Chapter 2

The first bloodsucker went down easy enough with a quick blast from Jo’s Glock, which gave her hope that these were old school Vampires, the kind that died quickly with a bullet or two, not the reengineered kind that had showed up a few days after the Revealing, and certainly not the pesky Souled kind that they’d discovered the year before Jo was born. No, with any luck, all of these dirt bags would turn out to be good ol’ fashioned bloodsuckers and fall down dead like good boys and girls with a blast of her weapon. She’d find out quickly enough.

A spray of ash from the first one, and a scream from a few others who were either so startled at her sudden appearance or just timid by nature, gave Jo the few seconds she needed to aim at the shadows and send a woman with long, scraggily black hair into oblivion.

From her right, a thin specter rushed her, his long claws reaching for her face. Jo whirled around, raising her knee and catching him under the ribs while she pointed her Glock, shooting at him quickly and then taking aim at another form flying in her direction. This one, an older woman with gray hair and a few extra pounds, almost made contact before Jo could aim her gun again. She shot twice, but the granny didn’t go down. An elbow to the throat, and a fist to her face sent the monster flying into a metal shelving unit, her arms flailing and her dress showing her large white panties beneath the floral print. Jo fired again, turning the would-be matronly murderer into black char.

The other guy was down but not out. He lay groaning on the ground, holding his shoulder. “Damn, I missed,” Jo muttered, placing her thick black boot on his neck and ignoring his pleas as she fired into his head. “Not this time,” she said as the sole of her boot thunked on the dingy, off-white linoleum, skidding in the pile of ash that occupied what used to be the outline of the Vampire.

Turning her head, she surveyed the store. It was dark, and while her eyes cut through shadows better than humans’ and most Vampires’ she still had a feeling she wasn’t alone. In the distance, she caught the wail of sirens and muttered another curse word, thinking someone must’ve heard the struggle, though they wouldn’t have detected the gunfire, not with this silencer on. She hated to leave her business unfinished, especially if there were a Vampire in the building who could ID her, so she took a chance and headed toward the swinging doors near the soda machines to have a look around in the back.

It didn’t take her long to find what she was searching for. Crouched in the corner, his arms over his head, a Vampire knelt in what smelled like a puddle of his own urine. “Get up,” she insisted, pointing her Glock at his head. It wasn’t that she needed to see his face before she shot him; for some reason, she felt the need to, the longing to make eye contact with every single one of these bastards she laid out. There was an atonement in that she couldn’t quite put into words; it was almost as if looking into their eyes before she killed them gave her a small part of her own soul back.

He didn’t look at her though. Keeping his arm over his balding head, he whimpered. “Please....” His voice broke. “What you’re doing is illegal.”

“So is sucking the blood from innocent humans!” Jo retorted. “Or at least it used to be! Before President Crimsoncrotch and his cronies took office. Look. At. Me.”

Slowly, the monster lowered his arm, revealing the steel grey eyes that assured Jo one pull of her trigger would end him. She didn’t hesitate. As he opened his eyes to make another plea for his life, her finger flinched, pulling back the tiny piece of metal that let fly a larger projectile, this one exploding between his eyes and leaving him staring into her own blankly for a half a second before he dissipated into a pile of black ash, mingled with piss.

Jo took a deep breath, glad the uneasiness in her gut was settling down. She was alone now, all of the Vampires sent to wherever the hell Vampires went when they were ended. At one point, she thought she knew where that was, but with everything that had happened over the last ten years, she had long since realized she had no idea. And there was no time to stand there and contemplate it either.

The sirens were drawing closer, and that ominous red and blue light reflected off the formerly shiny, silver surfaces outside as Jo punched her Glock back into its holster and sprinted for the door and her waiting bike. She was much faster than any human, thanks to a second and then third round of Transformation serum (the latter of the two something she’d decided to give herself one day while she was fooling around at Scott’s parents’ house, an act for which her father would’ve probably killed her if he were capable of doing so) and her engine was souped-up to the point it would be able to outrun anything the cops or the military had available. That didn’t mean she wanted to stand around and scratch her ass and wait for them to get closer.

She was on her bike, tearing out of the parking lot, headed the opposite direction from where she’d seen the lights in a matter of seconds. Just when she was about to slow down and breathe a little, she realized she was headed toward what appeared to be an unmarked, black SUV. “Son of a bitch,” Jo muttered, wishing she had bothered to take the time to put her helmet on so that, if that was in fact a cop—or worse—headed her direction, they wouldn’t be able to identify her. But with her long black braids and blue eyes that seemed to glow in the dark, if the occupants had gotten a glimpse of her through any sort of scope or magnification device, they’d definitely know who she was. She didn’t dare get any closer. Instead, she skidded around the next corner, a full block ahead of them, and gunned the engine, praying they didn’t turn down the same dark street she’d chosen.

Behind her, Jo heard the squeal of tires and cursed again. A quick turn of her head let her know the SUV was coming—and fast.