Elemental Assassin 01 - Spider's Bite

wearing a rumpled tux and a shaggy toupee slobbered on the ear of a blond hooker, while another rubbed his burgeoning crotch. A third girl, a brunette, stood off to the side, not involved or not caring to become so in the ménage à trois. Four really was a crowd.
    The two hookers gave me a hard stare. Their red lips drew back, and they flashed their fangs at me. Vampires. Upscale ones, from the pearl white color of their pointed teeth. But when they realized I wasn’t horning in on their action, they went back to telling the old guy how much they were going to enjoy getting screwed by him. My lips twitched. Funniest damn thing I’d heard all night.
    The man got off on the sixth floor with his two friends for the evening, leaving me alone with the third woman. I stared at her outfit. Bright color, flashy enough, not too tight, around a size six. It would work.
    I hit the stop button in the elevator and turned to the other woman. Her hand drifted down to her purse, and she eyed me with the wary look of a high-priced call girl who knows strangers can be dangerous, especially in the nice part of town. Her fangs poked through her lips. Another vampire.
    “I’ll give you two thousand dollars for your clothes, shoes, and that purse,” I said.
    “The clothes?” she asked, her brown gaze even more uncertain now. “That’s it? Nothing weird? Nothing extra?”
    I flashed her a wad of bills. “Nothing weird or extra.”
    Five minutes later, the hooker got off on the ninth floor wearing my cheap jacket, jeans, and boots. A minute after that, I stepped out onto the eleventh floor. I went into the emergency stairwell and opened my duffel bag. Hairbrush, lipstick, compact. It didn’t take long for me to paint my face, tease out my bleached hair, and otherwise transform myself into Gin, the ditsy call girl. I also grabbed three silverstone knives out of the bag, sticking the first against the small of my back and palming the second in my right hand. The third got stuffed inside the hooker’s minuscule purse.
    Girded for battle, I left the bag in the stairwell, got back in the elevator, and rode up to the twelfth floor—Finn’s floor.
    Investment banker, computer expert, and all-around shady character Finnegan Lane had done well for himself, which is why his apartment took up the entire floor instead of several thousand spacious feet, like the building’s other housing units. Finn didn’t believe in hiding one’s wealth, and he didn’t care that his gauche, nouveau riche ways upset his older, more genteel clients. Those folks, especially the vampires who’d been around since before the Civil War, despised his flashy ways, but Finn made them enough money to get them to choke on their antiquated southern standards.
    Still, I was always extra cautious when I visited Finn’s place. He might not be as deep into the assassin business as I was, but he still made plenty of enemies with his banking and stockbroker schemes—legal and otherwise. People were more vicious about money than any other thing, even sex. Add Finn’s rampant womanizing to the mix, and it was a wonder somebody hadn’t hired me to kill him years ago.
    The elevator opened, and I stepped out into the glossy antechamber that fronted Finn’s apartment. Low walnut table. Two chairs. Gilded mirror on the wall. A couple of fake pecan trees planted on either side of the front door. Southern decor at its finest.
    A guard stationed outside jerked his head in my direction at the sound of the elevator opening. A big man, tall and wide with a beefy neck that would have been a perfect fit on an NFL linebacker. Probably some giant blood in his family tree. Still, he was only one guy. I would have had at least three men out here. Maybe more, since I knew exactly what I was capable of—and how very determined I was to get to Finnegan before he quit breathing.
    The guard frowned, but he didn’t go for his gun or knock on the door behind him to alert whoever might be inside. Mistake number one. I ambled toward him, swinging my hips and letting my short, zebra-striped skirt ride up and show off my long, toned, fishnet-clad legs. I’d already undone most of the buttons on my scarlet silk blouse to let my five-dollar black bra peep through.
    The floor of the antechamber was made of fine marble, and the stone’s delicate murmur rang in time to my heels tapping across it. For the first time tonight, my spirits crept up. The vibrations would have been different if Finn