by S A Archer
Like the vampire chatting up the fairy girl in the corner. Having worked with vampires and werewolves long before she got involved with the fey, London figured she had a good eye for the type. That insight wasn’t necessary this time. She recognized the bloke from Selena’s vampire club in Dublin, even if she couldn’t immediately put a name to that face. Apparently, the awareness was mutual, as the creep even had the gall to make eye contact with her and grin with an undisguised flash of fang. Word was getting out among the predators; fey was on the menu. And this wanker thought Selena’s best friend wouldn’t rat him out.
Not on her watch.
The fairy either hadn’t noticed the fangs, or thought they were fake, since so many of the humans were role-playing as supernaturals in this club. With a word of caution ready on her tongue, London started through the crowd towards them. The guy caught her intention, or he’d just timed it right, but he helped the fairy girl to her feet just then, her three-inch heels only bringing her to a dainty five feet in height. The iridescent wings, that looked far more real than the fake ones mounted to the back of the young ladies just playing the part for the party, shivered as the vampire whispered something that she no doubt found charming enough to invest trust in this stranger. The pair of them started towards the side exit into the alley, the vampire’s hand against the girl’s low back, escorting her to her doom. Fey blood could cause a wicked addiction, and not all vampires knew how to pull back before taking too much. And many of them didn’t care.
The door closed on quiet hydraulic hinges before London reached it. Any scream from the alley before the door blocked the sound probably still couldn’t have been heard. Not over the solo Malcolm pounded across the drum set before him. It was another several seconds before London shoved herself through the last of the crowd and out the door into the cool, dark alley beyond. More than long enough for a vampire to use his speed to carry off a victim to her death. With her heart pounding in her chest, London hoped that she reached them in time.
The one thing she hadn’t been expecting, as she burst out the door, was the trap.
After the darkness inside the club the beam of a high-powered flashlight in her face momentarily blinded London. The shout of protest that tried to escape her muffled against the hand smashing to her mouth. An arm, like a straitjacket, crushed her swings to her torso before she could make them. Lifted from her feet, she kicked out. It didn’t matter. She struck nothing but air as she was rushed away from the exit and deeper into the alley.
Flashlight gone, the blackness of the alley blinded her just as effectively. Knocked to her knees, wrists gripped and forced to cross behind her neck, so all she could do was blink to clear her vision.
Well, that wasn’t all she could do, but it was all she did do just yet. The weight of the charm around her neck reminded her that Lugh was one mental call away, but he didn’t keep her around to shout for help every time things turned dicey. Besides, the last time she’d called his name, he’d not come. It had been Malcolm that saved her.
Already, she could make out the shadowy figures. More than one. Four, maybe five. No, definitely five, if she counted the fairy struggling. “Let her go!” London fought to get her feet under her, but the stronger vampire kept her down. Pride meant nothing compared to the life of a fey. “Lugh!”
No answering feeling through the magic of the charm. No radiant Sidhe warrior teleporting to her side.
London cursed. “Let her go!”
“You should be worrying about your own neck, precious.” The deep, male voice almost purred with sensuality; the vampire lure. This wasn’t her first time hearing it, and even though it skated across her flesh like a lover’s caress, she didn’t swoon.
So instead, fingers fisted in her hair and forced her head to the side. She hissed at the rough treatment, but not as much as when the burn of fangs penetrated her vein. “Get off of me!” The weight of her gun, holstered under her jacket at her side, meant nothing right now. And the venom of the vampire bite was quickly doing what the power of the vampire’s voice could not. And with the Sidhe magic in her blood, she couldn’t count on him releasing her before she was drained.
The echo of a gun chambering a bullet ricocheted in the alley. “The lady said, let her go.”
Now, London really did want to curse. She couldn’t see past the vampire’s shoulder to the speaker beyond, but she knew who it was.
The vampires didn’t immediately release her, but the one biting her did give up her vein, even if with a parting lick. “There’s a price on your blood, and I plan on cashing it in.” He backed away with a bloody grin. There were few things more disturbing than getting smiled at with blood-smeared teeth, especially when it was your own blood that had done the smearing.
Derek. His name was Derek. London remembered Selena mentioning him now. He’d come over from the States on some business of his sire, but Selena hadn’t said what.
London would need to find out.
Derek’s thugs retreated when he pulled back, and in a moment the lot of them were gone. At least they left the fairy behind. She embraced herself, pale and shivering as she stared at London, as if in shock. It only took the slightest tilt of London’s head, and her gaze flicking back to the club, to send the young fairy lady scrambling inside. Maybe next time she’d think twice before venturing into a dark alley with a stranger. London could only hope.
“Friend of yours?” Granger asked. His attention still fixed on the direction where Derek and his gang had gone. He holstered his weapon, and then reached a hand down to help her to her feet.
“Not hardly.” London accepted the offer, finding his grip warm and steady. Those vamps hadn’t even been enough to break him out into a sweat. This meant he wasn’t a complete noob when it came to the supernatural.
“I don’t suppose you’re going to give me a bunch of crap about aliens now, are you? Because, I think we both know better.” From his pocket he offered her a folded handkerchief.
Which she accepted, and cupped against the side of her neck. The vamp bite wouldn’t bleed for too long, but it would be enough to stain her collar if she didn’t put pressure on it. “Are you here for a reason? Or just going around in search of damsels in distress?”
“You and I have an unfinished conversation. So let’s find someplace out of the way, so you can start talking.”
“I really don’t have anything more to say to you.” She checked the handkerchief. Still bleeding. London refolded the cloth to a clean section, and pressed it to her neck again.
“See? That kind of response makes me think that you do. It makes me think you have a whole heck of a lot to say, actually. Starting with why a vampire thinks you have a price on your blood.” Granger’s arms crossed, making the suit jacket stretch tight across his shoulders. The agent wasn’t a muscle-bound bruiser, but he wasn’t skipping his gym appointments, that was for sure.
“Why don’t you go and ask him, because that was news to me, too.” London backed up a couple of steps to lean her bum against the brick wall. Her head pounded, which was an odd sensation, since being a pint or so shy of normal she wouldn’t have thought her pulse could muster up the force.
Granger leaned himself back against the wall beside her, arms still crossed as he considered her. “You are just bound and determined to be obstructive, aren’t you?”
“I’m just charming like that.” London glanced back at the building where the Fey Bangers, and specifically Malcolm, were playing. She really didn’t want Granger getting all curious and checking out the club. “Alright, you want to talk vampires, let’s talk vampires. But you’ll need to buy me a tall latte and a scone, because that blood loss is making me lightheaded and I need to eat something before I pass out.”
“Don’t trust me to catch you?” He smirked. “I am a gentleman, like that.”
She
whacked him with the back of her hand. “I don’t trust you not to violate my civil liberties with your grubby cop hands.”
“My cop hands are not grubby.”
Chapter Nine
Of the open restaurants in Waterford, London had picked one that balanced her need to put some distance between Granger and the fey, and put some food in her stomach before the lightheadedness morphed into nausea. To be honest though, not even sitting down with a latte in front of her and a turkey sandwich with extra pickle spears on the side was taking the edge off her headache.
Granger sitting across from her, with those scrutinizing cop-eyes, wasn’t helping matters, that was for certain. Supporting the side of her head in her hand, London dipped the pickle into the side of honey mustard and focused all her attention on eating it.
“That’s just gross. What? Are you pregnant?” Granger teased, stirring sugar into the coffee that was the only thing he ordered.
“Don’t even joke,” she murmured, although she was a hundred percent positive that she wasn’t. Not unless there was some immaculate conception clause in the druid handbook that she’d overlooked. “So, vampires. You didn’t even bat an eye at the fangs. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised Interpol knows about them. Not much gets past you guys, huh?” Best to steer the direction of this conversation where she wanted it to go, which was as far away from the topic of fey as possible.
“We’re a clever lot,” Granger agreed. “We always get to the bottom of things, even when people try to hide it.”
“Mmm,” she made a sound that could have been interpreted as agreement, or just an appreciation of the pickle.
“You want to see something?” Granger pulled his phone from his pocket and cued up a video. He slid the phone closer to London, and when she was done wiping her hand on a napkin and gave the device her attention, he tapped the glass to start the playback.
There, bigger than life, was a close-up of her and Malcolm plunging out of the Brightner Building just as it was crashing down.
Granger tapped the screen to pause it. “That’s you, isn’t it? Great cheekbones, by the way. I think your eyeliner was a bit smudged there, though.”
Not so much compliments as pointing out the clarity of the image.
He pointed to Malcolm’s face, which was equally as defined. “This guy we’ve not identified yet.”
With another tap, the video played once more, through the part where the two of them just vanished before they could hit the ground and be buried under the building toppling over them.
“So, I know the guy’s not a vampire. Vampires can’t teleport.” He slid the phone back towards himself. “And neither can you, unless I’m missing something.”
“Huh, that is weird,” she agreed. Her palm crushed down on the pulsing in her right temple. “So, what are the prevailing theories? You sure that wasn’t an alien abduction? Maybe the planet Venus was glaring off some swamp gas, or something freaky like that.”
“The prevailing theory is that your savior is a demon.” Granger dropped this casually, as he stirred his coffee.
London almost looked up at him in surprise. And if she had, it would have been a dead giveaway that she knew that wasn’t true. Even the fraction of a second of hesitation before she grunted another, “Huh,” that was supposed to sound like she was confused but thinking about the possibility, probably didn’t fool him. Picking up her sandwich, London pushed the conversation again, seeking any misdirection that volunteered itself. She’d rat out vampires, and even demons, if it protected the fey. “What does Interpol know about demons?”
And in truth, she really didn’t think they’d have put stock into anything supernatural.
“Usually, most large-scale, supernatural incidents can be linked to some demonic cause. Sometimes, they just like to stir things up, but more often it is infighting that triggers it.” Granger slid his phone back into his inside suit jacket pocket. “I spend most of my time hunting down these demons and eliminating the threat.”
“Eliminating the threat. Doesn’t sound too cuddly. I don’t suppose these demons get a trial.” She bit into her sandwich and chewed as she finally made eye contact, finding him entirely serious in all that he was saying.
“Have you ever tried to cuddle a demon?” He quirked up a half smirk.
“Can’t say that I have,” she admitted. “So how does one generally go about hunting for a demon?”
“Well, generally,” he nodded to her, as he stole her word, “we pick up the signature of their demonic residue, and use that to track them down. Only,” he pulled the spoon from his cup, tapped off a lingering drop, and set it aside on the saucer as he lifted the cup towards his mouth, “this time there was no residue. Not a single iota of it.”
“Huh,” she said again, like she didn’t have a clue what to make of that. “Weird.” This was definitely an extra-pickle conversation. Some people turned to chocolate, London found her comfort food in the form of pickles. She picked up the next one and speared it into the honey mustard.
“So, if he’s not a vampire, and he’s not a demon, then what is he?” Granger asked, relaxing back in his chair, done with his little presentation and ready for London to fill in his blanks for him.
This was why people didn’t like coppers. Especially clever ones.
London turned towards the waitress, lifting a finger to get her attention. “More pickles?”
“Pickles are not going to get you out of this one.” He glanced up as the waitress delivered a plate with pickles and more honey mustard. “Are you sure you’re not pregnant?”
Once the plate arrived, London proceeded to eat as if just sitting across from an old mate. Granger meant to put her on the spot, but she’d faced down slicker foes than him before. What wouldn’t work in this case was going on the defensive, or coming up with elaborate lies that could be quickly disproved. “Agent Granger, you seem like a genuinely good guy. You want to help people, right? Protect them from the monsters of the world, like those demons you were talking about?”
“That is my goal, yes.” He sipped at his coffee, one arm stretched across the back of the bench seat of the booth they shared, his expression interested and attentive. Clearly, he wasn’t going to just buy anything she shoveled in his direction, but he was open to hearing whatever story she was going to tell.
“I was only in the Brightner Building a couple times, like I said, but I can tell you with complete honesty that those people were evil. Like on the order of Nazi Germany and the concentration camps kind of evil. You found the cages, I presume.” It was her turn to fix him with her gaze.
It took him only a fraction of a second before he admitted, “We did.”
“There were people in those cages. Not lab animals, which in my book isn’t any better, but actual people. People that they were mutilating for God-knows what reasons.”
She had his undivided attention now.
“I saw those cages for the first time just after the breakout started. I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t. Maybe come to you guys, I don’t know. All I knew was in that moment when the chaos started was that I had to do whatever I could to let those people free.” She knew her eyes must have glazed over as she remembered that day. Granger would be able to tell that she was accessing memories and not imagination by the movement of her eyes, and she meant for him to see that. “I let as many of them out as I could and they were helping each other, too. So much noise. So much chaos. There was gunfire and explosions, then the sprinkler system went off and the building toppled over.”
She paused. Her heart was racing, just remembering the adrenaline rush as she and Malcolm were thrown out the window.
“I honestly can’t tell you what brought the building down. I honestly can’t tell you how it is that I survived. All I know is that those peopl
e running that company were pure evil, and I can only hope that all of the captives made it out alive.” London poked her sandwich with her pickle, shaking her head. “I know a little about vampires. I know a little about werewolves. Those people running that company were neither, but they were more monstrous than anything I’d ever come across before. And that’s a fact.”
And, for what it was worth, it was the truth. At least in every way that mattered.
Granger watched her for a moment longer, his hand still around his coffee cup as it sat on the table. “Thank you for that, Miss Eyer.” Leaning forward he collected the handkerchief that he’d loaned to her, and that was just sitting on the table, and pocketed it. Then, to her surprise, he got up from the table and left enough money to pay both their tabs. “If I have any further questions, I’ll be in touch.”
As he turned from her, she called, “Hey, Granger. How did you know where to find me?” She’d taken precautions; he shouldn’t have been able to just show up like that.
Granger turned back, flashed a smirk, and a cheeky wink, and then walked out to the sound of the jingle bells tinkling on the door.
Chapter Ten
“What are you working on?” Kieran’s voice slid over Riley’s awareness drawing him out of the computer screen he’d been staring into for the better part of four hours. He leaned back in his chair at the kitchen table to stretch his back. “I’m just trying to do a little research on this forum. I was able to catch some activity about some werewolves hunting the fey and we were able to stop them. I just know there’s more here that we can stop, if I can just get into the community or hack into the server.” He ran the fingers of both hands through his hair and then pulled as if that might release the tension in his scalp from having stared for so hard, for so long. The tension had his whole body aching and it was only now that he was moving that he realized it.
