by Hannah Jayne
Nina pinned me with a glare. “It gives me bad breath.”
I pinned her back. “You don’t have breath.”
Vlad chuckled from his spot at the table.
Nina rolled her eyes. “Anyway. We don’t do hearts. Or waste blood. Ever. Starving vamps in Africa, you know?” She pointed, her eyes narrowed. “Hobgoblins. That’s what you’re dealing with. They’re sloppy. And into all those weird organ meats.”
I could feel my eyes bulge.
“And they’re more likely to go rogue. Hobgoblins and zombies. They have no respect for the rules.”
“Ghouls either,” Vlad supplied.
“What do you think of me in this dress?” Nina folded a page back and held the magazine up to her narrow cheekbone. “Good?”
I sunk back into the couch, my stomach gurgling. “I can’t think of fashion right now. People are dying. And other people are thinking it’s coming from the Underworld. You know—”
Nina wrinkled her pixie nose. “I know. Delicate balance between worlds, blah, blah, blah.” She tossed the magazine and kicked her legs up onto the coffee table, balancing her chin in her palm. “You don’t think it’s coming from the Underworld?”
“I don’t know. There was veiling and a pentagram, so it’s got to be someone who knows their magics.”
Nina eyed me, the corners of her mouth turning up. “Pentagrams? How very every eighties horror movie. And any demon could learn to veil; it’s magic one-oh-one.”
“Can you?” I asked.
Nina looked away. “Any person could learn to do it, too.”
“Well, the veiling was one thing, but the rest … I’ve worked in the Underworld for a long time, Nina. I’ve worked with vampires, werewolves, even hobgoblins, and I’ve never even seen a hint of this kind of”—I shuddered again—“destruction.”
Nina raised a sculpted eyebrow.
“Not even from zombies,” I added. “Or ghouls.”
“Well,” Nina said, sitting forward, “remember when that Chaos demon ate your goldfish? That was pretty destructive.”
“A Chaos demon ate your goldfish?” Vlad said. “Cool.”
“It was not cool,” I snapped. “He swallowed Tipsy whole And the little plastic pirate ship she was hiding in. But the stupid demon didn’t rip her heart out.”
Nina shrugged, letting one elegantly slim arm hang over the arm of the couch.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Soph,” Nina started. “It certainly could be human. I’ve definitely seen a lot of crazy lunatic breathers in my day. Or days.”
“And people think we’re the monsters,” Vlad said.
Nina grinned then, her little fangs blue-white against her bright red lipstick. “So, what are you up to tonight?”
I glanced at the clock, then nodded toward my bedroom. “I can’t think of anything other than sleep.” I tapped my chest. “Breather, remember? We thrive on sleep. What about you?”
Nina gave me a smug smile and headed toward our guest room, which doubled as her enormous, stuffed-to-the-gills closet. “I am introducing my baby nephew Louis—”
“Aunt Nina, it’s Vlad!” Vlad moaned.
Nina rolled her eyes. “Whatever. We’re going to a new all-night club. It just opened right off the Haight. It’s called Dirt.”
I wrinkled my nose. “A club called Dirt?”
She raised a pleased eyebrow. “It’s strictly provamp. And way more breather-acceptable than its predecessor, Blood.”
“Do you have something to wear, Vlad?” Nina asked, stressing his name.
Vlad stood, smoothing his vest. “I’m wearing this.”
Nina poked her head out of her closet. “Awesome. I’m going to the hottest new club in town with a Halloween costume. Just”—she scrutinized Vlad’s suit—“don’t walk too close to me.”
“Hey,” I called, following Nina into her room as she nearly disappeared behind a lacy heap of vintage Betsey Johnson dresses. “How’d it go with Mr. Sampson tonight? Did you have any trouble with the chains? Sometimes the ankle lock sticks.”
“Ankle lock?” Vlad asked.
“Sampson’s a werewolf,” I called over my shoulder.
Vlad shrugged and went back to playing his game.
Nina stopped her rushed plow through her pillaged couture, and her head popped up, a silky cashmere tank top bunched around her thin shoulders.
I crossed my arms, panicked. “You did remember to chain Mr. Sampson, didn’t you?”
She gently gnawed on her bottom lip. “It’s not even a full moon, Soph. He’ll be fine, right?”
“Nina!”
She struggled into her tank top and stepped into a pair of deep-purple suede mules. “So I forgot this one time! I’ll do it tomorrow. No big.”
“You can’t just do it tomorrow!” I threw back the curtains and stared out the window, my eyes searching the inky night sky for the moon. “You have to chain him every night.”
Nina came out of her room, straightening her going-out clothes. “I thought that was just precautionary.”
I let out a long sigh, rubbing my temples. “It is—kind of. Werewolf evolution is so rapid. But”—I glanced outside again—“we have to do it. Every night.”
Nina bit her lip, looking apologetic. I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Don’t worry, Nina. I’ll take care of it.”
“Thanks,” she said, wrapping her tiny cold hands around my forearms. “I promise I won’t forget again. Besides”—she shrugged, her shoulders delicate and starkly pale against the black straps of her tank—“Sampson will be so happy to see you.”
A zip of heat rushed up the back of my neck, and I indulged in the me-and-Mr. Sampson fantasy for a split second before deciding to give up romance novels for good. The surge of estrogen obviously had my hormones in overdrive.
“Come on, Vlad, we’re going to Dirt!”
Nina gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and tucked a beaded gold Armani clutch under one arm. She did a quick spin, her glossy black hair fanning around her head, her makeup perfect on her poreless face. “Good?” she asked.
“Good.” I nodded, hugging her cold form close to me. “You guys have a nice time. And be safe, okay?”
Nina pulled away and bared her fangs, her delicate features going sharp and bloodthirsty in a split second. Vlad grinned, his own sharp fangs exposed.
“I think we’ll be okay,” she said, smiling sweetly. “See you in the morning.” Nina and Vlad noiselessly disappeared out the front door and I tumbled the lock behind them.
I would have liked to be polished and put together to head down to UDA (especially since it would very likely only be me, Mr. Sampson, and the dim glow from the safety lights). But it was late and wanton comfort won over wanton sexy, so I compromised: a pair of slim black yoga pants and a clean University of San Francisco sweatshirt. Impressive, right? I raked a brush through my mass of red curls and then coaxed them into a bouncy ponytail, then hastily swiped on a bit of mascara and let cherry ChapStick stand in for gloss.
I headed to the elevator and realized that I’d never been more thankful to have underground parking than I was on this night, which seemed darker and colder than most city nights.
Within minutes I was in the SFPD parking lot. There was a half-rusted Chevette in my usual parking space, and it seemed as if the majority of the city was spending its Wednesday night at the police station. The lot was nearly full, and squad cars kept coming and going, uniformed officers guiding cuffed suspects through the glassed-in side door. I circled the station once and had to park nearly a block away, wedging my little car between a behemoth SUV and a station wagon packed to the ceiling with newspapers and soda cans.
I shimmied out of the car and wedged my house keys through my fingers like claws, then walked with purpose (and terror) toward the police station. When I got there, I found myself doing a quick scan for Detective Hayes’s white SUV and then scolding myself for hoping he was there. First of all: he might be attractively hot with those piercing blue
eyes and that sexy, playful half smile, but he was obnoxious, with those beady blue eyes and that smug, cocky half smile. Second of all: I looked like a cross between a redheaded troll doll and college dropout Barbie—not exactly hot-obnoxious-man-impressing material. I slipped into the elevators and headed down to UDA.
When the doors opened on the UDA foyer, the place was deserted. Pale yellow emergency lights hummed from the back corners, but everything else remained completely blanketed in the stiff darkness. I picked my way through the waiting room chairs and vacant desks and hurried down the hallway, my sneakers squeaking on the linoleum. Empty in the shadows, the UDA offices looked far more frightening than they did in broad daylight, dotted with warlocks, vampires, and general demon folk. I shuddered.
I flicked on the light in my little front office and paused when I felt the grit under my tennis shoe. I looked down and my pulse quickened. There was a scattering of broken glass on the floor. I kicked aside the little shards and hugged my elbows, a cold wave of fear washing over me.
“Hello?” My voice came out hollow and tinny in the empty room. “Pete? It’s me, Sophie.” I picked my way through the pieces of glass and sucked in a breath when I saw five ragged tears in the fainting couch fabric. I fit my fingers over them. “Claw marks,” I whispered, my blood running cold.
There was a huge gash on the side of my desk, and my chair had been tossed across the room, shattering a cheery painting of the Golden Gate Bridge. I stepped over the cracked pot of my spider plant and swallowed hard, seeing the splinters along the door frame. Mr. Sampson’s office door was hanging by one hinge; the gold letters that used to spell out PETE SAMPSON, PRESIDENT on the door were scratched and shattered. I pushed the door aside and stepped into his office. The room was dark except for the ominous green glow from the bank light on his desk; its little gold ball bobbed on the end of its pull chain.
“Pete?” I asked again.
There was no answer, and the entire room was still as I edged my way behind Sampson’s big desk, pushing his chair aside and examining the wall chains.
“Oh no.” I sucked in a breath, my fingers running over one open shackle, the metal distorted, folded over itself. I followed the ankle chain to the eyebolt lying on the ground in a shower of powdery cement crumbs, the place in the wall where the eyebolt was held was now puckered and cracked.
“Oh, Mr. Sampson,” I whispered. “What happened here?”
I dropped the shackle and headed for the elevator, digging in my shoulder bag for the business card Detective Hayes had given me and flipping open my cell phone. I punched in his number and transferred my weight from foot to foot, counting each ring.
“Parker?” I asked the second I heard the phone connect. “Detective?”
Detective Hayes’s voice was sleep-heavy and gruff. “Parker is fine, Lawson.”
“Wow,” I said, pushing the button on the elevator. “You knew it was me. You are a good detective.”
“Good enough to have caller ID. Did your new houseguest take a bite out of you or is there another reason for this?” I heard him pause; then I heard the groan of a mattress, “One A.M. phone call?”
“Maybe.” I bit my lip, glancing once more over my shoulder at Mr. Sampson’s office. “I think my boss is missing.”
“Your boss? You mean Mr. Sampson? Missing? How do you know that? Where are you?”
“At the office. I’m about to get in the elevator. I came down here because Nina told me that she didn’t chain up Pete—Mr. Sampson—tonight. I was worried so I came to do it myself.”
“It’s not a full moon, right?” Hayes let out an inelegant, bored yawn. “Maybe he just went home.”
“His den.”
“What?”
“His den. He has a den, not a home … exactly. And no, I don’t think so. The office—something happened here. Everything is broken, shattered and … and one of the chains was broken. It had been torn from the wall.”
“So what does that mean? I thought you said that Nina didn’t chain him up. Why would the chains have been broken if Mr. Sampson never got chained up?”
“Mr. Sampson knows that he needs to be chained up. Always—full moon, or not.” I slumped, waiting for the damn elevator. “So, sometimes if we’re busy, Mr. Sampson will start chaining himself. If he does it early enough, it’s not a problem. But if he starts to change … if he starts to change before he’s completely secured—”
“He can do things like tear chains straight out of cement.”
“Yeah.” The elevator dinged and the doors slid open, to my immense relief. I rushed inside, mashing my fingers against the CLOSE DOOR button.
“Do you think he’s dangerous?” All the sleep was gone from Parker’s voice now.
“No,” I said, annoyed, “I think he’s in danger.”
The elevator doors slid shut, the phone still pressed against my ear. “There is a murderer on the loose and frankly, a task force of police officers who are out looking for a giant dog to shoot. I think someone may have gone after Sampson. Parker?” I frowned into the mouthpiece. “Parker, are you listening to me?” My cell phone went silent, the frowny little call dropped! icon on the screen.
“Stupid cell phone,” I muttered, riding the elevator to the ground floor of the police department.
I half ran, half walked through the bustling police department offices, my heart thundering in my throat. When I pushed through the back door into the department parking lot, one of the overhead lights was buzzing and blinking annoyingly. I stepped into the outside darkness and hurried through the lot that had emptied considerably, and when I approached my car down the block, the behemoth SUV and paper-stacked station wagon were gone, too. I was about to push my key into the lock when I heard the rustle of feet on gravel, and the unmistakable metallic smell of blood wafting on the air. I resisted the bad-horror-movie urge to yell out Hello? Is anybody there? into the darkness, and instead focused on getting my car door open and me behind the wheel before I wet my pants.
I yanked open my car door and was halfway through it when I felt the moist breath against my neck, then the viselike grip on my shoulder, yanking me out of the car. I yelped as fire roared from my shoulder to my chest and I was pulled, my forehead crashing against the hard metal door frame, the skin above my left eye splitting and immediately starting to ooze blood. I couldn’t make out the face in the darkness, but I knew that it was coming toward me, teeth bared, fingers gripping. Blood stung my eye and so I clenched my eyes shut, ready for the toothpicklike snapping of my bones. I opened my mouth to scream, but my voice was gone, strangled, lost in my own throat.
And that was the last thing I remembered.
Chapter Eight
When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was Opie’s face hovering above me, his watery eyes studying my forehead. His big nostrils flared, and I heard him say, “She’s coming around, sir.”
I tried to sit up, but my head and shoulders protested, the searing pain roaring through my body. My head throbbed, felt raw and cold above my eye, and my stomach seemed to curl over on itself. I blinked twice, trying to avoid the angry fluorescent glare above my head.
“Where am I?” I finally muttered, my lips sticky and stiff.
“She’s talking!” Opie said, his small hazel eyes not leaving mine. “What should I do?”
Police Chief Oliver looked down on me next, the dark brown of his eyes highlighting the huge purple bags underneath them. He was an enormous walrus of a man with a heaving chest puffed out and decorated with police paraphernalia, and a fine trail of drying marinara sauce on his navy blue tie. He crouched so that he was eye level with me.
“Are you okay, Miss Lawson?” he asked slowly, enunciating every word.
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to take in the scene. “What happened?”
The chief stepped back and clapped Opie on the back. He said, “She’s going to be okay, Franks. Let’s just give her some room,” and both men stepped away from me.
&nbs
p; I rolled my head, my skull filling with a new needling, angry pain. I tried to blink it away and then focused on the wall in front of me until I realized that I was stretched out on a sticky pleather sofa in an office that smelled of feet and corn chips and was stacked with bargain basement office furniture. “Where am I?” I repeated.
“It’s okay, Sophie. You’re fine. You’re in my office,” the police chief answered, and I felt his warm hand closing over my wrist, felt his finger find my pulse point and pause. “Don’t try to move,” he said when I attempted to sit up again. “You had quite a scare out there tonight.”
I struggled to a sitting position despite Chief Oliver’s warning, and yelped at the dull ache that blossomed from my shoulder and inched across my chest. I gently touched the cool spot above my eyebrow and winced, pulling my fingers away and examining the sticky traces of drying blood on them. “Am I dead?” I asked mournfully.
Opie grinned stupidly, and Chief Oliver set my wrist down, patting my hand gingerly.
“No, honey, you’re just fine. It seems you ran into”—I watched his eyes shift uncomfortably—“a bad element. What were you doing all alone in the middle of the night anyway?”
I thought of UDA, of Mr. Sampson and the broken chains. “Looking for my kitty,” I answered finally.
“Well, you should do that in the daylight hours and in a better part of town. You’ve got a pretty nasty bump on your head and you’re a little bruised up, but I think you’re going to be just fine. Officer Franks can drive you home.”
“No,” I said, planting my feet firmly on the floor. “I ran into a bad element? What does that mean? What happened to me? What, exactly, happened?”
I might have been paranoid, but I would almost swear that Officer Opie and Chief Oliver shared a look. I considered that it could have been the “nutty cat lady is getting hysterical” look, but I thought there was more to it. “Please,” I said. “I need to know.”
“Gangbangers, likely,” the chief said, nodding officially.
“Gangbangers?” I asked skeptically.
Though I didn’t remember much of the night and admittedly, my experience with gangs could be summed up by the toe-tapping musical brawl from West Side Story, I would have been willing to bet money that today’s gangs hadn’t evolved to bared teeth, claws, and superhuman strength. I winced again when I took a deep breath that sent pinpricks of pain throughout my chest and back. “You’re sure it was a gang? Did you see them? Did you see anyone?”