by Maren Smith
“Information,” Aleron replies. “A piece of a puzzle you hopefully know.”
Spreading his hand, the other vampire indicates the whole of his honeycomb of books and waits.
“A vampire lord has moved his nest into the Tucson area and I want to know who he is.”
“You’re going to have to be a touch more specific than that,” Ignacio says dryly. “Although not as plentiful as the written word, we do tend to be prolific when we get lonely.”
“I believe he’s an old soul and powerful. We ran into him earlier tonight. He not only masked his presence from me, he masked all but the one meant to draw my attention.”
“An uncommon ability,” Ignacio acknowledges. “But not unheard of.”
“He was an old man when he was sired.”
Why that should make a difference, I don’t know, but the other vampire’s attention abruptly intensifies.
“Full head of gray hair or bald on top with no more than a sprig around his pate, like a Roman emperor’s laurel leaf crown?”
“Definitely the crown,” Aleron replied.
“How old?”
“Fifty at least when he was turned.”
I’ve spent too much time with Aleron, I think. I see the subtle shift in Ignacio’s expression—the flattening of his mouth, the faint quirk of a brow—just before he turns away. He fetches a book, an old one almost two feet in length, thick and heavy. Its leather-bound cover is chipped and peeling, and its unevenly cut pages are yellowed with age and worn around the edges.
Laying it on a stack of more books on a cluttered table, he opens it carefully. Each page is blank, but between the sheaves are other pages—drawings, wanted posters, newspaper articles. He stops at a drawing, studies it silently a moment, and then steps back for Aleron to take a closer look.
“That’s him,” Aleron says softly. “Who is he?”
“At one time, he was known as Athanasius. I believe he goes by Arthur now.” Ignacio frowns. “He’s hunting you?”
“No.” When Aleron looks at me, so too does the other vampire.
He blinks, all traces of irritation melting into surprise as he glances at Aleron again. “Why?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
Tipping his head, Ignacio blinks again. “I do not have a crystal ball, young man. How exactly do you think I’m supposed to do that?”
“They say you can read the mind of any vampire who comes within a mile of you. It’s why you live so far underground. To get away from the constant chatter.”
Ignacio frowns, and Aleron asks, “How good are you with humans?”
“Wait a minute.” I step back, not at all liking the way the two of them are suddenly looking at me. “What exactly are you trying to do?”
Bowing his head, Aleron looks away from me. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it a guilty reaction, but it makes no sense.
“I already told you,” I say. “I’ve never met this Arthur… Athanasius… whoever he is. I don’t know why he’s after me. What possible use could it do to read my mind?”
“There’s nothing in there to read,” Ignacio snaps irritably. “Also, it looks like a guilty reaction because that’s exactly what it is. He likes fucking you and doesn’t want to have to admit he wiped your memories the other night. And no,” he says, turning back to Aleron, “I can’t undo the damage. Our kind does not simply crawl in and out of human heads without risk. What you’re asking me to do might just as easily leave her simple and drooling on herself, so let me save you the trouble. Athanasius is a leech. He moves his nest from place to place, continent to continent, never staying anywhere for longer than a few months, because he can’t. He’s never been careful where he feeds. He doesn’t care how many bodies he leaves in his wake. He doesn’t want your meat bag either, he could care less about sweetening the blood. He moved beyond that centuries ago.”
“What do you mean, moved beyond that?” Aleron frowns.
Myself, I’m still floundering much further back in the conversation. “What do you mean, wiped my memories?”
Ignacio gives us identical withering stares. “He wiped your memories,” he tells me, “because humans are panicky animals who react badly to knowing they aren’t at the top of the food chain. And Athanasius doesn’t give two shits for this girl,” he tells Aleron, “because the only thing he cares about is getting high. He was sucking nepenthes from Egyptian royalty three thousand years before the illegitimate son of a carpenter kicked the Roman hornets’ nest, and he’s still supping it—albeit now as heroin—from the veins of whoever he can enthrall off the dance floor at Lucius’s nightclub. He doesn’t care if you know about it,” he spits at me, and then to Aleron says, “He doesn’t care if you know it either. The only one he can’t afford to have knowledge of it is Lucius, at least not until he finagles a strong enough foothold on that vampire king’s hunting ground to snatch it out from under him.”
“Lucius will never let that happen,” Aleron says.
“Lucius is distracted,” Ignacio corrects. “He has a pretty she-wolf in his bed, his sired are ambitious and restless, and Athanasius knows it. He wants what Lucius has—a stable feeding ground close enough to the border where the drug supply is as endless as are the veins from which to drink it. It is also the one thing he will never be able to keep no matter how many times he keeps trying, because he’s stupid, stoned and too reckless to maintain patience for any length of time. That’s it. That’s it in a nutshell. He wants Club Toxic.”
“Then we go to Lucius,” Aleron says, decided. “Let’s see what he has to say about another king ousting him from his territory.”
Ignacio snorts. “He might not be as much help as you think.”
“You mean apart from the fact that shifters run Tucson, and they’re far more likely to shut him down than we are? Yes.” Aleron snorts now too. “I thought about that. But I don’t happen to be on friendly terms with any, and I’d just as soon not have to ask one for help.”
“Not that,” Ignacio says, and there’s a strangeness to his soft voice that catches even my attention.
All this time, I’ve been standing here, shocked to my core, searching my mind for a hollow in what I remember happening at the nightclub. I remember standing in line, being chosen to go inside, getting my drink, walking the perimeter of the dance floor, deciding to go home and then getting shot at. Somewhere in all that, I had a run-in with Aleron that he wiped away?
“Shit,” Aleron says.
My attention comes back to them, but they aren’t looking at me. They’re looking up over the top of me. I look up too. There are eight big-screen TVs hanging suspended on the wall directly above my head, that I haven’t noticed until now. Because of the way the ceiling juts in levels like stairs, it’s not until I come all the way into the center of the room that I see them. They’re on mute, with close caption text running along the bottom. All are turned to a different channel. One is streaming The Great British Baking Show. The rest are flashing pictures on the news. Three of those pictures are photos of me.
Finding the remote, Ignacio activates the sound on one in time for us all to hear a female newscaster saying, “…wanted for questioning in connection to the mass murder that happened tonight at Saguaro Canyons apartment complex. To recap, forty-one people were found slain in their homes at a complex where Miss Chapman also lived. No speculation can yet be made on what exactly happened, or why, but police…”
The television mutes again, leaving all of us standing in silence. I can’t breathe. My chest is aching, suddenly so tight it’s as if someone just reached in under my ribcage and grabbed me by the heart.
“They think I did that?” I choke.
“That’s the magic of television,” Ignacio muses. “Now everyone knows you did. They know your face, your name… What few friends you have who would never believe this of you, not in a million years, they won’t matter. Because the only thing you can say in your own defense is the one thing no one will believe, and
that’s a vampire did it.”
Chapter 11
Merris
I sit on the steps just outside Ignacio’s open door, still wearing the shirt Aleron gave me back at his house and his dress coat. Everything else, I’ve given back to him so he doesn’t have to make the trek up to the surface world in nothing but his trousers. In my hands, I hold the socks Ignacio gave me, just before he shooed at me with both hands, said, “Go, house elf, you’re free,” and sent me out here.
He’s an asshole too.
The socks are nice, though. They kind of look like homemade slipper socks, knitted in beige yarn on the outside, but with a thick lining of soft fake fur on the inside. I slip them on. The feet are a little big for me, but they’re very warm. Wiggling my toes in softness, all I feel is hungry, tired and sad.
I’m pretty sure I’m going to prison for forty-one murders I didn’t commit.
And that’s only if I’m not horribly slaughtered by rogue vampires first.
I’ve no idea what a shifter is, but the world I thought I knew is suddenly a much bigger and scarier place than I ever imagined.
“I’d offer to let you hole up here for the next fifty years,” Ignacio says as he escorts Aleron to the door. “But I don’t think I like either of you that much. No offense.”
“None taken,” Aleron diplomatically replies. “Thank you for the flashlight.”
“The button to get out is in the rocks above the door. Good luck,” he says, withdrawing back into his room. “Please don’t come back.”
The heavy rock slab rumbles into motion, sliding with gravel grinding slowness until it’s once more sealed and all the light is gone.
Shaking the flashlight until it comes on, Aleron offers me his hand but I shake it off. I’m still reeling from the mind-wipe revelation. Aleron is a vampire. A vampire. Capable of wiping entire memories from my mind. What did he wipe? How can I ever trust him again?
I can’t. But unfortunately, I’m stuck with him for the moment, seeing as how the entire Tucson police force is looking for me and my sister’s killer is still on the loose.
Up the stairs we go, single-file in most places because it’s so narrow. I’m more than ready to be out of this hole by the time we reach the top. My legs are like rubber. I don’t know how many times I had to stop and rest, but I’ve never felt so happy to see a car as I was once Aleron found the button releasing us back out into the night.
I slide into the passenger seat just as soon as he opens the door for me. “How much time do we have?” I ask, when he’s sitting beside me. The whole car rumbles to life when he starts it.
“Not much,” he says, one eye on the skyline which is already lightening to a plum-gray. “We have to hurry.”
“Back to your house?”
“No. He saw me with you. My house won’t be any safer than yours. The only thing working right now in our favor is the dawn. He can’t hunt you in the day, unless he’s using humans.”
“You mean as more than a food source.”
“It would make sense. Remember the man who grabbed your arm at the nightclub? He makes me wonder. A human could easily hunt other humans in that place without drawing too much scrutiny, and I hadn’t seen Athanasius or any of his nest before tonight. It makes sense that he would have agents in Club Toxic who can pass under Lucius’s radar.”
“That’s how he got to Jez.” It hurt just to say it.
“Yes.”
We drive in silence, speeding away from the mission, back up the freeway to Interstate 10, with the sky growing lighter by the second.
“If you want to crawl in the trunk, I can drive,” I offer. That might be a lie, though. I’ve never driven a stick before.
The look he gives me pretty much kills that idea. “I am not crawling in the trunk.” Glaring out at the road ahead, he adds, “You have no idea how to get where we’re going anyway. And while I’ll admit they’re not going to be happy to see me, they sure as hell aren’t going to let you in if I’m in the trunk. Chances are good they might not let us in no matter what we do.”
“Who?” I ask.
“Lucius, king of his nest and, arguably, the most powerful vampire in Tucson.” Aleron’s hands on the steering wheel are tight. It might be a trick of my imagination because I know how important this is, but it feels as if we’re driving even faster than he normally does.
“What’s the plan if he doesn’t let us in?” I’m almost afraid to ask.
“In all likelihood?” He glances at me sideways. “I will die and then so too, I suspect, will you. If not on Lucius’s command, then certainly by Athanasius’s once night falls again.”
It doesn’t take long to reach our destination. It must be a prerequisite—a person can’t become a vampire unless they’re rich. Or maybe this Lucius person simply isn’t king for nothing. His house is huge. The yard lights are on and the gate that blocks the driveway is electronically locked.
Aleron looks at the speaker box for a long time before he glances at me, rolls his window down and presses the button. The horizon is scarily bright, the color of old bruises, with just a highlight of pink on the underside of distant clouds.
It’s too close to dawn. I don’t think anyone’s going to answer. King or not, every vampire in that massive house has got to be tucked safely in their basement coffins by now. Jesus, am I about to watch Aleron go up in smoke and flames?
Panic sits in my chest like a cold fist, gradually tightening its grip with each irretrievable second that ticks on past us.
“We have to—” I forget what I’m about to say as the gate suddenly buzzes and opens, rattling back on its track and leaving the entire stretch of paved driveway open for us to approach. Not a single word comes from the speaker box. As Aleron puts the car into gear, the front porch light winks on and the door opens. No one steps out. “Yeah,” I breathe. “This isn’t ominous in the slightest.”
I look to Aleron, but our misgivings don’t change the facts. We’re out of time and options.
Driving up to the house, we leave the car parked at the garage. I’m imagining all kinds of terrible things inside the darkness waiting for us beyond that open door. There isn’t a single light on, and no one I can see is waiting to receive us.
Aleron takes the first step across the threshold, which startles me.
“Don’t you need permission to enter?”
Tsking, he stops just shy of rolling his eyes. “You are definitely going on TV restriction. Besides, they opened the door specifically so we could come inside. That is permission.”
Every curtain in the house is drawn, and once Aleron closes the door behind us, the only light we have is what slivers of a glow filter in through the cracks around the drapes that protect the porch windows. And then, suddenly, a light winks on further down the hall.
“This way,” a woman calls.
“Kindly hurry,” a man adds. “We haven’t a lot of time.”
I have more than a few misgivings, but when Aleron takes my arm, there’s nothing I can do but follow in his footsteps. Down the hall, past the kitchen, living room, den, to a master bedroom where the giant king-sized bed lies folded up against the wall, revealing stone stairs leading down. A beautiful woman—tall, slender, her white-blonde hair flowing freely down her back—is waiting near the entryway. We’ve caught them in the process of going underground and neither seems happy to be sharing this secret with us.
And yet, she’s the one who impatiently orders us to go down, waiting until we pass her before closing and locking the door behind us. We take the steep stairs down, following in the unhurried wake of a man even taller than Aleron.
The back of my neck prickles. I look back at the woman bringing up the rear of our very short train. Her stare is the coldest I think I’ve ever seen. She is not smiling. She is not friendly. She doesn’t like me.
I face forward, holding on to Aleron’s steadying arm with both hands now, all the way down into their sanctuary.
It’s everything I imagi
ne a vampire’s lair would be. Like a crypt, the walls and floor are stone. I can smell the must of dry dirt, though I don’t see bare earth anywhere. The floor is hard and cool, and we pass several small rooms before motion lights suddenly come on and we’re standing in a large room decorated only with a large stone sarcophagus rising up out of the middle of the floor. The lid is slightly askew, revealing a coffin big enough for two, lined in soft velvet and pillows.
“I’m surprised she’s not in bonds,” the man I assume to be Lucius says, turning to face us now that we’re all downstairs.
Releasing my hands, Aleron raises his hand to rest on the back of my neck. “Why would she be in bonds?”
“You are not here for the bounty?” Lucius asks. His face is a mask of politeness, but the air in here suddenly feels anything but. It’s grown heavier, colder. Distinctly and silently hostile.
On the back of my neck, Aleron’s fingers barely move, but I feel the tension in them. “What bounty?”
“The bounty I was forced to put up the minute I heard about the shifter slaughter at Saguaro Canyons. Now, the humans are blaming a human.” Lucius looks at me and both the age and the cold of his stare bore into me. “But the problem is, one human did not kill the grand matriarch of the Camino Seco coyote pack, nor did the matriarch reek of vampire. So, I am going to ask this once. What happened at that apartment complex? And I promise if you lie to me, I won’t bother ending either of you humanely. I’ll just give you to the Camino Seco shifters.”
“They won’t end you humanely, either,” the woman behind me growls.
“I don’t believe this.” I don’t mean to sound as pathetic as I do, but the wounds are still too raw, and there’s nothing so helpless and awful than not being able to prove your own innocence.
Worse than that, is this what the rest of my life is now going to be? Everyone I knew is dead and everyone I met is going to look at me with this same cold anger on their faces.
“I just wanted to find out what happened to my sister. I didn’t kill anyone!” I protest.
