Anthology - Dates From Hell.pdf - Anthology - asicara26

Contents

Kim Harrison - Undead in the Garden of Good and Evil

Lynsay Sands - The Claire Switch Project

Kelley Armstrong - Chaotic

Lori Handeland - Dead Man Dating

Undead in the Garden of Good and Evil

By Kim Harrison

Chapter One

Phone cradled between her shoulder and ear, Ivy Tamwood scooped

another chunk of chili up with her fries, leaning over the patterned wax

paper so it wouldn’t drip onto her desk. Kisten was bitching about

something or other, and she wasn’t listening, knowing he could go on for

half her lunch break before winding down. The guy was nice to wake up to

in the afternoon, and a delight to play with before the sun came up, but he

talked too much.

Which is why I put up with him, she mused, running her tongue across the

inside of her teeth before swallowing. Her world had gone too quickly from

alive to silent on that flight back home from California. My God, was it

seven years now? It had been unusual to foster a high-blood living vampire

child into a sympathetic camarilla, taking her from home and family for her

last two years of high school, but Piscary, the master vampire her family

looked to, had become too intense in his interest in her before she developed

the mental tools to deal with it, and her parents had intervened at some cost,

probably saving her sanity.

I could keep Freud in Havana cigars all by my lonesome, Ivy thought,

taking another bite of carbs and protein. Twenty-three ought to be far

enough away from that scared sixteen-year-old on the sun-drenched tarmac

to forget, but even now, after multiple blood and bed partners, a six-year

degree in social sciences, and landing an excellent job where she could use

her degree, she found her confidence was still tied to the very things that

screwed her up.

She missed Skimmer and her reminder that life was more than waiting for

it to end so she could get started living. And while Kisten was nothing like

her high school roommate, he had filled the gap nicely these last few years.

Smiling wickedly, Ivy gazed through the plate-glass wall that looked out

on the floor of open offices. Weight shifting, she crossed her legs at her

knees and leaned farther across her desk, imagining just what gap she’d like

Kisten to fill next.

“Damn vampire pheromones,” she breathed, and pulled herself straight,

not liking where her thoughts took her when she spent too much time in the

lower levels of the Inderland Security tower. Working the homicide division

of the I.S. got her a real office instead of a desk in the middle of the floor

with the peons, but there were too many vamps—both living and undead—

down here for the air circulation to handle.

Kisten’s tirade about prank phone calls ended abruptly. “What do vamp

pheromones have to do with humans attacking my pizza delivery crew?” he

asked in a lousy British accent. It was his newest preoccupation, and one she

hoped he’d tire of soon.

Rolling her chair closer to her desk, Ivy took a swig of her imported

bottled water, eyes askance on the boss’s closed door across the large room.

“Nothing. You want me to pick up anything on the way home? I might be

able to wing out of here early. Art’s in the office, which means someone

died and I have to go to work. Bet you first bite he’s going to want to cut my

lunch short”—she took another sip—“and I’m going to take it off the end of

my day.”

“No,” Kisten said. “Danny is doing the shopping today.”

One of the perks of living atop a restaurant, she thought, as Kisten started

in on a shopping list she didn’t care about. Pulling her plate of fries off her

desk, she set them on her lap, being careful to not spill anything on her

leather pants. The boss’s door opened, catching her eye when Art came out,

shaking hands with Mrs. Pendleton. He’d been in there a full half hour.

There was a stapled pack of paper in his hands, and Ivy’s pulse quickened.

She’d been sitting on her ass going over Art’s unsolved homicides for too

long. The man had no business being in homicide. Dead did not equal smart.

Unless being smart was in manipulating us into giving the undead our

blood. Ivy forced herself to keep eating, thinking the undead targeted their

living vampire kin more out of jealousy than maintaining good human

relations, as was claimed. Having been born with the vampire virus

embedded into her genome, Ivy enjoyed a measure of the undeads’ strengths

without the drawbacks of light fatality and pain from religious artifacts.

Though not in line with Art’s abilities, her hearing and strength were beyond

a human’s, and her sense of smell was tuned to the softer flavors of sweat

and pheromones. The undeads’ need for blood had been muted from a

biological necessity to a bloodlust that imparted a high like no other when

sated…addictive when mixed with sex.

Her gaze went unbidden to Art, and he smiled from across the wide floor

as if knowing her thoughts, his steady advance never shifting and the packet

of paper in his hand moving like a banner of intent. Appetite gone, she

swiveled her chair to put her back to the room. “Hey, Kist,” she said,

interrupting his comments about Danny’s recent poor choice of mushrooms,

“change of plans. By the amount of paperwork, it’s one of Art’s cleanup

runs. I won’t be home till sunup.”

“Again?”

“Again?” she mocked, fiddling with a colored pen until she realized it

telegraphed her mood and set it down with a sharp tap. “God, Kisten. You

make it sound like it’s every night.”

Kisten sighed. “Leave the paperwork for tomorrow, love. I don’t know

why you bust your ass so hard. You’re not moving up until you let Artie the

Smarty go down on you.”

“Is that so,” she said, feeling her face warm and the chili on her tongue go

flat. Tossing her plate to her desk, she forced herself to remain reclining with

her booted feet spread wide when what she wanted to do was hit someone.

Martial arts meditation had kept her out of civil court until now; self-control

was how she defined herself.

“You knew the system when you hired in,” he coaxed, and Ivy tugged the

sleeves to her skintight black pullover from her elbows to her wrists to hide

her faint scars. She could feel Art crossing the room, and adrenaline tickled

the pit of her stomach. It was a run, she told herself, but she knew Art was

the reason for the stir in her, not the chance to get out of the office.

“Why do you think I wanted to work with Piscary instead of the I.S.?”

Kisten was saying, words she had heard too many times before. “Give him

what he wants. I don’t care.” He laughed. “Hell, it might be nice having you

come home wanting to watch a movie instead of ready to drain me.”

Reaching to her desk, she finished her water, wiping the corner of her

mouth with a careful pinky. She had known the politics—hell, she had

grown up in them—but that didn’t mean she had to like the society she was

forced to work within. She had watched it end her mother’s life, watched it

now eat her father away, killing him little by little. It was the only path open

to her. And she was good at it. Very good at it. That’s what bothered her the

most.

She stiffened when Art fixed his brown eyes to the back of her neck.

Undead vamps had been looking at her since she had turned fourteen; she

knew the feeling. “I thought you stuck with Piscary because of his dental

plan,” she said sarcastically. “His dentals in your neck.”

“Ha, ha. Very funny,” Kisten said, his good humor doing nothing to ease

her agitation.

“I like what I do,” she said, putting a hand up against the knock on her

open door. She didn’t turn, smelling the stimulating, erotic scent of undead

vampire in her doorway. “I’m damn good at it,” she added to remind Art she

was the reason they had pulled his murder-solved ratio up the last six

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