Last Rites (Paranormal Detectives Book 5)

by Lily Luchesi

  She shook her head. “Home. I don’t want to remain here any longer than necessary.” Taking his hand, and glancing back at the house as they got into Danny’s car, she thought she saw a dark curtain rustle.

  It was past three-thirty in the morning when they got to their home and Angelica collapsed on the sofa, head in her hands. The brisk night air had sufficed to finish clearing her mind, and she was desperately ashamed of what had happened in the dungeon. How could she have drank blood from someone other than her Consort? How could she have kissed another man? She was at least glad she had had the presence of mind to stop the kiss. The bastard: how could he have done that to her?

  “Angie?”

  Danny’s strong presence was a comfort to her even when she felt she did not deserve it. She was wild like the wind, bubbling with anger and desire at every turn. He was stone, there to take the edge off of her emotions whenever she needed him. Solid, strong, perfect. For the nth time since being back with him in this incarnation, she mused upon the fact that she did not deserve this man.

  Fire and ice, just his very being calmed her.

  “It’s been a long time since I saw you like this. Not since Fiona. What happened, Angie? Who was this guy and why are you so…turbulent?” he asked.

  She leaned back, his arm supporting her. “You won’t believe me. Hell, I wouldn’t believe me, either. That was the actual, presumed dead vampire Emperor, Augustus.”

  Danny made a noise somewhere between a cough and a laugh. “Are you fucking with me? You are, aren’t you?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. That was one-hundred-percent ancient vampire ruler down there. Livia never actually killed him. He claims that his bloodline died out, but hers continued, just as Leander said. He…stalked my bloodline, until he saw that the prophecy came true when I was born. The Emperor had been waiting for the Empress to rise again. …And here I am.”

  Danny sat in silence. “All that time down there…I hate to ask, but what did you do to make him bite you?”

  She lightly smacked his leg. “Who said I did anything?”

  He cocked his eyebrow. “Because you’re you. And you can’t resist goading someone into getting a reaction. No offense, but you know how you get.”

  She nodded. Yes, she knew she could be a wonderful antagonist. “Well, I sort of threatened to finish killing him where Livia failed. I imagine he wasn’t too fond of that.” She rubbed the bite. “He bit me, trying to prove to me that only he and I could satiate each other. Unfortunately, he was proven wrong when he had me drink from him, though he doesn’t know that.”

  “Wrong how?” Danny asked.

  “His blood did nothing for me that yours could not. I didn’t tell him, afraid he would kill one or both of us in rage.” She paused. “The sheer power resonating in his very aura is stunning. I have never been face-to-face with someone who resonates like that. He is what I can become, minus the murders, of course. It is both frightening and fascinating.”

  Danny chuckled, and she was slightly offended.

  “What on Earth do you find funny about this?”

  He cleared his throat, trying not to smile. “Because you sound less like an ancient Empress and more like a teenage girl with a crush.”

  Angelica gaped at him, unable to give a proper reaction to that severely idiotic statement. “I am choosing to ignore that.” She stood up, now the one pacing. “I hate that he bit me, but the fact that he could, that he had such power over me, makes me know that one day I can have that power. When that day comes, every vampire on Earth will be forced to obey the law, whether they know it or not. To be able to exact my will in such a manner…no mortal will ever again be in danger from my kind!” She wanted to dance, she was so gleeful. In her bliss, her contemplation of a world without vampiric murder, she failed to see the fleeting glance of concern her Consort was giving her.

  ***

  Danny could not sleep once the sun had risen and Angelica had taken to her coffin. Staring out the window, watching the sun break through the buildings of the Downtown Chicago skyline, his concern for his wife was growing.

  Angelica had always, whether she realized it or not, desired being in a position of power. From her first kill, two centuries ago, she had gradually risen in the ranks. She began as the daughter of a Lord, already influential in those days, and then became a hunter. When being just a hunter could no longer satisfy her, she came to America to start the Paranormal Investigative Division. He admitted that, for many decades, she had not been the director, the leader, but that was more likely because she craved action as much as power. Directors saw very little action.

  He remembered the way she interrogated perps, although it was more like torture. It was all about power play. Even in their relationship, when she voluntarily gave up her power to him, it was still her decision. In submission, though it was not widely known, the submissive always held more power than the dominant, because of their choice to give up control. Angelica knew she could take that power of dominance away from Danny in a heartbeat (not that he would really complain if she wanted to switch roles).

  In fiction and reality, it was well documented that people who desired power and received it—even if they only wanted the power to do good, as she did—oftentimes met a very bloody and untimely end.

  The power Augustus showed her and tempted her with could very well be her undoing.

  Chapter Seven

  When Danny again woke in the middle of the afternoon, he was half in and half out of a nightmare. Or perhaps it had been a visitation. Either way, he was terrified and unsettled. Helena Collins, his old captain’s daughter who had been killed by a wayward vamp a few months ago, had been the star of it. He sat up and shook his head, the dream still as clear as a bell.

  He was back in garage from is vision from a few days ago, but now he could see the scene a bit clearer. He could see that it had been Helena screaming as she was being murdered.

  Her neck was broken, done by a left-handed individual, and the two vampire bites in her neck were gaping, making her head even more unsteady. The vampire had bitten further than any he’d ever seen, tearing at the flesh like a wild animal to get to the blood underneath. He was standing with her in the underground garage she had been killed in.

  He had not been there when it happened. Angelica had told him everything, but his psychic mind clearly saw the vampire who had killed her, decapitated and decayed in the distance, her jaw shattered from what must have been Angelica’s strong grip.

  He stood there, knowing he was too late to save Helena and wondering what she wanted, to visit him looking like this, like an extra from a horror movie. Her eyes had been filled with dead fear when he had seen her corpse, but now they were no longer afraid: they were a mixture of sadness and fury as they leaked blood-tinged tears.

  “Helena, talk to me. What is it?” he asked. “Why can’t you rest?”

  “I knew,” she said, her voice coming from a broken and twisted voice box. “When I met her I knew.”

  “Who? Knew what?” Danny asked.

  “The darkness is palpable to everyone but you. You’re courting death.”

  When had he not been courting death? All his life he’d chased his adrenaline rush, and all his life he had tempted the Grim Reaper. Why did she feel the need to come and haunt him? Because he was easy to access thanks to his powers?

  “Helena, what do you want from me?” he asked. “How can I put you to rest?”

  Her eyes spilled over with more angry tears and she said in what she wanted to be a shout, but was really a deathly whisper, “Avenge me!”

  That was when he had woken up, disoriented and terrified, drenched in sweat. Once he had gotten the coffee made, he was able to think a bit clearer. His visions, visitations, and anything else that came through his head from his powers stuck with him. He never had an eidetic memory, but for some reason everything he saw stuck with him and he could rifle through it, all thanks to Brighton’s teachings about mind palaces.


  Avenge me. He sighed. He had yet to deal with a vengeful spirit and he figured it was only a matter of time till he got to put one to rest. He just wished it didn’t have to be a friend of his. And of what did she want to be avenged? She had gone with Angelica of her own free will. She had been the one to decide to be a decoy. She knew the risks. The vamp who killed her was dead, so why did she require vengeance?

  And then there was the ‘courting death’ comment. Did she mean Angelica? Did she think Angelica was leading him into danger? Well, no shit, Sherlock. Of course she was. That was also something he had long ago accepted. He understood why Helena’s twisted spirit would think that: Angelica had led her to her death, so it all came full circle in Helena’s new thought process.

  Hopefully, her coming to visit was a fluke thing that would not happen again and he could forget all of this. In fiction, vengeful spirits were dangerous. If everything he had learned in the PID proved true, they’d be even worse in real life.

  He decided to not tell Angelica about the visitation. Right after Helena had been killed, Angelica had blamed herself, and he was pretty sure she still did. He wouldn’t let her fall deeper into self-deprecation when it wasn’t her fault. She had enough on her mind.

  ***

  Angelica woke in her usual way, getting out of her coffin and checking her email, quickly realizing that she had only one third the amount in her inbox since she quit the PID, and it was very refreshing. She sent Sean an update on what was happening, so he could return home as soon as possible.

  After dressing, she went downstairs realizing she was ravenous. However, it was on her mind that she was possibly taking too much blood from Danny. She had told Augustus the truth about how much blood she took from him daily, and it only just hit her that it was unnatural. Was it possible she was slowly killing her husband? The thought scared her, and she promised to cut down her blood intake from him by half. And to think, I have a biology degree!

  Danny was in the living room when she came down, and right away she knew something was wrong, and it was not just Augustus. They could handle him, of that she was confident. He was of sound mind, and he could be reasoned with. The hollows beneath his eyes were the kind a person got after they were extremely upset or frightened. He was reading a book from her collection, Wisps In The Dark: Identifying Different Types of Spirits.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, not even bothering with a sarcastic ‘good morning’.

  He jumped. “Fuck, you scared me. Why do you think something’s wrong?”

  “I’ve seen war ravaged people look less haggard than you back when Harriet and I fought in Scotland, so give.” She plopped down on the couch next to him, momentarily forgetting her hunger over her concern.

  “What’s the difference between a vengeful spirit and a remnant?” Danny asked.

  Angelica smiled, thinking of songwriting with Sean. He’d asked the same thing when writing the band’s last record. What am I, the Encyclopedia Supernaturalica? “You see, a spirit, vengeful or not, is an entire being. It is everything you knew of the person’s soul, just detached from the body. A remnant is just a piece, a leftover. Whatever keeps a remnant here is similar to what would keep a vengeful spirit Earthbound, but the big difference is, you cannot burn the body and get rid of the remnant like you could a spirit. To get rid of a remnant, you must do what it asks.”

  Danny paled. “And what if I don’t?”

  Angelica sighed “Then it haunts you until you go mad and kill yourself or someone else.”

  She watched as he put his head in his hands and said, “And what if I have no idea what to do to get it what it wants?”

  “How about you tell me exactly what this is about?” Angelica suggested. “Come on. It’s only gonna backfire if you keep it inside.”

  A remnant has to be human, not even a werewolf could become one. The soul has to be one hundred percent homosapien. That didn’t narrow down the list of possible dead people as much as she would have liked. Director Dominic, Danny’s old CPD partner Camille Fuller, the three guys in Lycancore because psychic vampires still have human blood in their veins, the neighbor Bella, Brighton, Mark…and of course Helena. The one remnant she was afraid it would be, because she had the most reason to want revenge. On her.

  The remnant she very soon found out that it was. As Danny talked, telling her about his frightening dream visitation, her body began to shake, but she kept it under control. Don’t panic, don’t panic, she kept repeating to herself.

  Helena hadn’t outright told him what had happened, and that was good. But maybe that was because he had woken up too soon. Remnants were frightening, driving the person they were haunting mad until they got what they wanted. Usually their visitations only ended when someone else was dead, and if Helena got her way, that someone was Angelica.

  Mid-sentence, as Danny said Helena was trying to warn him about ‘darkness’, she got up and started microwaving a bag of blood, just to occupy her trembling hands with something. She knew she shouldn’t have lied to Danny about what happened to Helena, but at the time she had been in terror at her own actions, facing the Lieutenant of Hell, and dealing with becoming the Empress. She was in no position to rationalize her actions…and even if she had been, he would not have understood.

  Love her he might, but he was still a mortal with a mortal’s mindset. He would not have seen Angelica’s actions as justified, and he never would have forgiven her. In her defense, she had not planned on draining Helena that night. She had abandoned that plan, but had been overtaken by hunger and weakness, just as Leander Price had said she’d be. She did not even fully realize what she had been doing until it was over. She regretted it, and would happily give her life for Helena’s if she could now.

  “Angie?” Danny called when she walked away. He followed her into the kitchen. “Angie, you don’t think she blames you for what that vamp did, does she?”

  “Sounds that way.” She forced her voice to be nonchalant. “If she ever visits you outside of a nightmare, maybe I can set things straight…but I doubt it. If she were a ghost, maybe. But a remnant is different, they have no way of reasoning.”

  Danny leaned against the counter as Angelica took the temperature of the blood. “So…what does she want?”

  Angelica scoffed. Brilliant man, slow mind. “She wants me dead, Danny. What else?”

  His mouth dropped. “You say that so calmly?”

  “She’s not the first thing to want me dead, and she won’t be the last.” At least, I hope not. “In any case, I’m going to call Harriet and get you an amulet. She can cast a charm on one that should keep Helena away for a while, until we figure out a more permanent solution. Right now, I need to figure out this shit with Augustus. Helena can’t hurt either of us right now, but he sure as Hell can.”

  Angelica sent a text to Harriet explaining what Danny needed, and received a message back, “I told you lying to him would come back to bite you in the arse. I’ll have one sent over this evening. BE CAREFUL!”

  Angelica was about to reply when there was a knock at the front door. “Human,” she said, able to scent the fresh blood in the visitor’s veins just three yards from where she stood, where the kitchen threshold met the foyer. Not that humans weren’t dangerous, but it was better than another vamp.

  She peeked through the peephole and saw the young girl who had been Augustus’ familiar in thrall the evening prior. What on Earth was she doing here? Making sure she was armed, Angelica opened the door.

  Once she was looking right at the girl, not through the stained glass of the door window, she saw that she was much more clear-headed. Her eyes weren’t glazed and her face had some color in it.

  “What do you want?” Angelica asked warily.

  “I’ve been set free. Augustus told me to deliver this to you and then he’d let me go, as a token of cooperation to you,” the girl said, speaking fast. She held out an envelope made of vellum. Who the Hell still used vellum?

  “Are you su
re he’s setting you free?” Angelica asked.

  The girl nodded. “He paid me, and even gave me a bit of his blood to make me feel better. Thank you, it was because of you he set me free.”

  Angelica smiled. At least one good thing came out of all this. She reached into her wallet, she pulled out a PID business card. “I want you to get checked out and make sure you’re safe. Go here, immediately, and ask for Harriet. She’ll be expecting you.”

  The girl took the card and nodded. “Thank you. I think you’re going to be able to control him.”

  “I don’t want control, I want cooperation. Now go, and be quick.” Angelica shut the door, firing off another text to Harriet before bringing the envelope to the living room, where Danny had relocated.

  “I overheard. You think that psycho is actually letting her go?” Danny asked as Angelica sat back down next to him.

  She nodded. “Yes. He won’t risk pissing me off any further. He does want an alliance, and while I am against his views on mortals, I think it is the only possible outcome. If I spurn him, and he goes public as being the true Emperor, more pure than I am, who do you think the vampires will flock to?” She turned the envelope nervously in her hands. “It will be civil war, if not an all-out ambush on me. Not only are most vampires around now natural predators who would jump at the chance to go back to our old ways, they would also gravitate toward a man as the natural leader.

  “I hate to say it, but not only does he have centuries on me, the world—even the vampire community—is still driven by archaic, misogynistic ideals that say a man is a better leader.”

  Danny scoffed. “Please. If I could, I’d hand over all of humanity for you to lead. Angelica, you underestimate not just yourself, but your entire species. You’ve been a leader for two hundred years. Augustus has been in hiding for centuries. The other vamps will see him as he is: a power-hungry, cowardly stalker unable to see anyone else get the spotlight. He was hidden away God knows where, stalking you, and he wants to rise back up on your coattails. And why? Because you are the most badass leader any species has ever seen.