Death's Rival by Faith Hunter Read Free Book Online Page B

contagious.
    Vampire saliva closes wounds, causing the veins and skin to contract and constrict.
     It’s usually applied with a tongue laving. This was weird. Okay. This gig was making
     me rethink everything I thought I knew about vamps, and I had been on a steep learning
     curve ever since I hit New Orleans.
    The tiny wound stopped bleeding. Nikki-Babe looked at me and I nodded my thanks. “I’ll
     be going now,” I said.
    “I don’t think so,” a voice said behind me. I turned and saw a man, human—or as human
     as the fangheads’ dinners ever are. I knew this guy wasn’t one of Ro’s usual blood-servants;
     even if I hadn’t been able to smell the new master on him, he wasn’t in the dossier.
     He was maybe seventy years old, looked twenty-five, and was powerful—meaning that
     he had fed on the blood of a master for a very long time. Bald, six feet and a smidge,
     blue eyes, reddish beard needing a trim, casual clothes, shirt half-tucked, as if
     he’d dressed and gotten here in a hurry. He was a righty.
    And he had a gun pointed at my chest.

CHAPTER THREE
    I Started to Squeeze the Trigger
    Holding his eyes, I slid the tote strap around my shoulders, shoved it back out of
     the way, and walked straight toward him. Keeping loose. Letting Beast bleed into my
     bloodstream and into my eyes. My heart rate sped as her adrenaline pumped into my
     body. His blue eyes widened. Beast-fast, I swerved right, forcing him to move cross-hand.
     And back left, into his personal space. I body-slammed him. Hard. Hooked his ankle
     as he shifted and shoved.
    The gun went off. Wild shot. Toward the ceiling. I caught his gun hand, flipped him,
     and landed one knee in the middle of his spine with all my weight. Took his gun away
     while he tried to remember how to breathe. Banged his head on the floor so hard he
     had to see stars.
    Fun,
Beast thought.
More!
    The shadow over me shifted. I lifted my eyes. Nikki-Babe was standing over me, still
     vamped out, blocking the light. Fangs latched down, claws out, waiting. If I really
     tried to hurt the stranger, he’d kill me, and I didn’t know why. Ignoring the looming
     shadow, I leaned in and sniffed. Blue Eyes smelled of witchy-power, not his own, but
     something he had obtained from a powerful witch or coven—probably an amulet of some
     sort. The witchy stench nearly overrode the blood-signature scent of his master, but
     not quite. It was a vamp-scent I recognized. The undertang made me hesitate, but only
     for a moment. For now the amulet was more important. Whatever spell he had was underneath
     him, inactivated, and I had better keep it that way. I pulled his arms back and secured
     them with a zip strip. Then added three more strips. He was a blood-servant to someone
     very powerful, with a witchy charm on his person. I wasn’t taking chances.
    I flipped him over, slamming his head against the marble floor. He grunted.
    “Have a care with our
guest
,” Nikki said, his mouth near my ear. The last word was nearly spitting, as if he
     would have used another, less kind and less hospitable term.
Curiouser and curiouser.
    “I’m taking care,” I said, my voice flat. I fished in Blue Eyes’ pocket and pulled
     out a pocket watch. It was neither old nor new, cheap nor expensive. It was something
     no one would ever notice twice, but it was charmed. I sniffed the amulet, and the
     magics smelled like blood. Like meat. Weird. I tucked it into my lead-lined pocket
     with the silver cross while Blue Eyes was still disoriented, and patted him down.
     I searched for wallet, ID, or a cell, but he was clean.
Figures
.
    I leaned in again. Now he smelled only of his master. A close perusal of the blood-signature
     proved that the master wasn’t someone I knew, not someone I had ever met, but I had
     killed a blood-servant belonging to the vamp recently. In Asheville, when I’d been
     attacked in my hotel room. Once again, everything went back to Asheville and I didn’t