Stakes Have Sword Envy

by Holly Ryan

  She nodded and picked up her phone. “Paul’s here to see you.”

  Maybe that hadn’t been the best idea. The detective could come in here with guns blazing at the mere mention of the person who was attempting to break into what his family had spent years guarding. At the very least, it should get him off his ass and come here since I couldn’t very well give my real name.

  The door that led to the rest of the station hurled open. Detective Appelt stood just inside, his brown eyes frantic, his fingers gripping the gun in his holster. His gaze settled on me, a shifty unknown in a hooded sweatshirt, and he drew his gun and pointed it directly at my head.

  My heart speed-racing, I tipped my chin up so he could see my face underneath the shadow of my hood for a split second.

  “Goddamn it.” He sagged against the doorframe, chunks of which had been torn out with the bullets from two nights ago. After closing his eyes briefly, he glanced up at the blonde officer behind the window. “It’s fine, Pam.” He speared me with a hard look. “Wrong Paul.”

  “If you’re sure, Detective.” The distrust in her voice followed me through the doorway into the rest of the station.

  Into what was left of the station. I sucked in a breath at the devastation around me, thinking I’d just walked on set of a post-apocalyptic movie. Bullet holes riddled the walls and desks of the sea of cubicles in front of me. In some places, electrical wires and pipes poked through the drywall. Lights dangled from the ceiling with work crews standing beneath them to change out the shattered bulbs. Officers at the cubicles shouted into their phones over the sound of drilling.

  I remembered very clearly what had gone down here, but seeing it with the sun streaming through the small windows set high into the walls cast a whole new light on it. How had I gotten out of here alive?

  Detective Appelt led me around the maze of cubicles and toward a wall of offices, his strides long despite a slight limp I hadn’t noticed before, his fists tight at his sides. Seemed I’d caught him on a bad day. Good.

  “What are you doing here?” he growled between a break in the drilling.

  “What do you mean, what am I doing here?” I hissed. “You know exactly what I’m here for.”

  “You should’ve called.”

  “You should’ve thought twice before stealing from me.”

  “Keep your voice down,” he warned.

  We turned right down a stretch of tiled floor, at the end of which was a dented elevator. A black skull key would take us to the bottom floor where my power had been stripped away. Sighing, Detective Appelt jammed his thumb into the button next to the elevator as he glanced at me.

  But I was staring past him at the bulletin board hanging on the wall with Paul’s picture pinned to it. All the pictures there flapped in a breeze from an open window, but Paul’s seemed to flutter the most, like he was trying to break free and slice me wide open with a paper cut. Who knew a missing person bulletin board could be so full of symbolism? Paul stared back from his picture, his watery blue eyes untainted by the unknown darkness who’d taken up residence inside him. As a human, I imagined he was normal, nice even. Now, he was anything but.

  The detective followed my gaze and then cleared his throat. Once the elevator opened, he ushered me in. “I have several officers out now looking for him.”

  “Have you tried your family’s mausoleum?” I asked as the doors closed.

  “We’re looking everywhere.” He pressed the Floor 3 button.

  “We should be going down,” I snapped.

  “We’re going up,” he hissed, then rubbed his temples as the elevator lifted. “You’ll wait in my office while I get your belongings, then we’ll head downstairs.”

  The doors closed, and we started to rise.

  “Aren’t my belongings evidence?”

  His eyes narrowed on me. “Not if you didn’t commit a crime.”

  I breathed a little easier. What a relief it was to no longer be accused of Tim’s murder, though his death still weighed heavily. The elevator doors opened to a quieter floor with more hallways and private offices than downstairs. Detective Appelt led me to the second door on the right with his name stenciled in black letters across the frosted glass window.

  Inside, he pointed to a chair in front of a large wooden desk. “Sit. Don’t touch anything. I’ll be right back.”

  I grimaced after him, the closest I could come to an innocent smile in my current situation, and sat. The cracked red cushion sank and wheezed under my weight, a reminder to swear off Sawyer’s apple pie starting first thing tomorrow. The rips in the upholstery pinched uncomfortably against my leg, and I shifted, the movement squeaking like I’d just pissed off a horde of roided-up mice. Yeah, I wasn’t sitting here. I rose and circled the desk toward the small window that had an excellent view of the parking lot.

  Murmured voices floated from the hallway. I turned, thinking one of them belonged to the detective, and did a double-take.

  Sawyer. Sawyer was here?

  I blinked my sleepless night out of my eyes. No, the man standing in the hallway wasn’t near as wide or as tall as my vamp. But the sun-and-moon tattoos creeping up past the collar of his light blue button-up toward his ear were just like Sawyer’s. Those tattoos were associated with the Necron Brotherhood, an ancient organization that had wanted to wipe out all slayers. Were they the same tattoo, or was it just a coincidence? From ten feet away, it was hard to tell since they looked so intricate, and I didn’t dare move and draw attention to myself in case he was part of the Necron Brotherhood.

  But Sawyer had said they’d disbanded long ago. Besides, they were made up of vampires. Daylight poured through the skylights in the ceiling, and the man this tattooed guy was talking to appeared to be human judging from his normal-looking eyes. Humans forgot about vampires’ existence as soon as they looked away from them.

  My point? The tattooed guy couldn’t be a vampire. But that ink hinted that he could be part of the Necron Brotherhood.

  A steady thrum of unease ran beneath my skin. Sawyer had said that the first mention of the dark unknown had come after the Brotherhood disbanded. So what if they’d re-banded to help Paul wipe out slayers for good? Could that be who was trying to open the trapdoor in the mausoleum? So Paul could get at whatever was underneath so he could finally be done with me?

  Detective Appelt came in then, jolting me out of my thoughts. He placed a clear plastic bag with my cell, my stake, and my seraph knife on his desk. “I hold on to these things until you’re on your way out, you hear?”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” I said softly in my best Spongebob theme song impersonation.

  The detective busied himself by leaning against the chair so he could take off his shoe and dump it out. While he was distracted and turned away, I retrieved my phone from the plastic bag, and after discovering I had 5 percent battery left, I quickly and nonchalantly snapped a photo of the tattooed man in the hallway for Sawyer to look at later, then slipped my phone back inside the bag and sealed it.

  “Damn drywall everywhere. I don’t know why they couldn’t clean this all up over the weekend.” The detective put his shoe back on. “Now to get the rest of what you’re missing. I’ve got this.” He snatched the plastic bag off his desk and started for the door, then looked behind him when I didn’t immediately follow like a lost puppy. “Coming?”

  The hair along my arms bristled. I’d have to walk right by Tattoo Guy, and though my hood was still in place, wouldn’t he know who he was trying to help kill? Only if he was helping Paul. Someday, I’d get it through my head that not everyone wanted me dead, but today was not that day. Better paranoid than sorry.

  “Yeah,” I said and followed after the detective.

  The two men in the hall shifted down the hallway to the right, while we went left, so I still didn’t get a good look at his tattoo without tilting my face up into the light. I didn’t want to do that, just in case.

  Inside the elevator, Detective Appelt pulled out a black skull
key and plugged it into the lock at the bottom of the wall panel.

  I glanced at him. “What’s with the odd key?”

  “You ask too many questions.”

  I grinded my teeth together. “Start answering them, and maybe I’ll stop.”

  He sliced his dark gaze toward me, his mouth twisted in a skeptical frown. Seeing him in this light, this close-up, emphasized the fine lines and dark circles around his eyes. Dude looked more tired than I felt for a Monday morning.

  “Or maybe I won’t stop, but you’re going to have to learn to trust me if I’m going to help you keep that trapdoor closed,” I said.

  His frown deepened, all but promising he’d never tell me everything he knew.

  Outside the closing elevator door, Tattoo Guy happened to look up. His eyes connected with mine, but I swiftly dropped my gaze to the floor and sank farther into my hoodie. Shit. Had he recognized me? Did he even know who I was? Nah, he was just some rando police guy. Right? Right. The door sealed us in, and we started downward.

  Detective Appelt cleared his throat. “Speaking of locks and keys, can we strike some sort of deal so I don’t have to keep buying locks to the graveyard every day?”

  “That’s you?”

  He nodded. “It didn’t used to be so hard keeping doors of all kinds shut.”

  I snorted. “Don’t I know it. Tim and I used to have a deal. He’d make it look like he locked the gate at night, and when I was through, I would really lock it. It worked out for both of us...until it didn’t.” I frowned down at my boots and sighed.

  “Did he know what you are?”

  “He must’ve on some level. I’d always assumed I wasn’t the first he’d known and that he had the same deal with others, but...” I shrugged. I should’ve asked him. I should’ve gotten to know him as a person instead of just as a cemetery grounds man. Maybe that could’ve prevented his death if I’d known him better. If I’d cared enough to warn him to stay away.

  “I like the deal with the lock. Let’s do that from now on. And if you see something at the mausoleum, or Paul, or anything else I should know about, you call me.” He plucked a business card out of the inside of his jacket pocket and handed it to me. “My cell number’s on the back.”

  I nodded, tucking the card into my sweatshirt pocket, the stressed tightness in my chest loosening a fraction. The more help I had on my side, the better chance I had of winning the war against Paul.

  The elevator doors slid open onto a long hallway with barred cells down both sides. My old cell was at the very end. We stepped out, but a familiar sense of dread pushed against me, slowing my progress to a crawl. My heartbeat spiked, and a cold sweat leaked down my back.

  “This is a trap,” I hissed.

  The detective’s echoing footsteps stopped in front of me, and he turned, his expression empty.

  “Isn’t it?” I asked. “Lure me down here and lock me up tight again. That’s the plan.”

  “Except it isn’t. You asked me to trust you, but trust is a two-way street.” He sighed and posted his hands on his hips, studying me. “It’s good that you’re wary. It keeps you sharp.”

  I nodded, still not daring to move any farther down the hall. “I’m alive because I’m wary.”

  His jaw pulsed, an unreadable expression rolling across his features, almost like a spark of understanding. “Me too.” After a second, he jerked his head for me to follow.

  He was right—I had to trust him. But he sure didn’t make it easy, just as I hadn’t made it easy for him by trying to open that trapdoor like a jackass. I took a steadying breath and followed, the only real choice I had if I wanted my power back.

  Most of the cells we passed were empty, but some people lay on their cots, facing the painted black walls so I couldn’t see their faces.

  “Did you take all of these people’s magic?” I asked in a low voice when we neared the end of the hallway.

  He twisted a key into my cell’s lock and held the door open for me, his mouth pressed in a firm line. “Be wary.”

  “Oh, I am.” I scanned the inside of the eight-by-eight foot cube while shifting my weight from one foot to the other. Someone must’ve cleaned up my pee puddle on the floor because the black floor was spotless and a strong chemical smell floated on the air.

  There was no way around this. I had to go inside. With my muscles tightened, my senses on alert, I stepped into the cell.

  A creak sounded at my back.

  I whirled just as he started to slam the door shut and then wedged my boot in front of it. “What the hell, Detective?”

  “You’re not trusting me,” he said through gritted teeth.

  Fuckity-fuck. “Fine,” I growled and stepped back.

  He shut the door and locked it, the loud click reverberating though my skull with finality. He stepped back, a column of icy silence, his brown eyes locked on my glare. If this was a trick, I swore those eyes of his would be the first things I plucked out and stomped on, and that was if I wasn’t in a violent mood.

  Down the hallway, the elevator doors whooshed open again, having already risen to the above floors. The detective glanced toward the sound and nodded at the approach of footsteps, seemingly unbothered that we were about to have company. I might’ve felt the same way if the next words hadn’t been uttered:

  “Lovely day for a stroll, isn’t it?”

  Icy panic wound up my spine and squeezed. Detective Appelt snapped his gaze to me at my loud gasp. Those weren’t exactly Paul’s words to trigger my nightmares, but they were eerily similar, and after hearing that someone was trying to help him, it couldn’t be a coincidence. It was likely Tattoo Guy, coming this way to...what? Slaughter me himself?

  “Keep him away, Detective,” I whispered.

  The footsteps echoed closer.

  Detective Appelt searched my face through the bars, his forehead creased, and then gazed at the approaching person.

  “Trust me.” I curled my hands into fists at my sides, preparing to do battle once again while locked inside a cell. “Please.”

  “Oh, you know the captain was looking for you just a minute ago,” Detective Appelt said to the person. The footsteps stopped. “Yeah, he said it was urgent. Sorry, I just remembered.” His delivery was smooth, a perfect lie I couldn’t have executed better myself.

  A pause, then, “Ah.”

  Such a weighted word, especially when filled with so much sarcasm. I had a funny feeling I’d just failed a test, like he’d been prodding the situation here to see if it was really me or not. But the figure turned and then walked off.

  I didn’t dare breathe again until the elevator lifted and the detective looked at me once again, his eyes sharp.

  “Mind telling me what that was all about?” he asked.

  “He sounded an awful lot like Paul.”

  The detective jerked back like I’d struck him, then hiked his thumb toward the elevator. “That guy? He’s one of our best detectives.”

  “I didn’t say he wasn’t,” I snapped, then closed my eyes to regroup. Detective Appelt had trusted me, not that other guy, so I had to give him some credit. Opening my eyes once again, I twirled my finger through the air to inspire some action. “Can we just get this over with?”

  Detective Appelt pulled what looked like a key fob from his pocket, but with no keys attached, and then hit one of the buttons. A thud came from the walls, all three of them at once, and it clattered the bars in front of me. I jerked, then attempted to breathe while trying to look for the source of the sound and keep the detective in sight at the same time. Something dropped overhead, a hailstorm of noise, and then slowly, light as feathers, golden flecks fluttered down from the ceiling.

  My power. It landed on my arms, my upturned face, and seeped into my pores like my body was drinking it in after a long drought. It crackled along my nerves, deeper and deeper inside of me until it was home, just as it had when I’d first opened that golden letter informing me of my new direction in life. I’d missed it. I�
��d still declared myself the slayer without it, but it had become such a huge part of me that I’d steered my whole life around it for eleven years. My slayer power was mine, and mine again.

  And it gave me a massive power boner.

  My power settled into me, the crackling fading to quiet, and waited for me to need super strength, increased speed, or fast healing for my slayer duties.

  I flicked my gaze to the detective. “I think I’m done here.”

  With narrowed eyes, he stepped toward the cell lock with the key at the ready. “I’ll take you up the elevator to the first floor. Don’t look at anyone. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t breathe on anyone. Don’t—”

  “Don’t touch. I got it.” I nodded, and as soon as the door cracked, I was out.

  Detective Appelt’s clipped footsteps sounded behind me since even he couldn’t keep up with me. Inside the elevator, he skull-keyed us upward and handed me my evidence bag, which I stuffed up my hoodie.

  Then the door slid open to the cacophony of the first floor, and I stepped out into a great rush of air coming in through the open windows. The pictures on the wanted bulletin board to my right flapped, one of which was floating loose right in front of my face.

  Paul. Of course it was Paul since he was always in my way, whether real or in paper form or in the doubt-filled part of my subconscious. I snatched his picture out of the air, tore it up, and discarded it into the nearest trash can on my way out.

  Gird your loins and hide the apple pie.

  Because the slayer was back.

  Chapter Three

  Hours later, after my day shift at The Bean Dream but before my slayer powers urged me to patrol, I flung myself into my favorite house. A beautifully scarred back faced me, but then its owner turned and lit my soul on fire with his impossibly bright grin.

  “Damn, Slayer. Welcome back. I can feel your p—oomph!”