“She damn well should be,” Chas muttered.
“And she said—which is no surprise to me—that Iscariot is after me, and after the Rings of Jubai.” Her attention slid to the five copper rings that glinted on Sebastian’s hand. “I was going to bring her here tonight—I thought she could stay here with you,” she said, looking at Sebastian. “Since you…well, you might understand her predicament.”
Chas slammed his glass on the table. His eyes burned, dark and intense. “No. He doesn’t understand her predicament because Vioget here made a conscious decision to relinquish his soul in an attempt to save the soul of Giulia Pesaro—who was a vampire, as you may or may not know, and thus her soul was damned.
“He didn’t choose to become undead on a whim, because he wanted to be immortal, wanted the power, thought it would be fun—or to get back at a friend.” He nodded at Macey, who was surprised he even knew Flora’s anger with her had been part of the reason she was susceptible to the lure of the undead. “So, no, Sebastian doesn’t really ‘understand her predicament,’” he said, mimicking Macey’s words in his low, gritty voice.
“Well now, Woodmore,” Sebastian said after a startled moment, “I didn’t realize you had an empathetic bone in your body. To surprises.” He slopped more whiskey in everyone’s glasses and lifted his own. “Salut.” Then he looked at Macey, capturing her with his warm gaze—though this time, without the edge of the thrall. “And why did you not bring this Flora here after all, then, cher?”
“On the way here, we were set upon—or at least, they attempted to set upon us—by three thugs. Of course I—we—fought them off, and when I went to look for Flora, she was gone.” Macey hesitated and lifted her drink.
If she told them what happened, she sensed Chas would be even more accusatory. And what would Sebastian think?
“Ah, I see. She took the opportunity to partake from the man who made the poor decision to attack her, didn’t she?” Chas spoke before she could make the choice. When she looked at him in surprise, he made an impatient gesture. “It’s obvious—you showed up here covered in someone else’s blood. Is he alive?”
“He was…when I sent him to the hospital in a taxi. I didn’t really know what else to do.” Macey’s hand was a little unsteady when she lifted her glass again. When was the last time she’d had something to eat? The whiskey still burned when it went down, but she was beginning to appreciate its warmth.
It dulled everything.
And yet it heightened her senses.
She drank, dimly aware of her two companions trading glances.
Irritated, she set the empty glass down with a dull thunk and gestured to it. In for a penny, in for a pound, she figured. Tomorrow would be soon enough to face the impossible choice that had become her life.
“Is there any way to help her?” She pointed to Chas. “You told me he”—she gestured to their host—“needed my help to save his soul. If it’s possible, then why can’t I help Flora?”
“That’s assuming your friend really wants help to save her soul, and isn’t working for Iscariot.” Chas, of course.
Macey bristled. “As if I haven’t thought of that—”
“I’m not certain it is possible.” Sebastian’s voice was low, tinged with an emotion Macey couldn’t quite identify. Fear? Despair? “To save a soul that’s been—what do the Dracule call it, Woodmore? Damaged? Yes, that’s the term. Damaged. I am acting on faith and hope, and the interpretation of a prophecy. Even Wayren can’t—or won’t—tell me what the result will be. I won’t know until it’s all over.”
“Until what is all over?” Macey demanded. She was sick of prophecies and unanswered questions, and answers she didn’t want to hear or think about. And she sure as hell didn’t want to leave here and go back to Al Capone.
“This. My life. Such as it is.” Sebastian smiled his gorgeous, charming smile. “And believe me when I say I am more than ready for it to be done.”
Macey didn’t quite know what to say to that. She’d known Sebastian—and Chas, for that matter—for less than a year, and already she couldn’t imagine life, or being a Venator, without either of them. She simply didn’t know enough, have enough experience—and she would never rely on Alphonsus to help her.
And the thought of facing Nicholas Iscariot on her own was hair-raising.
“That makes two of us.” Chas’s voice was gritty. “To clarify, Vioget—I speak of wishing for my own time on earth to come to an end, not the demise of your charming self.”
“Well, isn’t that nice, to know both the men I rely on the most have death wishes.”
“You rely on us?” Chas, of course, seized Macey’s comment like a dog with a bone. “I would never have guessed. I thought for certain we’d been replaced in your affections by that fat Italian bastard.”
He might have been baiting her—he probably was—but this time, Macey didn’t let his comment get to her. She merely turned toward Chas, leaned in closely enough to smell him—whiskey, wool, smoke, and something spicy—and batted her eyelashes. Yes, literally batted them. There was that saying about honey instead of vinegar, right?
“Of course not, Chas, sweetie. You could never be replaced in my affections. After all, I have you to thank for dragging me out of Iscariot’s auto, don’t I?”
His throat moved, his lips quirked, and his eyes flashed dark just for a moment. “Be careful, lulu,” he murmured. “I can play that game.” He lifted his glass, his knuckles brushing her cheek she was so close, and looked at her over the rim as he sipped.
Warmer and more lightheaded than she had a right to be, Macey eased back and turned her attention to Sebastian. He was watching the two of them, his mouth set in a half-smile, his eyes glinting with pleasure. The man definitely appreciated the fine art of flirtation.
“Perhaps you should ask Woodmore here about his own charmed life, ma petite. I’m not the only one who doesn’t belong in this age. He has his own role to play—and one about which he’s been particularly closemouthed. If you can imagine that.” Sebastian’s gaze narrowed with pleasure.
Macey was getting a little dizzy, transferring her attention from one to the other…or maybe it was the whiskey. “All right then, Chas, ’fess up, why don’t you?”
He’d settled onto his elbows, leaning on the bar counter, looking down at his perpetually full glass. “It’s Wayren’s fault. She gave me the opportunity to leave—”
“It was more like an escape, non?” Sebastian said helpfully.
Chas shot him a look of loathing. His jaws were obviously tight when he spoke, for his words came out clipped and sharp. “It was a long time ago, and I had finished with…what I had been doing—”
“Which was what?” Macey was genuinely curious, even though she could tell Chas didn’t wish to talk about it at all.
Sebastian came to Chas’s rescue. “He was hunting vampires, but a different breed of them. They’re called the Dracule, and unlike those of mine and Iscariot’s ilk, the Dracule can be redeemed. Some of them, anyway.” His smile was pained. “What Woodmore isn’t saying is that he had his heart broken, and he was running—”
“I’d finished a difficult task in Paris,” Chas interrupted flatly, taking over the narrative. “And the way it all worked out was not what I had hoped. The woman I—well, things were rather…unpleasant—”
“Unpleasant? The way Corvindale made it sound, you were even more of a cold bastard than you are now. And coming from him, that’s saying a lot.” Again, Sebastian with the helpful comment, but this time he softened it with a splash of whiskey into all three glasses. “Alas, that’s what a broken heart will do to a man, non?”
“As you well know,” Chas replied evenly.
“I don’t deny it.”
Macey shook her head. It was as if they were speaking in a foreign language, and that, combined with the drink, made it difficult for her to follow their conversation. So she jumped in. “Are you saying…Wayren brought you here? From where?”
“From 1803. London, to be exact. Though I spent quite a lot of time in Paris,” he added, bitterness in his tone. “Beneath the streets, hunting the infamous Cezar Moldavi. And his sister.”
“Are you saying Wayren brought you through time? She can do that?” Maybe it was the drink, but Macey actually found his tale believable. Maybe she’d read too much Jules Verne.
“Apparently so,” Chas said, looking back down at his glass. “I didn’t really care to know the mechanics. I was simply ready to…move on. So, under the tutelage of Max Pesaro—”
“That I would have liked to see,” Sebastian commented slyly. “You and Pesaro in the same room. It would have been quite entertaining to watch the two of you manage your—”
“—and his trainer Kritanu,” Chas continued from between gritted teeth, “I went through the Trial to become a Venator, and I was granted the vis bulla. Then Wayren brought me here. She hasn’t been specific about my purpose, but I think she simply wants me to play nursemaid to Vioget here. To protect his pretty face and form from the ugly undead.” He grinned darkly.
“Nursemaid my arse,” Sebastian growled, the bottle clinking as he refilled everyone’s glasses.
“Why else would she have offered me this?” Chas replied companionably, lifting his glass. When he set it down, it was empty, and he spoke to Macey. “It’s five years I’ve been here in Chicago, watching over the fanged one here. But I’ve traveled more than a hundred-twenty years, if you go by time measured in stars and planets.”
“You were in love with a woman in Paris, and what happened? You were hunting vampires, so, what? She got destroyed by the undead?” Macey couldn’t help but think of her own father’s story—and that of her mother.
That’s what happens when a Venator loves someone. Her stomach churned in an ugly swirl, and suddenly the whiskey didn’t look quite as appetizing.
As if reading her mind, Sebastian clunked a small bowl of peanuts in front of her. “Eat, cherie.”
Chas had given a short, hard laugh. “Oh, no, it wasn’t as simple as all that,” he said, real venom in his voice…but even in her state, Macey could hear the deep, raw pain he tried to hide with the bitterness. “Narcise was a vampire herself. A Dracule. And that, Macey darling, is the irony of the two men upon whom you rely the most—as you put it. The pair of us—we are the epitome of irony: the vampire hunter who becomes a vampire, and the vampire hunter who loves a vampire.” His eyes were bleary as he looked up at her. “Is it any wonder we’re finished with this world?”
Just then, the outside door rattled violently.
“We’re closed,” Sebastian called.
The door rattled even louder, and someone shouted back from beyond.
Sebastian rolled his eyes and slipped from behind the counter. “I know I serve the best, but when I’m closed, I’m closed. Bloody fools.”
Macey looked at Chas. “I’m sorry.”
He smiled tightly and lifted his glass. “It was for the better. I’m here now, and not just as window dressing, as they say at Marshall Field’s. Wayren, sly as she is, hasn’t told me anything other than I’m needed.”
“Will you go back when—well, after you’re done here?”
“I sure as hell hope not.”
“Macey.” Sebastian’s voice was tight and sharp, and she looked over. He’d stepped back to allow a small group of people to enter.
Five men, three women—all seemed raucous and happy…until she recognized two of the men. Capone’s goons.
And then she looked at the women, who were clearly drunk, hanging on their companions as if they were drowning.
The bottom dropped out of her belly, and all the whiskey inside surged and churned alarmingly.
“Dottie,” she whispered, bolting to her feet so quickly the stool crashed to the floor. And the other two women were friends of hers as well—Mandy and Clara.
They all appeared to be having a fun time…except for the thugs, who made a point of revealing the guns they had tucked in their pants.
Capone’s message was abundantly clear: her time was up.
ELEVEN
~ A Revelation Above the Fold ~
“Before I got coshed on the head, I saw their faces,” Grady told a trio of cops, which included Linwood. “I can identify five of the gang members.”
After successfully smothering the fire, Grady had called the fuzz and directed them to the warehouse while he headed into the office to write his story, in hopes of making the early edition…and possibly the front page.
Once a news hawk, always a news hawk.
Now, he and the authorities were standing in the Tribune’s office, shortly after dawn. The towering building, finished only last year, still smelled of fresh paint and new plaster.
“You really do have nine lives,” his uncle said, shaking his head. A smile flickered at the corners of his mouth.
Lieutenant Jameson Linwood was the only family Grady had, and vice versa. Grady hadn’t even known he had an uncle when he left Dublin to make his way to London, just before England got involved in the Great War. For his part, Linwood, who was barely a decade older than Grady, had no idea what misfortune had befallen his much older sister after she ran away from home, for he’d been a mere toddler at the time.
While working for a textile merchant, Linwood met and married an American girl. He moved to her hometown of Chicago, joined the police force, and had been here ever since.
He had pale, gingery hair and a spectacular number of matching freckles, which for the most part were limited to his muscular forearms and shoulders—with only a smattering of them decorating his forehead and hands. Though of average height, Linwood had the broad shoulders and build of a heavyweight boxer. Though uncle and nephew shared a name, the only physical feature they had in common was the color of their eyes—blue, though the elder relative’s irises tended more toward cornflower than his nephew’s.
“Explain to me again how you didn’t get burned alive,” said Officer Trudell, one of the few on the force Linwood and Grady would trust with their lives. “They had you handcuffed to a pipe? Who do you think you are—Houdini?” He laughed, slapping his uniformed leg.
Grady merely smiled and exchanged glances with his uncle. Linwood was one of the few people who knew the brilliant escape artist and magician was his mentor. “It doesn’t matter now. You have evidence, and I can identify them—one of the men has a deformed earlobe, which will make it easy to spread the word on the force.”
“And the misprinted bills—tens being printed on bleached-out singles. What a damned good idea if I do say so—for a counterfeiter.” At the new voice, Grady turned to Robert McCormick, former war hero and owner and managing editor of the Tribune. The newsman, who was taller than even Grady and sported a neat black mustache, was appropriately called the Colonel. With black-tipped fingers, he held a folded paper that smelled of fresh ink. “Glad you were able to save some of them from the fire, ace. The picture of the bills—and your story—made the front page.”
“Above or below the fold?” Grady asked with a grin, taking the hot-off-the-presses early edition. He didn’t mind when the ink transferred liberally to his own fingers—hazard of the trade—and answered his own question. “Hmm. Below it is. Well, maybe someday you’ll be finding my stories a place on the top,” he said with a grin at his boss, flipping the paper so he could see just what had made it above the fold.
“You’ll get the top when there’s an arrest,” replied McCormick.
But Grady wasn’t listening. His surroundings had fallen away somewhere far from him, and the conversation around him became murky as he looked at the front-page article that had not only usurped the position he’d hoped for, but fairly stabbed him in the gut.
There, splashed on the front page in a huge photo, was Al Capone…with a smiling, stylish Macey on his arm. Satchmo Stuns While Big Al Brags: Armstrong returns to Snorky’s Music Castle. Grady read on:
While Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five played to
a packed club last night, Big Al squired about a mysterious new dame on his arm. When asked about his lady, Capone merely grinned and said, ‘Don’t tell Mae!’ Later that evening, gunfire broke out in the club, temporarily halting Satchmo’s performance…but the sweet sounds of his coronet were only delayed a short time, for he swung back into the show with gusto after the wounded Danny Fanalucci was removed from the club. When asked about the altercation, Capone said, ‘Someone draws a gun in my place, he’s not gonna be welcomed back.’ The animosity between the two men is well known. The status of Danny Fanalucci’s health is not currently known, but bystanders indicated he was shot in the chest.
Grady felt a roar of emotion build inside, and he returned the edition to McCormick ever so calmly. “Better luck next time,” he said slowly, as if the words were being pushed out through a thick stew.
His companions didn’t seem to notice his reaction, though Linwood did give him a close look. But then Trudell reminded Grady he needed to give his formal statement, as well as work with an artist at the station to describe the gang members so drawings could be made.
Grady had no arguments about keeping his mind otherwise occupied. That was what he’d been doing for the last five months: trying to forget about Macey Denton.
Now he had even more reason to do so.
If he could.
* * *
Macey had been to the Cook County Morgue only once before. The memory was not one she cared to revisit, for on that occasion she’d had to identify the body of one of her closest friends.
Chelle had been captured and fed upon—brutally and liberally—by Nicholas Iscariot, and Macey had visited the morgue to confirm it was her friend whose body had been discovered dumped in an alley. It had been the morning after Macey herself had been attacked by Iscariot, and she was exhausted, hurting, and heartsick.
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