A slender hand with the strength of angels clamped around my neck, and I was slammed into the wall next to the door. I looked up into Ansel’s red-tinged eyes, his lips pulled back from long, nasty fangs.
“Hungry,” he said.
“Ansel!” I shouted.
“Shut up!” He shook me, his hand cutting off my air. “I’m sick to death of your grating, whining voice. I’m going to bathe in your blood.”
“You didn’t kill Laura,” I struggled to say. “She’s alive.”
For a split second, sanity flickered into his eyes, the brown of the mild-mannered Ansel returning. For a second. Then the Nightwalker reemerged.
“You’re good at lying. I hope you kissed your lover goodbye.”
He opened his mouth. Nightwalkers, when they are about to kill, elongate their mouths into long, narrow maws, like wolves—all the better to eat you with.
I worked a spark of Beneath magic into my hands, the spinning white ball the size of a marble. Ansel hadn’t fed on human flesh in a long, long time, and I knew he wouldn’t be sated with my blood alone. Once he got human blood inside him, he’d go on a rampage. All those people milled around upstairs—Mick was away healing himself, and Cassandra had gone home long ago—no one to protect them.
“I’m sorry, Ansel,” I said. “I always counted you as a friend.” I brought up my hand to flick the ball into his heart.
A plastic jug full of red liquid was thrust between my face and Ansel’s. I gagged on the stench. Cow’s blood. Lots of it.
Ansel slackened his grip on my throat just enough for me to twist out of it. I turned around, panting, and saw Elena holding under Ansel’s nose the jug of cow’s blood Mick had put into Ansel’s mini fridge.
I held my breath, and not just because of the smell. Last spring, we’d offered the blood-frenzied Ansel cow’s blood to calm him down, and he’d spit it out in rage. He’d gone into blood frenzy that time because of a spell, though, whereas earlier tonight he’d gone into it fighting to survive. This time he’d woken up both hungry and in fear of his life again.
Ansel glared at the bottle. Elena, unperturbed, pinched his nostrils between her fingers and poured blood into his mouth.
The blood flowed out again, all over Ansel’s nice gray button-down shirt, but he closed his mouth and swallowed. Elena upended the jug again, and this time, Ansel held still while he drank. And drank and drank. He gulped down most of the jug’s contents before he closed his eyes and took a step back.
His mouth returned to normal, and when he opened his eyes again, the brown of the antiques enthusiast regarded at me.
“I am so, so sorry, Janet.” He wiped his mouth with a shaking hand and glanced with dismay at his ruined shirt. “Perhaps you should let the next slayer take me.”
“No,” Elena said before I could speak. “We will not.”
She screwed the lid onto the jug and put the jug back into the refrigerator. She went into the bathroom, ran some water, and came out with a damp cloth, which she handed to Ansel so he could wipe his hands and face.
“Thanks, Elena,” I said.
“I won’t accept your thanks,” she said. “There is much more going on here, and you need to find out about it.” She pointed a plump finger at me. “Keep your thanks until we are done.” Her finger moved to Ansel. “A Firewalker is willing to burn down your haven around you to make you give him something. Slayers are leaving their marks on the doors and trying to break in to kill you. People are holding séances to try to find out information about you. Women are thought dead and then aren’t. You must now tell us everything.”
“I think you’d better,” I said.
Ansel conjured up a sigh that sounded as though it came from the depths of his long, lost soul. “Oh, Janet,” he said, looking more sorrowful than I’d ever seen him. “What have I done?”
Chapter Eight
“You tell me,” I said.
Elena rummaged through Ansel’s closet, which contained a neat row of button-down oxford shirts, polo shirts, suit jackets, and slacks. Even his casual jeans were folded neatly on shelves.
The clean shirt Elena picked out was a tasteful maroon polo. Ansel, always modest, ducked into the bathroom to change.
When he came out, having hidden the bloody shirt in his laundry hamper, he looked almost like a normal human being, except for his too-pale complexion and his haunted expression. He sat down on the desk chair Mick had straddled earlier and put his hands on his knees.
“Janet, I’m sorry. I heard the things I said to you. I . . .”
I held up my hand. “Blood frenzy. It happens. I’m more interested in what Drake wants, and why you were willing to risk burning to death to not give it to him.”
Ansel nodded, looking wretched, a far cry from the brutal Nightwalker who’d been about to suck me dry.
“Laura and I . . . We’ve done something bad, but for a good reason, I think.” He spread his long fingers. “You don’t know much about me, do you, Janet? That’s why I’m so grateful for your compassion in letting me stay here.”
Elena spoke before I could. “You mean you’re grateful for more than a place to hide from the sun, don’t you?”
Ansel nodded. “I told you that, before the war, my family owned an antiques store, which unfortunately perished in the Blitz. What I didn’t tell you was that my father was the greatest confidence trickster the antiques world had ever seen. Well, one of the greatest. The business, unfortunately, is rife with thieves.”
“Did you follow in his footsteps?” I asked. That would surprise me. Ansel was always so careful and polite, but then again, his air of guilelessness would help him be a good a con artist.
“I didn’t approve of what my father did. He’d cheat people out of fortunes. He’d tell an elderly widow that her houseful of eighteenth-century silver was worthless but that he’d pay her a little more than they were worth because he was compassionate. Then he’d turn around and sell off the whole collection at great profit to himself. Or he’d hire a forger to copy a unique piece of furniture and sell both the original and the copy to two different buyers in two different countries as the real thing. Easier to fool people in the days before you could look up your purchase on the Internet and find out there were six others just like it.”
I’d sunk to sit on the bed while Ansel told his story, but Elena remained standing, arms folded. She wasn’t a very tall woman, but she didn’t need height to be intimidating.
“You must have had an interesting upbringing,” I said.
Ansel looked embarrassed. “I did, yes. I knew how to run a swindle and run it well by the time I was twelve.”
I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment. “Please don’t tell me you ran a swindle on the dragons.”
“I had no intention of doing anything with the dragons at all. I swear to you, Janet. I’m not that foolish.”
“Then what happened?”
He waited a moment, studying his hands. Nightwalkers, when they don’t pretend to breathe, can go entirely still, and Ansel sat as still as death.
“Laura has a small store, but she’s well-known in her field. Buyers come to her from all over the world, especially those wanting Native American art and artifacts. People contact her and tell her what they want, and she finds it for them.”
“And you help her,” I said, “knowing the business as you do.”
“I’ve kept my hand in over the years,” Ansel said, looking modest. “Computers make it easier, though there’s no substitute for holding a thing in your hand and examining it. Internet photos—any photos—can be doctored by anyone with a laptop and affordable software.”
Elena broke in, her voice quiet but holding the force of ages. “What did you agree to help this woman find?”
Ansel looked up at her, shamefaced. “A pot. An ancient one.”
I stood up. “Please tell me she didn’t go out to Chaco Canyon to dig up a pot.”
The theft of Native American artifacts was a continuing probl
em. Non-Indians didn’t understand why they shouldn’t go dig up all the thousand-year-old pottery and other things buried in places like Chaco Canyon or Homol’ovi, or even out in the canyons around Magellan, and sell them to museums or private collectors for a stack of cash.
Most Indians, on the other hand, regard the pottery as sacred relics from their ancestors, which should be left undisturbed. They feel about it like non-Indian might feel about someone going to a churchyard and digging up their great-grandmother to sell her bones and whatever jewelry she’d been buried with. Federal laws, with prison sentences attached, were on the books to discourage pot hunting, but it still goes on.
But there’s an even better reason not to desecrate the dead. Not only is it macabre, it’s dangerous. There’s no telling what kind of god or spiritual force is guarding the dead—you could have a ton of evil trouble on your doorstep for even moving a potsherd. Gods and goddesses are not necessarily nice.
“No,” Ansel said quickly. “This particular pot has been circulating for a long time.”
“Then why was Laura hanging out in Chaco Canyon?”
Ansel shrugged. “I’m not really certain why. I’m piecing much of this together myself.”
And why had Laura been abducted from there? And where was she now? Drake needed to answer questions, and I had some ideas about how to make him talk.
“Anyway,” Ansel said, “Laura was approached earlier this year by a collector in Santa Fe who was looking for this particular pot. Laura and I started the research, learning all about the type of pot it was and where we might find this particular one. A few months later, Laura called me, uneasy. The collector who’d hired her was pushing her to find the pot, offering to pay more and more money if she hurried it up. When she had to say we were still looking, he started threatening her. It can take years to locate a piece and buy it, and clients understand that. But this man was adamant.”
“Why does he want it so much?” I asked.
“Why, indeed?” Ansel said. “I continued to look for the pot, while Laura began researching our client—discovering everything she could about him. We found the pot, by the way. It was at a private museum in Flagstaff. Laura notified the client, he transferred the money, and we bought it.”
Elena scowled at him, and I balled my fists. “So you have it,” I said. “Ansel.”
Ansel held up his hands. “No, I don’t. This is what I do not understand. Laura took it, not me. I never had charge of it, and she delivered it to the collector.”
“Wait.” I rubbed my temples. “Why are we talking about swindles if you bought the pot and gave it to Laura’s client? The deal is done.”
“We did swindle him,” Ansel said in a quiet voice. “The museum wanted two hundred thousand for the pot. I bargained them down to one hundred and fifty. But we agreed to tell the client that we bought it for the whole two. He paid up, and Laura and I split the fifty grand between us. That on top of Laura’s commission. Normally I’d never dream of doing something like that—but if you’d met the man . . . When Laura didn’t find the artifact fast enough, he threatened to put her out of business, threatened to ruin me—he doesn’t know I’m a Nightwalker. He lives in a big house, surrounded by riches, and is the most tight-fisted miser I’ve ever met. The things he said to Laura . . . We decided that he could afford to give us a little more money for what we had to put up with.”
I could understand myself giving the guy a little kick in the balls, but I’d also learned that such people could be dangerous. “Did he find out?”
“No. At least, I don’t think so. But something is very wrong. I’d already sent most of my money to my family in England—I like to help them out. Laura called me last week, all excited, and said she’d done something else. She said she knew she should have told me, but she was afraid of getting me involved, and that I’d understand. She didn’t want to tell me on the phone. We agreed to meet in Gallup where we could talk. When I got there, Laura was scared. She was sure she’d been followed. She convinced me to leave with her. And then . . . that’s where it all goes fuzzy. We were driving, and I must have gone blood frenzied for some reason. I don’t know why. I’m sorry, Janet, that’s all I can remember.”
“Why’d you keep this to yourself?” I asked. “I might have been able to help you sooner, before the slayers came calling.”
“Told you that I’d killed my girlfriend in a blood frenzy?” Ansel asked, eyes wide. “You would have thrown me out of here, at best. At worst, you and Mick would have decided that you needed to kill me. Don’t think I don’t hear your conversations about that.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Ansel, what you don’t understand is, I know exactly what it feels like to be an out-of-control killing machine. That’s when you need your friends the most. To stop you.”
“Perhaps. But I’m a Nightwalker. You at least can be a potent magical force for good in the world. I’m nothing but a bloodsucker, no good in me at all. I was created to be a weapon, to kill without remorse. Our situations are a bit different.”
“We could get into a big, long argument about that, but right now isn’t the time. Drake told me that Laura was alive, but that he didn’t know where she was. Are you sure you have no idea what she meant to tell you? About the pot? About the client? About Chaco Canyon? She was driving in that direction, and she was camping up there.”
“What I do know,” Ansel said, “is that she didn’t give me anything—not the pot or any other artifact, no money, nothing. When I woke up in the desert, there was just me. Getting to shelter was my only concern at that point. I have no clear idea of where I was, as I told you. Somewhere in northwestern New Mexico is about as specific as I can be.”
“We need to find her.” I stated the obvious, but sometimes, it has to be stated.
“The Firewalkers are convinced you have this pot,” Elena said. “Why is it important to them?”
Ansel spread his hands. “As I say, I have no idea.”
I believed him. Dragons could be annoyingly cryptic, and I planned to shake a few things out of them. Starting with Mick, who’d gone to the dragon compound today to find out why I’d sensed dragon at Laura’s campsite. We hadn’t exactly had a moment to talk.
But Ansel knew things too. “Who was the client, Ansel?” I asked. “The one so anxious to get this piece of pottery?”
“His name is Richard Young.”
“Oh, Ansel,” I said, blowing out my breath.
Even I had heard of Richard Young, a man who owned a large chunk of the businesses in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, who lived in a vast house on a hill above Santa Fe with a view people would pay millions for. The man was powerful and influential. And, some whispered, a criminal, or at least, he had criminal connections.
“We can’t always choose our clients,” Ansel said. “If they have the dosh, we don’t ask too many questions. Antiques dealers are always in need of an influx of cash.”
Which he sent off to his family in England. I couldn’t help admiring that. On the other hand, Richard Young was not the best person in the world to try to rip off.
“Thank you, Ansel,” I said. “For being straight with me. I’m going to try to find out what the dragons know and see if we can track down Laura. This might be easily solved.” Sure. “The big question is—if Laura’s fine, what was that stupid crap with the séance? Whoever faked it told Paige that Laura was dead and needed to be avenged.”
Ansel looked perplexed, so I quickly filled him in about the séance at Heather’s and the “message” from Laura.
Elena looked disapproving. She, like Cassandra and my grandmother, didn’t like séances. I had the feeling I’d get a phone call from Grandmother soon.
“She must have faked it,” Elena said. “The sister. So she’d have justification for hiring these slayers to kill Ansel. She might believe her sister is dead but not be able to prove it.”
“You will tell Paige she’s all right?” Ansel asked.
“First call I make.”
Second call, I meant. For the first I wouldn’t need a phone.
I told Ansel to stay in tonight, to be safe, and he nodded. He’d have his DVD machine cranking out classic movies in no time.
He looked so unhappy and guilty as I started to leave that I came back and gave him a hug and a kiss on the top of his head.
Quick ones. Ansel smelled like blood, his aura had my magic screaming, and he was dancing too close to blood frenzy for any lingering touch.
I left his room, and Elena marched upstairs behind me, heading off to check her kitchen for damage. Whatever she found, I was sure the dragons would hear about it. Loudly.
The firemen were still in my saloon, trying to decide what had started the fire. Lightning was one man’s speculation. The fire was completely out, wisps of smoke drifting in the night breeze.
“Can I go in?” I asked a guy in his oversized yellow suit, still wearing his hard fire hat. He was one of the Salas family, related to Magellan’s Assistant Chief of Police. Emilio Salas himself was outside in the parking lot talking to the other firemen.
Emilio saw me and came walking up with his usual energy. “You know what happened, Janet?”
“I wasn’t home,” I said, sticking to the literal truth.
“A couple of your guests saw a fireball come out the sky, and the place went up. Heat lightning is what will go in the report. A freak of nature.”
I’d be sure to tell Drake he was being listed as a freak of nature. I wanted to watch his face when I said it.
“Am I allowed in?” I asked again.
“If you want to take a quick look right inside the door, you can,” the fireman said. “But don’t go all the way in, and don’t touch anything. There’s a lot of glass fused to the floor and what’s left of the tables.”
Glass. I ducked past him and stepped inside the saloon.
It was a complete wreck. The long wooden bar, barstools, and tables were nothing but a pile of black lumps. The walls still stood, but they were black all the way to the tin ceiling, which had buckled and melted under the volcanic heat of dragon fire. Dragons were born in volcanoes, and the room looked as though one had erupted inside it.
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