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

by Lee Dignam

  No one said anything for a time, so Cyanide took her chance. “But, I mean… this was a hail-mary pass, wasn’t it?” she asked. “You had to know where the truck was coming out of and at what time.”

  “Court business always operated an hour before dawn, and usually they were run by humans. It discouraged other vampires from sticking their noses where they didn’t belong.”

  “But then what you’re saying is, the court—the Count—is definitely involved in this?”

  “He’s not just involved,” Daniel said, “He’s handling all the fucking logistics.”

  “It may not be the Count who’s directly involved with this,” Neo said, “There are many vampires in his inner circle who have access to court resources. Count Rufus may have no idea what’s going on.”

  “The only thing I know for certain is we still have a lot to figure out, but first things first; I want to know where the trailer was going. That could be where they’re keeping the other girls, or like a stopping ground or something.”

  “We should check the inside of the truck,” Cyanide said.

  “You don’t have to check anything. I’ll have my team go through it with a fine-tooth comb during the day. For now, you should probably get into your rooms.”

  Daniel handed a key to Cyanide and Neo, who headed off without saying a word. Cyanide watched him leave, hoping he would look back at her, but he didn’t. He unlocked the door to his room and stepped inside, out of sight.

  “Are you alright to stay here?” Daniel asked.

  “No,” Cyanide said. “But I trust you.”

  “I’ve taken lengths to make sure you’re as comfortable as possible, and as safe as possible. It won’t be the Ritz, but you’ll have a bed to sleep on.”

  Her eyes then floated across to the door to Neo’s room. “Thanks, Daniel. I appreciate it.”

  He nodded and stepped away, hurrying to his own room on the other side of the warehouse. She, meanwhile, closed her palm around the key in her hand and walked over to Neo’s door, then knocked three times. Her heart leapt when the latch came undone, but he didn’t open the door for her. Cyanide grabbed the handle, turned it, and let herself in. The room was small, quaint, with a table, a light, and a bed that looked like it had been pulled out of an army barracks, but the door was heavy, made of metal, and there was no way it could be opened from the outside once the latch was drawn.

  She shut the door, threw the lock, and turned to look at Neo, who was sitting on the edge of the bed. Without speaking, she walked over to where he was, sat down next to him, and kicked her boots off. Cyanide sat on her knees behind him, and slowly pulled the leather jacket off his shoulders. He was wearing a thin black t-shirt underneath, tattered and ripped in places. She let her chin fall on his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his waist.

  “I’m not going to ask you any questions,” she whispered into his ear. “I just don’t want to sleep alone.”

  Neo slowly slipped one boot off, then the other, and let himself fall back on the bed. Cyanide adjusted herself, fitting nicely with her chest against his side and her back pressed up against the wall. This was comfortable. This was safe. She let her hand fall across his stomach and waited for dawn to come, bringing with it the heaviness of sleep, and then sleep itself.

  When she was young and new, sleep had been terrifying. It was like dying. Vampires didn’t often dream, and didn’t rest. When the sun’s rays touched the land where the vampire slept, she would simply black out until dusk, and then awake as if no time had passed. This hadn’t been an easy thing to get used to back then, and still wasn’t a walk in the park now. But being with Neo helped.

  They didn’t talk, then. She smoothed his stomach with her thumb; he did the same to her shoulder. In her mind, she went over all that had happened tonight, from the first empty trailer, to the second, full one. They had done something good tonight, and thirty-three women would be moving on to better things as a result of their actions.

  Maybe, just maybe, a small group of people could make all the difference, and change the lives of the masses of oppressed people out there. And if not for all of them, then maybe just for one person—the girl Daniel was looking for.

  But then again, maybe not.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Cyanide couldn’t remember her eyes closing or consciousness slipping through her fingers, but she knew the sun had set over Ashwood’s skyline as keenly as she could feel Neo’s body beside her—cold, still, and dead.

  She rose and stared around the room, flicking the light switch next to the bed to the on position out of habit more than necessity. It seemed smaller than it had been last night, the walls more closely pushed together. There was also a notable lack of decoration which, considering Daniel was a man of taste, she had almost expected. All of these thoughts, disjointed and nonsensical, came at her at once. She thought, maybe, she had been thinking them before sleep had pushed her under, but couldn’t be sure.

  But when the first sharp, painful sensation pierced her gut, she forgot all about them.

  This was how it started—the hunger, the thirst. Always a pain in the right pit of the stomach. Then the pain would move up through the chest and into the brain, ripping through every nerve it touched along the way: at the base of the head, the collar, the chest, and heart. It was pain like a red-hot knife straight out of a forge carving its way through her insides, and the only way to quench it was to douse it with blood.

  Cyanide gripped her stomach and clenched her jaw, then lay herself back down on the bed, rolled onto her side, and faced the wall. She cradled herself, as if she had been kicked in the belly by a steel toe boot, until the pain subsided. It was Neo’s arm reaching across her shoulder to wrap her in an embrace that helped the sensation along—that helped her dismiss the hunger. He seemed to be immune to the first-thirst, as other vampires called it.

  But he wasn’t immune. This wasn’t something that went away with time or experience. It was simply something one learned to bury deep beneath the surface; a recurring trauma you could learn to live with, like beatings delivered by a drunk father. They would never go away. You could simply deal with it, or take the only other option available—see the sun again, and make it all stop.

  “You’re awake,” Cyanide said when she felt the will to speak returning.

  “You need to feed,” Neo said.

  “We all do.”

  The sharp, hot pain had transformed to a dull ache, one she could deal with, so she turned her head around and looked over at Neo, who had pulled away from her and started to stand. “Then feed. Only blood helps. We’re all junkies waiting for our next hit, only the thirst will kill us if we don’t satisfy it.”

  “Doesn’t Pixi go for days without feeding sometimes?”

  “Pixi is different; Pixi has discipline.”

  “And I don’t?”

  “No.”

  Cyanide grabbed her own jacket and put it on. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means what it means.”

  “That doesn’t help.”

  “It’s not that. Pixi’s discipline is unique to her; it’s a part of her, just like I can get brief impressions of the past by touching something.”

  “I don’t have any unique abilities.”

  “Maybe you do, but you just haven’t found them yet. They happen when you need them. It’s almost instinct.”

  He unlocked the door and opened it, letting harsh, fluorescent light from the warehouse spill into the room. It was quiet out there; no one seemed to be around. No one with a heartbeat, anyway. She would have been able to tell even without seeing them, especially now that her senses were so agitated thanks to her insatiable thirst. The humans must have cleared out during the day, leaving the warehouse as quiet as a tomb.

  Fitting imagery, considering three vampires were rising and stepping out of their crypts.

  Cyanide moved into the open and curiously looked around, spotting Daniel as he walked out of the door to the room h
e had slept in, carefully wrestling that stray cluster of hair which didn’t seem to want to flatten. When he was done with his hair, or had given up, he walked up to Cyanide and Neo with his hands in his pockets.

  “How are the women?” Cyanide asked.

  “Safe and healthy,” he said, “I woke up to a couple of emails left by my staff. Everyone’s been cleaned, checked out, and moved to safe locations.”

  “That happened fast.”

  “I have a good team.”

  She looked around the room and saw how empty it was without the murmur of people and the shuffle of shoes to fill it. With boxes lined up along the walls stacked impossibly high, chains dangling from the walkway above, and the surprisingly dim lighting, this place looked downright creepy. The only thing of note, of color, inside was the Trans Am. Someone must have moved it in for Neo while he was asleep.

  “Where is everyone?” Cyanide asked.

  “Around,” Daniel said, “Don’t worry, there are security personnel posted all over the place. We’re safe here.”

  “Okay, so, what are we supposed to do now?”

  “You? I have some ideas.”

  “Care to fill us in?”

  Daniel gestured toward Neo’s car. It didn’t look like he wanted anyone staying in the warehouse for any extended period of time, and Cyanide wasn’t going to complain. She needed to get home, maybe have a shower; at the very least, change into something else. There was blood on her top, and she’d get a whiff of it every so often. In her current state, that wasn’t something she wanted to carry around much longer.

  “This is a stupid question,” Cyanide said, “And one I think I know the answer to. But what would the court want with so many women?”

  “Commodities,” Neo said.

  “What?” Cyanide asked.

  “Those women are commodities to be used for feeding or as slaves, and conditioned to like it, to want it.”

  “You sound sure about that.”

  “That’s because I am.”

  “He’s right,” Daniel said. “The practice of keeping blood dolls is one as old as the act of feeding itself.”

  “So, why didn’t we suspect the court in the first place? That could have narrowed a few things down, made our lives easier.”

  “Because vampires aren’t the only species who buy and sell women; humans have been doing it for just as long. And it could still be humans; the court could just be getting a cut. But whatever is going on, we have to find the source and expose it.”

  Neo unlocked the driver side door and sat inside. “The faster we move the better,” Neo said. “Got any leads?”

  “Did any of the women say anything?” Cyanide asked. “I feel like we should go and talk to them, right?”

  “No. Leave that to me. Those women have been through enough—the last thing I want is for them to be questioned by…”

  “Us?” Neo put in, his voice low, but amplified by the warehouse’s natural acoustics.

  “Delicate situations need a delicate touch,” Daniel said.

  “So, not the women,” Cyanide said. “Then, what?”

  “I know a place… it’s a club down in Crow’s Heights run by a vampire—Lionel. I make it a point to know as much as I can about the vampires in the city, and I know he’s into the practice of blood dolls. Maybe Lionel knows something about that, or can point you in the right direction.”

  “So, you want us to go and put the scare into him?”

  “I don’t think it’ll come to that.”

  Cyanide walked around the front of the Trans Am and opened the passenger side door. “Alright,” she said, “We’ll pay him a visit and see if he knows anything. What do we do if he’s in on this?”

  Daniel ran a hand along his chin. “If he is, I doubt you’ll find out from one meeting with him. Just go, scope the place out, find out how he runs his business, and how he collects his blood dolls. Maybe they’re willing, or maybe he’s buying them from whoever is running this shit show. If you get a sense that something’s not right, you leave and come talk to me. Don’t attempt to take him on your own.”

  Neo started the car, pushing down on the gas and making it roar. That was our cue. Without using words, he had made it clear the conversation was over. It was time to move, time to act. Daniel stepped away from the car while Cyanide ducked into the passenger seat. Neo put the car into reverse, and the red Trans Am drew out into the night. After only a couple of minutes twisting and turning with the industrial district’s labyrinthine streets, they were on the main vein which fed into downtown Ashwood, lights and cars passing them as they went. High above, an almost impossibly large moon peered out from between parting clouds, flooding the landscape with silver light.

  “I need to make a stop at my place,” Cyanide said.

  Neo didn’t speak.

  She turned her head to look at him. “You hear me?”

  He flicked the radio on, settled on a station playing dark, synth pop music from the 80’s, and rested his gloved hand back on the steering wheel, gripping it tightly enough that leather squeaked against leather. Something was on his mind. Neo was tough to read most nights, but something was different tonight; there was a crack in his façade, and she had spotted it.

  The forever unrequited question burning on her lips now, as it had done so many times before, was so simple, yet Neo seemed almost incapable of answering it. What’s on your mind? She couldn’t remember the first time she had asked him what he was thinking, or how he was feeling, but she knew he hadn’t answered it then just as surely as she knew, if she asked now, she would be met with a stone-cold wall.

  Still, she dared.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  Neo continued staring at the road, his eyes cloudy and dull, flashes of yellow streetlight stroking his face at rapid intervals. He was a corpse driving a car, pale skinned, blue lipped, and lifeless except for the occasional shift of his hands on the wheel or his feet on the pedals. He had never told her how old he was, when the last time he had seen the sun was. Ten years? No. Twenty, or thirty, at least. But she knew of other vampires who had been dead for as long and weren’t so… detached.

  Daniel being the prime candidate among them.

  Cyanide waited for her answer, and kept waiting some more. There was only the whoosh of the wind as it pushed through Cyanide’s hair, the music floating out of the stereo, and the sound of her own brain cursing her for trying to get close, for trying to pry him open. That was a fight she would never win, no matter how close she thought they were.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Neo stood like a gargoyle, staring at a framed picture on Cyanide’s apartment wall. Pink, neon luminescence gave artificial color to the side of his pale face, which seemed to look a little pinched, like he was concentrating. Meanwhile, outside, light rain had started to fall, and the patter of droplets on the apartment window created a backdrop for the distant sirens and the hiss of cars down below—the sounds of the city.

  This wasn’t the first time Neo had come to her place, or even the hundredth, but having him here made a part of her, the small part that still thought like a human, nervous. She couldn’t say where these nerves came from, or why they overpowered the much larger side of her that hadn’t been human in years. But the unease was there, and it gripped her with a sudden need to “make the rounds”, picking up clothes she had left lying around all over the place.

  Neo didn’t seem to care about the state of her apartment; he was much more interested in that picture. There was nothing to it, really; just a landscape painting of a small house next to a crystal clear lake, the sun glittering off its surface. The picture wasn’t hers—it had come with the apartment—which made her wonder why he was so interested in it.

  Maybe because, like all vampires, there was a part of him that enjoyed having his memory refreshed. It was easy to forget what the sun looked like at times, even for Cyanide. Neo was older than she was; how hard was it for him?

  “I’m just gonna g
et changed,” she said, staring at him from across the room.

  He nodded. A slight gesture, but one she picked up.

  Cyanide stepped into her bedroom and tossed her leather jacket on the bed. She then slipped out of her combat boots and clothes, letting them fall where she stood before opening her closet and picking a black tank top and black jeans she had cut in several places herself. In her underwear, she crossed the living room and headed to the bathroom.

  Not a glance from Neo—not an iota of interest.

  What the hell was on his mind that had consumed him so completely? She considered the answer to the question while in the shower, enjoying the water as it fell on her, like hundreds of little hands massaging her skin. But even the massage couldn’t help untangle her thoughts of Neo, Daniel, and this entire, awful situation.

  Cyanide shut the water off and watched it pool, then drain. When she stepped out and walked up to the bathroom mirror, she found herself looking over at Neo, visible in the reflection through a crack in the open bathroom door. He glanced at her now, and saw her face, her hair, the swell of her breasts, her tattoos. Reds, greens, and purples were among her favorite colors to put on her skin, and they were all there, making different pictures, some which told a story—like the portrait of a kindly old woman—others which were just for decoration, like snakes slipping in and out of a pair of dice.

  She let herself be vulnerable around him, let him see her for who she really was. Him and only him. Hoping, sometimes, he might act, that he might show some humanity, some ability to feel. But he turned away and walked over to the window.

  Cyanide pressed her lips into a thin line and kicked the door shut, then proceeded to get dressed before stepping back into the living room.

  “Ready,” she said.

  Neo turned his head to look at her, then nodded and moved away from the wall, toward the front door.

  “Do you know where this place is?” Cyanide asked when they got to the Trans Am.