Cherry Stem

by Sotia Lazu

  “Knowing they’d live forever,” she yelled, raising her gaze to me. “They’d stay pretty forever. They wouldn’t get a single wrinkle, and they’d be rich. Nobody would miss them. I was helping them.”

  “What about Dorothea Williams?” Alex’s question fell heavily in the quiet that had followed Sheena’s outburst. “She has a son.” I was grateful the wrath etched on his face wasn’t aimed at me. I knew he was mortal and therefore physically weaker than me, but seeing him like that, I could tell he’d be lethal if he chose to.

  Sheena paled, her complexion turning ashen, and her lower lip trembled. “I didn’t want to give him Dotty. I wouldn’t have signed her if he hadn’t made me. He told me where I could…bump into her. I had to make it all seem my idea. He couldn’t approach her on his own, because she was cautious of going out with strangers, being a mom and all. After I met her—she was so nice. He said she’d be the last one. That it had to be her. I introduced them about a month ago, and they went out a few times. When nothing happened at their first date, I hoped he wouldn’t…you know.”

  I motioned for her to continue, but my mind reeled. If Willoughby was the guy Dotty had been seeing for a month, then he’d selected her before finding out about me and Alex. Before there was a me and Alex. Willoughby had been keeping tabs on me. That had to be it. But why? The question was drowned out by a flood of guilt; whatever the reason, it was my fault Dotty was gone.

  “When he called and demanded a new girl for next week, I told him I wouldn’t do it anymore, that he’d promised I wouldn’t have to. I asked him about Dotty. He wouldn’t talk about her, but I knew if he wanted a new girl, it meant Dotty—” Her voice, high-pitched by that point, broke, and her next words were muttered under her breath. “She was so nice.”

  Hearing Sheena say was twice drove a sharp spear of cold fear through my heart. “She’s dead?”

  “I tried to call her, to get her to break things off with him, but she didn’t answer. I thought I was too late. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  I didn’t realize I was almost crushing Alex’s hand until he cleared his throat, and I felt him try to pry it away. I let go. “We just know she’s missing. Do you know anything about where he might be taking the girls?”

  “No. I swear. I was too afraid to ask for details, and he never told me anything.” She downed the rest of her drink, and her hand trembled when she leaned forward to leave the glass on the coffee table.

  “Have you ever seen anybody else with him?”

  “No, never.” She chewed on her lip, and I could see flakes of the supposed lipstick peeling off on her teeth.

  “Do you have his number? Any way to contact him?” Alex had produced his notepad, but Sheena shook her head.

  “He always called me, and from a private number. Set the time and place, and asked for what he had in mind. He’d always meet them at clubs or parties. The names the girls were to ask for were always different.”

  Made-up names. I wondered if they were worse than “Willoughby,” although that had to be his real name. Or at least the name he went by in the vampire circles; it had been what they’d called him during my trial.

  Alex asked for her phone. “Maybe he’ll call again,” he said. She gave it to him immediately.

  Alex didn’t ask Sheena to specify the names Willoughby had given her on occasion. It made sense; we had no use for them. We were back to square one.

  I rose, and Alex followed my lead. There was nothing more to do there.

  Sheena pushed herself off the couch with both hands, wavered, and finally managed to stand. “What about me? What are you going to do with me?”

  Alex looked at me, and in that moment, I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that if I suggested he shoot her and bury her in the backyard, he’d be fine with it.

  A small part of me would be fine with it too. Sheena had pulled the world out from under my feet, and I couldn’t forgive her for that. Before that, however, she’d made my world a better place for a while. “Get out of town,” I said flatly. “For real this time. If I see you again, I’ll kill you.” I wouldn’t; I’m not a killer. But I’d do my best to make her miserable.

  She nodded. “For what little it’s worth, I am really sorry. I didn’t want any of this.”

  I believed her but didn’t really care.

  * * * *

  My phone buzzed again on the drive back, and once more I let it go to voice mail. I curled up in my seat and let the rocking motion of the car lull me to sleep.

  I only awoke briefly when Alex was getting me out of the car, and I thought I heard him say something about taking care of me. He was human and fragile despite his size, and I was a vampire and basically immortal. Still, his words made me feel safe. Alex’s strength came from within, and it could move mountains.

  Nothing bad could happen to me again as long as he held me.

  Chapter Ten

  Lying naked in bed, pressed against a hard male body, provides the best distraction from depressing thoughts. The body being Alex’s, chiseled to perfection, warm to the touch, and snuggled close to mine, added an extra reason for me not to want to get out from under the covers to retrieve my buzzing phone.

  It was still in my jeans pocket, where Alex had left it when he’d undressed me to put me in bed, and the jeans were folded on a chair just a few feet from where we were. The distance seemed vast when I knew crossing it entailed disentangling myself from Alex’s embrace.

  “You’re not gonna get that?” His breath caressing the back of my neck made me itch to leave the blasted call alone.

  I let out a puff of air and brought his palm to my lips so I could place a kiss on it. “You heard it?”

  “You don’t need enhanced hearing for that. I think I put your keys in the same pocket. They’re jingling.” He caressed my cheek with his thumb.

  “I don’t want to get up.” The words were drawn out and nasal.

  Alex ignored my whining. “I heard it earlier too. May be an emergency.”

  I doubted that; the caller hadn’t been persistent enough, letting hours go by between tries. I realized I should have checked my missed calls but had honestly forgotten about them until then. “The only people who have that number are Sheena, Constantine, Dotty, and the council.” Ignoring his grumbling that he ought to have it too, I went on. “It’s too early for any of the vampires to be calling me, and Sheena wouldn’t dare to.”

  I was out of bed as soon as the last word had left my mouth.

  Dotty! Dotty or her kidnapper—I refused to think of him as her killer—could be trying to contact me. I grabbed my jeans. My fingers might as well have been sausages, the way they refused to be agile and just pluck the stupid phone out of the stupid denim. The buzzing stopped.

  I finally found the phone and was about to check my missed calls when it started vibrating again. I let out a surprised squeal and looked at the name blipping on the lighted screen.

  My mood plummeted. Constantine.

  There went the possibility of crawling back next to Alex and having me some early-day sex. Unless, of course, I ignored the phone. If it was urgent after all, he’d text me when he saw he couldn’t reach me. I pressed the little red button and sent him a ready-made excuse message that said Can’t talk. Text in case of emergency. Then I turned and smiled at Alex, who was sitting up and looking at me intently. “Nobody important.” A glance at the unanswered calls list showed it had been him earlier too, but I had no voice mail alert.

  Alex’s features hardened, his deduction as to the caller’s identity so obvious I might as well have heard it click into place.

  I put my phone back and did my best seductive prowl back up the bed, but he seemed preoccupied. When I straddled him and lowered my face to his, he said, “I’ve been thinking…”

  Shit. Nothing good ever followed that line. Sitting back on his thighs, I looked at him with a pout. “If this is about Constantine, I told you—”

  “Nothing to do with him.” Yeah, right.
That was why he’d spat out him like the word had been drenched in lemon juice. “We’ve been going about this all wrong.”

  “Huh? Like how?” I scowled hard enough to almost put my eyebrows in my line of sight. What was he talking about? How could we have been doing the sex wrong?

  “We’ve been looking for clues when we don’t have a theory.” Hmmm… so it really had nothing to do with Constantine or our sex life. “We have to take this from the start.”

  Did I mention I was straddling him naked? And he wanted to talk shop?

  I slid off his body and covered myself with the sheet. “So let’s.” Suppressing my need to sulk took some effort, but I knew being upset that he could disregard my blatant pass at him was stupid when he wanted to discuss something about the case.

  “First off, you were turned—we assume by accident—and left for dead. A vampire who happened to be your fan happened to come by and spot you. Right so far?”

  “Right.” Where was he going with it? We already knew Willoughby and Ted had been working together.

  “Okay, so the question is why? It was too big a mess: turning you, dumping you, and supposedly discovering you. Why would they do that? What did they hope to accomplish?” He might as well have been directing the questions to himself, his voice was so low.

  “A law against turning people was established?”

  Alex arched an eyebrow, his look clearly saying what his mouth wouldn’t dare to: I was an idiot if I believed that. “I doubt that was what they were after, since they’re still turning people.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest, clutching at the sheet. I wished the cloth could protect more than my nonexistent modesty and warm more than just my skin. The ice-cold fingers that were gripping my still heart showed no intention of melting, however. Remembering I was feeling warm and safe mere moments ago compounded my sense of dread. Things were so fucking volatile. “We don’t know that,” I said in a small voice.

  “Okay, you’re right. We don’t know that.” Whether he sensed my need for reassurance or because he too needed the contact, he placed his palm between my shoulder blades. I leaned into his touch. “Yet that’s not all they managed, is it?”

  I curled in on myself and hugged my knees. Laying my cheek on my knee, I focused on enjoying his caressing my back. “No, it’s not. The old council was overthrown, and a new one replaced it.” They were the ones to benefit the most from my turning; they’d become the ruling body. Nobody controlled or even questioned them.

  “If your turning was indeed prearranged, they had to somehow be involved. They were the ones who were supposed to get Willoughby executed and didn’t. The same people you went to for help.” His tone held no accusation, yet I felt guilt add to the cluster of negative feelings that had made a home in my belly. Alex had warned me not to trust them but I’d insisted they were the good guys, and now they knew we were on to something.

  They probably knew about Alex too, which put him in even greater danger. It was one thing for a single rogue vampire to be after us, and another altogether for the enemy to be the council itself.

  “The council wouldn’t need to outlaw turnings if they planned on continuing them. They could have found another way to go about overturning their predecessors. This must all be a coincidence.” Unless, of course, they had another agenda.

  He tugged lightly at a strand of my hair. “You said yourself that we don’t know they’re turning the girls. If they are, maybe not all the council members are in on it. Probably not all of them are in on it, or they’d have killed you when you went to meet them. Still, even one of them is enough of a threat.”

  And they knew where to find us. The lack of a new attack might have been meant to lull us into a false sense of safety.

  “There’s something else your theory doesn’t explain,” I said. “Assuming they are taking the girls, why are they doing it?” And what could we do?

  “We’ll look into that. First we have to find a safe place. Maybe my apartment.”

  I scrunched my nose. “Which floor is it on?”

  “What does that matter?”

  “It kind of does; if it’s not an underground one, you obviously wanna see me go up in flames.”

  A vibration made me jump. This time there was no procrastination; I elbowed Alex in the ribs trying to answer it. The phone call would act as a distraction from the scariness, regardless of who was on the other end of the line.

  Only, when the music kicked in, I realized it wasn’t my phone; mine didn’t have “Paparazzi” as a ringtone.

  It was Sheena’s.

  With a fleeting thought at how our provider rocked for our having reception down in the basement, I looked at the tiny slip of a cell phone that was inching its way toward the edge of the nondescript coffee table we used as a nightstand. The screen flashed an innocent white light.

  Alex was staring at it too, but when I climbed over him to get it, he stopped me. “What if it’s him?” He wasn’t worried; he was actually asking what I had in mind.

  I knew what course of action would appeal the most to me. “I tell him to give me Dotty, unharmed, or I dust him?” I asked with fake cheer.

  Alex reached out and picked it up. After one glance at the display, he shook his head. “Out-of-area number.” I realized we were both whispering.

  “Let it go to voice mail.”

  We remained silent until the cell stopped ringing. We could have waited for an alerting text, but Alex was apparently no more patient than I was. He narrowed his eyes and pressed 1. The phone already looked fragile in his massive palm, but when his index pushed down on the tiny button, I was sure he’d break it. He didn’t, and he managed to turn the speaker on too. I silently prayed Sheena didn’t have a PIN for accessing her messages.

  Alex pressed the button once more, drew me so I lay on his chest, and held the phone between our ears.

  “I want a blonde tomorrow night.” It was him. Willoughby. “The swimsuit model, if she really is no older than twenty-three. Tell her to meet me in the VIP section of the Dark Sun at eleven. Ask for Mr. Erebus’s booth. If she doesn’t show, I’ll come for you.” The voice was flat, emotionless.

  I shivered, and Alex tightened his grip on me. Once sure the message was over, he tossed the phone back on the table and cradled me. “We’ll get him,” he said before kissing my forehead. “We’ll get him and he’ll pay.”

  “How?” The human justice system wasn’t capable of containing or handling him, and more innocent blood would be shed when he escaped.

  “Same way his friend did.”

  I was happy I couldn’t see his eyes that very moment. Judging by his tone, I was sure the darkness in his expression would scare me more than the notion of one or more council members being after us.

  “So we’re going to the Dark Sun tomorrow?” I asked, brushing my lips along his collarbone.

  I felt him nod.

  “And until then?”

  “We’re staying here.”

  I looked up at him, shocked. “What about finding a safe place?”

  “Even if the leak were fixed, my apartment is on the seventh floor and facing east. Windows with gauzelike curtains all around. Yours?”

  “We don’t need an invitation to enter another vamp’s place. Dead people have no threshold to keep the supernatural away.” I averted my face when he tried to capture my lips. “We don’t have to hide together. You could stay at your place, and I’ll stay at mine.” Suggesting that wasn’t my idea of fun, but I didn’t want to risk Alex’s life more than I already had. He was strong and he was trained to fight, but he was still human.

  He cupped my chin and turned me to him, our faces so close that I almost went cross-eyed trying to look at him.

  “We hide together, we fight together, and—if we have to—we run together,” he said. “Only Willoughby can get in here without an invitation, and if he does, we can take him.”

  He sounded so certain that I allowed myself to relax and get lost inside
the cocoon his words and presence had built around us.

  The semblance of safety and comfort only lasted until he said, “I think we should look through the folder Barbara gave us.”

  With a groan, I let him get off the bed and bring the blasted thing over so we could flip through the pages. There were ten more entries that only held pictures and numbers. Ten more young women that had been selected for vampire snacks—or worse. And those were only the ones Sheena’s Models had lined up for Willoughby. Nothing assured us my former agent was his only supplier.

  “This blonde has the proportions of a swimsuit model.” I pointed at a young woman’s picture. Her measurements were jotted hastily next to the photo.

  “I didn’t know models came in different categories.”

  So he thought I was in the same league as, say, Gisele? Could he be more awesome? I felt bad for having to correct him. “They do, actually. Runway models as a rule are really tall but less curvy. Swimsuit models are curvier and often more athletic.” And catalog models, like once-upon-a-time me, can be shorter than runway and more girl next doorish. No reason to point that out, though.

  None of them were among the missing ones and Sheena had said there weren’t supposed to be more, so what were they? Alternatives? Had she been presenting Willoughby with a buffet? I couldn’t think of what to do about it. We couldn’t exactly start calling them and warning them off a potential supernatural kidnapper/killer.

  “Maybe you should take this to your guys?” I said. “They can do more to protect them than we can.”

  “My guys are the ones who told us about Sheena’s Models. They have a copy of this by now. I was hoping there’d be just a couple more possible victims so you and I could maybe follow them.” That last sentence was uttered under his breath, like he was talking to himself. His voice rose again when he said, “Roebuck has probably gone by the agency by now and has a copy of this in his hands.” He closed the folder and let it drop to the floor by the bed.

  “So he knows we’ve been by asking questions too.”