by Erin Embly
I handed it back to him, and he shrugged as he took a drink for himself. “So . . .” He wiped the milk mustache off his upper lip. “You going to tell me what the fuck’s going on?”
“Has Miriam briefed you about the crime scene from this morning?”
“She has. Said you offered up your undercover services to help solve the case.” He braced his arms on the kitchen counter to lean forward and shake his head at me. “Woulda been nice if you’d consulted with me first.”
“Should I have called in front of them to ask permission from ‘my boyfriend’?”
He chuckled. “You shouldn’t have told them at all. Best to keep things separate even if it turns out we’re all looking for the same bad guys. If your cover gets blown, you’re really done for. No more Guardian work for you, even in secret.” Turning around, he opened the fridge and put the jars of milk in. “And Crane didn’t buy that, you know. About us dating. He’s not an idiot, just too polite to question it.”
“I—”
“So you’ll need to figure out another lie to tell him,” Dirk said quickly, talking over me. “Anyway, I’m coming with you tonight. Mission just got a lot more dangerous if we add all the suicides from today to the missing kids, and you need backup.” His eyes lit up for a moment. “Your brother has a flamethrower I can use, in case things get hairy.”
“A what?” I asked.
“You know.” He mimed the act of shooting flames at enemies all around him. “Bloodsuckers hate fire and I hate bloodsuckers. What time do we need to go?”
I sighed and sat down at the table, my body suddenly anxious for that nap I’d hoped to get in before tonight. “I appreciate the enthusiasm, really,” I said. “But something else just came up.”
“Oh?”
“Whoever sent the vampire after me today might have my brother and his daughter next up on their kill list.”
“Meaning you want me to take the kid somewhere else?”
“Meaning I want you to stay here and help protect them all.” I rubbed my eyes, then lifted my hair to show him Miriam’s tiny blob on my neck. “So it’s a good thing I told your partner what I’m doing tonight. He and Miriam can hang nearby just in case.”
“They don’t have any flamethrowers,” he pointed out, and I didn’t dignify it with a response.
“I’m going to get some rest.” I looked at my watch. “Wake me in an hour. And Dirk?”
“Hm?” he asked, a slight frown on his face.
“I’ll kill you if you let anything happen to them.”
“That’s no way to speak to your boyfriend,” he called as I walked up the stairs, holding my middle finger out behind me and unable to keep a tiny smirk off my face.
I woke feeling groggy although my heart was pounding in my chest. I could still hear the flies buzzing around me even though they, like the nightmare, were gone. That grotesque face on Noah’s body still beckoned to me, skeletal arms surrounding both me and Carina, this time peeling the flesh off our bones with sharp fingers. It was the pain that had woken me, and the fear. Both things I’d always been better equipped to deal with when I was awake.
My legs shook as I moved them out from under the covers and planted my feet on the floor, and I cursed the lack of control I had over my body and my emotions when I was sleeping.
It might have been worth it if I’d actually managed to get in some rest, but a glance at my phone told me it had barely been half an hour. It was just past five pm now, and I had to meet Soma in a little over two hours.
After a few breaths to get my bearings, I stood and shuffled my way downstairs. Laughter filled the air, and I stopped short on the steps, one bare foot hanging in the air while my fingers gripped the railing.
No, I thought, not here. But then it came again, more laughter, and it didn’t echo all around me like it had underground. This was distinctly coming from the living room, and it sounded like more than one person.
I finished walking down and turned the corner to see Noah, his usual face thankfully all there, sitting with everyone around the coffee table, playing a game of some sort.
Wait, no—not everyone. Ray wasn’t there, probably upstairs still researching, so who—
“Etty?” I practically yelled when my eyes managed to process the familiarity of the dark hair on the woman whose back was turned towards me.
She twisted over the back of the couch to face me and gave me a stiff smile, raising her hand in a wave. “Hi,” she said. “Sorry, I was napping when you got here, and then you were napping, and—”
“What the fuck, Etty!” All my grogginess gone, I sped over to her and threw my arms over the couch and around her shoulders.
She stiffened for an instant before hugging me back, and my head spun with the realization that I wasn’t sure we’d ever hugged before—and that this was probably not the best time for me to get myself covered in glittery fae dust. But I didn’t care. I was that happy to see her.
“Get a room, you two,” Carina said from across the table with a scoff.
I held back the urge to give her the finger only because Noah was sitting next to her.
Etty, on the other hand, just shrugged and said, “That’s a great idea.”
She was on her feet and hopping over the back of the couch before anyone could protest, taking my hand and dragging me into the kitchen, where she promptly poured a cup of steaming coffee and handed it to me.
“I made a pot when I heard you were asleep,” she said, and I would have been even happier to see her if that were possible. “There’s fresh goat milk in the fridge.”
I shook my head and brought the coffee to my lips, willing to pass on the milk for today. “How the hell are you here?” I asked once I’d taken a sip.
Etty tapped her long nails on the counter in a rolling pattern, from pinky to thumb. “I snuck out of the fae realm—that place is hell.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Snuck out? So they don’t know you’re here?”
“I mean at this point they probably know I’m gone. But I hope they don’t know I’m here.”
“You hope?” I tried not to let my alarm show in my face. If Etty was a fugitive again, I wasn’t sure how I felt about her holing up here with Noah and Carina and Ray. Not that I’d want her anywhere else, but still.
“It’s fine,” she said with a wave of her hand. “They have bigger things to worry about for now.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, wishing that for once she’d just tell me something straight.
“There’s been an incident. One of our kind gone rogue, used a crapton of dust and did a crapton of damage.” She leaned forward a little. “I mean like colossal compared to my thing.”
I stiffened in recognition. Could she be talking about the crime scene I’d crashed this morning?
“So they sent in a couple of equally colossal enforcers,” she continued. “The kind that never gets out of fairyland. They needed an extra-special portal, and there wasn’t time to enchant it with all the usual security. And I just . . . piggybacked a bit when they were leaving.”
“Hang on, back up,” I said. “These enforcers. What are they supposed to do over here?”
“Enforce,” Etty said.
“No, I mean . . . The incident,” I said, trying to take myself back to the crime scene. The golden eyes I’d seen in the alley outside came back to me now—could that have been one of these enforcers? “I think I know what you’re talking about, and the guy’s dead. Drained himself completely dry of dust and swallowed an iron doorknob to finish the job.”
Etty jerked at my words, her nails halting in their tapping. She leaned back, propping herself up on the counter for support as her eyes moved to the ground.
“Sorry,” I said, wishing I’d remembered just how sensitive she was when it came to iron. “Do you need—”
“I’m fine.” She looked up at me again. Her jaw was shaking slightly, and I could tell she was trying not to be sick. “If he swallowed . . .” She shook her
head. “If he’s dead. Then they’ll go after whoever made him do it.”
“How do you know someone made him do it?” I asked, and she gave me her signature “Come on, Darcy. Are you high?” look. I almost smiled to see it.
“No one would do that. No one could do that on their own.” She bit her lip in thought for a moment. “Humans are different. You weirdos are all about self-destructive behavior all the time. For us—when iron is involved—we just can’t. He might have been able to drain himself of dust, but he couldn’t have swallowed that unless someone else shoved it down his throat.”
“Hmm,” I said. That was interesting. I’d already been operating on the assumption that these murder-spree incidents weren’t caused by troubled individuals acting of their own volition. But there was a difference between making someone go crazy and forcing them to do something specific like swallowing an iron doorknob.
Or tearing out their own throat, I thought, my mind on the shifter in the Metro tunnel. Then I remembered what I had noticed just before she’d gone wild, when I’d touched her—that it had felt like her soul wasn’t all there. Not her mind, but her soul. Maybe that was how these people were being controlled.
Etty snapped her fingers in my face, a touch of glittering dust sprinkling into the air as she did it. “You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Just dealing with too much shit right now.”
“Tell me about it,” she said.
I knew she was being sarcastic, but I shook my head anyway. “I’d love to, but right now I have to go get ready to do some mystery work for the vampire who had my old boss killed.”
I downed the rest of the coffee in my mug and put it in the sink before turning back to Etty, who was staring at me kind of awkwardly.
Fuck it, I thought, and I stepped forward to give her another quick hug. As distracted as I was by everything right now, I needed her to know just how glad I was that she was back. I’d been shitty at appreciating her friendship before, and I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
She was startled again for a moment, but then she patted me on the back like I was a child and said, “Okay, Darce. Go have fun with your vampire nemesis. I’ll be here when you get back.”
12
A couple hours later and after telling Ray my theory about the soul control, I walked up to the address on Soma’s card armed to the teeth.
This was one thing I was glad for when it came to wearing jeans and leather now that I had no fancy professional clothes in my closet—more places to hide weapons. All my usual knives were tucked neatly into my jacket and boots, and I had a couple guns and holsters in the bag slung over my shoulder in case Soma was cool with me carrying openly.
It was a tossup, really, whether he would want me unassuming or intimidating. It depended on what exactly he needed me for. Either way, I was glad to have the thick, sturdy blade I normally left at home strapped to my outer thigh and a small axe underneath my jacket across my back. I’d needed to wear my loosest pair of jeans, and I wouldn’t be able to do much back bending tonight, but it was worth it to have a realistic option in case I needed to behead a bloodsucker and no one was making bread nearby.
I smirked. What was I thinking with the “in case” nonsense? I fucking hoped I’d be beheading a bloodsucker tonight—Soma himself. The idea of finally getting my revenge for Simeon’s death was like a carrot dangling in front of my head, energizing me but making it harder to focus on my official task of rooting out whatever new terror this jerk had unleashed.
I peered up at the building in front of me, wondering whether this was Soma’s office or his home. It was a newer construction, rare in this part of the city, with sleek lines and dark windows that shone as if they were mirrors. I’d expected a vampire so old to spend his time in something that closer resembled an actual crypt, as Kat had jokingly called it earlier. In any case, I should be able to poke around and see what he was hiding. I’d sacrificed one of my knives to bring my mini lockpick kit just for that reason.
“Miss Pierce?” someone called from behind me, and I turned to see a black van with tinted windows, one of them rolled down to reveal only the driver.
Eyebrows raised, I walked over to the passenger side. The driver sat stiffly with his fingers tight on the wheel, wearing a dark suit and dark sunglasses. The whole thing made me feel like I was dealing with a politician and not the head of a local restaurant group, but I supposed powerful men all looked the same in the end.
“Please get in the back,” the driver said, not even looking at me.
“Yep,” I said. Nothing weird about this at all.
I stuck my head in after opening the door just to make sure it was Soma back there and not someone else who might want me dead.
It was him alright, although he had his hand raised to his eyes and was squinting against the light streaming in from behind me. Alright, old man, I thought. “Looks like you could use some sunglasses.”
“Very funny,” he said as I slid the door shut and sat across from him.
The joke was lost on me, but then I supposed at a certain advanced age, things like sunglasses must become inherently hilarious.
“I thought you wanted to meet at this address,” I said as the driver pulled away from the curb.
“We just did,” he said. “Now we’re going somewhere else.”
I nodded, already frustrated with how this was going. I couldn’t see much through the darkened windows back here, and we were completely blocked off visually from the driver and his view. That was a problem, because Miriam would only know where we were if I knew where we were. So if I didn’t know, I couldn’t count on any backup should things go south. “Where?” I asked.
“Your first task,” Soma said with a fangless smile. “It’ll be a little different than what you’re used to, but I’m sure you’ll be up for the challenge.”
I blinked, waiting for him to continue. He was being too mysterious for my liking at the moment. Too eager to give me vague answers to my questions so he could watch me squirm. If I stopped asking questions, maybe he’d stop being so vague.
He tapped his finger on his thigh, a remarkably human gesture for a vampire so old. “There’s been some trouble lately, with some of the younger ones.”
I tilted my head and raised my eyebrows, genuinely interested.
“They aren’t allowed to create any fledglings until they’re old enough, but some are getting impatient. Greedy.”
I frowned, trying to guess what he was getting at. Vampires as a species still made most of their money from selling immortality—making more vampires in the process. As a business model, it wasn’t exactly sustainable.
So it had to be an exclusive market, with strict rules on who could sell and who could buy. And that meant new vampires couldn’t buy immortality as an investment and then go around selling it to anyone they could find to make back their money. They weren’t allowed. Along with the hefty fee required, they also usually had to sign away the bulk of their rights and centuries of their lives to their appointed elders. I assumed Soma was one such elder, and he was letting me know his kiddies needed to be put in time out.
“What are they doing?” I asked.
“Selling their blood to smugglers.” His mouth twisted as he spat out the words, and I found myself hating him a little less as it became clear his distaste for the subject matched my own.
I blinked, guessing what he was referring to but not wanting it to be true. “As in . . . ?”
“In bulk,” he confirmed, meaning there was no way these vampires were selling their blood directly from their veins. It would be in bags, which meant it would bring nothing good to anyone who bought it.
“Oof,” I said. Dirk had told me there’d been more blood on the black market and an uptick in botched jobs, and this was obviously why. If we were talking about unsustainable business models, this whole deal was even worse than what the higher-up vamps were doing “legitimately.” I also supposed Soma’s attitude towards i
t meant the mutated vamp who’d tried to kill Dirk probably wasn’t one of his.
But just because he wasn’t responsible for that particular clusterfuck didn’t mean he wasn’t the one nabbing kids or orchestrating the mass murders. And it didn’t mean he hadn’t ordered Simeon’s death.
“So you know what that implies?” Soma asked, and I remembered it wasn’t exactly common knowledge how much vampire blood would fuck you up if you tried to administer it without a live vampire on the other end. If it were, no human would buy it thinking they’d just scored the deal of their lifetime.
“I worked in a clinic when I was younger. Saw the results firsthand.” I breathed out, wishing I could purge the memory from my mind. But no, apparently I could only lose memories that were useful. “Can’t you just make a PSA or something? Educate people so no one’s dumb enough to buy it?”
“You think that would actually work? Humans have been consuming deadly substances willfully since long before even I was born. All it takes is a shred of hope to convince them.” He shook his head slightly. “No. If this knowledge were made public, it would only hurt our image as a whole. Make us seem more dangerous as a species. It’s not worth it so long as we can stop the offenders.”
What he said was all true, but that didn’t make him right. People would always hurt themselves, but they at least deserved to know what they were getting into before going down that path. Not that it was in any way feasible for me to take it upon myself to educate the whole world.
“So . . . where are we going?” I prompted. He still hadn’t told me.
“To stop the offenders,” he said with a grin. “You’ll handle the human smugglers, and we’ll handle our people.”
“Handle . . .” Heart sinking further, I frowned. I really hoped he didn’t mean for me to kill anyone. I was all about killing people when they were actively trying to kill me or whoever I was trying to protect, but blood smugglers? They might not even know what they were doing. Certainly some good old-fashioned handcuffs and jail time would be more appropriate. “I’d rather not do anything illegal,” I said carefully.
