Graveyard Shift

by Jenn Burke

  “I don’t fucking know!”

  “Are you sure it’s him?”

  “It’s not a face I’d ever forget.”

  She lifted her hands in surrender. “Okay, yeah, fair enough.”

  “I can’t risk him using me to hurt Wes...or any of you.” Determination flooded his expression. “I’ll leave.”

  “Uh, no. Don’t you dare,” I growled.

  “Wes—”

  The door opened behind me, but I was completely focused on my idiot of a boyfriend. “No. We do this together, damn it.”

  “Do what together?” Priya asked.

  “Fight Hudson’s sire Pike, who was supposed to be dead but no longer seems to be,” Lexi explained.

  “I’m in charge of the popcorn,” Sam said.

  “Enough!” Hudson roared. Startled into silence, we all stared at him. “This isn’t a joke. It’s not like other situations we’ve been in. You guys are standing there, not taking this seriously, and all I can think of is that...that...” He swallowed hard. “I barely managed to get away from the asshole once. I’m not sure I could do it again.” He looked at me. “I’m going to go pack.”

  “Don’t do anything until we have a family meeting.”

  He sighed. “Wes, I need to—”

  “Wait until we can all discuss this and come up with a plan as a family.” I glared at him. “Promise me. And I’ll know if you’re lying.” One of the many benefits of the mate bond.

  He held my gaze for a second, and I thought he was going to deny me. But then he deflated a little and said, “I promise,” before turning to go upstairs.

  “I’ll call Iskander,” Lexi said softly once Hudson was out of sight. Isk and Evan were manning the office, trying to get Iskander reacclimatized to working. “Maybe he can help talk him down.”

  “Thanks.” I ran a hand through my hair, still not used to the much shorter strands, as Lexi and Sam moved into the kitchen. “I’ve never seen him like this.”

  “Where can we find his sire?”

  I turned to look at Priya at the low, threatening note in her voice. “Danny Fortune’s. I think. A dive over on Queen near Sherbourne.” I caught her determined glare. “Priya...”

  “He’s terrified, Wes. It was practically radiating off him.”

  “I know, damn it! But we need to work together.”

  “I have a plan. Hunt the asshole down and kill him.”

  That actually wasn’t a bad plan, but still I shook my head. “And what if you get hurt?”

  Her eyes flashed all black. “I will not let that happen, Uncle Wes.”

  “You’d better not.”

  “Our chances of success would be higher if you were to accompany us.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at the stairs, wavering. This was not a good plan, only if it meant forgoing the “consult with the family” part of things that I’d insisted on. But I didn’t want Hudson anywhere near Pike, nor Evan—in case there was such a thing as “grandsire” influence. Iskander wasn’t ready to put his new wolfiness up in a paranormal fight, Sam was too young, and Lexi needed to watch over her.

  Jet was right. It was me and her, whether we spoke with the rest of the group or not.

  “Okay.”

  I opened the front door and froze at the sight of Marcus Kenworth standing on the doorstep, his hand raised to ring the bell.

  He frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  I summoned a wide smile from somewhere. “Taggart Westerson. Wesley was my cousin. I’m here to help Hudson with the business.” I held out a hand.

  Kenworth stared at it for a second, then took it. “I’m sorry. You took me by surprise. The family resemblance is fairly strong.”

  “I’ve been getting that a lot. It’s the nose, I think.” I kept my smile in place as Kenworth chuckled. “We’re actually just heading out, so...”

  “Right, right,” he said quickly. “Uh, I wanted to offer my condolences. To Hudson—er, Mr. Rojas.” Pink flared across his cheeks and nose.

  Condolences?

  “Is he in?”

  “He’s busy,” I said flatly.

  “Oh.” Kenworth cleared his throat. “Well, I’ll stop by another time then.”

  I felt like saying he’d be busy then too, but I refrained. “Okay, great,” I managed, pulling up a plastic smile again. “See you around.”

  Priya moved up beside me as we watched Kenworth walk down the driveway. “Was it just me, or was he a bit bait?”

  “Huh?”

  “Obvious. His interest in Uncle Hudson, I mean.”

  “Just a bit.” I glared at Kenworth’s retreating back.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Danny Fortune’s was as much a hole-in-the-wall as I remembered. I hadn’t looked too hard at the exterior on my last visit, but now, sitting across the street in my old Toyota—because the car Iskander had promised to find for me hadn’t turned up yet—I decided a wrecking ball could only improve the look of the place. It seemed like it was one step away from being shut down by Toronto Public Health.

  “Well, that’s a nasty-looking place, innit?” Priya said. “We don’t actually have to eat anything, right?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “So what’s the plan?”

  I glared at her. “You were the one all gung-ho on being here.”

  “But I’m no planner.” She grinned, but the expression fell away as she looked back at the restaurant. “Not usually, anyway.”

  Right—killing the man who killed the woman you loved, and getting away with it, probably required a bit of planning.

  I regarded Danny Fortune’s dark front window and debated our options. I could ghost into the place, like I had before. Gather intel. Except, in order to actually see people, I’d have to be only half in the otherplane...which meant that I’d be kind of visible. That could give away our element of surprise. Also, vamped-out Hudson had once grabbed me out of the otherplane, so there was that danger too.

  “Got one.” Priya popped open the passenger door and got out.

  I scrambled after her, checking to make sure I didn’t open the door into a passing car. “Got one what?”

  “A plan.” She checked both ways, then trotted across the street.

  “Crap—Priya—wait!” I caught up on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. “What’s the plan?”

  “We walk in, order something, pretend to eat, and case the place.” She shot me a daring grin and darted away to the door.

  Jesus Christ. Was this how Hudson felt when he worked with me? No... I wasn’t nearly this bad. I couldn’t be.

  No one was at the hostess stand, so Priya sashayed on by to select a table against the wall. She took the seat facing the interior of the place, so I was stuck with my back to everything. It made the hairs on my neck dance. The menus were laminated pieces of paper stuffed between the napkin holder and the salt and pepper shakers. Priya grabbed one, handed the other to me, and proceeded to pretend to look over the selections. But her eyes kept roaming the joint.

  She was not subtle.

  “I could have checked out the place as a ghost,” I told her, my voice barely above a whisper. There were no other patrons in the place, so even that level of conversation felt too loud.

  “Bollocks, I forgot.” She shot me a rueful grin. “Sorry, Uncle Wes.”

  I cleared my throat. “You know, you don’t have to call me that.”

  “What, uncle?”

  “Yeah.”

  She shrugged. “Why not? You’re Hudson’s partner, he’s my uncle, so therefore you are too.”

  “And Jet? She calls me uncle too.”

  “Does it bother you?”

  Did it? “I think she means it as a term of respect, so...no.”

  “She does. She likes tit
les. If you weren’t my uncle, she’d probably call you ‘Mr. Wes.’ Oi, what’ve we got to do to get some service in this place?” Her eyes lit up at something over my shoulder. “Finally, here comes someone.”

  Before I could turn to look, something hit me on my still-recovering head, and the world faded.

  * * *

  Waking up was not fun. Ow. My head pounded like I’d tied on shot after shot of whisky, but I didn’t do that much anymore, so that didn’t make any sense. Nor did the fact that I wasn’t lying in bed...and I couldn’t catch any hint of Hudson’s smoky cedar aftershave.

  “Does that moan mean you’re waking up?”

  I squinted in the direction of the British accent and managed to make out Priya sitting nearby. We were both on the floor—a floor with thin, scratchy Berber carpet that smelled like it had been gathering dust for thirty years. There was a metal-and-fake-wood desk against one wall, with a questionable-looking couch beside it. I couldn’t fault Priya for favoring the floor over the lumpy and stained cushions.

  “What the hell happened?” Following my words, I attempted to push myself into a sitting position, but quickly gave up as the world tilted and my stomach let me know that any further movement would result in a gross display that would make the smell of the place that much worse.

  “The waiter hit you over the head.”

  “That’s not very good service,” I muttered. “How’d they capture you?”

  “They threatened to hurt you.”

  I frowned. “You know I survived getting shot, right?”

  “Yeah. But it still hurt, right?” She crossed her arms defensively. “I couldn’t be responsible for that.”

  Huh.

  That show of compassion kind of derailed my thoughts about where we were and what had happened. If someone had asked me yesterday if Priya would do whatever it took to save herself when faced with this sort of situation, my answer would have been a resounding yes. Because demon.

  But...maybe I had rushed to judgment a little. My conscience squirmed as I remembered my agreement with the Order.

  Thinking I might have been wrong made my head pound that much more forcefully, so I abandoned that train of thought for now. “Where are we?”

  “The restaurant’s office. You were out for about half an hour. How’s your head?”

  “Complaining loudly.”

  “Just lie there, then. I checked the door earlier—it’s spelled. Neither Jet nor I can open it.”

  “I could probably ghost my way out.” Though the thought of it right now made me wince. I hated walking through walls on good days. Besides, blows to the head were usually good at messing up my abilities, if only temporarily. “Scratch that.”

  “I made a bloody mess of this, didn’t I?” she said. A quiet thump accompanied her words, and I pictured her smacking her head against the wall.

  “Takes two to tango.”

  “But I was the one who insisted on going now. And barged in here like I knew what I was doing. Look where it got us.”

  “Eh.”

  “How can that be your reaction?”

  I opened my eyes at the incredulous note in her voice. “Because I’m a big boy. I could have talked you down.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to confront Pike as much as you did. And now we’re stuck in a restaurant’s grimy office, waiting for the drug dealers to decide what to do with us.”

  “I’ve got to learn to think before I act, yeah?” Priya leaned her head against the wall. “Always my bloody problem. I get a thought in my head and it must be done.”

  “That what led you to going the demon-summoning route?”

  She huffed out a breath. “Yeah.”

  “Do you regret it?”

  “What part? Jet? Killing Gareth?”

  “Any of it? All of it?”

  “I regret faking my death,” she said after a few moments. “Leaving my dad all alone. And the rest of it? I can’t imagine living without Jet now, but Gareth?” Her jaw tensed. “He bloody well deserved what he got. But if I’d known then what I know now...”

  “What’s that?”

  “It changes you,” she murmured. “Murder does. I’m not the same person I was two years ago, and... I miss her sometimes. The Priya who didn’t worry about anything except taking care of her dad or getting a promotion at work or the latest bird to catch my fancy. Shopping, parties, fun nights out with friends, and so on.”

  “So, if you could go back?”

  She was quiet for a minute. “Not much point in wondering about that, is there? I can’t. I made my choices. Dwelling on them won’t help anyone.”

  Fair enough. I closed my eyes. “Did they say why they hit me, at least? Who was it, anyway?”

  “He had an eyepatch—”

  “Fuck.” Of course he did. A humorless bark of laughter escaped me, because really—if I didn’t have bad luck, I’d have no luck at all. “That’s Pike.”

  “Hudson’s sire? That’s him?”

  The door jerked open, and the man himself stood there. “That’s me.” He gave us a wide grin as he pushed the door closed behind him. “I knew as soon as you walked in, and I could smell him all over you, that you were someone I needed to get to know. I didn’t even realize Havoc—Hudson—was gay.”

  I sat up—because like hell I was going to talk to this guy lying down—and glared at him. “You didn’t know he was a cop, either, so...”

  “Oh, don’t kid yourself. Of course I knew that. That’s what made him so valuable.”

  Pike crouched in front of me, and I got my first good look at the man. He seemed to be in his thirties—he looked younger than Hudson, actually—but I knew he was well over one hundred. There were no wrinkles around his one good eye, no silver in the stringy medium-brown hair that draped over his shoulders. He was big-boned and carried extra weight through the gut, but it made him seem as large and solid as a wall. The only imperfection was the patch over his left eye, and I wondered how that had come to be. It had to have happened before he became a vampire. He wore casual clothes—jeans and a light gray sweater—and looked like any other hipster café-goer in this city.

  Except for the madness sparkling in his eye. He was enjoying seeing me at his mercy.

  “How are you even here?” I asked. “Hudson killed you.”

  “Clearly he didn’t.” Pike gestured to either side in a “here I am” sort of flourish. “Hudson thought he did, but I was with a friend that night.”

  “He doesn’t make those kinds of mistakes.”

  “Ah, but he was a young vampire, not even a year old, acting against his sire and his band in the most horrible way a fledgling could. I suspect he wasn’t thinking—or seeing—all that clearly that evening.”

  Okay...as much as it pained me to admit it, I could see that happening. Hudson hated killing. He was a catch-and-release-the-spider kind of guy, and when a mouse infiltrated our house over the summer, he’d gone to great lengths to set up humane traps to catch it, then had driven it to a park a few kilometers away. So killing the creatures he’d spent a year with couldn’t have been easy, even if it was justified.

  But Pike disappearing for twenty-plus-years and showing up now didn’t make any sense.

  “You’re wondering why now.” Pike’s grin widened. “Why not?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Nope. I don’t buy it.”

  He laughed. “I can see why Hudson is enamored of you. That wit...and that scent.” He inhaled deeply, and I didn’t bother to repress my shudder, which only made him laugh more. “Have you ever experienced the severance of your connection to your band?”

  “Uh...seeing as I’m not a vampire, no.”

  “Thanks to your Hudson, I have.” The laughter died away, replaced with that madness I’d spotted before, flaring now in
to a conflagration. “I was confused. Disoriented. Weak. There was only one truth in my mind—if it became known I’d survived, my allies would join forces with my enemies to finish the job Hudson had thought he’d already completed.”

  “So you ran.” Priya gasped. “Bloody hell, that’s where I know you from. Your face is all over the European Witch Web.”

  Pike looked proud at that. “I spent some time in France, yes.”

  “And butchered your way across Belgium and Germany, if the reports are correct, and I reckon they are.”

  “They could be.” The laughter was back.

  Jesus, this guy was sick.

  “But my heart has always been in Toronto, so once I’d gotten my feet back under me, I came home. I’m rebuilding my empire.”

  “Empire, huh.”

  Pike must not have liked my tone, because his hand flashed out to slap me—hard. The pain hit a second later, along with the feeling of wetness as the air found what I assumed was blood on my skin. He lifted his hand to his lips and licked off the drops of blood caught on his claws. “Exquisite,” he murmured.

  “So what’s this rebuilding entail?” I asked quickly, eager to stave off what I suspected was coming soon from how he was looking at me—like a treat.

  “Vampires,” he said simply. “Vampires everywhere. Shifters scrubbed out of existence, as they should be in every corner of the world. And if the vampires can’t do it, the drugs will. Poison for the dirty mutts,” he muttered under his breath. “Horrible things. Thinking they can eat my face without repercussions.”

  Was that what had happened to his eye? Why hadn’t it healed?

  “But I’ll show them. I’ll win. They’ll be gone, and I’ll be here, where I should be. King.” He grabbed my shoulder with one hand and placed the other on my ear to wrench my head sideways.

  “So, a two-pronged attack?” I said quickly, trying to distract Pike from what the next step was obviously going to be.

  “Like vampire fangs,” he said with a chuckle. “We’ll destroy them all, one way or another.”

  “What about your bodyguard? Why kill her?”

  Pike pulled back. Only a centimeter or two, but I’d take it. “Sarah? Because she was fucking one of them. Living with the scum, and hiding it from me. That couldn’t be forgiven.”