His grip slackened; I wrenched away and backed up. His shoulders slumped, head lolled forward, body fought to remain upright. Unfocused eyes looked back at me, lips parted in a wordless cry. His fangs had retracted and he stumbled forward.
Not much of a threat now. But I remembered he wasn’t alone.
“Parietis.”
The barrier went up just as Felix staggered into it; he struck and went crashing back, landing on the floor and whacking his head on the baseboard.
A second party stopped in the doorway. She was short, petite, with a porcelain doll-like appearance. Big round eyes set in an alabaster face looked up at me from beneath a fringe of dark brown hair, and her head seemed almost too big for her body.
Her gaze trailed over the barrier, as if she saw it despite the invisibility. Studying. Weighing. Then a wicked smile flickered across her lips.
I swallowed dryly. Shifted from one foot to the other and moved to the balls of my feet, ready to dart away. At this point I couldn’t shoot her through the barrier; either I’d have to dispel it or she would.
I decided to let the little China doll do all the work.
Her dainty hand moved to the pocket of her dark cardigan and withdrew a red velvet sachet. A tug on the drawstring let the top fall open, and she scooped out a handful of shimmery powder.
This wouldn’t be good.
She held her hand an inch from her pink painted lips, palm toward the ceiling, and blew.
The powder scattered, striking the barrier with sparks. Powder slithered down, shattering the spell; a tinkling like breaking glass sounded in my head and pain bloomed as if I’d smacked into a wall. I staggered, energy draining from my limbs. Something wet dripped from my nose and I dragged the back of my hand across it to see blood.
Son of a—
She moved fast—faster than a vampire. I blinked and she was before me. Splayed fingers reached up and touched my chest; I flew back, wood paneling creaking behind me as I struck the wall hard.
Behind China Doll, Felix was lurching, hands fumbling around the bullet hole in his forehead. At least he was out of commission for the time being.
That didn’t make me feel much better.
The small woman stalked forward, head tilted to the side. “You are worth a lot of money.” She grinned again, tiny fangs peaking out.
Vampire and magic user? Didn’t run into a whole lot of those.
I took in a ragged breath. My nose still bled, trickling onto my upper lip. “You know they’re abducting vamps, right? Turn me in, they’ll take you too.”
“Not if we leave you secured for them to pick up, Mr. O’Connor.” Her voice was lilting, almost childlike, and she stepped forward with careful grace. “I need not be in the country when they wire the money to me.”
I swung the gun up and fired.
She anticipated and knocked my hand aside—but then I figured she would. The bullet went wide, striking the wall on the other side of the room. I twisted at the hip and sent a punch her way; she leaned back with ease, my hit missing her jaw by an inch.
She didn’t plan for me hooking my ankle around hers.
China Doll dropped, suddenly graceless, and landed on the shag carpet.
I sent two bullets into her chest and took three quick steps to the door. A hiss and she was moving, launching herself my way.
“Parietis.” I slammed the door behind me just as I reached the basement hallway. The girl screamed on the other side and the door rattled as—presumably—her fists struck, but with the extra barrier, I expected her to be stuck for a minute.
I wiped at my bleeding nose again and took a deep breath, heart rattling in my chest. My head throbbed and nausea rose, twisting in my gut and burning my esophagus. Even as magic swam through my veins in a comforting buzz, like a fresh shot of whisky...I knew burn out approached. Fast.
With heavy steps I started for the staircase. Stopped.
A pair of tall dark figures waited at the top, each carrying a pair of knives.
Burn out will have to wait, I suppose.
****
Peter sat in the den on the same couch where he’d been when I left several hours ago in the morning. The only difference was the blue mug on the mission end table next to him. When I left, he’d had a green one.
He glanced up from his tablet and gave me a once over. “Hello.”
I closed the front door and grumbled a greeting, then kicked off my boots and strode for the powder room nearby.
“Kind of like old times,” Peter called. “I’m studying and you’re covered in blood.”
I slapped my gun and holster on the counter, and stripped out of my jacket. “I’m not covered.” A glance up at my reflection, though, told another story—I was pretty saturated in it. At least most of it wasn’t my own. My metal stake was gone, buried in one of the very-human knife wielders who came at me. I yanked off my torn shirt next and dumped it in the trash, and then surveyed the knife wound. Just nicked my left side—wasn’t deep at all. Now, the cut on my scalp wasn’t pretty and bled like a motherfucker, but then head wounds were like that, even when shallow.
“You left a trail on the floor.”
A glance back outside the bathroom and, yep, there was a trail of dark red staining the granite tile.
“We’ll lose the deposit,” Peter said. “Like the last one.”
By which he meant I would lose the deposit as I was the one renting the house, as I rented the last one. And the one before that. And the one before that.
“So who tried to kill you this time?”
“The usual.” Fucking vampires. Of all the leads I’d tried, I was sure Felix would work out. The covens were pretty tight-lipped but Heaven had been keeping us updated on anything she learned from them—which tended to be nothing. Meanwhile I sought every demon, every human with connections, and every bottom feeder I could locate...and nearly all of them tried to kill me. Even if I didn’t announce who I was—even with a fucking full beard—they all still knew and all tried to turn me in. Even vampires would risk their own hide to cash in.
Heaven and Peter, of course, had no idea what I was actually doing with my days. My former mother-in-law wasn’t around much—we’d banded together to survive and find answers, yes, but she generally kept her own apartment—and Peter confined his time to research, which I had no desire to interrupt.
Not until I finally had a real lead.
I knew what they’d say—had to sit through the lectures again and again three months ago. The words to that song hadn’t changed a whole lot since then, and whether Heaven sang lead vocals or Peter did a half-assed cover, I didn’t want to listen to it. While their lectures didn’t involve violence, I’d learned long ago that the thing to do is keep your head down, your mouth shut, and do it your fucking way regardless.
I patched myself up, rinsed off all the blood I could find, but forewent the shower. The small suburban home had a Jacuzzi tub upstairs—not a big one, but serviceable—and I’d soak later. After the whisky.
The blood on the floors wiped up well enough, though anyone shining a black light over it later might believe they’d stumbled across a crime scene. I dumped the towel in the laundry room and stalked for the den. Peter’s eyes remained locked on his tablet; his right index finger tapped the screen, scrolling through whatever text he was studying. An array of liquor waited in the cabinet on the far wall. I tossed some Springbank single malt into a glass and took a seat across from Peter, sinking into the arm chair. Then took a sip.
Fuck me, it was heaven. Or as close as I’d be getting.
The scotch eased the ache in my muscles and cleared the dull pain in my head. A comfortable burn settled in my limbs, my gut, and my brain. Magic swirled with cool tendrils twisting around my arms, my bare chest and abs, repairing. Slower than vampire blood healed, but better than the old fashioned way.
Peter sat in silence, pointedly ignoring me. He never asked where I’d been. Probably didn’t want to know—we’d been friends
a long time so he had the sense not to ask something he was better off not knowing.
This meant it was up to me to broach the subject. I had to—no one else I could ask.
“Ran into a vampire.”
His thick black brows lifted but he still didn’t look up. “Oh?”
“A vampire witch.”
That got his attention; he tipped the tablet down and glanced up. “You’re sure?”
“Saw the fangs and she dispelled a barrier I used. She was juiced up on something, too—thing weighed as much as a ten-year-old and one touch knocked me across the room. Literally touch, not just vampire strength.”
I must’ve engaged his attention sufficiently because he set the tablet down on the couch beside him and picked up his mug of tea instead.
“It’s unusual, right?”
Peter nodded. “Magic users aren’t normally turned, or if they are, they don’t survive the ensuing insanity when they wake for the first time. Something about the DNA of a witch is not cooperative with the vampiric parasite. I interviewed one for my thesis years ago and while he was functional, I wouldn’t say all the lights were on.”
That summed up China Doll. “She also didn’t dispel with normal means—bitch threw something and cracked the barrier. Some kind of powder.”
Again, Peter dipped his chin, as if nothing surprised him. “Useful for dispelling when there are layer of magics. She might’ve had something else nearby she didn’t want to disrupt.”
That made sense. She wouldn’t have been able to interrupt my disturbance of the dimension’s timeline—she probably had reactionary magic in there that kicked in when my spell went live.
The powder she used, though, could come in useful. “Can you find me someone who knows to mix up that dispel powder?” I was adding everything I could now to my personal arsenal and that might be helpful.
“Sure. Now, am I permitted to ask where you were?”
He was permitted. And I didn’t want to answer—not yet. I sipped my scotch instead.
Peter waited, studying me, blinking impassively.
I kept my hand locked on my drink and rose. “Going to shower.”
He didn’t ask again for details.
****
Heaven’s voice announced her presence downstairs, not loud but somehow worming its way to the upper floor all the same. Her words were always deliberate, tone simple and a tinge sardonic—especially after a few glasses of wine.
Goddess, she sounded like Mishka. Enough so that I paused mid-step, hand on the railing, standing at the top of the stairs.
She tried, repeatedly, to get me to talk about her daughter, my wife—especially in that first month. She wanted to know everything. As if I truly had a fucking clue about what Mishka was really like when everything had apparently been an act. And I didn’t even have the energy to tell Heaven lies. I couldn’t think about Mish, couldn’t grieve, couldn’t yet repair the damage her betrayal had done to me. Instead I found a new focus, a new obsession—a quest to drive my every waking moment and even my dreams. One that kept me going, gave me something to hold onto in the chaos around me.
With practice effort, I tucked away the painful burn against my sternum, shoved aside Mishka’s image in my mind’s eye, and drove away everything her memory conjured in me. Still, the sting remained the way flesh burns minutes after a slap.
I trudged down the stairs in a pair of dark yoga pants, the decent mood I’d been in post scotch and relaxing soak in the tub already long gone.
Heaven Thiering sat at the kitchen island on a barstool, sipping tea; Peter stood across from her. Both glanced at me when I walked in. I paused as they exchanged a look and then carefully turned to face me, expressions expectant. A hush fell over the room the way it does when you walk in on people who have just been talking about you.
My gaze darted back and forth between them.
Peter spoke first, his grin faux-friendly. “You’re just in time. We were hoping to...speak to you for a minute.”
I knew their looks now—it was a fucking intervention. I pursed my lips and kept mum; they probably had no idea what it was an intervention for anyway, so they could talk, and I could ignore and then go about my business again tomorrow.
“So speak.” I stalked past, the kitchen tile shockingly cold on my bare feet, and went for the fridge. We had eggs, cheese, and an array of vegetables in the crisper. Magic drained my body and I could use a big helping of protein.
And with my back to them while I cooked, they might shut the hell up sooner rather than later.
“You go out several times a week for most of the day and evening and tend to come back in need of medical attention,” Peter began.
I withdrew a large butcher knife from the block on the counter, kitchen light glinting on the blade, and began chopping red and green peppers; the thwack on the cutting board drowned out whatever Peter had said after that.
“—and frequently moving to avoid detection that we believe you bring to us,” he continued, “has been upsetting several of the other covens.”
I should care because the covens were so concerned about my well-being? Sure. They still had money and had no ties to the country left—they could leave. Go someplace safe where they didn’t have to fucking worry about me leading someone to their doorstep.
I cracked the eggs next and then coated the skillet with olive oil.
The other two were silent behind me. A glance in the chrome toaster oven to the side revealed them looking at one another.
Heaven turned my way again first. “To put it bluntly, we’re slightly concerned you’re going to get us killed.”
A handful of spices in the whisked eggs, and the omelet was ready to go. As the oil sizzled and popped, I tossed the mixture in and snatched a spatula.
Peter cleared his throat. “Can you tell us why you had a meeting with Felix Laurent today?”
I paused, spatula poised over the pan, as I stared into my browning, bubbling dinner. I hadn’t mentioned Felix’s name—not once. I didn’t keep information like that around either, not on scraps of paper, my cell phone, or the fucking calendar.
I turned slowly to face them, jaw set and brows pulled tight in a frown. Heat from the stovetop warmed my bare back; a drop of water from my damp hair slithered down my spine, icy cold and sending a fresh shiver through me.
“I have eyes and ears everywhere, Nathan.” Heaven tilted her head and sat up straighter. Her hands tightened around the light blue mug resting on the counter. “Vampires, at the moment, are extremely distrustful of our kind. Mr. Laurent, in particular, is not someone you ought to be dealing with at all. Whatever you’re attempting to accomplish, he will not help.”
“Figured that out. Thanks, though.” I turned back and flipped my omelet to cook the other side.
“Nate—” Peter began.
“If you’re both so worried,” I called over my shoulder, “you can move. I hear Peru is really nice this...well, any time of year.”
I swallowed dryly, fingers twitching. Magic thrummed in my veins again like the whisky, swimming contentedly. Non-witches would never understand, but magic had a sort of sentience of its own, and in that moment it was happy. Cheerily mending my wounds, which kept it occupied but not with a task it found draining. The more I used it, the more it built, like every spell poked another hole in the veil between the magic and me. Soon I’d be flooded, out of control, and I couldn’t find it in me to care.
But as much as I wanted the others to shut up about it and go away, a voice in my head swayed me from saying more—reminded me what I was doing in the first place. If I kept it up, I’d get myself killed. And that wouldn’t save her.
I turned off the stove and slid the large omelet onto a plate, not looking at them as I spoke. “I keep getting recognized.”
“There are bounties on your head,” Heaven said. “Very large ones. Several times the size of mine. What did you expect?”
I stared at the food, appetite gone, and leaned wi
th both hands on the counter; corded muscle moved on my arms as I squeezed the counter’s edge and tension worked through me. I’d avoided mention of this for months. Months of lying, of hiding, because I didn’t want to have this conversation.
A deep breath. “I’m trying to find her.”
Silence.
I pushed off the counter and moved toward the drawer to retrieve a fork, walking through the thick, building tension in the room that pressed down on me.
“Nate...” Peter, conciliatory, as always. “You know that—”
I snatched a fork from the drawer and slammed it closed again. Flatware rattled. “We don’t know anything.”
“None of the missing vampires have shown up,” Peter continued, voice still calm as ever. “Reports go back almost a year and none have reappeared. Who would kidnap and keep them alive? And how could someone hold that many vampires?”
I swung around, damp hair whipping against my shoulders. “Then where the fuck are the bodies? Not a single body has shown up. You said they take longer to decompose—have any of your contacts reported strange bodies that don’t decompose showing up in any morgues? Isn’t that something someone would have noticed?” The happy magic in my veins was gone, shifting to a wicked buzz that flickered across my skin, calling me to hurt and destroy and take pleasure in damaging everything around me.
I drew in a shaky breath and focused on driving down the building rage.
“It’s a big world,” Peter said. “It wouldn’t be difficult to hide her body.”
Her body. Not the bodies—not all the others. No, hers. Just hers. Because I wasn’t looking for the others, didn’t care about the others. I wasn’t a hero, wasn’t selfless—I’d be safely in another country myself if I didn’t think she was still out there.
For a moment, air left my lungs like a vacuum sucked it all away and I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. A startling, cold pain washed over me and something in my chest hurt.
No. No. She wasn’t dead. Not by a long shot.
I leveled him with a chilly stare. “She’s alive. I will find her.”
Bloodlines (Demons of Oblivion) Page 29