A second later, the scent of her flooded my nostrils and set me on fire like cheap moonshine, burning away everything else. I smelled lilacs, swamp water and a hint of rot under the hot scent of fresh blood and vamp saliva. The hair on the back of my neck stood as I locked onto the trail and followed it up the steepest part of the excavation. When I got to the top of the pit, I turned and looked back, taking advantage of the perfect image below. The slab of concrete where we had found Abigail was beautifully lit by the full moon, just like it would have been last night. I closed my eyes and imagined the girl lying there, posed as if she looked up at where I now stood.
“Sacrifice,” I murmured.
Greg’s head popped up. “What?” he whispered back to me across a hundred yards of construction debris.
“She was an offering to something. I don’t know what, but she wasn’t just turned and left here. She was meant as an offering.”
“Interesting theory, little vampire. However did you get so smart?” purred a low voice from directly behind me.
I jumped a little and pinwheeled my arms to keep from going head over heels back into the pit. I whirled around once I’d caught my balance to find a short woman in leather pants and a sheer black top standing behind me smirking. Her dark hair was pulled back in a severe ponytail, and a spiked leather collar and thigh-high boots completed the dominatrix look perfectly. I didn’t need super-senses to know she wasn’t wearing anything under that top, and the patent leather pants were so tight she must have had more super-powers than I’d known about to get into them. That image, coupled with a scent somewhere between cinnamon, sex and cotton candy swirled together to make me more cautious than usual whenever the oldest hottie in the known universe was around.
“What are you doing here, Lilith?” I growled.
“The same thing you are. Trying to find out why there’s suddenly another vampire running around in my city,” she said calmly.
“Your city? Aren’t you still the new demoness on the block?” I asked.
“I live here now, so this interloper concerns me. I wouldn’t want anything else interfering with my business.”
I was pretty sure the “else” she was referring to was the mess I made of her strip club a little while back. There was a dustup with a gargoyle that ended with a lot of broken furniture. And a few broken people.
“Which business is that, Lilith? The strip club or the illegal fight ring? Or have you gotten involved in something even more lucrative, like snuff films?” I hid my dislike for Lilith about as well as she hid her disdain for me. We weren’t exactly the mutual admiration society.
“So defensive, little vampire. And after I helped you with your little ambulance problem, too.” She stepped closer, and even my dead heart sped up a little. Lilith was sexy before a word even existed for it, and she made me seriously uncomfortable. After all, anyone who could answer ‘boxers or briefs’ about the original Adam had some serious magic.
“Yeah . . . um, thanks for that. Now what do you know about this new vamp?” I circled around Lilith to put her back to the big hole in the ground. I figured it best to limit my obvious threats to one at a time. I could usually avoid falling in big holes, or I could avoid getting into a fight with immortal hotties, but I wasn’t sure about my ability to do both at the same time.
“I know even less than you do, Mr. Black, and I promise you those are words I never thought I would hear myself say.” Lilith took a step over the edge and floated down into the pit to stand beside the concrete altar where Abigail had been sacrificed.
“Nice trick,” I said, jumping down to land beside her in a puff of gray concrete dust. The others joined us, Sabrina leading the way. Lilith acknowledged her arrival with a nod, the way two gunfighters nod at each other in old western movies. I knew they’d rather throw down than talk, but they put that aside for the moment.
“Okay,” I went on. “Let’s move on from what you know. I’ll settle for what you sense. Or even guess.”
Lilith walked up to Abigail and sniffed around her for a few seconds, looking carefully at the scars on her throat. She even leaned in and licked the side of the girl’s neck, which I was sure sent Greg to a happy place, but it just creeped me out a little.
“I sense nothing out of the ordinary,” she said. “I know nothing about the vampire who made this new one at all, except that she made both of you.”
I didn’t give her the satisfaction of asking her how she knew. I just nodded for her to go on.
“In the ancient days when monsters were entering the territory of another, stronger beast they would leave a peace offering where it would be easy to find. A sacrifice, if you will, to request safe passage. Perhaps that is what you were, my dear.”
“I was an offering?” Abigail sputtered, outraged.
“Looks like it, kiddo. Now we need to find out to who,” I said.
“To whom, little vampire, to whom. And while I would normally suggest that I would be the logical choice, this is not the place to make a sacrifice to my authority. And I have little use for the Sanguine. So I suspect that you are looking for someone else as the intended recipient of your lovely sister.”
“Don’t you mean we are looking for someone else, Lilith?” I asked.
“Oh no, little vampire. There is no we, royal or otherwise, in this equation. Now that I am fairly certain that this involved me not at all, I shall remove myself from the fray. If you require my assistance at any point, you know where to find me. You’ll find my prices very reasonable.” Lilith stroked a hand down my chest, grinned at Sabrina, then floated back up to the lip of the construction site and walked away. A few seconds later, I heard a motorcycle rev up and drive off.
I wondered for a second why I hadn’t heard her drive up until Greg said, “She was waiting for us, bro.”
“Huh?” I grunted, studiously not looking at where Lilith had just gone and even more studiously trying not to think about how warm her hand had been on my chest. That woman made me more uncomfortable than most, and that’s saying something.
“I didn’t hear her drive up, and I was paying attention. She was waiting for us. I’d guess she came out here during the day, got whatever information she was going to get, and waited for us to show up to tell us it wasn’t her deal.”
Abigail actually raised her hand. “Um . . . for the new kid, who was that?”
Greg put on his best professor tone for his answer, and I could have sworn he actually got a little taller while pontificating. “That was Lilith. Rumored to be the first wife of Adam. Yeah, that Adam. She was banished for wanting to be on top, and Eve came along afterward. Theoretically, she was made from the same dirt Adam was, thus had the silly idea that men and women should be equals. That led to the whole thing about creating Eve from a rib so women would forever be subservient to men, and we see how well that’s worked out for everyone. So Lilith is an immortal, and there are rumors about her being a succubus, a demoness, and a host of other unpleasant things. And she’s kinda the Kingpin of Charlotte, if you’ve read enough Daredevil comics to get the reference.”
“I saw that really crappy movie with Ben Affleck, if that’s what you mean,” Abby said. “But I get it. What does she do?”
“Owns a strip club, launders money, runs hookers, kidnaps innocent people and forces them to fight to the death in underground cage matches, disposes of stolen ambulances, whatever pays the bills,” Sabrina added, distaste dripping off her tongue.
“And you guys don’t like her?” Abigail asked.
“Despise is a better word,” Sabrina answered.
“Yeah, despise works,” Greg said quickly.
“Not me, I’m just afraid of her,” I said. Abigail looked at me until I clarified. “I’m afraid of anyone and anything I can’t kill. And Lilith tops the list in Charlotte, so I’m scared shitless by her. I try not to let it get in the way of occasionally having to work with her, though.”
“She tried to have us all killed a few months ago for inter
fering with one of her illegal operations. That’s not something I’ve managed to forgive yet,” Sabrina said.
“And the lovely Detective Law has been looking for an excuse to try out Lilith’s famed immortality ever since,” I added.
“I don’t get it,” Abigail went on. “Why did she come out here just to tell us that she wasn’t responsible for . . . turning me?”
Greg ticked off the points on his fingers as he spoke. “Lilith is above all else a businesswoman. She loves few things in this world, but money is high on the list. And if we go in and start wrecking her club again, that costs her money. She knows we’ll probably believe her if she tells us the truth, so that saves her money and saves us time. It’s a win-win. And I did just give her ten grand for a five grand disposal job, so she probably looks at this little info-dump as keeping her books square.”
I looked at my conniving little partner with respect.
“Well, if Abby wasn’t a sacrifice to Lilith, then to whom?” Sabrina asked.
“That’s why we’re detectives, I guess. Our job to find out. I lost the scent of the vamp when she got into a car at the top of the pit, but I caught something else odd up there. Greg, come with me. You two keep checking for physical evidence. Abby, this will be a good test for your vamp-vision.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Sabrina asked.
“I dunno, Detective. Teach her to detect?” With that, I turned around and bounded up the side of the pit in a couple of jumps, my pudgy partner right on my heels.
Chapter 7
“What are we looking for?” Greg asked at the top of the hole. “Take a good whiff.” I gestured to the woods near the site. Greg walked over to the trees separating the stadium site from the
apartments just off campus and took a deep breath. He doubled over, coughing with the intensity of the smell. Sometimes I forgot that Greg’s sense of smell was much stronger than mine. This wasn’t one of those times. I’d just really wanted to hit him over the head with my discovery.
“Holy crap!” he gasped when he was able to speak again. “Yeah. Now what is it?”
“What are they, to be precise. There are two distinct scents here, both
from last night.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my patience. “What. Are. They?” “Well, there’s the scent of vamp, a bunch of them, and at least one of
them is really old.”
“How can you tell?” I sniffed the air experimentally, but couldn’t find
anything that told me if any vamp was old or young.
“You know how blood smells after it’s been sitting on the counter for a
few days?”
“Boy, do I, and I’ve been meaning to talk to you about taking out the
trash a little quicker.”
Greg cut me off with a wave of his hand. “Later. Well, this is the same
thing. Abby smells like fresh blood because she’s a new vamp. You and I
don’t. Lilith smells way older, even though she’s not a vamp. I think it’s got
something to do with the tissue, or how we maintain our life force or
something.”
“Anyway,” I threw in quickly before Greg got too far down the rabbit
hole with his theorizing. “So several vamps, at least one old one. What’s the
other thing? That thing that smells like a cross between cheap cigars and wet
dog?”
“I have no idea, man. I’ve never smelled anything like it.” He edged
further into the woods and sniffed deeply.
“Like what?” Sabrina asked from behind me.
I jumped about seven feet in the air and whirled around on her. “I
swear I’m going to put a bell on your neck.”
“Try it. We’ll see where that bell ends up. Never smelled anything like
what?”
“We don’t know,” Greg said from the woods.
“Well, what about all these vampires I smell?” Abigail asked, causing
me to jump again.
“Dammit, would you two cut that out!” After I calmed down, I said, “I
don’t know what we’re going to do about the vamps, but we can’t do it
tonight.”
“Why not?” Sabrina asked.
“Not enough guns and too many potential appetizers in the party.” I
gave her my best don’t-argue-with-me look. She took the hint, which kind of
amazed me.
“Fine,” she said. “Then you should at least reconnoiter their location so
we can get back there when we’re better prepared. It’s supposed to rain
tomorrow, and that’ll wash away any scents they’ve left behind.” “How do you know that?” I asked. “It’s not like you have a
super-sniffer of your own.” Of course, with her being mojo-proof and able
to sneak up on a vampire, I shouldn’t be surprised if she did turn out to have
some kind of super-powers.
“There are these miraculous creatures, Jimmy, called dogs. We in the
police department sometimes work with these creatures to apprehend bad
people called criminals. So we spend a lot of time in a great place of learning
called the Academy, so we can study these creatures and how best to use
them.” She spoke very slowly, as if to a particularly stupid child, which I
supposed was somewhat fair.
Abigail covered her mouth with one hand, but Greg didn’t even bother
to hide his belly laughs. I shot them both the finger and walked off into the
woods to follow the vamps’ scent.
I motioned for Greg to stay behind because he’s about as stealthy as an
epileptic rhinoceros. I also hoped that he’d be able to keep Abigail back
there as well. If I was going to go stalking a nest of vampires, I didn’t need a
rookie looking over my shoulder. I lost the scent a couple of times, but had
watched enough bad survival movies to track in concentric circles until I
picked it up again.
The UNCC campus was built on the outskirts of Charlotte, and over
the years the city has grown out to meet the college, creating a whole suburb
in the area. Developers hadn’t gotten to everything, though, so there were
big chunks of wooded land surrounding the campus. I was traipsing through
one of those in a general northwesterly direction, my less stealthy tendencies
masked by the carpet of pine needles on the ground. The scent of
honeysuckle was heavy as the undergrowth thickened, slowing my progress
and reminding me that spring was definitely in the air.
After sneaking through the woods for about half an hour, I came to a
tall fence around a Victorian-style house complete with porch pillars. It looked like a cross between The Amityville Horror and the frat house from Animal House, with peeling paint, loose shutters and a parking lot full of stereotypical college beaters in the front. The scent trails ran up to and over the fence line, so the vampires must have gone into the house. I had to admit, if I wanted to prey on college kids, this would be about the perfect place to live. Isolated, secure, and by the looks of the overgrown driveway, largely forgotten. Between the scents and the footprints, I figured there had to be at least a dozen vamps in there. I decided I didn’t want to take on that
many vampires by myself, so I settled for watching the house instead. I eyeballed the place for about fifteen minutes and saw no hint of
movement inside. Nothing flickering past a window, no glow of a TV, no
sounds of rampant teenage fornication, nothing. What I did see was a lot of
windows with heavy curtains to block light, bars to keep out unwanted
visitors, and the telltale extra wire running along the top of the fence that
told me it could be electr
ified with the flip of a switch. Pretty heavy security
for a frat house.
I marked the house’s location on my phone’s GPS, took a couple of
grainy pictures and crept back to the others.
“Well?” Sabrina asked. They’d finished up their crime scene
investigation and were waiting on me at the car.
“Deep subject,” I replied. “Let’s go get something to eat, and I’ll tell
you all about it.”
“You don’t eat,” she shot back.
“Yeah, I do, and the cupboard’s pretty bare. So let’s go visit Bobby and
do a little grocery shopping. I’ll fill you in on the way to the hospital.” “Bobby’s out sick today. Stress from last night’s attack and all. What’s
your Plan B for dinner? Because I am not interested in donating.” “I wasn’t going to ask. Take Greg home. Abby and I will catch a ride.”
I got out of the car.
“Oh, no,” Greg said. “She comes with me. I am not going to have you
teaching her how to hunt. Not this early. So we need a better plan.” “We don’t have a choice. She hunts, or you do. The fridge is empty. Miss
Impetuous here drank us dry after her little trip outside this morning. Now
you can keep your morality, or you can keep Abby all lily-white, but you can’t
do both. Abby, how do you feel about takeout?”
Greg wasn’t ready to give up yet. “I am not okay with this. We don’t
have to be monsters, Abby. We can find another way. There’s a guy in the
ER down at Mercy South that I’ve used once or twice. We can call him.” I took a deep breath, counted to ten, then counted to ten again in
Spanish. Then I spoke. “Greg, that dude knows about you. And he’s only
ever been able to come up with three or four pints at a time. It’s going to
take double that to keep all three of us moving and sane until we can hook
up with Bobby tomorrow.”
The Black Knight Chronicles (Omnibus Edition) Page 42
