“I was wondering if you were free tonight?” Abner asked.
“Why? Did something happen?”
“Not exactly,” he said, sounding uncertain. “Ottaline Rebane says there’s been some odd activity around Darah Merah the last few nights, and she just wanted someone to come by and check it out.”
“Odd activity? What does that mean?” I asked. I tried to stop petting Matilda, but she was having none of it, pushing her fluffy white head on my lap so I had to pay attention to her.
“Mostly real juvenile stuff, like knocking on the door, then running off. But she also felt that some of the johns have been getting rougher with the girls.”
“Has anyone been hurt?” I asked.
“Not seriously, not yet,” Abner said. “I was planning to head out around eleven tonight, and I’m sure that I could handle it on my own. But I’ve been having a rough week, so I thought that if you weren’t busy, you could go with me.”
I hesitated only a second before replying, “Yeah, of course. That should be fine.” The dog whined in protest, as if she somehow knew I was ditching out on her and Jack. “You wanna just meet there?”
“Your place is on the way to the Singelgebied district, so I can stop by, and we could walk over together,” he offered.
“Sure. I’ll see you at eleven then.”
I hung up the phone and went out to tell Jack about my newfound plans for the evening, but like most things in his life, he took it in stride, and said that since my job involved literally saving people’s lives at times, it had to trump our plans of doing nothing.
When eleven o’clock rolled around, he and Matilda followed me down to wait for Abner and give the dog a chance to do her business. We stood on the sidewalk outside the complex, and the chilly air was filled with the sweet fragrance of flowers from the Bloemenmarkt across the river.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” I asked Jack again, as he waited beside me with Matilda’s leashed looped around his wrist and his hands in his pockets.
“No, I’ll be fine,” he assured me. “I planned on doing really exciting stuff tonight like working on some accounting stuff for the comic book shop.”
“That does sound thrilling. I’m really sorry I’ll miss that.”
“When you get back, we could always balance the books together, if you know what I mean.” He waggled his eyebrows at me, then laughed at his own joke.
Matilda let out a friendly bark when she spotted Abner approaching us from the down street. He’d been over to our apartment a few times, mostly for game nights at Bobby’s behest, and since the dog liked most people, she’d liked him.
“Hey, Abner. How are you doing?” Jack asked.
He nodded at Jack from under his homburg hat. “I’m quite well. And yourself?”
“Can’t complain, but that doesn’t stop me from trying,” Jack said.
I rolled my eyes. “That joke is older that you are. It’s probably older than Abner.”
“Almost,” Abner agreed with a light smile. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah, of course.” I kissed Jack quickly before walking off with Abner. “See you later.”
“Be safe,” he called after us. “Take care of my girl, Abner.”
The red-light district with Ottaline’s vampire brothel was only about a twenty-minute walk from my place, and Abner and I walked briskly together, so we would make it there even sooner.
It was a nice night, a bit on the chilly side, but for once the sky was clear, without any fog or rain lingering in the air. There were a few people out and about, riding their bikes or walking to a pub, but it was quiet enough that I felt comfortable talking with Abner openly about vampire business.
“So you said you’ve been having a rough week,” I said to him as we walked. “Anything other than finding that dying girl the other night?”
He let out a sour laugh. “You would think that one dead girl would be enough on its own, but sadly, in our line of work it isn’t.”
“What happened?”
“Earlier this week, I got a call,” he began. “There was quite a disturbance in a nice row house on the edge of the city, but I had to get there fast because neighbors were calling the police. So, I went down there, along with Ettie, but she was mostly dealing with the public, using her charms to placate them and convince them that this was not anything to get worked up about.”
I didn’t have the same skill as Ettie or Ezra or some of the other vampires I’d encountered, so most of my interactions involved criminals or victims and not the public. But someone like Ettie could use her beauty and her supernatural charm to convince humans of just about anything. It wasn’t exactly hypnotism, but it wasn’t that far off from it, either.
“I went into the house, and it was just a bloodbath,” Abner continued. “I suspected as much, because I could already smell the blood two streets down. But it was even worse than I imagined.
“There had been four vampires living in the home – the oldest was a man named Simon who was well over three-hundred. Another vampire was a friend of his, close in age, but the other two were his progeny. The older of the two – a stunning Egyptian vampire called Rana – had been with him quite some time, over a century, if she was to be believed. But the younger one had only been turned a few years”
He kept his head down, his eyes occasionally darting around as he spoke, and his voice was low, so a nearby human wouldn’t be able to pick it up, not unless they were right on top of us.
“And that’s where this all goes off the rails,” Abner went on. “Rana had a purely platonic relationship with her maker, which she swore up and down was just as she wanted, and he did, too. But then Simon had fallen in love, and he’d turned this younger vampire to be his lover. At first, everyone involved seemed happy with it.
“But over the course of the last several years, little things had built up and up.” He paused before going on with it. “A few days ago, Rana finally snapped. She killed the younger vampire first, hacking off his head with an ax, then went at the poor friend who had nothing to do with any of it.
“When I arrived, she had cornered Simon in an upstairs room, and as I went up to mediate, I had to step over several of his missing body parts – a foot here, a finger there, a whole arm at the top of the steps.” Abner grimaced, and his expression made me certain I was happy that I hadn’t been there to witness it.
“He was this limping, bloody, mutilated body by the time I saw him, but he was still alive – barely,” Abner went on. “Rana was mad, and I tried desperately to reason with her. It was during this time that she confessed everything that had transpired, spelling out their whole history, with Simon only chiming in to apologize profusely.
“Eventually, she charged at me with the ax, and I had to stake her – to save my own life.” He looked over at me. “That’s not even the worst part of the story. Once she was gone, I went over to do supportive care to the elder vampire, to see if I could maybe save him, and he told me, ‘Leave me. If life is without her, then I don’t want to live. Let me die.’”
“So what’d you do?” I asked.
Abner’s tone turned very matter-of-fact. “I stayed with him until he died, which didn’t take that much longer, and once Ettie had gotten the police and onlookers to leave, she called a crew to come clean up the mess, and I’m sure they disposed of the bodies.”
“Wow,” I said. “That is pretty insane.”
“It is,” he agreed, sounding weary once again. “The bond between a maker and progeny usually precludes any kind of petty differences. I’ve only dealt with murders between them a handful of times in my entire career, and this was by far the most brutal case of it. But I swear, something is making everyone act crazy.”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “You think things are getting crazier?”
“I do. Don’t you?” He looked down at me. “There’s something in the air, something electric.” His eyes turned up to the sky and the fat moon shining brightly above us. “Maybe
it’s the full moon. When I was a child, my mother used to tell me the moon brought out the madmen.”
“Do you believe that?” I asked, only half-joking.
“I don’t know. But she is the one that told me not to go out alone at night, or the vampires would find me.” He smirked. “And we can see how that turned out.”
We rounded a corner, away from the warm glow of downtown to the dark red lights of the adult area. Darah Merah was on the far side of the district, so we still had a little way to go. Here the streets were busier, mostly with male humans looking for a good time, but I spotted a vampire walking ahead of us.
Her back was to us, with her chestnut hair swinging in a ponytail, but when she glanced over her shoulder, looking back at us, I recognized her instantly. It was Iris Emmanuel, the crazed young vampire I’d dealt with at Darah Merah just over a week ago.
When she saw me, she smiled, then turned and started jogging away. She wore thigh high boots with heels that clacked on the concrete, and everyone around turned to watch her.
“She’s trouble,” I warned Abner, and without expounding further, we both gave chase after her and followed her into a dark alley.
She stood in front of a dead end, but when she turned back to face us, a wide smile spread out across her face. “Look at this. A pair of hunters out on a date to a whore house, perhaps?”
“Iris, you’ve been warned to stay from these premises,” I reminded her.
“By who? You?” She cackled. “Who put you in charge? Nobody. There was no committee. No vote. You put yourself above me, and expect me to bow before you?”
Iris snarled, “Well, fuck that. I have friends now, and I don’t need to listen to anybody.”
In her hand, she had a small metal pipe, and when she flicked her wrist, it extended out to three times it’s length – becoming a long stake with a razor-sharp point at the end.
IRIS RAN AT ME, PROBABLY because I was the one speaking to her, but that was a mistake, since Abner was the more experienced hunter of the two of us. She had a lot of pent of up rage, but I ducked out of her way easily.
Abner grabbed her stake from her, and bent it backward. She refused to let go, and I heard her bones snapping, and she emitted an agonizing growl.
“There’s no need for any of this,” Abner told her calmly as he closed her retractable stake. “Why don’t you calm down, heal yourself, and we can explain what we expect of you.”
She bent over, holding her injured bloody wrist, and for a moment, it seemed like she might take Abner up on his offer. But when she lifted her head, she was laughing, and murderous intensity filled her dark eyes.
In a flash, she pulled another stake from her boots and raised her good hand, meaning to throw it at Abner. I was sick of her games, so I grabbed the stake, and while it was still in her hand, I twisted it around and aimed it back at her chest.
“Drop it, and we can talk,” I told her, with the sharp point of the stake pressed right above her heart.
She spat in my face. “I’d rather die than surrender to you.”
Then she tried to bite me, and that was enough. I drove the stake through her heart, and she died with her mouth open wide, like a snake in mid-attack. I lowered her body to the ground and stayed crouched above her, wiping her blood off my hands.
“Dammit,” I muttered. “I didn’t want to kill anyone tonight.”
“None of us ever want to kill anyone, Alice,” Abner said, standing right behind me. “But she wasn’t going to be reasoned with, and I have no doubt that she was going to hurt many innocent people.”
“But she’s so young. In time, she could’ve learned –”
The words died on my lips the instant I saw her ring. It was large and kind of clunky, like a masculine class ring, and it didn’t seem to fit with her slender fingers. But that’s not what caught my eye.
At first glance, it appeared to be a horseshoe, with a crosshatch pattern across it. But the left side of the horseshoe was thinner than the right, and the right side ended with a knob. If I looked closer, I knew I’d be able to see the more minute details of the head, and the four small feet underneath, as well as the subtle engraving of the wings on the back.
The horseshoe was really a dragon. The symbol of Dracul.
“Holy shit,” I whispered, and I had to fight the very real urge to throw up.
I stood up quickly, too quickly, and I felt off-balance. Abner grabbed my arm to steady me, and I heard him asking me if I was okay but it all sounded so far away.
My mind was back in Minnesota, fighting Jonathan Evans – the vampire that killed my best friend Jane. She’d become a blood whore, addicted to the bites, and he’d gotten far too possessive of her. When she tried to quit, he’d killed her.
But she hadn’t been the only one. He’d taken to murdering young blood whores all over the city, leaving them in open places for humans to find. All of them had been marked with his brand before he killed them. Using that exact same ring that was on Iris’s finger.
“That’s not her ring,” I mumbled, my words feeling heavy and odd in my mouth. “How did she get Jonathan’s ring?”
“What?” Abner asked, and he put both his hands on my shoulders to force me to look at him, to focus and form coherent sentences. “What are you talking about?”
“That ring belonged to a vampire named Jonathan Evans, but I killed him,” I explained. “I killed him over five years ago. And Olivia disposed of the body. How did this baby vampire get his ring?”
Abner let go of me and crouched down beside Iris. He lifted her hand and pulled off the ring, and he inspected it in the moonlight for a second.
“This ring here?” he asked, and I nodded. “I doubt this was that Jonathan fellows ring.”
“No, I know that ring. I’m positive,” I insisted. I’d had nightmares about it for weeks after, picturing the mark he had left burned on Jane’s body.
“I’m sure he had a ring just like this one, but I don’t think this particular ring belonged to him. There must be hundreds, if not thousands in existence,” Abner explained.
I froze, a solid chill running through my very core. “What are you talking about?”
“This, as you may know, is the symbol of Dracul.” He pointed to the dragon. “And Dracul has a very devoted following in the form of a cult called the House of Basarab.”
The air felt like it had gone from my lungs, and Abner reached out for me, but it was too late. I knelt in the alley, my hand over my mouth and tried to process everything he was saying.
Jonathan had said he wanted to expose the vampires. He murdered the girls and left them in the open so humans would have to see it, and they’d have to deal with it. While he’d never specifically said he was following a cult or part of a group, all the pieces fit.
Five and a half years ago, my best friend had been murdered by a member of the House of Basarab, and in that time, they appeared to have only grown stronger, with a larger following.
“HEY,” JACK SAID AS I walked into our apartment several hours later, after clean up and conversations with Ettie. His expression fell the instant he saw me, so I knew I must’ve looked as bad as I felt. “Are you okay?”
I kicked off my shoes and took off my jacket. “I don’t know.”
He came over to me and gently touched my chin, turning my head to the side to inspect for wounds. “Were you hurt?”
“No,” I said, but that felt like a lie, so I amended it with, “Not really. You remember Jane?”
“You mean your best friend Jane?” He cocked his head at me. “Of course, I remember her. But what does she have to do with anything?”
I proceeded to tell him everything that happened tonight, everything I knew about the House of Basarab, and how it all tied together to make me feel like I’d failed Jane all over again. I still blamed myself for introducing her to vampires, for letting Milo bite her, for not protecting her, for her getting murdered.
“You didn’t fail Jane,” Jack told me whe
n I’d finished. “She made a lot of terrible choices all on her own, and you did what you could for her. You avenged her death.”
I looked up at him. “Did I, though?”
“Absolutely,” he replied confidently. “Jonathan Evans is still dead. And he may have had ties to this Basarab gang or whatever, but he was also a brash idiot, so there’s a very good chance he was working without any direction from them. Especially since the blood whore murders stopped after you killed him.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Alice, when will you learn? I’m always right.”
With that, he pulled me into his arms, hugging me to him, and I rested my head against his chest. Listening to the sound of his heartbeat always made me feel much better everything.
“Tonight just brought up a lot of shit that I’d rather forget,” I said.
“I know.” His words were muffled in my hair, and he kissed the top of my head. “It sucks that you couldn’t help Jane, and I’m sorry that you still feel guilty about that, especially since you shouldn’t. But you’re working with the Agency now. You save people’s lives all the time.”
“Well, I try to, anyway.”
“You do,” he insisted. “And you said that Ettie and Abner already know about the House of Basarab?”
I nodded. “I think Ettie keeps tabs on all vampire gang activity.”
“So the Agency will take care of them, if they need to. And because of you and the vampires you work with, so many other girls will be saved. You can’t feel bad about that.”
“That’s true,” I agreed, even though that didn’t stop me from feeling awful.
“What do you wanna do now?”
“It’s late and I’ve had a very long night. I just wanna take a long shower and go to bed.”
“Sounds perfect to me,” he said.
In the shower, I usually kept the water rather cold, but tonight I relished the way the hot water felt against my bare skin and the steam that filled my lungs when I breathed in. After the shower, I threw on my pajamas and hurried back into our chilly bedroom and hopped into bed.
Swear (My Blood Approves #5) Page 13