I snapped back to myself and looked at Lilith’s wide, terrified eyes. She’d thought she was being made into a vampire. If that was true of the others, it explained the swell of hope I’d felt in their last moments, before the bitter disappointment and terrible fear.
It was a clue. But it was too little for the enormous, pain-in-the-ass task that would be dealing with this corpse.
If I drove the body to the Factory right now, I risked being seen or pulled over. Being caught red-handed with a corpse would be a one-way ticket to prison. I could dump her here and let the cops sort it out. There was no way my human strength was enough to haul it all the way across Gas Works Park and into Lake Union, and with nothing to weigh it down, it’d be found in a few days even if I could.
“Double fuck.” I hissed the words into the air, but no one was around to hear them.
Sean was, of course, long gone and zero help. Cazimir was god only knew where, probably guzzling more vampire blood despite his recent near-death experience. I was alone and at my limit. I was ready to set my whole damn car on fire and move somewhere else just to be done with this mess.
I took a breath and got out of the car. Walking around to the passenger side, I yanked the body out. She landed with a thump on the pavement, a lifeless sack of flesh and bone.
If I’d still been a vampire, leaving her body in the open would be a crime. But I wasn’t. Her killer probably wasn’t far. If they were smart, they’d come back and deal with the corpse. If not, well, it wasn’t my problem.
I stared down at Lilith, her bullring glittering in the light. I felt sorry for her. She’d been a bitch to me, but that wasn’t a crime punishable by death. She’d wanted the same thing I wanted: eternity, fangs, and immortal power. Someone had killed her here and left her in my car as… what? A warning? A message? A gift? The last two bodies had been people who’d done me wrong, after all. The guy in my shower had tried to stake me and this girl had flung insults at me. Maybe the whole “cat bringing its human dead mice” analogy was more apt than I’d realized.
Somehow, that was worse. If these murders were some kind of threat meant to terrorize me for being human again, it was weird and scary. If these deaths were intended as presents, that raised the level of “fucked up” by several degrees.
I heard rustling in the trees and turned in time to spot a white face, looking back at me with an unreadable expression. My heart caught in my throat. And then half a breath later, the face was gone. But I’d seen her. I’d recognized her.
It was Fiona.
My blood froze. She stepped out of the trees.
Our eyes locked. For a moment, we just stared at each other, hatred crackling between us like electricity. Her makeup was smudged and ruined around her eyes, streaks of black hitting her cheeks. Perhaps Lilith had tried to claw Fiona’s eyes out while she’d been killed and the vision had cut out too soon for me to see it. I sure as hell hoped so.
I put my hand inside my purse and squeezed my Taser. Wind seemed to roar in my ears. I thought of the poor dead girl and clenched my free fist.
And then in a blur, Fiona flew forward. She smacked into me with the force of a locomotive. I hit the ground hard. My lungs deflated, pushing the air out. I gasped, trying to get oxygen. I managed to inhale with a wheeze. Fiona jumped on top of me, hissing and spitting. Her mouth was so close to my neck I could feel her cool breath. Her fangs scraped against my flesh.
I fumbled with the Taser while trying to push her off me and jam it into her skin at the same time. Sharp pain exploded in my neck as her fangs tore my skin open.
I shoved the Taser against the skin of her neck. It crackled, and smoke rose from her flesh. Vampire skin burns more easily than human skin. The electricity jolted through her and I was able to push out from beneath her when she reeled back in shock. I raced around my car, putting it between us, holding the Taser so hard my knuckles turned white.
Fiona hissed and touched her neck, where an angry red-and-black burn had appeared. It would heal fast enough. My hand went to my own wound. It would heal, too, but I loathed having a mark there from someone I despised.
“You fucking bitch!” she screamed at me. “You deserve to have your head ripped off your shoulders and held up on a pike as a warning.”
“You’re the one murdering innocent people!” My voice came out strained and ragged. My lungs hurt and I was still gasping for air.
Fiona’s eyes swept to the body before returning to me. She narrowed them, and if her gaze had been a laser beam, I’d have been cut in half. She looked at something over my shoulder and then hissed at me. I braced myself for her to pounce. But instead, she spoke, hissing and spitting the words like a curse. “Your blood treason killed my sire, you filthy bitch, so make no mistake. I’m going to rip your throat out of your neck and make sure you suffer as you bleed out.” With a last glance at something—or someone—behind me, she spun on her heel and disappeared into the trees.
I stood still for a moment, trying to catch my breath, blood thrumming in my ears. I was afraid to move until I could be sure Fiona wasn’t coming back.
After a long, terrifying moment, I finally dared to turn around. I saw nothing back where Fiona had been staring. The fact that something had scared her off should probably have been a relief, but there was no time to relax. I was standing yards away from a dead body. It wasn’t a good time to be caught by a dog walker. I needed to get out of there.
I shivered as I gave Lilith’s body one final look. Her face was flat and dead. I swallowed. For nearly a century, I’d believed I’d never become that. I’d been undead and could not die. I was savvy enough not to be killed. I would live forever.
Now the specter of death hung over me, a Sword of Damocles dangling over my head.
Inside my car, I examined my wound in my sun visor’s mirror. There was an angry red mark, but she’d only bitten me to drink blood. If she’d torn a hunk of flesh out of my throat, I’d be in the middle of bleeding to death. As it was, the vampire saliva had already closed the wound, and the mark would heal relatively quickly. It would still take a day or two for my mortal flesh to heal, though. It wasn’t instantaneous. The mark would be there, along with the bruise that was sure to follow.
I closed the visor’s mirror and drove quickly away.
I headed home on autopilot, pain and the aftereffects of adrenaline making me shaky and my head fuzzy. I was almost to my place when I realized I should go to the Factory instead. I really, really didn’t want to. But it was either that or risk Fiona coming to attack me. She knew where I lived, and the body in my shower proved she had no trouble getting inside. I turned right on Pike to head down to Pioneer Square.
Chapter 14
I triple-checked my car, making sure it was locked. Not that locks would keep Fiona from leaving another body inside, but I could pretend.
The front door of the Factory was closed, but a mortal guy opened it as soon as I knocked. He was dark-skinned and wore a black t-shirt and dark jeans. He held a plastic cup full of something that smelled like beer. I blinked and double-checked that I’d come to the right place, and not a frat house by mistake.
He looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to state my reason for being there. He eyed the wound in my neck but was polite enough not to bring it up. I supposed to a guy who hung out here, fang marks weren’t all that noteworthy.
“What’s the password?” he asked.
I stared blankly at him. He waited, sipping from his red plastic cup. I sighed. “The password is if you don’t let me in, I’ll call Lark and make your life miserable.”
I couldn’t really do that. Lark wasn’t going to do anything on my command. Hell, for all I knew, this guy was closer to Lark than I was.
He smiled. He had a friendly smile. “I was just joking, you know. You don’t have to be so dramatic.” He moved out of the doorway and let me in.
“Where’s the security team?” I asked. Though I’d been here before without the doors guarded.
> “Busy, I guess,” he said. “Lark’s not here either, last I checked. The vampires have vanished.” He balled his hand in the air and then flung his fingers open in a mimed explosion. “Poof.”
That made the uneasiness do another round through my veins. “What do you mean, vanished?”
“Hell if I know. Believe it or not, they don’t give us a minute-by-minute agenda of their nightly plans. And if they did, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to read it.” He gave me a wry look. “You want a drink or something?”
“Sure,” I said. I figured one drink might take the edge off the pain, and since Lark was apparently MIA, I could at least ask these mortals about Fiona, and their fallen comrades.
“I’m Elliot,” he said and extended his free hand. I shook it.
“Henri.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, that Henri.”
“Shit.” He looked at me more closely, like maybe he could see some mark of immortality left on me, traces of it on my skin. If only. “Tough break.”
“No kidding.”
He led me across the newly installed hardwood floor to the ballroom, which was the big party room in the Factory. There was no disco-like dance rave happening tonight. The party had a somber air: there was no music and not a single person smiled. Someone had pulled couches into the middle of the dance floor. People gathered around a bar that was on wheels, talking in low tones, while others sat on the couches and played games with no real enthusiasm. I wondered if they already knew Lilith was dead.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Elliot started to mix me a gin and tonic, per my request. “Goodbye party,” Elliot said.
“Goodbye to who?” I hoped they already knew about the dead mortals. They’d be more willing to talk to me if I wasn’t the bearer of terrible news.
“Not who. Here,” Elliot said, gesturing to the room around us. He dropped his hand and pulled a lime wedge from a plastic cup on the bar, dropping it into the cup before handing me the drink.
“You’re leaving the Factory?” I asked, surprised.
“Humans are being evicted,” Elliot said. “If a vampire wants to live with a mortal, they gotta do it elsewhere. But most of us don’t have vampire…” He flicked his fingers, trying to come up with a word, and settled on, “companions.”
“We don’t know that,” a guy nearby snapped. He leaned on the bar, staring at a drink he wasn’t touching. I’d put him in his late thirties. His jeans rode low on his hips and his cheeks were sunken. He wore heavy Goth makeup and had dyed his hair bright red.
“God, Brad, don’t be stupid,” one of the young women with red hair said, leaning over to look in his direction. “Of course we’re being kicked out.”
“Wait and see. I won’t be,” Brad said. He tossed his cup into the nearby trash can. I could hear the ice and liquid slosh as they hit the bottom. He stomped out of the room.
“Why are you being evicted?” I asked Elliot, though from talking to friends of Thomas a few weeks ago, and Lark only nights before, I had some idea. It wouldn’t hurt to hear what the humans thought, though.
He shrugged. “After what happened with Aidan…” He trailed off and met my eyes meaningfully. He knew I’d been here. I didn’t know what part I played in the story of Aidan’s betrayal and Cazimir’s “Restoration,” but I was sure it was a significant one. “I guess Lark wants to make this a sanctuary for traveling immortals.”
“Not to be vulgar, but I sort of thought having willing humans around was part of the resort package,” I said. It felt weird to talk about drinking blood with humans. I’d talked about it with other vampires many times: how we found our victims or donors, the best way to find donors while traveling, the best methods of hunting evildoers and scumbags, how to make drinking blood from plastic bags tolerable, and all that jazz. But now it just felt awkward.
Elliot shrugged again and took a sip of his beer. “You’ve seen the place. Lark wants something different from what King Cazimir did.”
“It’s bullshit,” another of the young women said. She came up to the bar and poured more vodka into her cup. She was probably in her late twenties or early thirties. She reminded me of Aidan, but maybe it was the blue hair and the frustration that wafted off of her. “I’ve lived here for six years. Where am I supposed to go? What can I even put on a resume? ‘Vampire housekeeper’?” She scoffed and, drink refreshed, went back to the couch.
Elliot turned back to me, clearly tired of this discussion. No doubt it had been a hot topic of conversation all night. “I doubt you came here to party. So what’s up?”
“I came to talk to Lark, but I guess I can give you the bad news. Did you know a Lilith?”
The first young woman, the one with the red hair, asked, “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“She was killed tonight,” I told her frankly. No sense in dancing around it. Elliot, the girl, and several other people around us looked horrified at that pronouncement. It was a shitty way to inform her friends.
“Shit,” Elliot said. “That sucks. I’m sorry, Lisa.” The last part was said to the young woman.
Lisa’s youthful face contorted in despair. “Damn it. I knew that fucking message was too good to be true,” she said. “I told her there was no way, but she said she knew who it came from and she trusted them.”
“What message?” I asked. Grieving sucks, and when you’re a mortal who hangs out with other vampire groupies, all hoping to be turned and rolling the dice that you won’t end up dead from an overly excited hungry vampire, you probably grieve a lot. Didn’t make it easier. At the same time, having more information to provide to Lark would only make my case stronger and more likely to be taken seriously. Assuming she was willing to take anything these people said seriously before she booted them out on their asses.
Lisa shook her head and sniffed. Elliot handed her a bar napkin, which she took gratefully, blowing her nose into it. “There was this message sent to her phone with a link to a map location. I think it was a park.”
“Gas Works Park?” I asked.
Lisa nodded. “I remember joking it didn’t sound like a park at all. But Lilith said she knew the place. That it was…” She starting sobbing, and the word after that was incoherent. I thought maybe it was beautiful. She blew her nose again. “The message said she’d been chosen for Ascension. As long as she could prove she was worthy, she’d be turned.”
“Why didn’t you go with her?” I asked. Mortals who live with or around vampires for any extended period of time learn pretty quickly that caution equals self-preservation and stupidity equals death.
“She wouldn’t let me. Said it might make her seem unworthy. But I thought it was too easy, you know?” She looked up at me with watery eyes. “But Lilith was pretty sure it was—” Lisa clamped her mouth shut, catching herself before she could say the name and glancing nervously over her shoulder.
“Fiona?” I supplied.
Lisa nodded and dabbed at her eyes. “They were friends. Fiona hated having mortals around here, said her sire hated it, too, and that if we’d been thrown out months ago, he’d still be alive.”
I didn’t know exactly when Fiona had been turned, but it hadn’t been long before Thomas had died. It was possible that if they’d been tossed on their asses months ago, Fiona would have died instead of having another vampire around to come to her rescue. Clearly, she didn’t see it that way.
“She wasn’t the first to get that message,” Elliot said. “And we don’t know it’s Fiona. She mostly just sneers at us.”
“She liked Lilith!” Lisa insisted with a sniff. “I can’t believe she wouldn’t think Lilith was worth turning. She’s really dead? Not like… vampire dead?”
Lisa had such wide, hopeful eyes, it was a little heartbreaking. And a little infuriating. She lived with vampires. She’d seen what vampires could do and how vampires treated mortals who clung to their coattails. They all had. Didn’t they understand their situation? Some vampire g
roupies, the ones kept close, might be lovers or friends or even equals to their vampire companions. But these guys were the lobsters in the tank. Sure, eventually someone might think they were too cute to eat and give them a forever home, but most of them weren’t going to get that lucky.
“Nope,” I said. “She’s dead dead.”
Lisa’s tears started up again, and Elliot knitted his eyebrows together in consternation at me as she slunk back to her friends on the sofa.
“You don’t have to be an asshole,” he said.
“No, but I’m really good at it,” I answered. He rolled his eyes. “I’m not trying to be a jerk. But she’s very dead. Trust me.” I’d pulled a couple of muscles in my newly healed arms yanking the deadweight of her corpse out of my car less than an hour ago, but I decided to spare them the gory details.
“Got it,” he said, shaking his head.
I pulled a bar napkin close to me and grabbed a pen from my purse. I jotted down my number and handed it to Elliot. “Can you call me if someone else gets one of those messages? Preferably before they charge off to their deaths?”
“I can try.” Elliot took the napkin and folded it in half. He pulled out his wallet and stuck it inside. “But I doubt Lilith’s death will stop anyone. They’ll just say she wasn’t worthy. And given that we’re all about to be homeless, everyone is extra desperate to be immortal. Fiona might be picky as hell, but she’s better than no chance at all.”
A shiver ran through me. Because I knew exactly how that felt. Maybe I should be less of a bitch to these people. We weren’t in the same boat, but we were all in the same river, being dragged by the same current.
And Elliot was right. I had no doubt that most of them would happily risk their lives for a chance at immortality, even if that chance was small. I finished my drink and thanked him.
Just for kicks, I walked up the stairs, but doors I’d never really noticed on the landing of the third floor had been closed and were locked, so I couldn’t get down the hall. It seemed the vampires really were away and wanted to make sure the mortals stayed out of their shit. I guessed most of the humans were lodging on the second floor, which was why it was still open. I rattled the doors a few times. Nothing happened.
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