Keri Arthur - Dangerous Games

Id like to thank

everyone at Bantam who made this book possibleespecially my editor, Anne, assistant editor Joshua, and copy editor Madeline.

Id also like to thank the lady who made all this possiblemy agent, Miriam.

This book is dedicated to my family.

Chapter 1

I stood in the shadows and watched the dead man.

The night was bitterly cold, and rain fell in a heavy, constant stream. Water sluiced down the vampires long causeway of a nose, leaping to the square thrust of his jaw before joining the mad rush down the front of his yellow raincoat. The puddle around his bare feet had reached his ankles and was slowly beginning to creep up his hairy legs.

Like most of the newly risen, he was little more than flesh stretched tautly over bone. But his skin possessed a rosy glow that suggested hed eaten well and often. Even if his pale eyes were sunken. Haunted.

Which in itself wasnt really surprising. Thanks to the willingness of both Hollywood and literature to romanticize vampirism, far too many humans seemed to think that by becoming a vampire theyd instantly gain all the power, sex, and wealth they could ever want. It wasnt until after the change that they began to realize that being undead wasnt the fun time often depicted; that wealth, sex, and popularity might come, but only if they survived the horrendous first few years when a vampire was all instinct and blood need. And of course, if they did survive, they then learned that endless lonelinessnever feeling the full warmth of the sun again, never being able to savor the taste of food, and being feared or ostracized by a good percentage of the populationwas also part of the equation.

Yeah, there were laws in place to stop discrimination against vampires and other nonhumans, but the laws were only a recent development. And while there might now be vampire groupies, they were also a recent phenomenon and only a small portion of the population. Hatred and fear of vamps had been around for centuries, and I had no doubt it would take centuries for it to abate. If it ever did.

And the bloody rampages of vamps like the one ahead werent helping any.

A total of twelve people had disappeared over the last month, and we were pretty sure this vamp was responsible for nine of them. But there were enough differences in method of killing between this vamps nine and the remaining three to suggest we had a second psycho on the loose. For a start, nine had met their deaths as a result of a vamp feeding frenzy. The other three had been meticulously sliced open neck to knee with a knife and their innards carefully removednot something the newly turned were generally capable of. When presented with the opportunity for a feed, they fed. There was nothing neat or meticulous about it.

Then there were the multiple, barely healed scars marring the backs of the three anomalous women, the missing pinky on their left hands, and the odd, almost satisfied smiles that seemed frozen on their dead lips. Women who were the victims of a vamps frenzy didnt die with that sort of smile, as the souls of the dead nine could probably attest if they were still hanging about.

And I seriously hoped that they werent . Id seen more than enough souls rising in recent timesI certainly didnt want to make a habit of it.

But dealing with two psychos on top of coping with the usual guardian patrols had the Directorate stretched to the limit, and that meant everyone had been pulling extra shifts. Which explained why Rhoan and I were out hunting rogue suckers on this bitch of a night after working all day trying to find some leads on what Jackour boss, and the vamp who ran the whole guardian division at the Directorate of Other Racescharmingly called The Cleaver.

I yawned and leaned a shoulder against the concrete wall lining one side of the small alleyway I was hiding in. The wall, which was part of the massive factory complex that dominated a good part of the old West Footscray area, protected me from the worst of the wind, but it didnt do a whole lot against the goddamn rain.

If the vamp felt any discomfort about standing in a pothole in the middle of a storm-drenched night, he certainly wasnt showing it. But then, the dead rarely cared about such things.

I might have vampire blood running through my veins, but I wasnt dead and I hated it.

Winter in Melbourne was never a joy, but this year wed had so much rain I was beginning to forget what sunshine looked like. Most wolves were immune to the cold, but I was a half-breed and obviously lacked that particular gene. My feet were icy and I was beginning to lose feeling in several toes. And this despite the fact I was wearing two pairs of thick woolen socks underneath my rubber-heeled shoes. Which were not waterproof, no matter what the makers claimed.

I should have worn stilettos. My feet would have been no worse off, and I would have felt more at home. And hey, if he happened to spot me, I could have pretended to be nothing more than a bedraggled, desperate hooker. But Jack kept insisting that high heels and my job just didnt go together.

Personally, I think he was a little afraid of my shoes. Not so much because of the colorwhich, admittedly, was often outrageousbut because of the nifty wooden heels. Wood and vamps were never an easy mix.

I flicked up the collar of my leather jacket and tried to ignore the fat drops of water dribbling down my spine. What I really neededmore than decent-looking shoeswas a hot bath, a seriously large cup of coffee, and a thick steak sandwich. Preferably with onions and ketchup. God, my mouth was salivating just thinking about it. Of course, given we were in the middle of this ghost town of factories, none of those things were likely to appear in my immediate future.

I thrust wet hair out of my eyes, and wished, for the umpteenth time, that he would just get on with it. Whatever it was.

Following him might be part of my job as a guardian, but that didnt mean I had to be happy about it. Id never had much choice about joining the guardian ranks, thanks to the experimental drugs several lunatics had forced into my system, and the psychic talents that were developing as a result. It was either stay with the Directorate as a guardian, so my growing abilities could be monitored and harnessed, or be shipped off to the military with the other unfortunates who had received similar doses of ARC1-23. I might not have wanted to be a guardian, but I sure as hell didnt want to be sent to the military. Give me the devil I know any day.

I shifted weight from one foot to the other again. What was this piece of dead meat waiting for? He couldnt have sensed meI was far enough away that he wouldnt hear the beat of my heart or the rush of blood through my veins. He hadnt looked over his shoulder, so he couldnt have spotted me with the infrared of his vampire vision, and bloodsuckers generally didnt have a very keen olfactory sense.

So why stand in a puddle in the middle of this abandoned factory complex looking like a little lost soul?

Part of me itched to shoot the bastard and just get the whole ordeal over with. But we needed to follow this baby vamp home to discover if he had any nasty surprises hidden in his nest. Like other victims, or perhaps even his maker.

Because it was unusual for one of the newly turned to survive nine rogue kills without getting himself caught or killed. Not without help, anyway.

The vampire suddenly stepped out of the puddle and began walking down the slight incline, his bare feet slapping noisily against the broken road. The shadows and the night hovered all around him, but he didnt bother cloaking his form. Given the whiteness of his hairy legs and the brightness of his yellow raincoat, that was strange. Though we were in the middle of nowhere. Maybe he figured he was safe.

I stepped out of the alleyway. The wind hit full force, pushing me sideways for several steps before I regained my balance. I padded across the road and stopped in the shadows again. The rain beat a tattoo against my back and the water seeping through my coat became a river, making me feel colder than Id ever dreamed possible. Forget the coffee and the sandwich. What I wanted more than anything right now was to get warm .