"I'm from everywhere," the stranger said, then sipped the wine.
A small drop clung to her lip. Gravity pulled it downward, the remaining moisture pooling into a droplet the shade of blood. Her tongue snaked out and captured the bead before it fell on the pristine white lapel of her suit. I had a bizarre flash of Snow White.
"Or maybe it's nowhere." She tilted her head. "You decide."
I was starting to get uneasy. She might be beautiful, but she was weird. Not that we didn't get weirdos in the bar every day. But there was usually a cop or ten around.
Sure, I'd once been a cop, but I wasn't anymore. And pretty much everyone, even Megan, frowned on bartenders pulling a gun on the clientele. Of course, if she wasn't human—
My fingers stroked the solid silver knife I hid beneath my ugly green uniform vest as I waited for some kind of sign.
The woman reached again for her wine. Contrary to her earlier assertion, she knocked it over. The ruby-red liquid sloshed across the bar, pooling at the edge before dripping onto the floor.
I should have been diving for a towel; instead I found myself fascinated by the shimmering puddle, which reflected the dim lights and the face of the woman.
The shiny dark surface leached the color from everything, not that there'd been all that much color to her in the first place. Black hair, white suit, light brown skin.
Slowly I lifted my gaze to hers. The glasses had cleared. I could see her eyes. I'd seen them before.
In the face of a woman of smoke who'd been conjured from a bonfire in the New Mexico desert. No wonder she hid them behind dark lenses. Those eyes would scare the pants off anyone who stared directly into them. I was surprised I hadn't been turned to stone. They held eons of hate, centuries of evil, millenniums of joy in the act of murder, with a dash of madness on the side.
I drew my knife, threw it—I ought to have been able to hit her in such close quarters—but she snatched the weapon out of the air with freakishly fast fingers.
"Shit," I said.
Smirking, she returned the knife—straight at my head. I ducked, and the thing struck the wall behind me with a thunk and a boing worthy of any cartoon soundtrack.
I straightened, meaning to grab the weapon and leap across the bar. I had supernatural speed and strength of my own. But the instant my head cleared wood, she grabbed me by the neck and hauled me over, breaking bottles, knocking glasses everywhere.
"Liz?" Megan called.
I opened my mouth to shout "Run!" and choked instead as the woman squeezed.
She lifted her gaze to where Megan must surely be. I wanted to say "Don't look at her," but speech was as beyond me as breathing.
I heard a whoosh and then a thud. Like a body sliding down a wall to collapse on the floor. Had the woman of smoke killed Megan with a single glance? I wouldn't put it past her.
I pulled at her hands, tugged on her fingers, managed to loosen her hold enough by breaking a few to gulp several quick breaths.
What in hell had happened? The woman of smoke was obviously a minion of evil out to kill me. Being the leader of the light, in a battle with the demon horde, seemed to have put a great big, invisible target on my back.
However, the other times I'd always had a warning— what I called a ghost whisper. The voice of the woman who'd raised me, Ruthie Kane—whose death had set this whole mess in motion—would tell me what kind of creature I was facing. Even if I didn't know how to kill it—and considering that I'd been dropped into this job with no training, that was usually the case—I still preferred advance notice of impending bloody death rather than having bloody death sprung upon me.
I tried to think. It was amazingly hard without oxygen, but I managed.
The woman of smoke had grabbed my silver knife and her fingers hadn't broken out in a rash. Not a shape-shifter, or at least not a common one such as a werewolf. When you mix silver and werewolves, you usually wind up with ashes.
Her strength hinted at vampire, though most of those would just tear out my throat and have a nice, relaxing bath in my blood. Still—
I let go of her arm and tore open my uniform so that Ruthie's silver crucifix spilled free. Vampires tended to flip when they saw the icon, not because of the shape, or the silver, but the blessing upon it. She didn't even blink.
I pressed it to her wrist anyway. Nothing. So, not a vampire.
Suddenly she stilled. The pressure on my throat eased; the black spots cleared from in front of my eyes. She stared at my chest and not with the fascinated expression I often got after opening my shirt. If I did say so myself, my breasts weren't bad. However, I'd never had a woman this interested in them. I didn't like it any more than I liked her.
"Where did you get that?" Her eyes sparked; I could have sworn I saw flames leap in the center of all that black.
"Th-the crucifix is—"
"A crucifix can't stop me." She sneered and yanked it from my neck, tossing the treasured memento aside.