by Renee George
"Drag," he said. He touched my cheek. "Are you hurt? You're crying."
I wiped at the tears that fell freely now. "I'm okay," I told him. "We're both okay."
"Where are we?"
"That's a great question. One that I don't have the answer for. But I thought you might be able to help us in that department. There's lettering all over this place like there was in the cave. Maybe you can find us a way out." I kissed him because I'd never been so scared to lose someone in all my life. "I can try that open sesame Latin spell from before."
He quirked a smile at me. "You knew the end was open sesame. I added it for some pizazz."
"I thought that might be the case. I took Latin in college back in the seventies," I told him. "It was more prevalent back then."
He sat up with my help. "I feel so strange," Baz said. He pressed his palm to his chest. "What? This can't be?"
"What can't be?"
"My heart. It's beating."
Uh oh. "Uhm. Can that happen spontaneously in a vampire? You know, without any encouragement from, say, a desperate witch?"
He stared at me. "You mean a witch who is also a necromancer?"
"That too." I hadn't even wondered when he'd gasped for breath what it might mean. Had I changed a vampire back to human? Did Baz want to be human? And if he didn't, would he ever forgive me for fucking up his immortality? "I was freaking out. You weren't responsive. I couldn't even feel your little bug squirming around. So, I gave it a little push."
"And what did you push it to do?"
"To wake up," I said. "That's it."
"Nothing else."
Oh, damn. "And to live. No. I'm sorry, Baz. I wasn't trying to change you, honest. I only wanted you to not be dead."
"But I have been dead for well over a hundred years, Drag. I'm used to it." He stood up and pulled me into his arms. "I'm not mad at you. Let's find a way out of this and see if the effects can be reversed."
"I suck."
He gave me a cheeky grin. "Do you know? Maybe you’re more vamp than witch."
"Or maybe I'm just a tramp," I said. Which was absolute bollocks. Since I couldn't get close enough to ninety-nine percent of all men to live the tramp-fantasy, a love life had been virtually impossible. Until now.
"We’ll test both theories later," he told me. He searched the room quickly after his eyes adjusted to the dark. "I think it has the same open spell."
"I do like predictable bad guys," I said. "Hold on to me." Baz wrapped his arms around me as I stretched out my power to flood the room. "Sapientia enim vocationem. Aperta sesamae."
Instead of being sucked into a black vortex, this time a hole big enough to pass through formed in the wall as light poured in from the corridor on the other side.
"Let's find Time Bomb and Dee, and get the hell out of here," I said.
"If Dee is... Can you?"
"You'd want me to bring her back? Like I did for you?"
"Yes," he told me.
"I'm... you must really care for her." I felt a twinge of jealousy.
"Like you must care for Time Bomb."
"Oh, so like a brother?"
"Not exactly," Baz said. After checking to make sure the coast was clear, we stepped outside the room. "Only kings can make multiple vampires, but all royalty is those who are the first nine to be turned by a king. They are each allowed one person to claim. Dee was mine."
"She's your daughter, then?"
He nodded. "Yes, she is."
"I'll do what I can, Baz. I promise. But first, we have to find them."
We moved quickly but quietly. I tried the open sesame spell on every single wall we passed that might have a room on the other side. I couldn't believe how big the building was, and to have all these stone walls, it made me wonder if we had been somehow transported to a European castle. We heard voices, and since both of us were trained for security, we had little trouble communicating with hand gestures.
We prepared to take down anyone who turned the corner on our hallway, but the voices stopped about fifteen feet away.
"We should have kept the Shifter," I heard one of the men say. "I would have loved to know exactly what it is about their teeth and claws that make them effective weapons against the night creatures."
"It wasn't worth it," the other man said. "The woman was awake, and she had yanked him free of the SUV. I'm not sure we couldn't have gotten near enough to either of them without losing several of our operatives."
My relief was palpable. Dee and Time Bomb hadn't been taken. Dee had protected him. I nodded back to Baz. The tension had eased around his mouth.
The men kept talking. "We were lucky to get the big prize, though. The heir to the throne, now that all his brothers and sisters are dead, and a witch who works for the council. You can't buy this kind of leverage."
"I don't want leverage," his compatriot said. "I want them dead. All of them. Vampires, witches, and Shifters." He spat. "They are a plague on humanity."
"Humans first," his buddy said.
"Humans first," he agreed.
And I'd had exactly enough of their asshole ideology to fuel my rage. I rounded the corner with Baz on my tail to see the two jerk-wad-bigoted-buttheads sitting at a Goddess-damned table in an open area with a refrigerator, microwave, sink, coffee machine, and crappy honor box full of off-brand snacks. This was a damned break room, and the two idiots, one bald, the other, a chubby fellow with yellow-blond hair, were sipping lattes and nibbling on bran muffins.
"Hey, Dumb and Dumber, both of you can fuck right off." I lunged across the table, grabbed a plastic fork from Dumber's plate, and stabbed Dumb in the eyeball with it. His chair slammed back with my effort, effectively throwing him to the floor. I stomped him hard in the chest to knock the wind from him, then kicked him in the head once, rendering him unconscious. I looked up to see Baz with his arm wrapped around the front of Dumber's chest, and he was biting the dude's neck.
"Gross," I said. "You have no idea where that guy's neck has been." Then I smiled. "And hey, you still have your fangs. That's good news, right?"
Baz let go of the guy and laughed. He looked at my guy on the ground. "The old plastic fork in the eye trick." Then to the man he'd just bitten, he said, "Now, my good man, why don't you give me your clothes, you're access pass, and keys to your car."
"Yes," Dumber said. "I will give you my clothes, my pass, and my car."
"I love a compliant fanatic, don't you?" Baz asked.
"You know his clothes are going to be big for you."
He considered the problem for a moment. "Do you know where our things are?"
"Yes," the guy said in a monotone drone. "They are in the safe room."
"Go get them and bring them back here as quickly as you can. Don't let anyone stop you."
"Yes." Dumber nodded. "I won't let anyone stop me."
After the yellow-haired buffoon left the room, I looked at baldy, lying on the ground behind the table. "You know, they probably have good reason to fear us."
Baz's expression darkened. "We didn't start this," he said. "They did. Now, all we can do is finish it."
"Like before," I said. "How's that been working out for you?"
Baz sighed. "I'll give the solution more thought."
I smiled. "And that's why they pay you the big bucks."
Chapter Ten
Dumber had been surprisingly efficient. He'd even brought me the key to the MAN. The blood that Baz had taken from the guy healed up his wounds and expelled the silver. He dressed, and we let the guy walk us right out of the place. It turned out we had been held in a pharmacy company building that was both a castle and a business in the hills just outside of Camdenton. Baz had to bite a few people along the way, of course, because the place had security guards everywhere.
I couldn't believe how efficient he was between biting and hypnotizing. I'm not going to lie—watching him work made my lady parts sing. It was surprisingly bright in the parking lot, but Baz seemed to really enjoy the sun
shine. Dumber drove a blue hatchback. One of those smart cars that got great gas mileage but moved at a snail's pace.
"We're going to have to dump this piece of crap," I told Baz. "Not because it's slow, but because all these gadgets mean we'll be easier to find."
"And it's slow," Baz said.
"Yes." I nodded. "I'm glad we're on the same page." Among our items hadn't been the satellite phone, our only means of communication with the team. "We can't risk calling Gigi or Monty," I said. "These assholes seem to stay one step ahead of us, and we can't risk the safety of our people to make contact."
"My people are gone," Baz said. "I don't have anyone to call now."
I remembered the two jerks, bragging about his brothers and sisters being killed. “I'm sorry about your siblings."
He nodded, his fingers tightening on the steering wheel. "What's our next move?"
"We find a payphone and call Shirley, let her know our status, then we get as far from the payphone as we can before hell rains down on us again."
"Do payphones even exist anymore?"
"These are small towns, so maybe. If we can't find a payphone, any landline will do."
"Do you have her number?"
I dug my wallet from my vest and pulled out her card. Shirley Brothers and a phone number were printed on one side. "Got it."
Baz had been right. Finding a payphone was like searching for the Holy Grail. We'd finally settled on knocking on a few doors in the smaller townships until a sweet old lady named Wilma Perkins let us borrow her phone. She used her cellphone for calling, but her life alert button and cable box were tied to her landline. I know this because she explained it in great detail.
The woman on the other end of the line said. "How can I help you?"
"This is RMCA field Agent Angharad Jones, today's code is Mockingjay." Shirley was a Hunger Games fan.
"Nightlock berry," she said as a challenge.
"Get ready for the reaping," I answered.
"This isn't protocol, Drag. Why are you calling me?"
"Gigi is in a safe house. Any contact I try to make will compromise her and the team."
Shirley didn't say anything for a moment then asked, "What's your status?"
"I have Bazyli Delgados Ravenblood. The new leader of the Ravenbloods, if the rumors about his brothers and sisters are true."
Shirley clucked her tongue. "They are."
"The Saturn guys--"
"The who?" she asked.
"The sabbatianoí," Baz said.
"I heard him," Shirley replied. "They are extinct."
"Not anymore. They are back, and they have allies."
"Shifters?" she asked.
"No. They have born necromancers working for them. I'm pretty sure that's how they're managing to kill the vampires without Shifters."
"Do you have any cash?" she asked.
I looked in my wallet. "Eight dollars and thirteen cents."
"I have five hundred," Baz said.
I raised a brow at him.
"I usually have more, but I didn't think I would need it."
"That'll do," Shirley said. "You two find a cash-only motel to hunker down in while I try to figure out what's going on. Call me tomorrow at nine a.m. for your orders."
"Yes, ma'am," I told her.
"Would you two like some thumbprint cookies?" the elderly woman asked. "I make them with blackberry jam."
"Mmm." I took one and died happily as it practically melted in my mouth. "That's a good cookie," I said, letting the crumbs fly where they may. "Try one," I said to Baz.
He flashed me fang.
I tapped his chest. "I bet other things are working as well."
Baz considered me for a moment then nodded. "Why not?" He picked up a cookie and took a bite. His expression turned from curious to confused to delight. His eyebrows raised. "That's so good," he said.
"Well, you two should take some for the road," Wilma said.
Baz was still munching on Wilma's baked goods when we checked into the El Rancho Resort outside Boonville, Missouri. We'd changed vehicles twice, the latest, an old farm truck, was by far the hardest to track. Even so, we parked around back by another old truck, making it the only two vehicles in the parking lot.
"Welcome to our chalet," Baz said as he opened the outside door to room 205. We'd taken a top floor room facing the road so we could see who was coming and who was going.
The manager, a middle-aged fellow named Ralph with a scraggly beard and porcupine hair, didn't even blink when we asked him about cash. He simply asked, "For the night or for the hour?"
We rented for the night. Forty-five dollars for the stay with a hundred dollar security deposit, refundable at check out, minus any room expenses, like pay-per-porn, using the phone or drinking the not-so-complimentary bottle of water sitting on the television stand that doubled for a desk. "You sure know how to sweep a woman off her feet," I replied.
The room had two double beds with blue bedspreads made of some kind of rough polyester. I took the bed on the right, nearest the door, and instantly stripped the blue atrocity off and onto the floor. Baz raised a questioning brow.
"I'm sure most hotels clean all their bedding, but this doesn't look like it would be one of them."
He laughed. "I'm going to shower."
I wanted to volunteer to join him, but we were being hunted, and that meant, we would have to stay vigilant unless we wanted to end up back in some dungeon. We'd gotten lucky this time and the last, I wasn't sure the Saturn guys would be stupid a third time.
"I'll take first watch, then," I said.
There had been a single wooden chair in front of the desk that held the television. I put it over by the window and cracked the curtain enough for me to see out, but not enough for anyone to see in.
My watch was a snore-fest. Not a single soul walked past our room. And no new vehicles entered the motel parking lot. Baz came out of the bathroom with the tiniest of towels draped around his waist, and I mentally beat myself up for not joining him.
"That was really strange," he said. "I don't remember heated showers feeling that good."
"They felt different when you were... You know. Dead?"
"Yes." He rubbed a small hand towel over his hair to dry it, and I wiped the drool from the corners of my mouth as I watched the muscles of his alabaster chest bunch and shift. He had a smattering of black hair between his pecs that created a line all the way down to below the towel. I knew from when we were escaping that the line went much lower, but I'd been in "save our asses" mode at the time and hadn't been able to really appreciate just how well his body was built.
"Adonis really does fit you," I said.
"You think Aphrodite would have chosen me as her one true love," he said, his voice dropping an octave.
"Uh-hmm. Yep." Porno music began to play loudly, and I thought it was in my head until Baz started laughing.
He sat on the end of my bed. "Our neighbors needed a little mood music, apparently." He gestured toward the bathroom. "I'll take watch now if you want to shower."
I nodded, afraid I'd abandon all professionalism if I said anything else.
The hot water didn't last. I quickly washed my hair and my body as the initial scald turned tepid to cool, managing to get out right before it reached freezing. I stepped out onto the bathmat and froze. Where were the towels? Had there been any towels? I cursed myself for not paying attention.
"Sorry," Baz said. "You'll probably need this." He took the towel from his waist and handed it to me. His thick erection flopped away from his abdomen, pointing in my direction.
I'd never seen anything like that big on a Michelangelo statue. I stepped forward off the towel, and my foot slid across the wet tile in an action so quick, that the only thing that kept me from doing the splits was banging my toes on the commode. “Shit! Ow, piss-hate-damn.”
Baz was there before I could get myself right. He hauled me up onto my feet. I was acutely aware of his skin pressing against my s
kin and all the wonderful sensations that went along with it.
He smoothed my moppy-wet hair back from my eyes. “Are you all right?”
In his arms, the pain was gone. The pain of magic, the pain of my childhood, and the pain in my big toe. "I'm perfect," I said.