“Enlighten me.” I smiled with emphasized innocence, widening my brown eyes for a doe-eyed look that the vamps tended to love.

The truth was, as much as I’d like to kill him, I technically couldn’t. But if it came down to it, I wanted to be able to face the shitstorm that would follow with as much useful information as possible. Since he was so new, there was a chance I might be able to pump him for a little information before I was forced to pull the trigger.

“I am your darkest nightmare. I am your death.”

Wow, someone had definitely given him the Introduction to Sounding Like a Poncy Asshole seminar before sending him out into the world. I rolled my eyes at his speech, which reeked like an old Lugosi movie.

“You’re a fucking baby,” I said, not even a hint of awed, cowering fear in my words.

That got his attention.

“I will rip your head off and bathe in your still-hot blood.” He didn’t sound as arrogant this time, but I had to give him credit for his continued efforts.

“No. You won’t.” I said it as matter-of-factly as one might say New York is a big city. “You’re what? Three days old, maybe? You’re not even a blip. You’re nothing. For all the vampire world cares, you might as well still have a pulse. Talk as big as you want, but I’m not the one who should be scared.”

He stood up and I tensed, my finger tightening on the trigger a fraction of an inch. His new position brought him to almost a foot taller than me, but I didn’t lower my weapon, and I didn’t back down. He saw now that I was well aware of what he was. Most people didn’t even believe in vampires, let alone utter their name with such nonchalance. He raised a brow at me and waited.

“Why don’t you ask me what I am?” I pressed the gun into his forehead harder.

He scoffed. “You are my dinner. Or perhaps I will turn you, bind you to me and have you every day until you wished you were dead.”

It was my turn to make a noise of disgusted annoyance and roll my eyes again. If he didn’t stop with this ridiculous, ostentatious performance, I was going to strain something.

“You wouldn’t know how to turn me even if you wanted to. You’re so young, you wouldn’t be able to stop. You’d drink too much and kill me before you could figure out which of your own arteries to open.” The sun would be up in a few hours, and though the night was still on my side, I didn’t particularly want to let this drag on much longer for either of us. “Now go ahead…ask who I am.”

He ignored me and tried to bat the gun away. I brought my knee up with a hard thrust and caught him in the groin, which was still excruciating even if you were undead, and replaced the gun at his temple when he collapsed. “Ask.”

“Bitch.”

I smacked him with the gun. “Ask.”

The part coming next was my favorite. It was a moment six years and many, many dead vampires in the making, and I never got tired of it.

“Who are you?” His voice was strained, though he would have his full strength back in an instant.

“My name is Secret McQueen.”

His eyes widened for the briefest of seconds, and I knew he recognized my name. It had an almost legendary status among the undead. Newborn vampires came to know it right away, because to be introduced, in person, to the owner of it, meant that you were dead. Well and truly dead. The forever kind, not the fun, false-immortality kind of death that vampires luxuriated in.

Knowing who I was, he understood I meant business.

“He told me about you.” And then, to my surprise, he smiled. “Oh, he will be so very pleased with me.”

Chapter Three

Some people might wonder what would lead a girl to chase a vampire through the heart of New York City, and why that same girl would risk her own life to point a gun at a newborn vampire in the middle of Central Park.

This would also bring up the messy question of why I can outrun a vampire, and why I have the occasional unrealized urge to hunt down humans from time to time.

The all-too-easy answer would be to tell you that I’m a half-vampire bounty hunter who takes out rogue vampires at the request of the vampire council.

And, yes, that is the easy answer. Problem is, I’m a little more than just a half-vampire. While logic might suggest that my remaining half would be human, it is not. I am, to the best of my knowledge, the world’s only half-vampire, half-werewolf hybrid. I was born this way; it was not by any choice of my own.

My mixed heritage was not of interest to the newborn vampire in front of me, because it was a well-guarded secret. What had piqued his interest was my name and the reputation that went with it. What had me worried, though, was how pleased he was to be making my acquaintance. I was willing to play along with him for the time being, as I was keen to know who had been telling him about me. The vampire in front of me was obviously not a sanctioned birth. The fact he was out in public so soon after rising and chasing an innocent girl through the heart of the city told me this.

So even though this vampire would not be considered a clean kill by council standards, he might be able to lead me to the one who made him, and that was who I wanted. That vampire was a rogue against the council and someone worth hunting.

According to a centuries-old law, all new vampires are turned only by decree of the vampire council. Becoming a vampire in this day and age is the paperwork equivalent to being sworn in to senate. The problem is rogues, those vampires who didn’t respect the council and wanted to return to the old ways—the days when vampires were believed in and feared, and had the power to do what they wanted without yielding to the rules of a governing body. Rogues didn’t like hiding from humans and pandering to the rules of a human society. They didn’t seem to remember that there was never a time in history where vampires were an actual ruling class. Instead they had their own version of the good old days, of hunting peasants or living in legendary castles. The really old ones passed these golden-years stories onto the younger ones, and suddenly all these Enlightenment era and New Colonial vampires got it in their heads to challenge the governing laws, espousing ideals of a lifestyle they hadn’t lived themselves.

They turned humans, buried them, and when the new vampires awoke, often sharing a coffin with a fresh dead body, they went mad, dug their way free and had all the urges and needs of an animal.

Then there’s the other thing about new vampires that annoys me to no end—they’re a lot like children. They’re inherently curious, disrespectful unless taught to be otherwise and blissfully unaware of their own mortality. This one in particular had all the traits of a rebellious and highly irritating little boy. The kind that screams in stores and kicks and bites. Only getting bitten by this child could kill you.

Child or animal, a newborn rogue vampire is no fun whatsoever to deal with. They cannot, under most circumstances, be reasoned with on any level. But I really wanted him to clarify what he meant when he said, he will be so very pleased with me. They say curiosity killed the cat, but I needed to know who made him. Guess it’s a good thing I was part wolf and not part cat.

“What is your name?” I figured if I could at least get a little intel while he was momentarily at ease, I’d have something to bring back to the council. The Tribunal, the leaders of the vampire council, wouldn’t be happy to see me a third time under these same conditions, and the feeling was mutual. If I killed this rogue, which I had no doubt I’d be forced to, I wanted an olive branch to bring to the Tribunal. Something good to justify my blatant disregard for council law.

He was still thinking about this question, his features clouded over with genuine confusion.

“Henry,” he said after a pause that felt endless. “I was Henry Davies.”

“Was. You do understand, then?” I never could figure out why, but a vast number of newborns did not understand that their new powers came with certain sacrifices, namely their pulse. Being a vampire was such a thrill until you realized you weren’t actually alive anymore. That pesky blood-drinking thing was also pretty hard for some of them to swallow, no pun intended.

“That I’m dead?”

“Yes.”

He rolled his eyes, clearly thinking me a moron for asking such an obvious question. “He told me it would all be different.”

Sometimes I really hated vampires. It’s ingrained in their psyche to be as vague as possible.

“Henry, who is he?”

“He is the one who made me.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious. Does your master have a name?”

Henry’s gaze locked on mine, and there was a moment of hesitation when I thought he might be about to give me an answer. The flicker of humanity was gone as fast as it appeared, leaving only a dismissive sneer. I knew that look well enough. He was thinking about what I might taste like. He wasn’t planning on answering me; he was more or less deciding on how long he would wait before he ate me.

Or, more specifically, before he tried.

“Henry, I suggest answering my question, because if I so much as see fangs, I will kill you.”

He laughed. The son of a bitch actually laughed at me. Just further proof on how young he was. No established, educated vampire would ever laugh in my face, especially not when they knew for certain who I was. They might joke behind my back, calling me “little vampire hunter” and pretending I wasn’t as scary as rumors would have them all believe. But when faced with me, a rogue vampire knew the end was near.

I may not look like much, but I don’t have my job based on my appearances. I kill vampires, it’s what I do, and not just any five-four blonde girl could pull it off. I get why he’d laugh, because at first glance I might come across more like a damsel in distress than a killer. In most cases it worked in my favor, but it got frustrating trying to intimidate vampires who refused to take me seriously.

In the distance I heard sirens, and I hoped to hell it meant the girl had made it to a pay phone or had at least found someone to call the police for her while she cried. And she would cry, for days most likely.