by Kelly Meding
I froze. No movement below. No shouts or alerts. I was quickly running out my five-minute clock and had to keep going. Down three more. A narrow, dimly lit hallway came into view. Two bare bulbs hung from broken fixtures, set ten feet apart.
No sense of déjà vu overwhelmed me. No feeling of familiarity filled me or twisted my guts. Rufus said this was where I was kept, but I didn’t remember it—likely because I hadn’t been conscious during the trip down, and I’d certainly been dead during the trip back up. I needed to find the room I was held in.
The air shifted. I sensed it too late to duck properly. The cool body slammed into my shoulders instead of my back. I tucked and twisted and sent the body sailing over me. It hit the paneled wall with a rattling thud and a pained screech. I remained crouched, braced by my left hand, tire iron in the right, while the vampire righted itself with preternatural ease and flipped to its feet.
At first glance, vampire males are often difficult to distinguish from females—the same white-blond hair; the same pale, angular features; the same lithe, flat-chested figures—but this one was definitely female. Her violet eyes flashed. She bared brilliant white fangs. A feral growl bubbled up from her throat. She watched, but didn’t attack.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“The welcome wagon,” I said. “We heard the place had new tenants, and wanted to drop off a fruit basket.”
She sneered. “You are not afraid.”
“I used to kill things like you for a living.”
“Used to?”
“I lost my license.”
“Or your nerve.”
I laughed; I’d lost more than my nerve. She stood up straight, paying no attention to the weapon in my hand. Her nose twitched. Muscles rippled beneath pale, stretched skin. She was trained, probably a soldier out doing a little recon. Vampires are notoriously tall and skinny, rarely shorter than five foot ten, but this one put her own kind to shame. She clocked in at six foot two easy, and towered over my still-crouched position. Like a fashion model, she reeked of malnourishment and starvation.
Not surprising when all you ate was blood.
“You are not human,” she said.
“Now, that’s not nice.” I swung the tire iron.
She ducked. Her fist slammed into my mid section. I used the sudden change in momentum to bring the iron down in the opposite direction. It cracked against her ribs even as I fell to my knees, gasping for air. She retreated, snarling.
“Who are you?” she asked again.
I glared at her, still on my hands and knees. “I’m annoyed. Who are you?”
“I am impatient.”
“Nice to meet you, Impatient.”
Her purple eyes roved over my body, examining me. She inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring. “What is your business here?”
“House hunting. Is this place for rent?”
She bared her fangs. “Can you not provide a serious response, child? I could kill you where you crouch.”
I drew up to my full height—not very impressive next to her—and held the tire iron back like a baseball bat. Ready to swing for home the moment she moved. “I dare you. What are you doing here? This isn’t your part of town.”
“I suspect my purpose is the same as yours—to discover the identities of those who would spread lies of an alliance between goblins and vampires, and to stop them.”
My jaw dropped. I couldn’t help it. Behind her formal tone, I heard sincerity. A small spark of hope flared to life.
“You’re against the alliance?” I asked.
She tilted her chin. “I and most of my kind see no benefit in it, in the long term, and know nothing of its purported existence. Goblins are a disagreeable sort—disgusting, destructive, and incapable of forming a productive society. Many vampires share their view of humanity, but I would prefer to live alongside your kind than theirs. We would lose more by aligning ourselves with goblins than we could ever hope to gain.”
“Do your leaders share this opinion?”
Something flickered in her eyes—curiosity? “None of the Families speak of it openly, child, because it is not happening. I heard the rumors from an underling, but we do not act upon rumor, only upon facts. I fed the rumors to a human informant, and he was supposed to investigate the allegations, but I have since lost contact.”
Alarm bells wailed through my head. “What was your informant’s name?” I asked.
“He asks me to call him—”
“Evangeline!”
I spun toward the stairs, nearly tangling my ankles in my haste. Behind me, the vampiress snarled. Footsteps thundered down, followed moments later by the rest of Alex. He froze on the bottom step, hand on the narrow railing, attention fixed over my shoulder.
“I’m fine,” I said to him, keeping myself between the two. “He’s a friend, Impatient. He’s not a threat.”
She made a show of sniffing the air. “No, I suppose he is not. And my name is Isleen.”
“Evy. He’s Alex.”
“What’s going on?” Alex asked.
“Potential ally,” I said. To Isleen: “You were saying he asked you to call him what?”
“Truman,” Isleen said. “That was the name he gave me.”
Wyatt. He hadn’t told me who his informant was, the person who’d told him about the potential alliance. Turned out it was someone with pretty good intel and a direct link to the upper echelons of vampire power. An alliance that had once felt like only a possibility now inched closer to terrifying reality.
“You know him,” she said when I didn’t speak.
I really had to learn to control my facial expressions. “Yes, I do. He’s been captured by the Triads. They’re holding him for questioning, but I have a contact on the inside who can help us break him out.”
“To what benefit?”
“To save his life?”
Isleen inclined her head, a subtle gesture that dripped with condescension. “Will his help be beneficial to our cause?”
Our cause? My wrist ached. I loosened my grip on the tire iron, allowing circulation back into my hand. “What the fuck do you think? Yes, he will be beneficial to our fucking cause.”
“That is all I was asking. Do not get upset.”
“Lady, you haven’t seen me upset.”
“You are as loyal as he said.”
I stared, my temper teetering on DefCon Five. “You know who I am?”
“At first I was uncertain, but now I am not. He spoke of you, Evangeline, although I imagined you younger.”
“And blonder?”
“Pardon?”
“Long story, and it has everything to do with why I’m here.”
Her eyes asked the silent question, but I hesitated. I hadn’t the stamina to repeat my sordid tale twice in one day. Besides, I still wasn’t certain that I trusted her. Vampires are, by nature, very self-centered. Their goal is always the betterment of their people, and if other species are trampled along the way, so be it. Deceptive and willing to play you like a fiddle for their own purposes, they still possessed one quality that many humans did not: an unwillingness to lie.
Still, I saw little distinction between deceiving and lying, but vampires saw an ocean of difference. How could they be proud of a culture that embraced duplicity?
Isleen watched me with cool disinterest. She pretty much ignored Alex. Both scored her faith points, but instinct kept me from trusting her. Her people were part of this rumored alliance, whether she liked it or not. And Wyatt and I weren’t exactly low-profile players in the Triads. I had to be sure.
“What does Truman look like?” I asked.
“Taller than him,” she replied, nodding in Alex’s general direction. “Black hair, dark eyes, I believe what you call a Mediterranean look. Greek, perhaps? A soft voice that deepens when he is angry.”
So far so good. “What about the scar?”
“Scar?”
“Yeah, the scar on his face.”
She remained motionless.
If she’d been up close and personal with Wyatt like she said, if she knew him at all, then she’d know—
“He does not have a scar on his face. None that was ever visible to me.”
“Good.”
I walked past her, toward the other doors that lined the corridor. Interview time was over. I needed to do what I’d come here to do. I passed several doors and stopped in front of one that sported a broken padlock. The door’s nameplate had been ripped off and a black X had been drawn in paint. No, not paint. I touched it, and a soft fleck came off on my fingertip. Dried blood. I jiggled the knob; it wasn’t locked.
“I would not, Evangeline,” Isleen said. She stood next to me without seeming to move. Alex hadn’t twitched from his place by the stairs.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Death is in that room. Something wicked and depraved happened there. It is quite overwhelming.”
Fear traced lines across my back with icy fingers as I realized which door I had been drawn to. I had died in this room. Going inside might jog loose the rest of my missing memories. But faced with that possibility, I hesitated. Some things were better left buried; others had to be dug up again, no matter how painful. Which was this?
Beyond my hesitation, one simple thought rose to the surface: Wyatt needed me. I had to do everything in my power to save him. He brought me back, gave up his free will, so I could tell him what happened in that room. Not going in failed him, made his sacrifice for nothing. No.
“I have to go in,” I said, as much for Isleen as myself. “I have to see it.”
She retreated a step. I turned the copper knob. It didn’t squeal. The door creaked open. Warm, humid air crept out, bringing with it the heavy odor of death. Metallic, sweet, and thick, it was a physical entity that forced me backward. I released the knob, but the door continued to swing into inky blackness.
Just inside, my fingers found a switch. Dim, garish light from a single, naked bulb flooded the room. Dried blood spackled every surface. Barely larger than a coat closet, the room’s wood-paneled walls sported haphazard sprays and streaks, with no discernible dispersal patterns. A stained and ripped mattress lay on the cement floor. Two lengths of chain were bolted to the wall above one end of the mattress, each ending in a pair of unlocked handcuffs. A set of rusty shackles, like something from a bondage film, lay on the floor by the opposite end of the mattress.
It was the source of the smell, of the dread, and of the sense of death. My death. My blood.
“Oh my God.”
Shit. “Alex, don’t come in here.”
Too late. He bolted back into the hall before he threw up. I ignored the retching. I couldn’t lose it, too. This was what I’d come to see. It’s what I had to remember. How had I gotten there? What had I learned that was so goddamn important?
I tried breathing through my mouth, but could still taste the stench. It permeated the room, the air, my senses, my skin—everything. I thought about Max and going to see him the night I left Wyatt’s bed, so certain that Max could help me, give me something on an alliance that was—at that time—only a rumor. Tell me if it was fact or fiction.
I took another step inside, less than a foot from the torn and defiled mattress. I studied the bloodstains. Most were centered, and imagination, not memory, told me its source. My stomach tightened, forcing bile into my throat. More blood dotted the head, near the dirty handcuffs. Footprints smeared it in unremarkable patterns on the concrete floor, but left no discernible shapes or sizes, just shadows of many feet. Had Wyatt knelt there? Held my hand? Watched me gasp for air and finally die?
The handcuffs had bound my wrists, the shackles my ankles, and had held me prisoner for almost three days. Most of the blood spilled was mine, but I felt some semblance of satisfaction in knowing—because I knew how hard I would have fought—that some tiny amount belonged to my captors. I knew I had been tortured here, because Rufus said so. I knew I had died here, because Wyatt said so.
But I knew nothing about that room from my own memory. Nothing.
The room tilted. I was on my knees, arms around my waist, hugging myself tightly. My entire body trembled. Slowly, I was beginning to lose it. If seeing this hadn’t shocked my memory into returning, would the next forty-eight hours really make a difference?
“Evy?” Alex was in front of me, crouched to eye level. He held my upper arms and shook me gently until I met his eyes. Twin blue puddles of concern shocked me out of my downward spiral. “Evy, are you here?”
I licked my lips, tasting death. “I’m here.”
“Do you remember?”
Tears, hot and bitter, seared my eyes. I didn’t blink, only stared. Sought answers in his eyes and found none. I was stronger than this. I inhaled and held it, imagined the oxygen was cleansing me, energizing me. Centering me so I could get on with the task ahead. In Alex’s concern, I saw Wyatt—waiting for me, counting on me to rescue him and make it right. To do what he’d brought me here to do.
“No,” I said on the exhale. “I tried and it didn’t work.”
“I do not know what memories you have lost,” Isleen said, “but perhaps memory is not what drew you to this place. Perhaps it was fated that we meet.”
“I don’t believe in fate.”
“No? Truman places great value in fate and fortune.”
I thought of Tovin and the vision that had brought us to this point—Wyatt’s blind adherence to that bright, happy future. It set all of these events into motion, and with only two days left, that future loomed on the edge of darkness. One gentle push and it would fall into the abyss, along with my life and his free will. So much suffering for nothing.
Using Alex for leverage, I stood up. He hovered, and I let him. Isleen stood casually in the doorway, outwardly unaffected by the sight or odor of the room. It surprised me, with wood surrounding her in all directions. Polished or not, it had to be discomfiting. Never mind her keen sense of smell.
No, her nostrils flared every few seconds, timed with the rise and fall of her chest. She sensed it; she was just good at hiding it.
I stood toe-to-toe with her, unintimidated by the eight inches she had on me. “Truman’s blind devotion to the idea of fate is why his own people are trying to kill him.”
She arched a slender eyebrow. “I thought his people were trying to kill him because he possesses information they do not wish to see made public.”
“That’s insane. They think he’s a traitor. No human would benefit from a vampire/goblin takeover. All of us would suffer.”
“Except for the humans rewarded for seeing such a takeover to fruition.”
The room suddenly seemed twenty degrees too cold, the walls too close. What she suggested was impossible. Goblins couldn’t be trusted. No one with any sense made a deal with one and expected them to uphold their end. Not without a vampire to ensure it.
“This is insane,” I snapped. “They took Wyatt because he kidnapped one of them and tortured him for information. They think he’s turned rogue, that’s all. You’re making me see conspiracies where there aren’t any. You don’t have any proof.”
“You are correct in this, Evangeline. I have only my suspicions and experience.”
“Well, I’ve got my suspicions and experience, too, lady.”
“Then I apologize for voicing my assumption, but my previous observation still stands. We were meant to meet, you and I. We are battling a common enemy, and we are running out of time.”
“You think we should help each other out?”
“I do.”
“Because you’re happy with the status quo and don’t want to see your people become a dominant species?”
“I do not wish to see the goblins become a dominant species. Vampires may not be dominant over humans, but we are still a superior race. Nothing changes that.”
I snorted. “So how can you help me?”
“Have you ever heard of Mo’n Rath?”
“Punk band?”
“It is an ancient vampi
re ritual,” she said, unflustered by my sarcasm. “We live long lives and, at times, we forget. The Mo’n Rath helps us recover forgotten memories. I have never attempted it with a human, but as I said before, you are not completely human. It may work.”
Alex had suggested hypnosis. Isleen was suggesting a vampiric memory ritual. As much as I preferred waiting for what was behind Door Number Three, I had to do something. The memories weren’t coming back on their own, so I had to go in and dig. Or let someone else do the digging.
And what was with her insistence that I was not completely human? Was it another side effect of the damned resurrection spell? If so, Wyatt was going to get an earful.
“Say we do this,” I said. “What do you want out of the deal?”
“Simply to stop the alliance. And, of course, I get to slay the vampire traitors involved.”
I looked at Alex. His expression was slightly glazed. It was familiar—the one he got when things started getting excessively weird. Sooner or later, he’d get used to it, but for now his innocence was refreshing. It reminded me what the Triads fought for—confidentiality. We kept the Dregs a controlled secret, and the rest of the world went about its merry way. Failure meant a lot more people walking around the city wearing expressions identical to his.
“You don’t have to keep helping me, Alex,” I said.
“Yeah, I do,” he said.
“You could get out of the city, far away from all of this.”
“I don’t have anywhere else to go. Chalice was my family.”
I brushed his cheek with the back of my hand, my heart swelling with gratitude.
“Touching,” Isleen said, “but we should be going.”
Leave it to a vampire to ruin a tender moment. I turned back to face Isleen. “Do you know someone who can perform this ritual? Someone trustworthy?”
“I do,” she said. “Myself.”