“Hang on, sweetheart,” Zorah’s voice said from somewhere close by. “I know it hurts. But I promise it’ll be okay soon. You hear me? You’ll be okay. Let me get your wrists free—”
The hard plastic binding my wrists behind me snapped. I barely noticed it, too busy trembling uncontrollably as bone, muscle, and sinew throbbed and twisted unnaturally in all the places where my body was broken. Slender fingers tangled with mine, squeezing. I gripped back with all of my strength... which wasn’t much.
“Not much longer,” Leonides said, still cradling me against him. “You’re almost there. That feeling is your body healing itself.”
Tears tracked down my cheeks, but the saltwater no longer stung across open scrapes where my face had impacted the pavement. Cartilage crunched, my broken nose straightening itself impossibly, the swelling receding until I could breathe properly again.
I was still under orders not to be afraid, and that was what gave me the courage to look down at my legs. The darkness of the night combined with the darkness of my flimsy yoga pants obscured the details, and that was probably just as well. I could feel my flesh shifting... crawling... knitting itself back together. The English vampire—with those glowing blue eyes, he just had to be another vampire—bit into his own wrist, dripping more blood directly over the ugly tears in the fabric covering my knees.
I watched distantly and without judgment, experiencing the pain and the itching and the burning, but not really processing it in any meaningful way. As the voices had promised, within minutes the sensations faded to nothing, leaving me shivering and covered with clammy sweat in the winter night.
“She’s freezing, damn it,” Leonides murmured. “Probably in shock, too. Hold her for a second.”
Other hands supported me. Leonides stripped off his long, dark coat and wrapped it around me, and then I was back in his arms.
“I’ll go wake up the bloke next,” said the British vampire, pushing to his feet and heading toward the dark form on the sidewalk—a form I now identified as Richard’s unconscious body.
I looked up at my boss’s face. The details of his expression were barely visible, given the lack of light. Only his eyes flared with unearthly luminescence. “You’re all right now,” he said. “Come back to us.”
I drew in a sharp breath as everything crashed down on me at once, my emotionless objectivity fleeing into the night as though it had never been.
“Tell me what happened, Vonnie,” Leonides demanded. “Who the hell were those men, and why did they kidnap you?”
When I opened my mouth, I had every intention of answering his questions, but instead of words coming out, a jagged sob tore free from my chest. Within moments, I was weeping loudly and hysterically, clutching at the man—vampire—holding me, my face buried in his chest.
A slender hand pressed between my shoulder blades, rubbing slow circles as I wept.
“All right, sweetheart,” Zorah soothed. “You’re okay now. It’s okay.”
I cried harder, feeling like the biggest, stupidest piece of shit on the planet.
“Vonnie!” Richard’s anguished cry jolted me back to some kind of coherence. “Oh, my god—we have to get her to a hospital!”
I pushed away from Leonides’ chest, Zorah’s hand sliding off my back as I did. “No, I’m okay.” My voice was high-pitched and unsteady.
“She’s been shot twice!” Richard snapped. “We need an ambulance, for god’s sake!”
Irritation pricked at me, centering me far more effectively than Zorah’s comforting words had done.
“I said I’m okay. Jesus, Richard—I’m right here. Could you maybe not talk about me in the third person?” I tested my knees, bending them gingerly. “Someone help me up.”
Richard gaped as Leonides rose and pulled me effortlessly to my feet with him.
“See?” I said, when I was sure I could take my own weight.
“But that’s... impossible...” Richard breathed.
“Clearly not,” said the English vampire in a dry tone, as he sauntered up to join us.
“What’s going on?” Richard asked faintly. “Who the hell are you people?”
“Uh, hello. We’re the people who saved your asses,” Zorah said. “You’re welcome, by the way. Now, what happened here, exactly? Because I just got a call from one very freaked-out kid, and ended up finding my friend screaming by the side of the road after being kneecapped. No offence, but this is not how I expected to spend my first night back in St. Louis.”
My heart skipped a beat as her words registered. “Oh my god—Jace! He called you? He’s okay?”
Self-loathing tried to strangle me as I realized that in the throes of agony from my wounds, I’d completely forgotten about my son, the only thing in my life that truly mattered. What kind of mother was I? What kind of person was I? I’d sent Jace out on his own at night in winter, and fucking forgotten about him—
“He’s all right,” Leonides said, and I nearly fainted with relief. “He’s with Len.”
“They’re hunkering down at my place until they get the all-clear,” Zorah added. “It seemed safest that way, since we weren’t sure exactly what had happened. Oh, and that reminds me—”
She pulled something from her pocket. I caught the dull glint of starlight against the familiar shape of my pendant, before she slipped the necklace into the pocket of the oversized coat I was wrapped in.
“Handy little magical trinket you’ve got there,” she said. “I think you and I are overdue for a serious talk, once things calm down.”
“Yeah,” I replied in a daze, knowing that she was probably right.
“Vonnie...” Richard still looked far out of his depth, but his voice sounded haunted. “Do you know these people? Because if you’re really all right, we need to go check on Jace. Now. You told that guy all about him earlier! What the hell were you thinking?”
I frowned at him, trying to untangle the words. “Yes, obviously I know them—this is my boss, and Zorah used to be a coworker. But what are you talking about, Richard? What guy? I didn’t say anything to anyone about Jace.”
He stared at me like I was the one not making sense. “Uh... the creepy blond guy who showed up and seemed to have Ivan in his pocket? Vonnie, he asked you if we had a child and you just... told him everything. And then he—” Richard lifted a hand to his brow, rubbing at his temples. “I... I don’t remember exactly. Maybe it was the knock I took on the head.”
“Your head’s fine now, mate,” said the English vampire.
“This creepy blond guy,” Zorah began, her tone full of foreboding. “He didn’t happen to arrive in a vintage car, by any chance? I don’t suppose you noticed any electronics misbehaving once he showed up?”
“You think the Fae were involved with this somehow?” Leonides asked sharply.
“Richard,” I said slowly. “There was no ‘creepy blond guy.’ You’re not making sense.”
“He showed up in an old black luxury sedan,” Richard said, addressing Zorah rather than me. “I think it was a Mercedes. All the other cars’ engines stalled and died when he pulled up. Then their headlights went out a few seconds later.”
“Well, shit,” Zorah said, with feeling. “That’s really not the answer I wanted to hear.”
NINETEEN
“YES. THAT CERTAINLY complicates matters,” the British vampire agreed. “Someone should get back to Len and the boy, just to be safe.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying!” Richard said.
“Intriguing that you retain some memory of the interaction, while she doesn’t,” the English guy replied pointedly.
It was Leonides who answered. “Vonnie showed resistance to Fae influence both times Teague came to the nightclub.” He was, I realized, still steadying me with a hand cupped beneath my left elbow. “She resisted vampire influence, as well—but only when she was wearing that pendant. When she took it off, I could mesmerize her with no problems. Maybe that was the case with the Fae, too. Since sh
e didn’t have the necklace, she was vulnerable to his influence.”
I looked between Leonides, Richard, and the British guy. There were so many things I was trying not to think about right now. Being shot. Zorah’s presence. The idea that yet more supernatural creatures had been rummaging around in my head, and I’d had no clue it was even happening.
“Guys. I need to get back to my son,” I said in a shaky voice. “Now.”
Zorah clapped her hands together and rubbed them briskly. “Right. Logistics. We’ve got five people, and, erm... one motorcycle.”
“How did three of you get here with only a motorcycle?” Richard asked. I could practically hear the confused frown in his voice.
“They rode together,” Leonides said. “I flew.”
Any other time, I might have pressed for more details. But not now. Apparently, though, Richard had no such compunctions.
“You... did what, now?”
I cut him off. “Less talking. More getting back to Jace. The goons who kidnapped us. Are they—”
“Dead,” said English Guy.
I swallowed and took a couple of deep breaths. “Okay. They brought us here in a car. It’s still in a parking lot nearby, I’m guessing. The keys might be on one of the bodies, right?”
English Guy held up a key ring. “Way ahead of you.” He tossed the car keys to Leonides, who snatched them neatly out of the air. “Zorah, take the motorbike and go with them. I’ll deal with the cleanup on this end, and join you when I’m done.”
Because he was a vampire, and apparently that meant he could fly. Right.
I shook my head, trying to clear it. The results were inconclusive. “Okay, fine. Let’s go. I... uh, I’m afraid I don’t know where the parking lot is from here, but I’m pretty sure it’s not far away.”
Unfortunately, being in mortal agony didn’t lend itself very well to memorizing directions. And Richard had been unconscious at the time, so he was no help either.
Zorah pointed. “They tried to run in that direction when we showed up.”
“Come on,” Leonides said, urging me in that direction with the hand still supporting my elbow.
Normally, I might have pulled away from the light grip, but the first step I took brought with it a wave of dizziness, my miraculously healed knees going rubbery. I let him steady me for a moment as I ruthlessly forced the weakness to one side.
Jace needed me. I didn’t have time for shock, or a PTSD attack, or whatever this was.
Sure enough, the parking lot was just around the corner—not even a block from where the goons had dumped us. Ivan was long gone, and it was empty except for the dark blue sedan that had brought us here. By the time we reached the car, I’d gotten my land legs back for the most part. Now I felt jittery, like electricity was crackling under my skin.
We piled into the car. I shamelessly claimed the front passenger seat, rather than dredge up memories of being bundled into the back seat with a gun pointed at my head. Leonides jammed the key in the ignition and turned it, but the engine only stuttered when the starter turned over. The smell of gasoline assailed my nose.
“Fuckin’ Fae and their goddamned magic,” Leonides cursed. “Give me strength.”
“Butterfly switch,” I said immediately, not knowing what he was talking about, exactly, but recognizing the signs of a flooded engine easily enough. “Mash the throttle while you’re turning it over.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Leonides said, already doing it.
The car stuttered and coughed, the starter laboring. I held my breath, hoping the thing had a strong battery... only to let it out in a rush when the engine finally caught.
“Buckle up,” Leonides told us grimly.
The motorcycle tore past, heading toward the main road, and we peeled out of the parking lot in pursuit, the tires spitting gravel. My boss drove like a bat out of hell. Meanwhile, I white-knuckled the dashboard with one hand and the grab-handle above the door with the other, silently urging him to go even faster.
Not to put too fine a point on it, most of the African-American guys I knew in St. Louis wouldn’t have dared to drive like Leonides was driving. Possibly, a person’s outlook on ‘driving while black’ changed when he could mesmerize any troublesome cops into forgetting why they’d pulled him over in the first place.
Right now, I was all for anything that got me back to Jace quicker. I was also still berating myself over the fact that my son’s wellbeing hadn’t been the very first thing on my mind when our rescuers arrived. The jittery feeling beneath my skin was growing, like it would physically explode if I didn’t confirm he was safe right the hell now.
I didn’t know where Zorah’s house was, except in the general sense that it was South City, somewhere off Hampton. The two of us had gone out together for the odd meal or drink after volunteering at the mental health nonprofit, but we hadn’t really had a ‘Netflix and popcorn on the couch’ kind of friendship. She’d never been to my apartment; I’d never been to her house. Which was, apparently, Len’s house now—at least on a temporary basis.
The motorcycle wove effortlessly through the light traffic ahead of us. Zorah could easily have outdistanced us in the clunky sedan, but she never got too far ahead. She was probably leading the way on purpose, to make sure Leonides didn’t get turned around. He might be her grandfather, but I had no clue if that meant he was intimately familiar with how to get to her house from anywhere in St. Louis or not.
My knee jiggled restlessly as we reached the right part of the city. I tried very hard not to think about how impossible it was that my knee should be doing anything right now, other than bleeding all over the pavement where I’d been dumped after being shot. There were so many questions to be answered, and I didn’t dare entertain any of them—not until I knew Jace was okay.
Once again, Richard apparently disagreed with me on that point. “How in god’s name did you even find us? Not that I’m complaining—don’t get me wrong. But we were in the middle of nowhere. That entire area is a ghost town.”
Leonides glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “Your kid told us you sent him down the fire escape with a phone after telling him to hide and call the police. Once he’d done that, I guess he started going down the contact list on Vonnie’s cell until someone picked up. Zorah and Rans had just arrived in St. Louis, so as luck would have it, she was the first person who did. She’d already called Len earlier, to let him know she was in town. The four of us were together at the club when Jace called. She recognized your number and answered it.”
I choked on the bittersweet pang that pierced my chest. I’d ghosted Zorah in the worst possible way when she’d needed me. Yet she’d still picked up without hesitation when she’d thought I was calling her... and her forgiving nature had ended up saving my life.
“Jace told Zorah what was happening at your apartment,” Leonides continued. “Let’s just say none of us have much cause to trust the police these days, so she got the address from him and we went there to pick him up right away. When we saw that there’d been a struggle in the apartment and you were both missing, I sent him off with Len to stay at Zorah’s place.”
“So, you beat the police to the apartment?” Richard asked, sounding skeptical. “Even though Jace called them before he called you?”
“The police never showed up,” Leonides said, his voice grim. “Not while we were there investigating, anyway. At a guess, the Fae had a hand in that particular public safety oversight.”
“You think... the Fae had something to do with Ivan deciding to come after us tonight?” I asked carefully. “Do you think it was Teague?”
“It seems reasonably likely, on both counts,” Leonides said, sending the car careening around a curve. “Anyway, once Len and Jace were safely away, we did a more thorough search of the apartment and found your pendant. I told the others about its unusual properties, and Zorah discovered that she could feel it getting slightly warmer or cooler depending on which direction she was facing. We took a gam
ble that it was pointing toward your location, and ran with it. Zorah monitored its temperature from the back of the motorcycle and gave Rans directions based on how warm it was, while I followed from above.”
I was drawn in despite myself, even as we turned onto a side road leading into a residential area.
“Hang on a minute,” I interrupted. “I thought Nigellus said that objects like the necklace don’t have any power of their own? He said they relied on the magic of the person possessing them.”
“Yeah, he did,” Leonides agreed. “But I’ll let Zorah deal with that part of the story.”
“You realize how crazy all of this sounds, right?” Richard asked from the back seat.
“Trust me, you’re preaching to the choir, buddy. And yet, here we all are,” Leonides replied as we screeched around another corner and onto a narrower residential road. Ahead, the motorcycle turned into the driveway of an unprepossessing bungalow, and we followed.
“Good,” my boss said. “It looks quiet enough. That’s something, at least.”
I was already halfway out of the car door, ignoring my residual shakiness as I hurried to catch up to Zorah at the house. The pent-up need to see Jace burst free of my skin just as she was lifting her key to the lock. It felt like a physical force, and my jaw fell open as an invisible wall of... something... flew past her and blew the door half off its hinges.
“Ohh... kay, then,” Zorah said slowly, the key still held poised in her hand. Her dark eyes slid to mine. “Seriously, Vonnie. Real talk. You and I need to have a conversation soon.”
I shoved past her, barely aware of Richard staring at me in shock. Leonides was right behind me. The broken door opened into a small front room, the modest space nearly taken up by a dilapidated couch and a single recliner. An interior doorway led deeper into the house—but it was blocked by Len, who was holding a wooden baseball bat cocked and ready to let fly at someone’s head.
He sagged in relief when he recognized us, the tip of the bat drooping to rest on the floor. “Oh, thank fuck, it’s you,” he said in a rush. “And what the hell did you just do to the door? Are you trying to give me a heart attack, here?”
Vampire Bound: Book One Page 14
