Kitabı oku: «A Perfect Blood»
A PERFECT BLOOD
KIM HARRISON
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Also by Kim Harrison
Copyright
About the Publisher
To the guy who likes remodelling even more than I do
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank my agent, Richard Curtis, and my editor, Diana Gill, without whom the Hollows would be but a small dream.
One
The woman across from me barely sniffed when I slammed the pen down on the counter. She didn’t care that I was furious, that I’d been standing in this stupid line for over an hour, that I couldn’t get my license renewed or my car registered in my name. I was tired of doing everything through Jenks or Ivy, but DEMON wasn’t a species option on the form. Friday morning at the DMV office. God! What had I been thinking?
“Look,” I said, waving a faded photocopied piece of paper. “I have my birth certificate, my high school diploma, my old license, and a library card. I’m standing right in front of you. I am a person, and I need a new driver’s license and my car registered!”
The woman gestured for the next guy in line, her bedraggled graying hair and lack of makeup only adding to her bored disinterest. I glared at the tidy Were in a business suit who had moved to stand too close behind me, and nervous, he dropped back.
The clerk looked at me over her glasses and sucked at her teeth. “I’m sorry,” she finally said, tapping at her keyboard and bringing up a new screen. “You’re not in the system under witch or even other.” She squinted at me. “You’re listed as dead. You’re not dead, are you?”
Crap on toast, can this get any worse? Frustrated, I tugged my shoulder bag up higher. “No, but can I get a dead-vamp sticker and get on with my life?” I asked, and the Were behind me cleared his throat impatiently.
She pushed her thick glasses back where they belonged. “Are you a vampire?” she asked dryly, and I slumped.
No, I was obviously not a vampire. From all accounts, I looked like a witch. Long, frizzy red hair; average build; average height; with a propensity for wearing leather when the situation demanded it and sometimes when it didn’t. Until a few months ago I’d called myself a witch, too, but when the choice was between becoming a lobotomized witch or a free demon … I took the demon status. I didn’t know they were going to take everything else, too. Demons were legal nonentities on this side of the ley lines. God help me if I should land in jail for jaywalking—I apparently had fewer rights than a pixy, and I was tired of it.
“I can’t help you, Ms. Morgan,” the woman said, beckoning the man behind me forward, and he shoved me aside as he handed her his form and old driver’s license.
“Please!” I said as she ignored me, leaning toward her screen. Beside me, the man grew nervous, the spicy scent of agitated Were rising up.
“I just bought the car,” I said, but it was obvious this date was over. “I need to get it registered. And my license renewed. I gotta drive home!”
I didn’t—I had Wayde for that—but the lie wouldn’t hurt anyone.
The woman eyed me with a bored expression as the man took a moment to write his check. “You are listed as dead, Ms. Morgan. You need to go down to the social security office and straighten it out there. I can’t help you here.”
“I tried that.” My teeth clenched, and the man in front of the counter fidgeted as we both vied for the scrap of worn carpet. “They told me I needed a valid driver’s license from you, a certified copy of life from my insurance company, and a court-documented form of species status before they’d even talk to me, and the courts won’t let me make an appointment because I’m listed as dead!” I was shouting, and I lowered my voice.
“I can’t help you,” she said as the man pushed me out of his space. “Come back when you have the right forms.”
Shoved to the side, I closed my eyes and counted to ten, very conscious of Wayde sitting in one of the faded orange plastic chairs under the windows as he waited for me to realize the inevitable. The twentysomething Were was one of Takata’s security people, having more muscles than tattoos showing from around his casual jeans and black T-shirt, and the small, stocky man had a lot of tattoos. He’d shown up on my doorstep the last week of July, moving into the belfry despite my protests, a “birthday gift” from my mom and birth father/pop-star dad. Apparently they didn’t think I could keep myself safe anymore—which bothered me a lot. Sort of. Wayde had been on my mom’s payroll for nearly four months, and the anger had dulled.
My eyes opened, and seeing that I was still in this nightmare, I gave up. Head down, I gripped my birth certificate tighter and stomped to the bank of orange plastic chairs. Sure enough, Wayde was carefully staring at the ceiling, his feet spread wide and his arms over his chest as he snapped his gum and waited. He looked like a biker dude with his short, carefully trimmed orange-red beard and no mustache. Wayde hadn’t told me this was a lost cause, but his opinion was obvious. The man got paid whether he was playing chauffeur for me or camped out in the church’s belfry talking to the pixies.
Seeing me approach, Wayde smiled infuriatingly, his biceps bulging as his arms crossed over his wide chest. “No good?” he asked in his Midwestern accent, as if he hadn’t heard the entire painful conversation.
Silent, I fumed as I wondered how the woman could treat me like I was just some jerk-ass nobody. I was a demon, damn it! I could flatten this place with one curse, burn it to nothing, give her warts or turn her dog inside out. If …
Hands clenched in fists, I gazed at the decorative band of charmed silver on my wrist, glinting in the electric light like a pretty bauble. If … If I hadn’t wanted to cut off all contact with my adopted kin. If I wasn’t such a good person to begin with. If I wanted to act like a demon in truth. I’d devoted my life to fighting injustice, and being jerked around like this wasn’t fair! But no one messes with a civil servant. Not even a demon.
“No good,” I echoed him as I tried and failed to get rid of my tension. Wayde took a deep breath as he stood. He was small for a man, but big for a Were, coming to my five foot eight exactly, with a thin waist, wide shoulders, and small feet. I hadn’t seen him as a wolf yet, but I bet he made a big one.
“You mind driving home?” I asked, handing him my keys. Crap, I’d had them in my hand for only the hour it had taken to get to the front of the line. I’d never get to drive my car legally.
Introspective, Wayde fingered the lucky rabbit’s foot key chain, the metal clinking softly. There wasn’t much on it these days—just the key to a car I couldn’t drive and the key to Ivy’s lockbox. “I’m sorry, Rachel,” he said, and I looked up at his low, sincere voice. “Maybe your dad can fix something.”
I knew he meant Takata, not the man who had actually raised me, and I grimaced. I was tired of going to other people for help. Hands in the pockets of my little red leather jacket, I turned to the door, and Wayde slipped ahead of me to open the milky glass. I’d get the car registered to Jenks tomorrow. Maybe Glenn could help get my license pushed through—they liked me down there at the human-run Federal Inderland Bureau.
“Ms. Morgan?” crackled and popped over the ancient PA, and I turned, a stab of hope rising in me even as I wondered at the hint of worry in the woman’s voice. “Please come to window G.”
I glanced at Wayde, who’d frozen with his hand on the door. His brown eyes were scanning the room behind me, and his usually easygoing expression was professionally wary. The switch surprised me. I hadn’t seen it before, but then, it had been pretty quiet around the church since I’d officially switched my species to demon. Very few people knew the band of silver around my wrist truncated about half my magic arsenal. It was basically a Möbius strip, the charm’s invocation phrase never ending, never beginning, holding the spell, and therefore me, in an in-between space where it was real yet not completely invoked and barred any contact with the demon collective. Long story short, it hid me from demons. My inability to do ley-line magic was an unfortunate side effect.
“Ms. Morgan, window G?” the worried voice came again.
We turned our backs on the bright, windy day beyond the cloudy glass. “Maybe they found another form,” I said, and Wayde slid into my personal space, making me stifle a shiver.
“If you’d give the I.S. and the FIB the lists they want, you’d get your citizenship faster,” he said, and I frowned. This didn’t feel good. There was way too much whispering behind the counter among the no-longer-bored clerks. People were looking at us, and not in a good way.
“I’m not going to write out every single demon curse so they can decide which ones are legal and which ones aren’t,” I said as I found the hand-lettered, dilapidated G hanging over a small window at the end of the room. “Talk about a waste of time.”
“And this morning wasn’t?” he asked dryly.
I ignored that, hopeful as I approached the woman waiting for me. She was dressed like a supervisor, and the flush on her face ratcheted my worry tighter. “Ah, I’m Rachel Morgan,” I said, but
she was already lifting the counter to let me into the back area.
Eyes bright, she glanced at Wayde. “If you could come with me, Ms. Morgan. Both of you, if you like. Someone would like to speak to you.”
“If it’s about—” I started.
“Just please come back,” she said, standing aside and ushering me through in excitement.
My gut tightened, but I wasn’t helpless, even lacking half my magic, and Wayde was with me. Again my eyes touched on the band of charmed silver. I didn’t like being without ley-line magic, but I’d rather that than the demons knowing I was alive. I’d made a few mistakes during the last year, the least of which had caused a leak in the ever-after. The entire alternate reality was shrinking, and as soon as the demons realized it, they’d probably take turns at me.
The woman sighed in relief as she closed the partition behind us, her low heels clacking fast as she led us to the back offices. An elated, frazzled living vampire in a black dress suit sat behind a cluttered desk in one, her face flushed and her eyes bright. She was young, professional, and probably bored out of her mind with working in an office day in and day out if the photos of her skydiving and running zip lines that were posted to her three-by-two calendar on the wall meant anything. Her office was overflowing with stacked folders and files in a weird mix of organized clutter. She probably took on more than she could handle. Trying to prove herself at the office, maybe as she clearly liked doing on her weekends?
I’d guess her human heritage was Hispanic, with her long dark hair pulled back in a simple clip and her dusky complexion, dark eyes, oval face, very red lips, white teeth, and pretty eyelashes. Her fingers tucking in her blah-brown blouse were long and slender, her nails painted a dull red. I could sense her confidence as she looked up at our entrance, a strong thread of self that ran through her. She was a living vampire, but clearly not high on her master’s favorites list. I thought it odd that the more favored a living vampire was, the more emotionally damaged she was. This woman was clearly one of the forgotten. Lucky her. Being forgotten meant you lived longer, and having been forgotten, she’d probably lack most of the darker abilities that Ivy, my room-mate, had developed in order to survive.
“Nina,” the supervisor said, and the young woman stood, by all appearances not interested in me as she stacked the papers on her desk in a vain attempt to tidy up. “This is Ms. Morgan, and, ah …”
Wayde stepped into the hesitation, extending his hand as he moved both of us into the small, cluttered room. “Mr. Benson,” the Were said. “I’m Ms. Morgan’s security. Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Ninotchka Romana Ledesma.”
The elaborate name rolled off his lips as if he’d grown up in the south of Spain, and surprised, I looked at the nameplate on the desk and decided I’d stick to Nina.
Nina blinked, her gaze going from him to me as if seeing me for the first time. “Ah, good to meet you,” she said as she confidently shook Wayde’s hand. She turned to me, hesitating as she saw my hands deep in the pockets of my red coat. “Sit if you want.”
I glanced at Wayde. Nina was excited, yes, but not about us. Was someone else coming? I thought, looking at the only open chair in the cramped office.
“Uh,” I started, blinking when Nina shifted her bra strap and took a peek down to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be. “Do we need another chair?”
“No,” she said abruptly as the woman who had brought us back here left, closing the door behind her. “Unless your security wants one. But don’t they usually stand?”
“I’m fine,” Wayde said as he took up a position just inside the closed door. “Ma’am, just what is it you want with Ms. Morgan?”
Tense, the young woman ran a hand down her hip and sat behind her desk, hiding her hands when she noticed her fingers trembling. “I don’t want anything. It’s not me, it’s him,” she said, and the tang of excited vampire reached out and smacked me. God, she smelled good, and I felt a tingle from the vampire bites under my perfect skin. “I’ve never done this before. I didn’t even know he knew I was alive, and now this!”
“Ah, all I want is my license renewed and my car registered in my own name,” I said, shaken from the surge of pheromones. I’d been right. She lacked control, but if she had been forgotten, it didn’t matter much. “If you can’t help me, I’m leaving.”
Alarm flashed over the living vampire, and she almost stood. “Someone in the I.S. would like to talk to you,” she said, her eyes wide. “I’m the only one here he wants to work through. My cousin is in the I.S., and well …” Flashing me a nervous smile, she suddenly looked scared. “It’s an honor to be asked to channel a master.”
I felt for the chair behind me and sat down. “A dead vamp wants to talk to me?” I gingerly perched on the edge of the seat. Sure, it was daylight, but the dead ones were still awake, deep underground. Apparently one wanted to talk to me, one so old that slipping into an unfamiliar living vampire was possible. Not good. But maybe he could get my car registered for me …
Uneasy, I glanced at Wayde. He shrugged and fell into parade rest. “Fine,” I said. “But make it quick. I’ve got to ask Jenks to register my car since you won’t do it through me.”
Ignoring my sarcasm, she shivered violently, jerking once as her eyes became unfocused and she reached for the stability of the desk with a white-knuckled strength. Her breath came in with a slow, sensual sound, her hair falling forward as her head bowed. She sighed, her red lips closing and her gaze sharpening on her hands gripping the edge of the desk. Slowly her fingers let go and her hands dropped into her lap. She seemed to grow taller as she pulled herself straight and looked at me—smiling to show her pointy little canines. I shivered at the new glint in her pupil-black eyes. I couldn’t help it, and her smile grew wider still as she took in the shape of my face in a decidedly masculine fashion. It wasn’t Nina anymore.
I stiffened as she breathed in deeply, shifting her shoulders back as she tasted my unease, something Nina probably wasn’t skilled enough to read on the air currents. The slight grimace as she looked down at her clothes made me wonder if she was uncomfortable with being in a skirt, or because of the cheap fabric. Her confidence before had been within herself. Now it was the assurance that she could do anything she wanted and no one would think twice. From the door, Wayde whistled, his arms loose at his sides.
“You’ve never seen this before?” I asked, and he shook his head. I watched “Nina” look over the room, placing herself, hearing things I could only guess at, sensing things I’d seen on the way in. “I once saw Piscary take over Kisten,” I said softly. “Ivy hated it when Piscary took her over.”
Across from me, Nina smiled. “She enjoyed it,” she said, her voice sounding deeper, richer, more sophisticated. “Don’t doubt that.”
Realizing I had crossed my knees submissively, I put my feet square on the floor and leaned back in my chair as if relaxed—but I wasn’t. This was eerie, seeing a man in a woman’s body, and I was sure the undead vamp was a man. Someone’s phone was vibrating, probably mine, and I ignored it.
Nina stood, gracefully catching her balance and frowning down at the scuffed heels she was wearing. Her hand came out to me in invitation, and I cursed myself when I found my hand rising to hers against my will, shivering as she breathed deeply over it, sensing what he/she was doing to me. “It’s good to see you again, Ms. Morgan,” she said slyly, and I reclaimed my hand before she tried to kiss it. God, I hated dealing with the old ones.
I glanced at Wayde, standing stiffly by the door. “You were the driver in San Francisco,” I guessed, remembering that the driver had been channeling an undead vamp of some importance, eavesdropping on coven business as he drove me out to take care of someone they couldn’t.
Smiling to hide her teeth, Nina inclined her head, looking devilish and seductive both as she took up a slightly wide-footed stance. It was really weird. This was not the flustered vampire who had been here when I walked in. And it wasn’t what Nina would become when she died her first death. It was someone else entirely, someone old.
“I don’t like not knowing who I’m talking with,” I said, trying for annoyed but hearing it come out as petulant.
“Today I look like Nina,” she said, settling back in her chair and grimacing at the dirty corners of the office and the lack of a window. “You may call me that.”
“Who are you?” I said more firmly, and she just smiled, steepling her fingers.
“Someone who can help you,” she said, and I rolled my eyes as Wayde coughed. From my bag on the floor, a tiny ping told me someone had left a voice mail. “If you’re willing to make an effort, that is,” Nina continued, ignoring Wayde. “We failed in recognizing you. We let you slip from us. You’ve done well, but you could do even better—with a little … structure.”
“I’m not coming back to Inderland Security,” I interrupted, flushing. Crap, if that’s what this was about, I might be in trouble. Saying no to them could shorten your life span. But all Nina did was send her pupil-black gaze to a paper on her desk. It was a copy of my license. Under it was a blank registration form. I sighed, remembering the world we lived in. Damn it, my phone was ringing again, too, but anyone important like Ivy or Jenks would know to call Wayde.
“I might work a job for you, though,” I added grudgingly. Still Nina said nothing, her black eyes making me fidget. If the dead vampire had really been here, he could have tempted me into anything, but Nina was a young, forgotten vampire, and she didn’t have the right hormones turned on for the vampire she was channeling to use. Yet.
“What is the job?” I prompted, wanting to get out of here before I asked to have her baby.
The light in her eyes speaking of a possessive strength, Nina smiled, showing enough teeth to make me stifle a shiver. “Right to the point,” she said as if it pleased her, and I stared when she tried to put a foot on one knee, checking her motion at the last moment when her skirt caught. She reclined instead to look even more masculine, more in control, not caring that she was showing a healthy portion of leg. “You do know the only reason I didn’t notice you was because Piscary saw you first?”
Piscary was dead now, but I liked this even less. “What do you want?”
Nina tilted her head, dangerously suave as she eyed me from under her thick eyelashes. Ivy had given me that look before, and I stifled a flash of libido, knowing it was coming from the pheromones Nina was kicking out.
“I want you and Ivy Tamwood to help us find a group of Inderlanders committing demonlike crimes in and around the Cincinnati area. We have three sites to look at.”
I sat up, shocked. “Three! How long has this been going on?” There’d been nothing in the papers, but then, if the I.S. didn’t want it in the news, it wouldn’t be.
“Several weeks,” Nina said in regret, her gaze falling from mine for the first time, “which would be evident once you looked at the data, so listen as I tell you what you won’t find there.”
My eyes squinted. But ticked off was better than being turned on. “You should have come to me right away,” I said. “It will be harder now.”
“We thought it was you, Ms. Morgan. We had to make sure it wasn’t. Now that we know for sure, we wish to engage your services.”
Engage my services. How old is this guy? “You’ve been following me,” I said, remembering that itchy feeling between my shoulder blades whenever I was out: the grocery store, the shoe mall, the movies. I had thought it was Wayde, but maybe not. Crap, how long had they been shadowing me?
“Three weeks,” Wayde said, answering my unspoken question. “I didn’t know it was the I.S. or I would have told you.”
I turned to him, appalled. “You knew someone was following me and didn’t think I needed to know? Isn’t that your job?” I snapped, and Nina chuckled.
His expression closed, Wayde looked first at Nina, then at me. “It’s my job, and my call.”
“We believe there’s more than one person responsible for the crimes,” Nina broke in, and my attention was recaptured by his/her silken, aged voice. It was still Nina’s, but the self-assurance was mesmerizing. “There seem to be two modes of operation, harvesting, then dumping. Witches. All the bodies were those of witches.”
My expression twisted. I didn’t like the sound of that. “Harvesting? That’s ugly.”
Nina took a deep breath, almost as if she’d forgotten to breathe—which was a distinct possibility. “It’s the dumping that’s disturbing us the most. Nina will escort you through the newest site, and by the time you’re done, a courier will have delivered to your church the information we have on the earlier crimes. I’d rather you not come into the I.S. tower, if you don’t mind.”
“Not a problem,” I said softly, thinking it over. Demonlike crime, not demon crime. I didn’t want to risk the demons knowing that I was still alive. But if it was truly demonic work, it would be all over the airways. Demons are not subtle. No, it was probably a group of wannabe witches dabbling in black magic, giving demons a bad name. Taking them out would not only make me feel good but it might help me get my citizenship pushed through.
“Okay,” I said, and her soft, pleased sigh slipped over my skin like a silk scarf, raising gooseflesh. “I have to make a call. And that’s even assuming I take the job. What does it pay?”
Nina reclined in her chair as if she owned the entire building. “What do you want?” she asked, her slim fingers gesturing gracefully, the red-painted nails catching the light. “Money?”
The word held a badly hidden disdain, but no, I didn’t need money. My purse was plenty fat. Literally. My credit cards had been canceled, my bank account, my phone plan, everything. I was unwillingly off the grid and carrying cash thanks to the money Trent Kalamack had given me, money originally from the Withons, a small (by his standards, not mine) token amount he’d demanded as an apology for their trying to kill him. Good thing I had a bodyguard.
“A valid driver’s license would be nice,” I said, fighting not to look at the form on the desk. With that, I might get my bank account back. “And my car registered in my name.” The independence would do wonders for my self-esteem.
Leaning forward with a masculine huff of air, Nina brushed her long fingers through the forms between us, making me wonder what it would feel like to have those sensitive fingertips on me, and I shivered again. It wasn’t her/him, it was the vamp pheromones rising in here, and I leaned past Wayde to crack the door. Office chatter, loud and excited, drifted in, and the undead vampire smiled, knowing why I had cracked it, though Nina wouldn’t have had a clue.
“I’d appreciate a list of the curses and how they’re performed so we can decide which are legal and which are not,” she said, and I caught back a bitter laugh.
“You have a library card, right?” I said flippantly. “It’s all in there.”
Nina cocked her head and eyed me from around her long, beautiful eyelashes, making my heart thump. “Not all of it,” she said softly, her words like an old jazz song down my spine.
I licked my lips and sat straighter, knees pressed together and hands clasped in my lap. “I don’t deal with my legal kin—Nina,” I said tightly, not liking the undead playing on my libido, and not through a young, innocent woman. Raising my hand, I jiggled the band of silver preventing me from tapping a line. He knew I had it. They all did. “I’m a limited-magic demon. Give me my car registration and my license, and I’ll find them for you. That’s my offer.”
“Done,” Nina said so quickly that I wished I’d asked for more.
Nina leaned forward, her long hand extended. I took it, and as we shook, the undead vampire left and I was suddenly shaking Nina the DMV worker’s hand.
Nina’s eyes widened as she gasped and pulled away. The scent of sweat rose, thick, and she fell back into her chair, her head lolling as her legs splayed awkwardly under the desk. “Wow,” she gasped to the ceiling, her lungs heaving as she struggled to catch up on the air her guest had probably forgotten to take in. Her face was pale and her fingers were trembling, but her eyes were so bright it was as if electricity was arcing through her. “What a rush!”
I looked at Wayde, who seemed nonplussed, and Nina suddenly sat up as if remembering that we were still in here. “Ah, thank you, Ms. Morgan,” she said, rising to her feet, full of energy. “I’ll get your registration started and give you the address to the cemetery. I’d take you there myself, but I have to do something for him first and will meet you there. I have to go.” Eyes wide, she caught her breath, and I swear I saw her shiver.
The paper was a soft rustle as she darted for the door, her speed edging into that eerie vampire quickness that Ivy, at least, took great pains to hide from me. I jerked, staring at Wayde as Nina’s exuberant voice echoed in the outer offices. “My God! I could hear everything!”
Exhaling, I unclenched my fists. Track down some bad witches. I could do that. Like Nina had said. All it would take would be some detective work—which I sucked at—and some earth charms—which I could still do. “I should call Ivy,” I said softly.
Looking uncomfortable, Wayde handed me my bag, and I slipped a hand inside to find my cell phone. I frowned at the missed-call number. Trent? What does he want?
“That’s probably a good idea, Ms. Morgan,” Wayde said, leaning over to look out the office door, but I was having second, third, and fourth thoughts.
Good idea? Right. That was the last thing this was.
Two
Friday traffic was thick this time of day in downtown Cincinnati, and I huffed as I stopped at yet another red light, my head tilted as I held my cell phone to my ear. The woman had put me on hold to check the appointment books, and I was ready to hang up on her.
Just getting across the city had been trying. The little blue sticky note Nina had given me two hours ago had only a street name and number. I didn’t remember a cemetery on Washington Street, and I wondered if she’d meant the old potters’ field where they’d built the music hall. God, I hoped not. Dead people gave me the willies.
Wayde sat beside me, his legs flopped open and taking up the entire passenger seat, trying not to look uneasy as I slipped my little car through traffic—I’d shaved at least five minutes off our travel time. I hadn’t had the chance to try the Mini Cooper out in traffic until today, and the new-to-me vehicle was fantastic for turning on a dime.
“Miss?” the young voice on the other end of the line said, and the light turned green.
“Yes!” I said, glad I had an automatic as I crept forward through the intersection and tried to aim the heat vents at the same time. “I can’t make it. Not today, and probably not this weekend.”
My hair blew in the warm draft, and the woman sighed. In the background I could hear some progressive alternative rock. Takata’s latest, maybe? “I can take you off the books, but Emojin isn’t going to be happy.”
“I’ve got a job this week,” I explained loudly as I took a quick look behind me and swerved to the right to get around some old guy in a blue Buick. Sure, the run didn’t pay money, but getting
my license and car registration back made me more than happy. Baby steps. I could do this.
Wayde grabbed the chicken strap, swinging with the momentum. “Ticking off your tattoo artist isn’t prudent.”
Frowning, I snapped, “Like saying no to the I.S. is any better?”
He shrugged, and I turned back to the road, slowing down. We were close to Fountain Square, and they usually had a cop on a horse somewhere. “When can you come in?” Emojin’s assistant asked. “These specialty dyes don’t hold their qualities forever.”
I slowed more, my bumper almost on the car ahead of me. Crap, I could almost read the print on the tube of lipstick the driver was applying in the rearview mirror. “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling a touch of guilt. “I’ll be busy all this weekend and probably next week. I’ll call when I can come in. Okay?”
The light had turned green, but the woman ahead of me wasn’t moving. “Watch it!” Wayde shouted as I crept forward, and thinking we must be closer than I thought, I stomped on the brake. Our heads swung forward and back, and I grimaced. “You’re going to lose your license the same day you get it if you’re not careful,” he said, letting go of the strap and sitting straighter.
“There’s a good ten inches there,” I grumbled. “It looks closer because the car is small.”
From the phone came a faint “I’ll put you down for Monday, midnight.”
Is she not listening to me? “I won’t be there!” I exclaimed. “I wouldn’t have to keep canceling if you wouldn’t keep making appointments I can’t keep.
“Hey!” I yelped when Wayde snatched the phone.
“Give me this before you crack us up against a wall,” he said darkly, his eyes pinched and his expression cross, his red beard making him look like a Viking.
“I can drive and talk at the same time,” I said, indignant, then hit the gas to make the next light before it turned and we were stuck behind Miss-America-Wannabe again. Rearview mirrors are for seeing who’s behind you, not for putting on makeup.
“Not well, you can’t.” Wayde put the phone to his right ear. “Mary Jo? This is Wayde. Give Rachel my next appointment. I’ll get her there.”
I looked askance at him, and from the tiny receiver came a relieved “Thanks, Wayde. She’s a pain in the ass.”
Wayde and I exchanged a long, slow look over the small space between us, and my fingers on the wheel tightened. “Really?” Wayde said, his face deadpan. “I’ve never had any trouble with her.”
He hung up with a flick of the wrist, and my pink phone looked funny in his hand. “Would you mind if I put this in your purse?” he asked, and my irritation tightened. Get me there?
“Go ahead,” I said, glancing at his tattoos as he gingerly opened my bag and dropped the phone in. He wasn’t wearing a coat, and he looked cold. “You have an appointment at Emojin’s? I didn’t think you had a scrap of skin left to ink.”
Smiling now, Wayde rolled up his left sleeve, making a fist and showing me his well-muscled biceps. Damn. An Asian dragon wound around it, its mouth open to show a flicking, forked tongue. Some of the scales were glinting gold, others were drab and blurry.
“Emojin is touching up my dragon. Giving it a little shine. I was stupid back when I got it, not caring who inked me. Emojin is one of the reasons I agreed to take this job.”
Traffic eased the farther we got from the city center, and I risked another look at him, surprised by his eagerness. “Excuse me?”
Wayde rolled his sleeve down. “Emojin is one of the best inkers this side of the Mississippi, if not in the entire U.S.,” he said. “I wanted to be a part of what she does, and if I’m here …” He shrugged, resettling himself in his seat.
I thought about that as I turned onto Washington. My heart gave a tiny thump, and I shifted my grip on the wheel, finally warming up in the car’s heat. November was cold in Cincinnati.
“Standing her up is disrespectful,” Wayde said softly. “She’s an artist. If you don’t respect the art, at least respect the artist.”
My breath came fast. “I don’t want a tattoo. I would’ve thought that was clear by now.”
Wayde made a rude sound. “It is,” he said sharply. “Put your big girl panties on and do it already. It’s been ages, and you’re being disrespectful to your pack. David—damn, if you were my alpha, I’d pin you by your throat and make you behave.”
“Yeah, well, that’s why you’re not an alpha,” I said, then wished I hadn’t. My tight shoulders eased and my head throbbed. “You’re right, though,” I admitted, and he stopped tapping the armrest. “I need to do this.” But it was going to hurt!
God, I was such a baby. At least I knew Wayde didn’t have a day off until next Friday. I’d have until then to screw my courage to the sticking point.
We had to be getting close, and the street was almost empty compared to the last street we’d been on. I slowed, looking for addresses. Maybe it was a church. A lot of the little ones had small cemeteries beside them.
“There,” Wayde said, and I followed his pointing finger to the I.S. van stopped at the curbside parking of a small city park. The music hall was across the street, but that wasn’t where the cluster of vehicles was. I didn’t see anyone among the trees and benches, but it was a six-acre park.
“Look, Ivy’s car,” I said, turning in to park beside her. I’d been hoping that she’d get here before me, wherever here was. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the hour and a half it had taken to get my license and registration had been an excuse to keep me away until the real work was done.
Deep in thought, I put the car into park and pulled my bag onto my lap. The charmed silver around my wrist thumped down. I missed the protection that being able to set a circle had given me, and I didn’t like crime scenes to begin with. Everyone made me feel stupid, and I always seemed to do something wrong. But I’d stand beside Ivy with my hands in my pockets and watch her work. She was great at crime scenes. She’d been the I.S.’s darling before she bought out her contract to go independent with me. I think it had saved her sanity. My thoughts darted to Nina, and I hoped that core of self she had would survive now that her master knew she was alive.
Wayde didn’t move as I opened my door. The cool air rushing in smelled faintly like garbage. I looked into the park and saw nothing but trees and the top of a large gazebo in the distance. “There’s no FIB here,” I said softly, still inside the car. Unusual. Nina had said that they’d been working on this for a couple of weeks. Perhaps the crime had been labeled as strictly Inderlander, no human involvement.
Wayde stretched out as much as a Were could stretch out in a compact car. “You need me, just whistle,” he said as he arranged his ball cap over his eyes against the sun leaking through the frost-emptied branches.
After weeks of him accompanying me and my hating it, I hesitated. “You’re not coming?”
Lifting the brim of his cap, he eyed me. “You want me to?” he asked blandly.
“Not really, no.”
He dropped the brim and laced his hands over his middle. “Then why are you bitching? It’s a crime scene, not a grocery store. No one’s going to bother you, and they won’t let me in.”
There was that. Nodding, I got out, hitched my bag back up on my shoulder, slammed the door shut, and started up the sidewalk snaking into the park, hearing the radio chatter coming from the gazebo. My boot heels clicked, and I hesitated at a confident hail from the open I.S. van as I passed it. There wasn’t any tape strung up, but with all the official vehicles, it was obvious the park might be closed.
“Excuse me, ma’am?” It came again, and I turned back around, fluffing my hair and smiling. I had a bent and dilapidated FIB sign under my car seat that I could put in the window when I was at crime scenes, but that wouldn’t help me today. At least I had my license.
“Hi!” I said brightly, waiting until he asked for it before I dug it out. “I’m Rachel Morgan. From Vampiric Charms? Nina, uh, one of your bosses, told me to come out and take a look.” I had stopped in a spot of light, and squinting at the thin, overly aggressive witch
in an I.S. uniform coming toward me, I tucked my hair back. “I should be on the list.”
“Identification?” he said, the word nasty and sharp. He was ticked that he’d been relegated to the parking lot when he wanted to be at the scene. I knew how he felt.
“Sure.” I handed it to him, my cold fingers fumbling. “I’m with Ivy Tamwood and the pixy?” God! What was it with me making everything a question? I’d been asked here.
The man’s confusion cleared, but he didn’t hand me my license back, looking down at it with mistrust. “Oh! You’re the, uh …”
My eyes narrowed at the derision that had crept into his voice. “Demon,” I finished for him, snatching my license. “Yes, that’s me.” My charmed silver felt cold as I shoved my license away. Sure, be mean to the demon when she’s got no magic. “They’re over there, huh?”
I turned away, teeth clenching when he called after me, “Ma’am, if you could wait a moment? You need an escort.”
Since when? I thought, my heels clumping to a stop. Behind him, at my car, Wayde made a bunny-eared kiss-kiss at me and went back to sleep. Irate, I leaned against a tree growing into the sidewalk. The trunk was still wet from last night’s rain, and I crossed my arms and gestured to the cop that I wouldn’t go anywhere.
He gave me a warning look and actually touched his wand, but when I pushed myself away from the tree, he turned and paced quickly to the van. Satisfied, I slumped back. Stupid ass. Now my mood was thoroughly ruined.
Sighing, I strained to hear the radio chatter, but it was too far for anything but background gibberish. Jenks would have been able to hear it from here. Ivy, too. My gaze went to the nearby music hall, and I shivered. The building had gorgeous architecture, but there was something wrong with it. Even the gargoyles
avoided it.
A faint, familiar voice pricked at my awareness, and my face, screwed up in a squint from the sun, slowly became a frown as I turned to the park. The masculine sound rose and fell in a politically practiced wave designed to soothe, assure, and convince. It brushed against me with the warmth the November breeze lacked, and my pulse jumped. Trent? What was he doing out here?
The sidewalk was still empty, and I pushed away from the tree again, concerned as I remembered his missed call an hour and a half ago. If it had been important, wouldn’t he have called Ivy or Jenks? But they were already out here. Damn it, I’d missing something, and I took a step forward when he and Nina came around a bend, their pace holding a businesslike quickness.
Jerking to a halt, I hesitated. Nina looked about the same. By all appearances she was channeling that undead vampire as she slapped Trent on the shoulder and pulled them to a stop when she noticed me waiting. They were too far away to hear what they were saying, but it was obvious that Trent wasn’t happy.
I hadn’t seen him in months, apart from visiting Ceri when her little girl, Ray, had been born. He looked good, if a bit preoccupied with hiding his anger behind a pleasant, fake smile—better than good, actually, and I fidgeted, remembering the passionate kiss that I’d promised to forget. His fair hair moving in the breeze caught the light, and I could tell the movement bothered him when he tucked it behind his ear. He was clean shaven, ready for the office as he stood in a patch of sun in his thousand-dollar shoes and a wool overcoat that came down to his knees. It hid his athletic physique, but I’d had a pretty good idea of what was under it—every wonderfully toned, tan inch of him—thanks to having burst in on him in the shower once. Oh my God, seeing him with a towel around his shower-wet hips had been worth the entire twenty-three hundred miles stuck in a Buick with a car-sick pixy.
He was about my age, my height, and way out of my tax bracket, even if he had given up on his bid for mayor and was no longer even a city council member. The illegal bio-drug lord, murderer, and real-time businessman blamed it on wanting to devote time to his new family, but I knew that coming out of the closet as an elf had hurt him politically. I felt no sympathy.
The thought of his silky hair in my fingertips as my lips moved against his rose through me, and I looked away as he and Nina clasped hands. The woman shook like a man, firm and aggressive, with a men’s club air about her. Why is Trent out here? I probably should’ve used that hour and a half and called him, but I’d been afraid of what he wanted.
My eyes were squinting again when I looked up. Nina was bent over Trent’s hand, probably commenting on the missing digits. Al, the demon I was hiding from, had taken them. He’d been well on his way to killing Trent at the time until Pierce had taken the blame for my being brain dead—which I hadn’t been. My soul had just been trapped in a bottle until my aura could heal.
Cold, I tugged my coat closer as Trent jerked his hand back and said something terse. I left wreckage like a hurricane among those I knew. No wonder I didn’t have very many friends. His pace fast and angry, Trent strode across the grass and to the nearby curb, clearly avoiding me. It was unusual that he wouldn’t try to hide his anger, but what was the point if you were talking to a vampire older than the Constitution who could read your emotions on the wind?
“Trent!” I called out, hating the snubbed feeling creeping into me.
He tilted his head to acknowledge my presence without slowing, and my next words died at the look of what might be betrayal in the slant of his lips. “Next time, answer your phone,” he said curtly from almost twenty yards away, his beautiful voice a study in contrasts. “I don’t call unless it’s important.”
“I’m not on your payroll.” Realizing how bitchy that had sounded, I took my hands out of my pockets. “I was in a meeting, sorry.”
Frowning, he looked away, his back hunched slightly and his shoulders about his ears as he went to a small black sports car and slipped behind the wheel with notable grace. The door shut with a soft thump. If taste and sophistication had a sound, that was it, and I dropped back to the tree and watched him check behind, then drive away, the engine a low, soft thrum of gathering power, hesitating as he took a turn and was gone.
Nicely handled, Rachel, I thought sourly, glancing at my own little Cooper and seeing Wayde watching the entire incident. Nina was coming to me, her pace slow and provocative. I could tell the second that the dead vamp left her. Her heels began to click, changing from a confident, sedate pace to a fast cadence, her arms beginning to swing and her hips to sway. Her eyes, too, were no longer intense with sly dominance, but sparkled with the emotion of having been recognized by someone she respected. Her entire posture shifted from lion-like satiation to one brimming with tense excitement.
I didn’t like that they had Trent out here. What had me most concerned, though, was that Trent was here on his own. Curious. Seeing my mistrust, she slowed her pace. “You got here fast,” she said by way of greeting, her smile fading as she took in my unease.
I uncrossed my arms, trying not to broadcast my wariness. The DMV office had called her to say that I was on my way? Perhaps I wasn’t supposed to know that they had Trent out here, too. Curiouser and curiouser.
“I made the lights,” I said as she eased to a halt beside me, looking me up and down with a soft grimace, as if seeing me through her own eyes for the first time. Smiling, I extended my hand and the young woman took it, her expression questioning when I said, “Hi. I don’t think we’ve really met.”
“Um, it’s not like that,” she said, her voice a little faster, a little higher, and a lot more positive than just a few hours ago in the DMV office. “It’s still me. It’s always me, and then … him, too.”
“Right.” I put my hands back in my pockets. She was all bouncy and excited now, but I had a feeling that something was going to go wrong with this arrangement despite her obvious enthusiasm. There was a reason the undead didn’t do this all the time, and it was probably going to leave Ms. DMV Worker in a padded cell when the undead master didn’t need her anymore. “I’m supposed to wait for an escort,” I said, and she gestured for me to accompany her.
“So, you working for the I.S. now?” I asked, trying to keep the anger out of my voice as I swung into step beside her, and she shook her head, a faint intake of breath telling me that she’d had an interesting ninety minutes while I’d been getting my temporary license.
“Not officially, no,” she said, pulling herself straight. “I’m his temporary assistant.”
Is that what they’re calling blood whores these days? I thought, then quashed it. This wasn’t her fault. She was the victim, even if she was willing. “So you won’t mind telling me why Trent Kalamack was out here?” I asked, and she laughed.
“He wanted to meet him,” she said, her tone somewhere between sly and derisive.
She was having way too much fun in this arrangement with the undead, and I made sure our feet hit the sidewalk at exactly the same time, adjusting my steps to be a little shorter since she was still in heels and I had on comfy boots. Recalling the almost betrayed look Trent had given me before driving off, I said, “That’s why walkie-talkie man was out here, not why Trent was.”
Nina’s breath hissed in angrily. My pulse hammered, and I sidestepped from her before I even knew what was happening, finding my balance as she turned to me, her posture bent and aggressive. My hands were out of my pockets, but Nina was already relaxing, a sullen expression on her face as she refused to meet my eyes. “Walkie-talkie man?” she said, her tone sharp with accusation. “It’s a good thing he likes that, or I’d have to teach you otherwise.”
We started walking again, a good three feet between us now—and it was her pace that adjusted to my longer step. “I’d like to see you try,” I muttered, and Nina jumped as if having been rebuked. It seemed as if her master vampire was listening in and didn’t like her attitude. That was nice, in a creepy, somewhat uneasy way. Still, prudence had me exhaling slowly, trying to relax before Nina tried to jump my jugular. The woman was getting a huge unexpected eddy of sensory input thanks to the vampire possessing her, input that she hadn’t had time to learn how to deal with. If walkie-talkie man wasn’t there to pull in the reins, there might be accidents. Sure, it was nice now, but eventually there would be running and screaming and blood on the floor.
“I thought the crime scene was at a cemetery,” I said cautiously.
Nina nodded as she looking intently into the park, toward the unseen crackle of radios. “It used to be one,” she said, her voice distant, as if she was listening to the dead vamp in her head, “until they moved the bodies.”
I’d never understood that, but I suppose it was better than having cemeteries taking up prime property when a small town grew into a larger metropolis. “Did they miss any?” I said as I paced beside her, her heels now clacking in harsh discord with my boots. Nina was still looking into the park as if trying to place herself, though I’d be surprised if she’d ever been here before. I was starting to feel like something was creeping up on me, and my shoulders itched.
From behind us, the little cop who had stopped me shouted, “Hey! I told you to wait!”
Nina turned with the suddenness of a cracked whip, every inch of her demanding obedience. “Do. Your. Paper. Work.” The man backed up, his face white. I jerked, stifling a shiver as I looked at her, her teeth showing in a pleasant but frightening smile. The powerful dead vamp was back.
“Y-yes, sir,” the officer stammered, almost falling as he backed his way to the van. The smooth sound of plastic wheels on metal broke the stillness as he slammed the door shut, and Nina turned, her hand lightly on the small of my back as she calmly ushered me forward with the grace of another age, not caring that the man had called her sir.
“I believe the reasoning behind depositing the body here was because it had once been a cemetery,” the undead vamp said softly, continuing the conversation as if I’d been talking to him all the time.
I remembered to breathe after about three steps. “I’ll give you one thing, Nina. You’re a handy man to have around.”
“I’ve been told that before,” she said with an honest, companionable warmth that raised just about every warning flag I had. Even so, the hint of amusement in her voice was soothing, and I relaxed, knowing that—oddly enough—I’d be safe now. He was back and in control, and I thought it strange that I’d feel safer with a monster in control of himself than with a woman struggling to find it.
“You’re going to handle this investigation personally? Why?” I said, tugging my bag onto my shoulder again to disguise the wrong feeling her hand was making on my back.
Nina smiled and shifted her hand from my back to take my arm as naturally as if she already owned it. It wasn’t as possessive, and my unease loosened, even as I disliked the fact that the undead vampire in Nina had been reading my emotions and was trying to ingratiate himself with me. “I want to get to know you better,” she said, her high voice taking on the hues of fine cigar smoke, rich and multilayered.
Swell. Nina’s steps beside mine had become silent next to the soft thumps of my boots. “The last vampire who wanted to ‘get to know me better’ ended up beaned by a chair leg,” I warned, but I didn’t pull away. There was a delicious tingle rising where she touched me, and I liked playing with fire.
“I’ll be careful,” Nina said, and I shocked myself when I looked up and saw her long black hair and delicate face, not one wrinkled and leathered, wise in the ways to screw over the world. “You are a demon, Ms. Morgan,” she said, leaning her head toward me as we walked as if we were close friends sharing a secret. “I want to know who you are so I can recognize your kind when it comes again. Who knows? Perhaps the I.S. is riddled with witches on the threshold of becoming demons.”
“Sure, okay,” I said, knowing I was the only witch besides Lee Saladan that Trent’s dad had saved, modifying our mitochondria to produce an enzyme that allowed us to survive the naturally occurring demon enzymes in our blood. I could pass the cure on, but Lee couldn’t.
“Oh dear,” Nina said around a sigh, somehow injecting the soft oath with a world of disappointment. “There are no more of you?” she asked, having sensed in my last words that there were not. “Are you sure? Pity. I think I will stay nevertheless. You amuse me, and so little does anymore.”
Better and better. With a solid effort, I pulled my arm from hers as we stepped from the sidewalk and walked on the frost-burnt grass. I still wanted to know why Trent had been out here, but didn’t think I’d be willing to pay the price for it. Besides, Jenks and Ivy would probably know, seeing that they were out here already.
Nina’s eyes were full of a delicious delight at my rebellion as we headed for the crackling radios. The older dead vampires got, the more human they became, and seeing such an old presence in a young body unnerved me more than seeing a masculine presence in a feminine one.
“I kind of like Nina, you know,” I said, not knowing why but feeling I had to stick up for the woman being used so callously. I’d lived long enough with Ivy to know that those who attracted the undead’s attention were abused and warped, and Nina had no clue to the depth of misery she was in for.
Nina sniffed, shifting her shoulders to look at the sky through the branches. “She’s a sweet girl, but poor.”
Ire pricked through me, and the last of his charisma shredded. “Being poor is not an indication of potential or worth. It’s a lack of resources.”
Nina turned, her dark eyebrows high in surprise. The delicious tang of experienced, confident living vampire was growing more complex and stronger the longer the undead vamp was in her, and I felt my expression freeze as I remembered Kisten. A fairy tale of a wish slipped through me that this might be Kisten, undead and reaching out to me, but no. I’d seen him dead twice. Nothing remained of him but memories and a box of ash under Ivy’s bed. Besides, this guy was really old.
“You’ve loved one of us before,” Nina breathed, as if the undead vampire in her shared my pain.
Blinking, I pulled myself out of my brief misery, finding that I’d put a hand on my neck to hide the scar that could no longer be seen. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“This way,” Nina said, making me take a small detour around a patch of grass. I could see nothing different about it as we passed, and Nina sniffed. “There are bones there,” she said, her low voice having the hint of old emotion.
Curious, I looked back at the earth again. “Must be icky knowing where everything is buried,” I said, thinking she was better than a metal detector.
“She was about eight,” Nina said. “Died of cholera in the 1800s. They missed her grave when they moved them because someone stole her marker.”
We were nearing the gazebo, wreathed with people and noise, but I turned to look behind me again even as I continued forward. “You can tell that from walking over a grave?”
“No. I helped bury her.”
“Oh.” I shut my mouth, wondering if the missing marker was under this guy’s coffin. The undead did not love, but they remembered love with a savage loyalty. Uneasy with all the people, I looked to find Ivy, standing with two I.S. agents in suits, going over a stapled printout. The sparkle of light on her shoulder was probably Jenks, the pixy making a burst of bright dust to acknowledge me but not leaving the warmth of Ivy’s shoulder as they studied a clipboard.
Behind them stood the gazebo bandstand, brightly painted and open. It would have been pretty except for the bloody, contorted body hanging from the center of the ceiling like a rag doll, spread-eagled, with filthy cords holding the limbs out. I felt myself pale as I realized the body had hooves instead of feet, and the brown I’d thought was a pair of sweats was actually a blood-soaked pelt of tightly curled fur. Blood had dripped from the corpse to puddle underneath, but there wasn’t nearly enough there to drain a body, and by the gray skin visible above the waist, he was drained, the blood either somewhere else or leaked through the cracks to the earth below.
My pace slowing, I swallowed hard and wished I had an amulet to soothe my gut. At first glance, I’d say that it looked like a misaligned curse had hit him and he’d been strung up as a warning—sort of a perverted public announcement against the dangers of black magic.
Then I saw the letters scrawled on the steps in blood. Stopping dead in my tracks, I felt Nina hesitate, evaluating me for signs of guilt as I took in the single word.
evulgo, it said. It was the word that the demons used to publicly acknowledge and register a curse, and very few people would know it.
Someone was calling me out.
Three
My head hurt, my heart was pounding so hard. Had Nina brought me out here to shake a confession from me? Was the I.S. blaming me for this … this atrocity?
Scared, I backed up, but she was a vampire, and with walkie-talkie man in her, it would take eight feet to give me any measure of security. Nina watched me, her expression more one of sour disappointment than the excited thrill of making a tag. Looked like I had passed the “let’s surprise Rachel” test.
“You thought I did that?” I said, shaking as I gestured at the body hanging spread-eagled from the roof of the bandstand. “You thought I did that perverted … thing!” My God, the body had been utterly deformed. Whoever had done this was either seriously disturbed or utterly lacking in compassion. Demonic? Perhaps, but I didn’t think a demon had done it.
Ivy looked up from the clipboard, and Jenks rose high, a silver dust slipping from the pixy. Feeling braver, I faced Nina, outrage filling me as I tried to push out the horror. This was why Trent had been here. As the man who had successfully banished me to the ever-after, they probably figured he’d know better than anyone if I’d done it.
“You brought me out here thinking I did this and that I was going to give something away!” I shouted, my back to the hanging corpse. Everyone was watching now, and Jenks darted to me with a sparkle of dust. I leaned in, furious. “What does your sniffer tell you? Did I do it?” I said bitterly. Jenks hovered before the dead vampire, his garden sword drawn. The pixy was clearly cold but ready to defend me, his tiny, angular features bunched in anger.
“No, not anymore.” Nina’s suddenly black eyes squinted as she looked past me to the hanging corpse. “But if you so much as scratch me, pixy, I will prosecute. I take care of those I borrow.”
Jenks’s sword drooped, and when I backed up a sullen step, he put it away and flitted to my shoulder, his dragonfly-like wings clattering angrily. Borrow. Sure. I suppose there were legal ramifications to letting the body you were controlling die. If anyone could kill a living vampire, Jenks had the reflexes to do it. Though pixies were generally a peaceful, garden-loving people, they fought fiercely for those they gave their loyalty to, and Jenks and I went back a long way. He looked about eighteen in his black, double-layered, skintight cold-weather gear, the only softness to him a decorative red sash his deceased wife had made for him. The color would keep any pixies not yet in hibernation from slaughtering him for being on their turf.
“Hi, Rache,” Jenks said as the four-inch man landed on my shoulder, bringing the scent of dandelions and oiled steel to me. “This vampire flunky giving you trouble?”
Nina grimaced at the slur. Behind her, Ivy made her slow way to us, scuffing her boots on the sidewalk so there’d be no misunderstanding of her intentions. She looked relaxed in her black jeans and leather coat, open to show her tucked-in T-shirt, but I’d lived across the hall from her for over two years, and I could see her tension in the tightness of her eyes. Some of it was a lingering jealousy she couldn’t help, because I was talking to another vampire—one stronger and more influential than she was—but most of it was concern as she prepared to stand up to a dead vampire. Her mother’s Asian heritage made her slim, her father’s European background made her tall. Straight black hair hung almost down to her midback again. It was in a ponytail right now, swaying as she came closer. Confident, she nevertheless had a healthy respect for her undead kin, and I dropped back a couple of steps to make room for her.
“Hi, Rachel,” she said, letting a soft, sultry tone into her voice to help cement her high political standing in Nina’s mind. Ivy was still alive, but she came from a very powerful family. “Are they not letting you on the crime site again?”
Feeling better with my friends around me, I uncrossed my arms. Nina was silent, and the surrounding I.S. officers were drifting into scoffing groups, probably making bets. “I don’t know yet,” I said tightly. “Walkie-talkie man here only gave us the job to find out if I did it.”
Jenks’s laughter sounded like angry wind chimes, and Ivy tilted her head as she took in Nina’s off-the-rack dress suit, scuffed heels, and a warm but clearly last year’s style coat, knowing in an instant that she was channeling a dead vampire. “Another stellar decision from the I.S. basement,” Ivy said, smiling to let her slightly pointy canines show.
My anger slid three points to unease when Nina smiled back at Ivy with an obvious attraction, clearly liking her strong will and defiant attitude. Yeah, that was about right for the old ones. The more you defied them, the more you relieved their boredom and the
more they tried to break you.
Jenks recognized Nina’s sultry look as one of the slow hunt, and his wings clattered in warning. Ivy recognized it, too, and grimacing, she rolled her eyes and blandly offered her hand to Nina. “I’m Ivy Tamwood,” she said without emotion as she tried to repair the damage and distance herself. “But you already know that.”
Nina became almost coy, formally taking her hand and kissing the top of it in an overdone show that looked really odd with the dead body strung up behind them. Jenks and I exchanged looks as the game of cat-and-mouse chess continued.
“I worked with your mother before she retired from the I.S.,” Nina said, her voice as gray and silky as holy dust. “You have her strength and your father’s humor. Piscary was a fool for mishandling you.”
Ivy yanked her hand back. “Piscary was my life. Now he’s dead and I have a new one.”
Ivy glanced at me, and I couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes as Jenks harrumphed. My scar was tingling at the vamp pheromones the two of them were kicking out, and I was struggling not to hide my neck when a ping of sensation snaked its way down to my groin. Vampires …
I took a slow breath, knowing by Ivy’s widening pupils that she was feeling it, too. Nina was getting better at channeling her undead master. Either that, or new hormones were being turned on the longer the master was inside her brain. I was betting it was the latter, and probably part of the perks of putting up with someone being inside you.
A faint yelp from the parking lot turned me around, and I wasn’t surprised to see Wayde jogging up the sidewalk, the I.S. officer from the van limping behind him. Nina made a small noise when he ran right over that patch of holy ground, clearly not pleased.
“I thought you were staying in the car!” I shouted as Nina sourly gestured to the surrounding I.S. officers to let him pass.
Giving them space warily, Wayde slowed as he approached, his eyes widening as he glanced at the body, then did a double take. “You yelled,” he explained, then looked again and swore under his breath. “I came. That’s my job. What the hell is that?”
“Someone’s mistake,” I said. “They asked me out here because they thought I did it. I got mad.”
“Sir,” Nina started, and I wondered why he/she used any term of respect at all.
“He’s my bodyguard,” I said tightly. “You know that. I don’t trust you. I should walk away from this, but I’m here, and I’m going to take a look. He stays. Got a problem, take it up with my mom.”
Jenks laughed as the undead vampire looked through Nina’s eyes, assessed the situation, then nodded, Nina’s stance taking on a faint swagger at odds with her slim figure. “He may stay if his talents include keeping his mouth shut.”
Wayde exhaled, seeming to lose body mass and tension, but it all came back when he glanced at the body again. “Uh, sorry it took me so long to get here,” he said to me. “I had to get around limp dick there.”
I looked behind Wayde to the retreating I.S. officer. He had his hand on his nose, and I think he was bleeding if Nina’s sharp eyes on him meant anything. Fresh blood and the scent of a fight were like champagne to the undead, and my estimation of Wayde wavered. A good bodyguard could have gotten by the I.S. officer without drawing blood.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said as I glanced at Ivy and she shrugged almost imperceptibly. “I appreciate it.” And despite my doubts, I did. Regardless of having broken the cop’s nose, he’d clearly been doing his job if the I.S. had been shadowing me and all I’d gotten was a faint feeling of unease. I wasn’t helpless, but another pair of eyes and fists usually kept incidents from ever happening. The best bodyguard was one who didn’t have to do anything but be there.
Jenks’s wings clattered as he took off from my shoulder, clearly struggling from the weight of his extra clothes. November was the cusp for pixies. Most were hibernating by now, but Jenks and his family would winter in the church, and if the day was warm enough, Jenks would brave the cold.
“We gonna watch walkie-talkie vamp have a blood orgy, or are we going to look at someone else’s?” he said snidely, and Nina gestured to the pair of I.S. officers who had been nervously lurking nearby. The better-dressed one jogged forward with the printout and handed it to Nina before backing up. I’d be cautious, too, if my superior had been lusting after someone’s nosebleed.
“I’ve sent a copy to your church of the information we’ve already gathered,” Nina said as she handed it in turn to Ivy. “I want this back. It’s my copy.”
Ivy took it, her lips tight with repressed anger. Something was bothering her, something more than the body. I looked past Nina to the body again, repulsed and yet riveted. My God, the man had only one hand left. It was thick and malformed, bending in as if cramped, with a thick, horny, inflexible skin. The fingers looked as if they were made of dough and just stuck on. The other hand and both his feet were perfect cloven hooves. If anything, he looked like a faun, only everything was perverted and disproportionate. There were no such things as fauns, never had been, but perhaps mutilations such as this were where the fable had gotten started.
Feeling ill, I looked away, noticing that the blood-drawn pentagram under him was one made to gather power from an external source. Jeez, I hoped this had nothing to do with me. The man looked as if he’d been in his midtwenties, fit apart from the half-goat thing.
“How many have there been?” I asked. They might only have asked me out here to see if I had done it, but now that I was here, I was going to find out who had. Ivy, too, was studiously looking through the packet of information, clearly eager to take the run. There were a lot of papers. The I.S. wasn’t known for being meticulous about data gathering, meaning this had been going on for a while. They should have come to me sooner.
Spinning gracefully, Nina turned to the body, looking at it as if it were a painting on a wall. “This is the third incident. His name was Thomas Siskton, and he was a university student, missing since last week.”
Jenks whistled by rubbing his wings together, and then he darted to the railing, standing on it and facing the body. “There hasn’t been anything in the news. You’d think a hoofed university student with horns would make the papers.”
“Keep your mouth shut,” Ivy said, knowing how hard it was for the pixy to keep a secret.
Nina looked between me and Wayde, clearly not happy with the Were being here. She probably didn’t know Jenks was the higher risk for blabbing despite pixies being non-citizens. “We’ve kept it quiet. It needs to stay that way.”
“Don’t worry about me,” Wayde said, dropping back and putting a hand in the air as he looked down submissively. “I’m a professional.”
I grimaced, hearing what the undead vampire was saying. You don’t just keep something like this quiet without illegal memory charms. Great. I hated memory charms.
Nina saw my understanding and smiled with her new, confident, sexy eyes and turned to Ivy, a hand out as if to escort her up the stairs. “The site is open for your inspection,” she said as she walked over the blood-painted word of Latin as if it meant nothing. “We’ve already gathered what we need.”
“Good.” Ivy casually sidestepped Nina’s guiding hand and walked up the stairs by herself. “I’ll let you know what you missed.”
Her attitude was surprisingly belligerent, and I wondered why she was letting her emotions show like this. She knew it would attract the undead’s attention all the more, and clearly she didn’t like him. Concerned, I went to follow Ivy up, and Wayde touched my elbow. “Hey, uh, I’ll stay here if you don’t mind,” he said, his face pale as he looked up at the body.
Jenks snickered, which I thought totally unfair, following it up with a “Not used to the blood, wolfman?”
Wayde’s expression sharpened on the pixy. “He’s half turned into something. You know how many nightmares I’ve had about that?”
Yes, I suppose being able to turn into a wolf, painfully, might give one a new kind of nightmare, and I smiled as I gave his arm a squeeze, feeling the hard muscle under his shirt. “You can wait at the car if you want. I’ll be fine.”
“No, I’ll stay. Just not up there,” Wayde said, and Nina cleared her throat for me to hurry up, even as Wayde looked past me to the body and shivered.
“Rache …” Jenks complained, and I headed up the stairs, hands in my pockets and giving the Latin a wide berth, reminded of how Nina had skirted the dead child under the ground.
“This is the third,” Nina said, and I blanched as I now had nothing else to look at other than the blood-soaked, softly pelted, cloven-hoofed, disfigured man before me. Jenks was right; he even had tiny horns, and his skin was gray and softly textured like a gargoyle’s. What in hell had they done to him? And why?
Please, God, may it have nothing to do with me. But I was the first demon this side of the ley lines, and I was getting a really bad feeling.
“We found the oldest one just last week,” Nina added, almost as an afterthought, her voice telling me the vampire speaking through her was deep in thought.
“You didn’t find them in order?” Jenks had parked himself upwind of the corpse. It smelled, but the cold had suppressed most of the stench. Actually the body had a distinctive meadow scent under all
the decaying blood, and I wondered if that was part of the faun thing that it had going.
Nina gave Jenks a dry look. “All the dump sites are similar to this one, but the first involved three teenagers from three different schools, missing since the fourth of November. Two were contorted like this one, the other died from heart failure. Her medical history shows she had heart issues, and we think she died from fright.”
I breathed deep, trying to get beyond the atrocity so I could think. The scent of wine and salt tickled a memory. Electricity, ozone, old books: it all added up to demons, except for the fact that there wasn’t the faintest hint of burnt amber. Demons stank of it. Jenks had assured me that I didn’t smell like the ever-after, but I think he was lying.
I’d been born a witch, but my blood kindled demon magic and the way the coven of moral and ethical standards saw it was that if it looked like a demon, did magic like a demon, and could be summoned like a demon, it was a demon. I couldn’t find fault with them. It had been a shock when I realized my blood didn’t invoke every witch charm, failing at the most complex because of the demon enzymes in it. Al, my demon teacher, was the same. I was a demon, like it or not. The first of a new generation thanks to Trent’s father. How nice was that?
The soft sound of pixy wings pulled me from my sour musings, and Jenks landed on my shoulder, his wings tinted blue from the cold. He knew where my thoughts had gone just by looking at me. “I don’t smell any burnt amber,” I said, and Nina nodded. Her canny gaze looked wrong on someone so young.
“It wasn’t at any other sites, either,” she said. “That’s why we thought of you.”
Ivy cleared her throat in reproach, and Nina broke eye contact with me to stare at her for a long, slow moment, the smaller woman quietly asserting her dominance until Ivy looked away. “All the victims had a large quantity of their blood drained from them, as you see here,” Nina said, turning back to the body. “The first victims showed evidence of being held against their wills: split fingernails, bondage marks, bruises, cuts, contusions. They resisted their capture and restraint. Evidence points to one to six days’ worth of torture. The moulage was old, but we’re fairly confident that none of the victims was killed where we found them.”
The man before me looked worn, in the dry air his dead eyes starting to sink back. The moulage here was clean, too, or Ivy would have said something. I couldn’t see emotion imprinted on the world, but vampires could. Most moulages faded with the sun, but murder left a stronger impression that could last weeks or even centuries if the crime was heinous enough and the spirit desperate to continue life. It was the source of ghosts—most times.
“Where were the others found?” Ivy asked, and Nina aggressively took the packet of papers from her, handing them back with a page of photos flipped open.
“The first victims were at an abandoned school,” Nina said as she looked down at the page, her jaw tense at Ivy’s subtle refusal to accept her authority. “It had been built on property that had once been a cemetery. Like this,” she said, her gaze lifting to the surrounding bare trees as if seeing it in another time. “It’s one of
the ties between the crimes. The second victim, who we found first, was in the driveway of a museum.”
“Let me guess,” Jenks said snidely. “It was built on an old grave site.”
Nina inclined her head, smiling with her teeth hidden. “Cincinnati is riddled with abandoned churchyards. Bodies were moved a lot, and not always back into the ground.”
Brow furrowed, I thought of our own graveyard, attached to the church. I didn’t want a body showing up there, especially not one with hooves and horns.
I didn’t even know this man’s name, and I carefully stepped over a blood-soaked cord holding his, ah, hoof so I could see his back, forcing myself to look closer to try and make sense of this. A hint of a tail made my stomach clench. I’d caught a glimpse of the school photo before Ivy turned away, and it made me even more uneasy. The pentagram surrounding the body here was the same they’d used at the school. It was fairly common in the higher charms, but drawing it in blood wasn’t. Someone was playing at being a demon.
“The victims at the school were decomposing badly when we found them,” Nina said, distracting me, “but they had clearly been restrained. The second victim had been kept sedated. We don’t know about this man. The tests haven’t been run yet, but he’s clearly been held against his will.”
Jenks took off from my shoulder, his wings clattering in anger. “Decomposed!” he exclaimed, clearly disgusted. “In this weather? Just how long had they been dead?”
Nina ignored his anger. “The three at the school had been dead somewhere between eight and ten days. We know they went missing on the fourth, but we aren’t sure how long they were dead before we found them Tuesday.”
Tuesday? Like three days ago Tuesday?
“Tink loves a duck!” Jenks exclaimed. “What have you been doing? Sitting on your thumb and spinning?”
“Jenks!” I exclaimed, and the undead vampire let some of his anger show, Nina’s eyes squinting. The anger wasn’t directed at us, telling me he wasn’t happy with how the investigation had been handled, either.
“The best we can tell, they probably died between the eighth and the tenth,” Nina said.
I really wanted off this bandstand, but I didn’t want to look squeamish.
“Magic killed them, not blood loss,” she added, holding her breath when the wind blew and the man’s blood-caked hair moved in the breeze. “That came afterward. Apart from the girl at the school, they died from a transforming spell that wasn’t done properly. We can’t be sure until the necropsy, but if this man follows the pattern, his insides will be as deformed as his outsides. They died because their bodies couldn’t function.”
Jenks was a tight hum at my ear, and he was slipping a green dust. “Hey, Rache, you mind if I check the sitch with the local pixies? They aren’t hibernating yet.”
Nina stiffened. It was a slight movement that probably would have escaped my detection if I hadn’t been looking for it. The dead vampire thought it was a waste of time, but not breaking our eye contact I nodded. “Good idea, Jenks.”
“Back in a sec,” he said, and in a flash, he was gone. I wished I could fly away, too.
“Whose blood made the spells that did this?” I asked, starting to get a bad feeling. Three teenagers killed, then a few days later, a second victim, then a few more days, and then Thomas.
“What an interesting question.” Nina backed up to lean against the railing. “We didn’t catch on that fast—Ms. Morgan.”
Her stance said I knew too much. Maybe she was right. Maybe it just took a demon to catch a demon. “Whose blood twisted the spells that killed them?” I asked again, jaw clenching.
“At the school, they died from their own. The second victim died from a spell kindled with blood from one of the teenagers. We don’t know yet whose blood this man died from.”
My shoulders slumped as I exhaled, and Ivy, who was looking from the bloody floor to one of the photos to compare the glyphs, met my eyes, reading my worry. Crap, they were leapfrogging. Taking the blood from the last victim to capture and experiment on the next. I put a hand to my middle and looked at the pentagram around me, wishing I had enough guts to take my charmed silver off and see where the nearest ley line was. Close, I bet. Graveyards were often built on them. If Jenks were here, I could ask him.
“Our working theory is once the perpetrators harvest sufficient blood to play with, they simply use the blood of the previous victim to experiment on and torture the next,” Nina said.
Play. That was a good word. It was what I’d already figured out, but hearing it made me more nauseated yet. At least there’d probably be no bodies older than the ones found at the school.
“Experiment?” Ivy looked up from her pages.
Nina drew herself up into a lecturing pose, and I wondered if the vampire inside her had been a professor. “In each case, the blood has been modified. To what end, we don’t yet know.”
I didn’t know, either, and I looked at the body so I wouldn’t have to look at Nina. This man’s death had been painful, his body spending several days twisted somewhere between a human and a goat as his captors played with his blood. But why? This was just nasty. Whoever had done this had dumped him to create a sensation and get noticed. A perverted warning against black magic … or a way to get my attention?
“How about the circle?” I said, my hands in my coat pockets. “Whose blood made it?”
Nina drifted closer to me, her posture having a relaxed tension as she passed the body with barely a flicker of acknowledgment. “We’re having difficulty finding that out. Our standard, magic-based tests are coming back inconclusive, and we’re having some trouble duplicating the FIB’s barely legal tissue-typing techniques. We think it’s from the second victim as well. He died only a week ago. A businessman in town for a convention.”
“Let me guess,” I said, doing the math in my head. “Thomas went missing exactly five days after the businessman died.”
“Exactly …” Nina whispered, her voice drawing through me to make me shiver and Ivy frown. Was she jealous? “How did you know?”
Knees wobbly, I sat down on the top step, my feet just shy of the word written in blood. The man’s cloven feet were at my eye level, and I turned away, breathing shallowly. “Because if you know
how, and have the right equipment, you can keep witch blood active for that long. After five days, they’d need a new source of blood.” I looked up, my gaze flicking to Wayde, at the foot of the stairs. “Anyone file a claim for missing lab equipment?” I asked Nina, and her eyes narrowed.
“I’ll find out.”
“Good idea,” I said sarcastically. God, vampires were clueless sometimes, so secure in their superiority that they didn’t ask the right questions.
“So let me get this straight,” Ivy said, the papers hanging from her hand as she stood beside and above me, her hip cocked and clearly not impressed. “You found body number two before you found the earlier crime with the kids?”
Nina flushed. “The location of the first bodies was remote. Whoever did this was unhappy that we missed the first one and so left the next one in a more public space.”
The better to tease you with, my dear, I thought as I held my breath and looked at the floor. A drop of coagulated blood dangled at the tip of the man’s hoof, suspended forever. Why couldn’t I have just taken the blue pill and gone home? Taking a deep breath, I stood, gripping the railing until I was sure I wouldn’t fall over. Someone was torturing witches. Why? “Ivy, what do you think?”
She shrugged. “Lots of IV marks. He reeks of antiseptic. They tried to keep him alive.”
“They were successful for about a week,” Nina interrupted.
Seeing me again upright, Ivy slid herself up to sit on the railing and leaf through the packet of information. Her ankles were crossed, and she smiled at me as she saw me catch my mental balance. Shrugging, I turned back to the body hanging before us. Yes, it was ugly, but if I couldn’t get past it, I’d never find out who had done it so I could pound his or her head into the pavement.
“The businessman,” I said as I finished my circuit of the man and carefully stepped between the cords keeping his legs spread-eagled. I was at his face, and I dropped my eyes. His skull looked malformed, the brow heavy. “Was he contorted like this?”
“Fairly close, but he still had his hands. Obviously they’re working toward a specific body type. There was no sign of a fight from him. Stress levels recorded in the body say he was kept alive for several days under a sleep charm after he was subjected to the malfunctioning spell. They probably woke him only to try a new charm or feed him. The change in SOP was either to extend his life after the failed spell or because their new facility was somewhere public and they couldn’t risk someone hearing him. We’re not sure.”
Whoever did this was insane, but I was willing to bet it wasn’t a demon. A demon curse would have worked, and this obviously hadn’t.
Ivy perked up as she found something she liked in her paperwork, her feet swinging as she sat balanced on the railing. “They kept moving their base?” she said, not looking from the pages. “Odd.”
“Agreed.” Nina rocked from her heels to her toes and back
again, her hands clasped behind her in a decidedly masculine gesture. Behind her, the I.S. officers were getting impatient, wanting to cut the body down and get on with it. “Microscopic evidence from
all the victims is different: dust samples, pollen, residual ley-line orientation at the time of death.”
Ley-line orientation at the time of death? I’d been out of the I.S. for a little over two years, and I’d already missed hearing about new technology.
“We’ll try to locate where they held this man, but they’ve probably moved already,” Nina said, glancing at the I.S. officers and the radio chatter below us. Two geeky living vampires at the bottom of the stairs with a gurney and a body bag fidgeted in the cold as they waited for us.
“We found enough evidence on the businessman’s body to sensitize an amulet. It led to an abandoned site, thoroughly cleaned, but they left the cage so we’d know it was them.”
Ivy slid from the railing with the papers securely bundled in her arms. I could tell she was not going to give them back. “They’re laughing at you,” she said mockingly as she started for the stairs, her motions slow and provocative. Crap on toast, she was intentionally goading the undead vampire, knowing he’d screwed up this run and rubbing his nose in his mistake. Either that or she just wanted to talk to the waiting techs.
“I know they’re laughing at us,” Nina almost growled, but she was watching Ivy’s ass as she took the stairs, and Ivy knew it. Jenks flew in to land on Ivy’s shoulder when she reached the sidewalk. He’d probably finished his investigation a while ago and simply hadn’t wanted to get near the body again. I could understand. It was probably like being next to the rotting carcass of a blue whale.
“Can we see the previous sites?” I asked just to get the undead vampire’s eyes off Ivy.
“If you like,” Nina said, annoyed as she brought her attention back to me. “All the information you need is in the reports. There’s evidence of at least four people involved in holding the victims.” She looked at the hanging man and frowned, her fingers twitching, grasping for something unseen—a nervous tic belonging to an undead vampire. Curious.
I exhaled as I took in what Nina was saying. If they’d moved and dumped the body, then we had five days to find the next victim. Damn it all to hell, this is ugly. Somewhere in the city a terrified man or woman was being experimented on, turned into this … halfway thing.
Jenks left Ivy to make irritating yo-yo motions in front of me, his color high. “One guy and two women dumped this guy,” he said proudly, and Nina’s expression showed stark amazement. “That is, if you trust pixies,” Jenks added snidely. “They came at four thirty-five in the morning, strung the guy up, finger-painted with blood from a bag, and left in a blue car. The local pixies didn’t pay much attention to them. A guy with a dog found him thirty-seven minutes later, and the I.S. flunky responding hit him with a forget charm and sent him on his way. He’s fine, but the dog is going to need massive amounts of therapy.”
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