by Devon Monk
“Is that a kind of poison?”
For the first time since I’d entered the room, Old Rossi’s eyes flicked up to meet mine. I gasped, then felt stupid for letting him see my reaction.
His eyes were red, deep heart-blood irises swimming in eyes gone black. A vampire hunting might have red eyes. A vampire starving might have black. But a vampire with red and black eyes was either a breath away from hellish, vengeful violence, or insanity.
I had never seen red and black eyes. Never seen the devil so near.
“It is an art.” His voice was barely more than a hiss, a whisper of breath across tongue. “A very old blood art.”
“Art kills vampires?” My heart pumped so fast and strong, I felt like my entire body was shaking. Instinct told me to run, hide, flee, but I knew that would be the fastest way to feel fangs sinking into my throat.
Old Rossi’s gaze fixed on my throat, where I knew my heartbeat fluttered.
I didn’t know if it was the fear, or just a brain glitch, but I couldn’t stop the next words from falling from my mouth. “That would explain your interior decorating choices.”
His gaze snapped up to lock on mine. Then his eyebrow slowly rose.
“Are you insulting my interior decorating tastes?”
“On purpose?”
He waited
“Yes?” I said.
Oh, dear gods. Why had I been honest? I didn’t usually insult people when they were about to kill me. There was no denying that Mr. Devil and Darkness over there was a breath away from killing something. Probably a nervous police chief who was dripping rain on his wooden floor.
He blinked, and a wash of black faded to gray, the red to a ruddy amber. “I have impeccable taste.”
He sounded offended.
He looked offended.
Offended was better than deadly.
“Says the man with a room full of eggs in boxes.”
I resisted the urge to slap my hand over my mouth. His look of offense shifted to surprise.
“They are rare and valuable and beautiful and represent the fragility of life in balance with the universe.”
He was right. They were beautiful. I opened my mouth to tell him I agreed with him, but he was on a roll.
“And furthermore, I went to great time and expense to wring as much ambient light and good vibes as possible out of this room and the entire house. The flow of chi in this place would register as a Category 5 hurricane. I not only have taste, it’s good taste. For the eye and the soul.”
This is where I didn’t ask if vampires had souls. Certain creatures and deities in town would probably have an answer for that, and every one of them would be different.
So instead I said, “You know who else keeps eggs in boxes? Chickens.” I held his gaze and hoped I got a smile out of him.
Old Rossi inhaled a breath and sort of choked on it as he laughed. “Reeds. Un-fucking-flappable.” He finished half-laughing half-coughing, then eased back into the cushions of the couch. “I thought your father was droll.”
It was nice to see him relax out of his pounce and devour stance. Did wonders for my blood pressure.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said, gesturing toward Sven.
Black washed over his eyes, was gone in a blink. “No more so than I.” He waved one long, sturdy-fingered hand toward the loveseat to his left.
I walked around the dead body and took a seat. Not because I relished sitting down with a dead guy spread out in front of me like some macabre table cloth, but because my knees were threatening to buckle.
Adrenalin and seeing my own imminent death did that to a girl.
“Tell me what you see.” He was back to staring at Sven.
I reluctantly studied the body again. “He’s been shot in the head. I don’t see any other visible wounds. No other sign of struggle or bruising.”
“Is that all you see?”
“Other than the weird symbols in blood on his chest, yes.”
Rossi shifted his head. “You see that.”
“Who could miss it?” Red symbols on Sven’s pale skin was like blood on snow.
There was a soft knock on the door.
“Come in, Ben.”
Ben Rossi was one of Ordinary’s firefighters. He was a nice guy, currently dating Jame Wolfe who was also a firefighter and a werewolf. They’d moved in together a couple months back, and had thrown a big housewarming party where they invited all their relatives.
They wisely had invited me and my sisters to help maintain the peace at the party.
Vampires and werewolves did not get along, but here in Ordinary, Old Rossi and Granny Wolfe worked to keep the animosity to as low a level as possible.
The smile on Ben’s handsome face twisted into a grimace. His eyes scanned the room, looking anywhere but at Sven. “You wanted to see me?” His voice sounded strained, thin.
“Step into the room, please.”
Ben did as he was told, but I could tell he didn’t like it. He stopped as far away from the coffee table with the corpse as he could and faced Rossi.
“I’m sorry to ask this of you, Ben, but I need you to tell me what you see on my coffee table.” There was a hint of power in Old Rossi’s words, a weight that exerted pressure on Ben.
Ben’s eyes met mine briefly—a shadow of fear, of revulsion—before he turned to Sven.
Ben blinked hard several times, and squinted as if he was trying to stare into the sun.
“Sven is lying there.” Ben’s words were clipped, breathless. “He is dead.”
“Yes. Good.” The weight of Rossi’s words increased. “Tell me how he was killed.”
Ben was panting. A trickle of sweat glistened at his temple, another at the curve of his throat. He swallowed, blinked hard again, as if trying to bring an impossible thing into focus.
“Silver bullet. One. Through the brain.”
“What else?” Two words that made my ears feel like they needed to pop.
“I don’t know.” Ben whispered.
“His chest. Look at his chest.”
Ben blinked and blinked, his gaze scanning over Sven’s body, flitting across his face, neck, chest, unable to rest.
“I don’t see, can’t see anything else. A bullet. Just a bullet.”
Ben was so distressed I was about to tell Rossi to let him go. I didn’t understand what was going on, exactly, but I liked Ben and I didn’t like seeing him looking so cornered and panicked.
“Do you see blood?”
Ben was visibly trembling now, his thin T-shirt soaked with sweat. Still, he stayed where he was, his gaze searching the dead vampire.
“No. No blood.”
Holy crap. I could see the blood clear as day. Obviously Old Rossi could see the blood too. But Ben was not lying. Even I could see that.
“Thank you, Ben.” Rossi’s words were gentle, light and laced with the vampiric tone that both hypnotized and soothed. “That is all I need. I’m sorry to distress you. Get a drink of water and rest. I’ll talk to you soon.”
Ben nodded woodenly, swallowed again several times and then all but fled the room, closing the door so quietly not an egg rattled.
“Okay, so Ben can’t see the blood,” I said.
Old Rossi had pushed up to sit on the edge of the couch, elbows propped on his thighs, fingers linked together, thumbs pressed against his mouth. He nodded.
“And that blood plus that bullet killed Sven.”
Again, he nodded.
“So there’s a way to kill your kind that isn’t stakes, garlic, or solar power.”
“Garlic is a myth. Although severing our heads works quite well. And so do the blood arts.”
“Technical ichor?”
“Ichor techne. An art many centuries old. An art I thought burned, hidden, buried with the devils who first developed it.”
Two ways I could take this conversation: ask about the devils who had developed a way to kill vampires I had never heard of, or find out who might have found that art to use n
ow. And why on Sven. So I guess that was three ways.
“Did you know them?”
“The devils? Yes.”
I waited. “Could they still be alive?”
“One of them is.”
“Who?”
“Me.”
Not what I expected. I wiped some of the sweat and rain off of my face and rubbed my palms on my jeans.
“Okay.” I took a second to process that. “Okay. I’ve never asked about your past, and Dad didn’t tell me anything more than we have noted in the family records. I’m going to assume you think this,” I spread fingers toward poor Sven, “is tangled up with your past life? Lives?”
“It is.”
“I’m going to need more than that if I’m going to solve this problem.”
“Is that what you’re going to do, Delaney? Solve this problem?” The fangs were starting to show, his usual hippy-chill attitude peeling away to give me a peek at the animal inside.
“I understand you take care of your own and the threats against them. But this is murder and I am the law in this town. Even if we buried Sven’s death under a convenient story of him leaving for brighter horizons, we know someone killed him.
“They left him like that so we could find him. So we would know what they did to a citizen of our town. That won’t stand with me. And it shouldn’t stand with you.”
He watched me with that damned steady gaze, the look that made me wonder how many of my fears he was cataloguing to use against me later.
“It wasn’t a threat.” Rossi said.
“Really? Because it looks like a threat to me.”
“It was an invitation.”
The biscuit and bacon I’d eaten earlier turned in my stomach. “Is that what the symbols mean? Some kind of invite?”
“No. The symbols are Sven’s plucking apart, his undoing, his final death. His body is the invitation.”
“To what?”
“War.”
I let that sit between us for a couple seconds. Someone must have closed a door too hard somewhere in the house because the egg shells on their glass pedestals shivered and chimed.
“All right. What war? With whom? Over what? And if other vampires can’t see this ichor techne, then was it an invite to you or to someone else, someone non-vampiric?”
“I was a mortal man many years ago, Delaney. When Rome seemed to rule the world.” A shadow crossed his eyes, but it was not the black of killing. I thought it might be memory or regret.
I couldn’t imagine looking back at memories from so long ago. Rossi had to be over two thousand years old.
Holy crap.
“This has something to do with Sven’s death?”
“I was a soldier,” he continued. “No different than the men beside me. Until we faced an army from the east. We were slaughtered, left broken and bleeding. Their soldiers defeated us. Overwhelmed by numbers, we fell.
“But it was that night, as the wounded got on with the business of becoming the dead that the true enemy arrived. Devils, demons with fangs and a hunger for blood. There were only two of them. Impossibly tall and pale.
“They moved through the wounded, searching, sniffing. I had fallen near another soldier. Near my brother-in-arms. My friend.”
He practically spat that last word.
“I don’t know which of us made a noise. Maybe it was me. That’s...” He shook his head. “Too long ago. But they heard and they came sniffing our way. We were both drawn up and feasted upon. They drank our blood. It was horrifying. Painful. Until it wasn’t. Until we begged for it.”
“Vampires,” I said to break the silence.
“Our makers. My maker.”
“Are they still alive? Do you think they’re behind this?”
“They are not behind this.”
“What about your friend? The other soldier.”
“Lavius is dead.”
“Are you sure?”
He just gave me a long look.
“Then what does this have to do with Sven?”
“Only Lavius and I knew of the ichor techne.”
“You must have learned it from someone. Knowledge gets written down, passed down. Who taught you about it?”
“No one. I created it.”
“Before you were a vampire?”
“No. Many years after.”
Which meant he must have used it to kill vampires. I didn’t know why a vampire would need some fancy way to kill one of his own, and really, that was beside the point.
“Did you have records of it here? Or anywhere else in the world?”
“No. I’ve made sure the art was wiped clean from history, and not even mentioned in the myths.”
Well, he’d done at least part of that. I’d never heard of it before, and I was in the know about the creatures in the world.
“So Sven being left with this drawn across his chest is someone telling you, specifically, they’ve found your old weapon? Other vampires can’t see the markings...how does that work?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you created this blood art thing.”
“Yes. I created it. And it has always been visible to me, to mortals, to creatures including other vampires. I do not know how it has been changed to hide it from vampire sight. I do not know why.”
“Totally ruins your reputation.”
“What reputation?”
“Of being a know-it-all.”
That got a fleeting smile out of him. “Focus, Delaney. This is a crime. You’re supposed to be good at this sort of thing.”
“All right. Tell me how this is a declaration of war.”
“Sven was one of mine.” The heat behind those words carried the strength of a thousand years. When Old Rossi brought a vampire under his wing, he became more than just their friend, he became their defender.
“Who wants to start a war with you? Someone you kicked out? Who hates you enough to want a war?”
Just because he accepted new vampires into Ordinary didn’t mean they always stayed here. Rossi had more rules about bringing in vampires than I did about bringing in gods. If vampires couldn’t live up to those rules, Rossi kicked them out.
Sometimes those partings were amicable, but not always.
“Do you have any enemies who would want you to suffer?”
He snorted. “Countless.”
“I’ll need a list.”
He smiled, and it was almost his normal smile—no teeth. Except for the glitter of red in his eyes, he was very nearly the love-not-war guy I’d known all my life. He leaned away, lounging into the couch, both arms spread wide across the back of it.
“I am not in the habit of measuring how many people hate me, only how many love me, baby.”
“Nice try, hippy. That’s not a love letter.” I pointed at Sven. Then a terrible thought crossed my mind. “Is it?”
“No. It is not.”
“So give me names. Who have you made angry who might also have access to the ichor techne?”
Old Rossi sighed, and rubbed one hand over his hair, the most human gesture I’d seen out of him since I had walked into the room. He stared at Sven as if unable to look anywhere else. “I don’t know. There is no one who comes to mind.”
“Really?”
“Despite what you must think of me, I am a fan of peace and non-violent conflict resolution.”
“Okay. So what do we do next?”
“We’ll bury him. Hold a memorial service.”
“I meant about his killer. About the invitation. The war.”
“I don’t know yet.”
“We need a plan. Is there anything here we can go on? Anything that could be a lead? This town has resources we can call on, both mundane and godly.”
“Let’s keep the gods out of it. The only ones who might do me any good would be carrying their power, and when they carry power they do not listen to the needs of the undead.”
“The gods in town could help even without their powers.”
“I’d rather snip my left nut off than owe any of them a favor.”
I could see he felt strongly about this.
“You might not have a choice in that. But I’ll start with police records. See if there have been any unusual deaths in the area, things involving blood markings or shots between the eyes.”
He was still staring at Sven, but grunted. I took that as an agreement and stood. I still hadn’t dried out from the rain and the back of my thighs and butt felt cold.
“We’re collecting information from the folks at the gas station and the people in the area who might have seen or heard something. I’ll let you know if I find anything. If there’s anything else you need, let me know.”
Just before I opened the door, he spoke.
“How much do you know about Ryder?”
That sent chills over my chills. “Ryder Bailey?” At least I hadn’t said: the guy I still can’t stop loving even though he dumped me?
“Ryder Bailey.”
“Um...well, we grew up together. His Dad retired to Florida and left him the cabin on Easy Lake that they remodeled together from the floor up. High school athlete, popular guy.”
Handsome, funny. Kind. Always helping anyone who needs a hand.
“Came back to town just over a year ago with a fancy degree and clients and set up his own architecture business.”
Folds origami, hangs his own art in his living room. Sexy as hell in bed. Gentle. Tastes like something deeper than caramel, something all his own. Something I wake up in the middle of the night craving.
“Hates rhubarb. Why?”
“That is Ryder’s blood.”
My stomach knotted and I glanced down at Sven. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Just his?”
“No. It is mixed with Sven’s. That is an important part of the art.”
“Mortal blood and vampire blood?”
“Yes. Killer and victim.”
I shuddered. “You’re telling me Ryder killed Sven.”
“I’m telling you that’s his blood. We won’t know he’s the killer until I question him.”
I let go of the door knob. “You won’t be questioning him.”
Rossi shifted, his eyebrow lifted, eyes steady on mine. “Won’t I?”
“No. Ryder is a mortal. That means he falls under mortal law. I will question him and you’ll keep your hands off him.”