Boundary Crossed (Boundary Magic #1)(31)
Moving to the bedside table, I opened the drawers, and was immediately grateful for the surgical gloves. It was full of dog-eared porn magazines and a couple of cheap-looking . . . uh . . . sex enhancement tools. Apparently Victor had suffered from some issues with size or stamina. Or both. Making a face, I clumsily began picking up the magazines, shaking each one out. A handful of subscription cards fluttered to the floor, but nothing useful. I went through the whole pile anyway, and at the very bottom I found my first potential clue: an old snapshot of four people leaning against a red sports car. I peered at the photo. Victor and Darcy were in there, but I didn’t recognize the other two men. The group’s clothes could have come from any number of eras, but Darcy’s haircut was a perfect copy of “the Rachel,” the style Jennifer Aniston had made popular in the nineties.
Aside from the glowing good health I’d come to associate with sated vampires, all four of them looked . . . relaxed. Happy. There was a contentedness in their body language that spoke of a long familiarity with each other.
“Find anything?” came Quinn’s voice.
I jumped and whirled on him. “Goddammit, Quinn! Stop sneaking up on me!”
He leaned in the doorway, unapologetic. “I’m a vampire, Lex. It’s what we do.”
I glared at him, but held up the photo. “I found this and a bunch of receipts.”
Quinn crossed the room in a flash, taking the photo from me. “This one is Kirby,” he said, pointing at the stranger on Victor’s left, a muscular, young-looking man with an aquiline nose and thinning black hair. Every vampire I had seen, in person or otherwise, was good-looking, but this one was on the ugly end of attractive. “The other guy I don’t know.”
“Did you find anything?” I asked.
Quinn made a face. “Well, I now know more about Darcy’s sex life than I wanted to.”
“Right there with you,” I said wryly, nodding toward the pile of porn magazines.
“Other than that knowledge, I didn’t find much,” Quinn went on. “I found a lot of receipts for the coffee shops on campus, which probably means those are Darcy’s preferred hunting ground. But I doubt she’d go to one of them if she’s on the run.”
“You checked the other rooms too?” I asked, eyebrows raised. He nodded. “What about the neighbors?” I asked. “There are what, two floors on top of this one? Do you think any of them were friendly with Victor and Darcy?”
Quinn hesitated for a second, then said, “I doubt it. We don’t socialize much with the foundings—that would be the semi-polite term for humans who have no knowledge of the Old World—but I suppose it’s worth a shot.”
“Let’s go.”
I followed Quinn back through the musty apartment. Starting at the top of the door, he began unlocking the dead bolts on the inside so we could pull the door all the way open instead of squeezing through past the hinges.
But as the last bolt slid free, there was a tremendous crack and the door rocketed inward, sending Quinn back into the living room wall, which his head struck hard enough to leave a dent two inches deep. Before I could even process what had happened, I heard Darcy’s voice. “Well, if it isn’t the skank with the weird blood, come a-calling,” she drawled. “Hello, skank.”
Chapter 14
I glanced at Quinn. He was struggling to get to his hands and knees, knocked for a loop. Darcy must have come back while we were in the bedroom, and then waited until Quinn undid the bolts to kick in the door. I turned my attention back to her.
Darcy looked terrible. Her once-perfect hair hung in greasy clumps around her face, and her mad, darting eyes reminded me of one of the animals my cousin Jake had brought me, a cat so feral it eventually had to be put down. She was wearing the same black leather jacket I’d seen at the Flatiron Depot and jeans that had once been very expensive. Now the jacket and jeans were splattered with dark stains, and even in the low light I could tell it was blood, probably from when I’d fought with her at John’s house. Had she come back for a change of clothes before she blew town? With an effort, I swallowed my fear and straightened my shoulders, slowly tugging the wooden stake—Quinn’s shredder—from my belt loops. “Hey, Darcy. How’s the nose?”
Her gleeful expression hardened, and she started moving toward Quinn. “I’ll kill you in a second,” she tossed at me, like I was next in line at the DMV. She reached Quinn, who was struggling to his feet with the stake clutched in one hand. He looked a little wobbly, and I started toward the two of them without making a conscious decision to do it.
But before I could take more than two steps, Darcy bent down and put one hand under his chin, yanking it up before he could bat her away. Quinn’s head snapped back with a crunch that made my stomach roll, and he plummeted to the floor when Darcy released her hold on him.
I stared at Quinn’s limp body, stunned. “You killed him,” I said stupidly.
Darcy snorted. “Not yet.” She picked up the stake that had rolled out of Quinn’s hand when he went down and flipped it around in her hand like an Old West gunslinger with a pistol. She straddled Quinn’s limp form, and I realized that she was about to stake him.
I couldn’t let that happen. I flew forward and tackled her, knocking Darcy off the unconscious vampire.