I couldn’t think of any point since Guthrie was turned when Rans would have had enough time alone with him to teach him how to transform, like he’d taught me the previous evening. Guthrie only snorted, though.
“Yeah... there was the small matter of my body unexpectedly dissolving into mist when one of those assholes on the boat jabbed a dagger point in the direction of my face,” he said. “Talk about on-the-job training.”
I winced, and then winced again as I realized Guthrie had later taken a silver knife between the ribs when he’d been trying to drown the last Fae. If he’d already known how to transform by then, he could have avoided the injury, presumably—but he hadn’t, because he’d been more focused on ensuring that the Fae who’d been about to kill me was dead.
“Well, then,” Rans said. “What’s it to be, love?”
I chewed my lower lip, only to stop myself when I remembered the potential for unintended fang damage.
“Dad was pretty far gone for a while, there,” I said slowly. “But he seemed much more like himself the last time I saw him. I don’t think he would have done something like this for a frivolous reason.”
“You think he came back to Earth because he has some kind of message for you?” Guthrie asked.
I lifted my hands and let them fall back against my hips, at a loss. “I mean... maybe?”
Christ. Who was I kidding with my waffling? Of course I was going to go to him. That was our family script, after all. He did whatever the hell he felt like, and I nipped along at his heels, in hopes that this would be the time he finally acted like the dad I’d always wanted.
After twenty years of practice, it was kind of our thing, okay?
My body deflated, and I scrubbed at my eye sockets. “All right,” I said. “I have to go find out what happened. I owe him that much.”
“You don’t owe him anything,” Rans said evenly. “Not that I expect you to truly believe that.”
I drew a deep—and thoroughly unnecessary—breath. “Guthrie was going back to St. Louis anyway. I could tag along with him and see what’s up, while you stay here...”
Where it’s safer, I didn’t add.
“Yes,” Rans said. “Because that’s totally going to happen.”
I waved at the words as though they were buzzing insects, feeling suddenly and deeply exhausted, to the greatest extent I’d experienced since emerging from my turning.
“Hey, I had to try, all right?”
Rans’ expression was caught somewhere between irritation and overly theatrical despair. “For a generally intelligent person, you’re proving very difficult to train when it comes to the whole ‘not accepting help when you need it’ thing.”
I scowled at him. “We’ve already established that stubbornness is basically my only useful coping mechanism.”
He raised a sharp eyebrow. “Define useful,” he shot back.
I scowled harder. “Look. Forget I said anything. I suppose if I’m making the wrong decision and this ends up being a trap, you’ll fall over dead the moment the bad guys take me out, either way. And whose fault is that, hmm?”
Of course, the answer was, it was my fault. Because I’d been the one to run off after my father and leave Rans behind, despite the prospect of deadly danger awaiting me on Dhuinne. Because I’d refused to ask for help, he’d had to come save me at the cost of a soul-bond that would kill him one day.
Oh, the irony.
Fortunately for me, Rans had seven centuries of practice at postponing lovers’ tiffs until a time when there weren’t more important things to worry about. He only looked at me with a level blue gaze.
It seemed increasingly unlikely that I’d have a similar length of time to learn this important life skill, despite my newly undead status. Still, I could take a hint.
“Sorry,” I muttered, before turning to the cat-sidhe. “Okay, it looks like we’ll be needing that lift after all. Guthrie, at least this way we can save you some time messing with that bank account tomorrow. Shall we grab our things and get this over with?”
* * *
For someone who hated traveling via the medium of Fae magic, I seemed to end up doing a fair amount of it these days. Interestingly, the cat-sidhe’s magical aura didn’t prickle against my succubus nature nearly as much as Albigard’s, Caspian’s, and the rest of the Unseelie did. I wondered whether that was something inherent to the shape-shifter’s nature, or if something about me had altered when I became a vampire, or what.
I’d been... kind of a mess the first couple of times I’d met the strange, androgynous Fae. I had vague memories that being in the shape-shifter’s presence had felt different, even then. But, to be fair, I’d also been so weak from days of torture that I could barely stand up—so there was that.
At any rate, portaling to the site of the nearest ley line was less of an ordeal than I’d become accustomed to. Travel along the ley line itself? Yeah, that part still sucked donkey balls. But at least I didn’t feel like I was in imminent danger of puking the blood I’d drunk from Studmuffin and the Beach Boys all over my black leather boots. Maybe my gag reflex had gone the way of my heartbeat. I’d have to ask Rans later.
The Fae had shifted into cat form before transporting us, but once we arrived at our destination somewhere in the vicinity of St. Louis, another flash heralded the reappearance of the shape-shifter’s humanoid form.
“I will leave you now,” the sidhe said.
It was dark—it had been the wee hours of the morning on Antigua when we left, and we’d traveled across two or three time zones. Even so, I could see that our pixie-ish guide appeared uncharacteristically tense and watchful in the moonlight.
“You don’t want to see my father in person?” I asked, surprised. The Fae had seemed oddly attached to him, back on Dhuinne. Apparently they’d shared a history stretching back to Dad’s first stint in the Fae realm, as an infant exchanged for a Faerie changeling.
“Best not,” said the cat-sidhe. “Too complicated.”
“How did you learn of his return from Hell in the first place?” Rans asked, not bothering to hide the edge of suspicion coloring his voice.
And, damn, it should have occurred to me to ask that question right away. I didn’t think the cat-sidhe had any particular reason to betray us... but someone on the Fae’s side had obviously tracked us to the Caribbean. The fact that the shape-shifter had found us there with such ease was legitimately suspicious.
“I have connections in the human realm,” the Fae said, a bit defensively. “The one you met earlier happened to be watching the gate between Hell and Earth when your lover’s sire came through.”
The Neveah woman. That sort of made sense. If she were really as serious about stalking Nigellus as she seemed to be—and if she was additionally aware of the existence of the supernatural world—then watching the gate to Hell would be a logical avenue for her to pursue when trying to find him.
“What’s her deal, anyway?” I couldn’t help asking. “Is she some kind of demon groupie, or what?”
The Fae frowned. “Demon... groupie? I don’t know what that is, demonkin. And her motivations are her own. Was her information not useful to you?”
“That remains to be seen,” Rans muttered, sotto voce.
“Okay,” I said. “Forget it. We’d... uh... best get going now. I can tell Dad you said hi, if you’d like?”
The furrow in the Fae’s pale brow deepened, the shape-shifter’s head tilting curiously. “I did not say ‘hi.’”
“Right. Never mind.” I looked around. We were in a small clearing that might well have been the same one Albigard brought us to before transporting us to Haiti. A sizzling flash caught my peripheral vision, and I turned just in time to see a black-furred tail-tip disappear through the miniature portal, which snapped shut immediately afterward.
Guthrie was also staring at the afterimage left by the cat-sidhe’s departure.
“Huh. That was certainly... trippy,” he said. He reached into a pocket and
pulled out his battered phone. “Now. Next question. Where the hell are we?”
Rans raised an eyebrow. “You’re the one with the GPS, mate. You tell us.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Guthrie groused. “Give me a minute.”
“The river’s nearby,” Rans observed. “I can smell it.”
I drew in a breath, surprised when the scent of muddy water hit me like a beacon, pulling my attention to our right.
Guthrie grunted. “Looks like we’re in Cahokia, at the southern edge of the Indian mounds.”
“Makes sense,” Rans said. “Such structures are often built along ley-lines. So... northwest, then?”
“Closer to due west,” Guthrie said. “About sixteen miles as the crow flies.”
“You mean as the vampire flies,” I suggested dryly. “Okay, so if you two want to take bets on how likely I am to lose the contents of my luggage in an alternate dimension when I try to shift, you’d better do it now.”
Guthrie huffed out a breath—the closest he ever seemed to come to laughter. “If it helps, when I played around with it this weekend, the trick seems to be not to think about the process too closely.”
“Right,” I said in a rueful tone. “So, don’t think about the pink rhinoceros sitting in the middle of the room? Sure thing... easy.”
“You’d best give it here, love,” Rans said, relieving me of my carryon full of belongings. “I’m quite partial to that red dress, after all. I’d hate to risk it to a theoretical alternate dimension.”
If I’d still had a heartbeat, I would have blushed scarlet upon remembering what we’d gotten up to the last time I wore that dress. “Thanks,” I said meekly.
Without the bag, I was only in possession of a few more items of clothing than I’d practiced with previously. Boots, socks, leggings, shirt, bra, panties. I could totally do this. Pink rhinoceros, eat your heart out.
“Ready?” Rans asked, looking at both of us.
“Sure,” I told him. “I was reborn for this shit.”
“I’m ready to be home, that’s for sure,” Guthrie said. “Lead the way. We’ll follow.”
Rans nodded. “Stay close,” he said, and dissipated in a swirl of white vapor.
Guthrie followed, and I scrunched my eyes shut, remembering the feeling of needing to be imminently elsewhere. My form dissolved into mist, and I reached out until my awareness brushed against Rans’ intangible presence next to me. As one, the three of us whooshed in the direction where I’d smelled the waters of the muddy Mississippi earlier.
It was a bit hard to keep track of time in my insubstantial state. Travel was easy, though—the next best thing to effortless. After white-knuckling my way through several airplane flights, ley lines, and Fae portals in recent weeks, I decided that I could totally get used to this.
An awareness of twinkling lights below us, paired with warmer air rising from concrete and asphalt, heralded our arrival over the city of my birth. Rans navigated us unerringly through the confusing landscape, until we came to a very familiar rooftop patio. The other two solidified in twin columns of thick mist, and Rans steadied me as I followed suit.
A quick pat down and a glance at myself reassured me that all my parts had come back attached in the right way. As a bonus, I also wasn’t naked. I hadn’t even materialized with my underpants over my leggings, or my bra hanging out. I took a moment to feel smug before the grim nature of the situation we were in reasserted itself.
Guthrie’s penthouse looked the same as it always had. We might as well have never left. If I’d expected the place to be trashed by demon and/or Fae agents intent on tracking Guthrie down, now that he was a vampire, I was dead wrong. Guthrie calmly pulled out a set of keys and unlocked the glass door, leading us inside. For the most part, the penthouse was as neat and elegant as ever. Only the rusty stains on the bedroom carpet and the dent in the front of the refrigerator gave any hint of the events of a few days ago, when Rans had turned Guthrie after the demon Myrial tried to kill him and reap his soul.
I shivered, caught by a fresh moment of surreality.
Rans handed my bag back to me, while my grandfather tossed his on the kitchen counter.
“Now what?” I asked Rans. “Your motorcycle’s still here, right?”
“It is,” Rans replied. “Guthrie, mate—you’re back where you wanted to be. Probably best if you don’t come with us, in case this does turn out to be a trap. Especially since the entire thing reeks of demon influence.”
But Guthrie looked at me, rather than replying to Rans directly. “Zorah, what about it? Do you want me to come or stay?”
A warm little ache curled up in my chest. “I’ve already dragged you way too far into this mess I call a life,” I said. “We’ve got this—and besides, I’m reluctant to subject you to a closer look at the shit-show that is my family life.”
He nodded. “If that’s what you want. Assuming no one snuffs me out of existence in the interim, you know where to find me if you need me.”
“Yeah.” I swallowed painfully. “Yeah, I do. Thanks, Guthrie. And... I’m sorry. For, you know—all this.”
He regarded me with sad, dark eyes. I stared back, trying to see any hints of my mother hidden in that gaze.
“You should stop apologizing for things, Zorah,” he told me, not unkindly. “Consider that a piece of grandfatherly advice, if it helps.”
I looked down and nodded, unable to hold eye contact any longer. Maybe it was good advice, coming from a guy who’d seen some shit in his unexpectedly long life. Nevertheless, I wasn’t quite ready to apply it to myself. Not when I knew full well how many people had been hurt, directly or indirectly, by their contact with me. Guthrie was only one entry in an ever-growing ledger.
He must have sensed my skepticism, because he sighed. “Anyway—be careful. And Rans... you’d better take care of my granddaughter, you asshole. Like I said before, you know how to reach me if you need me.”
“Indeed I do, mate. We’ll be in touch.”
I wrapped Guthrie in a brief hug, still unable to meet his gaze. As before, he seemed mildly taken aback by the gesture before he carefully returned the embrace. Rans clapped him on the upper arm as I pulled away.
Then, his cool fingers closed around my shoulder, squeezing gently. “Come on, love. Let’s go see what’s waiting for us at your place.”
FIVE
I FIDGETED IN the elevator going down from the penthouse to the parking garage. Rans was watching me; I could feel it. Rather than acknowledge his knowing blue gaze, as he effortlessly peered through the ugly mess of emotion surrounding me to see what lay beneath, I dug around in my bag for my phone and powered it on.
I was a wreck right now. Rans knew I was a wreck. There didn’t seem to be much point in dwelling on the fact.
The phone chimed a couple of times as it woke up and connected to the network. A couple of pings announced new notifications. One was for updates, but the other was a new email. I frowned, since the only email account attached to this burner cell was the throwaway one I’d registered for the sole purpose of trying to contact Vonnie.
And then, though I was embarrassed to admit it, I’d kind of forgotten about her after Len had shown up. So... hey! There was someone else to feel guilty about, as if I needed it. Two someones, really.
Poor Len. I’d half-hoped and half-dreaded that there might be a text or voicemail from him—but no. Nothing. Not that I could really blame him.
“Problem?” Rans asked. “A new one, I mean.”
“Not as such, no,” I said, double-checking that the VPN on my phone was active. Once I was sure that everything was being routed through a server in the Netherlands, I opened up the email and scanned it. “I just got a response from the friend I tried to contact before Len called back to help us, that’s all.”
He made a humming noise of acknowledgement and peered at the screen, reading over my shoulder.
Zorah! OMG, I’m SO SORRY I didn’t see this sooner, the email began. Where are you? Wh
at happened?? I’ve been worried sick ever since that day when you ran out of the office looking so upset... I tried to call and text, but first there was no answer, and then it said your phone had been disconnected.
Seriously, I feel awful for missing this email. Things have been a bit crazy here lately. Not that it’s an excuse, I mean. It’s just... I kind of owe some people money, and eventually it was easier to ditch my phone than have to fend off a gazillion calls a day about it, you know? But seriously, let me know that you’re okay. I’ve really been freaking out about what happened at MMHA ... like, to the point that I quit volunteering there.
WHAT HAPPENED? It was like pod people came in and took over everyone’s bodies. *shudders*
—Vonnie.
“Interesting,” Rans said.
“What part?” I asked absently, already typing out a reply.
Hi, Von—I’m okay. Kind of a long story re: the thing at MMHA with the pod people and the creepy blond dude. What about you, though? Is there anything I can do to help?
—Zorah
“The part where your friend apparently didn’t fall under Caspian’s spell,” Rans clarified.
I paused. “Huh. Good point. I... guess she wasn’t actually in the room with him? Maybe he wasn’t trying to manipulate her, just the people in charge.”
“Perhaps so,” Rans murmured, not sounding convinced.
The elevator dinged. I added my new phone number to the end of the email and hit send, trying not to think too hard about my hypocrisy as I did it. I had no business offering help to Vonnie when I wasn’t in a position to follow through. These days, I couldn’t even keep my own life from imploding, much less someone else’s.
I stuffed the phone back in my bag as I followed Rans through the elevator doors and into the garage. We crossed to the sleek black Triumph motorcycle, which had been patiently awaiting its owner’s return. Rans slid a proprietary hand over the metalwork before strapping his duffel across the back. I settled my bag a little more firmly over my shoulder since there wasn’t really a good place to stow the square-sided carry-on.
The Last Vampire- Complete series Box Set Page 89
