by A. J. Colby
I approached a sweeping metal and glass receptionist desk, eyeing the pair of closed doors behind it. The woman seated there looked as polished and austere as her surroundings. Ebony hair with a single bright pink stripe was styled into a sleek, asymmetrical bob to frame a narrow face. Sitting ramrod straight in a high-backed clear chair similar to those in the waiting room, I was surprised to realize that she was human.
So far all the staff I had seen around the club had been vampires, and I had to wonder if she felt safe up there, cloistered away in her quiet little corner while a veritable horde of the undead lurked beneath her.
“Hi, I’m here to—”
“Mr. Cordova will be with you momentarily, Ms. Cray,” she said before I could finish getting the words out. “May I fetch you some coffee or water while you wait?”
I was relieved that I wasn’t getting the same interrogation I’d received from all the other employees I’d encountered, and felt a thread of tension slip out of my shoulders at her welcoming manner.
“Coffee would be great, thanks.”
Moving with a kind of fluid grace that I doubted I could ever manage, the receptionist rose from her desk, coming around towards me and directing me to the seating area. I marveled at the impossibly tall heels she wore; if I tried to wear them I’d be lucky to limit the damage to a couple broken ankles. The unrelieved black of her clothing cast her in stark relief against the subdued colors of the decor.
Settling into the chair demanded a feat of balance and dexterity that I didn’t possess and I found myself sliding into a slouch on the slick Plexiglas no matter how hard I fought to sit up straight.
How the hell does she sit in one of these things? Does she have non-slip pads on her ass?
While I pondered the core muscle strength required to remain upright in the damn chair, the receptionist returned with a cup of coffee that smelled deliciously strong and made my mouth water. A black and red lacquer tray appeared in front of me, bearing the steaming cup of coffee alongside a metal pitcher of cream and a bowl of sugar.
Damn, a girl could get used to this kind of service, I thought, adding cream and sugar before lifting the cup to my nose.
The rich smell teased my senses while the warmth spread through the china and into my fingers. I paused only long enough to blow away the steam before taking the first sip. My lips curved into a contented smile and I hummed in appreciation. My lack of funds had me living on cheap store brand coffee and my taste buds buzzed in delight at the reminder of the real thing.
“Oh, that’s good,” I purred, opening my eyes just enough to look up at the receptionist who looked on with an expectant expression. At my words her features softened into a pleased smile, and she gave a shallow bob of her head. “Where on earth did you find coffee this good?” I asked, taking another sip, savoring the dark caramel notes on my tongue.
“Mr. Cordova has it flown in specially from Indonesian.”
“Of course he does,” I muttered while fighting the urge to roll my eyes. “Wait, this isn’t that coffee that passes through the gut of some fancy jungle cat is it?” My face contorted into a grimace at the thought of drinking cat ass coffee.
Shaking her head, my hostess replied, “No, but I would be happy to prepare a cup if you would like to try it.”
“Umm... no, thanks. I’m good.”
Taking another sip of coffee, I resolved to enjoy it as much as I could while it was available, knowing I wasn’t likely to ever get my hands on a supply of my own. My moment of bliss was short lived as the flowery scent of a familiar perfume invaded my senses, making the coffee turn bitter on my tongue.
Turning my eyes skyward I thought, Aw come on, couldn’t you at least have let me finish my coffee before unleashing Satan’s mistress?
I took one last sip of the brew that undoubtedly cost more than I made in a month and turned my attention to the blonde strutting towards me.
Perhaps in defiance of the miniscule outfits sported by the girls downstairs, Chrismer was dressed in charcoal slacks and a dark amethyst shirt that played surprisingly well against her lightly tanned skin. I couldn’t recall ever seeing her in anything other than a skirt suit and wondered if she kept a pair of pants on hand explicitly for her visits to the club. I didn’t think any of the club’s patrons would ever confuse her for one of the dancers, but then, I didn’t have to hang out in a place full of intoxicated, horny men looking to play a little grab ass. I might have worn a barbed wire suit if I had to work there.
“Cray, why am I not surprised you’re late?” Chrismer said, peering at me down the length of a nose that I had never realized had a slight upturn at the end.
Rising all too easily to her baiting tone, I snapped, “I wouldn’t have been late if I hadn’t been stopped by every goddamned vamp in this place and asked to prove my credentials.”
Dismissing my excuse with a wrinkle of her upturned nose, she said, “Hurry up. You’ve kept the Shepherd waiting long enough.”
Turning on her heel and striding away, she forced me to scramble to keep up with her. Maintaining my grip on my cup, I rose from my chair with as much grace as I could manage—which is to say, none at all—and followed Chrismer around the receptionist’s desk and through the double doors. The large office that she led me into was styled similarly to the reception area: full of pale colors and sleek modern furniture that seemed almost as sacrilegious to the building’s original design as the gyrating half-naked bodies downstairs.
The only splashes of color in the room were the dozens of photographs arranged on the smooth beige walls, each of them showing Cordova posing with various dignitaries, politicians, and even the occasional movie star.
Looks like the Shepherd gets around a bit.
The sound of a soft footfall drew my attention to a door hidden behind one of the hanging panels as the man from the photographs emerged from an unseen room drying his hands with a stark white towel.
Alexei Cordova, Shepherd of the City, had not been a large man in life. Standing no more than an inch or two taller than me, he exuded an aura that held the weight of centuries and left me with no doubt that he could crush me to dust with his pinky should the urge strike him. It was a sobering realization. I had a sick feeling that working for Cordova was going to end badly, but dammit, I needed a paying gig.
The least I can do is hear him out, right? If he turns out to be as much of a creep as I expect him to be, I can always tell him to take a hike. After all, I’ve survived this long on stale pizza.
Fighting the thoughts running rampant in my mind, I turned my attention to the ancient vamp watching me with the hint of a smile curving his lips. As strong as my initial inclination to dislike him was, I had to admit that he was attractive, for a vamp at least. Slender through the shoulders and chest, he had a trim waist that was accentuated by the immaculate cut of his black slacks. Dark hair fell in soft curls around his ears, skimming the edge of his blood red shirt collar. He moved with the grace of a dancer as he crossed the room, extending a hand towards me, the soft ambient lighting gleaming on a single golden ring on his index finger.
Not wanting to insult him right off the bat, I moved forward to shake his hand, my skin crawling as the cool, dry fingers curled around mine with precise gentleness. Meeting his eyes I couldn’t repress my sharp breath of surprise, or the reflexive jerk of my hand. Eyes the color of polished jade met mine, full of sharp intelligence, immeasurable power, and no small amount of amusement.
All the undead possess the same milky white, corpse-like eyes, but some of them, especially those who are angling themselves to assume positions of power within the mundane world, use contact lenses to maintain an appearance of normality.
Anything to keep the sheep at ease, I suppose.
Even the most expensive, top of the line, contacts don’t fully conceal the otherworldliness of a vamp’s eyes, often leaving them looking even creepier than their au natural counterparts. Cordova, it seemed, had spared no expense on his lenses, and for a
moment I could almost imagine that he had somehow retained his human eye color. The slow smile that curved his lips, revealing the first hint of fang, shattered any feelings of ease I had let myself begin to feel.
“Ms. Cray, how nice of you to join us,” he said, the hint of a Russian accent adding a hard edge to his words.
“I wasn’t aware that I had a choice,” I replied, shooting an arch look at Chrismer, who stood bent over the glass and metal modern monstrosity that was Cordova’s desk. Sparing me a brief glance she merely flashed a saccharine smile before turning her attention back to the papers on the desktop. Now that I had answered her master’s call, I was no longer her concern.
Only just managing to refrain from baring my teeth at the polished blonde, I turned my attention to Cordova. “So what is it you want me to do? I’m guessing you’re not looking for a new headliner.”
While Chrismer’s snort made it clear what her opinions were on the subject, Cordova’s eyes flared with heat and something else dangerous and full of darkness. Evidently, the Shepherd of the City found the thought of me in a revealing red leather number intriguing, and I couldn’t stop my shiver of revulsion. I wanted to tell the vamp that it would only happen over my dead body, but decided he could all too easily make that happen.
Keep your big mouth shut, Riley. Stick to business, and we just might make it out of here in one piece.
Leaning back against the edge of his desk, intertwining long fingered hands in his lap, Cordova regarded me in silence for a moment, seeming to drink in my mounting discomfort.
“Have you heard about the recent vampire deaths?” he asked, the bluntness of his inquiry catching me off guard.
“I heard something on the news I think,” I replied, vaguely remembering the newscast I had seen last night talking about the unsolved murders, though I wasn’t sure that making a vamp permanently dead could be classified as murder. There had been three attacks within the last two months, and I doubted the Shepherd was too happy about that.
“They were committed by a were. I would like you to find out who and why.”
“You want me to what?” This had to be a joke. Glancing back and forth between them, I saw that neither of them was laughing. “A were? You’re sure?”
Looking up from the desk, Chrismer pinned me with a glare. “The Shepherd of the City is never wrong.”
I very much doubted the validity of her words, but shrugged them off and turned my attention back to Cordova.
“I assure you, in this instance my Day Servant is correct,” Cordova said, reading my skepticism in the lines on my brow. “I am certain that these attacks were perpetrated by one of your kin.”
I didn’t like that he referred to the other weres as being my kin. I had no affiliations with any of them and generally preferred it that way. My few interactions with other weres were limited to my serial killer ex-boyfriend infecting me with lycanthropy and the ensuing “counseling and training” classes I was encouraged to take by my therapist. Neither had left me with a lot of warm fuzzy feelings towards other werewolves.
“That doesn’t explain why you’re asking me to do this. I don’t know any other weres, and I sure as hell don’t know why they’d be picking off your kind one by one,” I said crossing my arms over my chest.
Besides the same reasons that anyone else would want to, anyway, I added to myself.
“You are in a unique situation wherein you are not beholden to pack law.”
“So?”
“That means you may go places, and ask questions, that another werewolf could not.”
While it was true that as a lone wolf I wasn’t constrained by the rules of the pack, it also meant that I was considered as much of an outsider as a mundane or a vamp.
“What makes you think that any of them will want to talk to me? They’re not going to trust me for the same reasons you want me poking around for you.”
“I’m sure your sunny disposition and endless charm won’t have any trouble getting the wolves to open up to you,” he replied with a beatific smile that sent a shudder down my spine. Looking into his smiling face was like gazing into the snake enclosure at the zoo. I just wished there were several inches of protective glass between me and the master vampire.
“And just why should I care about any of this? I’m not pack, and frankly, I couldn’t care less about a few dead vamps.”
“Because if this erupts into an all-out war, as I fear it will, the bloodshed won’t be limited to werewolves and vampires alone. Mundanes, magi, fae—they are all in danger of becoming embroiled in a race war. Tell me, Ms. Cray, will you be able to sleep peacefully knowing that the streets run red with the blood of innocents because you didn’t want to help?”
A sick feeling settled in the pit of my stomach at his words, my mind automatically conjuring up images of Holbrook and Alyssa lying dead and broken in the street. There were so few people in this world that I cared about, envisioning them gone was almost more than I could bear. Even while every instinct screamed at me to tell the vampire to go suck on a clove of garlic, I begrudgingly nodded my head.
“What do I need to do?”
“My Day Servant will provide you with a list of the victims and a stipend for your daily expenses. I advise you to start by talking to their loved ones. You may be surprised by what you discover.”
I very much doubt that.
Resigned to my fate, I followed Chrismer out of Cordova’s office to the reception desk where we traded the file she’d compiled on the victims for the packet of contracts I’d been sent earlier in the day. Signing them had felt like I was making a deal with the devil, but the amount that Cordova deemed suitable for our “mutually agreeable arrangement” was more than I’d made in the last three months. With my savings reduced to a few pennies I couldn’t turn the opportunity down even if every instinct told me to steer clear of the Shepherd.
CHAPTER FIVE
STEPPING OUT ONTO the street, I tucked the thick folder Chrismer had given me under my arm and sucked in a deep lungful of air, for once not caring about the stink of the city. Even that was better than the stink of vampires. I would still have to wash my clothes to erase the musty, half rotten smell of the vamps, but just being outside was a relief.
Catching another nauseating whiff of eau de vamp, I wrinkled my nose.
Throwing them away might be my only option.
Pondering just how in the hell I was going to get a bunch of Day Servants and weres to open up to me, I maneuvered past the now bustling line towards my parked car. The protesters had dispersed while I had been rubbing elbows with the Shepherd of the City, their fanatic beliefs quailing in the face of the deepening dark. Cordova did a good job of policing his flock, but that didn’t mean that people didn’t occasionally go missing under suspicious circumstances. Setting up a picket line on the doorstep of a vamp-run business was just asking for trouble, and even the Humans for Humanity morons had enough brain cells to realize that.
Pausing in the circle of light cast by a streetlight, I dug my phone out of my pocket, bringing the screen to glaring life with a swipe of my finger and a minute seed of hope in the center of my chest. Maybe Holbrook had called while I was inside. I knew it was unlikely, but a girl can hope, right?
No new messages.
The empty inbox icon caused my shoulders to slump and my heart to sink to somewhere around my ankles. Holbrook and I hadn’t officially declared that we were dating, or anything else for that matter, but surely the amount of time we spent together and all the sexy fun times we shared meant there was something going on between us. Hell, I’d even splurged on some sexy underwear at Christmas that we’d both thoroughly enjoyed him peeling off of me.
So why hasn’t he called?
Feeling spurned was so much worse than the loneliness I had lived with for the past several years, and I cursed him for making me feel that way. Shoving the phone back into my pocket, I continued on towards my car, muttering under my breath about how much men sucked.
>
“Hurry up before someone sees us!” a voice hissed up ahead of me. A moment later the sound of shattering glass cut through the air, and unease crept through me.
Peering ahead, I struggled to see anything between the closely parked cars. I could just make out a figure standing close to where I’d parked my Jeep, the light of the nearby streetlight doing little to illuminate the face beneath a baseball cap. Something half remembered fluttered at the back of my mind, adding to the wariness blooming in my gut.
“Aren’t you done yet?” the same voice asked, tight with tension.
“Almost. Keep an eye out for anyone coming,” another voice responded in an irritated growl.
A loud pop made me jump, and the sound of rushing air spurred my cautious steps into a jog.
“What the fuck?” I said as my Jeep came into sight, several spider web cracks marring the windshield where someone had smashed it.
That someone was probably the man standing on the sidewalk with a bat draped over his shoulder. Drawing closer I recognized him as the kid who’d shouted hate-filled epithets at me earlier in the evening. Crouched in the gutter with a knife in his hand his buddy was making short work of slashing my tires.
“Hey! Get the fuck away from my car!”
“Shit! She’s coming. Move your ass, Mike,” Baseball Cap hissed, already backing away.
“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded, breaking into a run.
Wiggling his knife in an effort to remove it from the tire he had just stabbed, Mike looked up with wide eyes to see me pounding down the sidewalk towards him. Giving up on pulling the knife free, he sprang up and ran after his friend who had already made it halfway down the block. There may be honor among thieves, but there didn’t appear to be any among whack-jobs.
“Oh no you don’t,” I muttered, dropping the file folder near my Jeep and giving chase.
It was easy enough to catch up to the straggler, the wolf lending speed and power to my pumping legs. Landing a hand on his shoulder, I pulled him to a lurching stop, my grip on his shirt the only thing keeping him from ending up in a tangled heap on the sidewalk.