by Jayne Faith
Two of the men resumed what they were doing, and the one nearest me reached for something in his back pocket. Without a word, he handed me a bundle of papers folded lengthwise.
I flipped through them, noting the official Gregori letterhead and logo on all of them. The logo shone off the page, literally rising up in three dimensions off the paper, in holographic “ink”—a techno-magical material that Gregori had developed—and I knew the paperwork was legit. The holographic seals were impossible to forge.
Stein had come to peer over my shoulder. “That’s not a warrant, is it?”
“No. It’s documentation showing Gregori Industries owns that gargoyle,” I ground out through clenched teeth.
“What?” Roxanne’s voice broke, and her pale face contorted in horror.
Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.
I should have listened to Johnny and called the authorities. Not the regular police, but someone in Supernatural Crimes and Public Safety, like he’d suggested. SCPS would have claimed the gargoyle, but it would have been a hell of a lot more accessible than it was going to be once Gregori had it. Johnny’s instincts had been right. But had I listened? Nooo. Of course not. I was so sure I could handle it, so I’d batted my eyelashes at him and convinced him to do it my way.
“Tag number is right here,” Head Goon said. With a sausage of an index finger, he pointed at the side of the statue’s base. Next to the tag number was an animated seal of authenticity, another Gregori techno-magical invention.
I whipped my phone off its mount and snapped a picture. But my stomach was dropping like a faulty parachute. Embossed into the stone were the words “PROPERTY OF GREGORI INDUSTRIES. SPECIMEN #G5996613-06B” along with the company logo.
I shoved the paperwork at Stein. “Take pictures of all of these.”
Then I tapped Head Goon on the back and folded my arms, waiting until he turned around. “Explain to me how Gregori came to own this rare creature.”
“Sorry, can’t disclose that info.”
“Then tell us how it ended up on that balcony,” I demanded.
“Classified.”
I squeezed my eyes closed and pinched my temples between my thumb and middle finger.
Think.
I turned to my phone, finding Johnny in my contacts. He picked up on the second ring.
“I’m at Roxanne’s,” I said. “Gregori Industries has claimed the gargoyle as their property, and they’re currently in the process of hauling it away. It’s got their name and serial number on it. They’ve got paperwork.” With each word, misery deepened in the pit of my stomach.
Johnny let loose an impressive concentration of four-letter words.
The twisting sensation in my guts pulled tighter.
“When they get that thing onto Gregori property—” Johnny started.
“I know,” I cut in. “Then we’re officially screwed.”
The Gregori Industries campus, situated just outside Boise city limits, was practically its own sovereign nation. I never understood how Jacob Gregori had pulled it off, but anything on that property was more or less exempt from police search warrants or entry by law enforcement.
There was a dull bump that shook the floor, and I looked up to see that the goons had worked the statue inside the apartment. One of them manned the hand truck while the other two tipped the statue, lifting one edge of its base so the flat plate of the hand truck could be slid under it.
“You could call the cops, try to stall them,” Johnny said.
I looked at the ceiling and blew out a harsh breath. “You know how the police are when it comes to Gregori Industries. The cops will conveniently wait a couple of hours and then respond to the call after the gargoyle is long gone.”
Johnny sighed. “I don’t have any bright ideas. I’m sorry, Ella.”
“Please, don’t apologize. I should have listened to you in the first place. But I’m not going to let this drop,” I said. “I may need your help again.”
“You know I’m here, sugar.”
Good old Johnny.
I pulled my lips in between my teeth and clamped down. There was something I could do. The prospect of it made me about as happy as the thought of eating a chocolate covered piece of dog poop, but . . . I looked over at Roxanne. She stood in the same hoodie she’d worn the night before with her arms wrapped around her body, shivering in spite of the stuffy air as tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Hey,” I said to Head Goon, drawing out the word and aiming for a genial tone. I gestured to Roxanne, and he glanced over at her. I warmed my voice to the extent I was capable. “Can you guarantee no harm will come to it? At least until we have a chance to free him?”
With my eyes wide and upturned, I stepped close to Head Goon and touched his sweaty, hair-covered forearm. He was slightly shorter than me, so it was a real challenge to try to angle my head to make it seem like I was looking up at him with doe eyes.
“Pleeease?” I crooned. BO and stale coffee breath drifted up my nose.
I wasn’t a fan of this type of manipulation, and I knew I wasn’t good at it. But I could see him softening.
He actually smiled, showing me a row of stained teeth that looked like corn kernels. “The statue won’t be harmed. Not right away, anyway. It’ll be quarantined and under observation for the first twenty-four hours.”
I returned his smile and gave his arm a squeeze. “Oh, thank you!”
Allowing the saccharine expression to fall off my face, I went to Roxanne, purposely blocking her view of the men, and put my hands on her shoulders. I waited until she looked up at me.
“This isn’t over.” I pitched my voice low so only she would hear. “I can’t stop them from taking the statue, but I’m going to find a way to get your brother back.”
She nodded, but her eyes were far away and void of hope.
“Do you want to hang out at my place the rest of the day?” I asked, feeling weird about leaving her, even though she was clearly used to being home alone.
“No, that’s okay. I have a babysitting job in fifteen minutes.” The corners of her mouth drooped.
“When my shift ends, I’ll call you and tell you what we’re doing next. Johnny wants to help, too. Hang tight, Roxanne. Okay?”
Not even the mention of Johnny’s name elicited any spark. “Yeah,” she said, her voice tiny and flat.
I went to Stein and took the papers from him. “You got all of them?”
He nodded. Then he flicked a look at Roxanne. “Why isn’t she in school?”
She heard him and pulled a face as if she’d just smelled something spoiled. “Because it’s like the middle of summer?” There was that adults-are-morons curl of her lip.
My mouth twitched with the beginnings of a grin. Roxanne still had some fight in her.
“Oh, right.” Stein gave me a sheepish look.
“Officers Stein and Grey, report your status immediately,” came a voice through our earpieces.
Cursing silently, I puffed my cheeks and blew out a harsh breath. We’d missed our check-in. And we were away from our beat.
I pressed and held the walkie button on my earpiece. “Stein and Grey checking in. We were, uh, responding to a direct call for aid. All clear, no demon activity. Current location Twelfth Street, returning to Capitol Boulevard now.”
There was no point in lying about where we were. The station’s communication center constantly showed our position.
“Stein and Grey, you have orders to report to your Sergeant at the end of shift.”
I closed my eyes, slumping with defeat. Not only had I failed Roxanne, I’d gotten Stein in trouble his first day on the job.
“I’m sorry, we have to get back to work,” I said to Roxanne. “I’ll call you this evening.”
Stein and I hurried from the apartment and down to my truck.
“I’ll tell Devereux this was all my fault,” I said as I drove us toward our beat. “I’m already a troublemaker in his mind, so it won’t take much to convinc
e him. I’m sorry about this.” I glanced over at him.
The tension on his face was obvious. “You were trying to do something good. It was my choice to go with you.”
“Thanks for that, but I wouldn’t take offense if you want to request another partner. They’d probably grant it, given the circumstances.”
He blew out an annoyed breath. “Then I’d look like an ass. Who decides they can’t deal with shit their first day on duty?”
He had a point. He would look like a first class wuss if he asked to switch to someone else right now. A large part of me wished he’d do it anyway, but it was a selfish desire. I wanted it only to help relieve my own guilt.
With a furtive look out of the corners of my eyes, I tried to get a read on just how upset he was. He stared straight ahead, his jaw muscles flexing as he ground his teeth.
“I’ll, uh, make it up to you,” I said, all too aware of my own awkwardness and hating it. “Whatever you want, just tell me. I want to make this right.”
Hell’s bells, I sucked at contrition.
He tilted his head slightly, his eyes cast upward. “Okay,” he finally said, nodding.
I waited for more, but he remained silent as I found a parking spot at the edge of the green that fronted the capitol building.
Great, he was going to dangle it over me a while. I supposed I deserved it.
“So that girl thinks her brother is trapped in the gargoyle?” Stein asked, clearly dubious.
“Yeah, I know how it sounds, but she actually may be right.”
“How do you explain that?”
I lifted a shoulder. “I can’t. We have no idea how it could have happened.”
The doubt on Stein’s face said he wasn’t completely buying it.
I pulled out my debit card and waved it at the meter, even though I’d probably end up with a parking ticket anyway. The spots around the capitol were one hour max, and I couldn’t go running back every hour to feed the meter or move my truck. The alternative would have been to park at home and walk the handful of blocks to our beat, but that would have delayed us getting back to our territory and made it look like we were purposely dawdling, which only would have incurred more wrath from Devereux. I preferred a ticket.
A crowd was gathering on the green. The shadows framing the edges of my vision took notice, too, gyrating like dark smoke stirred by a breeze. A dull ache thumped between my eyes.
“Rally or something?” I asked Stein, mostly just for something to say.
“That guy looks familiar.” Stein was squinting at someone in the crowd.
I followed his gaze, and my eyes jumped right to the man who, despite standing at one edge of the people milling around, gave off the impression of being at the center of things.
“Rafael St. James,” I said.
“Why do I know that name?”
“He’s in the news every so often. Activist for equal treatment of vampires and other causes.”
“That’s right, I remember. He lives around here, doesn’t he?” Stein asked enthusiastically, as if he’d just realized we were in the presence of a celebrity, which wasn’t far from the truth, actually.
Glad that he seemed to be thawing, I nodded and quickly tried to dredge up anything I could think of about Rafael St. James. Some of the things I knew about Raf weren’t appropriate for polite conversation, but I’d leave that revelation for another time. “Yeah, he grew up here. Comes from money, but instead of following in his father’s footsteps, he dedicated his life to humanitarian causes. His father was a rich farmer and his mother was an illegal from Central America. Both are gone now, and he must be sitting on a fortune, but for the most part you’d never know it. Let’s make a loop and see what’s going on.”
We’d reached an intersection, but instead of crossing, we angled around to continue following the sidewalk that bordered the green. Now that we were back on our beat, we could take our time until another call came in from dispatch. As we neared Rafael and his people, I spotted a news van parking across the street.
I glanced at Stein, wondering what he sensed from the vampires in the crowd. I saw several—recognizable by their ethereal, ageless faces and the way they seemed to glide rather than walk—but I identified them by sight, as my magic wasn’t strong enough for me to sense what little magical signature they emitted. If there was a rogue vampire nearby, I’d feel the presence, but these were all dociles, treated with a special implant that released a continuous low-level dose of silver and other proprietary ingredients. The treatment allowed the vamps to walk in sunlight without burning and suppressed their bloodlust. It also made them much less detectable by people with magical aptitude.
The implants had been invented by none other than Gregori Industries not long after the New York City Rip and the subsequent emergence of the VAMP2 virus. All vampires were required by law to get the implant. The federal government claimed compliance was over 99%, but many believed that was an overestimation to diminish public fear and discrimination against vampires. Independent groups estimated compliance was quite a bit lower.
Rogue vamps were out there, but they were stealthy and smart. They tended to pick their victims from the fringes of society, and once they had their human feeders drunk on glamor and the high that came from vampire saliva, they usually didn’t worry about their prey trying to escape.
My chest clenched as the image of Evan flashed through my mind, his body slack and surrounded by others like him in a vamp feeder den. I’d had no sign where it was located, whether it was in real-time or a memory inserted into my brain, but one thing was certain—if the vision was real, there was a blood-hungry, impossibly strong and lightning quick rogue vamp keeping my brother there. I squeezed my eyelids closed, willing away the hurt that accompanied the thought of Evan serving as a helpless feeder.
“Are you okay?” Stein asked.
I drew a breath. “Yeah, fine.” I forced my focus to my partner and our present surroundings.
By the way Stein was staring at a porcelain-skinned vampire with corn silk hair down to her waist, I guessed this was a novelty for him. It made sense. Before the implants came along, vampires in New York and the surrounding areas were massacred. It wasn’t a place they tended to want to live.
Manhattan wasn’t just ground zero for the Rip, it was also the birthplace of modern vampires. In vamp culture, it was sort of holy ground, but not the type of landmark they wanted to visit. Once the implants became widespread and proved effective, vampires were allowed to live anywhere they chose. Vamps fled the Northeast, where the prejudice against them was strongest. It was possible that Stein, having grown up back East, had never even seen one in person before.
“What do you think about vampire rights?” Stein asked, his eyes still glued to the vamps.
“I think it’s a worthy cause. The dociles shouldn’t be discriminated against. It’s not their fault they’re infected, and they pose no harm to society as long as their implants are working. They have the right to death, liberty, pursuit of happiness, et cetera.”
“Do you know any?”
“Yeah, I’ve known a few, but they tend to keep to themselves. There are a ton of them out west off Hill Road,” I said, naming a long, winding road that began not far from my apartment and stretched westward at the base of the foothills. “There’s a big neighborhood that was built about twenty years ago. Sunshine Valley. Other pockets of vamp communities live farther west.”
“It’s interesting. The different attitudes about vampires, I mean.” Stein glanced at me, but I couldn’t read his eyes. “Back home, there are too many who lost loved ones to the virus. Others whose loved ones disappeared into feeder dens. It’s too fresh.”
In the early days of VAMP2, SWAT teams shot vampires on sight using rounds infused with oak filaments and silver—a sort of vampire stake in bullet form. Citizens killed a fair number, too. It was considered acceptable self-defense back then in the midst of the panic, so no one was ever charged with murder of a vamp
ire. Today, the fear of even the docile vampires was still heavy and public in some places. In general, the farther west you went, away from the East Coast and the original Rip, the greater the acceptance of docile vamps.
It was an uncomfortable topic. I wasn’t born yet when it all went down, but I knew enough from old footage on the web, media references, and what I’d learned in school to understand that out here, so far from New York, people had been incredibly lucky to suffer only a few deaths at the hands of a relatively small number of rogue vamps that made it this far west immediately after the Rip.
By the time I was born, the implants had been around for a few years. The prejudice against vamps, however, still lived on.
We slowed and then stopped at the edge of the crowd. Rafael’s people were setting up a little fold-out platform. A few were handing out pre-printed signs from the back of a pickup. I caught a look at some of the signs. One read, “EQUAL HEALTH CARE FOR ALL.” Another read, “VOTE AGAINST LEGAL DESCRIMINATION.”
Some of the people arriving on the green carried their own homemade signs.
Vampires are people too!
I’m a vampire, and I pay my taxes.
Rafael hopped onto the platform, and there was a little smattering of applause and cheers. He flashed a smile at the crowd and then looked down to switch on the megaphone in his hand. There was a brief screech of feedback, and he winced good-naturedly.
I’d read somewhere that he used old-school megaphones at his rallies instead of modern PA systems because he liked the way megaphones played in media photos. It wasn’t vanity, though. Despite his rock-god looks—tall, broad-shouldered, tousled dark hair, a wide mouth with an easy smile, pale green eyes the color of sea glass that stood out starkly against his Latin coloring—Rafael was always about the cause. His rallies might look like spontaneous, grassroots gatherings, but everything he did was carefully orchestrated for the greatest effect.
“I’d like to meet him,” Stein said. “Seems like an interesting character.”
“He is.”
He turned to me. “You know him?”
“We’ve crossed paths a few times,” I said mildly. Just then, Rafael’s gaze swung my way. The corner of his mouth lifted in a little half-smile of recognition.
