I went back into my bedroom and retrieved my sword. I’d taken it from a vindictive, murderous ancient vampire after using it to cut off his head, and now I was glad to have it.
Sean did not speak. He merely quirked an eyebrow. I grabbed my purse and opened the door, holding it open long enough for him to exit. He looked me over. I wore jeans and a black shirt under my leather jacket, with a sequined scarf around my bruised neck, my blonde hair tied up in a ponytail, and I was holding a sword.
“Dare I ask?”
“I told you, I’m taking care of things,” I said, locking my door.
“So I see.”
He was still watching me with a strange mixture of bewilderment and admiration as I turned and walked away.
Chapter 20
The house the mortals were squatting in was abandoned, with boards over the windows and an overgrown front yard. It was in North Seattle, not far from Ry’s house, though this one was probably scheduled for demolition any day now. The charming, old, two-story craftsman house would be razed to the ground to make room for two hideous boxes on the same lot that would each sell for twice what the house itself had been sold for.
In the meantime, the former vampire groupies were crashing inside, at least if the address Sean had given me was correct.
I jumped the fence and edged along the side of the house. The sliding glass door off the back porch had been boarded up, but someone had pried the boards loose from one side and had hung fabric behind the doors instead, either to block the light or to give them some privacy. Maybe both.
I crept up to the door and listened. I couldn’t hear anything through the glass. I tried the door. It didn’t budge.
I weighed my options: make a dramatic entrance by breaking the door, hoping the noise didn’t rouse attention from the neighbors, or knock like a civilized person holding a sword.
I knocked, rapping my knuckles against the glass.
The knock spurred noise inside, footsteps and people moving around. The fabric was swept aside and Lisa, one of the mortal girls I’d seen outside the Factory after they’d lit the fire, stared at me. Her eyes were puffy and red. The fabric fell shut. The door did not open.
I raised the sword, getting ready to go with option number one and break the glass, when a hand appeared through the fabric and slid the door open.
Brad aimed a gun at my face. He’d gone light on his usual Goth makeup, just some eyeliner, most of it smudged and possibly a day old. His hair was greasy and unwashed. The room behind him stank of body odor. The house probably didn’t have plumbing, so their access to showers was limited.
The back door opened into a dining nook near the kitchen and the living room was right beyond it, the front door clearly visible across the house. There was an old sofa one of the mortals was sitting on, though the rest were on their feet, watching me warily.
“Go to hell!” Brad demanded. His hand was shaking, making the gun vibrate.
“Put the gun down,” I said.
He looked at the sword in my hand. His lips curved into something like a smile, but it was too bitter and angry to qualify. “Fuck you.”
I lowered my sword. The way he was shaking, I could probably knock the gun out of his hand, but I decided to try and play nice first. More flies with honey, and all that jazz. “I just need to ask you some questions.”
“Bullshit,” someone behind him squeaked. “She’s here to kill us!” Someone else sobbed. One of the women held a big butcher knife with both hands like it was a baseball bat.
“I’m not here to kill you,” I said.
“Like hell!” the woman with the knife screamed. “Lark wants us dead!”
“Well, you did try to burn her and her vampire friends alive,” I said. One of them sobbed again. Another sniffled.
“Look, maybe if you guys help me out, I can talk her down,” I said. It wasn’t a lie, exactly, but I doubted it would do much good. Lark had proven to be pretty damn merciful, but setting fire to a vampire’s home in the middle of the day was as unforgivable as it got.
Brad brandished the gun. “What the fuck do you want?” His voice went up an octave.
“I have questions about Bea.”
Someone swore. One of the men bolted for the front door. Brad whirled, aiming the gun at the guy. “Don’t even think about it, Jeff.”
Jeff put up his hands and slowly turned to face his friend. “Dude, I’m tired of sitting here waiting to be slaughtered. We shouldn’t have set the fire. I don’t know why we listened to you about that witch. She’s not going to give us shit.”
“Witch?” I asked.
Brad made a disapproving sound at Jeff, who looked from the gun to me and back again before saying, “Oh, fuck off, Brad. You’re not in charge just because you lit the match!” Jeff sighed, folding his arms over his chest and turning to me. “Brad met with a witch who suggested we get revenge on the vampires for kicking us to the curb. Said she’d protect us if we brought one of the vampires out to her. She promised to make us immortal with magic. And Brad sold all of us on her bullshit. Except Elliot, who was smart enough to bolt.” He spat on the dirty wood floor.
Elliot hadn’t mentioned a witch and had looked genuinely confused when I’d mentioned magic, but maybe he was a good actor, or maybe he’d “noped out” as he put it before he’d heard the fine details of the plot.
“I knew that was crap,” Jeff said, “but when Brad introduced us to her, she sure made it sound good. We all wanted to believe it, so we let ourselves get carried away.”
“It’s not crap,” the woman with the knife said.
“Are you fucking immortal, Wendy? No? Then it was crap. Obviously.” Jeff sighed, like he was damn tired of repeating himself.
“So you guys did take Bea,” I confirmed.
“Terry and I staked Bea,” Jeff said, swallowing uneasily after the admission. The woman with the knife, whom I assumed was Terry, bristled at the sound of her name. “We brought her outside to the van we’d parked right behind the Factory and then gave her over to the witch.”
I remembered that van. I’d never considered a vampire had been trapped inside of it.
“We were half-drunk and desperate, but it was still crazy stupid,” Jeff said.
“You really think a witch is going to give you immortality?” I balked at the thought. I was desperate to get my fangs back and willing to take a lot of stupid risks to do it, but even that was a stretch for me.
“Why not?” Brad asked.
Jeff rolled his eyes. Clearly, he’d figured out they’d been used, even if the others didn’t want to believe they’d burned their bridges to the vampires for nothing. “You ever meet an immortal witch?” Jeff asked. “No. Because it’s not fucking possible.”
Brad cocked the gun, which was still aimed at Jeff.
With hands still up, Jeff sat on the sofa next to another mortal who’d been silent the whole time. I counted seven of them total in this room. Minus Elliot, that sum added up to the amount of mortals I’d seen in Underground. At least a dozen more had been kicked out of the Factory, but I hoped they’d been a hell of a lot smarter and actually left the state for their sakes. Lark would probably figure out exactly who had been involved in the fire and only lash out accordingly, but it was safer to be far away from the blast zone.
“Who is this witch with the golden promises?” I asked.
“Don’t know. She wore a facemask,” Brad said, lowering the gun.
I did my best not to balk at the stupidity of people who’d trust a woman who refused to show them her face. “How do you know it was a she?”
He shrugged. “Voice sounded feminine. Kind of like a teacher I had in high school.”
I ran through a mental Rolodex of the feminine-sounding Guild Elders. Kiki, Beverly, Carla, Erin. Could Byron disguise his voice that way? Maybe. I couldn’t really narrow the list without a face.
“Did this person tell you why she wanted a vampire?”
They all shook their heads. Id
iots. I doubted they’d even asked.
“So let me get this straight. You got drunk and let Brad and his mysterious, mask-wearing witch friend talk you into trying to murder your former vampire pals except for one, whom you kidnapped and handed over like a rat in a trap?”
Most of them stared at the floor and wrapped their arms around themselves. Lisa shuddered. The woman with the knife clutched it so hard, her knuckles turned white.
“They deserve what they got!” Brad shouted, waving the gun in my face a little too wildly for my liking. “We lived with them, played servant, fed them our blood, and what did we get? Huh? Kicked out on the street when one of them decided we were not needed!”
“You got a raw deal,” I agreed. “But that doesn’t excuse arson and murder. You guys are lucky you’re still alive. If you want to stay that way, you should get the hell out of the area. Probably out of the state. Split up, change your names, and pray to whatever gods you believe in that Lark decides you’re not worth the effort of hunting down.”
I sheathed my sword. Brad’s hand shook as he tightened his grip on the gun aimed at my face. I glared at him.
“Shooting me isn’t going to help you.”
“I thought you were going to help us,” Jeff said, his tone weary and flat. He’d been promised a lot of things, and none of them were working out.
“I am helping you. I can talk to Lark. I can also talk to walls. If you’re smart, you’ll run like the wind. Frankly, I don’t know why you’re still here.”
“The witch will protect us,” the woman with the knife said. “She’s going to make us gods.”
“Then where the hell is she?” Jeff demanded. “She promised she’d do the spell and then vanished. Newsflash, kids! That means it ain’t happening.”
“She said it took time to prepare,” Lisa argued, but without any conviction.
“What spell?” I asked.
“None of your business,” Brad said before anyone else could answer.
“An immortality spell?” I asked, annoyed at myself with how badly I wanted them to say yes. But even if that was what they’d been promised, there was no guarantee it was true or that any such potion or spell was viable or realistic. And even if it was, I wouldn’t opt into any ritual done by a known murderer. Besides, despite the fact that I wanted to be immortal again, I didn’t want just any old brand of immortality. I wanted my fangs, my vampiric senses, and my taste for blood.
“What difference does it make to you?” the woman with the knife asked.
“None at all. But unless the spell can protect you from a vampire tearing out your throat, I’d start packing. Get the hell out of the area before it’s too late.”
I turned and walked out of the house, half expecting a bullet to tear into me. I didn’t think Brad would shoot, not really, but he was clearly running on fumes and desperate to boot, which meant he might do it just to feel proactive.
“She’s going to help us, and the vampires will pay!” Brad shouted. “You’ll pay too, bitch!”
I ignored him and kept walking. I hoped like hell the others took my advice, even if Brad was loyal to the witch. Lark could hunt them down anywhere, and might, but if they fled they’d at least have a chance.
But that was not my problem.
My problem was the witch who was not only murdering vampires and attacking me, but conning helpless mortals into doing their bidding. The more I learned about this asshole, the more I wanted to slice her head off their neck.
But first I had to figure out who it was.
Chapter 21
I called Erin as I headed back to my car. She didn’t answer. I left a quick message telling her to call me back.
I was putting my phone back in my purse when something slammed into me and set my body on fire.
Heat raced through my veins. My skin burned. I couldn’t breathe. My stomach turned into an acid pit. I leaned forward, bracing myself against someone’s SUV and gritting my teeth until the pain stopped.
A dark figure stepped out from between two houses. My vision blurred, and when it cleared, I was staring right at a person clad in black, complete with a ski mask. I shuddered, struggling to fight through the pain so I could kick this person’s ass. And then I noticed the red hair through the mask. Just a bit of it at the forehead, where it had probably gotten caught in the cotton. There was only one witch I knew with bright red hair.
“Beverly?” I said. My pulse raced in my ears as the pain ebbed.
She made a noise, not unlike a squeak, and I knew I was right. It was her.
For a horrifying moment, she didn’t move. Then she flung her hand out toward me. I jumped to the side but I was too slow. The spell smacked into me with the same intensity as before. It felt like fire ants were crawling all over my body. I hunched over, taking two deep breaths. The pain ebbed again but my nerves pulsed, raw. Still kneeling, I pulled my sword out of its sheath.
Beverly had come closer and was now only a couple feet in front of me. I raised my sword as I stood, licking my lips. “For what it’s worth,” I said, hefting the sword in my hand, “I honestly didn’t suspect it was you.”
She brought up her hand to cast the spell again.
I didn’t hesitate—I just swung, bringing the blade down on her wrist. I didn’t know where the sword had come from before it ended up in Tertius’s possession, but it was preternaturally sharp.
Beverly’s hand hit the sidewalk with a meaty thud. Her scream was guttural and loud. Lights came on in the houses around us. I took that as my cue and bolted for my car, which was just up the street. I tossed my sword over the backseat and drove. I could see Beverly standing there on the sidewalk, holding her arm, as people came out to help.
I didn’t catch my breath for over a mile, and drove two more miles before stopping at a parking lot of a closed dry cleaner’s and pulling out my phone. I called Erin again. No response. So I drove to her apartment.
* * *
I banged on Erin’s door until she answered. She was in the same outfit she’d worn at the farm, a laptop open on the coffee table. Her orange cat was sitting on the sofa but jumped up to the back of the sofa when it saw me, as if being slightly higher would protect it. A black mass of fur skidded across the floor and into her bedroom.
Erin took one look at me and said, “What the hell happened to you?”
“I was attacked again.”
“Shit,” Erin said as she moved to let me in and then locked her deadbolt.
“It was Beverly.”
Erin’s eyebrows went up to her lacy black headband. “No way.”
“Yes, way. It was her. Her red hair was sticking out of her ski mask and she squeaked when I called her name.”
Erin shook her head in disbelief, flopping back down onto the sofa. “It can’t be Beverly. Are you sure?”
“Positive. Plus, I cut off her hand, so it’ll be hard for her to hide.”
“You cut off her hand?” Her voice went up an octave.
“She kept throwing spells at me. I had to do something.”
“Vampire logic,” she said, exasperated. “Cut off their limbs before sweeping their feet.”
I smiled despite myself. Good to know I still thought like a monster, even if I was trapped in a mortal body.
I explained what had happened, about the weird spell Beverly had thrown at me, and how she’d used the mortals to get one of her vampire victims after convincing them to set the Factory on fire.
Erin folded her arms over her midsection and leaned back against the couch. “It’s just… Beverly seems so…”
“Not like a cold-blooded killer?” I filled in.
“Yeah. But also, if it’s an immortality spell or whatever she’s trying to do…it seems odd for her. She’s never been one to seek power, and she really hates vampires. Immortality doesn’t seem like something she’d strive for.”
“Like I said, you’d be amazed what most people are capable of when the circumstances are right.”
Erin sighed. “Maybe. But it seems cynical to think that way.”
We sat in silence for a moment. Erin reached up behind her and petted the orange cat, whose yellow eyes regarded me with suspicion.
“Do you think it was Beverly who attacked you the other night?” she finally asked.
I considered her question. The build of the first attacker could have been Beverly beneath the baggy clothes. It was hard to say. “I’m not sure. I guess it could have been someone else the first time. Beverly wasn’t limping, after all. But it was definitely her tonight. Why?”
She lifted her shoulders in a shrug that died halfway. “Magic is forcing energy and intent into something to get a result. It requires focus. Some people find it easier to focus and direct energy with wands or staffs. Freeform spells are easier if you have excess energy stored in jewelry you can draw from. But the easiest way of all is to be consistent. If you usually call upon water spells in a fight—like snowballs or ice flares—you tend to stick to it because it becomes automatic. If you use fire spells, like the one you’re describing, that’s going to be your go-to. Every witch has a go-to attack spell. It’s for self-defense. But changing it up is odd because it would actually be harder to go out of your wheelhouse.”
“So if someone were keen on water spells, they’re unlikely to switch tactics. But then, the first round failed. Maybe she felt she had to try another tack.”
“Yeah, that’s possible,” Erin said. She tapped her green nails against the arm of the couch. “I guess I’m just having a hard time accepting it’s Beverly. She was a friend of my grandma’s, despite their age difference. And she’s never struck me as the sort to mess with dark magic.” I opened my mouth and she held up a hand. “I know, I know. Doesn’t mean she’s not capable. Clearly she is. It’s just hard to shift the paradigm, you know? I’ve known all of these people since we were kids, or at least since I was.”
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