“Okay. Thanks, Bianca. So, I think it was the Company.”
“Gibraltar’s company?”
His eyes widened with frustration. “No. Don’t be ridiculous. The Company. You know, the security people.”
“You can say ‘Amperdyne Technologies.’”
“Shsh. They got ears everywhere.” He peered up at security cameras on various buildings. “I think they even read lips.”
“They’d have to, to know I said their name.”
Paul Chandler was paranoid. A drinker, given the alcohol on his breath. But I didn’t see track marks. No signs of other addictions. If Mansfield trusted him, there must be more to him than I could see.
“Look, Bianca, I’m trying to help here. Can we just be safe and say ‘the Company?’”
“Fine. Why would the Company tell the vampires about me?”
“That’s just it, see? You’re the competition. If they find the kid, they’re golden. You find the kid, and it’s all tits up and stuff.”
“You aren’t English.”
“What?”
“Americans don’t say ‘tits up.’”
He squirmed. “Oh. I watch a lot of BBC America. What’s that have to do with anything?”
I stared at him. Intrigued by the mystical totem around his waist. Wondering how much more he was hiding from me. There wasn’t any dirt under his nails. His shoelaces were new even though the shoes were haggard. The stubble on his face was shaped.
“Never mind.” I’d have to look into him later. If Chandler was even his real name. I believed the bit about him working for Mansfield. They seemed like a natural fit. “Go on.”
“Alright, then. Like I said, see, if the vamps know you’re coming, they can take you out. Then it’s just the Company and the FBI again. And we know the FBI ain’t gonna solve this first.”
“Mansfield could’ve told me all this over the phone. Why the melodramatic confrontation?”
“No way! Nobody talks about the Company over a telephone! They scan calls for their name. We’re talking the highest of high techs.”
He reached around behind him. I pulled the hammer back on the Glock. Just to make a point.
“Whoa, now! Just got something to give you.” He slowly withdrew a manila envelope from the back of his pants.
I took it, keeping an eye on his hands. “What’s this?”
“Open it when you’re at home. Away from cameras and windows.” He glanced up at the security cameras above us. “Don’t underestimate the enemy this time, Bianca. Oh, and my number’s in there. In case you need to call. My rates are reasonable.”
“One last question. Why is Mansfield helping me now. When I first met him, he clearly didn’t like me.”
“It’s not you he didn’t like.”
“What was it?”
He squirmed a bit before answering. “It’s that Joseph suggested hiring you.”
“He hates Joseph that much?”
“He hates vampires that much. Good luck.” He smiled and trotted off down the street.
I had the gun still pointing at his back. A car came around the corner and I moved the gun to my side. Out of the car’s line of sight. It drove past and was gone. So was Paul Chandler. I stared at the envelope but I didn’t have x-ray vision.
Fine. I’d been planning on getting the lay of the apartments on Atlantic. See what kind of activity the vampires engaged in. The comings and goings of tenants. Lighting. Get a feel of the neighborhood before I visited them. A trip home to feed the cat was probably a good idea. And I could see whatever it was that Mansfield felt I needed. Needed so badly that he’d purchased an expensive totem and sent Chandler skulking around.
Chapter Nine
My one-bedroom condo was small. Only four hundred square feet. Set in a secured building. Brick and cement. Small windows. Security doors outside each unit. More defensible than a sprawling townhouse. And it had underground parking the led directly into the building. A building I owned.
I got out of my Honda Civic. Listening as much as ‘tasting’ for intruders in the garage. The alarm beeped as I activated it. No other sounds. I closed my eyes and reached out. No life-force bigger than an insect. Not even rodents.
That was probably my fault. They sensed my presence and avoided the complex. Like I was a snake slithering through the halls. Only there wasn’t anything reptilian about me. Not even my tail. Furred, no scales. Almost feline except for the narrow tip.
My phone rang and I jumped. My hand near my gun hilt. Ready to draw. I shook my fingers loose and answered the phone. “Janet?”
“Just making sure you were okay.”
I smirked. “Joseph didn’t try anything untoward.”
“Thank goodness for small favors.” She sounded embarrassed. “Sorry for bothering you. Have a good night then. Unless you need anything?”
“Say, can you call Gibraltar before bed? Tell his people I want to talk to Anton Thrace.”
“You want him in the office?”
“No. Not this time. Tell them I’ll come to him. Find out what time in the morning and where I can interview him. The earlier the better.”
“Daytime. So not a vampire.” She sounded relived.
“Werewolf.”
“Damn it, Bee!” Janet was still muttering to herself when she hung up.
I made it inside the building and to my door without incidence. I was being jumpy. Everything I’d learned about the coven and Amperdyne warned me that I was dealing with some very bad people. Getting rid of a pesky private detective would be child’s play for them. Especially if they disappeared my body.
The only advantage I had was that there wasn’t a lot of information out there on people like me. Succubi. I’d looked. I’d paid good people to look. Computer hackers. Experts in finding secrets. Very little had turned up. My enemies wouldn’t know what my full abilities were. Or how hard I was to kill. For that matter, I didn’t really know the answers either. That’s why Chandler’s little belt bothered me. Someone knew something. I’d worry about that after I’d found Vincent. Undead or alive.
The moment I opened my door, a small furry shape darted for me. It climbed up my skirt and blouse, perching on my shoulder. “Martini! Naughty kitty.”
The heavy Bengal cat was my only pet. A fire-rescue from a previous case. She’d been a mewling kitten back then. Light fur with dark spots. The woman giving her away thought she was an albino tabby. Turned out Martini was a seal-lynx snow Bengal. I hadn’t been sympathetic when the woman realized the high dollar value of her mistake and tried to get the kitten back. Obviously she wasn’t successful.
I rubbed Martini’s head, rewarding the Bengal despite her bad behavior climbing up my clothes. I needed to feel wanted. Loved. Not lusted after. A cat was better than an empty home. Or a man I couldn’t touch. Especially since cats were special.
For whatever reason, I couldn’t accidentally drain the life-force of a cat. Not even if I was starving and on death’s door. A secret I hadn’t shared with anyone because I didn’t know what it meant. Maybe that’s where the folklore about witches keeping cats as familiars came from. The idea made me smile.
“I’m not staying. Food for you and a change of clothes for me.” I went to the kitchen. Martini dropped onto the countertop to watch me with her sky-blue eyes. “Bad kitty. You aren’t allowed up here.”
“You aren’t very convincing.”
I bit back a cry of fright. My gun was in my hand without thinking. Reflexes were a wonderful thing.
Two figures moved out of the shadows. Into the brightness of the kitchen’s florescent bulbs. A man and a woman. Dressed in dark colors.
Martini leapt to the ground with a hiss and disappeared. They’d startled me and that pissed me off. More people I couldn’t sense. I was glad I had the wood-tipped ammo.
“Breaking and entering’s a crime. Especially for vampires.”
“We weren’t sure we could get inside,” said the female.
“I know you do
n’t have to be invited in. That’s just an old wife’s tale.” I watched them as I reached for the phone.
The man spoke. His voice uncertain. Soft. “Please don’t call the police. We’re here because you’re looking for us.”
I hesitated. “Pardon?”
The woman laughed derisively. “Not us. Our coven. We’re from the Atlantic Revenants.”
“Even if I wanted to talk to you, I didn’t give you permission to enter my home. Give me a better reason not to call the police. Or better still, a reason not to shoot you?”
The man glanced at the window. “How about the fact that there’s a sniper on the roof of the building across from your window?”
“Is that a threat?”
“No.” The female vampire put her hands on her hips, annoyed. “Do we look like we could shoot our way out of a paper bag?”
“Not really.” They were young. In both senses of the word. Early twenties and new vamps. Couldn’t be more than a year old as undead. They lacked the stillness of older vampires. That patience that Joseph had periodically displayed. Sparring with his words, his body had been completely relaxed. These two practically fidgeted by comparison.
“We were coming to see you at home since it was after hours. Naturally we did a little surveillance first. Spotted him before we came inside.”
“Why should I believe you?”
The man glanced at the woman. She sighed. “It’s gonna hurt.”
“Chilton won’t be happy if we just leave.”
“What are you going on about?”
The woman went to the window. The curtains were drawn. I never left them opened. Not just for security. I liked to walk around my apartment naked. Even without someone knowing what I was, I had a nice figure. Open curtains would make for a peeping tom’s wet dreams.
She turned on the lamp and stretched. Leisurely. I heard a tinkling and soft plunk. The sound of a bullet hitting flesh. The woman spun and fell. She dragged the light down with her. I started to rush to her but the man held me back.
“No. We want you to be dead.”
I pressed my Glock into his chest. Heart-high. “Excuse me?”
“Her you. Not you you.” He frowned at me. “My friend took a bullet for you.”
A cellphone went off. He answered it. “Yeah? Great.” He hung up and smiled. “You can get up, Rhoda. The sniper took off.”
The woman didn’t move. “Rhoda?”
He rushed over to her. Knelt down and rolled her onto her back. She opened her eyes and laughed. “Gotcha.”
“That wasn’t funny!”
I stared at her blouse. There was a hole where her heart was. No blood trickled out. Vampires didn’t bleed. Good to know.
“It was. Really, Dusty. It was.” She sprang to her feet with preternatural strength. Vampires weren’t superfast. But they were strong. She eyed me. “What?”
“If he’d been using wood you’d be dead.”
Her jaw dropped. Horrified. She wasn’t that good an actor. Neither of them had thought that through. Still, I had to question the staging of it all.
“How do I know you didn’t have one of your friends shoot you to convince me?”
She threw her head back exasperated. “Oh my freakin’ God! I took a bullet for the bitch and she doesn’t even care.”
“She’s got a point. We didn’t think about that.”
Rhoda sulked. “Maybe they should’ve used wood then, huhn? Would she have believed us then?”
“My sofa.” I was ignoring the two vampires. Part of me believed them. They were too pathetic to be lying. But there was a hole in my the cushion where the bullet had gone through her. “It took months to find one in this color!”
“White?” asked the male vampire. Men didn’t understand color. Neither did a lot of women.
“Cream,” countered Rhoda. Guessing. She sounded uncertain.
“Biscuit, actually.”
I found my tweezers in a basket on my reading table and poked around the stuffing. The vampire’s body had slowed the bullet enough that it hadn’t passed all the way through the stuffing. It took a couple of tries but the tweezers gripped it.
I pulled it out. “Silver.”
I stared at the drawn curtain. At the hole in the fabric.
“For werewolves?” asked Rhoda, confused.
“Succubi,” said Dusty. “Legend says that demons are susceptible to silver.”
“I’m not a demon.” I didn’t say anything about the silver. They didn’t need to know that it bothered me. Not like it hurt a lycanthrope. Or the way wood hurt a vampire. It interfered with my powers. Short-circuited them. I’d been shot with silver once before. Same reasoning then as now. Succubus equals demon to most humans.
Silver could be very bad even if it didn’t kill me. The previous shooter hadn’t been far enough away. Neither had his hostages. All of them dead at my hands. Janet and I never mentioned it. Too painful.
“So you believe us?”
“Yeah. I believe you. Why come to me? I have an answering service for after hours. They forward important calls.”
Dusty looked sheepish. “We didn’t know. It said nine to six online.”
I sighed. Clearly I needed to update my website. Or make sure my residence was scrubbed from the internet. Unfortunately, that would involve moving. I hated moving. I’d done it too many times over the decades.
I eyed them. “Now what?”
“Now we take you to Chilton.”
“I was on my way to your apartments after I fed the cat.”
Rhoda folded her arms over her boyish chest. “He’s not at the complex.”
“Oh? And where am I supposed to be going?”
“You like to dance?” asked Dusty, hopefully.
I stared at him. Hoping I was wrong. “A nightclub.”
“Yep.”
I shook my head. Crowded bars tended to have an excess of testosterone. Drunken men with fumbling hands. It wasn’t a good combination for a hungry succubus. But I needed to talk to the coven tonight. It took three nights to make a vampire. That’s why there weren’t more of them. This was night number three. Assuming that they’d already started.
“Let me change. There’s no way I’m going in public dressed like this.”
I didn’t wait for permission. I shut the bedroom door behind me and went to my closet. Not much to choose from. I didn’t date. I worked long hours every day. I had one nice dress. Something Janet had gotten me for her grandson’s graduation.
I pulled it out and frowned. A little formal, but Janet had said that a black dress worked for most occasions. Meeting a master vampire would be added to that list.
Chapter Ten
The vampires took me to Bubbles, a relatively new club on Ocean Boulevard across from beach. It was loud and packed for a Wednesday evening. Strobing lights changed angles as they flashed along the ceiling and down onto the floor. Men danced without shirts. Danced with other men.
I smiled. I didn’t like clubbing. But when I did go out, gay bars were my preference. Better music. Stronger drinks. And I didn’t have to fight off constant sexual advances. Not as many anyway.
My need to feed had subsided before we arrived. Without rhyme or reason. The goat hadn’t been enough. But I felt sated now. Otherwise being around this much testosterone would’ve been dangerous. For them of course. Lust was lust.
“Don’t worry, they won’t hit on you,” shouted Rhoda as Dusty led us to a section of private tables at the back of the bar.
“The men or the women?” I shouted back, laughing. “I’ve been here before.”
She eyed me oddly then. Glancing at my breasts. The curve of my hips. Not lustfully. No lechery at all. She was thinking I looked too feminine to be a lesbian. Clearly she hadn’t been to many gay bars.
“Chilton likes the music. Says it’s the closest thing we have to London.”
“He’s right. Unless you’re willing to drive to WeHo.”
“What’s that?” she a
sked.
I stared at her, frowning. New and from out of the area. A runaway? No. She had to be in her early twenties. Not pretty enough to be an aspiring actress. That left writer or singer.
“What kind of music?” I asked.
“Pardon?”
“What kind of music do you sing?”
She flashed surprise. “Can you read minds?”
I grinned and she frowned. “Sorry. No. I can’t. Lucky guess is all.”
“Right.” She didn’t believe me. Fair enough. I hadn’t believed her at first. She pointed at a tall, slender man in his mid-forties. “That’s Chilton.”
I studied him for a moment. Silver hair, without the lines of old age. Not quite handsome. Quirky. Mouth a little wide. Droopy lids that made him look perpetually bored. Slightly large straight nose. Popular features maybe a couple of hundred years ago. If I was remembering my history right. I wasn’t quite old enough to know it for a fact. But I’d studied the past a lot in an attempt to understand what I was.
“Miss Savage.” He spoke loudly, to be heard above the noise. Standing so that he could take my hand. I had a clutch purse in my left hand for the gun. Couldn’t figure out how to strap a holster underneath the dress. Too tight. Too short. And I wasn’t going to have it rubbing against my inner thigh.
“Chilton. Don’t you use last names among vampires?” It was a trick question. Inspired by my conversation with Joseph. Chilton had referred to me by my last name. I only knew his first. I was curious whether he’d become Rake by being more powerful or smarter than Joseph.
“Fledglings like Dusty and Rhoda use last names. A powerful vampire commands attention. There aren’t so many that when one says ‘Chilton,’ I might be mistaken for any other, lesser vampire.”
He sounded as bored as he looked. His tone polite. Pleasant even. But it had that tired quality. That I’d disappointed him.
Psychological games. The way pick-up-artists had been taught to insult women to make them become more interested. By acting as if I were disappointing, he hoped that I’d try to please him. Show him that I was more than I seemed. I’d majored in psychology before switching to criminology in college. And really, who fell for that nonsense, anyway, in this day and age?
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