My “lair,” for lack of a better—or cooler—word, was a century-old church built in an old cathedral style with lots of once-impressive stone pillars and benches. It also had a nice, secluded, and most importantly dark downstairs area.
I didn’t tan well.
“I still don’t get how consecrated ground could possibly work against them but not you. Magically, it makes no sense; and believe me, I’ve researched it.” The wizard swilled down some more coffee, wiping drips of it off of his stubble before taking another bite. “Okay, so let’s say they just hire some mortals to do it instead. There’s nothing keeping them out, nothing keeping some thug from taking a twenty to drop a Molotov on you while you sleep.”
“Sure there is,” I replied, leaning back in the booth and trying to relax. “Mortals can’t move the rubble blocking off the stairs to get to me.” Only something with my level of supernatural strength could move my blockade. There weren’t many of those around.
He tapped a fork thoughtfully against his lip and came at it from different angle. “What if they just shoot you when you leave at night?” He pointed his finger at me like a gun and pulled the “trigger.”
“Mortals can’t see me. I can blend in with the shadows, remember?”
“Okay.” He grunted, frowning. “Mortal sniper, hallowed bullets, IR scope.”
“Low body temp, quick moving target, multiple exits for them to cover,” I countered.
He frowned, then smirked confidently and leaned in, food momentarily forgotten. “What about: during the day, using a mortal demolitions crew with some of their blooded workers in it.” He nodded, seeming sure of his solution this time. “You’re out cold. So someone clears the way, and some blood-addicted PMC throws an incendiary grenade down there or something.”
I grinned. “You know, I never thought about that.” He nodded, victorious at last. “But Tamara did when she bought the church’s land deed out from under Clarion two months ago.” Clarion Coal, Oil, and Steel was the mortal face of the Sanguinarian power structure, not only in the Southeastern United States, but all the way down into Latin America as well. Their mortal company might be based on dying energy industries, but they more than made up for it with entrenched political and supernatural power. I chuckled. “So now there’s no good excuse for them to go play demolition man on abandoned property.”
Charles actually barked out an abrupt laugh, his uninhibited volume attracting attention from the sparse population of the Pancake Hut. “So, they can’t move on you openly without making it look to the Moroi like they’re afraid of you—as well as trespassing and damaging Moroi property. Bravo and well done, Tamara.” He sobered, smoothing away the amusement from his face as he tucked into his food once more. “Now all you’ve got to worry about is the fact that an extremely capable blood magician has a bit of your blood.”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
He nodded. “And did Tamara not get in deeper trouble for helping you like that?”
I wheezed out a stagnant breath. “I’m not certain. She doesn't exactly keep me in the loop on her family matters. I only got to start talking with her again around two or three months ago anyway, remember? They had her under house arrest before that. Couldn’t even get calls through.”
Tamara, one of my best and only remaining friends, also just happened to be one of the many daughters of Lillith, the Succubus Queen of the Moroi vampires, and thus a young member of their ruling house. This meant they kept a close eye on her, and a lot was expected of her. Like staying in line and doing what she was told.
She wasn’t much good at either. And they certainly didn’t want her running around, stirring up trouble with demons and Sanguinarians to try and save a handful of nobody humans. She’d defied her family and helped us anyway though, and I could only hope the price she’d paid was as tame as she’d implied when we talked.
Somehow, I doubted it. She might not be very good at staying out of trouble, but she was a really good liar.
“She’s supposed to be getting in touch with us tonight, you know.” Charles eyed the waitress intently and gestured firmly at his empty coffee cup. “Said she needs to touch base about what’s going on.”
I couldn’t help but perk up at the opportunity to see Tamara again. “She’s coming out to meet us?”
Charles scrutinized me while the waitress delivered another steaming coffee infusion, which he promptly downed most of. “Maybe.”
“That'd be nice. I miss her.” I stared at the table, my mood starting to spiral downward. “Speaking of missing…” There was no good way to broach the topic. “How’s Corey?” Charles’ underage apprentice might never have liked me, but he’d still saved my life, more or less. Besides, he’d shown some pretty heroic colors when he, Charles, Tamara, and I had dueled Strigoi, Hollow Men, and meat-faced demons together. I respected the kid; he had courage and willpower to spare, if a bit lacking in experience and common sense.
He’d even saved Charles from a certain and highly agonizing death when I couldn’t—and he’d paid for that heroism by being nearly torn in half by a Hollow man’s shotgun blast seconds later. “I hope he’s doing okay,” I offered sincerely. Unlike me, humans don’t eat short-range bursts of shotgun pellets to the ribs and walk it off. Corey had barely survived and last I knew still hadn’t fully recovered. A hospital bed is no place to have to celebrate your sixteenth birthday.
I could see the muscles in Charles’s jaw tighten. I didn’t know if he still blamed me for my failure to keep the boy safe...but I did. Either way, it was clear the wizard still had a score to settle. “Got a little help from Tamara,” he grudgingly admitted after a moment. “We got Corey out of the area as soon as the doctor would let him go, maybe a week ago. Sent him to live with my mother in Arizona for now.” He chuckled with dark amusement, like it was a joke only he knew. “He won’t enjoy it, but it’ll be good for him.”
“So he’s gone?” I’d never had a chance to say goodbye. Or thank you.
Charles nodded. “Yeah. Magisterium investigator and enforcer came around my place a couple of days after I shipped him out, asking questions. But,” he smiled thinly, “sadly, I didn’t know anything about rogue magician activity in the area. So they had to go back empty handed.”
“Glad to hear it.” So far, I had a dim opinion of the Magisterium and its austere, brutally-enforced rules, but I’d quickly learned that Charles didn’t much appreciate criticism of the organization that had trained him. So I bit my tongue and didn’t give him any more shit than I already had over his former instructors trying to arrest his former apprentice for “practicing high magic without a license.”
“So,” Charles took a breath and changed the subject. “Any ideas on where we go next?”
“That depends. Did we actually learn anything tonight?”
“We learned you can’t count,” he commented dryly.
I nodded easily. “There is that.” I tried to make a joke, but my sense of humor failed me.
“We’ve raided five locations in two weeks, and we’re no closer to finding them.” Charles let out a subdued, angry breath, watching thick trails of syrup slowly smother his final waffle. “Running into an impressively powerful Sanguinarian magician holding court in a bar for political pariahs is the closest thing we’ve had to a clue so far.” He leaned forward over his plate, eying me seriously. “How sure are you? You know we can’t have long. Whatever took them, they won’t last forever.”
We didn’t know they were dead, I kept telling myself. It was only my observations: the scent of blood, human and inhuman alike, paired with a lingering aura of death that made murder at vampiric hands a likely diagnosis. “More certain than I’d like to be.” I started ticking off points on my corpse-pale fingers. “At each kidnapping site, there was a lot of blood, too much for one person, especially for children. Some of it smells like stale human, but the rest, as far as I can tell, is Sanguinarian.”
In general, my senses had dulled since I’d peri
shed, but the scent of blood remained a constant exception, standing out like a splash of violent crimson on a monochrome canvas. That’s how I knew the blood vampires were involved in the recent rash of kidnappings. It hadn’t taken nine months of trial and error to figure out what kinds of blood would sustain me; the answer was simple: it had to come from a still-living human. Nothing else would do it. Every other kind of blood was one degree or another of completely disgusting. Human blood after it left the owner’s body smelled spoiled and rotten, and Sanguinarian blood had its own “close but not really human” aroma.
The scenes of the abductions smelled like both of those, mingled together.
I raised another finger. “And then, there’s the lingering death energies.”
Charles gave the remnants of his meal a long stare, and when it didn’t divulge more answers, he turned back to me. “And, unlike last time, we’ve found no marks to focus or manifest the energies, no markings where anything supernatural had come knocking from Next Door.”
I nodded. It was a lot like last year, only worse, and with less we could do about it. “CCOS can get anything they want. I just don’t understand what they could want with a handful of random children.”
“Something supernatural.” He shrugged. “I just don’t understand how we’ve found no other signs of Sanguinarian involvement. We’ve asked hard questions, we’ve raided their sanctuaries, we’ve talked to people in the know.”
“And we’re still just as empty-fucking-handed as when we started.”
“Exactly.” The magician’s syrup-covered fork clattered to the plate in frustration. We sat there, the silence growing thicker around us. “We could try Sloss again.”
“Just because Sloss also feels like death doesn't mean they’re connected. It’s a false positive.” I knew he was just trying to smash his head into the problem until some hope rattled loose, but I still felt it was a waste of time. Not that I minded going to Sloss; after the ambient fallout from the sizable body count and death ritual gone wrong last year, I was stronger at the old iron furnaces than anywhere else in the city. It almost felt like home.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only creature that felt that way.
“You have any better ideas?” Charles grumbled as he motioned for his check.
I conceded his point with a dry sigh and waited for the waitress to leave again. “Okay. Let’s go.”
“Tomorrow,” he grunted, leaning back and patting his belly, a final cup of coffee cradled in a big hand. I frowned. He frowned. “I’m exhausted, Ashley. It’s late for some people, you know. I’m not nocturnal.”
I briefly wondered how much sleep Charles got when we were out like this. It couldn’t be much. “Fair enough.” It wasn’t like I could work during the day, after all.
“Besides,” he added, “I’m cutting you off.”
I raised an eyebrow at the worn-looking magician. “What?”
He huffed out a sigh. “Because it takes too long. Another outing like the last one, and I wouldn’t be able to get you back to the church in time.”
“Oh.” I frowned, but nodded. “Thanks.”
Charles pulled his battered old phone out of the depths of his trench coat, checked the time, sent a message, then powered it back down. “So I’ll take you home. You can talk to Tamara. I’m going to bed.” He shrugged and slapped down a substantial tip. “We’ll catch up tomorrow and head out. Text me.”
I nodded. There was nothing for it except to keep trying, but I had the sneaking suspicion that our best just wasn’t good enough, not this time. On top of that, tonight’s attempt had made things more complicated, not less.
From the look in his dark, weary cinnamon eyes, Charles had similar thoughts.
We sat there, letting the seconds wither away, the harsh silence an uncomfortable blanket. Charles briefly nursed his coffee-and-waffle hangover, and I tried to ignore the beating hearts of everyone in the restaurant.
CHAPTER FIVE
Honey, I'm home
Eventually, we left the Pancake Hut and Charles drove me home. We came to a stop in an abandoned, unkempt parking lot; as luck would have it, no drug deals happened to be going down outside my house. I was kind of surprised. There was a pearlescent purple Dodge Hellcat lurking outside, though, close to one side of the building and partially concealed by the long, overgrown shadows of my new abode. I struggled to contain my excitement.
“We’re here,” Charles said, nodding at the dark, near-empty lot. “Now get out of my truck.”
I snorted and hopped out, more careful of his door this time around. “Thanks for the ride.”
He leaned over and swatted the manual lock on my door, then rolled down the window a little. “Have fun. One of you text me if it’s anything important. I’m going to bed.” He paused. “Well, whiskey, then bed.”
Charles ignored my goodbye wave as he sped his way out of the crumbling parking lot and into the night. I turned back to the crumbling, patient church that loomed quietly over me.
My church.
It was a cutting edge, turn of the century model—well, the nineteenth century, anyway. Despite showing its advanced age in every facet of its appearance, it still stood tall and strong, towering over the crack houses, abandoned tenements, and crumbling apartment buildings around it. A watchful, worn-out, and forgotten guardian, its steeple pointed like a righteous spear toward the heavens. The building rose above the ruined neighborhood like a monument to bygone hope, its empty lot, shattered pavement and rampant weeds holding court where people once gathered.
The long vigil had taken a heavy toll though, and it bore those scars like an old but steadfast soldier. Once-mighty stone columns lining the front were now crumbled, most lying about the abandoned lot in chunks my size or larger. Only a couple of the stories-high stone pillars could be described as intact, and only if you were feeling generous. The windows were even worse, reduced to empty, darkened reminders of their old beauty, smeared over with ugly graffiti or shattered like broken teeth. Cracks and missing chunks marred the old foundation, steps, and walls alike; only a monolith of resilient stone like this would have dared survive the test of time.
Even the massive double doors, each taller than me, were made of the same weather-worn, gray, chiseled stone. I still had no idea why they were made of stone or even how normal people had managed to get them open and closed again. A broken logging chain dripped limply from the exterior handles, the surviving links of my very first break-in, left draped there for appearances’ sake. After all, mere chains wouldn't keep out anything I was worried about. I hopped lightly up the steps and easily shifted the massive doors open far enough to slip inside—a feat only a supernatural creature could accomplish.
Tamara Moroaică was just such a supernatural. If you believed in the supernatural, you could figure that out just by looking at her. Unless you were blind, and maybe not even then.
She stood as soon as I stepped inside, tucking away her phone and rising fluidly from one of the intact, blocky stone pews with a broad smile, all flawless porcelain skin, long legs, and brilliant sapphire eyes. Effortlessly sexy, incredibly beautiful; like most of the full-blooded Moroi, she looked about as close to perfect as one could get. I opened my arms as she ran over to me, her feet leaving the ground as she flung herself at me for a hug.
I guess she knew I’d catch her.
“Ashes!” She laughed, clear and bright, as I spun her in a circle, careful not to bludgeon her on the heavy stone pews. “I’m so glad I got to see you! Charles said you were—” she deepened her voice, doing her best gruff Charles impression, “out working.” She smiled, her eyes sparkling as I set her back down. “Everything okay? Did you find anything this time?”
I snorted, giving her a final squeeze before letting her go. “Well, I have this,” I rasped, holding up my injured arm and wiggling the bone back and forth. “Does that count as a lucky break?”
She looked a little queasy at the motion. “Whoa. How did you even manage that?
I thought you were unbreakable.”
“The rock and the hard place said otherwise.”
Tamara’s cool, cheery expression faded into concern, flavored with a hint of reproach. She ran a hand through her hair; I smiled, noting it was a blend of electric blue and raven black today. “Ha, ha. Lucky break. You two were supposed to be careful.”
“We decided to be sloppy and useless instead.” I rolled up my tattered sleeve, showing her the still-spreading, blackened bruise. I wiggled the broken bone a little more for emphasis. “Thought we’d change things up.”
“Yeah, because Charles is never anything but cautious.” She made a disgusted face. “Stop that.”
I did, tucking the bone back where it was supposed to go and shrugging. “Not like I wanted to break it. Giant, sword-wielding rock-man named Flowers broke it for me. I let him.” I slipped my wool coat off my shoulders and displayed my other injuries. “And then there was the Sanguinarian magician that stole my blood and that time I fell into the sewers…”
Tamara stared at me, blinking those liquid sapphire eyes incredulously. “I can’t tell if you’re serious or not.”
I grinned. Of course she could. As a Moroi—a “psychic vampire,”—reading and evoking emotions was what she did; it was even how she replenished her energy. I invited her to sit on one of the more intact benches and launched into the night’s news, starting at the beginning but omitting my personal hunting trip.
I was overjoyed to see my Moroi friend again. Up until about three months ago, she’d been locked away in her family's main holdings at the Queen’s Regency hotel. She’d warned me to stay away; apparently, it was a really bad idea to get caught up in her family’s local political machinations. Only in the last few weeks had she regained a degree of her old freedom, but after half a year with pretty much no contact whatsoever, it was hardly enough.
Blood Red Ashes (Dying Ashes Book 2) Page 5
