Dead End Dating Read Free Page B

when I reached the door. Obviously, Mr. Hi-Lighter wasn’t used to having majorly hot babes call after him. He didn’t so much as miss a step as he walked down Fourth Street toward the subway station.
    I usually avoided the subway the way most people avoided Porta Pottis (a girl just didn’t know what she’d find crawling around in there during the middle of the night). But my instincts were prodding me on. I had a feeling about this guy.
    He looked so sad.
    So lonely.
    So geeky.
    He needed me.
    I started after him. I’d made it all of three steps before a strange sensation washed over me. My ears perked up and the hair on the back of my neck prickled, and I had the strangest sensation that I was the one being followed. I glanced around and saw…nothing. Just the empty sidewalk and the neon green MIDNIGHT MOE’S sign glowing in the distance.
    Shrugging off the feeling, I turned my attention back to Mr. Hi-Lighter, who’d managed to get a pretty good lead on me. I picked up my pace, which should have been enough to run this guy down in no time (just one of my many vamp talents). I gained on him as he neared the subway station and descended the steps, but I couldn’t seem to close the distance between us. He was moving too fast.
    Faster than me?
    That could only mean…Nah. He couldn’t be. I would have made him right away. That was the thing about vamps. We had heightened senses. We could see things that other people couldn’t. Hear sounds that weren’t audible to the average ear. Smell scents sharper and more intense than the average nose—another reason I avoided the subway.
    I followed as he pushed through the entry gate. My nostrils flared and I drank in a deep breath of…graham crackers? Way too bland for a born vamp. As for a made vampire…the few I’d actually met had smelled like old mothballs and greed.
    Obviously the past five hundred years were finally catching up to me. I just wasn’t as fast as I used to be. That, or Nike had finally hit pay dirt with their running shoes.
    Pushing through the gate, I bypassed a group of college girls, backpacks slung over their shoulders, and a gay couple walking hand in hand. I started down the platform just as Mr. Hi-Lighter came to a stop at the far end near a group of young guys.
    They wore classic gangbanger with slouchy jeans that barely clung to their hips, muscle shirts, and enough gold jewelry to reduce the national deficit by a good quarter.
    “What do you think you’re doing?” one of the guys asked Mr. Hi-Lighter.
    “Waiting for my train.”
    “It ain’t your train, dumbass.” The guy—tall with buzzed dark hair, an olive complexion, and a tattoo on his bicep that read BORN TO DIE —walked up until he was nose to nose. “It’s our train.”
    “That’s right,” another one said. He had deep red hair, freckles, and a Stone Cold Steve Austin attitude. “And this is our platform.”
    “So get lost,” Born to Die said before giving the geek a quick shove.
    Mr. Hi-Lighter stumbled back a few steps, right into another one of the guys who’d come up behind him.
    “I guess this asshole’s hard of hearing.” The guy behind shoved the geek back toward his friend. “Otherwise, he’d be gone by now.”
    “I don’t want any trouble.”
    “Then you shouldn’t have stopped on our platform uninvited.” Born to Die pulled out a knife. “It’s gonna cost you.”
    I picked up my steps, but I was still too far away to stop what happened next. The knife pressed against Mr. Hi-Lighter’s throat. His breath caught, his nostrils flared, and his eyes turned a telltale midnight black.
    I stopped in my tracks and waited for the transformation that would come next. A wolf or a jackal or something equally vicious. Something that would rip these clowns to pieces.
    The air shimmered and blurred, and a split second later, an old woman’s voice crackled across the distance.
    “Antonio Dante Moreno! You should be ashamed of yourself.”
    The guy with the