“And Joe died from new tats,” White Feather said.
“Exactly. He died from tats gone wrong, tats he admitted used Zandy’s blood. And Patrick mentioned he was staying with Joe in the basement because Joe kept trying to leave during the day. What he didn’t say, maybe because he didn’t know, was that Joe could go out in daylight because he was never completely turned!”
“Who the hell is Joe?” Gordon demanded.
“The ugliest, unhealthiest not-a-vampire I’ve ever seen. And the last time I saw him, he was dying in the basement of this place.”
“And you’re considering waltzing in there to find him? Shoot’m full of silver bullets?” Gordon’s eyes bulged.
My own panic was worse than his, but for entirely different reasons. “I don’t think Patrick knew any more than Joe told us during the visit, but the timing fits. Joe died about two weeks ago, right after these robberies started happening. Patrick believed Joe’s lack of respect for daylight was partly responsible for Joe’s illness, but my guess is that the whole turning vamp failed, leaving Joe somewhere in between. There was black magic in the tats, mixed with holy water and church grounds. There’s no way any spell could have gone as planned with those circumstances.”
“If Joe can operate during daylight hours, wouldn’t that make raiding the basement right now damned dangerous?” Gordon asked, single-minded as ever.
“It wouldn’t be any safer at night. And I wonder what happened to Patrick. Lynx said he’s missing.”
White Feather handed me the phone. “Call Lynx. If he’s on Patrick’s trail, you better tell him about Joe.”
While I placed the call and left a message because Lynx didn’t answer, Gordon said, “We need a plan.”
He was right. Even if Joe had cleared out...Patrick had been watching over him for the last few days. He wouldn’t allow Joe to go rogue without putting up a fight. Had he taken Joe to his own home? That was doubtful, but I didn’t know vamp etiquette.
Patrick had kept Joe here for a reason, so why move him? They had easy access to blood here. Blood was the universal food for a vamp, right?
Thinking of the red stuff had me reaching for the IV pole before Gordon could prevent me from tainting the evidence. If Patrick was hurt or had been without blood for a while, he would be hungry. I wasn’t offering anyone I knew as the main course. Better to have a safe source if we found him in time.
I tried hard not to think about Joe filled up on Zandy’s blood, roaming somewhere in the daylight and soon-to-be dark. A rogue vamp who could waltz right into my old house—and maybe even my new one because he had tainted blood from an old spell.
Gordon was only worried about storming the basement, but he hadn’t seen the rogue vamp. No point in telling him that basement might be the least of our problems.
Chapter 35
Gordon voted to bring in a SWAT team, but we didn’t have time. The flash of his badge did buy us the information that Patrick had missed his last two shifts.
“He’s been out of circulation for at least two nights. If he’s been bled dry or staked, there’s no rush. But if he is still...functioning, he’s somewhere that he can’t escape. And getting hungrier. And it takes three days to turn a vamp. I don’t think we want to wait a third day to see what Joe might be up to.”
“What does three days have to do with Patrick? He’s already a vamp,” Gordon pointed out.
“Nothing unless... well, I’m almost positive that Joe can’t do any turning because he isn’t a proper vampire, but I know it takes three days to turn one. Joe has been turning tats into constructs and obviously has a thing for creating monsters. We don’t dare wait through tonight to discover his plans because if he is up to something that includes a three day time limit, we’re about to hit it.”
White Feather sighed. “Wind can only reveal so much about what might be in a basement behind a locked door. We’ll have to go in.”
“Why did you call Mat? She’s a civilian!” Gordon exploded.
“She has the key to the basement. I don’t. You haven’t seen the place. It’s built like a tomb. One that isn’t meant to be opened all that often.”
Gordon found himself inundated with the police business of the dead body that had been Zandy, but the second Mat buzzed my phone announcing her arrival, he turned the mess over to someone else.
We spent a few minutes by the basement door reviewing details, none of us happy. Dusk was no more than a half hour away and cold had already arrived.
I tried Lynx again. I didn’t like that he wasn’t answering, especially since he was supposedly searching for Patrick. If Patrick wasn’t in the basement, he could be at his home in Los Alamos. Maybe Lynx had gone there. I shivered inside my jacket, and it wasn’t from the cold air.
We had minutes to sundown.
“Let’s go.” I broke into the terse argument between White Feather and his brother.
Gordon glared at me and adjusted the strap on the pair of stakes he had across his back. The tips were steel with serrated edges. They’d been dipped in silver more than once. Of more comfort to him was his gun. I didn’t need to ask to know the bullets were silver. I could sense them.
“There’s no silver in the hallway below. I checked. Mat?”
She held up the key. Gordon reached for it and met her closed fist and raised eyebrows. The key disappeared inside the lock before he could argue with her. She did take his advice and stand to the side while opening it.
White Feather sent in his wind. “No one breathing.”
That wasn’t all that reassuring in this case.
We trooped in, one at a time, as Gordon had instructed. I positioned myself behind White Feather’s left side. Mat hugged the right wall and Gordon brought up the rear, closing the door behind us.
My ring was warm, either from nerves or because White Feather was floating wind everywhere at once, a constant search. The lights were dim and the only switch we knew about was near the door down the hallway.
It wasn’t a long walk. Lynx had implied there were other rooms down here, but if they were as invisible as the one we’d visited, it could take a while to locate them. If not for the light switch I’d seen Patrick use, finding the outline of the door we were after might have taken longer too.
As soon as I spotted the light switch, I adjusted it to full power. White Feather and I both did reconnaissance. I sensed bare hints of silver this time, nothing more than atmospheric noise. White Feather interpreted a lot more.
“Patrick’s there. Vamps have a signature that wind recognizes. There’s a presence with no sound.”
“It’s not Joe?”
“I’ve met Patrick on enough occasions. There’s a certain smell on the wind. It’s vamp and it’s Patrick.”
“He’s alive?” I whispered.
White Feather snorted. “He hasn’t started breathing, but he hasn’t stopped existing either. There’s a...there are two others breathing.”
“Any other vamps that might be Joe?”
He shook his head. “No. Vamps are a vortex of negative energy, like an empty space, only when the wind goes there, it dries up. I’m not getting that except from the one corner.
The hall lights were at full power, but the keyhole was still almost invisible. The door itself was no more than a line of oddly layered concrete blocks. When White Feather inserted the key, it refused to budge left or right.
“Are you sure this is the right spot?” White Feather asked.
Had I not been searching for silver, I might not have felt the tingle of magic. “Let Mat turn it,” I said. “Patrick gave her the key.”
“You are not entering first,” Gordon growled. He was still thoroughly angry at being shoved in the backseat. But a gun with silver bullets was not as advantageous as wind. It might be on par with a thrown spell, but Mat and I not only had various weapons at our disposal, we both had the advantage of having been in the room before.
Mat and I switched places, putting her within reach of th
e key.
She turned it easily. It didn’t even click. With a hop, she was back in position behind me on the side of the door.
Gordon kicked it, forcing it inward.
White Feather was supposed to force it open with wind magic, but Gordon apparently couldn’t follow the plan. After the kick, he mashed me as he spun to the side.
Nothing moved. I felt White Feather’s magic sail past into the room.
“No change,” he confirmed.
Patrick’s voice was a strained gasp from within. “You’re...better off...not entering.”
White Feather ducked in behind Gordon, who went in low and fast, rolling. Mat hit the inside light switch. I lobbed a fire packet. It contained silver. I could call it back. I could set it off.
It wasn’t obvious at first glance that Patrick’s glamour was entirely gone because I almost always saw glimpses of the beast. Instead of a cool and handsome Spaniard, a hunched gargoyle waited in one corner, his long clawed fingers intertwined in front of his belly, holding the pieces of what was left of a shredded nurse’s smock.
Even without the tattered uniform, I’d have recognized him because I’d seen most of his face before. It wasn’t feral so much as rock hard. His eyes hadn’t changed. The cool orbs fit the gargoyle more than the human form; gray stone, unblinking. Fangs were as natural on such a face as the long, clawed feet and the folded leathery wings at his back. His body was little more than scaled muscles that rippled as he tightened them, holding himself in check.
Mat’s soft gasp was the first clue that his glamour was missing. White Feather’s silver ring heated, a reaction I felt through the gold on my own finger. “It’s just Patrick,” I said, my voice only cracking slightly.
I tossed the bag of blood to him. His vamp glamour skills might be weak, but he snagged it midair without visible effort. His hand twitched as he unclamped the bag and took a swallow. He managed not to guzzle.
I should have admired his restraint, but it was still human blood no matter how the score was tallied. “Moonlight madness.” Okay. He was not human and would never be again. Time to get over it and respect what was left.
Gordon’s gun never wavered off Patrick. White Feather and I split our attention, sparing plenty for the half naked humans on the right and left. Patrick was still a threat, at least until he had enough blood to control himself, but I’d bet my last spell that it wasn’t Patrick who had caused the two humans in the room to be lying senseless.
“They’re both breathing,” White Feather said.
The skinny teenager on our right leaked blood, little beads dripping down his ribs, almost drying before a second drop had a chance to fully form. The loss was slow; a parody of a stalactite forming.
The droplets meant that tattoos had been brought to animation. Joe had moved his studio from Tam’s salon to Patrick’s lair. And why not? After Mat and I visited, he knew we were putting the pieces of the puzzle together. It was only a matter of time before we figured out he was involved.
My eyes frantically searched and found the first tattoo creature perched on the hanging fluorescent light fixture. The blue-red hag had a face that sagged on one side and was a distorted blob on the other. Someone had been in a hurry when drawing this tat.
Blue wings showed behind her back. Obscenely misshapen boobs almost hid the fact that she had no lower body. She was cut off at the waist, nothing but a stump. “Where’s the other one?” I croaked in a bare whisper.
Patrick spaced his answer around swallows. “Joe forced the other construct to leave with him. This one protects the bodies and makes sure I do nothing but feast.” He swept his arm in the direction of a large bucket. The contents weren’t clear from here. “He left me Zandy’s blood. That or I fight his construct for the blood of these two.”
Gordon kept the gun leveled at Patrick, but he nodded to the body on our left. “Why haven’t you eaten either of them?”
Patrick finished the last of the blood. He did not lick his lips, but at least he now had lips shimmering back into existence over the harsher face. “They are more interested in my blood than I am in theirs.”
“Would the hag swinging from the light attack you if you tried to drink from either of the two on the floor?” I asked.
Patrick nodded. “Without a doubt.”
“The tats and constructs were made with Zandy’s blood?” Blood Patrick couldn’t afford to drink no matter how starved he might be.
“Joe’s blood, my blood and Zandy’s.”
My eyes traveled from the two victims to Patrick. I processed his comment about the victims being more interested in his blood than the other way around. Patrick watched us, waiting.
Finally he said, “You must kill them both. By nightfall they will both be vamps. Joe decided that humans weren’t powerful enough to keep constructs fueled. He is right, of course. He intends to continue feeding these two vampires to power his constructs.”
“You turned them?” I asked.
“Technically my blood was used to turn them.”
“Bloodsucker,” Gordon cursed.
I shook my head, seeing the truth. The rumor that a vamp drank the blood of a victim to turn him into a new vamp was backwards. “They drink Patrick’s blood to turn. Not the other way around.”
Patrick’s head swiveled my way. “Witch, you think too much. But even you are running out of time to arrive at an elegant solution to this problem.”
“I’m right, though.”
Patrick’s predator eyes didn’t blink. “The legend that we bite a victim three times is misleading. They feed from us before they die. We provide the second and third blood meal usually through a carotid artery. The dead at that stage aren’t terribly interested in eating.”
“And because of the bite marks, everyone assumes you fed off them until they died, but at that point you’re donating.”
“Bloodsucking mosquitoes,” was Gordon’s assessment. He edged one step towards the naked man closest to him. The beast on the light fixture dove and would have made good on the attack had White Feather not caught the wings with a stiff breeze.
The hag didn’t need a lower body to fly. With its wings open, the double sets of claws on the wings were more obvious. There was a grasping set at the top of the wing and another at the bottom where a hand might normally be.
Gordon fired instinctively, but the bullet, silver notwithstanding, went straight through the construct. It left a hole dead center of one low-hanging breast, but that didn’t even count as a maiming injury with a construct.
“Step back,” White Feather said, holding steady.
Gordon did so quickly, staring at the bullet hole. The construct hissed, turned into the wind and swiped at Patrick on its way back up to the light.
“Gordon...or Mat.” My voice was barely a whisper around the panic squeezing my throat. “We’d be safer if you went upstairs and procured another pint or two.” If we engaged the construct, and I could see no way around it, I didn’t want Patrick hungry at our backs. His glamour had returned such that both faces were visible, but he’d been down here for at least two days. Make that three. Night had to be only a few minutes away.
“Will these two vamp at nightfall?” I demanded. We already had Patrick hungry, we didn’t need two other vamps coming awake.
Patrick said, “You need to kill them before nightfall. They will turn, but—”
We waited in vain for him to continue. He merely stared, his gargoyle face wavering in and out of focus. “But what?” My patience hadn’t entered the room with me; there was no hope of finding it now.
“The information you seek is deadly.”
I snarled, “The information I already have is deadly.”
“It is forbidden.”
“Fine. One problem at a time. Mat?”
She nodded. “I can get fluids. Of any type. I’ll be back.”
“Gordon, there’s another vamp running free out there. With a construct. You’d better stick with Mat.” White Feather
didn’t have to ask twice.
They were barely into the hallway when Patrick said, “You must kill them both. I am not...what time is it?”
“Can’t you tell?” If he was having troubles of that sort, it smacked a little too much of Joe’s problems. Maybe he had fed on Zandy’s blood. Or Joe’s. Maybe he was already rogue or about to turn into some kind of sloppy, idiot vampire like Joe.
“Normally, yes. It seems close.”
“Less than a half hour. Maybe five minutes. Maybe less.” I didn’t have my watch.
Patrick straightened and hissed. “You must kill them now!”
When he moved, the construct recognized it as a viable threat. The hag dove. White Feather swirled it sideways, giving Patrick room to maneuver.
He didn’t waste it. Like a man possessed and with the speed somewhere between human and vamp, he lunged for the body on the right. I wasn’t about to stop him.
The construct wheeled around and closed her wings. She tumbled to the ground, landing safely under White Feather’s blast.
“A stake! Silver, wood, anything!” Patrick growled.
Gordon had the stakes. Gordon had gone to obtain more blood.
Not that Patrick waited. He grasped the teen’s head and twisted it violently. The snap nearly froze me with horror, but the construct was far from out of the picture. She rolled towards Patrick as if she’d had a lifetime of training without legs.
I detached the small silver spikes from my backpack, the mini stakes meant to skewer and burn a shifter. They were very, very small, only six inches in length, maybe eight counting the silver arrowhead, but technically, they were stakes.
I tossed one to Patrick.
The legless construct screamed, her maw full of deadly teeth intending to shred.
White Feather hit the hag with a blast that rolled the thing over like a bowling ball until her flat face got in the way and halted the momentum.
Patrick snatched the stake out of midair. “What in all of hell is this? This is the best stake you could design?”
His outrage would have been comical except for the fact that the other vampire sat up and let out a bloodcurdling shriek.
Under Witch Curse (Moon Shadow Series) Page 21