The Dead Wolves: An Ashwood Novel (Cursed and Damned Book 1)

by Lee Dignam

  Daniel nodded. “You’re free to go.”

  Cyanide turned her eyes up at Neo now and found him still looking at her. He hadn’t said a word in what was starting to feel like forever, but she had gotten used to this. It wasn’t exactly the silent treatment, Neo just didn’t talk much—he only spoke when he had something he deemed important to say, or at least that’s what Cyanide had come to understand.

  “You coming?” she asked.

  Neo shook his head. “I have to talk to Daniel,” he said.

  “Right… well, I’ll be seeing you both, then.”

  Her words weren’t met with a reply, so she turned her head and walked towards the small staircase at the back of the room. This unlit passageway ended in a metal door which did well enough to block out the sound from the other side. This was just as well since what lay on the other side of the door was a 24-hour laundromat which, even in the dead of night, seemed somehow full of people.

  No one looked at her as she stepped into the adjacent room. These folks were either used to keeping their heads low, or had no interest in her whatsoever. Of course, that wasn’t an accident. This place had been carefully chosen to serve as a safe house for the Dead Wolves; Daniel was just renting it for a while.

  As she left the laundromat and headed into the cold street, stuffing her hands in her pockets, she ran through the things Daniel had said and cursed herself for the questions she didn’t ask. What had Neo found out from the guy he had questioned? Did Daniel have any suspicions whatsoever as to who could have betrayed his trust? Did he have any leads he had been keeping in his back pocket?

  The night was young, and Cyanide’s body was buzzing with stolen life. It seemed a shame to waste it. But she didn’t have a choice. Neo had stayed behind to finish things up, and that was a conversation she knew she wasn’t welcome to. Whatever. Let them have their secrets. Daniel had offered her a ticket out of Ashwood. Once she was out of here, Neo and Daniel could share whatever secrets they wanted to.

  She’d be somewhere new, somewhere safe.

  CHAPTER THREE

  With Cyanide gone, it was only Neo and Daniel standing in the room, squaring off from across the table like war generals ready to lay down battle plans. Daniel ran his hand through his hair, thinking about how best to say what he had to say to the man standing in front of him. They had known each other for decades, and now Neo was the subject of a blood hunt.

  Blood hunts were a death sentence, and he didn’t want that for him.

  “We’ve gotta talk,” Daniel said.

  Neo nodded. “About the trailer, about Cyanide.”

  “And about you.”

  “I don’t want to talk about me.”

  “In this instance, it doesn’t matter what you want.”

  “I think it does.”

  Daniel laid the palms of his hands on the table and hovered over it, staring down at the map of Ashwood beneath him. He turned his eyes up at Neo and clenched his jaw. “They’ve called a blood hunt on you,” Daniel said. “I couldn’t stop it.”

  Neo didn’t reply. Didn’t nod or acknowledge what had been said. He simply stood there, staring out from behind cold, emotionless eyes, his red hair shining beneath the light buzzing above.

  “Did you hear me?” Daniel asked.

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  Neo shrugged. “Is it important?”

  Daniel drew himself up. “How could you think something like that isn’t important? They’re coming for you. I’m supposed to be coming from you too—I drank from the cup.”

  “So, why don’t you?”

  “Christ, Neo. Why do you have to treat this like it means nothing?”

  Neo shrugged. “It’s an outdated tradition that gives vampires the authority to act like monsters. How different is that from any other day? The people who drank from the cup commit atrocities all the time and get away with it.”

  “Yeah, but this time they’re coming for you. What’s worse, they’re making you a scapegoat—making it look like you’re responsible for a couple of near-misses with the humans.”

  A smirk crossed Neo’s face, causing the corner of his mouth to tug upwards. “That’s funny.”

  “Why is that funny?”

  “Because I don’t have human ties. I barely even have vampire ties anymore.”

  “That doesn’t matter—all that matters is what they’ll say to people once you’re brought in and made an example of. They’re gonna kill you, and then ruin your name.”

  “You really think they’ll go as far as to make an example of me?” Neo shook his head. “No, I think the first guy who gets his teeth into me will do the deed then and there. They’ve all got a reason for wanting me dead, and authority now, too.”

  “Doesn’t that make you nervous? Doesn’t that scare you?”

  Neo turned his eyes down on the map, then pointed his index finger at a section of squares and lines. It was an intersection—the one near the Victory Bridge. “This is where I lost the car I was trailing.”

  “What?” Daniel asked, arching around the map to get a better view.

  “Tonight,” Neo said, “A car pulled up alongside the trailer. I followed it for a few seconds before it disappeared.”

  “Cars don’t just disappear,” Daniel said, watching Neo tracing his finger along the stretch of road.

  “This one did.”

  “Did you get a look inside, or anything you could identify the car with?”

  “If I saw it again I would be able to identify it, but no. I have no idea who the car belonged to or who was inside.”

  Daniel now used his own index finger to scan the map, looking at streets and alleys stretching away from the point where Neo said he lost sight of the car. Cars didn’t just disappear—not unless someone used some kind of magic, and he didn’t think there was magic involved here, just crooks and cronies. Daniel had met a couple of mages in his time, and he didn’t think they were the sort to get into human trafficking.

  Mages claimed to have loftier motivations which guided them.

  “Hidden doors,” Daniel said. “The car could have slipped into any number of warehouses or garages along this road or any of these side streets.”

  “It’s possible,” Neo said. “But then, that suggests a deeper layer of organization.”

  “I don’t think these guys are disorganized. It took weeks for us to find tonight’s drop point, and it was just a decoy.”

  “A good one, too.”

  Daniel couldn’t hold it anymore. He slammed his fist against the table, causing the wood to crack, though not entirely split in half. “Dammit,” he said through gritted teeth. “Fuck.”

  Neo said nothing; he just watched and waited for Daniel to recover.

  When Daniel did, he took a deep breath—not that he had to—and walked around the room again with his hands clasped behind his head.

  “We’ll find her,” Neo said.

  Daniel spun around. “How?” he asked, “I have no leads, no information, and no ideas. She’s gone. Tonight was our one chance at finding her, and she’s fucking gone.”

  “She’s not gone. We may have been set up tonight, but the move is still happening.”

  “What?” Daniel asked, his head cocking to the side. “How do you know that?”

  “I questioned one of the guys driving the other trailer.”

  “And he knew something?”

  “Not much. He didn’t exactly tell me the move was still happening. The man had been paid to drive an empty trailer to the drop point. Ten thousand in cash. Half had been left for him in an unmarked mailbox. All he had to do was drive the trailer, park, and wait for an hour. The car that pulled up had the other half for him.”

  Daniel stepped toward the table again, the confusion apparent on his face. “So, he didn’t know who had hired him? How did he know the drop was still happening?”

  “Because his friend had heard something being said in the car when he picked up the cash. They spoke a
bout it after. Whoever was in the car was getting ready to move to the next checkpoint.”

  “Next checkpoint… so—”

  “So, the move is still happening.”

  “Or it already happened somewhere else, but that still doesn’t help us.”

  “Maybe not. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  Daniel let out a long, drawn out sigh. He didn’t need to sigh—didn’t need to breathe, except to talk—but the act of doing so helped to release the tension building in his chest. “I don’t like not knowing things,” he said.

  “I don’t either.”

  A pause followed, one pregnant with questions unasked, and topics of discussion waiting to be triggered. Daniel walked around the table again and absentmindedly picked up a dossier and rifled through it. Closing it, he let it fall on the table when he was done. Neo stood silently, adjusting the straps on his driving gloves, but saying nothing.

  “What are you going to do?” Daniel asked.

  “About?” Neo said.

  “About the blood hunt. You’ll need to lay low; maybe use the underground to travel.”

  “I won’t do any of that.”

  “You can’t just stay in the open—they’ll find you, and then they’ll kill you.”

  “Let them try.”

  “Neo…”

  “I don’t think you understand,” Neo said, and while his voice remained as soft and as quiet as ever, there was a sharpness to it now, an almost predatory authority. “I’m not scared of them,” he said. “I’ve dealt with their kind before—fat, bloated old toads who haven’t hunted for a meal in decades, some in centuries. They’re slow and weak, too complacent to even be able to hunt a human, let alone a vampire. I was a Count’s Guard; they won’t touch me.”

  “And you can be sure of that?”

  “As sure as I am that we’ll find the person you’re looking for if we don’t give up.”

  “I hope, for all our sakes, that you’re right. The last thing I want is for her to have to endure any more of this; for any of them to have to go through another night living the way they’re forced to live. It isn’t right.”

  Neo nodded and finished adjusting the straps on his gloves. “It’s time I left,” he said.

  Daniel took in a deep breath. “Alright,” he said, “Just be careful out there.”

  Without saying another word, or dismissing himself, Neo turned around and headed for the stairs. But before he began to climb them, he turned to look at Daniel. He was standing in the dark, now, and besides the slight illumination falling on the front of his leather jacket and the flicks of red covering his head, he looked almost like a shadow himself.

  “You’re not really going to let her leave town, are you?” Neo asked.

  “Cyanide?” Daniel asked. “Trust me, I know her better than she knows herself. She won’t leave.”

  Neo let an instant of uncertain silence pass, causing Daniel to begin doubting what he had said. “Maybe you knew her once upon a time,” Neo said, “But she’s forgotten you, and she’s forgotten herself. You don’t know who she is anymore, and if you let her go, she will go.”

  Daniel didn’t reply, but Neo’s words rang in his mind like church bells. The red-haired vampire melted into the dark and disappeared, leaving Daniel alone in the belly of the laundromat to ponder his own thoughts. Maybe Neo was right—maybe Cyanide would leave, given half the chance and enough money.

  But he had to let her make that decision on her own; it was the right thing to do.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Cyanide turned the key in the lock and pushed her shoulder against the door to open it. The door had a handle, but it was useless, being permanently stuck in the open position. When she stepped inside, she locked the door behind herself and slid out of her jacket, which she then draped over the back of a chair.

  She crossed the living room, navigating around the coffee table and the couch, and tugged on a rope that pulled the heavy-duty blinds up all the way, allowing neon-pink light from the Pink Pussy, one of the district’s more active strip joints, across the street to spill into the apartment. Loud voices filtered down from the unit above, somewhere a dog was barking, and in the bathroom the faucet was dripping.

  Cyanide let herself melt into the sagging couch and kicked her boots off, settling down with her phone and pouring time into the usual scroll-vortex sites, but quickly set it down on the sofa and let her eyes roam around the apartment. The cabinets in the open plan kitchen were chipped and empty, the wallpaper was peeling off in places, and the hot water had stopped running months ago, but it was home. It had kept the sun off her skin and provided a safe haven from the dangers of the night for almost two years. It had done its job well, but it was time to leave.

  Daniel’s offer was one she couldn’t refuse.

  An all-expense paid trip out of Ashwood to wherever she wanted to go. All she had to do was work for him a little longer and indulge his quest to eradicate corruption from a city with a black heart. Things were different a couple of years ago when she was young and fresh and didn’t yet know the reality of the dark world she had been reborn into. Despite having joined the eternal night, her life was bright and full of purpose. But that was a long time ago. Everything had changed, now, and leaving—finding a better place to live—was the right card to play. It was the only card to play.

  The phone she had set down vibrated sharply. She reached for it and flicked the screen to life. A message from Neo. Come downstairs, it said. Nothing else.

  Cyanide stood, pocketed her phone, and walked over to the window. She peered out, angling her eyes to the street, and saw Neo’s red Trans Am parked across from her building. A woman from the strip club had strutted up to the car window and sparked up a conversation. Cyanide pulled the blinds down, grabbed her jacket, and left the apartment. When she hit the street, she saw the woman who had come up to the car now walking away, staggering a little, one uneasy foot in front of the other.

  She stepped around the hood and climbed into the passenger seat. Neo’s cheeks were flush and red, and the sharp, metallic scent of blood was in the air—a smell imperceptible to humans, but easily picked up by her supernatural senses. He glanced over at her, started the car, and pulled away from the sidewalk without saying a word.

  Cyanide let herself sink into the seat and rested her head against the window, watching Ashwood roll by like a movie on fast forward. She didn’t care where he was taking her or where they would end up. When she and Neo went for a drive, it wasn’t so much the destination or the conversation that mattered, but the drive itself—sitting still while the world around you moved.

  He moved through the city almost aimlessly, driving through the brightly lit financial district one minute and through the dark, forgotten projects the next. Cyanide soon became aware that the scent of the city had faded away, being replaced by the briny aroma of the ocean. They had hit the coast, and the air out here was fresh and natural. When the car finally stopped, Cyanide perked up to see a black ocean stretching before her, pockmarked with lights from ships anchored far out at sea.

  Neo cut the engine, leaving only the gentle tick, tick, tick of the cooling motor and the sway of the sea not far from where they had stopped. Silence prevailed for some time, until finally Neo spoke.

  “You ever been out there?” he asked.

  “On the ocean?” She shook her head. “No.”

  “I was once, when I was a kid. My parents went on a cruise to the Caribbean.”

  “How was it?”

  “Awful. Hated it. I was scrawny and pale, and I hated everything about beaches, and sand, and sunlight. All I wanted to do was sit in the cabin and watch TV, but my parents insisted I go everywhere with them. I got so sunburned my skin opened up with blisters.”

  “Sounds painful.”

  “The sun will do more than give us blisters now.”

  Cyanide cocked her head. “In all the time I’ve known you, you’ve never spoken about your breathing days.”
/>   “I know. Ask me why I brought it up.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Why’d you bring it up?”

  “Because despite all that, I got to know my dad more than I’d ever known him before. He would tell me all about the ship, how it worked, how the engine pushed the ship across the ocean. Whenever we saw a car, he’d be able to name the model and the year it was made. I didn’t know he had such a passion for machines that moved, and if we had never gone on that trip, I may never have known. We would have gone home, my dad and I would have never gotten close, and I wouldn’t have discovered my own passions as a result.”

  “You’re about to make a point, aren’t you?”

  “People who take the easy way out never find what they need.”

  “Oh no, you did not bring me out here to lecture me about what happened at the safe house.”

  Neo gave Cyanide a sidelong glance. “Why didn’t you tell me you were thinking about leaving?”

  “Because it wasn’t any of your business. It wasn’t anyone’s business but my own. Since when is my life public?”

  “You’re a Dead Wolf; you’re one of us. What you do, the decisions you make, affect all of us.”

  “Look, I get that this cause is important, but you’ve seen what happened tonight. Daniel worked for weeks, and we came out with nothing because the people on the other side of this thing are smarter than we are.”

  “That doesn’t mean we stop fighting.”

  Cyanide let her head drop and ran her hands through her green hair, bunching it at the back and tossing it over one shoulder before straightening up again. She stared at him then, in silence, with only the swash of the waves and the occasional boom at the base of the cliff in front of the car to break it.

  “What do you want from me, Neo?” Cyanide asked.

  “Are you going to take the deal?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, okay? I don’t know what I’m going to do. All I know is that this place… it’s fucked up beyond repair, and I need to get out before it swallows me whole. You should get out too. Let the bastards have it.”