by Jess Haines
There was a dim glow coming from the display case next to the register and from some fridges in the back with sodas and beer. The track lighting on the ceiling and above the board behind the counter with prices painted on it was turned off. The racks of snacks and junk food didn’t seem to be out of order, and aside from some chips in the paint, what I could see of the flooring, counters, and two tables inside was clean. If the attack had occurred inside, there was no sign of it from where we were standing.
Still, that smell led me to believe that there was more to see here, something we hadn’t found yet. Stepping back from the window, I took a few short, sniffling breaths through my nose, just enough to get a whiff of that decaying stuff again. It wasn’t coming from the front.
Sara followed me as I alternately sniffed and gagged. The looks she was giving me made me wonder just how weird my expression must have been. I couldn’t help the way my nose scrunched up, my eyes watered, or how my mouth was twisting, like I had bitten into a not-quite-ripe lemon. Whatever was giving off that odor was rank. Like bad meat in a plastic bag under the summer sun, left to bake until it burst.
There was a light illuminating the side of the building between the Laundromat and the carnicería. Roaches scuttled out of our path and disappeared into crevices as we moved closer to the source of that smell. It appeared to be coming from close to the Dumpster flush against the wall, next to an exit from the butcher shop.
I couldn’t get any closer. My nose had started running, and my eyes were watering so badly that I could barely see. Taking her cue from the wave of my hand in the general direction of the trash, Sara kept going while I turned away to retch by the sidewalk.
When I managed to lift my head and blink the worst of the sting from my eyes, I saw some of the people in the Laundromat giving me dirty looks as they sorted their colors and folded their undies. Awesome.
Scrubbing the back of my hand against my mouth, I turned, watching as Sara crouched and poked at something on the ground. With her bare hands? Yuck.
Suddenly, she rose, almost tipping over her high-heeled boots. Once she regained her balance, she strode back to my side in a hurry.
Once she reached me, she didn’t look at me, placing her hands just under her ribs and taking a deep breath. She stared at, but I had the suspicion did not see, the used car lot across the street.
“Your nose didn’t lie. There’s a piece of zombie back there. I think it’s a finger.”
Oh, God.
“It moved when I touched it.”
Oh, God.
“Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Though I felt like making like Sir Robin in that Holy Grail movie, now wasn’t the time to run away. “We can’t leave without knowing what else happened here. Maybe someone in that Laundromat saw something. Which way did they go when they left? How did they get here? There’s got to be something more that we haven’t found yet.”
She nodded, but did not look particularly enthusiastic. We headed to the Laundromat, the people inside who hadn’t thought much of my behavior suddenly quite studious in their folding activities. One guy grabbed the remainder of his laundry in his arms and fled out the door opposite the one we were entering. He probably knew something, but I wasn’t in the mood to chase unwilling witnesses.
We went toward a lady leaning over the lower half of a Dutch door, watching one of the TVs playing from a wall mount across the room. She barely looked in our direction when Sara and I stopped in front of her.
“Excuse me,” I said, giving her a little wave. “Hi, there. Can we ask you a few questions?”
She tore her attention off the TV and looked me up and down. “No hablo Inglés.” Back to the TV.
Sara wasn’t deterred. She shot off some Spanish in rapid fire, and the older woman looked at her with surprise. They jabbered back and forth a bit, the lady becoming agitated before long. There were a lot of hand gestures and grabbing at the little gold cross around her neck.
After tonight, I was going to invest in a Spanish-English dictionary.
I gave Sara a pat on the back to indicate she should keep on with it while I moved to interview some of the other people hanging around.
There wasn’t much more to be learned from the others. Everyone I asked either didn’t speak English, hadn’t been around that night, or had only heard, not seen, what had happened. The noises they described were pretty par for the course considering it had been a zombie attack. Moans, groans, and screams had sent most of them diving for cover or calling the cops. They didn’t know what had made the noises, but they assumed it was shady business involving Others.
Sara startled me a few minutes later with a hand on my shoulder. The guy I was talking to eyeballed her cleavage like he hadn’t just been involved in what I considered to be a serious discussion about whether zombies that shamble versus the ones that run are more dangerous. He’d seen some of the ones that had attacked the vampires in the alley, though he had no recollection about where they’d come from or how they had left. Must have been some of that mage “fade” mojo, no doubt.
“I’ve got something. Let’s go,” Sara whispered.
I waved a good-bye to the guy, who failed to return the gesture. He was too busy gawking over Sara, who didn’t appear to notice his attention.
She kept her mouth shut until we were outside, slowing down a bit to mutter her findings to me under her breath before we returned to the car. “Looks like that mage knows how to cover his tracks. Rosalie said she saw the guy, looked right at him in fact, and that he tried to cast a black enchant on her to make her forget. Her family is a line of magic users, though, so she just pretended it worked and hid before he could figure out his spell didn’t work.
“He’s young, early twenties maybe, and wears stylish clothes. Pale skin, dark brown hair, tall and skinny. She didn’t get close enough to see his eye color, but she did spot a tattoo of a pentagram on his palm when he was casting at her. The zombies were brought here and taken away in a U-Haul, driven by a second man she didn’t see very well and couldn’t describe.”
“Not bad,” I said. “Don’t suppose she happened to catch the license plate, too?”
Sara smirked, moving around to the other side of the car. “Sadly, no. She did say the truck had a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge on the side, so that narrows it down—slightly.”
For a moment, I thought we might have the case in the bag—but then I groaned and slapped my palm on the roof. “Shit, no. We can’t call their home office to ask about rentals without using our PI license. Or call the cops and ask them to do the legwork for us. Damn.”
“Maybe not,” Sara replied, getting in and leaning across the seat to continue, “but I’m sure Clyde has connections, and we know enough to narrow down the search. With the guy’s description, and knowing about the truck, we should have enough info that Clyde could figure out who it was more rapidly than we could.”
Trinity tapped her nails on the steering wheel, not bothering to look back at us as I slid in beside Sara and buckled up. She took off almost as soon as the “click” of the seat belt locking sounded. “I take it you two found something?”
“Yeah,” Sara said. “We’ll tell Clyde when we get back. I don’t like repeating myself.”
Trinity didn’t say anything, the plastic covering the steering wheel squeaking under her fingers. Touchy.
I sincerely hoped Clyde would appreciate the work we had done and what we had found out for him. Hopefully he’d consider it enough and wouldn’t expect us to continue digging.
But knowing my luck, and considering the vampire’s behavior thus far, whatever we did for him would never be enough.
Chapter 12
“That’s a good start,” Clyde said to Sara as she finished telling him about what she had learned from the lady at the Laundromat, “but I need you to find him.”
Clyde’s expression had remained stony as we each told him what we had found out. I noted a brief clenching of his jaw as he to
ok in the details about the necromancer when Sara described him, but otherwise, there was no sign that the vampire was in the least affected by what we had to say. Though it was a tell, I wasn’t sure what it meant yet. He either already knew who the mage was, or he had a suspicion confirmed. Regardless, it just meant he hadn’t told us everything, which was something I already knew.
Sara shifted in her seat, a sign she was uncomfortable. It was a small miracle she’d been able to get as much information as she had out of that woman. Clyde probably didn’t realize we’d struck what was the private investigator’s equivalent of a gold vein, or maybe he just didn’t care.
I wasn’t all that surprised. Trinity had led us straight to Clyde as soon as we returned. The room we were in now was one we had passed through the first night on our way to see him. Well-lit and without the strobes, it was almost homey. There were numerous overstuffed chairs and couches, and the artwork on the walls, which hadn’t been there the night of the S&M-themed party, was of fields and horses and English countryside scenes.
He had placed himself in the center of it all, sprawled on a leather couch that matched the red silk-screen wallpaper. Fabian was seated on the other end with one leg thrown casually over the other.
Once again, Clyde wasn’t wearing a shirt, only this time he had on stone-washed jeans that weren’t so tight that nothing was left to the imagination. His followers—minions—whatever they were—had taken seats around him, some of them taking notes, others on the phone or tapping away on laptops, and a couple on the floor in front of Clyde, touching him and probably giving him the occasional compliment to stroke his ego. Or something else. Who knew, right?
I couldn’t help but wonder if every time he arranged to see us, he prepared in advance to pose in such a way that he would look devastating. If I hadn’t seen Royce do much the same every now and then, I might have been more impressed, but his posturing was getting old very fast.
As much as I wanted to call him on it, and ask him why he didn’t just use whatever connections he must have in the LAPD to track the necromancer down, it didn’t seem like a good time to push him. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to ask, but I already knew how he was going to answer.
“Clyde,” I said, quickly amending my words after seeing his expression, “Mr. Seabreeze, we don’t have access to our resources out here, and we can’t use our PI licenses or announce our presence to local authorities. It would defeat the purpose of our coming here. Is there anyway you can ask the police to look into this with the information we gave you? We’ve got a getaway vehicle description—a rented van. With that kind of information, they’d probably find this guy a lot faster than we can.”
“I don’t want the police involved in my affairs. There’s little they can do against a magical menace like a necromancer. If they were to find him first, they would inevitably die, and thus draw more bad press down on Others. I can’t allow it.”
His answer cemented my earlier theory that he knew who was behind this. From all I knew about him, he loved being in the spotlight, and he would undoubtedly have jumped on the opportunity to come across as the “victim” of some kind of hate crime if the culprit had been human instead of Other. This was something deeply personal, an affront to Clyde’s power structure and tenuous hold on this city.
I needed to get in touch with Royce as soon as possible and see if we could come back to New York or if there was somewhere else we could go. This place was more dangerous than where we’d been, if not in the same way, if Clyde was bringing down this kind of heat on himself.
As much as I wanted to come back with a smart-ass reply, I put on my best professional face and tone, bearing in mind that pissing him off would be unwise. “Okay. I’m not saying this to make you upset, but do you realize we have no way of following the leads we were able to scrounge up? It’s a dead end.”
His blue eyes gleamed, and I detected a hint of fang in his humorless smile as he leaned closer to me. “Really? No, Ms. Waynest, it hadn’t occurred to me.”
His sarcasm was really unnecessary. It took every last shred of willpower I had to keep from saying something snarky in return.
“I chose to use you for your investigative skills. If you are too incompetent to do the job, I’m sure you can find someone else to take you in.”
“No,” Sara said, stepping forward. Some of the other vampires in the room leaned in, their own eyes taking on a touch of red. “No, we’ll figure it out. We’re just going to need more time.”
Fabian rose from his seat beside Clyde, his eyes sliding over us in a way that nearly felt like fingers crawling over my skin. Creepy. I got the idea this was the first time he felt like we might be bringing something useful to the table, and that he also didn’t like it. There was something about the aura he was projecting that made me wonder what his stakes were in this.
“You’ve discovered much in a short period of time. I think perhaps you underestimate what you can do for us. Find the boy, and you will be suitably rewarded. ”
Clyde shot Fabian a look that I interpreted as “shut the hell up.” He then sat up and rested his elbows on his knees, giving Sara and me a smile that might have been endearing if he had kept his fangs to himself. “Continue your search as long as necessary. Use any of my resources you need to—but stay away from the local police. You wouldn’t want to be discovered and extradited back to New York, now, would you?”
Sara and I both shook our heads.
“Good. Give Trinity the details. I will see if I can have one of my people find out who rented that van and what the reported destination was supposed to be, though I am not sure the information will help you much. You two keep doing what you’re doing. You’re on the right track.”
Interesting. Clyde (and maybe Fabian?) had to know more than he was saying, but clearly wasn’t going to tell us what that was. At this point, I suspected he didn’t want to find out who was killing his people—he already had that information and wasn’t of a mind to share—he just wanted to know where they were. Maybe to test how good we were at our jobs, too.
If we found the necromancer, I had little doubt Clyde would try to kill the guy, but I also wondered what had started this mess and why they were both working so hard to fight each other while going unnoticed. The mage was covering his tracks, and Clyde didn’t want the cops involved. For Fabian to be here, I had the feeling something big was going on that meant Clyde had bitten off more than he could chew, and he needed the help of an older, more experienced vampire to make the Big Bad go away.
As for why they were so hell-bent on keeping things secret, it was possible old habits died hard. Others had kept their existence secret for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The decade or so that had passed since Rohrik Donovan and the Moonwalker pack had revealed that werewolves and vampires and magi and who knew what all were living alongside humanity wasn’t nearly long enough for most people to get used to it. The bulk of the supernatural community—the ones who had been around before their big reveal to the bulk of society—might have been experts at hiding their inter-Other wars from people, but somehow that didn’t seem like a good enough reason.
No, there was something deeply personal going on. But what?
The investigative part of me was itching to twist Clyde’s arm to work more out of him, but it wasn’t the time. Sara and I excused ourselves, and Trinity escorted us back to the guest house. If I was ever going to deliver that package of Analie’s, we’d need to figure out a way to travel without our babysitter. Maybe tomorrow I would see about having Clyde let us take the car without a driver. It was unlikely he’d allow it, but we could always ask.
Trinity hovered in the door once we were inside, frowning at us. I raised a brow in question.
“You two should be careful.”
Sara smirked, tossing her purse on the first step and leaning against the banister. “We’re doing our best, but I have the feeling your boss doesn’t care. You know something we don’t?”
Trinity ba
cked out of the door, lowering her head. I wondered if she was trying to keep what she was saying from being picked up by the security camera, or if she actually felt bad about how Clyde was treating us.
“You’re doing better than I thought you would,” she said. “Still, it’s worse than you know. I can’t tell you, he’d—I just can’t. But trust me when I say you don’t want to be around when he finds out where this necromancer is staying. It’ll be bad—for all of us.”
With that, she turned on her heel and fled. We didn’t even get a chance to tell her the details about the van.
“What is it about vampires and cryptic statements? Is it physically impossible for them to say what’s on their minds?” Sara asked.
I laughed. “Yeah, something like that. You should have seen Royce when he finally admitted that he was hiding things from me. Never thought I’d live to see the day.”
“Yeah, well, you almost didn’t. How are you feeling, anyway? Arnold told me he’s still trying to find out what’s going on with you.”
That made me cringe. I hadn’t thought Arnold would talk to Sara about my problems, but I shouldn’t have been too surprised. They were dating, after all.
Sara must have gathered that she’d hit a sore spot. She clapped me on the back and then started up the stairs. “Don’t worry too much. Once we get out of here, I’m sure Arnold will find a cure.”
Being reminded of the illness didn’t make me feel much better. Though Sara had sat with me while I was spitting out that black crud in the bathroom, I wasn’t sure exactly how much she knew about what was wrong with me. I didn’t want to face the idea that I was part lycanthrope or part vampire or whatever I might be. It had to pass. Whatever it was, it had to work its way out eventually. The pain had lessened, and I wasn’t growing fur in weird places. It had to be working its way out of my system.
Lowering my head and rubbing my fingertips over my eyes, I did my best to put it all away in the back of my head. Worrying about the infection on top of what Clyde was hiding, where we were going to turn for clues now that we had to follow what was essentially a dead end, and what was going to happen if Sara and I blew the lid on where the necromancer was hiding, was just one problem too many. Oh, and let us not forget that I was obligated to figure out how to get Analie’s package to a bunch of werewolves that might eat me if I showed up smelling like vampires.