“And who do you work for?” This was the question that I most wanted the answer to, the one that would determine what happened next.
Martin jerked his thumb at his chest. “Me, myself, and I. You might say that I’m . . . an independent contractor. I decided a long time ago that if I’m the one doing all the work and taking all the risks, then I’m the one keeping all the profits.”
His boasting actually filled me with a little bit of relief. It sounded like this scheme was limited to Martin, Vincent, and the other giants, which meant that I still had a chance to contain this—to fix it—for my sake, and especially for Gin’s.
“So why me?” I asked. “What’s so special about me?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Because you work for Gin Blanco, the queen of the Ashland underworld. At least, until someone kills her and takes her place.” Martin tapped his finger on my tablet, then repeated the motion on my phone. “Something that will be much easier to do with all the info stored on these babies.”
I’d thought that I’d been protecting Gin by compiling all that information on her, but Martin was right. All I’d done was make it easier for someone to kill her. Some assistant I was. My heart squeezed tight with guilt at how I’d failed her, but I forced myself to keep talking, to keep digging for information.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Sell the info to the highest bidder. One final score, and then I’m off to a nice tropical island somewhere, to live out the rest of my days drinking mai tais and flirting with cute diving instructors. I know it’s a bit cliché, but the scenario totally works for me.”
“What?” I snarked, my voice dripping with venom. “You aren’t happy being a not-so-humble college professor?”
Martin rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding me? The salary’s shit, the students are self-absorbed little know-it-alls, and the department head hates me because I’m younger, smarter, and better-looking than he is. Not to mention the fact that I’ve published more papers than he’s even written. He’ll never approve me for tenure.”
“I didn’t realize that working in academia was such an onerous job,” I snarked again.
He ignored my sarcasm. “I’ve been planning to leave for a long time now. And when I started talking to you at the Pork Pit and realized who you were and especially who you worked for, well, let’s just say that I decided to cash in my golden ticket right then and there.”
He leaned back in his chair, propped his feet up on the card table, and gave me another smug grin.
I had to hand it to him, the bastard was good. He’d been chatting me up for weeks, smiling, laughing, being ever-so-charming, and slowly building up my interest. Never coming to the Pork Pit too many days in a row. Never coming on too strong. Never acting like the con man and swindler that he truly was. And I’d fallen for his lies hook, line, and sinker. Another emotion zipped through my body, mixing with my cold rage: shame.
Complete, utter, humiliating shame.
“But I’ve dallied here long enough.” Martin swung his feet down off the table and stood up. “It won’t be long before your boss realizes that you’re missing, and I definitely don’t want to be anywhere in Ashland when that happens.”
He turned toward the warehouse door. “Hey, Vincent! Guys! You can come back in now!”
Well, now I knew why the giants had been so quiet. No doubt, they’d been trying to hear our conversation and laughing at me the whole time. A few seconds later, the door opened, and Vincent stepped back into the room, along with the other three giants. The four men gathered around the card table with Martin.
Vincent glanced at me, then back over at his boss. “So he fell for it? You didn’t have to pry it out of him?”
Martin waved my phone in the air. “Easier than seducing a student. I’m going to email my contacts and set up the auction. You get rid of Mr. Sanchez.”
Vincent grinned and cracked his knuckles. “With pleasure.”
Vincent jerked his head, and two of the giants moved over to stand beside me. They grabbed hold of my upper arms, while their boss stripped off his suit jacket and tie and rolled up the sleeves of his dark blue shirt. The third and final giant picked up the cards on the table, shuffled them, and dealt out a new poker hand. Apparently, beating me to death wasn’t going to take very long.
I ignored the giants by my sides and looked at Martin, who was texting away on his own phone. “Well done, Martin. You got me. You tricked me. I’ll admit that.”
He kept right on texting. “But?”
“But it’s too bad that my phone and my tablet are absolutely worthless now.”
That got his attention, along with Vincent’s and the other giants’. They all turned to stare at me.
Martin stopped texting, his blue eyes narrowing. “What do you mean, worthless?”
I shrugged. “I mean, I figured out your little scheme. You thought that you were playing me, but I’ve really been playing you this whole time.”
Not exactly the truth, but I wanted to salvage the few remaining tatters of my pride. Besides, the bastard had lied to me, and I wanted to return the favor.
“You didn’t figure out anything. You were completely convinced that I’d been beaten to a bloody pulp, and you wanted to save me. You gave up your stupid password just like that.” Martin snapped his fingers.
“Well, it certainly looked that way. You really did do a great job with your makeup. Kudos to the theater department for teaching you that.”
He rolled his eyes. “But?”
“But you forgot one little thing.”
“What’s that?”
“The giant that I killed in the alley when you first kidnapped me. I drank all of his blood, sucked it down like a strawberry milkshake.” I smirked at Vincent, whose hands curled into fists.
“So what?” Martin asked. “You got a bloody snack. Good for you. Consider it a last meal.”
“You’re right. Good for me. Because giant blood doesn’t just give vampires a surge of strength.” I tapped my nose. “It also gives us enhanced senses, including an exceptionally sharp sense of smell.”
“What are you saying?” Vincent growled.
I stared at him. “I’m saying that you all forgot one critical element in your little drama. Sure, Martin looked like he’d been beaten to within an inch of his life, but he didn’t smell like it. There wasn’t a whiff of blood anywhere on him. No so much as a single drop. Instead of stinking of copper, he smelled sweet, like corn syrup. It was a very, very faint aroma, one that I probably wouldn’t have been able to sense at all if I hadn’t had that hit of blood earlier. But I did sense it, and even more important, I recognized it. Gin uses corn syrup in some of her cooking. That’s when I knew that poor, injured, beat-up Martin was faking and that all the blood on him was just colored corn syrup.”
Vincent looked at me, then whirled around to Martin. “You said that your plan was foolproof. That he wouldn’t even know what hit him. That he cared about you too much to question anything.”
“But—but you gave me your password,” Martin sputtered, like it was the most important thing in the world. “I put it into your phone and your tablet. It worked on both of them, just like you said it would.”
I looked at Martin, my gray gaze steady on his blue one. “You mean Pigtracks? Oh, it’s a password, all right. One that automatically triggers a special app on my phone and my tablet.”
Worry filled his eyes, and he wet his lips. “What does the app do?”
I grinned. “It wipes my electronics. Completely erases all the info stored on them. Passwords, documents, photos, everything. Now, it takes a while to work—several minutes, actually—but since you were nice enough to sit there and brag about how you had conned me, it’s had plenty of time to do its job. All those precious gigs of information on Gin that you wanted? They’re long gone. Just like that.” My g
rin widened, and I snapped my own fingers.
Martin flinched at the sound. It wasn’t as good as punching him, but it was a start.
Vincent stared at Martin again. “He’d better be kidding. Tell me he’s kidding.”
Martin looked at me a second longer, then grabbed my phone. He punched in the Pigtracks password again, but all that came up was a blank blue screen. He tossed my phone aside and quickly repeated the process on my tablet.
“Fuck!” he growled. “Fuck!”
He threw my tablet down onto the floor, then grabbed my phone and did the same thing. And he didn’t stop there. Martin was in a rage now, and he flipped the table over, sending the playing cards flying through the air like snowflakes. He also kicked over a couple of the metal chairs that had been arranged around the table and stomped on my briefcase for good measure.
But his rage quickly burned itself out—at least, when it came to inanimate objects—and he whirled around and stalked over to me with clenched fists.
“You bastard!” he snarled. “I’m going to kill you for this!”
Martin raised his hands and lunged at me.
And that’s when I whipped my own hand up and stabbed him in the face with my spider rune tiepin.
7
The whole time Martin had been throwing his little temper tantrum, I’d been getting ready, planning my attack.
I jabbed the sharp point of the pin straight into his handsome face, right into the meaty part of his cheek. Martin screamed and staggered back, slapping at his face like he’d been stung by a bee and was trying to get it off him. This time, the blood that gushed down his cheek was very, very real. The coppery stench of it made me smile.
For a moment, Vincent and the other three giants froze, mouths gaping in surprise, but I was already moving. The two giants holding on to me were so shocked that they loosened their grips, just a bit, and I took advantage, whirling around and throwing off their hands. I slipped my wrist out of the open handcuff, grabbed the attached chain, and wrapped it around the throat of the giant on my left. Then I wrenched the chain—and his head—to the side as hard and fast as I could.
The giant’s neck snapped with an audible crack, and he plummeted to the ground.
I dropped the chain and whipped back around to the second giant. He lurched away from me, but I slammed my foot into his ankle, making him trip and fall to the floor. His face smacked into the concrete, dazing him and making him groan. Before he could recover, I threw myself on top of him, shoved his head to the side, and buried my fangs in his neck.
He screamed, but I ignored his loud, frantic cries and punched my fangs even deeper into his throat. His thick, warm blood rushed into my mouth, and I swallowed it down, down, down. The giant’s strength zinged through my body like a lightning bolt, giving me a fresh surge of power and amping up my senses that much more.
My enhanced hearing easily let me pinpoint the rasp-rasp of two guns sliding free from their leather holsters.
I tore my fangs out of the giant’s throat, severing his carotid artery so that he would bleed out. Then I grabbed hold of his dying body, surged to my feet, hauled him upright, and held him out in front of me, using him as a shield.
Crack!
Crack! Crack!
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Vincent and the third giant fired at me, but their bullets punched into their friend’s body instead of mine. I growled and ran forward, still holding on to the dead giant and pushing him in front of me like a battering ram. Vincent and the other man tried to scramble out of the way, but I plowed into them, and we all fell to the floor. The dead giant landed right on top of Vincent, knocking his gun out of his hand and momentarily pinning him to the ground. Vincent cursed and rolled around, trying to shove the dead man off him.
I scrambled back up onto my feet, and so did the third giant. His gun had landed on the floor between us, and we both lunged for it. But I was quicker, and I scooped up the weapon, grabbed hold of his tie, yanked him toward me, and shot him point-blank in the chest.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
He dropped to the floor without a sound.
“You son of a bitch!” Vincent yelled.
The giant surged up, threw himself forward, and tackled me around the knees, driving me down to the floor. My head snapped back against the concrete, momentarily stunning me. Vincent took advantage, climbing on top of me and wrapping his hands around my throat, trying to choke me to death.
I punched him in the face over and over again, landing several sharp, brutal blows, but he just shook them off and tightened his grip. So I dug my hands and heels into the concrete, trying to push and kick myself away from him. I slid back across the floor a few inches, but he followed me, his hands still locked around my neck.
“You think you can kill my men and get away with it?” Vincent said. “No fucking way!”
I didn’t waste time—or precious oxygen—responding. I’d rather win the actual fight than a silly war of words. So I tuned out his snarls and redoubled my efforts, digging my heels into the floor over and over again, even as my hands flapped at my sides, as though I were trying to make a snow angel in the middle of the dirty concrete.
During my struggles, my fingers slid across something smooth and hard lying on the floor: my tablet. As much as it pained me to destroy my electronics, it was the only thing within reach and the only chance I had. So I grabbed the device, whipped it up, and smashed it into the side of Vincent’s head.
And I didn’t stop.
I slammed the tablet into the giant’s head over and over again. Of course, his thick skull was a lot tougher and harder than my tablet was, and the protective plastic case quickly cracked open and started falling apart, along with the tablet itself. But that was okay, because I had a plan.
Crack!
I kept hitting the giant until I heard the distinctive sound of the tablet screen breaking. The rest of the device clattered to the floor, and I tightened my grip on the long, jagged shard still left in my hand. Perfect. This time, instead of going for his head, I drove the tablet shard into the side of Vincent’s neck.
Bull’s-eye.
Vincent howled with pain and finally loosened his tight, choking grip on my throat. He tried to slither away from me, but I didn’t let him. I grabbed hold of his tie, keeping him close. Then I twisted that shard in deeper and deeper, using my stolen strength to tear through his muscles and tendons and do as much damage as possible.
It was enough.
I hit an artery, and blood spurted out, covering my hands and face with its wet, sticky warmth. Vincent’s bellows died down to harsh, wheezing rasps. I jammed the shard in a little deeper, making him wheeze again, and shoved him away. He toppled over onto his side, and I scrambled back up into a low crouch, my fists raised, ready to finish beating him to death with my bare hands.
But I didn’t have to.
Vincent stared up at me, choking on the shard that I’d driven halfway through his neck. He coughed up a couple of mouthfuls of blood but quickly grew too weak to do even that. His chest spasmed, and his fingers twitched a few more times. Then his head lolled back against the floor, and his dark eyes became blank and distant—
Scrape-scrape.
Once again, my enhanced hearing let me pinpoint the sound of a gun, this time sliding against the concrete. I surged to my feet and whirled around.
Martin had grabbed one of the giants’ guns from the floor. My tiepin was still stuck in his face, as though a spider rune had been painted on his cheek. He reached up and yanked the pin out of his skin, flinging it to the floor in disgust.
Another wave of icy rage rolled through my body. My hands clenched into fists, and I started toward him, but he snapped up the gun, making me stop short.
We stared each other down. For several seconds, the only sounds were my ragged breaths and the steady plop-plop-plo
p of blood dripping off my fists. Not that Martin could hear the dripping. It was little more than a whisper, even to my own enhanced ears.
Then his gaze flicked to all the dead giants and to my smashed tablet and phone still lying on the floor.
“You bastard,” he hissed. “You’ve ruined everything.”
“Including that pretty face of yours,” I snarled.
Martin’s hand shot up to his cheek, and then he held it out in front of him, staring in horror at the blood glistening on his fingertips.
“No makeup,” I mocked him. “That’s real blood this time. How does it feel?”
He growled, snapped up the gun, and pulled the trigger.
Crack!
Crack! Crack!
Crack! Crack! Crack!
I threw myself down and rolled across the floor, ducking behind the overturned card table for cover. Martin might be a great con man, but he was a lousy shot, and none of the bullets even came close to hitting me. He screamed and pulled the trigger again.
Click.
This time, the gun was empty.
I got to my feet and stepped around the card table. Martin stared at me with wide, horrified eyes, realizing that he’d run out of luck, right along with bullets.
“My turn,” I growled.
Before he could even think about running away, I crossed the distance between us and grabbed his head, stabbing my thumb into the bloody hole in his cheek. He howled with pain and punched me in the stomach over and over again, using his empty gun for added oomph, trying to make me let go. But the hard, brutal blows were nothing compared to the intense ache in my heart.
Martin finally realized that he couldn’t overpower me, so he dropped his gun and quit hitting me. Then he decided to turn on the charm one last time.
“Silvio, you don’t want to hurt me, not really,” he crooned, trying to sound cool and in control, even though I still had a death grip on his head. “You’re just angry about my little deception. But you know what? We really did hit it off today. I felt like we really had a connection, and I know that you did too. I could see it in the way that you looked at me. It’s the same way that you’re looking at me right now.”