The Halfblood's Hoard (Halfblood Legacy Book 1)

by Devin Hanson

  I threw a look at Dimitri and he nodded back. Dimitri knew what I could do. Still, I was a long way from impressing him with my strength. The big marid could probably tie me in knots if he wanted to.

  “You show your inexperience. Alexandra is more than qualified to join the Priory, if she chose to. She assaulted Raveth on his own ground and killed his marid.”

  This time, I looked at Dimitri in shock. Raveth’s marid was dead? “I what?”

  Dimitri shrugged. “He died in the hospital last night from a cerebral hemorrhage. He never regained consciousness after the beating you gave him.”

  Eric was staring at me and I swallowed back the bile rising in my throat. I had killed someone? I hadn’t meant to do that. I had just been trying to break free of the marid’s hold on my throat.

  “Well.” Eric seemed to be struggling with Dimitri’s revelation as much as I was. “At least we won’t have to worry about him, then.”

  I found myself glaring at Eric. How could he be so callous? “So, what do you do besides drive?” I asked him scathingly.

  “I shoot things.” He made a gun with his fingers and mimed shooting me. “Bang.”

  “He is quite good, too,” Dimitri said.

  Eric grinned at me. “I won the Tennessee State three-gun competition last year.”

  I looked at him blankly. “I don’t know what that is.”

  Some of the ego faded from Eric’s expression. “It means I’m good. Better than anyone you’ve met, probably.”

  I was skeptical. Eric didn’t look like a badass marksman. He looked like a college kid who stayed on the computer more than was good for him.

  “I’m getting hungry,” Dimitri rumbled.

  “Then go get something to eat,” Eric said sourly and turned back to his phone.

  “I need to stay here to guard the circle,” Dimitri shook his head. “And I am not made up for the public.”

  “How about pizza?” I asked, trying to make it sound cheerful. My stomach felt like it was filled with lead. Just the thought of food made my guts cramp.

  “Sure, whatever.” Eric didn’t bother looking up.

  “What are you looking at, that’s so damn interesting?” Dimitri asked.

  “Twitter is blowing up with a new hashtag,” Eric grumbled. “Some promoter is promising the sexiest pictures ever taken. Half think it’s going to be another bust like when that Kardashian tried to break the internet, half are looking at the credentials of the people who claim to have seen the images and believe.”

  “Half of what?” I asked. I felt a little numb and light headed. On top of processing the shock of learning I had killed someone, this new revelation was more than I wanted to hear. I mean, I had intended for the photos I had taken with Francois to be wildly popular, I just didn’t think I’d be sitting across from Eric when he got to see me naked.

  “Everyone,” Eric blanked the screen on his phone and tossed it onto the table. “The whole damn internet is arguing about it.”

  “Really?”

  “Some of the major news networks are even picking up the story. They’re arguing if Twitter is the right venue for displaying pornography. Fox thinks that Twitter should block the tweets when they come out, CNN is arguing that as long as it’s marked mature, there’s no violation of the terms of service.”

  “What do you think?” Dimitri asked after a few seconds. I couldn’t think of anything to say. My mind seemed frozen.

  “As long as I get to see some naked hot chick, I could give a shit,” Eric leered.

  I swallowed. “Uh. What kind of pizza do you guys want?”

  I took their orders and left the room so I could get some reception on my phone. And because I couldn’t look at Eric, knowing he would be lusting after the photos Francois had taken. My brilliant idea of inspiring lust through social media was having immediate negative consequences. I had hoped for a few weeks or months before someone I knew recognized me. I felt greasy and defiled, and Francois hadn’t even released them yet.

  I stepped outside into the bright sunlight and the deafening din of the industrial shredder. Lunch break was over and the workers were back at turning cars into confetti. I abandoned the idea of calling for pizza and used my phone to order online instead. Dimitri wanted an extra-large meat-lovers pizza, Eric wanted a small thin-crust pizza with pineapple and olives with feta cheese, and I decided to keep it light and have a Caesar salad.

  Despite the painfully loud noise, I stayed out on the loading dock until the delivery car arrived, and only then went back into the garage, carrying the food. Eric was back to browsing Twitter again and he barely looked up when I dropped his travesty of a pizza off in front of him.

  Dimitri was more appreciative, and offered me a smile and a slice. “Ignore Eric,” he rumbled quietly. “He is young, and feels rejection strongly.”

  “You’d think he’d have plenty of practice by now,” I grumbled. My decision to stay away from eating pizza was rapidly dissolving as the aromas rose from Dimitri’s box. “Oh, all right. One slice. While we’re on the subject, I haven’t been able to figure out why you had Eric stalking me.”

  He shrugged, folded up a slice of pizza and made it disappear in four quick bites. “We didn’t know what Ethan’s interest in you was,” Dimitri spoke around his mouthful, “so Elaida had Eric pose as an Uber driver to keep an eye on you.”

  “She was jealous?” I grinned, imagining Elaida fuming and sending her minions on useless errands.

  Dimitri glanced at me sideways and swallowed his mouthful. “You would not hear such a thing from me.”

  “So, Eric, he’s human, isn’t he? Where did you find him?”

  “The Catholic Church might no longer directly support us, but whenever someone finds themselves involved in our side of the world and goes to the church for help, sometimes they guide them in our direction.”

  “And Eric?”

  “Saw a hinn while hunting and shot her.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Damn. That must have been a rude awakening.”

  Dimitri nodded. “We were in the States looking into why the vampires were growing excited and recruited him about five months ago. He is still learning what it is to be a Prior. How about yourself? How did you learn of… yourself? And us?”

  “My father taught me. As far as I know, he was just human, though he must have suspected something was different about me.” After the slice of pizza, my salad was pretty bland, but I did my best to enjoy it. The plastic fork they had included with the salad didn’t have tines sturdy enough to penetrate the croutons, and I ended up having to scoop them like I was using a spoon.

  “Strange, isn’t it, that a human would know?” Dimitri mused. “There aren’t many humans who are aware of us.”

  I crunched on a crouton thoughtfully. Dimitri was right. I had always just accepted the knowledge my father had passed on to me. When you’re five years old, being raised by a single father, you tend to take their word as gospel. What had he been that had given him knowledge of the supernatural? It had never occurred to me to question anything from him. “Hmm. I suppose it is strange.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Dimitri shrugged. “No. I am just making conversation.”

  “Yeah. Sorry.” I sighed. “His name was Nils Halsin. He died in a car accident when I was five.”

  “It is hard, losing a parent,” Dimitri nodded.

  “And what about you?” I asked. I didn’t want to talk about my father. “When did you join the Priory?”

  “Long ago,” Dimitri said shortly.

  Looks like I wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to talk about their past. “All right. Well, tell me this then. Have you ever done anything like what we’re doing today? Teleporting somewhere, stealing something and getting out again?”

  “Normally we aren’t stealing, but I have used magic to travel a few times before. It is a time-consuming process and it is usually easier to simply go in throug
h the front door.”

  “Heh. What do you do if not steal?”

  “Kill.”

  Gulp. Right. That put an end to the conversation, and I picked at my salad while Dimitri ate the rest of his extra-large pizza slice by slice. It was impressive watching him pack it away, but eventually the silence became awkward and I excused myself.

  I passed the time wandering around the circle painted on the floor and admiring the artistry and precision that had gone into it. I took care not to get close to the paint lest I smudge it on accident. Around two in the afternoon, Eric got up from where he had been slouched at the table and left. A few minutes later he returned, wheeling a pair of heavy cases, the kind used by musicians to carry large sound equipment and speakers.

  Eric had changed into mottled, dark-gray canvas clothing that looked like military surplus. I did a double-take when I saw him. Something about donning the camouflage had changed his demeanor; instead of looking like a scrawny nerd, he looked lean and competent.

  He opened one of the cases, and I saw what could only be described as a mobile armory. The other case contained body armor, and he proceeded to strap himself into layers of Kevlar and hard enamel plates. He glanced over and saw me watching.

  “We’re coming up on mission time,” he said. “If you need to prepare, now would be the time.”

  I nodded. “Uh. Okay.”

  He rolled his eyes at me. “Do you know how to use a gun?”

  “Um. No, not really.”

  Eric had been halfway through reaching for one of the pistols in the case, and he finished pulling it out after a moment’s hesitation. “Here. It’s chambered for ten-millimeter rounds. It has a stronger kick than a nine, but you should be able to handle it.”

  “I don’t know what that means.” The gun was heavy in my hand, heavier than the revolver had been back at the apartment in Silverlake.

  “It shoots bigger bullets than a normal woman’s handgun,” he said with a smirk.

  “Oh. How does it work?”

  Eric picked up a matching gun from the case and moved over to stand next to me so he could show me. “You push this button here to eject the magazine. That’s right. Now push it back in until it clicks. Good. Pull back the slide, here. You have to pull hard. Don’t be shy, you won’t break it. Good, that chambered a round. The safety is here. When it’s ready to fire, you can see the red dot.”

  I followed along with his instructions as he walked me through using the pistol. He showed me how to clear a jammed round, reload a magazine, even how to disassemble it and put it back together again. It was interesting, but I suspect he was just trying to find some way to pass the time. After the lesson petered out for lack of anything else to show me, he gave me a gun belt with a couple extra magazines, then returned to his own preparations.

  The gun belt with the pistol and extra magazines in it was heavier than I thought it would be. I was strapping it on when I felt my phone buzz. I started heading for the exit so I could get reception, and Eric called after me.

  “Wait! Don’t go outside with that on!”

  Right. I was still in Los Angeles, where someone walking around with a gun on their hip was likely to have the cops called on them. I unbuckled the belt and left it on the table. My call had gone to voicemail by the time I got outside. Thankfully, the shredder wasn’t running and it was quiet enough to talk on a phone.

  The call had come from Friday, and I called him back without checking my voicemail.

  “Alex, good. We need your help again.”

  Shit. “Hey, Sam. I’m caught up in something. What’s going on?”

  “We found another body. Same MO as the victims in their homes, but this one was in an alley behind a gas station. Right out in public.”

  Oh, that wasn’t good. “Um. That’s strange,” I dithered as I thought furiously, “wouldn’t that make it a different MO?”

  “The victim was killed in the same way. For now, the chief is calling it part of the same series of murders.”

  “Well, what do you want me to do?”

  “Come over and look at it.”

  “You want me to look at a dead guy?” I couldn’t keep the horror from my voice.

  “It isn’t pretty,” Sam admitted, “but this is fresh. Not more than an hour old.”

  “Wait, it killed in the day?”

  “Blood is still sticky,” Sam confirmed.

  “Gross.” There went my assumption that it was a vampire. I rubbed at my forehead as I thought. Maybe not, though. “Uh, check the angle of the sun. Was the alley in the shade?”

  “Why? Never mind. Yeah, the alley is on the east side of the gas station. It would have been shaded since… oh, maybe one o’clock. That’s right when forensics estimates the murder happened. They waited for the shade?”

  Well, my hypothesis wasn’t completely out of the question, then. I ignored Sam’s question. “Look around for a manhole in the alley. Sam, listen to me. If you find one, don’t go down it.”

  I heard Sam puffing as he jogged, then, “Yep. Got a manhole. Looks like a storm drain access. Probably runs straight to the LA River. There are new scratches along the rim. How did you know?”

  “It’s just a hunch. Please, Sam, don’t go down.”

  “I can’t just let this fuck go, Alex. If he’s down there, I’ll get K9 to send sniffer dogs after him. We’ll flush him out and put a stop to this now. Thanks for the tips, Alex. I hope you’re keeping track of your hours with us. So far, you’re worth every penny of your retainer.”

  He hung up and I glared at my phone. “God damn it!”

  “Trouble?” I turned and saw Elaida leaning against the door jam, her arms crossed under her breasts.

  “How long have you been standing there?”

  “Long enough to hear the end. Who were you talking to?”

  “A friend.”

  “Not good enough, Alexandra.” Elaida straightened up and her face hardened. “Who was on the line?”

  I muttered a curse. I was getting tired of the suspicion, but then I reminded myself that I was actually a plant, and was hired to betray Elaida to protect David’s wealth. “A detective. He’s investigating why my apartment was broken into, along with the fifteen or so other places. Something has been killing the residents, and it just made a fresh kill and escaped into the sewer system.”

  “This detective, is he one of us?”

  I shook my head. “He’s a straight. And he’s walking into danger that he doesn’t have a clue how to handle.”

  Elaida shrugged and dropped the tension in her back and shoulders. “It happens all the time, Alexandra. You can’t protect everyone from themselves. Come inside. We’re starting final preparations.”

  I eyed the sun now halfway to the horizon. The wrecker yard was within shouting distance of the LA River. If whatever was killing people needed shade to venture out, it wouldn’t be too long before it could go wherever it wanted.

  “Yeah. Give me a minute.”

  I called Friday back. It rang a few times then went to voicemail. I hung up and tried again, and got his voicemail again. “Fuck! Sam, listen. Once the sun starts casting long shadows, be careful.” I hung up, frustrated that I hadn’t been able to reach him directly. Just to be sure, I sent him the same message by text.

  Elaida had said to make my preparations. I sent another text, this time to Francois. The message was simple. 6pm. I set an alarm on my phone to alert me when Francois would be sending out the first of the images. I really hoped it would work. I really hoped my timing for the release would be right. What would be a better time? At 4pm to help with the hoard, or 6pm, to help with whatever came afterward?

  I shaded my eyes and took a last look at the low afternoon sun, and then I went back inside.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Frederick was back from whatever meditations he had been doing. He looked calm but tired. There was an air of hushed tension in the garage that made me hold my tongue. I strapped on Eric’s loaner pistol
and shrugged into my motorcycle jacket. Next to Eric’s modern combat armor, it was almost silly, but it was better than a t-shirt.

  Dimitri had put on armor of overlapping steel plates. I couldn’t even begin to estimate how much it must weigh. A few of the shoulder plates had to be over an inch thick. Chips, dings and scratches marred the steel, and a long parallel set of grooves on his chest armor could only have come from claws. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what had claws that could tear into plate steel like that.

  Elaida had disappeared, and joined us in the garage a few minutes later. I kind of half-expected her to show up in a chainmail bikini or something, but she only wore practical exercise clothing with sturdy boots and a doubled-up sports bra. With big tits like hers, running and jumping around would be painful without the extra support. She was wearing ergonomic wrist supports and carrying the carved skull.

  Seeing Elaida’s practical clothing made me feel a bit better. I had started to feel underdressed. Then Dimitri reached down behind the table and pulled up an enormous six-foot axe, with a long curving blade balanced by a wicked-looking spike on the other side, and a solid steel haft. I immediately went back to feeling unprepared again.

  What was I doing here? I was no combat specialist. I had a gun I barely knew how to use, a motorcycle jacket, and sarcastic wit. Hardly an intimidating arsenal.

  Dimitri walked across the garage toward the circle. I could feel every step he took through the soles of my feet. Elaida tilted her head at me to follow, and I reluctantly joined her, with Eric bringing up the rear. Stepping carefully so we didn’t smudge any of the paint, the four of us went to stand in the big circle in the middle.

  Frederick settled himself cross-legged at the top the circle, placed his hands in his lap and closed his eyes.

  “Now what?” I whispered to Elaida.

  “Now Frederick casts his spell.” She spoke quietly in reply, but didn’t whisper.

  “Okay.” I touched the pistol at my hip and took a deep breath. “I’m ready.”

  Eric smirked at me. He was carrying an assault rifle tricked out with more gadgets than I had names for, along with the pair of pistols and a dozen replacement clips for his various guns. He even had grenades hanging from his vest. He looked like he was about to take on the Taliban single-handedly. “The spell will take time to complete.”