“What, then?” I asked, hearing desperation seep into my voice.
I hadn’t been joking, back at my dad’s place. Right now, finding him was the only thing driving me forward. Even if I failed—even if my attempt resulted in my capture rather than his rescue—I still had to try. If I let my only remaining family member languish in my enemy’s hands while I hid myself away like a terrified mouse in a hole, what kind of daughter did that make me? What kind of person did that make me?
“I thought we’d pass this new information to Alby and see what he can make of it,” Rans said, looking at me as though he was weighing the likelihood of me losing my shit right here on the street. “He’s better positioned than either of us to learn something useful, although I can always do a bit of quiet aerial reconnaissance on the place at night, if need be.”
Right. Because my vampire lover could turn into mist and fly. Fuck. What had my life become?
“Do you really think we can trust him?” I asked, not much liking this plan. “Albigard, I mean?”
He paused, looking thoughtful. “There are… reasons why Albigard wants to stay on top of what’s going on within the Unseelie Court. Those reasons are self-serving—but, these days, they’re also in conflict with what most of the rest of his race wants. That makes him an ally in some respects, if not necessarily others.”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend?” I asked sourly.
“Until he isn’t. Quite so.”
“I really don’t like this,” I told him.
“I’d gathered,” he said.
We’d covered maybe half the distance back to the car and were passing a small encampment of homeless people. They’d set up on the boundary of the rather derelict area where the Weekly Oracle kept their cheap basement offices and a busier area with open storefronts and foot traffic.
Rans glanced at the makeshift tents, and then at a fast food restaurant down the block. “Time for lunch, I think.”
I glanced at the angle of the sun, thinking that it seemed awfully early. “More like brunch, I’d have thought.”
“Brunch, then.” He was rummaging in a pocket. A moment later, he came up with a couple of folded bills. With a jolt, I realized they were hundreds.
“I’m… not really all that hungry yet,” I told him, eyeing the cash.
“As you like,” he said. “I am, though. Someone seems to have sucked me dry last night, and I haven’t had a chance to refill yet.” He lifted my hand and pressed the money into it. “Do me a favor and get enough food for—” He broke off, glancing over the homeless encampment again. “—roughly a dozen people. Then bring it back here. Consider it your good deed for the day.”
I opened my mouth, closed it, and then opened it again. “Are you about to drink blood from homeless people?”
“Yes, I am about to drink blood from homeless people, after which I will provide them with some spending money, along with a free meal for them and the rest of their compatriots.” He raised a challenging eyebrow. “Does that offend you?”
I stood there for a minute, holding the breath I’d drawn to speak. “No,” I decided. “Not so long as you don’t drain them as badly as you drained me that first afternoon in St. Louis. Because… I’m sorry, Rans, but that really sucked.”
A grim little smile tipped up the corners of his mouth. “Last night with you was intense, luv—but not quite as intense as a shotgun blast through the chest. I’ll try to mind my table manners.”
I nodded, mostly satisfied by the reassurance, and started to turn away before another thought struck me. “Is it safe for me to, you know…” I gestured at the restaurant down the street.
“The Fae aren’t watching the entire city around the clock. We’re no place near your father’s home, government offices, or any travel hubs. It’s fine.”
With that, he peeled away and approached a skinny kid who was lounging in front of one of the makeshift tarp tents. Rans crouched in front of him and after a brief conversation, the kid called to some of the others nearby. Rans shot a glance over his shoulder at me, as though wondering why I hadn’t left to buy the food yet. His blue eyes were glowing.
I pivoted and marched down the street to buy hamburgers. Or possibly breakfast sandwiches if it was still too early for the lunch menu. Should this be bothering me more? I wasn’t sure. The feeling in my chest might possibly have been distaste. It also might have been burning, territorial jealousy at the idea of Rans’ lips closing over someone else’s neck… his teeth piercing someone else’s skin.
I stood in line, resolutely not examining the feeling any closer. When I reached the counter, I bought breakfast sandwiches and hash browns—muttering something under my breath about picking up food for the office when the cashier eyed the hundred dollar bills curiously.
When the order was finished I hauled the ridiculous, oversized bag back to where I’d left Rans. Apparently, the grisly part was already done, because he was lounging with casual equanimity against a wall, chatting with an old guy whose beard was stained yellow.
On the one hand, I had no particular desire to watch Rans drink blood from random people. But on the other hand, I had a vague impression that I was being managed. That he’d sent me away specifically so I wouldn’t make a scene while he was doing the dirty deed. Or deeds, since I gathered he’d intended to drink from more than one. None of the people around him looked upset. Had he mesmerized them into forgetting what had happened? Probably, I thought, remembering those glowing eyes glancing back at me as I’d left.
More importantly, though, none of them looked weakened or debilitated. Maybe I shouldn’t have worried. Rans had seven freaking centuries of practice at this, after all. I took a deep breath and strolled up.
“Hey,” I said awkwardly. “Who wants breakfast sandwiches and hash browns?”
Within moments, I was the most popular person on the block—surrounded by people in thrift store clothing and ragged military surplus gear. They helped pass everything around, making sure everyone got a fair share.
Almost everyone, at least. When the crowd cleared, I noticed an elderly woman hanging back in the shadows. Her short, iron-gray hair stood up in wild wisps pointing every which way, and her cheeks had the sunken look that came from missing too many teeth.
“Hey, Alma,” called the skinny kid Rans had been talking to when I left. “You okay back there? Come get some food.”
But Alma only scowled at him.
Not wanting the poor old dear to miss out on a hot meal, I rummaged for the last container of hash browns and approached her, pasting on what I hoped was a non-threatening smile.
“Hey, Alma. I’m Zo—” I caught myself and substituted my fake name. “I’m JoAnne.” God, I was still appallingly bad at this whole thing. I extended the styrofoam container. “I’ve got some hash browns left—”
The container and its contents went flying as Alma knocked it out of my hand with unexpected viciousness. I gaped at her in surprise as her lips peeled back, revealing gums populated by a few rotting teeth.
“Demon girl!” she hissed, pulling a makeshift blade out of her jacket and plunging it toward my face.
SIX
I STUMBLED BACK, but a hand appeared unexpectedly in my vision, catching the old woman’s wrist in a grip like iron. She shrieked in Rans’ face, her expression unhinged. Manic.
“Well, bugger,” Rans said as he caught her other arm, restraining her. “Maybe I should have expected something like this.”
“Alma!” The skinny kid and a couple of other people were hurrying toward us, alarm clouding their faces.
I scrambled out of the way, feeling my heart thudding against my ribcage after the unexpected jolt of adrenaline. Rans twisted the shard of sharpened metal out of Alma’s hand, and caught her again when she tried to go for his eyes with her nails.
“Jesus, Alma—what are you doing?” the kid cried, skidding to a stop in front of her. “You need to calm down… you’re gonna bring the cops down on us!”
<
br /> A fresh sliver of fear pierced me. My last couple of encounters with the cops had taught me that the old maxim, ‘Always trust a policeman’ didn’t hold true when you were a fugitive succubus hybrid on the run from a bunch of pissed-off faeries. If law enforcement did show up, there was a damned good chance the Fae would find out I was here—and Rans, too.
“Filthy hell-spawn!” Alma was screeching. “Abomination!”
Rans’ eyes pinned me. “Go to the car. She may calm down once you’re out of sight.” He rummaged in his pocket one-handed, the other hand still holding Alma’s wrists trapped. Keys arced through the air across the short distance separating us, followed by his phone. I caught both items as he spoke again. “I’ll take care of this. If I don’t catch up to you in ten minutes, call A.C. from the contact list and let him know what’s happening. A.C. is for Atlantic City… got it?”
“G-got it,” I stammered, realizing that must mean Nigellus.
“I’m really sorry, ma’am,” said the skinny kid. “Not sure what’s gotten into her. She’s been pretty calm lately, for the most part.”
“It’s okay,” I managed, and fled.
I tried not to look like someone who was expecting rogue police officers to descend in force with handcuffs and truncheons. I tried not to feel like it was St. Louis all over again. I made it to Glynda’s Ford Focus and opened the driver’s side door with shaking hands, sliding inside and slamming it behind me before clicking the locks shut.
Heart still galloping, I started the engine, adjusting the seat and mirrors just in case I had to move fast. In between checking every few seconds for approaching red and blue lights, I pulled Rans’ phone out and unlocked it, scrolling through the contact list. A.C. was there, as was Guthrie, under his own name. Further down was an entry called ‘Tink.’ Albigard, I was willing to bet.
I checked my surroundings again, while also keeping an eye on the time.
It occurred to me that I should add these numbers to my burner phones, in case I ever needed them and didn’t have access to his. I was still carrying one of the cell phones I’d bought in St. Louis; the other was packed in my luggage in the trunk. Pulling it out of my pocket, I tapped in the three contacts I thought I’d recognized, plus Rans’ number.
Seven minutes had passed since I started the car. There was still no sign of any police arriving… and now a familiar figure was approaching along the sidewalk. I breathed a sigh of relief. Rans looked like he was out for a casual stroll—completely unconcerned. I unlocked the doors as he approached, and he eased himself into the passenger seat.
“Deep breath, luv,” he said. “I’m ninety-nine percent certain that my attempt at damage control was successful. Well… ninety percent.” He paused. “Definitely more than eighty-five percent. Anyway, I’m sorry about all that. I should’ve considered that the Fae might be utilizing the homeless and mentally ill as watchdogs in the city.”
I handed him his phone, and he pocketed it.
“Tell me exactly what happened back there,” I said, striving to keep my tone calm.
Rans scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Fae can influence humans, as you’ve already seen with the police both here and in St. Louis,” he said.
“I know,” I replied, thinking of the behavior of Daisy and the other board members at MMHA. “Caspian got his claws into some of my coworkers back home.”
He nodded. “I’m not surprised. Chances are, they’ll have returned to normal now that he’s not breathing down their necks—though it’s possible he will have kept someone under his thrall to let him know on the off chance you decide to go back there.”
I thought of Vonnie… of Daisy. A shiver chased its way up my spine.
“It takes a lot of energy to hold onto a healthy human mind for an extended period,” he continued. “But it’s easier to implant a compulsion into someone with a mental illness. At a guess, our friend back there suffers from schizophrenia. These days, I imagine the voices are telling her to attack anyone who feels like a demon. No doubt her Fae handler implanted a sensitivity to demon animus in her mind, as well.”
Now I felt sick. “And are the voices also telling her to report back to the Fae if she finds any demons?”
“I expect so,” Rans said. “Which is why I attempted to influence her to forget what she’d just seen.”
“That’s what you meant by damage control?”
“Yes.”
“Damage control that you’re eighty-five percent certain was successful?” I prodded.
“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Well, eighty percent, anyway. Overcoming Fae influence is tricky. I’m fairly certain it worked, though.”
I swallowed a sigh. “Is it safe to go back to the house?”
“We’ll drive around for an hour or two. Make sure no one’s tailing us. If they aren’t, there’s no reason not to return.” He stretched in his seat, vertebrae popping audibly as he continued. “After all, our house sitting contract isn’t up until tomorrow. Hate to shirk on the job.”
I checked traffic in the mirror and eased out of the parking spot. “All right. Driving around randomly for an hour it is, then,” I said. “Let me know if anyone’s following us, so I’ll know when to panic.”
“Oh, I will,” he said, with a tone of relish that I didn’t really appreciate. “How are your high-speed driving skills? I haven’t been in a good car chase since—”
“Three days ago?” I finished, thinking back to that horrible night in St. Louis.
Rans made a dismissive noise. “Pfft. That was a motorcycle chase, not a car chase. And it hardly qualified as a good one. With that silver knife sticking out of my shoulder, I barely enjoyed it all.”
“You are certifiably insane,” I said, carefully obeying all relevant traffic laws as I turned left onto a random street.
He let out a soft snort and didn’t try to deny it. The silence stretched as I drove through the unfamiliar city with no destination in mind. As I thought over everything I’d learned, another question occurred.
“It must have been pretty difficult for Caspian and Albigard to influence all those cops,” I said, remembering the police swarming the bus station, not to mention the ones waiting for us at O’Hare yesterday.
“Indeed so,” Rans agreed. “Though I’ve suspected for a long time that the Fae single out members of law enforcement who are… shall we say, on the less stable side. PTSD, anxiety, addiction problems, borderline personality disorder—those types of things would make them more vulnerable to Fae influence. But even so, it was a startling display of blunt force on both occasions.”
“Should I be flattered?” I grumbled. “Because I don’t feel flattered.”
“Let’s just say, you seem to be a very popular individual among the inhuman crowd.”
I shot him a brief glance before returning my attention to traffic.
“Including you,” I said flatly. “Although I still don’t claim to understand why.”
It would be way too easy to fall into the fairytale princess narrative with this man. This vampire. He’d ridden to my rescue, saving me from a fate worse than death. I’d cradled his body against mine… taken him apart, and been taken apart by him in return. All of it had felt so goddamned right.
But a seven-hundred-year-old vampire did not fall for a twenty-six-year-old mostly human waitress just because her succubus-tainted blood acted like Viagra for the undead. There was more to this story, and until I learned it, I needed to keep my head on straight. Faeries might be real, but fairytale endings sure as hell weren’t. I’d learned that lesson at the tender age of six.
Rans regarded me for a long moment. “There are reasons why the Fae are so fixated on you, and I don’t know yet what all of those reasons are.”
I scowled. “I thought it was because Grandpa Demon shit all over the Big Important Peace Treaty by knocking up a human woman on the sly. And because my mom somehow managed to get pregnant with me, in turn.”
“Then why not just kill you?�
� Rans asked. “It wouldn’t have been difficult, and it isn’t as though they lack practice at it.”
My head whipped around so fast that the car swerved in its lane before I corrected it. “Wait. Are you saying you think the Fae were responsible for killing my mother?”
Snippets of conversation and memory slotted into place in my mind like puzzle pieces. Fae found it easier to control the mentally ill. My mother’s assassin had been mentally ill. He’d scrawled ‘Kill the demons’ on his cell wall in blood, the night he’d hung himself.
“Oh, yes—almost certainly,” Rans said, breaking through my moment of revelation.
I swallowed hard. “The forensics report said that the hollow-point rifle round the gunman used had been filled with salt. Do you know why that was?”
“Full-blooded demons are functionally immortal,” Rans told me, “but their bodies are vulnerable to salt. It burns them, and enough of it can incapacitate them completely, at least for a time. From what I know of cambions like your mother, the salt was probably an unnecessary embellishment. The bullet alone would have sufficed. It’s inclusion does, however, imply more knowledge and preparation than your average demon-fearing religious lunatic might be expected to employ.”
My hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly that the knuckles turned white. “So I’ve been right, all this time. There was more to my mother’s death than a random lunatic’s delusions.”
“Far more, yes,” Rans confirmed.
Vindication should have felt better than this.
“Doesn’t really help, does it?” Rans asked, eerily perceptive.
“Ask me again after I’ve got Dad back, and when no one is trying to kidnap or kill me,” I said at length.
Rans did not reply.
I refused to acknowledge the little voice in my head that whispered, And when will that be?
* * *
The Last Vampire Box Set Page 22