by Sierra Dean
It seemed naggingly familiar to me, but I couldn’t pinpoint why. For all I knew it might have been something I’d seen on a stupid Pinterest tattoo somewhere. Like a universal symbol for “don’t quit your daydream” or some other hooey-crystal nonsense.
I stayed crouched near the ground, looking at the area around me as if I might see something that other investigators had missed, but as far as I could tell the scene had been completely checked and photographed. I pushed myself up with a steadying palm, and when I glanced down, I realized my hand had a faint black coating on it.
Like charcoal.
In the grass it had been totally invisible, but when I’d touched it directly, it was unavoidable. There was definitely a smear of charcoal on my hand.
I snapped a photo of that as well, an uneasy feeling turning in my guts. Things were starting to feel very coincidental here, which meant there was probably no coincidence at all. Dead bodies. Charcoal. A killer vampire.
“Find anything?” Shane was standing close by, but not close enough to get in my way.
“I’m not sure yet. But something isn’t right.”
“Of course, someone died here. That leaves a mark.”
I held my hand up to show him. “But a literal mark?”
He made a face. “It’s New York. This place is filthy. I don’t know if you can assume that’s related to the murders. We’ve had plenty of rain since then. That could literally be anything. So you’re going to want to wash your hands super thoroughly after this, because that’s gross.”
“Thank you for that incredibly helpful hygiene information, I really appreciate it.”
“I feel like you’re being sarcastic, but I would like to consider myself something of an expert on the spread of germs at this point in my life. I don’t think a month has gone by in the last three years that either Siobhan or me aren’t sick with something. Kids, man. Tiny little disease factories, I’m telling you.” The glimmer of amusement in his eyes told me he wouldn’t trade his little disease factory for anything in the world.
All my baddest-ass friends were getting soft on me.
He could have been right, maybe the black smear on my hand was just dirt or other indistinguishable city grime, but the location of it was so close to where the bodies had been. In fact right where the bodies had been, which raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
There was something extra hinky about this Sig situation, and I was pretty sure once I sorted it out, I was going to hate what I found at the end of the trail.
Chapter Seventeen
The wardens of the East Coast Council were not accustomed to having a human working in their midst. I’d asked Holden if I might be able to use a desk during the day so I could access some of the old council files on Davos and do some research.
Now I’d been busy plugging away at it all for a few hours, and with the sun down, the wardens had begun filtering in to start their business for the night, and they really didn’t know what to do with me sitting at the typically empty desk, a pile of documents at my side, and a certainly surly don’t interrupt me expression on my face.
The past hours had yielded plenty of interesting information, but I still wasn’t sure how any of it was going to lead me to Sig.
Davos, it seemed, had painted himself as something of a mystic during his prime years in Russia and Georgia. So much so that I wasn’t far off when I’d made the joke about him being Rasputin. Before he’d been driven into hiding and had ultimately come to America, he had a bit of a cult following.
Literally.
I found old advertisements about his speeches, where people would gather to hear him talk about everything from religion to politics, and how only death could truly cure the ailments of mankind.
He convinced the believers of his cult he would give them eternal life if they were only willing to trust him and go to the temporary death that was necessary.
Whatever he said, he managed to convince a lot of poor, hungry, undereducated people he was practically a god, and could give them the lives they’d been praying for for so long.
Sometimes they were found dead, as he moved city to city, a traveling charlatan. Others went with him and were simply never seen or heard from again. Certainly some of them had become vampires—that was just the odds—but many of the girls who thought he was the best thing since before the Beatles wound up rotting in a ditch somewhere.
And many of the photos I found from the later body dump sites all showed that weird little seagull mark.
So now I knew that wasn’t a coincidence, the mark absolutely related to why those girls had died. Tyler had texted to let me know they were running it through the database, but there still hadn’t been any hits. Whatever it was, it was obscure or totally new.
I was hoping something in Davos’s history would give me a hint as to where he might be in the city. He clearly favored being around humans, and the girls had been members of a vampire fan club. Now that it was night again, that seemed like the best place to start hunting for him.
I’d called and left several messages for Ingrid, knowing if Sig was off in the wind, she would likely be with him, but she didn’t answer, and by the time I tried to leave the third voicemail, her box was full.
Once I was done with the fan club, I’d stop at the hotel where she lived to see if she might have left something behind that would point me in the right direction.
When I stood up from the desk, three wardens nearby jumped as if startled. I nodded at one near me, a guy who looked like he had probably once been a billboard model or something. He was too ripped and pretty to look directly at. It was almost a bit much. “Hey, you.”
“Y-yes?”
“What’s your name?”
“Walsh?” He said it like he wasn’t sure. I couldn’t decide if that was his first or last name, or if maybe he was just doing the Cher thing and rocking with one name only.
“Walsh, where do vampires go to find willing human feeds? Especially women?” I wasn’t really hip to that scene here anymore. The bars changed frequently to avoid protests from hate groups and potential attacks on the vampires and their fans. Bad for business to have picketers outside, so the establishments tended to roam.
“There’s a place on West 63rd and Columbus, near the ballet. It’s been there for ages, they don’t seem to mind the attention.”
I knew the area. It was close to Central Park and pretty close to my and Desmond’s apartment.
“Does this outfit work?” I asked, fanning my hand over the jeans and button-down Oxford I was wearing.
A bored-looking girl with sleek, dark hair and perfect smoky eyeshadow gave me a once-over and answered for Walsh. “I don’t know, is the vibe you’re hoping to give off, like, PTA mom meets HGTV house flipper? If so, you nailed it.”
I stared at her. “What’s your name?”
“Simone.”
“Great, you’re coming with me tonight, thanks for volunteering. Now, where can I find a dress in this joint?”
As luck would have it, the council was in the habit of providing clothing for wardens in need, and Simone was precisely the kind of woman who hid all the best designer label goods where no one could find them.
She swapped out my jeans and top for a black minidress with a plunging scoop at the back with affixed draping diamond chain that hung down my spine. Blessedly, she liked my boots and said I could wear them with the ensemble.
Simone was an interesting character. She acted totally disinterested in everything, but the second she was unleashed in a closet it was like her entire being lit up, and she became a different person. She had held up a half-dozen dress options to me before settling on the backless one.
I had to admit, I looked good. A hell of a lot better than just waltzing into the joint in jeans and demanding someone talk to me.
I bunched my curls into a messy bun on top of my head, but thankfully the ringlets had enough volume to make the whole thing look planned and intentional. Whatever woman
had invented the messy bun deserved to have her face put on money.
Simone and I took one of the council’s fleet of town cars to the club, and it let us off at the corner so our arrival wouldn’t attract any attention.
Of course, rolling into the club with someone who looked like Simone leading the way was bound to get you a few second glances no matter what. She had a body that was meant for designer clothes, all lean angles and sharp, bony edges. Her cheekbones could cut diamonds. She was ferocious.
Inside the club, rather than thumping bass, the music was mellow and low, a sure-fire sign we had entered an establishment frequented by vampires. When your hearing was as acute as theirs, music blaring at top volume was an assault to the senses.
Sidling up to the bar, the human bartender gave me one look, then immediately shifted his attention to Simone. “What can I get you?”
She scanned the room with dispassionate boredom and lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I haven’t seen anything interesting yet, but I’ll let you know.”
He realized then that her drink of choice wasn’t going to come on tap and gave a nod. “How about you?”
“Gin and tonic. Heavy on the G, light on the T, thanks.” One of my favorite things about being human now was how much I could drink. When I had the metabolism of a werewolf and vampire in one, alcohol raced through me, giving me an almost instant buzz. These days it took at least four or five cocktails before I hit that stage. Which meant a gin and tonic was absolutely in order for the night.
It was weird what things had changed now that I was human, while some had stayed the same. I still had some of the quickness I’d had as a vampire, something I assumed was related to my werewolf DNA. I could also take a beating better than most humans, but that was probably due to all the practice I’d had.
The bartender slid the drink across the bar to me, and I paid him, then I turned so I was facing the same direction as Simone. The lights here were dim, like way darker than a normal human bar. It was almost as if the club had been designed so vampires could get the first look at whatever it was they were interested in, and humans just had to wait to be approached.
“This is what the cool kids do?” I asked, remembering I didn’t need to yell to be heard.
“If someone wants to know that the humans they meet are open to a little blood sharing, then yes, this is the easiest way to do that these days.”
Judging by how busy the place was, things were good for vampires right now. The novelty hadn’t worn off yet, and people were still interested in getting up close and personal with fangs.
The whole thing made my skin crawl. It wasn’t that I was against vampires having a bevy of adoring fans waiting around wherever they went, it was more the fetishization aspect that bothered me.
Vampires wouldn’t care who they fed from any more than a human would care which cow their burger came from. Food was food. But humans came into places like this with a twisted, overly romantic ideal of what that relationship was, and I had to think the end result would be pretty disappointing.
Of course, the human participants would never remember how disappointing it was because the vampire’s thrall would make it seem like the most exciting and pleasurable experience. And so they’d just keep coming back for more.
So yeah, you could see why that would up the ick factor for me.
I sipped my drink, savoring the tang of fresh lime in the mix, and scanned the room as best I could given the pathetic lighting. I had a good idea of what Davos looked like thanks to my hours of research, but it was going to be hard to spot him in here unless I tripped over top of him.
“How do I look? Young and impressionable?” I posed for her.
Simone gave me a cursory glance and said, “You look neither young nor impressionable, but you do radiate that special brand of neediness the male vamps seem to love, so if bait was what you were going for, bravo. Chum in the water.”
There were so many layers to her insults I couldn’t fully unpack how savage they were.
Simone was so mean. I seriously loved her.
“Off you go, little fish. The sharks are circling.” She nodded towards the other side of the bar, where sure enough a few male vampires lingered in the shadows, seeming to have attention only for me.
They would know she was a vampire, whereas I was now easy prey.
Another nice thing about being away from the city so often, I didn’t always get recognized immediately anymore. A blow to my ego, maybe, but it made work like this a lot easier when the vampires didn’t know who I was.
You’d think it would be even harder to maintain anonymity in this community now that I was on TV from time to time talking about vampires and werewolves, but no. Perhaps it was that vampires didn’t care about the twenty-four-hour news cycle because time was such a fleeting concept to them?
More likely I looked way different in a dress than I did with my minimal-makeup, zero-fucks-given CNN wardrobe.
With Simone having vanished into the room, one of the male vampires who had been lingering in the shadows approached me. It wasn’t Davos, which made my heart sink, but that didn’t mean this guy didn’t know Davos, or that Davos wasn’t somewhere else here watching this happen.
I had to play this just right.
In a normal bar I’d blow the guy off and enjoy my drink, but this situation required a bit more finesse. If I simply said thanks no thanks to this vampire, it could set the expectation amongst the others nearby that I wasn’t actually interested in being someone’s snack and was a casual fang tourist here to gawk at the storybook creatures.
It happened a lot.
No, I had to let him know I was interested, but not interested in him, and that was the tricky part. For a woman who had been married twice and taken a vampire lover, I was sorry to say I wasn’t very good at traditional flirting.
My expertise was more of the force them to spend enough time with you that they have no choice but to find violence and sarcasm sexy variety. Basically the adult version of punching a boy you liked in the arm and telling him he was stupid. And it had clearly worked for me.
I couldn’t smack this guy and suggest he take me to see Davos.
Ugh, nuance really wasn’t my thing.
He slithered up next to me at the bar like Eurotrash snake and grinned in a way that said he probably didn’t care what my name was, let alone my hopes and dreams.
Not that different from a human bar, really.
“Hey,” he said.
Oh, joy. A conversationalist.
I sipped my drink coyly, hoping it looked flirty rather than giving the impression I didn’t know how to use a straw. “Hi.”
His gaze trailed down my neck. Success.
I’d have to tell Desmond later that I was now a certified master at flirting. After he died of laughter I’m sure he’d come to agree.
“Have I seen you here before? You look familiar.”
Shaking my head, I tried to come off as extra shy. “Uh-uh.”
“Guessed as much. I’m sure I’d remember a pretty girl like you. What’s your name, sweetie?”
Okay, so one thing here. This guy was clearly an older vampire based on what he took to be cool clothes, and oh my God had he bought a bunch of old pick-up guides from the seventies? These lines were atrocious. Even money said he was going to start negging me soon, borrowing a move from those steaming-turd-heap, modern books that suggested all women wanted in life was for men to be mean to them. So hot.
“I’m Jessica.”
“You’re a bit skinnier than I usually like my girls, Jessica, but there’s something about you.”
Ding ding ding. Did I just win Asshole Pickup Bingo? Yes, yes I did. I faked a laugh as airy and stupid as any I had ever heard and then played with a loose strand of my hair.
I was especially proud of my makeshift updo now, because he honestly couldn’t stop looking at my neck.
He grazed a finger over one of the burn marks on my arm. It had healed a lot since
L.A. thanks to my twice-a-day salve regimen, but I still flinched when he touched me.
“Does that hurt?” He sounded like he hoped it did.
“I’m a little sensitive.”
“What happened?”
Couldn’t really tell the truth here. Even around people I knew it required some backstory to explain how I’d burned the shit out of myself trying to climb out of Hell.
I was glad the dress had a high front so he couldn’t see the scars on my chest. Desmond didn’t care a lick about them, but he was my husband and thought I was perfect because I had sex with him on the regular and brought him bagels.
For others, it might be a bit of a turn-off to see pinkish-white pucker marks in the shape of someone’s hand.
I’d actually forgotten about the burn marks, though, which was amateur hour. I could have at least tried to cover them with some makeup.
“I’m a waitress,” I lied smoothly. “I sometimes get burns on the bread oven at work.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
I leaned in a little closer and smiled. “I like dangerous.”
“Then you’re wasting your time with him,” came a liquid-velvet voice from behind me.
“Oh yeah?” I turned, giving my best grin to whoever was trying to cut in on this dance.
And was suddenly face-to-face with Davos Kent.
Chapter Eighteen
I’d come to the bar with the sole intention of finding Davos, but the moment I was actually confronted with him, it was like my whole brain shorted out and I had no idea what to do with myself.
As I blinked stupidly at him, he waved off the other vampire, who retreated to the shadows without a word.
“What did you say your name was?” he asked.
“J-Jessica.” The stammer wasn’t even put on for affect. I was so damned surprised to see the honest-to-God Davos Kent this close to me that making language was hard.
At this point I was willing to admit I should have thought this through beyond just find the bad guy. I was notorious for only planning two steps ahead, when a much smarter person would have had an idea of what they were going to do when their plan really worked.
