by Deanna Chase
And that’s where I and my fellow vampire hunters came in. It was our job to make sure they didn’t get too far out of line.
“Kilsen. What do we have here?” Wallace Franks knelt down beside the vampire. “Looks like you had to pull out all the stops to bring him down.”
I snorted. “You could say that.”
The cleaner’s gaze focused on me and he did a double take. “What the hell are you wearing?”
I glanced down at the turquoise tube dress. The drizzle had not been kind. The material had turned see-through, and if it hadn’t been for my bra and panties, I’d be a prime candidate for indecent exposure. “Fuck me,” I muttered. “Don’t ask. Long story.”
Franks shrugged out of his shirt and handed it to me. “Here.”
I took the black button-down and wrapped it around myself, grateful there was at least one chivalrous man—or shifter to be exact—left in this town. “Thanks.”
“No problem. Want to give me the highlights on this one?”
“Quickly. I’ve got another case—” My voice broke on the word case. Willow and Tal weren’t just a case. They were family. “Um, an emergency actually.”
His expression turned to one that looked an awful lot like pity, and I knew he’d already heard about the fae couple. “Understood.”
“He’s wanted for feeding off humans. One went missing yesterday. I tried to neutralize him with my agate, but he’s too strong. It took my dagger to paralyze him. I’m positive if I take it out, he’ll wake right back up.”
“Got it.” He pulled a large needle out of his bag and jabbed it into the vamp’s neck.
I didn’t have to ask what he was doing. The substance he was injecting into the vampire was highly controlled by the Arcane. It could knock a vampire out for hours before he regained consciousness. It was a fantastic drug as it didn’t leave any permanent damage and vamps were alert fairly quickly after the affects wore off.
However, it was only ever used when and if a vamp had already been neutralized. If the vampire got it away from a tracker and used it on them, it was instant death. Too dangerous. So dangerous, in fact, the Arcane had banned it twice. But a few months ago, a vampire I’d stunned had awoken in the back of the van before they’d reached the Void offices and the vampire had gone mad, killing the two cleaners and driving the van off the Crescent City Connection bridge. After that incident, it had become a mandatory procedure to pump any vampire full of the toxin before transporting him or her to the holding cells.
I wrapped my hand around the handle of my dagger as Franks shoved his giant needle back into his bag of tricks. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
Tightening my hold on the handle, I yanked the blade out of the vampire. His hand shot straight up and grabbed Franks by the neck. The cleaner let out a strangled gasp and tried to jerk back, but it was no use. The vampire’s hold was too strong.
Without a second thought, I slammed the blade back into the vampire. He froze, his hand still clutching Franks’s neck. I moved around them and started to pry the vamp’s fingers off Franks. But suddenly the vamp started to vibrate, and before I could process what was happening, he yanked the blade out of his abdomen and slammed it into my thigh.
I let out a cry of pain and rolled. Fire burned up my leg and quickly headed for my chest. There were only seconds to spare. If the magic touched my heart, I’d be dead. My fingers wrapped around the cold hilt and I yanked while simultaneously zeroing in on the curse filling my veins. My magic flared to life and I mentally directed it to concentrate around the curse, to expel it through the blood already gushing from my wound.
Sweat poured down my face and my vision blurred, but I knew my magic was working. I could still feel the burn of the curse, and it was indeed flowing out of me. My wound was on fire, filling every sense that I had. I clutched my thigh and waited it out. Finally, when the burning stopped and my head swam from too much blood loss, I tore Franks’s shirt off and staunched the wound.
“Phoebe!”
Dax’s voice entered my consciousness and I raised my head, trying to blink away the blurriness clouding my vision. “Dax?”
“Jesus. What happened?” Even though his voice was rough and clouded with worry, I instantly calmed. Dax’s presence comforted me, gave me something to focus on other than the fact that there was a gaping wound in my thigh and I’d probably lost enough blood that I’d need a transfusion.
“Powerful vampire. Too fucking powerful.” I turned my head, scanning the area, already knowing the bastard was gone. He’d gotten away, and there was nothing I could’ve done about it.
“Shit!” Dax shifted away from me and he said, “Franks! Franks! Son of a bitch!”
I followed the sound of his voice and the blurry outline of Wallace Franks came into view. He wasn’t moving. Resignation settled over me and I whispered, “He’s gone, isn’t he?”
“Broken neck.”
My eyes stung with angry tears as I dragged myself over to the cleaner I’d known for the past five years. He’d been one of the best. I placed my hand on his chest right over his heart, knowing I wouldn’t feel anything, but praying Dax was wrong and that life still beat inside him.
Nothing. As Dax called in the incident, I laid my head on his chest and whispered, “Goodbye.”
4
“Take me back to the gala,” I said from the passenger seat of Dax’s beat-up Trooper. Not long after he’d called in Franks’s death, two more cleaners had shown up, taken my statement, then hauled Franks away. Without a word, Dax had picked me up and stuffed me into his Trooper.
“Are you insane? We need to get you to a healer ASAP.” He barely slowed as he cranked the wheel and made a right turn, heading back toward Uptown.
Talisen’s smiling face swam behind my closed eyelids. “But Tal and Willow—”
“Phoebe—”
“They are family,” I bit out. “I can’t keep fucking around, knowing someone has them. Some vampire hive that is likely one of Allcot’s enemies. Who knows what they’ll do to them?”
“You know as well as I do they aren’t going to hurt Willow. If they took her, they did it for her abilities,” he said, his voice clear and assured as he slipped into tracker mode. “They’ll want to keep her strong so she can turn as many of their vamps as possible.”
“But they won’t hesitate to hurt Tal. Especially if they’re trying to make her do something she doesn’t want to do. I have to get back there and cast a tracing spell.”
He glanced over at me, his eyes narrowed. “You really think you have the strength to do a tracing spell?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation, but it was a lie. My hands had started to shake, and I was so cold my feet had gone numb.
He grunted and continued driving.
“I can’t…” I swallowed the ache at the back of my throat.
“Can’t what?” He stepped on the gas, flying down the road, his impatience finally showing.
“It was a fucking setup, Dax. The vampire who did this to me? He baited me, toyed with me just long enough to snatch them. This was planned.”
He jerked his head, staring at me. “Planned? But how? There were three dozen Cryrique vampires at the gala. Not to mention an entire pack of shifters. There is no way a rogue hive could’ve taken them unless—”
“Allcot was in on it,” I finished for him, finally making the connection. Of course he was. He’d sent some unknown vamp to keep me occupied, to taunt me and throw me off the trail. Did he really think I was that stupid? That I wouldn’t see right through his shitty plan? If I hadn’t been so angry about Willow and Tal’s disappearance, I’d have been insulted.
“There’s no other way. No one gets past Allcot’s goons without his say-so.”
“I’ll kill the bastard,” I ground out.
“Not before the healer gets you put back together,” Dax said.
I opened my mouth to protest, to demand he turn around and head back downtown, but no sound came ou
t. Instead, my world began to spin, and suddenly everything went dark.
The low murmur of voices coaxed me from my dark cocoon of slumber. My limbs were heavy, as if they were weighted down, and my lids didn’t seem to want to open. I tried to move my lips, to speak, to turn my head, to do anything to pull myself from a shadow world where I hovered in the in-between.
“It’s not the blood loss that’s the problem,” a woman with a silky voice said. “We’ve already hooked up the transfusion.”
“What do you mean by problem?” Dax asked.
“She can’t fully recover until we purge the dark magic that was used on her. See this?”
“Yeah?”
“These dark edges indicate a curse. A powerful one, and it’s preventing the stitching spell from doing its job. She’ll have to stay until we can figure out what to do.”
“She’s not going to like that one bit,” Dax said.
If I could’ve smiled, I would’ve. My partner knew me all too well.
“It can’t be helped.”
Ice-cold hands touched my thigh, and my voice came back as I let out a displeased groan.
“Phoebe?” Dax’s breath tickled my cheek, and my eyes finally flew open.
Pure fear stared back at me through his gaze and I suddenly pushed myself up. “What’s wrong? What happened? Is it Wil? Tal? Tell me they’re all right.”
Dax’s full lips curved into a pleased smile. “Welcome back, Phoebs.”
I scowled at him. “Dax! Wil, Tal?”
He shook his head. “No news yet.”
“They why did you look like someone had…” I trailed off, remembering that we’d just lost Franks. And while that had hit both Dax and me pretty hard, it wasn’t the first time we’d lost an agent of the Void, and it wouldn’t be the last. Whatever had scared him was something different. “Uh, I mean, why were you looking at me like that?”
He shook his head slightly. “It might be because for a moment there I thought you’d checked out on me. For the record, Kilsen, you’re not allowed to pass out on me ever again. Got it?”
Jesus. The wound must be bad, because in all my years of hunting vampires and suffering concussions, bite wounds, and even broken bones, I’d never once passed out. Phoebe Kilsen, badass vampire hunter, did not faint. Ever. I cleared my throat. “That’s a promise I’ll gladly make.”
“Ms. Kilsen,” the silky-voiced woman said. “Welcome back.”
I blinked up at her. She had lush auburn hair that was pulled back into a long ponytail, wide-set blue eyes, and flawless porcelain skin. She was also wearing a silver-gray lab coat with her name embroidered on the left side. Healer Imogen.
“Hello,” I said, raising my eyebrows. “Are you new in town? I haven’t seen you here before.”
Her lips morphed into a radiant smile. “Just arrived last week. I have to say, New Orleans has had some of the most interesting cases I’ve ever had the opportunity to work on. This week has been incredible. But then you walked in.”
“Um, and now it’s not… incredible, I mean?”
“Oh, it is. Definitely,” she gushed. “But that wound, and the way you forced the curse out of your body. I’ve never seen a witch do that before. Not on herself. Are you a healer too?”
I snorted out a chuckle. “No, just stubborn.”
“Thank the gods you are,” she said as she flipped the heavy blanket covering me off my leg. “If you weren’t, we’d have lost you.”
A sick ache suddenly materialized in my stomach. I pressed a hand to my stomach and said, “I didn’t have much of a choice.”
“I wish all my patients were as stubborn as you. Now, what can you tell me about this curse?”
“Nothing.”
The left side of Dax’s lips twitched. I knew instinctively they’d already had this conversation. Well, if she thought she was getting details on my family curse, she’d lost her mind.
“You don’t know anything about it?” she said, her tone incredulous.
“No, I do,” I said, shifting position and swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. “I just can’t tell you anything about it. Family secret.”
“Ms. Kilsen, if we’re going to heal your wound, I’m going to need to know something about the curse. I need a starting point.”
“No, you don’t,” I said, inspecting my thigh. I didn’t exactly remember what it looked like after the vampire had stabbed me. My recollection was hazy. But considering I’d been running out of strength and blood when I’d forced the magic out of my system, the fact that there was only a thin outline of the curse still remaining meant I’d done a damn fine job. The area wasn’t even red or swollen.
“The curse will spread,” she insisted, sounding frantic.
I just shook my head and placed my palm over the wound. Closing my eyes, I pictured the wound in my mind and whispered, “Sano.” Magic concentrated in my thigh, tingling with brilliant energy. The wound stung, causing me to suck in a sharp breath, and then it began to burn. The fiery-hot pain was so intense it felt as if actual flames were licking over my skin. But underneath it all was my prickly magic, doing the job I’d asked it to do.
“Damn, Phoebe,” Dax said, awe in his tone.
I opened my eyes, focusing on him. He was staring down at my leg, his eyebrows raised and an expression of wonder on his face.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Imogen said.
I followed their gazes to my thigh and let out a small gasp of surprise. My hand was glowing silver, but instead of still covering the wound, it was hovering over it, a thick fog of black smoke clinging to my palm. I raised my hand, turned it over, and said, “Release.”
The dark smoke dissipated into the air and hovered as if suspended. I leaned forward, gently blowing. The smoke suddenly vanished into thin air as if it had never existed. And my thigh? All that was left of the wound was a small pink scar.
A pleased smile claimed my lips as I turned my attention to the healer. “I think I’ll be fine now.”
“How…?” She shook her head. “That was unreal. You must have healer magic. There’s no other explanation. I just can’t—”
I held a hand up. “It’s because I created the curse. Or rather my great-grandmother did, and it’s controlled by blood,” I explained and hopped off the bed. Gooseflesh broke out over my bare skin and I glanced down, realizing I was only wearing my bra and panties. It was a damned good thing Dax had already seen me naked. Otherwise, that moment would’ve been really awkward. “Now, where’s my dress?”
Dax held up the turquoise tube dress.
I grimaced. “Damn. I forgot about that.”
“Care to explain what happened to your gala dress?” he asked.
“Later. Right now all I’m interested in is getting out of here.” I tugged the tube dress over my head. “Shoes?”
Dax pointed to the corner of the room. The boots were on the floor while my dagger and phone were sitting in the seat of a metal folding chair.
I strode over, slipped them on, and grabbed my belongings. “Thanks, Imogen,” I said to the healer. “Whatever you did gave me my strength back, enough to eradicate the rest of the curse. I owe you one.”
She shook her head. “No you don’t. I was just doing my job.”
“Maybe,” I said, staring her in the eye. “But no one knows better than I do how powerful that curse is. I have no doubt that in the wrong hands, I might’ve never woken up.”
Dax muttered a curse.
Imogen grabbed my free hand. “I don’t like that you’re leaving so soon, but I understand the urgency of your case. Please just promise me that if you have any dizziness, unexplained fatigue, or any other unusual symptoms that you’ll come back in.”
Her hands were warm around mine, soothing even. But still her touch made me uneasy, and I frowned. That was strange. Talisen was the healer I usually saw after some vamp banged me up, and never once had his touch bothered me. I tugged my hand out of hers, the unease instantly vanis
hing, and nodded just so we didn’t waste any more time there.
“Sure.” I turned to Dax. “Let’s go.”
He led the way out of the exam room and into the quiet reception area. It was then I realized the healer’s office was in an old Victorian. White sheers covered the bay windows while two velvet couches filled what used to be a parlor along with a large desk off to the side. I glanced at the clock on the wall. Five twenty-five a.m. No wonder the place was empty.
Dax held the door open for me and we slipped outside onto Saint Charles Avenue.
“Has Allcot gotten his hands on her yet?” I asked Dax. Eadric Allcot was notorious for getting his hooks in any witches with healing powers. The truly powerful ones he always tried to lure to Cryrique. And if he couldn’t lure them, he used blackmail to get them to do his bidding.
It hadn’t always been that way, but as his organization delved deeper into experimental drugs for the supernatural, the demand for quality healers rose significantly. And although I hadn’t been able to prove anything yet, I was certain Allcot was breaking multiple laws when it came to testing those drugs. Unfortunately, the compromised healers were the ones running all his tests… mostly on unwilling participants, turning them into unwilling accomplices. If Allcot had gotten to her, there was no telling what she was doing behind closed doors at her clinic.
He shook his head. “No. She didn’t even know who he was.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“I asked her and believed her when she said no. Then I warned her he’d likely try something.” Dax paused beside the Trooper and eyed me. “Why?”