Vertigo Vampire: a Supernatural Thriller (The Specials Book 2)

by Tricia Owens

  Her amethyst eyes flashed with fire.

  “Who do you think you are? Some kind of avenging angel?” She gave me a once-over. “You’re just like the rest of us, a criminal to the core.”

  I laughed bitterly. “That must explain why I haven’t killed anyone yet.”

  “Get off your high horse, sweetie pie. The time will come when your hands are bloodied, too, and when it happens it won’t be for any noble reason. The Specials are trash and degenerates. Accept it and stop being a hypocrite.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Your hero blood doesn’t make you better than the rest of us,” she hissed. “It’ll still stain the floor.”

  My teeth snapped shut.

  She dismissed me to nod sharply at Taurus. “Bonus is mine. You two losers can have the head. Go Team.” With a snap of her bubble gum, Calia sauntered down the hallway and turned out of sight. The elevators dinged a few seconds later.

  Taurus came to stand over Peerage’s body and head. “I wanted that bonus.”

  I ignored his disappointment. My thoughts were elsewhere, trying to work out why Calia had claimed my blood was a hero’s.

  What did she know about me?

  How had she learned the truth?

  Chapter 2

  I slammed the door of my room, but I yearned to do more. Break windows maybe, and kick in walls. I immediately went to the small, artfully designed desk and hauled it away from the wall. Taped to the back of the furniture was a manila envelope containing my family documents. Nothing appeared to be disturbed, but just in case, I pulled up the envelope and checked its contents with hands that trembled.

  Taking a seat on the edge of my bed, I sorted through the papers. The Honor Citations—glorified death certificates for my parents—were still there. The letter that had informed me that I would be receiving an inheritance to pay my way through school was next. I slid out the commendation for my grandmother. Elise St. Marx. One of seven freedom fighters whose DNA had been magically enhanced by military scientists to make her more effective in battle. She and the other freedom fighters had been true heroes, defeating the ice demons which had overrun the city.

  It was too bad their fighting spirit had ultimately doomed them.

  My heart rate, already beating swiftly after what had happened to Peerage, picked up as I unfolded the sheet of paper that had been mailed to my aunt shortly after the war ended. In the briskly worded letter my aunt was informed that Elise had been taken into the care of the military scientists for “de-escalation of enhancements.” Translation: my grandmother and the other surviving freedom fighters had been whisked to a secret location and been deluged with a cocktail of suppressants that had rendered them harmless. And also nearly comatose.

  All the paperwork was in place and in the same order they had been. Nothing appeared disturbed. Keeping my connection to my grandmother a secret wasn’t for my safety but for hers. If the government learned that I had moved her out of their care and that she was gradually getting better and possibly beginning to remember the truth of what had been done to her, they would eliminate her.

  Calia shouldn’t have known anything about my grandmother or my parents, yet it sounded like she did. She had learned other secrets of mine by torturing Elliott, so who had she hurt to learn this one?

  It made her a problem. Was she a big enough problem that I would do something to shut her up? If it meant keeping my grandmother safe…maybe. In my current mood, absolutely.

  The papers went back into the envelope which I sealed in a way that would reveal any tampering. I re-attached it to the back of the desk. After pushing the furniture back into place, I stalked to the window and glared out.

  Victory City at night was beautiful, many of its glowing skyscrapers less than a decade old. It was difficult to tell that a war and a major natural disaster had occurred here which had resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. The government wanted us to move on, to forget about the war and concentrate on the future. That way, according to their propaganda, no one would try to copycat Dr. Febrero’s terrible crimes.

  I didn’t buy that reasoning. Not at all. Neither did many of the people in the Sinistera. Especially the two most important people in the building.

  On cue, as if summoned by my thoughts, I saw movement in the reflection in the glass. I turned and fought down motion sickness as my room appeared to judder and shake from side to side, shifting like a buggy video file. Forward and backward, from side to side it all moved. I was the only static point in my room. I would have shut my eyes, except that I knew what—or make that who—was coming next.

  The figure of a man appeared instantly, though he hadn’t thrown Time to arrive here. He was a fiber of the Sinistera, threaded through its being, able to travel wherever he wished within its walls. He was also trapped inside the hotel.

  The Architect was dressed as always in dark trousers, a white dress shirt, and a charcoal vest. These things never changed because he never changed. His dark hair fell over his glasses, which concealed a steady green gaze.

  “Long time no see,” I said. “It’s been a month. I guess the only thing that brings you out is murder.”

  “I’m always here.” He stared at me, his expression stony. “And you shouldn’t be upset over one death in the scheme of things.”

  “One death that had nothing to do with anything,” I retorted. “Peerage was a guest. He’s not part of the government. Calia killed him because she likes it. She thinks it’s funny. And you’re just as complicit because you brought her here and you don’t do anything to stop her.”

  “I’ve picked my battle. I thought you’d picked yours.”

  I considered meddling one of my guns into a billy club and hitting him over the head with it. But he’d probably disappear, and despite my fury, I didn’t want him disappearing again. I needed answers.

  “Why Peerage?” I demanded.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Peerage insisted he was innocent.”

  “Don’t all criminals say that?”

  His tone held a hint of mockery. He was partly responsible for my being here, for setting me up for murder. But I had no one but myself to blame for continuing to use my magic when I wasn’t officially certified to do so. That was a law I broke all on my own.

  “The difference is that I believed him,” I said.

  Behind The Architect, the room continued to shift maddeningly. Elliott had suggested that it was due to dimensions in time converging on this point. I had no idea if that was true and I wasn’t about to waste time now asking about it. I concentrated on the still form of The Architect, the only relief against that relentless visual distortion.

  “I think you and Tower are lying,” I said bluntly.

  Annoyance pulled the skin around The Architect’s eyes tight. “You don’t know everything, Arrow. That’s a deliberate decision to protect you and the other Specials.”

  “You’re not protecting me by lying to me. You forget that I’m an experienced conspiracy theorist. I don’t trust anyone.”

  That pulled the faintest of smiles from him. It was like a ray of light striking my eyes while I stood deep within a cave. I was slightly dazzled by it. And then I was annoyed by my reaction because I believed I was better than that.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t trust you, either, Nathaniel.”

  His smile died swiftly, replaced by a scowl. “I didn’t give you permission to use my name.”

  “Then why did you tell it to me?”

  When he looked away, I was reminded that he was young like me. He’d been trapped inside the Sinistera for fifteen years, so technically he was in his late thirties. But locked into the hotel’s strange spell, interacting only sporadically with Mr. Tower and one or two others, I believed he was still as young as he looked, his maturity frozen along with his appearance.

  “I told you that in order to manipulate you.” He glanced at me, as if checking for my reaction. “I needed you to feel a connection with me so you wou
ld stay.”

  “Maybe,” I allowed. My anger ebbed because it really wasn’t him I was upset with, it was Calia and the government. “Or maybe you should come clean about the real reason you want me to know who you are.”

  It was a bluff. I barely knew him or his motivations. Yet incredibly, color washed briefly over his cheeks, chased away by his cool apathy.

  “You’re a tool, Arrow,” he muttered. “That’s all that you and the other Specials are to me. Nothing else matters except exposing the government’s lies and restoring my father’s reputation. I need you all to help me do it. Tower, the other Specials—everyone is fair game.”

  “I’d believe you, except you said that one day you will be extremely important to me. You will be important to me. That’s how you said it.” I cocked my head, watching him closely. “Remember that?”

  His form began to shudder. I didn’t want him to leave. He knew things. Essential things. I wanted to know them, too.

  “Running away?” I challenged.

  “From you?” He stabilized, his ire clearly visible to me. “Don’t presume to know me or what I care about.”

  He stepped closer. I straightened off the window, my blood racing, though I wasn’t sure what I expected. For him to hit me? Use magic on me? I still didn’t know what his magic talent was, or if he had one.

  “I’m not your enemy,” I said, “so stop treating me like one. This has been my fight before I ever heard of you or the Sinistera. I’m using you, too. Or maybe we can call this what it is: a partnership to bring down the government. Let me in on what you know.”

  “This is no partnership,” he gritted out.

  I took a gamble. “Maybe it should be.”

  Without stopping to question myself, I reached for him. A part of me expected him to disappear or for my fingers to pass through air, but they met the warm, bare skin of his forearm and skidded upwards to where his sleeve was rolled up. He shuddered, and I thought he was shifting again. But the truth of it stirred my body: his reaction was due to my touch.

  Intimidated by his intense gaze, I watched my fingers drift back down his arm. He didn’t move, but I could hear his breathing, quickened like mine was.

  “All this time,” I murmured, still watching my hand, “you’ve been trapped in this place. Alone.” I finally dared to look up. Behind his glasses his eyes were torches of green fire. “Am I the first to touch you—”

  “Yes,” he croaked.

  I marveled at that. “Fifteen years…”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, his breathing harsher, his chest rising and falling beneath his vest. Yet he didn’t pull away from my innocent touch. “Nothing matters except clearing my father’s name and calling out those responsible for what happened.”

  “Those things matter,” I agreed quietly. “But so do you. Let me help you.”

  It hadn’t entered my mind to seduce Nathaniel. He was practically a figment of my imagination, a ghostly part of the hotel. And there was the matter of the crush I had on my best friend, Jasper Tracey.

  Yet none of that seemed to matter as my fingers drifted over the back of his hand and he turned his wrist so that my hand fell into his upturned palm. He crushed my hand in his. I winced, shocked by the sudden violence. He loosened his grip immediately, making me realize he hadn’t intended to hurt me, that he was overwhelmed by the first human contact he’d had in over a decade. To my surprise, that intrigued me in a manner that was wholly female. I recognized the challenge. I was drawn by his vulnerability.

  “You were in my home during the war,” I murmured as I stared at my hand in his. “You eavesdropped on the war plans. You heard all the awful things the wardens were planning to do to my grandmother and to the other freedom fighters.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they not know who you were?”

  He kept his eyes, like mine, on our shared grip, as though the only way these small truths could come out was if we hid ourselves during the telling of them.

  “As his work progressed, my father grew increasingly concerned that he would be betrayed by the very people who had hired him,” Nathaniel said. “He decided he needed insurance. He arranged for me to attend the meetings as an assistant to a corporal who didn’t exist. No one questioned it. They were too arrogant. While I was at your home for those meetings, I learned what I needed to. And it turned out my father was right. The wardens were working against him and worse. Once I had as much information as I dared collect, I came here to the Sinistera. My father had already arranged for my…preservation.”

  “You were waiting for me to grow up,” I reminded him. I dared to brush my thumb across his fingers, inciting another tiny shiver from him. “I was six, then. I’m twenty-one now.”

  “I was waiting,” he agreed, “for you to grow into your power. For you to realize that you had been lied to about your family. For you to feel compelled to do something about it.”

  “That’s all?”

  I felt him finally looking at me and raised my own gaze to meet his.

  “Arrow—” His expression was pained and fearful, as though he had been driven by spear point to the edge of a pit full of fire. “You should know—”

  My walkie-talkie squawked. “Arrow, where are you? I need you!”

  Nathaniel jerked his hand out of mine.

  “Wait!” I blurted.

  It was no use. He blinked away from me, his form reappearing at the other side of the room, head down, studying a ledger. He reappeared a few feet away me, leaning against one wall. He shifted again to the bed, lying on his stomach, completely unaware of me, his attention absorbed by his ledger. After another shift and he disappeared completely. A second later, my room settled into stillness.

  The Architect was part of the hotel once again.

  I sighed. “Damn.”

  “Arrow!”

  The bleat startled me.

  I thrust Nathaniel out of my mind and yanked my walkie-talkie off my belt. “I’m here.”

  “I’m on six. Please come quick!”

  Fear tunneled through me. “I’m coming!”

  I rushed out of my room and to the nearby bank of elevators where I slapped the up button. “Come on, come on!”

  I had no idea what could be happening to Elliott so I prepared for the worst. Though in a supernatural hotel full of magic criminals, what could the worst be? Could I even fathom it?

  Chapter 3

  When a car finally arrived, I jumped in and pounded on the button for the sixth floor. The doors closed achingly slowly. Regret filled me for telling Elliott to perform the security rounds on his own. This wasn’t the sort of place you wanted to walk around alone, especially when the extent of your magic granted you control over animals, as his did.

  It was new for me to be in charge of someone else. Elliott treated me as a genuine boss, not questioning my orders even when I obviously didn’t know what I was doing. He respected me and, as he’d admitted, he badly wanted a friend. Probably it wasn’t a good idea for bosses and subordinates to be friends, but in this strange place, and since we were both Specials, I didn’t feel that the usual rules should apply. We had to look out for each other, and to do that, we needed to trust each other.

  He and Sheridan, the Front Desk Receptionist, were so far the only people within the Sinistera that I could say I did trust. The other three Specials? No way. Not yet, at least.

  In the brass walls of the elevator car, my reflection was distorted and dream-like, as though I had become assimilated with the hotel just like The Architect. What had I been thinking taking his hand like that and nearly flirting with him? Nathaniel might be attractive and mysterious, but his very existence was dangerous. If anyone knew that Dr. Febrero’s son still lived, the Sinistera would be burned to the ground along with everyone in it.

  When the chime sounded and the doors slid open on the sixth floor, I leaped out. Nothing immediately caught my notice except for the cool, blue silk wallpaper and the indigo carpeting. The sconces
on this floor were shaped like silver birds with their wings extended as though they’d been flushed from their roosts. They cast a pale, white light along the ceiling, like a series of small moons.

  I stood and listened.

  The hotel didn’t play Muzak, so I was able to hear the faint hum of the air circulation system as it pumped Mr. Tower’s mood-altering aerosol through the halls and perhaps into the guest rooms, too. As an Atomization Arts specialist, he secretly gassed the guests with his own proprietary blends to encourage restful sleep. His gas wouldn’t knock you unconscious if you weren’t tired, but if you were, his concoction provided a subtle, pleasant slide into sleep.

  I pulled out my guns and cautiously headed toward the sound of heavy breathing.

  I saw the opened door four doors ahead of me.

  “Elliott?” I called out.

  A gasp. “In here!”

  I approached the door frame slowly and leaned around it to peer inside.

  It was an upgrade on my own room, with beautiful, chrome-colored window dressings and pearlescent wallpaper. The bed was a king, covered with a pure white comforter. A small, navy blue case sat on the floor. Nothing was unusual about the scene except for the extremely pale, older man who lay sprawled diagonally across the. Dried blood draped like a necklace across his throat. His face had been clawed until the white of his skull shone through.

  I sucked in my breath, shocked by the viciousness of the attack.

  “Me, too,” muttered a voice.

  Elliott kneeled on the floor on the other side of the bed. His pale, wavy hair was tousled as though he’d grabbed it more than once in a fit of anxiety.

  “What happened?” I demanded, gathering my composure. I quickly checked the corners of the room and then ducked into the en suite bathroom to ensure no one was hiding there. I’d learned my lesson with Calia tonight.

  “I don’t know,” Elliott said in a rush as I rejoined him. “The door was slightly ajar, so I looked inside and I found him like this.”