Not Dead Yet

by Jenn Burke

  “Especially if there is one and she knew about it.”

  “But we’ve still got access to Cyril’s warehouse while his agent and lawyer argue over what to do with it.”

  Lexi glared at Hudson, and I knew she was thinking what I was—that Cyril’s was the place where I’d almost been trapped. “You look out for him, Hudson, or so help me goddess, you won’t like the consequences.”

  Hudson had the grace to look uncomfortable and more than a little guilty, and I didn’t blame him. I’d gotten hurt because he’d asked me to help him, and that had to be weighing on his conscience. Not to mention the tingles of power edging through the kitchen to remind him Lexi might be half his age, but she was much more than a twentysomething nurse with great taste in best friends.

  “Noted,” he said.

  “I’m coming too,” Evan announced.

  “This isn’t an actual field trip.”

  Evan’s expression devolved into something almost mutinous. “I’m not staying here all by myself while you’re out doing something important.”

  I shrugged. “The more the merrier.”

  “Wes,” Hudson growled.

  I caught his eye and gave the smallest shake of my head. I’d told him about haunting Evan but not all of the details of why or what Evan had shared about his life before he encountered Hudson. Hud tilted his head, and something passed between us, some understanding like what we used to have. That connection between lovers, where you start ending each other’s sentences or reading each other’s moods, or whatever. It shocked me that we’d rediscovered that now, of all times. But it reassured me too.

  He turned his attention back to Evan. “You stay in the car. As a lookout.”

  Evan had been about to protest the staying in the car thing, but as soon as Hudson proclaimed the role lookout, he softened. “Yeah, okay. I can do that.”

  “Good. It’ll help.” Hudson arched a brow at me, and I smiled a small, shaky little smile.

  Yeah. It would help. Especially if this little field trip turned out to be more dangerous than Hudson promised.

  Chapter Twenty

  There were no cruisers stationed outside Cyril Horacek’s warehouse. I don’t know why I thought there would be—maybe because of how Hudson had described the scene as not being released. But of course there was no real reason for it to be under 24/7 guard, especially not in this era of tight fiscal management of city resources. Yellow police tape stretched over the main door, the one indication that not everything was normal here.

  As Hudson pulled his red beast into the parking lot, Evan leaned forward between the two front seats. “So what’s the plan?”

  “We get in, we try to find the secret room—if there is one—and we leave. Simple,” Hudson said, staring out the windshield.

  Evan groaned. “You know you just jinxed it, right?”

  “Huh?”

  “You said it would be simple. That means it’ll be anything but,” I pointed out.

  “You’re both nuts.” Hudson popped the car door open.

  I looked at Evan and held out a hand. “Five bucks it’s not simple.”

  Evan slapped my palm. “You’re on.”

  “You got your phone?”

  “Yep.” He waggled the small black device. “I’ll give Hudson a heads-up if anything’s weird out here.”

  I scrambled out of the car to catch up to Hudson, who was already cracking the police seal on the door. On our way over, he’d called Kat to let her know he was going to take another look—making sure there was a trail of legitimacy to his actions if they ever came under question. Kat had wanted to attend with him, but he’d told her to continue to focus on the newest murder. They’d found the fake bookshelf I’d told Hudson about, but they couldn’t determine how to open it. I didn’t blame Hudson for wanting Kat to be present when they finally figured out how to crack it, so she could be one of the first to view the secret room. I wondered what she’d make of it.

  Hudson opened the door and flicked on the light—which made me flinch. Of course he caught the reaction.

  “I’m not used to—” I waved a hand. “Breaking and entering on the up-and-up.”

  “No breaking here, only entering.” His eyes twinkled, and I remembered I’d used similar words when he’d first questioned me about Meredith’s murder.

  He waved me inside and I hesitated as I passed him, looking at the stairs that continued up to the loft. To the left was the door to Cyril’s workshop studio. Fear begged me to look in there first—I’d faced danger upstairs before, but none down here. Except logic insisted that any secret room would probably have an entry from the main living quarters, if only for convenience.

  “I’m right here,” Hudson said softly.

  I wasn’t alone. And we weren’t surrounded by cops, so I could reach out for him if I needed to. Except...could I? Did I have that right? Hudson had called me boyfriend before—to shore up his excuse for leave—but did he use that term with more in mind? With his hot and cold running attitude, I just didn’t know.

  So not the time to debate this. Jesus.

  I swallowed and nodded at the stairs. “Let’s go.”

  Cyril’s loft was as neat and eclectic as I remembered it, but there was an odor of abandonment to it now. A little bit musty, a lot still and close. I couldn’t see much of the bedroom area from the main floor, and that was perfectly fine with me. If I didn’t have to venture up there, all the better.

  Hudson and I started exploring the main floor, checking the walls for any anomalies, like hollow-sounding spots or weird protrusions that didn’t belong. I glanced at him a few times, wondering if I should bring up what I knew about Evan. It wasn’t the best time, but he needed to know, and god knew when we’d have another uninterrupted moment.

  “What?” Hudson demanded before I made up my mind.

  I turned back to the wall and rapped my knuckles on it. “What?”

  “Got something on your chest?”

  I held my breath, then decided to go for it. “Evan.”

  “No.”

  My brow wrinkled. “‘No’ what?”

  “There’s nothing between him and me.” His lips twisted and he focused on the wall. “He kissed me but—”

  I sputtered. “That was—I wasn’t—What?”

  “I’m not interested in him.”

  “Well—that’s—that’s good. Because Jesus, Hud, thirty-eight years between the two of you.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I squinted at him. “Don’t look at me like that.”

  “Like what? Like there’s fifty years between you and me, you mean? Like that?”

  “Funny. That’s not what I meant, anyway.” I quickly related the events of the night I’d haunted Evan—which was the main reason haunting Hudson the next day to escape the thing in the secret room had drained me so thoroughly.

  By the time I was done, Hudson had stopped examining the room and was staring at me, his eyes wide and his bronze skin pale. “Seriously? He was going to kill himself? Fuck. That’s—Fuck.”

  “You need to make a place for him in your life,” I said, all seriousness.

  “Yeah,” Hudson replied, his tone stunned, but he didn’t seem to grasp the depth of what I was saying.

  “No, I mean it. This is how we’re both going to—to fix this.”

  “I thought you said fixing it wasn’t possible.”

  “You know what I mean. I’m not telling you to coddle him or cater to his every need or—or—whatever. But you need to make sure he’s got a solid spot with you. Something he can’t doubt.”

  “I get it. And I don’t disagree, but...” Hudson turned back to the wall with a sigh and continued tapping. “That’s not me. You know I don’t let people in.”

  Huh—I did know that. And maybe that explained a lot of his hot and cold iss
ues, but we weren’t talking about him and me just now. “Bullshit. You can learn.”

  “He can stay with me as long as he needs to.”

  “He needs more than that.”

  “What?” Hudson said, his exasperation clear. “What does he need?”

  “Family. Home. Acceptance.”

  “Wes, I’m not built—”

  “Isn’t that everything you wanted when we were dating? Not kids—I know. But you and me, we were tight. We were a family of two.” When things were good, at least.

  “That’s different.”

  “Why, because we were fucking? Not built for friendship—what crap. You are built for it, if you get past yourself. You might wish you weren’t, with how hard you’re fighting to be all rawr, creature of the night, doomed and cursed and damned, but goddamn it, Hud. You’re alive. You’ve got a heart. You’ve got an amazing heart, full of joy and wonder, and you—”

  “Shut up.”

  I bristled. “You shut up. You know I’m right, you ass—”

  “Seriously, shut up for two seconds.” He rapped on the wall again. “I think this brick is fake.”

  I looked at the wall he was standing in front of—it was the one sporting the pictures I assumed Cyril was most proud of, including that massive cityscape of the Toronto skyline. I’d assumed it was the outer wall, but as I kept looking at it, I realized the dimensions weren’t quite right.

  “Hidden in plain sight,” I murmured.

  Hudson grunted and started pressing random bricks.

  “What are you doing?”

  “There’s always a fake brick switch in the movies.” He reached up to nudge a photo off-center. “Or maybe one of these pictures?”

  He pushed another half-dozen pictures to one side or the other. On the seventh—a black-and-white photo featuring stark graffiti on a brick wall—something groaned.

  “I can’t believe that worked.” Hudson stepped back as the wall—door—separated and a portion slid to the side.

  The room was pitch black. I could barely make out the edge of tiles at the border of the living room. How convenient to have a murder room located right off the entertainment space. Also scary as fuck.

  “Two murder victims, two secret rooms,” Hudson muttered. He pulled out a small flashlight, ignited its powerful beam, and took a step past the doorway, the light held up beside his head.

  “Is there a pentagram?” I supposed I could move forward, slip past Hudson, and see for myself—but I didn’t want to. The last time I’d entered one of these rooms...

  Yeah, no thanks.

  Hudson swept the light over the floor. “Yes, and a drain in the middle.”

  “Great.”

  “Shelves too.”

  “With artifacts?”

  “Yeah. Want to see if you can tell if anything is missing?”

  “No. I—I don’t want to go into the otherplane here.” I didn’t mention that I wasn’t sure if I could. My energy was still so low.

  “Fair enough. I’ll—” Hudson’s phone interrupted him. He pulled it off his belt and answered it without looking at the caller ID. “Rojas.” His back stiffened. “You sure? Shit. Thanks, kid—sorry. Evan. Thanks, Evan.” He turned to me. “We’ve got company.”

  “Cops?” Was I going to have to risk the otherplane in order to slip away?

  “Not unless they’re undercover. Four males wearing regular clothes, driving a Mercedes.”

  “Uh...did you ever drive a Mercedes while undercover?”

  “Not fucking once.”

  “So...” I raised my brows in question.

  Hudson tucked the flashlight back into his pocket. “Whoever they are, they’re not supposed to be here.”

  Anything else I might have said froze on my tongue as the door to Cyril’s apartment burst open. Four men crowded through it, all of them wearing some variation on business casual. A blazer here, jeans there, khakis, polo, whatever. There was no familial resemblance between them. One of the men was black, one had medium-brown skin, and the other two were white. All of them were big and muscular, their biceps and thighs threatening their business-casual clothing. One wrong flex and...oops, no pants. My bad.

  The one in the lead, wearing dark wash jeans and a gray blazer over a white T-shirt, nudged my memory. I didn’t have the greatest brain for faces, but something about how he held himself, how he moved, made me think I’d seen him before. A client’s muscle, maybe? He certainly looked the part. Especially with his crooked, bulbous nose. I could easily picture him getting into bar fights with a grin.

  Hudson displayed his badge. “Detective Hudson Rojas, Toronto Police. You gentlemen mind telling me why you’re standing in the middle of a cordoned-off crime scene?”

  The big guy in the front smiled.

  As his fangs dropped.

  “Oh fuck,” I whispered, involuntarily taking a step back.

  Hudson dropped his badge. “Wes, run!”

  “Yes, run.” The leader grinned at me, his fangs fully descended and his eyes glowing amber. He spoke with a slight accent, but I couldn’t pinpoint it. “I love a good chase.”

  That voice. I knew that voice.

  “Hey, shithead.” The leader turned to Hudson, who roared—fucking roared—and swiped claw-tipped fingers across his face. Hudson’s eyes blazed, and he bared his teeth, and I...

  I shouldn’t have been turned on. But apparently vampire Hudson was working for me.

  I ducked and rolled as one of the other guys—they were all vampires? Jesus—went to grab me. Despite my fears, I slipped into the otherplane, because there was no way I’d be able to dodge them in the living plane. As soon as I did, I heard the whispers—sibilant hisses on the edge of my hearing, enticing me to come closer, closer...

  Not this time, assholes.

  In the otherplane, all the vampires shared Hudson’s spiky, ragged, vamped-out shadow form. At a glance, they could be twins. Er, quintuplets. Whatever. But then I got a good look at the creature Hudson was facing, and my blood ran cold. The head vamp didn’t merely look like Meredith’s killer—I would bet my apartment building it was him. The shape of the shoulders was the same, the jaggedness of his form, everything.

  But he’d never spoken at Meredith’s murder scene, so why did his voice sound—

  Oh shit. The guy on Iskander’s phone.

  Before I could contemplate the implications of that, something tugged at me, almost grabbing hold. I yanked my attention back to my surroundings and dodged another swipe by one of the vampires as the other two went to join their leader and attack Hudson.

  I hadn’t realized how damned fast Hudson could be. How vicious. He never reached for his gun, opting instead to beat the shit out of his opponents, using his fangs and claws without mercy. The leader got in some good shots too. He was definitely as strong as Hudson, if not more so, but he didn’t have the finesse and skill Hudson displayed. Neither did the other two.

  My attacker made another grab for me, and I darted away. For the first time since I woke up like this in 1933, I could feel my hold on the otherplane slipping. Usually staying in it was as easy as breathing, but tonight, with the strain of the two haunts and the energy my body had depleted as I healed, I knew I couldn’t stay ghosted for long.

  New plan. I let myself rematerialize just enough to shout, “Hudson! Eyes!”

  Hoping he got my hint, I slipped fully back into the otherplane and focused the last of my energy on the lights in the apartment. I shoved my will at them—and the bulbs flared like mini supernovas before exploding. I heard a series of grunts and thuds and hoped that Hudson had used the distraction as I’d intended—to quickly incapacitate our opponents.

  Against my will, I phased fully back into the living plane. The apartment smelled like ozone and copper—electricity and blood—an aroma that was never going to leave m
y brain. The real world seemed a bit less stable than it should be as I stumbled toward the front door. I couldn’t hear the fighting anymore, but my senses were all a little off. The fact that the only illumination in the room was from the streetlights outside didn’t help.

  Then something grabbed my arm and I screamed.

  “It’s me.” Hudson started dragging me forward.

  I huffed. “Some of us can’t see in the dark.”

  “They’re not dead, just out. Come on, we need to move.”

  Hudson grabbed his badge from the floor and we sailed down the stairs to the main entrance. Well, Hudson sailed. I staggered and fell mostly. As we reached the exterior doors, there was movement behind us. I dug deep into the very last of my energy and bolted for the car. Hudson reached it before I did and the engine howled to life as I dove in the passenger door.

  “What the hell?” Evan demanded, hunkered down in the back seat as Hudson tore out of the parking lot. “Who were those guys?”

  “A band of vampires,” Hudson said through gritted teeth.

  “I think the lead one—I think he’s the guy who killed Meredith,” I panted.

  Hudson jerked his eyes toward me. “Shit.”

  “And he was the one on the phone when I called Iskander.”

  “You sure?”

  “I swear to God.”

  “You don’t believe in God.”

  I leaned my head against the seat. “That’s how you know I’m serious.”

  * * *

  After crashing hard in the guest room, I awoke after sunrise to discover Hudson spooning me, fast asleep. The room was illuminated solely by the glow of sunlight sneaking past the blinds, but it didn’t seem to bother Hudson, and if my guess was right and he’d slept up here with me every night while I was out of it, it hadn’t been an issue at all. Did he need the completely dark room in the basement, or was that something he’d made for himself because he thought he needed it?

  I rolled over and traced the line of his nose, and then his lips. He didn’t move or twitch, or give any other sign that he could feel my touch. But he was breathing. He was alive. Even in sleep, his arm cradled me possessively, and my heart—a long-ignored organ—ached with sensations I couldn’t quite categorize. Regret that Hudson had had to figure out what being a vampire meant through trial and error, and possibly denied himself things on the basis of nothing more than inaccurate folklore. But also pride, that he’d managed to cobble a life for himself out of the bits and pieces he knew, and that it was a good, productive life.