by Diana Graves
“Services, what other services do you offer here, Al?”
“Now, Raina, I don’t condone what people do in those rooms. I simply provide a safe place for guests to do as they like in privacy. Is your brother gone?” He pulled a cigar out and lit it. It was illegal to smoke in public buildings in Washington State, but who would tattle on Allegory?
“Why are you so up in arms about my brother?”
“I’ll be frank with you, Raina.”
“Can you be any other way?” I asked.
He smiled. “It wasn’t what your brother was doing, though his fantasy did freak the hell out of Bonnie.” Bonnie must have been that little lady that ran from the room when we opened the door. “No, I used that as an excuse to kick him out. That’s what’s going to go in my log. The real reason I want him out of here is because I heard he could be marked at any moment, and I don’t want it to be when he’s at my club. I want him the fuck off my property. The last thing I need is some young tooth getting his head chopped off in my place of business.”
I wasn’t surprised about the reason. It was a practical reason.
“Why the hell, then, didn’t you just say that? Why didn’t you just tell Luke to stop and tell Danny to kick him out? Why send me up there like that?”
Allegory burst into a crazed laugh as smoke leaked from his face. “And, what fun would that have been?”
I knew my face was ugly as I stood, causing the metal chair to crash to the floor. I stared down at them. Luke gave me a sly smile and Allegory was positively beaming. Did they enjoy pushing my buttons?
“Raina?” Charley placed his hand on my shoulder and I jumped. “Everything okay?” he asked looking down at me.
“No, where’s my brother?” I looked at Charley then.
He looked up the staircase. Mato was carrying Nick in his arms.
“What happened?” I asked, all in a panic. Nick’s eyes were closed as Mato held him in his arms like his weight meant nothing to him. At that moment Katie and Alicia came up, laughing and sweating from dancing.
“Shit!” Alicia yelled when she saw Nick. He was a terrible sight. Even with Mato’s trench coat hiding most of him from view, half his face was a bloody, swollen mess and his feet and hands were drenched in blood.
“He passed out. I don’t think he’s fed in nights,” Mato said as he finally made it down the stairs. “I think I should take him to Darkness. Tasha will fix him up.”
“I don’t care where the fuck you take him! Get the depraved bastard out of my club!” Allegory yelled from behind me. He was trying to make it look like we were the deviants here, because between my outburst and Nick’s bloody state, we were getting a lot of attention.
Mato growled at him and Katie jumped in shock. Alicia patted her shoulder and gave Allegory a look of disgust. I never thought she would give him, of all people, that look. She’s admired him from afar for so long.
“We’re leaving,” I nearly growled myself.
My face was hard, eyes sharp and daring. I turned to Allegory before walking away on a cloud of adrenaline. “If you ever fuck with me again, Allegory, you will earn yourself a spot at the top of my shit list. You don’t want that, people don’t last long there.”
My words were controlled and exact and full of truth, bitter and cold. He said nothing. He just smiled up at me and probably continued to smile at the back of my head as I headed for the exit. I spared a backward glance at Mato and the rest to make sure they were following me. They were. Alicia’s mouth was open in shock and Katie looked scared. Mato and Charley just looked like a couple of bad asses bringing up the rear.
We had gathered quite an audience. Half the club was watching us. I stopped at the coat booth so Katie and Alicia could get their things. Apparently Charley hadn’t given them anything, because he walked on by. Mato and I were the last to exit, and we stopped to look back over our shoulders. Most people looked away, but someone had the balls to take a picture of us.
♦
“Are you sure you’re fine?” Charley asked.
He was standing in front of his motorcycle. It was a stainless steel Harley, beautiful. Alicia had left already. Katie and Mato were in my pinto, waiting for me. Nick was in Mato’s lap in the back seat and Katie was in the front passenger seat.
“I’m fine,” I assured Charley, who’d already offered to follow me home ten times. He was afraid Allegory would send someone after me tonight. “Really,” I added when he gave me a worried look.
I leaned into Charley and gave him the warm hug he deserved after having my back in there. He was putting himself in danger for me. He didn’t belong to a collective, which meant he had no master vampire that would protect him. Anyone could kill him and no one would care. No one but me; was that threat enough to keep him safe? I didn’t know.
Charley pressed my body closer into his and nuzzled into my neck. “You’re fun to hug.”
I smiled at that, until I realized that he was referring to having my breasts pressed against him. Then I pushed him away. He leaned in and laid a quick kiss on my lips before I knew what was what. It was a vampire fast movement that left me motionless and a little confused.
“Adieu, Raina, be careful. You have my number?” he asked as he mounted his bike.
I was still staring blankly at where he used to be, “Um, yeah, I have it written down someplace.”
He revved his engine and winked at me, and then he sped away. Dork.
DOCTOR
WE RACED UP Mt. Rainier, even as Nick bled out, instead of finding a closer doctor for two reasons. I didn’t trust Bastion Fatal’s doctor, Gabriel. He was under Alistair’s control. And, Tacoma’s General Hospital would probably ask too many questions and they’d definitely call the authorities. Nick was already in danger of being marked. I didn’t want to compound bad behavior with psychosocial issues. We would just strengthen the case against him.
I was focused on the winding dark roads as Mato explained to Katie what happened at Allegory’s.
“Why isn’t he healing? I thought vampires heal super-fast,” Katie asked. I had the same question, but I was more concerned with getting to Darkness.
“They do, usually. But, he has been starving himself for a while. He is starting to rot.”
“What?!” I shouted without looking back at him.
“Can you not smell it?” he asked. I sniffed the air and yeah, he smelled bad. I should have noticed that, I should have smelled that putrid stench the moment Danny opened the door! What the hell?
“I’m not noticing things that I should be.”
“You are prioritizing, Raina. That is a good thing,” Mato said.
It didn’t feel like a good thing. I felt dumb, like I wasn’t all there. “How can that be good? What else am I missing?”
“You cannot know everything all the time. You cannot feel and see and smell every little thing, Raina. You are not a God. When vampires can no longer control the amount of information coming at them, they go crazy. You have to be able to prioritize your senses. You are noticing the most immediate and important information and subconsciously filing everything else away to examine later.”
The ‘God’ comment made me look at Katie, but she had her eyes shut, her head down. Maybe racing up Mt. Rainier’s roads with Nick dead in the back seat was a little too similar to what happened the last time we were on this mountain together. It was for me. Can you say déjà vu?
Mato had called Darkness’s clinic on his cell while I drove, so when we arrived Tasha was waiting outside with a host of medical staff at her side. They fetched Nick from Mato’s arms and rushed him into the clinic with haste. Katie, Mato and I followed, but had to wait at the elevator as doctor and company took Nick down, underground to the VCC (vampire care center) beneath the clinic. All vampire collectives have one. When we arrived in the VCC I found that it hadn’t changed since I last saw it. It was still halved by a thick glass wall, with a sitting area in the middle of one side and all the medical equipment on th
e other. Nick was strapped down on a gurney in the side with the medical equipment and we sat nervously on the side with the sitting area.
“Mato,” Katie began tentatively. “Do you think they’ll be able to stop Nil from rotting?” I’d never known Katie to care for Nick. It was nice to see her worried for his wellbeing, even though I wished she had no reason to be.
Mato didn’t answer right away, and that made me sit up straighter. “I do not know.” And that was all he said. He wasn’t a doctor, he was a cop. What did I expect, really?
We waited silently as Doctor Tasha and crew did their thing behind the glass. After some time a nurse came out. He was a short man, tan skinned with jet black hair.
“How is he?” I asked.
The nurse took a seat before answering me. “He’s stable but sedated for the time being. We’re going to need to keep him for observation for a while. The damage is severe. He seems to have not eaten in maybe a week or more, so he can’t heal himself. The blood you saw coming from him was mostly watery plasma, nearly void of blood cells. He’s dehydrated to the max. In fact, if he were human he’d be dead many times over. The anemia, the dehydration and the torture; each one alone is a death sentence.”
The nurse hung his head, like seeing this kind of disregard for one’s own undead life was just too sad. I agreed. Nick had a hard life, full of rejection. His afterlife wasn’t treating him any better. He seemed cursed. I didn’t know how to make things all better. I didn’t know why I felt like I had to, but I did.
“I should call Tristan and let him know what’s happened,” I said, trying to hide the tears filling my eyes by looking for my cell phone, only to remember that I didn’t have one anymore. Damn it. I hated being out of work! “Can I use your phone, Katie?” I asked, and my voice sounded thick with the threat of tears. I thought I was going to be a tough bitch, but they don’t cry and I did too often these days. I was glad Nick was sedated; because I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I could have blocked his thoughts while in that state. I felt like the world was pressing down on me. I didn’t have a job or a place to call home, and suddenly Katie, Thomas and Nick were all my responsibility.
“Okay,” Katie said softly. She handed me her tiny pink thing. I excused myself to the seclusion of the far corner of the room.
The phone rang once, twice, and then an excited Michael picked up.
“Katie!” he screamed in my ear. It would seem that Tristan’s home phone had caller ID.
“Michael, I’m,” I began to correct him, but he interrupted me.
“You haven’t called. I haven’t seen you since I turned. What’s up? Man, I have so much to tell you. Why are you so quiet? Oh, it’s like midnight. I must have woken you. I’m so sorry. I’ll call back later.”
“Michael!” I yelled into the phone to shut him up. “I called you, dip shit. It’s me, Raina. I’m just using Katie’s phone.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” He sounded sad. Had Katie really not spoken to him since he turned? Whoa.
“It’s okay. Is Tristan there? Something’s happened—to Nick.”
“What is it, Raina? Is he marked?”
“No, he’s been beaten up pretty badly though. I brought him to the clinic in Darkness. They say he’s stable, but they’re going to be keeping an eye on him for a while.”
“Shit. Who did it?”
I thought about my answer for a moment. It seemed like Nick’s business, maybe something he wouldn’t want everyone knowing. But, on second thought I didn’t want an angry little vampire Michael hunting for answers with a chip on his shoulders either. So, truth. If Nick wanted privacy he should have thought of that before starving himself, acting out with the ladies and choosing a public place to have himself brutalized.
“He did, or at least he paid someone to torture him, and he’s been starving himself, so he can’t heal the damage.”
“Holy shit, Ray. That’s crazy. Tristan is with Damon tonight. He should be home soon though.”
I’d almost forgotten that Tristan was seeing Bastion Fatal’s therapist, Damon. People have suggested that I visit Damon once a week too, but I’m too stubborn for all that mess.
“Okay, I’ll try to catch him on his cell.”
“He turns that off while he’s in therapy.”
“I’ll call Damon’s office then. Love you,” I said in parting.
“I love you, too. And, Raina, can you tell Katie to call me?”
“Yeah.”
Damon answered his phone on the first ring. Tristan had just left his office, but he was glad I called. I wasn’t.
“Raphael has contacted me again,” Damon said. He sounded tired. “He has set up a meeting with his lawyers to finalize your adoption of Thomas. It’s in Seattle tomorrow morning.”
“It’s tomorrow already. When did he contact you?”
“Just before Tristan walked through my door tonight. An imp leaped through my fireplace to deliver the message.”
I was silent for a time. Words seemed lost to me. I was grief stricken, and it seemed too much to add a morning meeting with demon lawyers to my bag of burdens…
Finally I asked, “What time, and where?” What choice did I have? The answer, none.
“Nine; on the corner of Broad Street and Danny Way.”
“That’s like a stone’s throw from the Space Needle—Okay, I guess I’ll see you at nine am sharp,” I breathed.
STANFORD AND SON
KATIE AND I finally got to bed at two in the morning. I wanted so badly to just sleep in for once. I mean, what good was being an out of work loser, if I didn’t get to sleep until ten in the morning? But, alas, I woke to my alarm clock at the awful hour of seven a.m. A shower, a cup of coffee and one hell of a commute later and I found myself at Stanford and Son’s, a family owned practice that specialized in demon law in conjunction with human law. Damon and I were quietly sitting in the waiting room outside Christopher Stanford’s office. The room was large, with tall ceilings, tasteful art and comfortable leather furniture.
Damon had brought little Thomas with him. He had olive skin and fine black hair, and he was quite the little charmer, all shy smiles, bashfully hiding behind Damon’s legs and arms. It was such a sad thing that his humanity was taken in such a horrific manner and now his young life was in the hands of a demon. He kicked his little feet while he sat quietly in his chair. He was drawing a picture with the paper and crayons Damon brought to keep him occupied. He drew himself and Damon playing in a garden. There were pixies flying everywhere and a sneaky little fae hiding behind a rock about to crush some lilies. Thomas smiled up at me with a huge grin when he caught me watching him. It melted my heart. I wanted to hug him, but I didn’t. Instead I walked away.
“I’ll be right back,” I said to Damon.
I took off my black coat. Well, okay, not my black coat. I swiped it from Fauna’s closet this morning along with some other clothes. I didn’t own classy things and I wanted to look nice. I was wearing a tasteful red dress and black strappy dress shoes.
Behind a large oak desk sat an Asian woman in a slick mustard yellow dress. She was working determinately on her laptop when I walked up to her desk. “I’m sorry, but how much longer do you think it’s going to be?”
“If you’ll just have a seat, I’ll call you when he’s ready,” she said.
That was what she had said when we first arrived thirty minutes ago. I just arched my brow to show my annoyance and started back toward my seat.
“Wait,” the woman said from behind me. I turned and found her holding a newspaper. “Is this you?” she asked.
She was holding up the front page of The Harold. Staring out from the page was a mean pair of red eyes, my red eyes. Without asking I grabbed the paper from her. The picture was of me and Mato as we looked back before leaving the club. Between the lighting of the club and the flash of the camera it was quite a dramatic picture. The person who took the picture had caught Mato in mid-turn. All his long dark hair was fanned out, his white shir
t was blood stained and Nick was limp in his arms. His honey gold eyes stared directing at the camera while my red eyes were for someone else, Allegory. I looked positively delicate standing next to Mato, but my hands were in fists that I didn’t remember making, and my face was hard, deadly serious and scary. I would be scared if someone looked at me that way. The title above the picture read, “Watch out Allegory!” I read the first few paragraphs of the article before letting out a frustrated huff of air and handing it back to her. “Yup, that’s me.” I didn’t say it with any pride.
Apparently, from what people could piece together at the club, Allegory had brutalized my brother as a warning to me to stay out of his alleged illegal affairs. There was even a quote from me, “I’m going to crush your heart under my stilettos.” That didn’t even sound like something I’d say…stilettos, for Goddess sake.
I bit my lip and looked at Thomas, who was now turned around in his seat and staring out of the window. What sort of mother makes it in the local newspapers like that?
“Mr. Stanford will see you now,” announced the lady with a careful smile.
Stanford had a fabulous office: huge windows, floor to ceiling book shelves and nifty items on display everywhere I looked. Christopher Stanford was standing in front of a large wood filing cabinet, flipping through the middle drawer. He had short white hair, perfect posture and a snazzy brown suit with a powder blue tie. He wasn’t exactly what I imagined a demon lawyer to look like, but what exactly did I expect; some dude in a red suit with slick black hair and a devious flirtatious smile? Yeah, kind of.
“Have a seat,” he said by way of greeting without looking our way. Thomas, Damon and I sat on a leather couch that sat beside a rather large fish tank. Thomas found the fish entertaining. “I see business is booming for you,” Stanford said gesturing to his own copy of The Harold. “I had no idea Mr. Allegory was into prostitution. But, with the company he keeps, I’m not surprised.”