Bone Hunter

by Thea Atkinson

  I felt as though someone had my back. And I needed that.

  I inhaled deep, all the better to work through the threads. Sometimes things made more sense when all the other senses were shut out.

  "It's connected," I said. "It has to be." I traced the pattern from the taste of blood in my mouth to the declaration that he needed me to find the stolen bones.

  "Oh my God," I said. "It's her. The physical aspect of the Morrigan. The bones and body."

  "What are you saying?" Fayed said.

  I looked from one of them to the other, knowing for certain now what Colin was after.

  "I'm saying the thing he's looking for, the thing he wants me to retrieve is Kassie."

  CHAPTER 22

  The more I thought about it, the more certain I grew. If Kassie was some sort of god with her body, mind, and spirit separated, and if the sidhe warlord wanted me to find a god's bones, couldn't the two be the same thing?

  "The real question is why does he want to help her?" I tapped my fingernail against my chin.

  Maddox scowled at me. "If you're right, then you're saying vampires took her?" He leaned back on his stool, arms crossed. He wasn't buying it.

  "I am." I couldn't look at Fayed because of what I was accusing his kith and kin of. It felt rude to look him in the eye.

  "That shade out there was clear about it. She thought I was in league with the vampires. She even mentioned one by name. Ambrogio."

  I laughed out loud then, because I finally made the connection. The satisfaction of piecing it all together made me thirsty.

  "Pass me a shot," I said. "That was thirsty work."

  Neither Fayed nor Maddox seemed the least bit pleased. One, russet-haired and man-bunned, looked like he'd eaten a rotten peach; the other looked like the last drop of blood he'd ingested had gone all clotted in his belly.

  "What?" I said. "You act as though this isn't a momentous occasion. I can get my glamor back and help Kassie all with one act of kindness."

  I lifted the bottle and poured the shot myself. I felt lighter than I had in days.

  "Slainte," I said holding the glass up high before downing the contents with a smack of my lips.

  I placed the empty neatly in front of me like a lady might.

  "And how do you propose to do that?" Maddox said, leaning onto his arms across the bar and nudging the shot glass to the side with his finger.

  I looked from him to Fayed, who for some reason wouldn't meet my eye.

  I shrugged. "Surely one of you knows the name," I said. "You both being all supernaturally and all."

  "You're drunk," Fayed said.

  "Damn straight," I said with a grin. It felt good to feel so light and airy. As though nothing was wrong at all in my little corner of the world.

  Maddox sighed heavily. "The nine worlds are all big places, Kitten. No one knows everyone. Not even the supernaturally types."

  I thought he was making fun of me.

  "Minor problem," I said. "That's what intel is for." I scratched my head, excited now instead of nervous.

  The sidhe had said he had intel. Now I wished I'd listened harder. I wondered if he would be inclined to give it now after I'd blown him off in favor of the gala job.

  "How hard can it be to find a vampire?" I said and pointed at Fayed. "See? I wasn't even looking, and I found him."

  Fayed laid his palm down in front of me and looked like he wanted to protest but Maddox shook his head at him, cutting him off.

  "You plan to find a vampire," Maddox said. "One vampire out of all the possible vampires and do what exactly?"

  "Well, not face him with a stake if that's what you're thinking," I said.

  "Oh I wasn't thinking that exactly," Maddox said.

  "I just need to find where he is, watch him for a while." I ran my finger along the lip of the shot glass. "A gal can't reveal all her secrets."

  Maddox let out a short laugh. "Secrets?" he said. "You're about as lousy a thief as I've met."

  It rankled. "You just haven't caught me on a good day yet," I said. "All this business with Scottie and sorcerers and shady bazaars with nasty things..." I sagged as I sat on my stool. "It's enough to throw the best of artists."

  I thought he might take the time to argue, but instead he took the bottle from the counter and slipped it back under the bar. I caught him glancing toward Fayed and a secret look passed between the two of them.

  "What?" I said. "I'm not so drunk that I didn't notice that."

  "You've been far too sheltered," Maddox said and Fayed nodded in agreement. "You think because you come into this bar and leave again un-accosted that you have some sort of anti-vampire, anti-any-supernatural-creature aura?"

  I squirmed on the stool. "No, but--"

  Fayed gathered up the shot glasses. "Why do you think I told you not to come back?" he said. "This isn't a safe place. You're not safe here. Do you have any idea what it's taken me the last three years to make sure you leave here at night safely?"

  "I hadn't thought about it."

  "Right," he said. "Because you haven't needed to think about it. Because I kept you safely ignorant of the shade world. I let you in here, I fed you your favorite distraction laced with absinthe just in case you saw something out of the ordinary and needed a plausible excuse, and then I made sure every blood-sucking, flesh-eating, soul-drinking creature stayed away from you."

  "Soul drinking," I said in a squeak. "Flesh eating?" I thought I felt dizzy.

  He didn't answer but the look on his face told me everything I needed to know.

  "Well I'm not safe from him now," I said. "I'm stuck right smack dab in the middle of it. So instead of telling me I'm not equipped to handle it, why not just help me?"

  Maddox sighed. "All right, Isabella," he said. "Let's pretend you're right. Let's say you could find this vampire and steal into his lair and extract Kassie like some sort of military hostage. How would you find him in the first place?"

  I shrugged. "Maybe I'll go outside and see if the Morrigan is still here. Maybe she'll point me in the right direction."

  "Of course," Maddox said. "And then you'll run in to said place with a toy water gun primed with holy water and demand to see Kassie?"

  I pressed my lips together. Most definitely making fun of me.

  "Of course not," I said. "I'm going to steal her."

  "Steal a living person."

  "Yes."

  "Alone?"

  "Well yes, once I find out where this Ambrogio is. He must be in the city somewhere. You said vampires were human, from this world. He has Kassie. Kassie was here. It just makes sense to start looking here."

  I hugged myself with the delight of not having to enter the Shadow Bazaar.

  Maddox made a sound low in his throat that could have meant anything but that I took to mean I was being foolish.

  I smacked Fayed's arm with the back of my hand.

  "You must have contacts," I said. "Maybe you even know an Ambrogio."

  Fayed got a strange look on his face. In fact, he'd looked remarkedly peaked since we'd turned the conversation in the direction of vampires at all.

  "What?" I asked, understanding now why he looked so odd. "You do. You know who it is."

  I jumped from the stool, not sure whether to be elated or angry. He'd been sitting there all this time with that information stuffed into his shirt.

  "Tell me," I said.

  "I don't know him," he said. "But I've heard the name."

  His gaze darted toward the back room as he said that, and I remembered the girl on the bar, the one decaying out in the back room and I couldn't tear my eyes away from his. I felt, for one second, like he might lunge at me in self preservation. I reached for the bar to ground myself.

  He must have seen my reaction because he laid his hand on mine.

  "She asked for it, Isabella. She wanted to die."

  This time when Maddox made a sound it was of disgust and if it was clear to me, it was to Fayed. I was gathering that he tolerated
the vampire but no more. This coming from a man who let vampires roam his bazaar and buy children from witches. I decided he didn't have a right to opine about them at all.

  Fayed, however, seemed to think he did.

  "I don't make a habit of drinking from an unwilling," he said to Maddox. "Although I do hear there is a robust trade in blood goods of all vintages."

  This last was laced with an undercurrent of threat.

  Maddox's hand curled into a fist on the counter. I knew he too was thinking about his bazaar and the barb had hit exactly where it had been aimed.

  I cut through the air with a karate chop between them.

  "So what's next? How do I get Kassie away from this vampire?"

  Fayed sighed. "While it's not inconceivable that she's being held in a blood-letter's menagerie, I don't think that's the case. In fact, it might be worse."

  My stomach knotted up at the term menagerie and flat-out squeezed at the thought there were worse things.

  "What kind of worse?" I asked.

  Fayed ran his tongue along his canines, obviously thinking.

  "Wait here," he said and swung over the bar to head down the hall.

  The tension in the air was palpable as Maddox and I waited for several long moments before Fayed appeared again. As he emerged from the shadows of the hallway, I caught sight of a familiar figure leaning against him.

  They halted at the head of the bar and Fayed let her stand alone for one tension-filled second before she staggered. He was already catching Ismé before she fell.

  I jumped to my feet, startled because I had expected her to be dead. A strange sort of joy welled its way up my throat. Not necessarily because I was happy she was alive but because Fayed hadn't killed her.

  "You're not dead," I said and took a step toward her.

  "I'm not dead anymore," she said and looked up at Fayed. Something swam across her expression that I couldn't quite explain as she looked at him, but I knew it didn't look like gratitude. Expectancy, maybe or entitlement.

  I blinked stupidly for a moment, then realized exactly what had happened.

  He had turned her.

  Maddox must've assumed the same thing, but his reaction was much more decided. He muttered something unpleasant under his breath and I gave him a sharp look.

  Fayed caught my eye and no doubt saw the communication, but decided it was inconsequential to the moment.

  "Ismé was attacked by a vampire named Ambrogio," he said. "Repeatedly and viciously."

  A look of anger crossed his face. "She'd be dead for real if I didn't do something to help her."

  I eyed Ismé silently as Fayed fumed beside her. Something about the way she stood there, looking victorious instead of victimized, made me wonder what was going on behind that muddy gaze. One thing was certain, she was strangely composed for a woman who had been attacked viciously before she'd had to turn to a vampire for help.

  In fact, it was downright odd that she would have turned to a vampire for help at all.

  "How do you know it was the same vampire?" I asked, although a name like Ambrogio was unique. I wanted to be sure.

  "Tell them," he said to her.

  CHAPTER 23

  She squared her shoulders in a way that was as deliberate as it was instinctive. It was a bracing breath, a final moment of decisiveness before plunging into ice cold water.

  "No one calls him Ambrogio anymore," she said. " He doesn't like to be reminded of the man he once was and can't be anymore."

  "Phantom soul," I murmured, catching Fayed's eye. He gave me a subtle nod of agreement.

  She, however, canted her head at me, curious, as though she were studying me and trying to figure out what I could possibly know about such a thing.

  "Like a phantom limb," I said to her. "Or so Fayed says."

  She twirled a lock of brown hair around a delicate finger and pulled the ends into her view for inspection.

  "Do you know what a phantom soul is?" Fayed asked her. "Many of us feel it."

  He said it as though he was concerned she would stumble on it in the dark unexpectedly.

  "If that means he still feels it, you're wrong," she said. "He feels nothing. He's focused on the same thing he has been since he was made by Artemis and Apollo."

  She leaned against the bar in a weary way that had Fayed marshalling a stool closer for her. He seemed almost fatherly in his attentions and for a moment, I felt as though someone should divest him of the responsibility because she seemed to almost expect it and it angered me.

  "You said he doesn't use that name anymore," I said, prodding her and forcing her to look at me instead of giving Fayed that entitled expression.

  She swung her gaze to mine. "He calls himself Gio nowadays, the poor sap."

  It was a strange way to refer to a vicious attacker, and even Maddox seemed to think so because he cleared his throat rather forcefully despite sitting there silently through the whole exchange. It made both Ismé and Fayed eye him.

  "You say that as though you knew him before," Maddox said to her after running his gaze across her forehead like a neon sign might be there. "As though you've known him a long time." He gave her a narrow-eyed, suspicious look.

  She ran her tongue along her teeth beneath her lips and gave him a direct stare. She didn't answer, but she didn't need to. She knew him. She had known him. Maybe longer than she wanted Fayed to know. It left me wondering if she'd been human when Fayed had turned her.

  "Of course I know him," she said. "He's the one who's been chewing on me every night."

  She thrust a now clear-skinned arm at him.

  Maddox made a sound low in his throat. He didn't need to say he didn't believe her. Each of us could see that disbelief written across his face.

  "Look," I said. "I don't care about your history with this Gio, or whether you knew him or know him and will know him. I just care about getting Kassie back, and you said you could help us."

  "Kassie?" she said in a tone that implied she didn't care. "I didn't say I could help. I said my attacker was the same vampire."

  Maddox was across the counter before either Fayed or I could react. I was left gaping at the blur of movement while Fayed lunged for him.

  "What are you?" Maddox ground out.

  He had Ismé by the throat and the woman didn't so much as flinch.

  Fayed tried and failed to pull Maddox's hands clear. His canines extended out over his lips in threat and his eyes turned bloodshot and terrifying. Not exactly the kind of thing a gal wants to see when she's kissing distance from those teeth.

  I couldn't get clear of my stool quick enough for my tastes.

  The last thing I wanted was to get between a furious vampire and a complete unknown who had proven he could kill with a touch. And yet there I was, flapping my hands in the air at the both of them because I was too scared of getting too close and too afraid of what might happen if I didn't.

  Fayed seemed the more rational. He backed up, but he was trembling. His hands were fists at his sides until he shoved them deep down into his pockets where they worked at his legs beneath, curling and uncurling.

  "Stop it," I said, turning my attention to Maddox. "It doesn't matter, Maddox. Let her go."

  "She's playing with us," he said, and the cords in his throat bulged. He was angry, all right. Mightily angry and yet a quick glance at Ismé showed a smirk lit her eyes.

  She wasn't scared.

  Unbelievably, she grinned beneath Maddox's hold.

  "I'm a vampire now," she said. "I'm immortal." There was triumphant laughter in her voice. "Do what you will."

  "Maddox," I murmured, tugging on his sleeve to get his attention. "Maddox, Fayed isn't doing so good."

  It was true. The man I knew was gone and in his place was a feral creature who was obviously struggling not to attack. Some part of him inside was still the man beneath the creature, fighting for control.

  Maddox seemed oblivious to the threat even when Fayed's lips curled back farther and I coul
d see that what I originally thought were the kind of teeth of cheesy vampire movies made me expect were really a trio of canines on each side with a middle fang so sharp as to be the tip of a needle.

  I shuddered and yanked a nearby stool in front of me as I backpedaled away from the bar.

  Maddox gave him an almost lazy look and for a second, I thought Fayed was going to leap at him, fangs wet with saliva and deadly intent, but then Maddox held up his free hand, and uttered a word I didn't understand.

  Fayed's chest heaved, his head swung back and forth. He snarled at Maddox.

  But that was all.

  Maddox swiveled his gaze back to Ismé who was still held in his grip.

  Whatever the man was, I needed to keep in mind that he was strong. And able to control a vampire with one word.

  Not someone I wanted to cross.

  I gripped the back of the stool, not sure if any movement would change the dynamic. Then, Maddox let Ismé go and I watched as she ran her palm down the column of her throat, smoothing out the skin as though it were a silk collar.

  Fayed wheezed out a breath and clutched at the bar.

  I thought I saw his canines retract.

  I eased out a slow, tentative breath.

  "Tell us about Gio," Maddox demanded of her. "What is it he's after? Why would he have the Morrigan?"

  That lit Ismé's face up with an almost perverse interest.

  "The Morrigan?" she squealed. "Now that is a different sort of feast altogether." Her expression went dead for an instant as she contemplated the information. Just seeing the lack of life gave me the creeps, and when she swung that brown-eyed gaze to mine, I flat-out shivered.

  "That bastard's crafty if not foolish," she said.

  Fayed reached out for her shoulder with a trembling hand. Upon contact, he convulsed and gasped. I watched as the vampire shook himself back into the man as though he were a dog shaking off lake water from his coat.

  "Sweet Jesus," I said because I knew I'd seen something few ever got to watch and still live.

  "What do you know?" he asked her. "Tell us." The command was unmistakeable.

  Ismé sighed irritably.