“Expecting anyone?” Linwood asked as his nephew went to answer it.
“No.”
Moments later, Grady was back in the kitchen, looking at a piece of paper that had been folded. His eyes were filled with surprise and wariness—and enthusiasm.
“Well, this is quite unexpected. Linwood, I’m going out.”
He handed the message to his uncle.
Meet me at Clancy’s Gold Coast at nine o’clock. Come alone.
“What the hell is this? One of your sources? And what’s that little squiggle on the bottom there? Is that supposed to be a signature?”
“In fact, it is. As Conan Doyle wrote: ‘The game is afoot.’” He already had his hat in hand. “Don’t wait up, uncle.”
FOUR
~ Of Cobras and their Comparison to Dangerous Men ~
“A photography exhibit?” Macey repeated as she dropped her stake onto the counter of The Silver Chalice. As it was approaching dawn, the place was silent and empty. “You want to go to a photography exhibit?”
There were undead to hunt, an immortal lord to track down and assassinate, plus a city to keep safe…and Temple wanted to go to a picture display.
The woman in question was replacing clean glasses neatly on their shelves, and she gave the stake on her counter a dark look. The pub had just closed, and Macey had wandered in from a night of searching out vampires.
“Look out, I just cleaned the counter,” Temple said, giving the stake a little shove to send it rolling onto the floor. She snatched up a rag to wipe off the bar again, putting as much elbow grease into that task as she did taking Macey through her paces practicing in the kalari. The shellacked bar shone like a mirror, and Macey was often bruised and sore when she was finished with her work. Temple was very good at what she did. Whatever she did, and that included getting her way.
“Don’t knock it, sister. The exhibit looks interesting.”
Temple was tall and lithe, with long, sleek muscles. Her age was near thirty, and she resembled the singer Josephine Baker, with her smooth, coffee-with-cream skin and shiny blue-black hair crimped into waves that just covered her ears. In fact, the first time Macey had seen her, she’d been singing in a cabaret called The Gyro.
Temple had come from New Orleans more than a year ago—not long before Macey learned about her calling as a vampire hunter—ostensibly to assist her Aunt Cookie in the hat shop she owned. But in reality, Temple had been assigned to Macey as her hand-to-hand combat trainer, or comitator. She was also well versed in the history of the Venators, as well as the prophecies of the Venator Lady Rosamunde Gardella, which had been written in the twelfth century. Additionally, Temple had recently taken over the ownership of Sebastian Vioget’s pub.
She was not, however, a Venator like Macey, Chas, and Sebastian.
“The article was in the Tribune,” Temple went on. “They’re exotic photographs from all over the world, and some of them are from a female adventure photographer. She’s taken photographs in some of the most dangerous and unique places—like from the top of Notre Dame in Paris. The article said she climbed up one of the spires to get the shot.”
“When is the exhibit?”
“Tonight. Mayor Dever is opening the exhibition, so it’ll be a very high-society reception. Tickets are hard to come by, but I’ve managed to snag three of them—don’t ask me how. I have my ways. I know it’s Saturday, but I can close up for one night. You should go to bed and rest up. You look like you could use a night out without the undead, sister—and the Good Lord knows I could. Aunt Cookie wants to come, and you know she’ll make sure we look our best. Be at her shop by five, and she’ll take care of everything.” Temple seemed almost giddy at the thought. “Who knows—there might even be a vampire or two lurking about, and you can kill two birds with one stake.”
Her eyes danced with unusual levity, causing Macey to wonder if the woman had secretly been hitting the gin. Though blunt as a dull knife, Temple was usually more dry and pragmatic.
“All right, I’ll go,” Macey said. Mayor Dever was going to be there. Perhaps she could talk with him and see what she could find out about “Baron Politano.” “There’s just as likely to be undead there as anywhere else.” Maybe even the so-called Italian baron himself. She suppressed a little shiver.
“How many vamps did you find tonight?” Temple was well aware of the current dearth of vampires lurking about the city and that this apparent lack of undead could only be the calm before the storm.
“Not enough. I got five, and so did Chas.”
“You and Chas?” Temple gave her a speculative glance and looked like she was about to speak again.
Macey forestalled the curiosity lighting her friend’s eyes by gesturing toward the stack of glasses yet to be put away. “How about pouring me a little something to help me sleep? I liked that stuff we had the night—the rosy-gold stuff Sebastian kept in the safe,” Macey said.
The liqueur was so thick it was just about like syrup, but it burned along with its unique sweetness. There was also a spiciness as well.
Temple didn’t comment, but pulled out the bottle in question. “Never saw this when he was still around,” she muttered, working off the fancy triangular stopper. “Sebastian was holding out the best stuff on us, sister. Wish I knew why he kept it locked up in a lead box. And wish I knew where to get more of it.” She filled a glass and slid it across the counter, then held up the bottle and squinted at it. “Looks like someone’s been helping themselves.” She eyed Macey balefully, and that seemed to bring her back to the previous topic. Unfortunately.
“So…you were with Chas last night,” Temple said. “He hasn’t come back yet. Do you know where he is?”
Macey shrugged, feeling the weight of her friend’s interest settling on her. “It’s not my job to keep track of him.” She couldn’t control the soft heat in her cheeks.
Temple didn’t look away. “You’re playing with fire there, sister. You know that, don’t you? Chas Woodmore’s not like other men.”
I’ll say. But Macey declined to speak. She wasn’t giving Temple any more ammunition for a lecture. It was none of her business what Macey and Chas had done in the back alley tonight after slaying six vampires in five minutes flat.
Temple had no reason to know how they’d turned to each other, panting and exhilarated after the wild battle that had ended much too soon, chests heaving, eyes glinting with satisfaction and yet still looking for something more. How Chas’s dark Gypsy gaze clashed with hers, hot and wild. How Macey grabbed him by the front of the shirt and spun him, then threw herself at him so forcefully he stumbled back into the brick wall.
There in the dark alley, amid broken crates and soggy cardboard boxes, the stench of rotting waste mingling with the scent of undead ash that still clung to their hair and shoulders, they’d devoured each other. Mouth to mouth, hot and sleek, tongues clashing, hands everywhere. The abrasive alley wall was behind him as she tore at the fastening of his trousers, plunging her hand down into the heat, closing around him as she groaned against the moist, warm skin of his neck—then suddenly, Macey found herself lifted. He gathered her up, pivoted, and shoved her against the wall, holding her with one powerful hand at her throat as he yanked up the skirt of her dress.
The fresh night air brushed her bare thighs as Chas lifted her over him, settling her with her legs around his waist. Her fingers were deep in the thick, wavy hair on his head as she kissed and licked and nipped at his throat, yanking his shirt wide open.
So needy. She needed, needed.
Needed something.
The beads on her dress caught and scrubbed against damp, rough bricks as he found the slit in her knickers, then slipped his fingers inside to feel how hot and ready she was. He moaned against her temple when he found she was, and with one quick shift then thrust, he was inside her.
Macey tightened her legs around his waist and moved with him—fast, hard, wild—the back of her head scraping against the wall, until finally
she found her peak. She made no effort to stifle her cry of release, and felt another roaring sweep of pleasure when his deep, heartfelt sigh reverberated against her hair.
She sagged back against the wall, balanced on his hips as he leaned forward, braced by one hand against the bricks, while the other held her up at the waist. Panting, gasping, at last he eased her to her feet. She landed there, unsteady for a moment as her loose shift slinked back into place over her thighs, then was suddenly shocked back to reality when she saw a figure pass by at the end of the alley.
What was I thinking?
She looked at Chas as she straightened her frock, pulled up her sagging, twisted stockings. Still weak-kneed, still reeling from the flood of lust and passion, she saw that he was studiously putting himself to rights as well. Without looking at her.
Dammit.
“Well that was…unexpected,” she managed to say, wondering how many beads were left on the back of her dress.
“You’ll get no complaints from me, lulu,” he said in a rough, rumbly voice. “Sure as hell beats the way I…used to do it.”
“In a bed, you mean?” she teased, trying to break the awkwardness.
“With fangs,” he said curtly.
Macey snapped her mouth shut. There was nothing she could say to that, for she well knew what it had cost Chas to admit such a thing.
She wasn’t clear on the details, but she knew Chas had fallen deeply in love with a vampire woman. He’d lost her—Narcise was her name—to another man. Then Chas had spent the last decade trying to forget her—and at the same time, battling his need to be fed upon by an undead while having sex.
It was an untenable condition: to be a vampire hunter addicted to the bite of an undead, to be attracted to that enthralling loss of blood and control while in the throes of passion. To need it.
Macey shivered, and her last bit of warmth and pleasure evaporated. She’d been fed upon by Nicholas Iscariot, and though she feared and loathed the vampire, she’d felt the base stirrings of lust mingling with the evil and darkness that came along with being enthralled.
She couldn’t imagine how difficult it was for Chas.
“That must’ve been some memory.”
Temple’s voice jolted Macey back to The Silver Chalice and the glass sitting in front of her with the rosy-gold liqueur.
She looked up to find her companion’s eyes on her, far too shrewd and knowing, and Macey took the opportunity to lift her glass and place a barrier between them while she sipped. Somehow the liqueur didn’t feel quite as warm and soothing as she remembered.
“We got trapped in an alley with six vampires,” she explained. “It was a very intense few moments.”
“That explains the mortar crumbles in your hair and the—er—condition of the back of your dress,” Temple said blandly.
“Like I said…it was intense.”
“You’re going to get hurt,” Temple told her, slamming her hand onto the pointy bottle stopper a little harder than necessary to shove it home. “Ouch.” She looked at her palm, then up at Macey. “Or he is.”
“I’m already hurt,” Macey said flatly, and slid off her stool. Now she didn’t feel much of anything but weariness and apprehension. And cold. Empty cold.
Even the hot, wild moments in the alley hadn’t changed that. The thing that frightened Macey the most was the fear that nothing ever would.
She changed the subject again. “Did you see the paper last night? The evening edition?”
Temple sobered. “Yes. Iscariot right on the damned front page. Have you been in touch with Wayren?”
“No,” Macey said, then continued in a burst of frustration, “No, I haven’t heard a thing from her since that night…the first night we had this.” She lifted her glass with the special liqueur, then set it back down without drinking.
“I’ve been studying the prophecies a bit more,” Temple said. “Going back further, and ahead a little more too. A bit of light reading, shall we say, before bedtime.” Her voice was flat and ironic. And maybe a little lonely.
“And…?” Macey was hoping she’d say something finite and specific, like: And Chas is the dauntless one. Or, We were wrong—the root of malevolence doesn’t refer to Iscariot after all.
Not that Macey thought for one minute there could be anyone more malevolent at the root than Judas Iscariot’s vampiric son.
“And…I’ve come to no further conclusions. But I think it’s a mistake to rely too heavily on what the damned prophecies say, anyway, sister.”
Macey nodded grimly. “I agree. The only reason we even know about it is because of Al Capone, and he was wrong anyway.”
“It still tickles me, in a laughable way, that Capone thought he was the dauntless one’s other half.”
Macey’s smile was grim. “But not that he thought I was the dauntless one.” She sighed. “Could he be right after all? About me?”
“We’ve been through this. The dauntless one is a man, but either way, you don’t fit the description. You did not root from ‘the deepest bowels of madness and grief,’ sister. Your parents loved you and cared for you—”
“Until Max Denton left me.” She found it difficult to refer to her father by anything but his formal name. “After my mother was mauled and torn to shreds. He sent me away.”
Temple gave her a sympathetic look. “And look what you’ve done to Grady as well.”
Macey gritted her teeth and sent her friend and mentor a very dark look. “At least he doesn’t remember me. I still remember my father.” She watched Temple, who was once again industriously drying glasses. “Regardless, I’m going to forget about the damned prophecy. I want to find out where Iscariot’s lair is, and then I’m going to figure out how to get in there and take him. I’m not waiting for him to make the next move. This is my game. Not his.”
Temple nodded in approval, and lifted her glass in a sharp toast. “Damn right. Time we women took charge and showed those men what we can do.”
Macey grinned and clinked her glass against the other. “You said it, sister.”
+ + +
The weather was brewing what looked like an ugly storm when Macey and Temple left Aunt Cookie’s hat shop, dressed in their finery.
“Hope the storms hold off until we get home,” Temple said, looking at the dark clouds with a jaundiced eye.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and Macey shook her head. “I doubt it. But it’ll keep any vampires off the streets tonight—or at least, their victims off the street,” she added as they drove along in what had been Sebastian’s automobile.
The photography exhibit that had Temple—and, it appeared, a good portion of the wealthy and powerful of Chicago—over the moon was being held in the Preston Bradley Hall of the stunning Chicago Library.
The building boasted two domes and several grand staircases with elegant archways. Macey, who’d been living in Chicago for less than two years, had never been inside the ornate structure, and she couldn’t help but gawk as she and Temple alighted from the car at the entrance on Washington Street.
“This is one of the reasons I wanted to come tonight,” Temple said, looking up as they passed through the arched portal and doors framed in bronze. “I needed an excuse to see the place.”
The lobby off Washington was three stories tall, with a vaulted ceiling. The walls were constructed of white marble and finished with mosaics in intricate organic designs. The glass, mother-of-pearl, and stone mosaic pieces were all the colors of the rainbow, yet the white marble overruled their colorfulness and made the lobby feel light, open, and airy despite the number of people crowding within.
“It’s a shame Aunt Cookie couldn’t attend after all,” Macey said as they handed their tickets to the doorman who stood at the base of grand staircase made of pristine white marble. It was studded with green marble medallions and more mosaics all the way up its broad flight. “After she spent all that time and effort getting us dressed, it’s too bad her hip began to act up.”
Macey’s mid-thigh red frock glittered and burned from the swirling scarlet, orange, and gold beading that shimmered with every movement. She looked like the blaze in a fireplace, Cookie had told her as she adjusted a three-inch-wide crimson headband around Macey’s forehead. On one side was a hand-sized rose, each red petal edged with scarlet glitter so it too sparkled as her dark head bobbed. A flowing evening jacket of gossamer fabric the shade of honey and shot with gold thread covered her shoulders, which were bare except for two skinny straps. She also wore blood-red gloves that reached past her elbows and were embroidered with black and gold sequins.
With a getup like that, Macey didn’t even need any jewelry, but she did wear two large black studs that glinted at her earlobes.
“When Aunt Cookie’s hip goes out, there isn’t much for it but to put that stinky old Cajun poultice on it and let ’er set,” Temple replied as they started up the grand staircase. The Tiffany glass dome, the focal point of the hall, loomed above, and the sparkle of stars and moonlight filtered through the glass. “Maybe a voodoo charm to help, but I let her handle that part of it.” She flashed a bright white smile. “Anyway, I promised her we’d hand out her business cards if anyone asked about our costumes.”
Temple wore a stunning shift of honey, gold, and amber, which fairly glowed against her rich cocoa skin. A slender headband studded with palm-sized peonies and an elegant arch of matching feathers completed her look, along with chunky black shoes sporting glittering gold sunburst buckles.
Preston Bradley Hall was crowded with people and tall round tables that echoed the curved walls of the room, as well as freestanding easels and temporary dividers that had been constructed to display the photography.
The exhibition was an elegant affair, with white-gloved waiters weaving through the maze of people and stationary objects, holding trays at the ready. In the corner, a string quartet played something more classical than jazzy.
Roaring Dawn: Macey Book 3 (The Gardella Vampire Hunters 10) Page 4