Risa’s head swiveled towards the doorway where I stood, but it was as if she didn’t even see me. As if she couldn’t actually register my presence. Instead, she stared at the spot with wide eyes full of pain, her raised hand shaking madly.
“You should have paid better attention,” Kristoff said to her in a chiding tone. “Balam has taken her. They’re downstairs already. I can see exactly what’s happening. Here – let me show you.”
What did he mean, Balam has taken her? He must have been referring to me, but for fuck’s sake, I was standing right here! Couldn’t Risa see me?
“Risa!” I cried, striding forward without fear, hardly concerned about anything Kristoff might do to me if I came too close. “Risa, I’m here. I’m right here! Can’t you see me? Can’t you hear me?”
Kristoff looked at me with a wide grin. “She can only see what I’m showing her,” he told me in a gloating tone. “She can only see you in Balam’s lair, being crushed in his fist. She can only hear the words I want her to hear.”
He looked back at Risa, who had been effectively subdued. She was staring straight ahead, not seeing anything that was real, her mouth open in shock. Kristoff pushed her roughly and knocked her off of him, sending her crashing down to the floor, where she crawled backward like someone trying to escape raging flames.
“No,” I said quickly, reaching up with my free hand to tear at my hair. “You’re lying. You couldn’t do that to her. She’s not under your thrall.”
“I’m a very powerful warlock,” Kristoff explained with that same demonic grin, rising to his feet and dusting himself off. He straightened his lapels, then gave me a hard look. “You underestimated me, Miss Ford,” he said calmly. “You thought you could defeat me, just because you had Risa at your side. But you should have run when you had the chance.”
He pulled his upper lip back over his teeth in a menacing snarl, then lunged at me. Only thing was, this time, I was acting on pure instinct. I knew he was coming before he even finished speaking.
Back at the warehouse, I had thought too long about it before taking the shot that winged Kristoff’s arm. Thinking wasn’t exactly my strong suit. Action was.
He was fast, yeah, there was no doubt about that. But so was I. My weapon was like a flesh-and-blood extension of my arm, and its motion was fluid, as if all I had to do was raise my hand, cock my thumb, and kill him with nothing but the power of my mind.
The small pronged arrow flew from my gun before he even started moving, and by the time I felt the wind of his imminent approach, he was standing stock-still in front of me, a look of utter shock on his dumb vampire face. He looked slowly down at the left side of his chest, where a wide bloodstain was quickly spreading over his shirt beneath his jacket.
“Well, fuck me,” he said in wonder, pressing a hand to the wound. “You shot me, you little whore.”
“Rot in hell, dickhead,” I spat, reaching out with my index finger to prod him in the chest.
He went down like a ton of bricks, propelled by nothing but my one little finger. By the time he hit the floor, his dark eyes were wide, glassy and unseeing.
Yep, he was dead as a doornail.
Now, after all these shenanigans, of course my first thought was to rush to Risa and see if she had snapped out of that weird trance. She was still staring straight ahead, but she was starting to blink slowly, as if the false images behind her eyes were clearing away.
I knelt down in front of her, taking her hands in mine. Usually her skin was cool, pleasantly cool, like that early April morning I once mentioned. But now it was freezing, cold as ice beneath my fingertips.
Her hands were slack at first, and she didn’t look at me. But then I spoke her name, laying my hand against her frigid cheek. She finally turned towards me, though she still seemed confused. She just stared at me, her eyes narrowing in bewilderment.
“I’m all right, baby,” I said in a clear, steady voice, trying to reassure her with my tone. “I never left you. I’ve been here the whole time. Kristoff was just fucking with you – but he’s gone now.”
Slowly, so slowly, the stark fear and pain faded from her eyes. She looked at me – and she saw me. She truly knew I was with her.
“D . . . Dani?” she stammered, gripping my hands tightly, but of course not too tightly to hurt me.
“I’m right here,” I repeated soothingly, running a gentle hand through her feathery hair.
She moved so quickly, she almost took me by surprise, darting forward and throwing her arms around me. She pulled me against her and held me close, burying her face in my neck, inhaling me like smoke.
I knew that I would never feel more loved than I did in that moment.
“It’s okay, baby,” I murmured in her ear, kissing her face once, twice, three times. “I’m okay.”
She held me as if she would never let me go. And, despite the fact that there was a dead vampire a few feet away – not to mention a demon from the sixth circle of hell in the basement – I had no desire to ask her to.
***
After we finally peeled ourselves off the floor, and out of each other’s arms, we got to work again. Risa didn’t seem to want to let go of my hand, and honestly, I was comforted by the constant touch of her skin.
For the first time, I thought of Michelle and the Black Angels back at the warehouse. Kristoff had claimed they were only under a sleeping spell, but cagy beast that he’d been, I didn’t see why I should believe anything he’d said.
“Are your friends all right?” I asked Risa.
“They’re perfectly fine,” she answered. “They were already awake before I came for you. Kristoff didn’t actually hurt them.”
I exhaled with relief, squeezing her hand. I really hadn’t wanted to hear that anyone had died while some psychotic vampire dude was kidnapping me.
Pulling Risa along with me, I walked over to Kristoff’s desk and picked up his cell phone. It wasn’t even locked. I guess creepy homicidal villains don’t feel any particular inclination to lock their phones.
“I know we should probably get out of here,” I muttered, scrolling through Kristoff’s texts. “There’s a demon downstairs, after all.”
“Not anymore there isn’t,” Risa told me.
I looked at her in bewilderment. “What does that mean?” I inquired with a sour feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“I could feel it as soon as he was dead,” Risa added, jerking her chin towards Kristoff’s body. “The demon’s presence had disappeared from the building. I would assume it’s with Serenity now.”
“Well, I guess you can’t blame it for not sticking around to avenge old Kris’s death,” I mumbled. “It’s not as if the guy was all that likable.”
I went back to the texts. There were messages from a shitload of different people, but many of them had one thing in common: the address 350 Watt Street.
“That must be where he’s keeping the missing girls,” I said to Risa, stowing the phone in my back pocket.
She nodded slowly, looking pained. I knew she was thinking of all the years Kristoff had forced her to be complicit in his disgusting enterprise.
I smiled softly, touching her cheek. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” I assured her. “None of it was your fault.”
She nodded again, obviously trying to harden herself against the strong emotion she was feeling.
“On a logical level, of course I know that,” she told me. “But there will always be a part of me that feels guilty.”
I leaned forward and hugged her close, kissing her neck and murmuring in her ear: “Vampire or not – that feeling is what makes you human.”
She held me tightly, and I turned to kiss her lips, then laid my forehead against hers. I had never really understood how to comfort people, but with Risa, it came naturally. There was no thinking, no guesswork. I just knew how.
I took my own phone out of my pocket and called Kent, relaying the address I’d found in Kristoff’s texts. It was a little bit of an
awkward conversation, because I couldn’t tell him much in the way of how I’d obtained my information. But he was my bro, after all, and he didn’t doubt me. He said he’d inform the captain right away and organize a squad to rescue the kidnapped girls.
I mouthed to Risa, “What’s the address?”
You may recall I was in the back of a blacked-out van when I arrived at my present location. If Balam had still been in the basement, I wouldn’t have asked Kent to come here, but the women scattered throughout the building hooked up to drips needed proper paramedics. There was nothing that Risa or I could really do for them.
Risa quietly told me the building’s address, and I repeated it to Kent.
“There are a lot of people here who need medical assistance,” I informed him. “Send ambos. And I’m not just talking one or two. We’re going to need a damn ambo army.”
“All right,” Kent replied. “We’ll be there as quick as we can.”
“Check all the rooms,” I told him. “And check the basement. There are people down there.”
I thought of the unconscious women under Balam’s throne, and I wondered if they were awake now that Kristoff was dead. As in, like, when the vampire dies, do all of his curses break? I figured I should ask Risa.
“Don’t worry, Dani,” Kent said. “We’ll take care of it.”
I ended the call with a sigh of relief, then turned to Risa.
“We have to leave, don’t we?” I asked her. My heart was heavy with regret. I knew Kent would be expecting me to be here when he arrived.
“Yeah,” she said softly, and I knew that she felt my pain. I was still cut off from the world I’d always known. Out in the open, I was exposed to Serenity’s wrath, not to mention the fact that I would be endangering anyone I came in contact with.
I knew Risa and I had to stay hidden for now. There was no way around it.
We joined hands again, and that familiar crackle of electricity moved slowly up my arm. I found strength in our united front.
We walked through the silent building towards the exit. The heavy scent of blood was thick in my nostrils, and I couldn’t help peering in at Kristoff’s prisoners as we passed by the open doors. Some of them looked so close to death.
I took comfort in the fact that soon these women would be free. Never again would another human being die by Kristoff’s hand.
When we passed the door that led down to the basement, I paused. “There were people down there,” I said to Risa. “Under a sleeping curse. But they might be awake now.”
She shook her head sadly, squeezing my hand. “I’m sorry, Dani,” she said. “There’s no one left down there.”
“No,” I murmured, unwilling to believe it. “Well, we should – we should go and look . . .”
“Don’t,” Risa said. The firmness in her voice made me pause. “You don’t want to see what’s down there.”
I hung my head in despair, trying not to think about what Balam must have done to those girls before he left. But I couldn’t help thinking about it. My mind was suddenly clouded by twenty shades of darkness and evil.
“Come on,” Rise murmured, putting her arm around my waist and leading me gently away from the door. “Let’s go.”
I nodded stiffly, starting off with her down the corridor. This whole day just fucking sucked.
When we came to the exit, Risa reached out to open the door – but before she could so much as lay a finger on it, it swung open of its own accord. Well, someone else’s, obviously. Though I had no idea who it could possibly be.
The outside world had darkened while I lay chained in my prison, and the only illumination was the handful of halogen lamps in the building’s parking lot. It was more than enough to throw glow on the new arrival, though.
It was a shapely woman of average height, with shoulder-length blonde hair and flawless skin. She was dressed in ridiculously expensive clothes, and was draped with enough diamond jewelry to weigh down a Clydesdale. When she saw Risa, she clutched her Gucci bag with wide eyes and an open mouth.
I had no trouble inferring who this particular joker was. It could have only been Brooke, Risa’s ex-girlfriend. You remember – the one with cancer for whom Risa traded her independence. The one who ran off with her nefarious vampire savior and left Risa with a cellar full of kidnapped women and girls.
The sight of her made me seriously want to vomit. I wished that I had something in my stomach to accomplish the feat. I would have yakked all over her fucking Prada shoes.
“R-Risa!” she stammered, looking as if she were wondering whether she should fear for her life. If it were up to me, she certainly would have, but Risa wasn’t that kind of person. She would never have hurt anyone without just cause.
“Hello, Brooke,” she said drily. It was obvious that she was thoroughly unimpressed with her ex’s foolish display of grandeur.
“What are you doing here?” Brooke asked. Then, a little more pointedly: “Where’s Kristoff?”
“He’s dead, bitch,” I replied cheerfully. “He’ll no longer be funding what seems to have been a very long shopping spree.”
She glanced at me with a harsh expression, her cold eyes looking like those of a dead fish. “Who the fuck are you?” she demanded.
“I’m Risa’s girlfriend,” I said proudly, squeezing my lover’s hand.
Risa smiled happily and pressed my fingers.
“Ah, I see,” Brooke said in a haughty voice. She looked me up and down and added, “So you decided to downgrade, Risa?”
That was the last straw. That one broke the goddamn camel’s back. I knew it would be thoroughly unethical to shoot this bitch – but that didn’t mean I couldn’t punch her in her gross face.
So that’s what I did.
She fell to the floor like a hooker who’d had too much gin, nose bleeding, apparently unconscious.
“Sorry,” I said sheepishly, rubbing the fist I’d used to punch Brooke and looking uncertainly into Risa’s face. But she was practically beaming.
“You’ve got a hell of a right hook,” she commended me.
“Thanks,” I murmured, blushing like a kindergartener whose crush just told her that she admired how many worms she could eat without puking.
Without another glance towards her, we stepped over Brooke’s unconscious form, then exited the building. I let the door fall shut in our wake, grateful to be leaving that charnel house behind.
There were three vehicles in the dimly-lit lot. Kristoff’s van was still there, and I saw a white Beamer that must have belonged to Brooke. Risa’s red Kawasaki was right by the door.
“Your chariot awaits, my lady,” Risa said with a smile.
We got on the bike, and I wrapped my arms tightly around Risa’s waist, burying my face in her shoulder. I was overwhelmed with the notion that I’d just cheated death. That I’d kicked it squarely in the balls and left it moaning on the floor, trading its frigid embrace for the soft, familiar curves of my lover’s body. I held her close, breathing her in.
“Are you okay?” she asked quietly, turning her head to look at me.
“I’m better than okay,” I murmured, kissing her lips tenderly. “I’m with you.”
She kissed me back, nuzzling my face with her cheek. Then she turned around and started the bike.
She drove out of the lot and into the street, speeding us farther away from that wretched building with every passing second. Soon Kent and the ambos would arrive to take care of the women. I wasn’t sure what they’d make of an unconscious broad in the entryway and a dead guy in the back office, but that wasn’t really my problem at the moment.
At the moment – well, it was as if I didn’t have any problems at all. Yeah, it was true that the leader of Shadow City’s vampires wanted me and Risa dead. I was cut off from the human world, and I didn’t know if I would ever be able to go back to it.
But I didn’t know if I wanted to go back to it. Here in this moment, here with Risa, I was happy. I felt satisfied and complete in a w
ay I never had in my life.
I had no idea where we were going, and I had no idea what we were doing. But I was with Risa – and we would face what came, whatever came, together.
Risa had marked me, had claimed me as her own. But somehow, in my own way, I’d marked her, too. I’d left a brand on her that I’d never bestowed upon anyone else. Her mark was invisible, just like mine. But it was real. And it couldn’t be erased by near-death experiences, or the threat of murderous vampire leaders, or M.I.A. demons from hell who may or may not still have wanted to crush me in their fists.
The moon shone bright in the inky sky over our heads, and I peered at it through the visor of my helmet, tightening my grip on Risa’s waist. No, I didn’t know what would happen. Not today, not tomorrow.
But maybe the moon knew. And maybe one of these days she’d fill me in.
*END OF BOOK 1*
Marked (Shadow City Book 1) Page 14
