Mercy Blade

by Faith Hunter

Page 60

 

  Bruiser flipped open his cell phone and speed dialed a number. Thirty seconds later, I had total access to everything in vamp HQ, including the rooms I’d never been in. Yeah me! So why should I risk everything by telling Bruiser? I shouldn’t. I stood, taking the steps to Bitsa in the azaleas. I stopped. Stared at the ground, hidden in the dark. I was gonna blow the top off Bruiser’s can of worms. And I just knew it was gonna cost me, eventually. “You know Evangelina put a spell on you, don’t you?”

  Bruiser had stood when I did, but more slowly, and halted, half crouched, when I spoke. “Evie . . . ” He stepped toward me and changed the question. “How do you know?”

  “I can see it. She has a pinkish haze of magics all around her lately. And now so do you. It got to us”—I paused, glad of the dark to cover my blush—“in the shower. Be careful, Bruiser. Something’s going on with Evie. ”

  I kick-started Bitsa and eased her onto the drive. Only when I got to the street did I pause and helmet up and rearrange my gear. Then, exhausted and heartsore, I gunned the bike and headed back into the city.

  “And you discovered this when?” I asked Wrassler.

  “Not me. Not us. The cops found it the night after the were-cat died, when they were taking the office apart. Far as we know, till then, only Leo knew it was here. And he didn’t tell. ”Wrassler and I had entered through Leo’s main office doorway, tearing down the crime-scene tape. Yeah, it might make the cops’ jobs harder, but I didn’t really care about that. I cared about stuff no one had told me, that might help me solve the murder and save Rick. Wrassler and I had talked things through until my head was spinning, but it was beginning to come together. The cops had found a second hidden entrance in Leo’s office.

  I’d gotten a good look at the first hidden passage. It was like something out of a horror movie, but without the lights or scary music: a stairway spiraling down to a narrow, light-less corridor between rooms to the outer wall. There, a lever opened a passage to the sidewalk, an egress if one was supernat-fast enough. The passageway smelled of were-cat, werewolf, vamp, dead fish, and cops. And Rick’s blood, dried drops marked by crime-scene cones. If I had made nice-nice with Jodi, she might have told me there was blood, and I might have known early on that Rick was in trouble, but I’d been too busy to make better friends with the local cops.

  The mixture of scents was confusing—the wolves and cats and vamps all in one hidden place. It seemed everyone knew about the passageway but me.

  Now, we stood in front of the newest surprise—Leo’s office’s second hidden entrance. The passage had been found when the cops started taking out rugs and wall hangings splattered with crime-scene blood. It entered the office from behind the fireplace, the passageway eight feet high and twenty inches wide, leading to the next room, which had its own secret entrance—a private elevator. The tiny brass cage had access to hidden passages on every floor of vamp HQ, including the crawl space to the domes above the ballroom where the wolves had waited. The elevator smelled only of dead fish, were-blood, and Rick’s blood. All the blood was old and dry, I guessed lost the night of Safia’s murder. But the fishy smell . . . “I need to see the room the grindylow used,” I said, not letting myself react to the blood smell or what it could mean.

  “Okay by me. Little sucker trashed it. And now he’s gone. No one’s seen him in days. ”

  The room set aside for visiting security was way more than trashed. It was wet, stinking of mold, ripped, and shredded. The grindy had let the tub overflow until the carpet was soaked, had shredded every piece of fabric and drenched the scraps, maybe trying to make himself a grindy den, a wet place like home. Days later, in the damp climate of Louisiana, untouched by anyone due to the visitor’s status, mold had set in.

  I knelt and studied the grindy’s claw marks. The edges of the tears were smooth, not ragged, indicating razor sharp claws. I wouldn’t want to fight the little sucker, not even if I had a cannon and way better armor. They were three clawed, like a sloth, the center one longer than the two beside. Just like the wound in Safia’s throat, which was just weird. Why kill her here, not back in Africa?Because she had been a good little girl until she met Rick?

  The grindy’s scent was definitely fishlike, but not any fish Beast had ever encountered. I drew up the bloodhound-memory of smells as I stood over Safia’s body. I remembered fish. I had thought it was her supper. Stupid, to make a determination without evidence.

  As far as I could tell, under the fish and mold smell, Rick hadn’t been in the grindylow’s rooms. I pulled the door shut and wandered back to the hidden elevator, hands in my jeans pockets. “Okay, how does this sound?” I said to Wrassler, who filled up the hallway behind me. “Rick infiltrated the Soniat Hotel, undercover, as a busboy or something, during the early, clandestine discussions with Leo and the Vampire Council. Safia met the cop. She was bored. Interested in a pretty boy. ”

  Wrassler added to my narrative. “Somehow she knows about this passage. The night of the big bash, she arranges to get him inside HQ for some hanky-panky. ”

  “Hanky-panky. ” I quashed my reaction to my words. This was a job. Not my heart breaking. “Okay. He’s in, with her, coming up the passageway. Somehow, Rick is injured,” though not badly, because I hadn’t smelled his blood-scent over Safia’s blood loss. “Tyler goes into the office, where he shouldn’t be, catches them together. Safia is shot by Tyler to frame Leo and Bruiser. Tyler runs. Safia starts to shift. Then the grindy kills the person he was here to protect. Which makes no sense. ”

  “Unless she’d tried to turn the cop,” Wrassler said.

  And the final piece fell into place. Kemnebi had said the grindylows are . . . pets. Most of the time . . . But he’d hesitated when he said pets. As if that description hadn’t been his first choice. Pain gripped my stomach, burning. I said, “It all makes sense, like a woven scarf with all its knots, but only two pieces of string. ”

  “Girly analogy. ”

  I stuttered a laugh, surprised, but the laughter cleared my head. “Bite me. String one: Tyler wants revenge on Bruiser and Leo for something—I don’t know what, so don’t ask. He came over in the 1960s to work a frame, maybe something longstanding with the Marchands or the Rochefort clan in France, since he was working security for them. But for whatever reason, he had to abandon his plan. He’s been waiting for a chance to finish it for years. Tyler comes back with the wedding party, starts his plan all over again, shoots Safia to set up Bruiser and Leo as murderers. Tyler runs, changes clothes, reappears in the ballroom in the middle of the fight. We never notice he’s gone.

  “String two,” I said, “is all about the grindy. Kemnebi said grindylows ‘are pets. Most of the time. Guardians, occasionally. Less often, the enforcers of were-law. ’ But what if they are the enforcers of were-law first, and pets second? And if Safia had bitten someone . . . ” Like Rick. I stared hard at the carpet beneath my booted feet. “Say that . . . Safia tried to turn Rick. The grindy followed her to Leo’s office, where she was bringing him in the night of the party. Grindy interrupted a struggle between Tyler, Safia, and Rick. Tyler shoots Safia and runs, Safia tries to change after being shot. And the grindy kills her for breaking were-law. Grindy grabs Rick, who’s bleeding, maybe bitten. Or maybe he has to hurt Rick to subdue him. The grindy takes him through the secret passageway, into the elevator. Stashes him until . . . What? He gets away? The werewolves find him?”

  “Still has holes, but if the female weres knew each another, that might cinch up loose ends. ”

  I must have looked confused because Wrassler said, “If the girls were gossiping behind Kemnebi’s back or something, if they were sharing Rick, in the carnal sense, then there’s the link between the girls that includes Rick. ”

  I remembered the site at Beast’s hunting grounds, the limb where the black cat had watched the wolves feeding.

  “They knew each other,” he said. “And, okay, maybe they were conspiri
ng to bring the wolves into the worldwide were-fold. But maybe they were having sleepovers and eating s’mores. And the wolf-bitch stole Rick from her best cat-gal-pal. ”

  The thought hurt, but I pushed it away. I could hurt later, after I saved Rick.

  Our theory was more a leap of faith than logic, but it made sense. “Let’s go over the security tapes, starting when the were-cats entered the compound. Maybe we’ll spot something. ”

  Wrassler picked up the house phone, dialed a number, gave instructions and hung up. “Come on, Legs. We got us a movie date. ”

  Near dawn, Wrassler and I were so stoked on caffeine and stuffed with an early breakfast, we were shaky with the overload. But we had our proof—video of the two were-females meeting in the street outside the hidden door to Leo’s office and going inside together. It was clearly a planned meeting, between two people who were acquainted. “Roll footage number two again. ” I watched as the were-bitch let the wolves in, and later footage as Rick was carried out the hidden door, bleeding, over Fire Truck’s shoulder, well after dawn on day two, the were-bitch urging him to speed, her hands on his back, her pack behind her. “If Leo had told us about the passageways we would have found Rick days ago,” I said, hearing my misery. “The wolves had known the talks were taking place, just like the cops had. Seems like I was the only person in the city who didn’t,” I said.

  “I didn’t know,” Wrassler said. But somehow that didn’t help. He went on. “The female weres met, maybe at the hotel, liked one another, planned on some serious girl time, maybe, like I said, Safia thought the wolves deserved to be part of the negotiations. We might never know. ”“The wolf-bitch gets in, lets her guys in later—not over the wall like we thought—using the secret passageways to get set up. And it all went to hell in a handbasket,” I said, the words like ashes in my mouth. “Safia died. Rick ended up with the wolf-bitch. ” Hurt. Likely bitten by two different were species.