by Kingsolver
I smiled and batted my eyes as I moved closer to him. “Why, sugar, who told you someone had to be big to kill bloodsuckers? All you have to do is talk sweet to lure them in, wait until they try to bite your neck, and then punch them in the chest with a stake.” I pulled my punch, an upper cut below his ribs, but still hit him in the diaphragm hard enough to lift him off the ground and drive the air from his lungs.
While he sat on the floor moaning and wheezing, I bent over him and said, “And then you just cut off their heads. Sugar, you don’t have to be very big to control a whole lot of magic.”
He glared at me, but when I extended a hand, he took it. I pulled him to his feet. “No hard feelings, sugar? I sure don’t have any.”
I received a grudging grin, then he turned and led us into the building.
The warehouse was being used for something besides grisly trophies because I saw that pallets of boxes filled about half the space. A forklift was parked near the loading dock. We wound our way between the pallets until we came to an office door with a light showing under it. Big-dumb-and-ugly opened the door and ushered us in.
The dhampir was sitting, but I guessed she was as tall as Michaela. Definitely as busty, and almost as pretty, with red hair and pale, flawless skin. She looked a bit like a slightly-older and larger version of Eileen Montgomery. The dhampir made me feel almost as though my magic was a consolation prize. I wondered what it would be like to have every man and woman you passed on the street stare at you.
“Miz Gardner,” Luke said in a tone that I was sure he used with his teachers in grammar school, “this is Erin McLane. She asked for an introduction.”
“Oh, she did? And how did you meet her?” The accent was cultured British. I wondered who her mother had been.
“She’s the bartender at Rosie O’Grady’s.”
“A lot of the hunters hang out there,” I said. “I need money, and this seemed like a good way to get some fast.”
She studied me. “What kind of mage are you?” she asked. She wanted to know my affinity—what my talent was for twisting reality.
I shook my head. “I’m just a ley-line mage. I don’t convert energy. I just use it the way it comes to me.” I knew that to a lot of people, my inability to turn ley line energy into a physical manifestation was viewed either as a lack of training or a lack of talent—or both. But I lacked for neither training nor power. Master Benedict thought it was due to my being half witch.
“And that’s how you knocked Hugo down?”
I glanced at a TV in the corner that showed a split screen. The cameras were aimed outside and inside the dock. “Yes, ma’am. I had to pull my punch though. I didn’t figure you’d be too happy if I killed him.”
She spent the next fifteen minutes grilling me. I must have said the right things, because then she explained the deal—when I could bring her the heads, how to do it, and a whole lot of what not to do. Then she gave me a code to use when I visited and told us to get lost and not to bother her again unless we came to do business.
I caught most of what she told me, but didn’t worry too much about what I missed. Lizzy had drilled me on how to set my new phone to record a conversation, and I had been practicing all day. I had my conversations with Luke recorded, too.
What captured most of my attention was a long, black cloak with a peaked hood that hung on a coat rack in the corner next to a second door.
Hugo showed us out, and we got back in Luke’s truck. We made it to the end of the road and turned the corner when lights from a cop car went off behind us.
“Shit,” Luke said. “What the hell is this for? I wasn’t speeding or anything.”
He pulled over, and I reached out. “Don’t get upset, sugar. I’m sure it’s nothing.” I placed my hand on the side of his head and drained his life energy until he passed out, slumping against the steering wheel. Mackle walked up and opened his door.
“What did you do to him?”
“Just drained his energy a little. He’ll be fine when he wakes up in the morning, but he’ll be hungry as hell.”
I got out of the truck and walked around to help her pull Luke out.
“How about his partner?” I asked.
“We have a couple of cops waiting for him back at his hotel,” Mackle said.
Frankie walked up and looked down at the unconscious man lying on the ground.
“I have a full confession recorded,” I said. “He bragged rather freely. I also have a recording of everything the dhampir told me. But I don’t know what good that will do you. You said you can’t prosecute them for killing vampires.”
“Not in a normal court,” Frankie said. “There’s a prison in northern Canada that is financed by various paranormal councils, and we’ll send them there. What we need now is to identify all of the people involved in this screwed-up business and round them up. We need this Constance Gardner’s ledger that shows who she paid.”
What makes you think she has one?” I asked.
“Because the people who are financing her want records. It’s the way they’re used to doing business.”
CHAPTER 16
I woke to Trevor’s voice, and at first had a difficult time figuring out where I was. A knock came on the door.
“Yes?” I called.
The door opened, and he stuck his head in. “Get up and I’ll take you ladies to brunch.”
All I could do was blink at him. How could someone be so cheerful so early in the morning?
“What time is it?” I managed to ask.
“Ten o’clock. Come on, I’m starving.”
I hadn’t gotten to bed at Jolene’s until four-thirty in the morning. Ten o’clock was far too early from my perspective.
“I need a shower,” I finally said.
“So get up.”
The door pushed wider, and Jolene padded in holding a steaming mug. She was still wearing pajamas.
“Here, drink some of this,” she said. “I’ll go take my shower while you wake up.”
Gratefully, I sat up and took the mug. Her eyes widened a bit, and I realized the covers had slid down to my waist.
“You didn’t grow up bashful, did you?” she asked.
“Nothing he hasn’t seen before, but he doesn’t seem to get too excited about it,” I grumbled.
She laughed and headed out of the room, taking Trevor with her and pulling the door closed.
After I managed to sort myself out and get dressed, Trevor drove us north of downtown and then out to the coast. I thought at first, he might be taking us to the place where I met with Michaela, but he drove past there and almost to the foothills.
“That’s the university,” Jolene pointed when we parked.
A street separated the restaurant’s parking lot from a large brick building covered with ivy and nestled in the trees. I scanned the area and saw more and more buildings with young people walking along sidewalks between them. On our side of the street, there were a lot of shops with a few taverns sprinkled in.
“This is where all of you went to school? Where Lizzy still goes?” I asked.
“Yep,” Trevor said. “We can go walk around if you like after we eat.”
“Sounds good. Where do the sugar daddies hang out?”
“Online,” Jolene said with a laugh. “You need a computer to go trolling for those guys.”
“If I could afford a computer, I wouldn’t need a sugar daddy.”
Trevor winked at me. “Life just isn’t fair sometimes.”
We sat by the windows at the back of the restaurant, overlooking the ocean and a lot of little islands just off the coast.
“That’s where the sugar daddies live,” Jolene jokingly told me. From the size of the one house I could see, the guy who owned it could have hidden an entire harem without his wife knowing about it.
After brunch, Jolene and Trevor gave me a tour of the campus. It was a revelation for me to see so many people of my age in one place. We saw almost no one over thirty. In my years wi
th the Illuminati, after I finished my training at nineteen, I had almost always been the youngest in any gathering.
We sat on a wall that ringed the university, looking down over the cliffs above the ocean and discussing our next steps in taking down the bounty ring. We called Frankie, who assured us that she had two fresh vampire heads acquired the previous evening from a bounty hunter the cops had busted.
“I only saw Gardner and an ogre she called Hugo,” I told my friends, “but that doesn’t mean they were the only ones there. I didn’t see any heads, and there were five vehicles parked at the warehouse.”
“An ogre?” Trevor asked.
“Figuratively speaking. Big, fat, ugly, and not too bright.”
“So, you take her the heads, what then?” Jolene asked.
“I record it for Frankie, get paid, and establish my bona fides. The following night I’ll take Gardner some more heads. She should be feeling rather comfortable with me at that point, and maybe I can make a move on her.”
“Frankie told me last night that Blair is coming back to work today,” Trevor said. “She has the warehouse staked out, and said they were going to follow Gardner anytime she left the place. The bounty business is going to dry up because the cops will be stopping every car headed toward the warehouse after dark.”
“Frankie should let a few bounty hunters slide through,” I said. “Gardner’s liable to get suspicious if I’m the only one delivering heads.”
“Good point,” he said and pulled out his phone. Jolene and I watched the scenery while he talked to Frankie. When he hung up, he gave an emphatic nod. “Frankie said they already thought of that. They’re letting one of every four vehicles through.”
We met Frankie, Mackle, and Blair around midnight, and they handed me two garbage bags, each containing a freshly confiscated vampire head. I felt compelled to look, then wished I hadn’t. Both of the deceased vamps had been turned when they were about my age, and I was willing to bet they hadn’t been vampires very long.
They say that vampires don’t change after they’re turned, but they do in a way. They become hardened, and it shows in their faces. The girl who died the final death and donated her head that night still looked fresh-faced and innocent. Although I didn’t want to touch her, I reached into the bag, lifted one of her eyelids, and slipped one of Jolene’s tracking chips under it.
People often told me that I looked older than I was. I didn’t, really, but I could see that same hardness in my face. Killing takes a toll. I puked my guts out the first time I killed a person, but I had learned to shut off my feelings, my emotions. I was always drawn to pictures of soldiers. Nineteen or twenty years old, and after coming back from war, they were different. Although survivors quickly learned to kill those trying to kill them, a little bit of a person’s soul blackened each time they took a life. I figured my soul was as black as pitch.
I had never thought about it until I came to Westport, made friends, and really saw what a normal life looked like. The shadow world that paranormals and supernaturals lived in was violent, but most magical beings lived most of their lives just like everyone else. I struggled with the new emotions I was feeling, especially my feelings for Trevor. And the re-awakened feelings about killing and death.
Jolene handed one of the little mirrors for the tracking chips to Detective Mackle, and gave her the spell to make it work. The cops would be able to track the vampire girl’s head. They hoped they would find where the heads were being taken.
“Good evening, Lieutenant,” I greeted Blair. “Good to see you out and about again.” He still had a dressing on his neck, which I thought was odd.
“Feels good to be out. I was going crazy sitting around doing nothing.”
I reached out and lightly touched the bandage. “Is that healing all right?”
He frowned. “They grafted some skin from my shoulder blade. Damned vamp took a chunk out of me that would have left a truly ugly scar.”
“Dodge better next time.” I winked at him. “But, hell, think of the stories you can tell the girls. You’re a hero. Saved a girl’s life.”
Blair barked out a laugh. “Girl saved mine.”
I gave him a quick hug. “We’re even. Without you, Barclay probably would have had me.”
I had inherited Luke’s old SUV after the cops confiscated it. It was a gas hog, but Frankie had given me a credit card, along with a stern lecture about what I could and couldn’t use it for. I tossed the heads in the back of the SUV and drove to the warehouse to dance with Constance Gardner.
When I punched in the code she had given me, I didn’t have to wait nearly as long for Hugo to open the door as Luke did the night before. I held up the garbage bags, and he nodded for me to come in.
We threaded our way through the stacks of pallets and boxes back to the office. When I met Gardner there the previous evening, she wore a white blouse and black trousers, but the yellow dress and pearls she had on that night made me wonder if she had a hot date planned for later. The black cloak was again draped over the coat rack in the corner.
I showed her the heads and was glad Frankie provided me with fresh samples, because Gardner reached into each of the bags and touched the neck stumps, checking to see if the blood was fresh. Evidently satisfied, she nodded to Hugo, who took the bags and left.
Gardner went back around her desk, sat down, and opened one of the desk drawers. She pulled out two bundles of twenty-dollar bills and placed them on the desk. The violet currency straps were still on them. Someone was supplying her with a lot of cash straight from a bank.
“Where did you find them?” she asked me.
“Hanging around the red-light district down on West Twenty-Fourth Street,” I said. “Easy pickings down there with the hookers and johns.”
She nodded. “The people financing the bounties would prefer if you hunted closer to downtown, and in the suburbs north of the river. They really don’t care if the vamps chew on a few hookers.”
“I’ll remember that.”
Gardner pushed the money across the desk to me. I flipped through the bills to count them, then tucked them into my pocket.
“Thank you,” I said and turned to go.
“I asked around about you,” she said. “You sound like a smart girl. If you’re interested in making some real money, we might have some jobs you could do for us.”
Turning back to her, I said, “I would be interested in listening.”
She nodded. “Goodnight, Miss McLane.”
When I passed Trevor’s car parked on the street just outside the warehouse complex, he turned on his lights and followed me. We drove to where Frankie and Blair waited for us, and I handed her the money.
“Original currency bands?” Frankie said in surprise as she inspected the money. “And crisp new bills in serial number sequence. Damn, we should be able to identify the bank fairly easily.”
I must have looked puzzled, because she explained. “If a bank is involved in any way with funding a criminal enterprise, we can open up their books and find all the transactions tied to the account. That gives us the money men, all tied up neatly in a bundle, and we can shut this thing down.”
I chalked it up to being above my pay grade.
Trevor and I dropped the SUV at Jolene’s and went to Rosie’s for a drink. It was the only bar either of us knew that stayed open after hours. When I got there, I went to the ladies’ room and scrubbed my hands. Even though I had barely touched one of the heads, I felt dirty, as though something had stuck to me.
“Are you doing okay?” he asked me after the waitress took our drink orders.
“No. I feel really creepy walking around with someone’s head in a garbage bag.”
He seemed to study me for a minute, then nodded. “It’s a nasty business. Some of the things we get involved in—Jo and Josh and I—I just try to think about why I’m doing it and sort of put my feelings on hold while I’m doing it.”
I shook my head. “Like that shifter kid yo
u guys found?”
“Uh-huh. At least it wasn’t my job to execute the monster who sacrificed that kid.”
We had a couple of drinks, then he took me back to Jolene’s, where I planned to spend the night.
He walked me to her door and put his arms around me. One kiss turned into several, and just as I was about to lose myself, he pulled back.
“I’ll see you tomorrow. Okay?”
I could take a hint with the best of them, so I bid him good night.
CHAPTER 17
I called Lieutenant Blair the following morning and asked if I could come by to see him. Jolene lived fairly close to downtown, and it wasn’t raining, so I walked.
Detective Mackle came to get me when I buzzed at the door to their suite of basement offices and led me through the cubicles back to Blair’s office.
“How did your hunting go last night?” I asked her as we threaded our way through the room full of cubicles.
“This job really sucks sometimes,” she answered. “I can’t believe how sick some people are. We busted seventeen people last night and confiscated a total of thirty-one vampire heads and four wolves. The body counts were lower when the vamps were running out of control. At least they didn’t kill all their victims.”
“And all of the people you busted will go to that prison in Canada that Frankie told me about?”
“The paranormals, yes. The norms we’ll send to a prison in Greenland,” Mackle said. “The paranormal councils in North America and Europe jointly run that one. If it was up to me, we’d haul their asses out in the ocean and sink the boat.”
She left me at Blair’s open door. He was sitting behind his desk working on the computer and didn’t seem to notice me. I tapped on the door jamb, and he looked up, then smiled.
“Erin! Come in.” He shoved the keyboard away from him and motioned to the chair in front of his desk. “Would you like some coffee?”
“I’ve heard rumors that cop-shop coffee is terrible,” I said with a smile.
