Tooth and Nail

by Chris Underwood

  “It will be burned in the light of the sun, so that no part of her can be used for sympathetic magic or dark sorcery.”

  It made sense. Vampires tended to be skittish about that kind of thing.

  “When?” I asked. “Dawn?”

  He nodded.

  I shook my head. “That’s not going to fly. I need you to get me her head.”

  His eyes widened. “What…what for?”

  I clapped him on the shoulder. “The darkest of sorceries. Welcome to the investigation, friend.”

  9

  I finally made it to the guest bedroom a few minutes later. Nolan had staggered off looking like he was rethinking his recent life decisions. The house had grown quiet, though every now and then I heard the soft clunk of a door closing or a murmur of conversation in some distant part of the mansion.

  Lockhart would be getting as much done as she could before she had to retire for the night. She had to ensure that the vampires’ defenses and contingencies were all in order—they would be vulnerable to the ogres during daylight hours if something kicked off. Not only that, she also had to make sure that none of the other vampires scattered throughout Lost Falls were planning anything stupid.

  Lockhart’s rivals—and even her supposed allies—were always scheming to improve their own standings within the brood. Someone might use Eventide’s death as an opportunity to take Lockhart down.

  Technically, Lockhart didn’t need to sleep, even during the day. A few hours of trance-like rest would be enough to keep her refreshed. But a vampire’s fear of daylight was something very powerful. Even with the blackout curtains that covered every window in the house, Lockhart would undoubtedly spend the day in some dark basement room, sealed inside something that—while technically not a coffin—might as well be one.

  Until then, she’d be a busy bee. Me, on the other hand, I needed a few hours shuteye.

  I trudged into the guest room that Lockhart had assigned to me. It was furnished much like Rachel’s guest bedroom, except there was a painting above the bed depicting a sailing ship swept about on a storm-ravaged sea.

  Strangely, there was an old CRT TV sitting on the desk in one corner, with an ancient VCR perched atop it. It seemed a little out of place in Lockhart’s otherwise sophisticated mansion. I suppose when you live as long as a vampire you tend to accumulate outdated technology. Maybe Lockhart just hadn’t discovered the glory of ultra-high-definition TVs yet.

  There was a lock on the door that looked like it wouldn’t keep out a toddler. I closed the door and locked it anyway.

  A fresh set of clothes had been laid out on the bed. They looked clean and crisp and about my size, if a little too business-like for my taste. A fluffy white towel was folded next to the clothes.

  On the other side of the room, a doorway led to an en suite bathroom. I checked the time. It was late—well, early, really. I needed sleep. But I also needed to get the cold out of my bones and the mud out from between my toes. With a sigh, I hung up my coat, grabbed the towel, and went into the bathroom.

  The shower was perfect. Just fucking perfect. Hot, with just the right amount of pressure. I stood under the spray for longer than I care to admit, letting the water drive out the iciness that had filled my core. For a few minutes, I even forgot that I was standing naked and unarmed in a vampire’s lair.

  With some regret, I turned off the water and dried myself off. Wrapping the towel around myself, I stepped back into the bedroom.

  There was a man reclining on my bed.

  Well, I say man. Truth is, I didn’t know if he had a gender at all. Maybe he changed it whenever the mood took him. His hips were wide like a woman’s, but his chest and shoulders were broad, as broad as mine.

  He lay on his side, one knee raised. On that knee rested an arm that was too long for the rest of him. His other arm was curled beneath him, propping up his soft chin.

  His face had changed since I’d last seen him. He still bore two eyes of differing shape and color, but now they were framed with gold-rimmed spectacles. The glasses perched on an obscenely long nose that made me think of a toucan’s beak. He had a new head of hair as well: blazing orange and braided into a pair of long pigtails.

  He smiled broadly as I stepped into the bedroom, displaying crooked teeth that didn’t match.

  “Good evening, my dear Osric,” the Dealer said. His eyebrows furrowed, he pulled back the sleeve of his pinstriped shirt to consult his silver wristwatch. “Or should I say good morning?”

  “No,” I said.

  The Dealer frowned, then turned his wrist so I could read his watch. “But you see, it’s nearly four o’clock on this fine morning, so—”

  “No,” I said again. “You shouldn’t say good morning. Or good evening. Or anything. You should keep your mouth shut while you walk out that door.”

  “I shall never understand why you are so hostile whenever I come to visit.”

  “I’m tired,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’m cranky. And I’m not even dressed.”

  “I waited while you finished your shower. I thought it was the polite thing to do.” He showed me his smile again.

  I began to ask him how he’d managed to get in, but then I closed my mouth with a grunt. The Dealer went wherever the hell he pleased. My wards had never managed to keep him out, and I doubted Lockhart’s magical protections could either.

  Instead, I stomped over to the bed. With one hand I held my towel in place—the last thing I needed was for it to fall down—and with my other I stabbed a finger toward the misshapen creature grinning at me. He didn’t flinch.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I growled.

  His smile widened beyond the limits of what should have been possible with a human mouth. He sat up slowly and stared at me with eyes that were not his own. A faint scent of decay wafted over me.

  “You missed something at Doyle’s Reach,” he said. “I can help you find it. For the right price.”

  10

  The Dealer. That was what I called him. If he had another name, I didn’t know it. Hell, if he had one, he’d probably bought it off someone else.

  What was he, really? A demon? The thought had crossed my mind more than once. He was something more than a Stranger, something more than the witches and sorcerers and monsters that dwelt in Lost Falls. He didn’t live here, in this world. He was more like a traveling salesman.

  There were more of his kind, I knew. But it was this Dealer, this creature in front of me, that had sold me my power. It was this Dealer that had pulled back the veil that had covered my eyes and shown me another world lurking just out of sight.

  I had been someone else then. Just a dumb kid. Part of me still hated the Dealer for taking that away from me. But if I was honest—really, truly honest—I had to admit that the blame for that loss didn’t lie entirely with the Dealer.

  He had only made me an offer. I was the one who couldn’t refuse it.

  Since then, from time to time, he had inserted himself back into my life. It was never a pleasant experience.

  I dressed quickly, turning away from the Dealer and using the towel to conceal myself as best I could until I was semi-decent.

  “There is something different about you,” he said as I pulled on the trousers that had been left out for me.

  I turned around and found him staring at me intently. “Eyes to yourself, huh?”

  He didn’t seem to hear. His eyes roamed across my tattoos, then across my bare chest, pausing on the faint scars I bore: a set of long slashes where a lesser vampire had got the better of me, and a couple of small holes in my chest and stomach where a man named Brandon Mills had shot me.

  I tried not to think about those scars very much. Every time I caught a glimpse of them in the mirror, it brought back the burning pain, the feeling of suffocation. The deep cold. The sensation of damp soil covering my face as the bastard buried me in a shallow grave.

  “You’ve healed well,” the Dealer said. “Some of my fines
t work, I think. But something has changed since I last had the pleasure of your company.”

  “I got a haircut last week.”

  With a sudden burst of energy, the Dealer threw his legs forward and leapt off the bed. Before I could even take a step back, he was standing right in front of me, neck craned forward.

  I flinched back. “What the hell are you—?”

  He shuffled even closer to me, raising his impressive nose and sniffing about like a rat on the hunt for cheese. With a frown, he pulled back and shook his head.

  “Not a smell. Almost, but not quite. It’s something else.” He narrowed his eyes and peered at me. “You’re…brighter, somehow. It’s as if you’re wrapped in silver and gold.”

  “Dealer,” I said, “I’m only going to ask you this once. Please get the fuck out of my personal space.”

  He flashed me an apologetic grin and raised his long-fingered hands.

  “Deepest apologies, my friend.” He took a step back. “Better?”

  “Keep going.”

  He shuffled another half-step back and then came to a halt. I decided that was about as good as I was going to get. I grabbed my new shirt and pulled it on.

  “I’m still very fond of your body, Osric,” the Dealer said. “Perhaps we could make a new deal in which you gift it to me in case of your untimely—”

  “Pass.”

  “I would, of course, wait until your soul had departed before—”

  “No, Dealer. That’s my final answer.”

  He laughed at that—a high pitched laugh that didn’t match his voice in the slightest. “If I had a tooth for every time I had someone change their ‘final answer…’ ” He made air quotes with his long fingers, then shrugged. “But I’m sure you will be different.”

  I dragged my hand across my face and sat down heavily on the end of the bed. “Listen. I’m tired. I have to be up in a few hours to try to do a job I really should not have volunteered for. So how about you just make your offer, so I can tell you where to shove it.”

  “Very well. Let’s get down to business.” In one deft movement, he grabbed the desk chair, spun it around, and sat down in front of me with one leg crossed over the other. “Your search for the truth surrounding the death of Selene Eventide is doomed to failure.”

  “Luckily, I have a more positive attitude than you.”

  “I have nothing but respect for your attitude, Osric, and your skills. But you missed something at Doyle’s Reach. You all did. It is understandable. The circumstances under which you had to investigate were far from ideal.”

  “You were watching us?”

  “In a sense,” he said.

  “What does that mean?”

  He gave a little shrug. “I like to keep an eye on things. It’s good for business. You know that.”

  I sighed. I didn’t know why I was even bothering. “Fine. What did we miss?”

  “A witness.”

  I blinked. “What witness? You mean that lady who heard the crash and timed it to an episode of CSI?”

  He shook his head. “A real witness.” The Dealer spread his arms and smiled grandly. “And here is where we come to my favorite part. The negotiation.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “You just tipped your hand. There aren’t that many people in Doyle’s Reach. If we go door-knocking again, we’ll find your witness.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps they will volunteer the information easily. Or perhaps they don’t even live in Doyle’s Reach. Do you think you have the time to find them?”

  “I’m a pretty good tracker.”

  “You are indeed,” the Dealer said. “But you don’t know what you’re tracking.”

  The bastard had me there. I rubbed my tired eyes, trying to think about this rationally. Any time the Dealer showed up in my life, my first instinct was to tell him to get his rotting Frankensteinian ass out of my life.

  But the Dealer wasn’t a cheat. If he said he had something, he had something. Hell, maybe he was right, and without this witness we’d never get to the truth of the matter.

  And then what? War? It was certainly possible.

  “Tell you what,” I said. “You give me this witness of yours, and then you head on over to Lockhart to collect your payment. This is her mess. She might as well foot the bill.”

  “It doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid. He who makes the deal must pay the price.”

  “Is that what counts as a moral code for you?” I asked.

  “We are all bound by certain rules, are we not?”

  I grunted. “Why to come to me at all, then? Deal with Lockhart directly. She’s more desperate to solve this than I am.” I gestured widely, taking in the guest room. “And she can afford to pay for the information.”

  “I can only assume from that suggestion that you have never entered into a contract with a vampire before,” the Dealer said with a grimace. “Sonja Lockhart would have her lawyers ironing out the details until all parties involved had been worn away by the winds of time.”

  “All right, fine. Fine.” I held up my hands. “Just tell me what you want. A kidney? Maybe a testicle. I recommend old righty. He’s never let me down.”

  “No, no, nothing as crass as that. I’ve decided that when you do finally sell me your body, I want it intact.”

  “What, then?”

  The Dealer smiled and leaned back in his chair. He brushed some imaginary dust off his knee, then clasped his hands together. The bastard really was enjoying himself.

  “Your sister and her wife have recently adopted a new son,” he began.

  I sat up straight. “No. Fuck you.”

  “Calm yourself, Osric. I am not a marauding goblin who would snatch a child from beneath their parents’ noses. And as I have already told you, I cannot demand another person pay the price for your end of the deal. Not without their consent, which one so young as little Michael is unable to give.”

  “Then what the hell do you want?”

  “You spend time with young Michael. You speak with him. I simply wish to share in your memories of him.”

  I frowned. “This is getting real creepy, Dealer.”

  “Not at all. For this, I will not take the memories from you. I will simply return in—let’s say six months—and you can share with me stories of your time spent with Michael.”

  “And when you say share…”

  “Conversation, Osric. As if we were old friends catching up and you wished to tell me all the wonderful things your nephew has been up to.”

  “No digging around in my brain with your scalpel?”

  “I’ll leave my tools at home,” he said.

  My frown deepened. Something about this was making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Michael had only just turned three, but he’d already lived a hard life. He’d been abducted by a goblin sorcerer and turned into a strange, twisted creature so that his blood could be used to power the sorcerer’s experiments. Through a lot of effort, and with the reluctant help of the town hag, Early and I had managed to reverse the transformation and restore his humanity. With his parents dead, my sister Alice and her wife Valerie had brought him into their family. They were trying to give him the kind of childhood he deserved.

  But despite our best efforts, Michael hadn’t been left completely unchanged by the ordeal. I never knew him before he was taken by the sorcerer, but I felt sure he wasn’t the same kid now that he’d been then. He was a quiet boy. Watchful, cautious, smart. Sometimes, though, he said things. Strange things. Things he shouldn’t know.

  If a normal kid had said those things, they would’ve been dismissed as a small child’s babbling. But Michael wasn’t normal. He’d been bathed in magic since he was eighteen months old. That had to have left a mark on him.

  “What exactly do you think he can tell you?” I asked slowly. I studied the Dealer’s face closely as I asked the question.

  “That is not your concern.”

  “Oh, I’m very concerned,” I said. “I
’m concerned you’re trying to use him. You want to make him into some of kind of…some kind of pawn. And I don’t know what game you’re playing.”

  “We all play the same game, Osric. And we’re all pawns, in one way or another.”

  “Even you?”

  “Especially me.”

  I narrowed my eyes. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t get a read on him. He was, for all intents and purposes, wearing a mask—a mask he’d stitched together from the body parts he’d bought from other people. If he had any true emotion, any humanity, it was buried beneath that slowly decaying flesh.

  “Osric,” he said, “I am not your enemy. And make no mistake: you do have enemies. This whole town does. They are lurking. Waiting for a moment of weakness. If conflict breaks out between the vampires and the ogres, your enemies will seize that opportunity. They will drive wedges between the peoples of Lost Falls. And then, when you are at your most divided, they will destroy you all.”

  I set my jaw. “I know the stakes, Dealer.”

  “Then accept my offer. It is, I think, particularly generous. In six months, I will return. You will tell me everything you have witnessed Michael Wakefield-Turner say or do during that time. In exchange, I will help you identify a crucial witness in your investigation at Doyle’s Reach.”

  I rubbed at my jaw. “You’ll help me now? Tonight?”

  “Of course. The information will not be much use six months from now, will it?” He grinned like he’d made a joke and was waiting for me to laugh.

  “What if I take the deal and then stiff you on our little heart-to-heart in six months?”

  “Then perhaps I’ll come for that testicle you offered.”

  I mulled it over. I couldn’t help but suspect that there was a trap here, some catch I hadn’t figured out. The Dealer wouldn’t screw himself over on his own deal. Whatever he was getting out of this, it was more than what it appeared on the surface.

  Michael was valuable to him. Or maybe it was my interactions with the kid that were valuable. Whatever it was, the Dealer thought he could glean something from me. Information, maybe?