Read Halfway to the Grave for Free Online Page B

down. How you’ve managed to plant sixteen of us in the ground is beyond me, but then the world never lacks for fools.”
    “Hey.” Piqued, I defended my skills. “I would have had you in pieces if you hadn’t made me drive and then sucker-punched me when I wasn’t looking.”
    He laughed again. It transformed his face into something I just realized was very beautiful. I looked away, not wanting to see him as anything but a monster. A dangerous monster.
    “Kitten, why do you think I made you drive? I had you pegged five seconds after speaking with you. You were a novice, green to the gills and, once off your routine, helpless as a babe. Of course I sucker-punched you. There is only one way to fight, and that’s dirty. Clean, gentlemanly fighting will get you nowhere but dead, and fast. Take every cheap shot, every low blow, absolutely kick people when they’re down, and then maybe you’ll be the one who walks away. Remember that. You’re in a fight to the death. This isn’t a boxing match. You can’t win by scoring the most points.”
    “I get it.” Grimly enough, I did. In this he was correct. It was a death match every time I confronted a vampire. Including this one.
    “But now we’re off topic. We’ve covered our weaknesses. On to our strengths, and we have many. Speed, vision, hearing, smell, physical strength—all are superior to a human’s. We can scent you long before we see you, andwe can hear your heartbeat a mile away. In addition to that, all of us have some form of mind control over humans. A vampire can suck a pint of your blood and seconds later you won’t even remember seeing one. It’s in our fangs, a little bitty drop of hallucinogen that, when combined with our power, makes you susceptible to suggestion. Like, for example, someone didn’t just suck on your neck but you met a bloke and had a chat and now you’re sleepy. That’s how most of us feed. A little dab here and a little dab there, and none the wiser for it. If every vampire killed to eat, we’d have been outed from our closet centuries ago.”
    “You can control my mind?” The thought horrified me.
    His brown eyes suddenly bled to green and his gaze drilled into mine.
    “ Come to me ,” he whispered, yet the words seemed to resound in my head.
    “No fucking way,” I said, chilled at the sudden urge I had to do it.
    Abruptly, his eyes were brown again and he threw a cheery grin my way.
    “Nope, appears not. Good on you, that’ll come in handy. Can’t have you getting all weak-minded and forgetting your goals, can we? Probably it’s your bloodline. It doesn’t work on other vampires. Or humans who imbibe of vampire blood. Guess you have enough of us in you. Some humans are immune to it also, but only a very small percentage. Have to have extraordinary mind control or natural resistance not to let us in and meddle about. MTV and video games have solved that problem as far as most of humanity goes. That, and telly, as it were.”
    “Telly?” Who was that?
    He grunted in amusement. “Television, of course. Don’t you speak English?”
    “You sure don’t,” I muttered.
    Shaking his head, he frowned at me. “Daylight’s burning, luv. We have a lot to cover. We’ve gone through the senses and the mind control, but don’t forget our strength. Or our teeth. Vampires are strong enough to break you in half and carry the pieces with a finger. We can throw your car at you if we want to. And we’ll rip you apart with our teeth. The question is, how many of our strengths do you have in you?”
    Hesitatingly, I began to tick off my abnormalities.
    “I can see very well and darkness doesn’t affect me. I see as well at night as in the day. I’m faster than anyone I know, humanly speaking. I can hear things from far away, maybe not as far as you can. Sometimes in my room at night I could hear my grandparents downstairs whispering to each other about me….”
    I stopped, judging from his look that I’d revealed too