I stared down in shock at the unconscious form of Michiko the leader of the Dark Council, and the most powerful vampire I knew.
“Are you just going to leave her on the floor?” Monty said, exasperated. “I’ll get something to clean all this blood. Call Roxanne.”
“You know you could’ve just yelled at me to get out of the way. An air blast into the nearest wall seems a little much.” I crouched next to Michiko and scooped her up gently, walking over to the sofa.
“No time,” he said from the kitchen. “Besides, you seem unhurt. And don’t put your bloody vampire on the Hansen.”
I froze mid-descent. That’s exactly where I was about to place her. The Hansen sofa had been a gift from Roxanne, and it was the most expensive item in our reception area. No one was allowed to sit on it, except Roxanne on her infrequent visits.
“She’s not my bloody vampire” —I looked down at her in my arms—“well, today I guess she is.”
“Precisely, and I don’t intend to get blood all over that thing. Roxanne will kill me and attempt to kill you if we get it soiled.”
“How about the Chesterfield? Or do you have a gurney around here somewhere that I don’t know about?” I said, looking around. I stepped over to the other sofa and laid Chi down.
“Chesterfield, yes.” Monty appeared with a bunch of towels and a small steel box covered in runes. “Step back. Did you call Roxanne?”
“On it.” I pulled out my phone, dialed Haven Medical, and put it on speakerphone.
“Haven Medical. Director DeMarco speaking,” Roxanne said after she picked up. “Hello, Simon.”
“Roxanne, we have an emergency,” I said, my voice urgent. “You need to come to the office.”
“Simon, every time I deal with you or Monty it’s an emergency,” she said with a sigh. “Is it Tristan? Bring him here. You aren’t equipped to deal with injuries at your office.”
“No, we can’t transport,” I said. “I think she’s lost too much blood.”
“She? What happened?” she said, suddenly alert. “Who’s injured?”
“It’s Chi. You need to get here now.”
“Shite, I’m on my way. Tell Tristan to keep her stable until I arrive. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“She knows I’m not a bloody healer,” Monty grumbled as he placed towels around Chi and attempted to clean her wounds. “You’d better cancel Roselli’s.”
“Cancel…Roselli’s?” I looked at my phone. “And speak to Piero?”
He gave me the ‘are you an idiot?’ look and I began dialing. “Would you like to explain to your vampire how you felt obligated to go to dinner while she lies on the sofa, bleeding?”
“Not really, but cancelling Roselli’s is almost as bad,” I said, hoping Piero didn’t pick up. His voice came over the phone after the third ring.
“Roselli’s,” his voice said with a slight accent. “Buona sera, Simon.”
“Buona sera, Piero,” I said and took a deep breath. “I’m afraid we can’t make it tonight after all.”
There was a long pause followed by a short sigh.
“This is unacceptable. I needed to speak with you and Tristano tonight,” Piero said, in short clipped words, which meant he was upset. I could just see him tapping a finger into the table, punctuating each word. “You know the consequence of cancellation?”
I did. You didn’t cancel a reservation at Roselli’s—ever. The penalty for doing so was blacklisting for a year, if you were lucky and Piero was in a good mood.
“Someone attacked Michiko—” I started.
“Ah, Simon, why don’t you speak clearly?” he replied. I imagined the face pinch. “I will bring you dinner.”
I tried my best to hide my shock. Piero owned the most exclusive supernatural dining experience in the city. To offer to bring us dinner was unprecedented. After a few seconds, I found my voice.
“Piero, that is extremely gracious of you, but I’m sure you must be busy. The night is just starting and I can’t possibly expect you to—” Monty gave me the ‘don’t bother’ headshake. “Can you bring some pastrami for Peaches?”
“Pastrami?” Piero answered as if I had insulted him. “This is not a deli. I will bring filet for the animal, and he will eat it.”
“Thank you, Piero, this really means—” I began.
“I will be there presto. Ciao,” he said, cutting me off and hanging up.
“He must really like you,” Monty said, exchanging towels and applying bandages. “I don’t recall him delivering food to anyone in my lifetime. Much less their pet.”
“I think it has less to do with me and more to do with her.” I pointed at Chi. “She is the head of the Dark Council, after all. How is she? What could do this to her? Why isn’t she reacting?”
Chi was deathly still and paler than usual.
“It’s a defensive state. Stronger vampires can enter a catatonic state to deal with catastrophic injury,” Monty said, tossing down a towel and picking up a new one.
“How strong is she? She has a gunshot wound and is checked out. This ‘defensive state’ seems like it needs to be reworked,” I said, looking down at her.
“With a younger or less powerful vampire, you would be sweeping up the remains,” he said and glanced up at me. “I don’t know how she survived a gunshot to the abdomen, but whoever did this is obviously dangerous and skilled.”
“Who can do that? As far as I know there aren’t many things as fast as a vampire.”
“The staggering breadth of your supernatural knowledge leaves much to be desired. There are creatures as fast as— and faster than—vampires in existence,” he said, shaking his head and pushing some hair from his face. “But this was done by the Cazadoras, or so she claims. I just don’t remember them using guns.”
“The wound isn’t closing. I thought vampires had accelerated healing?” I said, concerned that the pile of bloody towels on the floor was growing. When she woke up, she would be starving. We would be standing next to a powerful, old, and hungry vampire. “Monty, what happens when she wakes up?”
“Well, she usually heals almost as fast as you do, but she’s still losing blood from her abdominal wound.” Monty placed more blood-soaked towels on the floor. “When she wakes up she will be ravenous, and will need to feed—oh. That would be bad.”
I nodded and checked Grim Whisper. I didn’t want to shoot her, but I had no plans of being on the menu. “Yes, that was my thought too. Will restraints work?”
“No, she’s too strong. Even in this state, her body would resist them. If Cazadoras did this, they were trying to kill her,” he said, his voice grim. “I thought the Cazadoras were wiped out? Seems I was mistaken.”
“What are these Cazadoras?” I lifted the door and placed the hernia-inducing piece of metal next to the entrance with a grunt. “Remind me again why we have a door if it keeps getting blown off its hinges? Maybe we should just hang a curtain?”
“Their full name is Cazadoras Sangrientas de la Noche—Blood Hunters of the Night,” Monty answered, ignoring my remark about the door. “They’ve always been referred to as Blood Hunters.”
“And, what, they’re vampire hunters?” I said with a short-lived laugh as Monty nodded. “They’re really vampire hunters?”
“Precisely. They were the most effective, zealous, and ruthless group to hunt down vampires. I thought the Council declared New York a sanctuary city?” he said, looking concerned at Chi.
“Seems someone didn’t get the memo,” I said. “Could be they just don’t care about the Council and really hate vampires—or both.”
He placed a bandage over the wound and kept towels over it, applying pressure. “Whatever caused this wound is still in there. I don’t dare go in without knowing what I’m looking for.”
“Can’t you just use your magic? Quan did this thing with golden light that healed me and Peaches. Can you do that?”
“I’m a battle mage not a healer. My specialty is destruction, no
t reconstruction.” Monty gave me a look of uncertainty. “Besides, magic on supernaturals is far from an exact thing. I could do more harm than good.”
“Yeah, I got the part about destruction, so did most of the city.” I removed the bloody towels from his side. “Don’t they teach you to fix what you break back at the Sanctuary? Isn’t that one of the tenets?”
“Battle mages are taught to be living weapons of obliteration,” he said tightly, and sighed. “What Quan did is a discipline beyond me. The mages of the White Phoenix are unparalleled healers. I can only do rudimentary healing spells,” he whispered. “All we can do now is wait.”
FOUR
ROXANNE APPEARED AT the door a few minutes later with a large case and two assistants carrying a gurney. Peaches let Roxanne cross the threshold but growled when the men tried to come in. They both stopped at the threshold and stepped back.
“Piero is bringing over food.” I grabbed Peaches by the scruff of the neck and pulled him away from the doorway. “Sorry, he likes to chew on visitors.”
“Please, wait by the entrance,” Roxanne instructed her assistants while she put her case down and knelt on the floor next to Monty. She touched his wrist with her hand. “I can take over from here. Thank you, Tristan. Would you mind assisting?”
He gave her a short nod, moved to the side, and opened the case. She put on a pair of latex gloves and asked for a scalpel.
“Some of the wounds around the neck and torso have healed.” Monty handed her the scalpel. “The abdominal injury must contain some foreign material that’s preventing healing.”
“Do you know who did this?” she asked as she made the first incision. “Who could bring her down like this?”
“Blood Hunters,” Monty said, and dabbed the wound with absorbent material to remove the blood.
“Blood Hunters? I thought the Council eliminated that group decades ago,” Roxanne said, reaching for the angled forceps. “This is a gunshot wound. Since when do Blood Hunters use guns? I thought they were all crossbows and stakes?”
“Apparently they’ve upgraded with the times. Can you remove the round? I would like to examine it before you report it to the NYTF,” Monty said, wiping more blood away.
Like any medical facility, Haven Medical was obligated by law to report every case of a bullet wound, gunshot wound, or any other injury from a firearm. Instead of reporting to the local police, they had to inform the NYTF—a quasi-military police force created to deal with any supernatural event occurring in New York City.
Roxanne nodded and closed her eyes for a few seconds. She traced a rune and the tip of the forceps turned white hot before returning to its normal color. She grabbed another forceps, uttered some words under her breath, and inserted them into the wound.
After what seemed like a minute, she removed the instrument with the round and placed it into the small pan he held. She inserted the first pair of forceps into the wound, and the sound of sizzling skin filled the reception area as she cauterized the wound.
Monty stood up and stepped over to a table as Roxanne dressed the wound. He motioned for me to come over as he pulled out a magnifying glass from one of the drawers. He wiped down the round, removing blood, and exposing an intricate inscription of runic symbols.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked me as I looked at the round.
It appeared to glow as he turned it in his fingers. “Is that thing glowing?” I asked as he kept rotating the bullet.
He nodded. “Yes. This is a nine-millimeter armor-piercing light irradiated tungsten carbide round—the ultimate vampire killer,” he said, the surprise evident in his voice. “LIT rounds were outlawed after the war. These things are impossible to get.”
“Not that impossible. Looks like your entropy rounds, with a slight variation.” I pointed at the bullet. “I don’t recognize the rune work, though.”
“I don’t either, but I know who would,” Monty whispered, turning the bullet over in his hand under the magnifying glass. “Nicholas.”
“Are you kidding me? Nicholas, as in the Moving Market? Shadow Nick?”
“The same,” he confirmed, nodding while he examined the bullet. “Rune designs are like signatures. Each one is a distinct indicator of who traced it. He would know who created this rune.”
“And probably tell them, too. We can’t trust him.” I tried to memorize the design.
“You don’t trust him because he’s a plane-weaver,” Monty said, looking at me.
“Am I wrong?”
“Yes,” Monty said. “We can’t trust Nicholas because he’s a corrupt, immoral, and self-serving individual who will betray you faster than you could blink.”
“How am I wrong, then? That’s exactly what I meant—you can’t trust him.”
“It has nothing to do with his being a plane-weaver,” Monty said, examining the bullet again. “It has everything to do with him being a despicable person. You have to respect his ability. The Moving Market thrives and eludes the Dark Council because of him. He’s a necessary evil.”
“Are you sure he’s the only one who can identify these runes? Does this mean this design is like handwriting?” I asked, clearly not happy about this Moving Market idea.
“Deeper. A rune possesses a miniscule essence of the magic-user who wrote it. If he doesn’t know who wrote it, he will know someone who does.” Monty held up the bullet and looked at Roxanne. “I need to borrow this for a few hours. Can you delay the call?”
“I’ll call Ramirez once we get back to Haven,” Roxanne answered and began packing her case. “That should give you a few hours’ head start. You can take the bullet, but we need to take her with us, she’s still critical. Simon, can you carry her to the gurney?”
I slipped my arms under the still unconscious Chi, and lifted her slowly off the Chesterfield. She was surprisingly heavy despite her small frame. Being careful not to jostle her, I placed her gently on the waiting gurney. I stepped back as they strapped her in and waited for Roxanne.
“Can you keep her safe? I need you to keep her safe,” I said as Roxanne approached the gurney.
“The Unit is runed inside and out,” she responded, placing her hand on my arm. “She’ll be safe. I’ll ride in the back with her. I may not be Tristan, but I’m no pushover.”
“Thank you. I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I said, touching the side of the gurney. “I’ll make sure to call Ken.”
“That would be a good idea,” Roxanne said, nodding and looking at our doorway. “Maybe a more secure door would be in order as well. This one seems to be a bit—flimsy. Don’t you have Cecil’s number, Tristan?”
“I do,” he said, stepping close to her. “I’ll give him a call.”
“I’m sure he could design something for you.” She motioned to the assistants and they wheeled Chi down the hall. She paused to touch Monty’s cheek. “It’s good of you to keep the Hansen clean. I need that bullet in Haven by the time the NYTF comes to speak to me.”
Tristan turned crimson and nodded. She smiled and caught up to the gurney. Peaches and I followed her downstairs and to the waiting Unit. Once they were on their way, I came back upstairs in time to see Monty raising the door and placing it over the entrance.
FIVE
I CALLED KEN and it went straight to voicemail. This meant he was either busy, or avoiding me. He and I didn’t get along much, but when it came to his sister, he was fierce—and scary—in his loyalty.
I had just fastened the last hinge on the door, when I heard a soft knock. Peaches sniffed the air and rumbled. I patted him on the head and rubbed his ears.
“Settle down, at least this threat has the courtesy to knock before exploding the door in my face,” I said, stepping back and resting my hand on Grim Whisper.
“Simon, the door,” Piero said, followed by another knock. I knew it was Piero because he always pronounced my name “see-mon” i
nstead of the usual “sigh-mon.”
“One second.” I grabbed Peaches by the scruff. “I need to put you on a diet.” He resisted my pull and focused on the door. Even I could smell the food.
“This food will go to waste if cold,” Piero said in his clipped English. “Aprire la porta—presto, presto.”
I quickly opened the door and Piero entered without incident—or anything in his hands. Peaches expressed his disappointment as a low rumble escaped him.
Piero was dressed in a simple black Armani two-piece suit, and a bone-white shirt. As usual, his ensemble lacked any kind of neckwear. I had shared the bond with Piero shortly after taking Peaches to Roselli’s a few weeks ago. Taking a hellhound to an upscale supernatural restaurant wasn’t the best of ideas, and could be the reason he was making a house call.
Piero stood by the entrance and clapped twice.
A young woman came to the door. Her hands were trembling slightly as she held a large steel bowl. Inside the bowl, I counted no less than five oversized pieces of filet mignon. The smell wafted over, and Peaches looked at me and whined.
“You can’t bite the brave young woman who is bringing you the meat,” I said, making sure I had a firm grip on his scruff. “Got it?”
He rumbled in response.
“Please, place the bowl over there. The kitchen,” Piero instructed. “Away from the door. Thank you.”
The young woman did as he asked, never taking her eyes off Peaches.
“Only the bowl,” I warned as I let him go. He ran over with a singular focus, and began devouring the food.
The young woman backed out of the office quickly, as Piero clapped again. A cadre of white-clad servers entered the office next. They rolled in a serving table and an assortment of trays. They quickly placed a setting for two on the Kahiko dining table, which elicited a nod of approval from Piero as he pointed and coordinated.
Ten minutes later the servers were gone, and we sat down before a magnificent dinner. Wagyu beef and white truffle covered my plate, and Monty had his signature salad. Piero stood by the table. If I closed my eyes and went by smell alone, I could almost imagine we were in Roselli’s.
Montague & Strong Detective Novels Box Set: Montague & Strong Detective Novels Books, 1 through 3 (Montague & Strong Case Files) Page 39