by S. W. Clarke
“I’m no lady.” I stepped onto the elevator, whose back was pure glass, and turned around. “But I won’t ever turn down an offer to go first.”
His brows lowered, and the Norwegian’s mouth shifted into vague mirth. He stepped on after me, his scent filling the small space. I inhaled some mixture of pine and musk, and a tiny flint and tinder sparked in my insides.
There it was: lust. That quick, that potent. My brain registered it, set it aside.
He glanced back at me. “Which floor?”
How does he not know which floor? We should both be headed to the roof, right?
Unless he wasn’t Scarred. Which meant I didn’t have a clue who I was stuck in this elevator with.
“Fifty-seventh,” I said warily.
He nodded, hit the button for the top floor. The doors shut, enclosing us in the space, and I lowered my hands to my sides, keeping my fingers ready.
The Norwegian turned toward me, eyes on my own a moment before they dropped to the collar of my jacket beneath my faux-fur coat. He was eyeing my Scarred disguise, but it was more than that.
He was sizing me up.
I could tell him I wasn’t one of the Scarred. I could try to charm him. But as a look of recognition passed between us, his fingers folded to fists, the knuckles appearing.
He was ready for action. And not the pleasurable kind.
Evidently my disguise hadn’t worked on him, either.
The elevator jolted into motion, and in the momentary stasis, it was unclear who would go for whom first.
“To hell with it,” I said, and leaned back to grip the railing, raised both feet and kicked him square in the left shin.
↔
He groaned with the kick, staggering. I took the moment to push off the wall, lunging forward with two fingers aimed straight for his left eye. He was so tall I was practically aiming straight up. Despite that, I would nearly have gotten him if he hadn’t jerked his pretty Norwegian head back with some kind of crazy reflexes.
“Stop,” he barked, the elevator dinging with each floor as we rose higher and higher. “You’ve already racked up two assault charges.”
“Like you weren’t about to assault me,” I spat as he tried to throw both arms around me. I ducked out from his grasp and took a knee. My fist sailed straight into his crotch.
All the fight went out of him, and he doubled over with a groan. “I was going to detain you,” he huffed through pain.
I backed up to the elevator’s doors, sloughing off the fur coat. He’d already seen my disguise; no use pretending. At least now I could get to my whips. “I’m not who you think—”
I didn’t get to finish; he rushed forward, grabbing me around the middle and swinging me around so fast and hard I was on the floor of the elevator before I could curse.
Before I could even think to curse.
But now that I was on the ground, him on top of me, I thought of plenty of curses. Son of a motherless goat, he’s quick.
With him straddling me, I got a real good whiff of that scent as he breathed hard above me. His face was so close to mine I could pick out a small chicken pox scar on his chin.
I scrabbled to get my arms and legs free, but he had me in a proper hold. It didn’t hurt that he probably weighed three times as much as me. He got my arms pinned to my sides in a second.
I jerked my chin at him. “Let me up, you idiot.”
“I’d be a bigger idiot to let you up after all that.”
“I was preemptively defending myself,” I snarled as the elevator dinged away. “Let me up and I promise not to jangle your jewels twice.”
“I’d rather not take that chance.”
I let out a quick, irritated sigh as he stared straight down at me. This close, I knew for sure he wasn’t one of those Scarred bastards; he didn’t have the hate in his eyes. He was something else. “So you’re not Scarred.”
His hazel eyes narrowed. “Nope.”
“But you did the hand signal!”
He shrugged. “I was just copying you.”
“Great, so we’re a pair of swampducks about to walk into the center of a group of sadistic murderers on Halloween night.”
As we began rising again, something about that expression made him look at me a little different. Maybe it was occurring to him I wasn’t a bad guy after all. “Who are you?”
“I’ll tell you. I’m—”
His eyes had left mine. They strayed to the glass wall behind me, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “What in the ...?”
I followed his gaze, though my view was upside down. As I looked out through the glass, a pair of wings snapped and opened wide, sweeping straight up past the elevator and into the sky.
Percy and Seleema, headed to their position.
I glanced back at the Norwegian. He was staring after Percy, even though Percy had disappeared up the side of the building.
My heart warmed; my little dragon was so much faster than an elevator.
When the Norwegian looked back down at me, I gave him what I’d once heard a Scotsman call a “Glasgow kiss.”
By which I mean, I headbutted him.
Hard.
His head jerked back, and his grip loosened enough that I was able to get my right arm free.
I took the opportunity to drive my finger into his side—right beneath the ribs. That did the trick; he barked something obscene as he instinctively moved away from my finger, and I rolled out from under him.
I was on my feet before he’d even gotten a hand to his forehead. I slid one of the throwing daggers from my boot as I rose, pointed the tip down at him. The elevator was slowing as we got to the roof. “I’m not one of the Scarred. If I was, I’d have killed you just now,” I breathed. “My name’s Tara, and I’ve come to crash that party on the roof. Now who are you?”
He blinked up at me, squeezing the bridge of his nose. “Erik. I’m a corporal with the World Army.”
World Army. The military was getting involved?
“All right, Corporal. Why are you here?”
He kept one hand on his forehead. “Can I at least have the dignity of standing?”
I kept the knife pointed at him. “If you do so slowly.”
He braced himself against the wall as he rose. His eyes strayed again to the glass wall, as though looking for the dragon he’d spotted. Then they returned to me. “I was sent to New York to infiltrate this event by pretending to be one of them. I can’t tell you more than that.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And I outed you before you even got to the roof.”
He ignored me as he removed his palm from his forehead and examined it for blood. “Christ, you may not be Scarred, but you fight like one.”
I couldn’t tell whether that was a compliment or not. I kept the knife pointed at him as the elevator slowed. We were near the roof. “We’re about to be at the top floor. Here’s what’s going to happen, Erik with the World Army—I’m going to put a stop to whatever devilry I find up there.”
He kept rubbing his forehead. “Devilry, huh? All by yourself? I could call in backup.”
"How long will it take for backup to show up?"
He shrugged one shoulder. "They'll come quick."
I set my free hand on my hip. "Erik, there was this one time my grandma was having a heart attack right in front of me. We called 911, and they said an ambulance would be there 'lickety split.' Do you know what 'lickety split' means to a government organization? Forty-seven minutes. Forty-seven minutes is not going to help us here. So let me ask you straight up, Erik with the World Army—are your people going to come right away, or are they going to come lickety split?"
His eyes had gotten wider and wider as I spoke. When I stopped, the air seemed to ease out of him, his whole body slumping a bit. "Lickety split,” he muttered.
The elevator stopped, and the doors slowly slid open.
"Well lickety split ain't going to help us here.” I backed toward the open door, the knife still level
ed at his chest. I leaned backward, glanced left and right down the hall of the 57th floor.
Nothing and no one.
I stepped back into the hallway with my arm still raised, and Erik remained standing in the elevator, staring back at me.
I jerked my head. “Come on, then.”
He came out, and the doors closed behind him a second later. “You’re going to blow your cover if you’ve got a knife pointed at me the whole while.”
A muscle by my nose twitched. Seleema and Percy were waiting. Annabelle was in danger. “In the World Army, you’ve got some code of ethics, right? Or a code of honor?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“So when I tell you I’m trying to stop the evil ex-vamps up on that roof, does that mean you won’t give me problems?”
Under this light, his dark hair shone chestnut. “If your priorities and my priorities don’t conflict, sure.”
“And what are your priorities?”
“To serve and protect humanity. That’s at the top of the list.”
“Good. Then in this case, we’re not in conflict.” I jerked my chin upward to indicate the roof above. “There are kidnapped humans up there who need rescuing.”
He lowered his face to meet my eyes full on. “You know that for sure?”
I held his gaze. “I know that. One of them is named Annabelle Martin. She’s been missing for two days. I won’t mind if you want to head over to her apartment to confirm.”
He studied my face, from eyes to lips to chin and back up again. “I told you who I am, but you didn’t tell me who you are. Not really.”
I sighed, a short and quick noise. “My name’s Tara Drake.”
“And?” He gestured for me to go on. “What organization are you with?”
“I’m with the NA of SA.”
“What?”
“The National Association of Street Artists,” I shot back. “We take street crime pretty seriously.”
He gave me a funny look before realizing I was joking (well, sort of joking. I really was a card carrying member of the NA of SA). “So what’s your interest in all this? Why are you putting your ass on the line? That kidnapped girl up there your lover?”
I shook my head; my lips pursed without my consent. “Nothing like that. I’ve got unfinished business with those ex-vamps.”
“Sounds more personal than business.”
“It is.”
He lowered his voice. “They did something to you or yours?”
“You could say that,” I growled, slowly lowering the knife. “Luckily I've got a plan, and I know just how you'll fit in."
Chapter 21
Two minutes later, I shouldered open the heavy door to the roof of 432 Park Avenue. Cold, blistering wind tried to push the door shut on me, but I persisted until I’d gotten through and allowed it to bang shut behind me.
I was alone. The expanse of the roof stretched on for thirty feet, periodically lit by floodlights and otherwise cast in shadow, all the way to a second section of the roof some ten feet higher than this one and only accessible by a metal-runged ladder.
A hand gripped the meat of my bicep from behind, swung me around. I found myself staring into an unfamiliar, thin-lipped face. “Who are you?”
Shit, Tara. Way to let someone sneak up on you.
I blinked, remembered who I was supposed to be. My lip curled as I wrenched my arm away. It was time to gamble. “How dare you touch me. Are you new?”
I didn’t know the man staring back at me, but I knew what he was. Once you’ve seen one ex-vampire, you always recognize them. The gods only left five years ago, so every ex-vamp—this one included—bears a strange youthfulness to the skin, the hair, coupled with a peculiar oldness in the eyes. They may have lived a hundred years or two thousand, but that still makes them all much older than any of us regular humans.
Ancient being or no, in the GoneGod World this one apparently didn’t have much social cache. He’d been instructed to guard the door, after all. His eyes flitted over my disguise. “You’re her?”
One of my eyebrows rose into an imperious arch. “I am her.”
Whoever “her” was, she apparently hadn’t arrived yet.
He nodded once. “I apologize, ma’am. He’s expecting you. Go up the ladder.”
I’d gambled hard and won big. I sniffed. “Apology not accepted. Next time, you’ll be watching the bottom of my boot instead of a door.”
I swung around into the wind and pressed against it toward the ladder. As I did, I scanned the sky. The moon was round as a bowl and unobscured by clouds, but I didn’t see any dragons.
Good.
As I approached the ladder, faint voices floated to me on the wind. It sounded like chanting, and I couldn’t tell if I shivered because of the bitter cold or what those voices promised.
As a girl, I’d heard stories about keeping black cats indoors on Halloween. I’d heard tell of graveyard rituals and strange folks doing witchy things when the veil between this world and the spirit world was thinnest.
But I never thought I’d walk right into one.
I began ascending the ladder, rung by rung. The metal bit into my skin through my gloves, numbing out what feeling I had left in my fingers. That was a bad thing—I expected I’d need those fingers to grip a whip, at the very least. What I wouldn’t give to warm them on Percy’s hide right now.
By the time I crested the ladder, the chanting had grown from whispers on the wind to undeniable and unnerving singing into the sky. And even though my mind had conjured up all kinds of strange and unpleasant devilry during the course of my climb, I was still shocked by what I saw.
There, helpfully illuminated by two floodlights set at opposite ends of the roof, stood six upside-down crosses creaking in the wind. And affixed to each of them, heads facing down toward the earth, were six people.
One of whom was Annabelle.
↔
Annabelle wasn’t making any noise. Neither were the others, all of whom were tied to the crosses by their wrists and ankles and around their waists. They had gags through their mouths, and their eyes were closed—every one of them.
Before them, their backs to me, stood a dozen men and women in the same outfit I was disguised in right now—pure black, high-fashion clothes like a New Yorker would wear to work. A wool jacket to the calves, black slacks, polished, thick-soled oxfords or riding boots on their feet.
I suppose after the GoneGods knew how many centuries of being a vampire and enjoying the finest the world had to offer, they imagined themselves, even now, among the world’s elite.
And maybe those present were among the world’s true elite—the multi-millionaires and the billionaires. They’d certainly had the luxury of time to amass wealth and power. But they were also among the world’s most selfish. The most sadistic.
Because even though they were mortal, they still believed they were better than. That they deserved more. That divine providence had bestowed them vampirism because they were worthy.
So even now, they kidnapped. They killed. They craved.
There in the middle, arms upraised and chanting to the sky, stood the man with the dark hair. The man who had pretended to be a boy and kissed me. Who had led the slaughter of my family and extended family.
Valdis.
The son of a bitch was standing right there. And somehow, though we were so far in time and space from that night, I was transported right back to the worst night of my life. I was fourteen again and staring down the barrel of my own family’s death. I remembered the absolute feeling of powerlessness when I’d landed face-first in the dirt, been pinned down until I could hardly breathe.
Even now, across the space of years, my lungs caught. I had to work to take in air.
I’d been searching for him for so long, imagining my revenge, that I hadn’t ever anticipated how I would feel in the moment I saw him again.
I hadn’t expected to feel that powerlessness. That weakness. That fear.
; How humbling, to realize in one moment atop one of the tallest buildings in New York City, that you’ve spent your adulthood trying to outrun the feelings you experienced as a child. And they’re all still there. They’re still there, waiting to be felt.
But there was one massive difference between the me of then and the me of now.
I had power now, too.
I pulled back the sleeve on my jacket to expose my watch. With one shaking finger, I pressed a button to send my angry emoji into the ether.
And then, with fortitude that would have made my parents straighten with pride, I climbed up the rest of that ladder and stood on the edge of that roof behind a dozen Scarred and filled up my lungs as far as they would go.
“VALDIS!” I yelled out over the wind, my wool coat whipping around my legs.
The chanting went on a second before it broke off. Faces turned, then bodies.
The eyes of my enemies were on me. All of them. And who knew how many more Scarred lurked in the darkness, waiting to protect their master?
And at the center of them, the man whose life I would take. When his one good eye fell on me, a cruel pride surged in my chest. The other one was closed forever, a long scar running up the side of his face from cheek to forehead.
A whip had done that the day he became mortal. Louise had done that—the same whip I had hidden under my fur jacket.
The whip I planned to end his life with.
“Ah,” he said, that voice too velvety by far. “You’re here.” He snapped his fingers to those around him. “Don’t stop.”
They were strangely obedient; those around him resumed their chanting. Behind them, something white glimmered on the ground, an ethereal light pouring off it.
I slipped off the wool jacket, leaving only my leather jacket beneath. I reached one arm behind my waist. “First you’re going to let Annabelle and the others go.” I took one step forward. “And then I’m going to send you to whatever Hell remains.”
His eye lit. “You’ve become feistier. This excuses your lateness.”
I took another step forward, fingers sliding around the grip of the whip. He was talking to me like he knew me, just as he had that night. But it was just a distraction. “Did you hear me?”
