by Izzy Shows
To her credit, she did not recoil from me, though she did look away to her master.
He shrugged. “She has come here with no ill intentions, and has brought a serious matter to my attention. Considering what it is, I find that her attire is not unwarranted—there have been vampire attacks in the city, Carmen.”
She blanched, looking at me and then back at Dudley. “No, that isn’t possible.”
“I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt, that you have not lost control of those under your command.” Now, he sounded dangerous. “I know you would not disappoint me like that. No, these must either be interlopers or rogues. They must be brought to heel, as I’m sure you will agree. Miss Sheach will need assistance with this, I have no doubt, and I have volunteered you for the task.”
Her eyes almost bulged out of her head. “You want me to work with her? A Wizard? That is unnatural.”
I felt the same way, though I didn’t give voice to it. I didn’t want to work with her any more than she wanted to work with me, but I had the good sense to know that arguing with Dudley wasn’t going to get me anywhere, and would end up with humiliation. You would think that one of his pawns would be aware of that as well. She seemed set on fighting with him, though.
“I am aware that you will not enjoy this position, but perhaps you can bring yourself to recognise that this is not an insult, but an honour. I trust you to work with her.”
“How is it anything but an insult, when the last of us that worked with a Wizard died? You have given me a death sentence!” she shouted at him.
I watched as all emotions dropped out of his face and he became still. The tension in the room thickened, and I wanted to leave. With or without Carmen, I didn’t want to be in that room any longer, not with the way Dudley was looking.
“You dare to bring her up?”
I remembered what they were talking about, the vampire that had worked with Aidan and been killed. That was what almost got us killed when we had visited the last time, and remembering that made this situation all the stranger. Because Carmen had a point, it didn’t make sense for him to lend another vampire out with a Wizard when the last one hadn’t survived it.
It also made me aware that Carmen needed to survive this adventure, or else I was looking at being vampire enemy number one.
I looked at Carmen, who appeared sufficiently cowed, and then back at Dudley. He was calming down.
“You will work with her, and that is the end of it,” he said.
“Yes, My Lord.” She looked at me, and I could see that she was still immensely unhappy about it.
Tough luck. I wasn’t thrilled either.
The two of us left his room in silence, but before I could make it down the stairs my phone rang. I grabbed it and slapped it against my ear. “Sheach.” I barked my usual to the point opening.
“Lovely to see you answer your phone in such a pleasant tone still.” It was Finn talking. “Have you got time? I wanted to compare notes and then go by the victim’s house, see if there’s anything there.”
I glanced over at Carmen, debating telling Finn about her, but deciding not to do that over the phone. The surprise probably wasn’t a good idea either, but oh, well. “Yeah, that’s fine. Where should I meet you?”
“Denmark Place, in Soho? It’s near the house.”
“See you then.”
12
Carmen had been silent for the entire journey, which didn’t bother me much aside from how awkward it had been. I didn’t want to talk to her, didn’t want to get to know her. Normalising a vampire just sounded like a bad idea altogether.
“Maybe you should stay in the car for a moment,” I said when we arrived.
“Concerned your friend won’t like me?” She spoke for the first time since we’d left Dudley’s office.
That was a difficult question. Because if I told her that he was going to hate her, there was nothing stopping her from making the entire interaction horrible, there was nothing that promised she would stay in the car and not make a bother of herself. I didn’t want Finn to see her and make a fuss, although there wasn’t a huge chance that he would know what she was just by looking at her.
Shouldn’t have mentioned it. I thought, realising that it would have gone better if she had just climbed out and Finn had assumed she was just another human.
“No,” I said, thinking on my feet. “You’re a beautiful woman, you’ll distract him.”
That was perfect, because it wasn’t even a lie. Finn was a notorious womaniser, not that he discriminated by sex for his partners, and I had no doubt that her allure was supernatural. Finn would be enchanted by her as soon as he saw her, and it would be difficult to get him back on topic once he was.
She smiled at me. “Your poor boy. I will give you a few minutes so that you can have whatever important conversation you need to.”
Haha! Victory was mine. Even if I hated her tone, the way she dismissed Finn and the nature of our conversation, I had to celebrate the fact that I’d persuaded her to stay in the car.
“Thanks,” I said, getting out of the car then.
Finn wasn’t there yet, so I leaned against the car and waited.
He didn’t take long, exiting his car in a bit of a hurry. He slowed when he saw me, his expression softening.
“Hey, you OK? You seemed wiped out yesterday.”
“Yeah, I’m fine now. That was a hell of a spell, though, and I don’t want to have to do that again any time soon,” I said, grinning at him.
“Hey, I don’t want to see it anytime soon,” he said. “That was freaky.”
“At least you didn’t have to do it.” I rolled my eyes. Death freaks people out, and I’d be a liar if I said it had no effect on me, but at least I could do what needed to be done when push came to shove.
“That’s true. So, have you dug anything up yet?”
I shook my head, sighing. “Not a whole lot, not really. I’ve done some digging on vampires in general, what they’re like and what they’re susceptible to, but nothing about the group that’s doing this. I also went and visited the resident Baron, but he says that he has nothing at all to do with it.” I shrugged.
“Resident Baron?” He asked, eyebrows knitting together.
“Yeah, leader of the local vampire coven. They refer to themselves as a House, there are different rankings as far as leaders go…”
“What, and you took him at his word for that?”
I frowned. “See, last time he tried to eat me because Aidan offended him. This time, he gave me a girl to help me out. I just don’t think that’s the behaviour of someone that wants me dead, which he would if I was investigating something he was doing.”
“What do you mean, he gave you a girl to help out?”
Oh. Oops. Cats out of the bag now.
He looked behind me at Carmen, and his eyes widened. “She’s…pretty,” he said, appreciative.
“Don’t do that,” I said. “Do not set your sights on her, trust me, she isn’t your type.”
“I forgot you were the only one who knew my type, since I’m sticking to the story that I don’t have one.”
“Well, for one, she’s smart…” I trailed off, not wanting to tick off ‘for two, she’s a vampire.’
“I never said I didn’t like smart women,” he said, frowning. “Why do you insist on that?”
“It’s your track record, not mine,” I pointed out. Letting out a frustrated breath, I looked him in the eye. “For two, she’s a vampire. Her allure isn’t natural, and you shouldn’t be involved with her.” There, it had to be said after all.
His eyes went wide again, jaw dropping open. “You’re working with one of them?” He stared at me and I cringed.
“I told you, he gave me someone to help out—“ I didn’t get to finish my sentence, because just then one of my car doors slammed shut, and Carmen was beside us. That was not natural speed.
“I understand that you are displeased to be working with me, human
, and I can assure you that it is no great pleasure of mine to be assisting you. It is at the command of My Lord that I do this, otherwise I would be at home right now. If it is any comfort to you, I mean neither you nor Miss Sheach any harm, and I will do whatever is necessary to assist with the capture or death of any vampire that is killing indiscriminately in this town. It is not something that we allow to occur, and it is not something I am in the habit of forgiving.”
Finn stared at her for a long moment, then looked at me.
I shrugged. “You heard her. She’s going to help.”
He glared at me in silence for a solid minute, leaving me anxiously shifting my weight from one foot to the other while I waited for a response.
“Fine. I don’t have to like it though,” he said.
Pain exploded across my back, I was acutely aware of the sharp bite between my shoulder blades as I flew into Finn, knocking him to the ground. Only then did I register the sound of the shot, after it had already hit me. My lungs burned, refusing to draw in the air I fought for with my mouth open, and I felt Finn’s arms around me. Somewhere in the distance there was the muffled sound of my name being called, but all I could focus on was the ringing in my ears.
“Blair!”
I gasped, finally dragging air into the fire that raged in my lungs. “I’m…”—I gasped out the first word—“fine.”
“Like hell you are! How are you still talking? Fuck. Fucking Christ, someone took a shot at you? Did they clip you?” He struggled to turn me around, to look at my back, but I jerked away from him as soon as I reclaimed control of my body.
“I’m fine, Finn,” I said, my voice hoarse.
“You certainly are,” Carmen said, she sounded…impressed? The warded tattoo, I realised, was providing a lot of the heat on my back, it wasn’t just the gunshot causing it. I twisted slightly and pulled up my shirt just a bit, to see the scales glowing, barely able to see it at the side of my lower back.
Oh hell, that was bloody cool, even I had to think it. The tattoo hadn’t had any real use yet, but it was cool to see how it worked now.
I straightened back out and stood up, trying to ignore Finn’s wide and horrified eyes.
“You were shot,” he whispered. “You were shot, how are you still standing?”
“I’m fine,” I repeated, more firm this time.
“Let me see! We need to call Shawn; we need to call it in and file a report!” He reached for me, twisting me around before I could fight. I heard his sudden intake of breath and rolled my eyes.
“We’re not doing any of that, Finn. I’m fine, just a little sore and I needed to catch my breath. It’s all fine.”
“You have a bullet hole in your shirt! And you’re back is…what the fuck is your tattoo doing? It’s pulsing colour!” He was almost shouting now.
“Keep your voice down,” Carmen hissed. “You’ll alert someone. There’s nothing that your police can do, other than make a note of the fact that someone is trying to kill her. It won’t help at all, you’re useless. We need to move before they realise it didn’t work.”
“She’s right, Finn. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing else to do. Let’s just get moving, you wanted to go check out the victim’s house, so let’s do that.”
He stared at me as if I’d grown a second head, as if he didn’t recognise me.
That was fair. I wasn’t the girl I’d been last year, or the year before that. This job had changed me from the girl who didn’t know what she was doing with her life, didn’t know who she was in the world, didn’t know how to interact with people—OK, well, maybe I still wasn’t doing so good on that front—into someone that could hold her own in a fight and had a place that she belonged. I was the one keeping the streets clean, I was the one protecting the community.
Someone taking a shot at me wasn’t the most terrifying thing for me to think about.
I had bigger fish to fry.
13
The house was a lot swankier than I had expected. I suppose I should have realised that living near Trafalgar Square meant money, but the woman whose shoes I’d walked in had not given me the impression of someone with money, so alone had she been. That was probably a bad stereotype that I needed to rid myself of.
There were expensive throw pillows on the couch, paintings decorated the walls, an old fireplace in the living room. One of those melting wax smelling things on an end table, I had no idea what they were called but I could tell that it smelled good. A flat screen sat inside an oak media centre, with a lot of complicated looking boxes underneath it. Cable? Maybe, who knows. I didn’t have a TV, and I certainly didn’t know what any of those boxes did.
I felt out of place in so nice a house, but maybe that was because it was just a house belonging to someone I hadn’t known—but didn’t I know her now? I knew how lonely she was, I knew how separated she had been from her friends and how desperate for attention she had been. I knew she had loved a TV show enough to want to leave her friends and go watch it, enough to travel down a dark alley just to get to it on time even though it had been risky. There was no way for her to have known it would have been the death of her, I had to remind myself of that. She had known there was risk involved, she hadn’t known there was a predator in the city that would get so close to her.
Why had she allowed herself to be so comfortable around a stranger? I frowned, shaking my head. She was supposed to know better; everyone was supposed to know better than to be so cavalier with a stranger about personal details. She had let a strange man walk with her, kiss her, she had acted as if there was no threat to her person with that at all. And that wasn’t true even if the man hadn’t been a vampire, strange men are always treated with suspicion, especially late at night. Why hadn’t she kept her distance?
I tried to push the thoughts out of my head. It didn’t matter how many times I went over it, she was still dead and it wasn’t going to change that fact.
“Blair? Why don’t you take the bedroom, see if there’s anything in there that can tie her to the others, OK?” Finn asked.
“What exactly am I looking for?’
“Any kind of paraphernalia, indications of being on a dating site or something of that nature. If she knew them at all,” he said.
“This is not my area of expertise.” I mumbled as I walked out of the room and into the woman’s bedroom. Finn knew what he was talking about, he’d worked cases like this one before. I suppose he was treating it the same as he would any other serial killer case.
“This is a waste of time,” Carmen said. “There won’t be anything that will tie her to the other victims. These vampires are killing at random, taking the weak from the pack when they spot them, feeding, and running away. It is a known pattern, but there’s no way that you’ll be able to find him based on what happened to the victims.”
I winced, because I knew in my heart that Carmen was probably right. The vampire hadn’t done any kind of stake out, wasn’t going to try and eat all the women in a group of friends, wasn’t going to zero in on any specific person. That was something that a human killer might do, but it wasn’t the behaviour of a predator hunting in a town. Finn wasn’t going to accept that answer though, he needed to feel like he was in control of the situation, and this was his way of doing that.
“There has to be something,” Finn said. “There’s always something. They slip up somewhere, if it isn’t a tie to a group then they get sloppy and leave a hint as to who they are. Maybe he didn’t do it this time, maybe it’ll be the next victim. But the only way for us to know that, the only way for us to try and stop there from being a next victim, is to see if the mistake has already been made.”
“No, the way to stop there being a next victim is to kill him. No other steps will get us to that resolution.”
I tried to ignore their arguing and concentrate on the task at hand. Her bedroom was generic, a bed with red duvet, two pillows were joined by numerous more throw pillows or accent pillows or whatever the hell they’re c
alled when they’re on a bed. There were unburnt tea candles by a bedside table, a design on what looked like a blanket or carpet hung on the wall, an older looking alarm clock stood on the bedside table the other side of the bed.
I was invading her privacy, her space, and no matter how many times I told myself she was dead and couldn’t care about it anymore, it didn’t make me feel any better. I walked to the bedside table with the candles and pulled open the drawer. Inside was a leather-bound journal, and I couldn’t help but think about how innocent its placement was. Right where you’d expect someone to keep a journal, without any sort of lock or key to keep it from prying eyes—there were no prying eyes for her to worry about, or there hadn’t been, anyway. She’d lived alone.
I picked up the journal and took a seat on the bed, flipping it open to the last page. I felt horrible, but it was the only thing in the room that could give me insight into what she might have been up to, that Finn had been talking about. If she was seeing men, if her friends were disappearing, that would be in here. I felt like it wouldn’t reveal any information, though, before I even read a word.
She would have thought about missing friends when she walked down that alley, I was certain.
Dear Diary,
Today was no better than yesterday, just another day passing. I went to work, I ate lunch with Carol, I came home and watched the telly. I wish I had someone to spend the evening with, someone who would make the days a little more bearable, but there’s no one interested in me. Not really. I went to the bookshop today, and someone asked me on a date, but I said no. How silly is that? I just had a bad feeling about it, he wasn’t going to like me. He thought I was a cute girl getting a book, and I suppose in a way I was, but he probably wouldn’t have liked anything I had to say. I’m so tired of having to dumb myself down just to get someone to talk to me for more than five minutes. I didn’t want to do that for an entire evening again, and maybe that was unfair of me. Maybe he would have been different. I’m tired, though. Tired of being rejected.
