Midnight Curse (Disrupted Magic Book 1)

by Melissa F. Olson

  “You weren’t chosen,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You were leverage. An insurance policy in case Molly got stabby after her apprenticeship. You’re just a brainwashed pawn with daddy issues.”

  “Better a pawn than a whore,” he said nastily, and Jesse shot him in the chest.

  “No!” Molly yelped. Jesse gave her an innocent, bewildered look, like maybe the gun had gone off by itself. I approved.

  Oskar’s hand clutched the wound, but his eyes didn’t leave Molly. “I was supposed to protect him from you!” he yelled. “We thought—we both thought—you had moved on. Why did you come back? Why did you kill him!”

  “Because he killed them,” she said flatly. “I went home, decades later, to see what became of my family. Only as it turned out, they had all died the night Alonzo came for me. My parents, my sisters, my brothers. He had killed them even before he promised to leave them alone. He used them to control me, and they were already dead.”

  For one brief instant, something almost human flicked across Oskar’s face. “I did not know about his promise,” he said sullenly, and in that moment he reminded me of a teenage boy who’s realized he was in the wrong. “I apologize for nothing, but . . . I did not know.”

  She gave him a tiny nod. I could already see him straightening up, looking less pained. We were running out of time.

  “What’s the plan, Molly?” I asked. “You don’t want him to die, fine. I think it’s garbage, but whatever. What are we doing with him instead?”

  “We take him to Dashiell,” she said, but her voice was uncertain.

  “Then Dashiell will just be the one to kill him,” I pointed out. “And if you let him go, he might leave LA, but he’s definitely going to take more women. He’s going to keep doing this.”

  Oskar said nothing. He was eyeing Jesse with a wary look, one hand still clapped over the bullet wound. The guy was crazy, but not entirely stupid.

  “I don’t know,” Molly wailed. “Alonzo fucked with his head, and it’s my fault! He wouldn’t have done any of it if Oskar hadn’t known me.”

  “Maybe not,” I said gently. I gestured toward the vampire, who was still covered in Molly’s blood. “But he’s broken.”

  “So were you!”

  Touché. That stung a little bit, but she wasn’t wrong. After Olivia fucked with my head, I’d been broken, too.

  But now that I was seeing this whack job, I realized that I had only been manipulated. Oskar had been full-on reconditioned. Or maybe he’d always had a little seed of misogyny and violence, and Alonzo had simply spotted it and helped it grow. Either way, the guy didn’t strike me as redeemable.

  I glanced at Jesse, but he just shook his head. He didn’t know what to do either. We all stood there, waiting, until the new bullet tinkled to the ground. Then I took a step toward Oskar. Jesse shifted his body so he could keep the gun on the now-human vampire, and Molly wrung her hands, giving me a pleading look.

  I walked right up to Oskar until we were almost nose to nose. He smirked at me, but there was a little bit of uncertainty behind his expression. Good luck hiding behind vampire superpowers now, asshole. “You got a raw deal,” I said briefly, “I get that. But how can you not see that selling the bodies of unwilling women is just plain wrong?”

  His smirk faded. He looked at me with incomprehension. “Why?”

  I blinked. “Why? Why is it wrong to kidnap, rape, and torture young women? Is that a real question?”

  “Women are not thinking creatures,” he said, his voice perfectly reasonable, like we were arguing about the cognitive power of, say, kittens. “Alonzo made me see that. They do not know what is best for them. I take them in; I give them a place to live, blood to drink. I make them immortal,” he went on. “What is a little pain, a little time spent pleasuring the greater sex, in exchange for that?”

  I felt a terrible anger building in my chest, and at that moment I couldn’t have controlled my radius if I tried. It was expanding by the second. I felt a tiny zip at the new edge of it—the familiar sensation of a vampire’s press, fizzing out against my radius—and a terrible idea was born in my head. I just needed to keep Count Asshat talking. “And the eight girls who died?” I said. “What about them?”

  “Twelve was too many to control,” he said, in the same reasonable tone. “Too many bodies to move to this location. The dead girls were collateral damage.” He shrugged in a dismissive way, like when you spill your drink and have to pay for a new one. What are you gonna do?

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. It was too far back for Molly or Oskar to notice, although Jesse might have. Louder, I said, “If Dashiell’s so powerful, why risk coming to Los Angeles? Was it because of the motorcycle club?”

  He gave me a look of condescending approval. “Their leader is a moron who can be easily controlled,” he said. “And he has connections in prostitution and pornography. He can watch the business for me during the day, and if the police ever become interested in me, he will make a perfect scapegoat.” A sardonic smile. “Besides, this city comes with revenge on my whore of an ex.”

  Molly flinched. I just stared at the guy, genuinely astonished. The guy was still talking in present tense, as though we were all going to just let him walk out the door and pursue his perverted dreams.

  But I needed to keep him on topic. “Three of the MC guys died here tonight,” I pointed out. “You got them killed.”

  Oskar just spread his hands with a smile. “There are always more.”

  Even though I’d been expecting it, the shot was loud. It rang through the small, empty space like a banshee wail, and before the echo died down Oskar had fallen. Molly screamed and dropped with him, kneeling beside him as blood drained from the bullet hole in his forehead. Jesse turned and jerked his gun up, pointing it at the aging, bushy-haired biker, who stood there with a gray face, a big-ass pistol, and no apology in his eyes.

  Molly was crying, and when she held up Oskar’s body I could see that most of the back of his head was missing. “No!” she sobbed. She looked up at me. “Move away, Scarlett!” she cried. “Maybe the vampire magic—”

  I shook my head. “He’s gone, Molly.”

  Molly rose and saw the old biker who’d shot Oskar. She flew at him, but I darted forward and grabbed the back of her dress with the arm that didn’t have a bullet graze. The dress came apart in my hand, but not before I’d stepped close enough to wrap my arms around her. She fought me to get at the biker, but even wounded, when we were both human I was stronger than she was. I held on. After a moment, the fight left her. She turned herself around and buried her face in my neck, crying in earnest.

  “Could someone please explain,” the biker said in a low, dangerous voice, “what in all of fuck is going on here?”

  I patted Molly’s back, giving Jesse a look that said, All yours, dude.

  Jesse stepped forward. “You were taken for a ride, that’s what happened,” he said. He pointed to Oskar’s body. “This man gave you mind-control drugs that convinced you to go along with some seriously fucked-up plans.”

  “What plans?” the guy demanded. “Who is he?”

  “He’s just some asshole,” Jesse said, and truer words were never frickin’ spoken. “He made you think that he was a guy you trusted twenty-odd years ago. He got you to send your guys to do some pretty nasty things, Lee.”

  Lee, for that was apparently his name, shook his head stubbornly. “No. I don’t take no drugs. That never happened.”

  “Then can you explain how you got here?” Jesse’s voice was gentle. “Or why you sent your guys to be killed, just on this one man’s say-so? You were dosed.”

  Lee looked uncertain. And then in the distance, I heard the first siren. Apparently, even in City of Industry you can make enough noise to alarm someone.

  “Say I believe you,” Lee said over the noise. “How the fuck are we going to explain all of this to the cops?”

  “I’ve got an idea about that,” Jesse said grimly. “But I
’d need you to go along with some things.”

  Chapter 46

  Telling lies to cops is a major part of my occupation. I’ve done it plenty of times, with and without Dashiell helping the lie along via some creative mind-control. But even I had to admit that the story Jesse cooked up for the police was masterful. Like we should write it on a poster, frame it in gold, and hang it on the wall in Dashiell’s mansion kind of masterful.

  Here’s how it went: Molly, a helpless young college student with a rare sunlight allergy, had had a fling with a biker, an asshole named Carl. According to Lee Harrison, Carl, who was not terrible-looking once you got past the greasy beard, had a couple of very real convictions for rape and assault. Eventually this fictional version of Molly wised up and decided to break it off, but old Carl didn’t take the news well. In fact, he showed up at her house, killed her roommates, and burned down the building, all while she was away from home. Molly had run to hide with an old friend, Frederic, but Carl and his biker buddies had found her at his place. Frederic had shot Carl in the foot, and his Rottweiler had killed two of Carl’s pals. Carl had beaten the shit out of Frederic and taken him and Molly to the Mock-Donald’s in City of Industry, where Carl intended to . . . well, do really bad things to her.

  Meanwhile, Molly’s old friend Scarlett (me) got wind of Molly’s kidnapping and called Molly’s ex-boyfriend Oskar, as well as my friend Jesse Cruz, the famous ex-detective. I convinced Jesse not to call the police, and the three of us stormed the Mock-Donald’s to rescue Molly. We also brought Frederic’s Rottweiler, who helped us “subdue” the bikers. Unfortunately, the evil bikers managed to shoot Frederic and Oskar, killing them both. Lee came to the Mock-Donald’s to stop Carl, but arrived too late to save him. We saved Molly, and the (imaginary) Rottweiler ran off. There would likely be searches, and the press would probably have a lot to say about responsible dog ownership. I felt a tiny bit guilty about that, but it was worth it to keep Shadow out of all this.

  Under regular circumstances, of course, the police would probably have figured out that this story had a few ridiculous holes. But Dashiell sent his “lawyer,” an Arabian vampire named Fahima, to help press the police officers who were questioning us. It also didn’t hurt that Molly was so obviously abused and distraught—I’d stayed close enough that she still had the black eyes and the cut on her face, not to mention a lot of blood staining her hair and shredded clothes. And it helped that that Jesse had a solid gold reputation within the department. He wasn’t well liked, but he was grudgingly respected, and that counted on our side. Finally, we were told we could go home, as long as we stayed in town.

  At 6 a.m., Jesse pulled the van into the driveway at my house, and he, Molly, Shadow, and I dragged ourselves toward the front door. Molly was carrying her go-bag, which still held a change of clothes for her. To my surprise, Eli was not only awake and home, but sitting outside on one of the Adirondack chairs we used when we were playing with Shadow.

  “Jesse,” I said, “can you get Molly set up in Shadow’s cell? The cot’s gone, but there’s a sleeping bag in the hall closet.”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Shadow, go with him,” I instructed. “Jesse can give you a steak from the fridge.”

  Shadow’s ears perked up, and she practically pranced into the house. At least one of us was unaffected by the night’s events. I was gonna have to hose blood off her again, though.

  I went and sat down in the chair next to Eli’s, tilting my head back. I was so tired that I needed a new classification for tiredness.

  “You’re okay,” Eli said quietly. His voice was heavy with relief, and it was only then I realized that this was why he was waiting up. I hadn’t even thought to call him until we were almost back to the cottage, and then I’d figured he’d either be at the Trials or sleeping. “Is it over?”

  “For the most part. We’ll need to do some more cleanup tomorrow night, but . . . yeah. We got the bad guy.” I told him about Molly’s friends, who were on their way to a safe house in San Francisco. Fahima had made the arrangements for me. As it turned out, she knew how to access all of Dashiell’s business-y stuff. She’d offered Molly a few different cities to choose from, but we’d picked San Francisco because that’s where Corry was located. She would be able to check on the girls for us, and give them occasional breaks from vampirism if they needed it. She was even about their age.

  “We still need to talk about us,” Eli said when I was finished.

  “Okay . . .” I said, letting it hang. I could have pled tiredness, or claimed that I’d been through enough for one day, but that wouldn’t have been fair. Eli had been patient, setting his personal worries aside until the crisis was over. I owed him this conversation. I gestured for him to start. “You go first.”

  “Last week, at Jack’s wedding, we talked about marriage,” he began.

  My stomach flopped over, a cold, wet feeling that somehow didn’t make an audible sound. “Yes.”

  “I thought we were heading in that direction. I thought our life together was pretty damned good.”

  “It is good,” I insisted. “I really love you.”

  “I know you do. And I love you. The thing is,” he said, and his ice-blue eyes were bottomless in that moment, “until this situation with Molly, I thought we were on the same page about the future, and more than that, about . . . what’s really important.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Are you suggesting Molly’s life isn’t important?”

  He waved one hand. “No, not that, it’s just . . . I have this bartending job for Will, and it’s fine. I like making the sculptures, and that’s fine too. But the things that are really important to me are family—you and the pack. Especially the pups.”

  I stared at him, not getting it. He sighed. “I know, I’m not explaining this very well. Look, there are people who wake up every morning excited to go to work. They might still complain about their jobs, and they’ll take vacations like everyone else, but at the end of the day, their work fulfills them. But that’s not me. I’m the other kind of person. I work for a paycheck, and while I don’t hate my job, if I lost it tomorrow I’d just go find a new one.” He reached across the space between our chairs to take my hand. “What fulfills me is being with you, and my place in the pack. I used to think you were a paycheck girl, too, but since this thing with Molly started, I realized . . .” He took a deep breath, pushed it out. “You love your job,” he said simply.

  I pulled back my hand, hugging my arms to my chest. A few days ago, I would probably have denied this statement. But as much as I hated to admit it . . . I’d had fun, these last two days. Oh, I’d been worried and upset and terrified, but also . . . yeah. I hadn’t done any of it for the fun, but that wasn’t the same as not having any.

  “Why is that a bad thing?” I asked. “Don’t you want me to love my job?”

  “Not when it puts you in danger. Not when you constantly feel the need to prove yourself, risk yourself.”

  “But we saved Molly,” I said, my voice coming out . . . desperate. I felt like I was on a train that was slowly going off the rails, and I didn’t know the magic words to stop it. “The bad guy’s dead. It’s over.”

  “Yeah, this crisis is over. But there will be another one. Maybe next week, maybe in another three years, but there will be another. And what if we’re married by then? What if we have a child?”

  An old hurt filled my mouth with bitterness. “I can’t—”

  “I know, nulls can’t get pregnant. There are other options, though. We could make it happen.” He reached across the space between us and ran his fingers through a tendril of my hair, which had fallen loose from the ballerina bun. “But either way, the next time something falls apart, you’re going to be out there risking your life again, and I’ll be stuck here, turning into this person I don’t want to be. This possessive, angry person who loves you so much that I feel helpless.”

  This was a moment when I could have launched into my feminist speec
h about taking care of myself and not needing him to worry about me. But if I had learned one frickin’ thing in this relationship, it was that he couldn’t control his need to protect me any more than I could control my need for independence.

  Eli got out of his chair and crouched down in front of mine. He reached up and brushed the tears from my cheeks. When had I started crying? “Are you asking me to quit my job?” I whispered.

  “I’m asking you,” he said gently, “if you think you could even be happy without it. Happy being with me. Being a wife, and maybe a mother, with a job that doesn’t require risks.”

  And this was it. This was the moment where I needed to decide who I was going to be. Hero or housewife?

  No, that wasn’t fair. It was reductive, and besides, that wasn’t really the question. The question was, after all the things I’d done and experienced, could I still be happy in a relatively human life?

  Assuming I could walk away from the Old World now without Dashiell and the others penalizing me . . . would I?

  Five years ago, I would have left with a song in my heart. But since then, I’d come to realize that being who I was, doing the things I did . . . it helped people. And I liked that.

  I reached up to touch Eli’s cheeks. He smelled like the ocean and aftershave and laundry soap, all the good clean smells that I now associated with home. We had been so happy.

  And the moment I thought those words, I knew it was over.

  “No,” I said, pushing my voice past the lump in my throat. “I love you. And I love the person that being with you makes me. But I love the other part of me, too. The one who does all the things you’re afraid of.”

  He nodded, and in that instant I knew this was exactly what he’d expected. “You’re such a good man,” I said, my voice cracking. “This would really be a lot easier for me if you were a dickweed.”

  He smiled faintly. I didn’t want to say the words, but one of us had to, and for once I was determined to be brave. “We’re breaking up, aren’t we?” I said.