by RJ Blain
“He bit me back.”
Marian’s four words widened Pierina’s eyes and her smile. “Wonderful. There are many reasons to celebrate. I would love to get to know you better—and share with you some tidbits that may help you unravel the mystery that is our Gibby.”
I didn’t look forward to Marian joining forces with Ernesto’s daughter, who ran crime rings right under her father’s nose and made him like it. No matter what happened, it would cause trouble for me. Too wise to voice my concerns, I slid my arm behind Marian’s back and guided her across the restaurant.
The main dining room’s fresco of Noah’s Flood intrigued me the most; there was no ark, only craggy mountain peaks covered in snow and surrounded by churning water, where the remnants of Earth’s life clung to tenacious survival. Only after several visits and unashamed staring had I realized unicorns lurked within the waves, fighting back the waters, while on the bitterly cold peaks, a phoenix and another unicorn, blacker than night with flames in its eyes, protected the survivors from winter’s cold embrace.
When the lights were turned off, the fresco revealed its true secrets, and I hoped I would get a chance to show Marian a special sort of magic—and draw her attention to a few of the figures huddled on the slopes of the mighty mountains withstanding the raging sea.
The lights were on and the place was packed, forcing us to navigate through a sea of tables, chairs, busy waiters and waitresses, and diners to the staircase tucked in the far corner. It spiraled upwards to my second favorite room, which featured a fresco of the eruption of Vesuvius over Pompeii and the destruction of Herculaneum. After dark, it replayed the final days of the cities, and at the end, a phoenix rose from the mountain’s heart and took to the skies, raining cinders and ash on the ground below.
Pushing aside the dark curtain separating the main dining room from the wall-to-wall window, Pierina gestured to the opened door, and I waited for Marian to go first. Instead of the white tablecloths used in the rest of the restaurant, Pierina had brought out the black cloth embroidered with gold thread, which depicted dragons in flight chasing phoenixes while unicorns galloped beneath them, whinnying their dismay they too couldn’t fly. Long red candles, surrounded with an olive and laurel wreath, served as the center piece.
I was pretty sure the silverware was made of white and yellow gold.
“You’ve outdone yourself as always, Pierina.”
The vampire smiled at me. “It’s our pleasure to bring you our finest at our papa’s expense. Please, sit. Enjoy the view. My brothers will bring you your wine and serve you tonight while I attend to matters in the kitchen.”
I took advantage of Marian’s hesitance to pull out her chair. “Now try to imagine me in either a cop uniform or a pair of jeans doing this. I’ve seen the entire secondary dining room stop and stare at me for sitting on the balcony fresh off duty.”
She giggled and sat, and I nudged her chair closer to the table. “I never would have taken you for the type to know proper etiquette.”
“I’m a man of many surprises. Usually, Pierina sets the table with the white cloth, but she’s feeling extravagant today for some reason.” I smiled and sat across from Marian. “It’s definitely nicer when I’m not dining alone.”
My choice of seat for Marian gave her the best view of Lower Chicago’s drop into the abyss, and the rumble of the canal’s waterfall drowned out the conversation inside the building. While we’d be able to hear each other, the noise meant others couldn’t, not easily.
The waterfall’s noise made the balcony one of the best places to do business, and if secrecy mattered, the curtains could be drawn for absolute privacy.
Marian leaned to the side, her gaze fixed on the black waters tumbling into the darkness below. “It didn’t seem so loud on the street!”
“Magic. Pierina likes the ambiance of the falls but doesn’t want it disturbing the diners in the restaurant, so she had a practitioner muffle the sound to only be heard in certain locations in the restaurant. The balcony is one of them.”
“That’s amazing. What happens if you fall in?”
I turned and pointed to where the canal washed over the edge. “There’s a grate down there. If you fall in, it’s possible to get your head above the surface; the current’s really strong, but every now and then someone survives. It’s one of the jobs the CPD has; if someone falls into the canal, we’re the S&R team for the grate. I’ve pulled a few people off the grate in my time. Some of them survived. If you go over, survival is a coin toss. It’s a manmade waterway. If you go over, it’s a violent water slide to the bottom into a deep pool. The denizens below send the survivors back up and call for a patrol and ambulance. The city pays them for the live bodies.”
“How many survive each year?”
I thought about my years patrolling the area. “For every five or six who get pinned to the grate, one goes through or over, and I’d say maybe fifty-fifty odds of living to tell the story.”
“And the denizens below don’t mind the water is so disgusting down there?”
“I think they like it.”
Marian stared at the canal and the darkness beyond. “Well, isn’t that charming?”
I smiled. “Even in darkness there’s beauty. If you’re lucky, you’ll see something really special.”
“What?”
“While many of the denizens are unknown, some come up from time to time. Among them are the lampad.”
“Lampad?”
I smiled. “Nymphs, believed to be the daughters of Nyx, the constant companion of Hecate.”
Marian’s eyes widened. “Hecate? The Greek goddess?”
“Roman, too.”
“Is she real?”
I held my hands up in a gesture of both surrender and ignorance. “Who am I to say? All I know is that sometimes, if you’re on the balcony, you might see lights in the distance, and no one is ever really sure what they saw, except it’s never the same.”
Marian leaned towards me and asked in a hushed voice, “Have you seen them?”
“I haven’t, but I think I’ve heard them,” I confessed in a conspiratorial whisper. “It is said Hecate favors dogs, for they help her to guide the spirits of the dead. Once, I thought I heard the braying of dogs in the distance, but no one else heard it.”
“You have to be pulling my leg.”
“Would I do that?”
“Yes.”
I laughed. “I did think I heard the dogs. As for the rest, it’s just a story—a really interesting story, one close to the heart of Ernesto’s daughter.”
“Just when I start to think I understand you, you surprise me again, Shane.”
I smiled and was saved from having to answer by Quinton, who came bearing a bottle of wine so encrusted with dust I couldn’t imagine how it had survived the ages. Then again, I could.
At Michietti’s, anything was possible.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
If I’d read the Roman numerals on the label correctly, we were drinking a two thousand year old bottle of wine. The rest of the label made no sense to me; ancient Latin looked like gibberish to me. I hadn’t even realized the Romans had fashioned anything out of glass.
The bottle’s long, fluted neck and short, bulbous bottom were unusual, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what the label itself was made of, but it was tied to the glass rather than glued. Quinton pulled the stopper and poured the wine into my glass then waited for me to taste it and discover if it had somehow survived the millenniums since its making. I lifted the glass, holding it up so I could get a good look at the liquid in the light streaming in behind the old vampire.
The ruby wine looked okay, and when I gave it a swirl and sniffed it, its sweetness surprised me. I took a cautious sip.
I’d tasted a lot of wines over the years, from the earthy ones Ernesto favored to the sweeter, aged ports. Fruity sweetness, spice, and earth mingled on my tongue in a delicate balance, no flavor overpowering the other until I couldn’t quite t
ell where one ended and the other began.
“It’s exquisite.” I had no other word for the vintage, and I doubted I’d ever taste the wine’s equal again.
Quinton smiled and filled Marian’s glass before topping mine off. “My sister will be so pleased. It was her very first, and it holds a special place in her heart.”
Thousands of years had left Pierina’s heart shriveled, renewed only when she fed from a human. “She honors us.”
Marian tried a sip and sucked in a breath. “It’s so different.”
“Grapes have survived thousands of years, but these were not the same grapes that grow now. You’ll not taste its like again. A pity, really.” Quinton restored the stopper to the bottle. “I’ll take the bottle inside and bring it back when you’re ready for more. When you leave, my dear sister would like you to take the bottle home with you so it might become a cherished memory. I’ll bring your appetizers shortly.”
I should have known Pierina would take matters into her own hands. Knowing her, we’d sample everything on the menu before she finished feeding us.
“Thank you.” The two words seemed insignificant compared to what the vampires offered, but Quinton bowed and left us.
“How old is this wine, Shane?”
“At least two thousand years old. I’m pretty sure the label was written in ancient Latin, and the numerals were in the single digits. I’m not sure if it’s from AD or BC, though.”
“Oh my god.” She stared at her glass. “I’m supposed to drink this? Me? How was it preserved for so long?”
“I’m going to guess magic, which is why Quinton took the bottle back inside.”
“But why are the vampires giving it to us?”
“What’s the average lifespan of a shifter?”
“No one told you?”
“No. To be fair, I didn’t ask.”
“Longer than lycanthropes. We aren’t reliant on the virus to stay alive. We’re a lot less common than lycanthropes, but we can live longer. If their virus dies, they die. But they have advantages we lack.”
Relief I wouldn’t die of old age long before my parents washed through me. I needed to do a lot of research, but I could work with what I’d learned. “Like enhanced regeneration?”
“Right. We heal faster than regular humans, and we have a much higher ability to withstand lethal damage, but we’ll never match a lycanthrope’s regenerative ability.”
“And the lycanthrope virus in other shifters? That doesn’t help their regeneration?”
“No. If I’m exposed to lycanthropy, I get a fever for a few days. I suppose it might help a little, but I’ve never tried it. I’ve only had accidental exposure.”
I wasn’t sure what I thought about that, and to cover my uncertainty, I took another sip of wine. “Ernesto knows I’m an unidentified shifter by now, and once he knew, he would’ve told his children. To them, humans live such short lives, like brightly burning flames that wink out too quickly. As soon as they begin to truly witness the complexity of a human, the human dies. He probably knows a lot more about shifters than I do, so he’d know my lifespan—barring death from unnatural causes—has been greatly lengthened.”
“So he’s celebrating that you’ll be around a lot longer to bother him?”
“That would be my first guess.”
“But it’s Pierina’s wine.”
“She’s cut from the same cloth as her father, and she loves feeding her favorite people.”
“The Italian food he brought over. It’s from here, isn’t it?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. Pierina loves cooking. She can’t eat much beyond a taste, but little makes her happier than feeding living things.”
“That seems so weird. She’s undead.”
“I’m no expert on vampires, but I’ve come to the conclusion they value life even more after undeath, because they can no longer experience it in the same way.” I took another sip of my wine.
“If he likes you so much, why doesn’t he just turn you?”
“Because he likes me—that’s why. If he hated me, he’d turn me and get his revenge by making me into the type of person he wanted. But death is a part of undeath, and when someone is turned, everything that person used to be dies with them. Vampires become new people. Who they used to be is truly gone.”
“You’ve known someone who became a vampire, haven’t you?”
I shrugged. “Hard not to around here. Chicago has a high population of vamps and demons.”
“Yet they can’t stand werewolves.”
“I never said it made sense.”
“That’s true.” Marian drank her wine, her gaze focusing on the canal behind me. “Whenever I start thinking I have you figured out, you surprise me.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Well, I won’t get bored.” She grinned and turned her attention back to me.
“Good.”
Pierina must have believed Marian and I were at risk of starvation, because she served us a sampling of everything on her menu. The vampire retained some of her common sense, limiting the serving sizes to something in the realm of sane—if we were lycanthropes fresh off a rampage and in dire need of sustenance.
We weren’t, but I couldn’t resist the challenge, and neither could Marian. While I’d warned her about the vampire’s tendency to use every bit of an animal to enter her kitchen, I doubted Marian believed me until the heart arrived. At least Pierina had cooked it, which was better than the first time I’d sampled one of her more unique dishes.
“Dare I ask what other organs are going to end up on my plate tonight?”
I laughed, and because Pierina was pulling out all the stops, I played the game and tasted her offerings. Despite the ick factor, I actually liked heart—even when it wasn’t cooked as thoroughly as I’d preferred. “The CDC asked if I considered myself an adventurous eater. I pointed out I knew from experience I disliked tripe and haggis. The second time I got sick on tripe, Pierina took pity on me and stopped making me eat it.”
“You got sick on it?”
“Nothing is quite as undignified as throwing up over the balcony railing. The first time, I think she was taken by surprise. The second time, she laughed. Vampires have terrible senses of humor. Ever since, she threatens to feed it to me if I’ve been bad.”
“When aren’t you bad?”
I grinned. “But my record is so clean it squeaks.”
“I still haven’t figured out how you pulled that off.”
“There’s nothing illegal about being nice to people, even hardened criminals. If you know the rules, it’s surprisingly easy to obey them. It just takes creativity.”
“That’s still impressive. There weren’t any mentions in your file that you have a relationship with any of the people you actually know.”
“That was easy; every cop who’s done a traffic patrol in Lower Chicago has met Ernesto and his brood. It’s not worth putting on the records, since everyone’s been involved at some level or another. If you really wanted to connect the dots, you’d look at my busts and realize I’ve been waging a quiet war with Ernesto for years.”
“What do you mean?”
“Speeding tickets, parking violations, anything a patrol officer might be able to nail him or his children on. When I’d catch him, he’d find some way to prank me, usually at my apartment.”
“Like with Amy.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s absurd.”
I grinned and toasted her with my wine glass. “It made my dead-end career a little more fun.”
“Would you be willing to move away from Chicago?”
“If it means I might have another stab at law enforcement? Definitely.”
“How do you feel about—”
The crack-bang of something detonating nearby drowned out Marian’s question, and the balcony lurched. The concrete, steel, and stone groaned, and before I could do more than rise to my feet, the entire structure collapsed beneath us. I hit
the canal back first, and the air rushed out of my lungs.
Water flooded into my mouth, and while every instinct I had screamed at me to do something, my body refused to move. The current sucked me under, and I hit the grate hard enough to knock what little breath I had left out of me along with the water I’d swallowed on impact.
Somehow, I wasn’t dead from the fall, but unless I wanted to change my status from living to dead, I needed to move. The first few seconds, my stunned body refused to obey me. I twitched, remembered how my arms and legs were supposed to work, and struggled to orient myself. Which way was up? Which way was down?
At a depth of fifteen feet, if I went the wrong way, I’d be able to change directions. If I found the wall, that would be even better; I’d be able to climb out on my own. I twisted until my chest touched the bars and reached over my head, groping for the metal crossing the end of the canal.
Everything went according to plan until a flash penetrated the murky waters, and the grate shuddered from the force of a blow. I froze, aware of the burn in my chest, the strain of my oxygen-deprived lungs, and the quivering in my muscles.
The metal shuddered again before dumping me into the abyss.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
During my initial training with the CPD, I’d been told the canal drained over a concrete spillway, one designed to mimic a waterslide for any sentients unfortunate enough to go over the grate meant to keep them from tumbling to Chicago’s third level. While my instructors hadn’t exactly lied, they hadn’t been speaking the complete truth.
Madmen on a pixie dust high might call the twisting, turning concrete monstrosity a waterslide. Either through magic or clever engineering, the water spread out and slicked the whole thing, and I plummeted through six slimy inches of fluid I hesitated to think of as water.
I could have dealt with a flat slope, but no. I rode a demented slinky with an attitude problem determined to tenderize me before dumping my bruised and battered body at the bottom. At least the creators understood a human wouldn’t be in any condition to swim after such a fall; instead of plunging into water, I landed on a net. Water still pounded me from above, but I could breathe.