Dawn Slayer

by Clara Coulson

  “I’m…sorry?” I offer.

  The commissioner gives me a smile split between amusement and annoyance. “A bit late for apologies now, boy, after your employer has strong-armed me into a rather unfavorable compromise.”

  He scrawls his signature at the bottom of the page he was perusing, then skirts past me and the line of agents protecting the building from the intruding vampires. He shows no hint of fear as he approaches Foley and offers him the packet of papers. “Our legal department has agreed to capitulate to all your ‘requests,’ Lord Tepes, so there should be no need for additional negotiation on the part of your house. If you’ll sign and date this agreement, you can be on your way with Mr. Kinsey.”

  Foley, wearing an uncharacteristically flat expression, accepts the packet. He flips through it, presumably searching for key details to ensure whatever terms he insisted upon are included to the letter and are not written in ambiguous language that could give DSI more leeway than he wants. After about ninety seconds, he nods in satisfaction and says, “I’ll sign.”

  Petrov hands Foley the pen. Foley scrawls his name in the designated spot, and then he hands both pen and paper back to their owner. “Thank you for your cooperation regarding this delicate political matter, Commissioner,” Foley says coolly. “If that’s all…”

  Petrov looks to Irina, who nudges me into motion with her elbow. I take the cue and cross the tense space between the DSI agents and the vampires. When I’m halfway there, Petrov tucks the packet under his arm, sticks his pen in the front pocket of his suit jacket, and whips around, intentionally moving fast enough to slap Foley with the tails of his heavy coat.

  Foley pretends to ignore the slight, but I catch the barest hint of anger spark in his crimson eyes. If he was an older and stronger vampire—if he was his father—no human would dare to insult him.

  Foley is young and inexperienced. And Petrov knows it. And Petrov wants Foley to know that he knows it. His message is clear as day: “If you keep screwing with my city, I’ll find a way to wriggle out of all the constraints you’ve placed on DSI in order to punish you and your agents to the fullest extent of the law, and perhaps beyond.”

  If I’d seen Riker give that sort of warning to the vampires a few months back, I would’ve wholeheartedly agreed with his actions. But now that I know Foley, know what he’s been through, what he’s still going through…I can’t help but give Petrov a disgusted look as we pass each other.

  The commissioner isn’t daunted by my scowl, however. Why would he be? I’m even younger than Foley, and my position as a supernatural political entity is far more tenuous. He believes he’ll have a chance to catch me again, a chance to break me again, and if my encounters with the Children of Enoch keep sliding toward disastrous, he might just be right.

  I pick up my pace as I near the door and motion for Foley to hurry outside. I don’t want to be in this building anymore, DSI office or not. The hostility steaming up from the agents behind me is so thick that it’s sticking in my throat, choking off my air, and my conflicting emotions are roiling in my stomach so violently that I’m on the verge of throwing up.

  Yesterday, this was all so simple. I was on DSI’s side, and my enemies were the people who threatened my city. But this isn’t my city, and this isn’t my DSI, and even if it was, I’m not part of DSI at all anymore. So who are my allies, and whose ally am I?

  Suddenly, I feel like I’m standing on the precipice of a deep, dark identity crisis. A wave of vertigo nearly sends me to the ground. By some miracle, I manage to hold myself together until I make it to the line of BMWs parked outside the entrance to the building.

  At this point, Annette notices my distress. She quickly bundles me into the back of one of the cars and slams the door shut before any of the DSI agents in the parking lot can get a good look at my face. I find myself sitting next to Foley again, an echo of this morning, only this time Annette’s in the driver’s seat and Lucian is nowhere to be found.

  “Where’s Lucian?” I choke out, using lungs that don’t want to inhale.

  Foley frowns. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I just…I…” I plant my face in my hands. “Sorry.”

  A soothing hand lands on my shoulder, and Foley says softly, “Anxiety?”

  I grunt out a confirmation, and start pulling techniques from the bundle of therapy tools I’ve collected over the past couple years. I get control of my breathing, slow and steady so I don’t hyperventilate. I stop fighting against the flow of my racing thoughts, and in so doing, prevent a mental dam from shoring up the pressure and making the whole attack that much worse.

  I let the anxiety run its course over the next few minutes, let the smooth movement of the car lull me closer to a state of relaxation, as Annette ferries me away from the DSI Moscow office.

  Foley doesn’t bother me the whole time I’m coming down from the attack. He sits patiently and waits until I’m ready to talk. Even though I can tell from his constant fidgeting that he’s desperate to ask me a hundred questions.

  He knows what it’s like to be overwhelmed by the weight of life’s problems. What I’m experiencing right now is a drop in the bucket to the kind of shit he’s been wading through these past few weeks. And that blankets me in guilt, the fact he feels the need to delay important actions for my sake, when his problems are far worse than my own.

  I swallow what remains of my anxiety and say, “Thanks for the save.”

  Foley gives me a faint smile. “You say that now, but…”

  “But what?”

  “Cal, I like you, but I can’t make egregious exceptions for you.” Foley reaches into a briefcase on the floor between his feet and tugs out a red plastic folder, which he holds out to me.

  I accept the folder and thumb it open. Inside is an official-looking document written in Romanian, a language I don’t speak. But my name is printed plainly several times throughout the paragraphs. At the bottom of the page is Foley’s signature, a perfect forgery of my own, and the notarized seal of House Tepes. The date at the top of the document claims it was created months ago, around the beginning of my lengthy medical leave in the wake of Bollinger mutilating my hand.

  “Foley,” I say with a tone of warning, “is this a backdated employment agreement claiming I’ve been a Tepes intelligence operative for several months?”

  “An intelligence operative?” Foley snorts. “Not sure you’d be a good fit for that job, Cal.”

  “Foley.”

  “But it is a document claiming that you’ve been an agent of my house since that date. And from this point on, you will use the document, when necessary, as proof that you are in the employ of my house as a consultant who serves in a ‘critical advisory role’ to Lord Tepes himself. As someone serving a vampire house in an official political capacity, you have all the diplomatic protections as specified in the current treaties and other agreements between the Vampire Federation, the ICM, the Lycanthrope Republic, and the regular human governments via DSI.”

  “Oh.” I glance from the paper to Foley and back again. “Can you get away with lying about something like that?”

  “The only thing I’m lying about is your start date. The rest is true.”

  “Um, no offense, but I don’t actually work for you.”

  Foley stares me down with those crimson eyes. “You do now.”

  I open my mouth to contradict him, but he holds up a single commanding finger, an order to shut the hell up and listen to what Lord Tepes, not Foley Banks, has to say on the matter.

  “Lone wolves don’t last long in politics, Cal,” he says. “No matter how strong they are, no matter how fast they run, no matter how smart they think, lone wolves always fall in the end because they simply don’t possess enough stamina to stay ahead of a pursuing pack in perpetuity. And with no one guaranteed to support their views, their measures, their morals, no matter how ‘right’ they may be, lone wolves also hold little sway in the political field even while they are alive and kicking.�
�

  He sighs. “When Targus burned that binding oath onto your arm, he took a lot more from you than just a job. He took away the umbrella that DSI held over your head to keep the rain from drowning you during the fallout of every clash of ideology between the various supernatural political entities with which DSI has been involved for the duration of your employment there. During many of those clashes, I have been informed, you made a considerable number of personal enemies, and also evoked interest from people whose interest you really don’t want.”

  I swallow thickly. “I know that, all of that.”

  “Then you should understand why I did this.” He taps the edge of the folder. “You saved my life, and my house, and possibly the entire Vampire Federation. Therefore, it’s only fair that I save you in return, even if I have to save you from situations that partly arise from your own naïveté. The short of it is that you can’t keep involving yourself in situations that revolve around supernatural political entities, including DSI, if you aren’t yourself formally aligned with at least one of those entities. Unless you want to end up dead or disappeared.”

  “And you think the vampires are my best option?” I ask.

  Foley purses his lips. “Well, as far as I can tell, your other options are the ICM, who just tried to assassinate a two-year-old girl, the Wolves, who hate you because you ‘let’ Vincent Wallace get killed by Delos, or the faeries, who work in mysterious ways for mysterious ends, most of which have historically been detrimental to anyone who is not themselves a faerie.”

  I slump against the seat. “Okay, you have a point.”

  He coaxes me to let go of the folder and sets it on the cushion between us. “Look, I understand your apprehension. You haven’t known me very long, and as a bloodsucking creature of the night, I don’t exactly scream ‘trustworthy.’ But I promise you, I promise, that I won’t use this arrangement to hurt you in any way. I won’t boss you around like some low-level employee. I won’t embroil you in vampire-specific issues and risk your well-being for something that doesn’t concern you. I won’t ask you to do anything that I know goes against your morals. And if you have an objection to something I request of you, or anything I do, I won’t get mad if you voice your opinion.”

  He pats the folder. “This isn’t a prison sentence. It’s protection for both of us. When the right conditions are present, I can use your employment status to extricate you from delicate situations, like the one we just came from. And if people question my use of your counsel or assistance in supernatural matters, I can throw your employment agreement around like a weight to prove that your presence is both acceptable and relevant. Pulling you under the Tepes umbrella gives you a great deal of political leverage, and gives me the use of your skills in matters that threaten not only the Federation but the world at large. Like this current business with the Children of Enoch.”

  “Well,” I breathe out, “you drive a hard bargain, don’t you?”

  The words are lighthearted, but the emotions behind them are not. I’m both impressed and disturbed at the thought process that went into Foley’s reasoning. Because it exhibits a great many strengths I didn’t know he possessed. Up until this moment, I had Foley pegged as book smart to the nth degree but so far out of his depth politically that it would take him ages to catch up to his older social peers.

  He’s just proven, however, that he’s capable of strategizing in the same multifaceted manner most veteran politicians use to get what they want. He’s tangled me up in a clever web of lies that will allow him to use me in his house’s favor while simultaneously giving me enough leeway in how I act to satisfy my own goals and ambitions.

  If I didn’t know for certain that Foley had a good heart, I would call him a crafty bitch. As it is, I can tell that he tried his best to make this “deal” favorable for me. He attempted to balance the urgent needs of his house, and the Federation, with the debts he feels he owes me for my help after the Knight coup.

  While being essentially drafted into a vampire’s service leaves a bad taste in my mouth, I can’t complain. Because Foley is right. Without his protection, anyone can attack me in any way at any time, and justify it using any excuse.

  As a free agent of substantial magic strength, I am viewed as a potential threat to everyone.

  Swallowing the tatters of my pride, I offer my hand to Foley. “Fine. I’ll play your game. But if I’m going to formally work for you, I better get paid.”

  Foley stifles a grin and takes my hand, giving me a solid shake. “Your monthly salary is listed in your employment agreement.” He opens the folder again and points to a number near the bottom of the page.

  I stare at the number for a long moment. “Is that decimal in the wrong place?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Gee, pal, why didn’t you show me that earlier? I would’ve said yes a lot faster.”

  “That was going to be my trump card,” he says, chuckling, “if you decided to be stubborn.”

  “Did you expect me to be stubborn?”

  He gives me a pointed look. “It’s you, Cal.”

  “Hey now, there’s no need—”

  Annette, who hasn’t said a word since we started moving, clears her throat.

  Foley perks up and peers through the windshield. “Oh, we’re almost there.”

  “Are we heading back to the Hyatt?” I ask.

  “Yes.” His brief burst of mirth fades to sadness. “And we have a problem waiting there.”

  “What problem?”

  Foley wrings his hands. “Luc.”

  “Is he still injured?”

  “He is.” Foley’s voice cracks, and in a flash, the budding politician devolves once more into the fragile young noble. “And he’s not healing, Cal. He’s not healing at all.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  My state of disarray hidden by another one of Foley’s spare coats, I follow Annette and Foley into the Hyatt lobby elevator, and we head up to the presidential suite once again. None of us speak during the ride. Foley fidgets, worried that Lucian’s condition has worsened since he left. Annette paints a picture of stoicism on her face broken only by the tension in her shoulders. And I lean against the wall of the elevator, my fatigue growing stronger for each second I’m on my feet.

  I’ve been going nonstop since this morning. Sooner rather than later, I’m going to run out of steam. But I force myself to move when the elevator doors slide open, determined to at least help Foley with the Lucian problem before I fall out on the floor.

  The suite door is once again guarded by the men in black, who went upstairs ahead of us to make sure there were no threats lying in wait. The redheaded woman is somewhere behind us, probably prowling around the lobby to ensure we weren’t followed here by unsavory characters.

  If I was in Foley’s place, I’d feel suffocated by his house staff’s extreme level of protectiveness. But really, I can’t fault them for it. Not after the Knight coup nearly toppled the house. Not after Lizzie Banks gutted her own brother and sent him fleeing halfway around the world—to the safety of a Crow’s apartment.

  These people, his own agents, sworn to serve his house, weren’t able to save him then. So now they’re doing their best to make up for that failure. I’d be an ass if I didn’t respect that.

  One of the suits opens the door for us, and I give him a respectful nod as I enter the suite.

  The smell hits me first. That unmistakable scent of rot. It permeates the suite from ceiling to floor, walls to windows, hanging in the air so thickly that I swear I can feel the particulates of putrid flesh sticking to my face and neck.

  Nausea rolls through my gut, not because of the smell itself—I’ve smelled many corpses in various states of decay in my time as a cop and as a DSI detective—but because I know the smell belongs to a body that isn’t yet dead. I can only imagine the misery that Lucian is experiencing right now, with his body stuck in such a horrific state.

  No one deserves to be alive while decomposing. No
t even killers.

  Foley makes a beeline for one of the bedrooms. The doorway is surrounded by a crowd of gawking vampires who are whispering words of dismay in a variety of languages. One by one, they notice their lord’s approach, and their whispers die out in a wave as the group parts down the middle to allow Foley to enter the room. I half expect Foley to hesitate on the threshold, but he doesn’t. He marches in with his head held high even though he looks ready to cry.

  Annette is hot on Foley’s heels, her fists clenching in anticipation of once more witnessing what’s left of Lucian Ardelean. I’m about as enthused as she is at the prospect, but I trail her into the room anyway. Because I need to see the end results of what the cloaked man did to Lucian on nothing more than a whim. I need to know how pissed I should be at that man, with his self-assured air and his heartless demeanor and his pet djinn wrapped in poisonous packaging.

  The answer, it turns out, is “enraged.”

  Lucian looks dead. He lies motionless atop a bundle of ruined white towels, the fabric stained with thick smears of red and brown sludge. He’s nude, except for a towel draped over his genitals for modesty and a wet washcloth laid over his face. Every inch of his skin from his hips to his forehead has been reduced to peeling, half-dissolved tissue, some of it red, some of it black, some of it brown, all of it leaking fluids. His hair has fallen out in clumps, and it litters the pillow underneath his head, along with bloody bits of his scalp. Each breath he takes passes through shriveled nostrils or melted lips, and his lungs sound like they’re barely working.

  The vampire tending to Lucian, who I assume has medical training, is checking his breathing with a stethoscope when Foley, Annette, and I shuffle up to the bedside. As she pulls the stethoscope from his chest, strips of Lucian’s skin come off with it. The woman sighs and grabs a wet wipe from a bottle someone set on the nightstand. As she cleans off the end of her stethoscope, she says to no one in particular, “He’s still not getting any better. But he’s not getting any worse either.”