Constance frowned. “I think he’s under pretty good. I couldn’t get a good read on him, but as soon as he saw the spider, he… changed. He was happy to see him.” She shook her head. There was more, but it was difficult to explain auras to people who couldn’t see them. The way their auras had blended together, that red spark between them, worried her.
“You think it’s his persuasion?”
The other option was too awful. How could a Hunter possibly care for one of those things? “I’ve never met a familiar, but yeah, I think so.”
Selena nodded, but kept her own counsel for now, and then touched her earpiece. “Bowie, we’ve got eyes on both the werespider and the familiar. How’s it going with the vampire?”
There was no response. Constance picked up on Selena’s sudden worry, and they shared a glance. Then Selena’s cell phone began to vibrate. She answered quickly, on the first ring.
“Selena.” Ryan’s voice was quick and serious. “We’re having some technical difficulties on this end.” Beside him, his computer screen was bright blue. White text in neat lines broadcasted a nonstop repeating error message, thousands of times per minute until the core memory finally ran out and the whole works crashed. “The whole system’s overloaded.”
“A bug?” guessed Selena.
“I’m not sure,” said Ryan. “But the comms are down, as is the security feed.”
“Keep trying to restore communications,” said Selena. “We’ll keep you posted via text message.”
They got back inside, and Stefan glowered at them. “Took you long enough. I gotta piss like a racehorse.”
This was hardly surprising considering the amount of time they had been following the two of them, though it was agitating. “Make it quick,” said Selena.
Stefan nodded and went down the stairs. Underneath them was a small alcove leading to a little hallway with a “ladies” sign on one end and a “gentlemen” sign on the other. The men’s room was getting crowded by this time of night, and he shouldered his way to a urinal. Surveillance was boring; they had them right there in front of them, what were they waiting for? If Stefan were in charge, the demons would be dead already, and maybe the Hunter too. The way he’d heard it, familiars were just as bad as demons, and any Hunter stupid enough to fall under their spells was hardly a Hunter at all.
He washed his hands, drying them on his pants since the paper towels had already run out. He was headed to the door when Craig came in, an absent smile on his face. Stefan made sure his shoulder slammed into his as he passed. Craig turned and glared at him, the cheap light fixtures making his eyes seem to flash.
“Sorry, bro,” Stefan sneered. “Didn’t see you there.”
“Uh, well, you’re excused.” Craig turned to walk away, but Stefan just couldn’t let him.
“Nice jacket. You know this isn’t a leather bar, though, right?”
Craig halted. Beside the werespider, he looked to be an average height, but up close he was quite large—taller than Stefan, with the build of an Olympic swimmer or sprinter. He looked back at him, the glare still held in his eyes. “Do you have a problem, man?”
“Yeah, I think I do.” Selena chirped in his ear and started to let him know that communications had been restored, but her voice cut out halfway, replaced by a loud burst of static feedback. He touched his ear, wincing slightly. The other man was staring at him with narrowed green eyes. He glanced down, glanced back up. Stefan wished he’d try something, but he was still.
The first few chords of “Sympathy For The Devil” by the Stones briefly sounded, and Craig took his eyes off him just long enough to retrieve the phone from his pocket.
Stefan opened his mouth to ask whether that was his boyfriend checking to make sure he hadn’t drowned in the toilet, when another burst of static interrupted his thoughts. Selena was still trying to get through. “I gotta go,” said Stefan.
Chapter Seventeen
—
Pressure
The Hunter left the bathroom, and Jasper was sure that he was right in his assumption. Once he’d really gotten a good look at him, it was impossible not to see the signs—the heavy pair of combat boots, the flinch of microphone feedback, the way he was built and how he carried himself. He’d been paranoid for days, always looking over his shoulder, but he was right, though he got no satisfaction from this.
They had to get out of here.
“Hello?” The music was so loud he could hardly hear Alcander on the other side of the phone. He jammed his finger into his other ear to block out some noise. “Al, what’s going on? Are you alright?”
“I think so,” said Alcander’s voice, soft, hesitant. “For now.” There was a pause, then, if possible, his voice grew smaller. “Is Crimson with you? He won’t answer his cell phone, and I need to speak to him.”
“He’s in the other room,” said Jasper. “Is something wrong? I can give him a message or… Are you in some sort of trouble?”
There was a tense, drawn pause. Jasper thought of the probable Hunter he’d just run into and felt sudden, racing panic. “Is somebody with you, Alcander?”
Silence.
“Al?”
“I’m here.” He was obviously scared. “Alright, I’ll tell you.” But he didn’t, not right away. Jasper wanted to scream at him to hurry the fuck up. Crimson was alone in the other room, and where there was one Hunter, there was almost always bound to be more. “Someone has patched into the hotel’s surveillance system, and they have been using it to track your and Crimson’s movements. I have waylaid them for now, but I have reason to believe they are Hunters.”
“Jesus Christ, Al, why didn’t you lead with that?” Jasper strode quickly back into the main room. The crowd was denser than it was before, and fucking Crimson had wandered off and lost himself in it during the five minutes they were separated. Jasper looked frantically around, searching first for the werespider’s familiar face, then for the less familiar one from the bathroom. Neither jumped out at him. “Al! Are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“You should have just told me. I coulda been looking for him this whole time. Why didn’t you—”
“Because they are here for you,” said Alcander. And just like that, all sound seemed suddenly muted. He could only hear Alcander’s voice—small and scared and strained. “I followed the patch backwards to them. The details on the electronic report are fairly slim, and I am still decrypting it, but… it is you, isn’t it? Undercover mission. Rogue operative. You are supposed to kill us.”
Charlie had altered the details of his file when he went undercover, so he had never been concerned that the smart little vampire could find him that way. Obviously, he’d found some sort of mission briefing, probably issued to the Miami Hunters via Charlie.
He could deny it. That was what he wanted to do. But Alcander was not an idiot. He’d know. He already knew. Jasper looked around again, scouring the crowd with trained eyes. “God, don’t tell Crimson. I’m not going to hurt you guys. Al, you know that, right?”
His gaze went up and trailed the balcony. He saw the black-haired girl who had spoken to him earlier and, not far away, the Hunter, both of them pretending to be very engrossed in a very serious conversation. Jasper thought “pretending” because the way their lips moved, they were speaking in regular, conversational tones, which they couldn’t have heard with the noise of the club unless they were both talented lip-readers. So that was two. At least two, plus (from what he knew about typical hunting teams and considering the information from Alcander) whoever was there from tech, and (since it was Florida and half the fucking population seemed to use some form of magic) probably someone from the magical division as well. So four.
At least four…
Where the blue fuck is Crimson?
“Are you okay, Al? They’re not there, right?”
“I have traced the IP address to a building in Coconut Grove, just over five miles away. I am sure they are bouncing the signal; it could be
from almost anywhere. I am trying to get a better point on it.”
The vampire was talking low and fast, panic building. Jasper felt a stab of sympathy and guilt. He shouldn’t have left him alone. “I’m not going to let them hurt you either. Either of you.” Alcander hadn’t even done anything to warrant it.
“What about when they try to hurt you?” murmured Alcander.
That was a good question. He compartmentalized it. There were many bridges that needed crossing before he came to that one. “Stay in the hotel room. Call me if anything happens. And keep calling Crimson. I can’t find him.” Keeping a weather eye on the two Hunters above, he hung up the phone and started to elbow his way through the crowd. This was a nightmare. God, he could really use a…
Cigarette.
He felt so stupid he could have screamed. He looked around for the “smoking” sign. There wasn’t one, but a bright red “EXIT” sign was posted above a fire escape door. Some cheeky young artist had crookedly spray-painted “& Smoker’s Lounge” in drippy, yellow lettering off to the side of it. He wove his way in that direction. Above him, a thirtysomething woman with short-cropped black hair and a blue dress descended the steps a little too casually.
He went straight for the fire exit. It was propped open with a doorstop, a sliver of the night outside showing. He burst through the door, the words already coming out of his mouth. “Crimson, we have to… go…?”
A very drunk-looking man in an old letterman jacket blinked blearily at him with an unlit cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.
Moments ago, he believed that his heart was racing. Now, he saw that he was mistaken. Hands clenching at his sides, he spun around and marched back into the club. He was making a beeline for the staircase. He didn’t know what he was going to do when he got there, just that he had to do something,
That was when he noticed the short-haired woman standing against the wall and looking pointedly away, near a beaded curtain. It was so close to the smoke machine that he hadn’t noticed it earlier. His eyes darted up to the other two. They were out of sight now, no longer near the railing. Then back to the lady in blue. Was she one of them? As inconspicuously as he could, he made his way over to the curtain and brushed the beads aside.
The room beyond was lit almost exclusively by old neon signs, some of them from brands long expired, and wallpapered in napkins with scribble art. Keeping his back to the wall, looking first ahead and then behind, and then ahead and then behind, he reached for his gun and inched down the short, low-lit corridor. The sound of bass thumped in the walls, the ceiling, under his feet, and in his chest. There were raised voices up ahead, but making out individual words through the music was impossible.
He stopped near a bend at the end of the hallway and stole another glance quickly behind him. Then he turned on the flashlight on his phone and shined it into the dark corners at either side of the door. The woman hadn’t followed him. At least, not yet.
Laying his palm on the backstrap of his pistol and shining the light ahead, he rounded the corner all at once.
The gun was halfway out of the holster when his eyes finally understood what he was seeing, and he quickly let go.
A large group of young women were nestled around a table, playing some sort of drinking game. One of them was wearing a little plastic crown with spikes fashioned to look like cartoony penises. Right smack in the middle of the group, with a pile of shot glasses already heaped in front of him, was Crimson.
“Heya, Jazz!”
It was a miracle he didn’t crush his own cell phone, he was gripping it so tightly. “What are you doing?”
“Samantha’s getting married next week,” said Crimson, and all of the very wasted ladies cheered and “whoo’d” like this were new information they hadn’t heard before. “We’re playin’ Never Have I Ever. I’m losin’ real bad.”
“Who—” began Jasper, but that wasn’t the question he really wanted to ask. “Why—” he began again, but that still wasn’t the question. In fact, there wasn’t any question. “We have to leave.” He grabbed the back of Crimson’s chair and wrenched it away from the table. “Now.”
The group of women “aww’d” and “how come’d,” but Crimson was on his feet in an instant. “What’s up?”
It was entirely too much to explain. “Al.” That was a good enough summary, and it would definitely get him moving, away from the Hunters, back to the hotel, and back to Alcander, but what he would do when he got there and fully understood the truth, Jasper did not know. At least Al would be taken care of.
The red in his eyes shone as brightly as the neon signs around them. He took off at a quick clip, not quite jogging, but neither walking. As they were nearing the end of the hall, Jasper remembered the woman. “Wait. I think there might be Hunters. In the club.”
Crimson rounded on him without breaking stride. “You think or you know?”
“I’m pretty sure,” said Jasper. “Almost positive.” At least that was true. “I counted at least three.”
“What about Al?”
“I… I don’t know. He sounded scared, but he didn’t say they were there.”
Crimson took hold of his hand, pulling him back into the club proper. “C’mon.”
The woman with the short hair was gone from her previous place on the other side of the curtain. Jasper looked around for her again, but his eyes found Lindsay and her friend before they found any of the Hunters.
“There you guys are!” Lindsay yelled over the music, grabbing Jasper’s other hand and pressing a sloppy kiss against his lips. “You disappeared. I thought you bailed! Come dance with me!”
“Lindsay, we gotta go.” He pulled his hand from hers, his gaze darting around the club. He saw the man he’d encountered in the bathroom, glaring right at them.
“Yeah, let’s get outta here,” Lindsay agreed. “We can go to my place! My roommate’s at her parents’ this weekend, so we can be alone.”
A different sort of panic rose in Jasper’s throat. “I—uh…” He looked away from the Hunter, casting Crimson a look.
“We’re gonna need a rain check, babe,” Crimson said. “It’s my brother. He’s a bit of a basket case—thinks people are after him, watching him through his webcam and shit. Jazz here is the only one who can talk him down when he gets nuts. We’ll catch up with you tomorrow.”
“Oh,” Lindsay looked disappointed, but she bought it. “Okay. Well, I hope everything works out okay.”
“Thanks,” Jasper said, unsure if he spoke loud enough to be heard. He raised his voice. “Get home safe.” He hoped the Hunters wouldn’t follow her but couldn’t worry about that now. They had to get back to Al.
Crimson led him through the club. Jasper had never been on the other side of the Hunters and found he was terrified. He knew exactly what they were capable of. They knew where they were staying; they knew where they went out. God, he’d been so stupid. He should have argued more with Crimson, convinced him to go somewhere else. But he hadn’t wanted to leave. No, he had been having too much fun, and he’d met a girl who seemed to like him, and he was such an idiot.
The night was muggy but still cooler than the crowded club behind them. Jasper wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. It wasn’t far to the hotel. “They know where we’re staying. Al said they were watching the security feeds. We have to get him and go.”
“If Al’s been fuckin’ around with their security-whatevers, they probably think we know, don’tcha think? And if they know that we know, they’re gonna expect us to react like we know, y’know?”
“Crimson, I have no idea what you’re trying to say to me right now. We have to leave.”
Crimson’s eyes flickered. “It’s the middle of the night, we don’t have a car, and even if we got one, they’re expectin’ us to run. How far do you think we’d get? Are there only four of them? Or are there six? Or eight? Or ten?” He was talking quickly and quietly now, his voice barely above a whisper, his lips hardly moving. “They
could be all around us right now. They look just like everyone else.”
Jasper looked behind them and saw the girl who’d been talking to him—Constance—walk out of the club, pause at the curb, and then cross the street.
“What are we going to do?” Jasper asked.
“We just act like we don’t notice them,” said Crimson. “Because if we did know, we’d obviously run. If we don’t run…”
“Then they think we’re still in the dark.” Jasper understood.
“A trap only works when you don’t see it comin’.” He paused, lit a cigarette, took a drag and handed it to Jasper. “You like plans, right? Let’s make a plan.”
#
Jasper was suspicious of everyone in the lobby, from the pair of women having drinks at the in-house bar, to the middle-aged man reading a magazine, to the receptionist who smiled at them from behind the front desk. They took the stairs, and though Jasper went as fast as he could go, he could tell Crimson was impatient with the speed. Jasper told him to go ahead, to check on Alcander, but Crimson only told him to hurry up.
The door was bolted when they reached it. “Al, it’s us,” Jasper began.
Crimson leaned around him, slamming his fist against the door with three booming knocks. “Open the fuckin’ door, Doc!” A few seconds later the door was opened, and the vampire let them in, closing it quickly behind them.
#
“Did anyone come by the room?” asked Crimson as he entered. “A maid or…”
“No,” said Alcander. Crimson didn’t know why he bothered asking. No new scents were in the room. “I never let them in. They leave everything by the door in the morning.”
“The cameras?” asked Crimson.
Alcander pointed stiffly to the laptop that sat open on the bed. “They are down right now.” Something about the way the vampire was acting wasn’t sitting right with him. “The staff is working on getting them back up. I’m not sure—”
“Can you bring them back up?”
Alcander clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth like this was a stupid question. Maybe it was. For all he knew, the things ran by magic, as well as electricity. “If I bring them back online, the hotel and whoever is patched into them will have access to them too.”
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