Legally Undead by Margo Bond Collins

team, but they tend to be better at the movements.”
    I wiped my face on the towel. “You’ve taught this stuff to women before?”
    “Used to have a woman on my team,” he said. “Scarlett. Ex cop. Damn good fighter.”
    “What happened to her?” I almost dreaded hearing the answer. If he said she’d been killed by a vampire, I might never leave my apartment again.
    “She quit,” he said shortly. I didn’t pursue it—his tone didn’t invite curiosity.
    Nick began packing his gear back into his bag. “Okay. Let’s go kill some vamps.”
    “What?” My voice squeaked out of me.
    “You wanted to learn how to kill vamps. You’ve got the basics. Now let’s put it into practice.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Absolutely.”
    As we walked out of the building, the last of the sun’s rays stretched out across the sky. We climbed into the van and Nick pulled away from the curb.
    “This should be a fairly easy job,” he said. “Just two vamps holed up in an apartment on the upper West side. Normally I’d handle it by myself, so it seems like a good training opportunity.”
    I still wasn’t sure I agreed that I was ready, but at least I felt marginally safer with Nick along.
    We pulled up in front of a building near Morningside Park on a dark winding street. The buildings of Columbia University glowered over us from the top of a hill, negating what little sunlight filtered down to the streets below. Nick parked the van and got out, swinging his gym bag. As we approached the front entrance, he handed me a couple of stakes. I gripped one in each hand and hoped I wouldn’t need more.
    “Stay behind me. Don’t engage with them unless you have to, but be prepared to fight.”
    I nodded nervously, and he walked in the main entrance. It had had a buzzer at one time, but the lock had been broken open. The building wasn’t abandoned, though. There were stained welcome mats in front of a few of the apartment doors, and I could smell something cooking, something spicy, like curry. From a floor somewhere up above, I could hear a baby crying.
    We made our way up two flights of stairs. Nick walked to a door and without hesitating, kicked it in.
    I’d never seen someone kick in a door before. It’s pretty impressive. I guess the vamps inside thought so, too, because when I followed Nick into the apartment, they were cringing against the far wall, hissing and growling.
    This was the first really good look I got at a vampire—I’d been too busy killing the first one and running away from the second one to get more than a fleeting impression of what they looked like when they were alive—or undead, anyway. I realized that these vampires didn’t look like the vampires I’d seen in movies. In movies, the vampires look fairly human; they just have some long pointy teeth up top.
    These vampires looked fairly human, too, until they opened their mouths. Unlike movie vampires, they had long pointy fangs both top and bottom—upper and lower fangs. Once they opened their mouths, they looked utterly inhuman. They looked like animals. The sort of animals who will eat you for dinner.
    Nick stepped slowly across the threshold, and I followed behind him.
    Black painted plywood covered the windows, but from the single bulb dangling in the hallway I could see that the apartment was a mess. A yellowed carpet full of small cigarette burns covered the wooden planks of the floor. There were several stained blankets on top of the carpet, but no furniture. Ashtrays overflowed onto the floor and onto the body of a young woman.
    Very young. Sixteen or seventeen, at the most. She lay on her side, as if she’d gone to sleep. But her skin was white and bloodless, and her eyes were open. She was totally naked and had bite marks all over her body. All over. Up and down her arms and legs, on her neck, I could even see one in her armpit. She was thin, with stringy brown hair. In fact, she was thin to the point of emaciation, like she hadn’t eaten