by TA Moore
Took had lived there for over a year. Before that he’d spent a decade in Philadelphia, where they’d purged the mosaics but embraced the harsh, defensive lines of crenellated parapets and arrow-slit windows. He should be used to it by now, but sometimes he missed the low, easy sprawl of the towns out west, where he’d grown up… where the buildings didn’t need to stake the sky.
“She wanted to speak to you,” SSA West Crane said. The dim ghost of his reflection in the long, dark windows signed something and sat back in the big leather chair. “I didn’t expect her to turn up at dawn.”
“I think she turned up at midnight,” Took said. “I’m not used to being nocturnal yet.”
“Does it matter?” West asked in that voice, the one that was carefully uninflected to give the impression the question was free of weight when it wasn’t at all. Took knew the voice. He used to be the one to use it. Now people used it on him. “So someone knows your address. What’s wrong with that? Do you think she might tell someone else? That someone will find you that you don’t want to find you?”
Yes.
Of course he did, Took thought bitterly. He bounced from hotel room to randomly chosen parking lot because he was afraid that the vampire who’d snatched him would track him down again. Sometimes he woke up, curled into the perimeter of that fucking box, and he was too scared to straighten himself out in case his feet hit cold metal and he breathed in the stench of his own body as it rotted.
In case his escape had been a dream. Or a trick.
“It sounds stupid when you say it,” Took drawled as he turned around. He shrugged under West’s curious stare. “I guess secrecy gets to be a habit, and after everything that happened after I… got back, it’s been nice to leave the house without having to wade through the press.”
West chuckled and took his glasses off. Without the heavy, square frames, the SSA’s face looked younger, his eyes a ridiculous shade of blue. West was more pleasantly nondescript than handsome, but he had beautiful eyes. There had been a time when Took spent a fair amount of time appreciating those eyes.
“I doubt that will be a problem,” West joked with a crooked smile. “No offense, Took, but you’re old news.”
Took tried to pin down the flicker of nostalgic attraction that fluttered in his gut, hold on to it, but it faded like a ghost. Once upon a time, he’d been pretty sure he could fall in love with West, or close enough to make him the better choice. Now he didn’t know. They’d tried after Took got back, but…. Well, nobody wanted something that broken. Took couldn’t hold that against West.
“Maybe not once people find out I’m working for the Waring parents,” he said. “A VINE agent who wants to overturn one of VINE’s big profile cases? That’s newsworthy.”
West surrendered to that point. “I won’t give anyone else your address, then.” He pointed at the chair opposite with the leg of his glasses. “Sit. What have you found out about the Waring case?”
“Nothing solid.” Took walked over to the chair, but he leaned on the back of it instead of sitting down. “Nothing you can take to The Salt, just some dropped threads and gaps.”
The spark of satisfaction made West’s pretty eyes look mean for a second. “Things the original investigation missed?”
“Just because they didn’t follow up on it, doesn’t mean they should have,” Took pointed out. “Maybe what they missed wasn’t relevant. I don’t know yet.”
He did, but it was gut instinct, an itch he knew he was about to scratch, and that wasn’t something you could present to The Salt.
West hissed in disappointment. “If you can prove the Biters didn’t do due diligence on this,” he said, “it would be very useful for me. Liam Waring still has influence. If he throws his weight behind me, certain obstacles could be removed.”
“Like?”
West grimaced and sat back. He slid his glasses back on and the man Took had sort of thought he could love vanished behind the plastic-and-glass mask. “You know how hard it is for a breathing man to rise beyond where I am in VINE. The old guard… well, immortality causes a certain stratification of hierarchy. Sometimes it needs to be shaken up, and if the Waring case was a clusterfuck, well, there’s plenty of senior agents who bet their career on the Biters’ reputations. It wouldn’t hurt to have the redeemed, relieved father speak out in my favor for one of those spots.”
It was just politics, Took reminded himself, nothing personal. That didn’t make him feel any better about it.
“I’m a Biter,” he pointed out.
“You’re the token human,” West shot the old jibe on autopilot. His gaze cut down to Took’s mouth and then away quickly as he corrected himself. “Or you were the token human.”
There was a bitter edge to that acknowledgment. Took understood that. He could taste the old sour resentment in the back of his throat over the idea that he hadn’t been a Biter. It might be hypocritical, since he hadn’t wanted to join the division, but he had still earned his place.
Like it or not, they’d been the closest thing he had to a family.
But that was an old fight. It tracked from one side of their relationship to the other, worn deep from repetition, and Took didn’t particularly want to have it again. He pushed himself up off the chair and straightened his shoulders.
“There’s no sign of any wrongdoing or corruption,” he said. “If something was missed, then it was by mistake, not from malice. I’m not interested in pinning blame on anyone.”
“I don’t need blame,” West said. He smiled and spread his hands out in front of him. “Just an opportunity. If this isn’t it, there’ll be another. I’d never expect you to manufacture any evidence, Took. You know that. If there’s anyone here on your side, it’s me. Still.”
The reminder made Took bite the inside of his cheek. He owed West, and not just because he’d been a piss-poor boyfriend before they broke up. It was West who’d sorted him out sanctuary here when the press attention in Philly had nearly driven him to distraction, and without his influence behind the scenes to counteract the psych reports, VINE would have dismissed Took months ago.
Gratitude was the least Took owed him. It wasn’t West’s fault that obligation felt like a stranglehold to Took. His family had wielded it like a weapon, and the echoes of it were still sharp as they battered against his brain.
“Be grateful for the roof over your head.”
“You should appreciate the food we put in your stomach.”
“If I was you, I’d be thankful that only broke your wrist.”
“Just do as you’re told, boy. You owe us that.”
Took slammed the lid down on that—fuck the past—and clenched his jaw on the urge to be ungrateful. Not everyone was like his family. People really did deserve his thanks and didn’t just expect them.
“I’ve just got threads,” Took said. “Until I pull them, I don’t know what’s on the end… but I don’t think any of this had to do with the Hunters.”
For a heartbeat West looked surprised, then satisfied. “If you’re right, Took,” he said, “that’s all the opportunity I’ll need.”
He got up from behind the desk and limped over to the door. The halt to his step caught Took off guard. Anything that changed while he was… gone… still did, as though his brain couldn’t quite believe he’d missed so much.
“Keep me updated,” West said as he pulled the door open and braced it. “Anything, no matter how small it seems. I might be able to use it to help Liam delay the execution. And Took. Where you live is already common knowledge in VINE. So if someone wanted to find out where you were?”
Tension caught at the back of Took’s neck like a wire hooked into his spine. He clenched his jaw against the extension of his fangs in response to what his brain saw as a threat.
“He already does,” West said. “And he’s already here.”
Of course he was. Took supposed it would be disingenuous to pretend he was surprised. He’d tossed a mystery and a challenge into Madoc
’s lap.
“And?”
“He wants to talk to you,” West said. “I’ve put him off for now, to give you a chance to prepare yourself, but technically he’s still your SSA. Unless you want to make that transfer request.”
A year ago Took had needed that buffer. It wasn’t entirely fair to West that it pissed him off now. Of course, Took thought dryly, when had he ever been entirely fair to West?
“He’s a dhampir, not Medusa. I won’t turn to stone just from looking at him.”
“Are you having doubts?” West asked as he let the door close and sealed the room again. He sounded almost hopeful. It was hard to blame him. If Took was right, then being on his side was dangerous. “I know you think Madoc had reason to kidnap you—and I can’t argue that he’d have liked to fuck you, he didn’t bother to hide that—but just because he was one of the people that knew your schedule doesn’t mean he did it. He knows he’s not a cardinal anymore. He can’t just take what he wants.”
The hole in the center of Took’s memory tried to spackle itself over with that theory. It wanted to accept it, to set the imagined events in stone as a memory. Took didn’t know why he balked at it. This was his theory, his gut-check hunch. He’d accepted the Waring case because of that itch in his brain. Why couldn’t he commit to Madoc’s guilt?
He tried—again—to remember the woozy, blood-dehydrated days in the hospital after his rescue. Something had convinced him that Madoc could be his monster, but the line of thought was lost in a tangle of delusion and denial. He’d thought he was still alive, that it had been days—at a push, weeks—since he’d been taken. Exactly what triggered his suspicion of Madoc was lost in that jumble. All he could pinpoint was the moment when he’d opened his eyes and stared at the cracked old ceiling of his hospital room with an entire, logical case against Madoc nested in his brain.
It had made sense then. He supposed, on some level, it still did—not enough to convince him, but enough to make it hard to dismiss.
“Madoc always hated the word can’t,” he said dryly. “But like you said, he’s still my SSA. If he wants to see me, I don’t have a choice. Tell him he knows where to find me.”
“Does he?” West asked, an edge to his voice.
Took reached past West to pull the door open. “I don’t know,” he said. “If he doesn’t, I guess you could always give him my address.”
Chapter Six
SIX GENERATIONS of Warings were buried in the Charleston dirt. On the worn gray headstones, fenced into their own plot, the ashes of their hearts were displayed in sealed lead urns sunk in under the names of the dead. The same slogan was carved into all the stones, just visible under the family name.
Life for the Living
“We already knew they were a family of bigots,” Lawrence said. She squinted as though the moonlight bothered her eyes. It was the Kiss at work, the last defense of her soul as it lost the fight to keep her human. “What new information are we going to find here?”
“Nothing,” Madoc said. He crouched down in front of the graves, his weight balanced on the balls of his feet. “It’s just courtesy to visit the family first, isn’t it?”
Lawrence snorted as though he’d said something odd, and stepped back. She stuck her hands in the pockets of her trousers and turned to survey the graveyard while she waited for him.
The stubs of two older stones on Debbie Waring’s grave had been ground down level with the dirt. When she’d been put in the dirt, Life for the Living had been a posthumously defiant statement of support for breathing rights in a city where the rule of the undead had seemed immutable. She had, based on the history the Warings boasted, campaigned for the right of humans to take public office and had offered up her family home as a way station for Hunters.
Until recently that last had been mostly dismissed as family folklore, a statement of support for Hunters that was safely defanged by time… until Dominic’s arrest. Seven slaughtered families in a staggered path that led from Charleston to San Antonio and a family legacy that tied to the Hunters made a tidy story.
Too tidy maybe?
“It would have been convenient if you’d not been so fervent about death, ma’am,” Madoc murmured to the dead woman as he straightened back up. “Some answers would be useful around now.”
Lawrence watched him out of the corner of her eye. Curiosity and a reluctance to actually ask warred on her face.
“Did you think there was a chance she might answer,” she half joked, half asked as Madoc turned away and headed down the overgrown alleys between less well-tended graves. Spanish moss dangled from the upraised arms of an angel like a spooled-out soul, gray and unnerving in the moonlight. Lawrence fell in next to him. “That would be handy, if the dead could talk.”
He glanced at her and raised an eyebrow. It took her a second to snort dismissively as she caught the mistake.
“Not like you,” she said. “You know what I mean. The real, still dead.”
Madoc reached absently for his medal, the silver cold under his fingers. He twisted it on the chain.
He’d been born dead—blue instead of white and cold despite the coat of blood. His mother had bruised air into him and chafed him warm with handfuls of bloody straw, desperate for something to survive the byre she’d hidden in. She’d been a surgeon’s daughter, and she’d cleaned up enough pints of blood from the floor to know when too much had been lost. The job had been only half-done when she died.
Death had been his twin, his ally, and a loyal companion who never explained why they jilted him at that last smoky altar. It seemed odd that Debbie Waring’s death was more “real” than his.
“If I wanted to talk to the dead, I wouldn’t do it at their graveside,” he said. “That would be like trying to interrogate someone by yelling at an empty suit.”
Lawrence hesitated and nearly tripped over the step she hadn’t quite finished. “But you could?” she asked. Her voice was suspicious. Took had always taken Madoc at his word, but Lawrence wasn’t so sure of him. “Why don’t we do it, then? If we can interrogate the dead, the spirit of the victim, that would make our jobs a lot easier.”
Madoc tucked his medal back under his collar. It felt colder than it should, but that was just imagination. “Only once in history has magic lived up to its promise,” he said. “The consultation of spirits has never led to a murderer’s arrest, Lawrence, and it’s more likely to generate a tragedy. Don’t trust the dead.”
It was her turn to expectantly raise her eyebrow at him as she waited.
“Present company excepted,” she suggested eventually. The dull, background drone of mosquitoes picked up as they walked along the long, narrow moat that symbolically guarded the church from the undead. Lawrence swatted one off her neck, cursed, and slapped her arm to smear one against her skin. They didn’t bother Madoc. Ichor didn’t smell like food to them.
He flicked one of the bugs off her shoulder. “Never trust a predator when you’re prey,” he said. “Hunger erodes good intentions.”
Lawrence scratched her shoulder with blunt, nude-pink nails. “I won’t be prey much longer. Can I trust you then?”
For a moment Madoc considered the truth. Lawrence would always be prey to someone, because no matter how long she lived or how dangerous she was, there’d always be someone older and meaner. Even Madoc, old and mean enough to get by, bent the neck to the Salted Boyars. If Tepes ever found his way across the wide, barren sea, then Madoc would bend the knee. Again.
“Of course,” he lied instead. The last thing he wanted to see when he looked at Lawrence was reality. He wanted to see the reflection of the better world she believed in. That idealism was part of why he’d picked her for the team, and he wanted her to keep it, as much of it as was safe. He abruptly changed the subject back to the case. “I want you to get in touch with Pally and dig into the Warings’ background. Between the family legacy and Liam Waring’s politics, we assumed extremist connections somewhere. However, once we caught Dom red-h
anded—and everything else—the court decided we didn’t need to chase it down and muddy the waters. Focus on the weeks after Annabelle’s disappearance. If she and Dom were somehow contacted, then maybe what happened to her was the hook someone used to bait him.”
There was already a welt on Lawrence’s shoulder. She scratched it again as she frowned. “That’s just motive,” she said. “It doesn’t change what he did. All those people, Madoc, he still killed them.”
“Maybe not alone.”
“Where are you going?”
Madoc turned slightly and gestured toward the east at the surrounding streets. “The Aron family lived three blocks from here. They were murdered in the middle of dinner, their throats cut as they ate a chicken Kiev, and left there until Mr. Aron’s law firm came to see what had happened to him.”
Lawrence narrowed her eyes as she sifted through the files in her head. “It wasn’t one of the cases VINE liked Waring for?”
“It was considered,” he said. “But the Arons were breathing, until they weren’t. All of Warings’ other victims included at least one vampire. But… if we’re looking for connections VINE might have missed, that’s the one that stands out locally.”
“So you do believe Took?” Lawrence asked. “You think we made a mistake?”
Her version of the question lacked the smug edge that West Crane had given it. It still made Madoc want to show fang, just from the reminder. He’d never liked West, but he’d always assumed it was because West had what Madoc wanted. Now neither of them did, and West was still a smug little bastard.
“We’ll see,” Madoc said. “Take the car. I’ll make my own way.”
Lawrence hesitated briefly as she rocked back on her heels. “I’d like to see him work sometime,” she said stiffly. “Took. If he’s that good, maybe I could learn something.”