I rasped out a sigh. In light of recent events, she had more of a point than I liked.
I studied the blood vampire instead of responding immediately. I’d learned over many weeks of covert meetings that there was more to this random Sanguinarian than there had seemed to be at first; those casual, uncaring red-violet eyes hid a dangerous, well-honed intelligence that rarely missed anything. I suspected that even her irritating jabs and snide comments were just one more mind game, another tool in her arsenal designed to throw off anyone she spoke to, to get them to reveal more than they wanted or make poor decisions.
“Well?” She tapped her fingers on the table, an irritating staccato. “You in or out?”
I shook my head. “You know my answer. I’m in to the end.” She grinned at my response, flaunting her long, snake-like fangs without a care in the world; Aine knew she had me over the barrel. While originally she had come to me with the offer of an alliance, now it was me who couldn't afford to walk away from the table. The clever, rebellious Sanguinarian could gain access to knowledge that even Tamara or Garibaldi could never have found, and I needed it—to fix some of the things that I couldn’t stand to see broken.
I just hoped she still needed me as much as I needed her.
“So. Why are you selling Ruby?” I glanced around again, at the people in the rough leather booths and clustered along the long bar, creatively made to look like it was cobbled together from scrap metal and spare parts. “And why does no one seem to care?”
Before responding, the vampire yawned and kicked her feet up on the table, giving me a good look at her washed-out, thoroughly frayed, black jeans and heavy combat boots. “Getting involved in the process gives me access to people, and more importantly, to all-powerful information.” She shrugged. “An’ obviously, no one here cares because I don’t want them to.”
She wiggled her fingers at me as food suddenly arrived, interrupting us as the waitress set plates on the rough wooden table. The slender Sanguinarian slid smoothly back into her seat, rubbing her hands together eagerly at the sight of a hulking double patty melt with onions, and a nest of chili-cheese fries with even more onions. I was given a simple, rustic-looking burger half the size of my head, its hot meat billowing steam. I wondered if I could just take it back to Tamara.
With another wink directed my way, the waitress disappeared back behind the bar without bothering to leave us a ticket. I leaned back and tried to relax, trying not to think about how my Sanguinarian companion was brazenly manipulating the humans all around us and absently wondering how hard it was to eat a patty melt with snake fangs.
Left alone with my thoughts while Aine feasted, I took another look around the restaurant. Burger Doctor was an expensive place to find a respectable burger—assuming you were actually paying for it, which I seriously doubted we were doing. Most people didn’t come for the quality of the food, though, but rather for the unique ambiance.
Above the bar, a faded, flickering sign—made to look several decades old—still proclaimed “Dystopia Diner: Burgers for the End of Times” in garishly glowing neon. The place had once been a stand-alone fifties era restaurant replicant, but after the original owner went bankrupt, some genius had decided to remodel it into a post-apocalyptic themed joint instead and double the prices. Now it was a niche place for utter weirdos to blend in among their own, which explained both why I was here and why the waitress was possibly flirting with me.
I restrained the urge to take a turn tapping the table impatiently as Aine ate…and ate, and ate. I couldn’t blame her though; as a mortal vampire, I knew she needed both normal food and her supernatural fuel, just like a Moroi. Besides, with an intact face, I would have happily stuffed myself right alongside her; the food smelled really delicious. But instead, to speed things up, I filled her in on choice bits of my recent encounters with Fright and Lan while she chewed, adding in whatever useful information I’d picked up from my own contacts since we’d last met up.
“So,” Aine chewed on the words around a mouthful of chili and onions. “I expect you want me to keep an eye on these two ghost fuckin’ assfactories?”
“If you don’t already know them, yeah.” I nodded. “I’m still trying to get a handle on what they want, why they’re here, and who they’re working with. Probably going to ask Garibaldi, too.”
The Sanguinarian shook her head, taking a noisy slurp of her milkshake. “I’m tellin you, it’s a mistake to get that mortal involved. You’re gonna regret getting ‘im in over his ‘ead.”
“He’s ex-mafia. I think he can handle himself. Besides, have you seen him?” I gestured, making a big, broad-shouldered box around myself. “Even I watch my ass around him. And besides, I didn’t get him involved. He got himself involved.”
“You got him involved,” she retorted firmly.
I wasn’t going to argue this point again. “Anyway, Tamara and I are worried that something in town is about to hit the fan. Fright? Lan? The targeted murders? And somebody obviously wants me out of the picture before it happens, and I seriously doubt that person is Lan himself.”
“Yeah, he shoulda shut ‘is damn mouth when he thought he had you dead to rights.” Aine snorted; I couldn’t help but nod my own agreement. But I wasn’t about to complain about the benefits of Lan’s seemingly guilt-driven monologue. “See? That’s why you never give anybody anything for free. Even if you think they’re dead.”
“Now you sound like a Fae.”
“They do ‘ave a few good ideas on ‘em.” She polished off the last of the melt with a hungry smile. It was a little creepy. “An’ speakin’ of Fae, I’d be much more concerned with who’s holding that Fright’s leash than I am with the man ‘imself.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Call it a hunch with a whole lotta years t’back it up.” She shrugged. “And as for that other one…well, I can only hope the Jiangshi aren’t involved in numbers.”
“Yeah,” I replied without thinking, “all we need now is a vampire three-way.” I blinked. “Alliance, I mean.”
She chuckled. “Aye, we don’t need that kinda ‘eadache, but we prolly don’t ‘ave to worry about it, either. The Jiangshi survive by staying out of other vampires’ business. ‘Specially ours.” She pushed the small remainder of slightly-soggy fries away, apparently finally unable to continue. “Right. My turn.”
A slender, top of the line mobile phone made its appearance from her pants pocket, its case battered and scuffed like it had endured one too many ass-kickings of its own. She powered it up and slid it over in front of me, indicating the picture occupying the slightly cracked screen with the precise tap of a crimson-nailed finger. “Check this shit out.”
I swiped through an extensive gallery of pictures, looking at more than a few familiar faces and locations, then stopped on one in particular. “Davora Alilovic. There you are.” I couldn’t help adding a little bit of a gravelly growl to her name; not only had the anger-eating Moroi hurt Tamara and tried to kill me—as well as escaping my and Garibaldi’s attempt to capture her and use her to clear Tamara’s name—I knew full well she was one of the main vampires behind the supernatural drugs flooding the streets.
I just hadn’t seen her in several months.
“An here’s the bloke what replaced ‘er.” Aine grinned as I blinked, surprised.
“Wait…replaced?” I paused swiping and stared, enlarging the image for a closer look. On one side of the screen was Davora, with her irritating face and perfect, petite, busty Moroi figure; on the other, a tall, very refined, handsome man with a perfect, pale complexion, clean-cut raven hair, and frosty hazel eyes. He looked a little familiar, but not in a way I could directly put a finger on. “Moroi?” I asked, tapping the image of the suited man, and my companion nodded. “What’s his name?”
“Juris. But what he means is more important than who he is.”
“I don’t follow.”
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, I’ll go real slow, try to keep up.”
I rolled my eyes back at her, and could have sworn she smothered a smile. “Davora went to ground after you nearly killed ‘er. You and I both searched for ‘er high an’ low for weeks, but she might as well have been a ghost.”
“Actually, if she had been a ghost, I probably could have found her.”
She ignored me. “But this whole while, the Ruby machine just keeps pumping. And now she pops up suddenly and ‘ands over the reins. Worse, she don’t even look pissed ‘bout it.” She tapped Davora’s smirking face with a tiny blood claw, a line of static tracing its way across the screen. “So yeah, this is bad. Worse than we thought, anyway—and not just for you an’ your girlfriend.”
I raised an eyebrow. “But why is this Juris guy so much worse than Davora?”
“S’not about that.” She puffed out a breath. “Do you really not get it? If she was replaced, that means the Moroi-Sanguinarian alliance is organized, that it runs deeper than we knew. This is no casual fling; they’ve got a bloody structure, a fucking chain of command. It means that we’re up against more than a few rogue little shits with a grudge. We’re up against an entire dissatisfied group with their shit together, gunning for power with a plan in hand.”
I frowned heavily. She probably wasn’t wrong. “How do you know he’s the new head honcho?”
“‘Cause I caught Miss Personality ‘ere trading off responsibilities, that’s how.” She reached across the table and swiped through several more pictures.
I studied the evidence, nodding slowly as it came together. “Miss Personality. That’s a good one.” A few dozen pictures later and the series came to an end, freezing on a final one where Davora was staring almost directly into the camera. “Looks like she was onto you there.”
“Yeah, prolly sensed me ‘cause I hate ‘er irritating face an’ everything it’s attached to.” She shrugged. “Took ‘er long enough. I was starting to wonder if I could set up camp in ‘er asshole before she noticed me.”
I snorted, amused. “So. If this whole thing is bigger than we knew, how far does it go? All the way to the top?” I leaned in, intent. Eager. “What about Liandra?”
The Sanguinarian sighed. “No. I ain’t found a damn thing so far. Woman may not play nice, but she looks clean.” To my surprise, she gave me a slight, sympathetic frown. “Sorry, love.”
I breathed out a long, dead breath as my hopes for helping Tamara dissipated into the burger-flavored air. “I was so certain…”
She shrugged casually. “Well, chin up. Soon we’ll know for sure.” I raised an eyebrow at her. “Made a tentative little contact with an important Moroi. One of your girlfriend’s elder brothers. He’s not too old, as they go, but he’s got a sterling rep for being able to get shit done. And more importantly, he likes to negotiate.”
“You think we can trust him?” I felt my hope perk back up a little.
“More so than that Liandra. I’ll find out for sure soon enough. Meeting with ‘im in a few days, if all goes well.”
“You’re going yourself? What if it goes badly?”
Aine made a face. “Who the ‘ell else is gonna go? Someone else would just fuck this shit sideways, anyway.” She gave me a fake, suggestive smirk. “But I’m flattered that you’re all worried about me.”
“Believe me, that’s not it.” I made a face.
She grinned. “Well, after I ‘ave my little chat, I guarantee you and I will know if there’s any difference in what Liandra’s doing and what the rest of the Moroi are doing, and we can go from there.” She settled back in her booth with a hopeful, happy sigh. “I do love me some blackmail.”
I shook my head. “Let’s put Liandra aside for now, then. How high do you think this goes on the Sanguinarian side?”
For the first time, the vampire looked introspective and thoughtful, obviously thinking her answer through as she tapped a bloody nail against pearly white teeth. “Hard t’say. Like I said before, this feels like an underground movement on both sides. An upheaval, a power grab.”
“So not all the way to the top, because what would be the point.”
“Guess there’s hope for you yet.” She flashed her fangs at me, but her heart wasn’t in the insult. “Ceallach.” Her eyes were serious. “Or Mr. Keegan, nowadays. He’s the one in charge ‘ere in Birmingham. An’ let’s just say… he’s very important. Old as fuck and twice as powerful. But he’s rarely actually ‘ere. Prefers to leave real work to his main subordinate, Miss Olivia fucking Cebreros.” She made a disgusted, gagging face. “Who, by the way, is an utter bitch.”
“You say that about a lot of the Sanguinarians in charge,” I remarked. She shrugged. I shrugged back. “So you think she’s involved?”
Aine spread her hands with uncertainty. “More like it could run anywhere up to and including her…or it could be another cabal of assholes from pretty much anywhere, working to pull the rug out from under ‘em.”
“And we still don’t know what their plan actually is. Why they’re bothering with the whole drugs thing.” I paged back through her pictures, alternating trying to commit important faces to memory and glaring at Davora.
“No one ever said this’d be easy,” she replied. “Remember: this whole fuckshow is probably just one moving part out of something much bigger.”
“Because of course it is.” I sighed, noting the time on the Sanguinarian’s phone, and moved to wrap up my untouched burger. I still had places to be tonight, and people that didn’t like to be kept waiting.
o o o
Less than an hour later I found myself sitting at Mitchell Garibaldi’s kitchen table, watching the man himself as he finished a bout of late-night business.
“If you’d come earlier, you wouldn’t have to wait on me,” he remarked quietly in his resonant, authoritative baritone.
I glanced at his spiral-shaped kitchen clock. There was still plenty of time to pick up Tamara, just not enough to also go hunting for food of my own. Oh well. “It’s okay. Besides, I’m starting to think I’m always late.”
“Hmmm.” Pushing a small set of reading glasses higher onto his nose, Garibaldi examined the contents of a pair of manila envelopes with one hand, keeping them tilted carefully away from me while also paging through his phone with his other hand. Behind the small, polished lenses, his eyes—the color of worn steel mixed with a rich ocean blue—gleamed in the pale kitchen light.
I didn’t bother him; Garibaldi wasn’t the sort of man one annoyed…even me. He exuded a sense of quiet, calm authority, wearing his set of jet-black silk pajamas as if they were the snazzy formal suit I usually saw him in. In fact, the pajamas looked a lot like the suit I usually saw him in: both were fitted, double breasted, and neatly buttoned up the front. Even at his most casual, he still cut an imposing figure, with broad shoulders and a layer of once-heavy muscle that age was slowly turning soft. The faint scars on his sun-darkened face and the bent angle of his hawkish, oft-broken nose announced that those muscles weren’t just for ornamentation, as did the subtle bulge of a compact handgun concealed at his side.
Perhaps far more telling was the fact that, unlike most humans, he didn’t seem bothered in the least by me, the undying monstrosity sharing space at his kitchen table. The two large, suited gentlemen in the room with us shivered occasionally as if chilled, unconsciously careful to never come too close to me—but Garibaldi never even shifted, his heart rate always rock-steady.
“Alright.” When Garibaldi spoke, both men straightened. “Rotate Andrew and Randall off of duty at the club. They’ve had enough of a vacation, and I need to give Paulie and Jackie a break. As for the other matter, call in—” he cut off, eyeing me over the folders. “You know, I’ll just message you in the morning, before my first consult. Probably simplest that way.”
With a handful more words exchanged, Garibaldi rose and saw the two men on their way, sharing a quiet laugh and patting one of them companionably on the back as they exited. Someone obscured from view outside opened and closed the door for them, one of many h
eartbeats lurking somewhere on the grounds.
Crossing the well-appointed kitchen once more, the older man sat again, his careful movements indicating a degree of fatigue. “So, to what do I owe the honor of tonight’s visit?”
“Aine,” I replied.
With a grunt, he got back up, opened the large steel refrigerator, and sat back down with a fancy craft beer in hand. “Well, then.” He popped the top and took a generous swig. “How bad are things today?”
“Not…so bad.” I filled him in as concisely as I could, retelling everything I’d conveyed to Aine about the past few days, and reporting what she had told me in return, giving him a complete rundown of the state of the city and every new detail of the Ruby alliance we were trying to destroy. Unlike the Sanguinarian, Garibaldi seemed much more concerned as the full story was unveiled.
“Show me the pictures,” he said when I finished.
I did as I was asked, handing him my phone with its copy of the Sanguinarian’s reconnaissance. “What do you think?”
“That I don’t like Davora getting to just walk away after what she’s done to this city,” he murmured, raking back a handful of his neatly-trimmed, dark brown hair, the gesture drawing my eyes to the growing streaks of steely gray at his temples. “But like your…friend…indicated, I like this even less.” His eyes bore down heavily onto the picture of Juris and Davora. “Juris, you say?”
I nodded.
“Something about his eyes…” Garibaldi mused. “There’s a ruthless quality to them that I know all too well.” He shook his head, stifling a yawn before it could build momentum. “I don’t know who he is, but I will soon find out.”
I gave the older man an appreciative grin. There was a reason I brought all this to him after all. Despite boasting a shadowy past, I truly believed that he wanted what was best for Birmingham, that he wanted a chance to leave the city better than how he’d found it.
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