By a Thread

by Jennifer Estep

  While we walked, Dekes chatted about various pieces of art that we passed. Paintings, statues, carvings. Most of the items were things you’d find in the home of any wealthy businessman. But the deeper we moved into the mansion, the more I noticed other things—quirky things, odd things, even downright bizarre things. A marble chess set sitting on a table between two empty chairs. Cases full of guns, knives, swords, and other weapons. Miniature airplanes dangling from the ceiling on thin strands of fishing line. A row of lockets, each one open to show the faded locks of hair curled inside. Even a display of antique dolls in frilly dresses. Their open, empty, staring glass eyes seemed to follow me as we strolled past them.

  Dekes also seemed to have a fascination with pirates and shipwrecks. Gold coins, silver goblets, jewel-crusted daggers, and more glittered in glass cases, along with small, perfect models of the ships that the plunder had supposedly come from.

  All of the items were clean, polished, and in mint condition, even the dolls. If Finn had been here, he would have been salivating, especially over the gold and the jewels. But Dekes just strolled by all the finery, barely pausing to glance at it before moving on to the next room, the next case, and the next treasure that it contained. He had all these fine things, exquisite things, but it seemed like the vamp had long ago lost interest in them, as if knowing that he possessed them was enough, and he had no further need to admire or even look at them ever again.

  “Your home is lovely,” I said. “You seem to be quite the collector—of all sorts of unusual things.”

  “Mmm. Yes, I suppose you could say that I’m a collector. Some would call my tastes eclectic, but if I see something that I want, then I go after it,” Dekes murmured. “No matter what it is and what it takes to acquire it. The biggest, the best, the most expensive, the most delicate, the macabre, and the unusual. It fascinates me, the things people hold dear, the things that they value.”

  “And what’s your favorite thing to collect? Paintings? Sculptures? Antiques?”

  He smiled, and for a moment, I felt a surge of elemental magic roll off him. “Nothing so mundane as that. I simply enjoy surrounding myself with beautiful, powerful women.”

  I wondered at his odd answer, but I kept the conversation going, mindful of the two giants still watching me. “It seems to me like you already have one of those. Your wife is quite stunning.”

  Most men would have bragged long and hard and loud if they’d had a beauty like Vanessa on their arm and in their bed, but Dekes waved a hand, dismissing my comment. “My wife has her uses. That’s why I married her. But I find the old saying to be true—variety really is the spice of life. I tend to live for the moment and all the pleasures that can be had in it.”

  His words were meant to be seductive, the kind of sly double-talk that rich men indulged in with women they thought were beneath them but wanted to fuck anyway. Still, something in the vampire’s tone worried me. There was a smugness in his voice, a note of sly triumph, like he knew something that I didn’t. It worried me—and I didn’t like to be worried.

  Finally, we reached a pair of double doors at the end of a long hallway. By this point, we were in an entirely separate wing from the pool where the press conference had been held. Except for the two giants trailing us, I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect spot to have my chat with Dekes. We were far enough away from the south lawn that no one would hear the giants or the vampire scream if I decided to kill them. But instead of making me feel better, the deserted location ratcheted up my tension.

  In my experience, nothing was ever this easy. I could almost see a giant cartoon anchor hovering in the air over my head. I just didn’t know when it was going to drop on me—and how bad the damage would be when it did.

  “And now, another one of my pride and joys,” Dekes said in a vaguely bored voice.

  He threw open the double doors, stepped inside, and turned around, his hands spread out wide, inviting me to follow him inside. By this point, it felt like the giants were hemming me in instead of just protecting their boss. Since I didn’t have another option, I walked forward.

  We stood in a massive library, which was just as rich, lavish, and immaculate as the rest of the mansion. Dark, glossy wooden shelves stretched from the floor to the ceiling, with ladders on rollers attached to the sides so that folks could have access to the books on the top shelves. A stone fireplace took up the middle of the back wall, while several chairs, a table, a rolltop desk, and a green leather sofa perched in front of it. Titles by classic American authors like Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain filled the shelves closest to me, the gold and silver foil on the spines gleaming like the pirate doubloons that I’d seen in other parts of the mansion. A pair of French doors set into the far wall led out to a wide patio. Next to the doors, a wet bar was stuffed into the back corner of the library, and a crystal goblet had already been set out, probably on Dekes’s orders so that he could have a nightcap or two after his press conference was over with. I wondered if the vampire preferred blood or liquor to help him relax. I was betting blood.

  “A library,” I said. “How charming.”

  “It’s more than merely charming,” Dekes said. “I have several valuable first editions in here, and the temperature is climate-controlled to keep them in pristine condition, given the wretched humidity on this island. One of the joys of being a vampire is the long life span. Books that I bought for a pittance a hundred years ago are quite valuable today.”

  Vampires could live a long, long time, just like dwarves. Five hundred years wasn’t an uncommon age for both of those races to reach, while giants and elementals only tended to reach the one hundred fifty mark or so. Finn had estimated Dekes to be at least three hundred, which meant that he’d reached middle age in vampire years.

  Some folks even speculated that vampires could live indefinitely, as long as they had a steady supply of blood and took care of their bodies by exercising, eating right, and whatnot. But I’d never heard of a vamp making it much past five hundred. The longer folks lived, the more enemies they tended to make, and the greater the chance was of one of those enemies hiring someone like me to step in and cut a vamp’s life short.

  Dekes walked over to the fireplace. I trailed along behind him, with the giants bringing up the rear. My eyes scanned the library for cameras, phones, and anything that looked like a panic button that the vampire might reach out and press when I made my move. Two giants at my back were two too many, and I didn’t want him summoning even more of his men in here.

  “Actually, I have a confession to make. I brought you here because I was told that you like books,” Dekes said, turning to face me.

  I looked at him, wariness slowly creeping up my spine like a cold finger. “How could you possibly know that?”

  “An old friend of mine told me how very fond you are of reading.”

  Suspicion surged through me at his easy tone, but I forced myself to play along and ask the obvious question. “And what friend would that be?”

  Dekes’s smile widened. “Why, Jonah McAllister, of course. He’s told me quite a bit about you, Ms. Blanco. Tell me, do you care if I call you Gin?”

  15

  Fuck. Randall Dekes knew exactly who I was—which meant that things were about to get seriously ugly. I wasn’t just going to have a chat with the vampire and warn him to leave Callie alone. Not anymore. Now only one of us would be leaving this room alive, and I was determined that it was going to be me.

  I thought about immediately launching into full-scale attack mode but quickly discarded that idea—at least until I was out of reach of the two giants looming behind me. It wouldn’t do to let them latch onto me, not when I still didn’t know what kind of elemental magic Dekes had and what he planned to do to me with it. I had no doubt that Dekes would kill his own men if it meant taking me down with them.

  No, the vampire was the real threat here, and I needed to deal with him first. So instead of reaching for one of my knives and charging at my enemies,
I walked over, put my purse up on the mantel so both my hands would be free, and leaned against the fireplace, affecting a nonchalant air. The whole time, though, I was calculating speed, distances, and angles and wondering how much of his weird elemental magic Dekes might blast me with before I put him down for good.

  “So you know my real name. Bravo for you. I assume that Jonah told you about my alter ego as well?”

  “That you’re really the assassin the Spider? Oh yes. Jonah and I had quite a fascinating conversation about you—and the fact that you killed his son, Jake. Jonah was very upset about that. Still is, as a matter of fact.”

  I’d killed Jake McAllister during a party at Mab’s house, leaving his body in one of the Fire elemental’s bathtubs. Jake had tried to rob the Pork Pit, in addition to wanting to rape and murder me, but I showed Jake just what a fatal mistake he’d made by taking me on—just as I was going to show Dekes.

  But instead of backing up or moving away from me, Dekes gave me a smug, satisfied, slightly maniacal smile the Cheshire cat would have been envious of. The vampire didn’t seem concerned at all that he was in the same room with a notorious assassin. My worry cranked up another notch. Dekes didn’t strike me as the kind of man to lay his cards on the table without first being absolutely sure that he had the winning hand.

  “Tell me, is my good friend Jonah here at the press conference?” I asked, matching Dekes’s calm with a bored, indifferent mask. “Because I’d love to personally thank him for introducing us, so to speak.”

  “Sadly, no. Jonah couldn’t make it,” Dekes said. “But we had an interesting conversation on the phone this morning. It was something of a fluke, really. I was dealing with other things, namely the discovery of the bodies of several men I employ that were found floating in the pool of the Blue Sands hotel. It was doubly embarrassing for me, since not only did my men die rather brutal deaths but I’d originally planned to have my press conference there, as I own the hotel. Naturally, I had to change the location. Bodies in the pool are not good for business.”

  “No,” I agreed. “They never are.”

  “I’ve known Jonah a long time, and he’s handling some of the paperwork regarding my new casino. He called me this morning, and naturally I mentioned the unfortunate incident at the hotel and how I’d sent my men out to deal with what seemed to be a very small, easily solvable problem, but that they’d ended up dead instead.”

  The pleasant smile never left the vampire’s face, but his green eyes were just as cold and hard as mine were now. “I lamented to Jonah that my men couldn’t do something as simple as handle two female tourists, much less the restaurant owner that they were trying to help. You can imagine my surprise when he asked me what the two tourists looked like—and if my men had been stabbed to death. When I told him that, yes, my men had indeed been stabbed to death, that’s when he mentioned your name. We had quite a long talk about you, Gin. Jonah was even kind enough to text me a photo of you, along with those of your friends.”

  Damn and double damn. I’d thought that maybe getting out of Ashland for a few days might change my perpetual bad luck, but the bitch was out in full force tonight and ready to fuck me over once again.

  Since there was no point in hiding why I was really here any longer, I palmed one of my silverstone knives and held it up so that Dekes could see it.

  “Well, since you know I’m the Spider, surely you realize why I came here this evening.”

  Dekes made that arrogant, dismissive wave with his hand again. “I assume it had something to do with Callie Reyes. From what my sources have been able to dig up, she’s good friends with your . . . sister, is it? Detective Coolidge? I believe I saw the detective by the pool. A beautiful woman, your sister.”

  My hand tightened around the knife. If this bastard thought he was getting anywhere near Bria, then he obviously hadn’t listened closely enough to McAllister. I might not like the smarmy lawyer, but I knew enough about him to realize that he’d tell Dekes every little detail he knew about me, including how I’d killed Mab. So why wasn’t Dekes worried I’d do the same to him? I didn’t know what game he was playing, but I had a feeling that I’d already lost. The only question now was how high the price was going to be.

  “But as beautiful as your sister might be, she’s just not as special as you are, now, is she, Gin?”

  “Special?” I asked. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  I didn’t care what he thought was so damn special about me, but I asked the question because it let me slide another step in the vamp’s direction. I’d been easing closer and closer to him as we’d talked, and now I was only about fifteen feet from him. As soon as I got within arm’s reach, I was lunging forward and taking him out with my knives, magic, or both if necessary. The two giants stood off to my left, their gazes fixed on me. They’d noticed the steps I’d taken, but they’d made no move to counter them, not even to unbutton their suit jackets and reach for the guns they were probably wearing. Apparently they thought their boss could handle me all by himself. A troubling thought, and I started to wonder just how badly I’d underestimated the vampire.

  Dekes’s eyes gleamed in his face, and I felt like a mouse staring into the face of a very large, very hungry cat. “You see, what really intrigued me about you, Gin, and the reason I let you and your friends slip into my press conference is your elemental power—and the fact that you have both Ice and Stone magic. At least, that’s what Jonah claimed on the phone. I couldn’t quite believe it myself. It’s an exceptionally rare gift, being able to tap into two elemental areas like that. I’ve certainly never met anyone with a dual gift before—and I’ve had quite a bit of experience with elementals over the years.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, anything, to keep him talking so I could creep even closer to him, but Dekes beat me to the punch.

  “Bring them in!” the vampire called out in a loud voice.

  Footsteps sounded in the hall, and a third giant stepped into the library, dragging Vanessa into the room. The other woman gave me a look that was a mixture of anger, disgust, and pity. A second later, two more giants entered the library—also dragging Vanessa inside.

  I blinked, staring at the limp figure that hung in between the last two giants and wondering if I was seeing double. No, wait, that wasn’t Vanessa. The woman, who looked to be unconscious, had the same black hair and beautiful skin that Vanessa did, indicating that they were related, but her features were younger, softer, smoother. She also wore an elegant black evening gown, but the fabric didn’t hide how painfully thin she was. I could see the bones in her chest all the way across the room. But the strange thing was that she had on the same diamond and pearl jewelry that Vanessa did—a wide choker around her neck and matching cuffs on either wrist. Two more giants stepped into the library and shut the double doors behind them.

  Now there was a total of seven giants in the room, along with me, Dekes, and the two women. Not great odds, but I’d survived worse.

  “I’m not sure if you realize it or not, but my lovely wife, Vanessa, has a younger sister, Victoria.”

  Dekes nodded at the giants, who dragged the two women over to where we stood. The giants dumped the still-unconscious Victoria onto the green leather sofa while Vanessa broke free of the man holding her, rushed forward, and dropped to her knees beside the couch, cradling her sister’s head in her hands. Anguish filled Vanessa’s face as she looked at her sister, an anguish that I knew all too well. I’d felt the same thing the night Bria had been kidnapped and taken to Mab. Fear, rage, and utter, humiliating helplessness that I’d failed to protect my sister.

  Earlier at the press conference, Vanessa hadn’t been warning me away from her husband because she thought I might steal him from her—she’d been trying to save my life. I’d just been too smug and arrogant about my own prowess as the Spider to realize it. Never believe your own reputation. Fletcher had told me that more than once, but that’s just what I’d done tonight, thinking that Dek
es would be an easy mark for an assassin like me.

  I wondered if it would be the last mistake I ever made.

  “Darling,” Dekes said in a soft voice. “Let’s show Gin just how good I am to you and your dear sister.”

  Vanessa’s back stiffened, and her whole body trembled with fear, rage, or perhaps both. For a moment, I thought she wasn’t going to do what he said, but she slowly pushed herself to her feet and turned to face me. With shaking hands, Vanessa yanked the jeweled cuffs off her arms, unsnapped the choker from around her neck, and let them all drop to the floor.

  Bite marks covered her neck and wrists—deep, vicious, ugly bite marks.

  The skin around Vanessa’s wrists was mottled, purple, and broken from the wounds, and the same marks ringed her neck like the choker she’d just torn off. Most of the marks looked fresh, but I could see the gleam of old white scars and newer pink puckered ones here and there—so many fucking scars. I couldn’t tell how many times Dekes had bitten her or for how long, but my stomach recoiled at the sight, and the spider rune scars embedded in my own palms began to itch and burn with old memories. I knew what it was like to be marked like that, to be branded, to be tortured. I’d only endured it once, but Vanessa had been subjected to it over and over and over again, ever since she’d been married to Dekes—perhaps even longer.

  Now I knew why the diamonds and pearls had whispered and wailed with anger, pain, and fear instead of their own sparkling beauty. The jewels were echoing Vanessa’s own feelings of being trapped in her marriage to Dekes, of being used so cruelly by the vampire.