Bloodstone d-3

by Nancy Holzner

A human woman looked up from the reception desk. She was about forty, had on no makeup, and wore her hair slicked back in a ponytail. “Yeah?”

  “I’m here to see Juliet Capulet.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You’re her attorney? I thought you said you couldn’t come in until morning.”

  Betsy Blythe had already called back. That was a good sign. Maybe Kane’s faith in her was justified.

  I decided to ignore the receptionist’s question—no point in lying to the police unless absolutely necessary—and responded to her statement instead. “If I waited until morning, there’d be no point, would there? Vampires sleep during the day.” Juliet was old for a vampire, with all of the powers age conferred. She could stay up half the day if she wanted, but most vampires conked out as soon as the sun cleared the horizon.

  The receptionist considered, then shrugged. “Sign in here,” she said, turning an open book toward me. “I’ll need to search your bag.”

  As she opened my purse, I scrawled a signature that could be anything from Betsy Blythe to John Hancock.

  “No weapons allowed in the cells. I’ll give you a receipt for this knife.” She removed a bronze dagger and set it on her desk. “And this one.”

  The second dagger made her raise an eyebrow. But both eyebrows went up when the third dagger, the one in my boot, set off the metal detector. I handed it over. “Jesus, how many blades do you carry?” She crossed out the number she’d been writing on my receipt.

  “I’m, um, taking a self-defense class.”

  Uh-huh, said her look. In a cocktail dress and pearls.

  “Can’t be too careful in the Zone, right?” I added.

  “Well, that’s true. I never go to any of the monster bars. I walk straight between work and the checkpoint. And the place still creeps me out.” She handed me a ticket. “I’ll get a guard to escort you to the prisoner. Use this to reclaim your weapons on the way out.” She handed me a slip of paper, which I stuffed into my purse.

  The uniformed guard was also human—six two, buzz cut, with shoulders that might even give him an edge in a wrestling match with a zombie. He jerked his head to indicate I should follow. We went down a hallway and turned a corner. I waited while he removed a ring of keys from his belt and sorted through them to open a metal door. Near the end of another long hallway he stopped and again went through his keys. He opened a door and gestured me inside.

  “Fifteen minutes,” he said.

  I went in. The door shut and locked behind me.

  Juliet sat on a narrow cot, on top of a scratchy-looking beige blanket. She was thin. Not concentration-camp-victim thin, but she’d lost her voluptuousness. Her elbows looked knobby in the short-sleeved orange prison shirt. Her long black hair was stringy and lusterless.

  This was not the Juliet I knew. My Juliet had made Romeo fall in love with her at first sight more than six centuries ago. Since then, countless others had fallen for her sultry gaze, the curve of her mouth, her effortless allure. This Juliet looked frail, like the years (if not yet the centuries) were catching up with her.

  If she was surprised to see me, she didn’t show it. I wanted to hug her, but she made no move toward me. Just a steady stare.

  There was a chair against the wall by the door. I sat in it.

  “Hi,” I said. “Orange is so not your color.”

  She pressed her lips into a tight, tiny smile—a vampire’s smile. “They told me this style doesn’t come in black.”

  We stared at each other. Juliet’s face was as still and unblinking, as if carved from marble.

  My questions tumbled out all at once. “So what’s going on?” I asked. “Where have you been? Who are the Old Ones? What the hell happened in Washington?”

  She said nothing but shifted on her cot, crossing her legs. A chain rattled. A silver shackle was locked around her right ankle, connected to thick links of silver chain that coiled on the floor and disappeared under the bed. Around the shackle, her skin was mottled purple and black, covered with large blisters. That had to hurt.

  Juliet flicked a glance toward a corner of the room, behind me. I turned in my chair to see a mounted video camera winking at us rhythmically with its red eye. The room was probably bugged, too. So much for lawyer-client privilege. Not that any such thing existed for us monsters.

  “Are they treating you okay?” I asked.

  Juliet sniffed. “I turned myself in to get protective custody. That means they’re supposed to keep moving me to different facilities, not leave me here chained to the wall like some pathetic Andromeda waiting for the sea monster.” She rattled the chain. It looked long enough to let her move around the cell. Not that there was anywhere to go in the eight-by-ten room. “If they don’t torture me to death with silver, they’ll drive me insane with that camera. The way it’s always blinking, blinking, blinking. I can’t ignore it.” As a predator, Juliet’s vampire senses were hyperalert to any movement. She could probably see the pulse of the recording light even through closed eyelids. “Or else they’ll starve me with diluted blood.” She wrinkled her nose. “They serve it cold. In a bottle.”

  Blood loses vitality when it leaves the body, and vampires need living blood to thrive. The Goon Squad should know that. But obviously they didn’t care. They were giving Juliet enough nourishment to keep her alive, but weak. She’d be easier to handle that way. “I’ll see if there’s anything Kane can do.”

  “Why didn’t he come? I asked for him specifically.”

  “He said . . .” I looked around, wondering where they’d hidden the microphone, and didn’t finish.

  How the hell were we supposed to have any kind of meaningful conversation? There was so much to talk about, but nothing we could say, given the circumstances. We went back to staring at each other.

  Coming here to talk with Juliet had been a bad idea. In the morning, her real lawyer would show up. There might be trouble for Juliet because I’d dropped by tonight. And I hadn’t gotten an answer to even one of my million-and-two questions.

  So much for helping my roommate.

  At least I could try to play lawyer, then get advice from Kane. What would he be asking if he were here?

  “Have any specific charges been brought against you?” I asked, trying to sound like I knew what I was doing.

  Instead of answering, Juliet gasped. “What on earth?” She was looking over my shoulder, toward the camera.

  I twisted around. It took me a moment to realize what she’d seen. There was no blinking from the video camera. Its light had gone dark.

  Out in the hallway, something crashed, making the cell’s cement floor shudder. The crash was followed by a protracted scream, a sound twisted with unfathomable fear and pain.

  I jumped up and went to the door. There was no knob on the inside. We were trapped. More crashes, more bangs shook the cell. Maybe whatever stalked the hallway wasn’t looking for us. Maybe it would pass us by.

  I held my breath and waited.

  A blow from outside jarred the door. So much for passing us by.

  Behind me, Juliet made a strangled sound. “It’s them,” she whispered. “They’ve found me.” She looked wildly around the cell. Her gaze landed on me, darkened with something like sorrow. “I’m sorry, Vicky,” she whispered.

  Her words chilled me more than the scream had. Vampires never apologize—ever. Not even as a figure of speech.

  Another blow bulged the door inward.

  I reached into my purse for a knife—and pulled out my weapons-check receipt. Stupid visitors’ policy. I picked up the chair I’d been sitting in and lifted it over my head, pressing myself as flat as I could against the cinder-block wall beside the door. When whatever was on the other side rushed into the room, I’d knock the crap out of it.

  With a screech of tearing metal, the door was ripped from its hinges. A robed figure sped through the doorway. I slammed the chair down on him, and he collapsed in a heap of black cloth.

  Right behind him came a second one, this o
ne in a brown robe. He flew—literally flew—over the first, straight at Juliet.

  Juliet sat perfectly still, her hands folded in her lap, her face expressionless except for the terror that screamed silently from her eyes.

  What the hell was wrong with her? Why wasn’t she fighting?

  She didn’t move, didn’t even flinch, as the brown-robed creature lifted her from the bed.

  I picked up the chair and rushed him from behind. As I brought the chair down, the creature flung his arm backward, knocking me sideways. There was ice and power in the blow, and more-than-ordinary strength. I flew across the room and hit the wall headfirst. Stars exploded through my vision. Pain and the warm, metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. I’d bitten my tongue when I hit the wall. I wiped my mouth, smearing blood across my cheek.

  The room felt twenty degrees colder than it had before the Old Ones entered.

  I shook the stars away. Brown Robe held Juliet like an undead groom about to whisk his bride over the threshold. But her shackle held her back, the silver chain stretched taut. The creature grabbed the chain and pulled, trying to yank it from the wall. He shrieked as a cloud of black-and-yellow smoke billowed from his hand. The creature dropped both Juliet and the chain. He spun around, clutching his hand to his chest, his bulging eyes searching the room.

  His face. I’d forgotten how hideous the Old Ones were. Yellow skin stretched taut across the skull. His eyes protruded from their sockets, the whites tea colored. A hole gaped where his nose should be. But it was the fangs that made the Old Ones redefine ugly. They stretched from this Old One’s lipless mouth past his chin, ending in razor-sharp points. Saber-toothed vampires. Just what I wanted to fight without my weapons.

  Brown Robe didn’t share my dilemma. Smoke still streaming from his right hand, he drew a short sword with his left. I tensed, preparing. But the Old One didn’t attack. Instead, he picked up Juliet, threw her onto the cot, and began hacking at her leg with the sword, just above the shackle.

  Juliet screamed.

  Oh, no, you don’t.

  I rushed the Old One from the right. He tried to swat me away again, but I dodged the blow. I grabbed his sword, and we grappled for it.

  The Old One’s grip was strong. His icy fingers made my joints ache. Gritting my teeth, I stuck a finger in his eye socket. Brown Robe recoiled, and I twisted my body. I got the sword away.

  Immediately I thrust, but Brown Robe jumped impossibly high. Something grabbed my ankle and yanked backward. I fell, cracking my head again on the side of the cot. More stars. They filled the room, swirling over my head like the goddamn Milky Way.

  When my vision cleared, I lay on my back, a weight pinning my limbs to the floor. Inches above me, the faces of two Old Ones hovered like a nightmare. The cold, stale smell of ancient death—of mold and rot and grave dust—flowed from them like an arctic wind blowing through a tomb. I struggled, but I couldn’t move. The Old Ones looked at each other. The black-robed one nodded. Brown Robe yanked his sword from my hand and rose. Immediately, Juliet’s screams began again, louder and more frantic than before.

  Black Robe lowered his face to mine. A tip of black tongue poked out from between his fangs. Slowly, carefully, he licked the corner of my mouth, tasting the blood smeared there. It felt like an ice-coated slug slithering along my skin. Revulsion clenched my stomach, and I turned my head away. Mistake. Pain stabbed my neck and shoulder as the Old One sank his fangs into me. These creatures could drain a person dry in a couple of minutes. I’d seen the empty husks they left behind.

  My neck ached and burned, and I could feel myself weaken as the creature sucked the life from my body. My toes and fingers were cold, going numb. I wiggled them, and my left hand brushed something. I heard a faint clink. The silver chain. It had burned Brown Robe’s hand to a cinder. I had a feeling that Black Robe wouldn’t like it much, either.

  Black Robe had my hand pinned to the floor, but I got my fingers around the chain. One flick, and the silver made contact with the decrepit yellow flesh. Smoke billowed. Black Robe reared back, batting at his burned hand.

  The moment his weight left my arms I was up on my knees. I wrapped the chain around his neck and yanked hard. Black Robe snarled and bucked and clawed at me with both hands. I looped the chain around my own hands so I wouldn’t lose my grip on it. The silver links grew hot in my fists as smoke billowed, spewing the smell of charred, rotten meat throughout the room. The links of chain seared my palms, the backs of my hands. I clenched my teeth against the pain and kept the chain taut.

  A blade sliced toward me. I dropped sideways, dragging Black Robe with me, rolling as we hit the floor. With the second strike, Brown Robe drove his blade deep into his buddy’s gut. I kicked Brown Robe’s wrist, and he dropped his sword. In my hands, the burning chain went slack as Black Robe’s head toppled from his body and rolled under the cot.

  I held two lengths of chain, one in each hand. Contact with the Old One’s flesh had melted the links, breaking the chain. The Old One’s headless corpse lay at my feet. The contact hadn’t done the creature’s neck any good, either.

  The length of chain attached to Juliet’s shackle was the longer of the two pieces. I lashed it like a whip at Brown Robe. The Old One jumped back, but not far enough. The chain hit his face, burning through his cheek. He shrieked and flew up to the ceiling. I whipped the chain at his legs, his feet, whatever I could reach. The smoke that choked the room showed I’d hit him more than once.

  Brown Robe swooped toward me. I ducked, spinning the chain over my head like a helicopter rotor. But Brown Robe wasn’t attacking; he was running away. The Old One rocketed through the door. I let go of the silver chain, snatched up the dropped sword, and ran after him.

  The hallway was empty. Cell doors hung crookedly, any inhabitants long gone. I ran toward the entrance. The metal door that sealed off the cell block had been torn from its hinges. Beside it, the guard who’d walked me down the hallway lay crumpled on the floor. I passed him, then stopped where the hallway turned right. Keeping my back against the wall, I peered around the corner.

  No sign of Brown Robe—except for more bodies left behind. Two here. The receptionist who’d signed me in lay sprawled across her desk. Another guard, one I hadn’t seen before, had been tossed aside like an empty candy wrapper. All three of the dead norms had been drained of blood.

  Through a half-open door, I could see the building’s surveillance center. It looked like a tornado had blown through, and then someone had taken an ax to what was left.

  What a disaster. After this, Juliet wouldn’t be safe from the Goon Squad or the Old Ones. I had to get her out of here. I gathered up the knives I’d left with the receptionist and returned to the cell block.

  The ruined door to Juliet’s cell lay against the far wall, where the Old Ones had hurled it. A quiet moaning issued from the open doorway.

  Juliet sat on the cot, her injured leg pulled up and resting on her other thigh. The silver chain trailed from her ankle. She rocked back and forth, back and forth, cradling her leg.

  I went over to her. “Let me see—”

  She snarled, baring her fangs, and shoved me away. Nail marks scored my arm.

  “Juliet, we have to go.”

  She snarled again, her eyes flaring with rage and pain but not a spark of recognition.

  “Hey, it’s me. Vicky. Come on, you know me.” I stayed out of scratching range, trying to make my voice both gentle and urgent. “We need to get out of here. Those Old Ones killed the guards. The one that got away might come back with reinforcements.”

  “The Old Ones,” she whispered, and I saw a flicker of the Juliet I knew. Her forehead wrinkled, like she was considering a difficult problem. “You killed one of them.”

  I nudged the headless body with my toe. Yup. Killed it dead. Juliet stared at the corpse as if she couldn’t fathom what it was.

  I tried again. “How badly are you hurt? Can you walk?”

  She extended her leg toward me
. The bloody wound where Brown Robe had tried to saw through her leg gaped. The bone, absurdly white, showed in the ragged cut. That wasn’t good. Juliet should have started to heal already.

  “It’s the silver,” she said. “It slows healing. As long as that’s in contact with my skin . . .” She hugged herself. “And I’m so famished.”

  She looked terrible. Purple crescents, so dark they were almost black, ringed her eyes. Her skin, always pale, looked dead white, like those guards who’d been drained of blood.

  The guards. The one who’d let me into Juliet’s cell carried that huge ring of keys. One of them had to open Juliet’s shackle. Once the silver was off her, she’d gain strength and start to heal.

  I hoped.

  I hurried to the guard who’d fallen in the hallway. His key ring jutted out from his hip. I removed the keys and started back to Juliet’s cell. Along the way, I noticed that one of the gray metal doors was stenciled with the word Kitchen. I tried the knob; it opened.

  The Goon Squad’s kitchen looked more like a break room. In its center stood a table, magazines and newspaper sections strewn across its top. There was a microwave and a coffeemaker on a counter to my right. Beyond the counter was a refrigerator.

  I opened the fridge and surveyed its contents. On the top shelf sat a carton of milk, a couple of brown bags, and a Tupperware container of some kind of pasta. The next shelf down held what I was looking for: bottles of blood. Juliet had complained it was cold and watered-down, but it would give her some nourishment.

  With four bottles clenched in my arms, I left the kitchen and returned to Juliet’s cell. She was still on the cot, rhythmically kicking the dead Old One with her good foot. As soon as she saw what I carried, she reached for the bottles. She downed the first two without taking a breath. I started to uncap the third, but she shook her head.

  “Can you get this silver off me?”

  I sorted through the keys until I found a few that looked like they might fit the shackle. On the third try, the lock clicked open. Juliet sighed with relief as the silver fell away from her skin. I dropped the shackle on the floor, away from her. A puff of smoke went up where some silver links touched the Old One’s body. I picked up the chain again, considering—it made a pretty good weapon against the Old Ones.