by D. N. Hoxa
“I really am sorry, Winter,” James said and took a step back.
“Who the hell are those vampires? Are they with the same ones I killed two months ago? Because I killed three more today, and they ended up burning down my friend’s house.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have given him that many details, but I was still considerably pissed.
“You know they’ll kill me if I tell you,” James said, shaking his head.
“They’re not going to find out,” Bender said again. “How about that?”
“They’re very dangerous,” James said. “Please, don’t make me.”
There I went again, feeling sorry for the asshole.
“Look, Bender’s right. Nobody’s going to find out. Just pretend I was never here, okay? I really need to know who they are, James.”
“Dangerous, I already told you. They’re very dangerous. You don’t want to mess with them.”
“But I already did, remember? When I killed three of them and saved your life, I messed with them!” I hissed. I remembered the night clearly. I also remembered the vampire bite on the side of my neck. The one on my shoulders hadn’t hurt nearly as much as that one, when the vampire’s teeth had sunk right into my veins.
James covered his face with his hands. Squeezing my eyes shut, I made myself give him a second. He had a family. Of course he was in a bad position. Sure, he was an asshole for ratting me out, but that didn’t mean I needed to be an asshole, too.
“Nobody knows exactly who they are,” James finally said. “They rarely visit the Lair.”
The Lair was a neighborhood in the Bronx that vampires had practically stolen for themselves, and most of them gathered there every night. It wasn’t a very nice place for the rest of the paranormals.
“You’re going to have to give me more than that,” I pushed.
“Look, I really don’t know much. They just come and pick vamps to do jobs. They pay really well, too, so nobody asks questions.”
“And what did you not do for them to get them after you?” When I first met James, he was hiding from those vampires. He probably took a job from them, took the money, and didn’t deliver. Classic.
James shrugged a couple of times and looked away from me. “I was supposed to keep tabs on some people for two weeks. So I missed a few days, so what?”
“Stop being vague, or I swear to God I’m going to break your nose. Twice.” I raised two fingers in front of his face, and I wasn’t even kidding. His daughter was in the other room, and by the time we would leave, his nose would be healed. She wouldn’t notice a thing. Except the blood.
Yeah, she’d probably notice the blood.
“All right, all right, I was supposed to watch over a bunch of witches. See where they went, when. That sort of thing. And I did!” James said, all the while shaking his head like he was trying to stop himself from speaking. “I reported back, and they must have figured out afterwards that I’d missed a couple nights. So they came after me. End of story.”
“Not even close,” I mumbled. “What witches were you watching over and why?”
James shrugged. “Some Greens in Delaware. I don’t know why. You can kill me if you want, but I don’t. We never ask questions.”
I barely heard his last few sentences. He had lost me at Delaware. I looked back at Bender. He was now very interested in James, too.
“Which Greens? Do you have a name?” he asked the vampire.
“No names. Just an address, that’s all.”
“I was in Delaware myself. How did you manage to get past the spells?” I asked because the name didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all now.
“Winter, please—” But before James could finish the sentence, I slammed him against the wall and held my arm against his throat.
“I’m going to hurt you very badly. Your daughter is going to hear you crying in pain.” At that point I was willing to do whatever it took, even get Bender to take Melissa outside while I dealt with the vamp. “Tell me everything.”
“The ring,” he cried. “With the ring. Just please…”
I let him go and stepped back. My mind was a mess of swirling thoughts. Nothing seemed to fit together anymore, and I wished I was in an isolated room somewhere, all alone and in darkness so I could put everything back in its place.
“Where can we find them?” Bender asked.
“I don’t know. Nobody knows. The only time anybody’s seen them is in the Lair,” James said, his voice breaking.
“Are you sure? It really would help us if you could remember details. Any detail at all,” Bender continued, but I doubted he’d get anything else out of James.
“I already told you everything I know. They’re dangerous, and when they want to find someone, they do. They found me in less than a month where I was hiding, and nobody else could find me there. I’m telling you, there’s no kidding with them.”
“How many are there?” I asked instead.
“We’ve seen about ten of them,” James said.
If ten showed their faces to the world, a hundred more were probably behind them.
“Did they give you the ring?”
James nodded.
“And you didn’t return it?”
He flinched. “They didn’t ask for it when I reported to them. I figured they’d let me keep it. I wanted to sell it to buy something pretty for my daughter, but then I paid you with it.”
I smiled bitterly. “You said a lot of people are after it. I remember, James. That’s what you told me.”
“Some other vampires were after it when they found out I had it, but that’s it!”
Lie. I could smell it on him like burned sugar. It stunk.
“You need to leave. Right now, before they figure out you were here.”
“What did you tell them about me?”
“Nothing. That you were protecting yourself when you killed the first three. And I told them that you had become a fairy. I said you no longer even had any magic in you, and I didn’t tell them about the ring, at first. I sent them chasing after someone else. Until last night,” he whispered. “I had no choice. You have to believe me.”
I did believe him, but that didn’t matter at all. “Try to make some money and leave the country, James. You owe it to your daughter.” I turned for the door. Bender was already waiting.
“What do you think I’m trying to do? My wife’s working her ass off night and day. I’m going to disappear as soon as I can,” he called while we walked up the stairs in a hurry. I really hoped I never saw that vampire again.
Sixteen
When Bender and I made it out in the streets again, we were both looking around at everyone passing us by. We were both in a hurry to get back to Turtle, too. Things had changed now. Everything had changed.
“I need to go by my office. If they haven’t been there already, I need to find that ring,” I said to Bender, but he made no sound until we were finally inside the car, and I turned the ignition on.
“So it’s true,” he breathed.
Surprised, I narrowed my brows. “You thought I was lying to you this whole time?” It was supposed to be a joke, but apparently, I’d hit right in the truth.
“When you’ve lived the life I lived, you learn not to trust anyone.”
Laughing dryly, I shook my head. “Wow, you’re a piece of work.” When he refused to say anything else, I continued because I was just too full to keep my mouth shut. “So you just got up and left the comfort of your home without even being sure that it would be worth something?”
“For this, yes. If there was even the slightest hope that I could bring Jessica’s killers to justice, I would take it, no matter the odds.”
His words made me hate him, just a little. I realized that people didn’t trust fairies, but I’d gone to the witch with my heart on my sleeve and I’d told him things I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. Now, he was telling me at least a part of him had thought it was all bullshit. I took it harder than was reasonable, but on
ly because I’d actually enjoyed talking to the guy. And working with him, too.
Suddenly, all the will to talk left me, and I shut down into myself. My thoughts screamed at me, and eventually, I heard nothing anymore. I found myself thinking about the new car I was going to get. Probably some sort of a defense mechanism for my sanity.
It took me twenty minutes to get to Geraldine Street. I looked up at the sky before turning the corner to my office, half expecting to see grey smoke against the dark sky, but no. There was no smoke. My office looked completely intact. That should have made me happy, but it didn’t. It just made me more suspicious. Why had those vampires not gone in there already? If they’d searched the place well enough, they would have found the ring.
“Do you have a gun on you?” I asked Bender before getting out of the car.
“I do, but I don’t really need one,” he said and didn’t even wait for me.
With a sigh, I climbed out of Turtle and walked the five feet it took me to get to the office. Cautiously, I approached the glass door and peaked inside. Empty. The office was empty. Not even my landlady was in there. For the first time in my life, I felt a bit disappointed not to see her old smiling face.
I opened the door as slowly as I could because I still couldn’t believe that the vampires weren’t there.
Sniffing deeply, I made sure that no smell of menthol or wet wood reached my nostrils before stepping in. I turned the light on and scanned the floor for any spell stones someone could have left there but found nothing. By the time I searched the bathroom and my room, I was covered in sweat from head to toe.
“Looks like I’d be doing you a favor by offering you my couch to sleep on,” Bender mumbled when I asked him to come help me search for the ring in my wardrobe.
“You don’t have a couch, remember?” His whole house got burned down.
“Of course I do,” Bender said. “That house they torched isn’t my only one.”
Oh? I turned to him with a new wave of curiosity. “It isn’t?” was my way of asking him to explain.
“Nope. I’ve got two more across the States. My parents were relatively rich witches,” he said with a grin.
Lucky bastard.
I’d emptied the lower part of my wardrobe completely and found plenty of my mother’s jewelry but still no ring. Where the hell had I put that thing?
“So we’re just not going to talk about it?” Bender said after a few minutes.
“No, we are. Just not right away.” I needed some time to process everything.
“Those vampires either are the beasts you talk about, or they’re working for them, and the latter makes more sense since vampires and magic don’t mix,” was Bender’s way of saying he didn’t give a shit whether I needed processing time or not.
“They work for them, all right,” I mumbled. I would have smelled the beast if it had been a vampire. The smell of a vampire was unmistakable.
“So if we find them, we find the beasts,” Bender continued.
I just kept going through my clothes and through all my jewelry. The witch was supposed to help, but he just stood there and watched instead.
“Or they’ll find us.”
A shiver ran down my back. I’d fought those vampires before without knowing who they were, or who they worked for. Now, everything was different.
“We have to tell the ECU,” Bender said and made me freeze for a second.
“Tell them what? What’s the proof?”
“That ring you’re going to find soon,” he said and sat down on the edge of my bed.
I could barely move as it was. Something hard hit my stomach and a thought, as clear as day, took over my mind. Reluctantly, I sighed.
“So all those years you spent on this case, you’re just going to hand it right over to the hands of the ECU?” It was something I didn’t particularly like to think about because it made me feel like a selfish bitch, but I wouldn’t have been able to keep my mouth shut. Sooner better than later.
Bender was silent for a long minute. “I don’t want to, but if those things are as powerful as you described them, we might need to get help.”
“I know, but if we let the ECU in on this, they’re going to kick us out. I caught the thing single-handedly, and they didn’t care.”
It was how they operated. They were either completely out, or the only ones to be in on something.
“We need some rest. We have to think about this with clear heads,” Bender said.
I couldn’t agree more.
“I say we leave Manhattan, just to be on the safe side.” There were a lot of hotels we could go to, but the farther we were from my office, the better.
“I say we sleep here,” Bender said and surprised me all over again. “I’ll keep watch until dawn. When the sun is up, who’s going to come for us?”
The man did have a point.
“I can’t find it,” I mumbled. My eyes were burning. I hadn’t slept at all the night before. It was all catching up with me. Suddenly, his plan sounded mighty fine.
“In the morning.” He patted the bed. “Get some sleep.”
“No, you sleep here. I’ll sleep at the desk.” It was only fair because his house got burned down because of me.
“Absolutely not. I’m a gentleman.” He was at the door before I could get out. “Goodnight, Wayne.”
“Goodnight, Bender,” I mumbled and fell on the bed. It wasn’t fair, but I had no energy left to argue with him over who got the bed. Sleep took me as soon as my cheek hit the pillow, and the last thing I remembered thinking was the place where I’d last seen James’s ring.
***
Everything that had happened the day before came to me in a rush even before I opened my eyes: Bender, his house, Ammic, the vampires, James…I cringed. Had I really fallen asleep and left Bender in my office alone?
Jumping to my feet, I started walking before I even straightened completely. When the room began to spin fast, I didn’t dare stop. Heart in my throat, I made it out to the office, cursing myself in my head for allowing something like this to happen. I’d given a complete stranger absolute power over me and my work. My whole life. I had everything in there, and he could have spelled it all.
“Winny, dear, so good to see you.”
My landlady’s voice registered first. Her wrinkled, smiling face second. My shoulder hit the wall to my side, and I sighed loudly. Bender was sitting at my desk, drinking tea with Ms. Riley.
“Yes, Winny, dear. So good to see you,” Bender said, grinning like a little kid and hiding his face from my landlady behind his cup.
“Ms. Riley, what are you doing here?” I breathed, though the question was useless. I already knew what she was going to say.
“I was just going for a walk when I saw Mr. Bender here all by himself and thought I’d keep him company,” she said. Right. She was always going on walks. “I’ve made you some tea, too. It’s great for your skin.”
She’d actually had her kettle with her. I was going to send her flying out the door, but when I look into her eyes, I just couldn’t. She looked so damn happy to be there. Damn it. I hated guilt. Reluctantly, I dragged my feet to my desk and took the white cup of tea she offered me.
“Thank you, Ms. Riley.”
“You’re welcome, dear. I was worried about you. You’ve been gone for so long,” she said.
Two days. I hadn’t been at the office for two days.
“I was busy,” I mumbled and drank the tea. It was really good.
“Mr. Riley here was telling me about you,” Bender said, his cheeks flushed as he tried to hold back the laughter.
I managed not to roll my eyes at him in front of my landlady, but he would get what was coming for him as soon as she left. If she planned to.
“I’m sorry, Winny, but I’m going to have to agree with her. You do need to try wearing dresses sometimes, and preferably not black. And you really need to think about cutting your hair, or get a new conditioner at the very least.”
> My hands pulled up in fists as Ms. Riley watched me and nodded as if Bender was fucking preaching.
“And what’s up with all those weapons you carry around with you? They’re dangerous, you know.”
“And the other thing,” my landlady said to Bender and raised her brows as if they already had developed a secret language.
“Oh, oh!” Bender said and set his cup on the desk, then turned to me. “Life is too short, Winny. You should find a man and have babies soon. The years go by so fast.”
I slammed my face against the desk as he burst out in laughter, no longer able to contain himself. Mornings were not the best time to make fun of me.
“I tried to tell her before,” Ms. Riley said to Bender, as if she couldn’t even see him laughing his eyes out. “She’s a very stubborn young lady.”
I made myself raise my head again. “Thank you, Ms. Riley. I really do appreciate your concern, but I’m fine. I like to live this way, I promise.”
“But, Winny—”
“No buts, Ms. Riley. You’ve got to take care of yourself. Stop worrying about me, okay?”
“Oh, I wish I could,” she said, smiling and shaking her head.
I looked up at the ceiling. Some divine intervention right about now would be nice.
Bender had finally stopped laughing, and he cleared his throat. I expected him to continue to make fun of me, but lucky for him, he didn’t.
“Ms. Riley, you said you belonged to the Brigham pack before,” he said, and she eagerly put the cup down to answer.
“My family belongs to the Brighams,” she said. “But I was always more of a lone wolf. I haven’t lived with my family since I was eighteen years old, and I set myself away from all the customs and the pack traditions early on when I met my husband, God rest his soul.”
Oh, wow. This was totally unexpected. Who knew Ms. Riley was a rebel in her youth?
“He was a Blood witch. Neither of our families accepted our marriage. He ended up leaving his coven, too.”