“You—”
“Quit wasting time,” I said. “You think you’ll make your boss mad? How mad will he be if Greta dies because you didn’t want to bother him?”
Jimmy chewed on his lip, then pulled a walkie-talkie from his waist and spoke quietly into it. He held his hand up to the white earpiece in his ear and nodded. “Mr. Breunig is on his way.”
We waited. Greta moaned, and Callie and I stared at the guard, who watched us with hooded eyes, until the glass door flung open and the vampire, Asa, stepped out. He looked at us, then at Greta, then his lips curled up in a snarl.
“Easy,” I said. “I don’t think it’s in your best interest to throw down here on the sidewalk. Besides, it won’t do Greta a hell of a lot of good, either.”
Asa’s snarl faded, and the anger drained from his face. “Good point.”
I glanced down at Greta. Her eyes had rolled back in her head until only the whites showed. She had finally stopped whimpering, and there was a visible cloud of smoke rising from the ragged wound in her arm. “Maybe you better carry her.”
Asa started to speak, stopped, then stepped forward and picked Greta up like she weighed nothing. “Follow me.”
Jimmy hurried in front of Asa and held the door open. Asa was halfway through to the lobby when he noticed we weren’t following. “What?”
I cleared my throat. “I want a guarantee that we’ll be safe.”
“I can’t—”
“Say it,” I said, “or we’re not coming. You want to know what happened and how Greta got shot? I want your word.”
The vampire’s head tilted to the side, then he said in a precise voice, “You shall be safe inside these walls, hunter. The both of you. On my life.”
Callie nodded at me, and I said, “Oh, it is. It is on your life.”
* * *
The elevator doors closed with a thunk, and the elevator went down instead of up. “Where are we going?” I asked. I wasn’t nervous, exactly, but I wondered if my sudden confidence in my ability to handle Asa bordered on the delusional.
“Relax, hunter. You have my word. In my time, a man’s word meant everything.”
Callie reached out and took Greta’s limp hand. “Can you heal her?”
Asa frowned. “What happened?”
“I shot her by accident,” I said. The vampire raised an eyebrow, and I hastily continued, “I was trying to hit Tessa Spurlock. Spurlock pulled Greta into the line of fire.”
“Spurlock,” Asa muttered. “What about Elijah?”
The elevator reached its destination, and the door opened into a large room nearly as big as the building itself. The walls were white concrete, and there were steel boxes the size of large refrigerators, and then the shock hit me when I realized they were steel refrigerators. “Where are we?”
“Desmond built this place after he bought the club,” Asa said. “Where is Elijah?”
I caught the vampire’s eyes and shook my head.
“No,” Asa muttered. “Not Elijah.”
“Spurlock ripped his heart out,” Callie said. She raised Greta’s hand. “We need to do something to help her. Now!”
Asa nodded. “This way.”
He led us between the refrigerators to the back of the room, where an old-fashioned clawfoot tub waited. It was elegant in a way that modern fixtures never seemed to bother with anymore. The feet were delicately carved claws, almost photorealistic, and the sides were black-textured iron.
Asa lowered Greta into the tub and turned to me. “I need—”
“What the hell is going on?” boomed a man’s voice.
I spun on my heel just in time to see Desmond Jackson storm in. He wore an expansive purple suit and an old-fashioned white derby hat, with enough gold chain around his neck to purchase a decent-sized home. He saw Greta in the tub and the smoke billowing from the bullet hole in her arm, and his face went hard. “I swear—”
“It wasn’t them,” Asa said. He stepped forward and held up his hands. “We need to get blood in her.”
Desmond glared at me, then threw off his hat and dumped the gold chains and jacket in one smooth motion. “Tell Jimmy to clear the club.”
Asa pulled a walkie-talkie from his waistband and spoke urgently into it.
Desmond approached the tub. “She was shot with silver?”
“Yes,” I said. “It was my fault. I was trying to hit Tessa Spurlock.”
Desmond stopped and scowled at me.
“It was an accident.”
Desmond’s eyes narrowed. “What about—”
“Elijah is dead. Spurlock killed him.”
“Tessa did this?”
“She tried to kill us. Did you send Elijah and Greta to spy on us?”
Desmond’s jaw clenched, and his hands trembled.
Uh-oh.
“Greta saved us,” Callie said. “We can talk about this later.”
Desmond’s jaw relaxed. “There any silver left in her?”
I knelt next to the tub and gently raised Greta’s arm. She didn’t move. “It went clean through.”
“Then I’m gonna need your help.” He strode back toward the elevator and grabbed the edge of one of the refrigerators. It was then that I noticed they were on rollers. He flipped the locks on the rollers loose with his expensive leather shoes, yanked the power cord from a dangling power outlet, and pushed the refrigerator back to the tub. “Bring another one, just in case.”
While Desmond fiddled with the first refrigerator, I went to another, unlocked the wheels, and freed the power cable. It was heavy, maybe five hundred pounds, but it rolled smoothly across the concrete floor.
When I reached the tub, Desmond had opened his refrigerator door and was helping Asa with something inside. When they moved, I saw bags of blood hanging from wire racks. They fed into a central line, and Desmond unspooled a clear plastic hose.
“What are you doing with that?” I asked.
“We got to clean the wound. The silver killed the tissue. If it spreads, poor Greta is gonna go up in smoke.” He turned to look at me, and I saw uncertainty in his eyes. “I know you don’t care, hunter, but I gave her the gift. She’s like my daughter, understand?”
I did understand, probably better than anyone.
Desmond removed a bone-handled switchblade knife from his front pocket and pressed a button on the side. The blade snicked out, at least five inches of steel that gleamed in the overhead fluorescent light.
“I’m sorry, child,” he said before grabbing her arm firmly and sticking the blade into the hole in her arm.
Greta gasped. Her eyes snapped open, and she bolted upright in the steel tub. The sounds coming from her mouth were grunts and groans mixed with consonants that never formed words.
“I know it hurts,” Desmond said soothingly. The tip of the knife emerged from the other side of the hole, and he sawed back and forth while spinning the knife in a circle.
Asa dropped to the tub and caught Greta’s other hand before it could strike Desmond’s face.
“Hold her steady,” Desmond said.
Asa frowned. “I’m trying.” He grabbed Greta’s arm with his other hand and put his body weight into it, but when Greta began to lift him from the ground, he grabbed the lip of the iron tub and pulled her back down.
Desmond continued sawing out the flesh around the bullet hole, and Greta thrashed about in the tub, her feet hitting the iron tub so hard it was making small gong-gong noises. He turned to look at me. “I need your help. Hold her feet.”
Callie held her crucifix in a death grip, either to keep Greta from attacking us or to stop it from flaring to life and blasting the other vampires.
Desmond had stopped, the knife sticking through Greta’s arm, and was glaring at me. I knelt by the end of the tub and grabbed Greta’s legs. She wore a pair of skintight jeans, and I marveled that she could get her feet through the minuscule leg holes. She had managed to kick off one of he
r tennis shoes, and her tiny foot kept slipping through my fingers as I struggled to put the shoe back on.
“Dammit, hunter. I said, hold her feet!”
A giggle rose from the back of my throat. The sheer absurdity of the situation had finally gotten to me. I was desperately trying to hold the ankle of a hundred-year-old vampire while her vampire master struggled to cut the skin from a smoking bullet hole.
The giggle finally escaped, and Asa gave me a dark look.
“Sorry, this is just…”
Callie dropped to her knees and softly stroked Greta’s leg. “You’ll be fine, you’ll be fine.”
Greta’s resistance eased. Callie’s words had gotten through, or she had finally run out of energy. Desmond gave Callie a guarded look and said, “I’m almost done.” He spun the knife and then, using his other hand, pulled a lump of smoking skin and muscle from Greta’s arm and threw it on the floor, where it landed with a wet thwack.
The blood had gone black, and it smelled so putrid that I wanted to vomit, but thankfully there was nothing left in my stomach.
Greta stopped moving, and Desmond grabbed the plastic tube from the refrigerator and stuck it into the gaping hole in Greta’s arm.
Asa stood and pushed a button inside the refrigerator, and the tube filled with blood, which finally reached the end of the tube and poured through the hole in Greta’s arm and out the other side. The coppery scent filled the air, and Desmond watched the blood drain from the hole. “We need to get her under.”
I was wondering what that meant when Desmond took hold of Greta’s shirt and simply ripped it in half, then split it apart around her arms. Greta wore a black halter top bra underneath her shirt, and Desmond tore that off, too, exposing Greta’s small breasts.
I must have been staring, because I felt Callie’s hand touch mine.
“What?” I asked.
“I’m not sure you should see what’s coming next,” Callie whispered.
There was another ripping noise as Desmond tore off Greta’s jeans and panties and threw them on the floor next to the remains of her shirt and bra.
“Take off her socks and shoes,” he said.
I fumbled with the socks, trying not to notice the neatly trimmed mound of pubic hair between Greta’s legs. A heat rose inside me, and I wanted to blame it on the change, or the nine months since I had last been intimate with my wife, but I didn’t know if that was the case.
When I finally removed Greta’s socks and shoes and felt the cold, waxy skin underneath, the heat vanished as quickly as it had risen. Asa opened the other refrigerator and started filling the tub with blood from a tube similar to the one that was still inside Greta’s bicep.
“Will this save her?” Callie asked.
As the blood filled the tub, Desmond wiped his thumb across Greta’s forehead. “I cut out the bad part. Hopefully the blood will do the rest.”
A voice in the back of my head pointed out that for a vampire who was more concerned about business than ruling the city, Desmond had planned for this very occasion.
Maybe he thought Garski would come for him one day. Or perhaps he just likes to be prepared. There are an awful lot of people coming to his club, and if they’re volunteering to donate blood, it would be stupid not to take advantage of that.
We watched as the blood rose, covering the bottoms of Greta’s feet, then her waist, and then Desmond removed the tube from her arm and pushed her head under.
She slid down into the tub, disappearing under the blood, and there were no bubbles to mark her breathing or waves to mark her struggling for air. The blood kept filling the tub until it was almost to the rim, and then the tubes finally ran dry and the surface became as still as glass.
* * *
“How long should it take?” I asked.
Desmond said, “We ain’t never done this before.”
I stared at the tub full of blood. The smell was … overpowering. “Since we’re waiting, tell me why you sent them to follow us.”
Asa glanced between the two of us. Desmond watched the tub but finally nodded at him.
“Desmond thought Spurlock might come after you,” Asa said.
“Why?”
“When Spurlock first showed up, we were sympathetic. Silas gave her the gift. When we give the gift, it creates a bond between us and our … children, I guess you can call them.”
Callie sucked in her breath. “When Silas died…”
“It drove her crazy,” Desmond said. “Silas told her about me. How I ran a legal business. How we had an arrangement with the sheriff.”
“You took her in,” I said.
“I told her she could have a place here if she followed the rules.”
“What about the sheriff?”
“I told her no killing. That was the one rule I held her to. No killing.”
“Then what happened?”
“Beats me.”
“Don’t bullshit me,” I said. “There’s something more there. I can tell.”
Asa stared at me with alarm. “You can tell when we lie?”
Callie gave me an unreadable look.
“Maybe,” I said. “I honestly don’t know, but there’s something that you aren’t telling me.”
Desmond hesitated.
“Tell him the truth,” Asa said.
“It ain’t your call—”
“Elijah is dead. Tell him.”
“She was only here for a few weeks,” Desmond said. “She was … lost. I gave her a job tending bar. Maybe it was too soon, being around…”
“People,” Callie said. “Being around people.”
Desmond stroked his chin. “Yeah. Being around people can be tempting. Look, you don’t understand the hunger—”
“I’m beginning to,” I said.
Desmond’s mouth quirked up, but it wasn’t a smile. “I heard that might happen.”
“What did you hear?”
“If you kill enough vampires, you start to become like us. You get stronger and faster. You start to feel … urges.” He hesitated. “Is it true?”
Callie shook her head. “Sam.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I don’t think it will hurt to tell them.” To Desmond, I said, “I’m afraid some of it is true.”
“Which part?”
It was my turn to hesitate. “All of it, I guess.”
“Really?” Asa asked. He stepped around the tub and gave me an appraising look. “How many vampires have you killed?”
I almost told him that it wasn’t enough, but I ignored him. “What happened with Spurlock?”
“She killed one of my customers,” Desmond said. “We found her on the third floor. In the bathroom. It was a man. He owned some kind of consulting company. Always bought drinks for the ladies. A good man.” He paused. “You may think it sounds crazy, but we’ve changed. After our deal with the sheriff … it was hard, at first. You know it’s not just the blood, right?”
I nodded.
“Of course, you do. You know a lot about us, don’t you? Well, it ain’t easy, but you get used to it. Gets easier after a few years. Maybe we didn’t tell Spurlock that. Maybe we messed up somewhere—”
“We didn’t mess up,” Asa said. He was glaring at Desmond, and his lips were drawn back in a snarl. “I told you that woman was crazy. You didn’t want to—”
“That’s enough,” Desmond said.
“Tell them the rest.”
“The rest?” I asked.
“Tessa was sorry,” Desmond said.
Asa shook his head. “She wasn’t.”
“She said she was sorry,” Desmond said, “but I couldn’t afford to give her a second chance. Sorry or not, I couldn’t risk my people. So, I kicked her out of the club. Told her to find a different city.”
“You took care of the body?” Callie asked.
Desmond nodded. “The man didn’t have no close family. I made sure he got reported missing. I
got some money to his niece and nephews. I tried to make it right.”
“Make it right,” I said. “Did you even think about calling Henry?”
“I don’t turn on my people,” Desmond growled. “I didn’t kill anybody. My people didn’t kill anybody. That Tessa, she was a … a refugee, right? I didn’t want any trouble.”
“She became trouble.”
Desmond frowned. “Bodies turned up. I had to do something.”
A cold pit settled into my stomach. “What did you do, Desmond?”
“He set her up,” Asa said.
Desmond spun to glare at Asa. “I tried to fix the problem.”
I finally put two and two together. “You involved Garski.”
“I made a decision to fix the problem.”
“You turned on your own kind,” Asa said.
Desmond staggered back. The successful businessman suddenly looked very tired. He glanced at the tub full of blood. “Garski had been following us for years, but he never came after us.”
“He was content to take care of the pressing threats,” I said.
“You sound like you know him.”
Callie was staring at me. “Other vampires passed through since the sheriff warned you. They were problems as well. Did you fix them, too?”
“When I found out a vampire had stopped in Chicago, I made sure that Garski knew about it. It kept him out of our hair. Kept the city safe, too, so don’t eyeball me like that. I did more to protect this city than you can understand. Turning on your own kind is bad. Real bad.”
“If you gave Spurlock up to Garski, why is she still alive?” I asked.
“She’s tough. She’s may only be thirty or forty years old, but she’s powerful.” He clenched his fists. “How did it happen? How did she … kill Elijah?”
“She must have followed us,” Callie said. “I’m assuming you sent Greta and Elijah to follow us, too?”
“Yeah.”
“We went to see Madame Wang.”
“I know about Madame Wang,” Desmond said. “But why see her?”
“We thought she might help us find the missing men,” I said.
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