The Darkest Kiss

It didn’t matter. I kept hitting the trigger.

And kept missing.

Kade twisted around and fired blindly. The shot scoured the creature’s side and she screamed—a high sound of fury that made my ears ache.

Then she was on him, her sheer weight and speed flinging them both backward, until all I could see was a fighting ball of black and brown.

I swore and raced across the room. They were still rolling, tumbling, across the filthy concrete floor, but Kade had somehow managed to get his hands around the creature’s neck. The corded muscles in his arms were evidence enough of the strength he was using to try to strangle her, but he seemed to be achieving little more than holding her wickedly sharp teeth away from his throat. And all the while, her claws were ripping at him everywhere else.

I couldn’t risk a shot. Like before, I could kill Kade as easily as I could kill the bakeneko. So I reached out and grabbed her tail instead.

“Hey, bitch, try tackling someone in your own species group for a change.”

I hauled back as hard as I could, and ripped her away from Kade. But she came away fighting, twisting around and slashing with her claws. I ducked the blows and flung her sideways with all my might. Then I fired the laser.

This time, I hit the bitch.

The bright beam scoured another trench down her side then flung itself toward a rear leg, slicing through flesh and sinew. The burnt smell of fur and skin tainted the air, but even as I pressed the trigger to fire again, the bakeneko was on the move, her speed seemingly un-hampered by the wound.

Kade, bleeding from a dozen different wounds, scrambled to his feet and ran to the left. He swooped up his laser and pressed the trigger, but with the creature ru

“She’s playing hide-and-seek,” he said. Blood poured down his arm and both legs, and his stomach had several deep slashes. When combined with the still-raw—but no longer bleeding—wound he’d received in the apartment, he wasn’t a pretty sight.

“You’d better shift shape to stop the bleeding,” I said, “Iktar should be here by now. Go find him while I track the creature.”

“Fuck that.” He snorted softly. “You think I’m going to let you go after that thing alone? You’ve got rocks in your head, sweetheart.”

I might have rocks, but I was swifter and faster than he was. I was also less injured. “Kade, we need help to bring her down.”

“Iktar can track emotions as well as I can. He’ll find us quick enough. Move, Riley.”

There was no point in arguing. That was obvious not only in his tone, but in the anger in his eyes. He wanted to bring this creature down bad.

I ran forward, following the scent of cat and burned flesh. Power shimmered across my senses as Kade shifted shape to stop the bleeding, then the sound of his footsteps echoed as he followed.

We crashed into the next room. The bakeneko was nowhere to be seen, but there were several shimmers of life crouching in the corners.

“The bitch is playing rats again.”

I raised the laser and fired at the nearest nest. High-pitched squeals met the assault, and those rats I didn’t kill went scattering.

One of them was faster than the rest, and it was ru

She launched herself in the air, her body little more than a blur of black.

“Kade!” I screamed, a warning he didn’t really need.

He threw himself sideways, but the giant cat’s paw hit him mid-leap, sending him flying straight at one of the grimy windows. Glass shattered, then Kade was gone.

I swore and fired the weapon, keeping my finger on the trigger and sending a continuous beam the bakeneko’s way. The laser grew hotter in my hands, until it was almost impossible to hold, but it didn’t do much good. The bitch was moving faster than any vampire, and while I left a trail of burned and smoking brick, plaster, and debris, the bakeneko remained whole.

As the red light began to flash on the weapon, warning that its charge was failing, I backed toward a wall and looked around for another weapon.

Unless I wanted to slap her senseless with a dead rat, there wasn’t much here.

The laser finally gave out, the bright beam dying with little fanfare. I shoved the overheated weapon away and flexed my fingers. It looked like I’d have to do this the hard way—at least until Kade and Iktar got here.

The bakeneko finally stopped moving, her form shifting as she took on human shape again. But it seemed to take her longer than before. Maybe the energy she was expending was finally taking a toll.

“You,” she said. “I shall eat. Your flesh smells sweet.”

Her voice was low and oddly scratchy—the voice of someone not used to controlling vocal cords. It made me wonder how she’d kept up the facade of being Alana Burns for a whole night. But there again, maybe there’d been no need for her to say much. She’d been with a politician, after all, and they were notorious for loving the sound of their own voices.

I shifted my stance a little, my weight on my toes so I could move fast if needed. Although I was more than happy to keep her talking until the cavalry came to the rescue—in fact, I had to. I couldn’t risk letting her escape. There’d been too many deaths—and too many souls lost—already.

Besides, I’d rather fight with words than fists. I had enough scars as it was.

“So why me?” I said, watching her eyes and ignoring the satisfied smile teasing her lips. “Why not the man you threw out the window? He tastes a whole lot better than me, trust me on that.”

“He is not a pale one. It is the pale ones I must kill.” She began to walk toward me, the lazy smile on her lips growing. A cat playing with its prey.

I flexed my fingers, trying to ease the tension winding through my muscles. “Why only us pale types? That hardly seems fair.”

“Pale women killed my mistress. She hated them, and they killed her.”

“Your mistress was killed by a vampire out for revenge. Her death had nothing to do with any of the other people.”

Or me. But I don’t think the bakeneko cared. Her quest for vengeance had slipped into outright lust for murder.

She was halfway across the room now, her strides long and rolling. There was no tension in her shoulders, no sign that she expected any sort of fight—like she expected me to be a quick and easy kill. And maybe I would be—this bitch might not be stronger than a god of death, but she was certainly faster.

“No,” she said. “They took everything from her. They stole her life, so I steal theirs.”

“And the men you killed?”

“She hated them. Hated what they did to her.” A languid smile drifted across her lips. “I used them like they used her.”

Like a cat should talk about behavior when they treated the whole world as underlings. “She was a Trollop. How else would they treat her?”

The bakeneko frowned. “I don’t know this word.”

“It means she was little better than a filthy cat in heat, and she was treated as such.”

The bakeneko’s eyes darkened. “For that, I rip you apart slow—”

The words were barely out of her mouth when I leapt at her. I had to—catching her by surprise was my only real hope of doing some serious damage. I had time to see her eyes widen slightly, then I hit her head-on, knocking her down and sideways. We both hit the ground hard, but I rolled to my feet quickly and hit her again, one foot smashing her in the face and mashing her nose flat, the other catching her in the throat. She staggered back, making a gurgling sound, the smirk disappearing under a cloud of anger and pain. I hit the concrete and again pushed upward. The bakeneko’s shape was shifting again, becoming a cat from the feet up. But the shapeshift wasn’t as fast as before, so maybe the constant fighting and the wounds I’d inflicted on her were begi