“So, your pack is close-knit?” I asked before I took a sip.
“A pack is supposed to be family,” he reminded me. “And we take that to heart. We take care of each other, support each other. The way a pack should.”
It sounded nice. For the last year it seemed like this pack had forgotten that. I eyed him. Was I really considering this?
Zahur
I was more than just irritated as I landed in the warehouse district. The messenger I sent for Ranulf had been slow enough to grate my nerves. Evelyn wasn’t improving; in fact, she was getting worse. And where was I? Out looking at a vampire crime scene. I muttered under my breath as I buttoned my shirt and dropped off the roof to the asphalt below. Two vampires instantly showed fang.
“Where’s Lemora?” I didn’t beat around the bush. “She asked me to come out.”
One of the guards eyed me a moment before opening the door to the warehouse. “She’s inside.”
I walked in and was hit with an overwhelming stench of rot. He must have been dead a while. Then again, vampires tended to decompose quickly after death. I strode through the room toward where several halogen lamps were set up at the scene when I was met by a leggy brunette with a perfect, pale complexion.
“You must be Lemora.” I stopped several feet from her.
She smiled a strained smile. “Mr. Zahur. Thank you for coming so quickly.”
“As I said on the phone, I’ll do what I can; but my first priority is Evelyn’s health.” I crossed my arms over my chest.
She nodded. “As it should be. How is she?”
“Recovering,” I hedged. I didn’t know this being, and I wasn’t going gossip about patient health.
“Good.” Lemora sighed as we reached the center of the room. “Here he is.”
A vampire hung upside down from the ten-foot-tall ceiling. His arms were cuffed behind his back, his face paler than pale. He hung in the center of a circle drawn in blood and chalk. Outside the circle were symbols I’d never seen. Runes; but I’d never been able to keep those straight. Outside of that ring of symbols was another circle, both in blood and chalk again. I walked around the circle, careful of where I set my feet. The vampire’s throat had been slit; it looked like all four jugulars cut. It wouldn’t have taken less than a minute for him to bleed out.
Despite popular mythology, vampires aren’t dead. Though their bodies were souped-up to the point that they dry out their own blood quickly and need to replenish their supply often. Faster, stronger, and no aging. It all came with a price. No afterlife. This world, and this life was all they had.
I knelt down and examined the circle again. “How old was he?”
“Thirty-three. He was one of our regular blood donors. When he found out he had terminal pancreatic cancer, he asked to be converted.” Lemora’s answer had me turning to her. She smiled. “He has a daughter to support, no other family. Evelyn gave her permission.”
I turned back to the scene and got to my feet. Along with the floor, chalk-and-blood-smeared symbols were on every wall. “Where is she now?”
“She’s in my penthouse.” Lemora sighed. “She was having a sleepover at a friend’s home for a few nights and just came back today.”
I shook my head as I pulled out my phone. Poor kid. “And you think it’s safe to have humans living in the nest?”
Lemora’s face grew hard. “It is perfectly safe for several reasons. One, I screen my vampires carefully before conversion. All of my vampires are good, decent people. Second, human safety is guaranteed by my word. Third, we are not a nest of monsters, Mr. Zahur.”
I nodded; that may be so. “But we both know that not all nests operate like yours.”
Her eyes grew shadowed. “Murderers? Yes. Sadists? Yes. Psychopaths? Absolutely. But not in my nest.”
“The Van Doren nest.” The history of the nest that ran Manhattan wasn’t a secret. It was caked in blood and bodies.
She nodded. “The Van Doren nest is full of vipers. They’ve put it to good use as assassins for hire for at least the last century.”
“And vampires allow it?” I shot her a look.
She lifted her chin. “Vampires don’t police each other, Mr. Zahur. We have our general rules of respect and our territories. If there’s an issue, it’s handled within the nest.”
No governing body? I stored that away for later as I went back to work. “What happens to the little girl now?”
“I’m her guardian now.” Lemora dropped her hands from her hips. “Her father had insisted.”
I began taking photos of the symbols. “Evie might be awake tomorrow and be able to tell you what the symbols mean.” I moved around the room, being sure to take pictures of everything.
“What happened?” Lemora asked.
I gave her a rundown of what happened on Christmas Eve. She started muttering in French. “I’ll have my people warned. And tell them to keep an ear out. But the city seems to be trying to tear itself apart at the moment.”
“It does indeed.” I was still taking pictures when I noticed something. “Did any of you touch or clean up anything?”
Lemora gave an elegant shake of the head. “Of course not. Evelyn has always been clear on procedure.”
I nodded; that’s what I was afraid of. “Where’s the blood?”
She grew that absolutely still that only vampires can achieve. “Pardon?”
“He’s hung upside down to be drained, the floor should be covered.” I gestured at the practically pristine floor. “Where did his blood go?”
Her face grew paler. “That’s a good question…”
“What can vampire blood be used for?” I asked, stepping closer to her.
She shrugged. “Not conversion; that has to be from the vein… I don’t know.”
“We’d better figure it out.”
One of the guards from the door reached us. “There’s a Redcap asking for you, gargoyle.”
I cursed. “Over six feet tall?”
He nodded.
It was Helix. I headed out of the warehouse and out into the night. Stepping outside, I looked up at the goblin. “What?”
“We have another fully formed demon sighting.” Helix’s voice was tired.
Shit! What the hell was happening?
5
Ninety miles off the coast of Florida
Rina
I pulled my coat closed against the chill as Falk lowered the throttle until we were almost idling. The rental company had been closed; it was Christmas, after all. So, Falk stole a boat from a marina. Well, borrowed. I was going to make sure to fill it up before we dropped it back off.
The water was calm as far as I could see, giving the whole place an eerie feel of stillness. Like the calm before the storm. All right, Evie, you’ve already had me jump off a building; what kind of surprises am I in for now?
The sun warmed my shoulders while I turned to watch as Falk checked the GPS again. I looked out at the water, hoping I remembered the numbers right. I had only had a few seconds to jot them down before my memory faded.
Falk signed to me. We’re here.
“Give me a minute to set the anchor.” I got to my feet before moving to the front. I opened the hatch at the nose of the boat and pulled out a large, yellow nylon bag with a smaller red bag attached. I set it to the side and tied an anchor rope to the bow. I threw the bags over the side. The sea anchor unfurled itself underwater and turned into a small parachute, which it pretty much was. It would keep us from drifting, especially in the calm water.
I shut the hatch, straightened, and turned around. Falk’s eyes snapped up from where he was looking. Was…was he just checking out my butt? My cheeks burned. “Uh, um, shut off the motors.”
The silence was surprising. I started to pull the cooler closer to the nose of the boat. Falk bent down and picked it up effortlessly. I stepped back and let him deal with opening the cooler. My stomach rolled a little as he reached in and lifted the dead piglet out. He set it on top of the
bow. It wasn’t that I was a vegetarian, it was just that it wasn’t a full-grown pig. Then he pulled out a bag of pig’s blood and quickly poured that into the water off the bow.
He dropped the trash back into the cooler on his way over to me. What now?
“Now, we wait,” I said. “She said it would take some time.”
He nodded as we sat down in the back of the boat in the sun.
Going into the middle of nowhere with a man I didn’t really know wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever done. Add in that he had killed a vampire without hesitating and threw a man off a train, it was guaranteed suicide. But Evie trusted him. And some instinct I had was telling me I was safe. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. It was crazy, but my instincts were rarely wrong.
Maybe it was because of the woman he helped get off the train. When the train had finally gotten to Jacksonville, we had been on the platform when I spotted a woman struggling to get her baby stroller off the train. The stroller was stuck on a step, and her two other kids were on the verge of throwing tantrums.
Falk didn’t say anything before he left my side and went to the door of the train. He simply reached up and lifted the stroller off the edge and set it carefully on the platform. While I watched, stunned, he moved out of the way so the woman could get her other two in line.
The woman thanked him profusely before heading for the station. Falk came back as if nothing had happened.
I turned around and looked out at the sun getting closer to setting. It had been sweet. Something I hadn’t expected from the scary boogeyman gargoyle. Boogeyman? Why did that pop into my head?
I rubbed my temple. At least out here, my head could finally stop hurting. For some reason, my barriers were getting weaker and I didn’t know why. They usually got weaker when I was in a huge city, but not this much. A vibration along the rail had me turning back to Falk.
He stopped tapping when he got my attention. Are you feeling all right? You were pale in town.
He noticed? “My barriers are thinning out and I don’t know why. The further we get away from the city, the better.” Thankfully, my barriers had never come down all the way before. It wasn’t something I was eager to try.
How did you manage before you met Evie?
“It wasn’t that bad until my second year in college.” I tucked a stray hair that slipped out of my braid behind my ear. My fingers brushed the mic on my hearing aid as I remembered the constant voices of other people in my head. “The headaches were almost constant, but it was livable. Then it started getting worse. Nose bleeds, throwing up; I couldn’t sleep because it was loud in my head. It was really…I was miserable.”
How did you function like that? The boat rose and fell with the water.
“I didn’t.” I gave him a half-smile. “I started staying in my dorm room as much as possible, missing all my classes. Anytime I went out, for even an hour, I was in bed the rest of the day, sick.”
What changed?
“Evie,” I said. “She found me.”
The corner of his lip twitched. How?
“She tracked me down.” I relaxed a little more against the seat cushion. “Apparently, when I was finally sleeping, I was projecting my dreams across the city. It was strong enough that she managed to find me at the campus.”
His eyes grew lighter, from dark to a slight amber. How did that go for you?
I grinned. “Not well. She slipped into my head and told me to wake up and answer the door.”
The corner of his lips lifted into a grin.
I shrugged. “I did, and there she was. With that look she gets on her face when she’s angry.”
He nodded. I’ve seen it. It’s a mix of disappointed and ‘I’m trying not to kill you.’
“Exactly. So, this strange woman walked into my dorm with that look, slammed the door, then proceeded to lecture the hell out of me. That I was lucky she was the one to find me; that I was most likely shoving my dreams into every sensitive person across the city.”
He tilted his head to the side. What then?
“Then, she sat me down. Explained what I was doing and then made barriers for me.” I smiled as the memory filled me with warmth. “That was the best night of sleep I had in years. I’ve been working at the shop and learning from her ever since.”
His gaze ran over my face, then met mine again. What’s it like? Telepathy?
I thought about how to explain it. “It’s like a crowded party. And I can go from person to person and eavesdrop on what they’re thinking on the surface. But if I wanted to, I could climb into their head and see their entire world. That’s the most accurate way I can describe it.”
Silence fell again while we waited. I shifted in my seat. Yeah, my instincts weren’t screaming at me to run. But they weren’t saying get comfy.
He looked out at the water, his jaw clenching, before turning back to me. Evie said you’re going to university for computers?
My shoulders relaxed as I smiled. “Yeah, I like programming. I want to get into making video games, but right now I’m working on an app that will do speech to text as a default on a smart phone…” I continued to explain to him what I was doing. Why it would be neat, and how I was trying to program it. I told him everything I could think of that would bore him. But instead of looking bored, his elbows were on his knees as he listened intently. It was…nice.
When I was done telling him about the project, I asked, “What do you do? I mean, gargoyles have jobs, right?”
His shoulders grew rigid as he looked down at the floor of the boat. He leaned back before answering. Yes, we have doctors, teachers, just like every town. But we’re also the only protection our people have. So, we have military-type positions that humans don’t anymore.
“What do you mean jobs humans don’t have anymore?” What kind of jobs were those?
He paused for several moments before he signed, I’m the person you call when you need to get rid of a problem.
My brow drew down. “What, like, pest control?”
He grew still. Executioner.
It took me several heartbeats to realize he wasn’t joking. “Executioner…”
He clenched his jaw.
“Your job is to kill people?” Holy…
He was completely still as he waited for…something. As if waiting for me to condemn him. Instead, I asked the first thing that popped into my head. “Is that what you want to do?”
His gaze snapped to mine, his face hard. My pulse in my ears was the only sound as he watched me. Eventually, he shook his head.
The relief had me sinking back against the cushion. “Then why don’t you quit?”
His face was dark again. Because there aren’t many who can do what I do.
“But you don’t want to.” It just slipped out.
He focused on me again. Someone has to do the jobs that no one wants.
My chest ached. “That sucks.”
He looked out at the water, turning away. The warmth that seemed to radiate from him fell away. Something inside me didn’t like it. “What do you like to do?”
He grew still. Woodworking.
Woodworking. I didn’t expect that. He seemed more like the kind to drink and play pool.
Why did Evelyn ask you to get these components?
I smiled. “Probably because I may or may not, but definitely do, have a slight fascination with mythical creatures.”
He raised an eyebrow. What about it fascinates you?
“I don’t know, lots of things. Um, the fact that they are so rare. Why is that? How intelligent are they? Are the myths anything like the real thing?” I shrugged. “All of the above.”
We fell into silence after that, but strangely, not an uncomfortable one.
An hour or so later, something nudged the underside of the boat. I sat up straight, my heart already starting to pound. I got to my feet and looked over the edge at the water swirling around the boat. Falk did the same on his side.
Okay, that’s supp
osed to happen… The boat was nudged again. I hit the floor of the boat as it rocked back and forth. “Holy crap!” Using the rail and the console, I pulled myself to my feet.
Falk somehow kept on his feet with his hand on the side as he made his way towards me.
It rose out of the water, slowly. First, the deep-blue scales poked out of the water. Then the actual skull rose, the size of a school bus. I swallowed hard as the creature’s head continued to rise. Yellow eyes watched us as the giant mouth and teeth cleared the edge of the boat. It was beautiful. Different shades of blue and green feathered her scales in a beautiful pattern along her face and down its long neck.
I cracked my barrier and sent a tendril of thought out to brush the creature’s mind.
“Evelyn sent me,” I sent gently as I stepped out to the middle of the bow of the boat. “Please, she’s in trouble.”
Warmth and concern answered me. I smiled.
The long, thick, graceful neck brought her snout down to my level. My heart raced, my hand trembled as I reached up and touched her scales gently. They were more pliable than I thought they’d be. You see scales and think armor. But that wasn’t what this was. My fingers traced the lines carefully. They were thin and pliable, like a snake. Light burst through me as I touched this amazing creature. A leviathan. I was touching a leviathan! I could barely believe it. They were thought to be extinct by those who even knew they really existed.
Curiosity flowed through my mind.
“She’s hurt pretty badly,” I told her as I forced myself to drop my hand. “She needs a scale from you.”
The leviathan lowered its head, bringing it up close to the bow. She turned her head and scraped her massive jaw along the rim. I dropped to the floor as the boat rocked hard, almost tipping. Falk managed to get to my side and help steady me to my knees. The creature put its snout down to touch the deck just past my foot, stopping the rocking. She lifted her head and considered Falk. Welcome burst through my mind.
Run Page 8
