Once on the other side of the car, I landed silently in the plume of garlic smell trailing her.
Just as she was about to touch the doorknob, I grabbed one of her shoulders and spun her around.
Her aura lit in horror.
I used only enough hypnotism to keep her paralyzed, but I show ed my fangs. I wanted her to understand the trouble she was in.
Her eyes locked on mine and opened wide. There was nothing between her thoughts and me but terror.
Her face drained of color. And I hadn’t gotten around to tapping a vein.
The garlic odor came from her coat, the residue of the garlic that had splashed against her when the vaccination gun broke. I unbuttoned the coat and slipped it off her shoulders. She wore a black T-shirt.
In my mind’s eye, I saw the charred remains of Lemuel and Shantayla the intern. I felt the heft of Wendy’s body when I carried her out of the burning mortuary. The sorrow of her death tore at me with morbid claws.
I squeezed the woman’s arms. My talons dimpled her skin. I wanted her to feel pain, but I didn’t want to draw blood. Yet.
I stared into the deep, empty wells of her pupils. She’d have no choice but to tell me the truth.
“Who are you working for?”
The skin around her eyes gathered. Her lower lip trembled.
Her resistance was strong but would break.
I asked her again.
Her eyelids quivered. Her mouth parted.
But she said nothing.
I increased the power of my hypnosis.
“Who are you working for?”
She squirmed.
“Is it Bourbon? Paxton?”
She clenched her eyes shut. “I can’t tell you.”
My kundalini noir caught. Can’t tell me?
Suddenly bewildered, I hesitated. She had no choice. Since when could a human resist hypnosis?
I squeezed my talons into her arms. “Open your eyes.”
Her muscles rippled in a spasm of agony. Her eyes opened, void of everything but naked fear.
I gazed deep and upped the power.
She still wouldn’t talk. Someone must have put a subconscious block in her mind.
But who? Another vampire?
I had to break through that block.
How?
Through more pain. Like the pain Wendy suffered in her final moments.
I pulled the woman toward me.
I opened my mouth to completely expose my fangs and add to the dread of my bite.
I couldn’t deny the pleasure rising through me, the bloodlust that lives hidden inside each vampire. We cast no shadow on the outside, but the inner shadow—the black stain of our damnation—points to the void in our soul.
Every whimper from the woman stoked a satanic muse imploring me to find pain, harvest misery, make music of her suffering.
I inched close to a dangerous fault. Was I causing this torment in order to get information or was this about vengeance?
Her eyes begged me to stop.
STOP.
The word reverberated in my mind as if Wendy had said it.
A wave of shame pulsed through my kundalini noir. I’d gone too far. I had let hatred and the lust for revenge take hold of my…
Heart.
Though I had no heart, only a dead muscle in my chest, there remained a space, a yearning for a better Felix to remain good and honest and virtuous.
Me.
Virtuous.
I let the woman go.
She sagged to the floor like her bones had turned to jelly. She fell to her side, her complexion anemic with shock, her arms drawn to her chest. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She sobbed and sank against the concrete floor.
But I felt no pity. I’d dirtied myself enough with this foul business, and if she wanted to talk, that was up to her. I retreated behind a moat of disgust that grew wider and deeper with every second.
But the moat disappeared when she said:
“Paxton.”
CHAPTER 54
The name lanced me. “What did you say?”
She repeated, “Paxton.”
My frustration fused into anticipation. “Is he here? In Charleston?”
She whispered, “Yes.”
“Where?”
The woman raised her face, her eyes bloodshot and sunken in wet red depressions, her mouth distorted, sweat gathering in the hollows of her neck. Every feature of her face showed the agony of fear and despair.
“Tell me,” I shouted, the hatred returning like a fever.
The bay door began to rattle.
Startled, I whirled around, the Webley out, my finger on the trigger.
The front door opened and I turned around again. Calhoun came in. His red-and-orange aura swirled in alarm. He had changed from his costume to a dark business suit.
Three werewolves entered with him, among them Dan, his bodyguard. Hairy. Brutish. Brandishing claws. Large pistol carried at the ready.
The bay door kept rattling open. Five more weres ducked inside. More claws. More guns.
They circled around me.
Though I was outnumbered, I saw myself huge, powerful, eager to shed more blood. My talons itched for the chance to rip flesh. I glanced to the ceiling. It was of simple prefab metal construction. Easy to break through. I’d attack the werewolves at thunderbolt speed, cause as much damage as possible, and escape through the roof.
Their auras roiled in excitement.
This was going to be a very ugly fight.
Calhoun didn’t appear to recognize the woman or give an indication that he cared about her. He raised a hand and walked between his werewolves and me. “Easy, Felix. We’re here to help.”
“How did you find me?”
“My boys followed the Pontiac.”
Calhoun motioned to his eyes, indicating that I put my contacts back in.
When I did, he mumbled, “Thanks.”
He turned his attention to the woman. “Is she one of the assassins?”
“Yeah. She told me she works for Julius Paxton.”
Calhoun stepped close to her. “What else did she say?”
“Nothing. He put a psychic block on her subconscious.”
Calhoun yanked her hair. “You ruined my party.”
“She’s gone through enough.” I started for him.
Calhoun’s weres aimed their guns. I stopped and raised my hands, my revolver dangling from my fingers.
“Give me time. I’ll get her to talk.”
“She answers to me.” Calhoun let go of her hair and wiped his hand on his coat. “I want to know how she got into the costume ball. She couldn’t have done it without help from a were. Who? Bourbon?”
A car halted outside the open bay door. A Maserati. The driver’s window scrolled down. Angela peered out, looking distraught, haggard.
Calhoun said to me, “Angela will take you back to the hotel.”
“I’m not ready to leave.” I pointed to the woman. “She’s got information I need.”
“Felix,” Calhoun hissed, “go. I’ll take care of her.”
His were goons snarled a collective threat.
The woman started to sob.
He guided me to the open bay door.
“We’ll tell you what she says.” Calhoun’s nose darkened and his fangs started to show. “Don’t concern yourself anymore.”
The woman’s sobs deepened.
The bay door started to rattle close. The woman let out a long mournful wail. The bay door shut and muffled her cry.
I got into the Maserati.
The woman had tried to kill me, she wouldn’t talk about Paxton, I had every reason to want her to suffer. But I didn’t. “What’s going to happen to her?”
Angela glanced back to the bay door with a bit of sympathy. “She knows about werewolves and the supernatural world. What are your rules?”
“Since she’s human, I’d probably have to kill her to protect the Great Secret.”
“P
robably?”
I didn’t want to argue. I didn’t want to talk. I just wanted to get away. The night had already caused me to do many brutal things.
We drove to the end of the warehouses and turned for the gate. A security guard waved us through. Were.
How could the woman have passed through the gate without security’s knowledge?
Who did the guards work for? Calhoun or Bourbon?
I thought about the vampire who had attacked us on Folly Island with the bat-wing outfit. He wasn’t Paxton. So who was he? How did Paxton manage to put the note on Angela’s windshield so soon after blowing up the mortuary?
I rubbed the Webley as if it were a talisman that could answer my questions and protect me from danger.
We were back on East Bay Street, going south, before Angela broke the silence. “When are you going after Paxton?”
“As soon as I find out where he is. I need to find a way to flush him out of his spider hole.”
“And then?”
“Finish business I thought was settled years ago.”
I’d escaped Paxton’s trap. Again.
It was my turn to be the hunter.
CHAPTER 55
Angela halted her Maserati in front of the Washington Arms. I expected her to wish me luck, to kiss me, but she didn’t.
“What’s the problem?”
Angela kept her gaze on the ship lights in the harbor. “There’s all this trouble around me and I’m doing nothing but sitting and watching.” Her voice softened with regret. “I could have protected you at the party.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I have to do something to stop the war.” She spoke in a whisper, as if thinking aloud.
I asked, “How?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.” She put the Maserati in drive. “I have to go.”
I started to get out when she grasped my hand. Her eyes shone like molten copper in the darkness of the car’s interior. “Be careful, Felix.”
“You, too.” I thought about giving her a kiss until she let go of my hand.
I shut the door and watched her drive off, hoping that nothing happened to her. I’d already lost Wendy.
Once in my hotel room, I shed the waiter outfit, showered, and changed into my clothes. Then I called King Gullah.
A woman answered.
I introduced myself.
She said, “It’s late. The King is indisposed.”
“Then undispose him,” I replied.
“I’ll pass the message along.” She hung up.
So much for my vampiric authority.
The last twelve hours had been all go, go, go. Fatigue crept in like a fog, dulling my alertness. I needed a meal and I needed to rest.
Rest, hell. I needed a good sleep. In a coffin, but the bed would have to do.
But I wasn’t satisfied with the security arrangements. Last time I’d nodded off, Angela had snuck in here. Good thing she was on my side.
I locked the doors and lodged chairs under the doorknobs. Not sophisticated, but the racket of someone breaking in should alert me.
My phone vibrated.
It was Gullah’s woman. “Where are you?”
I told her.
“The King will see you there tomorrow.” She hung up before I had the chance to ask what time.
Someone giggled in the room next door. I put my ear to the wall. A woman teased, talking dirty. A mousy-voiced man replied.
The time was a quarter to three in the morning. I admired her dedication if she was willing to attend to such an early sprouting of morning wood.
An idea lit in my mind. I could hide in their room.
I went to my balcony and studied the one next door. One side of their French doors was cracked open and the sounds of their bed talk drifted out.
I removed my contacts. The landscape was dotted with dozens of red auras from the little animals prowling the grounds.
With my Webley safely tucked inside my waistband, I climbed the railing of my balcony and leaped for their side. I landed as delicately as a mosquito.
The woman muffled a squeal. The man grunted.
I parted the curtain that billowed between the doors.
Two red auras mashed together on the mattress. Fireworks of excitement sizzled through the glowing penumbras. The woman and man, naked and going at it.
When I was a new vampire, I would’ve hesitated at disturbing them. Now bothering them for blood was the same as taking eggs from under a hen. God made me a vampire. I drink blood. God made humans. They have blood. Besides, hypnosis and the amnesia enzymes allow my victims to keep their dignity.
I levitated and glided into the room.
“C’mon. C’mon,” the man grunted.
“Sorry to disturb the barn dance,” I said. “But I need to crash here.”
The man looked at me. His aura exploded. He sat up fast and rolled off the bed.
The woman lifted her face from the pillow. The penumbra of her aura brightened in concern. “What’s the matter? What’s going on?”
Her head swiveled to me, her eyes wide as king-size marbles. I zapped her hard, enough to keep her quiet for a few moments.
Lover Boy squirmed on his back. He reminded me of a scrawny hairless cat. Tendrils of fright whipped from his aura in knots of writhing sparks.
I fanged him first, then her. I gave them plenty of amnesia and pleasure enzymes, enough that they’d have trouble remembering what they’d started, much less that I had visited. The gaps in their memory would be a pleasant hum. I slathered on the healing enzymes so that when they woke up, they couldn’t find my fang marks with a magnifying glass.
I left Lover Boy on the floor. Let him think he’d fallen off the bed in the passion of the moment.
I locked all the doors and closed the curtains. When morning arrived, I didn’t want to let in one tiny crack of sunlight.
I got undressed and crawled into bed with the woman, to feed and to nod off. Her naked body warmed me like a giant hot water bottle. I laid the Webley beside me, just in case.
At ten in the morning I woke up. The woman rested her head on my shoulder. She murmured softly. Lover Boy snored on the floor.
Tonight, Le Cercle de Sang et Crocs. I could feel the hands of a clock scraping inside of me. I was almost out of time. Still no Paxton. Still no resolution between Bourbon and Calhoun.
I climbed out of bed, wary of what the day would bring, in need of a shave and coffee. I got dressed and decided that since it was daylight and my makeup needed a touch-up, I’d return to my room via the hall.
My room door wouldn’t open. Of course, I’d left a chair wedged under the knob. I wiggled the door back and forth until the chair clattered to the floor.
No one had entered but me.
Then I sniffed.
A cadaver odor.
Faint.
Plus dried roses.
Vampire. But it wasn’t me.
My talons zipped from under my fingertips. I clasped my revolver. The silver bullets waited for their deadly call to action.
What did my sixth sense detect?
My closet door was open. I’d left it closed. My knapsack was on the floor, surrounded by its spilled contents.
I entered the room, stood to one side, and carefully shut the door.
I kept silent and listened. Water ran through a faucet in a distant room. Someone changed channels.
But my room was quiet. I was alone.
The French doors to the balcony were closed, as I’d left them. But the curtain rod at the top of one of the doors was broken and the curtain hung crooked.
I peeked outside through the doors. I was certain the intruder had come through the balcony. A vampire could levitate and pull himself up on the trellises.
What would account for the broken curtain rod? One side looked like it had been wrenched from the door.
The end of the curtain rod was shaped like an arrowhead and something small and black was snagged on one of the
barbs. I pulled the object free. A piece of stiff black fabric the size of my thumbnail. Nylon? Kevlar? The wood at the top of the door was marred with scratches.
I tried to imagine something that high scraping against the door and snagging the curtain rod.
Like what?
The mechanical bat wings of the vampire who had attacked Angela and me. Paxton’s assistant? The wings had caught the curtain rod, torn them loose, and left this piece behind. Clumsy vampire, he might want to rethink his trade as an assassin.
He’d probably come to finish me off with another silver-edged knife. I stashed the black material in my pocket in case I’d need it as evidence.
I gathered my knapsack and contents from the floor and set them on the desk. I inventoried my belongings and stuffed them back in the knapsack. The violation of the break-in made everything I touched seem dirty and tainted. Nothing was missing, fortunately. No clue as to what Bat Wing had been looking for.
I sat and let my thoughts settle into a pile of spaghetti. Loose facts, conjectures, and lies twisted over one another in an endless, tangled mess.
A despondent mood crept over me. What could I have done to save Wendy? Maybe if I hadn’t blinded myself with pride and had left Charleston at the beginning, she might still be alive.
I still had her keys. I pulled them from my pocket and placed them on the desk. I’d been so busy that I hadn’t bothered to examine them even as I had changed clothes. What for? She was dead and all her property burned to cinders.
I studied each key. There was the ignition key to her Ford, several worn brass house keys, a steel Master Lock key, a roach clip (used), and the key fob, a pistachio-size orange quartz with a gold fitting that attached to the key ring. A band of gold circled the middle of the crystal. I hadn’t noticed the capsule before when Wendy had used these keys.
I held the crystal to the light and saw a dark object inside the translucent capsule.
This capsule couldn’t hold much. A couple of aspirins. Maybe enough hashish for one bowl.
If this crystal was supernatural in origin, why didn’t I detect it with the tuning-fork locator when Gullah and I sanitized Wendy’s house? Apparently, since we were looking for the Araneum’s property, this didn’t belong to them.
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