“Okay,” I said, sucking a stream of hot air through my teeth and nodding once in resolution. “Okay. I’m going. He probably won’t even be there. It’s fine. I’m going.”
Hades, Dulcie, just start walking.
Then I heard footsteps. Not mine, but somebody else’s. Heavy, clumsy, and not many of them. Three, maybe four people, no more, stumbling down the street, their speech slurring badly enough to require subtitles. I sniffed the air—salt, sweat, alcohol, testosterone. A lot of alcohol.
And the metal-and-oily smell of guns.
Well, fuck.
Four guys, I guessed. Angry, drunk. Itching for a fight, and probably looking for any Netherworldian to rough up and make themselves feel like men. They were armed, all of them, and probably with the one thing that might have stopped me from killing them if the mood struck me. Dragon saliva doesn’t have a particular smell, but anyone out this late, with the audacity of carrying weapons, would definitely be packing anti-creature bullets. They were either off-duty cops or armed civilians. They were also about to get their open-carry licenses revoked and hard.
Just around the corner, they were moving with purpose—as much as a belligerent band of drunks could muster, at least. I shrank into the shadows, waiting for them to pass… watching their faces so I could report them later.
The first one to drag himself around the bend was the drunkest of the bunch. Average height, red hair, a buttoned-up blue shirt that was open past his ribs. Drunken out of his skull. With a badge that shone on his belt.
Shit, now I have to say something. I slid right back into cop-mode mentality. “Sir, are you on duty?” I asked, stepping forward. He wasn’t wearing his uniform, but nothing makes the force look worse than a conspicuously drunk officer wandering the wasteland in the dark—except maybe the same officer stumbling across an equally drunk supernatural teenager and beating the shit out of him. That’d be bad news no matter who got blamed.
“NO!” he spat back. I saw a bottle in his hand, long-empty, its contents clinging to his paper-white tongue for dear life. “I’m off… I’m off! I’m off for the night!”
“Uh-huh,” I said, and the rest of his motley crew crept up behind him, their eyes narrowing as they gave me accusing stares.
“Are any of you gentlemen sober enough to take him home?” No sense pissing them off if I didn’t have to. I’d met a very small number of cops who managed to maintain a civil conversation with me, and he was a brother in blue before he became a stupid punk on the street. Besides, my hair covered the points of my ears, so there was nothing inherently magical about me, none that they could see. Maybe they wouldn’t recognize me and we could all go home without a fuss.
“Dulcie O’Neil,” said another one, and the steady well, well, well gibe of a petty supervillain came to mind.
Well fuckity-fuck you too, Universe.
I recognized the guy, but barely—Morris something, a short, stocky guy from my orientation. One of a few that quit the day they found out I was joining their little corner of the force. He wasn’t nearly so drunk as his redheaded friend, but his cheeks were rosy pink and he was having a hell of a time just keeping his balance.
Great, just what I need right now.
“Go directly home now and I won’t arrest you for public intoxication,” I said, half reaching for a gun I’d left at home—not that I needed it if things went sour. Things won’t go sour. They’re just drunk and tired and stupid. They’ve got better things to do than cause trouble.
“And what if we don’t?” Morris asked, following my hand. He grinned when he saw I wasn’t armed.
I almost laughed. “Then I’ll arrest you for public intoxication.”
“Hell of an earthquake just now,” said the one next to him, someone I didn’t recognize. Tall, square face, big, angry eyes with all his veins stenciled in painful detail. Bulging muscles, he was taking long, deliberate strides forward, something that a less capable creature than I might have found intimidating.
“Yeah,” I said, adjusting my stance. I was suddenly ready to make a break for it. The last thing I needed was a bunch of idiot cops screaming that Dulcie O’Neil tried to kill them. I could call somebody else to pick them up when I was in the clear. “Hell of an earthquake.”
“Funny you happened to be here when it happened.”
“Dude, really?” I asked. “We’re in California. This is, like, the earthquake sanctuary of the world.” Yeah, maybe we didn’t have that many earthquakes but I didn’t know what else to say. It wasn’t like I was going to tell them what really caused it. Mainly because I didn’t know.
He scoffed, his eyes drifting left, then pitched into the building, barely catching himself. “Fucking freak,” he said. Not the most inspiring insult, but the subsequent look he gave me could have sent Hades scuttling for cover.
“I didn’t cause the earthquake,” I said lamely. “I can’t create earthquakes.” I don’t think.
They all pretended not to hear me.
“Ryland’s dead,” Thomas said, taking a giant step forward. “Wanna know why?”
Well, fuck. I didn’t have a clue who Ryland might be, but if I had to guess, I’d say he was a cop—one whose death was about to be pinned squarely on me. “Let me guess…” But I wasn’t able to finish my sentence.
“That fucking monster you brought back with you,” he said. He glared at me, his heart thrumming under his ribs. The sound was enough to make me salivate, although I couldn’t tell you why.
“Monster?” I repeated as I frowned. Wait, so I’m not the monster in question right now? “What monster?”
“The thing that killed Ryland,” Thomas spat out, “and everybody else. It ripped them to pieces.”
Oh, I thought. The precinct monster. Got it. “I didn’t bring anything back from anywhere. We still don’t know who or what is responsible for the attack.” Learning that they knew about it at all this early did not bode well for the morning news. If their buddies were leaking the story to them, and especially, if someone they knew was now dead, they’d be more than eager to tell any news station that would listen, whether the department was ready to release a statement or not. This was going to be very bad for the former ANC. “I had absolutely nothing to do with it.”
They ignored me, and all four took staggering steps forward. I groaned. Hades, here we go.
My plan was to dodge them at the last second and dematerialize a few steps away. I wanted to give them a little taste of the scary vampire they’d heard so much about and a chance to make the smart decision of skedaddling home. Barring that, I would leave. Even running sober, none of them were nearly half my speed, so they’d never catch me. I’d become a disembodied blur for half a second, and then poof! Gone.
Before I could respond, a shadow leapt out from nowhere and punched Thomas in the face hard enough to shatter his teeth. None of my theatrical dodging was necessary.
Five seconds later, all four drunken men were rolling on the ground, moaning and cursing in various degrees. All of them were bleeding from deep cuts in their mouths, and scrapes on their elbows, the little wounds filled with asphalt and humiliation. Their guns were removed from their holsters and now sitting idly at the feet of the face-punching shadow.
He, meantime, was looking rather pleased with himself.
“Evening,” he said in his thick English accent, his fangs glinting in the moonlight as he smiled broadly at me.
I suppressed a groan. “Bram.”
EIGHT
Sam
I went home. Driving slowly, I kept my phone in my lap in case Dulcie called. It buzzed a few times, but the buzzing was just email notifications. I didn’t hear from Dulcie during the entire twenty-minute drive. Which I hoped was a good sign. However, Dulcie isn’t known for making intelligent decisions on the fly, especially when it involves asking someone for help. Even if that someone is me.
I had to talk myself out of turning around and trying to follow her a number of times—not only because sh
e would absolutely see me coming, but also because she would feel personally attacked. Like I didn’t trust her enough to go on a walk. That’s fair, I guess. Even though she knows I know she was procrastinating. And, what was more, I was fairly sure she was afraid she’d run into Knight. And I guess I couldn’t blame her for that.
She’ll call me if she has another episode, I thought, trying to avoid becoming the overbearing mother. I actually doubted she would have another episode; she seemed stabilized enough for the night. All I had to worry about now was Dulcie deliberately doing something stupid. Like demolishing an abandoned building or identifying herself in a bar just to start a fight. No, it was not typical Dulcie behavior, but she’d done a lot dumber things and for dumber reasons. Today was rough. My worry was well-founded. At this point, I could do nothing else but worry.
I turned slowly onto my street. My house had miraculously been spared any damage from the nightmare earthquakes. The roads getting there, however, were in pretty bad shape. Cracked and splintered like palm trees after a hurricane, pieces of rubble covered the medians and shoulders, all surrounded by orange caution cones and reflective signs. There were only so many bulldozers in the state, and most of them were busy in bigger cities where the citizens thought they mattered more. My car—a silver Jetta—was barely high enough to handle the ups and downs of the buckled streets, and not without making me supremely nauseous.
I parked the car, took out my keys, and spent a minute just climbing out of the seat. My stomach kept flipping and churning, while the rest of my body tried to ignore it.
Maybe I ate something bad at the diner, I thought. I hadn’t eaten much, but fried food plus bad driving is always a recipe for disaster.
Eventually, I made it to the front door. The white paint was scratched and scorched, but that was my fault. Whenever I get stressed, I accidentally set things on fire. That accounted for the ash-black flower beds and smoke-stained façade. And the broken garage lights. And the dark, scorched circles on the lawn.
I’ve been very stressed out lately.
I looked down at my keys and started sorting through them to find the house key. The door flew open before I could manage to do it.
“Hey, beautiful,” Casey said, one arm propped against the door frame. Dark hair, square glasses, a sweet, little, nerdy smile quirking the corners of his mouth. He was wearing a blue button-up with the sleeves pushed back to his elbows. The sight of him made my heart splutter like a light bulb in a haunted house.
For those of you just tuning in, Casey works as an FBI agent in the Preternatural Division—a group of amusingly underfunded federal employees that were tasked with the maintenance and regulation of the supernatural community. They existed before and after the fall of the Association of Netherworld Creatures and were, in theory, our supervisors. In a worst case scenario, they were also our enforcers.
Casey was here because we’d crashed into worst-case-scenario territory like a meteor.
Knight had been Casey’s ANC contact, whose job was to keep the FBI informed of any suspicious goings-on. Things like the aggressively dangerous crime of kidnapping the daughter of the former leader of the Netherworldian regime that was just overturned. Suspicioso. You’d think that Knight would have reported that before he went gallivanting off into the dark on a mission to save her with a historically unhelpful vampire and no plan. When Knight went missing—along with a host of other high-ranking ANC employees—it brought Casey and his band of crazy people down on our heads, and not a moment too soon. By the time he got here, I was all that was left of Knight’s office.
“Hey,” I said to my boyfriend as I slumped forward into him before he closed the door behind me. I buried my face in his shirt and spent a full minute just breathing, inhaling his delicious smell. “You smell really nice,” I said through his shirt.
He chuckled, squeezed me, and let me go, trailing his hands from my shoulders to my arms where they stayed. “You smell nice, too.”
I slipped my hands under his shirt and pressed them into his sides, keeping my face still buried in his shirt. “Give me your body heat,” I said.
“Sure, it’s not like I need it for anything.”
“I demand your warmth.”
“Right. Damn, your hands are cold.”
“Shut up, I’m working on them.”
He laughed. After a long moment, he asked, “How’s Dulcie?”
I pulled back a little to look at him and, after a short pause, I shrugged. “She was in a state when I got there. The werewolf part of her was taking over and fighting with all the other parts of her. Kind of like when a were turns for the first time, except she managed to keep herself anchored until I got there. I talked her down.”
“That’s good,” he said, vaguely familiar with Dulcie’s episodes. He grimaced. “She’s going to have to come in. The division is down at the precinct right now, examining all the information about the attack. Mom agreed to give Dulcie until the morning, but that’s the best we can do.”
“I know,” I said. Casey’s mother led the Preternatural Division, and had been more than sweet to all of us. “Thank you.”
I called Casey before I left Dulcie and gave him the gist of the story. I practically begged him not to drag Dulcie into the office at this ungodly hour. After the day she had—hell, the life she had—Casey agreed to pull some strings that would allow her a little more time. It wasn’t very long, but better than nothing, and while Dulcie might try to convince you she was fine, the best friend always knows better. We’d been living at a breakneck save-the-world pace for so long, she needed… I don’t know, more than a single hour to sort herself out.
Casey told his mother and other superiors that he had reason to believe Meg was still alive, and he sent them to Dulcie’s precinct to do what they could. A few more hours without Dulcie’s personal story wouldn’t kill anybody.
Hopefully.
“So the thing you felt,” said Casey. “You mentioned…”
“That I thought it was Meg,” I finished. “Yeah. I can’t be sure, it was pretty faint, and it was… I don’t know, laced with something else? Maybe it was just me, but Dulcie felt it too, and she said she sensed the same thing at her precinct… In fact, she was totally convinced it was Meg.” I sighed. “Honestly, I’d be more surprised if it weren’t at this point.”
I sighed, which soon became a deep, woeful groan. I buried my face in Casey’s shirt again and just let the noise exude, the moisture of my breath condensing on my cheeks and underneath my eyes. He squeezed me tight once and kissed the top of my head.
“Meg didn’t die,” I said. I never really believed that she had, but I’d chalked the feeling up to stupid paranoia. “She’s still a major threat.”
“Maybe.”
Maybe, I echoed silently. Yes, we didn’t know for certain. That shadowy, heavy feeling was similar in all cases, but could’ve meant anything. Bram’s shadows involved some necromancy, but they were very different schools of magic. This could be another twig on the dark-magic branch. And have nothing to do with Meg. Nothing at all.
My fear was cold and heavy in my stomach, and I clenched my teeth as I remembered the cold darkness and the skeleton-god that drove it away.
I must have made a sound because Casey squeezed me even tighter.
“I know,” he said. “We’ll do everything we can. I promise.”
I sighed again and looked up at him, smiling. “Thanks, babe.”
“If Dulcie needs anything, just let me know, okay? I’m always here.”
“I know,” I said. We stayed there like that for a long moment, just looking at each other. Watching our pupils dilate, hearing our inhales and exhales, smiling when they synchronized. God, he was cute.
“She will have to come in tomorrow,” he said. “She had the world’s worst day, so we can give her the night, but no longer than that.”
I nodded. “Yeah.” It was stupid to wait at all, but a strung-out Dulcie in a small, metal room was the last th
ing we needed right now.
Casey gestured back to the kitchen and a conspicuous grey-brown haze that was drifting into the living room. He didn’t look away. “I finished dinner.”
I sniffed the air. Something sweet, something salty, and something that was definitely still burning. “Did you?”
“I tried. Really, really hard.”
I pushed myself up on my toes and kissed him. “You’re awfully sweet.”
He gave me a peck on the nose, grinning. “And you’re spicy?”
I pushed him back, laughing. “You wanna fight me and find out how spicy I can be?”
“I don’t know, probably.”
I punched him in the shoulder—not hard, just playfully. Not that I even possessed the upper body strength to dive into him if I really wanted to anyway.
He grinned. “That was adorable.”
I glowered at him. “Shut up; I could set you on fire if I really wanted to.”
“Because you’re so hot?”
“Hades, never mind.”
He laughed and lunged forward, bending down and wrapping his arms around my waist. In no time, he was spinning me around fast enough to blur the room into a palette of colors and fog.
“Hey!” I said, laughing. He stopped and put me down, grinning like a little kid.
“Hey, guess what?” he said.
“What?” I answered, reeling.
His expression changed. He leaned forward, putting his lips right next to my ear and exhaling slowly. He stood there a full minute, letting the warmth of his breath sink into my skin. His hands lifted my shirt, pressing against my stomach and my waist, then rising, higher, higher… his lips parting, inhaling deeply…
“Is there a sentence I should be waiting for?” I whispered.
He leaned down, kissing my neck, once, then twice. His hands began wrapping around me and pressing into the space between my shoulder blades. “Probably not.”
What Screams May Come Page 9
