If they so much as look at Chaz askance, I’ll make him run.
They wended their way past the display tables, the smell of decay roiling along ahead of them. Two of them were taller than Val, one bulky, one thin. The third was small and slight, and when she stopped on the other side of the counter, she pushed her hood back so Val could see the four long scars running down her cheek. They marred an otherwise pretty face, now that the snout was gone. She’d probably been popular, back when she was human: high cheekbones, pixie-ish nose, full lips. If she gave her hair a wash, she might even turn some heads now.
“Hello, Leech.” She grinned up at Val. In the light, her teeth were jagged and yellow.
Well, almost pretty. “Didn’t I tell you to get the hell out of town?”
“We’re on our way out. Just needed to pick up one last thing before we go.” The two behind her lifted their noses and sniffed.
“It’s here.” The one on the left closed his eyes, panting a little. He looked Justin’s age, maybe younger. His cheeks were a minefield of acne scars; apparently becoming a Jackal didn’t fix your skin problems like vampirism did.
The other one nodded, turning until his nose pointed toward the rare books room. He was, as Chaz might say, built like a brick shithouse. Val wondered if a blow from the fire extinguisher she kept behind the register would even have any effect on him, or if he’d only grin and shake his head at her like the bulldog did in the cartoons, when the cat finally got in a solid hit. “In there.”
The woman’s grin widened. “Did the old man bring you a present today, Leech? Something that wasn’t his?” She leaned across the counter, dropping her voice. “We went looking for it, and it wasn’t at his house. He didn’t want to tell us where he’d hidden it, but he talked in the end.”
“Screamed, really,” said the one on the left, the skinny one.
Val gripped the counter so hard the wood groaned. Blood thundered in her ears; she wanted to lunge at them, tear at their throats and make them howl for what they’d done. Their rancid blood would make her gag, but it would be worth it, so worth it to make the Jackals pay. Her gums prickled as her fangs unsheathed.
“All swept up, Val, just need to—” Chaz froze beside the rack full of maps as four heads swiveled toward him. The dustpan he carried dipped and spilled its sandy contents all over his shoes. “Val?” In his other hand, he held the push broom. He switched his grip on it, getting ready to bring it up like a baseball bat, but before he could, the right-hand Jackal moved.
Its motion was a blur even to Val’s preternatural senses; to Chaz, it must have seemed to reach him in an eyeblink. She couldn’t Command him to run now: the Jackal’s hand slipped around his throat, its grimy black claws making indents in his skin.
For his part, Chaz took it well. After his initial start, he stood calmly, still wielding the broom even though he didn’t have the range of motion to swing it. He glanced down at the wrist holding him and saw the fine, dark fur. “Oh. Uh. Fuck,” was the extent of his commentary.
“How about you show me that book,” said the woman, pulling Val’s attention back, “and he doesn’t have to get hurt tonight.”
“Val, no. Fuck these guys. Don’t—”
Right Hand lifted his other arm almost casually and extended his index finger, the claw hovering less than an inch from Chaz’ eye. The unspoken threat shut Chaz up.
“All right.” Val reached under the register and retrieved the key from its hook. “All right, you can have it.” She let it dangle before the woman, but pulled it back before the Jackal bitch could take it. “I’m going to have to let you in.”
The woman growled. “You don’t want to piss me off, Leech. Whatever you’re trying to pull here—”
“I’m not trying to pull anything.” Val set the key down on the counter. “If you pick up that key, it’s going to hurt like hell. It’s silver. Go ahead and touch it if you don’t believe me.”
The woman jerked her head, and Left Hand reached past her to prod the key with the tip of his finger. As soon as his skin made contact, the flesh turned black. Tendrils of smoke curled up like a cigarette left to burn in an ashtray. The Jackal yanked his arm away and danced backward. He whimpered as he stuffed the injured finger into his mouth.
Val had expected the woman to react at least a little. Instead, she watched her companion’s pain with clinical observation. She’s not an alpha. She didn’t smell like one, and an alpha never would have let Val get the drop on it the way she had last night. But she might be fucking the alpha, or could be an alpha’s pup. Val tucked that away to mull over later. Provided there was a later.
The woman didn’t wait for the whimpering to stop. She shrugged and faced Val. “Fine. Lead the way.”
As much as she loathed turning her back on a Jackal, Val stepped away from the register and headed toward the back. She took the aisle that Chaz and Right Hand were in, pausing before them to bare her fangs at the creature holding her friend. Up close, she could see beneath his hood. A network of scars covered his face, souvenirs from years of fights. She wondered how many times he’d challenged an alpha and lost.
Right Hand flashed long canines at her. One of the front ones was chipped. She imagined the ragged bite marks he would leave on Chaz’ flesh if she screwed this up.
She dipped her head in acknowledgment—you win this round—and turned to Chaz. “Will you be all right while I . . .” She gestured at the rare books room, but what she meant was, “while I leave you with these things that wouldn’t mind having your spleen for a snack.”
He grinned at her despite the smell of fear-sweat rolling off him. “Peachy keen.”
Then the Jackal woman gave her a shove and got her moving again.
• • •
VAL OPENED THE door for the Jackal bitch but didn’t follow her inside. She wanted to be able to keep an eye on the two up front. “The book’s on the desk. Take it and get the hell out of here.”
But of course that wasn’t good enough. The woman seemed content to leave Val in the doorway. As soon as she set eyes on the book, it was as if she’d forgotten about the vampire behind her altogether. She stood staring down at the top of the desk for a long moment, the set of her shoulders rigid, breath coming in a pant as she sniffed the air. New mothers weren’t half as careful with their firstborns as the Jackal woman was as she lifted the book.
The Ziploc bag fell to the ground like a discarded candy bar wrapper. The woman’s eyes shone as she leafed through the onionskin-thin pages. She turned toward the door as she flipped, enough for Val to see the rapture on her face turn to rage. “Where is it?” she snarled, flipping faster.
“Where is what?”
The Jackal woman looked up at her, tawny eyes flashing. “You changed it. You stole it.” She turned the book around and showed Val the pages.
Blank.
Not the whole book, but a page here, a page there. Val couldn’t make sense of the text that remained. A mere glimpse of the writing made her stomach roil. But there were definitely whole chunks of it missing. “I didn’t do anything to it. I don’t even know what it is.”
“You did it. Or he did it. But since he’s dead, you get to fix it. But first.” She strode past Val and shouted to Right Hand. “Kill him.”
“No!” The Jackals could move fast, but so could Val. She grabbed the bitch and shoved her back against the wall. The book thudded to the floor in a flurry of pages. After a moment, the Jackal woman stopped fighting, laying her throat bare for Val—a dog submitting to its master. Val shifted the key in her palm so it protruded out from between her middle and index fingers. She held it against the woman’s throat. The flesh sizzled and burned like a piece of plastic held over a flame.
Despite the pain, the woman didn’t scream.
Right Hand paused, poised on the edge of carrying out his order. Left Hand wavered up by the register. Val could see him weighing his options—would a sudden move help or hurt? He’s still a pup. Too indecisive.
The woman had the balls to smile. “You think you can take them both?”
Val kept her hand at the bitch’s throat, but glanced back at Right Hand. She thought about the scars on his face again. He might just be old enough. The other two seemed oddly young, as Jackals went, but this one struck her as more wary, more weathered. “Has your alpha ever mentioned Sacramento?”
“What’s that have to do with—” The bitch hushed as the silver pressed in harder.
Right Hand nodded, wary.
“I was there. So you know that means I can kill the both of you, easy. Don’t you?”
Left Hand whined low in his throat, still sucking on his burnt fingertip. Beneath Val, the Jackal bitch had gone very still, her eyes darting from Val to Right Hand and back. “Let him go,” the bitch said. The panicked, wheedling tone from this morning was back.
Right Hand did as he was told, pushing Chaz away from him with a bit too much force. Chaz stumbled forward. He caught his balance with the broom and held it out in front of him as he put distance between himself and the Jackals.
Val dragged the bitch down the aisle and past Right Hand. They swept past Left Hand, too, straight to the door. She shoved the abomination out onto the sidewalk and held the door open for the other two. They got the hint and squeezed past, trying not to touch her as they slunk out into the night.
The bitch crouched down, one hand to her throat, gulping in the chilly air. “Two days,” she rasped.
“For what?” Val twirled the key around on its chain. Wish I’d thought to use it as a garrote. Then she wouldn’t still be talking.
“To find what’s missing. To make it whole again.”
“You three really want to come back and try my patience?”
“Not just us.” Right and Left helped the bitch to her feet. She lifted her glittering eyes to meet Val’s. “If you don’t get those pages back, we’ll bring friends.” They backed away, until the shadows covered them. The bitch’s voice hung on the air: “We’ll bring a whole nest.”
8
CHAZ HEARD THE woman’s threat float through the door. It should have chilled him, he supposed, but he had something slightly more pressing to address first. “I take it you two are acquainted?” Now that the three were gone, his pants-shitting fear was rapidly melting into anger. He figured that nearly getting his eye poked out—oh, and then nearly getting killed on command, let’s not forget—gave him the right to kick up a bit of a fuss.
Val locked the door and leaned back against it. “Chaz, I’m sorry. I—”
He didn’t bother tamping down the fury in his voice. She fucked up, she gets to hear it. “No. Not good enough. I asked you earlier tonight if you knew anything, and you said no. Then these three whatever-the-fucks walk in here and it’s clear you and the woman have met before. I’m guessing shortly after we parted ways last night.” His knuckles had gone white on the broom handle. “You lied to me. Which, you know, whatever, I expect you to now and then. I’m sure there’s obscure vampire shit I’m not allowed to know. But not when it’s important. Not when one or both of us could get killed.”
“I know. I was wrong.” She spread her hands wide, but stayed where she was. “I thought it was taken care of, and I screwed up, and I’m sorry.”
He realized he was shaking. Chaz wasn’t the kind of person you crowded when he was angry. He didn’t take well to being placated, either. He’d never swung on her—never would—but Val was giving him his space all the same. He throttled the broom a little longer, then let it clatter to the floor. Better than a stress ball. “What now, then?”
“Now . . .” She hesitated, but seemed to think better of something—probably a suggestion that he go home, which wouldn’t go over well. “I’m locking up and going to the Clearwaters’. You coming?”
The words were barely out of her mouth before he answered. “Hell yes.”
• • •
CHAZ WAS QUIET as he drove to the professor’s. The ride wasn’t long enough for her to tell him very much, aside from that the creatures were called Jackals and she’d chased the woman out of Bryant Hall the night before. He gripped the steering wheel and kept quiet. Sure, not asking questions was borderline petulant, but he hadn’t had a chance to properly seethe yet. Five years as her Renfield—five years under the impression she told him the important shit—made this omission hard to simply shrug off.
Chaz killed the engine in front of a sprawling old Colonial a block down the street from the Clearwater house. He would have thought that every house in the neighborhood would be lit up, but only a few seemed to have anyone left awake. They hopped over a low fence, sneaking past a two-car garage and into the backyard. When he squinted, Chaz could make out the faint spindly shadows of a swing set just before the tree line, but even those melted away as heavy clouds covered the moon. Val led them across the yard and into the woods.
The darkness didn’t hinder her, but Chaz didn’t have the luxury of night vision. He moved quietly enough, drawing on what little knowledge he’d retained from his Boy Scout troop back in the day, but as far as he knew there wasn’t a badge for skulking around in the pitch blackness with a vampire. Or trespassing on a murder scene to see if the crazy dog-people had left any clues behind. Without the moonlight, he was blind out here. Chaz waved his arms in front of himself so he didn’t get a branch to the face.
Everything was so quiet. He could hear the shuffle of leaves beneath his feet and his own harsh breathing, but other than that, the night was silent. No night birds called to one another, no crickets chirped. Nothing went scurrying through the underbrush at his approach. Was it the kind of silence that descended when animals caught the scent of a predator?
Val’s the predator here. Nothing else. She’d have called it off if there were Jackals lurking.
But if Val was nearby, he couldn’t hear her anymore. Did we get separated? Chaz stopped walking and peered around, straining to make sense of the darkness. His eyes were as wide as they could go, but all around him was seamless black. He felt his breath grow ragged and raspy edged with panic. His chest tightened even as he gulped down a lungful of air. Shame mingled with the fear; he didn’t think chickenshit went with the whole Renfield persona. He didn’t know if it was more embarrassing for the Jackals to know he was afraid, or for Val to see the fear on his face.
Cold fingers closed over his. Somehow, he managed not to yelp. Or piss his pants. It’s only Val.
“Come on,” she said, and gave his hand a squeeze. “I’ll lead you.”
Relief flooded through him, stronger than the shame. He could feel like a pansy in the morning. In the daylight. “Yeah. Okay.” He closed his eyes and let her tug him forward through the woods.
• • •
CHAZ COULD FEEL the wrongness as soon as they crossed onto the Clearwaters’ land. He couldn’t have said quite what felt so wrong, but the knot of fear that had settled in his stomach twisted into something new. Where before he’d been afraid of Jackals jumping out of the shadows and killing them, or cops tramping through the trees and arresting them, now the panic was on a purely animal level. His lizard brain wanted him to run, and his logical brain couldn’t think of a good reason not to. Except for Val. Her presence kept him from letting the flight instinct take over.
By the time they reached the flagstone steps of the patio that had been Helen’s last home improvement, Val was breathing through her mouth. She’s smelling them. It must have been overpowering.
Once Val had started leading him along, he’d kept the freaking-the-fuck-out down to a minimum by wondering how they’d get inside. Turned out it wasn’t an issue: the back door had been torn off its hinges. Th
e only things keeping anyone out were a few strips of police tape strapped across the doorway to deter the law-abiding. Now that they were out of the woods and in semifamiliar territory, Chaz let go of Val and reached into the pocket of his Windbreaker. “Here,” he said, and pressed a soft bundle into her hands.
“Are these from the rare books room?” Val stared at the cotton gloves, then at Chaz.
“Yeah. I thought . . . fingerprints. I don’t know if you’d leave them, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to have them. Plus, you know. I’d be smearing them all over the place.” Talking made the fear recede a bit, enough that he could tamp down the urge to snatch up Val’s hand again. I have to be the world’s worst minion.
She tugged on the gloves while Chaz fumbled out a pair of his own. “Can’t have my employees getting arrested. It’s bad publicity.”
They exchanged tense smiles; Val lifted the yellow tape enough so she could duck through it, but she seemed reluctant to pass through the doorway.
“Val, what’s— Oh.” It dawned on him: she’d been in the house before—the professor often had her come by to appraise his newly acquired rarities—but now that her former hosts were dead, had their invitation been rescinded? Chaz stepped around her. His boots crunched on broken glass as he walked into the kitchen and turned around. “Come on in.”
Val gave him a nod of thanks and joined him across the threshold.
The kitchen was a shambles: scratches covered the hardwood floor, as if several dogs had come scrabbling through and dug deep gouges with their claws. The table had been overturned, the contents of the cabinets strewn about the room. Val sniffed. “No one’s inside. Hasn’t been anyone here for a few hours.”
“What about the cops? Is there a car out front?”
“Wait here. I’ll check.” She headed off into the dining room, then along the hallway that led to the front of the house.
While he waited, Chaz dug his penlight out of his pocket. Outside, it might have given them away, but in here, unless anyone was patrolling the backyard, he figured it was worth the risk. He thought he could re-create the Jackals’ movements by the marks on the floor. They seemed to have gone straight through the kitchen and deeper into the house. The ransacking must have happened afterward; he found human footprints in the rubble.
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