Gage was still out when I got home. He was a night-owl kind of guy, and usually he and I would watch a few episodes of whatever was on Adult Swim that night while I ate a quick dinner. But his shoes weren’t in their usual spot by the door, so he was apparently out somewhere, still having a great time. I grumbled a little to myself as I heated up my cup of ramen noodles and reflected on the sadness of our standard routine being one of the highlights of my current social life.
Tonight it was a rerun of The Venture Brothers, but my sleep-deprived eyes started getting bleary halfway through it. I tossed the ramen noodle cup in the trash and staggered off to bed, deciding that a shower could wait until tomorrow. My head hit the pillow just after midnight, and I was asleep almost instantly.
• • •
I woke up suddenly, in one of those complete awakenings that left me confused but alert, catching the end of a loud crashing sound that echoed through the apartment. It was followed immediately by a dull thud. I glanced at the clock and saw that I’d slept for only two hours.
My hearing had been intermittently flirting with achieving vampire levels lately. Most days I had regular human hearing; then suddenly the sound of Buttons, Mrs. Bandyopadyay’s bichon frise, scampering across the linoleum sounded like he was right next to my ear. Five minutes later everything would be back to normal. Chivalry had told me that this was a normal part of transition, but had been his usual tight-lipped self with any other information, like how to make it stop or if this would eventually become my new normal.
I waited a moment but couldn’t hear anything else, which meant that I was back to regular human levels and my auditory system had just gone haywire again. This wasn’t the first time that Gage coming home had sounded like an approaching army, and I relaxed back into my pillow, listening for the rest of his usual routine. Gage swore by the properties of an antioxidant juice for warding off hangovers or the aftereffects of a late night—I’d tried it once on his urging, and had spent the next ten minutes running my mouth under the faucet to try to clean out the taste, which had been on par with raw sewage. I waited for the sound of the juicer to begin.
I waited, but there were no sounds in our apartment—not the juicer, and not even the usual sounds of Gage’s feet across the floor.
I sat up in bed and called softly, “Gage?”
Just silence.
I got up completely and walked out of the bedroom. The living room was dark except for the small light above the main door, which I’d left on when I went to bed so that Gage wouldn’t have to fumble around completely in the dark when he got home. I glanced down at the small mat beside the door, noting that Gage’s sneakers were still missing. He hadn’t come home yet.
That sent my mind back to the noise that had woken me up. It had sounded like it had come from the apartment, but if vampire hearing had been involved it might well have been feral cats knocking over the outside trash cans again.
Maybe. But I was less trusting than I used to be, and I padded quickly back to my room to retrieve the .45 Colt automatic that was hidden under my bed, disguised under an old pair of boxer shorts. My foster father had raised me with a strong respect for proper gun safety, meaning that I felt daily guilt over not keeping the Colt locked in a regulation gun safe, but the guilt wasn’t enough to overpower my desire to be able to get at the Colt quickly if something not entirely human presented itself.
The ammo was separate from the gun, hidden in the toe of an old slipper that also stayed under the bed. I slid the clip into the Colt with the ease of long practice, then, feeling significantly braver, left the bedroom again.
The thing about having a roommate was that it made it a lot easier to go back to sleep after a weird sound, because there was always a built-in explanation available. With Gage still out, there was no way that I was going to be able to close my eyes again until I’d checked everywhere. I started with the bathroom, because that was on my side of the apartment, right across from my door. Then I went back to the main room, checking around the sofa, looking under the kitchen table.
I tapped lightly on Gage’s door and called his name again. He was regular in his habits, and I was confident that he wasn’t home, but I had no desire to run the risk that he’d gone straight to his room without taking off his shoes or drinking his antioxidant crap. Really, there would be no good outcome to that one—particularly since I hadn’t exactly mentioned to him that I was a gun owner.
There was no response, and I held the Colt in my left hand, down at my side, while I reached for the doorknob with my right. For a moment I smelled something weird, and I paused, sniffing. It was almost familiar, but then it was gone again. Shit, now my nose was getting in on the transition business.
I opened the door and looked around. The dark room looked normal. A cool breeze came in from his open window, and the moonlight was bright enough to illuminate Gage’s neatly made bed.
Nothing weird at all. It must’ve been feral cats. I started to turn, but then I suddenly smelled that weird thing again, and this time it was much stronger. I sniffed, trying to place it. For a moment I couldn’t think of it, then it suddenly hit me what I was smelling. Blood. Not a lot of it, but enough that it was tickling at the part of me that was a vampire, like a chocoholic would feel walking past the open door of the Newport Fudge Company.
I walked farther into the room, raising the gun so that now I was holding it in a two-handed grip at chest level, no longer bothering to hide it. Closer now, I could see that the window I’d assumed was open was actually broken—someone had knocked a hole in it so that they could get to the lock, and there was glass on the floor that I tried not to step on.
I still couldn’t see anyone, but I could definitely smell the blood, and the glass on the floor was probably from the sound that had first woken me up. I leaned back quickly and flipped the wall switch.
Cheery light filled the room, illuminating what had been hidden in the shadows at the base of the bed. Gage lay facedown on the floor of his room, completely naked, with both arms outstretched. There was something wrong with his arms, but at first my brain refused to register what it was.
I was moving toward him before I fully registered what I was seeing, and it wasn’t until I reached down and actually touched his shoulder that I realized that he was already dead.
Chapter 3
Gage’s skin was icy under my hand, and I jerked backward instinctively. I’d been around dead bodies before, sometimes even ones that I’d been responsible for turning into corpses, but finding Gage like that was different. My brain felt foggy from the shock, and I sat down heavily on the floor, staring at what was in front of me.
Gage was lying on his chest with his face turned toward me. His eyes were open, empty and staring, and there were a bunch of cuts and dried blood around his mouth. His hands were gone, cut away with an almost disturbing neatness just below his freshly inked tattoo band. There’d been no hacking—his wrists looked like sliced salami at the deli counter.
Had I not already been a vegetarian, that image would’ve turned me off of salami for life.
For a second I had to battle nausea. I closed my eyes tightly, fighting the urge to vomit, but when I opened them up again Gage was still in front of me, still lying there. His surfer-blond hair was matted with dried blood. I’d just been making fun of his hair this afternoon, I remembered.
Somehow that thought broke through my shock, and I was scrambling out of the room, back to my bedside table and my cell phone. I’d dialed 911 and was talking to the dispatcher even as I stuffed the Colt under my mattress. That was definitely something that was not a good idea to have in hand when the cops showed up.
I hung up as soon as the dispatcher assured me that the police were on their way over. The next number was the one that I knew I should’ve called first, a fact that I consciously ignored as I punched it in. It wouldn’t matter to Chivalry or my mother what had killed G
age, whether deranged human or something less natural. What mattered to them was keeping our profile low, making sure that the Scott name didn’t come up any more than absolutely necessary. If my first call hadn’t been to the police, I knew without a doubt that Chivalry would’ve hopped in his car with the intention of walking me through a body disposal. Then there would’ve been some false trails, maybe a forged e-mail, something that made certain that when Gage’s family started looking for him, the trail led away from this apartment until going cold somewhere far, far away.
Gage had been my friend. He didn’t deserve that.
Chivalry answered on the second ring.
“My roommate is dead,” I said as soon as I heard his voice.
There was a brief pause. Then Chivalry asked, completely calmly, “Did you attack him?”
“What?” I yelped. “No! What are you— How could you think that?”
“You are getting older, Fortitude,” came his icy voice. “It is a reasonable question.”
“No, no, it is not reasonable. Something else killed—” Unbidden, the image of Gage’s empty wrists flashed in front of my eyes and I gulped hard. “Something else killed Gage. I don’t know what. There are cuts on his face, and his hands were cut off.” I paused again, taking a deep breath. “The police are on their way over.”
“Why?” Chivalry was no longer calm, and his voice lashed out sharply. “Did a neighbor see something? Hear something?”
“I called them.”
“What?” He sounded truly stunned.
“I panicked,” I lied. “I just . . . panicked and thought like a human.”
“This is most inconvenient.” There was a long pause, and I closed my eyes and slumped down onto my bed. “I am unable to come tonight, little brother. Bhumika’s health has . . . we are in the hospital, and will need to remain overnight.”
“I’m sorry,” I muttered. “Is she okay?”
“Nothing to concern yourself over,” he said, putting me sharply in my place. “I will call the lawyers; someone will be there soon to handle things. Don’t say anything to the police. And you might want to call that fox friend of yours—she’s annoying, but the kitsune know how to handle themselves discreetly. She can prevent you from any more of these problematic slips.”
I swallowed hard. “What about Gage?”
“I’ll call the mayor tomorrow morning,” Chivalry said, misunderstanding my question. “This will all be cleaned up quickly. Don’t worry.” I heard my brother’s concern for me in those last words.
“So, you’ll come over after you make the call?” Bhumika must’ve been in very bad shape if he wasn’t already in his car and on his way right now.
There was a pause on the other end, and when Chivalry spoke, he sounded confused. “Why? Is something wrong?”
I blinked. “Chivalry, something killed Gage.”
“A human sociopath, no doubt,” my brother said dismissively. “Or your roommate had unsavory ties.”
I slapped my head in disbelief and had to bite down the urge to snap at him. Instead I just drenched my voice in sarcasm. “Really, you don’t find it coincidental that out of all the guys in Providence, it’s my roommate who is gruesomely murdered?”
Chivalry sighed. “And what dire enemies have you made lately?” I could tell across all the miles that he had that Humoring Baby Brother look on his face—the one that always made me want to punch him, or, barring that, force him to watch the Justin Bieber movie for three days in a row.
I tried reason. “Oh, you don’t think Dominic doesn’t hold a grudge over me killing Luca?” Frankly I deserved a goddamn medal, a parade, and a fist bump from Patrick Stewart for killing that Eurotrash pedophile, but his father might not agree.
Chivalry actually made a pish noise over the phone. “Dominic is in Italy and wouldn’t dare risk such an act of aggression.”
“What about—”
My brother cut me off before I could start listing everyone else who lived under my mother’s rule and wasn’t blissfully happy—namely, everyone. “Fortitude, there is no creature in our mother’s territory that would be so foolish as to do this. Before you construct some martyr complex over this, remind yourself that, however distressing this has been, you merely rented a room to this human and this almost certainly has no more relevance than that you really need to conduct some kind of background check on your roommates.”
My free hand curled into a fist, and I pressed it into my leg as hard as I could, pushing down what I wanted to say to my brother. He was in the hospital with his dying wife, I reminded myself. It wasn’t entirely his fault at the moment that he was being an empathy-stunted prick.
Finally Chivalry gave another heaving sigh and said, “Fortitude, Providence is a big city. Big cities are riddled with crime and murder, and if you would just give up this childishness and move home, you would not find yourself in such unsavory situations—”
I cut him off before he could warm to one of his favorite topics. “I have to go. The police are here,” I said through clenched teeth.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Chivalry promised.
I hung up and immediately dialed another number. I’d lied to Chivalry—the police weren’t here yet, but I knew that I didn’t have much more time. I also had no desire to sit through another of my brother’s lectures about moving to Newport while Gage’s body rested a mere two rooms away from me.
And despite Chivalry’s confidence, his reasoning still felt wrong. What were the odds that Gage being murdered had absolutely nothing to do with him rooming with Providence’s one vampire?
No one in my family had killed him. I would’ve known if any of them had been in the city tonight. But once Chivalry called in a cover-up, even if he was right and it had been some human psychopath who killed Gage, that person would never be caught. My mother’s interests were in the political theaters, and there wasn’t a politician in this state who didn’t jump to attention when she made a phone call. My foster father had been a decorated policeman, but when Prudence murdered him and my foster mother, Madeline’s influence had made certain individuals falsify or destroy evidence, then pin the crime on a homeless man who was then, very conveniently, found dead in his cell.
Calling the police meant that Gage would go back to his family, and they wouldn’t wonder about him for years, but there wouldn’t be justice for him.
The first police car had just pulled up in front of the building, siren wailing, as I hit the Send key on my phone.
Suzume’s voice was raspy from sleep when she answered, but there was that usual layer of amusement that made me close my eyes and drink in that moment of normality. “Just to let you know, Fort,” she said when she picked up, “etiquette dictates that the woman has to initiate a booty call relationship.”
“What?” I asked, momentarily distracted.
“I know, it seems sexist to me, too”—her voice dripped reasonableness—“but Miss Manners is very clear on the subject.”
For half a second I smiled; then it was wiped away by the pounding on my door as the police reminded me of everything that had happened tonight.
“Suze, it’s nothing like that,” I said, and quickly filled her in.
“I’ll be right there.” All playfulness was gone now. “Don’t say a word to the cops. Let your mom’s lawyers earn their money for once.”
She hung up, and there was no avoiding it anymore. I went to the door to let the police inside.
• • •
I’d never known that so many people could fit in my apartment.
The first uniformed officers were joined by two plainclothes detectives, then a horde of even more officers. Beyond a few basic questions, people mostly left me alone. Apparently some big boss had already let it be known not to bother “the nice Scott boy.” I accepted it, knowing that I’d done what I could.
Twenty minutes after the first officer arrived, there was a ruckus in the hallway and then, to my shock, Matt McMahon rushed through the door. He must’ve been on a stakeout, because although he was several kinds of rumpled, he was dressed in slacks and a button-down. His eyes swept over the scene until he picked me out; then he said, “Oh, thank Christ,” loudly in that booze-weathered voice that I knew so well, and came straight over, completely ignoring the doorway officer’s futile efforts to herd him back outside—about as effective as a teacup poodle against a Great Dane.
I opened my mouth to say something—what, I had no idea—but the words (and breath) were knocked out of me as Matt swept me up in a rib-bruising hug.
I’d known Matt most of my life. He’d been my foster father’s partner, and he hadn’t been able to turn the other way during the murder cover-up. It had cost him his career as a cop, and become the obsession that had shaped the past seventeen years of his life. He’d become a private detective, working on a lot of other cases but always trying to uncover Brian and Jill’s real murderer. He’d also kept an eye on me, and we’d been close. That had all changed in the spring, when there had been vampire victims on the ground. He suspected that I’d been involved in the rescue of Amy Grann from her kidnapper, and seen the Scott cover-up machine swing into action again in a way all too reminiscent to be a coincidence. I’d lost his trust, and that had hurt. But even worse was that, I was all too aware that if my family realized that Matt was now a threat, none of them would hesitate to kill him.
Iron Night Page 5