A Kiss of Blood (Vamp City #2)(2)

But even as she thought that, she knew she didn’t really want Arturo dead.

Shoving her gun into her waistband, Quinn crossed to the window and pushed open the lower half of the double-hung, enjoying the brush of cool September air over her skin. Across the narrow street stood one of the GW dorms, half the windows lit like the spots on a domino, the other half dark, the students still out and about campus despite the fact that the sun had set more than an hour ago.

Zack and his best friend Lily, both GW seniors, should have been out there with them, though more than likely they’d have been right here, side by side in front of their computers either playing some high-action fantasy shoot-’em-up or designing one. But Lily had disappeared, as so many people around D.C. had in recent months. Quinn suspected she’d fallen through the same door into Vamp City that she and Zack had as they’d searched for her; but they’d never found her.

Lily was most likely dead. Humans didn’t last long among the vampires. And Zack . . . poor Zack was suffering not only from the magic sickness but from grief and depression as well. Her sweet, easygoing brother had not emerged from Hell unscathed.

Quinn straightened, hoping her neighbor, Mike, would come over as he did most evenings and give her something to think about other than vampires and lost friends, and something to listen to other than the ticking clock. In his company, she could pretend, if only for an hour or two, that she lived a normal life in a normal world. Even if nothing could be further from the truth.

But as she turned from the window, a familiar chill skated over her skin—a feeling she knew presaged the bleeding together of the two worlds. Those in Vamp City would feel the bleed-through as an earthquake. During the day, the quake would be quickly followed by sunbeams bursting overhead like light through a dark piece of hole-riddled construction paper. The vampires would flee the sunlight, or die if they were unlucky enough to be standing in the wrong place when the sunbeams appeared.

But in the real world, Quinn alone felt the change, thanks to her sorcerer’s blood. She alone could see through the shadowy breaks like windows into the other world. And since one of those breaks stood in front of her apartment, just outside her window, she turned back and bent low, unable to resist another glimpse of that world.

Created in 1870, a doppelganger of Washington, D.C., at that time, it was a world without streetlights or paved roads or electricity except in those few homes that had been hooked up to generators. She stared at the deserted, moonlit street and the line of crumbling row houses in a section of Vamp City that she knew to be largely uninhabited.

The street in that otherworld appeared deserted tonight. She heard no sounds but those of the real world, which continued to carry to her ears—a car driving down the street, the tick of the clock, the banter of college kids walking along the sidewalk below her window, discussing their fantasy-football picks.

Out of nowhere, a young man in shorts and a T-shirt stumbled into the dark Vamp City street, falling to his hands and knees in the dirt. Quinn gasped. One of the fantasy-football kids must have slipped between the worlds as he’d passed through the break. Every day, thousands passed through unaware and unaffected, but every now and again, one slipped through. As Lily probably had. As she and Zack definitely had.

While the kid struggled to his feet, Quinn heard his friends’ voices below, shouting for him from the real world. Shouts the kid would never hear. Only she could hear both worlds at once when they bled into one another like this.

She watched as the young man leaped to his feet, staring around him in stunned silence, his body language projecting disbelief, shock, and slowly dawning terror. Her heart ached for him because she’d been in his shoes just a few weeks ago. And she knew what he’d soon learn—that he had every right to be afraid.

His friends would tell the cops that he’d been right there, then just wasn’t—the same story reported over and over again on the news from others who’d been with one of the missing. But the cops wouldn’t find him. They didn’t have a clue what was going on. And they couldn’t do anything about it even if they knew.

Her breath caught. She might be able to save him if she hurried, if she raced into that world and snatched him back out before the break closed.

Before she could question the wisdom, she was racing for her front door. Thanks to her sorcerer’s blood, she alone could travel both ways through a sunbeam. She’d escaped that way once before. And she’d helped others do the same.

As she dashed down the hall and into the stairwell, her logical mind began to question the wisdom of this action. The breaks were unpredictable, some lasting close to an hour, others only a minute or two. If she ran into that world to save the kid, and the break closed before she got out again, she’d be stuck, unable to return to Zack until and unless she could make her way out through another break. And Zack needed her.

But she couldn’t just leave the kid there. Not if she could help him.

She ran through the lobby. By the time she reached the doors to the street, her heart was pounding, sweat beading on her brow. She pushed open the glass door, just feet from where the break began and the magic would suck her in. In that dark column, she saw the Vamp City world and watched with dismay as two horses and their riders circled the kid. She gasped as one of the riders threw a lasso, roping the young man like a steer.

Fury ignited inside her. But caution and experience held her back because she recognized the overlarge heads and ears of the riders and knew them to be inhuman Traders with inhuman strength.