by Kelly Meding
I just didn’t want to be the one to suggest to him someone in his inner circle was a traitor. “Are vampires vulnerable to each others’ mind fucks?” I asked.
Kathleen’s eyebrows furrowed in a deep vee. “What?”
Sixty-five years old and she still had trouble with slang. “Can one vampire read another’s mind?”
“I’m uncertain. The Master of a line can, with permission, access the mind of any he has made.”
“Right.” Tennyson had mentioned that.
Kathleen continued. “But those powers rarely extend to those outside of his making. What you are thinking?”
“Getting info, is all.” Half true, since I was also contemplating the idea that one of Tennyson’s enemy was setting us up. A powerful Master could, potentially, poke into the mind of a lesser vamp, thereby getting the location of the takeover. Theory, all of it. Just theory. But with all that was going on and no clear answers, that’s the best we had at the moment.
“Who’s Tennyson?” Julius asked.
I jumped at the sound of his voice, having forgotten he was there—which is quite a trick, considering his state.
“The vampire Master we are attempting to assist,” Kathleen said. “I explained this to you.”
Had she? Oh, right, while I was revisiting those peanuts.
“Did you?” Julius screwed up his face, concentrating. “I don’t remember.”
I asked Kathleen, “Is short-term memory loss a side effect of the revenant thing? Like, he knows who we are, but we have to keep reminding him what’s going on right now.”
“I am uncertain, as he is my first revenant,” she said. “It is possible whatever was done to him to manipulate his memory prior to death or as part of the revenancy spell in order to prevent him from recalling who turned him may have gone awry.”
“Awry?” She had such a frustrating way with words, sometimes. “So no matter what we tell him about what’s happening, he’ll probably just forget.”
A curtain of sadness fell across Kathleen’s pale face. “Again, it’s possible.”
I wanted to stamp my foot in childish frustration, but somehow curbed the desire. “All we have are possibilities and no real answers, bless it.”
“Yes.”
“This really sucks.”
“Yes.”
“Something bad happened to me, didn’t it?” Julius asked. “I can’t feel my legs.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed the foil-covered box, flipped it upside down, and placed it over the cake container, effectively obscuring my dead boss’s head from view. He didn’t protest, and I was glad.
Kathleen’s phone beeped. She glanced at the display, reading whatever info K.I.M. had sent. “As of last reporting,” she said, “the West Coast unit has not had a member go missing. No one has reported unusual, large-scale paranormal activity within their zone, either.”
It didn’t really make me feel better. Two teams for the whole US meant huge-ass territories. Ours encompassed the entire East Coast, from Maine to Florida, and as far west as Missouri and Arkansas. Everything else belonged to Weller’s West Coast unit, including Alaska—although Alaska’s problems were generally limited to were-polar bears running amok—and occasionally bits of Canada. Too much territory for us to be certain that nothing else was going on under our noses. We hadn’t even seen the Myrtle’s Acres takeover until it happened, and that was practically in our backyard.
“Does Weller know what’s going on here?” I asked.
“Updates have been sent.”
I sank deeper against the sofa cushions, the soft leather oddly comforting. I closed my eyes, frustrated and tired. “Should we move back to HQ? The bad guys know where this house is.”
Kathleen didn’t reply right away. Several long beats preceded her reply. “If this was first warning, they have no need to attack us again so soon. They must have guessed we would be here,” she said, nodding her head at the hobgoblin, “so if they were planning something, they would have done so already.”
“So we stay?”
“Yes. Also, Tennyson is coming in with Novak and Jaxon.”
“Right.” We couldn’t take Tennyson onto HQ grounds. Here was as good a place as any to figure out our next step. And home base wasn’t far if we needed supplies or equipment.
I hadn’t intended to fall asleep and woke with an annoyed grunt. Voices were echoing in the foyer, and I bounced to my feet, neck aching from the awkward position. Jaxon stormed into the living room first, his hazel eyes wide as they took me in. He faltered. I sagged a little, not realizing how much I needed him until he was there, and I kind of hated that need. I considered a quip about my appearance, to keep it all balanced, but couldn’t find my sense of humor, buried as it was beneath my grief.
I managed a wan smile. He opened his arms, and I fell into his embrace, grateful for the comfort. My fingers bunched in his shirt, and I pressed my face into his neck, drawing on the refreshing, forest smell of him. The familiar hard planes of his chest, the strength in his arms and shoulders. Being this close to him warmed me on the inside, made me feel so protected I wanted to cry all over again.
Jaxon and I had tried, really tried. We’d had fun, made each other laugh, and the sex had been fantastic. Probably the best of my life, even if I’d never tell him so. But the rigorous demands of our working relationship had made a personal one impossible to maintain without knock-down, drag-out fights on a biweekly basis. It hadn’t worked, but Jaxon still knew how to hold me the way I liked. The way I needed when I didn’t know how to ask, and I loved him for it.
He didn’t ask if I was okay. It was a stupid-ass question, anyway. He just held me tight, his lean arms around my waist, hands splayed across my back. Around us, the others came inside. I felt Novak nearby, felt the rage pouring off him. Demon rage, no matter the demon, is like the static on a television screen—get too close and it snaps at your fingertips and sets your hair on end.
An even stronger presence followed him—Tennyson. One of the boys must have invited him inside. I glanced up and met his gaze over Jaxon’s shoulder. The Master vampire lingered in the archway between the foyer and living room, his old-fashioned cloak even more out of place among the modern furnishings. He watched me with an unreadable expression, but I didn’t miss the tiniest flecks of green in his eyes, natural color still shielded behind the faint blue glow.
Green. Huh.
“Under the box,” Kathleen said, somewhere behind me.
“Why’d you cover him up?” Novak asked.
“You’ll understand when you see.”
I twisted out of Jaxon’s embrace, not protesting when he left one arm draped protectively across my shoulders. Kathleen stood near the bound hobgoblin, her arms crossed over her chest. Novak approached the foil box, every muscle in his ripped body coiled and tense enough to burst. He lifted the box.
I didn’t think it possible for such a dark-skinned demon to pale, but he did. Few things spooked Novak. He didn’t tremble or cry out or drop the box in fright—it was enough that he did a favorable impression of an over-creamed mug of coffee.
“Bless me,” he said.
“Novak,” said the head in the box, still in that broken bellows voice.
The incubus didn’t reply. He put the box back down, and as before, we heard no protest from Julius.
“Fascinating,” Tennyson said.
I spun to face the Master vamp, ignoring Jaxon’s surprised grunt. “Someone’s warning us against helping you,” I said to Tennyson, getting back into his personal space. Not a smart move, on my part, but I didn’t care. I glared up at his angular face, letting my rage rise to the surface and bubble with power.
“It would seem so,” he replied, his voice cold and eerily calm.
“So tell me, then, of those three Masters who have high levels of mind manipulation ability, any of them powerful enough to pull off necromancy? Or should I say stupid enough?”
He flared his nostrils, then wrinkle
d his nose, as if my close presence offended him. “Necromancy is forbidden,” he said.
“Yeah, no kidding. Also, not what I asked.”
“I have no other answer for you, Ms. Harrison. Vampires take care to follow the rules of magic and spellcasting, and even then, very, very few are able to manipulate that sort of organic magic. Our magic, which is passed through the blood from Master to child, is not the same. The mixing of the two is dangerous and not tolerated among our people.”
Jaxon snorted. “So you’re saying even if a Master could pull off necromancy, no one would talk about it?” he asked.
“Yes.”
It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted a name, a face, hell even a geographical location would be better than all of the nothing I had to work with. “Fine,” I said. “Do you know of anyone, I don’t care what species or inclination, who possesses the knowledge and power to practice necromancy? Successfully, I mean, not the idiots who produce zombies.”
Tennyson stilled—not hard to do, since he wasn’t moving much in the first place. His pale face seemed carved from stone. “Someone with the skill to do such a thing to your friend, you mean,” he said.
“Obviously.”
He took another half minute to practice his inner Mona Lisa, then finally nodded. “Yes, I am acquainted with a practitioner of some considerable skill who has been known to dabble in the blackest of the Dark Arts. If she is not involved, she may know who is.”
A tiny ray of hope peeked out. “Where does she live?”
“Never in one place very long.”
“Which means what?”
Tennyson bent his neck until his forehead was a hair’s breadth from mine. His long, multihued hair fell forward in a thin curtain, framing both sides of his face. He released a puff of cool air, more for effect than any need to actually breathe. I kept perfectly still, not backing down, working hard to show no fear in the face of a djinn’s mortal enemy.
My dad would be proud.
“Which means you haven’t a demon’s chance in heaven of finding her without my help,” he said, each word dripping with thirst.
The pulse point in my neck throbbed, and bless it, I shivered. I stepped back, driven by an instinctual need to separate myself from the predator invading my personal space.
“The witch is a traveler, then?” Novak asked, somehow right behind me. Jaxon and Kathleen had circled in tighter, as well, backing me up.
“Indeed,” Tennyson said, once more calm and in control.
“I’ve tracked down travelers before.”
“Not of her caliber. Even with your considerable skills, Incubus, only those whom she has invited into her home can sense its location.”
Novak made a rude noise. “Let me guess, Vampire. She has invited you into her”—he paused and made air quotes, leaving little doubt as to his innuendo—“home, in the past?”
“Yes, she has. She understands the need for powerful allies.”
I reached back and pinched Novak’s arm. He stopped before any more arguments or innuendo made it past his lips. It wasn’t helping.
“Tennyson,” I said, squaring my shoulders, “can you take us to meet her?”
He overlapped my question with his curt reply. “No.”
“Why not?”
“She will not welcome the demon, nor is she fond of skin-walkers. The half-blooded she also finds . . . distasteful.”
Well, that wiped our entire team off the list, didn’t it? “So we’re supposed to what? Let you go in and question her alone?”
“Hardly.” He allowed a flicker of amusement to enter his eyes, which made me hate him a little bit more. “I take one of you with me under my protection—vouch for you, as is the common vernacular—and she will allow it.”
“Why only one of us?” Novak asked.
Tennyson sighed. “He cannot simply be grateful for the existence of a loophole, he must question its constraints.”
“He’s doing his job,” I said. “The last time one of us was out of another’s sight, he got turned into a talking head.”
“I understand, Ms. Harrison, which is why I give your team my word that I will protect you while you are in my care.”
My hand jerked. “Me?” He’d already decided I was the lucky loophole attendee, which made me all kinds of nervous.
“You are this team’s de facto leader now, are you not? Or would you prefer I bring your former boss’s head along with me in your stead?”
I curled my hand into a fist, tight enough to make the knuckles crack. I had half a mind to crack them again—right across his straight, pointy nose. Maybe it was his perfectly serious manner of speech, or the cold way he spoke about a man who’d died yesterday, I don’t know. Something about Woodrow Tennyson, Master Vampire, set my blood boiling.
And not in the “he’s so hot, I want to jump him” way.
The tiny part of me that quailed at the idea of being alone with Tennyson for however long it took to track down and question this witch kept hoping one of my team would speak up and insist on taking my place. The rest of me was proud of them for keeping quiet—it spoke to Julius’s training and our instilled respect for the chain of command.
I squared my shoulders. “When do we leave?”
“Immediately, if it suits you.” He glanced at the living room windows. “Do you have a vehicle suitable for daylight travel?”
“Tinted windows?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe. I’ll see what I can do.” I smiled on the inside, because for the briefest moment, my comment made Tennyson look nervous.
Chapter 5
Okay, so I wasn’t entirely fair with my vehicle choice. The ten-year-old Element had only a mild tint on the windshield and front windows, with a darker tint in the rear. It forced Tennyson to sit in the backseat with his cloak drawn up and wrapped around him, protecting his delicate skin from the morning sun’s glare. Keeping him in the backseat, which was raised up higher than in my preferred Expedition, put him square in my rearview mirror.
Well, put his clothes in the rearview. Vampires may not cast a reflection, but we entertain ourselves by making fun of movies that show their clothes as not casting a reflection, either. Clothes are clothes no matter who’s wearing them.
The front passenger seat was occupied by my boss. I was still creeped out by the idea of toting him around in a cake carrier, but I couldn’t just leave him behind at HQ, and sending him with Jaxon and the others to see the werewolves was like bringing along an hors d’oeuvre. We also discovered Julius went right to sleep—Zombie Standby Mode, as Jaxon called it, right before I punched him in the chest—when placed in darkness. Revenant Achilles heel, possibly, but at least I knew he wasn’t bored closed up inside the carrier.
I’d been driving in silence for forty-five minutes, using his cryptic “north” as my compass, and I couldn’t take the quiet any longer. I flicked on the radio. Something modern filled the car with drums and guitar strumming. Much better.
“Must you listen to that?” Tennyson asked.
Habit drew my gaze to the rearview mirror. An empty hood stared back, giving me no expression to match his disdainful tone. “I don’t hear you making conversation.”
“No, you do not.”
Sarcasm detector must be in the off position. “I hate driving in silence, okay? Give me a break.”
He immediately disproved my sarcasm theory by zinging me with, “What would you like broken?”
“You know, if I wasn’t positive my team would track you down and kill you so painfully your youngest vamp would feel it, I’d think you were serious.”
“Do you think so little of me?”
“I don’t know you.”
After a moment’s pause in which I felt him staring at the back of my head, he said, “Complete your thought, please.”
I blew out through clenched teeth. “I don’t know you, but you’re a vampire, so I really wouldn’t put it past you. Happy?”
“Not in the le
ast. However, I am pleased you spoke your mind. Djinn are not known for censoring their thoughts or emotions. I imagine you war with your base nature quite often.”
“Base nature?” I forced myself to relax my grip on the steering wheel. We were cruising down the highway at eight o’clock in the morning, and I was having a personality discussion with a vampire I couldn’t look in the eye. And I hadn’t had any coffee.
“You are only half human, Ms. Harrison,” he said as though instructing a difficult pupil. “Your djinn half will always be stronger than your human half, just as your friend Kathleen’s vampire half will always outweigh her human half. Humans are the weaker species.”
“You were human once.” As a retort, it was pretty blessed weak. I knew my djinn side was stronger; it’s why I struggled so hard to repress my Quarrel and block the magic I felt around me at all times. Ignoring part of yourself is never easy, and I didn’t need a freaking vampire Master to reiterate the fact.
“I’ve not been human for five hundred and forty years.”
“Holy shit.”
It just came out. I knew he was old. He’d admitted to having a three-hundred-plus underling. I just hadn’t expected half a millennium of living experience. Or unliving experience, depending on your point of view.
“My age surprises you?”
“A little.” I glanced over my shoulder for no good reason other than needing a look at his face. A reminder of what he looked like, even though he was impossible to forget. My gaze lingered less than a moment, and I took care to avoid eye contact.
The taillights of a silver Cadillac flashed red, warning me of impending contact. I mashed on the brakes with little time to wonder where the car had come from. Tennyson slammed into the back of the passenger seat with a grunt. The Cadillac found its accelerator and zipped forward in the lane. I returned my foot to the gas pedal and pressed until my speed returned to normal, clenching the wheel the entire time.
Adrenaline surged through me—terrific, I needed another headache to make my morning complete. My heart started sinking back into my chest, leaving my poor throat alone so I could find my voice. “You okay?” I asked.
