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  I maintained eye contact, looking for the slightest sign of uncertainty.

  The corner of her mouth dipped. A fraction of a second later, however, it returned as though she hadn’t let her guard down.

  But her hesitation told me that, for all her power, Zephora wasn’t as powerful as she thought. So I decided to voice a similar thought. “You’ve lived in four different centuries, and you still have the intelligence of a worm.”

  A car door slammed on the street behind me. I swiveled in that direction.

  Darius strutted across the sidewalk and headed toward me with determined strides, his expression dark and ominous.

  “You were saying?” Zephora’s spirit asked.

  Inside the bedroom, her body shifted, and the landline phone dropped from her palm and hit the floor. A smile appeared on her face, making it obvious that, while she had her back to me, she had texted Darius and informed him I had intruded on her property. All the while, she slept, as though she couldn’t be bothered while she caught up on her beauty sleep. How odd!

  But I didn’t have time to contemplate that. I swung back toward Darius.

  Fifteen feet away and closing in with quick but steady strides, he said, “I didn’t expect you to be ready for our showdown so soon. Needless to say, I am quite pleased.” From the devious look on his face, he looked intent on destroying me.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Darius’s smile grew with each passing second. “If it is any consolation, if your body absorbs too much punishment, I shall allow you to pass from this life. Is that a fair offer?” He stopped ten feet away from where I stood just outside of Zephora’s bedroom.

  “Such a sweetheart.”

  A dimple appeared in his cheek as his smile brightened into an “awe, shucks” expression.

  I said, “You’ve been to one of Hannibal Lecter’s hospitality courses, haven’t you?”

  “I’m unfamiliar with Mr. Lecter.” He rushed forward and immediately eclipsed the distance between us. He threw a right hook.

  I stepped back, tapped his fist in the opposite direction, and threw a fist into his cheek.

  He went reeling past me, not from the force of my blow, since punches thrown by humans didn’t ordinarily stun vampires, but because I’d redirected his balance. When he regained his poise, he smirked at me. “I see a challenge is in order.” Rather than unbutton his gray blazer and loosen his tie, he ensured that both were tight against his frame. “Excellent. I’m pleased that you have not decided to flee from your promise.”

  “I’m a lot of things. But a liar isn’t one of them.”

  He rushed me and threw an upper cut.

  I dodged his lightning-fast punch, but I couldn’t completely avoid a hammer fist to my head. Knocked to the side, my reflexes kicked in, allowing me to tumble to the ground and bounce back up. Although I’d fought many opponents over the years during martial arts competitions, none of them had the speed or resilience of a vampire. So while I shook the double vision from my head, I felt heat rising inside me, emanating from a point of fright and panic.

  Darius charged and threw a right jab.

  I avoided it and followed-up backhanded blow before barely blocking a roundhouse kick. Nevertheless, the power behind that blow sent me to the ground and, knowing that Darius would take advantage of this development, I jumped up at the exact moment his left fist flew past my right cheek.

  I grabbed his arm and cranked it down, shattering his elbow, then used his leverage to swing my body across his back to drag him to the ground. The second we hit the surface, air rushed out of my lungs, but I’d exhaled at that exact moment so I didn’t lose the critical second I’d need to continue my assault.

  Fearing that I hadn’t been quick enough, I felt a surge of warmth spreading through me until it slammed into my hands. Rather than allow my upper hand to dissipate, I planted both feet against the grass and strapped both hands around Darius’s face.

  A sizzling sound, like hamburger meat against a burner, rose from his face as he screamed and with one quick jerk threw me off him, knocking me seven feet backwards.

  I scrambled to my feet and got into a fighting stance.

  Darius stood up and pulled his hands from a face that showed deep black gulleys in his cheeks. He smiled, but winced as his facial muscles most likely stung. He clenched his teeth to avoid moving his face any longer than necessary. “That will not stop me.” The lamppost overhead shining down on his face revealed that his charred cheeks began to smooth and regain its natural shape, the dark hue growing paler with each passing second.

  “I must admit,” Darius said, making his way toward me. “You won round one.” He looked at his contorted elbow and sighed as though its twisted nature was a minor inconvenience. Then he grabbed it with his free hand and turned it. A bone-chilling crack issued forth. “Congratulations are in order. It seems I underestimated you. I shall not repeat that mistake.”

  His aloof manner and eerie tone set my nerves on edge. He conveyed complete confidence by walking leisurely toward me, as though killing me was a foregone conclusion. It made sense considering that, as an immortal being, he could spend the rest of his existence hunting me. And only killing him would prevent him from following through on his threat.

  One problem made that a troubling endeavor: Darius had more abilities than I did, and he had a much better command over them than the two abilities that I possessed. Besides, I’d need to fall asleep to astral project, and even then, I’d only be able to project my spirit. Far from menacing!

  It meant I could rely on my martial arts skills all day, but since Darius had greater stamina, not to mention quicker reflexes, he could continue battling me until he wore me down…or I made one small mistake. Then he would capitalize on it and kill me. My confidence dwindled.

  Darius closed in, only five feet away now.

  As panic made my chest tight, I felt heat surging through me. I raised both hands, hoping to shoot my adversary in the chest. But he grabbed my wrists, cinched them together, and twisted them. Rather than allow him to complete the maneuver, which would have snapped both wrist bones, my hands grew warm enough to scorch Darius’s wrists.

  He didn’t let go, but the burning sensation melting his skin must have made it difficult for him to increase the pressure or break my wrists.

  I used the temporary respite to kick his left kneecap. That bone snapped, making him stumble. Feeling him dragging me down while fear gripped me, I increased the heat in my hands.

  Darius cringed and released me. He dropped to the grass.

  I righted myself and directed both hands at Darius. Twin bolts of fire slammed into his chest, spreading fire across his body.

  He squiggled side-to-side, crying out, before rolling quickly like a log zipping down a hill.

  His swift actions left me sending flames into the grass.

  Darius stamped out the flames thirty feet away from me, but plumes of smoke drifted off his clothes. His exposed arms, neck, and face were black and crinkly.

  I glanced around, hoping to find a weapon that would allow me to kill him. I didn’t find any sharp, wooden objects that I could puncture his chest with. But I’d placed the Soul Sword in the trunk before leaving my home…just in case I needed it. If I could grab it quickly enough and return to Darius, I could lop off his head.

  I’d parked my car across the street, fifty feet away from where I now stood. Rather than waste another moment, I bolted toward it. Now that I’d stopped concentrating, the warmth spreading throughout my system disappeared.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Darius place both hands against his kneecap and shove it back into place. He grinned at me with cheeks that had already half-healed, the cracked skin now ashen instead of pure black.

  Depending on how quickly he healed, I might not even have a chance to get to the sword in time.

  “Please don’t rush on my account,” Darius called out to me with a hint of joy in his voice. “I’ll attend to you momentarily.”
/>   I ignored his arrogance and arrived at the trunk of my car. I yanked my key ring from my front pocket, found my car key starter and pressed the button that unlocked the trunk. It popped open. I glanced back at Darius.

  Fifty feet away, he stood up. He let out a heavy sigh and smiled. “I hope you intend on handing over the Soul Sword.” He took a step forward, but his left kneecap buckled, preventing him from advancing toward me. His smile grew as he set his foot into the ground and rotated his knee.

  It seemed that either he hadn’t re-set his knee as he’d thought or he’d actually done so, but it hadn’t completely healed yet.

  “Please, no need to worry,” Darius said. “But I do appreciate your concern.”

  Assuming he had full-range of motion in his damaged knee within the next few seconds, how long would it take him to close the distance between us? I pushed aside the blanket covering my acoustic guitar case (since our band spent all day yesterday rehearsing, I hadn’t any time to buy a sheath for it), and tried to unsnap the lock on the case, but I applied too much pressure. The knob cracked off, leaving me staring at the locked case. I risked a glance back at Darius.

  He tested his knee, bending it in every direction. His smile indicated that it had completely recovered from the damage I’d caused.

  I had two choices. Either I could jump in the car and speed away, or I could try to bust open the case…and hope that I opened it before he attacked me from behind, since my peripheral vision didn’t allow me the opportunity to work on the case while checking on Darius.

  Fight or flight. I didn’t have time to think over the conundrum. So I slammed the trunk shut, ran over to the driver’s side door, whipped it open, hopped inside, and started the car.

  Just as the engine turned, Darius had reached the driver’s side door. He reached through the open window and grabbed my neck.

  I stomped on the accelerator. I’d hoped that the jolt in speed would have startled Darius and loosened his grasp around my neck. That hadn’t happened. In fact, his forearm slammed against the side of the window, jerking my neck in that direction. Thankfully, the force pushed my head backwards as well, so Darius’s grasp didn’t separate my neck from my head. However, it did press it against the headrest, and the strain between the pressure Darius applied and the speed with which I’d forced my car made my head bob in every direction.

  I kept my eyes on the road, while barely catching sight of Darius; he ran alongside my vehicle with surprising speed, although he struggled to keep up. Since I didn’t have time to concentrate on calling upon another fistful of fire, I considered grabbing the lighter underneath the navigational system, but it would take time to burn bright, and if I didn’t heat up immediately. Darius might tear off my head. No other possibilities presented themselves, so I followed the logical path: I hit the window lever.

  The window rose. But after a couple inches, Darius pressed his forearm down, preventing the window from continuing its ascent. So I slammed on the gas. My neck craned to the left, as Darius applied more pressure, but his face opposite me slid further back, as it became obvious that he couldn’t keep up with my car. I glanced at the speedometer: I’d just hit 40 mph!

  Through the windshield, I saw that traveling twenty more yards would result in driving into someone’s driveway, meaning I had to turn left before that happened, otherwise, at my current speed, I would crash into a resident’s garage door.

  I craned my neck to the left, which demanded plenty of control, since if I moved too quickly or too slowly, Darius would twist my head around and crack my neck.

  “Still here,” Darius said with a smirk.

  I didn’t respond and instead tramped down on the accelerator as hard as possible. As the vehicle hit 47 mph, Darius’s hold on my neck slackened. Straight ahead though, I needed to travel only ten more yards before the street curved into a perpendicular street, so I kept my foot down, now going past 50 mph.

  Darius’s grasp fell away, springing my neck in the opposite direction. At that exact moment, I entered the next street, so I stomped on the brakes and swung the wheel to the left.

  Darius’s body bashed against the side of the car before ricocheting into the street. The vehicle’s tires let out a shriek from such a swift turn, but once I evened out the vehicle, I hit the accelerator again and rocketed down the street. I glanced in the rearview mirror as pain sliced through my head.

  About twenty yards behind me, Darius rose to his feet and watched my departure.

  I turned the corner, putting more distance between us. I headed for home in serious need of placing an ice pack against the back of my neck and a good night of sleep. Tomorrow afternoon, I’d attempt to speak with a woman who could help me put an end to all of this torment. I just hoped she’d listen to what I had to say.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Why are you dressed like that?” asked a beefy man at the entrance of Angels of Babylon, an upper scale strip club. His eyebrows rose. “All those clothes on you? That just ain’t possible.” He pushed a hand through a scraggly goatee. He closed his eyes and looked at me again. “Must’ve took some bad acid…or something. It’s a bad trip.”

  I shook my head. My neck was a little stiff, but I’d avoided serious injury. “I’m not Alexis. She’s my identical twin sister.”

  The man removed the half-smoked cigar from his lips and chuckled. He slipped a hand across his bald head. “No kidding?” He looked me over and a smile surfaced. “Hey, you’re a mighty good looker. Some nice curves on you. Might want to see the boss, see if you two could do a performance together. Bet our clients would get their rocks off on that. Hell, I know I would,”

  “Tempting offer, but…no way in hell! I ignored his sexist comments and scanned the packed strip club. The classic Whitesnake song “Slide It In” pumped through the surround-sound speakers across the ceiling. Above the stage, canned lights shined down on a tanned, lithe blonde woman who barely looked of drinking age. She wore a short, plaid skirt, white-laced stockings, and a leopard-styled bra that peeked through the white see-through white blouse that she’d tied at her bursting breasts. She removed a pair of glasses and flung them into the crowd. Then she sat down on a chair at the middle of the stage and spread her legs, pushing down her short skirt to prevent the crowd from seeing what remained hidden behind it. Even so, she bent forward, providing the audience with more than a heap of cleavage.

  A few men clapped and a couple others lifted their mugs of beer in salute, while the vast majority chatted or looked on in silence. Half a dozen men stood at the stage railing, waving bills at the woman, a couple of whom stumbled from having drunk too much.

  On my way here, I gave a lot of thought to how my sister ended my life. How do you mentally process something like that? Did I hate her? Not precisely. Did I want retribution? Yeah! How could I not? She’d resorted to that measure in order to protect our mother, but still…I kinda died because of it! Alexis enjoyed irritating me (and everyone else, for that matter), but she didn’t seem to have any interest in killing me…or anyone. Given that rationale, I wasn’t sure if I didn’t hate her because I didn’t have any family and I desperately wanted one, or because she would be a wily ally against Darius since she could read minds, push thoughts into those around her, and move objects with her mind.

  “You looking for Alexis?” asked the bouncer, putting a hand in his pocket and adjusting his erection through his pants. “Damn, girl. You got some hot shit going on.”

  I ignored him, barely able to contain my revulsion. “Is she still scheduled to go on? Or is she done for the day?”

  He looked at me, incredulous. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. What’s the problem?”

  “Problem? There ain’t no problem.” He stepped aside and jerked a thumb toward the stage. “She’s on right now.”

  I looked in the direction he pointed. Shocked, my mouth hung open. My sister did a fantastic job of transforming herself into a naughty schoolgirl.

  “Hey, I catch your drift,�
� he said, nodding at my expression. “I’m due for a break. You open for business? I got a hundred coming your way. You know, the best job…is a blow job!”

  In no mood for further sexual harassment, and without a second thought, I landed an open-handed chop into his neck. Even though it made my own neck sting, the punishment I doled out was well worth it.

  He doubled-over, grasping his throat, gurgling.

  “Never speak to a lady like that. You hear me, you redneck punk!” I walked past him and made my way down an aisle, watching Alexis contort her body in various directions, accepting bills of various denominations. Just as the last man tucked a fifty-dollar bill into her bra, I stepped up beside him and glared at my sister.

  Shocked, she stared at me, touched her wig and adjusted it. “What’re…” Anger flashed across her face. “What’re you doing here?”

  “We need to talk. Now!”

  Seeing the seriousness in my expression, she clenched her teeth, nodded, and slanted her head toward the hallway about forty feet to my left. Then she spun around and strutted across the stage as the song ended.

  I followed opposite her, ignoring the men who stared at me as though they’d seen double, because they had, only I wasn’t about to acknowledge that fact. When I finally reached the hallway entrance, a seven-foot tall, burly black man stared at me with an uncompromising stare.

  “You just saw me speak with my sister. Please let me see her.”

  He shook his head. “That won’t happen…without word from Lexie.”

  I disregarded the man’s nickname. “Did you see me put down the bouncer at the front of the club?”

  He nodded. “Already got someone to take his place.” He gestured toward the entrance. “See for yourself.”

  “I don’t care who’s there. What I care about is seeing my sister. It’s incredibly important that I see her. Please don’t make me hurt you.”

  He cracked a smile. “Not gonna happen, sister.” Then he nodded his head behind me. “Already got some back-up.”