“So we found the bigfoot of demons, only tiny,” I said dryly, leaning back in my seat. “Great. How did they eradicate the swarm?”
“Unknown. Even demonologists and covens were focused on the threat of the Black Death and many died—there’s little more to go by than these stories.”
So we didn’t know where they came from, what they were vulnerable to, who might’ve brought them here now. Perfect.
“What did you find at Dev’s apartment?” Dad asked.
“Nothing. He took his laptop...” And potentially the pendant. We’d been in a rush, but Melinoë said there was demonic energy around it and the swarm had hit just as we’d found it. Hell, maybe some kind of boobytrap had been left there, though I didn’t know where my brother would’ve found those creatures, if that was the case. Simplest explanation remained that something was watching his apartment and came after us.
I can be tactful and subtle, and ask around a subject until I get what I want. And I did that with plenty of people. But Dad was Dad and we didn’t do secrets or subtleties in our household.
“Dev had a pendant,” I began. “One that he inherited from his mom. Creepy-ass red stone.”
Slowly, he nodded. “What about it?”
“What does it do?”
He leaned back in his plush navy chair, fingers steepled before him. “Why?”
“Because I always accepted it was none of my business but now I’m curious. He’s missing and so is the pendant. Either he took it with him—which, as far as I recall, he never wore or removed—or someone else took it. Which is probably a bad thing. The swarm also hit us just as I checked the empty box.”
Dad chewed on this for a moment, gaze absently on the hardwood floor. “Honestly, El, I’m not sure what it does. It came from another dimension—that much I know. His mom wanted it passed along to him, and it cost her soul to do it. Those wishes were honored, Dev was aware of the stone and officially given it when he was twelve, and that is all I know for sure.”
“When you say...” Melinoë’s voice trailed off and she glanced at us both as we turned to her, that awkwardness rising again. “Sorry, I just never got the details—when you say it cost her soul...?”
“Her soul crossed dimensions to reach this one and it was not an easy trip—to put it mildly. This is all second-hand, but from what I understand, there were no instructions, no backstory—she just asked that Dev have the pendant.”
“Second-hand from...?”
Tense silence stretched between the three of us.
“Someone no longer with us,” I said at last. “So we can’t really ask for more information.” I did not believe for a second that Dad hadn’t researched the hell out of the pendant in the past twenty-five years—he might not have confirmed information about the origin or purpose, but he’d have theories.
But if he wasn’t mentioning them in front of Melinoë...?
Though there was no sound, no indication of another presence, I nonetheless felt it and did not look away from Melinoë when I called in warning, “Rodney.”
The other presence across the room paused in the darkness and I heard a tail thump the wall as it swished.
Dad sighed and looked over his shoulder. “I didn’t even hear him.”
Melinoë frowned and peered past Dad into the darkness by the heavy curtains—I could tell the precise moment she saw him because she squealed and flew out of her seat, rounding the loveseat in the same movement that was less coordinated and graceful as it was sheer luck. “What the hell is that!”
Rodney made his presence fully known then by stalking over, heavy paws thumping on the hardwood. He could be entirely silent when he wanted to be, and then shift on a dime so you heard all six hundred pounds of him. His coat of spotted beige and brown fur was well groomed and smooth, and his amber eyes flashed in the light. Foot-long fangs gleamed—how Dad found someone to keep doing dental work on the beast, I had no idea, but his teeth were in top condition.
For each step he took forward, Melinoë took one back.
“That’s a saber-tooth tiger,” she said.
“That’s actually a misnomer,” I said. “Not a tiger.”
She stared silently.
“He’s harmless,” I assured her.
“He is not,” Dad corrected. “But he attacks from above—if he’s on ground-level, he’s not hunting.”
The big saber-tooth cat sauntered over, wound around Dad’s chair and gave him a warning glare and dismissive snort, then came to sit directly at my feet, his short tail swishing and whiskers flicking.
Melinoë had not come back to sit. “I...uh...”
I reached out to stroke Rodney’s head and his eyes closed, a deep purr rumbling contentedly.
“I don’t like cats,” she blurted out suddenly, still wide-eyed and worried. “Like even normal-sized ones.”
Many would claim Rodney did not understand human language, but he stopped purring, opened his eyes into slits, and glared at her with a deep growl.
“Sorry—”
“It’s okay,” Dad said smoothly. “He doesn’t really follow instructions or move when he doesn’t want to, so he probably won’t leave the room—do you want to meet us downstairs?”
“Aunt Roo is in the kitchen,” I said. “Go back the way we came, hang a right at the bottom of the stairs, then another right. You can’t miss the kitchen and you’ll probably hear her.”
Slowly Melinoë nodded while backing up toward the door—in another few seconds, she was gone.
Rodney followed, going just to the closed door, where he turned twice and dropped gracelessly to sit.
I leaned back on the couch with a sigh. “He needs to get out more, his people skills are atrophying.”
“Mine too.”
“How are the experiments going?”
He smiled wryly. “What makes you think I’m still doing them?”
“Because you closed that book pretty quickly when we walked in earlier.”
He nodded, granting me that. “When I have progress, I’ll let you know. I’m trying something new, I’m hopeful, but I’m basically inventing spells as I go without test subjects.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“Everything’s different now, El. I’m working within a new framework of rules I have no idea of—there are a confirmed five vampires in all of the Americas left including me, with roughly eight in Europe Roo can identify through rumors and a handful in Asia. Six more in Africa. We can’t find any record of any of them turning someone since the virus.”
“That doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”
“Eleven years of failure is not heartening.”
“If anyone can do it, blah blah blah—I suck at pep talks. But if I can help—”
“This is my work, El. It’s fine.”
I could argue two witches would be better than one. Hell, I had argued it. But if he reached a point of wanting help, he’d ask.
“I ask, again, should I be concerned about Dev?” Dad not-so-subtly diverted the conversation, though I supposed it was reasonable since I told him his only son was missing.
“I don’t know yet. Whole thing is news to me. No clues in his apartment except that missing pendant. He never took it out or wore it as far as I can recall, so either he did this time—which is strange and worrisome in itself—or someone took it. Which is also strange and worrisome. And we were attacked by a swarm, so...? I’m not really sure which option I’d prefer at this point, but Melinoë said there was demon energy—”
“Melinoë,” he repeated, steepling his fingers again as his brow pulled into a frown. “That’s her full name?”
“Yeah. Melinoë...I don’t remember. Started with a T?”
“Takata.”
Blood left my face and my gut went cold at his expression. “Right. She said she’s Dev’s cousin.”
Dad went very still as he absorbed this, and I could practically see the thoughts whirling around his brain. “She told you this?”
<
br /> “Yes. She said she’s been in contact with him, they’ve been working together on stuff. Spells and that.” No need to freak him out more by bringing up the Aanzhenii.
“When did you meet her?”
What aren’t you telling me? “Like literally today. What the fuck, Dad?”
He gave himself a shake. “Sorry. I’ve never met her, I don’t know anything about her. But her mother...was not a friend, El.”
“I know that side of Dev’s family is fucked up—”
“She killed people. Including someone...close to our family. I know of Melinoë’s existence and I never met her before tonight, so I don’t know anything about her. She introduced herself to you freely and probably has nothing to hide.”
“So be careful,” I filled in, squirming uncomfortably—I didn’t like him to worry, and I really didn’t like him to nag.
“Be safe,” he said instead. “And be smart. Because I know you are genetically incapable of being careful.”
“Ha ha,” I said dryly. “For once are you telling me not to see the best in someone?”
“Give her the benefit of the doubt but don’t drop your guard. Because there was nothing good to see in Peri Takata and until you know Melinoë’s agenda, you might learn that firsthand.”
That was the very last thing I expected my father to ever say about anyone. It left my world a bit off-kilter, like everything had tilted a little to the left and I couldn’t see it the right way anymore.
“Now despite your protests, you are clearly not fine.” He shifted to face me and reached out for my hand. “Let me help.”
I bit back a whiny, But Daaaaad, and accepted his hand—and the healing magic it offered.
Nine
Anywhere but Here
Aunt Roo made us coffee to go, packed up the cheese and crackers she was preparing on a platter in a Tupperware container for us to take, and even sent along cookies she’d just baked. She had the dough in the freezer, of course, but was eager to mother us, which meant shoving as much food as she could in our hands before we headed back outside for my car.
My vehicle was strangely devoid of the parts of dead demon swarm that had been severed when I closed the door on them earlier—I’d mentioned it to Dad and it seemed possible someone had come out to collect them for study, unless they’d somehow dissipated over time and not left a trace. I’d see if he called in a few days with some answers if he was the one who took them.
I almost considered bringing Rodney with us. Dad’s warning was ringing in my head and Melinoë clearly didn’t like the cat, so that seemed the safest bet. But if she had some agenda other than what she’d said, the best way to draw it out was to continue as we had been: searching for Dev, with me none the wiser to any concerns about her lineage.
And whether I liked it or not, we were working together on this. She was the only current link I had to my brother, and I needed to know what steps she’d already taken in the search before I could figure out what I should be doing.
We’d been on the dark road for a few minutes, me driving this time and heading back toward the city while munching on snacks when she asked, “Am I seeing things or are you in remarkably better shape?”
“Dad has an arsenal of healing spells. It speeds up what the body naturally does. Technically I learned a few, but I was never very good.” We all had our strengths, after all.
Mine was homicide.
“Your dad was...nice.” She almost sounded surprised when she said it.
“Did Dev lead you to believe he wasn’t?” Dev had grown up worshipping the ground Dad walked on, almost literally. Like he didn’t go so far as anointing him as lord and saviour, but Dad could rarely say or do anything wrong in his eyes.
“He never talked about him. I just figured...” She shrugged. “Well, you’re you. I thought your dad must be awful.”
“You’re you” likely referred to my extracurricular activities.
“I don’t kill bad men because I had a bad father—it’s the opposite, really.” I’d spent a lot of time trying to analyze how I fell into such a thing and what might be “wrong” with me, as well as argued plenty with Tanvi. And it definitely wasn’t deep-seated damage. “I grew up with a loving family. I was tutored. Had a good relationship with Dad. I knew, vaguely, that the rest of the world wasn’t like that, but I didn’t realize until I was older and in school—until I saw what a sharp contrast boys and men were to what I grew up with. Do you remember the first time an older man hit on you?”
She thought about it in silence as we sped down the dark road. “Thirteen, maybe? This creepy neighbour remarked on my training bra.”
“I was twelve. It actually startled me, and I looked around, like I hadn’t heard him right. The father of a friend who was waiting to pick her up after school. Had my parents been there, they would’ve taken his head off, but no one even blinked.”
I had, of course, responded by magically tampering with the brakes of the idling car behind him. It didn’t roll fast, but it still knocked him over, and I stood there staring him dead in the eyes when he fell.
Ah, memories. Baby’s First Retaliatory Attempt at Bodily Injury of a Stranger.
“I understand the cycle of abuse,” I continued, “so I get that it starts early in life, I understand the psychology behind all the factors that leads men to become like that. But my dad grew up in an abusive home and he worked to be better than how he was raised. They can do better. Some choose not to. I don’t have a lot of patience for it.”
“I’ve spent time dealing with people like that—usually men,” she conceded. “But a lot of what would be considered ‘toxic’ from any gender. I always thought that proper therapy could work wonders, if people would only try.”
I shook my head. “I’ve read the studies. All therapy does is make abusive men well-adjusted abusers better equipped to use gaslighting language against their partners.”
“Right.”
“You have to throw the whole man out.”
“Whole man garbage disposal.”
“Exactly. That’s me.” There was more, of course—more that I’d witnessed, more horror that drove me toward the pleasure of revenge. But I had no deep dark secret past as a survivor. It was, oddly, a combination of empathy and compassion with violent vengeful tendencies.
I wanted to help others and sometimes that meant killing people who had no place in this world.
Which was why I was so out of my depth with trying to help Dev. I thought as I drove, rolling ideas around—I wasn’t sure where to go next with this. I hadn’t expected Dad to be a dead end for information—not that he’d know anything about Dev, but I’d thought surely the swarm.
I’d been through my brother’s apartment. Normally I’d next go to any popular haunts, any friends. Stakeout. Question. That was the pattern. I skipped that part when hunting a target for my regular work because my client could usually tell me plenty. I didn’t know what crowds Dev ran with or anything beyond where he lived.
Melinoë was my only link to him now.
“Ideas of where to head next?” I asked.
She was staring out the window silently. She finished chewing, washed her food down with a sip of coffee. “Maybe you’ll see something I didn’t back at the motel where he was staying?”
There was always that possibility. “Where was he staying?”
“North-ish. Three hours or so away from the city, probably less if we go at night without traffic.”
That close? He had to have something he was observing if he was that close to home but not bothering with the drive. “Address?”
“I’ve got it on my phone.”
“Where do you have the rest of his stuff?”
“Locker at the subway, 4th and King stop. My car is a rental and I didn’t want his things kept there.”
Which wasn’t far from my office—meaning in turn it wasn’t too far from my apartment. “We’ll swing by my place first for some supplies, then the subway. Grab your
rental if you like before we head to the motel.”
The sparseness of country roads slowly gave way to bedroom communities and then the bright lights of the city itself lit the sky. It was coming up on three a.m., which meant just a handful of cars and people were about downtown. We drove past the harbour, the scent of the water filling the vehicle despite the windows being up, and I started to make a wide languid left onto my street.
And tapped the brake when I saw the police cars midway down the block.
Three cars, right in front of my building, no sirens but the red and blue lights whirled. I leaned forward to peer through the windshield, my heart suddenly hammering and breath stolen.
There could be a completely legitimate reason for them to be there. Something in one of the other apartments. No domestic disturbances in my area—I made short work of those—but some other accident, maybe...
Or maybe it was Dev. Surely they’d go to Dad’s place first if something had happened to him and they needed the next of kin, but...?
But Tanvi would’ve given you a heads-up—she knows you’re looking for him.
Still staring at the police cars, I fumbled around for my phone until I remembered I’d stuffed it in my messenger bag. I’d set it on silent at some point. There was a message there from an unknown number—
Don’t come home.
Fuck. I had little doubt it was Tanvi—must’ve had a burner phone so it wouldn’t be traced back to her.
I dropped the phone on the dash and put the car in reverse.
“What’s going on?” Melinoë asked.
“Not entirely sure but apparently it isn’t a good idea for me to hit my apartment right now. Let’s get your stuff at the subway.”
I cast frequent nervous glances in my rearview as I drove but didn’t see any police following. I avoided the temptation to drive past my office and took some side roads to 4th Street.
There was parking across the road for those using the subway, but I left the car on the street by the stairs on the corner leading down. Melinoë and I headed out, the autumn air chillier than even when we left Dad’s. Our steps echoed as we jogged down to the subway level, the concrete chipped and worn beneath our feet.
Blood Ties Page 6
