Blood Bound

by R. J. Blain

  “Ben and several of the more talkative men in the brood witnessed me sign our civil union papers. By signing, I’ve made you my top priority. None of them will believe, for a moment, that I’d allow you to slip away now, especially knowing Breckenan desires you and we have probable traitors within the brood. It goes against everything I’ve taught them. It goes against everything I prefer, but it is a sound idea, one that protects you more than having you stay here tomorrow night will.”

  “And if your brood feels that way, your enemies will as well.”

  “Our enemies, for my enemies are now yours, and yours are now mine. That is our way. But yes, you’re correct. I’ve never before allowed someone so new to my brood to venture out without a dire and immediate threat. I am merely assuming tomorrow night will bring a dire and immediate threat. You know how to survive on the streets alone, and the brood will draw a great deal of attention. That should give you time to disappear until we get a better feel for this vampire’s operations. And if your father is in league and tries to make a move while we’re occupied elsewhere, you won’t be at risk.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be at risk on the streets.”

  “I’m doing my best to avoid thinking about that reality.”

  I gave him credit; he wasn’t locking me in a satin and silk prison full of luxuries, which I viewed as a far cry better than what I’d endure if I’d gone to be a bride in a different brood. “I’m not taking a phone or anything that can be tracked.”

  “I dislike that.”

  “If you can track me, someone else can track me.”

  “I dislike that, too.”

  “You weren’t supposed to like it.”

  “I see you are going to be a most ruthless wife.”

  “I thought that much was obvious.”

  “I do appreciate a challenge. But know this, Pepper. Should even a single hair on your head be damaged, I will be rather upset.”

  We’d have to have a talk about his protective tendencies, although he did well enough not protesting my suggestion I take myself elsewhere for a while. What Emerick didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, and if someone did damage my hair, well, with a little luck and my stakes, I’d solve the problem myself. “I’ll be careful.”

  “Do.” Emerick went to the bathtub, turned the faucet on, and gestured for me to open the secret door. I scraped where I’d been pricked the first time and pressed my finger to the stone. It opened, and I crawled inside, careful to close the door before heading for the roof, where I’d enjoy a few nights of freedom.

  Following Emerick’s instructions on how to leave the brood’s property, I slipped away into the night.

  Aware my past movements were known, my hunting methods identified, and my life on the streets exposed, I went back to my earliest days as a vampire, when I’d been afraid to venture anywhere near humans. Central Park offered plenty of hiding places for the unsavory, although most vampires gave it a wide berth.

  The sun made for a potent foe, even in the shadiest depths of the park.

  But a determined vampire could dig a hole, and there were plenty of promising places for me to choose from. In the predawn gloom, I located an abandoned animal den, claimed it as my own, and dug enough to obstruct the entrance and block the sun’s lethal rays from reaching me.

  Had I been human, I doubted I could’ve slept on the cold, hard ground while a plethora of bugs kept me company. Within minutes of the sun rising, I fell into slumber.

  The next thing I knew, night had fallen, and the quiet sounds of the park after dark surrounded me, a mix of animal cries and distant voices. The distant voices didn’t bother me; it would take a miracle for them to find me in my hole. I stretched to work the kinks out, grimacing at the layer of dirt I wore. It’d taken me a few weeks to become resigned to my state as the eternally filthy, and it’d only taken a few nights to embrace cleanliness. With luck, it wouldn’t take long for the brood to do its work.

  I already wanted to return to my newly claimed bed and bathroom. The vampire that came with the bed and the bathroom counted as a perk. That I didn’t have to get over my unreasonable interest in Emerick brightened my evening.

  I figured I’d lost my mind due to my newfound freedom and ability to make huge mistakes without my father breathing down my neck. Maybe Emerick counted as a mistake—maybe he didn’t.

  It didn’t matter. He was my mistake to make, and I’d fully embrace my recklessness with pride.

  Until I could explore more of the consequences of my choices, I would make use of my nights to hunt a new sort of prey. Breckenan’s rivalry with my father scraped at the surface of a bigger problem, one I hadn’t thought to mention to Emerick. If there was one vampire out to compete with my father, there were others.

  As I knew the location of my father’s prime targets in Harlem, I could start a hunt of my own, observe the creatures that lurked in the night, and begin piecing together who was who and what they were doing near my father’s properties.

  I hated doing nothing. With the Lowrance brood invading Breckenan’s territory, I figured there’d be less attention in interesting places, like the premier buildings my father meant to renovate. Things would have changed in a year, but some plans cost too much money to deviate from, and the renovations of his prime pieces of real estate counted.

  He’d gone too far to give up on his plans, and my father was many things, but he didn’t like to quit. It would take a lot more than the threat of a brood, or my disappearance, to thwart him. I wondered if Breckenan had hoped eliminating me from the picture would disrupt my father’s plans.

  If anything, it would’ve lit a fire under my father’s ass and ensured he wouldn’t veer from his original course.

  I took the time to check over my stakes and make certain I still had both of Emerick’s knives before I crawled out of my chosen hole. The park remained dark and quiet, the distant sounds of the city comforting in their familiarity. I would begin my night with finding the perfect piece of wood up high in a tall tree, and then I’d take it to Harlem to scout my father’s properties from nearby buildings.

  As far as plans went, mine lacked in many ways, but it would give me something to do. If I had even a little good luck, I might overhear something from one of the construction crews expanding my father’s empire. The workers gossiped worse than any woman I knew, although I didn’t know all that many personally thanks to how my father operated his company, which had far more men than women in its upper management.

  Most of the time, I was the odd one out, welcome only because my father’s employees and investors weren’t willing to test those waters. Questioning my position as my father’s heir usually ended with a terminated employment or a buyout.

  I had to give my father credit on that score; he’d done well enough by me.

  The few days with Emerick hadn’t removed all of my caution; I checked for any observers before climbing into the tallest tree I could find. Being a vampire helped my efforts because as long as I could secure a somewhat good grip on a branch, I could pull myself up. Within a few minutes, I scaled to the top branches, which creaked under my weight. With the city’s glow to guide me, I tested branches until I found one that’d broken, its heart exposed while it held onto the tree with a few persistent scraps of bark. I pulled it loose, nodding my satisfaction. Gripping it between my teeth, I began the process of slithering down the trunk so I wouldn’t leave a rather gruesome impression in the ground below.

  Armed with my stick, I headed towards Harlem, a five mile walk that would eat up an hour and a half of my night. Considering the number of stakes I carried and my leather outfit, I’d draw attention if I took the more traditional street route, which meant I’d be skulking through allies and sticking to the darkest parts of the city.

  Trouble in the shape of a miscreant vampire might find me, and if one did come calling, I had a lot of frustration to work out before choking down a meal of bad blood.

  As though sensing crossing me wouldn’t be w
ise, I dodged everyone on the streets, reaching the lawless land that Harlem had become. The Mink Building, in the short days since my last visit, had already undergone some renovations, including the repair and filling in of the disgusting trench surrounding it.

  From my perch on one of the neighboring buildings, I could make out three crews working on the streets while surveyors examined the exterior. According to the snippets of conversation that reached my inhumanly sensitive ears, repair costs would be astronomical, and only a fool would dish out to make it habitable.

  I could think of a few fools with the money and will to do it, and my father was one of them.

  As proud New Yorkers wouldn’t trust the word of the wealthy on a good day, protesters kept a close watch on the crews while a few cops loitered, although I wondered if the boys in blue would actually do anything about the situation if there was a clash.

  I settled in to wait, retrieving the pocketknife so I could start whittling at the stake. Like every other stake I’d ever carved, it warmed in my hand while I peeled away the bark to expose the deadened wood beneath it. While aware the age of the wood mattered when it came to killing a vampire, I decided it didn’t matter if the wood had been only a few months old before it had broken.

  It had tried to touch the sky, and that was good enough for me.

  I just hoped the sun-kissed wood understood what I needed from it. Assuming I believed Emerick’s maker, which I did, Breckenan had done something so vile the old vampire had been unwilling to discuss it for fear of making me remember something best forgotten. That sort of vampire I’d continue to hunt, although I wrinkled my nose at the thought of drinking blood so tainted.

  I’d have to ask Emerick if all I had to do to kill a damned vampire was stake and decapitate. Perhaps I could disembowel and defenestrate while I was at it; both beat committing an act of exsanguination and having to consume foul blood in the process.

  Emerick had already spoiled me, and it hadn’t taken him long to do his dirty work. My worries over the actual dirty work he and his brood did stirred, although I recognized I’d done the smart thing, making certain I didn’t make for an easy target.

  The Mink Building, while a bustle of construction activity punctuated by the annoyed rumblings of bored protestors, had begun its transformation into one of the safer places of Harlem. I bet it would become another pillar of someone’s empire in time, although I wondered who pulled the strings. While my father would do something like buy the Mink Building, I had no confirmation of who actually owned it.

  Buildings changed hands often, but with the new legislation regarding leases, there’d be a brawl between the wealthy to make sure the real estate belonged to them. My father would buy and sell properties vying for better position, too.

  A year away and no access to the property ownership records would leave me guessing, and I hated having to guess on something important. Unless I got lucky and someone brought in a marked car showing a privately owned construction crew, I couldn’t confirm who was doing what at the Mink Building.

  Color me unsurprised with a splash of extra disgusted.

  Without a reason to stay, I whittled and considered my next viable targets. I’d blown at least half the night watching from my rooftop perch with nothing to show for my efforts beyond a feel for the neighborhood, which had gone from dark, troubled, and somewhat quiet to a construction field day.

  I bet every landlord in the neighborhood wanted to get their operations rolling as quickly as possible, and how better to make it happen than recruit nocturnal supernaturals? I narrowed my eyes and considered the workers below. What were they? Were they humans wanting a good paycheck and willing to deal with the night shift? Vampires? Weres of some sort? Witches and whatever else went bump in the night?

  The night hid many secrets, which made it the ideal time for the grislier elements of human nature to come out and play.

  With so many places to start, I needed to evaluate my best bets. My father’s operations, which typically avoided the more delicate historic sites because they added huge expense with little gain, might offer me insights into his activities or draw me right back into his bitter, dark world should the wrong person spot me. Then again, a year ago, I’d been a much different woman with shorter hair and a less gaunt appearance.

  The old me never would have dreamed of wearing leathers decked out with an assortment of stakes and knives. The leather, tighter than anything I’d worn as a mortal, did wonders for me. While form-fitting, I could ignore how wretchedly thin I’d become.

  Leather treated me nicely, and I’d make a point of treating it nicely in the future. Or buying several outfits for myself as I inevitably ruined them doing things in leather I shouldn’t, including sleeping in holes in the ground. I’d have another night of sleeping in the ground ahead of me unless I found a safe cubby in Harlem. Considering the heightened construction activity, especially around the Mink Building, such places would be few and far between.

  Too many eyes were focused on the neighborhood.

  In a way, Emerick and Ben catching me had worked in my favor. Without the brood pulling me into its fold, someone else, like one of my father’s goons, might’ve been the one to pin me to a roof. I could guess what my father would do if he got his hands on me, a hated vampire.

  Loyalty or death came to mind. If he wanted me alive to improve his standings among the preternatural, he’d showcase me, pretending he welcomed me in order to strengthen his empire. He’d hold a staking—or worse—over my head. And, as he loathed everything to do with vampires, I expected he’d try to force me to consume the cheapest animal blood money could buy. Worse, if he discovered my alliance with Emerick, he’d try to nullify it in a permanent fashion.

  Emerick’s wealth and probable influence would make him a prime target of my father, I hoped my husband could handle whatever my father threw at him if my father opted to wage war with the Lowrance brood. With my brood.

  Another possibility worried me more.

  My father might try to forge an alliance with the Lowrance brood, one that would likely have disastrous results for every preternatural unfortunate enough to be caught in the crossfire. From the little I’d seen of Mistress Avalon, the tactic would appeal to the vampires.

  I would bet my unlife on intrigue being a vampire way of life, something I should have appreciated as an attorney but did not. Information made the intrigue world go round, and without anything concrete, all I’d do was make shots in the dark and hope for the best, which rarely worked out well.

  Shots in the dark might work for some, but I wanted the truth.

  With my father and his plans the only certainty I had, and a flimsy one at that, I needed to skirt the lion’s den to learn more. Staying out of trouble would be the first of my problems. Getting useful intel would be my next challenge. The real issue would be figuring out what to do with what I learned.

  Oh, well. Even before death, I’d figured out life wasn’t easy. Life after death just added a few kicks to the situation. One way or another, I’d make sense of the tangled web of my situation and find a way to circumvent those who would enslave others just for being different and possessing magic.

  Eighteen

  I wouldn’t trust me in a dark alley.

  As my father liked turning something cheap into something extravagant, I headed for the worst places Harlem had to offer, which put me close enough to Central Park that I could find a place to burrow before sunrise as long as I kept an eye on the sky. Like at the Mink Building, a frenzy of construction activity warned me change came to the neighborhood—change my father meant to implement as quickly as possible.

  As I’d generally tried to avoid my father’s properties, I’d missed when he’d gone from property acquisition to property development, but judging from the state of the buildings in progress, he’d be in full operations within a few weeks, which would give him plenty of time to find tenants willing to sell their souls to the devil. Unlike other parts of Harlem, my
father’s operations lacked the presence of the police. Instead, he had goons in suits keeping a watch on everything. He modeled his bodyguards after the Secret Service, something I’d found to be ridiculous. In a way, I was relieved he’d never offered me any of his men to follow me around and keep me out of trouble.

  It’d been bad enough securing the few freedoms I’d enjoyed under his rule. Under no circumstances could I allow my father to sink his claws back into me.

  I picked a rooftop nearby, made use of the fire escape, and scaled the rest of the way onto the roof, which had seen better days. Considering where my father’s operations focused, the building and its neighbors were next on the list for renovations, and he’d probably demolish the entire thing to keep costs down.

  Old buildings tended to cost a fortune to restore, and he would go the uniform, prefab route on as much of the work as he could. If the choice belonged to him, Harlem would become a neighborhood of identical dwellings, all priced astronomically high because it looked decent from the curb.

  I could rely on my father for that much. If he was at all involved with the project, it would look decent from the curb. No, it would look better than decent from the curb. People would view the property, become lost in the dream of owning something so pretty, and lose more than their rent each month.

  Damn it, I wanted to stab someone with one of my stakes, preferably my father, for his part in my current situation.

  Sighing, I settled in with Emerick’s pocketknife and resumed whittling my new stake while observing the construction work below. Every one of my father’s operations worked the same way. He assigned a task, and he expected it to be done in as efficient a fashion as possible. The workers and guards below obeyed my father’s commands, and if I hadn’t known about the legislation behind his acquisitions and desire to become a landlord for the preternatural, I might’ve admired him and his dealings.