After the food was delivered and he’d tested each item, pushing the potatoes to the side—too salty—he said, “So let’s hear this hysterical story. How did you die?”
She looked up from her plate. “It was an allergic reaction.”
He leaned back. “That’s not funny. Not even a little bit funny.”
“Wait, let me finish. I used to have terrible allergies—gluten, dairy, bees, peanuts, soy, almost every kind of flower…”
“When is this going to get funny?”
She dropped her fork. “If you want to know why the angels missed me, shut up and let me tell my story.”
He impatiently watched her pick at her food. Did she ever eat? A lot of people in the world had to survive eating only vegetables. So there was no need to waste food like this. It was sad.
“I was going to Argentina with my parents. They travel a lot.”
He cocked his head as her words hit. Travel. She’d used the present tense, because her parents were still around. Somewhere. What would it be like to have parents? Probably horrific. He didn’t work with kids, but that old-enough-but-still-dumb-enough stage took a long time to grow out of for a lot of them, so he knew what parents were like. They were as bad as hunters he shouldn’t want around because all they did was annoy him.
If her parents were still alive, why did she look so peaceful remembering them? They’d abandoned her and left her with a monster for three years. Davyn had never seen a parenting manual, but he’d bet that would be a big oops in all of them.
“We were somewhere above Central America when a bee stung me.”
“You were killed by a bee in an airplane.”
“Yep.” She waited for him to laugh.
“You thought I would find that amusing?”
Her mouth fell open a bit. “It was a bee. In an airplane. How is that not completely farcical to you?”
“It’s odd. And says a lot about the kind of luck you have, I guess. But—” Oh. He got it. “That’s why the angels missed you. You died in the air, not on land or in any designated zone. So, what? The angels in the South American zone and the North American zone each thought the other would take care of bringing you into the Highworld?”
“Died and came back, all before the Captain even turned the Fasten Seat Belt light back on.” She nodded. “My dad made up the bad seatbelt joke, but the rest is kind of funny, isn’t it?”
“You have a strange sense of humor, puppet.” He took another bite of toast. “It’s a good thing I’m such a big fan of your body.”
“For both of us,” she said, not bothering to cover her smile. “Some cute doctors in Argentina, by the way.”
“Are you afraid of it?”
“Of Argentina? No, it’s nice.”
“Of dying, puppet. Are you afraid of dying?” He shrugged when she didn’t respond. “Or flying.”
Her pause told him more than she probably wanted him to know, more than he should want to know. “I’m not afraid of anything.”
“You sound like a demon.” He laughed at the irony, not her story or the way she’d died. “Dying and flying.” Two things a demon could never, ever experience.
After she’d finished picking at her food, Davyn listened to her complain about how much time it was taking him to eat. He should’ve never told her about Montreal.
“Back off, puppet, or you’ll regret waking up at all.”
“No one should eat that stuff. It’s death on a plate covered in maple syrup. Be glad you’re immortal.”
“Is this what it feels like to have a conscience—someone sitting too close and making you want to strangle yourself?” Made him feel better than ever about being a demon.
She flopped back against her chair in protest. Fine, she could do all the silent protesting she wanted, emphasis on ‘silent.’ But eventually even her silence ruined his appetite.
“I’ve heard enough of your sighing and grumbling to last a few more tours.” He tossed his napkin onto his plate, grumbling as it discolored from the grease and syrup. “If you can’t keep up, go back to the hotel and wait for me there.”
“Keeping up with you won’t be a problem, trust me.”
Trust her? That would never happen.
Davyn phased through the wall and started looking around while the hunter picked the lock. Lamere’s place was a mirror of the vamp it belonged to—controlled, cold, and empty.
Her whisper was muffled by the door between them. “Can’t you just flip the lock and let me in?”
“Yep.” But he wasn’t going to. Being what he was had certain disadvantages and a couple perks. He didn’t share the painful parts with her, so why would he share the good stuff?
Her mumbled cursing stopped when the lock clicked.
“I knew you could do it, puppet,” he said without turning. She made one pass of the apartment, obviously not trusting that Davyn had done it right. Then they both made another sweep, more slowly this time, looking for any clue of when the vamp had been there last and when he might be coming back.
“He has good taste,” Davyn said. “In furniture and kidnap victims.”
She glared at him as if she’d caught him staring at her ass. “For future reference, if you’re trying to compliment someone—although I have no idea why you would, considering how much you enjoy my company—but if you were, here’s a little tip: Don’t do it by bringing up the worst experience of the person’s life.”
He frowned, his brow tightening. “You had a bad experience with furniture?”
“Jerk.”
He stopped laughing when he heard a cry far too quiet for human ears, even her enhanced ones. Then he searched the way he should’ve from the start—like a demon, without all the damn humanness.
Keira peeked under the mattress. “He didn’t use the kitchen or the bathroom or leave anything here. This trip has been a total bust.”
“Only if you don’t see it for what it is.” Shushing her, he walked out of the bedroom towards the kitchen, not caring if she followed or even heard him.
“Are you hungry again?”
“Yes, but I’m not looking for food.” He opened the fridge. “A vamp as old as Lamere doesn’t need a bed. And he doesn’t need champagne.”
She counted the champagne flutes with her eyes, and then turned in a circle, spotting all the things she should. “Even if he’s a lush, he can only use one glass at a time.”
Davyn was almost proud of his little puppet. Almost. “So…”
“He brings people here,” she said. “Seduces them.”
He nodded. “Humans probably, because any sane supernatural would sense his troubled soul and not want to play at his house. Other vamps who live on the edge of sanity maybe, but nobody else. Except Otis.”
“Thom,” she said absentmindedly. “Where’s he staying?”
“Here. Right now.”
“Sleeping?”
He shook his head. “Not today. If you shut up a second, I might be able to…”
Otis’ mind was nothing but pain, no temptation Davyn could use to ferret him out of wherever he was, no desire except to die. Davyn almost felt sorry for the guy.
“Start looking for something hidden magically. Something will look wrong, out of place.” Unfortunately, Lamere was too much of a bastard to make anything easy on them. “If you were Lamere and wanted to hide some”—he stopped himself from saying someone, needing the hunter’s memories to help, not to complicate things—“something, where would you put it?”
“I don’t know,” she said, obviously noticing his hesitation and understanding why.
“Think, hunter. A place he kept his shit. Closet or—”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t hide his things—he displays them. So he’d want natural light. The moon when he wants to touch, and the sun when he only wants to stand back and look.” Her last few words were mumbled as she headed towards the windows, grabbing the curtains to open them but stopping abruptly. “Thom? Is he still alive?”
He walked around the armchair before slowly sitting down, only mildly disgusted at the idea of Lamere sitting in the exact same place, watching someone beg for their life. Not that Davyn hadn’t done it—he just hadn’t done it for fun. Enjoying something like that was beyond his scope of evil, at least in the last twenty-five years of a tour. And before that? Yeah, he might have enjoyed it a little, but only within the rules of his race and only to those who deserved it, Lamere being at the top of that list.
The hunter jumped backwards when the wall she was running her hands across flickered momentarily. “Did I do that or did you?”
“Not sure. Try whatever you were doing.”
She held her palm flat against a painting, then patted it and moved it in a circle one way and then the other. Davyn calmly put both his arms on the rests to watch the wall fade and the shadow of Thom, whose human name was Otis, come into focus.
“Oh fuck.” Should’ve thought of that. Davyn leapt out of the chair without thinking, grabbing the hunter by the waist and tossing her behind him.
“What—?” She fell into the chair, howling. Then cursing.
“He’s a starving vamp, and you’re a delicious human. Stay behind me.”
Otis, you poor bastard. He hadn’t seen anything like this above the crust since his first tour, a hundred and fifty years ago. A man stripped of everything he had…and was.
The young vampire’s breath was heavy, broken from his silent and continuous weeping. The tools Lamere had used were modern, a matching set hung on the wall just a few feet from his victim. Whips, knives, even a dagger-shaped wooden stake—the ultimate weapon in a sadistic vampire’s arsenal. But Lamere hadn’t used it, preferring to create as much pain and weakness as possible while Otis was alive and able to feel it.
“Poor bastard” didn’t cover it.
The worst part was that Lamere had the foresight to force Otis to stand in a large trough, now filled with eight pints of his own blood. Only a few inches of the vampire’s skin around his eyes remained undamaged. The rest of him had been ripped apart, pulled, pried open. Then kept apart with silver staple-looking things, obviously meant to stop him from healing, to make his blood flow as quickly as his magic could repair his body. Both ankles were bound by chain, his legs twisted beyond the vampire’s ability to heal. But his eyes were clear, so bright with fear it forced Davyn back a step. Right into the hunter.
As if the bump woke her up, she moved faster than he’d ever seen her move. Not to run away like he would’ve thought. She went straight for the torture devices, not looking at the mutilated vampire once. She chose the stake, longer than the one she normally used, lighter too—he could tell by the way her hand shook. No, not shaking. Testing.
“Hunter—”
Without a sound or a glance, she flipped it, squeezing the wood and throwing it just like she’d done a million times before. Except this time the chest it pierced was another victim of her abuser, the only one who’d been where she had. A second later Otis dusted, his remains raining down onto the blood that had already drained from his body.
Neither of them moved, but the hunter’s heartbeat and breathing raced.
“I used to pray someone would do that to me.” Her voice was flat, emotionless. After only another minute, she took a deep breath and looked at her throwing hand. “Why wasn’t he asleep? It’s daytime.”
“The young can stay up if they have the blood of one of the old guys, but I don’t think that’s what happened here.” Otis didn’t have any blood, not even his own. “When a vamp is that close to death, they can’t sleep through it.”
She nodded slowly. “He couldn’t have told us where Lamere would go next. Even if he could, he wouldn’t have. Not after Lamere did that to him.”
“I know.” Davyn followed her into the kitchen and watched her scrub her hands, the water steaming, her skin reddening. “Hurry up. I want to get out of this fucking town.”
They left without another word. Good.
Because he didn’t want to tell her what Otis had been thinking over and over until he dusted. Or that the vampire had been left like that—alive but mutilated—with a purpose. But more than anything, Davyn really wished he’d never heard the message Otis was supposed to have given the hunter:
Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. And she shall be called woman.
Thirteen
Keira finger-combed her hair, as if anyone cared how a hunter looked. At least if gave her something to do with her hands on the way into the library. Parker wasn’t there, probably at her day job. But today Keira was here to see the boss, not the historian.
Graham was probably freaked out to see Keira smile as she walked towards him, but if he was here, the woman he didn’t let go more than forty feet from him had to be here, too.
“Have you come up with a secret handshake yet?” she asked.
“Where I come from, the only reason you shake someone’s hand is to get close enough to kill them.”
“Huh. So you’re from Southern California then?”
His smile was so small, she had to squint to see it. “Not what I was referring to, but yes, I was.”
Was? It seemed like such an odd way to say it. She looked at him again—tall with a body built by sports and great heredity, not gyms and free weights. Jaw, lips, and nose that looked like someone had taken the best parts of a bunch of models and photoshopped them all into one face. Almost too perfect, even for an ex-toy. If she couldn’t sense his humanity, she’d have thought he was a—
She squinted again. Nah, that wasn’t possible. Except that it was, because of Addison’s power. Keira shut her mouth before she got herself in trouble, not sure she was supposed to know or suspect he might have ever been something less human than he was now.
“Do you need to call her?” she asked.
“She seems to trust you. That’s something you don’t want to lose, hunter. Be careful.”
Addison was mid-yawn when Keira walked in. She covered her mouth as soon as they saw each other. “Wow, that was attractive. Sorry. I think I’m getting sick.”
As Keira neared her idol, she thought the same thing. Addison was paler, except for the darkness around her eyes.
“You probably need more rest.”
“I do nothing but sleep lately. You catching me here is a total fluke.” She rubbed her hands over her face and slapped her cheeks as if to wake herself up. “So how’s it going with Lamere?”
“Well, it’s…going.” Since Addison didn’t ask specifically about Davyn, Keira didn’t bring him up. “I was in Montreal the other day because Lamere has a place there, and I thought of something I wanted to talk to you about.” But that didn’t mean she should. What did Keira know about war or an army? She’d been on her own for the past three years, six if she counted the time she’d spent as Lamere’s prisoner.
“Cool.” She motioned Keira over. “A lot of people think I’m the leader of the Rising. I’m not. I’m the organizer. Like a party planner without the party or a budget. Or a paycheck. Or cake. Great, now I want cake. What are the chances we could send Graham out for some?” She laughed. “Sorry, you were saying? If you have an idea, I want to hear it.”
Keira sat stiffly. “I think we should expand. Start small groups in any city with a decent-sized population of supers.” When she looked up, Addison nodded slowly.
“It’s a good idea, but it’s not possible right now. Opening other branches means finding someone to run each of them. We’re kind of shorthanded. It’s taken three months just to pool the people we have now. Finding someone who wants to recruit and organize the seers is next to impossible.” She shrugged. “It’s not their fault, but seers tend to be followers. We’re taught to be. Forced to be, I guess.” It was strange to hear Addison put herself in the same group as seers. She wasn’t, she was something much more valuable.
“I’ll do it.” The words were out of Keira’s mouth before she’d really thought about it. Or maybe she had been thinking about it but not been cognizant of it. Because something had put those words on her tongue.
“It’s a crappy job. Are you sure you don’t want to take that back?”
“I don’t think I do. But I don’t know enough about what you do to decide for sure.”
“The day-to-day stuff isn’t hard. It’s the—” She coughed. “Sorry. The hard part is asking someone to go after a rogue vampire, for instance, or get someone out of one of the toy boxes. You guys do it because you’re brave and, for some weird reason, you trust me. But every time I ask a seer to do something, I do it knowing I may be sending them to their death. And that’s…really, really awful. The only thing worse is when it actually happens.” The expression on Addison’s face was so much more than remorse. It was doubt, fear, shame. All things Keira had felt when she’d been imprisoned. Did Addison feel trapped as well? What a shitty thing to bond over.
“None of that was your fault. We all know the risks before we join up.”
“Is that possible—to know all the risks?” No, it wasn’t. Because life was only one of the things someone could lose.
“No one blames you.”
“I know.” Addison nodded. “Mostly because Parker says something similar at least five times a day. But that doesn’t make it any easier. If you want to do this job, it’s not your own life you’ll be putting on the line. It’s someone else’s.”
Keira understood Addison’s point. It was easy to go into a situation knowing you had the skills to pull it off. How would she know if the person she sent in could handle it?
“I’ll think about it.”
“Take your time. The supers will still be around when you decide.” Addison smiled. “Tracked down any evil vampires lately?”
“Everything I do seems useless. If he’s gone underground again, it may be a while.” Months, if her luck continued the way it had been.
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