“Kill her,” Melanie prompted, her black-rimmed eyes shiny with the prospect of violence.
Eugene raised the stake. I kicked him in the shin. He dropped the stake again, blinked painfully up at me as he rubbed his leg, and then ran away in the opposite direction.
I shook my head as I watched him flee. “Honestly, Melanie, I think your taste in men may be even worse than mine.”
I turned to glance at her just in time to see her lunge at me, the stake now in her hand. Instinctively, I grabbed her wrists to prevent her from plunging it into my chest. Her momentum knocked me backward and we fell in a heap on the ground, my dark sunglasses knocked off my face. She was stronger than she looked, plus she’d taken me by surprise. Not a good combination.
“This’ll teach him for dumping me,” she shrieked. “He thinks I’m not good enough for him, huh? We’ll see about that.”
It never would have occurred to me, after facing off against legitimately deadly vampire hunters, that I had anything to be afraid of with Melanie. But as I wrestled with her—her jilted-girlfriend rage tripling her normal strength; her seeing me as the reason for all of her problems—my life flashed before my eyes. And it wasn’t pretty. I hadn’t lived a very interesting life.
I felt the sharp tip of the stake nick my chest. The pain brought me out of my mental slide show and back to reality. With my hands busy fending off her attack and my legs trapped under her, I knew I’d have to use my head if I wanted to get out of this one. Literally use my head.
I smacked my forehead against the bridge of her nose. She screamed but didn’t budge.
“Let go of me,” I yelled.
“No way. You’re dead meat!”
“What about Eugene?” I managed. “Don’t you want to make sure he’s okay?”
“Screw Eugene!” she yelled.
“No thanks!”
We rolled around on the ground. The girl sure had spunk, I’d give her that. When she set her mind to something, she didn’t give up. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel that killing me was a very good thing for her to set her sights on. Then I saw somebody out of the corner of my eye. Thank God. Somebody was going to rescue me. The somebody wasn’t moving. While I held Melanie’s hands away from me, I glanced over.
Quinn looked down at us wrestling on the ground. He wore dark sunglasses.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hello,” I replied.
“How’s it going?”
“Not so good.” I bashed Melanie in the upper lip this time, giving me the opportunity to maneuver myself on top of her. I was going to need some Tylenol after this was over.
Either that or a mortician.
“Who’s your friend?” Quinn still wasn’t making a single move to help me out.
“Oh, this is Melanie,” I said, after I narrowly avoided the stake hitting my jugular.
“Melanie, Quinn.”
Melanie wasn’t in the mood to meet new people at the moment. It was quite obvious that Quinn was trying to keep from smiling at my predicament. If I weren’t fighting for my life, I would have been extremely annoyed.
“Need some help?” he finally asked.
“Oh, no. I’ve got it all under control.”
Melanie rolled over, so she was on top again, and let out a Xena-like war cry.
“Okay,” he said. “I guess I’ll see you later, then.”
“Quinn!” I yelled after he turned his back. In this position the bright afternoon sun was blinding me. “Welcome to the land of sarcasm. Help would be nice.”
He grinned and, with one hand, snatched Melanie by the back of her black sweatshirt and hauled her off me. She clawed at him, the air, and everything in between. I slowly got to my feet and brushed off my jacket. There was a patch of red over my heart, where she’d grazed me with the stake. I rubbed it tenderly and pouted. She’d ruined one of my favorite T-shirts. Quinn gently shook Melanie until she dropped the stake. She didn’t seem scared; she just looked pissed off that we’d been interrupted. Quinn held her arms firmly against her sides so she couldn’t budge. I grabbed my sunglasses off the ground and put them back on. Then I walked over to Melanie and slowly looked her up and down. “Now is the time when I’m supposed to say that I’m sorry about how things went down with you and Timothy. And that vampires aren’t all bad. Also, that in time you’ll be okay; you just need to give your feelings a while to heal.”
She blinked at me, and I could see the rage slowly fading from her eyes.
“Let her go,” I told Quinn. He released her and she turned to walk away without saying another word.
“Oh, just one more thing, Melanie,” I said.
She turned around and I punched her in her already-injured nose.
I smiled at her. “Come near me again, and I’ll bite you.”
Her lower lip quivered and she turned and ran away.
I rubbed my throbbing hand. “Ow, that hurt.”
Quinn just shook his head at me.
I frowned at him. “What?”
“You just made me remember one of the first things you ever said to me.”
“What’s that?”
“That you’re not a nice girl.”
“Oh, right! That was after your pickup line from hell.” I smiled, and then stopped myself from looking too friendly. “What are you doing around here, anyhow?”
“Looking for you.”
“Is that right?” I was immediately on my guard.
“Relax,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you. Besides, after what I just witnessed, I don’t think I’d be able to hurt you. You’re pretty tough.”
I crossed my arms. “Then what do you want?”
He began to say something and then stopped. He opened his mouth again and met my eyes. “I wanted to apologize.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Apologize. For what?”