Bloodless

by Tori Centanni

  “I see,” Lark said. She pressed her lips into a thin line. Two young women walked by, one carrying a trash bag and the other carrying a microwave.

  “That’s it? ‘I see’?”

  Lark turned toward me. “Did you expect me to be shocked?” I had, actually, but I didn’t say so. She continued, “Fiona has always been volatile. She loathed the mortals who clung to vampires even when she was among them.”

  “Like Aidan,” I said.

  Lark’s nod was sharp. “As I said, I told Cazimir he was unstable. I could see it in Fiona, too, though I understood Thomas’s choice to turn her.” Fiona had been on death’s door when it had been done. Thomas had saved her life. “She has been seething and simmering with a quiet rage since her Ascension. Thomas’s death only fueled it further.”

  Thomas’s death hadn’t been my fault directly, but in a roundabout way, I was the reason Aidan had injected him with the poison-filled syringe. Since Aidan was dead, I was the next best target to aim her rage at.

  There was a long silence. Lark was still, her expression hard and indecipherable. Whether she was thinking of her lost love or of his fledgling who’d gone off the rails, I couldn’t guess. After a long moment, I lifted and then dropped my hands. “Well, now you know. I assume you’ll deal with Fiona for her crimes.” It was a question, but I tried to sound more confident, pulse racing in my ears as I waited to hear whether Fiona was going to be punished or left to torment me another day.

  Lark smiled. It was a strange, mirthless smile, one that I was sure her victims probably saw shortly before they died. “She left. I thought she was merely tired of the Factory, but now I can assume she knew you’d found her out.”

  “Wait, she’s gone?” I felt my chest tighten.

  “She left last night,” Lark said. “She was gone when I returned for the day.”

  “Well, fuck.” So much for getting the serial killer contained and taken care of. I had a sick feeling she hadn’t run for the hills or taken a cruise. Hell, with my luck, she was waiting in my car. “Can’t you track her down?”

  Lark raised one eyebrow as she watched two mortals maneuver a cheap IKEA table through the front doors. “I could. But I will not bother. The victims left for the cops had their throats slit, correct? It was a stupid move on her part, and if she were here, I would certainly impose consequences, but it’s hardly a crime that warrants chasing her down like a dog.”

  In other words, Lark had chosen Door Number Two: downplay the crime. If Fiona was smart, she’d stay the hell away for a few years and then she could return as though nothing ever happened.

  “Yeah, well, thanks for your help.” Sarcasm dripped from the words. I could feel a headache forming behind my eyes.

  Fiona was on the lam, and no one was going to help me track her down and bring her to justice. And worse, now she had damn good reason to end her game, and I doubted it ended with a handshake and a smile.

  Chapter 17

  Just beyond the line of trucks and moving vans, I stopped dead when I saw Tertius. He stood on the sidewalk, watching the mortals trek back and forth, filling the vehicles with their possessions. He wore a tailored suit with a waistcoat and top hat, like he was going to a Phantom of the Opera audition.

  After a moment’s hesitation, I pivoted to go in another direction so I could avoid him. He had other plans.

  He appeared before me as if by magic, standing directly in my path.

  “Henrietta,” he said with a wide, fang-filled smile. The hair on my arms stood on end.

  “Tertius,” I said, forcing a smile. My heart sped up. His fangs looked sharp. The way his eyes raked over me suggested he wanted to use them, and that made my insides roil.

  “Lovely night,” he said, as though he couldn’t hear my heart slamming into my rib cage and couldn’t begin to guess that I was fucking terrified.

  “Yeah,” I said. “People think it always rains in Seattle, but we have pretty great summers.” Even as my stomach rolled in circles and I tried not to stare at his fangs in abject fear, I realized it was sort of absurd to be standing there talking about the weather with an ancient vampire.

  “It’s delightful to see you again, my dear. What have you been up to?” The moonlight exaggerated his pallor and made his eyes look like glass orbs. It was unsettling. Blood thrummed in my ears and I was acutely aware of how he could hear it, too. How he knew my pulse was racing. He knew exactly how badly he freaked me out. The glint in his eyes told me he probably got off on it. Sick bastard.

  “Nothing exciting,” I said.

  Something flashed across his face like a lightning strike, but the expression was gone and back to a neutrally pleasant facade before I could make it out. “I see,” he said. “That is a shame. A young woman like you should have a life full of excitement.”

  “I make do,” I said. “Speaking of, I should really get going.”

  I started to walk past him, but he grabbed my arm. His fingernails were long and dug into my flesh. The spike of pain was sharp. I gasped.

  “Tertius! There you are!” Lark came marching across the street toward us in her white pantsuit, looking for all the world like an angel ready to lay the smack down on some demons. In that moment, I could have kissed her.

  Tertius held me fast, hand squeezing my upper arm. “Did you need something?” he asked, impatience making his tone hard.

  “There’s a mortal looking for you. Says she needs to see you before she vacates the premises.” Lark had an edge in her tone, too, and I couldn’t tell whether that was directed toward Tertius or the mortal girl. “Please come deal with her so she’ll go.”

  His eyes bored into me, and I got the impression he wanted to drag me around with him, but slowly the pressure subsided as he let go of my arm. I let out a breath I’d been sucking in.

  “We’ll continue our tête-à-tête later,” he said, in a way that made it very clear it was an order, not a request.

  He was gone before he could notice me shudder at the thought or swallow down the lump that had risen in my throat. Lark gave me a look I could only describe as parental.

  “Perhaps you should stay away from the Factory,” she said. But unlike Tertius’s words, it didn’t feel like a command.

  “Maybe someone should make me a goddamn vampire so I don’t have to walk around in this vulnerable meat suit!” I clenched my fists. I was shaking. I could still feel his hand on my arm, clamped down like a vise, and I did not like it.

  “Henri, a new vampire is hardly safer around those like Tertius than a human. You should avoid him.”

  I opened my mouth to tell her that I’d tried, but it was hard to avoid an immortal who wanted to find you, but it was no use. She knew that as well as I did. Whatever Tertius wanted with me, I planned to stay very far away from him and not let him get it.

  But the trouble with plans is that the universe has a very twisted sense of humor.

  * * *

  “I see you’re not dead,” Cazimir slurred when I came in the door. He was sitting on one of the stools along my counter, drinking from a wine bottle that lacked a label and smelled more like paint thinner than cabernet.

  “I see you’re drunk,” I said. “Lucky me.”

  He waved a hand dismissively and spoke in a quick torrent of French. I caught about half of it, something about my mother. I set a pizza box on the counter. I’d stopped by a takeout-only joint on my way up the Hill, parking illegally and risking a ticket for the twenty minutes it’d taken them to make my pesto pizza.

  I opened the box and inhaled the aroma of basil, garlic, and grease. Cazimir made a face, like I’d just slit open a dead fish instead. “Must you consume such odorous food?”

  “Have you eaten today?” I asked, ignoring his comment.

  Cazimir laughed, a bark of amusement. “Ma cherie, I have consumed the ambrosia of the gods.”

  I took that to mean he’d had vampire blood, which was a pretty terrible idea, and so was chasing it with cheap wine, but I was too f
rayed to argue. I’d been stripped bare and my edges were unraveling. Fiona was out there somewhere holding a grudge, and Tertius clearly wanted to do bad things to me, and not the fun kind. One vampire threat was unnerving, but two was more than I could handle.

  I got out two plates and set one in front of Caz, dropping a slice of the pizza onto his before choosing a big green slice for myself. It was pesto and mozzarella, dotted with creamy white balls of goat cheese. I took a bite of my salty, gooey slice.

  Cazimir watched me like I might bite him next. He didn’t so much as poke at his slice. He drank the dredges of his wine and then set the bottle on the counter. “What was the verdict?” he asked, a little slur to the words.

  “Fiona’s gone. I guess she’s done playing America’s Next New Vampire now that I know it’s her.”

  “Gone where?” he asked.

  “Hell if I know,” I said, wiping my mouth with a napkin that immediately turned green with pesto pizza grease. “Maybe she’s waiting in my closet.”

  Cazimir didn’t move for a long moment, except for a slight sway as he tried to keep his drunk ass steady on the stool. “You realize you need to kill her before she kills you.”

  “No shit,” I said.

  I shoved the rest of my slice into my mouth. As I chewed, Cazimir stood. He was wearing the black “I’m So Vein” t-shirt again, which I’d washed with the rest of his clothes when I’d done my own laundry a few nights ago. Cazimir claimed he didn’t understand how to work the washer and dryer, and I didn’t have the patience to teach him or the desire to live with someone wearing dirty clothes.

  “You’re leaving?” I asked, surprised to see him head for the front door instead of the sofa.

  “Oui,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes, already tired of the faux French king routine. “Where could you possibly be going to while drunk in the middle of the night?”

  “To get my ID,” Cazimir said. “You asked me to, non?”

  I eyed him suspiciously. “From where? You think Lark kept your stuff?”

  I hadn’t seen the fifth floor of the Factory, so for all I knew, Lark had sealed it off like a tomb to preserve it in case Caz came back—she was savvy and good at planning for every contingency—but I didn’t get the impression Mortal Cazimir was going to be welcome. Particularly now that she was throwing the mortals out.

  Cazimir tried to give me a look that said I was stupid, but he hiccupped and ruined it. His eyes widened, and he shook as another hiccup wracked his chest. He looked like a cat whose own tail had scared it. “What is that?” he finally demanded.

  “You don’t remember hiccups?” I got him a glass of water. “Drink this whole glass and then hold your breath.”

  “N-no,” he said, the word broken by another hiccup. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

  He chugged the water and then held his breath, as I gestured for him to keep holding it until thirty seconds had past. He let out the breath and waited. Nothing happened. The hiccups were gone.

  “Bartender trick,” I said. “The other thing that really works is biting a lemon with bitters on it.”

  “The human body is malicious and vile,” he spat with more vitriol than usual. He ambled to the front door, bumping into the wall on his way. “I won’t be human for long.”

  With that, he left, slamming the door behind him.

  I sighed and slid his plate toward me. I spun it around and took a bite of his untouched slice. He was right about one thing: he wouldn’t be alive for long if he kept chugging vampire blood and bad wine and refused to eat any food.

  His misery was palpable. I understood his pain, better than anyone on this planet. There were moments—often when I was walking alone at night and some asshole started following close behind me, making my own vulnerability crystal clear to me—that I loathed being human so much I wanted to scream and break things and set Neha’s apartment on fire and claw open Sean’s skin to get at his crimson blood.

  But then I got home and those moments passed. The desire to have my immortality back never left, but I could find joy in this human existence. Moments where the sore feet and exhaustion and the constant ever-pressing needs stopped feeling so overwhelming and I could stand in the sun or take a hot bath or drink a glass of good wine or eat a cheesy, aromatic pizza. I didn’t want it forever. But I could cope with it as a temporary state.

  Cazimir refused to find any of that joy. And I was worried that was going to be the literal death of him.

  When I finished eating Caz’s slice, I put both plates in the sink and shoved the pizza box in the fridge. Then I turned the deadbolt and locked the door. For good measure, I glanced out the window. No sign of Fiona or Eva or Tertius or the mystery vampire in the hoodie, or anyone else staring up at my apartment. Good. I shut the blinds to keep it that way.

  I took Cazimir’s wine bottle from the counter and gave it a good sniff. It was so acrid and harsh it made me wince. More like a chemical cleaning agent than something made of grapes. I ran my finger inside the bottle and tasted it. It burned on my tongue and tasted vaguely of copper and cough syrup. The sinking feeling in my stomach rose to an acidic crescendo, pushing bile up my throat.

  Cazimir wasn’t stupid enough to drink black market vampire blood, I told myself. There was no fucking way he was that idiotic. Besides, he had a source of vampire blood, didn’t he? That fledgling he’d been drinking from. Unless he’d made that up. Unless he’d just been chugging poison the whole time. He hadn’t exactly denied it when I’d asked.

  I shivered, the thought making my blood run cold.

  Vampire blood is a hot commodity on the supernatural black market. It does have some curative powers, although to get any real benefit, you’d need to drink a lot of it on a regular basis for a long period of time, and that’s bound to come with some shitty side effects. And other than Cazimir’s cancer survivor, I’d never heard of it curing anything beyond a few scrapes or a runny nose. Usually, it does more harm than good.

  But the black market shit isn’t marketed or sold for real use. Vampire blood is the Rhino Horn or Tiger Balls of the Preternatural World. There’s no proof it can actually do anything its peddlers claim, but the people who sell it (or, more often, dubious substances they claim to be it) will tell you it can do anything from curing cancer to reducing wrinkles to giving you better odds when playing the lottery. The last time I saw someone peddling it, it was being sold in tiny bottles that would only hold a couple of mouthfuls, which wasn’t enough to do anything for anyone, even if they were full of pure grade-A vampire blood.

  I had relished killing that seller, who had in turn killed dozens of people who drank his supposed “vampire blood” to cure their diseases. The “vampire blood” he was selling had been mostly cow’s blood and chemicals. There’d been only a few drops of vampire blood in some of the bottles, and anyhow, even a whole wine bottle full of pure vampire blood wasn’t going to do much.

  The only people who bought black market vampire blood were desperate mortals or vampire groupies so out of their minds with the need to be immortal, they’d try pretty much anything, even if it killed them.

  Cazimir knew better.

  This had to be cheap wine, maybe mixed with his fledgling’s blood. Or so I told myself.

  I rinsed the bottle and dumped it into the recycle bin, glancing at the trash can in hopes of finding a label. There wasn’t one.

  I poured myself a glass of wine from the bottle of Chardonnay that was in the fridge and tried to relax. With all the problems plaguing me, that sure as hell wasn’t easy.

  Chapter 18

  “Has table eight ordered yet?” Max asked me as we stood at the server station. I was putting in the order for table six, a four-top who was easygoing. I liked table six. Table eight was working my nerves, and given that a murderous vampire who hated my guts was on the loose, I didn’t have a lot of nerves to spare.

  I’d been moving entirely in direct sunlight whenever I had to go ou
t, with the exception of leaving work after dark. I’d been sleeping with a silver stake under my pillow, and even then I hadn’t been able to sleep much until sunrise. At least the sun came up early in the summertime, meaning I was getting enough hours to function without turning into a serial killer myself.

  “Nope, not yet,” I told him.

  He glanced at the clock. “Five bucks says she doesn’t order until half past.”

  That was ten minutes away. “Max, she has the menu memorized by now. Ten bucks says they pay for the cocktails and leave.”

  “You’re on.” Max extended his hand, and I shook it before hitting send on six’s order and going to see if eight was finally ready.

  The woman was still studying the menu like she was going to be quizzed on it. The man’s menu had been closed and dangling off the edge of the table for a while now.

  “Don’t you usually have chicken?” she asked me. It was the third time she’d asked for a protein not on the menu. Le Poisson did usually have chicken, but as I’d explained to her twice already, the menu was seasonal and also contingent on what the chef could get locally.

  So instead of repeating myself a third time, I said, “The red pepper ravioli is delightful. We can do it with a garlic cream sauce instead of the mushroom sauce.” She’d already expressed her great dislike for both mushrooms and seafood, which was what most of our seasonal menu consisted of. It was the last night of Oyster Week, so they were the star of the menu.

  “I don’t eat cream sauces,” she said, as if I’d suggested she eat a plate of worms.

  Her date—and I assumed it was a date, because there were no wedding rings, and he looked perplexed and mortified by her in equal measure—leaned across the table and said quietly, “We can go somewhere else. It’s not a big deal. Really.”

  “No, it’s fine,” she insisted, still scouring the one-page menu like it might have a secret code hidden in the flowery descriptions of the entrees.