eyes was so reminiscent of the last time Ryan had seen her that a shiver ran down his spine.

  "I'm not exactly what?” she asked Scott.

  Katsu barked out a single word, and though Ryan didn't know the language, there was no mistaking the chastising tone. Tala immediately stiffened, her foot lifting from Scott's throat, and in the next second Scott grabbed her ankle and pushed her off, forcing her to do a back flip in midair in order not to land on her head.

  Katsu spoke again, this time coming to Ryan's side to prevent any more fighting. Everybody looked to Tala to translate, but all she did was shake her head.

  "Well, I don't know about you people,” Noni said, tucking her stake into her waistband, “but I'm out of here. I didn't show up to be a sitting duck for a bunch of crazy vamps."

  Nobody stopped her as she turned and bolted for the front exit, but just as she stretched out a hand to open the door, the wall shimmered and sparked, the entire room pulsing as if taking deep breaths. Noni screamed the split second before she was thrown away from the exit, landing over twenty feet away on her upper back with such force that her head snapped back and hit the floor.

  Tala was the first to run to her, with Ryan right on her heels. By the time they were crouching at her side, Noni was already struggling to push herself upright, wincing with every new flex of muscles.

  "They put up a fucking forcefield?” It was said with such youthful incredulity that it was hard not to smile. “Are they crazy?"

  "Lie down,” Tala said. Her nimble hands pushed Noni back to the floor, slipping around the back of her head to feel for injury. Her mouth was grim as she explored, but when she pulled away her fingers were clear of blood. “You probably have a concussion, but the skin's not broken and I can't feel any fractures in your skull. You need to take it easy, though."

  "Yeah, well, tell that to the vamps who've locked us in here.” Pushing away their hands, Noni unfolded away from the floor, swaying as she rose to her feet. She didn't refuse the arm Ryan snuck around her back to help her return to the group, though as soon as they were there, she collapsed on the nearest bench. “So what's the what? These vamps want their very own dollhouse of vampire hunters? Because that's just fucking weird."

  "They corralled us,” Ryan said. “They want us all dead."

  Scott rolled his eyes. “No shit, Sherlock."

  "They've used a stasis bubble.” Tala's voice was still even, in spite of her earlier fight. Ryan hadn't seen her in action since she'd saved his life at Purdue, but the memory of her cool efficiency, her deadly accuracy, lived on in his dreams every single night. His memory hadn't failed him. “They've created a temporary holding cell for us. It stops time for others not affected by the spell, which is why everyone else appears to be frozen."

  "How long do these bubbles last?” Ryan asked.

  "Several hours, usually. It depends on the strength of the spellcaster."

  The lights flickered and dimmed.

  "Damn it.” Tala looked down and scanned the floor. When her gaze came to settle on a larger piece of glass, she stepped to crush it under her heel. The artificial illumination she'd provided immediately brightened again, but her face was anything but pleased when she turned back to the group.

  "We're running out of time,” she said. “The vampires have done something to the power so that we can't fight as well, and my sunlight spell won't last much longer. We need to find a way to restore it."

  Ryan nodded. “Sounds like my cue.” At her curious glance, he shrugged. “Vampire hunting doesn't exactly pay the bills. In my downtime, I'm an electrical engineer. I wasn't at Purdue to party, you know."

  Though he'd hoped that his reference to their first meeting might break the ice between them a little, Tala ignored it, choosing instead to regard him with that piercing, black gaze. “I'll come with you. We need to stay in teams.” She spoke a few words in Japanese to Katsu, who nodded and immediately moved to sit with Noni. In front of Scott, though, she paused.

  "Can you play nice and help Katsu keep an eye on the kid?” she asked.

  "Hey!” Noni protested. “Nineteen is not a kid! It's fucking legal!"

  Everybody ignored her outburst. “Why do I have to stay?” Scott argued.

  "Because if the spell dies before we get lights on, the vamps will come back. And better to have one of you guarding the kid while the other takes any of them on.” Tala glared. “Unless you're still only in it for the chicks and attention, in which case, I hope you fall on your stake in the dark."

  His mouth tightened, as did his grip around the piece of wood in his hands. “Be fast. I'm not in the mood to lose my life on a babysitting job."

  Tala didn't stop to watch him retreat to stand next to the other pair. She grabbed Ryan's arm and began dragging him away from the middle of the room, toward a narrow door marked Private. He kept his mouth shut until she shoved the door open and hauled him through, but when it slammed behind them, leaving them in pitch black again without the sunshine spell to guide the way, he dug his heels in.

  "Do you know where you're going?” he said. He felt a little ridiculous talking to the dark, but the curling of her fingers around his arm helped dispel some of his hesitancy.

  "You mean you showed up to what you thought was a clan meeting without learning the layout of the place they were using?"

  Her voice dripped with disdain; she might as well have screamed, “Amateur!", and been done with it. It was enough to put Ryan on the defensive. Tala might still be the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, but he wasn't some Hoosier straight off the farm.

  "Considering I just found out about it yesterday, flew all night from Phoenix to land this morning at LaGuardia, and spent half my day arming up, I don't think I did too badly just being here in the first place,” he snapped.

  "Except now you're a hostage."

  "So are you. And what good would knowing the blueprints of this place have done you if you didn't have me to help you get the power back up?"

  She fell silent at that, and Ryan regretted not being able to see her features. The fact that she didn't automatically have a comeback surely meant he'd scored a point in whatever contest of wills she was waging, but without visual confirmation, he had no way of being sure.

  "Let's go,” she said after a few seconds. Her grip tightened as she began to lead him slowly down the hall. “We don't have time to waste here."

  Ryan put his other hand to the wall to feel his way along. She was right. There was a job to be done, even if it wasn't the one he'd set out that night to do. And, he got the distinct impression that Tala Mamola had just decided he wasn't as green as she'd originally estimated.

  That was an impression Ryan wanted to foster. After all, she was the entire reason he was even a vampire hunter in the first place.

  * * * *

  It didn't matter that it was night, or that winter was making its presence known early that year, or that he'd forgotten to grab a heavier coat before leaving the dorm. What mattered was that Ryan was late, and that Jeannie was going to be pissed, and that if he didn't get his balls across campus in the next five minutes, she was going to leave without him and he could say goodbye to the night of debauchery that he'd had planned for them, the night he'd spent the past two weeks organizing. She was going to be leaving for her home in Maine in three days for Thanksgiving, and if he wanted any quality time with his girlfriend before she got sucked into the drama of high school sweethearts who still lived in their hometown, he needed t
o get it now.

  So he ran. He cut across lawns, he ducked between buildings, he used the fire exit that was always propped open for smokers at the back of the theater, in order to get to her dorm in time. He never heard the footsteps behind him. He never heard the whispers. All he heard was the tympani of his heart in his blood and the nagging voice of his high school gym teacher in the back of his head, yelling at him for being so out of shape and running like a girl.

  Ryan caught Jeannie walking down the front path in front of her dorm. He was out of breath, and his sweat-soaked skin made his thin shirt stick to his back, in spite of the icy chill in the air. She, on the other hand, looked as perfect as always, not a hair out of place in her short, blonde cap, her make-up dramatic but expertly applied. Her blue eyes flashed at him in anger, and she jerked out of his grasp when he tried to stop her from walking away.

  "You do this all the time, Ryan! You make me wait for you, and then you think you can just waltz in whenever the hell you feel like it."

  "You think this was waltzing? I can't even breathe here."

  But trying to turn his tardiness into a joke didn't make her laugh as he'd hoped, and Jeannie flounced past him, the hard soles of her boots clicking on the walk as she marched toward the student parking lot.

  "Let me explain—"

  "Don't bother. We're done. I'm done."

  They were on the edge of the lot, and he was just reaching to try and grab her arm one more time, try and make her see reason, that he loved her and he could be better, he really could, when the shadows erupted in a flurry of snarls and leather. The horizon tilted in front of him when strong hands jerked him back by the shoulders and tossed him to the ground.

  Ryan barely had time to see something dark jump at Jeannie before a body was on top of his, pinning him to the half-frozen grass. He heard her scream, though, because it tore through the night, tore through his skin, shredded his heart as he heard it get cut off in a wet gurgle.

  "Jeannie!"

  A hand clamped over his mouth, and he turned terrified eyes to the figure holding him down. The sandwich he'd scarfed down before bolting for Jeannie's threatened to come back up when he saw the corpse-gray skin and the snarling fangs and the red-pupiled eyes, but there wasn't any time to contemplate the churning of his stomach before his sense of survival kicked in.

  He wriggled beneath the legs that were clamped around his hips, and though his sudden movement jarred the body of—let's face it, it was a vampire, whether he wanted to believe in Dracula or not—it didn't dislodge it. If anything, his fight seemed to amuse the monster, and a sickening smile made its lips spread over its fangs.

  "Do that some more,” it said. “You'll taste even better with the fear running through your veins."

  Reason would have told Ryan to stop, but reason had fled the building as soon as he'd heard Jeannie's death cry. The vampire rode his writhing body for several seconds before the hand around his mouth tightened, pushing upward to block off the passage of air through his nose.

  "Okay, I'm bored now,” it announced. “Let's eat."

  "Let's not."

  Ryan didn't have time to register the female voice as anything but not-Jeannie before the vampire was twisting around on top of him, seeking out its owner. The hold over Ryan's mouth loosened enough for him to gasp for air, and then it was gone entirely, leaving behind a shower of ash that had him choking even more than when he'd been suffocated.

  Rolling onto his hands and knees, he coughed and gagged, clearing his lungs before lifting his head to see what was happening. The vampire who'd attacked him was gone, but the one who'd killed Jeannie was in full battle mode with a dark-haired dervish, her slim body twisting and dancing so gracefully that it didn't even look like a fight. His eyes darted to Jeannie, lying discarded on the concrete like a broken doll, and the ash that coated his throat mixed with the bile that rose from his gut, making him heave into the grass.

  By the time he looked up again, the second vampire was gone, and the dervish was crouching by Jeannie's body, feeling for a pulse.

  "Is she dead?” he called out.

  The woman straightened. “Yes. But she did not drink so she will rest."

  "Rest?” Hysteria drove Ryan to his feet, and he lurched toward the curb. “She's dead! That's not resting. That's murder."

  "To a vampire, it's called survival.” She lifted her head. The eyes that met his were like black marbles, catching glints of moonlight to gleam in the darkness. She had to be the same age he was, Ryan realized with shock. And yet, she moved and spoke like someone centuries older. “Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine,” he replied automatically, even though he was far from it. But her query laid the permission for his flurry of questions to explode. “Who are you? What are you? What the hell just happened here?"

  At his almost belligerent outburst, she lifted her chin. The fresh angle cast the streetlight across her delicate features, a long nose, high cheekbones. The dark skin and slight slant to her eyes suggested a non-Caucasian background, but all Ryan knew was that she was likely the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

  "I saved you,” she replied, her tone suddenly crisp. For the first time, he noticed the accent in her words, like English was a second language or even a third. Exchange student, maybe? “I am sorry I could not save your girlfriend. I did not intend for either of you to die."

  His mind whirled. She hadn't answered either of his first questions, and those were the ones he needed the most right now. “So you knew they were going to attack us,” he fished.

  "I knew they would attack someone tonight, yes."

  "And you just let them."

  "I needed to be sure they were the ones I was after."

  "By letting them snack on us? Who the hell does that kind of thing?"

  Her mouth thinned. “Someone who does not wish to kill innocents, for one,” she snapped. She tucked the wooden stake she still cradled in her hand into a narrow pocket in her cargo pants; if he hadn't seen her do it, he wouldn't have even suspected it was there. “Savor the chance you've been given. Not everyone gets a second one."

  He watched her march off through the parked cars. Her head was high, her spine straight, but her hands were clenched into fists at her side. She had gone almost twenty feet, before he broke into a run after her, grabbing her arm and forcing her to a stop.

  "I don't know who you are,” he said. “Or why you did what you did."

  There was a shine in her eyes that hadn't been there before, enough of a glistening to make him loosen his hold on her. “My name is Tala Mamola,” she replied, carefully extracting herself from his hand. “And I did it because I had to."

  Ryan remained rooted in his spot as she backed away. It wasn't until the night had swallowed her up that he murmured, “Thank you."

  * * * *

  So often, it felt like he'd lived two whole lifetimes since that night at Purdue, but here, in the darkened back hall at Grand Central Station with Tala's small hand warm and firm around his wrist, it could have been yesterday. He'd changed his whole existence after meeting her, seeking out answers and finding Oliver instead. It had been Oliver who had told Ryan about Tala's family heritage, about how vampire hunting was her whole life, her entire legacy. She left her home in the Philippines whenever a threat arose elsewhere, even when it took her to West Lafayette, Indiana. It had been Oliver who'd agreed to train him, to teach Ryan everything he knew about vampires and how to kill them.

  Now Oliver was dead. And Tala was back. And Ryan didn't know what was going on anymore.

  They had wound through too many corridors for him to keep track of, meandering into the bowels of the station, when Tala finally spoke again.

  "I am sorry about Oliver. I know he was ... your friend."

  Her subdued voice was warmer than it had been, a melodious balm in the chaotic darkness. A knot unraveled in Ryan's gut, and he let out a long, low sigh.

  "Some friend I am,” he said. “I didn't even know he was goi
ng to be here."

  They turned a corner, and in the distance he saw the red glow of an emergency exit light. It revealed the curve of Tala's head in front of him, but her gaze was firmly fixed ahead, as if she didn't need the scant light to see.

  "None of us knew,” she said. “If we had, we would have been far more organized, I think."

  "At the very least, I would've saved money, hitching a ride with Oliver.” His tone was light, and though he heard her small chuckle, he knew his joke had done little to dispel the somber mood. “I don't know any of the others, though,” he continued. “Just you."

  "Katsu is an excellent hunter. He'll be valuable if there's a fight."

  She didn't elaborate on Scott, and she obviously knew him. If she thought she was going to get off that easy, she had another think coming. Ryan had long ago given up the notion that the unknown was acceptable.

  "So what's the deal with you and Scott?” he asked. Maybe it was a little bit of jealousy that prompted him to ask as well. The other man had had a taste of the woman who had obsessed Ryan's thoughts for a decade. “I'm guessing you're not on each other's Christmas card list anymore."

  He heard her breath, felt it take life like an entirely separate creature between them. “We used to hunt together. And then we lived together. And then we didn't do either anymore."

  "Because he left you or you left him?"

  "Does it matter?"

  In the darkness, Ryan shrugged. “It helps in figuring out who's playing on whose side. Like that Noni. She's a fireball. I wouldn't pick her last for my team."

  Tala snorted. “She's a child."

  "She's nineteen."

  "A child."

  "You couldn't have been much older that that when you saved me at Purdue."

  She stopped so suddenly that Ryan ran into the back of her. Tala stumbled, letting him go so that her hand could fly out to the wall to steady herself, and then whirled to face him, the ends of her hair whipping across his face.

  "Why are you here?” she demanded.

  Ryan frowned. “I told you. Because I heard about—"