by Angela Henry
Though a big woman, she was always neat and well-dressed and, until the disappearance of her mother’s ring, always very polite. She’d had her eye on her mother’s ring for years and had been told it would be hers upon her death. But Mrs. Modine had left strict instructions in her will to be buried with her ring, sending Mildred into a rage. As far as Zander was concerned, Mildred taking the ring would’ve been just as much of a theft as him taking it. So what difference did it make which one of them had the ring, when it was still going against her mother’s very specific wishes? Only Mildred didn’t see it that way.
“If my mama was buried with her ring, then how do you explain this?” Mildred reached into her large leather purse and pulled out a snapshot.
Zander took the snapshot and glanced at it. In it Cora Modine lay resting peacefully in her casket, looking beautiful in a pink vintage Chanel suit with her fluffy white hair coiffed to perfection. Zander flushed with pride. It was some of his best work. Then he looked at her hands resting gracefully at her waist, with one hand folded over the other. That’s when he noticed his mistake. The hand resting on top was her left hand, the hand she’d worn her cocktail ring on, and it was ringless. He’d neglected to place the opposite hand on top. Had he done so, he would have easily been able to point out that Mrs. Modine had, in fact, been buried with her ring and the opposite hand just been placed on top covering it.
“I had to wait until my aunt Nelly got back from her cruise to Alaska and got her pictures developed from the wake before I could prove you took my mama’s ring,” said Mildred smugly.
“This picture proves nothing. Obviously, I put the ring on the wrong finger when I prepared the body.”
“You can tell that nonsense to the police.” She walked past him toward the door, then paused. “I’ve done my research on you, mister, and a lot of folks have had a lot of expensive things come up missing after having their family members buried by you. You sweet-talked your way out of it all those other times. But this time you aren’t going to get away with it. I wonder what the police will find here when they show up with a warrant.”
In the time it took Mildred’s hand to reach for the doorknob, Zander had picked up the lead crystal candy dish from the foyer table and slammed it hard into the back of the woman’s head. She fell hard, and he stared at her for several long minutes as blood pooled under her head, before dropping the candy dish and sinking down to the floor next to her body. What in God’s name had he just done?
“Look what you made me do!” he screamed at her.
Her eyes blinked rapidly and her mouth worked, but no sound came out. He actually couldn’t believe she was still alive. Then the sounds from below started up again, and he realized what he needed to do. It was the only way. He had work to do, a new batch of brain tissue to reanimate for Dr. Grace, and Vic needed to be fed. He was just looking out for his little brother after all, Zander thought grimly as he hefted Mildred Modine’s barely alive body across the foyer to the basement door.
****
Desi West was hot, tired, and aggravated. She’d spent the better part of the day questioning all the licensed and registered necromancers in town. And so far none of them knew anything about NeCro or knew of any self-respecting necromancer who would be involved in anything so vile. Not that reanimating the dead wasn’t vile. But they were a tight-knit bunch, and Desi supposed any of them could’ve been lying to her to protect one of their own but she doubted it. Unlike alchemy, necromancy was looked down upon by most of the supernatural community. If a necromancer were helping to create a dangerous drug, they’d have been served up on a silver platter to the EA by their own guild for fear that their activities would be a blot on the rest of them, who were already struggling to maintain some semblance of respectability. Desi had one last visit to make before she could call it a day, and she dreaded it, which is why she’d saved it for last.
Once she found a parking space, which proved damned near impossible in the narrow streets of the Quarter, she headed into the Antoinette Hotel. She crossed the crowded lobby, marveling as she always did at its sheer opulence. It had been decorated to look like it had been plucked from the Palace of Versailles, and she wondered what the wealthy guests would think if they knew what lived in the penthouse suite. Once on the marble-floored elevator, she pressed the red button to the penthouse and then loaded a special clip of hollow-tipped rounds that she saved for visits such as this one into her Glock. Each of the silver bullets had not only been dipped in blessed holy water but had been filled with the liquid as well. The bullets were all-purpose, meaning they could be used on a variety of misbehaving supernatural creatures. But Desi had a sneaking suspicion they would barely raise a blister on the two-hundred-year-old vampire she was about to see. The older the vampire, the more immune they were to holy water and the greater their tolerance to sunlight. The only thing they weren’t immune to was fire, the Achilles’ heel of most supernatural creatures except for dragons, of course, which were born of fire. Desi wasn’t expecting trouble, but better safe than sorry.
When the elevator stopped, the doors slid open, and her host’s human servant, a slim beautiful blond man dressed in an elegant gray suit with a purple silk shirt, greeted her. He didn’t look a day over twenty-five. Though Desi could never fathom the reasons why a human would serve the undead, it appeared to come with certain perks. Along with the EA-subsidized monthly check companions got for babysitting vampires, living in close proximity to a vampire assured that even though they would never live even half as long as their masters, they’d retain their youth and beauty until the day they died. But though their exteriors wouldn’t change, they would continue to age on the inside. Morel had autopsied many a companion’s body, all of them with the internal organs of a person of extreme old age.
“Hello, Fontaine.” Desi held out her hand for him to shake and tried not to flinch when both his clammy hands grasped hers enthusiastically.
“Good afternoon, Agent West. And to what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?” Though Fontaine wasn’t a vampire, his pale-white skin made his red-lipped smile downright creepy. Or maybe he was wearing lipstick. Desi couldn’t tell.
“I need to talk to your boss. Is he in?” Desi looked beyond Fontaine’s shoulder to the closed office door at the end of the hall.
“Is he expecting you?” asked the young man without even attempting to hide his amusement.
“No.”
Fontaine laughed a high-pitched, tinkling laugh that he probably thought was charming but set Desi’s teeth on edge.
“I do love your spontaneity, Agent West. However,” said Fontaine, leaning toward Desi and lowering his voice, “he’s being a bit of an enfant terrible today and is not at all fit for civilized company.”
“I can hear you, dickhead!” came a loud, heavily accented French voice from behind the closed office door, causing Fontaine to jump.
“See what I mean?” he said, looking sheepish.
“That’s okay because I’m not feeling very civilized today myself.” Desi attempted to sidestep him. But he blocked her path.
“Not so fast, agent.” He wagged a finger in her face. “Your weapon, please.” He held out a hand, and Desi sighed, making a show of how annoyed she was at having to turn over her Glock. She’d had a feeling she’d have to turn it over, which is why she also had a holy water-blessed silver dagger strapped in a sheath at the small of her back. She got all the way to the office door before Fontaine called out to her, “I’ll let you keep your knife, Agent West. He’d kill you before you could even get your fingers around the handle.” He laughed hysterically.
Ignoring him, Desi rapped on the door before walking in without being invited, happy that unlike vampires, she didn’t need an invitation before entering. The office was large, with the same marble on the floor as the elevator. Heavy gold, velvet drapes hung over the one and only window. Wallpaper with a gold fleur-de-lis pattern covered the walls, and small statuettes of Greek and Roman gods occupied r
ecessed nooks in the walls. A fresco on the ceiling depicted the story of Cupid and Psych. Large white, fluffy cloudlike pillows were strewn all over the floor.
And sitting on top of the gold-trimmed Louis the Sixteenth desk occupying the back wall of the office was a sullen ten-year-old boy dressed as Cupid, complete with wings, a golden bow and arrow, and a short white toga that did nothing for his bloodless complexion. Of course, he wasn’t actually ten. He’d been ten when he’d been turned as he lay dying of tuberculosis in a filthy cell in the Temple Prison in Paris in 1795 by a vampire who’d been a loyal admirer of his mother, Marie Antoinette. Seems Marie was a night owl who really knew how to throw a party, and if there’s anything vampires love, it’s a good party.
“Hello, Louis Charles. I love what you did with your office.” Each time Desi had visited Louis Charles, his office was always decorated differently. The last time it was a western motif, the time before that had been a space theme, and the time before that, dinosaurs.
“Liar,” sneered Louis Charles petulantly. “You just want something and think flattering me will make me give it to you.” He shot an arrow at her, and she jumped out of the way before it speared her in the thigh.
This was what Desi hated the most about Louis Charles. Underneath his childlike exterior and immature behavior was a cold and calculating over-two-hundred-year-old vampire, making it difficult to know how to treat him. If she treated him like she wanted to and misted him with holy water when he misbehaved, he’d cry like any other ten-year-old and throw a tantrum, and she’d never get any information out of him. But if she let her guard down, she was liable to get bitten and not necessarily because he was hungry but because he was lonely. Two hundred years was a long time to be stuck in a ten-year-old’s body with all the urges of a grown man. Louis Charles had a huge crush on Desi, and if turning humans hadn’t been outlawed by the EA, he’d have kicked Fontaine to the curb in an instant and had Desi by his side, whether she wanted to be there or not. Instead, he acted like a typical ten-year-old boy in love with all the kicking, punching, pushing, and hair pulling that Desi remembered receiving from the little boys who’d had crushes on her in grade school.
“Now, that wasn’t very nice.” Desi tried hard to keep her tone light. Louis Charles didn’t respond. He just stared at her while kicking the leg of the desk with the heel of his sandaled foot. “And that’s no way to treat your father’s desk.”
“He’s dead and it’s my desk now.”
Just then Fontaine entered the room with a tray. On it sat a glass of lemonade for Desi and a tall glass filled with thick red liquid with a straw for Louis Charles. He snatched the glass from the tray and began sucking greedily on the straw, then licked his lips and teeth with a bloodstained tongue.
“Mmm.” Louis Charles sighed in contentment. “Fontaine makes the best blood smoothies. Would you like one, Agent West?” Desi noticed his fangs were extended and felt the need to make this a short visit.
“I only use the choicest cuts of liver and the right amount of ice. Makes it nice and thick,” exclaimed Fontaine on his way out the door.
“Uh. No, thank you,” said Desi. “I can’t stay long.”
“You can never stay very long. You always want something from me, but I never get anything in return. Why won’t you stay and play with me?” whined Louis Charles.
“Because you don’t play fair. You cheat.”
“I know what you came here to find out, but I’m not telling you anything until you promise me a game of chess.”
“And how do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“It’s about that zombie drug, isn’t it?” teased the boy knowingly. “You want to know who’s making it, right?”
“Like I don’t know that one of the other necromancers I’ve already visited hasn’t already called you and told you to expect a visit from me.”
“I don’t associate with peasants, and they don’t talk to me anyway. They’re jealous.”
He was probably right, Desi mused. What had started out as a lonely vampire boy’s longing for a pet he wouldn’t be tempted to drain had turned into a lucrative career as a professional necromancer and a succession of undead cats, dogs, and parakeets, which was Louis Charles’s specialty, pet reanimation for the super wealthy. He’d cornered a niche market none of the other necromancers in town had tapped into.
“And what is this information?”
“Just one game of chess, and I’ll tell you what I know. Please.” He stared at her with the oldest and saddest pair of eyes Desi had ever seen. She knew she was being played like a harp, but what choice did she have?
“Fine,” she said, giving in. “But just one game, and this info better be damned good.”
Two hours, and what turned out to be three chess games later, Desi finally left Louis Charles’s penthouse with information that she didn’t quite know what to make of. According to the boy, years ago a man had approached him wanting to become his apprentice. He praised Louis Charles’s talent, telling him he wanted to learn at the feet of royalty. Easily flattered by anyone recognizing him as the last king of France, Louis Charles had been about to agree until he’d had Fontaine check the man out and discovered he’d been suspected of torturing a neighbor’s cat to death, as well as being responsible for other neighbors’ missing pets. Had the man been an ax murderer, he wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but torturing and killing pets was something Louis Charles couldn’t overlook, and he told the man to get lost.
“Do you remember his name?” Desi had asked him.
“Are you crazy? That was twenty years ago,” the boy had replied indignantly as he had taken her queen. “But I remember when he introduced himself, he said we had something in common because he was a descendant of Cleopatra and therefore had royal blood, too.”
Desi pondered this as she sat in her car in the parking garage of the Superdome. A descendant of Cleopatra—what did that mean? She couldn’t think straight because she was dead on her feet. She reclined her seat, intending to get a couple of hours of sleep. Within seconds of closing her eyes, she was dreaming about feathers. Silvery feathers tipped in burnished bronze. Soft and warm and wrapped around her like a cocoon. She was naked, and the feathers were gloriously silky against her bare flesh. They touched her everywhere. Her lips, her throat, under her breasts, and around her nipples, and teasingly, maddeningly slow between her legs. She sighed and arched her hips upward against the silky softness, grinding against it. But the wielder of the feathers wouldn’t be rushed. Desi could just make out a hint of a smile on a face hidden by shadows before strong gentle hands pushed her thighs a little farther apart, and a hot, wet mouth replaced the feathers. Desi cried out in pleasure as the mouth sucked and explored with its tongue all of her secret places and seemed to go on and on forever. Orgasm after orgasm racked her body, and when she finally regained coherent speech, she begged her shadow lover in a ragged voice, “Please, show me your face. I need to see you.”
The shadow man, who had been nuzzling her inner thigh, lifted his head and, with lips still moist from her wetness, smiled a slow, seductive smile before covering her body with his own and thrusting himself deep inside her with one exquisitely painful thrust. As he continued to thrust, his silvery bronze-tipped wings extended and began to flap, lifting their entwined bodies several inches into the air as they both climaxed. Desi was in the throes of the most amazing orgasm when a sudden knock on her driver’s-side window jerked her awake. She was horrified to find her jeans unsnapped and unzipped and her shirt half-unbuttoned. And when she thought about it later, she didn’t know what had embarrassed her more: that it had been Morel who had knocked on her window because he’d heard her moaning and thought she was hurt, or that her winged dream lover had been Xavier Knight.
****
Crystal Sneed sat hunched down in the driver’s seat of the car she’d stolen, careful to stay at least three car lengths away from Dr. Langdon Grace’s black Mercedes. She’d been following him si
nce he left Alastair Duquesne’s house the night before and had even slept in the car as she waited for him to emerge from his apartment that morning. She’d regretted lying to Xavier Knight about not knowing the source of the NeCro. She’d known all along it was Grace. She’d seen him enough times at Alastair’s house, and he’d even come to the apartment Alastair had rented for her on Press Street. Dr. Grace was an odd man. Despite his charm, he’d always made Crystal nervous.
When she’d started to get sick, Alastair had him treat her, though she never got any better and she soon came to realize she wasn’t being treated at all. She was being observed and studied like a lab rat. Crystal could tell Langdon Grace only saw her as an object to be manipulated. She’d thought Alastair treating her like a whore had been bad enough, but the way Grace looked at her with his cold, ice-blue eyes like she was nothing frightened her. But Alastair beat her when she told him she didn’t want to see Grace again for another checkup, and Crystal got the feeling that he was acting not just out of anger but of fear.
Alastair had been scared of Langdon Grace, too. But she couldn’t figure out why until the night she’d seen Grace giving Alastair a supply of NeCro and telling him he needed more test subjects. Alastair had hesitated, and Grace threatened to expose his secret to the police. Crystal didn’t know exactly what the secret was and wondered if it had anything to do with him only wanting to have sex with her when she was sedated and not moving. After that visit Crystal realized that she wasn’t crazy or paranoid from the NeCro. Alastair and Grace were playing a cruel, sick game with her life. She was disposable, and the idea that they could do to others what they’d done to her enraged her.
She’d tried to run away, but there was no place she could go to escape what she’d become. The effects of the NeCro were horrifying, but she had needed the drug like she needed air to breathe, at least until recently. Now she craved something else, something that had turned her into a monster. Alastair and Grace had to be stopped. They had to pay. Crystal had gone to Alastair’s house to kill him the night before, but knew Grace had beaten her to it when she heard his horrified screams coming from his house. Now, it was Dr. Langdon Grace’s turn to die. As much as Crystal longed to accept Knight’s help, this was something she needed to do on her own. She planned to kill the good doctor and then kill herself. Crystal followed Grace all the way to his office at Necropolis Pharmaceuticals, and then parked in the parking garage next to his Mercedes. She got out of the car and almost fainted from the intense hunger that had overtaken her in just the last couple of days. She leaned against the car for support as she made her way around the car to the trunk to check on the owner, a city worker that she’d carjacked at gunpoint as he’d left a bar.