by Eliza Ford
Em decided to cut through Nick's routine questions.
"We've heard there's someone powerful in town," she said. "Someone with ... particular ... likes and desires. We've heard they spend a lot of time at Alina's club, and we've heard you're up there a lot too. Anything you'd like to tell us about that?"
Will had chatted politely with Nick up until now, but at Em's words he turned a little grey. He cleared his throat and crossed his arms across his chest. He looked Em straight in the eyes, but turned his own head a little to the side.
"Ah, that would be, ah, confidential information," he said quietly with a little upward twinge at the side of mouth that Em knew meant he really was sorry.
Behind them Jarek snorted and took a quick step forward.
Nick took a quick glance at Jarek and stepped forward as well, more to stake his own superiority at the scene than to express his impatience with Will. Jarek stopped short and snarled, not quite at Nick. Nick folded his arms, making sure to flex every muscle in his upper body as he did so.
Boys, thought Em. Always the testosterone.
Will, meanwhile, seemed to have shrunk a little. His face was pale and the whites of his eyes were showing. It was plain he knew exactly what Jarek was now, and he was frightened. But however frightened he was of Jarek, and Em for that matter, whatever truth they wanted him to speak frightened him even more.
Nick seemed determined not to notice the odd tension in the air between Will and Jarek.
"Is that the best you can do?" Nick said. "'Confidential information'? We may not be police but we can still take you downtown for a chat, you know. How would you feel about sharing your 'confidential information' with the narcotics division?"
"You can take me anywhere you like, pal," said Will angrily. "I can't tell you, OK? You think I wouldn't tell you if I could? I've got a business to run here. I don't need pigs like you stepping in messing things up. I..."
"Woah," said Em. "Alright Will, if you can't tell us, you can't tell us. Take it easy." She felt bad for him. He was scared alright. But of what?
"Well," said Nick, taking a breath and slowing things down a little. "There's a new club in town and your client demographic must have changed a little. New customers, new supplies, new venue. You've got your old customers and a bunch of Alina's new ones, yeah?" He paused and Will eyed him warily. "So, how do you manage all that? Do you keep spreadsheets? Do you write it up a little black book?" Will said nothing. "What about your phone? Hand over your phone Will, and let me take a quick look. If you don't want to tell us anything, why don't you let me have a look for myself?"
Will threw his hands up in the air and turned away. Em could feel the turmoil inside him. He'd obviously been scared or threatened into silence, but he had enough respect for Em to want to tell her something. His mind was boiling, and Em felt sorry for him. Sorry for her friend. But she needed something from him now, not just a lead to take back to Robert, she needed to know what was going on at the club, and who was slaughtering humans for the fun of it. With Nick about pull out the handcuffs and march Will down to the station, and Jarek about to spin into another dimension and rip Will's mind through time and space, she was running out of time. She had to get Will to talk. Now.
She also needed to keep Nick away from Will's phone. If Will was stupid enough to keep a record of his customers her name was likely to be on it. Nick didn't need to see that.
"Nick," she said. "Search the rest of the warehouse, will you? See what you can find." She wanted him out of the way for a while.
"Yeah," he said, and slowly walked away after a last hard look at both Will and Jarek.
Em motioned to a crate nearby.
"Sit down, Will," she said. She motioned to Nick walking to the other end of the warehouse. "He's not going to find anything, is he?" she asked softly.
"No," said Will, and he sucked in a big breath of air and let it out slowly. "I'm sorry, Em. I really can't tell you."
"I get it, Will," she said resting a hand on his arm. "You can give me a hint though. Take your time. Think about what you can say. I'm not stupid, you know. Give me something that isn't going to incriminate you, something that I can use. I'll figure it out."
Will nodded, and looked at Jarek. "He's Family, isn't he?" he said. "Not English?"
Jarek chuckled. "Not English," he said. "And you're safe from me, Will. Em tells me you look after her. You're hers, as far as I'm concerned."
Will nodded again, and Em could tell he had relaxed and was beginning to think through his dilemma. He was sifting through a lot of information, mulling over what to say and what not to say.
Em looked at Jarek over Will's head. He gave a short nod.
Em stretched out a tendril of dark energy toward Will's mind. She slipped her mind into Will's like a mist and floated there carefully, not wanting to do anything to let Will know she was there. She watched Will thinking, and let the feel of Will's thoughts become obvious to her. Then she slowly adjusted her own mind to match the patterns of Will's thoughts. She was wrapped around his mind like a blanket. Every thought he made she could feel, every memory, every hope and every desire.
She drew in her breath as the power of it rushed through her. Will's thoughts bathed her in a thousand sensations at once, and her human body buzzed as her vampire half sorted everything out. There was a section of Will's mind that was pulsing with fear. Em hovered in it, amongst it, and revelled in the emotion. Fear was like a rich red wine and her darker self drank it in, while her human body quivered with the thrill of it, excited despite herself.
There it was. A building by the water, another old warehouse. Em could see it in Will's mind's eye, but Will's thoughts refused to take her any closer to it. His fear was welling up, throbbing. She swam through it playfully, loving the delicious paralysing chill of it, and then she remembered where she was and who she was doing this to. Will was her friend, she chided herself. Pull yourself together Em.
Above her Jarek smiled a long slow smile that twisted up at one corner. He knew what she was doing in there. He knew she was enjoying it.
It lasted just a moment, and then Em drew away. Will's rough voice shook her back to the present. He seemed unaware of what had just happened in his own mind.
"I can tell you this," he said. "But it's not much."
Nick wandered back over and stood just outside their little circle watching with his arms folded.
"The, erm, newcomer you're looking for doesn't take no for an answer. From anyone. Not even Alina. Has a big, erm, appetite, and needs to store things away from public view, if you know what I mean."
Will looked up at Em. She nodded encouragingly.
"You need to look for a warehouse." Will looked up sharply at Nick's derisive snort. "Another warehouse. Closer to the water than mine. Conveniently close to the water." He paused again. "This warehouse is going to have a history, that's how you're going to find it. A history..."
He stopped. He actually looked like he was in pain, Em thought. Poor thing. This was brave of him.
Nick grunted. "A warehouse with history," he said. "Oh yeah, that's really helpful."
"Shut up, Nick," said Em. "Thanks, Will. Thanks for talking to us." She stood up and tilted her face so that Nick couldn't see the wink and the grateful smile she gave to Will. "If you think of anything else you can tell us..."
"Yeah," said Will. "I know where to find you."
Em had the spoonful of pasta halfway to her lips when Jarek materialized suddenly next to her on the sofa.
"Ugh," she said, juggling the bowl on her lap and clutching at the glass of red wine which had been balancing on the cloth arm of the sofa and was now tottering precariously. "What was wrong with the door?"
A few trails of black smoke pulled themselves into Jarek's figure. He had dropped the visiting English medical examiner form and returned to his favourite muscles-and-black-silk persona. Em was glad. That weedy British thing had been getting on her nerves. So not her type.
Jarek p
eered dubiously into her dinner and raised an eyebrow.
"It's pasta sauce," said Em. "Made with tomatoes. You should try it sometime."
Jarek snorted.
He stretched his legs out and rested them on the coffee table next to hers. His shoulders shuffled back into the cushions of the sofa. When he turned to look at her their eyes were level. Em held his gaze and felt him push out a subtle but demanding wave of dark energy toward her.
Em considered him. She allowed his mind to flow right up to the gates of her own then carefully strengthened her defences against him. Slowly and gently Jarek intensified his mental thrust until the weight of his existence swelled and swirled darkly against the edges of her mind. His eyes stared into hers and threatened to pull her into the deepening dark energy that pulsated between them.
She thought about how inviting that seemed - how exhilarating it would be to let herself fall.
She smiled, blinked, and with that Jarek's carefully constructed advance disintegrated and vanished, like a flurry of dandelion seeds in the breeze.
Jarek snarled. He unfolded himself from the sofa angrily and flopped down in an easy chair on the other side of the coffee table. Em's smile widened into a grin. He could be such a boy sometimes, and how easy it was to provoke him.
"It isn't funny, Emilia," Jarek said eventually. "Your father sent me here to bring Alina home to face her doom. You too if I decided you'd been aiding her. I'd have dragged you both off without a thought if it was anyone but you. You told me to wait, Emilia." He leant forward in his seat and rested his elbows on his knees, feet wide apart, shoulders square and strong. "I've played your silly game, lover, and I'm tired of it. This embarrasses the Family, it embarrasses your father, and it embarrasses me the longer you drag this out. My patience is nearly at an end."
Em sighed. She'd known this was coming.
After letting go of her hold on Will's mind she'd slipped into Jarek's - a skill she'd realized she had hundreds of years ago. Jarek couldn't enter her mind without her invitation, but she could penetrate his in a heartbeat, sometimes without him even knowing. It infuriated him, and she'd spent some very enjoyable centuries exploiting her talent and his weakness shamelessly. Perhaps now hadn't been a good time to remind him of that weakness, but she'd asked him, in his mind, to visit the warehouse location that Will had given her. She and Nick had to follow protocol and find the warehouse the hard way, the human way, but Em wanted to know now, and she'd sent Jarek on an errand. No wonder he'd come back in a foul mood. He didn't take orders meekly.
"I told you, Jarek, there's something bigger happening here. Alina's part of it, somehow. You don't want to go running back to his lordship with the wrong fish on the hook, do you?"
He said nothing.
"What was at the warehouse? Who was there?"
"Nothing," said Jarek, petulantly. "No one. Oh, there was a mess alright. Someone had been there recently, but there was no one there at all."
"No one?" said Em. "Not even Alina?"
"No one," said Jarek, sighing suddenly and leaning back in the chair again. "In fact, there wasn't even the scent of anyone, other than humans, of course. And you say this 'bigger fish' you think is out there is not human? Not Family?"
"Of course it's not human. And it's definitely not Family. I'd know if it were Family," said Em.
"Yes." Jarek seemed to be considering the problem. "So what is it?"
Em ran a hand through her hair in exasperation. "I don't know, Jarek." She was aware she was wailing slightly. This problem, and the headaches that went with it, had been bugging her for too long. She wasn't used to this level of helplessness. "Don't you feel it?" she asked. "I've had the same headache for weeks now. It just doesn't go away. And I'm sure it's connected."
Jarek frowned.
"I don't feel it, Em," he said. His voice sounded flat, but his eyes glittered at her. He didn't believe her.
"It's real, Jarek. And it's ... strong." Em wondered how much to say. "I think it's pretty powerful, I mean, if you can't feel it..."
Jarek let out an explosive breath and turned his face to one side. The scar on his cheek pulsed as he clenched his jaw. "Well, it must be a human thing then," he said derisively. He sneered. "My energy is pure, yours is mingled with the human blood of your filthy whoring human mother. Maybe you can only feel it because you're weak, a halfling, tainted..."
Em unleashed a burst of energy that picked up Jarek's human body and the chair he was sitting on and threw them both against the wall. Jarek didn't even have time to assemble his thoughts and spin his body into smoke. His head connected with the corner of the door frame and split crazily spilling dark energy into the room in a messy cascade of black mist, stars and swirling nebulae. As he recovered from the shock of the attack and collected his thoughts, Em spun into smoke and flew across the room to engulf him in her fury.
Not even caring, or even noticing, the barriers he'd suddenly erected around his own mind she pushed through his defences and howled inside his very being.
"How dare you?" she screamed. "How dare you?"
She gathered up every tendril of the headache that had been plaguing her for weeks and bundled it into a tightly wound ball of energy. Then she pushed it with all her strength into the deepest part of Jarek's being that she could reach. And when it was there, she kicked it.
"A human thing, is it?" she spat. "Is that human, Jarek? Is it?"
Jarek was barely holding on to his human form. He'd tried to spin out into dark energy to avoid the worst of Em's attack, but she'd held him in the material dimension. His form was splitting and cracking and dark boiling tempests of blackness were spilling out of him, laced with stars, crackling with electricity. He threw his head back and choked out a cry as his human form screamed in pain and his vampire self howled in outrage at being overpowered.
"Is this filthy tainted human hurting you, Jarek? Am I, Jarek?" Em's being seethed through a handful of dimensions at once, and coiled around the writhing man contorted on the floor of her lounge room.
She pulled her human form back together and stood before him. He wrapped his arms around his head and knelt at her feet.
She let him go. Her anger faded as quickly as it had arisen. She pulled the pain out of his being and drew back entirely. She sighed. And watched him.
Jarek staggered to his feet. In a blink his form was perfect again. His ripped silk shirt was repaired, the rents in his skin were healed, the chair was back in its place in the middle of the room. His chest rose and fell as he sucked in air and his black eyes regarded her coldly as she walked back around the coffee table to sit again in the sofa.
She picked up her bowl of pasta, refilled her wine glass and went back to her dinner.
Jarek slowly returned to his seat.
"There is no one in all of creation that I would tolerate that sort of treatment from but you, Emilia," he said darkly.
Em sniffed. "I don't think 'tolerate' is the right word," she said. "You didn't 'tolerate' that. You suffered it, because you had no choice but to endure it. And that is because you don't have the power to stop me." She picked up her wine glass and held it with her lips just brushing the glass. "You know that, lover."
Jarek stared a few moments longer, and then smiled.
"Come home with me, Emilia," he said. "You and I are meant to be together. We are powerful, ruthless, lethal together." His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. His voice was deep and seductive. "We are perfect..."
"I know," said Em, simply. "And I miss that, Jarek, I really do. But I'm here now. And I like it."
"But..."
"And that's it, Jarek. That's it."
They stared at each other. Em found she was the first to drop her gaze. She was tired.
"Do you want some wine?" she said, standing up to grab another glass from the kitchen. "And I have chocolate...?"
Jarek followed her into the kitchen and took the glass from her hand. He laid it on the counter and stepped close to Em until they wer
e almost touching. With a finger, he brushed a strand of hair from her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. His eyes travelled over her face, and the finger traced a line down her cheek, his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth, the rest of his hand curling around her neck. His other arm reached around her waist and pulled her into him.
He sighed, and she rested her head on his chest while his hand stroked her hair.
"If you ever change your mind," he said.
They stood there in silence for a long moment. Em felt the coldness of his body, the lack of heartbeat in his chest. She thought about Nick.
"It wasn't human, was it?" she asked.
"No," said Jarek. "You were right. But I ..."
In her handbag on the counter, Em's cell phone rang. Neither of them moved for a moment and then Em dragged herself out of Jarek's embrace.
"I have to get that," she muttered, allowing her hair to fall across her face again, not wanting to meet his eyes.
It was Nick.
"What's up?" she said. "It's late. You're not still at the office are you?"
"I was thinking about what that dealer said." Nick sounded wired. He usually got this way when he thought he'd cracked something - when a case started coming together. Em felt the little flutter of excitement she usually got in the middle of her chest when this happened. Nick's enthusiasm was infectious.
"This warehouse with a history he was going on about," he went on, talking at top speed. "I was googling stuff about... Forget it, doesn't matter. And then I realized I was being too literal about it. He didn't mean ancient history, just a history. So I hit the crime maps, and the one place kept coming up. It's a pretty random history - all sorts of jobs there over the last couple of decades, almost like the place has some kind of criminal attracting vibe..."