by Debra Dunbar
“Mom, it’s not Dario,” I insisted. “It’s not his Balaj. They’re too busy fighting for their territory. There are rogues from outside the city who are taking advantage of Leonora’s death. If they keep harrying the Balaj, then none of Dario’s family can be spared to turn their candidates and increase their numbers, and if the rogues band together with enough numbers, they could actually take the city and drive Dario’s Balaj out. They want these vampires out of Baltimore, and you want them dead. We can work together here. They need help, not accusation, not the Order coming down on their heads.”
She opened up the drawer and took out a pair of spoons. “I hear you, Aria. Trust me, I hear you. But time is not on our side here.”
“Mom, the local Balaj wouldn’t draw attention to themselves by killing a Templar Knight in a way that screams the murderer was a vampire, then dumping him on the street to be found. If it was Dario’s family, Knight D’Angelo’s body would never have been found.”
“True, but—ah!” Mom shrieked and threw a spoon across the room. It bounced off the wall and clattered on the floor.
I looked over at the spoon with the battered handle and slapped a hand over my mouth to smother my laugh.
“Solaria Angelique Ainsworth, why is there a man in one of your spoons?”
Now, I laughed. “Never mind, Mom. He’s a mage who’s interested in mentoring me.”
“And why wouldn’t he come to your house like a normal person? Why use a spoon as some kind of weird mage FaceTime?”
“Because he’s in jail. Now, as I was saying, it’s not Dario’s Balaj. They’d never risk themselves like that. They know the repercussions of killing a Templar.”
Mom picked up the spoon and shoved it in an upper cabinet before getting out another, non-magical, one. “Your Dario is a new Master, trying to gain control over a decimated family group,” Mom said. “Maybe he wouldn’t know if a subset of his family were doing things that might have put them at direct odds with what Knight D’Angelo was doing.”
I pulled the half-filled pot from the coffee maker and filled our mugs before putting it back. “There aren’t that many left in the Balaj, and they’re all loyal to Dario. No one would do this.”
Mom waited for me to sit, then did the same. “I know you don’t believe this, but vampires kill and they’re loyal only to themselves. Their hunger drives them and few have enough control to restrain themselves when feeding. This would be the perfect opportunity for a group of your boyfriend’s family to do whatever they wanted knowing there would be little chance of repercussions.”
“That’s not true. Vampires are very loyal to their family, and they can restrain themselves,” I argued as I sipped my coffee. “I’ve met a lot of vampires in the last few months. The ones that can’t manage to control themselves are put down. I’ve seen it.”
“But if a new Master has his hands full securing his territory and managing the transition he may not be able to enforce that. Especially if they’re down on numbers. Killing those who drain their victims, might not be optimal if he’s trying to fend off incursions on his territory and he needs the numbers to help him fight any attempts to take their territory.”
I clenched my jaw. “You’re saying Dario knows about this, that he knows about it and has not only lied to me, but he led me on an orchestrated fake-investigation last night?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe he doesn’t know. Either way, I’ve been sent to deliver justice.”
I swallowed hard, realizing I was going to have to work fast and hard to make sure Mom and I found the real killers, and that any red herrings pointing toward Dario’s Balaj weren’t taken seriously.
But in spite of my outward confidence that Dario and his family weren’t involved in these deaths, there was a tiny thread of doubt worrying away inside me. I knew he’d kept things from me in the past. I knew he tried to keep the unseemly side of vampire life hidden from my eyes. Had he lied? He’d do anything to keep his family safe, and that might mean he’d need to shield the killers—and that he’d need to make sure I didn’t find out any of his family were responsible.
If it were a member of Dario’s family, then that vampire would need to be brought to justice. And then I’d need to deal with how that impacted my relationship with Dario later. In the meantime, I’d work to find the killers no matter if they were human, vampire, or something else.
“I’ll help,” I told Mom. “Let’s sit down and go over what I’ve got so far, then we can talk to Dario tonight. If it’s any of his family…well, we’ll deal with that when we find out who’s behind the killings.”
“Solaria.” Mom reached out and took my arm. “I’ll definitely listen and take all the evidence into account, but I need you to know that I’ve been sent here by the Elders with a very specific mandate. I’m supposed to wipe out all the vampires in Baltimore.”
I stared at her. “You mean the ones responsible for Bernard D’Angelo’s death?”
“With vampires, it’s never just a few, it’s a culture of predation. I’m supposed to kill all involved, even if they are only affiliated with the one responsible for Knight D’Angelo’s death.”
I yanked my arm out of her grasp. “That’s not justice, it’s murder.”
“They’re not human, these creatures. They prey upon humans. It’s no different than putting down a pack of rabid animals.”
I glared at her. “And you really think that?”
I knew my mother wasn’t the sort of person who just went around killing without a reason, but she’d had a lifetime of taking out all sorts of supernatural creatures that were a threat to humanity. Vampires occupied a gray area as far as she was concerned. She wouldn’t lose sleep over a world where vampires had been eradicated, but she didn’t make it her mission to do the eradicating.
Basically if the order told her to murder a bunch of puppies, she’d refuse, but vampires? It was no different than killing wraiths or Chupacabra in her mind.
She sighed. “I came here to let you know. Maybe your boyfriend should leave the city for a while.”
It took me a few seconds to get my anger under control. This was a professional courtesy call—so I could get Dario out of town while she wiped out his family.
“He’s not going to leave his territory, nor his family. He’s in charge of the Balaj now. And territory is everything to vampires.”
Mom sighed. “I expected you to say that. I’ll work with you, Solaria. We’ll try to find the actual killer and hope it’s not someone in your boyfriend’s family. Then I’ll take out the killer and his colleagues, but we don’t have much time here.”
Unless Mom knew where the vampires were or where to find them, she could be here a long time—a very long time. They could sense us just as we could sense them, and vampires, Dario as the exception, tended to stay out of our way.
“I’ve got a few other things going on in town that I need you to know about,” I told her. “There’s a murder that my detective friend thinks is a blood-for-money killing. I don’t think I’ll be called on to help with that, but I might. I’ve got a meeting later this morning with Russell about…some information. Then Dario’s fighting to keep his territory and his family safe, and I’m helping him with that.”
Mom shook her head and smirked. “Solaria, I never thought that you’d be dealing with all of this when you refused to take your Oath and went off in a snit to make coffee drinks and live in poverty in downtown Baltimore.”
I sighed. “Me either.”
We both looked at the bottle of Fireball. Mom reached out and picked up the bottle, unscrewing the cap and taking a sniff. I pushed the two shot glasses over to her. Ignoring them she took a sip out of the bottle and passed it to me.
I did the same. “I’m going to text Dario so when he awakens for the night he knows I’ve got company and that we need to talk. I’ll have him meet us here to go over everything.”
Mom nodded and reached for the bottle. “Do you mind if I stay here? I’d rather
shack up on your couch or put a bed roll on the floor in a spare room than deal with life on the streets.”
I nearly choked on my sip of coffee. “Streets? Doesn’t the Order shell out for hotel costs?”
She took another brief sip of the Fireball and passed the bottle back to me, picking up her mug of coffee. “Yes, but this isn’t a vacation, it’s an assignment. I’ll be tracking when I’m not sleeping. I need to be somewhere more central than where the ritzy hotels are, and I need to be able to adjust my overnight space depending on where my hunt leads me.”
I eyed the booze, then set the bottle down on the table, knowing I needed the caffeine more this morning. “You’re seriously going to go on a vampire hunting spree in the city like a Van Helsing or something? Lurk in dark alleys with a handful of stakes and your sword? Lure them in with the promise of blood and sex only to stake them? How will you know when you get them all? Do the Elders have stats on how many are in the city? You do know that if you wipe out Dario’s Balaj, another group will swoop in to take the territory.”
“I don’t want to wipe out your boyfriend and his family, I just want to find who killed Bernard D’Angelo and deliver justice. The Elders aren’t asking me to take on every vampire in the Northeast, just the group who murdered Bernard,” she assured me. “If that’s someone in Dario’s Balaj, then I think you need to advise him to get out of the way. If that’s another vampire family, then we need to find them.”
I looked down at my mug of coffee. This was insane. It was like the Crusades all over again—kill them all and let God sort them out. Our order had been formed to deliver divine justice, to protect pilgrims on the path, to guard and protect the Temple and the holy objects therein. Things had gone horribly wrong during the Crusades and a lot of innocent people had died for what had amounted to greed. When we’d fallen from grace, some had felt it was politics and greed at play, while others believed we were being served a helping of our own divine justice. Either way, I didn’t want to see history repeat itself. The Elders might not be motivated by greed, but either way, the actions were the same. We Templars shouldn’t be exterminating an entire group, just because one may or may not be a murderer.
“What if it’s someone trying to pin D’Angelo’s death, on the Balaj? This is insane, Mom. If a human in Glen Burnie killed a Templar, would you be killing the entire human population there? No. You’d be investigating, finding the person or persons responsible and bringing them to justice.”
“Aria, this isn’t a random killing.” Mom leaned forward. “Knight D’Angelo wasn’t a drunk wandering the streets who got drained by a hungry vampire. He was a skilled Templar, and he was murdered on purpose.”
“It would be a lot easier to find his killer if we knew motive, which is most likely tied to whatever he was doing in the city. If we knew what his mission was, then we might have a clue who killed him and why,” I muttered.
“I know.” Mom eyed the Fireball bottle. “But the Elders haven’t seen fit to give me that information. I figured that you knew this city better than any of the other Templars, and you’d most likely have an idea why he would have been here. He arrived two weeks ago.”
I held up my hands. “I know there’s something that the death mages were trying to hold back, something that required serious magic, but I’ve yet to figure out what that is. It could be that the Elders got a hint and sent someone here to check it out. Other than that, I don’t know. Maybe there’s an artifact here I don’t know about that he was sent to retrieve. Seriously that’s the only other thing I can think of.”
Mom pursed her lips in thought. “If it were a patron who was paying us to remove a supernatural threat, then I think you’d be aware of that threat. You’re right. It most likely was an artifact that the Elders caught wind of.”
An artifact that put a Knight at odds either with vampires or someone who was eager to blame the Knight’s death on vampires.
“In addition to meeting with Dario, I think we should probably meet with the police as well and get as much information from them on D’Angelo’s autopsy as possible,” I told her.
“That’s a good idea. I know you said you had some other commitments. When do you think we can get started?”
I looked at my phone. “I need to shower and change and be over at Russell’s at ten. I should be back around noon or one. I’ve got that broken portion of the wand we found in the garage, but I wanted to examine it later this afternoon while in the circle downstairs, just in case it’s rigged to explode or something.”
Mom grimaced. “I’m going to go over to where the body was found, look around, and check out that garage. I’ll meet you back here later in the afternoon. Please wait for me before you go examining that wand.”
Honestly I’d be grateful for her help in that one. Mom had handled a lot of artifacts over the decades. She might not perform magic beyond the Templar blessings and prayers, but she knew enough to identify a lot of spells.
I held up a hand. “I promise that I’ll wait for you to get home before doing anything with the wand. Also, Dario wakes at sunset. He’ll probably need an hour or two to feed, take care of any Balaj business and get over here. I can order pizza or Chinese delivery for dinner and we can meet here as soon as he’s available. I’ll text Tremelay and see if he has any additional information about the case he can give us, too.”
Mom’s eyes widened. “Tremelay?”
I nodded. “I know. But his family hasn’t been Templars for ten generations at least.”
She shook her head. “Just because someone didn’t take their vow, or even train, doesn’t mean they’re not a Templar. Their family pledged their lives and the lives of their future generations to the Lord. That makes him a Templar in my eyes and in the eyes of the Order.”
Just as I was still a Templar even though I’d not taken my vows. Although I couldn’t imagine Tremelay would be all that thrilled about being pledged to serve the Lord as a Templar by some ancestor hundreds of years ago, and I didn’t see how that might help our case.
“Well Templar or not, I’m glad he’s on our side,” I told her. “He’s a heck of a detective, and he’s saved my butt several times.”
Mom smiled for the first time since she’d arrived. “Good. I’ll be happy to have another Templar working with us, whether he’s a Knight or not. Go ahead and text him as well as your vampire boyfriend. Maybe the detective can also meet with us tonight if he’s available. And I think Chinese food for tonight. I’m in the mood for some Hunan Chicken and spicy tofu.”
I went to write it down and hesitated, mentally calculating what four adults could eat as well as the balance in my checking account.
“I’ll buy,” Mom added. “Actually, the Order is buying. I have an expense account, so don’t skimp on the egg rolls.”
I grinned. If the Order was buying, then I was going all out tonight. And I most definitely was not going to skimp on the egg rolls.
Chapter 15
I sat across from Russell, overly sweet tea on the table in front of me. This time I’d left Fulk at home, assuming Russell wouldn’t need the dog to communicate with Raven. He definitely wouldn’t need the dog to communicate with the other spirit I needed to speak with.
“Do you have any personal items from this Bernard D’Angelo?” Russell asked. “Often a close friend of a loved one has enough of a connection with a deceased person that I can establish a link, but since you didn’t know him, a personal item would be helpful.”
“I don’t have anything,” I confessed. “I don’t even know what he looked like. We’re both Templars, so maybe that is enough of a connection? The only other thing I’ve got is a morgue photo of his body and a close up picture of the Templar tattoo on his wrist—also from the morgue.”
The necromancer frowned thoughtfully, surveying the various tools on the table between us. “You have a similar tattoo, as I recall.”
I pulled back the sleeve of my sweatshirt to reveal that mark. “It’s blessed as it’s i
nked, so it’s not just a regular tattoo. All Templars have one.”
“May I?” He reached out to touch that tattoo at my nod, shuddering as his fingers made contact with my skin. “That might work. Now to decide how to best communicate with this Knight.”
“I really need to ask him some questions.”
Russell sighed, pulling the Ouija board front and center. “I don’t know how clear any responses are going to be. I’m not even sure I’ll be able to contact him or not. You’ve never met him. We don’t have anything personal of his that might link to his spirit through the veil. If I can manage a connection using your tattoo, then I’ll see what happens.”
He arranged the planchette on the board, dimmed the lights and drew the drapes, then walked around the room, lighting candles. I placed my hands palms-up on the table and waited as he sat. Putting one hand on my Templar tattoo, and the other flat on the table, Russell closed his eyes and began to hum.
The air grew thick and warm. The candles flickered. The planchette quivered an inch to the left.
“Bernard D’Angelo, Knight Templar, I reach out to you across the veil and ask that you answer us.”
We waited. I stared at the planchette, willing it to move, but nothing happened.
“Bernard D’Angelo, Knight Templar, we call to you. A sister Templar needs help in finding your murderers and bringing them to justice. I call to you through the bond of your mark.”
I felt the tattoo on my wrist tingle and warm. The planchette shuddered and slowly moved, letter by letter to spell out a response.
BLOOD.
I waited, but the planchette remained still. Blood. I assumed the man was telling me that vampires had killed him by drinking his blood.
“Knight D’Angelo, I am Solaria Ainsworth. We know you were killed by vampires. We’re trying to track them down and deliver justice. What were you in Baltimore seeking?”
