Shadow's Messenger: An Aileen Travers Novel

by T. A. White

  I gaped down at it. Sorcerer’s bond? I’d never heard of such a thing. And when did I enter into any sort of agreement?

  “When you said ‘I’ll do it. Just stop whatever you’re doing,’” the sorcerer said.

  I grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him close, letting my fangs slide out. “Are you reading my mind?”

  He scowled at me and gently touched the tattoo. The skin caught fire and I screamed, shoving the sorcerer away from me.

  “Of course not. Your face said everything I needed to know. You should really learn to hide your thoughts. Being so transparent is only going to get you in trouble.”

  I cradled my arm to my chest, hissing at the brush of cloth against the sensitive skin. That hurt.

  “How can something that simple be an agreement?” I asked through gritted teeth. “We didn’t even discuss terms.”

  “Any verbal agreement is enough to bind you into a contract. You said you’d do it, hence the mark. It’s not my fault you failed to clarify things before you agreed. This is magic 101. Do the vampires teach their young anything anymore?”

  They probably did, but since I was never trained, I’d missed out on all the basic knowledge. Wish Jerry had taken the time to explain that little tidbit before sending me off on this job.

  Not that it mattered. It didn’t change the fact I wasn’t going after the murderer. He’d gone through some of the highest members of the supernatural community like they were tissue paper. It’s why hysteria was building in the city after every attack. If some of the most powerful beings in the city couldn’t do anything about him, there was zero chance I’d be able to apprehend or kill him. I’d take the forfeit over certain death, thank you.

  “I’m still not going after him,” I told the sorcerer.

  “I hope you’ll reconsider,” he said. “The tattoo will kill you otherwise.”

  “I thought you said it was fifty years of servitude?”

  “It’s double or nothing now. You do this, and you’re free to go on your merry way. Fail and you owe me a hundred years. If you don’t even try, you’ll die.”

  He hadn’t said anything about a hundred years or death in any of our dealings. I cursed my lack of knowledge. If I’d known that a simple slip of the tongue could get me committed to something, I would have guarded my words much more carefully.

  He watched me with a nasty smile on his young face. “Guess you know now why everyone gives sorcerers such a wide berth. I’m not used to being able to bend someone to my needs so easily. I could get used to this.”

  After this, I would be joining the masses in keeping away from sorcerers.

  “Guess I’ll be working with you after all,” I said, with a grin that was closer to a baring of teeth.

  There was no real choice. I just had to hope I could figure some way to take out the murderer. My entire life had been a series of triumphing against stacked odds. Why should this be any different?

  “Somehow I knew you’d come around to my way of thinking.”

  Yeah, yeah. He was smarter than me.

  “Let’s get on with it. If you know who the murderer is, oh smart one, point me in the right direction.”

  “I didn’t say I knew who it was. The package you were to deliver was supposed to help the werewolf put the last of the pieces together.”

  “Okay, so if it had everything he needed, you should be able to put the clues together to come up with a name.”

  He folded his arms over his chest and scuffed one shoe against the cement. “If I knew what that information said, you would be right. As it stands, I don’t.”

  I didn’t get it. He’d put the information together. Shouldn’t he be able to remember what it said?

  “How can you not know?” I asked. “You said you were the one who recovered the clues.”

  “That may have been a bit of an overstatement.”

  “How big of an overstatement?”

  “I wasn’t actually the one who assembled the information. Someone else did that.”

  Unbelievable.

  “So it should be easy to find that person and ask him what we need to know.”

  “Yes. It should be easy for you to find him.”

  He looked at me meaningfully. I narrowed my eyes at him. Parts of his story didn’t add up. If this was as important to him as he said, shouldn’t he want to keep a much closer eye on things? I know I would be supervising closely a job of this magnitude. Especially if I thought my employee had already screwed up a critical piece of the job. For that matter, why was he asking me, the person who’d already failed once, to do this? He had to have others waiting in the wings. Why a baby vamp?

  “And where will you be while I’m questioning this guy?” I asked.

  He lifted one shoulder. “Around. It’s not really any of your business is it? That’s why you’re my employee for the moment. I tell you what to do, not the other way around.”

  Hm. I’d already been burned by this guy once. Twice if you counted the cluster that was the delivery time and place.

  It was clear he wasn’t to be trusted. My gut told me he was hiding a lot. For the moment, I didn’t have a lot of choices so I’d go along with his plans until I could figure out a way to get out of this fool agreement.

  “Here.” He tossed me a small metal charm. I caught it and turned it over in my hands.

  “What’s this? A necklace. Not sure it’ll do me a lot of good with the killer.”

  He rolled his eyes. “No, you twit. It’s an amulet. Break it and it’ll call me to your side.”

  Hm. That could come in handy.

  The teenage looking sorcerer gave me the name and address of where I could meet his guy and took off to wherever sorcerers went in their spare time.

  Picking up Cherry was easy compared to last night. If there were any werewolves around, they were well hidden when I strolled up to the bright red mustang. Even better, there wasn’t a single scratch on her. Jerry would leave my head in place for another day.

  The address the sorcerer gave me was on the edge of the Arena District, close to the heart of downtown. Prior to my change, I had spent many a night on the town down here with my friends. It was the entertainment center of the city and some of the hottest clubs and restaurants made their stand along Park Street, which ran down the middle of the district. A lot of the bigger companies kept apartments and condos in the area as temporary housing for employees looking to relocate to the area.

  I had avoided it since moving back to the city. I’d heard vampires had their fingers in every club down here. It was the perfect place for hunting. Plenty of young, healthy and inebriated people looking for a good time and not particularly on their guard.

  The sorcerer’s contact lived and worked in one of the condos, so despite my misgivings, I found myself parking in one of the garages and walking the three blocks there.

  The complex was one of the new builds. The brick was beautiful, and the land around the four story building charmingly landscaped. Nestled down a brick walkway, it was off the main thoroughfare and had its own underground parking garage. I couldn’t help being impressed and slightly disgusted at the same time. The place was nice and in the heart of everything. You could step out your door and find yourself at any point downtown in just a few minutes. For someone who loved being in the middle of everything and wanted to be surrounded by a lively atmosphere, the place was perfect.

  It was also obscenely expensive. My parents had looked at a couple of these when they were first built, thinking that with two kids in college it might be nice to move closer to everything. They quickly changed their mind at the price tag.

  My guy was on the third floor, condo 315. Getting in had been as simple as waiting for a resident to happen along and then asking them to hold the door. I had several shopping bags filled with tissue paper and rocks to help sell the image.

  The lady hadn’t even questioned me. All this fancy security and it didn’t’ mean squat unless the residents were willing to f
ollow the rules. I could have been a serial killer for all she knew.

  I knocked on the door and waited, looking up and down the hall. When no one answered, I knocked again. I already knew it was useless. If anybody had been home, I would have heard them moving around.

  I didn’t really want to wait around all night in vamp territory. I couldn’t lurk outside in the hall all night either. Even if this place had lax security, they were bound to get suspicious of someone lingering in the hall for hours. I couldn’t even wait outside for him to come home because I had no idea what he looked like.

  That left breaking in.

  I reached into my back pocket and grabbed my library card. It didn’t get as much use these days and if it broke I could easily get a new one. It turns out, TV had it semi right when they showed people breaking into houses with the use of a credit card. I discovered this trick after locking myself out of my apartment for the third time in less than a week. It didn’t work on every lock, but the generic, cheap ones were too easy to get through. If his deadbolt was engaged, I was screwed. This trick wouldn’t get me through a deadbolt.

  My mad breaking and entering skills turned out to be unnecessary; the door knob turned easily in my hand before I could use the card.

  The door swung open. I lingered outside not liking this one bit. There were only a few reasons for someone’s door to be unlocked. The first, they were one of those idiotic people who left their doors unlocked against all common sense. Or they just left for a moment and thought it would be safe as long as they came right back.

  Given my luck recently, I had a feeling it was closer to someone had already beaten me to breaking in.

  The smell of old decay reached me.

  It could also be that my contact was already dead.

  This was becoming a theme with the sorcerer’s errands.

  From the smell of things he’d died quite a while ago. The scent was faint so I doubted a body was still in the condo. If he was already dead, there wasn’t much he could do to me. I doubted the killer was waiting in there for me either. His work was already done. Might as well see what I could find. Maybe my dead contact had a helpful flash drive labeled ‘murder clues’.

  I stepped inside and shut the door after me, taking the time to glance around. This was a nice place. I could see why people were willing to pay a premium for a spot in this building. The floors were a dark hardwood, so new there wasn’t a scratch on them. The space was very modern with an open floorplan. You could stand in the kitchen and still converse with people in the dining and living room areas. The kitchen was twice the size as mine, with oak cabinets running all the way to the top of the vaulted ceilings and an island in the middle of the space. Every appliance was stainless steel.

  Whoever lived here had money and taste. If the location hadn’t screamed ‘well off’, the furniture would. My aunt had a slight obsession with nice quality furniture, and as a result, rotated her living room furniture out several times. For that reason, I knew a little about what this stuff must have cost. Nothing in this room was under a thousand dollars. Well, maybe that book.

  Must be nice to be able to afford all this. I’d pinched pennies for so long now I couldn’t imagine throwing a single one away for indulgences such as these.

  Too bad whoever owned this place was no longer around to enjoy it.

  The smell of death permeated the air, but I was having a hard time pinpointing it. Nothing really seemed out of place. There were no blood stains or broken furniture. I was sure I wasn’t imagining it. Something had died in here within the last week.

  A thought occurred that should have dawned on me much sooner. Just because I smelled death didn’t mean that it was necessarily the guy I’d been sent to find who’d done the dying. Perhaps my contact had done the killing.

  If that was the case, he might be a little perturbed to find I’d broken into his place. I should report back to the sorcerer and see if he could give me some idea on this new situation.

  I took a step to the door only to come to a halt. The knob wiggled back and forth. I backed away. I’d forgotten to lock the door behind me when I came in earlier.

  It swung open before I’d even taken two steps, leaving me facing a familiar pair of blue eyes. I blinked, the surprise I felt reflected on his face as well.

  He moved so fast I couldn’t get out of his way before he had me by the throat. He slammed me against a wall.

  “Well, well. What do we have here?”

  His face was only inches from mine as he held me effortlessly off the ground. I struggled, kicking and wiggling. It was no use. His fingers gripped my throat with an implacable steel. He wasn’t budging.

  I settled for grabbing his wrists and using some of my own strength to take some of the pressure off. I didn’t know if I could survive if he decided to tear my throat out.

  “Which Clan are you from?”

  I gurgled, the sound garbled and incomprehensible. His grip made it impossible to form even a word.

  “This is the second time I’ve found you at one of my scenes. You’re not one of the Azul, and I highly doubt the Branors would take you for their own.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. I’d never heard of any of these ‘families’ before. He was the vampire from Lou’s. What was he even doing here? No, what was he doing there?

  He shook me. Plaster dust rained down as I thudded into the wall. I gurgled and rolled my eyes, still not able to talk.

  Abruptly, he released me, stepping back and watching with an arrogant expression as I collapsed against the wall, gasping for air. That was the second time tonight someone had watched as I fought to breathe. It was not a feeling I liked.

  When I felt like my vocal cords weren’t in danger of seizing, I said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  The vampire looked like he’d been turned in his early 30s. His face was young but without that fresh out of puberty look most people in their 20s had. He was attractive. If you saw him in a bar, you probably wouldn’t get the courage to go up and talk to him. With dark brown hair cut short above his ears and cheek bones that could cut glass, he probably starred in many a woman’s fantasies. Right now his face was smooth and patronizing as he regarded me.

  “Your family clan, girl. Which vampire clan sent you?”

  Vampire clan. Crap. Right. I didn’t have one. I also didn’t want him to know that. Problem was I had no idea what the families were even called.

  “The Starett clan?”

  Starett was Jerry’s last name. Or at least the name that was currently on his business cards. In a way he had sent me and I was part of his organization.

  “The Starett’s?” he asked.

  “Yup. The Starett’s.”

  Maybe he’d buy my desperate gamble.

  “Hm. And here I thought I knew every vampire family there was.”

  “We’re relatively new. You probably haven’t heard of us yet.”

  I edged sideways along the wall, cursing inwardly when he slid along with me.

  He regarded me as a predator does its prey, like he was wondering how I would taste, like he was enjoying the hunt. I wasn’t fooling anyone, but I had to try.

  “It’s funny that I don’t remember. I’m sure a name like Starett would have caused some gossip when they petitioned to be recognized as their own clan.”

  “Perhaps it did and it just never reached you.”

  His eyes seemed to darken, the colors shifting. I glanced away, not wanting to get caught and mesmerized like last time. I didn’t know if that’s how the mesmerizing worked but it seemed as good a guess as any.

  “That would be very difficult as I make a habit of keeping tabs on every upstart clan.”

  Okay. Sounded like this guy took intelligence gathering rather seriously.

  I shrugged at him. “I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe your tabs keeping isn’t as good as you thought.”

  Yes, let’s insult the lethal vampire who is capable of upending
my entire world. That is a brilliant plan.

  He smiled at me. It did not engender feelings of relief, reminding me instead of a dragon smiling at its next meal. This smile said its owner was a slightly deranged psychopath willing to swallow whole anything that got in his way.

  He reached out, grabbing me by the back of my neck, not even noticing my puny punches as they bounced off his chest. A feather could have been fluttering against him for all the attention he gave my struggles.

  He held me still as he leaned close, running his nose along my neck and sniffing. I stayed motionless, wanting to see how this played out before I did anything. He was stronger than me, but I had a few tricks up my sleeve that might even the playing field.

  “Is there a reason you’re smelling me?” I asked in the voice I used to use when trying to make a private feel about two inches tall.

  “You are lying to me. I thought to cut through your deceptions to the source of the matter.” He raised his head, looking at me with penetrating eyes. “I do not recognize any of the scents clinging to your skin. I will need to take blood to get a better picture.”

  The captain had warned me about letting a vampire take my blood again. He said anybody would be able to tell immediately that I was unclaimed. In rare cases, it might even give them some small claim on me, enabling them to track or compel me.

  “I do not give my permission for this,” I said. I didn’t know if that would work as it hadn’t sounded like he was asking permission.

  He smiled, showing the tip of one fang. “I do not remember asking.”

  Yep. That’s what I thought. Arrogant asshole.

  Several things happened simultaneously after that. He bent to my neck. I palmed one of the slim, silver blades hidden in my belt. He held me too closely for a heart blow under his ribcage and his ribs protected many of his vital organs. That left back or neck.

  I buried the blade as deep as I could in his back, praying I hit something important enough to slow him down and then twisted the blade.