by Peter Dawes
But that hardly meant I could not borrow his.
Chapter Thirteen
They welcomed me into their house again with no small degree of uncertainty, but acquiesced toward hearing me out. Seated at their kitchen table once more, I explained the task ahead and waited for watcher and seer alike to weigh in on my idea. After an extended silence, Darshan was the first to speak while Kamini quietly observed from the chair beside him. “Are you sure you won’t let us come with you?” he asked. “I don’t have any trouble believing we could gain permission if we tell the Order we are there to help you.”
“I hardly think is necessary to pull you away from your work here,” I countered. Leaning forward in my seat, I folded my hands atop the table, the formalities of tea and pleasantries behind us now. I still had a fraction of a cup’s worth left, something I filed into the back of my thoughts in favor of focusing on the reason for my visit. “I have a very specific request.”
“And what would that be?”
My gaze found Kamini, a smile touching the corners of my lips. “If I could be so bold as to request her help with a spell.” I glanced at Darshan again. “Namely, whichever one you used to change the color of your eyes. As you can imagine, wading into a coven full of vampires is perilous in and of itself, but when one is specifically tasked with not killing any of them, it is best to reduce the likelihood of that being a necessity.”
Darshan’s brow furrowed as he settled back against his chair and pursed his lips. Kamini straightened her posture, her hand settling on her seer’s shoulder and head tilting while she regarded me. When they finally broke enough to glance at each other, a silent – and likely telepathic – discussion commenced, one evident in their eyes alone and nothing else. I watched until it felt uncomfortable to stare and my gaze felt drawn toward roaming elsewhere.
Kamini broke the silence with a sigh, bringing my focus back to the pair. Nodding at us, she stood, taking her leave of the kitchen without any further ceremony. I perked an eyebrow, tracking her exit until she wandered into the sitting room and disappeared out of sight. Darshan nodded in my periphery, prompting me to glance in his direction again. “She has agreed, but she needs to get a few things ready first,” he said. A smaller smile surfaced on his face, reluctant in its appearance. “It’s an involved spell.”
My expression evened, but my curiosity had been piqued. “What do you mean by involved?”
Darshan sighed. “It’s –” He gestured with his hand as though rifling a rolodex for the correct word. “– an illusion. It makes others see a different color. It doesn’t change anything about your eyes themselves.”
“Does it ever wear off?”
“There’s a way to dismiss it. Kamini will tell you how. There is only one thing about it, however.” The other seer shook his head, pointing a finger at me for emphasis. “You can’t let anybody get too close. This distance is still fine, how you and I are from each other. But any closer and you chance them seeing through the spell.”
I frowned reflexively. “Very well, then. I shall make certain to remember that.”
“Your life might depend on it, vampire or not.” He opened his mouth to add something further, but was interrupted by his watcher’s voice, calling him into the other room; or such is what I surmised from the tone and urgency of her speech. Darshan shouted back an answer, glancing at me while rising to a stand. “She says she needs my help with a few things,” he said. “Could you please wait here?”
“Yes, absolutely,” I responded, returning the gesture when he nodded at me and watching him exit the kitchen. As he turned a corner, leaving me to myself, I drew a deep breath inward, sipping from the cup of tea and using the moment to center my thoughts. The spell solved more problems than it caused, I told myself, and at least this time I would not have to use my bloody glasses. That made the caution of keeping people at arm’s length worthwhile. As I pondered that notion, I heard my brother chide me once more for my unwillingness to play along with a ruse and frowned.
Yes, there had been a day when I savored deception, but I was not lying about having lost my taste for it.
‘Your life might depend on it, vampire or not.’ I replayed Darshan’s comment in my mind, taking another drink from the cup and musing on the wisdom of his words. They were true for more than just the spell. Acting was what would be asked of me, and no illusion would substitute. I considered that truth and how much sobriety to lend toward it.
The muted sounds of Darshan and Kamini talking faded farther into the backdrop the more I considered the real challenge before me. A whisper began to grow in volume, its genesis somewhere within my mind, and caught my attention from this sheer fact alone.
How good we had been at it. With what little effort we had managed to circle around vampire and human alike. I failed to determine just what ‘we’ meant, as the voice shifted to sound so much more like my own, but I had no time to consider it further before the torrent of memory overtook me.
Images painted around me before I could stop them, taking me to another place and time.
***
The voice sank its hooks into me, taking the redeemed hero on a tour of his darkest days. No longer seated in a kitchen in India, I found myself in a posh club deep within a Philadelphia hotel, one aligned between Rittenhouse Square and the Avenue of the Arts in Center City. It was not my normal hunting grounds, but special times called for exotic venues and this had been an assignment handed to me by Sabrina during the days when she yet had me wrapped around her twisted little finger.
Thus, I settled in at one of the tables, lighting a cigarette while dressed in my normal attire. The black suit hanging from my frame concealed my compliment of daggers, the sword not with me to preclude the necessity of a longer coat. Music filled the air of a much calmer, more instrumental quality than I had become accustomed to hearing waft around the area nightlife. It would figure, a creature so vain would desire an equally pretentious place to meet.
A smile played across my lips, my demeanor cool and concentration focused on the crowd surrounding me. He had been described as a man my height, with sandy brown hair and brown eyes, looking approximately thirty human years in age. It took three cigarettes and a glass and a half of Scotch for me to spot him in the sea of faces, leading his date to the bar and situating himself there while motioning to the bartender. Lifting two fingers, he nodded at a question posed to him before directing his focus to the human woman. The action inspired me to do the same.
She wore a slinky black dress and had ebony hair pinned neatly into a bun. White mink draped across her shoulders, she wore heels at least three inches tall and still only reached the bottom of his chin with the top of her head. My target helped her up into one of the stools and took a seat next to her, reaching in his suit jacket for a metal cigarette case and pulling it out. They had two lit and their drinks delivered at the point when I decided to motion in their direction.
My mistress had warned me of him. Not of her; she had been listed as a human contact, but very little other information had been provided. Sliding onto a stool three seats down from them, I lifted my glass when the bartender glanced in my direction. He nodded, going back to his business and leaving me to mine, with the vampire and his date apathetic to my presence despite the oddity of my dark sunglasses. Swirling the amber-colored liquor in my glass, I imbibed a small sip of it, intent on nursing this one as long as possible. My wits needed to be sharp, my ears attuned to their conversation.
Edwin Gallagher had murder on his mind.
It gave me no small amount of amusement to consider. I was three years into my reign of terror as an assassin and the vampire council had been reduced to pleading to outsiders for assistance. The network of spies in Sabrina’s employ carried the message to Timothy that Philip’s coven had been the one to posit the solution. Hire an assassin of their own, to cease the threat known as Flynn once and for all. While Edwin himself was not the trigger man, he was to be the facilitator, which forced us int
o action. I had been given the task of cutting off the problem at its source.
He glanced in my direction, as though the presence of another vampire had directed his gaze toward me. I brought my cigarette to my mouth, drawing from it and tapping the ash from the end into the ashtray while waiting for his attention to be diverted. Whatever he had been told about me, the legend of my sunglasses had failed to reach his ears for he looked back at the human woman without skipping a conversational beat. The corners of my mouth curled as I beheld this in my periphery.
Relaxing by the slightest of margins, I sipped my drink and listened to their conversation.
“Anyway,” Edwin said, “my coven master said you have some experience with this sort of problem.”
The woman shrugged, taking a drink of her martini before responding. “I’m more of a go-between than the type to get my hands dirty, Mr. Gallagher,” she said. “That being said, I don’t think my clients have ever been contracted to handle one of your kind before. Who is your master?”
“Yancey McGovern in Albany.”
“The name rings a bell.” She chuckled softly. “I think he was looking for a more human target.”
“Still, he said your clients handled our situation delicately.”
“They’re former military. They’d hardly handle it any other way. I wouldn’t even need to tell them it was a vampire, they only care about the paycheck.” The woman allowed a lull to settle in the conversation, more attentive to her drink than Edwin and bent on depleting her cigarette in the space between her comments. A slight shift of her body and her clearing her throat preceded her next words. “What did the coven masters here do to earn an assassin on their heads?”
A sardonic chuckle passed through Edwin’s lips. “Who knows?” he asked. “I tried asking the one who called us, but he kept insisting nothing. Just that a member of their council went off the rails and made a vie for power.”
“One hell of a vie. What is his body count so far?”
“Too many.” I heard the frown in his response. “Killing one of us without provocation is enough.”
“But you think they’re lying about not doing anything.”
“I don’t know what to think. Philip isn’t the kind to withhold information. He says there just isn’t much of it out there. Nobody comes back alive after one of their encounters with this guy. He’s that good.”
As tempted as I was to bask in the moment of ego, I saw my opportunity and took it. Rising from my seat, I extinguished my cigarette and took my drink in hand, repositioning myself next to Edwin. He turned to face me, looking instantly distressed at such a direct violation of their space. I acted nonplussed, however, bringing the glass to my lips and shaking my head, a rueful air to me. “I can tell the two of you are not from around here,” I said, my lowering my voice below the volume the two of them had employed.
They exchanged a look in the corner of my eye. I refused to regard them straight away, content to nurse my drink and pull them in gradually. Finally, Edwin shifted just enough to indicate me part of their chat now, an eyebrow raised at my intrusion. “Might I ask what gave you that impression?” he asked.
I smirked. “I could tell you because I know all the vampires in this area, but that would be lying. And it’d hardly do much for me, considering you both look to be in need of some assistance.”
His female companion inclined closer. “What business is any of this to you?” she asked.
“Quite a lot, actually,” I said. “Would you like for me to point out to you what gives you away?” When neither of them responded, I finally turned in my chair to face them, reaching in my pocket for my cigarettes and careful not to reveal the hilts of my daggers. Lighting the end of one, I allowed the moment to linger again, but not long enough to lose their interest. One draw from the end and one puff of smoke exhaled and I began my dance.
“You are discussing this business in public,” I continued, maintaining the volume of my voice. It forced the woman closer, but I hardly minded. The smile I flashed in recognition of her shift was intentionally predatory. “Have you no idea where you are? You are in the middle of a city a notorious assassin calls his playground and you are discussing his demise as though conversing about sports or some museum piece you fancy. How do you know he isn’t lingering somewhere in the midst of this crowd?”
The woman stole a brief flick of her eyes around to the other people gathered. Edwin, however, countered my smirk with one of his own. “As far as I see it, you’re the only other vampire in this bar,” he said.
“And therein lies your second folly,” I said. “Would you like for me to point out what that is?”
“You’ve not seen fit to hold back your commentary since joining us.”
“Yes, well, you could say I am hoping what you lack in intelligence, you can make up for in wealth.” Licking my lips, I looked at the female companion again. “You are affluent, am I correct?”
“We are both people of means,” Edwin interrupted, forcing my eyes back to him. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Well, it is my business. I need to know how much my information might be worth.” I brought the cigarette back to my lips, but did not draw from it again just yet. Instead, I maintained my grin, speaking first. “You could say I am being the wiser man and seeking to leave town.”
Edwin paused to glance at his female companion. She looked at him and shrugged, prompting him to study me much closer than he had a few moments ago. “Tell me what sort of information you have and I’ll tell you how much it’s worth to me.”
I breathed a quiet laugh and shook my head. “You think I come with a pittance when I offer you the crown jewels. What if I said I could deliver the assassin to you?”
“I wouldn’t believe a word you were saying.”
“That, my friend, is precisely why I see the current state of affairs as such. You shall ignore me, go back to your planning, and wind up with a blade run through you.” I nodded toward the woman. “You and your beautiful accomplice here. Who provided you with your information? You said Philip? Him and him alone was it?”
Edwin scowled. “Again, none of your concern.”
“The man is a fool and probably never bothered to warn you that Sabrina has a network of spies.”
My statement caused the woman to straighten in her seat. She glanced at Edwin. “Spies?” she asked.
“He’s making up lies to try to swindle us,” he responded.
“I would be if the statement was not true,” I said. “It is, however. Sabrina’s eyes are everywhere and are not limited to vampires. Human men and women. People of varying occupations who make a decent amount of money from the information they sell to her spymaster. Timothy is his name, by the way. I would tell you to go back to Philip and ask about it, but I have my doubts you shall survive your walk home.”
“Assuming you’re right about that, then why would you put your neck on the line?”
Drawing from my cigarette, I leaned forward and extinguished it while exhaling a puff of smoke. The curl of my lips smoothed into a much more serious expression. If I was to sell them this ruse, this would be the moment I made my final push. “It is as I said to you just a few moments ago. I want to leave town. You doubt the existence of this network while little did you know you are speaking to one of them.”
Edwin retreated, still close enough to be in my spider web, but that healthy amount which indicated he believed me enough for me to continue. My smirk lit to life anew. “Oh yes,” I said. “You were right to be suspicious of me. And had you half a wit, you would not have ended up in this position, but now here we are and I feel like doing business. Now, I could leave here and tell Sabrina everything I just overheard and make a pretty penny. And Philip and his coven would be damned to decimation after they found a way to end the two of you first. Or, we could walk up into a room I have rented in this hotel and discuss how much compensation you will give me to tell you everything I know. Where to find the assassin. His n
ormal feeding grounds. When you might have the best chances of catching him off guard and all the things which would get me killed if my mistress knew I was the one delivering this information to you.”
I held the gaze as much as possible through the dark lenses of my sunglasses. Edwin stared at me for several beats, and then glanced at his female companion, the two of them sharing a silent exchange which lasted only for a few seconds. She shrugged and he extinguished his cigarette while extracting his billfold and tossing money onto the counter. By the time the duo regarded me again, I wondered if Edwin had bought the farce or saw me as a threat. Either way he nodded and pointed toward the hotel lobby. “Lead the way,” he said.
“Follow me,” I said, sliding from my seat and regarding the woman first before walking past. She nodded in return, her expression wary as she took hold of Edwin’s arm and allowed him to guide her. My gait remained calm while guiding them toward the lobby elevators and my composure firmly in place as I pressed the dimly lit up arrow. “Tell me,” I said, “How do you happen to know assassins?”
A chime preceded us crossing the threshold past the doors which parted. I pushed the button for the sixth floor, and lingered with them in silence until the doors shut and we started our ascent. “I was a call girl in Washington, DC,” she finally said. “One of my clients suggested this might be a more lucrative business, so I decided to give it a try.” I saw her peer around in my periphery as she spoke, for the lack, I assumed, of something to do.
“I can imagine it is.” We reached our floor and I led the way out again, reaching in my pocket for the keycard provided when I had registered the hotel room earlier. The sound of them walking lined them in my mental sights, with her on the left, and him guiding her to the right. No other sounds indicated a knife being pulled or a gun extracted from a convenient hiding spot. Once I reached the door to my room, I was assured I yet held the winning cards up my sleeve.
