by A. J. Aalto
I'm never going to be on anyone's list as the kindest, most forgiving person in the world. Probably, I’m a bit shittier than your average gal. Definitely, I’m small and bitter. Still, I take no pride in admitting that my flashlight casting Aston Sarokhanian into sharp relief, chained to the wall, his nasty, high-iron bitch DaySitter Sayomi near dead at his feet, shackled to his ankle by her wrist, was a teensy bit satisfying. It's petty, it's cruel, and it's vengeful, but after all she’d done to me, goddamn it, it still felt good until my conscience kicked in.
Gunther’s desperate forward lunge startled me into a reality check. He sniffed all around Sayomi, nudging at her shoulder with his muzzle. I bent to check her restraints, but her chains were locked tight.
When she stirred and rolled her head to squint up at me, she looked about as happy to see me as I expected – like the Grim Reaper had come to collect her and she was, at long last, resigned to go.
“How…?” she rasped.
“Gunther led me here.”
“And you came?” She drew a labored breath as her eyes rolled behind nearly-closed lids, her weak hand trying to rise against her shackles.
“I know, right? After you blocked me on Facebook? Guess I can’t take a hint,” I agreed. “Take it easy, don’t move too much.”
“I can’t… can you save Aston?”
Gunther nuzzled at the side of her face, and I very much didn't. “I am a dual-Talented forensic psychometrist with secondary clairempathy. I held a very prestigious job working for Gold-Drake & Cross and the FBI’s Preternatural Crimes Unit. I have a PhD in preternatural biology, and am very well versed in the dark arts. And,” I paused, waiting for her eyes to meet mine, “I've got a fanny pack chock-full of turkey jerky.”
“Is that a no?” she wheezed.
“I am not the Breaker of Chains. You’re thinking of that hot dragon chick from Game of Thrones.” I put my gloves back on and ran my hands over her head, neck, and shoulders, checking for signs of injury. I gave her a quick pat-down just in case, but figured if she’d ever had weapons, they’d been taken away, or she wouldn’t be here. “Life sucks, shit happens, we do what we can. Hold on, though. Help is coming.”
“Is that why you came?” She paused to cough, dry and hacking, followed by more wheezing that sparked a worry in me that she might have a respiratory infection. Cave air loaded with mildew, fungus, and mold spores, could have easily infected her if she'd been here as long as I suspected. Hopefully, it was just that, and not one of the crypt plagues from beetles or spiders. “To help us?”
“Technically, no,” I admitted. “I'm snooping. Answers, Sayomi. It’s time. Look at him. Look at your companion. He can’t hurt anyone now. What harm could it do to tell me the truth?” I slipped my glove back off to check her forehead temperature with my wrist, and found it clammy and hot.
“I know about the Lord of Exile, Sayomi. I know Aston isn’t the eldest Sarokhanian. Tell me why Aston is pretending. Tell me why Aston is chained in this room. Tell me who did this.”
“And then what?” she demanded, her fervor causing her to cough hard enough to coil up, her spine curling inward. Then she shot me an accusing, suspicious glare. “You can’t protect us. We’re paying the price. Trespass at your own risk.”
Trespass. Someone else had warned me not to trespass. “Who's Pascal?”
A sound from the wall, grating and raspy. I flashed my light at Ashton again. His face was a rictus of pain, and his terrified, unseeing eyes rolled in their sockets. He’d been spending every ounce of his remaining power trying not to drain his DaySitter to the point of death, but it was close now, anyways. She stank of it, sour and desperate.
My heart lurched — everything about this was wrong. I knew without a doubt that Aston had never left Niagara, as Ghazaros had claimed. Aston had only been walled in, his essence hidden and sapped. I was so close to the truth that my guts were quivering nonstop. Aston had left Vlastimirova, come home to Niagara, and gotten bamboozled and chained up; tarved the whole time. If he was powerful enough to manifest a phantasm, he would have been less emaciated. Instead, he survived on what he could scrounge from his starving DaySitter. The cords in his neck stood out like wires, and his skin was papery on his high cheekbones.
When I reached for Sayomi again, she jackknifed back, using her last energy to scramble away from me, making soft wounded-animal noises. I replied with even softer noises, soothing sounds to reassure her.
“You want him dead,” she gurgled. “They’ll stake him. They’ll end him.”
“You’re in luck, Sayomi. I’ve sent for the one person on this planet who can’t afford to have Aston die yet.” I smiled uncertainly. “Though he’ll be sorely tempted.”
“Just kill me,” she spat. “I don’t want to live without Aston. Kill me.”
“You say that like I commit murder willy-nilly. I'd be insulted if it weren't kinda true.” I unzipped my fanny pack and pulled out the jerky, and tore off a corner. “Here, go slow. Don’t wolf it down.”
Gunther snorted and snuffled, and I snapped off a hunk of jerky for him, too. “Don't fox it down, either, you mangy stole.”
And then I felt Kill-Notch’s metaphysical ping through the house Bond, pinpointing his location. No wonder I was dropping the V-bomb left and right. Batten was already close. Too close for it to be a coincidence. On the phone, when I’d asked how close he was, how long it would take him, he hadn’t answered.
Because he was already here. He already knew which tunnel the Lord of Exile was in. How was that possible? My mouth went dry. My eyes fluttered shut and my gloved hands balled into fists.
Batten was working with Malashock.
Thirty-Four
Batten told me Malashock would stake him. I shook my head, even though my enemies were the only ones there to see it, and they weren’t likely to sympathize. That’s the wrong path I’m being led down. Wes was right, I was being lied to by more than one person — Nyquist, Malashock, and Batten. Fucking Batten. He’d told me not to discuss him with Malashock, because it was putting him and Harry and Wes at risk. That had been a lie. Batten had lied to me. Again.
Kill-Notch didn’t want me discussing him with Malashock because he knew the Blue Sense might let me cut through her lies, see their secret alliance. The vampire hunters were working as a team behind my back. When Malashock dropped me at Kimberly’s, she must have known I was there to see Batten. How had Wes not picked any of this out of Malashock’s head when she showed up at North House?
The cross she wore. It had worked to ward off his Talent. I thought he’d been shying away from temptation, but Wes was still new dead, and while the cross had made Harry smirk, perhaps Wesley had been successfully repelled.
My heart squeezed hotly, half rage and half hurt. I closed my eyes and hung my head. The hunters would work together to take out the whole of House Sarokhanian, exactly what he’d always wanted. This was Mark Kill-Notch Batten’s end game, the boss fight. What had the deal been between them? Get Batten’s answers about Colonel Jack and then team up to stake the immortals? And where did I stand in all this? Once again, I’d helped lead him to his prey like the sucker I am, and once again, I would get tossed to the side when I was no longer needed.
Together, the Stake Squad would make me break my promises. They would destroy dozens of entirely uninvolved revenants as collateral damage. Ludovic had tried to warn me. Don’t trust the cooks. Plural. Harry had always called Batten a “cold cook” and I'd never bothered to ask what was supposed to be getting cooked. Or who.
My anger spiked. How long had Batten been going behind my back, whispering in Malashock’s ear? How long had she been giving me misleading advice about my man troubles, knowing it would all be over soon? The worst part was, neither of them were doing anything illegal, and in order to stop them, I’d have to kick both their asses.
Hopefully, not at the same time. I swallowed hard at that thought. Batten was immortal, and squaring off with him was a ridiculously bad idea,
but Malashock, I could take… No, actually, that was also absurd. Unless I ambushed her with a perfectly-placed kick and broke her kneecap, there wasn’t much I could do to stop her, either. Busting up a federal law enforcement officer was not a smart plan.
“Are you really thinking about standing between two armed vampire hunters and at least one underfed undead guy?” I whispered angrily at myself, tasting the bitter frustration on the back of my tongue.
I crammed my eyelids tighter and pictured the two of them meeting outside the mouth of the cave, plotting against me, trading hand signals, sharing their secrets like a couple of assholes, two bad-asses in dark leather with heavy weaponry. And what did I have? A gun, which I couldn’t very well use against Liv unless I wanted to wind up in prison. I supposed I could shoot Batten again. “Nothing would make me happier,” I admitted aloud, and Sayomi made a questioning little noise that I ignored.
I flashed back to one of Sheriff Hood’s lessons, when he ran me out to the woods on the other side of Shaw’s Fist Lake and then pop-quizzed my self-defense reactions. (“What you got?” he’d challenged, dismissing my witchcraft, chiding my choices, and then failing to catch me.) I had borrowed speed from the Morrigan, swapping life essence for raw power, boosting my speed and agility.
My eyes slid sideways to the lich on the wall. “Swapping life essence for raw power... or war power.” Aston was now quite insane, and there was a definite predictability to his future behavior — if released, he would feed. That would be his instinct. He would have zero control, even if I tried to reason with him. And since his DaySitter was too weakened, and Gunther was small, furry, and unappealing, I would look like a nice, juicy, number-one option.
Divide and conquer, I thought. I had to get rid of Malashock, split them up. I gave Sayomi’s shoulder a reassuring pat and scratched behind Gunther’s ear before standing and moving to the door to listen. Scratching and mud sounds, clicking noises, probably the shell-coated boggle hunting goblins. I moved a little closer to the door and felt Gunther’s nose bump the back of my leg. Looking down, I found his very human eyes staring up at me.
“Wanna give me a hand, pal?” I whispered, looking over my shoulder at Aston. “I need Batten in here with the bolt cutters, but I need his back-up chased off. Can you do that? Do you know what I’m saying?”
He clearly didn’t. Sniffing my shoes some more, he abandoned my side and went back to Sayomi.
“Maybe I’m wrong,” I told them softly. “Maybe I’m paranoid. Maybe he’s not betraying me again. Dear Dark Lady, please let me be wrong. Please don’t let Jerkface be a…. jerk. Blerg.”
I went back to the dying DaySitter and was cradling Sayomi’s head in my lap while she ate bits of jerky when I finally heard soft footsteps. I opened the House Bond fully, sent strands of hopeful energy zipping through it, found Batten’s familiar signature — he didn’t Feel shady as fuck, and that gave me a little hope. When he crept close to the room, I only heard one set of boots in the dirt.
The ache in my heart broke in a hot rush of shame and guilt and relief. His confused face slid around the corner, alert and wary. He had the bolt cutters, and he was alone. I’d never been so happy to be wrong in my life.
Batten stood for a long time staring at the room, looking stunned. His dark gaze went to Aston, and began to glisten with a cold, dead light. For a moment, I thought he was going to use the opportunity to strike at Aston — the tension in his shoulders ratcheted up, his jaw clenched, and his eyes flashed an eerie greenish-blue like Remy’s.
Before he could act, I held up a hand. “Slow your roll, Jerkface. Can’t get answers from dust, remember?” I glanced at Sayomi. “Do you know what happened to Colonel Jack Batten?”
She looked from Batten — obviously astonished that Kill-Notch was still above ground — to me, clearly desperate for the best outcome for her and her revenant. At least one person had believed Batten’s faked death, and she was uncertain about how to proceed. Whether or not she should tell the truth, and which would be the end of her, or the way to salvation.
“It doesn’t matter what you say next, I’m still going to get you out of here and to a hospital.” I motioned to Batten with the bolt cutters, and he reluctantly bent to work on her cuffs.
“I don’t see a cup of coffee or a Maple Dip, Kill-Notch,” I muttered at him. “I'm leaving you zero stars in my take-out app.” I rethought that, since he hadn’t betrayed me with little miss hot pants to work against me. “Okay, one star: didn’t entirely disappoint.”
The cuffs fell away from Sayomi’s wrist and she sank closer to me in relief, reaching for more jerky.
“Feed him. Please,” Sayomi said at last. “My Master is the only one who knows the truth about Jack Batten.”
“Who put you in here?” I asked. “Where is the Lord of Exile?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t see. I don’t know anything.”
The Blue Sense reported that she was telling me the truth, and she was so desperate for rescue that she would have spilled nuclear launch codes if she’d had them. I turned my face up to Batten. “Malashock still out there? White van, dark windows, werebat gem-smuggler in custody?”
“No. I had to wait for her to leave. I wouldn’t have gotten past her without something happening,” he said. “She’s fired up and ready to stake anything.”
The Blue Sense all but bellowed. Truth. Holy shitballs, he’s telling the truth. I willed myself not to get teary-eyed and resisted the urge to kiss him right on the lips. “She’s taking Nyquist in. I told her to. She told me no, but respected my wishes and did it. Wow. Okay. That’s fucking unexpected. Let’s go two-for-two, eh? You get Sayomi out of here. Call an ambulance, get her medical attention.”
“I’m not leaving you in here. Especially not with – ”
I cut him off. “I’ll start feeding Aston and get him semi-coherent, see if he’ll give us some answers in exchange.”
Batten’s eyes bulged, and he reminded me, “Ghazaros Merzyan is responsible for his care.”
“Ghazaros is hiding under Harry’s coattails.”
“What about Borodian?”
I considered the lich on the wall. “It’s possible that Zorovar and Rotten Roy are the ones responsible for Aston being chained and drained. Maybe even in cahoots.”
“Why isn’t Aston feeding by phantasm?”
“I don’t think he can,” I said, eyeing Sayomi. “I think we were right about him. There’s a lot of things Aston can’t do. Maybe he can't send out for jim-jams to slurp.”
I gazed up at the lich again, and Aston’s eyes swept the ceiling madly. “You'll have to carry her out of here. I’ll keep Gunther with me, in case the boggles come sniffing around.”
“You’re not feeding Aston Sarokhanian, here, alone. That’s not happening,” Batten said firmly, with no room for argument.
I saw the sense in it. “All right. I’ll wait until you come back. Prop Sayomi in a safe spot and call an ambulance. If you see Malashock, do not bring her back in here, no matter what anyone says.” Before Batten could collect Sayomi into his arms, I touched her forehead again under the guise of checking her temperature once more. I let my bare palm rest flat against her clammy skin, and opened my mind to my psychometry, drawing the faintest vision from her — a vault door, propped open. A vault full of kegs marked with white writing.
It didn’t make sense, not in a muddy old tunnel, but there it was. She knew of a vault, and the vault was top of mind right now. I pressed deeper into her vision to look at the rock surrounding the door. Shale. When I pulled back, I couldn’t see anything else, but got the impression of a blend of scents — beeswax, rum, sulfur, and smoke. Rotten Roy.
Batten gathered her up and swept out of the room, and Folkenflik popped to his feet, vibrating with concern under my hand. I told him softly, “She’ll be okay. Stay with me, Gunther.”
It was a long ten minutes of doubt and worry alone with the werefox and the maddened vampire. Revenant, I thought stubbornly,
even though it was Aston, and until I saw him vulnerable like this, he’d been the big bad V-word of my nightmares. “Who did this to him, Gunther?” I asked, scratching behind his ear.
One of this paws started scratching air as I found an itchy spot. I tried to ignore the tug of kinship I felt with him, and wondered whether I would get trapped in my furry form someday like him, and hoped Harry would scratch my ears for me. I made a mental note to have him practice when we got out of this. Maybe naked, in front of the wood-burning stove back at Shaw's Fist.
Batten’s figure filled the small door frame again. “All right, Ms. Info-Gather, now what?”
“Now, one of us feeds this fine fellow.” It was dark, but I could feel Batten glaring at me, and when I swung the flashlight to check, his angry eyes held a hard glint.
“Or?”
“Or we release him and hope he’s not crazed by hunger and tears both of our throats open in his zeal to feed.” I shrugged. “I mean, if you’re ready to rumble, we can try it, but I’d rather refill his tank while he’s safely chained up and manageable.”
Batten shook his head. “He gets a taste of you, all hell will break loose. Remember Gregori?” His voice was accusing and tinged with jealousy, as if I’d known that rescuing Gregori would Bond the old revenant to me, and that I’d done it on purpose to enrage him and Harry.
Batten shoved a thick finger in my face. “Not happening again. Besides, he's tasted me before.”
I recalled vividly the gnarled knot of scar tissue high on Batten’s inner thigh, and the first time he’d shown it to me, and how vulnerable he’d been when he spoke of it. There was none of that vulnerability in his voice now, but I Felt it strongly through the Bond. I marveled at how good he was at keeping his hurt off his face. Years of training had forged him an excellent mask, but now, I was privy to his emotions in a way I never was before. I was still undecided on whether that was a good thing.
