by Jess Haines
The heat in my cheeks was sudden and intense. Sara’s exaggerated leer didn’t help. I coughed into a hand, avoiding answering her.
“Yeah, yeah. You can dish it—”
“—but I can’t take it. I know.”
Smiling, she rose and stretched, closing her eyes as she got on tiptoe and arched her back. Guess I wasn’t the only one feeling a bit sore after being cooped up in the plane on the way here. When she was done, she patted my knee and then headed for the door. She paused there, hand on the knob. “Get some sleep. We’ll meet with Clyde tomorrow, start working this case, and stay busy so we don’t have to worry about what’s going on at home. Sound good?”
I nodded, rubbing the back of my neck. With a flash of pearly teeth, she was gone, her own door soon clicking shut quietly behind her. I rose to shut my own door and start getting ready for bed.
My family might be a mess, my business in the toilet, my love life a shambles, and my neck on the line with the cops, White Hats, werewolves, and who knew what else—but I had a job to do. We wouldn’t forget our friends, our families, our commitments, or our enemies, but we would be safe, and far enough away that the people hunting us would most likely lose interest or forget about us given enough time. Arnold would protect the rest of our friends and family. Royce would fix the mess and make it safe for us to return. I hoped.
On the bright side, I no longer felt the pressure of outside forces pushing me around. Even though I wasn’t thrilled about hunting zombies, Sara was here, and the two of us could solve this case together. We’d make Clyde pay through the nose for our services, which should put us on track to salvaging H&W Investigations, and it would most likely keep us busy enough to forget all the worries we’d left behind in New York.
For now, that would have to be enough.
Chapter 9
Though Sara and I both woke up long before the sun went down, nobody came to give us any idea what we were expected to do. In the late morning, while the two of us stumbled around the kitchen in search of breakfast, a lady with skin tanned dark from hours in the sun and dark, silky hair swept up in a neat chignon, had bustled in and introduced herself as Florencia, the resident cook. We were supposed to ring her on one of the internal phone lines if we were hungry.
I wasn’t totally comfortable with the luxury of having a cook at our beck and call, but Sara had been very gracious, thanking her and asking for what I assumed by the sound was a Spanish dish. The foreign words rolled off her tongue as she conversed with the cook, leaving me feeling foolish for taking French in high school. When Florencia turned to me, I gave Sara a helpless look. She laughed and told the cook—in English, making me feel doubly foolish—to give me an omelet and a pot of coffee, thanked her again, and then led me to the kitchen table.
Outside of a restaurant, I had never had such fantastic food. Florencia explained as she cooked that she had gone to culinary school and intended to open her own restaurant, but that working for Clyde had given her the opportunity to earn the capital she needed to finance the venture.
“Three more years of this,” she said, flipping the omelet in the skillet with the kind of practiced ease I had only seen in movies and TV shows, “and I should have enough to start Mama Flora’s. I have my eye on an old restaurant near the pier. If the market holds steady, I’ll have everything I need, and Mr. Seabreeze has promised to help with the negotiations and decorating.”
Sara and I congratulated her, though we both raised our eyebrows at her blithe mention of Clyde’s promise. Though he was clearly the type to showboat, if he kept his word and was truly so good to his faithful employees, perhaps he wasn’t quite the mercenary we had assumed.
Royce had proven to me that not all vampires were evil, mindless beasts, and that they were capable of being compassionate. We hadn’t had the opportunity to get to know Clyde, so considering he had been backed into a figurative corner due to this zombie infestation, it was possible we had thus far only seen his worst side. Granted, I was pissed about the cell phones being confiscated, but not entirely surprised.
At first, Royce had also been a bit of a manipulative dick, which was part of why it had taken me so long to see that he wasn’t such a bad guy. I imagined it might be the same with Clyde. We were nothing special to the vampire. Just another couple of “dumb humans”—only good for food or entertainment, if that much. He didn’t respect us yet, so he saw no reason to treat us as anything other than pawns. Now that I had played the Other games of dominance and grandstanding for a few rounds, I was confident I could find a way to show him that Sara and I had teeth.
Close to noon, we were munching on some snacks while we hung out in the den with the big screen. As we were trying to get into daytime TV, someone showed up with a depressingly thin file folder containing the information Clyde was willing to give us about the zombies, and an envelope delightfully thick with cash.
After storing the envelope in one of Sara’s bags, we opened the file on the sprawling kitchen table to see what was inside and spread everything out. There wasn’t much. A list of missing and dead vampires, a few blurry pictures, and a couple of handwritten notes describing what surviving human servants had seen. Though it took some doing to figure out what the shaky scrawl spelled out, we had a rough picture of the situation before long.
Though they were, of course, frightened and disoriented by what they had seen, their stories were clear enough. Most of the descriptions involved great numbers of the walking dead—and there was no doubt that’s what they were, considering the way the survivors wrote of stink and rot—shoving them aside to reach their vampire masters. The accounts didn’t include the handwritten notes of what happened after. The pages were missing, or had been deliberately removed. Instead, there were a couple of photos clipped to the back of the folder, standing mute testament to the massacre that must have taken place.
I’d never seen a body torn apart before. Though I’d been in the room while a pack of werewolves had torn apart a vampire and a mage, feasting on their remains, I had kept my eyes closed so I wouldn’t see anything I’d never be able to unsee.
And now, nightmares of those pictures—the chunks of missing flesh, the shredded flaps of skin, and the gleam of white bone set in a pool of crimson—would haunt me for the rest of my days.
Sara grew very pale next to me, but we both somehow managed to keep from barfing.
We quickly shoved the pictures and accounts of the survivors back into the folder, then moved on to the note-covered maps. If not for all the assurances in the folder that no one but vampires had died, I would have said to hell with the case then and there.
Instead, we soldiered on, spending about an hour going over maps of Los Angeles that had notations about where the bodies of dead vampires had been discovered. We needed to get to know the lay of the land and the places we would have to explore. Though all the attacks had occurred within LA County, no two had happened in the same place.
When she saw what we were doing, Florencia gave us some help figuring out where we were and the limits of Clyde’s dominion. His territory, though it included major cities like Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, and Hollywood, was quite a lot smaller than I was expecting. Considering Royce controlled multiple states, it was a bit anticlimactic to find out Clyde had such a small amount of land to call his own. When we asked about the areas that fell outside of his purview but were still in Los Angeles County, Florencia didn’t have any answers.
The one common thread we could see was that many of the attacks took place close to properties Clyde owned on the fringes of his territory. Whoever or whatever was controlling the zombies appeared to be situated somewhere just beyond the borders. We couldn’t be sure since we didn’t know this area like we did New York, but hiding that many decomposing bodies meant they had to have a damned good place to store them in this heat to keep any neighbors from finding them. My guess was a morgue, a climate-controlled warehouse, or perhaps they were kept somewhere outside of the city
—maybe in the Angeles Crest Forest?—until they were needed and then transported wherever the next attack was supposed to take place.
There were problems with each of those theories, but until we had a chance to examine some of the locations of the attacks in person, I had the feeling that we wouldn’t be able to narrow this search down any more than we already had. More than anything, I wanted to know what the survivors’ notes didn’t say. Who were Clyde’s enemies? Who in the supernatural community around here had the kind of power it must take to command a small army of the walking dead?
Arnold might be able to help with that end of things, though I wasn’t sure how much he’d know about Others in California.
Sara and I decided to put off further speculation until after we’d spoken to Clyde. We spent the rest of our day mostly bored and occasionally shuddering when the memories of those pictures resurfaced during our discussions about where to start our search.
The most likely place appeared to be near Burbank and Glendale, where three attacks had occurred close together.
Shortly after sundown, I had a nosebleed tinged with the black stuff again. It was far less intense than it had been back in New York, and most of it was in my nose and throat instead of everywhere else, but it was still awfully unpleasant. Sara helped me to the bathroom and sat with me while I spat out ropy strings of blackish liquid, washed it from the corners of my eyes, and blew it out my nose. It was disgusting, yes, but nowhere near as painful as it had been the other times. There wasn’t as much of the crud as there had been that first night, or even in the shower with Royce the night before last.
Sara said nothing as she held my hair off the back of my neck while I washed the crud out of my mouth, though I know she must have had questions. She knew I’d tell her when I was ready.
Unfortunately, it was going to be awhile before I could bring myself to explain. She might have been my best friend, but the memories of those hours of helplessness, of pain and blood and knowing I was no longer quite human, were too close.
Before I could help her come to terms with it, I needed to do something about that myself.
Not long after I finished cleaning myself up and we returned to the kitchen, a knock on the door frame startled us. A new security guard—a woman, one I didn’t recall seeing last night—was examining us with dark, narrowed eyes.
“Ladies. Clyde would like to see you now.”
Sara and I exchanged a look before rising and following the guard to the main house. I was annoyed to note she was quite a bit taller than me, so perfectly beautiful and graceful with her high cheekbones and sleek, braided hair that I knew she must have been another vampire. Her dress was like that of the security guards I’d seen last night, though she had guns holstered on either hip. Her deadly grace reminded me strongly of Mouse, though there wasn’t much other resemblance.
We entered through the door near the pool deck. She took us through some hallways to a room full of weird paintings and strange sculptures and told us to wait.
There wasn’t any place to sit, so we just stood awkwardly, staring around the room. Separately, the pieces were just . . . well . . . weird. Together, they made a strange kind of sense. The swirl of colors and clashing styles made me dizzy, so I made a point of focusing on one piece. Of course. It had to be a Warhol.
My feet were starting to hurt by the time Clyde swept into the room, a bevy of buzzing sycophants trailing in his wake. His hair was a different color this evening, no longer black, but a deep chocolate color with frosted tips, making for a striking, punk-rocker look that fit with the bare chest and drawstring leather pants slung low on his hips. He waved a hand airily and the people surrounding him backed off, mumbling reassurances about his hair, his clothes, something about appointments and a TV spot, and a few other things I didn’t quite catch.
As the others backed away, he snapped his fingers at the security guard who had escorted us. She froze, hovering near the door.
Once he was across the room, he turned to face us, and I could have sworn that his eyes were a solid black. Like fathomless pools of pure hunger sucking me deep into a cold, lonely place.
It might have been the space between breaths or an eternity before he looked away, his attention fixing on a granite statue of a robed angel with sweeping wings, the tracks of tears permanently etched across the cheeks of that androgynous face. Air seeped out between my teeth in a hiss as tension ran out of me. Gut instinct told me we were on the verge of experiencing something very nasty by his hands if we didn’t watch our step. Made me wonder just how well that little charm around my throat—the one that was supposed to prevent vampires and magi from messing with my head—was working.
“Good evening,” Clyde said, his voice smooth as silk and completely at odds with the way he had devoured us with his eyes a moment ago. “I wished to see you before you begin your search. Do you have any questions about what you saw in the file you were given? Were you able to glean anything useful?”
Sara and I exchanged a look. As badly as I had wanted to snark at him about taking the phone, now clearly wasn’t the time.
She stepped forward, and I let her lead. She was better at verbal sparring than I ever was; a necessary skill I would need to hone if I was going to be spending much more time around these strange vampires.
“Yes. We think we know where to start, but first we’d like to know who you think might be behind this. Or any enemies who might have more information? They won’t know us, so they might be willing to let something useful spill if they don’t realize we’re working for you.”
He threw back his head and laughed, the sound booming through the room loudly enough to make me flinch. When the sound tapered off, he rubbed a faux tear from the corner of his eye. “My, you are direct. How refreshing.”
Sara was unmoved. She folded her arms and gave him an “I’m waiting” look. I did my best to follow her example, though I don’t think I looked nearly as convincing or intimidating as she did.
“I have no enemies, my dear. If I knew who it was, I would have taken care of this matter myself.”
He added a charming smile at the end of that statement with just a hint of fang showing. It was a pose Royce often took when he was trying to see if he could use his nature to scare me into dropping information he could use, make me react in some calculated way, or distract me from asking vitally important questions.
Though Sara was taken aback by Clyde’s answer, I wasn’t impressed. “You’re the master vampire of Los-freaking-Angeles. Don’t tell me you don’t know where your enemies are. There’s no way you could be this arrogant, and hold a city of this size for so long, being completely ignorant of the whereabouts of the people who have a bone to pick with you.”
Clyde stared at me, his dark blue eyes briefly flashing with embers of red in the pupils. His expression remained stony and unwavering for a very long moment—and then he smiled, making no effort to hide the fangs that peeked out from behind his lips. “My, my, Ms. Waynest. I do believe I now see what potential Rhathos must have sensed in you.” It had been a long time since I’d heard someone refer to Royce by that name. The last one to call him that was Max Carlyle. It put me on alert since I doubted anything good could come of it. “It’s a pity you won’t be staying here long. I suddenly find I would like to know more about that clever tongue of yours.”
Heat instantly suffused my cheeks, but I refused to be cowed or swayed by the posturing of this overconfident, conceited ass.
“Don’t change the subject. You know as much about me as you need to. What I’m interested in are your enemies. And don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“If you want us to work for you and solve this case,” Sara cut in smoothly, tempering my harsh words, “then you need to give us what we need to do our jobs effectively. Like our phones, and the information we’ve asked for, and far more politely than you deserve.”
Clyde leaned against one of the angel’s stone wings and steepl
ed his fingers, his eyes narrowing as he regarded us. It was rather obvious he was weighing his options and deciding what information would be safe to divulge—but at least he was considering telling us what we needed to know. Progress.
“Locally, there are two groups that may have information about this mess, and whoever is behind it. There is a section of the city of Glendale that I do not hold dominion over—another vampire named Jimmy Thrane calls himself its ruler.”
Another vampire running a portion of the city? That didn’t sound like good news, and Royce had made no mention of it before I left. No wonder Clyde looked and sounded like he’d just bitten into a lemon as he spat out that tidbit of information.
That sense of hunger emanating from him was growing again, somehow both magnetic and repulsive at the same time. The fine hairs on the back of my neck were rising, a sense of dread becoming a growing pit in my stomach. Sara didn’t appear to be handling it much better, if the pallor and flutter of her eyelids were anything to go by.
“Aside from Mr. Thrane, if you are willing to run the risks inherent with making contact with them, we have a local branch of White Hats in town. Undoubtedly they will have information I cannot provide, but either the White Hats or Mr. Thrane’s band may see you as a threat. They may even attempt to take you and use you as leverage against Mr. Royce or me. If you don’t heed my warnings, and either of you end up in the enemy’s hands, I will not go out of my way to save you.”
“We can take care of ourselves,” I said, hoping it was true.
“Good,” he replied, jerking his chin toward the door and the woman waiting nearby. She’d been so quiet, I’d forgotten she was there, waiting in the shadows. “Trinity will see to your transportation needs. Report to me when you return.”
“And the phone?” Sara asked. More daring than I was willing to be right now.