Bryce had been asleep and completely helpless when the human struck just after sunrise. Nothing in heaven or earth could have wakened him. Some would argue that at least he felt no pain. But he also had no chance to fight back. No chance to fight for his right to exist.
I suppressed a shiver that bit at my muscles and ignored the ache in my fangs. I couldn’t kill this coldhearted monster. I needed the answers he held. He knew the why and the final who.
“How did you find out about Bryce?” I asked, doing the best I could to swallow back my anger. “I can’t imagine you found him on your own considering that you’re not from around here.” I squatted like a toad among his memories, waiting for the image of the person who had betrayed Bryce. Yet I was momentarily distracted by the smile that blossomed on his face. The scowl that twisted his features melted away, and his eyes widened as a grin split his mouth.
“I didn’t know about him until one of your kind told me about him,” he proudly announced, hoping to get a rise out of me, but I didn’t react. I had already suspected that a nightwalker was somehow involved in this mess. But hearing those ugly words fall from his lips didn’t stop the flash of anger that ripped through me.
“Who?” I whispered.
“Why would I tell you?”
“In hopes of getting a quick, merciful death.” I took two quick steps out of the light, approaching my companion. He lurched backward, nearly stumbling in his awkward haste. I smiled as his own smile faded. “You can tell me or I can pick it out of your mind. Besides, why would you want to protect this nightwalker?”
“What do I care about some stupid fucking vamp? She came to me bitching about being turned against her will and that she wanted me to kill the bastard that did it. She was some blond bitch. Said her name was Katie.”
As he spoke, I watched him mentally replay the moment when she had approached him at night in a lonely parking lot. But something was off. Katie was not now nor was she ever a nightwalker. And yet the image of the nightwalker was blurred so that I could only pick out the figure’s slight form and blond hair. The person was definitely female, but the face was unclear. The nightwalker that spoke to him had tampered with his memory, but had not done a very good job of it.
Did you see? I silently asked Knox, who was still watching from the other side of the room. I never heard him move, but I could feel that he was now closer to me than he had been only seconds earlier.
Yes. That’s not Katie. She wasn’t a nightwalker, unless . . .
I saw the body. She’s not rising tomorrow night. She’s gone. Even if Katie hadn’t been drained of all her blood, it was unlikely she would have been able to heal her broken neck in the process of being reborn. In general, the human had to be in working order if he or she was going to be brought over. We could heal nearly any wound once we were nightwalkers, but we all had to start off in good shape.
“You’ve been lied to, my friend,” I commented, turning my attention back to the human. It wasn’t Katie. Furthermore, the nightwalker had lied about the reason for having Bryce killed. It was impossible to be made into a nightwalker against your will. If you didn’t want it, you died. And sometimes, even if you did want it, you died. You had to fight death for your soul during the process and he wasn’t the most congenial loser.
“What the hell do I care? A vampire is dead. One less to prey on humans.”
“Yes,” I hissed. “One less.” Turning on my right heel, I headed back toward the entrance of the warehouse with Knox at my side. I was done with the human. Between his uninformative answers and his damaged memories, I had gotten from him all the information I was going to be able to get. I was content to hand him over to Barrett. I had a bigger target in mind at this point. While combing through Franklin’s mind, I had caught the address for a Coalition safe house in Atlanta and a second one in Memphis, Tennessee. I’d see to it that that information was put to good use.
The shot was like an explosion in the silence of the warehouse. Pain punctured my back to the right of my spine, ripping through flesh and organs, before exiting through my chest. My whole body bowed and jerked forward. I slid a couple inches on the tips of my toes before my knees gave out on me and I collapsed to the floor. The bastard had missed my heart, but the bullet cut through one of my lungs. Lucky for me, I didn’t need my lungs any longer, and it wouldn’t take long for the damage to repair itself.
Knox knelt beside me, one hand on my arm while I pressed a hand to my chest to stem the bleeding. “Are you okay?” he demanded in a snarl. He was simply waiting for me to say that I was okay before he launched himself at Franklin.
“You forgot to search him?” I bit out.
“I’m sorry. I . . . I forgot. I’ll take care of him now.”
“He’s mine,” I replied in a low growl. Gripping Knox’s arm, I jumped to my feet and rushed across the warehouse to where the human stood, attempting to unload the contents of his handgun into my body. However, all the bullets went wide. There was no hitting me. I was moving too fast. A grim blur of color in the dimly lit warehouse. He didn’t know I was there until my hands closed around his throat and I threw him against one of the support beams. By then, his gun was clicking sadly, out of bullets.
“You have my undivided attention now,” I said, leaning in close enough that my breath brushed against his ear. “Is there something you wanted?” My chest pressed against his shirt, soaking up some of my blood. I pulled back just far enough that he could now see my fangs, sending a shiver of fear through him.
My hands clenching his shirt trembled as I fought the urge to sink my teeth into his throat. But it was more than just the need to drink in his blood. The monster that lay deep within my chest roared to life, demanding that I rip flesh and break bone. I wanted to hear him scream in pain until the sound echoed through the empty warehouse. I needed him drowning in pain, instead of emitting the terrified little whimpers that escaped him now.
Slowly I regained control of myself. In my world, I had the right to tear and rend and shred. He attacked me first. He tried to kill me at Bryce’s and again here. Unfortunately, I had other plans for this shivering sack of flesh that would serve me better than a moment’s joy in killing this bastard.
“I thought so,” I said, shoving him a little as I released his shirt.
Again, I turned and walked away. Knox accompanied me out of the warehouse. His mouth opened the moment the steel door closed with a solid clang behind us. “We forgot to ask about the video camera,” Knox said, sliding to a stop in the gravel.
“He’ll only lie about it, wasting our time,” I said, halting him before he could go back into the warehouse.
“But if they have your picture—”
“I’m screwed, I know.” Screwed was an understatement. If it got out that I was a nightwalker, even as a joke, the Coven would have my head and heart on a platter before sunrise. “Do we have anyone who might be able to hack into the Coalition database?”
“Hackers? Nightwalkers, no. But Barrett has at least a pair.”
“Perfect.” I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed Barrett’s number. “He’s at the warehouse, but won’t remain here for long. He’s all yours now,” I announced as soon as he picked up the line.
“Thank you,” Barrett murmured in a low voice. He was grateful, but he wasn’t particularly happy. He owed me now and it sat heavy in his stomach.
“You can track him by the scent of my blood,” I added, twisting the knife.
Barrett knew the only way my blood would get on Franklin would be if he managed to wound me. He now owed me a very big favor considering I had walked away from a very personal slight so that he could have his revenge. And if there was one thing that all the other races had in common, it was the fact that not one of us liked to be beholden to the other.
“What do you need?” he said as if he were grinding the words up in his clenched teeth.
“A favor. He may have gotten me on film earlier. I need all evidence of it eras
ed. Files, e-mails, and possibly data removed from the Coalition database. Do you have people who can handle it?”
“You know I do,” he replied. His voice sounded a lot less gruff than earlier. As favors went, this one was fairly easy. His people were potentially getting access to our enemy’s files while he was evening a score with me.
“My fate is in your hands.”
“Don’t worry, Mira. I’ll keep you off YouTube.”
Smiling, I shoved the phone into my pocket and pulled my keys out of my other pocket as we walked around the side of the building to where my car was parked. Opening the trunk, I dug around in my little bag for a fresh shirt. “So did we learn anything of value tonight?”
“That a nightwalker was the one to contact Franklin,” Knox replied.
He was right. A werewolf would never have been able to blur a person’s memory like we saw and it was extremely unlikely that a warlock or witch would be able to find where Bryce kept his daylight sanctuary. However, nightwalkers frequently shared that information when they allowed other nightwalkers to bed down with them during the day in rare moments of trust or when seeking to start a family.
“Whoever it was didn’t know how to properly mask her appearance. She vaguely looked like Katie, but it was very shaky as if the person was struggling to either hold the illusion or was unable to properly mend Franklin’s memories.”
“A fledgling?” Knox asked. He sounded skeptical and I couldn’t blame him.
“Possibly.” I quickly unbuttoned my shirt and looked down to find that the wound had completely healed, but now there was a trail of drying blood running down into the waist of my jeans. Wiping off as much blood as possible, I threw the shirt into my trunk to destroy later and pulled on a dark gray T-shirt.
“It could just be an older nightwalker that never had any proper training,” Knox suggested.
“A fledgling seems unlikely,” I agreed, shutting the trunk of my car. “Bryce didn’t have any fledglings of his own and he should have been old enough to easily defend himself from any of the fledglings within the area.”
“Which is maybe why a fledgling got the Coalition to do the dirty work?”
“Could a fledgling be so stupid? She had to know that we would look into this and track her down.” I turned and leaned against the car for a minute, my arms folded over my chest.
“And maybe that was a part of her plan,” interjected a new voice. I looked up in time to see Bishop step from the shadows beside the wall of the warehouse. “Maybe this fledgling’s goal is to kill you as well as this Bryce person.”
“She’s getting closer if that’s the case,” Knox added, making me scowl at him.
“Don’t make faces at the boy, Mira. He’s right,” Bishop teased. “You’ve been nearly killed three times already tonight and you’ve yet to catch this schemer.”
“I can understand killing Bryce for some reason related to our world and even the attempts on me. It’s all involved with our world. But why kill Katie Hixson? All she wanted to do was to enter our world.”
“Don’t know,” Knox said with a shrug of his shoulders. He stood before me, his hands shoved into his front pockets. “Jealousy? Maybe the fledgling didn’t want Bryce bringing over Katie or maybe she was jealous that he would rather spend time with Katie than with another nightwalker.”
It wasn’t a new story. A fledgling was hurt because a nightwalker fell for a human and wanted to turn him or her. I’d seen it all play out like a Shakespearean tragedy—everyone dead. “We need the answer to those questions.”
“Only one place left to get them.”
“Gregor.” The name escaped me in a low growl. If there was one nightwalker I wouldn’t mind seeing with his head and heart removed, it was Gregor. He was a few centuries old and controlled a clique of nightwalkers that I found more than a little annoying.
For now, I would have to put aside my distaste for him. If Bryce was known to travel with Gregor on occasion, then the nightwalker would be able to give me more information as to who might have had Bryce killed and Katie Hixson drained.
Chapter 8
Gregor wasn’t at the Dark Room. Adam quickly informed me upon arriving that when Gregor discovered I was looking for him, he left the Dark Room and asked that I meet him at the Docks. I could only guess that the nightwalker didn’t want to be seen being questioned by me. I could understand his hesitance, but that didn’t make me happy about it.
The Docks was a nightclub near the riverfront that catered to the local Goth scene with its dark, smoky decor and nonstop industrial music blaring in the background. It was one of my favorite places to spend an evening. The clientele were content to just let me enjoy the music and the dancing. It was a good place to hide when you were trying to avoid the world around you.
Slipping ahead of the crowd that waited to get into the club, I slapped a fifty on the counter per my usual no-questions policy with the management of the club. They didn’t ask to see my identification and didn’t attempt to put one of those paper strips on my wrist indicating that I was over the age of twenty-one. I didn’t come to this place to drink alcohol.
Gregor sat alone at a table in a dark corner of the nightclub. He wore a dark red, knee-length jacket over a black shirt and black double-breasted vest with large silver buttons. A gold chain for his pocket watch hung from his vest pocket. His whole attire screamed of Victorian aristocracy, making him appear to be horribly out of place in this bar filled with black leather, silver chains, and tattered lace. Regardless of the fact that Gregor had actually survived the Victorian era, he was now part of the Steampunk generation, which was a somewhat distant cousin to the Goth movement that refused to completely fade away. While I doubted he believed in their mentality, the Steampunk generation did fit his taste in clothing.
“Mira, it’s so good to see you again. It’s been ages,” Gregor said, easily rising to his feet as we approached his table.
“Hmm . . . yes, not since you suggested that a number of nightwalkers go running with the shifters on a full moon. How many fledglings did we lose that night? Six?” I said with a frown as I took a seat opposite him.
A grin spread across his face as he returned to his seat. “Eight.”
“And four lycans were badly injured,” Knox added from where he stood just behind my right shoulder. There were only two chairs at the tiny table, and I was surprised that he had chosen to stand behind me rather than pull over another chair. But then Knox was from the Old World and had been raised by an Old World nightwalker. Standing indicated that he was my assistant rather than my supposed equal sitting beside me.
“But it was fun. I’m sorry you missed out,” Gregor continued, nearly chuckling.
“It seems I missed out on some other fun, too,” I said, preferring to finally switch the subject. There was nothing I could do about Gregor’s twisted sense of humor. He had convinced a group of young nightwalkers to go running with some werewolves on the night of a full moon. There was the inevitable scuffle, and eight nightwalkers got shredded in the process, as Gregor knew would happen. My concern was the four lycans that got hurt. Barrett had not been happy about it, but then we both knew there was nothing we could do about it. We had to give our people some room to make stupid mistakes so long as humans weren’t involved.
“If you’re referring to what happened to Bryce, I had nothing to do with his demise as I’m sure you know. I heard that he was killed during the daylight hours,” Gregor said, sitting back in his chair. The music shifted at the back of the nightclub where the dance floor was located, moving to a heavy thumping beat that vibrated in my chest. I would rather be dancing, surrounded by smiling, sweating humans caught up in the music, than dealing with Gregor and this entire mess.
“For once, I believe you,” I said with a frown. “I need to know who Bryce hung out with. Particularly females. Someone killed him and Katie Hixson.”
For the first time since we walked into the Docks, the smile that filled Gregor’s fac
e slipped away and he honestly looked confused. “I don’t understand. Katie was murdered?”
“Shortly after sunset. It was a nightwalker,” Knox interjected.
“You knew Katie?” I demanded, drawing Gregor’s stunned gaze from Knox to me again.
“Yes, Bryce and the rest of his group brought her in to the Dark Room a few times. She was a lovely young lady. Very polite and sweet. Not the usual Goth, living-dead nonsense that you see hanging on our kind as if we were their long-lost messiah.”
“Was there anyone jealous of Bryce and Katie? Anyone who might have wanted them both dead?” Knox inquired.
“Bryce, yes. I can think of one person who would want Bryce dead, but not Katie. Lauren was the one that introduced Katie to Bryce and the rest of his small group. Lauren had known Katie while she was a human and had brought her into the fold as a human. It could have been anyone within the group he hung with. There were three females: Lauren, Bridgette, and Kari. And then Charles traveled with that flock on occasion, but not so much within the past few years.”
I was familiar with Bridgette. She was about fifty years old and had moved into the area with my permission more than twenty years ago. However, the other two I wasn’t overly familiar with. “How old are Lauren and Kari?”
“Kari is nearly thirty, I believe. She moved here with Charles. Lauren is really fresh—five or six years, I think. I’m not sure who her maker is. She’s never mentioned him and I’ve never seen her with anyone but Bryce and the rest of his group.”
The Dead, the Damned, and the Forgotten Page 6