THREE
THE SUN HAD set a few hours earlier by the time we got back to the Moscow. Andrei was by the door as usual as we got out of the Goat. The engine of the 1967 Pontiac GTO purred and rumbled as the valet took it down to the garage.
“Dobryy vecher, Andrei said, holding the door open as we entered the building.
“Good evening, Andrei,” I said, walking past him. “Where’s Olga?”
He stepped back when Peaches came through the door behind me.
“Tseber, bozhe khrani menya,” Andrei said under his breath, crossing himself as Peaches entered the lobby, oblivious to the terror he left in his wake. I walked back to the door and Andrei.
“He doesn’t understand Russian yet,” I whispered as I put a hand on his shoulder. “If you keep calling him a hellhound, I’m going to teach him, and then not even God will save you when he decides to remove one of your legs. His name is Peaches. Vy ponimayete?”
“Da,” he said, nodding quickly. “I understand. Mrs. Olga is not in building. Will be back later.”
“Spasibo,” I said, and caught up to Monty and Peaches as they reached the stairs. “Tell her I have this month and next, but we need to talk about my neighbors.”
“Your creature is going to give him a heart attack one day, and you will have to explain to Olga why her doorman is dead in the lobby,” Monty said as we approached our door.
He placed his hand on the sign next to our space, and it flared orange, releasing the locks to the door. I looked at the sign again. We had to have the last one replaced due to Monty not getting the runes quite right and melting the brass. But this one wasn’t quite right.
“Why is my name second again?” I asked, polishing a corner of the sign. “It sounds better with Strong first—Strong & Montague Detectives or S&M Detectives.”
Monty sighed as he opened the door. “This again? I explained it to you. The names are arranged alphabetically,” he said and pointed at the sign. “It’s also a matter of professionalism. We are a detective agency, not a BDSM outlet.”
“Can we increase the size of my name—you know, to compensate and create balance?” I closed the door behind me. Orange runes flared along its surface, locking it.
“Balance?” Monty asked, giving me a look and heading to the kitchen.
“Size matters. You can’t both be first and have a bigger font,” I said, rubbing Peaches behind the ears. “That’s just not fair.”
“Are you serious?” He poked his head out of the kitchen. “It’s not the length of your name but the size of the font that matters?”
I nodded. “Exactly. When are we getting the new sign?”
“If it will put this subject to rest, I’ll order it as soon as I have some tea—”
Peaches barked, cutting him off.
Standing under an F-22 Raptor as it broke Mach 1 would be quieter than Peaches’ bark. The sound shattered the kitchen windows and nearly destroyed my eardrums. Someone or something had breached the external security and was coming our way.
I shook my head until the ringing calmed down and I got to my feet. I stepped around Peaches, who had planted himself in the center of the floor. Monty formed an orb of air in his hand as he approached.
I unholstered Grim Whisper and approached the door, when a blast of air shoved me out of the way. I managed to get my hand up to prevent an instant face-plant into the wall. I turned in time to see the door explode inward and sail across our reception area, missing the immobile Peaches by inches.
That’s when I saw her. My heart clenched in my chest. I tried to process the image I was seeing, but the disconnect was too great and my brain seized.
She was slumped against the doorframe. Her face was bruised and bloodied. Her hair, normally perfectly arranged, was a mane of chaos around her head and face. The black leggings she wore were torn in several places, allowing glimpses of her pale skin. A bloodied hand clutched her abdomen.
“I need—I need help. Cazadoras,” she said, struggling with the words.
Her breathing was ragged as she grasped the doorframe and left a bloody trail. The runes on the threshold flared to life as she stumbled forward. Peaches rumbled but stood still. She took a few steps forward as she tried to regain some measure of composure and failed. Her body crumpled to the floor a second later.
I stared down in shock at the unconscious form of Michiko the leader of the Dark Council, and the most powerful vampire I knew.
“Are you just going to leave her on the floor?” Monty said, exasperated. “I’ll get something to clean all this blood. Call Roxanne.”
“You know you could’ve just yelled at me to get out of the way. An air blast into the nearest wall seems a little much.” I crouched next to Michiko and scooped her up gently, walking over to the sofa.
“No time,” he said from the kitchen. “Besides, you seem unhurt. And don’t put your bloody vampire on the Hansen.”
I froze mid-descent. That’s exactly where I was about to place her. The Hansen sofa had been a gift from Roxanne, and it was the most expensive item in our reception area. No one was allowed to sit on it, except Roxanne on her infrequent visits.
“She’s not my bloody vampire” —I looked down at her in my arms—“well, today I guess she is.”
“Precisely, and I don’t intend to get blood all over that thing. Roxanne will kill me and attempt to kill you if we get it soiled.”
“How about the Chesterfield? Or do you have a gurney around here somewhere that I don’t know about?” I said, looking around. I stepped over to the other sofa and laid Chi down.
“Chesterfield, yes.” Monty appeared with a bunch of towels and a small steel box covered in runes. “Step back. Did you call Roxanne?”
“On it.” I pulled out my phone, dialed Haven Medical, and put it on speakerphone.
“Haven Medical. Director DeMarco speaking,” Roxanne said after she picked up. “Hello, Simon.”
“Roxanne, we have an emergency,” I said, my voice urgent. “You need to come to the office.”
“Simon, every time I deal with you or Monty it’s an emergency,” she said with a sigh. “Is it Tristan? Bring him here. You aren’t equipped to deal with injuries at your office.”
“No, we can’t transport,” I said. “I think she’s lost too much blood.”
“She? What happened?” she said, suddenly alert. “Who’s injured?”
“It’s Chi. You need to get here now.”
“Shite, I’m on my way. Tell Tristan to keep her stable until I arrive. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“She knows I’m not a bloody healer,” Monty grumbled as he placed towels around Chi and attempted to clean her wounds. “You’d better cancel Roselli’s.”
“Cancel…Roselli’s?” I looked at my phone. “And speak to Piero?”
He gave me the ‘are you an idiot?’ look and I began dialing. “Would you like to explain to your vampire how you felt obligated to go to dinner while she lies on the sofa, bleeding?”
“Not really, but cancelling Roselli’s is almost as bad,” I said, hoping Piero didn’t pick up. His voice came over the phone after the third ring.
“Roselli’s,” his voice said with a slight accent. “Buona sera, Simon.”
“Buona sera, Piero,” I said and took a deep breath. “I’m afraid we can’t make it tonight after all.”
There was a long pause followed by a short sigh.
“This is unacceptable. I needed to speak with you and Tristano tonight,” Piero said, in short clipped words, which meant he was upset. I could just see him tapping a finger into the table, punctuating each word. “You know the consequence of cancellation?”
I did. You didn’t cancel a reservation at Roselli’s—ever. The penalty for doing so was blacklisting for a year, if you were lucky and Piero was in a good mood.
“Someone attacked Michiko—” I started.
“Ah, Simon, why don’t you speak clearly?” he replied. I imagined the face pinch. “I will br
ing you dinner.”
I tried my best to hide my shock. Piero owned the most exclusive supernatural dining experience in the city. To offer to bring us dinner was unprecedented. After a few seconds, I found my voice.
“Piero, that is extremely gracious of you, but I’m sure you must be busy. The night is just starting and I can’t possibly expect you to—” Monty gave me the ‘don’t bother’ headshake. “Can you bring some pastrami for Peaches?”
“Pastrami?” Piero answered as if I had insulted him. “This is not a deli. I will bring filet for the animal, and he will eat it.”
“Thank you, Piero, this really means—” I began.
“I will be there presto. Ciao,” he said, cutting me off and hanging up.
“He must really like you,” Monty said, exchanging towels and applying bandages. “I don’t recall him delivering food to anyone in my lifetime. Much less their pet.”
“I think it has less to do with me and more to do with her.” I pointed at Chi. “She is the head of the Dark Council, after all. How is she? What could do this to her? Why isn’t she reacting?”
Chi was deathly still and paler than usual.
“It’s a defensive state. Stronger vampires can enter a catatonic state to deal with catastrophic injury,” Monty said, tossing down a towel and picking up a new one.
“How strong is she? She has a gunshot wound and is checked out. This ‘defensive state’ seems like it needs to be reworked,” I said, looking down at her.
“With a younger or less powerful vampire, you would be sweeping up the remains,” he said and glanced up at me. “I don’t know how she survived a gunshot to the abdomen, but whoever did this is obviously dangerous and skilled.”
“Who can do that? As far as I know there aren’t many things as fast as a vampire.”
“The staggering breadth of your supernatural knowledge leaves much to be desired. There are creatures as fast as— and faster than—vampires in existence,” he said, shaking his head and pushing some hair from his face. “But this was done by the Cazadoras, or so she claims. I just don’t remember them using guns.”
“The wound isn’t closing. I thought vampires had accelerated healing?” I said, concerned that the pile of bloody towels on the floor was growing. When she woke up, she would be starving. We would be standing next to a powerful, old, and hungry vampire. “Monty, what happens when she wakes up?”
“Well, she usually heals almost as fast as you do, but she’s still losing blood from her abdominal wound.” Monty placed more blood-soaked towels on the floor. “When she wakes up she will be ravenous, and will need to feed—oh. That would be bad.”
I nodded and checked Grim Whisper. I didn’t want to shoot her, but I had no plans of being on the menu. “Yes, that was my thought too. Will restraints work?”
“No, she’s too strong. Even in this state, her body would resist them. If Cazadoras did this, they were trying to kill her,” he said, his voice grim. “I thought the Cazadoras were wiped out? Seems I was mistaken.”
“What are these Cazadoras?” I lifted the door and placed the hernia-inducing piece of metal next to the entrance with a grunt. “Remind me again why we have a door if it keeps getting blown off its hinges? Maybe we should just hang a curtain?”
“Their full name is Cazadoras Sangrientas de la Noche—Blood Hunters of the Night,” Monty answered, ignoring my remark about the door. “They’ve always been referred to as Blood Hunters.”
“And, what, they’re vampire hunters?” I said with a short-lived laugh as Monty nodded. “They’re really vampire hunters?”
“Precisely. They were the most effective, zealous, and ruthless group to hunt down vampires. I thought the Council declared New York a sanctuary city?” he said, looking concerned at Chi.
“Seems someone didn’t get the memo,” I said. “Could be they just don’t care about the Council and really hate vampires—or both.”
He placed a bandage over the wound and kept towels over it, applying pressure. “Whatever caused this wound is still in there. I don’t dare go in without knowing what I’m looking for.”
“Can’t you just use your magic? Quan did this thing with golden light that healed me and Peaches. Can you do that?”
“I’m a battle mage not a healer. My specialty is destruction, not reconstruction.” Monty gave me a look of uncertainty. “Besides, magic on supernaturals is far from an exact thing. I could do more harm than good.”
“Yeah, I got the part about destruction, so did most of the city.” I removed the bloody towels from his side. “Don’t they teach you to fix what you break back at the Sanctuary? Isn’t that one of the tenets?”
“Battle mages are taught to be living weapons of obliteration,” he said tightly, and sighed. “What Quan did is a discipline beyond me. The mages of the White Phoenix are unparalleled healers. I can only do rudimentary healing spells,” he whispered. “All we can do now is wait.”
FOUR
ROXANNE APPEARED AT the door a few minutes later with a large case and two assistants carrying a gurney. Peaches let Roxanne cross the threshold but growled when the men tried to come in. They both stopped at the threshold and stepped back.
“Piero is bringing over food.” I grabbed Peaches by the scruff of the neck and pulled him away from the doorway. “Sorry, he likes to chew on visitors.”
“Please, wait by the entrance,” Roxanne instructed her assistants while she put her case down and knelt on the floor next to Monty. She touched his wrist with her hand. “I can take over from here. Thank you, Tristan. Would you mind assisting?”
He gave her a short nod, moved to the side, and opened the case. She put on a pair of latex gloves and asked for a scalpel.
“Some of the wounds around the neck and torso have healed.” Monty handed her the scalpel. “The abdominal injury must contain some foreign material that’s preventing healing.”
“Do you know who did this?” she asked as she made the first incision. “Who could bring her down like this?”
“Blood Hunters,” Monty said, and dabbed the wound with absorbent material to remove the blood.
“Blood Hunters? I thought the Council eliminated that group decades ago,” Roxanne said, reaching for the angled forceps. “This is a gunshot wound. Since when do Blood Hunters use guns? I thought they were all crossbows and stakes?”
“Apparently they’ve upgraded with the times. Can you remove the round? I would like to examine it before you report it to the NYTF,” Monty said, wiping more blood away.
Like any medical facility, Haven Medical was obligated by law to report every case of a bullet wound, gunshot wound, or any other injury from a firearm. Instead of reporting to the local police, they had to inform the NYTF—a quasi-military police force created to deal with any supernatural event occurring in New York City.
Roxanne nodded and closed her eyes for a few seconds. She traced a rune and the tip of the forceps turned white hot before returning to its normal color. She grabbed another forceps, uttered some words under her breath, and inserted them into the wound.
After what seemed like a minute, she removed the instrument with the round and placed it into the small pan he held. She inserted the first pair of forceps into the wound, and the sound of sizzling skin filled the reception area as she cauterized the wound.
Monty stood up and stepped over to a table as Roxanne dressed the wound. He motioned for me to come over as he pulled out a magnifying glass from one of the drawers. He wiped down the round, removing blood, and exposing an intricate inscription of runic symbols.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked me as I looked at the round.
It appeared to glow as he turned it in his fingers. “Is that thing glowing?” I asked as he kept rotating the bullet.
He nodded. “Yes. This is a nine-millimeter armor-piercing light irradiated tungsten carbide round—the ultimate vampi
re killer,” he said, the surprise evident in his voice. “LIT rounds were outlawed after the war. These things are impossible to get.”
“Not that impossible. Looks like your entropy rounds, with a slight variation.” I pointed at the bullet. “I don’t recognize the rune work, though.”
“I don’t either, but I know who would,” Monty whispered, turning the bullet over in his hand under the magnifying glass. “Nicholas.”
“Are you kidding me? Nicholas, as in the Moving Market? Shadow Nick?”
“The same,” he confirmed, nodding while he examined the bullet. “Rune designs are like signatures. Each one is a distinct indicator of who traced it. He would know who created this rune.”
“And probably tell them, too. We can’t trust him.” I tried to memorize the design.
“You don’t trust him because he’s a plane-weaver,” Monty said, looking at me.
“Am I wrong?”
“Yes,” Monty said. “We can’t trust Nicholas because he’s a corrupt, immoral, and self-serving individual who will betray you faster than you could blink.”
“How am I wrong, then? That’s exactly what I meant—you can’t trust him.”
“It has nothing to do with his being a plane-weaver,” Monty said, examining the bullet again. “It has everything to do with him being a despicable person. You have to respect his ability. The Moving Market thrives and eludes the Dark Council because of him. He’s a necessary evil.”
“Are you sure he’s the only one who can identify these runes? Does this mean this design is like handwriting?” I asked, clearly not happy about this Moving Market idea.
“Deeper. A rune possesses a miniscule essence of the magic-user who wrote it. If he doesn’t know who wrote it, he will know someone who does.” Monty held up the bullet and looked at Roxanne. “I need to borrow this for a few hours. Can you delay the call?”
“I’ll call Ramirez once we get back to Haven,” Roxanne answered and began packing her case. “That should give you a few hours’ head start. You can take the bullet, but we need to take her with us, she’s still critical. Simon, can you carry her to the gurney?”
Blood Is Thicker A Montague & Strong Detective Novel (Montague & Strong Case Files Book 3) Page 2
