Badlands Witch - Carrie Vaughn Page 0,1

which was only part of why Cormac worried that he was getting soft.

He had one more stake tucked in his inside jacket pocket. Pulled it out, held it outstretched while the vampire ran at him. Alas, the vampire wasn’t stupid enough to just run right up it. He grabbed Cormac’s wrist and squeezed, causing him to drop the stake. He could have broken Cormac in half right there; instead, he paused, savoring the moment, leering with bared fangs and bringing himself closer, closer. . .

Cormac’s other hand was on the utility closet’s handle. He yanked open the door, fell in, knocking the vampire off balance and shutting the door behind him. As he hoped, a stack of mops and brooms lay piled up in the corner. He grabbed a broom with a wooden handle, set it under a foot and snapped it in half.

When the vampire opened the door, Cormac rammed the broken handle into his chest, right through his heart. The guy screamed, expression twisting with anguish.

The vampire couldn’t have been that old, a couple of decades at most. The body blackened, but it didn’t shrivel to a husk and turn to ash the way the old ones did, the rot of the grave if they had been allowed to rot in a grave. Becoming a vampire only delayed the inevitable. Vampires like this, throwing themselves on stakes for a Master who had been destroyed years before—what a waste. But nobody held a grudge like a vampire. They had the time to burn. Cormac let go of the stake, and the rotted body dropped at his feet.

Well, that was bracing.

Because the vampire didn’t turn to dust and blow away, conveniently disposing of itself, Cormac now had a body to deal with.

“I do not need this shit,” he muttered. Irate, he kicked it. The leathery skin made a disconcerting squishing sound.

It’s better than letting him kill you, Amelia stated, sounding nonplussed. But yes, it is a bother.

He dragged the body someplace where it would be exposed to sunlight before anyone found it. The apartment building’s dumpster had too much foot traffic, but behind the building lay a gravely stretch, a foot or two wide, between the building and a boundary fence. A couple of scraggily dead shrubs poked up through the rocks. No one went there, and it faced east. As soon as the rays hit it, it would burn to ash, then poof, gone. Hell, this was such a clear case of self-defense maybe he should call the police. Except no, not with a manslaughter conviction on his record. Besides, come dawn, there wouldn’t even be a body. Nothing to report.

Finally he got safely into his apartment and took a very long, hot shower to get the stink of dead vampire off him.

Explain it again, Amelia said when he finally got out of the shower. She’d at least given him some peace until he got clean. You went after an entire vampire Family by yourself?

“Wasn’t much of a Family. Most of them weren’t any older than that guy.”

You could have been killed.

“Turned out okay.”

There are times when I am grateful I didn’t know you earlier in your life. You seemed to have engaged in quite a lot of reckless behavior.

He barked a laugh. “If you only knew the half of it.”

She could know, if she wanted. But she was English, overly polite, and didn’t pry too much into the mind where she lived. That would be like rifling through the linen closet in the house where one was a guest, she insisted. Even though they were more like roommates.

Except with her, the door was always, always open. When he toweled off, she was there. When he slipped on sweatpants, so did she. Whatever he touched, she felt. They didn’t talk about it. Ignored it as much as they could. He avoided mirrors. When he needed to jack off, she pretended to leave the room, as if she could ever leave the room. And once in a while, he found himself in front of the mirror and hoping she was looking.

She wasn’t real. It wasn’t real.

Cormac slept and dreamed in their valley.

His father had taken him camping here, a high valley in the Colorado Rockies where a snowmelt creek cut down through a meadow bowl, bounded by a pine forest. The sky above was searing blue, smudged with white clouds. No air smelled cleaner than this. No place felt safer. He and Amelia had built this shared space—part guided meditation,