“Hallucinations, I guess?” I tell him, tiptoeing around the truth.
“Hallucinations.” Asher’s leg’s bounces a bit, the thick, rubber heel of one boot tapping against the floor. “Or something else?”
I know what he’s getting at now: I can’t be trusted because I’m the nutball who had a psychotic break and simply lost two months of time. “I’m not crazy. I know what I remember.”
“I believe you.”
“You do.” Now that sounds like a statement, go figure.
“Yeah, I do.” Asher leans forward in his chair again, holding the pad loosely in one hand, tapping the pen against it with the other. “There are… people… like Benicio. They have a certain affinity for reading minds. Reading memories. They can actually feed off of your recollections, like emotional vampires. Most of the time, they’re completely harmless. Beneficial, in fact. But sometimes, like vampires, they go a little rogue.”
“So you think one of these rogue memory-readers is stalking girls?”
“Yes, but the question is, why?” Asher leans back, his quiet gaze returning to the notepad. “Walk me the through the timeline, starting with the Thursday night gig.”
It takes two shitty cups of coffee, four pages of notes, and a half an hour before he’s verified that the first body dump happened after Motel Night in the Valley, the second after the encounter with Benicio in the hallway at Scion. I’ll give it to Asher, the man is methodical and detail-oriented in a way that teases out vague recollections of Benicio’s heavy cologne, the button-down shirt he was wearing, the fact that he and Xaine tussled hard enough for there to have been DNA transfer.
“Did he ever give you anything?” Asher asks. “Drinks? Pills?”
“No. He only… touched me.”
Far from surprised, Asher only nods. “We’ve found a trace substance on the skin of the victims. Since your tests are still at the lab, we’ll have to wait for the verdict on a match, but the blood screen for the others was pretty conclusive. Both of them had a high saturation level of an unidentified psychoactive substance that seems to have been transferred via skin-to-skin contact and… um… fluid exchange.” Asher rubs a finger alongside his nose, smudging a blot of ink across the skin as he frowns. “I hate to say it, Ms. Chase, but I think you’re the one that keeps getting away. Benicio’s stalking you, and whenever something—or someone—interrupts him, we get a dead Lore-alike.”
“But why?”
“These types, the ones like Benicio, they get their kicks off people’s thoughts, their secrets, their little dark corners,” Asher says. “Your worst moments are their best ones.”
“So you’re saying that he’s using these girls for sex and memories?”
“Something like that,” is Asher’s confirmation.
“If he’s so ‘harmless,’ then why are two girls dead?”
He gives me an appraising look. “That’s the bit I’m not sure of. Care to tell me a little about what he might be after, Ms. Chase?”
“What?” I hesitate, eying him warily. “Like… my memories?”
He gives a slow nod, and I squirm. My eyes dart toward the elevator at the end of the hallway, and I stare at that silver rectangle with longing, wishing Xaine would reappear like a genie and let me wish myself out of the hot seat.
No dice, so I finally meet Asher’s patient gaze again. Unlike the fat detective, this guy projects an aura of you can trust me that I almost want to heed. But there’s another part of me, the one that keeps asking those not-a-question questions, that’s unsure of everything I ever knew. I used to speak my mind, but then they told me it was broken.
“I’m not crazy,” I repeat. “I’m not.”
“Okay,” he says easily.
“So if I tell you what I’m thinking about telling you,” I say, “I don’t want someone in a white jacket coming in to haul me away. Got it?”
He lifts a hand and draws an X over his heart. “Swear to die.”
Still, I hesitate. I fought my family and friends, railing and screaming, clawing and trying to convince someone, anyone that I wasn’t imagining things. After a while, I began to doubt my own mind. Began to wonder if maybe they were right.
It’s all in your head.
Asher sits in silence, arms crossed over his chest, feet still splayed out. I have to hand it to him, the guy is waiting me out like a pro, and I realize that I’m going to have to cough up something if I want to get Xaine and myself out of here anytime soon.
“Someone picked me up from the record store where I worked with my… well, from the place where I worked.” The words come slowly, haltingly, and I hesitate to tell him anything about Daniel. “It was after-hours, and I was closing up to go home. The last thing I remember is the bell ringing above the door…”
“I’m sorry,” I say, sliding the register back into its place and slowly easing the thing shut. “We’re closed. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”
There are two men in the doorway, both of them dressed head-to-toe in black, and sudden panic surges up my spine. The man in front wears a flipped-up hood over his skull, but I can tell it’s shaved short, with the hint of dark stubble along the edge of his forehead. He’s got a septum piercing connected to two separate silver strands, each one strung outward to a hole in the corresponding ear. Both of the delicate chains are hung with little metal tines in the shape of canines, and the entire effect dials the menace up to eleven.
“Lourdes Chase?”
I’m already inching toward the panic button, searching beneath the counter with my fingers, trying to find the little white box that will summon the police. Silver Teeth walks toward me slowly, but his partner deviates, branching off to the side in order to pace down the adjacent aisle. He ducks briefly into the back of the store, banging doors against walls as he checks the practice rooms, the office, the bathroom, then turns back to give a nod in Silver Teeth’s direction.
“Can I help you?” My voice wavers, my hands shake, and I try not to be too obvious about the forays my fingers are making just out of sight.
“Are you Lourdes Chase?”
“Look, I don’t know what—”
Silver Teeth grins, exposing a row of sharp, white incisors, all of them filed into points. It’s like looking into the mouth of a shark, and suddenly I understand.
I will not be home for dinner.
“Ms. Chase?” Asher’s voice cuts into the scene, calling me back. “Are you okay?”
“What?” I say, blinking at his concerned face. “Uh, yeah… there was a guy with shark teeth and chains on his face. That’s all I remember, until I woke up at the local loony bin.”
He thinks it over for a second, then ventures, “You were missing for two months.”
I nod. “Yes, but I don’t know where I was. Flashes used to come to me when I was asleep, in nightmares, but since Benicio, it’s gotten worse.”
“Worse how?”
“It’s like he shook things loose.” Suddenly, it’s hard to swallow. “I’m getting stuff in little clips, even when I’m awake. All the things I convinced myself weren’t real are bubbling up from wherever I stuffed them.”
“Repressed memories?” Asher’s earnest face holds no censure, only curiosity.
“I don’t know,” I say, shaking my head. “Maybe. I see tubes. Blood. Someone telling someone else to ‘do it again.’ There’s another guy, always demanding to know what’s happening. His is the only face I ever remember clearly.”
“Can you describe the face?”
“Xaine knows him,” I tell Asher. “Says he’s famous. He was at Scion tonight, right before the lockdown. Sandy hair, wavy, not quite to his shoulders. Tall, and lean, and he’s got these eyes. Yellow eyes, like a cat.”
Frowning, Asher slowly reaches over toward Fatty’s desk, picking up the latest issue of People magazine half-buried beneath all the other papers. Xaine is on the cover, Sexiest Man Alive again, but Asher flips past that, searching for something. Eventually he licks his t
humb, pushes back a sheet of paper, then folds the magazine back on itself so that he can hold up a picture.
“This him?”
Then it’s my turn to look confused as I take the glossy dossier from his hands. I’ve walked past this issue a hundred times in the supermarket and the streetside news stands. Hell, Jess has a copy of it sitting on the kitchen table at home. I never once flipped it open and looked inside.
Apparently, I should have.
“Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on here?”
“She’s alive…”
In the magazine, he’s smiling, wearing an expensive suit, and has one hand tucked into a perfectly tailored pocket. His dark blond hair is artfully mussed; he looks flawless, aristocratic, commanding. And it’s the same man I saw standing on the opposite side of the Scion lockdown glass. A face I believed I’d hallucinated yet again.
“Caspian Declan.” I read the name next to the caption. Billionaire, businessman, philanthropist, and humanitarian. So then why…? “I don’t understand any of this.”
“Mr. Declan owns one of the foremost vampire research facilities in the country, possibly the world. It’s as closed-to-the-public-slash-media as a place could possibly be, so nobody really knows what goes on inside.” Asher’s thinking hard, trying to untangle it all. “You said there were tubes and blood. Do you remember anything else?”
I stare at the picture, memorizing every nuance of Caspian Declan’s I own the world grin. “A lot of blood. I think I was bleeding. They kept changing the sheets because it was seeping out of my skin. They seemed mad about that.”
“Did you recognize anyone else there?”
I can only shake my head, close the magazine, and set it carefully upon Fatty’s desk. “No. It’s like I’m in a dream. All the faces are smudges that I can’t ever seem to remember.”
“Except his?”
“Except his,” I confirm. “He always walks in, demanding to know what’s happening but…”
When I don’t immediately continue, Asher prompts, “But?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “It’s all a blur of people’s voices, bright lights, darkness, and—” Pain. “Everything else.”
“And you think that’s what happened in the two months you were missing?” When I nod, Asher shifts so that the chair creaks under his weight. One thumb flicks at the paper edge of the notepad.
Eventually, my curiosity gets the better of me. “So, what are you thinking?”
He exhales slowly through his nose, not sounding at all happy about the interrogation shoe being on the other foot. “I think someone tried to vamp you.”
The snort that escapes me is wholly inelegant. “I’m about as not-a-vampire as they come.”
“Trust me,” Asher says, “it’s blowing my mind, too. But what you described sounds exactly like a forced turn. Involuntary vamping is illegal and very underground, but it’s a growing problem. My question is… why you? The fangers aren’t exactly rocket scientists, but most of them have figured out if they want a baby vamp, they have to pick a male victim.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know the science behind it, exactly,” he tells me, “but women are far less likely to survive the change. One in a thousand, maybe. Most of them die on the table. It’s why you rarely see them, and the ones that make it? They’re like the vampire Holy Grail.”
“Has anyone ever not turned?”
The way he looks at me is enough of an answer, but he adds, “Apparently, yes,” just to seal the deal. “But there’s good news. I don’t think you’re crazy.”
“That’s… somehow, not as vindicating as I thought it would be.” And I shudder. Instead of starting over in LA, I landed myself in a city where a serial killer with a face I can’t remember is trying to eat the memories of Caspian Declan peering at me through the glass of a medcenter window.
“Back to Benicio, though.” Asher taps a finger against his notepad. “Shot in the dark?”
I nod. “Go ahead, lay it on me.”
“You’re the only girl who’s lived through more than one encounter with this guy.” His face is serious, grim even. “I think Benny figured out he could mine your memories hard and deep, something he can’t normally do. He figured out he could—and excuse my French, here—mindfuck you six ways to Sunday and come back for more later. Other humans wouldn’t survive… haven’t survived what he’s been doing to you. It’s like an addiction, and every time he doesn’t get his fix, he throws a temper tantrum and settles for the next best thing. Probably ends up shredding their brains from the inside out… because you’re the anomaly. Survived a vamping and kept on tramping—” Asher cuts himself off and then tries to amend, “Sorry, I didn’t mean that to sound—”
“Maybe you shouldn’t try to rhyme things,” I say, smiling at his ten-shades-of-mortified expression.” When he only clears his throat, I draw in a deep breath and say, “Okay, well, hooray for me.” Sardonic and cynical. “As far as superpowers go, this is sorta shitty.”
“Yeah, turbo-healing is totally boring,” Asher scoffs. “We’ll have to get you some adamantium claws or something to make it cooler.”
“Oh, now you’re funny.” But the humor fades quickly. “Why me? Why can I get ‘mindfucked’ by this guy and live to tell the tale?”
But whatever Asher would have said is lost when the elevator at the end of the hallway opens and Xaine emerges, muttering up a storm.
He comes to a dead halt when he gets a good look at me and my new friend. “You saved me a phone call, Reece.” His gaze flicks back and forth, like he’s watching a tennis match. “G.I. Joe, I see you’ve met DJ Lore.”
“Cut the shit,” Asher says, standing as Xaine approaches. “I know about the lockdown at Scion. I was headed there next.”
“Yeah, well, you’ll be interested to hear that your sister triggered it. Cas Declan dragged her out of the club, shoved her into a limo, and bit her in the parking lot. If she hadn’t set off the emergency systems, I’d almost think she was into that sort of thing.”
Asher… Reece. Another puzzle piece drops into place, and no wonder it took so long. There’s absolutely nothing about Asher Reece that reads like Reille. Patient instead of restless, brown hair instead of red, dark eyes instead of green. He’s got at least eight inches on her in height, too, and a hundred pounds of lean muscle.
I’m expecting him to be surprised by the news of the not-quite-a-kidnapping, but all Asher gives Xaine is one cynical eyebrow. “You sure this wasn’t some bullshit roleplaying game?”
“You’re her brother.” Xaine gives Asher the stare-down, but when that elicits precisely nothing from the other man, he affects a disappointed expression. “Maybe you should err on the side of caution here.”
“Yeah, maybe. Or maybe I’d just be chasing my tail again,” Asher says. “Call me callous if you want, but I’ve spent enough years picking Reille up after she’s fallen down to have developed a pretty solid baseline. If it’s not booze, it’s boys.” He thinks about it a moment, then amends. “Well, it used to be boys. Now it’s vampires.”
“Look, asshole, all I know is that they climbed into a limo together and drove off. Reille’s on her own as far as I’m concerned, and right now I’m looking out for Number One. The last thing I need is you showing up on my doorstep a week from now, shooting first and asking questions later.”
“Oh, no worries,” Asher hastens to reassure Xaine. “I’m still counting the days until I can put a UV bullet right in the middle of your rock-hard head. Or maybe I’ll put a couple regular ones through your dick.” There’s an abrupt change in demeanor and tone when he turns toward me. “Listen, Ms. Chase, you need to take extra precautions when going about your daily routine—”
“Fuck her daily routine,” Xaine interjects. “She’s staying with me until further notice.”
“Perfect solution,” Asher fires back. “Shack her up with someone who thinks of her as food until Benicio is off the streets.”
/>
“Hey, you do your job and that’ll happen within the week, right?”
Asher opens his mouth to reply, but there’s a commotion at the front door as a large group gets corralled inside. First in is a girl so tiny that she might well still be in high school and so redheaded that it had to come out of a bottle. She’s wearing a hotel bathrobe that barely covers her bum, and I have more than a little sympathy for her spaced-out expression. Nothing good happened to her tonight. Behind her is Trick St. John, who apparently traded in his skanky bookends for a pair of double-reinforced handcuffs, and judging by the ear-blistering slew of curse words spilling out of him, he’s none too happy to be here right now.
“It’s all right,” I murmur, distracted by the noise. “I’ll be fine with Xaine.”
Asher scowls, digs a card out of his pocket, and slaps it into my palm. “That’s my business line and my cell phone number.”
“Heya, Lo!” calls out a familiar voice, and I hardly spare Asher a second to thank him for the card because behind Blond, Blue-Eyed, Fangy, and Pissed is Tamsyn. And behind her—
“Lourdes already has my card,” Jax Trace says, apparently oblivious to the fact that the entire group he came in with is smeared with blood, like they went to a Blade-style rave and someone forgot to turn off the sprinkler system. “If she needs a ride anywhere, she can call me.”
“Eat a dick, Trace,” Xaine says cheerfully, heaving me out of the plastic chair with very little effort. “By the looks of your fancy silver bracelets, you’re not going to be available to play taxi for anyone for a while.” His gaze flickers to Trick and catches sight of something that prompts the fangiest grin I’ve seen out of him yet. “Hey, St. John, whatever happened to ‘don’t get attached’?”
Trick raises his hand to flip Xaine off, but since he’s handcuffed to the tiny redhead, he about jerks her off her feet in the attempt. “Shut your bloody fucking mouth, X, before I stuff my fist so far down your throat your shit starts speaking sign language.”
“British or American?” Xaine asks, dragging me away from the small chain gang. “I just want to know whether or not I should lube up for the extra ‘u’ in colour, flavour, and go fuck yourself.”
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