Diamond in the Rough

by Isobella Crowley

  Centuries upon centuries of cruelty, wanton blood-gluttony, and vicious arrogance and entitlement lent urgency to a hunger that had never abated and still drove forward in time for endless, unlimited satisfaction.

  Within the yellowish light, a face appeared, somehow dim amidst the glow like the shadow cast by the sun. A dark, bony face, subtly beautiful and regal but utterly, terribly evil stared at her.

  “No!” she shouted. “Back! Return to the wasteland in which you were buried. I reign here!”

  Red light surged from the man on the desk and engulfed the entire room as the golden light faded. Taylor pushed and sent streaks of crimson spiraling through the gold, weaving their way into its essence, and Moswen’s power fled.

  The red light flashed once more, then died, and the entire room went totally black.

  Silence descended, broken only by the labored breathing of the humans, and the room’s ambient illumination gradually returned. Everything was calm. Alex lay gasping, and only the faintest outline of the hieroglyph remained on his chest.

  “Wow,” Remy commented. “That…uh, that was a hell of a show. I didn’t even know you could do that, Taylor. Whatever it was.”

  She leaned back, straightened, and flexed her hands. “If the truth be told, I wasn’t certain I’d be able to. But now, Moswen knows that she’d best think of me as an equal.”

  Alex blinked repeatedly and glanced around with fast sharp movements like a bird or a lizard as though he expected something else to happen at any moment.

  “Is it over?” he moaned. “Am I—”

  “You are free,” Taylor explained, “of Moswen’s poisonous influence. She won’t be able to read your thoughts, or hurt you, or kill you. At least, not by that method.” She gestured to the Australian’s bare chest.

  He swung his legs over the edge, raised himself into a seated position on the desk, and rubbed his eyes.

  “However,” she added, “a small trace of the brand remains and it is now under my control. You will not be kept on so cruelly tight a leash as you were under her but if you try to flee the city, I will know and I will stop you. And don’t even think about trying to harm me or anyone under my protection.”

  The man nodded and moved his hands away from his eyes and through his shaggy, straw-colored hair.

  She leaned closer to him. “Now, tell me all about your mistress. Do not attempt to lie.”

  Alex breathed deeply and ignored the plump beads of sweat that rolled over his brow and nose into his eyes and mouth. “Her name is Moswen Neith. And yes, she’s a fucking vampire. We accidentally freed her during a dig in Israel.”

  Remy cocked an eyebrow. “A Jewish vampire. The bad jokes about kosher slaughter practically write themselves.”

  “No, you idiot!” the other man snapped. “She’s Egyptian.”

  “Okay.” He shrugged. “Halal slaughter.”

  The Australian ignored him. “She never said exactly how old she is, but, well…” His eyes glazed over. “She mentioned something about how Caliph al-Mahdi—you know, the bloke who assumed power over the Abbasid Caliphate in CE 775—had her driven out of Egypt and into Sinai. They also prevented her from heading toward Baghdad, so she spent most of the next thousand years in the Negev and Syrian Deserts. She slept most of the time, woke up to feed every decade or two, and waited for the right opportunity to retake her birthright, as she called it.”

  Remy looked uncomfortable at that, Taylor saw. She’d noticed a similar look in his eyes when she’d spoken of her own distant past. Something about the vast abyss of time in which the undead existed tended to creep mortals out.

  “Go on,” she said.

  Alex swallowed. “So, finally, when the Bedouin began to expand into southern Israel, they formed a posse and cornered her in an ancient Nabataean temple and trapped her in the deepest crypt under a mess of Islamic holy symbols. And some good masonry, of course.”

  His shoulders slumped. “We let her out. That dig…it was the opportunity of a lifetime. Of course, it was an accident, and it would be ridiculous to suggest that all this is somehow our fault.”

  “Oh,” Remy snorted, “of course.”

  He shook his head. “I’d recently earned my doctorate. I had to go. Eitan Feldman was running things. He was one of my heroes. Then, she split his face open and tore everyone else apart…”

  Taylor nodded. “I’ve heard of Feldman. I am sorry to hear that he’s been lost to the world. You’re an archaeologist, then. Interesting. You might actually prove useful to us in more ways than one.”

  Remy began to feel bad for the schmuck again, knowing that his mentor and friends had all been massacred by a pissed-off vampire, but something occurred to him and he simply couldn’t help himself.

  “So,” he remarked, “you’re a pro, but you never realized that the Black Cat statue was a fake, did you?”

  Alex’s head snapped up. “What? Bullshit!”

  He smiled innocently and looked toward the ceiling. “Yeppers. That little flaw under the tail? That’s the mark of Osman the Fake-Ass Scammer. He’s probably made a fortune by now ripping people off, including the previous owners and even the Guggenheim.”

  Taylor held a hand toward Remy, palm outward. “That’s enough, Remington. You forgot to mention that he also fooled you twice.”

  He made a pouty face but shut up.

  She glanced at Alex again. “It’s true, though, the idol is a fake. Moswen and I both used it as bait to try to entrap the other. She managed to draw me out enough to be detected, and I’m sure you told her all about me, but she has failed in the long run.”

  The man’s eyes locked warily on hers. “Right. So, what now? How can I…ah, be of service?”

  Taylor half-smiled. “We’ll talk about it. The most important thing you can do, though, is nothing. I didn’t entirely remove the brand she put on your chest. I reversed it. Now, it will act as a beacon on her location.”

  He looked confused. “What…what does that mean?”

  “She can no longer use it to track you,” the vampire explained, “but I can track her. However, she almost certainly has a general idea of what I’ve done. Which is to say that she knows you have been fashioned into a tool that will hurt her, rather than help her.”

  The man’s face slowly fell. She placed a hand over his heart and closed her eyes.

  “For example,” she said softly, “Yes…yes, she’s on the move already. Heading northwest. I imagine she’ll have preparations to make, but I’d guess she’ll hide in Beersheba for a while, then make her way to the nearest airport. I would be surprised if she didn’t come to New York. Soon.”

  Alex’s features, tanned by exposure to the sun in both Australia and Israel, suddenly turned the color of skim milk.

  She removed her hand. “We’ll protect you. But don’t convince us that you’re more trouble than you’re worth, my friend.”

  Remy patted the man on the shoulder. “Well, then. It looks like you’re the bait now.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Moonlight Detective Agency Office, Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York

  “Hey!” Remy called.

  One of the workmen, mounted on a ladder, looked petulantly at him. A lollipop stick dangled from his mouth. “Whaddya want?”

  He moved his fingers in a ring around the interior of each of his cufflinks. “I’m curious as to when this section of the hallway will be done. It’s been, what, a month or something now since we brought you guys on?”

  The man deliberately looked away from him at the plaster. “Soon,” he grunted. “The cops and that speed freak did a helluva number on this place. And we’re backed up with work orders. We kinda want to be done with ʼem all by Christmas.”

  With a brisk nod, Remington walked past the semi-friendly gentleman and his unspeaking partner. He was right, of course. The place had been fairly badly damaged. And it was almost Christmas.

  Still, the back hall near the bathroom seemed to be the last place that needed significa
nt work. Soon, the entire office would be better than new.

  Remy turned the corner. Andrew Volz was there, installing shiny rounded stainless-steel panels to cover the wires he’d had to replace. He motioned with a thick hand and he came over to hear his pitch.

  “Well, boss,” he rumbled, “as you can see, this is coming along quite nicely. The next so-called speed freak who breaks in will have a much harder time damaging our network, ha. Not to mention that I’ve installed backups to the backups. I won’t bore you with the details, but your computer system will soon be barely shy of invincible. Unless they launch a tactical nuke into the office.”

  Remy shrugged. “Who knows what the morrow will bring? Even some of the people who dislike us probably won’t be that brazen, though. Good work, Volz. Keep earning that pay. One day, perhaps you’ll even be able to afford to buy another inch of height.”

  “Hrmph!” He snorted and put his fists on his hips. “I have all I need and more. Plus, I’m a genius. You wouldn’t want me to take my services elsewhere, now would you?”

  He flashed his best PR smile. “Of course not. Therefore, I take back what I said. I bet that if you really wanted height-extension surgery, you could already afford it.”

  For a moment, it looked like the dwarf was about to argue—probably as a way to haggle for higher pay or more bonuses—but the man walked on to avoid giving him an opening.

  Shortly after the fight with Alex, he’d prevailed upon Taylor to hire Volz as a full-time employee. “Every successful business needs a designated tech guy,” he’d said, and she had begrudgingly agreed.

  Now, thanks to his access to significant sums of Taylor’s money, their office was operating at—or even beyond—the cutting edge of modern information technology. Seeing all the quasi-futuristic gadgets around made a weird contrast with the somewhat dated architectural style of the building itself.

  Plus, it was always nice to have someone on hand who could hack through the FBI’s security systems like a hatchet through drywall. Taylor seemed confident that Gilmore wasn’t planning to screw them over, but there was always the chance that someone above her in the hierarchy might have other ideas.

  They’d also returned the Black Cat Idol to its original owners with a tearful “We regret to inform you that…” letter explaining that it was a forgery.

  Beyond Volz and his wires and plates, he entered the lobby.

  Bobby waved from behind the desk. “Hi, Mr Remington.” She was reading The New England Inquirer again, although he couldn’t be bothered to examine the headlines.

  He waved back and admired his surroundings.

  The receptionist had a certain flair for interior decorating. She’d arranged the area to make it look like a cross between a hip college café and the parlor at someone’s grandmother’s house—cozy and welcoming but without being quaint.

  Paintings lined the walls. Or cheap prints, rather, and nothing an art collector would be too impressed with. They looked nice, anyway, and she’d organized them in a pleasing fashion that drew the eye to them in sequence.

  She also had a seemingly endless supply of potted plants, which she rotated on a weekly basis. Currently, it was mostly pines and holly, what with the Holidays looming on the horizon.

  Remy swaggered to her deskside. “Do we have any new customers?”

  She smiled at him, conveniently putting her face in line with her cleavage, relative to where his eyes were at the moment. “Nope. Things were picking up, but I think they’ll settle over Christmas. We’ll probably be inundated on the second of January.”

  He nodded. “Yes, that ought to be enough time for everyone to sober up.”

  Footsteps approached. It was Alex, now dressed in slacks and a white button-up shirt like any other office worker. A pen peeked out of his chest pocket, and he held a manila folder under one arm.

  “So,” he announced, “I’m done putting all the completed case files in alphabetical order. And I swept the bathroom floors. Am I done for the day yet?”

  “Hmm.” Remy stroked his chin. He looked at the receptionist. “Bobby, the intern does not currently have anything to do. Would you like him to fetch you a cup of coffee?”

  “Sure,” she replied, her demeanor suddenly a little brusque.

  Alex sighed. “Yeah, all right, I’ll get right on that. You know, I have a PhD. This is a waste of my talents. You could at least have me do archaeological research on your clients’ interests instead of all this menial labor like some bogan who’s only been through secondary school.”

  He played dumb. “What’s a bogan?”

  The Australian ignored the question and gestured toward Bobby. “She’s merely sitting there getting some very important reading done, while I could be investigating—”

  Taylor appeared behind him. “That Nabataean temple?” she suggested.

  The man spun, startled.

  She smiled. “It would be helpful to know more about our enemy’s origins. If you’re unhappy with the work you’re doing here, we could always send you to Israel. If you don’t mind the risks, of course.”

  “I’ll pass, thanks,” he mumbled while he cringed and shuddered before he trudged toward the coffee machine.

  The receptionist pretended not to notice that this exchange had even occurred. It was telling that she disliked Alex. Normally, she liked almost everyone. But when their new intern was around, she stiffened and grew terse and businesslike.

  Remy supposed that the newcomer would be more successful in repairing his reputation if he didn’t constantly try to fly under the radar with all the smartass sniper-comments. It was as if he tested to see if he had a reaction and assumed that when no one responded to his petty insults, it was because they were too stupid to understand what he was doing.

  They all knew. But, mostly, they simply ignored him.

  Otherwise, he’d behaved himself, though. There had been no aggravated assaults, larceny, or attempted murders directed at his co-workers, encouragingly enough. Nor had he tried to flee. It helped that he was still alive and aware of his good luck in no longer having an ancient Egyptian bloodsucker twisting a magical cattle prod around in his heart.

  There’d been some friction with INS, however. Taylor currently stalled them while she tried to get Alex approved for Legal Resident status. It seemed obvious to Remy that the man would rather go home, but he was at least smart enough to know that the only place he’d be safe from Moswen’s wrath was under the boss’ wing.

  Taylor glanced at Bobby as well—and at the paper in her hands.

  “Oh,” she marveled, “that’s rich. Remington scion’s Times Square brawl found to involve Illuminati assassin. By Jenny Ocren.”

  The girl looked up and pouted slightly. “I have to admit,” she remarked, “that they don’t seem to have all their facts straight this time. Normally, I expect a higher standard of journalism from them. But this Ocren chick never even called us. Hell, even I could have told her that the Times Square brawl involved some drugged-up guy from the Israeli Mafia.”

  She lowered the paper and glowered while she chewed on a finger. “Unless the Illuminati themselves paid them to carry out the hit—”

  “I doubt it,” the vampire quipped. “In any event, Ms Ocren is doing us a service by killing normal people’s interest in the event.”

  Taylor turned to Remy. “I’ll take over our operations for the night once I’ve settled in. You may go unless you have anything else you want to discuss.”

  He thrust his hands into his pockets. “Not really.”

  Before he could return to his office, the front door opened to admit a stunningly beautiful young woman, about five foot three, with pinned-up, platinum-colored hair. She carried a shiny plastic purse—very un-corporate—but was dressed more or less professionally in a proper dress, albeit a bright red one.

  “Hi,” she said and waved by holding her hand horizontally while she flipped the fingers up and down. She locked gazes briefly with Remington. “I’ll just…um,
go right in.” She walked past the three of them, past Volz, and let herself into his office.

  “Hey!” Bobby called and brandished the sign-in sheet guests usually had to fill out. She glanced at her two bosses. “When did we hire her? I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before.”

  Remy gestured dismissively. “Oh, don’t worry. She’s not a full-timer, only a kind of freelance contractor I discovered. She comes in for odd jobs.”

  He chuckled inwardly. Like bodyguard work, for example. Or virtually infallible tracking of dangerous suspects. Or heavy lifting. All the usual stuff you’d expect from someone who looks like she stepped out of a hipster fashion ad in a music magazine.

  Still with a broad smile, he strolled after her, opened his office door, and stepped in to gather his things.

  Riley sprang at him at once and wound her arms around his neck. Her hair smelled like lilacs.

  “Are you happy to see me?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he assured her and planted a quick, semi-platonic kiss on her cheek to emphasize the point. “Admittedly, I am forced by my biology to be even happier when you’re roughly the same size as I am. Also, that suit looks good on you. The color is a little loud, but you’re a woman so you ought to be able to get away with it. Men are restricted to black, grey, brown, and navy-blue.”

  He sighed. For some reason, he’d always wanted to wear a green suit. Or maybe purple, even if it meant that Jenny Ocren would report that he’d become a seventies retro pimp to pay his debts off. Maybe one day, he’d get drunk enough to attempt it.

  No. One drink per day, tops. Maybe two or three on special occasions. That’s the new rule.

  Remy released the fairy and picked his gym bag up.

  She squinted at it. “What is that? I’ve seen you carry it before, but it looks like clothes. Have you had mud splashed on you in the street lately?”

  “You’re mostly right.” He didn’t bother to hide his amusement. “It’s for my martial arts classes. I enrolled at an MMA gym two weeks ago. I go twice a week now but might increase it to three times later. Granted, it will be another couple of weeks before I’m healed enough to actually start any sparring or anything—you’d think ribs would mend themselves faster – but they at least have me learning some of the basics and doing preliminary exercise to get myself in proper shape. Which I’ve been working hard at, if I may say so.”