Last Ditch Effort Read online

  “Well,” he muttered breathily. “I guess we’ll start to the left, and—”

  Something scuffled behind him and he spun while his muscles tensed and his heart froze in a convulsive halt. Almost as soon as he’d turned, he saw what it was. A dark shape about eighteen inches long and seven inches tall yowled and screeched in fear that probably equaled his own.

  “Fucking cats.” He grunted in relieved annoyance and resumed his path into the alley. “Don’t they have anything better to do than sneak up on people who are already…”

  His words trailed off. He’d been about to say nervous, but terrified might have been a better word.

  Merely being there was dangerous. Someone might easily mug him, with no witnesses and no one to help. He could stumble onto a homeless junkie, crazed and irritable, who might do God knew what in a chemical-induced mania. Or the police might appear and assume he’d come to buy drugs himself. The idea that they might harass him with leading questions before they hauled him off on some bullshit charge almost equaled the junkie scenario.

  But the man whom the accountant had come to meet was the most frightening thing of all.

  He breathed deeply, steeled himself, and stepped toward the nearer alley.

  As he drew closer, a looming silhouette detached itself from the inky pool of shadow between the buildings and moved toward him. The footfalls were heavy, yet somehow soft.

  Near the mouth of the narrow walkway, they stopped at the same moment—the accountant about six feet outside, the other six feet within.

  The shadow spoke first in a tone that was low, deep, raspy, and almost bestial. “You came. Smart man.”

  This, the small man thought, was what it would sound like if a guard dog tried to form human words around its angry growls.

  “Of course.” He tried to sound confident. It wasn’t easy to gather the nervousness in a tight ball and hide it deep within himself but he made a valiant effort. “Your instructions were perfectly clear. Shall we begin negotiations?”

  A barking, snorting sound transformed into a harsh, hacking laugh.

  “Negotiations? No. I am here to tell you how things will be. You have no say in the matter.”

  The speaker took three long, striding steps forward, emerged from the jaws of the alley, and entered the dim light of the empty street.

  A lump formed in the accountant’s throat and he swallowed instinctively. Previously, he had not had a good look at the larger man. Now, however, he saw that his appearance unfortunately matched the voice.

  His companion was even taller than he’d seemed at first and stood in a hunched posture as if readying himself to pounce. His hair was fairly short yet unkempt, and it spiked wildly. A full beard covered most of his face. His skin was dark and leathery and his eyes narrow and gleaming. At a glance, he seemed something other than human.

  The accountant desperately wanted to back away from the advancing figure. But he had not attacked yet and backing away would be interpreted as weakness—perhaps even a lack of resolve.

  “If,” the smaller man began, “you can indeed offer me ‘protection,’ let’s say what I pay you per month can be based off—”

  “No,” the other retorted. “You pay whatever I tell you to pay.” His eyes seemed almost to glow with a yellowish hue like the reflected light of a full moon. “I am the alpha of the pack. You are the least. You now exist at my mercy.”

  He took another step and leaned forward, and the long fingers of his powerful hands clenched and unclenched.

  The accountant was on the verge of fleeing, but he knew he would not be able to run fast enough to escape.

  The bestial man continued and his voice rose in volume. “Displease me in any way and I’ll rip your throat out and feast on your flesh and blood. You have no—”

  He stopped abruptly. His gleaming eyes flicked to the side and his hair rose like that of a threatened animal.

  Both men turned to face the woman at the same time. Her chuckle was soft and precise, completely out of place, it seemed, beside the hulking werewolf she’d startled.

  “Hello, James,” she said.

  The accountant realized that James, his would-be extortionist, was afraid of this petite stranger. That was all the encouragement he needed. He turned and ran toward the waterfront, faster than he would have thought himself capable of, and vanished into the night.

  James turned his head slightly to yell after him, “I’ll find you. This is not over yet.” His gaze, however, remained locked on the approaching figure who had emerged, almost catlike, from a slanting shadow beside the building to the east of the alley.

  He growled low in his throat. “I thought you didn’t mess with humans, Taylor.”

  Small, light footsteps sounded on the concrete as the new arrival drew closer and stepped out into the harsh light.

  She was dressed entirely in black and in clothing halfway between formal and exercise gear. Her shoulder-length hair was so dark that its gleam was almost blue. Her skin was almost unnaturally white.

  “I still don’t mess with humans, James, unless they can help me.” She smiled. “For example”—she nodded in the direction in which the accountant had fled—“I might use them as bait.”

  “Bait? For what?” the werewolf demanded. His teeth extended to grow longer and sharper and the familiar painful itch heralded the fur that sprouted from his skin as his whole body was suffused with anger.

  Taylor took another step toward him. She cracked the knuckles of her slim hands. “Discovering who is responsible for the recent spate of wanton killing of humans. It would appear that I have succeeded.”

  “Hah!” James spat. He repositioned himself slowly while he spoke and slid slightly back toward the alley’s mouth, where the woman would have less room to maneuver—if she tried anything. “Since when does your kind have any scruples about the sanctity of human life?”

  His adversary followed his subtle movements with her gaze, which had taken on a pale reddish glint. “I am not above killing when there’s actual cause for it,” she explained, “but your childish and irresponsible acts of slaughter draw far too much attention. The humans will find you and when they do, that will become a problem for me.”

  He allowed his lips to curl away from his mouthful of fangs. “You don’t give a shit about the rest of us, Taylor.” He snarled to emphasize his point. “You simply want to protect the domesticated ones so no one comes looking for vampires and finds you.”

  The woman took another quick, light step. She now faced the werewolf and effectively backed him into the alley toward which he’d begun to retreat.

  “Yes,” she remarked, “I am among those who will be inconvenienced by your recklessness. I have no time for that, James.” Her eyes narrowed in anticipation of his attack before he moved. He thrust into a broad, powerful leap with both arms outstretched and the claws already unsheathed from the tips of his paw-like hands.

  Taylor ducked and rolled under his hand. His brain was too engulfed with red fury for conscious strategy, but his instincts and reflexes had reached the peak of their lupine efficiency. Grunting and drooling, he pivoted and struck with a fist. His movements made up in strength and unconscious ease what they lacked in sophistication.

  Something crunched and gave way against his knuckles and the woman catapulted into the wall of the west building. He paused for an instant to assess how much damage he’d done. If he pounced too soon, he might fall into a trap she’d laid for him.

  The vampire stood. A trickle of blood came from her mouth and her jaw seemed to have cracked inwards, but the bone was already resetting itself beneath her ivory skin. She wiped the blood away with the back of her hand and licked it with a long, dark-red tongue.

  “I wondered,” she began, “if you would be all bark and no bite, James. It’s a pity you’ll shortly no longer be around to spar with.”

  They both lunged.

  Chapter Two

  Taylor was not incapable of fear and felt a trace of it
now. The lycanthrope was a more formidable opponent than she’d assumed.

  He swung a furred fist at her face, most likely intended to cave the rest of her skull in, perhaps. She moved faster to duck under it, seized his arm, and prepared to rip his throat out before he could attempt another blow. He shifted his position instead and simply half-shoved, half-threw her toward the deserted courtyard behind the alley.

  She landed, rolled, and vaulted up at once to elevate twenty feet before she glided with arms outspread to land in the low branches of the area’s single tree.

  James glared at her and spittle trailed from the lips around his fangs. “Coward!” He barked a scornful laugh.

  Taylor ignored the insult. She had no intention to retreat. After all, she had defeated monsters worse than him.

  “Don’t worry, James,” she explained. “I’m not going anywhere. I shall stand triumphant over your ravaged corpse.”

  She leapt with the unnatural grace of her kind directly toward the werewolf, who prowled and clawed at the dirt in his almost frenzied need to kill her. The bloodlust of the beast was dominant over the man now. Any conscious thoughts his mind might try to find, at this point, would quickly be forgotten in the mental chaos of enraged predatory reflex.

  Crazed with rage, James pounced and his jaws snapped toward her head. She made her move at the same time, threw herself down and aside, and landed in time to swipe her own claws through the lycanthrope’s stomach as she rolled away from him.

  He grunted and gurgled, then howled as he spun toward her while blood poured from his slashed abdomen. His recovery was faster than she would have liked.

  She tried to pull out of his reach, but his hairy, powerful hands closed on her right wrist and yanked hard. Her upper arm snapped near the elbow. Pain surged through her and she fell back and wrenched away from his grasp. He staggered in place as the delayed reaction to his own injury suddenly affected him.

  His yellow gaze fixed on her, his pupils wide with adrenalin. “You—” He snarled in place of words. Her nails had ripped half his gut but already, the flow of blood had lessened in force and volume and the torn flesh worked to repair itself.

  He was a powerful creature indeed, she thought, to be able to regenerate so quickly. No wonder the Southern Tip Pack had elected him their alpha.

  But he was not the only one with that ability. She backed away and slapped her humerus into place, and the familiar tingling prickled as the bone mended and the flesh around it eased itself together.

  She allowed her mouth to hang open so her enemy could see her fangs. “You’re no pushover, James. I half-expected to be disappointed. But I’ve gone easy on you. I didn’t want this over too soon. Let’s have some real fun, now.”

  The blue-black hue of the night in her eyes began to shift as they took on a reddish sheen. Her own instincts—every bit as predatory as his but less chained to the conventions of animal nature—kicked in and rapidly attained their highest level of power and sensitivity.

  Her adversary took a step toward her and drool flowed freely as he growled. “Stop talking and fight!”

  “Very well.”

  With a lunging motion almost too fast for even a werewolf’s eyes to see, she swept her left arm to the side, yanked a brick from the rear corner of the building behind her, and hurled it at him in the same movement.

  He raised a paw and deflected it with ease, but the momentary distraction was all Taylor needed. She had already surged toward him and pivoted in midair to kick him hard in the stomach with both feet—one landed firmly on what remained of the gash—and drove him back in a snarling flurry of limbs.

  She landed beside a trash can and threw that as a follow-up. He braced himself with his feet and launched toward her and shouldered the can aside. She seized him around the neck, hauled him off-course, and delivered an uppercut to his face that careened him into a heap of garbage along one side of the courtyard.

  Parts of his jaw and skull had shattered in a very satisfying fashion under her small, hard fist.

  She walked over to a metal pole cemented into the ground. “There are reasons why you never provoke a vampire, James,” she lectured him.

  The werewolf spasmed in anger, flung the trash away, and struggled to his feet, his movements pained and awkward. Her flying kick had reopened his gut wound and probably cracked a couple of ribs, and his skull was still in bad shape. The injuries also weren’t regenerating fast enough.

  Taylor wrapped her hands around the pole as her opponent, now in a blind animal rage, roared and charged.

  Sharp cracks echoed through the courtyard when concrete gave in and fissured violently. Taylor heaved the pole free of the earth, with a large chunk of dirty cement still attached to the end like the head of a giant mace. She swung it easily as if it weighed less than a small baton.

  That cement mace connected with the same side of James’ face she’d recently punched. The force of the impact pounded his head to the side before the weapon drove into his upper chest to shatter his collarbone, shoulder, and a couple more ribs. He crumpled and made a painful wet noise when he tried to breathe.

  The vampire tossed her makeshift weapon aside. It thumped onto a broad slab of pavement and left a spiderweb of cracks where it struck.

  “You,” she began, “have broken the rules. You’ve killed innocent people even after you’ve extorted ‘protection’ money from them—like the poor bastard you met tonight. If you do shit like that, you’d best understand that some of us are willing to stop it. At any cost.”

  The werewolf was still alive, twitching and bleeding, and while he attempted to get himself back into fighting shape, he’d taken too much damage in too short a time. For the next few minutes, he was at his adversary’s mercy.

  Not that she intended to show any.

  Her beautiful face, by now, had finished its transformation to reveal her true nature as something even more terrifying than he was. Her eyes were fully red and her jaw had fallen open like a python’s.

  “There’s always a way to kill a lycanthrope,” she observed. Her voice had become a sharp, hollow rasp. “Silver isn’t the only one. There is also what the medical profession refers to as massive trauma.”

  Her clawed left hand stabbed viciously through James’ ruined chest. He tried to howl but couldn’t drag in enough air through his injured face and neck. Her hand found its target and she withdrew her blood-soaked arm slowly. His heart beat once in her grasp before it fell still. She raised the organ to her mouth and bit half off. After a moment, she spat out a sliver of ribcage that had broken off in the tough muscle.

  “Tasty,” she commented. His blood ran down her chin. “You are good for something, after all.”

  He was almost dead, but not quite there yet. His body, stupid as it was, continued its attempt to regenerate from damage that would have killed a human twice over.

  Taylor opened her mouth still wider, her gaze on the werewolf’s neck. She leaned over him for her last drink.

  Above and around them, the noise of their battle had risen to the rafters of the abandoned buildings. There was, however, no rustling, no flapping of wings, nor high squeaking cries. It was night and the bats were all out hunting.

  Midtown Manhattan, New York City

  Approximately twenty-four hours had passed since David had made his solemn vow to pay someone else to finish making his condo fit for human habitation. Now, at last, he was able to complete that vow.

  He stood near the door and scrawled in his checkbook, as a line—a long line—of people prepared to file out. It looked like the new cleaning company had sent their entire staff.

  He licked a finger. “Let’s see…one thousand, nine hundred and eighty-seven dollars, and sixty-nine cents. That was the figure you quoted me, right?” He folded the check away from the stub and began to tear along the perforation.

  “Yes,” replied a pinch-faced older man near the front of the column, who frowned with disapproval. His overalls were covered with stains and
his hands looked red and painful, despite having worked in gloves. He smelled awful.

  David ignored the implied moral criticism. “Excellent.” He smiled and handed the check to the crusty old bastard.

  The geezer took it and they exchanged their last formal pleasantries. Most of the other cleaners simply looked relieved that it was over. A few looked…broken, somehow, as though their souls had been damaged by sights—and aromas— not meant for mortal senses.

  After the door closed behind them, he sighed wearily. Once upon a time, a mere two grand to save himself some unpleasant hassle would have been nothing.

  An assortment of envelopes, however, rested on the nearby table to remind him that things had changed. Most of them were things like credit card advertisements, charities begging for money, personal letters from people he used to know who wanted money, bills, and various other inconsequential things.

  There was one, however, that was far more interesting. The knock on his door yesterday had been for the envelope in question, sent via certified mail. If he had to sign for it, the implication was that it was actually important.

  Not only that, it looked important—or, at least, unique. The envelope was a deep yellowish-brown color as though handmade to resemble old-fashioned parchment. The sender had listed neither their own personal name nor the name of an organization, and the return address was not one he recognized.

  David slit the envelope with a knife and sat at the table to read the contents. Within, the letter was handwritten in a beautiful, fancy, almost archaic script—the kind of fancy, archaic script it was a real bitch to read.

  Once he deciphered it, he had to read the letter twice to fully grasp its significance.

  “The Moonlight Detective Agency. I wondered what the hell had happened to it.”

  Of the various businesses he’d owned, the Moonlight Detective Agency was perhaps the one he knew the least about. He did not even know what they did—what kind of agency they were, exactly, or where they operated—or how many personnel they employed. He usually paid little attention to such matters.