He bent to gather his arrows on his way toward us. The sun shone behind him, throwing impossible shadows down over his face. It looked as though his eye sockets were nothing but black holes, but that couldn’t be right.
“Hendry, it looks like I caught you at a bad time.” The man stopped a few feet away, his whole face a blurred spot on the sun behind him. “Is that vampire in the shadows with you your lover? I won’t make no judgements if that’s the case.”
There were so many things wrong with what he’d just said. Vampire? Lover? Me?
Hendry shook his head at the old man.
“You sure?” The man looked around as if he’d heard the air tell him something different. “She threw something at you that you didn’t seem to like, so that’s when I started shooting. I thought you was in trouble on account of the Berks following you and stealing all your ladders. Have you checked her mouth, son? For fangs?”
Hendry nodded, a tight frown on his face.
“Well, okay, then. I’ll leave you to it.” He hobbled back a few steps and then turned to the rectangular door in the roof. After producing a silver key from his pocket, he plugged it into the lock and opened the door. “Always check your whores for fangs, Hendry. Don’t let anyone ever tell you different.”
Fury sizzled through my veins, as hot and stifling as Hendry’s weight. Pretty sure that man had just called me Hendry’s whore. I swung my knee up between Hendry’s legs to get him off me, perhaps with a tad more gusto than was necessary.
He gasped and slid off me, cupping himself, his whole face pinched in agony.
I instantly regretted it since he’d only been trying to protect me from the insane-talking man’s arrows, but I’d needed him off me. The questions buzzing through my head wouldn’t arrange themselves with him so close.
After gathering my bag, markers, and whiteboard, I guided Hendry to his feet, conveying my apology with a gentle yet firm touch because we needed to get inside. He glared, but he didn’t push me away either.
We followed the old man into the brothel and closed and locked the door behind us. The man stopped at the second floor to a symphony of squealing women who ran to cling to him as if he were a god. I blinked after him as he was hauled farther down the hallway. Since he’d talked outside and still lived, maybe the god thing wasn’t too far off the mark.
“Now, now, ladies, there’s plenty of Bast to go around,” he said before disappearing into one of the rooms.
“Does he have eyes?” From my vantage on the spiral staircase, I still couldn’t tell for sure.
“He was born without them. He just has empty eye sockets, but usually keeps his eyelids closed,” Hendry rasped. “He has second sight anyway, so he doesn’t really need eyes.”
“Well, he did think I was a vampire, so I’ll have to disagree with you there. Why does he think he can talk outside?” I glanced over my shoulder when Hendry didn’t immediately answer.
He bent over the railing to prop himself on his elbow as he descended. “ESP. He’s not actually talking out loud.”
“Oh.” The sun had been so bright, I hadn’t been able to tell if his mouth had moved. Handy trick to have in this silent world. I looked at Hendry again. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll tell you when my balls are ready to join society as regular, contributing balls again.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, reaching the first-floor landing and turning my frown on him. “I’m not used to being called a whore.”
“I never said you were,” he said through gritted teeth.
“I know. You were protecting me from…” I waved toward the stairs.
“Bast. Short for Sebastian. He’s my uncle on my dad’s side.”
I nodded, unsure of what to do with myself under the force of his stare. “Thank you for making sure Bast’s arrows didn’t hit me.”
He walked by me, his strides slow and pained, and pointed through an open door off the entryway. “Wait in there.” He turned and vanished through the saloon doors.
Inside where he’d indicated seemed to be a cluttered office with overflowing bookshelves bordering the walls. A map of Tombstone held down with several half-melted candles covered a large table in the middle. Behind it sat a large desk with papers spilling out of folders and a dust-covered mammoth of a computer. Mismatched chairs bracketed the desk on either side.
I chose the nearest one and sat, unsure of what I was supposed to be waiting for. Tessa, I supposed, who had surely missed me. The minutes ticked by, so I wheeled the chair to the map on the table behind me. Several areas had been circled or marked with an X in red marker that reminded me of the pictures of people hanging in the Silence Collector’s apartment across the street. I shivered despite the heat and ran my hand along my collar. That had been yet another show of Hendry’s protectiveness when he’d waltzed in through the broken window to steal me away from The Silence Collectors. I owed him my life a couple of times over. He was determined to get both our collars off, and I vowed to do anything to help. It was the very least I could do.
A figure appeared in the doorway, an hourglass in a gorgeous green dress. Today, it was strapless with a slight V to reveal the seam of Tessa’s breasts. The color brought out the creaminess in her skin and the luster of her upswept blonde hair. She strutted forward, her hips punching the air on either side in time to her clicking heels. Her blue eyes flitted over the map as she stopped at the side, regarding it, then me, with a chilly, blank stare.
“I put you in the kitchen,” she finally said. “Starting tomorrow, you’ll work from seven in the morning to seven at night.”
Twelve hours slaving in a hot kitchen for a roof over my head. I could definitely deal. “Okay.”
She lifted her hand to one of the candles and snapped off some of the dried wax that had dripped over the holder. “You blow it once, I’ll put you on bath duty. You blow it there…” She rubbed her fingers together and flicked the wax to the floor. “Well, I will have fulfilled my word to Hendry.”
I took her meaning well. Don’t fuck up. I’d heard it a time or two before.
“Thank you…” I let the words hang, thinking I should say something more, maybe offer her my firstborn for payment, but then it might sound as if I were insincere.
“I would pay you, but I only pay my whores. And if my whores looked like you, I wouldn’t have any money to pay.” She twitched the corners of her lips in what I supposed was meant to be a smile. “I’m sure you understand.”
My insides flamed. “Of course. We can’t all be cursed with shiny apple skin and a rotted core. It wouldn’t be fair to the fruit that tastes juicy and fresh with just a few bumps and bruises to give it personality.”
Her non-smile dripped off her face like wax from a candle. An angry red rash crawled across her neck. “Has Hendry tasted you yet like he has every other woman who has walked through these doors? He doesn’t care about personality. He cares about pussy, and any one of them will do.”
An unexplained spike drove through my chest, sharp and painful, but I winked and grinned in an attempt to hide it. “Good to know. Truly. I’ll keep that in mind next time he’s tasting me.”
She slammed her hand down on the table, making the candle holders jump, her lips smashed together. “You’ve officially been moved to the baths due to insubordination. One more chance, and your personality will be vampire chow.” She twirled around and stomped out, narrowly missing mowing down the subject of our conversation.
My face flushed when I saw him. I prayed to Sandreka he hadn’t heard a word I’d just said.
Tessa had pushed me because she wanted me gone, and Hendry had been too easy of a trap to fall in. I should’ve known better.
Hendry leaned against the doorway with a plastic bag of ice in his hand and a suspicious glint in his hazel eyes. “Mind telling me what that was about?”
“She was just giving me my work assignment for tomorrow,” I said innocently. “The baths, 7:00 a.m. sharp.”
“Not the k
itchen?” He held up the ice. “They just said they were short in there and were glad to have the extra help.”
“Slight change in plan.” I shrugged, unsure if I should tell him about Tessa’s two-strikes-and-I was-out deal. She might find revenge in another form, though. Better to keep my head down, my lips locked, and make my tongue churchy in a brothel.
He closed the door behind him and slowly crossed toward me, his powerful frame shrinking the room. I swallowed, his presence like a weight pressing against me. The memory of his body on mine up on the roof, how his hard planes had molded with mine, came unbidden into my head. He’d looked at me differently then, his face so close that we’d shared the same air, so different than now as, with no more than a fleeting glance, he sat behind the desk. Did he look at all women the way he’d looked at me, as if they were wondrous creatures? Was that why they stuck out their chests and licked their glossy lips around him, for a glimpse that they were something more? If what Tessa said were true, he did a lot more than look. Another little pang went off in my chest, but I ignored it.
He propped his leg on top of the desk and settled the bag of ice between his legs. The black mark between his eyes from my thrown marker was still there.
“I’m really sorry about your…everything.” I tried for an apologetic smile and pointed to where the mark would be on my face and then to him. “Next time I won’t kick as hard.”
He seemed to get the message as he licked his thumb and rubbed at the spot with a frown. It smeared up his forehead behind his curls. “I’ll live. But there won’t be a next time.”
“If you say so.” That had come out before I was able to stop it and probably sounded like a threat, so I moved on. “Is this your office?”
He sat back in his chair, studying me. “It belongs to the leader of the resistance.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “There’s a resistance?”
He nodded. “We take back our city so we don’t live in constant fear; so we can walk the city streets, day or night; so we can talk. Communicate, as you’re so fond of saying.”
“No offense, but I never pegged you for the type to want to communicate. You never spoke to me once before yesterday, and you threw my whiteboard across the rooftop like I’d cursed it with a disease.” I shrugged. “So maybe this isn’t the right resistance for you.”
“I threw the whiteboard because I saw Bast’s arrows and panicked.” His eyes narrowed. “And I never talked to you because I had nothing to say.”
The tips of my ears burned. Well, then. That was a little too much honesty for me. I liked it better when he didn’t speak.
“You only decided I was worth talking to when you thought I would fuck up.” I tried to keep my voice level so I wouldn’t let on how what he’d just said made me feel, but my last few words whipped the air.
He pulled his leg from the desk and leaned forward, his gaze searching. “And you didn’t fuck up.”
“Not because of you,” I said, my voice incredulous. “My choice to go against the church and save the girl had nothing to do with you or your ridiculous warning.”
“I know that. You did it because it was the right thing to do.” He sat back again and posted his elbows on the arms of the chair. “And this is the right resistance for me, Fin. Always has been.”
It didn’t make a lot of sense to me to resist something that had no problem flinging themselves out into the sun for a taste of blood. How could anyone ever win against the Berkano?
“Who all is a part of this resistance?” I asked.
“So far? Me.”
“Only you?”
He sighed, exhausted, exasperated, or a combination of the two. “And everyone here, off and on, plus a lot more will join with the right leader.”
“Why don’t you lead them?”
“It’s complicated.” He brushed his hand over a stack of papers on the desk. “I can lead the witches and humans here to the water, but I can’t make them drink.”
This man and his metaphors. So it was complicated. Or he just didn’t want to tell me the real reason.
“Get more water, then,” I said.
An almost smile touched his lips. “People do what I say because I say it, not because they’re inspired. They’re afraid, as they should be, but when I tell them my ideas to take back Tombstone from the Berkano, they find a million excuses not to, or they’ll say they’ll help but suddenly remember there’s that thing they promised someone else to do. A good leader will spark hope, make people listen to their words, but also the heart of the meaning behind them. Make them believe that what they’re doing has to be done.”
Exactly what he was doing to me right then. I believed every word he’d just said because they’d been spoken like a true leader. “You’re sure that’s not you?”
“I’m sure.” He readjusted the ice between his legs and winced. “But I know someone who can.”
“Who is that?”
He gazed at me from behind his brown curls, his stare intense. “You.”
Chapter 6
144 Hours Left
Me. Leading a resistance against the Berkano vampires. I inhaled the words Hendry had just said to see if they fit within me, but I choked them back out on a laugh.
“Let me put this as delicately as possible,” I said. “When I kicked you in the balls earlier, I did it too hard, as you well know. They must be rattling inside your head because I’m sorry, but what you’re saying makes absolutely no sense.”
He bit down on his lower lip, the slightest curl pinching the corners. “Do you watch people when you sing to them?”
I leaned back in my chair with a frown. This wasn’t the direction I’d expected the conversation to take. “I watch my dad mostly. If he’s crying, that usually means I’m doing something right. He always said I could move even those with the coldest of hearts to tears.”
“You make them feel something with your voice. I see it, and I don’t even have to look at their faces. They sit up, perfectly still, even the kids, to listen. To hear more. Even from the balcony, I can see it all around them. This sort of…enchantment that’s not made of magic, but from you.”
I blinked at him while a sense of pride warmed my chest. That had been such a nice thing to say, especially coming from him, a guy who’d never wasted a second before yesterday to speak to me. “While singing, maybe. But when I talk, I have no filter. I speak in swear words and sarcasm, and the rest of my vocabulary consists of my need for biscuits. I’m not a leader. I’m fucking hungry.”
He bowed his head as if in prayer and chuckled, its deep, pleasant notes curling low in my stomach. “Point taken.” He leaned his elbow on the armrest, his hand at his jaw, the heat of his gaze sliding right under my skin. “Maybe you have brothel tongue.”
My face flushed at how dirty he’d made that sound, and I squirmed in my seat. “So you want me to be a whore now instead of a leader?”
“No,” he said sharply. “I mean… I meant in the sense that you are in a brothel, and you have a tongue, so use it. To lead. Nothing else.”
I studied him for several beats, considering. “Say I agreed to do this, to lead. What exactly would I be leading them to? A future with no Berkano? A truce?”
He ran his hand over his eyes and massaged his temples. “That’s where it gets complicated.”
“Why does it have to be complicated?”
“You’ll see why soon enough.” He bit his lip as he stared down at the stacks of paper in front of him. “Look, I’m not asking you to decide right now, but if you want to see what I’m talking about, sing. After dinner tonight. Watch their faces, and see what you do to them.”
“Sing, like… You want me to just stand up and belt something out?” The only people I’d ever sung for were those I’d known my whole life. These were strangers who, as far as I knew, had never heard anyone sing in our quiet world. What if they thought I sounded like a screeching lunatic? Worse, what if I was, and the congregation at the Church of Hangmen just did
n’t have it in them to tell me? “What if I don’t? Lead them, I mean.”
“There are a lot of folks in Tombstone who have the Rift Curse,” he said. “I would like to find something to help them and help us with our collar problem at the same time. I have a proposition, which you’re in no way obligated to agree to.”
The suggestive tone of his voice hummed my blood faster through my veins. His steady gaze summoned the air from my lungs, and my chest lifted for more at an embarrassing speed.
“What?” I squeaked.
“We need supplies. There’s a hospital three buildings down the street where we might be able to get those supplies.”
“What kind of supplies?”
“Microscopes, syringes, medical equipment…”
“Okay, wow.” I sat forward. “This idea isn’t what I thought it might be. You’re going to try to take my magic collar off with science?”
“If the hospital hasn’t already been ransacked. Full disclosure, though. I’ve tried going to the hospital for supplies several times, and I’ve always come back with…” He winced. “At least one less person.”
So, he hadn’t killed those on his hunting parties. He’d just taken them to the hospital. I huffed out a breath. “Those are terrible odds.”
He nodded and waved at the bookshelves. “A lot of these books are medical, so I already know what I’m looking for when we get inside. It’s just a matter of finding them.”
“And not dying.” I glanced at the shelves, wondering if he’d read every single one. The thought of him poring over books, turning the delicate pages between his fingertips, made me briefly smile. That was something I did in the baptismal, two hours a day according to my carefully plotted schedule. My favorite was historical fiction, but I also read my fair share of nonfiction. There was a whole box of books in the junk room of the church. I never thought Hendry and I would have reading in common.
Blood Song: Division 7: The Berkano Vampire Collection Page 7
