Crashing Paradise Read online

  Some did not believe she existed, until the very moment she was tearing out their dead hearts.

  From time to time, one would rise among them as a leader. Whenever that happened, Eve made a special effort to track and kill it. She did not want the vampires to have hope.

  It was also convenient, because whenever some leech got arrogant enough to want to be the boss, lots of the others gathered around. She could destroy dozens of them in one fell swoop.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Side by side, Eve and Clay started down through the maze of terraced paths that was Villefranche. In her Caroline Herrera top and white cotton pants, she was the picture of the wealthy tourist. She might have been an Italian model or a Brazilian heiress. Even here, where the rich and beautiful were merely part of the landscape, she drew attention. And, yet, with Clay at her side in his blue jeans and T-shirt, she blended.

  People sat at outdoor cafés, drinking wine or coffee on patios.

  Lovers walked hand in hand, some curled against one another in acrobatic marvels, even as they strolled together.

  An old woman watered her flowers with a rusting can. Two men walked a dog, the three of them fashioning some kind of family. A stunningly handsome man with thin, Gallic features and piercing eyes stood on a corner and played the violin for all those who might appreciate his music.

  He was a vampire.

  The violinist caught sight of her, and the smile vanished from his face. He turned and began to make his way down a steep alley that curved down toward the Mediterranean amidst shops and restaurants. Laughter and the tinkling of wineglasses erupted from an open door. The vampire continued to play his violin with every step, moving slowly, capering a bit as he entertained those he passed.

  “Him?” Clay asked.

  Eve smiled. “Him.”

  The shapeshifter reached out and twined his fingers in hers. Eve resisted the urge to pull her hand away. Instead, she gave him a look full of warmth and love. In this form, Clay was ruggedly handsome, with his dark hair and stubbly beard and those ancient eyes. But they were not lovers. Their intimacy was for appearances’ sake, so that they would blend with their surroundings. Eve had entertained the idea of becoming Clay’s lover.

  Fucking him, you mean, she thought.

  A small chuckle escaped her lips, and Clay looked at her strangely. The odd thing was that fucking was not what she thought of at all when she considered the possibility of sharing a bed with him. And perhaps that was why she had not allowed herself to get any closer to Clay. Anytime Eve wanted a man, she took what she wanted. They never argued. She would take them for a ride, and sometimes there would be wounds, and sometimes there would be blood—always voluntary.

  But it was always on her terms.

  Clay knew who and what she was, but he was probably the only creature in the world who was not intimidated by that knowledge. He had been even closer to the Creator, in his way, than she had been, in her days in the Garden. The loneliness and confusion that ached in him was like a beacon to her. Clay had been discarded by God, just as she had been.

  He understood her in a way no one else could. The idea of becoming more intimate with him frightened her.

  Eve didn’t like the feeling. It pissed her off. All of which was a good way to mask how she really felt. All of her fighting and fucking and laughter kept her distracted, when she wasn’t hunting vampires. Her crusade had been going on for four centuries, and not once had she received any sign from God that He had noticed.

  Yet she kept working toward her redemption. She had felt His presence and heard His voice, so long ago. Eve had faith that God would not have allowed her to continue to exist without giving her the chance to redeem herself, to cleanse the horrors from her soul. If she allowed herself to get too close to Clay, she would dwell too much on the callous way in which the Creator had abandoned him, and she would be forced to wonder if she had been wrong, to wonder if redemption was beyond her reach.

  They were close, Eve and Clay.

  But she would not get closer.

  If she had to kill every vampire, eradicate the last leech on the face of the Earth, to earn her redemption, then that was precisely what she would do. Even if it took her until the end of time.

  Which brought her back to the question that had been plaguing her for the past few years. What if eradicating vampirism was not enough? What if there was some key that she was missing, some task that she had to perform in order to earn her redemption? Was there some wrong she could set right, some evil to be destroyed, or some fated moment when by her actions she might call the Creator’s attention down upon herself and force Him to forgive her, to heal her, to let her rest?

  Sometimes she hated God more than the vampire filth she had spawned, more, even, than the demon that had made her a monster.

  “You all right?” Clay whispered.

  Eve glanced at him, at those eternal eyes, and she nodded.

  “Fine.”

  “I’m getting the idea you wish I hadn’t come,” he said, keeping his voice low and amiable as they walked down the cobblestone steps. “I know this crusade is pretty personal—”

  “No,” she said, dismissive. “I’m glad you’re here. No way to know how many of them there’ll be.”

  But that was the big question, wasn’t it? Why had she asked him to come? Eve had slain thousands of vampires since her awakening from evil. She didn’t need a partner. The redemption she sought was for herself alone.

  The violinist disappeared into a side alley ahead. Eve picked up her pace, hand still linked with Clay’s. Once they entered the alley, she let him go. Shuttered windows hung open, and there were sheets and clothes hung to dry over windowsills.

  A man passed them in the other direction, smoking a pipe, tobacco so rich and redolent that Eve could not help but think of Conan Doyle. Then a boy raced past them on a bicycle, calling out ahead of him so that people dodged out of his way. He had a small horn on the front, and he honked it several times as he rattled over the cobblestones, reckless with his own safety but somehow still worried about those who might be fool enough to get in his way.

  A slender man and woman ran their hands over one another, leaning against a wall, just out of reach of the light thrown by a lantern that hung from a bracket on the wall.

  Of the vampire and his violin, there was no visible sign.

  And yet . . .

  “Do you hear it?” Eve asked.

  “Yes. Just ahead.”

  The music continued, luring them on. And she had no doubt that it was a lure. The violinist wanted them to follow.

  Surely he would reach the nest in Villefranche where he and others of his kind rested during the day, and where they brought their victims at night. The new leader that had sprung up, a Spaniard called Orjo, would be there as well.

  Eve smiled.

  Clay hesitated. “He’s the bait.”

  Eve flipped her long, raven hair back and glanced at him, wearing a smirk. “No, babe, he only thinks he’s the bait. We’re the bait . . . and we’re the trap, too.”

  They followed the music through another alley, and beneath several vaulted passages, where archway tunnels led beneath houses. The sense of going back in time, of walking the Medieval town, only grew as they explored the Old Town.

  They crossed small squares, one in the shadow of the tall church at the center of Villefranche, even as the church bell chimed eleven.

  And then they came to another vaulted passage. Eve and Clay paused at the entrance to read the name engraved on the entrance. RUE OBSCURA. Eve thought it aptly named. As they entered, they were leaving the rest of Villefranche behind.

  Several other people were walking ahead of them, chatting in fascination, gazing around at the stone construction of the passageway. The Rue Obscura ran under several blocks of houses. Its many archways and stone walls comprised a long tunnel through the heart of the town. Iron lanterns hung at intervals from the high ceiling, bright lightbulbs burning from
within metal grills.

  The violin music seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere along the Rue Obscura, drifting like mist along the masonry walls. Eve and Clay walked along the passage, glancing warily in both directions each time they came to an open arch on either side. To the left, the openings led uphill, and they could see people and hear laughter. The openings on the right led downhill, along stone steps, and over the redtiled roofs they could see the Mediterranean, calm and beautiful.

  Clay glanced at Eve as they walked deeper into the Rue Obscura. His body language had changed entirely. His muscles were tensed and ready for a fight. She nodded. There was little need for pretense, anymore.

  Just as she thought this, the music grew loud and brash.

  They moved beneath a stone arch and into a new section of the dungeonlike tunnel, and the violinist waited for them just ahead. He leaned against the wall, just as the lovers had earlier.

  With a final stroke, he ceased playing his instrument and lowered the bow, watching them openly, with a languid, almost bored sort of stare.

  Eve bit into her lower lip, just to taste the blood on her tongue.

  “Now,” she whispered.

  But it was not a signal to Clay. It was her prediction. And it was correct. Even as she spoke that single syllable, shutters clacked open on the windows down in that vaulted passage.

  Dark, lithe figures leaped from open windows. Others dropped down from the ceiling above, unfolding from where they had clung to exposed wooden beams and the iron chains that held lanterns aloft. Like giant spiders, they landed on the cobblestones and scuttled into position. Still more emerged from the side passages.

  A middle-aged German couple had been coming along the rue toward them from the other direction. Eve and Clay could only watch as the vampires swarmed them in near-total silence and tore their throats open. Blood sprayed, and the vampires drank.

  The moment was broken.

  Clay roared his righteous fury, enraged not at their savagery, but at his inability to stop them from killing. Eve watched in fascination as he surged toward them, changing with his first step. His flesh flowed like liquid, and she could hear the pop of bones shifting inside of him as he shifted into his primal form, his natural self. Clay must have been nine feet tall, his flesh a brownish orange in the lanternlight, cracked and split like dried earth. He had no hair, and was clad only in an Egyptian-style kilt.

  The first of the vampires clawed furrows in the rough earth of his flesh. Clay moved quicker, even, than these vermin.

  He snatched up the vampire by her throat and drove her upward at the iron lantern above. The metal broke through her back and burst through her chest, destroying most of the withered organs inside, her heart included.

  She exploded in a cloud of ash that sifted to the ground.

  Then the fight was on.

  The vampires swept in. From the sheath at her back, hidden beneath her blouse, Eve withdrew the Gemini Blade that Squire had made for her. One side of the curved blade was iron, the other silver. Either one would do for her purposes.

  Eve leaped into the air, spinning, and kicked the nearest vampire so hard that its skull shattered and it fell to the cobblestones.

  It would heal, if she let it. Coming down, she grabbed a fistful of the long, greasy hair of a male and twisted, using the leech for leverage as she kicked out again, knocking two others back.

  She landed on her feet, and swept the Gemini Blade to the right, decapitating a fat, pustulant thing that lunged at her. It burst in a flash of cinders, even as she turned, gripping the Gemini tighter, and punched the iron edge at the face of a grinning, dark-skinned woman. The blade cut off her head above the lower jaw, leaving the bottom fangs gleaming in the lanternlight.

  Perhaps a dozen feet away, they swarmed around Clay again. He was so huge that he made a large target. Six or seven vampires had their hands on him, but there was nothing they could do to him. The shapeshifter could not be made one of them, and in this form, he could not even be made to bleed. They gouged at his clay flesh, tore chunks of it away, but he would rebuild himself. And as he did, he destroyed them.

  Clay reached up and snapped a centuries-old beam from the ceiling, a narrow crossbar that splintered as it broke off.

  He tossed three vampires away. Two of them crashed into the stone wall, and the third landed on the stone floor. With a grunt, Clay turned and plunged that splintered beam into the heart of a vampire. Faster than they could have known, he pulled it out and struck the next, and the next, and the next.

  A breeze swept through the Rue Obscura, and the ash of vampires danced along the cobblestones.

  Eve kept killing. This was her crusade. This scourge upon humanity had begun with her, and it would end with her.

  A vampire grabbed hold of her long hair. Grinning, she spun, and sliced off his arm with the silver edge of Gemini.

  The poison silver coursed through the vampire, and it screamed, just before she swung the blade a second time, severing its head with a crunch of spine and gristle.

  The one she had first thrown to the ground, shattering its skull, began to rise. She drove one sandaled foot down onto its chest and punched the Gemini down like a guillotine blade. More dust swirled around her.

  A trio of teenaged girls, civilians, came walking into the Rue Obscura from one of the side passages. When they saw Clay murdering vampires, and two of the vermin started toward them, the girls screamed and ran. Only one of the vampires followed, but there was nothing Eve could do, as the rest of the tribe was still swarming them.

  Impatient, now, Eve punched her left fist through the chest of a towering vampire and tore out his withered heart. As he fell away to cinders, she crouched low, spinning around with the Gemini ready. The vampires around her hesitated now, not wanting to throw their lives away.

  “You didn’t know who it was, coming for you,” she said.

  Their eyes gleamed in the lanternlight, down there in the dark passage. But they were skittish now, and she knew she was correct. They were only just now beginning to realize.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “It’s me.”

  “Eve,” one of the vampires said, anxious.

  But he didn’t run. Eve frowned. Why wouldn’t they run?

  What could give them such confidence against her? All she could think of was that this new leader, the Spaniard, Orjo, had made them believe they could destroy her. Time to put a stop to that.

  “Orjo!” she called, in a singsong voice. “Come to Mama!”

  One of the vampires laughed. That unnerved her.

  “What’s so fucking funny?”

  “Orjo’s dead, bitch. You already dusted him.”

  Eve frowned, and the vampires began to close the circle around her once again. She watched as Clay lifted a hulking leech above his head and tore the vampire apart with his bare hands. The shapeshifter could have turned into a lion and bitten their heads off, or a bear, and snapped them into kindling.

  But in this form, they could not draw blood. He grabbed another vampire and swung it at the wall. Its head burst like an overripe melon.

  We’re killing them. They don’t stand a chance, she thought.

  “Are you just fucking dense?” Eve demanded, glancing from one vampire to the next as they circled her. She tightened her grip on the Gemini’s handle. “Why aren’t you afraid?”

  Even as she spoke, another couple came along the Rue Obscura. Eve saw them, then saw the sling the mother wore across her chest, and the baby sleeping within.

  A thin, ugly vampire with a crooked nose took a step nearer, almost daring her to attack.

  “It doesn’t matter if we die, as long as you die with us,” the vampire said, a giddy little laugh bubbling out of his throat. “And with the allies we have tonight, you will die.”

  “Not before you,” Eve snarled as she leaped into a spinning kick that shattered the arrogant vampire’s face and that crooked nose.

  Before she could finish it off, four of the leeche
s broke away and raced for the couple and their baby. The woman screamed, holding the baby against her in its sling as she backed away. Her husband started to shout, full of male bluster, trying to hide his fear. The first vampire to reach him grabbed him by the hair and slammed his face into the stone masonry of the wall. He cried out for his wife to flee.

  “Clay!” Eve called, turning to see him pulping a leech’s head against a stone archway.

  “Busy!” he snapped. Five of them hung from him. One had attached itself to his back, elongated claws thrust into the earthen flesh, jaws clamped on his neck. The thing gnawed him like a dog, and Clay barely seemed to notice.

  Eve shot an elbow into the face of a vampire trying to grab her from behind. Bone broke and fangs snapped on impact and the vampire roared in rage and pain. He would recover, but Eve wasn’t waiting around. A thin little blond girl raced toward her, no more than twelve years old when she had been turned. She looked like a whore, painted eyes and sheer blouse and lipstick so bright it gleamed red in the dark.

  “Enough,” Eve growled, and she ran at the little girl.

  The lithe blond vampire reached for her when they were about to collide. Eve punched the Gemini Blade at her chest.

  The girl tried to block it with her arms, but the blade cut through muscle and bone, hacked off her right hand, and split her torso between her breasts. Eve had cut her heart in two.

  She tore the Gemini out of the girl’s chest with a wet snap, and rose, glancing around, feeling the feral rage rising up within her. Her fingers lengthened and tapered into twelveinch talons, the nails like blades themselves.

  The mother screamed. One of the vampires tore the sling from her with a rip of fabric. The baby wailed in terror. Eve cried out in return, as though it could understand her answer.