by Debra Dunbar
He’d called me back so soon after sunset that I wasn’t sure he’d even fed yet. I knew he probably had a million things to do, but he’d arrived right about the same time as our food delivery and immediately sat down to discuss the situation.
Mom lifted an eyebrow. “No offense, but if the killers were part of your family, I’m pretty sure you’d work to protect them, given the decimation your Balaj just suffered this past month and the challenges you’re facing in trying to hold your territory.”
“I completely understand your skepticism.” Dario reached into his back pocket and pulled one of those foldable maps that people used to get at the gas station before everyone had cell phones and GPS in their cars. He moved aside the food containers under Fulk’s watchful eye, and spread the map out. “Aria was with me and two of my family last night as we investigated this man’s murder. At the time, none of us knew he was a Templar. Where I agree that it could be possible for a member of my family to take advantage of the situation and feed beyond what is safe, none of us would be so foolish as to murder a Templar—especially now. And we would certainly not be partnering with a mage when we have Aria willing to assist and protect us.”
Mom eyed the map. “Given what I’ve found out today as well as what Aria has discovered, I’m less inclined to think any of your Balaj was involved, but I still need you to be aware of what will happen should that be the case.”
“Understood.” Dario pointed to sections of the map. “Here are the areas where we’ve been dealing with incursions from rogue vampires over the last month.”
Mom and I both leaned forward, noting the areas outlined in blue, mostly to the north and west of the city.
“And here are the areas where, based on recent information, we believe this group is hunting.” He pointed to a section outlined in red. “They’re organized and working under leadership, but they are not part of our Balaj. From what our allies have gathered, they’re a mercenary group out of Virginia—a splinter faction of a Balaj in Richmond.”
“How large do you think this faction is?” Mom asked.
“We’re guessing twenty to thirty.”
I sucked in a breath. That was the same size or slightly larger than Dario’s family, which meant there was about to be a serious fight for the Baltimore territory—a fight that Dario might not win.
“And they’re smack in the middle of your territory,” my mother mused.
Dario grimaced. “Yes, they are. We have yet to find out who hired them, and for what purpose. We also don’t know if they have plans to challenge us for the Baltimore territory or not. Normally I’d say no, but we’re in a vulnerable position right now, and these mercenaries might decide to make a play for the city once their job is done—that is, if the city isn’t part of their pay.”
“I checked this area today.” Mom pointed to the map. “There’s a building that may or may not be one of their bases of operations. There are no magical traps, and no vampires were bedded down at the time I was there, but residents have seen them come and go.”
Dario frowned. “This could be their hunting territory and they’re using the building for that purpose. If they’re using the addict population as a food source, then they’d want to take them somewhere to feed and for the human to shoot up afterward.”
“That makes sense. We found that broken vial of heroin in the garage,” I added.
“But why be so stealthy?” Mom asked. “If your Balaj is stretched so thin, they could feed on whomever they wanted. Instead they’re basically paying off their prey with drugs for their silence. If they hadn’t killed Knight D’Angelo and left his body on the street with clear signs of vampire predation on him, then we would never have known they were here.”
“Clearly Knight D’Angelo knew they were here and was trying to stop them,” I said. “I think they meant for his body to point to Dario’s family and leave them undiscovered.”
Dario nodded. “Whoever is paying them wouldn’t want to bring attention to their activities. I’m sure they felt the Order would target my Balaj, and kill two birds with one stone. We’ve been so busy dealing with rogues to the north, that we wouldn’t have realized the Templars had targeted us until too late. And after wiping us out, you would have gone home, leaving them to operate without any real chance of detection.”
And that’s exactly what might have happened if I hadn’t fallen over Melbourne Cassidy’s body while jogging, if Janice hadn’t gotten those morgue videos, if Detective Tremelay hadn’t gone and checked for similar crimes, and if the Enforcer the Elders sent hadn’t been my mother.
Mom tapped a finger against her lips. “We still don’t know what Marblehead or royal blood has to do with any of this, but clearly a mage was involved in Knight D’Angelo’s death as well as this group of vampires. My job is clear—I just wish I knew if I was going to be facing a golem or rescuing a prince, or what.”
“How about the artifact angle?” I asked. “You said it was possible Knight D’Angelo was here to collect an artifact. Perhaps Marblehead refers to that? And ‘royal blood’ as well?”
We both looked at Dario.
“You took the only artifact we had,” he told me. “I’m not aware of any others in the city.”
“Me either.” I turned to my mother. “Do you think if you called one of the Elders and put some pressure on them, they’d tell you exactly what the heck Bernard D’Angelo was doing in Baltimore?”
She shook her head. “I wish. You know how they are. They said it’s need to know and that I didn’t need to know. The Elders and Knight D’Angelo were the only ones aware of his mission. In the meantime, I’m going to nose around this area where the vampire faction may be holed up and see if I can find out what’s going on.”
I glanced outside at the street. It was dark tonight, not even the light of the moon to help the dim streetlights out. A perfect night to hunt—for both vampires and Templars.
“I can send a few of my family to accompany you,” Dario offered.
Mom shook her head. “No. I don’t want to spook them. If they smell your vampires, they’ll go underground and I’ll never find them.”
“Or they’ll all band together and jump the two of us,” I added. Mom was more than capable of taking out a handful of vampires on her own, but this was my city and I was determined to go with her tonight.
Thankfully it wasn’t Dario’s family we’d be hunting—at least not tonight.
Chapter 20
“I want at least one vampire with you,” Dario said. I was pretty sure the unsaid implication was that he wanted to be that vampire.
“Absolutely not,” Mom told him. “Aria and I can sense vampires, so none are likely to be sneaking up on us. Plus they’ll scent any vampire we’re with and be on guard. It would ruin any element of surprise we might have.”
“We know our territory better than either of you, and we’ve been taking out rogues for the last month. They won’t know we’re there until we’re on top of them.”
“Templars fight alone,” Mom shot back.
“This Templar doesn’t,” I drawled. “And we can only sense vampires if they’re still in the vicinity. Having one of Dario’s family along means we can scent track them. It will save us time.”
“And that way you don’t accidently lop the head off one of our family,” Dario added.
That was definitely a risk. I knew most of the Balaj but not all of them, and a vampire moving toward me at speed was pretty indistinguishable from another. I’d swing first and ask questions later in that sort of scenario, and I knew my mother would do the same.
Mom scowled. “They need to do as I say. If I want them to back up, or stay outside, or do the hokey-pokey, then it better happen.”
Dario shot me a questioning glance and I nodded. Mom was in charge of this. She was a Knight. She was the senior Templar. And she was my mother.
“Opal will go with you,” Dario announced. “I’ll have Balen and Madeline take two of the younger vampires and
work from the outside in herding any vampires toward a central place.”
Mom reluctantly nodded. “All right. But the goal is to take one alive to question. If that can’t happen, then kill them. I don’t want any alive to go back and report on what happened tonight.”
Dario pulled out his phone and sent a quick text. “Opal will be here in just a minute.”
I bit back a smile, knowing he’d probably had her waiting outside, just in case this happened. He was sending Opal with us instead of going himself because he couldn’t be in a position where he was taking orders unquestioningly from my mother. Opal was young, and she trusted me. She’d not do anything that would harm her family, but it would be no issue for her to sit or stay or do the hokey-pokey if my mother told her to.
And unlike most of the older vampires, I was pretty sure Opal knew what the hokey-pokey was.
Once Dario was done texting the others in his family, we hovered over the map. Dario let Mom indicate where she planned on searching, then he texted the areas to each of his teams, asking them all to start three to five miles from us and move inward.
Opal was waiting on my front porch stoop and was oddly silent as she followed us, climbing into the back of my mother’s enormous Mercedes sedan.
“Hi Mrs. Ainsworth,” she squeaked once we got moving. “It’s so nice to meet you. I’m a friend of your daughter’s. I helped her with some magical stuff a few months ago, and she’s really good. She didn’t burn my hair off or kill me or anything.”
Mom’s eyebrows knitted together. “That’s good to hear.”
“This is a very nice car.” Opal began pushing the buttons to open and close the windows, adjust the climate control, change the speakers and audio settings in the rear of the car. “It’s very nice.”
I choked back a laugh, feeling like when I was ten and Mom was driving a bunch of my friends to a birthday party at the duckpin bowling alley. They’d all been a bit in awe of her too—and whatever luxury car she’d been driving at the time.
“I’m really good at tracking,” Opal babbled on. “You’ve got no idea how stoked I am that the boss entrusted his girlfriend to me. And you too, Mrs. Ainsworth. I’ll take good care of both of you, and I’ll find these mercenary candyasses, and I’ll kick their butts. And rip their heads off.”
“You do the tracking and stay out of the way,” Mom told her. “We’ll take care of the butt kicking.”
Opal nodded enthusiastically. Her hair today was in an amazingly huge afro, her eyeliner winging out from the outer corners of her eyes. In keeping with the stealth nature of our mission, she’d put aside the psychedelic prints and bell-bottom jeans and was dressed in black leggings and a black leather corset that looked as though it had been resurrected from the days of Leonora’s reign.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll do whatever you say because you’re like the boss’ mother-in-law or something. But I need to protect you because if anything happened, the boss would have my head. Especially Aria. It’s hard for us when we care about a human. We want to lock them in our house and keep them safe and cherish them for every moment of their short lives.”
Mom sent me another worried glance.
“Don’t worry. Dario is not locking me his house like a fragile vase. We’ve discussed this. I’ve stayed over at his place once, but normally he comes to my house—a house I’m renting and completely responsible for. Dario’s not at all involved with my house or my car or my finances.”
I knew that my parents were concerned about a conflict of interest, and not just me having a vampire for a boyfriend. If he started giving me money, paying for my housing or my car, then I’d owe him. And where I was beginning to think that Dario would never take advantage of a situation like that, I knew my parents didn’t know him as well and feared I’d fall under his spell, become enthralled with him, let him take my blood and become nothing more than a shell of who I was.
Mom pulled over and parked on a residential side street. The Mercedes stuck out like a diamond in a pile of coal. Every other car on the block was at least ten years old, although they seemed to be well maintained.
We hopped out and my mother didn’t even bother to lock the car. I stared at the vehicle, imagining returning to find it gone, or stripped, and my mother perplexed about what had happened. With a quick glance at the two, I placed my hand on the car and said the words to perform a quick illusion. It wasn’t much, but it would make the car look less like Cal Ripken Jr. had pulled up into the neighborhood.
“This is the building I checked earlier today,” Mom told Opal. “There were no vampires sheltering there, but I got the impression this was a place they often brought their meals for the evening.”
Opal nodded, her eyes focusing on something in the distance as she lifted her head to scent the air. With the smooth easy stride of a predator, she circled the building as we followed.
“There are six vampires who frequent here—four as recently as last night. There were also six humans here and all of them frequently used heroin.” She turned to my mother with an embarrassed smile. “Addicts make up the majority of our blood donors. They’re willing and eager, and it’s easy for us to pay them with their drug of choice. Over time, we’ve come to enjoy the flavor heroin gives their blood. It’s like comfort food. Like mac and cheese, or mashed potatoes and gravy.”
Mom hid it well, but I could tell the idea revolted her. “Do you think you can track them?”
Opal grinned, her teeth perfectly white including a set of intimidating fangs. “I’ll do my best, Mrs. Ainsworth. If they go in different directions, is there one vampire in particular you want to track?”
I was now wondering if we should have had more than one of Dario’s family accompany us. It had never crossed my mind that the rogues wouldn’t have all gone back to wherever they stayed en masse.
“Can you tell if any of these vampires is more senior than the other? Older, or more powerful?”
Opal tilted her head, her lips pursing as she thought. “They are all very similar in age, and most are equal in power. I’ll pick two, and if the paths diverge, I’ll make a decision. We can always double back. If we move fast, we’ll have more time to search.”
“We can run,” Mom told her. “Not at your speed, but I know Aria is fit and I’m able to maintain a quick pace for three or four hours.”
Opal took off and we jogged after her. I’ll admit we got quite a few odd looks being two women with swords strapped to our backs running after a lanky young woman with an afro dressed all in black, but from the lack of patrol cars descending on us no one must have bothered calling the police.
After an hour of crisscrossing back and forth for endless blocks, we slowed. Opal took out her phone and sent a few texts as she walked. “Balen’s group found three vampires to the west that they’re herding toward us. None of the others have sensed any vampires in their areas, so they’re spreading out a bit.”
“Where and when can we expect to intersect with these vampires being sent our way?” Mom asked.
“Half an hour. I’m not exactly sure where they’re going to be here, but I’ll get us within a few blocks.”
Opal led us six blocks down and we stood waiting as she texted, getting updates from Balen about the vampires coming our way.
“They’ve split up. One is coming right for us down this street here. Balen and his team are taking the other two.”
Opal pocketed the phone and we each took a position. When our quarry appeared, he didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry. The vampire looked to be in his twenties, although from the static feel of his energy, I knew he was far older. He was dressed in dark pants and a white button-down shirt with a dark jacket. His blond hair was long and straight, tied at the neck in a low ponytail. He tensed when he drew even with us, his head swiveling to look right at Opal.
That’s when he bolted.
Opal shot past us, cutting him off at the next street while Mom and I circled around. He was less afraid of us than Opal, and
fell into the trap. Mom swung her sword just as he saw the weapon and dropped. With a quick reverse, my mother’s sword sliced along his calf, cutting through the dark pants and skin, leaving a line of dark blood.
The vampire shrieked in pain, but jumped up and away from my mother, keeping an eye on the pair of us as he quickly glanced behind for options.
Opal appeared behind me, nodding for us to move forward. I went left and Mom went right, each of us carefully blocking the vampire’s escape and slowly edging him down the street. He darted back and forth, trying to get find an opening. Opal dashed around with a blur of speed, making sure he didn’t take any of the side streets. As we headed toward a line of huge buildings, she fell in behind us.
We maneuvered the vampire across Route 40 and between two huge buildings that backed up to a ten-foot brick wall. He slowed his frantic attempts at escape, and eyed us, tense and ready to take advantage of any opening.
“You’re trespassing,” Opal called out. “You know the penalty.”
“I’ve been hired to do a job that requires I be in the city,” he countered. “I’m no rogue. I haven’t attacked any of the local Balaj, nor killed prey. I’ve only taken what I need and left them unharmed.”
“You know protocol,” Opal countered. “You never presented yourself to the Balaj. You never requested permission to enter the city.”
The vampire eyed my mother and me. “And your Balaj is so weak that you need to rely on humans with magical weaponry to help?”
“Actually, the Balaj is helping us,” Mom chimed in. “A Templar Knight was murdered, and I’m here to find the killer.”
The vampire’s eyes widened and he looked around, judging the height of the wall and clearly evaluating whether he’d have time to scale it before we caught him. “It wasn’t me. I had nothing to do with killing any human—Templar or not.”
Opal edged around me, putting herself closer to the wall. “Your group killed the Knight—your group of vampires, and the mage.”
