Crap.
I took out my phone and searched Twitter and YouTube, then Googled “SoHo Sasquatch.”
Nothing.
For now.
The stack of the Informer was twice the height of what it usually was. It looked like they’d printed plenty of extras. My old editor would want to entice as much money as possible from the sensation-loving public. It was half past two in the afternoon; that stack must have been huge when it’d been delivered this morning.
I put down my bagel, took my coffee with me to cool it down, and climbed out of the SUV to get a copy.
It read like a fluffed-up police report, and seeing the name on the byline, I knew it’d been fluffed up with silicone.
I’d been my editor’s favorite reporter because I was a good reporter who got the story. Scuttlebutt had it that Trixie Shaftner was now his favorite, but for completely different reasons. Trixie was good at getting people to talk to her—especially men. Her sources were bigger and higher up than mine, but then so were her boobs. All she had to do was aim her girls at them, and the poor, besotted bastards were one question away from becoming her next “source close to the investigation.”
I gave the article a quick scan to see if Trixie had managed to get anywhere close to the truth.
The article was sensational, panic inducing, and full of gruesome details—vintage Informer. Sounded like Trixie had gotten her hands on the coroner’s report or had rubbed her bounty up against one of the first responders, or both. Falke’s method of demise was described with near ghoulish glee. The coroner believed the weapon to be a curved knife, like a sickle. Trixie said that Falke’s slash wounds were caused by claws, and that his arm had been torn, not cut, from his shoulder.
One point for Trixie.
She had the same information that we did on Falke’s background, but there was nothing on why he had been in New York. She also didn’t know what Falke had been doing in the proprietor’s office at Barrington Galleries when he was murdered; and of course, all efforts to locate Oliver Barrington-Smythe led to a dead end. In an unexpected and imaginative twist, Trixie all but accused Ollie of being the Dr. Frankenstein/mastermind behind the monster, and inferred that his gallery was a front for occult criminal activity.
Ollie? A criminal mastermind?
Snort.
Nice try, Trix, but no cigar.
Conveniently, Ollie wasn’t around to refute her story or sue the pants off of her and the Informer. Though if he were here, he’d just stay open extended hours to take financial advantage of his notoriety, and offer tours of his office at twenty bucks a pop.
The official police statement was that a body was found and that they were currently investigating.
I had coffee in one hand, the tabloid in the other, and was drinking the former and reading the latter while walking across an icy sidewalk back to the SUV. It was multitasking at its finest. It was also what kept me from seeing the yuppie vampire stroll right up next to me and put a vice-clamp grip on my upper arm.
“Fools and their money are easily parted,” he murmured in my ear.
He was wearing sunglasses. Oakleys. That kept his eyes from doing a repeat of trying to hypnotize like he’d nearly done last night.
I did some panicked fumbling through my brain’s filing cabinet for what I knew about vampires and daylight. Younger vamps couldn’t take the light at all. Middle-aged ones could be out in the light, but “time to turn so you don’t burn” was literal with them. Vamps older than five hundred years had no problem being out and about during the day, but shades were advisable.
In addition to sunglasses, the yuppie vamp had every square inch of skin covered—suit, tie, wool coat, gloves, and scarf. Only his face was exposed, but it was shaded under the brim of a stylish fedora. Middle-aged variety. Check.
I’d like to say that I didn’t do a repeat of my stand, stare, and stammer bit from last night. I’d like to say it, but I couldn’t.
“The sun doesn’t agree with me, either,” I eventually heard myself say.
The vampire took the Informer from me then firmly linked my arm through his. “I thought as much with your kind.” He said the last two words as if they left a bad taste in his mouth. “Then you will be agreeable to finding a more private place to continue our conversation.” He tossed the tabloid in the nearest trash, which was really where it belonged.
I wasn’t running this time; and with my arm locked down, I couldn’t. Besides, vampire or not, I’d seen him rip the ass out of his pants. That and knowing what color underwear he wore took a little of the edge off my fear. It was also broad daylight and we were in the middle of a relatively crowded street. If I had to, I had a scream that’d put a banshee to shame.
The vampire jerked me in closer, facing him. “Is the package in place?”
“What?”
“My package. Is it in place?”
I resisted the urge to look down at the front of the vampire’s pants. “Uh . . . yes?”
“Good.” His fingers curled in a crushing grip around my hand. “Now explain to me why you apprehended the assassin and delivered the keys and flash drive into SPI’s hands?”
I didn’t know him, but he obviously thought he knew me. Plus, the homeless guy knew Ian. This was officially beyond confusing.
When in doubt, go with the truth. “She killed our source.” I remembered Ian dumping out the contents of the purse. “The SPI agent took the keys, and I didn’t know about the flash drive.”
“Tarbert had far outlived his usefulness, and paid the price for his greed.” He lowered his face to mine, and I could smell whoever he had for breakfast. “The head of the beast does not matter to me, but if you do not wish to share Tarbert’s fate, you will retrieve that flash drive.”
“I . . . I don’t think I can do that.”
“You derive great enjoyment from toying with me, demon. Perhaps our employer is correct and you have outlived your usefulness as well.” He adjusted his grip on my arm to get a better hold. “Your behavior has become increasingly erratic, and the risk of exposure is too great.”
A black van with blacked-out windows pulled up to the curb. The door slid open. I caught a glimpse of two men in black suits, white shirts, black ties, and sunglasses, putting off a serious Men in Black vibe.
“Get in,” the vampire ordered.
It didn’t matter where you were from—backwoods or big city—you didn’t get into a van full of strange men, and they didn’t come any stranger than this.
I didn’t act. I reacted.
With a scream that could be heard for blocks—probably above and below ground—I punched the vamp in the face with the hand holding the scalding coffee. I’d forgotten until that moment that I was still wearing the brass knuckles under my glove. I felt teeth break. The vamp’s hold on me loosened, and I yanked my arm free, inadvertently knocking off his hat and sunglasses in the process.
Now the vamp was screaming, too—burning from coffee and the sun, and bleeding from broken teeth, including one fang.
I ran and kept running, down the stairs into the subway station, slowing only enough to swipe my MetroCard at the turnstile. I rounded the corner and was going full speed when I hit the men’s room door with my open hand and plowed into Ian, knocking him to the floor and landing on top of him. Yasha and Calvin were carrying a crate now marked “Defective Toilet.” They looked just as stunned as Ian, minus the pain.
I panted to catch my breath. “Need any help?”
10
WE were in the SUV headed back to Manhattan. Yasha was driving and Calvin was literally riding shotgun. Ian was in the backseat with me, and Grendel’s head was in the cargo area right behind us. When we’d gotten topside, there had been no sign of the vamp, van, or MiBs. Heck, even the vamp’s blood was gone. And the people on the street were acting like nothing had happened. I had to hand it to
them; it took a lot to ruffle New Yorkers.
“When he asked if his package was in place, I told him yes.”
Calvin shot me a bemused look.
“Yeah,” I said. “That was my first thought, too. And ‘yes’ seemed to be the answer he wanted. When I’m dealing with crazy people who can rip my throat out with their teeth—or who want to take me to a mystery employer who thinks I’ve outlived my usefulness—I tell them what they want to hear.”
In addition to freaking out over nearly being kidnapped, my skin was trying to crawl off and hide from a mummified monster head sitting mere inches away. I turned in the seat to put my back to the door. I didn’t care if the thing didn’t have a body; I wasn’t taking my eyes off of it, but it didn’t stop me from finishing my bagel. I had my priorities. What I didn’t have was any coffee to wash it down with, but who needed caffeine when you had adrenaline.
I’d given them the Reader’s Digest condensed version of the Informer getting wind of our monster problem, but a word-for-word report of my encounter with the vampire. As a former reporter, I was good at remembering exactly what someone told me, especially when it involved personal threats of the fatal kind.
Ian’s response when I finished was to run his hand over his face. “Let me get this straight. The dead guy from Ollie’s had your picture in his pocket, and now this vampire—also from last night—thinks that you and he work for the same person.”
“That person couldn’t possibly be Vivienne Sagadraco, could it?”
Ian didn’t even dignify that with an answer.
“Hey, I’m still new here. Just checking.”
“Did he give any indication of what was in the package and where it is?” Ian asked.
“None.” And I could’ve smacked myself for not asking. “I wanted to ask, but if I had, he’d have known I wasn’t the person he thought I was—whoever that is. And he acted like I should know what he was talking about, like I’m in cahoots with these people—whoever they are.”
“How could vampire mistake you for demon?” Yasha asked.
I threw up my hands in an I’ve-got-nothing gesture.
“I’m more concerned about how he knew exactly where you’d be last night and today,” Ian said. “Maybe once Kenji gets a look at what’s on that flash drive, we’ll have a big piece of the puzzle and some of this will start to make sense.”
“Nothing that’s happened since this whole thing started has made sense,” I told him.
“Is true,” Yasha agreed.
Ian shot the Russian a look. Yasha ignored him.
“We have Tarbert’s killer in custody,” Ian reminded me. “Our people are the best. If she knows who hired her, the name of her contact, and where the drop point was for the flash drive and those keys—they’ll get it out of her.”
I leaned back and ate the last bite of bagel. “I’d forgotten about the mausoleum and crypt keys. And the vampire said that the head of the beast didn’t matter to him.” I tried to put the pieces together in my head. “Adam Falke wanted to buy the arm and head; now Falke’s dead, probably killed by the beast the vampire was talking about. Ollie was going to get the arm and buy the head to sell to Falke. And now Ollie’s kidnapped and the guy selling the head is dead.”
“We have the head,” Ian said. “And the flash drive.”
“And ghouls took Ollie and the arm.”
“In a decommissioned military helicopter.”
We all thought about that.
As I swallowed the last bite of my bagel, my fear gave way to anger. “And just what the hell did he mean by ‘my erratic behavior’?”
Ian just looked at me. Yasha and Calvin stared straight ahead and didn’t say a word.
I glared at all of them.
“We’ll check in with Moreau when we get back to headquarters,” Ian said. “See if he has any leads on who the vampire is.”
A vampire that thinks that I’m working with him, the same vampire who orchestrated at least one murder—and possibly two. I could hardly forget the pieces of Adam Falke scattered around Ollie’s office—a victim who was carrying a blood-spattered photo of me.
I thunked my head against the window. This couldn’t be good for my next performance review.
• • •
The monster head was a big hit at SPI headquarters. People in white lab coats immediately surrounded the box labeled “Defective Toilet” and whisked it away.
Ian went in search of Alain Moreau. I went in search of answers. Alone. By myself. Without having to account to Moreau for dealings with shady vampires, men in black in black vans, and erratic behavior. I’d have to talk to him eventually, but it wasn’t going to be now.
There was something I could do to help that I was actually good at.
Get to the bottom of a story.
There’d been three murders in two days, and two of those killings had been committed by a ten-foot-tall monster with five-inch claws who’d come to town not as a tourist, but to eat the tourists, and anyone else who looked tasty. Connected to all that in some way was a team of ghoul commandos who’d taken Oliver Barrington-Smythe. Ollie wasn’t just a source; he was a friend. Occasionally obnoxious, but always a friend. It may not have been my job to save him from those ghouls; but dammit, it was my job to do everything I could to help get him back. And the thing I did best of all was to stick my nose where it didn’t belong. One of my dad’s best hunting dogs had gotten a piece bitten out of her nose by a raccoon that way, but it hadn’t stopped her from doing what she’d been born to do.
I was a hunter, too, only I tracked down information, waded through facts and rumors, picking through the truth and lies—until I’d found all the pieces of a puzzle and could put together a picture of what had really happened. Like one of Dad’s hounds on a scent, I wasn’t going to let anything throw me off the trail. Yes, a scarab-tattooed guy who’d been carrying a picture of me had gotten himself gutted, but if we didn’t get to the bottom of this by New Year’s Eve, more people would die; a lot more.
And it was growing increasingly likely that I could be one of them.
I went to my desk in the far corner of the bull pen.
There’d been a decorative addition since this morning.
A toy model of a tractor sitting on top of a crushed model car.
Embarrassing news traveled fast.
I looked around for the culprit. As I did, clapping, whistles, and cheering came from every agent in the bull pen. I even got some standing ovations. So I did the only thing I could do. Smiled, waved like a gymnast after a successful dismount, and sat down.
I slunk down behind my computer monitor, but the smile stayed.
It was my second piece of coworker-supplied desk flair.
When an agent did something particularly memorable in the field—intentionally good or unintentionally mortifying—their fellow agents made sure their actions didn’t go unrewarded.
You weren’t truly a member of the team until you’d been gifted with desk flair.
My smile turned into a goofy grin. To paraphrase the immortal words of Sally Field: they liked me. They really liked me.
My first piece of desk flair had been a leprechaun figurine wearing a gold crown. He looked like the cute, little guy on the Lucky Charms cereal box—that is if you ignored the tiny pair of pants that someone had sewed that were down around his ankles—and the itty-bitty dangly bits someone had made out of Play-Doh. Multiply that leprechaun times five, and that was the event that marked my first time out in the field as a SPI agent.
SPI wasn’t normally in the bodyguard business, but as a favor to the local Seelie Court, a team of SPI agents had been assigned to escort a soon-to-be-married leprechaun prince and his bachelor-party buddies for a night on the town. Those three wishes the leprechauns would’ve been forced to grant if they’d been captured? They held unlimited power i
f they came from a member of the royal family. Wishes certain creatures of the Unseelie Court would’ve stopped at nothing to get. Hence the SPI bodyguard detail.
Well, the prince didn’t want bodyguards.
A fun fact to know about leprechauns: a human’s gaze can hold them prisoner. However, the instant the human looks away, the leprechaun can vanish. So where was the first place the prince and his roving bachelor party wanted to go? A strip club. SPI’s agents are highly trained and disciplined; but take five male agents into a strip club and tell them they can’t look?
The prince and his boys had flown the coop before the first G-string dropped.
Leprechauns are masters of disguise and can make themselves look like anyone. So we had five magically disguised leprechauns running amok and unguarded through New York’s adult entertainment establishments, and yours truly was the only SPI agent who’d been able to see through their glamours.
That night turned into a race against agents of the Unseelie Court as we hit New York’s strip joints, searching for a pack of horny leprechauns looking to get lucky.
We eventually found them in the Bronx. They’d gotten the munchies and staggered into a thankfully empty McDonalds.
The hobgoblin owner had met us in the parking lot, and while Ian got him calmed down, I went inside.
Bad call.
The leprechauns weren’t wearing glamours; and by this point, they weren’t even wearing clothes. Every last one of them thought that, like the Lucky Charms guy, they were “magically delicious.” His Highness even asked if I wanted to rub his charms for good luck.
After I’d Tasered him smack-dab in the Happy Meal, the others saw the wisdom in putting their pants back on.
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