by Jenn Windrow
“I already know who his general is.”
“How did you manage that?”
“Stumbled upon it. I’ve already taken out one of his nests too.”
Caleb slapped his hands on his thighs and stood. “Why didn’t you tell us this sooner?”
“If I did I’d still have an extra six years of working for you.”
Caleb tossed his hands in the air and ruffled his wings.
“Like I said…resourceful,” Divinity spoke up.
“I’d have chosen another word.” It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what word he would have used.
“We have faith in you, Alexis Black.” Divinity nodded her head in my direction before taking Kadmus’ hand, standing to leave.
I followed her lead, without the handsome body guard helping me, but before whatever mode of transportation that brought me here could whisk me away, Eddie spoke.
Alexis, please give her a message for me.
Who? The queen?
Yes.
Sure. Whatever.
Tell her she has her mother’s eyes. Eyes that I have not seen in a thousand years.
My cold, dead, non-beating heart dropped into my stomach.
How would you know that, Eddie?
Because I’m her father.
My blood iced.
Yes. Caleb bestowed you with the spirit of Vlad the Impaler.
I was going to pluck every feather off that angel’s wings.
Please, Alexis. Tell her for me, I need her to know that I am still here.
I cleared my throat, not sure how to even approach this conversation. “Excuse me, your majesty.” She looked at me with those haunting eyes. “Umm…Eddie.”
He slashed at my insides.
“I mean your father has a message for you.” I relayed said message.
Her smile light and happy lit up the room. “I felt him when I touched you, but I wasn’t sure you realized whose spirit laid within you.”
I let my evil death stare settle on Caleb. “I didn’t until two minutes ago.”
The queen gave a death stare of her own. “Caleb, how come you never told her the father of all vampires shared her body?”
Caleb fluttered his wings under her scrutiny and a few feathers floated around the room. “It didn’t seem important to her mission.”
“Unimportant my ass, you winged freak.” I stopped myself before I said or did something that would shorten my immortal life span. “For two years I have called the father of all Vampires Eddie.”
Kadmus broke his stoic guard protocol and busted out a laugh. “You named Vlad the Impaler Eddie?”
He was lucky he carried a pointy sword.
Divinty broke up the tension, putting her hand on my wrist. I wasn’t sure if it was to calm me or feel her father’s spirit. “Alexis, my father would want you to fight for our race. What is happening to these vampires is wrong. They are suffering and I wouldn’t trust anyone but the soul strong enough to handle my father’s spirit to fight this battle.” Her Queenship bowed.
Damn.
“I’ll do my best, your majesty.” Then I pointed at Caleb. “For her. Not you.”
Caleb flapped his wings again and flipped me the bird. “Just don’t fuck up.” Everything went black.
I reappeared in my room, and did a full body pat down for any sign of a new tattoo.
Now you understand the full power at your disposal if you choose to use it. Stop fighting me and you will be stronger than you have ever imagined.
Whatever. I’m still calling you Eddie.
Chapter Fourteen
My unexpected visit with the angel from hell and the vampire queen left me exhausted. Then Reaper had shown up at it’s-way-too-early-to-deal-with-his-attitude o’clock and announced that Operation Hunt and Kill Terrance was in full effect. Terrance needed to be found, but I wished it could wait until I was dressed, showered and fed.
I sat crisscross applesauce in one of my kitchen chairs. One hand wrapped around a mug of blood, the other resting on Nathan’s ghostly wrist. I listened as Reaper and he debated the color code system Reaper was using on the map of the city that now covered half of the tabletop. Reaper hoped that his little science experiment would help us locate the center of the attacks, and therefore Terrance’s base of operation.
The other half of the table looked as if High-end tech store had a baby on top of it. Computers, phones, walkie-talkies, and police scanners covered every available inch.
I had planned on telling them about my Royal body snatcher and visit with the queen, but they had been arguing since I entered the room, so I left them to their bitching and sat back and listened.
“You bloody wanker.” Nathan tried to pound his fist on the tabletop, but it just floated through. “Why would you put purple there, it clearly needs a green dot.”
Reaper picked up one sheet out of at least fifteen sheets of paper and held it in front of Nathan’s face. “Look at the numbers again, ghost-boy, it’s purple.”
Nathan peaked out from behind the paper. “But a green dot would make that our center.”
“I’m. Not. Done. Yet.” Each word got louder than the one before it, like a teakettle whistle. Reaper put his head back down and continued to place brightly colored dots on the map.
Nathan floated over Reaper’s shoulder and quietly watched him continue to work. The crackle from the police scanner was the only noise left in the room until someone pounded on my downstairs door.
“Expecting someone?” Nathan asked.
“Practically everyone I know is already in this room.” I got on the elevator in the wake of my pathetic proclamation.
One deep breath and I knew who waited on the other side of the door. Julian Monroe, back for another visit. I tugged at the bottom of my mid-drift sweatshirt, silently wishing there was more material to cover the top of my brand poking out of my lowrise sweats.
Heavy fists pounded on the door again and I gave up trying to cover my flesh and pulled open the heavy steel.
Standing in front of me was not the perfectly put together doctor I was used to seeing. Instead, Julian looked like a man after a six-day bender of tequila and vodka.
I pulled the door open enough for him to come in. “Did you get hit by a bus on the way over?”
He pushed past me. “I’ve got a big problem and you’re the only one I can trust to help me.”
“Your sister?”
“Worse.” We walked over to the elevator and pushed the button to take us up. “I need your help.”
I had already offered to help him locate his sister, now he wanted something else. We stayed in silence until we stepped off the elevator. Both Reaper and Nathan turned to look at our company.
“Doctor Hottie came for a house call.” Nathan floated closer to us.
I grabbed his wrist before he passed by and he solidified. It was time for Julian to meet the third member of our grisly group. “Julian, this is Nathan.”
Julian’s inspection started at the top of Nathan’s head and traveled down. He paused and watched the sparks that shot out from where my hand touched his flesh. “Fascinating.” The scientist in him took over and he reached out, touching the purplish-blue electric currents that flowed between us. “He’s a ghost?”
“I prefer Spook of Spectacular.” Nathan did some sort of fancy bow he must have learned in his old court days.
“He only appears when you touch?”
I let go of Nathan and he faded away. “I seem to be the only one who can see him when we’re not in contact.” I placed my hand on his shoulder and he reappeared.
Julian stepped closer and put his hand on Nathan’s arm. “He’s solid.”
Nathan shrugged away from his touch. “Enough of the touchy feely. Didn’t you come here for a reason?”
Julian gave him a lopsided smile, ran a hand through his beyond-a-finger-combing hair and pulled out one of the kitchen chairs, but didn’t sit down; instead, he started pacing the room. I let go o
f Nathan and settled myself into a chair.
After a few moments I couldn’t take it anymore. “You ready to share?”
He stopped in front of me, stuffed his hands into his jean pocket and leaned against the kitchen counter. “Someone broke into my lab last night.”
Nathan floated next to me, bobbing up and down like a four-year old who had to pee. I placed my hand on his arm. “Did they steal a body?” He looked hopeful that Julian would have a fun horror story to share of dismembered bodies being stolen from the morgue.
Julian shook his head. “Not that lab. My personal lab, where I do my private research. When I got there last night I found the door pried open and the place trashed.”
“Did they take anything?” I asked.
He picked up one of the bright yellow walkie-talkies from the table and started to switch it on and off. “Yes. A serum I’ve developed. All of it. Every last drop.” He pushed off the counter and started pacing again.
Reaper stopped placing his little dots and looked up at Julian. “What does the serum do?”
Julian’s strides got longer. He scrubbed his hands over his face and his heartbeat took off. Whatever this serum did, the good Doctor was worried. He cleared his throat. “When injected into someone with supernatural abilities, let’s say a werewolf, it masks the physical characteristics and returns the user’s body and functions, such as heart rate, breathing, aggression, and all the senses back to more human levels. It hides those abilities and allows the user to walk around undetected to other supernaturals.”
More questions about the mysterious Julian Monroe torpedoed my curiosity. Then I remembered the needle sitting on the counter. I grabbed it and held it up. “Does it look like this?”
Julian snatched the needled from my hand, pushed the plunger and let the leftover liquid fall to his fingertip. He sniffed then tasted it. “Where did you find this?”
“At the nest we destroyed last night. They were all over the place, including sticking out of the vampires’ arms.”
He tossed the needle across the table. “Fuck.”
“That would be a yes?”
His mouth twitched. “That’s a yes. But there’s something not quite right with it. Like something has been added to the original formula. I can’t tell what it is until I get it back to the lab and examine it.”
I sat back down and folded my arms over my chest. “Why would you develop something like this?”
This time his smile reached his eyes and, for the first time that evening, I saw the man who I had met two nights ago. He settled in the chair next to me and placed the walkie-talkie back on the table. Reaper put his map aside and Nathan floated over the couch. We all waited for Julian to answer my questions.
“I created the serum to help a friend of mine, a werewolf, who needed to hide from his former pack. It was a matter of life and death and took me six years to find the correct ingredients.” Secrets played hide and seek in his eyes. He was keeping something from us, but what and why? His unwillingness to share the whole story scratched at my nerves.
Reaper took the needle from the table and turned it around, watching the liquid coat the inside. “What’s in it?”
“A combination of herbs. Some poisonous, some not, but each ingredient serves a very important purpose. The most important part of it is Wolfsbane.” He took the needle from Reaper’s hand and stared at the tiny bit of liquid, then placed it on the table.
“When used properly it has the ability to slow the racing heartbeat and pulse of the werewolf to mimic the slower human heart rate. Then Valerian Root, a natural mood enhancer. Scorpion Venom to stop the physical change. Skullcap to lower anxiety, which is a trigger for the werewolf to change. Green Cardamom to dull the personality. And finally it is all mixed in liquid mistletoe, which hides the true nature of the wolf.”
“And someone drank this willingly?” I let the high pitch of my voice tell him how absurd I thought the idea was.
“Not drank, injected.”
I shuddered at the thought of someone sticking the nasty concoction in their veins.
“I’m sorry that someone broke into your lab, and they took your work, but what does this have to do with us?” Reaper nodded his head in agreement.
“I believe whoever took it is trying to hide in plain sight.” He sat in the chair next to me and met my eyes. “Hiding from you. From whatever gives you the ability to detect the supernatural with just a sniff.”
“About that.” I paused for dramatic effect or because I was chicken shit. Who knew? “I found out last night that I share a body with the spirit of Vlad the Impaler…”
Nathan fizzed, fizzled, and faded.
When he returned he so eloquently said, “No f’ing way.”
“Yep. Seems my friend the angel thought I would be a fitting host for his most holiness.”
“So, your alter ego is actually the father of all vampires?” This from Reaper. “Well, that explains the horrific mood swings.”
I flipped him off in the most graceful way as possible. Both fingers held high and straight.
I turned my attention to Julian to continue our conversation. “No supernatural could even begin to escape detection,” I said with a smile and a head tilt.
“A werewolf using this serum could be sitting across the table from you right now and you would never know it.”
“I doubt it.”
He shook his head. “I don’t.
Reaper spoke up. “Any idea who stole it?”
“Terrance.”
“How did he know about it?” I asked.
“My sister told him. She’s the only person, besides me, that knows where my lab is located.”
“How many vials are we talking about?”
“Almost fifty.” He tapped his lip with his index finger. “Each vial contains ten injections.”
I quickly did the math in my head. “So, we’re talking about five hundred injections in total.”
“Can anything but a werewolf use it?”
“I don’t know.” He raised and lowered his shoulders. “I’ve never tested it on anything but a werewolf.”
“The vampires I encountered last night were covered in open sores and puss. Could that be a side effect?”
Julian turned his gaze on me. “It sounds like they had a bad reaction, but I won’t know for sure until I find out what they added to the serum.”
“Would it kill them?”
Nathan bounced around to get my attention, then held out his arm. I touched him and became solid. “Could your serum control Vlad? Make it so she could walk among other vampires undetected?”
I removed my hand, folded my arms over my chest, and let him fade away.
“The original serum might be able to suppress her vampire urges, but I can’t be completely sure until I have a live sample or test subject.”
“I turned them all to ash.” Then I quickly added, “And I am not volunteering.”
Nathan moved closer and brushed against me, turning solid again. “Think about it, Alexis. A fail-safe in case you get in a jam. A way to help Reaper if he is buggered up. Possibly a chance to walk among the undead again without having to stake them.”
Injecting an unknown substance didn’t sound like the best idea, but having a couple doses around if I needed them couldn’t hurt. No one said I had to use it. “Is it possible to leave a couple vials with me? You know, just in case.” Eddie/Vlad started playing slice and dice with my insides.
“Sure, but I can’t guarantee it won’t have some side effects.”
I started to smile but let it fall into a frown. “Can’t be any worse than what I deal with every single day.”
Reaper went back to his maps and paper, but before he started placing any more dots he looked up at us. “We need to work faster.”
We all sat and watched him. He flipped through the papers, placed more dots, then stepped back and looked at his handy work. “Here.” He pointed to an area on the map surrounded by multiple color
ed dots, except at the center. The center was empty.
“Gear up,” he said. “It’s time to find Terrance.”
Chapter Fifteen
It took us twenty minutes to convince Julian to go home and give up his plea to join our hunting party. I already had one human in the group to protect and didn’t need another. After an argument, and no chance at winning, he stormed off with the proclamation he was off to brew some more of his wonder drug.
We piled in the car and headed through the suburbs in search of Terrance. My Chemical Romance drowned out Nathan’s non-stop commentary from the back of the car. The section of road we traveled wasn’t lined with the typical forests and green belts of the suburbs. These roads were lined with industrial buildings and factories.
According to Reaper’s early evening of research, we were headed to the center of the attacks. According to his reasoning this is where we would find our guy. According to my vampire intuition things were going to get ugly. Again.
After nearly getting Reaper killed at the farm house I didn’t want to take any more chances, but I had to think of a good excuse to keep him in the car and out of harm’s way.
An impossible task I most likely wouldn’t accomplish.
Reaper parked in a centrally located lot and stopped the engine. “I think we should separate and take a look around.” He opened his car door and headed to the trunk.
I quickly got out and raced after him. “After what happened last time I think that is a horrible idea. We don’t know what we’re walking into.”
“This place is huge. We’ll never be able to cover all the ground with just the two of us.” He protested with a wave of an arm and his signature sneer.
“Make that three of us.” Nathan came up behind us.
I turned and looked at Nathan. “You can help me search.” Then I swiveled to look at Reaper. “How about you drive around and see if you can find anything.”
It wasn’t the best plan, you could hear the Chevelle coming from ten miles away, but it would keep Reaper safe behind two tons of metal and glass.
His mouth opened, closed, and then opened again, but the retort never passed his vocal cords. He walked back to the car, slammed the door, and cranked the engine.
