"If he does, we'll get the story from him, and we'll give it to you."
She smiled and nodded. "Thank you, dear." She turned slowly to face me. "I don't suppose--I shouldn't ask but...well, at my age, I've learned to pursue opportunities when they present themselves to me. Is there any chance I could examine that letter? Presuming you still have it..."
"We do," Jeremy said. "And when this is over, we'd be happy to show it to you. In the meantime, may we contact you if we have questions?"
"Absolutely. And perhaps, now that I know the letter's supernatural link--a portal and dimensional zombies--I might be able to dig up some more stories for you."
The first restaurant we passed had a note on the door, saying that the shop was closed due to E. coli in the city's water supply.
"E. coli?" I said. "So they know what it is? Or is that just a guess? Maybe I should call my newspaper contacts and--"
"And do what? Find out the situation is worse than we thought, giving you one more thing to worry about? Won't get the portal closed any faster."
"Clay's right," Jeremy said. "We need to keep the blinders on and move forward, however tempting it may be to stop and look around."
We picked up sandwiches and took them to a downtown park, where we could be assured of privacy. With the exception of the occasional late-working office employee cutting through to the subway station, privacy is what we had...until a change in the wind brought a now-familiar stink.
"Son of a bitch," Clay muttered under his breath.
"Guess Rose was right," I said. "They can find me. Saves us the bother of looking for this one." I inhaled deeper and nearly gagged. "I can barely pick up a scent under that stench. I think it's male..."
"You'd be right," Clay said.
He nudged my leg to the left. On the pretext of taking another napkin from the bag, I glanced over and saw a figure almost hidden behind a metal sculpture.
"Shall we try to find a convenient alley?" Jeremy murmured behind his sandwich.
"I know something better." I wiped imaginary sweat from my forehead, made a face and raised my voice above normal. "God, I have to get out of this heat. Can we eat someplace else? With air-conditioning...and tables?"
Clay nodded and we gathered up our stuff. I led them to the street corner and across to a looming business tower. We went inside. I smiled at the security guard and waved to a "down" escalator a hundred feet away. He nodded and returned to his reading.
Seeing where I was taking them, Clay stopped. "Is that--?"
"The gateway to hell. Sorry." I took his arm and continued walking, then glanced over at Jeremy. "It's part of PATH, Toronto's underground walkway system. Clay had a bad experience with it last winter."
"Traumatic," Clay muttered. "Still recovering."
"Clay had an early morning department meeting, and I needed to buy him a new shirt," I told Jeremy. "He'd ripped another one."
"I ripped--?"
"So I told him to meet me at the Second Cup near the store. Only, he didn't come in that entrance."
"Probably because it was cold enough out there to freeze--"
"It was cold," I continued as we stepped onto the escalator. "So he takes the nearest entrance, not knowing the tunnels stretch for over six miles. The first Second Cup he sees, he thinks, 'This must be it' and sits down. When I don't show, he realizes there might be another one down here."
"Or twenty," Clay muttered.
"Be glad I didn't say Starbucks. Upshot is, if you don't know your way, it all starts to look the same. Of course, the logical solution is to stop and ask for directions."
Clay snorted.
"So what happened next was entirely his own fault."
"Dare I ask?" Jeremy said as we stepped off the escalator.
"Lunch hour. For thousands of office workers. With sub-subzero temperatures outside."
"One minute I was just wandering around, the place practically empty, and then--" Clay shuddered.
"Traumatic, I know," I said, patting him on the back. "But--" I swept a hand around "--much different now."
We stood at the end of a hall stretching a few hundred feet, flanked with coffee shops, bookstores, drugstores and everything else an office worker might need between nine and five. But it was summertime, when no one cared to work later than necessary. The stores had been closed for hours. The walkways were left open only as a convenience for pedestrians.
"Not bad," Clay said as he looked around.
"If our zombie pal wants to make his move, he'll have plenty of opportunities. We just need to watch out for security guards and cameras. There's an even quieter place a block over. We'll head that way."
Before we'd passed three storefronts, hesitant footsteps sounded behind us. Bait taken.
We made sure to turn lots of corners and avoid long straightaways, letting our pursuer stay close but hidden, watching us from behind the last corner until we turned the next. As we walked, I counted the number of attack opportunities we'd given him. When I reached five, I paused at a storefront and pointed to a display of baby sundresses.
"What's he waiting for?" I whispered.
"Same thing his bowler-hatted friend waited for," Jeremy said. "The doe to separate from the herd."
He was right. Unlike Hollywood's brain-dead, brain-munching zombies, these guys weren't stupid.
Before I could even open my mouth, Clay said, "No."
"I--"
"Remember your promise? At my side. At all times."
"I'm not suggesting I lure him away and finish him off myself. Just the luring away part."
"Elena's right," Jeremy said. "We'll be close behind. It's safe enough."
"Good," I said. "Then it's time for me to use the bathroom." I raised my voice. "There's a food court just around the corner. You two can sit and eat while I find a washroom."
When we reached the food court, I put my sandwich bag on a table, then looked around.
"Oh, the bathroom's over there," I said loudly. "We walked right past it. I'll be back in a minute."
I took one last hit of chocolate milk, giving the zombie time to get out of sight.
The bathrooms were down a service hall. As I walked, I tracked the distant pad of footsteps behind me, ready to turn if they got too close before Clay arrived.
I reached the end, only to realize the hall dog-legged. At least this would give Clay a chance to attack the zombie out of sight of anyone passing in the main thoroughfare.
As I rounded the corner, I looked around for security cameras. None. Good. The footsteps behind me sped up...and Clay's joined them. I smiled. Easy as--
A shadow leapt from a recessed doorway. I wheeled, but too slow, and a body hit my shoulder, knocking me into the far wall. I kicked. As my foot went up, I mentally slapped myself. Again, the sudden move threw me off balance. As I stumbled, the figure rushed me, hands out, going for my throat. I swung and caught my attacker in the jaw. He flew back with a shriek...a very unmasculine shriek.
I leapt onto the falling figure. A face turned to mine--a woman's face, pocked and red. Rose.
"Thought you were done with Rose, didn't you?" she cackled.
My surprise threw me off. She lunged at me, fingers hooked into claws, aiming for my eyes. An uppercut stopped her hands before they got within a foot of my face. As she fell back, I grabbed her by the throat and slammed her into the wall. Her face twisted, then went slack, and when I let her go, her body slid to the floor and started to crumble.
"Easy to kill," I muttered. "Problem is keeping them that way."
At a noise from the corner, I whirled, hands going up. Clay raced around.
"I heard--"
"Got her," I said. "Again. It was Rose. I could have sworn it was a man--"
"It was." He grabbed my arm and pulled me back toward the main hall. "The same guy I killed at the truck stop."
"Did you--?"
"Started to," he said, now moving at a jog and pulling me along. "Then I heard you and mine got away. Jeremy
went after him."
"Let's go," I said, and we started off.
The bowler-hatted man had taken the first exit. We crested the top of the escalator just as Jeremy was stepping onto the down side. He backed off it and led us outside before speaking.
"He crossed the road and I lost the scent in traffic," he said. "Are you both all right?"
"Just another encounter with not-so-sweet-smelling Rose," I said.
Jeremy tensed. "Rose?"
"The zombie we--"
"Yes, I know. You didn't--Did you touch her?"
"Sure," I said. "I had to. She attacked me. But if you're worried about the syphilis, I swear I didn't have sex with her."
Jeremy didn't smile. "Did you touch her lips or any of the sores near her mouth?"
"I don't think so, but--"
His fingers clamped around my elbow. "There's a coffee shop across the road. You need to go into the bathroom and scrub your hands and arms."
He didn't even wait for the light to change, just led me across between cars.
"Jer?" Clay said, jogging up beside us. "I thought you said syphilis was easily treated."
"It is. But it's particularly dangerous to pregnant mothers."
He caught my look and slowed, grip relaxing on my arm. "You'll be fine." A small smile. "I'm overreacting, as usual. The only danger is if you came in contact with the sores around her mouth and ingest the bacterium or transfer it through broken skin. A thorough scrubbing will do the trick. I should have mentioned something last night but..."
"Rose was already dead, or so we thought. So what's happening--"
"First, scrub up," he said, stopping outside the coffee shop doors. "Then we can discuss it."
I scrubbed my hands and arms until my skin was red, then washed my face and neck, cleaning off every bit of exposed skin, even parts I knew hadn't touched Rose.
When I went outside, we returned to the escalator leading down to the PATH walkways, and I found the bowler-hatted man's scent there, but lost it at the street. Between the exhaust fumes and the smog and the stink of a thousand daily passersby, our target's scent had disappeared.
I watched the steady stream of traffic going by. "If we wait a few hours and I Change, it would probably be safe."
Jeremy shook his head. "It's not worth the risk. Killing them doesn't seem to help."
"Either we have an army of zombie clones, or the undead aren't staying dead. Remember yesterday, when Robert was talking about the difference between controlled zombies raised by a necromancer and those created by a sorcerer's portal? He said both kinds are tough to kill. Necromancer ones just won't die, but dimensional ones..." I frowned. "Did he say what happened with them?"
"No," Jeremy said. "Because that shouldn't have been relevant. This portal was created over a hundred years ago, meaning any 'controller' should be dead."
"Should be," Clay muttered. "But there's always a catch."
Jeremy nodded. "Time to talk to Jaime and Robert again. And let's see if we can contact that vampire thief tonight. I'll go back to the hotel to make the calls while you two track down Zoe Takano."
Clay opened his mouth, but Jeremy cut him off. "Yes, I know you don't like that idea, but it's the best use of our limited resources. Even if that zombie did circle back and find me, presuming I'd know where the letter is too, they've hardly been difficult to kill so far."
"Rose didn't even have a weapon," I said. "And unless my nose is wrong, they're coming back a little the worse for wear. Deteriorating."
Clay hesitated.
"You can walk me to the hotel and lock me in, if it makes you feel better," Jeremy said. "After tonight, we won't have this problem with dividing our resources. I'm calling Antonio, and asking him and Nick to come. He still hasn't forgiven me for not summoning them back from Europe when Elena was taken. I don't have an excuse for not bothering them this time."
Clay nodded, and we walked Jeremy back to the hotel.
Zoe
FROM THE OUTSIDE, MILLER'S WASN'T THE SORT OF PLACE I'd wander into in search of a drink. The term "hole in the wall" has never been more apt. The place had an entrance accessible only by a door leading from the alley. The flickering neon Miller's Ale sign made me think that, if the owner had found a Labatt's sign in the curbside trash instead, the bar would have a different name.
There was a single reinforced window beside the door. As I slipped up for a closer look, I realized the window wasn't just reinforced, it was plastered over from the inside.
A shower of gravel rained down. Clay had reached the second-story fire escape landing, but the window overlooking it was barred, which I'm sure would be much appreciated by anyone trapped inside during a fire. The bars were old, though, and Clay snapped them with a sharp wrench. Then he stripped off his shirt and wrapped his hand in it to muffle the noise as he broke the window. No alarms sounded. A place like this, rusted bars were all you got.
Clay looked down through the slats of the fire escape.
"You gonna be okay?" he said.
"Even knocked up, I think I can take on a vampire."
I waited while Clay slipped inside. A moment later, he stuck his head out and gave me the all clear--he'd found a place to watch over me from upstairs.
In the movies, vampires and werewolves are often portrayed as mortal enemies. Not true. There's no gut-level antipathy, no centuries-old feud. I'm just not...keen on vampires. Chalk it up to a bad experience.
The first vampire I met tried to befriend me. Nothing wrong with that. I was flattered; who wouldn't be? Then I'd been taken captive by supernatural-collecting psychotic humans. Her response? What a tragedy...but, as long as Elena's gone, I might as well help myself to her boyfriend. Clay had told her where to stick it. When I'd escaped, she thought we could pick up where we left off. The lesson I learned from that? Compared to vampires, Clay is downright empathetic.
I shouldn't tar all vampires with Cassandra's brush, but later encounters taught me that with few exceptions, vampires are self-absorbed egomaniacs. Paige says it's self-preservation, because they live so long and watch everyone around them grow old and die. They learn not to form attachments. I can see that. But there's a big difference between understanding a type of person and wanting to hang out with them. When I walked into that bar to meet Zoe Takano, I knew this encounter would take some serious acting skills.
A wave of cigarette smoke rolled over me when I opened the door. Someone was giving a big middle finger to the city's antismoking laws. A glance around, and I knew the owner wasn't in danger of being reported. The kind of people who cared about secondhand smoke issues didn't come here.
A dozen patrons, most of them alone, seemed dedicated to prodding the night into oblivion with beer and third-rate whiskey. A few huddled by the bar, not talking, just drinking, as if being within two feet of another person was as sociable as they could get.
Xavier had said the bartender was a supernatural. He didn't say what kind, and it didn't matter. But it explained why the bartender, and some of the clientele, could see a woman come in here for decades without aging, and not care. The nonsupernatural regulars could probably see a vampire feasting on the guy beside them and only decide they'd had their limit for the night.
Zoe Takano was easy to spot. For one thing, she was the only woman. For another, she was clean--with gleaming black hair, a tight white T-shirt, black jeans and motorcycle boots. And she looked more alive than anything in the bar, which, all things considered, was kind of sad.
She sat at a corner table, reading the Sun, her hand wrapped around an icy beer bottle. When I stepped in, she was the first one to look up--the only one to look up. She gave me a slow once-over, then made it a twice-over, her index finger tapping the bottle neck. Sizing up my potential as a more satisfying thirst quencher? Maybe if I played this right, we could skip the whole "small talk" portion of the meeting and get straight to the "invitation into a dark, deserted alley."
This might not be Zoe. Xavier said the bar did attra
ct supernatural criminals looking for a safe place to conduct business. But she was the only vampire in Toronto--a quick call to the council's second vampire delegate, Aaron, had confirmed that. He'd given me a brief physical sketch too. Although Aaron hadn't seen Zoe in years, with vampires, vital stats don't change in two years or two hundred.
She fit Aaron's description, but as I approached, I still ran a sniff test. A vampire's smell is all artificial. I could track Cassandra or Aaron by their particular blend of soap, shampoo, cosmetics, laundry detergent, but underneath that, there was nothing. When you don't have bodily functions, you don't have a smell.
This woman had almost no scent at all, only a faintly chemical odor, as if she used all unscented products. The better to confuse guard dogs.
"Zoe Takano?" I said.
Her gaze slid up me, taking my measure. When she reached my eyes, I expected to see a predatory gleam. Here was a healthy woman, alone and weighted down with child. Mother Nature's version of convenience food--dinner too dumb to keep out of danger's path. Yet her expression was only one of curiosity.
Across the room, the bartender stopped wiping the counter and looked over at us, eyes narrowing. She must have given him some signal because he nodded and returned to his wiping.
"Zoe Takano?" I repeated, almost certain now that she wasn't who I thought she was.
"At your service, ma'am." Her eyes glittered then, in anticipation, but there was no hunger behind it, still only curiosity. "And I presume it is service that you're looking for, a service I can provide?"
"I have a proposition--"
She chuckled. "Exactly what I was hoping."
"It's a job--"
"Ah, business. Too bad."
I hesitated. "You aren't taking clients--"
A tinkling laugh, like wind chimes. "Oh, I'm always taking clients. Don't mind me. It's been a slow week, and when there's little to amuse me, I start to amuse myself. Sit, sit. Get off your feet. That--" a nod at my stomach, "--can't be terribly comfortable. Not in this heat."
"Er, yes. I mean, no, it isn't." I pulled out a chair and sat down. "Thank you."
"A cold drink?" she said. "Something nonalcoholic, I presume?"
"Um, no. I'm fine. I was told--"
"First things first," she said, leaning back in her chair. "Credentials. I presume you come on a recommendation. May I ask from whom?"
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