There’s a woman standing in the doorway. Brown hair bound in a loose bun. Slouched posture. Plain jeans and a fitted, pastel pink blouse. A simple pair of brown boots. She’s not particularly tall or broad, and her presence is not threatening in and of itself. If I passed her on the street, I wouldn’t give her a second glance, except perhaps to think her pretty.
And that right there? That false façade of harmlessness? That’s the real danger.
Lizzie Banks strides into the room, typing away at her phone, and shoos the grouchy noble guy away with a single wave of her hand. He bows—legitimately bows—and exits the room without another word, closing the door behind him. Lizzie takes her sweet time walking around my chair, and hops up onto the old desk, which lets out a disconcerting creak despite her light weight. I don’t know exactly where I am, but between the peeling paint on the walls, the splintery floorboards, and the fifty-year-old, half-rotten furniture, I’m going to guess it’s some abandoned office building no one will think to search for me.
With a press of her thumb, Lizzie finishes texting and sets her phone aside, then finally deigns to give me a glance. Her face is reminiscent of Foley’s, the same general bone structure, the same nose, the same eye shape, clearly marking them as siblings born to the same parents. She looks perhaps five years older than him despite being almost a century his senior, which I take to mean that Foley too will stop aging completely once he hits thirty or so. Born vampires only age until they hit peak physical maturity. That way, they avoid the physical declines that us humans are doomed to suffer.
Lizzie twirls a loose lock of hair and purses her lips in a contemplative way, silently judging me for nearly half a minute before she speaks. “You’re a lot cuter than I thought you’d be. Caine’s surviving dogs described you like you were some kind of icky bug.”
Not wanting to give off any hint that I’m nervous about my impending torture and murder, I reply, “I imagine that’s because I kicked their asses.”
“So I heard.” She smiles in a way that is not at all threatening, which is why I find it extremely threatening. “You’re quite resourceful for a human, especially for one so young. What are you, twenty-five? You must be close to my brother’s age.”
“Twenty-three.”
Her eyebrows arch. “Really? What led you to get involved in vampire politics at your age? Did Lucian recruit you as an informant or something?”
“Or something.”
“Hm, bad luck.” In a swift, liquid motion, she slides off the desk and into my lap, straddling my thighs and draping her arms over my shoulders. I lean back, but I can’t go anywhere because of the uncomfortable wooden chair digging into my spine. I’m forced to sit with my head tilted at an awkward angle in order to avoid bumping noses with the vampire woman whose face is now three inches from my own. She’s still wearing her lackadaisical smile, carrying herself with that loose, carefree posture, and I’m reminded ever so much of Foley’s general behavior, the quiet, shy nerd with a subtle sense of humor, compared to the vicious predator that ripped a guy’s head off and kicked it through the woods.
Lizzie Banks is hiding that same predator underneath her mask, along with another phantom. A psychopathic personality. No empathy. Total indifference to the pain and suffering of everyone around her. All she cares about is advancing her own goals. She’s acting friendly because she sees this as a game. I’m a mouse. She’s a cat. She wants to harmlessly bat me around for a while, confuse me with strange motions, creep up from behind the moment I think I’m safe and bite my head off.
I desperately try to remain calm, but she’s so close, I can smell the fruity bubblegum she was chewing a short time ago, and my heart rate picks up, thudding hard against my ribcage. Lizzie pretends not to notice my fear and simply sits there in my lap, tilting her head from side to side, slowly dissecting every inch of my face with those amiable eyes that are hiding the unbridled glee of a serial killer about to be sated. This woman butchered her own relatives, gutted her own brother.
When she’s done playing with me, I’m going to get the exact same treatment.
“So,” she finally says, “what’s your name? Norris didn’t find ID on you.”
I assume Norris is the grouchy noble. And he didn’t find ID on me because I left my wallet and phone at Lassiter’s house. I was worried about this exact situation, being compromised in a way that allowed the Knights to pin down my identity as a DSI agent. Good decision, Cal. You might end up dying a horrible death in this nasty building, but at least Lucian will get to swoop in and save the day as planned, right?
I draw my lips into a thin line. “Name’s Camilo.”
“Oh? Are you Hispanic?” She pouts in a way that tells me she’s mentally running through all of Lucian’s known associates.
“On my mom’s side.”
She runs a hand through my hair, and I shiver before I can stop myself. “I can see the influence. You have lovely hair.” Her fingers leave my hair and run down the side of my face, tracing my jawline. “Your father must be a real looker too. Strong jaw. Bright eyes. You’re very pretty, you know? It’s a huge pity you’ve put yourself into a situation where you could end up with nasty scars.” The fingers continue down my neck, then drop all the way to my right hand. She taps two fingers against the scar on my palm. “Though I see you’ve already been through the ringer once. What happened there?”
“I got shot by somebody I pissed off.”
“You piss off people often?”
“Keep fucking with me, and you’re going to find out.”
Lizzie’s left eye twitches, almost imperceptibly. “You don’t seem like an idiot, based on the victories you’ve had so far today. So I have to wonder where you get off talking back to someone who could easily break your neck.”
“Lady, I was tortured by werewolves in a shack for three days. You breaking my neck is the least of my worries. Just because I’m instinctively anxious about being killed doesn’t mean you actually strike true fear into my soul. I’m past the point of being intimidated by supernatural creatures.”
A total lie. I’m totally afraid of being tortured to death in this dinky chair and having my corpse tossed into a ditch and having to look on in horror as a ghost while the world get utterly destroyed by the Black Knights. But Lizzie Banks doesn’t need to know that. She needs to think I’m competent and unbreakable. That way, she’ll be less likely to spend a great deal of time working me over for information, which means I’ll be less likely to spill any and risk Foley’s well-being or Lucian’s success.
Sure, I’ll die faster if Lizzie gets fed up, but at least I won’t take others down with me.
“So you’re not going to answer my questions, even if I torture you, is what you’re saying?” she asks.
“Correct.” I throw up a fake smile that mimics hers. “I might counter your questions with my own though.”
“And what do you want to ask me?” she says with a sultry trill. Her arms tighten around my neck like a noose as opposed to a hug, and her thighs shift atop my own, coming way too close to my crotch. “Why I’m doing this? Why I’m an awful person? Why I want to kill my own brother? Why I want to bend and break this world beneath my feet? And so on?”
“Actually,” I reply, “I was going to ask you something like, ‘Are you aware sexual assault is a crime?’ because you’re getting way too handsy.”
She balks, having expected me to say anything but that. At last, the false friendly smile starts to melt off her face, hot wax dripping away to reveal the bare bones of a bitter, barbaric creature. “What,” she says snidely, “am I not pretty enough for you? Or do you not like women?”
“Oh no, I like women. I just like them more when they’re not about to butcher me.”
She drops her arms from my neck, her hands curling into fists, and I anticipate both of them smashing into my face, crushing my jaw into dust or shattering my skull, driving pieces of bone into my brain and destroying the delicate tissue that contains all
the information she’s hunting for. Alas, I don’t get off that lucky. She dispels her spark of rage and glowers at me, irritated I won’t let her steer this interaction. “You’re trying to trick me into killing you quickly, aren’t you?”
“Took you long enough to figure that out.”
“Fine.” She leans away from me. “I wanted to have some fun with you, pretty boy, and blow off some steam before tonight—a lot of pressure riding on this, you know?—but if you’re going to be a little shit about it, then we’ll get this over with.”
I don’t get a chance to retort. She grabs my hair and wrenches my head to the side with a powerful tug that almost snaps my neck. Then she strikes like a snake, burying her fangs into the flesh at the curve of my shoulder. Before the pain even hits me, the vampire venom is already spreading through my veins, whispering sweet, sweet lies. I feel like I fall off the edge of the Earth and float down through endless space, weightless, my eyelids drooping, my muscles relaxing, a faint burn of pleasure sloshing in my gut. Time becomes indeterminate, all my thoughts blending together into an indistinguishable mess.
Lizzie rips her fangs out and wipes her blood-streaked mouth with her hand. She smacks that bloodied hand on my cheek and caresses my skin with her thumb, leans close and whispers, breath ghosting over my lips, “Tell me, pretty boy, where’s my brother?”
I nearly do tell her. Vampire venom is sedating and leaves you open to suggestion, all your mental defenses crumbling away under the weight of a drug not native to this world. But the second I open my lips to inform the vampire who doesn’t seem at all menacing to me now, with her beautiful face and her mesmerizing red eyes, the exact location of the brother she wants to rip apart, it’s like I ram into a physical wall. I swear something hits me. I feel it against my chest, a solid weight, a pressure that freezes my lungs and causes my heart to skip a beat.
And like that, the power of Lizzie’s venom fades to a faint warmth in my veins, and I feel as if someone dumped a bucket of cold water onto my head. “What did Foley ever do to you?” I say in a voice that should not be as steady or strong as it is.
Confusion flickers across her face, but it’s overrun by her innate distaste for Foley, and she can’t stop herself from answering. “He’s never done anything to me. He’s never done anything at all. That’s the whole point. Little golden boy of the family who gets everything he wants with no effort at all, while the black sheep gets kicked to the curb no matter how hard she tries to prove herself. What a sham. And what a shame. Maybe if dear old Dad had bothered to pay the least bit of attention to his wayward daughter, he would’ve seen me coming before I tore his head off his shoulders and tossed it into a garbage can.”
She rakes her nails down my face, leaving deep, bloody gouges. As I choke out a cry of pain, she wraps her hand around my throat and places two sharp nails directly atop the biggest vessels in my neck. One strong squeeze, and my blood will pulse out in two directions, draining me dry in under a minute. Not the worst way to die, not by far. But it’s not the best way either. Oh, god. Here it comes.
Lizzie growls, sounding way too much like an actual beast, and says, “Enough stalling. You’re a pretty thing I want to play with, but you’re not that pretty and I’m not that playful. Tell me where my brother is, and I’ll kill you quickly. Refuse, and I’ll do it slowly. You say you’ve been tortured by Wolves? I say those filthy, stupid dogs don’t know the first thing about torture. Me, on the other hand? I’ve had a whole century to practice. And I did not waste that time. You push me too far, and I’ll send you to the Eververse as a shattered wreck of a soul, doomed to suffer for eternity. Or better yet, I’ll seal your shade inside a charm and wear it on my wrist and make you watch as I raze this world to ash and dust.”
She shakes a bracelet out of her blouse sleeve. There are five gold charms on it, and all of them are faintly glowing yellow.
She’s a hundred percent serious about the shade sealing.
Holy shit. She’s a legitimate sadistic psycho.
The fingernails bite into my skin, drawing thin streams of blood. “Where is he?”
“I…”
There’s a soft knock at the door.
Lizzie’s head snaps up, and she snarls out, “What?”
The door opens behind me, and a voice that sounds like Norris says, “My apologies, ma’am, but I thought you’d like to know we have a lead on your brother. We’re preparing to head out to the location of interest. You said you wanted to come along this time to, ah, ‘ensure there are no more pathetic failures’ on your watch?”
Lizzie releases my neck and slides off my lap, crossing her arms as she glances between me and the doorway. “Oh, so you managed to do something right after all? How’d you find him?”
“Scout spotted him.”
My pulse quickens. What the heck is Foley doing outside? Is he stupid?
Lizzie practically preens. “Well, looks like we won’t get to finish our game, pretty boy.” She points her finger at me but looks at the door. “Stay here and keep an eye on him, Norris. Rough him up a little, if you want, but keep him alive. If Foley somehow slips away again due to someone’s incompetence”—she emphasizes “someone’s” to make sure we understand the fuckup can’t be her—“we’ll still need his intel.”
Norris, irked at being left out of the action, replies dully, “As you wish.” He trudges over to the desk, leaning against the flimsy structure as Lizzie grabs her phone and marches out into the hall. She slams the door shut behind her, freeing me from one murderous bastard but leaving me in the presence of another who, while clearly not as insane, is no less ruthless. And Norris has a vendetta against me, since I got him in trouble by freeing Foley at the DSI garage.
In the silence that falls between us as Norris waits for Lizzie to move out of hearing range—he’s probably got some shit he wants to do to me she won’t like—I idly wonder what my DSI pals are up to right now. Surely they saw me get snatched by the goons in the garage via the security cams. Usually, that would compel them to mount a rescue attempt, but they’re under the impression that the Knights in Aurora are actually real agents from the Federation. Or at least, they were. I have a feeling my behavior and the actions of the Knight goons during our garage scuffle might’ve left DSI a tad suspicious about this whole “Foley is a fugitive” tale.
Why? Because if Riker had called whichever Knight is pretending to be an obstructive bureaucrat and told them I’m a DSI agent, then this jig would already be up. Lizzie would know my identity. But she clearly has no clue who I am, or that I’m affiliated with DSI. She thinks I’m some random human recruited by Lucian to be a local intelligence operative.
So Riker hasn’t given me away yet. He’s wary about the unknowns in this situation. He’s being cautious.
Hopefully, that caution will hold until Lucian is able to mount his counterattack.
Satisfied that Lizzie is too far away to hear what he does to me, Norris steps closer to my chair. I steel myself, clench my jaw, prepare for an onslaught of intense pain. The vampire bends over, drops his face close to my ear, and whispers, “Don’t make a sound. There are two guards at one end of the hall, blocking the door for the stairwell. When I free you from this room, I want you to run the other direction, jump through the window at that end of the hall, land on the roof of the neighboring building, and get the hell out of here as fast as your skinny legs can take you.”
“Um, what?” I rear back and gawp at him, puzzled over what sort of trick he’s attempting.
In response to my stupid expression, Norris’ eyes flash violet.
Like a shapeshifter’s.
“You’re not the—”
He slaps a hand over my mouth and says, “Keep it quiet, kid, or you’re going to give me away.”
I nod, and he removes the hand. I crank down my volume and ask, “What did you do to the real Norris?”
The shapeshifter raises an eyebrow. “What do you think?”
“You took down a noble va
mpire?”
“I’ve taken out much worse.” He starts untying the ropes around my wrists. “It’s not so hard when they think you’re an ally.”
“Did Lucian send you?” He didn’t say anything about employing a shapeshifter during his call, but I know he’s done so at least twice on previous missions in Aurora.
“Not this time.”
I shoot him a stern look. “That implies he has before.”
“He did indeed. I had the pleasure of visiting your city last year.”
Ice-cold dread burns through my veins, and I can’t help but let out a stuttering gasp. “You…You’re the shifter who killed ex-Mayor Slate, Wizard Halliburton, and Vic Martinez.”
“Correct.” He frees both my arms and crouches to give my ankles the same treatment. “I heard you were the first person to figure me out. Followed that mayor’s ghost to his real body, is that right?”
“It is.” I lick my lips and taste blood. The cuts on my face are still weeping. “So, if you’re not working for Lucian, then why are you here?”
“Well, obviously”—he undoes the last rope and rises—“I’m working for someone else. Someone who’s looking out for you.”
“Who?”
He shakes his head. “Sorry, I don’t get contracted with an absolute secrecy clause and tell. Shapeshifter’s honor.”
I rack my brain, attempting to figure out the most likely culprits. It has to be someone aware of the Knight coup, and someone who knows I’m in danger, potentially because they’ve been spying on me. The only possibility that comes to mind is Iyanda, who could easily be keeping track of me using owl man.
Her Impundulu—a creature with a bird form that often acts as a witch’s assistant, I recently learned—watched me from afar for a whole year as I interacted with various elements of the Methuselah Group. He saved me several times when I was in imminent danger.
But if he’s back here, keeping a close eye on the Knights for his boss, then why didn’t he just save me himself like all the times before? There’s no reason to change his strategies.
Day Killer (City of Crows Book 5) Page 12
