by Sierra Dean
When this tiny, spritely man spoke, he had the voice of a chain-smoking, three-hundred-pound African-American blues singer. It was deep, hoarse and commanding.
I squinted at him, trying to tell whether his appearance was a masking charm for his true form. I didn’t have the gift of magic-sight, sadly.
“Fae?” I questioned out loud, as if that would narrow things down.
Asking someone if they were fae wasn’t an insult, but it was about as useful as asking a person if they were human. The fae were so varied and abundant I doubted anyone knew the full extent of their kind.
I’d only ever met a full-blooded fae in Calliope’s realm. As a half-fairy/half-god, her fairy side was considered fae. No one would ever use the word out loud to describe her, as she would take it as a grave insult, considering her other half was—after all—a god. Fairies were counted as the highest level of the fae—magical, beautiful and immortal. The lowest levels of the fae were creatures like trolls or gnomes, but I’d never seen or heard mention of such things, so perhaps they weren’t even real. I had met an ogre once.
The man who owned my choice gun store was mid-level half-fae, a land-bound merman with allure capabilities similar to a siren, which explained why his shitty-looking shop did such good business. And why I kept going back. Not to mention being the reason he never asked me what I wanted silver bullets for. Keeping things within the paranormal community had its benefits.
The guy in front of me looked, for all the world, like a leprechaun. But, standing in front of an Irish pub, with all that red hair? Wouldn’t that be too clichéd?
“Maybe,” he half-answered my query. “What’s it to you, Blondie?” The deep voice was incredibly off-putting.
I fumbled in my front pocket and held the card out to show him. He looked from the card, to me, then back. He grumbled something under his breath which sounded Gaelic, then stepped away from the door. He thrust the card back into my hand as I passed, but didn’t say another word to me.
“What the hell was that?” I asked myself once inside.
“That was Fagan.” I was startled by the arrival of a large human man standing in the interior entrance of the pub.
This man was the exact opposite of Fagan. He was six feet tall and almost as broad as the doorframe. He had silver-gray hair, slicked back into a short ponytail, and his face showed signs of a hard and violent life. One scar bisected his cheek in an ugly, pale, six-inch gash. He looked to be about fifty but had one of those faces that could be ten years older or younger than it actually was.
“Fagan is a brownie. A hob.” At first I thought the man might be tossing out insults, until I realized he was telling me what type of fae Fagan was. “They make the best doormen. Reliable, persistent, and I literally pay him in milk and honey.” He chuckled.
“Guess that means if I follow him home later he won’t take me to a pot of gold?”
“No. But he would take you to a great dim sum place. Dynamite pot stickers.” He moved his bulk out of the door to let me in. The room was poorly lit and sparsely populated. It looked like every other Irish, English or Scottish pub I’d ever seen. There were scarred wood tables, Guinness paraphernalia, and various football trophies and scarves adorning the walls. It felt warm inside and smelled of good ale and the best whiskey.
There were enough hushed conversations taking place I couldn’t focus on any one specific line of dialogue, and it came as a relief to not feel like I was intruding.
“Who gave you the card?” the big man asked. “I’ve never seen you before, so someone must have sent you to us,” he explained, to soften his original, abrupt question.
I was still holding the card in my hand where Fagan had placed it.
“Keats,” I said.
“Ah, the famous Mr. Keats. Did he consider himself above whatever problem you brought him?” The man smirked, and I kept my face impassive, but I was insulted on Keaty’s behalf. We were partners, after all. “Poltergeist, is it? Or a dream demon, perhaps?”
“I’m looking for Jameson,” I replied.
The condescending look disappeared from his face, and he fixed me with a hard, assessing stare.
“Well, you’ve found him.” I had assumed as much, based on the authoritative manner he had adopted from the offset. “And who might you be, little lady?”
Keaty had said I should tell them my name, so I figured I might as well start there. “I’m Secret McQueen,” I announced, building my slight frame up as tall as I could. I’m not much to look at, size-wise, but big surprises come in little packages.
Silence fell over the room like a sudden onset of fog. Behind the bar someone dropped a glass and the sound echoed outwards in a crystalline ripple. Every pair of eyes in the room fixed on me, and I tried not to let it make me nervous, but I was itching to go for my gun.
The silence held for longer than was comfortable. I guess my reputation extended beyond the vampire community.
The large man, now confirmed to be Jameson, cleared his throat, and on cue the patrons of the bar resumed their normal activities.
“My apologies, Miss McQueen—”
“Secret, please.” I loathed the formality of Miss McQueen, and those who commonly used it were not the type of people I liked to correct, so whenever I had the opportunity to avoid the title, I did.
“Secret.” He smiled. “What brings you to Bramley?”
“I need help with something and was hoping you or one of your associates might have some information.”
He indicated a table in the back of the room, where two other patrons were already seated. He was giving us a little privacy to further discuss my situation.
I took a chair with its back against the wall so I could see the room and the entrance. Any assassin worth their salt knows you never leave your back exposed.
Jameson took the chair across from mine, clearly trusting that no one in the room meant him harm. I wish I could have felt so sure in any room. Beside Jameson was a young, somber-looking Japanese girl. I would have liked to call her pretty, with her straight black hair and flawless complexion, but her face was so rigid and tense it was difficult to judge her real level of beauty.
Beside me but out of reach was a man who appeared to be about my same age. He was of the ethnic minority I’d only ever seen in New York, which was the unique blending of Latino and African-American. He had strong features—pillowy, full lips and a jaw that looked carved out of marble. Beneath the white T-shirt he wore it was obvious he was well built and had the kind of large biceps that made me want to know what a hug from him would feel like.
His skin was a soft, honeyed brown, and his black hair had been cut so close to his scalp it was impossible to tell if it had once been curly. His eyes weren’t brown, but rather an unexpected shade of gray, and his gaze was locked on my forehead. He looked as serious as the Japanese girl, but on him the expression was less practiced. Though his build and appearance would pigeonhole him as a thug, I suspected he was naturally prone to a cheerful disposition. His eyes gave him away, because they were too warm and lacked the deadened glaze of a true killer.
I liked to think mine still had a little glimmer of life to them too.
“This is Noriko.” Jameson indicated the girl, who nodded tightly, never lowering her gaze. “And that’s Nolan.”
Nolan smiled and moved to offer me his hand before catching a disapproving glare from Jameson and resuming his stoic pose.
“Pleasure to meet you,” he said in spite of himself. “We hear lots ’bout you ’round here.”
Jameson sighed dramatically, and Nolan recognized his mistake. It was also my introduction to Nolan’s unique voice, which was low and smooth. He seemed unable to attach the letter A to the beginning of words and had a classic Brooklyn accent that warmed my heart.
“What kind of information are you looking for?” Jameson asked.
“I’ve been contracted to eliminate a rogue threat by the name of Holden Chancery.” I watched them for any flicke
r of recognition and got nothing.
“And?”
“I believe Mr. Chancery’s contract is…unjust. In order to prove it, I need to find out what he’s been accused of.”
Another long silence, this one isolated to our table, hung in the air. It was Nolan, not Jameson, who finally spoke up.
“You mean you want to help save the vampire?”
“Yes.”
“But, you’re like some big-shot vampire slayer, ya? The biggest, baddest, ’ccording to word on the street.”
“I’m not disagreeing with that.”
“Then I don’t get it.”
Jameson must have been just as curious, because he hadn’t stopped Nolan from talking.
“This vampire is a friend. I trust when he says he’s innocent. He’s always had my back.” I hoped they could appreciate that.
Noriko stared at me with an expression so cold I got a chill.
“I came to you people because I thought you might want to save a life, rather than running around trying to take them,” I finished.
“We do save lives, Miss McQueen,” Jameson said, back to formal titles. “Every vampire we kill is a dozen lives we’ve saved.”
I formed my mouth into a thin line, and I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re a fool if you think killing one vampire will save lives. The vampires you kill, the ones you can catch, they’re babies. Probably less than fifty years old and untrained in avoiding maniac vampire-slayer wannabes. If you ever met a true rogue, it would rip you and everyone in this bar to pieces in seconds. The true rogues are older than this city.” This was, of course, not true. Most rogues were middle-aged by vampire standards. One or two hundred years old and hell-bent on some sort of destructive agenda. They would still murder a group of mediocre slayers, though. The older vampire rogues, the ones who didn’t care about anything but bloodshed, they were the really scary ones. Vampires who didn’t care for the laws that kept their existence a secret, and only cared about the feed.
I’d known a few of them in my time, and those rogues even made me fearful for my life. When all you care about is death, you have little else to lose. Those vampires were the scariest. I doubted anyone in this room had ever met a vampire more than thirty years dead.
I rubbed the bridge of my nose and fought off the looming headache a few minutes longer. I was crankier than usual, thanks to my hunger, and being irritated wasn’t helping. There was no avoiding it; I’d need to stop at Calliope’s before I went home. I needed blood.
“I’m sorry. I know you think what you do is noble, and in theory it is. But there are vampires who mean no harm to humans.”
“Every vampire means harm to humans,” Nolan said, and pain flashed over his face. There was a story there, and I wanted to know it.
“Look, my mother was almost killed by a vampire, I get it,” I replied. This was, for all intents and purposes, true. What I didn’t mention was the vampire in question had been my formerly human father, and thanks to the vampire blood he fed her, I became the freak show I was today. My confession seemed to soothe Nolan’s frustration.
“If they almost killed someone you love, how could you work for them?” he asked.
I didn’t bother explaining how often I wished my father had finished the job, or how there was no love between Mercy McQueen and me. My personal history didn’t belong here because no one would ever be able to deal with the complexities of it all. I barely could.
“The vampire council exists to protect humanity, whether or not you want to believe it. They police vampires and make sure humanity never learns the truth about the existence of vampires in the world. That keeps human collateral to a minimum.”
“Human collateral?” Nolan looked disgusted. My word choice was poor at best, but I’d been with the monsters too long. Even I sometimes saw death that way.
“I’m a killer, Nolan,” I admitted. “I’m not the most…delicate person to explain this.”
Jameson drummed his fingers on the table, returning my attention to the rest of the group.
“Given our clear ineptitude at vampire hunting, how would you propose we help you?” He was clearly offended, but I suspected it was more because I’d drawn awareness to the truth rather than spoken a lie. He must have lost others to more experienced rogues and had probably earned his nasty scar in a similar fashion. If Jameson had survived a fight with a true rogue, I owed him more respect than I had been giving him, and I decided to operate henceforth as if he had earned it.
“I’m too well-known,” I admitted. “I don’t have the same access to information you do. I thought one of you might have heard of something, some reason why a vampire warden would be declared a rogue.”
“As you pointed out,” Jameson said, “we don’t pay much attention to the distinction between rogue and non-rogue vampires.” The disdain was still evident in his voice, but he was talking to me, which was a good enough sign for me to press on.
“You must keep an ear to the ground, though. Vampires are easier to kill once they’re removed from the council’s immediate protection. I’m guessing the ones you guys most commonly see are young vampires attempting to live alone for the first time. If Holden had been exiled from the council, there must have been some kind of a buzz about it.”
“At Havana the other—” Nolan was interrupted by both Noriko and Jameson cursing for him to be silent, but it was too late.
“Havana? You let your people go to the vampire bar?” I was shocked.
“Not into the bar, no.” Jameson sighed. “Everyone here is human except for Fagan and a few other half-fae. It would be far too risky to send them in. They would be under the thrall before they passed the coat check.”
Smart man. He was a better leader than I’d expected.
“But we do often send people out to patrol nearby in case a vampire should go out alone and attempt to feed.”
Jesus. I could only imagine some vampire, with his enthralled feed for the night, no intention of taking any lives, brought to the final death by the Scooby Gang here. It made me a little sad. These people needed proper training and real knowledge about vampires. I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t want to add to the damage caused by my previous outburst, but under the surface I was seething.
“I was patrolling the other night,” Nolan explained. He apparently had already done the damage by telling me about their presence outside Havana, because neither Noriko nor Jameson stopped him this time. “I didn’t find no solo vamps, but I heard two of them talking. They were saying something ’bout a ‘half-breed lover’? I didn’t know what that meant.” He shrugged. “But they said something like ‘he never was good at keeping secrets.’”
That stung. I’d always known Holden dealt with a lot of flack for being my warden, primarily because I was a difficult charge to keep in line, but more so because the other vampires didn’t trust me. He suffered for being my friend. The secrets the vampires mentioned were just a singular Secret.
I tried to look unmoved by his words, but I couldn’t mask the pain in my eyes, so I lowered them. Thank goodness no one at the table was a werewolf, because I didn’t want any of them to mistake the action for submissiveness. They’d have walked all over me after that, deserved or not.
“I appreciate your time,” I said, when the tone of my voice wasn’t at risk of giving me away.
Without a doubt in my mind, I now believed Holden had been framed because of me. I’d gone from being unsure of whether or not I could trust him, to feeling guilty for his current situation. It wasn’t to say that whatever he was accused of was related to me directly, because there was little they could pin on him there. No, he was on the run now because other vampires believed he was guilty, thanks to his relationship with me.
I rose from the table, as did Jameson and Nolan. Only Noriko remained seated, her dark eyes never looking away from my face. She hadn’t missed the pain. I extended a hand to Jameson, as both a farewell and a peace offering.
“I’m sorry
,” I continued. “For not being more supportive of the work you do.” I wanted to lecture them on the differences between types of vampires a little more, but some people will never see a vampire as anything other than evil. Maybe they were the smart ones.
“I don’t know if we were of any help.” His voice had lost its former edge. We had reached an understanding, it seemed. He looked me in the eyes, and his handshake was firm and dry. Jameson saw me as an equal. While I would have rather he viewed me as his superior, at least in this field, I would accept equality. A twenty-two-year-old girl wasn’t going to get anything better from a fifty-something man, and I was lucky to get that.
Once I dropped his hand, I did something I bet none of them expected. I turned to Nolan, and instead of shaking his hand, I pulled him in for a hug. The purpose was twofold, but I was counting on them only understanding half of it.
As expected, Nolan didn’t fight the hug. He let me embrace him and pushed the gesture further by placing a hand on my lower back, as Lucas was so fond of doing, and pulling me closer. I had wanted to know what a hug in those arms felt like, and found my answer. It was solid and comforting, and though I was testing him, I couldn’t help but enjoy it a little.
The point, as Jameson and Noriko would understand it, was that I’d proven how ineffectual Nolan was as a fighter. He hadn’t resisted my invasion into his space. He didn’t try to go for my gun to disarm me, and he’d willingly allowed me into his defensive zone. Foolish boy.
But my purpose was more sinister than they could have anticipated. While I was close to him, I nuzzled my face as close to his neck as I could, given how tall he was, and I took a big whiff. With so many different smells clouding the air in the bar I wanted to be certain I could recognize Nolan’s specific scent again. That he had let me get so close to his neck only proved how unprepared he was for the work he was doing.
Nolan, the would-be vampire slayer, had let a hungry half-vampire press herself right up to his jugular. Another hour or two without eating and the temptation would have proven too much for me. As it was, breathing in the luscious, musky smell of him, my fangs extended with anticipation. I clamped my mouth shut and stepped back. Patting Nolan on the cheek, I gave him a sad, tight smile, and shared a look with Jameson to be sure he understood what I’d just shown him.
