“Do you live here?” I finally asked, pulling my hand away from his. I’d realized with a start that I had no idea where he was currently residing. Sean came and went like smoke through a keyhole (a trick no real vampire could actually do). I knew he wasn’t staying at the Factory, but beyond that, I hadn’t even considered where he was holed up.
“On the beach? Hardly a place for a vampire to reside,” Sean said wryly.
“In West Seattle,” I said, not amused.
Sean reached over and smoothed my hair, smirking as he did. “If you want me to take you home with me, Henrietta, all you need to do is ask.”
“You’re such an ass,” I said, getting to my feet. “You really won’t give me any blood?”
Sean shook his head. “I can’t do that. I understand your reasons for providing the scientist with your blood. I do.” He met my eyes. His were almost black in the dimness, and the look he gave me was intense, pressing the truth of his words upon me. “I will never hold it against you. But I cannot allow my blood to be toyed with in such a way. And anyhow, I don’t believe your scientist can help you. When you are restored to me, it will be my own doing.”
I shook my head, pressure squeezing my chest. “Or I’ll die first, and never get to be immortal again.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said, making sure it sounded as sarcastic as I could make it. I turned and walked up the beach.
I didn’t need empty promises. I needed action. I needed blood.
And there was only one other vampire I could ask.
Chapter 7
I hovered in the doorway of the guest bedroom that had become a sick room for Cazimir. He lay on the bed completely still, a porcelain sculpture of a man with a narrow nose and pouty lips, his short blonde hair the only proof he wasn’t actually sculpted out of marble. He wore a silk robe that was different than the one he’d worn last time I was here. Ry, his fledgling-turned-sire, was clearly taking good care of him.
When he was awake, Cazimir spoke in an exaggerated French accent and went by the surname De Roi, which was definitely a nom de plume. I had no idea what country he’d been born in or when, only that it was over three hundred years ago, and by the time he’d met up with Sean in the 1700s, he was living in France and he was already a vampire.
Now he was a sleeping statue, a corpse preserved by magic that should have animated him and let him be the vibrant, melodramatic, over-the-top vampire he’d once been.
“Fucks you up, doesn’t it?” Ryuto said. He smelled of cigarettes and aftershave.
Vampires are stuck with whatever hair they have when they’re turned. Ry was clean-shaven now, so I assumed he had some facial hair he was shaving off every night. He wore an orange t-shirt with the black silhouette of fangs on the front that had probably come from last year’s Halloween discount bin. “Seeing him like that, I mean. It isn’t right.”
“No,” I agreed. “It isn’t.”
Ry had led me up here almost thirty minutes ago and I’d stood and stared at Cazimir as if I could wake him by sheer will. If that were true, Ry’s will would have done it weeks ago. Even now, Ry’s face was drawn, and he bounced pensively from foot to foot, staring at the man who’d turned him into a vampire.
I gave Cazimir one more long look and left the room, closing the door behind me. We headed downstairs to his modest-sized living room. A new Lego project, this one a medieval castle of some sort, sat in progress on the coffee table. A Tupperware bin full of Lego bricks had been pushed beneath the table. An ashtray sat on the corner, along with a pack of cigarettes.
Ry sat on the sofa and gestured that I should take a seat beside him. I did, putting my purse on the end table next to me.
Ryuto had been made a vampire in his late twenties or early thirties. He was a handsome guy of Japanese descent, with black hair and blue eyes. He spoke with a slight Canadian accent, since that was where he’d grown up, which explained the giant painting of Vancouver, BC on the wall above the fireplace. I stared at it now, admiring the brushwork. Ry had been into painting for a while, so he’d told me. The Legos were a relatively new hobby, I gathered.
“I wish I could tell if he’s still in there,” Ry said. “I feed him blood a few times a week, but I might as well be funneling it down the throat of a corpse for all he reacts.”
“I’m sure he’s there,” I said, because I had to believe that. I told him Sean’s story, about Angela’s opium den fledgling and how she had been convinced he was in there.
“If anyone could tell, she could,” Ry said. “Have you met her? She’s…” He trailed off and reached for his pack of smokes.
“Terrifying?” I supplied.
He smiled and lit the cigarette, taking a long drag and holding it before blowing out smoke. “I was going to say ostentatious. But she is damn scary, the way she can read your mind.”
“It’s a little weird,” I agreed.
“Sometimes I wish I had half the powers the comic books think we do, you know? Like mind control would come in handy if someone started to get suspicious.” He waved a hand in the air and spoke in an exaggerated voice. “‘Nothing to see here, mortal. Your neighbor is normal and boring, not a creature of the night.’” He grinned. “But telepathy? That’s one I’m glad I don’t have to contend with.”
At that moment, I’d have been happy to have any powers at all. My ability to see people’s last moments in their blood barely counted. And Neha’s Cure had stripped me of all the rest.
Ry leaned forward to ash his cigarette. “Do you think she’d come?”
“Angela?” I asked, startled.
“Yeah. I mean, if I can get in touch with her, do you think she’d come and tell me if he’s in there?”
I considered his question. Angela and I hadn’t spoken in decades. But I didn’t see any reason why she wouldn’t come. I didn’t think she had any deep connection to Cazimir, but if Ryuto had met her, it was likely she’d spent some time at the Factory. That would have been fun to see.
Angela had a way of wigging everyone out because she’d snatch thoughts right out of the air and act as though her ability to hear them was normal. And, though she wouldn’t outright admit it, I’d seen her plant thoughts into people’s heads, which was three times as frightening. Vampire stories often called the mind-control trick Ry had mentioned “glamouring” people. Angela was the first and only vampire I’d ever met who could actually do it.
I wondered what she’d make of me now, mortal and human. At least she’d believe that it hadn’t been a choice. She might also believe I was a Blood Traitor, and deserved to die for my role in the Cure’s creation.
“She might if you ask,” I said finally.
“Not gonna lie, at this point I’d try just about anything,” Ry said. He leaned close to me, the smell of smoke overpowering as he whispered conspiratorially, “I poked him with a needle.”
“Seriously?”
He smiled and leaned forward to ash his cigarette again. “He bled for half a second and then healed. But he didn’t so much as twitch.”
“Wow.”
We were both silent for a moment. I rolled the implications of that over in my head.
“It’d be better to know,” Ry finally said, like he was answering his own internal question rather than speaking to me.
Part of me didn’t want to know. Not if Caz was really gone.
“Hey, what if there were another way to help him?” I asked.
Ry raised his eyebrows and then he rolled his wrist and hand in a go on gesture.
“The scientist who created the Cure is working on an antidote,” I said, and waited to see how this landed. Inwardly, I braced myself for outrage or annoyance or even straight-up growling at the mention. Instead, Ry snorted derisively.
“Right. I’m completely sure she is,” he said, shaking his head.
“She owes me,” I said.
“She owes me a hell of a lot, too,” he said, tilting his head upwar
d, toward the ceiling. Ry had never met Neha, but Cazimir was collateral damage.
I pressed on. “The thing is, in order for her to make an antidote, I need to get her some vampire blood. Since mine isn’t vampiric anymore.”
Ry opened his mouth and closed it again, tilting his head to examine me as if I had magically appeared on the sofa beside him in place of the person he thought he’d been talking to.
“I don’t need much,” I said. “Just a few vials.”
Ry scratched his arm and took another drag on his cigarette, the tip turning to ash. “I’ll think about it.”
“Thanks,” I said, relieved. It wasn’t a flat-out no, and Ry had something at stake. “If it is the Cure that’s keeping him unconscious…”
“I don’t think it is,” he said firmly. “But let me ruminate on the hazards of being a Blood Traitor. I don’t have a lot of friends among our kind. Not sure I want to make a lot of enemies.”
“Making enemies means you’re doing something right,” I said, repeating something Sean had once said. I stood. “I should get going. Can I do anything? For Caz? Or…”
Ry shook his head and pulled the unfinished Lego structure closer to him. “Nah. I’m all right. I’ll let you know if there’s any change. In the meantime,” he patted the Lego structure, “Castle Cazimir isn’t going to build itself.”
I smiled. Some vampires coped with eternity by traveling constantly and never putting down roots. Some tried to push any and all boundaries they came across, like Sean. Some, like Cazimir or Lark, tried to establish positions of power and create legendary personas around themselves. Ryuto opted for a hobby to tinker away the hours. I, myself, had spent a lot of time watching late night television, and had become enamored with police procedurals like Law & Order. Maybe it was time for me to get a hobby of my own.
“Catch you later,” he said.
“Hey,” I said. “Warn me if Hurricane Angela agrees to come to town.”
Ry smiled. “Do my best. But you know how she is. More likely to show up out of the blue than answer her phone.”
That sounded about right. I opened the door and was relieved to breathe the fresh autumn air outside. It had gotten late, and my mortal muscles felt heavy. I headed home to get some sleep.
Chapter 8
I slept until midafternoon, and had just showered and dressed when my phone rang. The number had the Seattle area code 206, but was otherwise unfamiliar to me. I figured it was probably Erin on a different line or something, so I answered instead of letting it go to voicemail.
“You need to get down to the Factory,” a voice said. It took me a second to place it and realize it was Elliot, the mortal vampire groupie who’d been kind of a dick to me last night.
“What? Why?” I asked. I had no desire to go to the Factory, a vampire den, in the middle of the day. Or at all, really.
“Just go,” Elliot said. He sounded tired. “And if Lark survives, tell her I wasn’t part of this idiotic plan.”
He hung up. I stared at the phone, my caffeinated-deprived brain struggling to make sense of the call before the line about “if Lark survives” registered. Then I flew out the door.
* * *
Smoke billowed out of the Factory. And not black incinerator smoke from the chimney, either. It poured out of the fourth-floor windows. The west-facing windows had shattered from the heat. Plumes of dark smoke filled the frames.
The fire department hadn’t arrived yet, but it wouldn’t be long. Pioneer Square was bustling in the daytime, and though the Factory was a little way up the street from the center of the action, someone was bound to notice the smoke and realize something was very wrong, if they hadn’t already.
The fourth floor housed the Factory’s library, full of very flammable books and ancient paper. As I raced toward the fire, I caught sight of several familiar faces standing across the street. I skidded to a halt and made eye contact with Brad, the gothy mortal boy who’d been angry and surly to me in the bar. His glare was full of hatred: for me, for Lark, for vampires in general. One of the girls next to Brad said something, her eyes wide. The others who stood with them were all staring, glass-eyed and slack-jawed, at the flames. I wondered what the hell they’d expected when they’d set the fire. Brad, though, smirked proudly.
This was their doing. Had to be. That explained Elliot’s warning call and insistence he wasn’t part of this idiotic plot. Setting fire to a place a vampire sleeps in is the ultimate betrayal. It was a suicide mission. Most of the mortals seemed to realize that, given their grave expressions.
A windowless van pulled between me and the ex-Factory mortals. I decided the fire was more urgent and headed toward it, but I glanced back when the van pulled away and all of the mortals were gone, too chickenshit to stay behind and watch their dirty work unfold.
The Factory’s front door was unlocked. There were no security guards around like usual. Somehow, the mortals had gotten rid of them. A cold feeling snaked through my midsection at how far these spurned groupies were willing to go for revenge.
The air smelled of smoke, but it wasn’t too thick on the first floor. I knew Lark slept on the third, or had last time I’d seen her room. I rushed up the stairs, the smoke getting thicker as I reached the second floor. I coughed and continued up the stairs, bumping into Lark who was heading down from her bedroom.
She was in a dressing gown with a huge winter coat thrown over it, wide-eyed and bewildered. Her black hair was in Bantu knots against her scalp. She stared at me and then hissed with fangs.
I tried to ignore the threatening display, even as my hair stood on end and ice trickled down my spine.
“I’m here to help,” I said. “Is there a back door?”
She blinked at the question, her predatory expression fading into something that almost looked human. “What?”
“We have to get out of here,” I insisted. I sneezed as smoke tickled my nostrils. It was getting thicker by the second.
“I am aware,” she said, projecting a calmness I wouldn’t feel if my house were on fire. “But it’s daytime and there’s nowhere close by…”
Vampires could travel in daylight for short distances if they were properly protected from the sun. But even a centimeter of skin exposed to sunlight would burst into flame. And if one stood out in the sunlight even in layers of clothes for long enough, they’d start to smolder and burn. That was the truly sick part of the mortals’ plan to set this inferno. The vampires were damned if they stayed in a burning building, and damned if they ran out into the sunlight.
“Who’s still living here?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Bea was on the fourth floor, but I suspect she’s lost.”
“Well, fuck,” I said. Bea was the librarian vampire who kept things orderly and managed the library, which was now engulfed in flames, from what I could tell. The fact that Lark used the past tense told me she had probably tried to make her way up there before heading down. Bea hadn’t liked me much, but I couldn’t exactly blame her for getting on the Everyone Hates Henri train. I was sorry to hear she was probably dead. “Who else?”
“Harold. He’s down here.”
She raced ahead of me. Smoke thickened in the air, making my eyes water and my throat itch. And then I saw flames at the top of the third-floor landing. I ran after Lark. There wasn’t a lot of time. Vampires are very flammable, and as a human, I could die of smoke inhalation or burn as well as the immortals. We had to get out of this death trap of a Factory before it was too late.
Lark pounded on a door. A moment later, a vampire wearing blue pajama bottoms and unwashed eyeliner smeared around his eyes opened it. I recognized him as a vampire I’d seen here a while back. He’d been kind of a dick and I’d dubbed him “Count Gothula.” Now he was bleary-eyed and confused, especially when he noticed me, and then finally the smoke.
“Get covered up,” Lark told him. “Meet us at the back door.”
“It’s daytime,” he said, still not quite awake.
The Factory was old, made of brick and sturdy stuff. It had been partially burned during the Great Fire in 1889 and then quickly restored. But the flames now had brand new carpet to fuel them, along with plenty of wood. The fire was spreading fast.
“You won’t both fit in my trunk,” I said, following her down the hall. I coughed as smoke and ash filled my mouth and lungs.
“You have a vehicle. We can make it work,” she said confidently, but her voice was strained. As we headed back toward the steps, flames were licking down the third floor stairs, nearly at the second. Lark shouted back for Harold to hurry. There were no fire extinguishers on the wall, and I highly doubted this place was up to code.
Lark zipped down the stairs at vampiric speed and I ran as fast as I could behind her. The heat from the flames above was so oppressive that I could barely breathe.
“I knew I should have reopened the tunnel.”
“The tunnel?” I asked.
“A connection to the underground. I was told it caved in years ago. I should have done that first.”
She opened a coat closet at the back of the house and pulled out a long jacket just as Harold came bounding at us. He wore black leather gloves, a long black leather duster, and he held a motorcycle helmet. I’d bet the tempered glass in its visor was sun-resistant.
Lark put on a ski mask, hat, and gloves, and pulled the hood of her jacket over her head. She looked ready to hit the slopes in a hazmat zone.
“I’ll get my car,” I said, ducking out the door.
I coughed as I ran. My lungs burned and my eyes were dry. I heard sirens in the distance. They were close. I needed to be faster. I got into my sedan and peeled out of the spot, getting dirty looks from pedestrians crossing the street.
I pulled into the alley behind the Factory. My heart pounded in my chest. The sirens were already so loud, I thought they might pierce my eardrums. I saw a big, red fire truck roar up the street and park in front of the Factory.
Sanguinity (Henri Dunn Book 3) Page 5