It’s confusing. It’s like I’m carrying you on top of my head.
I’ll try not to be so heavy.
But you won’t leave, will you?
Not just yet. Where are we going? What are we doing?
Where are you? I want to find your sleeping body and beat the shit out of it.
That’s fair. But, consider that I’m not mind raping you, girl. I’m just along for the ride.
That was true, Ivy decided. She couldn’t feel Christopher probing and prodding the inside of her head. He was there, but in a very different way than when he’d shared consciousness with her the day before. She saw no imaginary landscape, no dream scenario was spinning her along with it. She was just walking along a street with a vampire in her head.
Weirder things had probably happened.
Oh, yes, all the time.
He went quiet after that. She thought maybe he’d left. She walked on, noticed some leaves faded to gold and bronze rattling in the wind as she walked past them. They sounded like moans to her. She was covered in gooseflesh despite being dressed in warm clothes. Dread rose in her, twisted her belly, caught in her throat. She wanted to scream. She wanted to scream other people’s screams.
You aren’t doing this, are you?
I wish you would stop, Christopher answered. I’m as scared as you are. Where are we? Why am I seeing a statue of Shakespeare in Chicago?
The question put her back in her surroundings, standing on a park path. She wasn’t alone out there. People moved around her; nobody noticed her since she wasn’t doing anything but standing at the edge of a path out of the way. If she’d spoken aloud it would be assumed she was speaking on a cell phone. Crazy folk could shout and mumble to invisible people without anyone’s thinking anything of it these days.
Shakespeare sitting down? Bronze statue?
She knew what Christopher was seeing, where he was seeing. She began to walk that way.
Christopher didn’t like the way the invisible darkness was growing. There was an empty spot in the world where Ivy was heading. Empty of life. Empty of pain. Not empty of grief.
He wanted to tell her to stop, to send her another way.
He wasn’t going to treat her like a child.
There was a flock of pigeons sitting on Shakespeare’s lap. There were buildings off to the right. That wasn’t the way she was looking for. She walked around the low steps that formed the base of the bronze statue and took a path toward a stand of trees. The branches and remaining leaves ahead of her rattled and screamed louder and louder as she approached. Rattled like bones.
She could smell blood and raw meat. She imagined it and knew she imagined it, but the revolting stench sickened her just the same.
She was no detective, but she knew what the broken branches meant when she reached the thick thornbushes. She saw threads caught on thorns. Saw more than one set of footprints on the ground. She froze in place, looking blankly ahead. If she went through the barrier of the bushes…
You don’t have to go in there.
Maybe she shouldn’t. Maybe she’d be disturbing a crime scene. The police wouldn’t like that. Selena wouldn’t—
But Selena wouldn’t be able to tell if—
Tell what?
He was worried about her. Suspicious that she had hidden secrets. But mostly the vampire didn’t want her hurt. She closed her eyes to the sensation of his long arms wrapped tightly around her. It was becoming natural to share this telepathic link that shouldn’t be there. She stood perfectly still for a few moments, absorbing invisible warmth.
Then he stepped back, let her go, waited.
She walked closer to the slaughter.
She stepped through to the other side when she found a spot where the bushes weren’t quite so thick. She walked around several trees, one a willow that left her with an image of long, lank, dead yellow hair.
She didn’t need images of death. She found the reality of it soon enough, just a few steps beyond the trees. She had expected to find a body. She’d dreaded it, but braced for the sight of something horrific.
Trying to prepare for horror did Ivy no good at all.
She screamed. She fell to her knees, unable to stop screaming.
T here’s three of them! Goddess, no! Three! The bastard killed three—
Who? Christopher questioned. What bastard? Who are you talking about? Tell me, Ivy!
She shut him out. Hard and fast and painfully. She flung him so hard that the shock wave threw Christopher far out of himself as much as out of her. He whirled and swirled through daylight, through the city, bouncing into and out through a dozen strangers before falling into himself. He huddled inside his head, body immobile, but he was shaking and sweating on the inside.
Well, that was different.
He wondered how it had felt to the poor people he’d swept through. Had they had a moment of déjà vu? Felt like someone danced on their graves?
Never mind them, what the hell had that mortal girl done to him?
Pure hysteria had caused that flare of energy, hadn’t it? It had been a compound of horror, fear, anger, shame.
And not a one of those emotions had involved him. Christopher was sure she’d even forgotten he was with her the moment she found the corpses.
She was reacting to someone else. Someone she hated, feared. Someone she suspected.
Her stalker? Did she know—?
It better not be an old boyfriend.
Christopher couldn’t think anymore. What she’d done had taken too much out of him. Even vampires had to sleep sometime.
We’ll talk later, love. Oh, yes, we will.
chapter twenty-one
Let me go. Let me out of here. I want to go home.”
Jack stood in a half circle with Ted and John around the chair in the basement where they’d tied Dick. Dick kept struggling, crying, protesting, begging. He wasn’t getting any better. He kept babbling about who he had been and couldn’t seem to remember who he was.
“My name’s Martin. David Martin? Martin David?” he babbled. “I can’t remember.”
“You’re Dick,” John said.
“You like to rape and kill girls,” Ted said.
Dick howled in anguish. The sound was muffled by the well-insulated basement walls.
Jack had hoped bringing Dick back to the Master’s presence would do some good.
The Master stood back and watched, arms crossed, not looking particularly concerned. “Shut him up,” was all he said after a while. “We can’t risk any neighbors hearing him, no matter how muffled it is down here.”
Jack grabbed a couple of dish towels from the laundry basket on the far side of the basement and did as ordered. He blamed himself for having not anticipated this order already.
“Aren’t you going to fix him?” Ted asked the Master. He looked from the weeping prisoner to each of them before turning belligerently upon the demon watching indifferently. “How did that happen to him? Could it happen to any of us?”
The Master answered Ted’s questions with a hard look, glaring until Ted’s gazed dropped submissively.
The Master came forward and stroked Dick’s hair. He patted Dick’s tear-stained cheek. “This is my fault. It’s not that the host’s mind is too strong to handle the reincarnation overlay. No, it’s not that at all. I made a bad choice when I brought Dick back from hell. It was a bad joke on my part—wanting a servant or two who already knew how to terrorize this city.”
He looked at each of them. “John, I have no worries about you. You and I have been a team before, Jack.” His gaze went stern when it focused on Ted. “You are sly and ambitious. I don’t trust you for a moment.”
Ted paled and took a step back.
“But I like your style,” the Master told him. “And you’re strong enough to survive.”
“Thanks,” Ted murmured, not sounding too certain about what the Master meant.
Their demon lord gently placed his hands on either side of Dick’s hea
d. It took only a casual twist for him to break the mortal’s neck. The Master took a deep breath, breathing in the essence of everything Dick had been, every traumatized emotion of the dying host’s soul. The glory around the Master grew visibly brighter as he absorbed the sacrifice without needing any of the ritual preparation used in stripping death energy from his servants.
Jack sighed in wonder. Ted tried to stifle a gasp.
The Master sighed happily and looked back at Ted. “Envision this happening to you, my slave. Now, let’s prepare for our usual ceremony. A moment, Jack,” the Master added as Ted and John went to the other side of the basement to prepare for the more formal energy transfer at the altar.
The Master took no more notice of the corpse tied to the chair, so Jack turned away as well. “I’ll see to the body, Master.”
The Master’s hot hand landed on Jack’s shoulder. He smiled, sending pride through the look and touch. All of Jack’s concerns melted away.
“You haven’t brought me a sacrifice recently,” the Master said. “I’m concerned for you. You need the kill. You’re not the stalker type. Why are you doing this?”
Jack looked at the floor. He was pleased at the Master’s concern but ashamed of his behavior. “For you, Master. I’m trying to do something special for you, something new. That is an explanation, not an excuse. I’m sorry I’m not doing it correctly. This has nothing to do with the host mind, I promise you,” he added hastily. “I have that completely under control.”
The Master nodded and patted his shoulder. “Your victim has eluded you a couple of times. That alone makes her special. That must add to your enthusiasm for the chase.”
Jack smiled, excitement rising. “I’ve frightened her. I’ve felt the fear in her. She’s surrounded herself with people, and—she has magical protection as well as power of her own. I’ll get past all of them.”
“That will make the kill sweeter,” the Master agreed. “I think I would have asked you for one of that coven even if you hadn’t picked this one yourself.”
“The familia will try to thwart you.”
The Master shrugged. “I’ll tell you what. Since she’s so special for you—for me—capture her. Bring her to me. Do her here. You can show the other boys how it’s done. We’ll make a black ceremony of it.” He put a finger to his bright red lips, warning Jack not to share his knowledge of what the black ceremony meant. “Let’s just say it will be a real party.”
The final party. Jack loved the idea. “I’ll bring her to you,” he promised. “As soon as I can.”
chapter twenty-two
Goddess, how her head hurt! Ivy could barely see out of her swollen eyes. She couldn’t stop crying for those poor people and hated that she couldn’t stop. They were dead. Gone. Taken out of life, out of their families’ and friends’ lives. There were three blank spaces in the world. Why? For what?
Oh, she knew—suspected—the reasons for the murders. Stupid, stupid, useless reasons. Magic, for crying out loud! Psychic power games that had so little real effect in the world.
Magic worked. For some. So what? It was just a goddess-damned bad allergy! Trying to take over the world with spells that didn’t work on 90 percent of the population was old-fashioned and stupid. Why couldn’t people accept that magic was more affliction than tool and get on with living their lives the best they could with what ailed them?
Of course, she couldn’t explain that to the cops, who insisted on talking to her one after another, starting with the uniformed cop who came running in response to her screaming. More cops arrived. The uniform was followed by a detective.
Questions. Suspicions.
Yeah, it did look like she’d deliberately come hunting for the bodies, didn’t it? She didn’t blame them for looking at her suspiciously. And she couldn’t stop crying. She’d been led away from the crime scene. But she couldn’t stop seeing the bodies. Grief took her over, and she had to cry it out and get her head clear.
More cops arrived, informing her that they were homicide detectives, this time. Selena wasn’t among them. She was asked to explain again. She could tell they were annoyed when she told them exactly what she’d said twice before. Was she supposed to say something suspicious? Nervously change her story as a sign of some sort of guilt? Or was keeping to the exact same story a sign of guilt? She resented their suspicion even though she knew that assuming people told the truth wasn’t in their job description. Not that she could tell them the whole truth.
Then the media showed up, kept away by even more cops, but their helicopters circled over the park. The sick, greedy excitement pouring off the media did nothing to help the shaky emotions she couldn’t bring under control.
It would be an insult to ghouls to compare the news crews to them.
Why hadn’t she controlled herself? Why hadn’t she taken out her cell phone and called Selena? No. She’d screamed, and that scream, her weakness, could destroy Chicago’s magical community. She knew people were already thinking and talking about ritual murders.
Why hadn’t she called Selena?
Selena was from the magic world and a homicide cop. Maybe she should ask them to call Selena. No. It was better not to draw attention to any connection between them.
“Can I go?” she finally asked. “I’ve told you everything I know.”
“I don’t think you’ve told us everything,” a big, belligerent detective said. He got up in her face, and he’d had onions and cigarettes for breakfast. “What are you crying about? Feeling guilty about something?”
A hand landed on the detective’s shoulder. “Take a step back, please,” Selena said politely. “If you don’t want to be eating your own balls in another minute.”
Oddly enough, the stinky detective smiled as he turned to look at Ivy’s cousin. “Don’t tell me, Crawford, I’ve stumbled into one of your sort of cases.”
Selena gestured toward the bodies being examined by a crowd of forensic technicians and shrugged. “I know that you’re harassing my cousin and know how well I take care of my family.”
“So, it is one of your cases.” The detective looked toward the line of news vans and cameras. “How true is what they’re speculating about?”
“It’s not my case,” Selena said. “I just came by to give my cousin a ride home.” Selena pushed past the detective and took Ivy by the arm. “You are a wreck, child. Let’s go.”
Selena led Ivy away from the scene, away from the media. Nobody tried to stop them, no questions were called out or cameras turned on them. Selena wasn’t putting up with any shit that day. Her commanding aura spread out around everyone, whether they were sensitive to magic or not. Charisma was the word, Ivy guessed. Charisma was a kind of magic that worked on most people. Selena had a lot of it.
Selena took Ivy back to the house she’d told her not to leave, and this time Ivy intended to do as she was told. She didn’t notice the drive—everything was literally a blur.
Once inside, she stumbled into the guest bathroom and washed her face over and over before staring into the mirror above the sink. She couldn’t make out her face. It wasn’t just from the crying. Everything was fuzzy.
“There’s something wrong with my eyes!”
Selena was lingering in the doorway. She’d been lecturing Ivy, but Ivy had only heard blahblahdangerousblahblahblahstupid and didn’t bother listening though she agreed with every word. Especially the blahs.
Now Selena grabbed her face and got as close to her face as the mean detective had. Only her breath was fine, and she stared intently into Ivy’s eyes.
“What are you looking for?” Ivy asked.
“I have no idea. There are shadows in there. I’ve got a feeling you’re not quite here. Does your head hurt?”
“Goddess, yes. You know, it feels like my brain has been tossing weights around.” Tears began to sting her eyes again. “I just feel so—awful!”
“Why don’t you take a nap. Maybe getting some sleep will push a reset button or something.”
Ivy didn’t like the or something part, but she welcomed the idea of sleep. She stumbled past Selena and flopped down on the first bed she found, or at least it was a horizontal surface of some sort.
Then she was gone. Just gone. Into the lovely dark where strong, warm, leather-clad arms waited to hold her.
How was a vampire supposed to get any rest with all that crying going on?
Christopher sat up, rubbed his aching, tired eyes, then peered into the absolute darkness.
The darkness after dawn was a normal part of vampire life. When it first happened after the turning, it was terrifying to him. He’d seen it as punishment for the thing he’d done to become a vampire. It got to be normal after a while—a few decades. He didn’t scream when he woke in the empty darkness anymore. He’d learned to find his way out of it. All vampires did. You moved on. In fact, this black nothing was something he hardly even noticed anymore.
Except at that moment.
He closed his eyes. It was ridiculous to let this darkness get to him when his real eyes were frozen shut for as long as the sun was in the sky. Christopher listened. After a while, he moved toward the crying woman.
“Ah, there you are,” he said, coming out of nothing to approach Ivy sitting at the base of—he glanced up—a statue of William Shakespeare. With pigeons. “No respect.”
He waved at the birds. They weren’t one bit startled. Oh, well, he wasn’t really here, and neither was Ivy. He sat down beside her. Put an arm around her shaking shoulders. She leaned into him, rested her forehead against his chest. His shirt was soon damp with her tears.
“You’re stronger than this,” he said after a while, when she kept crying and crying. He rubbed his free hand across the back of his head and laughed softly. “Oh, yes, I remember your flinging me away now. Do you recall what happened then?”
Ivy burbled something unintelligible, even though they were using telepathy here. He lifted her chin and raised it until she was looking at him. The whites surrounding her hazel eyes were all red, her pretty face was swollen, almost unrecognizable. Her misery rolled off her and into him in graygreenblack stormy waves.
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