by Naomi Clark
She waved my comment off. “We found them in a pool of blood they’d clearly vomited.” She curled her lips in distaste. “Based on what Kinley told us about Beckett, the cause is the same.”
Kinley must have been the kid who took Beckett’s body away. “Okay. But how does that point to a warlock?”
Even though I’d had the same thought myself, I was just conjecturing. If Mr. Cold had actual evidence, and he wanted me to bring the culprit in, I needed to know as much as possible.
“I’m assuming you know perfectly well how to kill a vampire, Georgia,” Harmony said. She plucked a peanut from the bowl and rolled it across the table for Elijah to chase. “And you saw Beckett die first-hand, if Kinley’s correct. So you know none of those methods were used. That just leaves magic, as far as we can see.”
“Or poison?” I suggested, recalling my earlier thoughts.
“I guess it’s not impossible,” she said, “but we don’t think it’s likely.”
“Okay.” I set my knife and fork down, feeling a twinge in my temples. “So these are the facts. Three vampires died, not by fire, sunlight, or saltwater, and so Mr. Cold decided it must be by magic. And that’s it, that’s all you know?”
“Sorry I couldn’t provide you with an autopsy report, but vampire pathologists are thin on the ground.”
“It doesn’t give me a lot to work with. I almost feel like you’re setting me up for failure.”
Harmony’s eyes widened in faux-surprise. “You think we’re just looking for an excuse to kill the local dhampir?”
I shrugged. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“It may shock you to know that Mr. Cold has no prejudice against your kind,” she said in a tone that indicated she had plenty of prejudice. “If he wanted you dead, it would have happened a long time ago.”
I mulled on the implication that he’d known I was in Ridderport long before I even knew he existed. It made me deeply uncomfortable. “Good to know,” I muttered. “Well, where am I supposed to start looking for this imaginary warlock? Does Mr. Cold have any enemies who might target the clan?”
“I can find out for you,” she said. “Come back tomorrow night and Ezra or I will have details.”
My head throbbed. “Why not have the details tonight, if the plan was to hire me all along?”
“I guess Mr. Cold was naïve enough to think you might have your own resources. Maybe that was a mistake.”
Impatience ate at my fraying temper. “I’m not the psychic round here. Why not have Ezra hunt down the warlock? He’d surely be a lot faster at it than me.”
Harmony stiffened, her face turning into a beautiful, emotionless mask. “That isn’t how Ezra works.”
“It’s not how I work, either.” I sighed, shoving my plate away. “If you want my help, you have to make it easy for me. I was a vampire-hunter, not a warlock-hunter. And usually when I was given a bounty to collect, I was given details with it. Names, faces, places of residence. Ridderport might not be New York or Chicago, but it’s still a city. I can’t just go door-to-door asking for murderous warlocks.”
A smile flickered on her lips. “I think that’s the most you’ve said all night.”
“Either you can help or you can’t, and if you can’t, go get someone who can,” I said. The headache was going to become a migraine at this rate. Hadn’t Mr. Cold ever hired a fucking contractor before?
She huffed. “I can put you in touch with Hugo and Viviana’s human servant, Saul Taylor. He should know more about their last movements. Wait here.” She picked up my empty plate and swept off.
I drummed my fingers on the table as Elijah pecked a peanut to pieces, already regretting my choices tonight. Working for vampires? Even for ten thousand dollars?
“Would they really have hurt you?” I asked Elijah.
He cocked his head to one side and offered me a peanut. I accepted it graciously, knowing the answer. Of course they would. And I would never have forgiven myself. There had to be a way to resolve this fast and get the undead community off my back. I wasn’t a detective, but if there really was a warlock in town killing off vampires, they’d leave traces somewhere. All I needed was a starting point, right?
My mental pep talk wasn’t convincing. I was almost glad when Harmony returned.
“Come back tomorrow evening and ask for me or Ezra,” she said. She paused for a second and added, “actually, just ask for me. I’ll get you Saul’s address and ask Mr. Cold if he knows of anyone with a grudge.”
I nodded. “I’m going to guess there’s at least someone. Master vampires don’t become masters by being nice.”
She smiled thinly. “I’m sure you’re quite correct.”
“Don’t be offended on his behalf. I bet he’d say the same.”
“Maybe all his enemies are already dead,” Harmony said.
I pulled my jacket back on, too hot the second the leather touched my skin. It felt like it had gained twenty pounds since I took it off, and I groaned at the thought of the walk home. Patting myself down, I remembered something. “Shit.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I left a knife in the basement. I’d like it back.” The stiletto wasn’t irreplaceable, but nor did I want to waste time replacing it.
“I’ll have it for you tomorrow,” she promised and gestured to the door. “The night is young. Why not go and enjoy it?”
I grimaced and patted my shoulder. “Come on, Elijah. Let’s get out of here.”
He eyed his remaining peanuts with definite sadness, then hopped onto my shoulder. Harmony gave us what looked like a genuine smile at the sight.
“Your warlock story is really about him, isn’t it?” she asked, with an insight that made my stomach churn.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” I said, heading for the door. “Thanks for dinner.”
She didn’t say anything, but I felt her watching us as we left, and the feeling didn’t fade once we were back on the streets. I guess I probably was being watched. I’d keep an eye on me if our positions were reversed. Inviting a dhampir, and a vampire-hunting one at that, into your home was a risky move for a master vampire.
That was why I didn’t take the jacket off, even though I was disgustingly hot, and even though I didn’t think I’d be attacked on the way home. There was no way to know for sure, and I didn’t want to compromise my ability to fight or go for a weapon by carrying the jacket. So I just sweated and swore, and thought about how good a cold shower would be when I did get home.
The walk was uneventful. That sense of being watched never went away, but nothing happened. Elijah dozed on my shoulder, full of peanuts and probably perfectly content. I envied him. It was going to take more than a bag of peanuts to erase the anxiety and anger of tonight. Maybe a piece of cheesecake. Maybe a whole cheesecake. Maybe I should give Bea a call...
The night wind carried a lot of scents down Easton Road. Brine and the honey-almond perfume of night phlox hit me as I approached my house, a smell I liked, but one not strong enough to mask the scent of vampire.
“Fuck,” I said, pulling out the Ghost. I sidled along Mr. Holland’s fence toward my drive, heart racing. I’d been cheated of a real fight tonight, and even if I didn’t want one mentally, my body was ready for it. All the rage and adrenaline I’d conjured for Charlotte was still waiting to be spent. My movements stirred Elijah, and he took to the air with an irked croak, vanishing into the darkness.
I turned onto my drive and crouched behind my bus, peering around it to scan the front of my house. The security light was off, but I could see a figure in the shadows. Male, skinny, long hair. Kinley? What the hell was he doing here?
What was the best strategy here? He was young, but a vampire was always dangerous, and tonight’s little dance with Johanna had proved I was rusty. I’d lost a weapon, for fuck’s sake. Such bad form.
On the other hand, I didn’t really want to start a shoot-out on my quiet, family-orientated little street. The cops would be here in no t
ime. I reluctantly holstered the Ghost and decided to risk the direct approach. Kinley wasn’t hiding, exactly. If he wanted to catch me off-guard, there were half a dozen better places to hide than on the doorstep.
I slid the briefcase under the bus, then came out and walked until I triggered the security light. The driveway was flooded with cold light, illuminating the vampire. It was indeed Kinley, and he flinched in the sudden glare, shielding his eyes. While he was blinded, I rushed him.
Before he could react, I’d closed the distance and had him up against the front door, my forearm across his throat, Ezra’s knife against his cheek. A certain dark joy filled me when he whimpered and tried to writhe free.
“Don’t,” I warned him. “You’ll lose an eye.”
“I’m not here to start shit!” he cried.
“Good, because I wouldn’t take it.” I eased my arm away from his throat, but kept the knife on his face. “Whatever you want, I’m not interested. You need to leave.”
He bit his lip, staring at the ground. “No.”
“It’s not optional.”
“No! Mr. Cold’s got you going after the warlock, right? I’m going to help.” He met my eyes, a world of stubbornness in his gaze.
“I don’t need any help.” I moved the knife, deciding he wasn’t going to be a threat. “If there really is a warlock and they’ve really got a way to kill vampires, you’re better off staying out of it.”
“No!” His eyes glittered, and a potent mixture of fury and deep, cutting grief filled his face. “I loved Beckett! I’m not hiding like a coward while his killer takes us out one by one.”
Against my will and my better judgement, I softened. You couldn’t fake the passion in his voice, the depth of misery. I knew that kind of heartbreak. It wasn’t in me to ignore it. With a sigh, I released him.
“You’d better come in,” I said, fishing my door key from my pocket.
I pushed the door open and nodded him in, then went to retrieve the briefcase. Every instinct in my body sang in alarm at the sight of a vampire stepping into my house. Retirement had made me soft.
Chapter Thirteen
I told myself I was being practical, as I escorted Kinley into the kitchen. He obviously hadn’t been far behind Beckett the night he died, so he might have information about Beckett’s last movements that would help me. I didn’t have to be nice to him or keep him around.
Then I saw the furtive look of guilt on his face as he looked at the broken, boarded-up kitchen window, and my temper began to simmer.
“That was you, then?” I asked, hands on my hips.
He avoided my gaze, glaring angrily at the microwave. “I was pissed. You stabbed Beckett.”
“He attacked me first,” I argued, then bit my lip, stopping myself. He’d lost someone he loved in a horrible, traumatic way. He was entitled to his grief. I’d been a wreck after Elijah. The first three weeks or so were still a black-out filled blur, and the sharp scent of tequila still made me gag. In comparison, Kinley really hadn’t done anything wrong.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said, softening my tone. I set the briefcase on the kitchen table and stripped off my jacket with a sigh of relief. I needed a shower, but I wanted a coffee more. “Sit down. We’ll talk.”
He obeyed and I set the kettle boiling. I didn’t offer him a cup. Vampires could drink, but they didn’t really benefit from it. Besides, Kinley looked like he needed something stronger than coffee, and I wasn’t sharing my alcohol.
Under the warm kitchen lights, he looked even younger than I’d thought, and woefully pathetic. His long dark hair was greasy and knotted, his complexion sallow. His worn t-shirt, advertising some band who were probably huge in the 90s, was torn and blood-stained. His jeans were ripped at the knees, clearly from wear rather than for fashion. He tapped broken, dirty nails on the table, and I noticed two of his fingers were taped together badly.
“What happened?” I asked, nodding at his hand.
He regarded his hand absently. “Mr. Cold broke my fingers for breaking your window.” He shrugged, but seemed to shrink in on himself as he spoke.
I felt a bite of anger on his behalf, despite myself. “Is that normal behavior for Mr. Cold?”
He shrugged again. “Was he nice to you?”
“Not especially.” The kettle boiled, and I doled a spoonful of instant vanilla coffee into a mug, then added the water. I joined him at the table.
It felt unnatural, dangerous, to be sitting opposite a vampire in my own home. Even one as young and twitchy as Kinley. The air between us burned with tension and unspoken anger. Not necessarily directed at each other, but at the situation and the ones who’d engineered it – Mr. Cold and our vampire-killer.
I was usually good at letting silence stretch out, but as I stirred my coffee, Kinley’s quiet misery ground at me.
“Tell me about Beckett,” I said. If I could get him to open up, I could hopefully steer him toward Beckett’s death, but I didn’t want to go straight for the jugular.
Kinley toyed with the frayed leather band at his wrist. “He was...all I had. Everything. We came here together from Salt Lake City three years ago. His parents were religious and mine were...absent.” A spasm of pain crossed his face.
“And you were both still mortal when you came here?” I asked.
He nodded. “I mean, it’s not like we planned to become vampires. I never even believed in vampires until it happened.” He swallowed hard, then gave another of those casual shrugs that hid a world of hurt. “There’s this club, Obsidian. You know it?”
I shook my head. I’d never had a clubbing-drinking-dancing-drugs phase, and even if I hadn’t already been vampire-hunting when most of my classmates were out clubbing, I probably still wouldn’t have had one. Loud music and loud people made me irritable and anxious.
“It’s a cool club. Like underground grunge and punk stuff. Beckett got a DJ gig there not long after we moved here. He loves...loved music, all kinds of music. He thrived on the crowds and everything. We used to go there every Saturday night. We made friends, started building a real life, and then one night...” He shook his head, biting his lip.
“Tell me,” I encouraged. “I know it hurts, but it does help.”
He was quiet for a second. “There was this guy. I’d seen him at the club a lot, always just hanging out at the bar. He gave me a bad vibe, but he never tried anything so I didn’t really worry about it. Then one night, we were leaving and he cut us off. Asks if we want to party with him. We said no thanks and tried to move on, but he wouldn’t...”
He stopped again, covering his face with his hands. “I don’t really remember much of it,” he mumbled through his fingers. “I remember pain, blood, and hunger. I remember darkness and bodies, and then...and then there was Mr. Cold.” He raised his head, expression bleak and distant. “He told us Yates, the vampire who turned us, was dead. Mr. Cold has rules about turning people against their will. Apparently we were strike three for Yates, and Mr. Cold took him to the ocean.”
I shivered, clutching my coffee cup hard. It was distasteful to agree with Mr. Cold, but hard to disagree with his policy. “How long ago was that?”
“Three years. We made the best of it, I guess. I mean, we always knew we’d spend our lives together. Now we had eternity. At least, I thought we did.” He slumped in his chair, covering his face again. “We were supposed to have eternity.”
It was impossible not to feel for him. The parts of his story he hadn’t told me still rang loud through his words. A family who didn’t care about him. The judgement of Beckett’s parents. The courage it took to abandon everything you knew and start over, reclaim and rebuild your live. The horror of a vampire’s hunger. The terror of turning. Reclaiming and rebuilding all over again, but this time with an appetite for blood and a dark life you hadn’t wanted, hadn’t asked for, hadn’t even dreamed existed.
At least through all of that, he’d had his lover.
And now he didn’t. My throa
t tightened, and I almost didn’t ask him my next question, but I couldn’t help Kinley or Beckett by saying nothing.
“Tell me about the night he died.”
Kinley gave me a wretched, angry look. “You were there.”
“Only for the end.”
He seemed to shrink in on himself even more, like a hermit crab retreating into its shell. “It was just a normal night. We went to Obsidian. We were...um...” He hesitated, giving me a shifty, guilty look.
“Hunting?” I asked, voice clear of inflection.
“We don’t kill people! We’ve never killed anyone!”
“I’m sure you don’t have to defend yourself to me,” I said. “I’m retired.”
He snorted, then shook his head. “Like I say, it was a normal night. Obsidian is good for that kind of thing. Everyone’s wasted, there’s usually drugs going around, and people don’t tend to remember each other, you know? So you can feed and leave and you don’t draw any attention to yourself. We did that. We fed, and we left, and on the way home...”
He inhaled sharply, and shook his head, suddenly mute. I drank my coffee and waited to see if he’d speak again, but his silence was complete and laced with loss, and I didn’t have the heart to push him for more. I went to rinse my cup out, and heard annoyed caws and pecks echoing through the boarded-up window. I opened the back door and Elijah flew in, circling the kitchen a couple of times to spit crow-ish insults at me.
“It’s not my fault you didn’t come in the front with me,” I told him. “If being left outside five minutes longer than you want is the worst thing that happens to you tonight, we can call it a win.”
He huffed and landed on the table, scratching at the wood. Kinley stared at him, dark eyes thoughtful. He looked like he was about to ask a question, and I didn’t want that, so I spoke first.
“Is there anything else you can tell me? Something must have happened to Beckett at the club. Was there anyone new there, or did anything at all unusual happen?”
He shook his head. “We don’t...we always tried to avoid feeding on the same people more than once, so we’re always looking for new people. Were always looking.” He frowned, balling his hands into fists.