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  Something blurred between us; a loud smack rang out, and the vampire hunter spun in two complete circles before collapsing into a heap. Ebon skidded to a halt, his eyes wild and his hair standing on end and his head very firmly attached to his neck. “Xanthe!”

  “Ebon!” I gaped at him.

  He ignored this, grabbing me by the shoulders. His frantic gaze searched my face. “Be thee hart?”

  I blinked. “Huh?”

  “Me haid warn’t anigh, I couldn’t find ’ee in time....” he moaned mystifyingly. His French accent was totally gone, replaced by the broad, drawling tones of … Somerset? He sounded more like a farmhand than a vampire. “Be thee hart? Thee peer—” He looked down at my chest and stopped dead.

  I looked down too. My flesh had closed up around the stake, leaving a four-inch stub of wood sticking up from my skin.

  My totally naked skin.

  I yelped, crossing my arms over my chest. I hobbled over to the unconscious vampire hunter and tipped him out of his coat as fast as I could manage. It felt like an age before I could finally swirl its heavy weight over my shoulders. The coat was still warm from the vampire hunter’s body, and it smelled of sweat. With it covering me from neck to ankle, I was able to summon the courage to look round at Ebon again.

  He was still frozen in place, staring at me. My face went instantly scarlet.

  “Uh …” I dug my hands into the pockets of the coat, encountering numerous mysterious objects. Something sharp strapped into the lining dug into the small of my back. “Hi. So … neat trick with the head. Can I do that?”

  Ebon swallowed. “Stake,” he croaked, pointing at my now safely covered chest.

  “Oh. Right. Yeah, he got me too.” I loosened the coat enough to peer down at the stub. “I guess it’s gotta come out. Can you give me a hand?”

  “Stake?” he repeated, his voice going high and wobbly.

  I gave him a level look. “Don’t tell me you’re squeamish about blood.”

  The whites showed all around Ebon’s eyes.

  Obviously, there was no help from that corner. Bracing myself, I wrapped my hand around the stub, and yanked. It took quite a bit of force to part it from my body, but at last the wood slid out with a horrible slurp. Almost immediately, I could feel the bones spring back outward, new flesh welling up to fill the gaping hole.

  Glancing up at Ebon, I summoned a weak smile. “Good thing that myth isn’t real, right?” I said, tossing the bloodstained stake to clatter near his feet.

  Ebon’s eyes rolled up in his head. Perfectly rigid, he toppled over in a dead faint.

  I stared from the prone vampire hunter to Ebon’s unmoving form, and back again. With a sigh, I pulled my slightly scorched mobile out of the ruins of my jeans, and stalked off in search of a signal. I had to go nearly to the other side of the Ring, but at last I found one. I dialed.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said. “Um … can you come pick us up?”

  Chapter 14

  The next evening found me having breakfast with a ridiculously hot guy. It was typical of my life that this would only happen when said guy was tied up.

  I stirred my tea, contemplating the vampire hunter across the kitchen table. “Not only do you try to kill me, you have to go and get me grounded for the rest of my existence,” I said resentfully. Thanks to the hunter’s little trick with the oil and the lighter, my dad had turned up to find me dressed only in a borrowed trench coat, with two unconscious men. There’s really no way to put a good spin on that sort of situation. “I hope you’re happy.”

  The vampire hunter did not look happy. This probably had something to do with the fact that he was duct-taped to his chair. He should count himself lucky. Mum and Dad were still out in the garage, hunting among the unpacked boxes from the move and arguing about where the handcuffs and spreader bar had been stored. I really, really didn’t want to know.

  “So, Brains,” I muttered to the fish, who was eyeing the hunter with distinct interest from its tank on the work surface. “Got any ideas about what we do now?”

  The silver goldfish sucked in water, somehow contriving to make its perfectly round, toothless mouth look positively horrifyingly.

  “I’ll bear that in mind.” I drained the last of my tea, and rose to loom with what I hoped was ominous menace at the hunter. “Okay,” I said, showing him my fangs. I felt awfully dumb. “Are you going to talk, or am I going to feed you to my childe here?”

  The vampire hunter glowered at me, radiating unyielding determination. Oh, joy. I wished Ebon were awake to deal with this, but he got up a lot later than I did, presumably due to his greater age. In the meantime, it was up to me to interrogate this guy, and I wasn’t sure how to begin. In the stories I’d read or seen, only bad guys ever had people tied up and helpless. Should I slap him? Threaten to electrocute him with the toaster? Offer him a cup of tea? I was the heroine—wasn’t he supposed to have a change of heart and spontaneously come over to my side, having fallen hopelessly in love with my unique specialness?

  I couldn’t help casting a speculative eye over the hunter’s impressive muscles, wondering if maybe a little vampiric seduction might work in this situation. Unfortunately, for his part, the vampire hunter looked more like he was checking me out for vulnerable spots rather than appreciating my irresistible charms. I sighed, giving up the idea. Probably for the best, given that the only seduction I’d ever attempted had gone downhill after my initial DO U FANCY ME Y/N? text message to the boy in question. I’d been really glad to change schools in the wake of that disaster. He and his friends were probably still laughing about it even now.

  Well, at least I could find out the vampire hunter’s name. His coat was draped over the table in front of me; spreading it out, I started going through the pockets.

  This turned out to take some time.

  There were a lot of pockets. The whole inner surface of the coat was covered with them, each precisely sized for the item inside. They were even labeled, the words embroidered on the same sort of ribbon that parents used to sew name tags into their kids’ school uniforms. This guy made my categorizing obsession look normal.

  Some of the items were about what one might expect to find in a vampire hunter’s outfit—a couple of crucifixes (they didn’t seem to bother me, which made me wonder why he was carrying them around), a whole load of stakes, a few flasks of oil (one missing)—but there was also a whole row of pockets marked PAPER CLIPS. Also another for SEEDS, and yet another marked FLOUR.

  “At least you don’t seem to have a pocket labeled ‘tortoise, live,’” I said absently, examining the handful of small rubber balls I’d just taken out of a pocket helpfully labeled BALLS, BOUNCY. “I’m not sure I could have coped with that. Shouldn’t you be carrying some actual, you know, weapons?”

  The hunter didn’t say anything. He glared.

  “Look, you’re going to have to start talking sometime. And believe me, I’m by far the sanest person around here. My name’s Jane.” I finally found the pocket labeled WALLET, and flipped it open. “And you are—” I stopped, reading the name on his bank card. “Oh, come on. Don’t you have any imagination?”

  “No.” His voice was a rough, dry rumble. He glowered at me.

  “No kidding. That’s gotta be the worst pseudonym ever. Don’t you get a lot of comments?”

  “Yes,” he said in tones of deep resignation. “Because it’s my real name.”

  I stared at him. “You’re joking.”

  His face was a study in stoicism.

  I flipped through his driver’s license and bank cards. There it was, on every one. “Van Helsing? Your actual name is actually Van Helsing?”

  From Van’s weary expression, this was a question he got a lot. “It’s a family tradition.”

  I shook my head. “Wow, and I thought my parents were evil.” According to the date on Van’s driver’s license, he was seventeen. Somehow he’d looked a lot older when he’d been trying to cut my head off. “Sooooo … you’re a vam
pire hunter, right? What’s up with that? I mean, what have we ever done to you?”

  Van’s look suggested that I’d moved into the top spot on his personal list of Most Idiotic People I Have Met. “For a start, kidnapped and ra—” He stumbled on the word, breaking off for an instant. “That is, kidnapped and tortured my mother.”

  That kind of stopped me dead. “Uh, okay,” I said, after a second. “I’m really sorry to hear that. But I didn’t do it personally, you know.”

  Van really did have an astonishing variety of glares. This one clearly indicated that he was plotting at least three ways to kill me using nothing but the available kitchen utensils. “You’re all evil, bloodsucking monsters who slaughter and eat people.”

  “I do not!” I protested hotly. My words were punctuated by the door banging open. “Hi, Ebon,” I said over my shoulder. “Tell this guy vampires don’t kill—”

  “Who sent you?” Ebon crossed the room in one long stride, seizing hold of the front of the hunter’s T-shirt. He shook him, chair and all. “Who sent you?! Tell us or I’ll eat you myself!” At least, I think that’s what he said. The hillbilly Somerset accent was back, so thick that he sounded fresh off the farm.

  “Ebon, relax!” I grabbed his arm, pulling him away from the hunter. I hadn’t expected Ebon to throw himself into the role of bad cop quite this enthusiastically. “And what’s with the voice?”

  “You!” He turned his wild-eyed gaze on me, looking utterly freaked out. He must have charged down here as soon as he’d woken up; bits of twigs and grass still stuck up out of his hair. “What in the name of all that’s holy are you?”

  “Ooookay.” I steered him into a chair. I guessed he was entitled to a small meltdown, seeing as how he’d had his head cut off last night. “Let’s try to relax for a second. Take deep breaths. Uh, actually, I guess that won’t help, but you know what I mean.” I patted his shoulder reassuringly. “We’re all safe now. We got the vampire hunter nice and secure—”

  “But he’s not supposed to be here!” Ebon wailed. “We weren’t expecting a real one!”

  Could he have amnesia? “Those other two were pretty real, remember?”

  “What other two?” Van said.

  “Oh, don’t give me that,” I snapped over my shoulder. “And I know about your werecat friend. So don’t think they’ll be able to rescue you!”

  The hunter had the most perfect “WTF?” expression I’d ever seen. “What friends? I don’t have any friends. The cat’s your friend.” He jerked his chin at Ebon.

  “Huh? He’s not a cat, he’s a—” I swung round. Ebon had gone stark white. He stared up at me, face stricken. GUILTY practically flashed in neon above his head.

  “… vampire?” I finished, lamely. “Ebon, what’s going on?”

  “I—I am a vampire,” he said. His thick country accent clashed badly with his velvet frock coat. “But … I … I’m not quite who you think.”

  “Ebenezer Lee,” Van supplied. He closed his eyes, evidently reciting by heart. “Born on a farm near Nether Stowey, 1842. Died in a fertilizer factory, Bristol, 1859. Bloodline: Mr. Tibbles, from Sekhmet.” He opened his eyes again and shrugged as best he could, bound as he was. “That’s as far back as we know.”

  I stared at him, then at Ebon. “Mr. Tibbles?”

  Ebon’s hands twisted together. “I did say I wasn’t part of Hakon’s Bloodline.” He looked as though he could sink through the floor in mortification. “And that my sire was a beast. I wasn’t lying.”

  Ebon’s form shimmered. All of him—including his clothes—came apart into a dense gray mist, which coiled down to re-form into a small and very dejected cat.

  “It was you outside my window!” I recognized that spotted, sand-colored fur. I should have known; he was as long-limbed and gawky in this form as in his human one. His eyes were even the same pale shade of blue. “I chased you! Ebon, or Ebenezer, or whoever you are—you’d better start talking right now.”

  “Mrow,” said the cat, ears drooping. Mist swirled, and Ebon sat there once again, thankfully still fully clothed. “I only wanted to impress you.” He dropped his head. “Hakon said I had to seduce you, win you over to our side. He wasn’t happy about having to rely on me, but he didn’t have anyone more suitable near enough—there aren’t that many physically young vampires. It was my huge opportunity to show him I was worthy of a permanent place in his organization. I couldn’t risk ruining it. So I …” He swallowed, then said very fast, “I persuaded two of Hakon’s people to pretend to be vampire hunters so that I could rescue you from them.”

  “Those guys were vampires?”

  “I wondered what they were doing around here,” Van muttered.

  Ebon held up his hands pleadingly. “I had to do something, Xanthe! How could I have presented my true self to you and have a hope of persuading you to accept my protection? You’d never have trusted this voice,” he savagely exaggerated his accent, “instead of Lilith’s. She’s the mistress of seduction! And I’m a Victorian farm boy who isn’t even a proper vampire.”

  “So you lied to make yourself seem more romantic.”

  He nodded, barely moving.

  “You do realize that was really, really stupid, right?”

  Every line of his body showed that he did.

  I contemplated him in silence for a moment. “Ebenezer, huh?”

  He winced. “It used to be a perfectly normal name.”

  “Tell you what.” I stuck out my hand in his direction. “I’ll call you Ebon if you’ll call me Jane.”

  Ebon looked at my proffered palm, then up at my face. Solemnly, he took my hand in his own. “Thank you.”

  I tightened my grip for a moment, staring him in the eye. “That is the only thing you’ve been lying about … isn’t it?”

  Ebon put his free hand over his heart, bowing slightly. “On the honor of my Bloodline, I swear.”

  “Your sire,” Van said under his breath, “is a cat.”

  “Don’t make me come over there and bite you,” I said to him. “I haven’t eaten anyone yet, but if you piss me off enough, I may start.”

  “Liar.” Van’s impressive shoulders bunched, straining against the bindings. “You cannot hide your evil deeds from me, monster. You must have killed many innocents, but they will be avenged. I shall destroy you.”

  “I’ve hardly killed anyone!” I paused. “Hang on. Ebon, that guy whose head I ripped off …?”

  “Sven? He’s fine. Just a little, ah, aggrieved. Hakon called him and his brother back before there could be any further … escalation.” Ebon sighed. “I’m going to have a lot of apologizing to do.”

  “There, see?” I turned back to Van, hands on my hips. “I haven’t killed anyone.”

  Van’s jaw clenched stubbornly. “I fought you. I saw your speed, your strength. You could only gain such power through gorging on blood.”

  “You also saw her heal a heart wound,” Ebon said flatly. “Explain that.”

  Van blanched. “I … must have missed?” He sounded more as if he desperately wanted it to be true than that he actually believed it.

  “What?” I said, looking from one to the other. “Ebon, you stuck your head back on. That’s got to be harder than healing a mere staking.”

  “The vampire digests the blood of the living not with its stomach, but with its heart.” Van could only have been reciting from a textbook. His school must have been really exciting. “It is the only part of the vampire’s body that is vital to its unnatural existence, and the only part that cannot be regenerated. Destroying the heart, by any means, thus returns the vampire to true death.” He had a slightly panicked expression, as though he’d just opened his end-of-year exam and discovered that he’d studied the wrong topics. “You are a vampire. You must drink human blood. And you’re supposed to die when I stake you!” This last was nearly a wail.

  I looked at Ebon for confirmation. He nodded mutely. “Well, I don’t,” I said firmly. “Look, isn’t it simple? Thi
s must all have something to do with Lilith.” And, I didn’t say, “Superluminal” … whoever the hell that was.

  “Who?” Van said blankly.

  “My sire,” I said to him. “Lilith.” I looked over at Ebon. “This whole heart thing could be another effect of that, right?”

  “No,” Ebon said very firmly. He scrubbed his hands over his face, staring at me over them as if I’d suddenly turned into a werewolf. “You are an impossibility. If all this truly is Lilith’s doing, then we are in a dire situation indeed.”

  “There isn’t a Lilith,” Van said, frowning. His green eyes flicked from side to side as if reading an invisible index. “Deceit will not protect you. I will find the truth.”

  “Even your kind haven’t discovered all our secrets,” Ebon snapped at him. “And you should hope that you never do.” Van matched his glare.

  “O-kay,” I said, stepping between them before the entire room filled up with testosterone. I turned to Van. “Look, now that you know I’m not some sort of monster, will you stop trying to kill me? I can’t have you lurking everywhere I go, and I really don’t want to have to keep you tied up. What do you say?”

  He didn’t even take a second to consider it. “No.”

  Before I could inform him how utterly unreasonable he was being, the door banged open. “Hiya!” Zack said brightly, barging in. “How’s the torture going?”

  “Ever heard of knocking?” I scowled at him.

  “Why, are you worried about corrupting my innocent soul with terrible scenes of agony?” He patted me affectionately on the arm. “That’s real sweet, Janie. Look, I brought pliers!”

  Van leaned back as far as the bonds would let him, evidently far more worried by the enthusiastic twelve-year-old than by any of the vampires in the room. I didn’t blame him. Zack had scrounged quite a collection of replica Victorian medical equipment from eBay—“accessories,” he called them—and they made an intimidating display in the bandolier around his chest. The goggles and wipe-clean PVC trousers weren’t exactly reassuring, either.