by Nell Stark
“Sebastian,” I said as we ascended into an alley just off Mott. The rain had cleared, but puddles filled every divot in the street. “The woman with the whip—do you know her?”
“No.” He was already thumbing through his BlackBerry, eyes flickering rapidly as he scanned his messages. “She leaves me a message before every party, but she only uses burn phones.”
“If I don’t get anywhere at the Consortium, I want to find her.”
His head snapped up. “You think she has something to do with this? Why?”
“No,” I said. “But I think she might be connected to Gwendolyn somehow.”
“I’ll look into it.” His gaze flickered between my face and the backlit screen in his palm. “Be careful.”
Normally, his proprietary concern would have grated on me, but tonight I didn’t mind. I even touched him on the shoulder as I turned toward the subway station. If what we both suspected was true, he was the one at risk here—not me.
*
I avoided the front door. Vincent had been taken into Headquarters via the back entrance, and since I’d never gone in that way, I didn’t know what to expect. I approached it as silently as I could, concentrating on every sound, every scent, every stirring of the dense air. The night would mask my presence from any onlookers, but the Consortium was also likely to be busy.
The door was locked. I sucked in a breath as I held my hand to the palm scanner that jutted out from the wall. At the click of the door opening, I blew out a long sigh. At least I was in.
“In” was a corridor that made a perpendicular turn ten feet away. I made my footsteps slow and measured, despite my pounding pulse. At a bend in the hall, I paused and listened carefully for any sign of movement. All I heard were the slow, alternating beeps of several heart monitors, distant and muffled. I never would have heard them at all had I not been what I was.
I took off toward the sound but nearly blew my cover when a door, ten feet ahead and to my right, opened. Swiftly, I ducked back behind the bend, hoping that whoever had come out wasn’t trying to leave the building. For one breath-stealing moment, I thought I would be discovered, but the rhythmic treads grew softer rather than louder. I let out my breath in a relieved sigh and cautiously looked around the corner. A flash of long, dark hair and the swirl of a white lab coat was all I saw before the individual disappeared behind a door at the end of the hall. From the sound of her steps afterward, it led to a stairwell.
I counted to thirty before following her and paused to try the knob at the windowless door from which she’d emerged. Locked. When I twisted harder, I heard the metal groan. I could probably have forced it, but that might have given away my presence, and I wanted to see where she had gone.
The door to the stairwell swung open at a touch and I found myself on a landing with two choices: ascent or descent. Closing my eyes, I listened for the beeping of the monitors. It was a little louder now, and seemed to be coming from below me, though I couldn’t be sure as echoes bounced off the concrete walls. Down first, then I could always go up later, if I was mistaken.
I wasn’t. The stairwell opened into an antechamber that seemed to be some kind of observation facility. Several chairs were lined up to face a large window cut into the far wall overlooking a larger room in which at least a dozen beds had been arranged in dormitory-style rows. Half of them were curtained off, the other half empty. As I watched, the woman in the lab coat picked a file out of a cabinet against one wall and drew back the curtain on the closest bed. I had the briefest glimpse of the patient’s face—covered in heavy stubble and shining with sweat—before the woman’s body obscured my vision.
I cursed, eyeing the scanner next to the sliding door that separated me from the room. I doubted this one would accept my palm.
Too late, I heard the snick of a lock catching behind me. I whirled to find Harold Clavier, dressed in deep red scrubs, stepping away from a small door next to the staircase that I had overlooked in my eagerness to discover what was going on in the makeshift hospital. A stream of cold air wafted past my face. In the midst of struggling to gather my thoughts, I absurdly wondered whether he had stepped out of a refrigerator. And then I realized that he had. A morgue. Gwendolyn’s body was probably back there.
“You have no business here, Valentine.” Clavier’s voice was devoid of inflection. I wondered if the mannerism was studied, or if he really felt nothing.
“Yes, I do.” The surge of adrenaline at being caught made me sound a little shaky. “A woman died tonight, displaying the same symptoms as the man at Luna a week ago and the woman in Tribeca a few days back.” I searched his eyes for any sign of sympathy, of empathy. Had the parasite stolen every human impulse from him? “Something is killing shifters. Alexa is coming home soon. I need her to be safe.”
“We are already investigating these incidents,” he said, using the same tone of voice that a father might use for his recalcitrant child. “I can’t tell you anything further.”
“Let me help, damn it!” I couldn’t keep from raising my voice. “I have skills you can use. My training is excellent. Put me to work. Please.”
Clavier tilted his head to look at me over the tops of his glasses. “You can stop your snooping and allow me and my staff to do our jobs. We have this under control.” He walked to the sliding doors, pressed his hand to the scanner, and stepped over the threshold. He was taunting me. Mocking me. As the doors hissed shut behind him, I clenched my fists hard enough to break the skin of my own palms.
“No,” I said to the glass that separated me from the truth. “I don’t think you do.”
Chapter Seven
The rough stone of the balustrade chafed my palms as I leaned forward in search of clean air. Across the boulevard, the walls of the library burned, even the stone catching flame in the impossible heat of the conflagration. Hoarse screams rose from the streets below as smoke reached down my throat to claw at my lungs. I was going to die. We all were. I could feel the lives being extinguished around me like so many flickering candles. How had I not seen this coming?
Breathing shallowly, I tugged hard at the rope I had knotted around one of the balusters. It would not extend to the ground. I could only pray that it would reach close enough. I didn’t have much time—the floor was growing warmer. Soon, the four walls of this chamber would also be wreathed in flame.
One of us had to survive. If the clan line did not persist, the Order of Mithras itself would be jeopardized. I grasped the rope and swung my legs over the edge, then eased my grip enough to descend into the billowing haze. All too soon, I found myself dangling at its end, thick smoke obscuring the length of the drop. I flexed my knees, clenched my jaw, and let my hands fall away.
The impact sent streaks of pain shooting through my legs and up along my spine. My right foot twisted under me, and I felt my anklebone snap as I collapsed against the flagstones. They burned my palms. Closing my lips around an agonized moan, I tried to stand and failed. My eyes watered, tears tracking through the grime that covered my face as I slowly pushed myself forward, condemned to slide on my belly like the serpent in Paradise.
There was nowhere for me to go, but I had to carry on. Perhaps all was not lost—perhaps the invaders would leave me for dead. So long as there was the slimmest chance of survival, I would not yield. And then, instead of heated rock, my hand touched smooth, cool leather. I looked up, and my hopes died.
“You,” I said, the pain in my leg eclipsed by the agonizing knowledge that I had failed.
Balthasar Brenner laughed, his wild hair dusted with glowing sparks. “Who else were you expecting, René?”
“This is madness,” I said hoarsely. “You are declaring war on the vampires. Do you want the world to bathe in blood yet again?”
Brenner crouched and fisted my hair, baring my throat. I swallowed convulsively. “You know as well as I do that your kind started this war by engineering a plague against us.” His lips drew back from his teeth and he snarled into my face. “Th
e Alliance will be dissolved. Die certain of that.”
Surprise. Bewilderment. They were sensations I had not felt in over three hundred years. As Balthasar Brenner’s body blurred smoothly into that of a large, white wolf, I knew they would be my last.
I woke to the ominous sound of a stirring beehive. As I blinked my way into consciousness, I realized three things: my throat was throbbing more insistently than it had since I’d been turned, my left arm had fallen asleep, and the beehive was my cell phone vibrating against the coffee table. Alexa. I scooped it up and muttered a hasty hello, but the call had already gone to voicemail. Sebastian.
I set the phone down and shook the needling sensation out of my left arm, then swung my legs over the side of the couch and stared around my apartment. Twilight filtered through the window. A rerun of some crime show played on the television. I remembered getting home from the lab around six and collapsing into the soft embrace of the couch, silently vowing that I would only close my eyes for a second. So much for that plan.
The scent of char was still so strong in my nose that I got up to check the kitchen. Nothing burning—I hadn’t used the pots all week. The odor was entirely a product of my crazy dream. It had felt so real—the sharp pain of my cracking ankle, the billowing smoke and panicked dread that had been choking me by turns. No, not me. René. But who was he? The name sounded familiar…
And then I remembered the annoying, holier-than-thou vampire who had so imperiously given me orders in Helen’s office. He’d mentioned a René. “René Valois,” he had said, “Blood Prime of the Clan of the Missionary, has summoned you to Sybaris.” What a strange and vivid dream to have about someone I’d never met, never seen—someone I’d heard of only once. My pulse was still elevated from my dream-self’s desperation, and thirst flared with every heartbeat.
To take my mind off the craving, I called Sebastian back. “Sorry I missed you,” I said. “Fell asleep by accident. What’s going on?”
“I have an address for you. Of the woman with the whip.” I grabbed a pen and a crumpled pizza receipt from the table as he rattled off a street and apartment number in the Bronx.
“Thanks,” I said, padding into the kitchen. For a long moment, I deliberated between the tap and a bottle of red wine. The choice was easy: the viscous wine sometimes fooled my throat for an instant. “I’ll head out in a few minutes.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“Hell no, you’re not!” My hand shook, and I cursed under my breath as the rich Shiraz splashed onto my white tank top. “If there’s some kind of pathogen out there, then vampires don’t seem to be susceptible. I’ll be safe. You’d be in danger.”
“If there’s some kind of pathogen out there,” he said, “then I’ve probably already been exposed.”
However likely that was, I refused to believe it. I didn’t want to think of Sebastian that way, convulsing helplessly in the thrall of some power he could not defeat. “Still, there’s a chance you haven’t been. And we should try to keep it that way.”
He was quiet for a moment. The red wine sluiced down my throat, thick and fragrant but nothing like what I needed. Alexa was supposed to come home tomorrow. I would go to the airport, even though I suspected she would not be stepping off the plane. Grimacing, I threw the rest of the glass back in one swallow.
“Call on the land line. Hang on a second.” Sebastian’s murmur was followed by the sound of him setting down his cell phone. “Brenner,” I heard distantly.
Brenner. The dream returned in a rush: the taste of smoke coating my mouth, the sharp tug of Brenner’s fingers in my hair, the despair pressing behind my eyes as I realized my fate was sealed. Balthasar Brenner. The memory of the snarling white wolf made my skin prickle. It had felt so real.
“Back,” Sebastian said. “Now where—”
“Is your father named Balthasar?”
Silence greeted my question. “Yes,” he said finally, his voice flat. “Why?”
“I had…a dream.” I paused, the words sounding ridiculous as I said them.
“About my father?”
“Yes. It was very vivid. He turned into a white wolf.”
“He has been known to do that,” Sebastian said dryly.
“I’m sure there’s a logical explanation,” I said, even though I wasn’t. Had Sebastian ever mentioned the kind of wolf into which his father transformed? I didn’t think he had. So how had my imagination manufactured the correct details?
I was no stranger to nightmares, but this one had been different. “Just random neurons firing,” I told him and myself. “Probably inspired by our conversation last week.”
“If I contributed to his invading your dreams, then believe me, I apologize.”
“Invading,” I said slowly, remembering how my hope had been extinguished when I’d found myself in Brenner’s hands. “In my dream, he was invading a city.”
Sebastian barked out a laugh. “Your random neurons seem to have generated a very accurate picture. I have no doubt that he would like to invade several cities, if he could.”
As he spoke, I upended the bottle of wine and frowned when only a few drops dribbled out. My throat was pulsing now, and my head was starting to ache. Sighing, I reached for the bottle of painkillers next to the sink and shook three into my palm. At least I could do something about my head.
“Val? You still with me?”
I blinked hard, realizing that in a matter of seconds I had zoned out. What the hell was going on? “Uh, yeah. Sorry. Distracted.” Distracted, yet in dire need of a distraction. I pushed off the counter and headed toward the bedroom, putting the phone on speaker while I shucked off my stained tank and ran it under the bathroom tap. “I’m going out. Did you get a name to go with that address?”
“Shade.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s it.” Sebastian’s voice was laced with frustration again. “You’ll call me as soon as you find anything.”
It wasn’t a request, but I didn’t take umbrage. I couldn’t stand feeling helpless either. And this was particularly difficult for him, I knew, since he was being forced to rely not on another Were, but on a vampire.
“I’ll call.” I pulled on a T-shirt and examined myself in the mirror: too thin, too pale, my eyes bloodshot. I looked haggard. Ill. On the edge of sanity.
*
Sebastian’s address led me to a run-down brick building in Mott Haven. The alley next to it smelled of decay and urine, and I focused on breathing through my mouth. It reminded me of the site of my attack at the hands of the Missionary, and I struggled to tamp down the surge of fear that accompanied the hazy memories. Concentrating instead on the door, which was almost hanging off its hinges, I knocked gingerly at first and then harder a few moments later.
At the sound of soft footsteps scuffing over floorboards, I rested my hand on my gun. The woman who opened the door bore only a slight resemblance to the dominatrix who ruled the Red Circuit’s weekly stage. Without her heeled black boots she was of less than average height, and the long, dark hair that usually flowed down over her shoulders from beneath the mask was pulled back into a ponytail. Her eyes were a little puffy around the edges, as though she had been crying. This close, I caught the faint but distinctive musky scent that clung to her skin and marked her as a shifter.
“You’re the one with the whip,” I said, edging one toe between the door and the frame so she couldn’t shut me out.
She took a step backward in alarm, eyes flickering between my face and the gun at my side. “Who are you? How did you find me?”
“It wasn’t easy.” I held up both hands, knowing that I risked her transforming if she became too frightened or upset. But instead of shivering into her animal form, she braced one hand on the wall and coughed hard into her elbow. Suddenly, her puffy eyes took on an entirely different meaning. The skin around her nose was red and a little raw, too.
“You’re sick,” I said. “Like Gwendolyn was.”
She rai
sed her head and I watched the apprehension on her face turn to despair. “Come in,” she said, and I entered into a clean but Spartan apartment. Her asceticism confused me; surely Sebastian paid her handsomely for the services she rendered to the Circuit. But there was no evidence of money here.
“Who are you?” she said again, once the door had shut.
“My name is Valentine Darrow. I’m—”
“A vampire. I’ve heard of you.” When she arched one thin eyebrow, I felt a brief echo of the aura of power that always surrounded the dominatrix. “Your girlfriend is infamous.”
“She’s saving my soul,” I said quietly.
Shade scoffed. “Saving? You look about as good as I feel.” She gestured to a worn armchair and perched on the edge of the futon across from it. “You’re not here at the behest of Lambros, or I’d be in the back of a van right now. So, why?”
“What if I had been?” I countered. “If that’s what you’re afraid of, why did you open the door?”
She laughed. “Lambros wouldn’t have knocked.”
I rested my elbows on my knees. “I’ve seen two Weres die now with similar symptoms, and I’ve heard of a third. The Consortium is stonewalling me. Alexa is supposed to come home tomorrow, and I can’t reach her. I need to figure out what’s happening. To protect her. Please, will you tell me whatever it is that you know? If I can help you, I will.”
Shade met my eyes for several seconds. Whatever she saw in my entreating gaze must have been convincing, because she nodded. “Gwen was my lover. A little over a week ago, she came down with a random nosebleed that wouldn’t quit for the longest time. A few days later, she felt feverish. As though she had the flu. I tried to convince her not to go for the Record on Friday, but she insisted that she was starting to feel better.” The ghost of a smile twisted her lips. “Always so stubborn, my Gwen.”
