Blood Gamble (Disrupted Magic Book 2)

by Melissa F. Olson

  “Yeah, obviously I’m the bad guy,” I replied. I was tired, and frustrated, and worried about Wyatt, and I wanted the walkie-talkie and to get out of the building and for Jesse to be here. I was sick of all of this, and it came through in my voice when I said, “Look, what is the point of any of this? If you hate being a vampire so much, just kill yourself and let the rest of us go on with our lives. Hell, I can even make it easy for you. Have your little butt monkey out there shoot you in the head, and I can get home in time for breakfast.”

  Lucy stood up, her fists clenched. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing?” she said. “Trying to keep me talking, to tell you all about my feelings? Please. You’re just like every vampire sycophant who comes around begging Arthur and me for the real Dracula story—”

  “Lady, I know the real Dracula story,” I interrupted, trying to sound bored. “I know all about Claire.”

  Lucy Holmwood actually flinched. Then she went very still. I’d gotten to her. Interesting. “What did you just say?” she hissed at me.

  “I said I know your story, you vapid, parasitic shithead,” I said conversationally. “Dracula was inspired by a psycho vampire named Claire Clairmont. She cozied up to some idiot personal assistant who fancied himself a writer, and told him all about vampires. He wrote a whole book inspired by Claire, but he changed a good deal of the story to disguise the real players. For starters, he changed his main character’s gender.” I shrugged. “As for the clichéd creepy castle and three skanky wives, I’m thinking that was just classic Victorian male fears about the horrors of releasing female sexuality, but you’d know more about that than I would.”

  Lucy’s eyes were beginning to bulge in a very satisfying manner, so I went on. “That wasn’t the only change, though. There’s also the small matter of you, Lucy, turning Arthur into a vampire rather than letting him kill you. And, of course, the fact that Claire didn’t actually die in London. She died more than three years ago in Pasadena, California.” I glared right into Lucy Holmwood’s pretty little face. “When I motherfucking killed her.”

  Lucy fell back in her chair, her hand over her mouth like I’d just slapped it. Okay, technically, I hadn’t killed Claire/Ariadne (Clariadne?). But I had turned her human again, right before Dashiell killed her.

  Lucy held her hand to her mouth for a moment, and then got up and rushed a few steps away, far enough to get out of my radius. “You’re lying,” she muttered, not looking at me. “You have to be lying.”

  “When I met her, she had dyed her hair black and wore black clothes. She went by the name Ariadne, and she lived in a great big mansion in Orange County that she let rot all around her like a demented vampire Miss Havisham.

  “One thing I never understood, though,” I continued, not looking at Lucy, just speaking to the room in general, “when I researched her later, all the sources I found said she died at eighty. But the Claire I saw was maybe midtwenties, at the most.”

  Lucy looked up then, her eyes stricken. “She was twenty-four,” she whispered. “After she was turned, she pretended to age for a few years, then she told everyone she’d taken a governess job in Russia. Really, she was looking for a doppelgänger to take her place back in England.”

  I nodded. It was oddly satisfying to have that piece of the puzzle filled in, like when you find a lost item after you’ve already replaced it and moved on.

  “Did you really kill her?” Lucy said, and her eyes were as intense as any I’d ever seen.

  “Yes. She tried to move against the cardinal vampire of Los Angeles, and in the process, hurt a friend of mine,” I said. “I turned her human, and then she was killed.”

  This was a simplification, of course, but not a lie. Lucy would assume I meant that I’d turned Claire into a human temporarily. Instead, I’d somehow taken the vampire magic right out of her, turning her into a human woman again. I hadn’t been there when Dashiell killed her, but I was completely certain that he had. Claire had been a thorn in his side for two hundred years, and she’d tried to kill his wife in front of him. Dashiell wouldn’t take something like that lightly.

  But I didn’t understand why Lucy Holmwood was having such a huge reaction to the news about Claire. Had Lucy been in love with her? But why had they parted ways to begin with? I knew Claire had left London after Dracula was published, but why hadn’t Lucy and Arthur just gone with her?

  “Oh shit,” I said, understanding. “You weren’t just trying for some big vampire final solution, were you? All this work, the whole vampire trap . . . you were looking for her.” That was why they’d done so much publicity under the Dracula names, why they’d made such a big deal of getting vampires from other locations to come to Las Vegas for the show. It wasn’t just to exterminate them. They wanted to lure Claire to Vegas.

  “You were hoping to kill her, too.”

  Chapter 33

  Lucy’s pretty rosebud mouth opened, but for once she said nothing. Then she closed her eyes, and actual tears slipped down her face.

  Staggering, she came back and sat down in the chair, looking like she couldn’t bear to stand up anymore. “I promised him,” she whispered. She bent her head over her knees, clutching handfuls of her hair.

  “Arthur?” I guessed. “What did you promise?”

  She had no reason to answer me, not really. At that moment, though, I didn’t think she was really aware of who she was talking to, and the words came tumbling out in a broken whisper. “If he let me live, if he joined me, we would fight against she who cursed me with this plague. She who tried to come between us. We would find her, together. We would punish her, and then we would die.” Lucy winced. She didn’t want to die, at least not anymore.

  “That’s what all this was about?” I said, flabbergasted. “You hated Claire for turning you into a vampire?”

  A momentary panic hit me—did the Holmwoods know that Dashiell was the one who’d turned Claire into a vampire to begin with? But no, I didn’t think so—they had never made any effort to draw him into this plan, so either they didn’t know or they didn’t hold him responsible for Claire’s actions. But I wasn’t about to bring it up now, in case Lucy decided that put Dashiell on her personal hit list.

  “Do you think I wanted this?” Lucy demanded. She gestured down at herself. “Do you think I chose this existence over the life I had planned? I was going to marry Arthur, and we were going to have children and a beautiful estate, everything I’d wanted my whole silly, simple life. And she took all that away from me just for . . . for a demonstration.”

  She’d lost me. “What? What demonstration?”

  Lucy sat back, waving a hand. “Claire had some ridiculous notion that telling the world about vampires would force vampire societies to get along. She wanted to expose us, so she needed to show that hack writer what it was to feed, to turn someone.” Her face twisted sourly. “She picked me. Because I was naive, and because I was there.” Her lower lip trembled again. “I was going to have children.”

  “Why wait so long?” I blurted. “Why not go after Claire back then? There were two of you.”

  Lucy glowered at me. “Claire went into hiding,” she snapped. “It wasn’t exactly difficult, in those days, but she cut all her old ties with other vampires. Why do you think we spent so long traveling? It’s a big world. It took decades just to narrow it down to the United States.” Her glare deepened. “And then you took my revenge away from me.” She couldn’t keep up the anger, though. After a moment, she crumpled, her head falling into her hands.

  Then I had an idea. It was not a great idea, and it would generally suck, but it was all I had.

  I made myself scoff loudly. “What kind of moron goes to this much trouble just to find someone?” Lucy’s head shot up, her eyes burning. “Honestly, Luce,” I went on, “you’ve got to be pretty pathetic to chase some chick around the world for a century because of some imagined slight.”

  “Imagined slight?” She reached down to my discarded belt and snatched a knif
e, then stalked over to me, grabbing my hair and yanking my head sideways to expose my throat. “I could kill you,” she hissed, holding the blade close. “Or so much worse. Don’t you see that? Have you no respect for—”

  I spat in her face.

  “Ugh!” She jerked back, disgusted. But I’d already hooked one socked foot behind her ankles, so she tipped backward, her arms flailing, and landed hard on her back. I wanted to kick her face, but without my boots I might break a toe, so instead I lifted my leg and stomped my heel down on her chest, forcing the air out of her lungs. A classic Marko move.

  The knife fell out of her hands with a little clatter. Her face went pale and shocked, like she couldn’t believe someone had dared turn the tables on her, the famous Lucy Holmwood.

  Even vampires who spend time around nulls aren’t used to having the wind knocked out of them. Hell, it throws most humans. God knew it threw me every time I took a bad fall during my training with Marko. While Lucy lay there trying to suck in air, I worked my handcuffs around the railing to get closer to her. If she got enough breath to scream, I was fucked.

  I turned as far as I could in the handcuffs, straining my shoulders, but I was able to pull the knife out of her reach with my heel. I hooked my foot around her neck and slid her just a little closer. I managed to position my body over her, and I placed my foot over her neck, pressing down just a tiny bit. “If I step down hard, I’ll crush your larynx and you’ll die,” I told her. Okay, I didn’t actually know if this was true, but the odds were good that a vampire would know even less about the physiological need to breathe than I did. “So just shake your head yes or no. Do you have the handcuff keys?”

  She shook her head no. Her delicate face looked terrified as she struggled to regulate her restored breathing. “Does Clay have them?”

  She nodded.

  Shit. “Call him,” I told her. “Just his name.”

  I eased up the pressure of my foot, and she yelled, “Clay!”

  The big vampire poked his head in the room, then immediately reached for the holster on his belt. “Stop!” I hollered. “Or I’ll stomp on her throat and she’ll die. Toss the handcuff keys to Lucy’s left hand. Slowly.” God, I felt like I was writing my own bad movie dialogue.

  Clay looked at Lucy. I was pushing my foot down on her throat again, but she had rolled her eyes sideways so she could see him. She nodded her head, almost imperceptibly.

  Digging into his pocket, Clay pulled out a tiny set of silver keys and carefully tossed them to Lucy. They hit the old floorboards, slid, and came to a stop near her left hand, just within reach.

  “Pick them up and put them in my hand,” I told her.

  Her brow furrowed into a horrible glare, but she did as she was told, raising her arm and leaning upward a little to reach my hand. I lifted my foot along with her body, ready to stomp it back down if she screwed me over. But Lucy pushed the keys into my palm. Her fingers were damp. I’d made Lucy Holmwood nervous. Yay me.

  I kept my foot on her neck, hoping my feet were smelly. The fear and adrenaline pumping through my body were urging me to hurry hurry hurry, but I forced myself to move slowly as I unlocked one of the handcuffs, and then the other. When I finally had my hands free, I dropped down and snatched up the knife Lucy had dropped. With my left hand, I held it to Lucy’s throat as I pulled back my leg, which had begun to ache with tension. I was still practically on top of her, and I had the bizarre thought that it probably looked like we were playing Twister. Hopefully I was winning.

  “Clay, I’m gonna need that knife belt now,” I said, sparing a quick glance at him. “Kick it over.” Grimacing, he kicked the belt, which slid over and came to rest against Lucy’s leg. Keeping the blade near her neck with one hand, I reached for the belt with the other, fumbling the buckle closed. Then I looped it over my right shoulder, removing one more knife.

  “Stand up very slowly,” I told Lucy. “I’ll take a step back to give you room, but you should know that I can throw these things as well as I can hold them.”

  I backed up a tiny step, but I wasn’t even watching Lucy: I was watching Clay. Sure enough, when he thought I was distracted with Lucy’s movement, his hand shot toward his holster.

  I extended my radius and threw the first knife, hitting him high in the shoulder. He groaned but kept moving, so I switched the other knife into my right hand and chunked it into his throat.

  In action movies, you always see someone throwing a knife into the bad guy’s heart, and when it comes to vampires, everyone automatically thinks of the heart as the best place to hurt them. But it’s really difficult to get enough power behind a throwing knife to push all the way through the breastbone, even of an ordinary human, and I wasn’t sure I had the upper-body strength. The throat, however, was right there in the open, and it was vulnerable as shit.

  The blade buried itself in Clay’s trachea. He dropped the gun, his hands shooting up to clutch at the knife. He made a couple of strangled, unbearable attempts to breathe, and then collapsed, his eyes going dull. Lucy, who was facing him, gave a little gasp of surprise, but she didn’t seem all that broken up. She’d probably seen a lot of vampires-turned-human die in a null’s radius lately.

  Speaking of which, I could still feel Wyatt’s vampire magic, but it seemed to be dimming. I forced Lucy to move across the large room toward the door we’d come through, mostly so I could get Wyatt out of my radius without shrinking it. I picked up Clay’s gun where it had fallen, and glanced at it just long enough to make sure I could figure it out. Thank God, it was a Beretta. It was a little different from Jesse’s, but close enough for me to use. I tucked the knives back into my belt and pointed the gun at Lucy, who instinctively raised her hands.

  Then I paused. I wasn’t actually sure what to do now. I couldn’t leave Wyatt with these people, and I couldn’t carry him out of here, especially not if I was keeping a gun on someone. I was stuck.

  Think, Scarlett.

  Lucy must have seen the uncertainty on my face, because she sneered. “You’re out of time, little null. Arthur and the boys will be here any minute, and they’ve got a lot more firepower than you can handle with one gun and a couple of pig stickers. If you run right now, you might get away before they kill you.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at Wyatt. He hadn’t moved.

  “Where is Jameson?” I asked Lucy.

  Confusion flickered over her face, followed by comprehension. “That’s why you’re here? He’s your little friend, is he?” She looked at me with pity. “Oh, you poor dear. Do you think you can save him?”

  I gritted my teeth. “I can try.”

  “But he doesn’t want to be saved,” she reasoned, as if she were explaining something very obvious to someone very stupid. Which, okay, maybe I was. “He hates vampires more than we do. My goodness, he’s just loved killing my kind. I’ve barely needed to lift a finger; he’s been so happy to—”

  “Where is he?” I repeated loudly. The gun was getting heavy.

  “I’m right here, Letts,” came a tired, familiar voice from the side doorway.

  I was unwilling to look fully away from Lucy Holmwood, so I turned my head to the left and peeked out of the corner of my eye. Jameson was standing just inside the room, his hands and his eyebrows raised. “And I think maybe we need to talk.”

  Lucy sighed with relief. “It took you long enough,” she snapped, tossing her pretty blonde hair. She paid no attention to the gun I was still holding.

  “Sorry,” Jameson said, stepping slowly into the room, his hands still up. He glanced curiously at first Wyatt and then Clay, but all he said was, “The first two gas stations I tried were out.”

  “Out of what?” I asked. My hands seemed to want to move the gun toward Jameson, the moving threat, but I forced myself to keep it pointed at Lucy.

  Jameson’s lips quirked up in a wry smile. “Ice, believe it or not. I was making a run for ice before our guests arrive.”

  A snort burst through my lips. It was
so ridiculous it had to be true. “Please move away from him,” I said to Jameson, who had sidled closer to Wyatt. “I want him to heal.”

  “Oh.” Jameson looked down at Wyatt for a moment, then shrugged and moved closer to Lucy and me. It was a huge room; there was still plenty of space.

  Jameson looked between us. “So I see you two have met,” he said cautiously.

  “Yes, and I’m ready for you to kill her now,” Lucy said imperiously. “At first I thought she might be of use to us, but she’s more trouble than she’s worth.”

  I glared at her. “Um, hello? I have the gun.”

  She scoffed. Now that her guy was here to back her up, her confidence had returned. “Please. I doubt you even know how to use it.”

  I raised the Beretta, flicked off the safety, and sent one bullet straight into the forehead of the poor stone bust behind the bronze railing.

  Both Jameson and Lucy jumped at the sound, and I made a mental note to thank Jesse for forcing me to the stupid range all those times. It might have been my imagination, but in my peripheral vision I thought I saw Wyatt stir. Maybe it was just wishful thinking.

  “Scarlett, what the hell?” Jameson burst out. “What are you doing?”

  “What am I doing?” I said incredulously. “You’re killing people! You literally came here tonight to kill people!” He tried to answer, but I wasn’t finished. “You’ve been lying to me this whole time, and for what?” I gestured to Lucy. “For them? For their fucked up genocide plan? You and me, we could have—” My voice broke then, and I stopped talking before I started crying in earnest. Lucy was smirking at me, but she knew better than to say anything at that moment, while I had the gun.

  There was no chance for Jameson and me, not anymore. I knew that, but it still pissed me off that he’d thrown us away. Now the best-case scenario was me getting him out of the country alive, and that would require a hell of a lot of luck.