How to Wake an Undead City

by Edwards, Hailey

  “Fuck it,” their not-so-fearless leader snarled. “No reward is worth this.”

  He leapt out the smashed window, his harness catching him, and rappelled out of sight.

  “I got this.” Clem walked over, palmed a hefty pocket knife, and cut the rope. “Wait for it.”

  The dull thud of a body hitting pavement wasn’t music to my ears, but it was a relief. The threat had been dealt with, we were all still alive, and we had one vampire left to question.

  Face to the night, Linus murmured, “This shouldn’t be your life.”

  “This path brought me to you.” I reached beneath his cowl, dipping my hands in icy midnight to rest my palms on his cool cheeks. “I can walk it, as long as you’re beside me.”

  Light fractured around him, illuminating his face. “You shouldn’t have to—”

  Bringing him down to me, I silenced him with a kiss.

  “Ah.” Clem sidestepped us. “I see you’ve learned how to win arguments.”

  “Shhh.” I released Linus to slant him a look. “It only works if they don’t realize they’re being handled.”

  “Oh, we realize.” Linus brushed his lips over mine. “We just don’t care.”

  Snorting out a laugh, I shoved him away. “What do we do with our new friend?”

  The moment’s amusement lost, his features hardened into the potentate’s. “We bring him with us.”

  “Where?” I glanced around the ruined suite. “The Faraday?”

  “No, we can’t risk the exposure. Too many people know me there.”

  And some would be happy to spread the gossip about the potentate bringing his fiancée home, meaning Savannah’s tender underbelly, already vulnerable, would be even more exposed to circling predators.

  “Mary Alice is not going to be happy about this.” I sighed at the night sky that loomed so much closer, brighter as we moved toward dawn. “I didn’t think this type of glass could be broken. It’s tempered, right? There’s some kind of laminating process between panes? They must have…” I crunched over the debris, kicking it aside in search of clues. “But that’s not possible.”

  “You were thinking they must have cased this building prior to our arrival.” Linus watched a moment before crouching near me and examining a blackened clay shard. “They used charms that self-terminate.” He lifted it, and it glittered. “They embedded crushed tempered glass as foci. They likely planned this attack based on the Faraday, or under the assumption we would stay in a hotel in downtown. Any window made of the same material would work as a trigger for the charm to detonate on cue.”

  “How is it we’re so popular tonight?” We might as well have hung up flashing neon lights to match the parlor downstairs. “A visit from Johan and one from the vampire assassins. That can’t be a coincidence.”

  I only told a select few about coming to Atlanta, and they were all staying under Woolly’s roof except for Boaz. He had expanded that to include his partner and their backup, but they had no details. I hadn’t known where we were staying to tell any of them, and whoever was behind this had us pegged down to the address.

  Linus’s team knew our whereabouts, I was certain, but he trusted them with his life on a daily basis when he was on the job and had for years. They could have taken him out at any time, so it didn’t jive for me that they would choose now to switch teams.

  As much as I wanted to check Mary Alice off our suspect list, I had to remember—for the both of us—that she was an information broker. She was the one who had originally told me about the price on my head. While she might be fond of Linus, she had proven earlier she was no fan of mine.

  For the right price, a quick call to her could have given the Marchands our location.

  That would explain Johan showing up on our doorstep. And who knows? Maybe she ran two-for-one specials? Maybe she double-dipped, sold the information to two or more parties. The vampire assassins might have gotten tipped only after Johan left if Mary Alice was a big believer in customer service.

  The utter stupidity of staying above the hub of underground intel gatherers struck me hours too late to do anything about it. We should have been safe here, but I was learning safety was an illusion.

  The question, no matter how uncomfortable, had to be asked, “Are you sure Mary Alice…?”

  “Mary Alice is neutral.” Quick, hard, certain was his answer. “The moment she picks a side, she becomes obsolete. People won’t trust the information she sells not to be slanted toward her beliefs. She can’t have her own agenda, or no one will trust her to further theirs.”

  It was clear he wanted to believe the best of her, so I didn’t point out she had helped us. A few times. Or that Linus wasn’t her only friend. She might be helping others along too. To our detriment.

  Unbidden, Odette’s once-beloved face rose to the forefront of my mind, weathered from the sun and wrinkled by time and a life I had thought well-lived. Recalling her forced me to remember my own battle to believe the worst in someone I had trusted for so long. For his sake, I hoped his friend proved truer than mine.

  “We’ve got to be missing something…” I glanced around, my gaze landing on a discarded hanger sticking out of the trashcan. The dots connected in a flash, and I felt stupid for not considering it sooner. “Neely.”

  Following my line of sight, he asked, “You think Neely is responsible?”

  “Yes.” I yanked the hanger out of the can like it was proof. “No. Not directly.” I started pacing. “He ordered our clothes. He charged them to my account. Anyone with the means to monitor those types of transactions would have known I was planning on being in the city, and that you were coming with me. They would know where to find us since the packages had the address of Mary Alice’s building.”

  “You’re right.” His brow slanted downward. “There are only so many places in the city who tailor clothes to the High Society aesthetic. I pointed them out when Neely asked me for recommendations.” It was easy to see he was beating himself up for being predictable. “A bribe could buy that easily. There are Low Society necromancers and other factions within the city who sell that type of information to interested parties.”

  Interested parties, like Mary Alice. Ugh. I hated that her name kept popping into my head. Just because my nearest and dearest continued to betray me didn’t mean he shared the same curse. His taste in friends might prove better than mine. I followed my heart, for all the good it did me, while he used his head and let relationships grow from there.

  “Neely placed two big orders, both online. That gives us two stores, and goddess only knows how many employees. Someone took the order, someone filled the order, and someone delivered the order.” Thinking back, I made room for a third factor. “A courier service walked the orders up, but was it the same company both times? I can’t remember.”

  “Yes.” Linus shifted on his seat. “I recommended them as well. They’re discreet and always on time.”

  Picking at the loose thread, I asked, “Who would know you use them?”

  “Anyone who has business dealings with me as Scion Lawson. As the potentate, I hand-deliver what needs passing on, or I entrust the task to a member of my team.”

  “That leaves us with too many variables. We can’t shorten our suspect list and still get home on time.”

  “I’m not staying behind.” His blue-black stare dared me to suggest otherwise.

  “Are you going to call Mary Alice?” I gestured to the wreckage. “She might appreciate the heads-up.”

  Proving our thoughts often traveled the same paths, he shook his head. “This happened right under her nose. Even if Clem hadn’t splattered a vampire on the sidewalk outside her shop, she would have heard from one of her sources.”

  “There is that.” Rorschach vampires did tend to send a rather specific message. “I’ll send a floral arrangement.”

  Though Maud had never taught me which flower meant sorry vampires blew out the side of your building.

  “Flowers are a nice
touch. Let my team handle the rest.” He gestured toward the monitors. “They’ll touch base with us as they hunt down new leads or if they make progress on what we give them.”

  “Okay.” I gusted out a long breath, grateful to be one step closer to home. “That works.”

  Not a perfect solution, but I would take an iffy one at this point and smile about it.

  Four

  Running short on time, we packed the van in a rush, including a man-shaped duffle with a rust-colored stain spreading across the bottom. After we strapped in, Linus placed a call to the cleaners. Though the job paid well, it was ugly work mopping up supernatural messes before human cops could get involved.

  “I need you to send a text for me,” Linus said, handing over his phone as he pulled into traffic.

  One text turned out to be five as he arranged for a second rendezvous with his team through me.

  This time, we met at Base Four instead of Base Two, which made me wonder how many of them he had secreted across the city.

  With a hostage in tow, Clem providing an extra set of hands came in, well, handy.

  Bishop wasn’t thrilled we had acquired a third wheel, though his eyes glinted at the word interrogation, making me more curious than ever about what manner of supernatural creature he might be. But it was rude to ask, so I bided my time until I could bribe Linus for the details.

  Deja vu spun my head as we entered Base Four and discovered it resembled Base Two right down to the squeaky castor on Bishop’s worn desk chair. Had we not gained access from a different parking deck, on a different floor, on a different street, I would have assumed this was the same place. But that was crazy talk.

  Right?

  While I tucked our suitcases out of the way, Linus held the door for Clem, who carried our hostage, still in the duffle taken from the suite’s closet, in a fireman’s carry. How the duffle got there, or if there were more, I chose not to ask. Let alone how Linus knew where to find it. There are some questions best left unanswered.

  “Let’s get your friend down to the cell.” Bishop opened a slim door that illuminated even narrower steps. “I have a one hundred percent success rate when it comes to extracting information.” He winked at me. “I’ll have your answers before dinner.”

  While I had no love for assassins, I was extremely tired of them. I wanted answers I could trust, and I wanted them fast. Lucky for our unconscious friend, there was an easier way to get them than letting Bishop have his fun.

  Striving for diplomacy, I winked back at him. “Let me go first?”

  “Are you sure?” Bishop rubbed his jaw. “Interrogations get ugly fast.”

  “I spent five years in Atramentous.” Ice encased my heart at the memory. “Nothing is uglier than that.”

  Regret mingled with respect on his face. “Have at him.”

  With a tight nod to banish the ghosts of that dank, wet cell, I trailed Clem down two flights of stairs to a narrow room with a single cot, a toilet, and a sink. Linus and Bishop came down to watch the show, but it was a tight fit. Clem dumped his load on the mattress then looked to me for orders.

  The pocket knife felt as warm as the blood I was about to spill when I palmed it, flicked open the blade, and cut deep. Liquid pooled in my cupped hand, and I used it as ink for the sigils I drew on the man’s forehead.

  No sooner had I completed the design than he gasped awake, eyes wild as they spun around the room.

  Clem took the opportunity to cuff the prisoner’s hands behind his back, then he attached a chain to the convenient anchor mounted on the wall for just that purpose.

  “You’re going to answer some questions for me.” Despite his frantic struggles, I managed to line up the same truth sigils I had once used on Linus across both his cheeks. “There.” Sitting back to admire my handiwork, I flushed at the pride on Linus’s face. “Let’s begin.”

  “I won’t tell you anything.”

  Green.

  Green meant he was telling the truth.

  Guess I was going to have to be more persuasive.

  Eyes closed, I sorted through the genetic memory passed down to me through generations of goddess-touched necromancers until I discovered a sigil that coerced the truth rather than verified it. With the design in the forefront of my mind, I opened my eyes and applied those across his forehead.

  The change in his demeanor was instant. The fight drained out of him, and he slumped forward, relaxed.

  I started him off easy. “Who do you work for?”

  “I follow the money.”

  Green.

  “Who paid you?”

  He shook his head, tipped sideways. “No names.”

  Green.

  With Clem’s help, I propped him upright again. “That’s all you’ve got?”

  “They wanted proof.” He blinked at me, eyes gone hazy. “Your head or your heart.”

  Green.

  Linus drifted to my side, silent as a wraith. “How did you know where to find Grier?”

  “Got the address an hour before via text.”

  Green.

  Getting nowhere fast, I demanded, “Did they tell you why?”

  “Questions cost time,” he intoned with the cadence of a familiar mantra. “Time is money.”

  Green.

  Frustrated, Bishop kicked the wall. “Can you kill the laser show, please?”

  “Sure.” We had verified his answers were true. There was no reason to keep testing them if it put Bishop more on edge. “There.” I swiped the vampire’s cheeks clean. “Happy?”

  “Not as happy as I would be if I hadn’t agreed to let you go first,” he grumbled. “You’re taking the fun out of it.”

  Clem huffed behind him. “As much as I hate to agree, he’s right.”

  “Grier’s methods are more effective.” Linus smiled, just a tiny bit. “You can always try your hand with him after.”

  He passed judgment without a flicker of doubt, and I envied him that. Things hadn’t been so black-and-white to me since finding myself on the other end of a life sentence.

  “I can’t think of anything else to ask,” I admitted. “He doesn’t know who hired him, what they wanted with me, or how they knew where to find me. Taking him was a waste of our time.”

  Bishop wet his lips. “Not a total waste.”

  Thinking my curiosity was about to be sated, I waited for him to elaborate, but he was busy staring down the prisoner like the man was prey who would bolt if given the opportunity.

  “Don’t kill him.” Linus drew me toward the stairs. “Yet.”

  Linus and I left the vampire sitting in his cell, sedated by the sigil that had yet to wear off.

  Color me surprised when both Clem and Bishop followed us back into the control room.

  “We need to discuss our findings with the others,” Linus explained at my confusion.

  Or the lack thereof. We hadn’t learned anything from him. All we had done was condemn him to a slower death than his fellows. Unless…

  Waiting until we were all upstairs, I rapped on the door we had just shut. “Is this soundproof?”

  Linus brushed his fingertips over the knob, checking that it was secure. “Yes.”

  “What if we plant a tracker on him, let Bishop rough him up a bit, then let him go and see what happens?”

  “It’s not the worst plan I’ve ever heard.” Bishop cracked his knuckles. “His comrades will sweep him for bugs before they let him anywhere near their headquarters, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try my luck.” He cut Linus a look. “Escaping from the potentate’s clutches is rare enough to raise eyebrows.” He shrugged. “At least with your head still attached.”

  “I was thinking a sigil.” I rubbed reddish-brown flakes off my palm. “I could draw them on in a few places no one would think to look.”

  Linus, who wasn’t the jealous kind, turned eyes gone black on me. “Where did you have in mind?”

  Biting the inside of my cheek, I kept from smiling. “Maybe it’s best you do
n’t know.”

  I could tell he wanted to press the issue almost as much as he wanted to support my plan.

  With a sharp inhale, he drained the darkness from his vision. “I’m sure you’re right.”

  The skin on my palm had healed, but I could always pick the scab. “When should we get started?”

  “Bishop.” Linus took the out he had been given. “Escort Grier to the cell?”

  Once I got down to it, the process was about as much fun as I expected, but at least it didn’t take long.

  Thankfully, with the vampire still zoned out, all the cleanup required afterward was a good handwashing.

  “Between your sigils and my trackers,” Bishop said, walking up the stairs behind me, “we make a good recon team.”

  “Any hope for a shower while we wait?” The clothes I had on were stained with blood and unpleasantness. “This isn’t the first impression I wanted to make on the alpha.”

  We were closing in on six a.m. Two hours until our meeting. Two hours until Tisdale decided our fate.

  “Bishop,” Linus said as he woke the monitors, “show Grier to the bathroom, please.”

  While Linus presided over an on-screen meeting with the rest of the team, Bishop guided me to a large room stacked with enough bunk beds to sleep a dozen people. There was one en suite bathroom, but it was full-size, and it had two enclosed toilet stalls.

  Clem shouldered in behind us, taking in the facilities with a sharp eye.

  “Why bother with amenities when you’re never all in one place at one time?”

  “We break up domestic disputes and all sorts of ugly on the streets. Victims need safe places to stay, even when the shelters are full. We can partition the command center off, containing our guests in the residence area. That gives them access to the bunkroom, the bathroom, the kitchen, and the dining room. There’s a lockbox we can activate as well for remote entry. That way, we don’t see them, and they don’t see us.”

  “Clever.” It was just the sort of thing Linus would dream up, well, think up since he didn’t sleep often.

  “Linus built his own world within his city, back when he had nothing else.” Bishop kept his voice pitched low. “Now he has you, and you’re bigger than the world he imagined for himself.”