Vamped by Lucienne Diver Page A

buttered your bread. Personally, debris, cobwebs, a lifetime supply of dust, and creepy things scurrying along the floor didn’t do it for me. And the smell . If I actually had to breathe, I’d probably choke on the air, which was thick and heavy with the scent of voided bowels and spoiling meat, blood, and mold.
    “Anyone here?” I called—but, you know, not too loudly.
    Come, morsel, the voice said, giving me the jitters. Toward the light, the better to see you, my dear.
    It’s your freak show , I responded mentally.
    The whispering in my head quieted all of the sudden as if listening, then answered, “Out of the mouths of babes.”
    Only this time the voice wasn’t in my head—and that didn’t make it any better. It was again that high-pitched croon. I bet he drove the neighborhood dogs to distraction.
    I followed the sound, into a dark room lit only by a lantern in the center. I kicked something and it rolled before me … sounded like bone, not that I was any expert. I tried not to look, but it was instinctual … and it was a bone. Femur, maybe, or some other long bone. Big enough to be … my brain balked. The bone rattled into others like it, the remains of several meals at least. And there, cowering in the corner, was Marcy.
    “You okay?” I asked.
    “Y-y-yes,” she answered unconvincingly.
    “Great. Run!”
    She cut her gaze toward the boogeyman and then bolted for the doorway. I stepped aside to let her through, but in one quick leap, more worthy of a grasshopper than anything human-shaped, the psychic cut her off.
    Marcy screamed as he grabbed her shoulders and thrust her back, into a pile of bones, like she was a mere rag doll. I stooped to pick up a weapon, not that I thought it would do me any good against him. It didn’t make me feel much more powerful than my blazing fury alone.
    “Trade,” I said, hefting the—I looked down—skull. It was all I could do not to scream. “Her for me.”
    He looked at me in amusement, eyes blazing red now like Melli’s never had, and that crazy laughter bounced around in my brain. “Why, when I could have you both?”
    “Over my dead body.”
    “Eventually,” he agreed.
    I launched the skull at him, aiming it like a dodgeball at my arch-nemesis. Tina had just lost her title. She’d be sooo crushed.
    The skull bounced off his chest. His eyes flared, but that was the only reaction. Not a flinch, not so much as a wince.
    “I may cease to find you amusing,” he threatened.
    “That’s a shame, ’cause I live for your amusement … Oh wait, I don’t .”
    “Gina?” Marcy’s voice quavered, but this time I ignored her, not wanting to switch my attention and possibly the freakshow’s toward my friend.
    “Gina!” she said more urgently, the edge of hysteria creeping into her voice. I realized that the floor was moving … skittering … at the edges of my vision. Mice. Plural. Marcy would be freaking and scaling the walls any time now. Which I could handle, but her shrieking … Maybe the freakshow would have over-sensitive ears.
    I couldn’t count on that, though.
    “Yo, dude, catch!” And I launched myself at him, yanking the hair spray from my waistband as I went. I did a duck and roll as his talons swept at me, grabbing up the lantern as I rolled past. The candle inside flickered and sloshed hot wax but didn’t go out, and I used my momentum to hurl the lantern at the creep as hard as I could, unleashing a stream of superhold as the lantern flew by. The very air caught fire.
    “Run, Marcy, now!” I yelled, hoping I’d foiled the creep’s night vision, hoping that this was enough of a distraction. The flames didn’t last long, though, and as he fought his way through them, Marcy shot past me to the door. Freakshow lurched, and I shot the hair spray again, right into his blazing red eyes.
    His howl split my head in two. I dove for the door while he thrashed blindly, trying to grab me up or rip me to shreds. Either way, I wasn’t waiting