by Holly Ryan
After my shower, I found Roseff’s book the slayer Senate had written about him, and then skipped toward the stairs, feeling better than I had in...ever. Two kinds of power stormed through me at once, swirling and throbbing me into a sex-starved vampire slash slayer, and finally—for now, at least—I’d had my fill. Good thing my vampires could keep up with me. Otherwise, I was sure I could fuck their dicks off, and that would be a real bummer for everyone.
“Guess what, guys?” I called on my way down. “I feel thoroughly sexed now.”
At the bottom of the steps, I found the boarded-up front door open, held by Sawyer. Someone strode in, blond and male, wearing jeans and a simple white tee. Orange-yellow eyes, familiar face. A vampire just like me.
Detective Appelt, my dad, I was 99 percent sure. Here, right when I’d just announced how sexually sated I was. Well, now was as good as any for him to learn all about me. Might as well start with my sex life and move on from there.
He stopped when he met my gaze. “Belle, I...” A mix of emotions played across his face, each one matching exactly how I felt, before he settled on a shy smile with a touch of sadness. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
I nodded, not knowing what else to say. How were these types of conversations supposed to begin? My stomach tied itself in knots while a ton of questions flashed through my head faster than I could catch them. I finally settled on direct and to the point: “Ready to tell me all about how I burst from your loins?”
Chapter Four
Detective Appelt’s face darkened, a hint of red firing up around his irises. “Not if you’re going to be crude. Your mother was a good woman.”
I turned my back on him and strode toward the kitchen with Roseff’s book, keeping my movements loose, when my body was anything but. I knew full well what my mother was like, but a sudden urge to hurt him, to lash out at him, tipped on the edge of my tongue. He’d proved he wanted nothing to do with me, so listening to him try to defend himself wasn’t high on my Oh-This-Will-Be-Fun! list. At the same time, life and death had aged me some, made me tired of how hard it all was, even when I was just a normal slayer. Maybe it had been hard for him too.
Jacek and Eddie were already in the kitchen, leaning against the countertop by the refrigerator.
“Detective,” Jacek said with a nod.
“Jacek. Eddie,” the detective said.
I supposed the detective was on a first-name basis with my vamps because he’d spent a whole lot of quality time in the woodshed in the backyard. One of my vamps had always gone out to feed him every day like he was some kind of vampiric farm animal.
We sat at the kitchen table on opposite sides, silence stretching until the air seemed to snap with tension, until Sawyer sat next to me and eased some of my apprehension. Cleo trotted to the detective and whined so he’d scratch her ears. He complied, because how could he not?
I cleared my throat and set Roseff’s book on the table. “Let’s start with something easy first, like how you stole my slayer power in the police station without the world going to shit.”
Detective Appelt nodded, deep creases forming across his brow. “Your friend the devil filled me in on...what’s happening. I did it with a plant.”
Eddie strode closer to the table, curiosity burning brightly behind his glasses. “Like a chemical plant or a biological plant?”
“Biological. It’s called a corpse flower,” the detective said.
A strange chuckle tripped out of my mouth. “A corpse flower? How fitting.”
He nodded. “They’re in the ceiling of the cell you were in, in all the cells down there. They thrive on other’s power, store it for them, when the power is dangerous.”
Like mine was, a ticking time bomb about to go off in my head. “So how does this corpse flower in the ceiling work?” Wow, that was a sentence I never thought I would say.
“Like most plants, except instead of taking carbon dioxide, it takes in power.”
“But once again, if the universe needs its slayer, and the slayer’s power had been eaten by a plant, then how did the universe not erupt into chaos?” I asked.
“Plants are living, breathing organisms, Sunshine,” Eddie said.
“But...I’m not,” I reminded him. “Not anymore.”
“You are still alive, though, in a sense. You have thought processes, you get thirsty, you...uh...” Eddie cleared his throat with a glance at the detective. “Crave companionship.”
I shot him a smile. “Okay. I see where you’re going with this. Basically, this corpse flower was the slayer for a while. A badass slayer plant.”
Cleo lifted her head from her ear scratches and growled.
“Not as badass as you, obviously,” I told her.
Satisfied, she grinned up at the detective and nudged his hand for more pets.
“So this corpse flower eats power...” My mind, such as it was, raced. “What does it need to grow?”
The detective shrugged. “Light. Water. Same as any other plant. Ours in the station’s basement have windows above each cell.”
“What’s going through that brain of yours, Sunshine?” Eddie crossed his arms and tipped his chin at me.
“Down in the trapdoor right in front of the portal that leads to Paul’s dimension, there were maggots swarming down there, but there was light. A lot of light.”
Jacek shook his head and laughed from his stance by the cupboards. “Are you saying what I don’t know you’re saying?”
“Yes,” I said, smiling. “We could plant one of those corpse flowers down there. Sorry, we meaning I. None of you are going down there. But there’s water in the lake portal, and power inside it too.”
“Corpse flowers grow very quickly and quite large.” The detective looked at me for a moment, sizing me up, when all he really needed to do was search inside himself to see what he needed to see. I had a feeling we were a lot more alike than different. “They might even be able to seal up this lake portal.”
I nodded, feeling like we might be on the same page. This was progress. This was also us avoiding talking about Mom.
He shook his head down at the table. “I wish I’d been able to prevent that trapdoor from opening.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said, and I meant it.
A deep frown pulled at his face as he absently fiddled with the cover of Roseff’s book between us. “The trapdoor opened under my watch. I’ll never forgive myself.”
“There were too many variables working against you. Paul, obviously, and my ex-boss who was helping him.” I shrugged. “Also me.”
Sawyer put his arm around my shoulder. “Them more than you.”
“I took a flamethrower and shovel to the cemetery to open that trapdoor.” I jabbed myself in the chest. “That was the night I became a shit-geneer.”
Jacek snorted and choked down his drink. “Warn me next time, okay?”
I winked. “Sorry.”
“You didn’t know any better,” the detective said, his focus steadfast on me.
Maybe not. But did he? He’d knocked up my mom, after all, and then left her to raise me all by herself. I grimaced down at the table as a painful twist took root in my heart. I wanted to know why, but at the same time, I really didn’t.
Sawyer squeezed my shoulder as he gazed at the detective. “Why was it your family who was tasked with guarding the trapdoor for so long?”
“The Appelts have always been different,” he began and absently inched Roseff’s book closer to him. “Humans forget about vampires once they look away from them, but the Appelts have always seen them plain as day, and any other supernatural that wants to stay hidden. It’s a useful skill when guarding a trapdoor that shouldn’t be opened by anyone, which is why the Senate hired my family.”
Eddie glanced at me, but when I just shrugged, he started to pace, looking deep in thought. I saw my first vampires at nine years old when I was tasked to kill them. Before that, I hadn’t seen any.
The detective opened the boo
k and flipped through the pages without really looking at them. “At first, it was said that my family just thought we were wired differently, but the theory is that we have a little fae in us.”
“Wait...” I started, but I had no idea where to go with that thought process. Fae?
“Sunshine,” Eddie said, still pacing, his voice like a teasing accusation. “That’s why you smell so good.”
“Because I’m fae?” A fae vampire slayer... I was many things at once, and not just a slayer like I had been for so long. Admittedly, I knew very little about fae since my focus had always been vampires, and then dark unknowns. So this would take a bit to stir into my consciousness, just like my being a vampire. “Next thing I know, someone’s going to tell me I’m a pirate.”
“Well, you do make my Roger jolly.” Jacek gave me a panty-dropping grin.
Detective Appelt turned to him slowly, and the grin slipped off Jacek’s face when he whipped around to study the cupboards in detail.
I pushed my lips together. Eddie shook his head. Sawyer leaned back in his chair and covered his eyes with his hand.
The detective slowly turned back to me. “Yes, because you’re fae. We have light inside us”—he held my gaze for a long moment—“and it’s powerful enough to beat a dark unknown.”
“A fae slash vampire slash slayer.” Eddie pushed up his glasses and smiled as if just reaching a conclusion. “Paul doesn’t stand a chance.”
I smiled back, but I wasn’t so sure about that after Paul had handed my ass to me with the rest of me poured on top like a bloody hollandaise sauce. Damn, that was a horrific visual, even for me, but it had happened.
I didn’t want to ask Detective Appelt, but this was just too important. “Did my mom know?”
He winced, his gaze aimed down at the book he flipped through. “I think she suspected something when you were born. There was light...everywhere.”
So he hadn’t told her because he really was a coward. Surprise, surprise. A spark of fury shook through my hands, so I folded them into myself, suddenly feeling very vulnerable.
“You were there when I was born?” I grinded out.
He looked at me as though he couldn’t believe I’d just asked that, his mouth open like I’d just sucker-punched him. “Of course I was.”
I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t talk about Mom with him, which I supposed made me a coward too. Like father, like daughter. Give me a dark unknown to battle, but this? Just...no.
Sawyer studied me, likely reading everything in my silence, and then turned back to the detective. “Tell us more about this corpse flower. Do you think it could grow at the bottom of the trapdoor and take in the power from Paul’s lake portal?”
The detective nodded. “If there’s enough light, then yes. That and the lake should do it. But the corpse flower only blooms on the full moon because of that specific gravitational pull on the earth.”
Eddie pulled out his cell, I presumed to find the moon calendar. After a few swipes, he flipped his glasses up on his head to stare at the screen, unhindered from that pesky invention that was supposed to help him see better.
“Wait for it,” Jacek said, crossing the kitchen to peer over his shoulder. “Wait for it...”
Expectant silence fell for a long minute.
Jacek heaved a sigh and rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding me right now, Eddie? You should see his calendar, guys. It’s packed full with Book Delivery Day and Book Release Day that he can’t even read it.”
“Shut your hole. I can read it just fine. There.” Eddie pointed to his phone, and his gorgeous face paled.
The constant smile on Jacek’s face fell away when he looked too. “Oh.”
“When is it?” Sawyer demanded.
Eddie looked right at me, his lips pressed into a frown. “The next full moon is on October thirty-first.”
My birthday. My twenty-first birthday, the age I wasn’t supposed to make it to. The age no slayer had ever reached, except one—Roseff. Insane, brain-pickled Roseff, alive because he hid in an underground dungeon where he tortured Jacek for two hundred fifty years. Not my idea of a party. Not at all.
Sawyer sat back and scrubbed his hands down his face. “That’s cutting it ridiculously close.”
“I mean...maybe not. My official time of birth is 11:59 at night. The moon will be out before that, obviously, so I’ll go on my merry way to kill Paul in his dimension, then plant the flower, and hope it grows over the portal as it sucks the power out of it and me, and effectively trapping dead Paul inside.” I looked at each of them. “Easy chicken squeezy?”
The detective shook his head. “I don’t see what chickens have to do with this, and no, not easy.”
Sawyer put his hand on my thigh. “We’re scheduling your battle with Paul based on a flower that may not even do what you want it to do.” His shoulders sagged as he looked at me, heartache and worry written across every single frown line on his face. “And you may not even make it until your birthday.”
He was right, of course. My mind was slipping loose, like feet on an incline of gravel, and last night’s imaginary throw-down with Paul had been a prime example of that.
“Unless...” Eddie started, concern glinting behind his glasses. “We have one of those flowers take out your slayer power. Today. Right now.”
I groaned as I shook my head up at the ceiling. “I don’t know if that will work. The slayer power makes me just like Paul in a lot of ways since the power is technically his. It makes us similar so I can understand him better, you know? And...the power itself is very literally turning me into a monster that can defeat a monster, which may not be a bad thing if I can finally kill Paul.”
Jacek shot me a sad smile. “You’re not a monster, Slayer. Not even close.”
I smiled back, every single part of me warming despite my being dead.
“You’re right though,” Eddie said, starting to pace again. “Taking away your power too soon could be the worst thing to do.”
Sawyer nodded. “We need to do this strategically, and quickly.”
Jacek strode toward me and then caressed my face with the back of his knuckles. “I can test your abilities and speed, see how exactly becoming a vampire has changed them.”
“Do that just as soon as you can,” Sawyer ordered.
“You sure you can take me?” I asked.
Jacek grinned. “I’d love it if you could take me.”
Me too. Most of our sparring sessions were basically just foreplay, but I was anxious to see what I could do as a vampire/slayer/fae/pirate. Yeah, I was totally claiming that one too.
Eddie’s long, agile fingers flew over his phone. “I’ll research this corpse flower more, see if it’s worth waiting for the full moon, and see if it will grow underground. Can you tell me more about what it’s like down there, the temperature, everything?”
“Yeah.” My skin prickled at the thought of going back through the trapdoor, even just in my memories. And when I had to go back for real...well, I might just have to wear an adult diaper. I told them all about the long dark tunnel that led to the rope bridge across the maggots forty feet or so below, the falling rocks, and the lake portal like a glass mirror on the other side.
Eddie frowned. “The falling rocks are a concern. Plants of any kind don’t like things falling on them when they’re trying to grow.”
“Yeah, and the maggots were still alive. Don’t they eat plants?” A sudden thought struck. “Oh!”
Four heads swiveled toward me and said, “What?”
I stood from the table and went in search of my phone. “I took a picture down there.”
“Like a selfie?” Eddie asked.
“Nah, that’s for next time,” I called, spotting my cell on the coffee table in the living room. Then I crossed back to the kitchen and handed the phone to the detective since his outstretched hand was closest. “That was scratched into the wall before the long tunnel.”
Everyone gathered around to look. I didn’t n
eed to see it again. No one spoke as I rounded back to my chair.
“Do you see it?” I asked. “There’s only like two pictures on my phone.”
“I see it.” Eddie’s gaze ticked up to me with a look that brewed a storm of horror in my gut.
“What? What does it say? It looked like chicken scratches to me,” I said, squeezing the back of my chair. “Is it ancient Sumerian again?”
Jacek backed away from my phone as if it had grown tentacles. “Slayer...did you write that?”
My jaw dropped open. “What?”
“The slant of the letters, Belle. How you use circles to dot your I’s.” Sawyer’s face grew stark with worry. “We know your handwriting.”
I just shook my head, disbelief shocking my voice right out of me. Of course I hadn’t written it. I couldn’t even read it.
“That same sentence is in here,” Detective Appelt said and turned Roseff’s open book around on the table. “Lovely night—”
“No!” Jacek shouted.
“Don’t say it!” Sawyer warned.
But I’d already seen the words written across the page. Lovely night for a stroll, isn’t it?
Static drilled through the back of my skull, once again too powerful to turn off. The kitchen melted in on itself, everything warping and sagging. The brand new table turned into blackened maple syrup, and on the other side of it sat Paul.
I reared back in shock, flinging myself against the kitchen cabinets while the static grew louder. How did he get in here without my knowing? Without any of us seeing? I fished for the god bone inside my jacket pocket, but something knocked into my side before I had the chance to chuck it. Something massive with red eyes sliding down his face. My Sawyer. Paul must’ve strolled right into him when he’d come into this house.
I had to stop him. I had to get him out. By any means necessary.
A stake. I plucked mine free from my bun. A stake through the heart. My heart. Then it would all be done. No more Paul. And there was no Kevlar jacket there to stop a stake this time.
What? No! I lifted the stake, but Jacek flashed in front of me, his face bubbling and sliding down his neck. He disarmed me with one of the ways he’d taught me, and then Sawyer was wrapping his arms around me from the back, tight enough to grind my bones together.