Midnight Marked (Chicagoland Vampires, #12)(71)

I slammed back an elbow that nailed his jaw with a satisfying crunch. The glamour fell away as he bellowed and raised hands to the blood streaming from his face. I took advantage, trying to slide away on the floor of the train, now slippery with sweat and blood, but he grabbed my ankle. I swore, kicked back as he crawled forward with bloodied teeth, and hoped he’d chewed off a piece of his own tongue.

He pulled me backward, sharp fingernails digging against my leathers. I turned onto my back, and he grinned victoriously, crawled over me.

“FYI, that was a ploy,” I said with a smile, then buried my knee in his crotch—or tried to. He deflected with his knee, backhanded me hard enough to put stars behind my eyes. Quick karma for too much ego, I thought, hearing Catcher’s training in my head.

“I don’t miss,” the Rogue said, but that wasn’t going to be relevant. The train lurched, began to slow as it neared the next station.

“Considering I’m alive, you’re about a year wrong.”

When he grabbed the edge of a seat to keep from falling over as the train slowed, I took my chance, stuck pointed fingers in the crux of his elbow. He yelped, released his arm, floundered backward in the jarring train.

I climbed to my feet, head still ringing from his slap, and kicked him in the ribs, then slipped across the car to grab my dagger.

The train came to a stop, and the doors opened. We both looked up as a small girl in a polka-dotted shirt jumped inside, her black hair wound prettily into knots on each side of her head.

“Hurry up, Mama!” she yelled, glancing back through the doors at her mother, whose eyes had grown wide at the sight in the train—the bloody vampire on one side of the car, me on the other, the dagger in my hand, staring at him like an executioner ready to mete out punishment he’d long been owed.

The world stilled.

The Rogue waited for me, the child waited for her mother, and her mother stared at us with terror that locked her in place.

The child’s eyes shifted to me, dropped to the dagger, then the bloody vampire.

I could have moved. I could have run forward, pierced his black heart. But in front of a child? Should I be the one to give her nightmares?

Unfortunately, that brief hesitation was just what he needed.

He jumped forward, his gaze on the child. Her mother realized what was happening, reached out to grab her daughter, but the vampire moved quicker. He snatched up the child, yanked her to his chest with an arm around her waist, held his knife to her throat. Her mother screamed, but before she could move, the train doors closed and the car lurched forward.

“Put her down,” I demanded, the little girl screaming in the vampire’s arms, her mother screaming on the platform, the passengers who’d come through the other door staring at both of us in confusion and horror.

“Make me,” he said with a grin. “I’m going to walk out of here with her, and no one is going to stop me.”

The train rumbled as it rushed toward the next station. I could feel the humans, fearing for the child, moving closer behind me. I held out a hand to stop them but kept my eyes on the Rogue.

“So you’re a coward. All that trouble to get me alone, to take me out and finish your work, and you’re going to walk away with a human shield? How do you think your boss is going to react to that? You think he’ll be impressed?”

“Fuck you,” he said, but he was smart enough to look alarmed. He’d know as well as I did, if not more, how violent Reed was, how manipulative, and how protective of his public reputation. Cyrius Lore was proof enough of that.

The girl was squirming in his arms, kicking against him, tears streaming down her face. My chest ached to reach out, touch and comfort. But her safety was entirely up to the Rogue, and I had to keep my focus on him—convince him to let her go, and move along.

Even if that meant I lost my chance at him.

“Actually,” I said, “this probably helps us. I’m sure someone has called the cops, and I’d bet some of those humans behind me have phones, are recording or photographing this little interaction.” Precisely because they were recording it, I didn’t dare say Reed’s name aloud. No one would believe he was involved without hard evidence, which I didn’t have. And I wasn’t going to set myself up for another arrest.

“Long story short,” I continued, “your boss will see that you’ve failed, and we’ll have that much more evidence to build the case against him, to put him away for a very long time. All that, of course, will happen after he takes care of you.”

The vampire stared at me, a bead of sweat trickling down his nose. Rational thought could do that to a psychopath.

The train began to slow again, and he jerked his gaze to the doors, looking for a way out.

“Hand her to me, and you walk away,” I said.

“I’m not an idiot,” he said. “I hand her to you, and you kill me.”

“Not in front of witnesses.”

We pulled into the station, jerked to a stop. The door opened, and he hesitated, and then tossed the child at me like an unwanted rag doll.

I jumped, hit my knees, arms outstretched . . . and caught her. She wailed with terror, kicked out with pointy little knees and elbows, caught the cheek that sung with pain from his slap.

But she was safe.

People rushed into the train to travel, off the train to get away from the vampire. I climbed to my feet, the child still in my arms, and squeezed through them to the platform.