by J. K. Beck
" Known exit points," Luke corrected.
"Probably expects you to coldcock me and make a break for it," Nick said.
"We still have over an hour before I'm required to return. Why waste the opportunity?"
"What are you planning?"
"Sara Constantine," Luke said, the possibility of seeing her again too tempting to postpone.
"Is that still necessary? You've got Tiberius in your court now."
"Plan B," Luke said.
"Forget it. She's all the way across town. And we talked about this. This isn't the time. Not for her."
"Perhaps you're right," Luke said, not inclined to argue with his friend. "Give me one moment, though. I want to show you something." He moved to one of the two stone coffins in the room and began to shove aside the lid, releasing the thick stench of death.
"Look," Luke said.
Nick did, but saw nothing more interesting than stone and dust. Then he glanced up at Luke and saw the apology on his face, saw his friend's hand moving as fast as lightning.
He had time for only the merest flash of understanding before the hand connected, and black, liquid pain flooded his nose and face.
His knees went weak. The world swam in front of him. And the last thing Nick heard as he dropped into Luke's arms was his friend's murmured apology for doing exactly what Doyle had expected he'd do.
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Chapter 13
Nick lay motionless at the bottom of the sarcophagus, remarkably at peace for a man who would soon wake in a fury. For that, Luke was sorry, but there was no other way. What he intended must be done alone.
He reached inside the coffin and removed Nick's watch, which had already been set to count down the remaining furlough time. For a moment, he considered also taking Nick's cell phone. After all, he needed to be careful, and Nick's reaction to Luke's betrayal was an unknown--a potential risk to not only his life, but to Tasha's life and the lives of his friends as well. One call, and Nick could report Luke's treachery. One call, and the stake poised over Luke's heart would be triggered.
No.
He turned away, shamed that he could even consider the possibility of such perfidy. He left the phone in the pocket of the friend he trusted with his life, and never doubted that he'd made the right decision.
And then, with one last look at the man in the coffin, Luke slid the stone lid back into place.
Unlike his own crypt, this tomb truly did house the dead, and the scent of death lingered on the thick summer air, reminding him of both what he was, and what he was not.
Like the corpses in this tomb, Luke had once been human, his life marked by the minutes counting down to the day he lived no more, but instead lay in stasis and began to rot. Such a cruel trick was birth, he'd thought, inescapably tainting that gift of life with the horror of death.
And to him, a young man who had seen his mother and baby sister die in childbirth, who had watched his father fall from another man's sword, death truly was a horror. A cruel taskmaster that came without warning, trying daily to cheat the living out of the gift bestowed at birth.
He had been eighteen when he heard rumors of a dark woman of timeless beauty whose kiss could grant eternal life. He had become obsessed, determined to find her and convince her to bestow her prize upon him. For seven long years he searched, but to no avail. As a soldier in the Roman army, he was afforded very little freedom, his investigation limited to listening to the tales of travelers and interrogating other soldiers returning from duty in the far reaches of the empire.
So futile seemed his efforts, that in time he almost forgot his obsession, his thoughts turning more toward the lusty Claudia, a merchant's daughter with whom he had fallen in love. He had taken her as his bride in the spring, and by the fall harvest she was heavy with child. When, months later, the midwife had placed the tiny Livia in his arms, Luke was deaf to those who urged that she was flawed. To him, she was perfect. He was the one who was weak. For he could never be strong enough or wise enough to fully protect this child, to make her healthy.
She grew slower than other children, each passing year seeming to drain her body 82
of life. Though careful not to let the child see his fears, he nightly succumbed to the crippling horror that she would be snatched from him. He turned not to his wife for comfort, though, as his own impotence shamed him. Instead, he would wander the wheat fields after dark, the baleful sound of his anguish drowned out by the whisper of the grain in the wind.
Livia knew nothing of her parents' fears, and though often confined to bed, her mind grew sharp and quick. By the time she was ten, sweet Livia had her doting father entirely under her control. Still, the joy that stole his breath when he looked upon the child was snuffed out by the fear that he and Claudia would be forced to bury her before the year was out. Her body, the physicians told them, was breaking down, and despite regular entreaties to the gods, her condition worsened daily. Fate, it seemed, had contrived to allow Luke only a taste of true happiness before ripping it brutally from his hands.
He recalled with perfect clarity the day his life had changed forever. Livia had been confined to bed, and both Luke and Claudia were sitting vigil at her side when they'd heard the thunder of hooves approaching. Luke had stiffened, imagining the rider was Death, come to bear his daughter away.
He need not have worried. Death was not coming then. Would not, in fact, come until Lucius himself invited it in.
The rider was Sergius, who had ridden his horse hard to deliver the news that the streets were filled with rumors that the dark lady had come to Londinium. And though Luke had not thought of his obsession since the months before Livia's birth, to him it seemed as though Serge had arrived on the wings of destiny. For how better to save his daughter than to bar Death from the door?
It had broken his heart to part from her and from Claudia, who had wept and clung to him as he'd mounted his horse. He had held fast, though, promising his wife that he would return presently, bearing Livia's salvation.
The trip south was grueling, and he'd arrived at the city gates sore and hungry, his horse ridden almost to the point of collapse. He had cared not, his thoughts only on Livia, on finding the dark lady who could return his daughter to him. For three days he and Serge had scoured the city's underbelly, following any rumor, any hint of news, but never finding the lady herself.
He'd been on the verge of giving up when he'd located her in a tavern and pleaded his case. She had declined at first, unconcerned, she'd said, about the welfare of his child. He'd persisted, though, determined that he would have what he came for. That he would win the lady's gift and deliver it triumphantly to his home. His tenacity persuaded her, and in the end, he won his heart's desire. He would like to say that he hadn't fully understood the terms as she relayed them to him, but that would be a lie. He'd understood. There had been no failure to disclose. No dark trick. The soul, she told him, is not alone in man. There is evil as well. And the evil has a name and a face: daemon. In some, it is mild. Calm. Controllable. In others, it rages. Burns. Writhes. But in all humanity, it is there, hidden well in most by the power of their soul to suppress it. To quell and control.
The dark gift releases the daemon, and only the strongest have the strength to battle it back.
He listened. He understood. And he had taken the gift with eyes wide open, 83
arrogant enough to believe that the terms did not apply to him. He was a good man, after all. Kind. He loved his family deeply, and they him. He took the gift not selfishly, but with his child's well-being at the forefront of his mind.
Surely, with motives so pure the gods would exempt him from the gift's dark effects or bestow upon him the strength to control the daemon. Of course, he'd been wrong. The curse vampyre had freed the daemon, just as the lady had told him it would. It did not, as human mythology sometimes suggests, allow evil to enter. The evil was already within him, had been there all along. And once he became nosferatu, that evil ran free.
He'd become a killer, a monster, and were he given the chance, he would gladly return to that fateful day and sacrifice himself to the normal course of nature, if only to save those he had hurt.
The innocent. The strangers.
And, yes, to save his Livia.
Even now, all these centuries later, his stomach roiled and his blood ran cold when he remembered what he'd done, the torment he'd wrought upon the child he'd adored, the woman he'd loved.
With the daemon riding high, he'd left Londinium for home, intending to fulfill his original purpose and draw his wife and child into his shiny new world. Claudia, however, had been horrified and had thrown herself on him as she tried to keep him from his Livia.
He'd shaken her off violently, having no patience for the foolish woman who would sentence their daughter to a mortal death. With a daemon's strength, he'd thrown her against the stone hearth, and she'd slipped into unconsciousness, her body sagging to the floor.
He'd felt no regret, only a renewed purpose as he'd stalked through the house toward his child. He could smell her, the scent of her teasing his senses. Death waited in the room for her, but Lucius refused to give the vile beast satisfaction. He would snatch Livia from Death's clutches. He would, finally, save her.
She'd smiled as he'd approached her bed, but the expression had faded as he'd moved closer. "Pater?" she'd murmured. "Quis es?" He'd told her to hush, then drawn her tiny body into his arms. She'd snuggled close at first, reassured, then pulled away, confused, and complained that his skin didn't feel right. "I will soothe you," he'd whispered, and with her scream echoing in his ears, he'd sunk his fangs deep into the tender, young flesh of her neck. She'd writhed and struggled, but the daemon had swirled unrelenting within him, and he'd drunk and drunk, the taste of her fear causing him no hesitation but instead enticing the daemon even more. He drank deep, telling himself that he could stop in time--that he could turn her. That he could save her.
And though he felt the whisper of death touch her--though he knew that he was on the verge of taking her too far--the daemon would not stop. He would not stop. He drank his fill, and drew the last spark of life from her. There would be no renewal for his Livia. No life.
He had stolen it from her, thrusting death upon her even as he'd tried to give her unending life.
He had failed, and as he looked up, confused and sated, her body limp in his arms, 84
he'd seen Claudia silhouetted in the doorway, a knife tight in her hand. She held the blade out toward him, her face a mask of fear and fury and grief.
The daemon within him had whipped into a frenzy from which Lucius had been unable to emerge. Grief, rage, confusion, loss. All pounding inside him. All driving him down, down into the mire. Lost in the call of the blood, Lucius had leaped toward his wife, a part of him wanting to share his grief, another part wanting to snuff out her life because of the harsh way that she now looked at him.
She hurled the knife and ran even before its hilt collided harmlessly against his chest.
He let her go, then turned back and cradled the lifeless body of his daughter. And as grief warred with hunger, he surrendered, fully and completely, to the daemon within. 85
Chapter 14
Sara sat cross-legged on her bed, eyes closed, taking one deep breath after another. She'd been going a hundred miles an hour since before six that morning, and now she felt ripped apart from the inside. Excited, yes. But completely exhausted as well. She wanted sleep, but Bosch had insisted that the security system in her condo be updated immediately, so she had to wait up for the installation team. Considering what she now knew was out there in the world, she didn't really have a serious objection. Without thinking about what she was doing, she scooted to the side of the bed, then bent to open the bedside table's drawer. She hesitated only briefly, then reached in and pulled out the Glock 9mm that she'd bought the day her concealed carry permit had been issued. In truth, she hadn't wanted the thing, but she'd been a green prosecutor working a high-profile drug trafficking case, and Marty had insisted that everyone on the team license up and carry a weapon whenever they were away from the criminal justice center.
Sara had dutifully followed instructions, but the moment the case had wrapped, she'd transferred the gun from her purse to the drawer, and it hadn't emerged since. Until now.
Now she took it out and hefted it, testing the weight. She ejected the magazine, then pulled back the slide to check the chamber. Clear, she slapped the clip back home, then realized that her thoughts had drifted to Lortag. And, more, to Evangeline Toureau. If that had been Sara standing there, would she have been able to drive that stake home? If her daughter had been murdered? If the defendant had been sentenced to death?
A brutal system, Bosch had called it, and he was right. Yet she had to admit there was a circular beauty in allowing Evangeline to avenge her daughter. And what if her imaginary Evangeline had met Lortag in a dark alley?
Or if Sara herself had met Jacob Crouch when the Glock had lived in her purse?
What would she have done then?
She knew what she would have wanted to do. She wanted to blow his fucking head off.
And it was for that reason that she no longer carried the gun. Crouch might be dead--his life taken in a twist of fate that had set her younger self to dancing--but there were other monsters out there. Her weapon was the system, though. Not a gun. Not a stake. But the courts and the prisons, designed to punish and protect. And had the system served little Melinda Toureau?
She shivered, not liking the small voice in her head, and frustrated by her inability to accept what Bosch had so casually told her. Intellectually, Sara understood. But her heart still ached for that little girl.
The doorbell buzzed, and she hurried to answer it, smoothing down her Stanford Law T-shirt as she walked. She peered through the peephole and found herself facing a man with a sagging basset-hound face and eerie yellow eyes.
"Security Officer Roland, night shift leader and domicile protection specialist," he 86
said, flashing his Division identification. She led him and the team inside, showed them around, then parked herself on the sofa with a stack of files. She turned first to her copy of the initial report, once again skimming Ryan Doyle's summary. Though he was thorough, she wanted to go over the details with him in person, and he and his partner were scheduled to be in her office at ten the next morning.
According to the report, Braddock had been a shape-shifter, on the bench for two decades, an advocate before that. He'd been born in the late thirties, but Sara didn't know if that meant he'd died young, or if a shape-shifter's life span tended to be about that of a human's. Several years before he'd retired, he'd been sanctioned for accepting bribes, and there'd been murmurs that he'd engaged in blackmail. He'd made restitution, appeared before a review board, and had been allowed to keep his seat on the bench. She made a note. The crime was old and apparently resolved, but she knew damn well that bribery and blackmail could be a solid motive for murder. More than that, those crimes were often only part of the story, and she intended to have Doyle and Tucker dig, and dig deep. She'd moved on to the medical examiner's report when Roland shuffled through the room, and she lifted her pencil to catch his attention. "How's it going?"
"Like wine and aged cheese, fine security work takes time."
"How much time?"
"Can't rush perfection," he said, leaning against the wall as he hooked his thumbs in the loops of his jeans. For the first time, she noticed the long tufts of hair that grew on the back of his wrists and poked out from underneath the cuffs of his sleeves. "But we are in the final stretch."
"Fair enough." She started to turn back to her papers, then paused, peering at him.
"How long have you worked at Division?"
She watched his face run through the calculations. "Eh, three decades? Four?"
"You know Judge Braddock?"
"Sure. Retired what, three years ago?"
"Impressions?"
The h
angdog face went flat.
"I'm new, Roland. I'm just trying to get a feel for the victim."
"Yeah, well, the victim was pretty much an asshole." She shifted, interested. "How so?"
"Oh, he was good with the law and all that. But wouldn't give what he called a lesser being the time of day. Snapped at support staff. Had himself one supreme holierthan-thou attitude. Heard he got into some trouble awhile back. Bribes, I think. Wouldn't wish him dead though."
"Somebody did."
"Dragos, wasn't it?"
"So it seems," she said, working to keep her voice flat, even though the thought that the man who'd touched her so intimately could have done that horrible thing was still twisting her up inside. "Any ideas why Lucius Dragos would want Braddock dead?"
"Well, I ..." He paused, as if truly considering the question. "Actually, I can't think why Braddock would even be on a vamp like Dragos's radar. Kinda makes you think, doesn't it? All sorts of stuff going on under the surface all the time. May not see it," he added, "but it's there."
Yeah, she thought. But what exactly was "it"?
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"Thanks," she said to him, then looked around the room. "So what are you doing?"
"Ah, this. Now this is interesting stuff. We got you covered for magical entrance-that's Chiarra," he added, waving in the direction of a woman with glowing purple hands.
"No creature's gonna be porting right into your apartment after we're done."
"Porting?"
He grinned. "Beam me up, Scotty," he said, then waggled his overgrown eyebrows.
"Oh. Right."
"Got the seams around your windows and under your doors sealed up nice and tight against mist, too. Don't want any two-cent vamps or their passengers getting in, do we? Especially not when you've got such a high-profile vampire case on your first go out the gate."
"I'm sorry? Two cents?"
"Huh? Oh, no. Two centuries. That's about the age when a vamp develops the ability to mist. Gotta grow into it, you know. You hear about a vamp getting prosecuted by the humans, you know he was a youngster. No older vamp's gonna sit still for steel handcuffs and cages, that's for damn sure."