“Waiting for you by that adorable VW van.”
“I’m going with her,” Kristoff said calmly and firmly.
A conflicted sort of relief rose up. He wasn’t her first choice, but Cora was asking Red to swim with the sharks. And it was getting close to dinner time. If she was watching the informant’s back, who would watch hers? “Raves are chaotic. Another pair of eyes could help.”
“My man Kristoff here is not known for slumming it.” Cora raised an eyebrow.
“No, but I am known for researching my investments. Gianni wants funding,” Kristoff argued, slyly looking to Red. “Had that unfortunate damage to one of his bars.”
“Hmmm.” Cora put an arm around Red’s shoulders and turned her away from Kristoff. Her voice dropped to a candid whisper. “You sure you want him around, chica?”
“I want to stop the violence, Cora.” Red bowed her head. “Those people at the diner… They would have finished their coffee and driven home tonight. You didn’t see them.” Biting her lip, Red stopped, her words resurrecting the smell of the blood and the sight of the gore.
“We will stop the Dague,” Cora vowed.
“I don’t care about vampire politics. I care about the innocents hurt along the way.” Red turned on her heel and headed toward the elevator. “We’re going to have to hurry unless Kristoff wants to ride back in the trunk at sunrise.”
Chapter Fourteen
January 26th, Hours before Dawn, Beach near the Los Angeles International Airport, Los Angeles, California
Red stepped onto the dark beach. Swinging glowsticks beckoned her. Laughing technicolor clusters of ravers smoked menthol cigarettes and huddled around a makeshift DJ setup. Electric lanterns hung on poles sticking out of the sand. A salty stink rolled off the choppy waves. Airplanes rumbled over the black Pacific, descending to the sprawling nearby LAX airport, covering up the techno bass.
“This is your territory, Trey.” Red gestured for the blond man, Donal’s claimed human, to take the lead.
Rubbing his hands, Trey shifted on his feet before pulling his hood up. Black cat ears decorated the top. His heavily-lined eyes darted around. Silent in the van ride, his voice came out rough from disuse. “I never come this late.”
Her voice grew soft and cajoling. “It’s last call, I know. Let’s make the rounds.”
“Take care.” Kristoff patted Trey’s shoulder. He smiled, but his shadowy face cast a clear warning. “I’ll be watching.”
Trey gulped, Adam’s apple bobbing as he nodded. He looped his arm through Red’s. “Let’s fla-mingle then.”
Hand in the pocket of her borrowed fuzzy green coat, Red walked arm in arm with Trey through the crowd. A smattering of dancers still gyrated to the beat, but after four a.m. the energy was flagging. The beach party had a coming-down vibe. After everything she had seen tonight, the light trails and the ravers in neon-colored coats seemed surreal.
“What’s the deal with this place? Its more chill than I expected.”
“We’re in after-party mode.” Trey looked down at a pretty young man in false eyelashes, pupils wide as if seeing beyond the smog to the stars, laying on a beach towel. He sighed, wistful.
Red shook her head. Vampires could ring the dinner bell without their prey suspecting. Some hunters didn’t get why vampires, or any other supernatural creature, would keep up the masquerade of secrecy for the human world. She got it. Why dabble in the logistics when you could pull the strings behind the scenes? A fraction of the effort of an undead-run dystopian society with all the benefits. “The vamps pay off the cops, put up a DJ, and dinner gathers.”
“You think we don’t get something from the arrangement? I met Donal at a party like this.” Trey pulled his arm away.
Red cocked her head. She shoved back the judgment. The man had been silent as a sphinx and twice as enigmatic in the car. She knew nothing about his life beyond spotting him at a few vamp hangouts. The trouble with starting therapy was that you started to see the patterns in your own bullshit. She was judging everyone at this party because their lifestyle hit too close to home. It was hypocritical. She had come here with the vampire who had claimed her after all.
“What do you get from it?” she asked.
“You should know.” Trey lifted his eyebrow. “Once in your bed, you always choose dead.”
“That’s a cliché,” Red huffed, flushing as she thought back to Lucas. If he was the standard, then Trey might not exactly be wrong. She wasn’t going to admit it. “It’s not true.”
“You say that because you haven’t been with a human again, yet.” Trey shook his head. “Come back to me when you do, girlfriend.”
“They aren’t crack.”
“You can get off crack,” Trey muttered. The fake cat ears on his hoodie twitched as he glanced away. “There isn’t any cure for the cemetery fever.”
The sea air stung her lungs as she sucked in a harsh breath, unsettled. She played it off with a joke. “Donal is that good, huh?”
“That bear is a Viking in the sheets and a gentleman on the streets.” Trey lifted his eyebrows, gaze falling distant. “But we’re not getting dirt on me.” He guided her to the center of the dancers around the DJ.
“Trey!” A skinny teenage girl tugged on Trey’s hoodie. “I haven’t seen you in forever! Have you heard about Zane? His vamp finally turned him!”
“Are you kidding?” Trey blinked, jaw clenching. He glanced at Red. “Stay here.”
“Keep in eyesight,” Red said.
Trey pushed through the crowd without a look back.
“Where is he going? I thought he’d be happier.” The girl shrugged, her frown defining her strong jaw. Lines of pink, white, and blue face paint crossed her face from temple to temple. A bulky faded military surplus jacket draped her shoulders over a black top and layers of silver necklaces. She rolled her eyes. “He’s all into that dead man crap.”
Red folded her arms. “I hope you’re not. You don’t look old enough to be here, let alone be immortal.”
“Ugh, god no. Those dead types promise a lot, but I don’t see them leaving much besides scars.” The girl put out her hand. “I’m Ophelia.”
“Red.” She shook the girl’s hand, watching Trey go to the edge of the beach ravers to start a fervent discussion with a lanky dark-haired man. “Let’s walk and talk, Ophelia. You seem like a real regular.”
“I came to do tarot readings. Not everyone is a burnout junkie here. Some kids from UCLA come. They want to know the future even if they are just about to pass out.” Ophelia held up her bag. “Want a reading?”
“Maybe.” Red shivered from the ocean breeze after stepping out of the warmth of the mass of dancers. “The future is kinda a big thing. I don’t even know what I’m doing tomorrow.”
“Trade secret, it’s more of a psychological thing. The tarot is a mirror.” Ophelia shuffled her deck. She pulled out the Tower card. The Victorian looking print held nothing back from the ominous scene as crumbling stone fell to the enveloping flames.
“It’s on fire.” Red cringed, pointing at the grim looking card. “That looks bad.”
“That’s not a bad thing! Necessarily. The Rider-Waite deck is dramatic. It just means that things are changing.”
“I already figured that out.” Red studied the card, seeing the tower where the warlock had nearly burned her at the stake in the Dreamland in the image. Shaking her head, she looked toward the choppy waves hitting the beach. “Ophelia, you seem really sweet. You shouldn’t be here. I’ve been hearing some weird rumors about some desert vamps.”
Ophelia put away her cards before lifting a hand. “Hey, I respect your mama bear vibes, but I already got the memo. Don’t join the caravan out to Slab City.”
“You’ve heard about the Burrows then?” Red leaned in to whisper the words.
“Yeah, I saw Zane and some other friends go out for a party. Zane is the only one who came back.” Ophelia shook her head. “I even saw one of the vamps they went with.
He was dating my friend Sarah, and now I’m overhearing him say he’s meeting another chick at the Fine Line. Fucking vampires. Such two-timers! I walked right by him, but I didn’t dare say anything.”
“Good. Don’t.” Red made a mental note to tell Cora about the newest rogue minion and the burrower in town. “Where was this vampire? One of my friends went missing too.”
Ophelia turned and nodded toward the edge of the water.
Kristoff stood in quiet conversation with a female vampire in a black jumpsuit.
“Oh, man, where’d he go? He was just there with the one in the jumpsuit.” Ophelia shook her head, paling under her face paint. “Hey, we shouldn’t talk about this where they can hear. I got to go.”
“Wait!”
Ophelia disappeared into the crowd and behind the DJ booth.
Red hoped the girl would find her way home tonight. She wondered what it was like to be a reckless teenager living on the edges of vampire society. She might have been one. Maybe that was why she didn’t remember high school.
“Why’d Ophelia run off?” Trey asked as he walked up.
“Realized it was her bedtime.” Red studied the resignation in his peaked expression. “Did you learn anything?”
Scowling, Trey shook his head. “This party is dead. No one has heard of any burrowers in town.”
Red nodded. She held back her suspicion that Trey hadn’t been doing serious recon beyond finding out about his friend. If he was worried, he might not be thinking straight enough to analyze what he’d heard. “What’s the deal with your buddy Zane?”
“He’s going to live forever. He’s peachy,” Trey sassed, burying his hands in his hoodie pockets.
Jaw falling slack, Red rubbed her ear, wondering if she misheard him over the drum and bass. He sounded jealous. That wasn’t the usual tune she heard about being turned into a vampire. Hunters saw it as worse than death. “You want that?”
“Who wouldn’t? But it’s not going to happen for me.” Trey shook his head, shoulders hunched from the cold. “Donal isn’t the settling down type. Every time he leaves, I say good riddance and then ask him to come back the next weekend.”
“Sounds hard.”
“That’s undead fuck boys for you.” Gesturing her forward, Trey shrugged and stomped his feet. He pulled his hood strings tighter. “Let’s dance. I’m freezing.”
Resisting the urge to call out to the DJ and request Freebird in Vic’s honor, Red shuffled about and called it dancing. She focused on Trey as he mingled in and out of the crowd.
The lithe young man managed to dance, giggle, flirt, gossip, and banter with multiple ravers at once. His dancing was more of a vehicle for conversation.
Red mostly just bobbed her head and shivered to keep warm. She kept her hand ready to reach for the hunter’s kit under the lime green fur.
Fingers ran over her shoulder.
“No touching…” Red prepared a glare for another drugged out college kid looking to pet her fuzzy coat. Instead, it was Kristoff. “Oh, Mr. Novak. Done discussing venture capital?”
Hand on her elbow, Kristoff smirked. “I hate to break up your fun, but I don’t want to ride in the trunk. Did he learn something?”
“A van load of ravers went to the desert and never returned. At least one was turned. There are definitely poachers in Cora’s territory.” Narrowing her eyes, she hugged herself as she stepped away from the last dregs of the dance party. Trey had been distracted tonight. Once he heard about Zane, he had checked out as an informant. She wasn’t going to risk his life to share that insight. Whatever relationship she had with Kristoff, she couldn’t assume that Donal kept his claimed humans so leniently.
“Better than me. I only heard pitch after pitch about the Fine Line.” Kristoff rolled his eyes up.
“Is that a club?” Red dropped her arms. That was the place Ophelia had mentioned.
“Owned by the same people who run these parties.” Kristoff gestured to the beach rave. His gaze grew contemptuous, like a professional assessing a peer’s work and finding it wanting. He put his hand on her lower back. “What else did you hear?”
“I heard that a burrower’s going there, maybe meeting someone. The girl thought it was a date, but…” Red pinched the bridge of her nose. Fatigue hit her suddenly. Had it really all been the same night? That was the nature of the business. You could go weeks without a big case and then bam, your life was on hold and you lived on coffee and the rush of survival. She shivered. “I’m not sure when, but it sounds like soon.”
“Just looking at you is making me cold.” Rubbing a firm hand on her back, Kristoff leaned in to block her from the wind. “Not tonight. We both need sleep.”
“I’m happy to go. I’m running on empty.” Red nodded, fighting back a yawn. “I’ve just been dancing, so I will hit the sheets and be asleep.”
“Nightmares?” Kristoff tucked a wild lock of hair behind her ear.
“I’ve seen enough tonight to give the average person plenty of those.” Red frowned at the not unpleasant feel of his fingers through her hair. Too much had happened for her to process him on top of it. She ducked her head. It had felt like a lifetime, and she still had the ride home. At least she was going home. Some hadn’t tonight.
Kristoff put a hand on her shoulder. “You care so much. About the people in the diner, even that girl you were talking with tonight.”
Red screwed up her face, too tired to care that she was showing all her peeved cards. “Going to make fun of me for my human feelings?”
He shook his head. “You have courage in your convictions. I wouldn’t make fun of that. I would make fun of Cora’s coat, however.”
Surprise forced a laugh from her throat. She ran her hands down the fuzzy lime green coat. It had been the hit of the rave even if she wouldn’t have normally worn something so shaggy or neon. “It’s warm.”
He rubbed her sleeve, chuckling. “You look like you skinned a Muppet.”
Wrapping herself tighter in the coat, Red raised an eyebrow. “I won’t tell Cora you said that.”
Kristoff smiled and fixed her crooked collar. “Gather up Trey, and I’ll meet you at the car.”
Looking after him, Red bit her lip. The wind whipped her long coat back. She felt colder without him beside her. She shook her head and trudged across the sand toward Trey who was hugging the DJ.
Catching her eye, Trey nodded before striding to her. His eyeliner ran under his hood. “We packing it in?”
Red nodded, leading him from the beach and toward the cars parked in a sprawling industrial lot. This wedge of dirty beach behind LAX wasn’t the kind they put in the tourism commercials. She caught sight of Kristoff leaning against her rental car.
“You’re smiling a little,” Trey commented, walking beside her. “Did you learn something?”
“Nothing much.” Wiping the expression off her face, Red shrugged. The hour must have made her delirious. She yearned for her own bed. “I’m happy to go home.”
“Mmm.” Mischievous eyebrow lifting, Trey cocked out a sassy hip. His eyes darted between her and Kristoff. “With or without Novak?”
Lip curling up, Red shook her head and waved her hands. “He claimed me, but it’s not like that.”
“Alright.” Trey nodded, cat ears flapping on his hood, his face disbelieving. “Okay.”
Red didn’t need his knowing tone in her ear. She ducked her head to avoid his gaze as she power-walked to the waiting vampire. When would this night be over already? She should have already known the answer to that. Dawn still felt too far away.
---
Legs trembling, Red drooped from exhaustion. They had lost Chang yesterday, Lucas was god-knew-where with Selene, and their only soulmancer was in a pharmaceutical coma. It had all faded into a horrified blur. Her sashimi at the Pandora Hotel was the only highlight of the night. Eight people had still been alive then. This was just the beginning. She still had one more task before she could sleep.
Grimacing, she
pulled the eerie handmade poppet out from under her coat. Found in the oven of the Soul House, it looked too much like her. It wasn’t a voodoo doll, and the energy around it seem neutral, but it was creepy as fuck anyway. Life as a hunter taught her to burn the spooky shit as a rule. She dropped it on the brick barbeque pit. Squeezing the last drops of lighter fluid on the fabric doll, Red tossed the bottle into a nearby trash can.
Red flipped opened a matchbook from the Pump House and dragged a thin matchhead across it. She flicked the match on the poppet. The tiny stitched fangs were the only difference between her and the doll. Selene had kept her psychic sight after death. Had she stuck with witchcraft too? Whatever it was, why ever it looked like her, the fire would purge the magic.
Curls of smoke rose to the dawn sky past the balconies overlooking the apartment building’s center courtyard. Flames licked up, consuming the poppet in the barbeque pit. It crumbled into ash as the synthetic fabric burned. Crimson yarn hair twisted in the fire. The green button eyes locked on Red as the plastic bubbled.
She stepped away from the smoke. Shoulders shaking, she wiped her tears on her sleeve. It was stupid, but it didn’t feel like she was just burning the doll. She saw herself. Or maybe the woman she thought she had been. Her world had tilted the night the Brotherhood rejected her. A new life had to rise from the ashes.
Red didn’t know how she would get herself back on course. She answered to vampires now. It wasn’t the full truth. This wasn’t just a job for Cora now. It wasn’t just about her debt. The Dague had crossed every line, human and vampire, tonight. Red might never be an official hunter in the noble Brotherhood of Bards and Heroes, but she still knew how to hunt. She would find the monsters responsible and make them pay.
Chapter Fifteen
January 26th, Evening, The Pump House, Los Angeles, California
Chewing on her nail as they approached the sleepy strip mall, Red twisted in the front seat of the open top black convertible to face the smirking vampire in the back. Her day had started off badly without any word from Lucas. The worry had boiled up until she had been the one calling Cora for an assignment. She chose the location, but the supreme hadn’t let her pick the team. “Stay here unless I call.”
Witch Gone Viral Page 18
