I find my wits and move on him again. I could have saved her. Instead, I watched the blood pour out. Why? Was I too hungry again? At the last moment, he dashes out of the way, and the blade takes off Emilia’s head. This strength will take some getting used to.
“Now, now, Othello. If you were hungry you could have told me. I’d have let you have your turn.”
“You bastard.”
Quicker than I can react, he’s before me, his hand on my chin. How is he this much faster than me? “It seems you need training. Bianca!”
Jumping back from him, I feel something smash into my head. It feels like I’ve been run through the entirety of St Mark’s Basilica, hitting each and every wall and ledge along the way. I don’t even see stars. The world goes black around me. He’s won.
I jerk awake, still feeling the throbbing in my head. As ever, it dissipates when I return to the waking world. I suppose if I must be haunted by dreams, I’m glad it’s the one time I did the right thing. The one time I wasn’t a coward. The last time I wasn’t a coward. Loathing myself slightly more than usual, I sigh, and it turns into a yawn as I stretch. My hands meet both pillows, and I find the bed empty. “Mia?”
Would she have left for work without me? She certainly wanted to. Maybe I have been a little too demanding. “Mia?” I call again, louder this time. There’re no sounds in the entire apartment save for an occasional squawk. I can’t hear her breathing, her heartbeat. This isn’t good.
As if in answer, the phone on the nearest nightstand buzzes loudly. That’s not mine. “Hello?” I ask.
“Mia?” I recognize the voice. That man from her office, her direct superior, I believe. “Where are you? It’s past nine.”
Shit. Where is she? I’ve never tried mesmerizing someone when I couldn’t see them, but it works over Skype. Maybe it’ll work on the phone. “She called in sick last night. Do you not remember?”
“Of course I do. I must have forgotten to write it down. I’ve been such an asshole, blowing up her phone like that. Tell her I’m sorry, Olivia.”
“Of course.” He’d already been under my thrall the last few days. I wonder if it would work on someone who hadn’t yet experienced my control. I may have the opportunity to find out, as I’m not sure I have enough favors to call in for this.
Before I give in to my fears, I throw myself out of bed and check every room. I listen, look, and smell for any sign of her, but she seems to be gone. Swallowing, I glance outside. My car’s still there, so she didn’t take it and go get groceries, and she doesn’t seem the type to go for a run. Especially when she was supposed to be at work.
Amelia is missing, and there’s one very obvious explanation for it. He has her.
I throw myself from the bed, toss some food in Harvey’s cage, and lock him in, then search the apartment with every sense I can manage. If I can figure out how to sleuth with proprioception, I’ll do that as well.
There’s a missed call on my phone, but it’s from Elizabeth. No ransom demand, then. It takes the better part of an hour, but I find a few footprints outside. I have to steady my breathing and blink away tears just to examine it. Men’s size ten, so not too helpful—but I also find a broken lightbulb in the garbage. It wasn’t there the previous night. It has to be a sign of a struggle. She was attacked. For an instant I can smell the thatch roof burning, but I find only an unburned stucco ceiling when I look up.
I take a few more deep breaths. I can worry later. Now I have to act. Whoever was in here was good. They left no other visual trace, and their scent is covered by a powerful cologne mixed with patchouli and I believe, deer urine. Assuming he made any effort to clean off afterward, it’s going to take a lot of work to extract his scent from the other aromas.
Collapsing on a barstool at her counter, I throw my head into my hands. Okay, Olivia, Ollie, think. Right, we installed cameras. Christ…I cross myself. I’m stupid. I swear, it’s been long enough. I should be used to the idea that technology can solve one’s problems by now. Maybe I’ll believe that when I start using my phone for directions. Change is hard.
I check the recordings and feel bile rising in my throat as I see a man snatch Mia from her kitchen. She doesn’t even have the chance to fight back, but a plate is knocked off the counter. I fast-forward through the tape, looking for anything I can use. He parked in the blind spots of our cameras outside, and he was wearing gloves and a mask, except—there, right there. He had to adjust his mask after he picked her up. I pull it back, fractions of a second at a time, and find a clear image of his face from his nose down. Just an ordinary human. Of course he’d use one of them to hunt me. No, he doesn’t know about the Hunt; he’s just using what’s practical. Don’t let him get even more in your head, Ollie. I pause for a second, staring at the screen. I’d never called myself that before.
It can wait. This photo is far more pressing. It’s not much, but if it’s all I have, perhaps I can ask around. Other fiends make use of human mercenaries from time to time when absolutely necessary, and it seems unlikely that this one would be solely in Iago’s employ. I need to inquire for more information at the Community Center.
With a renewed purpose, I throw on some proper clothes, strap my sword and pistol to my hips, and toss the shotgun and extra ammunition into a duffel bag. It’s a little small, as she presumably did not intend to use it for this, but it will have to do. I will find my girlfriend. Damn it, now I’m saying it.
I make a few calls on the way over, but neither of my contacts have anything. If I want some useful information for insider trading or who’s winning tonight’s races, that they can give me, but apparently, finding Mia is a little too past their abilities. I shove my phone into my back pocket, grab the duffel bag from the passenger seat, and march inside, keeping an eye out for anyone suspicious.
Of course, it’s 11:15 on a weekday, so anyone in here is suspicious. Most of the stands are empty, and the few shops have their shutters pulled down. I pray I won’t have to wait until tonight to find anything out. He’ll torture her like he did me. I’d sooner die than let that happen to her. Even if it means I have to face him.
“Sven!” I call near his store, checking for any sign of him. Damn it, I need someone who might know something. Who’d be better for that task than a paranoid nutter? Grumbling, I move to a nearby bakery stall. Unless I want to buy some cupcakes, no one seems to have anything helpful.
“Is everything all right?” one of the identical fauns asks me.
Fuck it, maybe the hellbound bastard likes baked goods. “Have you seen this man?” I ask, holding up a printout of his face. It took me longer than I’d care to admit to figure out her printer.
He shakes his head and turns to his partner.
“I’m afraid not, dear. Have you asked Carlos?”
I rack my brain for a Carlos. “No. Who?”
“I suppose you’re not often here in the day. He does a lot of stock market stuff, helped us score the money to start this stand in a single night, but he’d probably have more info.”
One doesn’t need a license to start a stand here. It’s a black market. Does he mean the money for enough ingredients? That’s not that impressive from insider trading. My guy could’ve gotten them a real bakery in the same amount of time. “Could you point me to him?”
I follow his directions to find a short, dark-haired man. He looks human, though slightly too perfect, and smells faintly of the fae. “Changeling,” I greet him. I have such great manners when I’m pissed.
“Vampire.”
“Have you seen this man?” I hold up the photo. I need to be nicer. If I piss off the closest thing to a lead I’ve found, I’m well beyond fucked. I won’t let him take another woman from me. I can’t. “Please. It’s urgent.”
“I have,” he replies, grinning broadly.
Holy shit. “You have? Really? Oh, thank you. Tell me everything. What do you want for it?” I’ll give anything. He can have my house, my companies, whatever he wants. I have to stop
Iago.
“No need. I was already paid.”
“What?”
“Yeah, this guy in the photo, he came to me and told me that if you ever came around asking about him, to give you this letter. I can’t tell you anything more. I don’t serve both sides if this is some sort of feud.”
I bare my fangs. He just told me he was siding with Iago, and I will need some energy if I’m to walk right into a trap.
Outside, I wipe the changeling blood from my lips while I drop him to the ground—can’t hurt anyone inside, that’s against the rules. I finally read the note. It’s an address, one not far from here. It doesn’t say anything else. Wow, I was expecting taunting or some dramatic threat. Maybe he’s mellowed in his old age. Pathetic whining sounds come from the pitiful excuse for a mortal who would dare side with that monstrosity as I head back to my car, leaving him to bleed on the ground.
* * *
His hideout isn’t the ostentatious castle I’d expected from his ego. It looks more like something an American doomsday prepper would have. There are no windows, and it’s either quite small or largely underground. Either way, it has ornate double doors for the entrance. Only he would do that.
The doors fly off their hinges with a single kick. “You damnable coward!” I shout through the empty halls, causing a scurrying from deeper within the bunker. “I’ll have your head, you pitiful, ignorant, utterly mad knave of a man.”
A bullet tears into my shoulder. It hurts like a son of a bitch, but I do my best to ignore it. He’s given away his position.
In an instant, I’m beside the man from the photograph, the man who hurt Mia. He’s a mere human, as I thought. I tear him open, his blood filling me up. I hadn’t bothered to take it all from the last idiot, but this one deserves to die.
He promptly does so.
The air stinks of betrayal and lies. Iago must be nearby. “Come out here, you murderous, manipulative son of a whore,” I call, readying my sword in one hand and my pistol in the other. He’ll burn. I’m done being his victim. I’m done letting him do as he will, hurting and manipulating people throughout the world. It won’t happen again. I won’t let it.
“Othello.”
My vision goes red as I spin, my blade pointed right at his throat. “Iago.” My voice is scarcely more than a snarl.
He pays the sword no mind. His features spread into a warm and genuine smile. “By God’s wounds, man, it has been too long.” He takes a step to the side, and I prepare to parry. Instead of striking, however, he claps me on the back and quickly dodges my riposte. “Oh, how I’ve missed you. I’m glad you’re finally home.”
Does he really need to take the Lord’s name in vain? Hasn’t he done enough? I cross myself with my gun hand. The pain grounds me as I force myself to concentrate. I’m here to kill him. He took her. He took both of them from me. He takes everything I love. Fuck, I need to focus. I try another swipe of my blade and don’t land anywhere near him.
He giggles mischievously, sounding more like a ten-year-old in the midst of a prank than a sociopath carving a bloody swath through humankind. “Oh, Othello. Crossing yourself already. You always were the good Catholic girl. Of course, when I knew you, you were more of a good Catholic boy.”
“Enough!” I swing at him, but he steps out of my weapon’s path without the slightest difficulty.
“Very well, you can be Olivia now, if that’s what you want.”
“I want you to hand her over.”
He cocks his head, narrowing his eyes as if he can’t quite place his finger on who I’m referring to. “Her?” He places his hand on his chin as he stares up at the ceiling. “Oh, you mean your midnight snack. Of course she’s yours. I simply assumed you were full after eating my man.”
“She’s not food.”
“Oh, I beg to differ. Humans are food at most and toys at the least.”
Another swing, another dodge. “Iago,” I growl.
“But we have so much to catch up on. All these years, all this time, I’ve been waiting for you. I knew you’d come back to me—it was never in question—but I didn’t expect you to be this resilient. You always were far stronger than Bianca, but women, and…what is the term now? Blacks? I think Moor went out of fashion a few centuries back. Well, they need a firm guiding hand.”
He catches my blade in midair. That cocky grin I always loathed. He hasn’t changed a bit. The lean, gaunt boy with his slick black hair and the attitude that the world owes him everything.
Since he’s so busy holding my sword, I take the moment to fire a round right into his belly. He seems more stunned by the surprise than by the round igniting inside him. I take my chance and advance, cutting a black line across his chest and another one in his thigh, deep enough that the dark coagulated blood of his last victim oozes onto the floor. “I won’t let you hurt her.”
Laughter fills the room. He takes a step back, the only sign that he’s at all worried as he grins at me, clapping his hands together. “Bravo, Othello…sorry, Olivia. You are doing so much better than I’d thought. Perhaps you truly do deserve your sacred place at my side.”
“Go to hell.” I raise the gun to fire a round into his head, but by the time I pull the trigger, he’s already gone. His fist slams into my side, feeling not unlike being struck by a lance on the end of a freight train.
I stumble several paces to the side, having to move with the blow to avoid falling to the ground. My gun comes up as I spin, aiming at where he’d just been, only for my legs to fly out from under me at a kick from behind. The hand on my throat brings me the rest of the way to the ground. “You’ve grown soft, my dear friend,” he says, his voice conversational. “I expected better of you. When we first fought, you nearly bested me. I knew I’d chosen right. And now…look at yourself. On your back, beneath me, where you’ve always belonged, unable to so much as put up a fight.” He lets out a hiss, his hand touching the hole in his belly. “Perhaps I’ll have you fetch me a victim when this is all through. Maybe that harlot I have locked up.”
I bring my feet up in an arc, slamming them into his head, pushing off the ground as I swing my sword in a wide arc, nearly taking his hand.
He leaps back, that smirk still unmarred. “So protective of what’s yours. I do know that feeling.” He rushes in, ducking under my strike, his shoulder slamming into my stomach while he grabs my leg and hurls me against the nearest wall.
Before I can right myself again, he’s on me, and all I can do is block his blows as they shower down on me. I pull the trigger, the bullet not even grazing him, but the sound startles him enough that I can attempt to stab him.
He steps to the side, dodging with ease. “What do you think this will gain you? You think you’ll save her and be the hero? You’re no hero. You’re exactly the monster I made you. The sinful freak who killed her own wife.”
An involuntary shudder runs through me. I want to say that he’s wrong, that I’m not that, that I know better, but I don’t. I can’t. I’m not. Lunging forward, I shove my blade right for his atrophied heart. He catches it again. “I don’t mean to offend, my dearest friend. I simply speak the truth. Oh, but I do marvel at you. The last year must have been eating you up, knowing that I was there, knowing that that which you desired most was so close, and yet you couldn’t touch it. It must’ve been the sweetest suffering. Tell me about it, please. For old times’ sake.”
Bile rises in my throat. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
He blinks, his playful façade finally dropping as he peers into my eyes. “What do you mean?”
“‘That which I desired most’? Are you talking about Mia? We didn’t meet until a few weeks ago.”
“No, not the girl!” he all but screams, stepping toward me, his eyes wide and panicked, his hand sliding through his hair. In another instant, he’s composed again, sneering down at me. “You really don’t know? Oh, I can’t believe this. Did you at least see the messages at your favorite hunting ground before they shut it do
wn? Not the one for hicks. The one where you find the vampire chasers.”
I shake my head, staring down, barely able to even process that. He’s been there this whole time. He’s been watching me for who knows how long, and I never suspected a thing until Bianca showed up. I thought I was free. I thought I’d escaped. And he was right here. I’m even dumber than I thought. “Bianca really did escape, didn’t she?”
“Of course. I had to make an example of her. I had to show what happens if you disobey me again.”
I’m such a fool. “How long has it been?”
“Since we last saw each other? Oh, centuries.” He smiles, realization dawning on his face. “Oh, how long have I been watching you? Waiting? Playing our game? It’s been…” He purses his lips, doing the calculations in his head. “A little under three years. You did a good job getting away, but you knew it couldn’t be forever. You belong to me, Olivia. You always have, and you always will.”
I swallow, finding my throat dry despite the liters of blood I drank today. I scramble back, pressing against the wall.
“About a year ago, I decided that it was time to begin the game anew—after all, you wouldn’t notice me if I didn’t—so I gave your crucifix, along with a few pounds of other silver jewelry—mostly crosses—to a local butcher, with instructions to make sure to offer it free with every transaction. With your love of a proper Italian meal, I knew it wouldn’t take long. I wanted to see your face when you saw it, but wouldn’t you know it, the little moron went and sold it all to some wendigo. He had no right. I thought you’d at least seen it.” He places his hand on his chest, collecting himself. “Well, I’ve dealt with him. He’ll not double-cross anyone else.”
Olivia Page 19
