by Sierra Dean
My battered body agreed with this sentiment wholeheartedly. As I got back up to my feet I let out a groan of protest.
“Let’s get her out of here,” I said. “I know those wounds don’t look bad, but we need to get you to a hospital. I’m actually shocked you’re still human. You lost so much blood, and he gave you his, and then you were out cold…”
“Not to get cute by quoting The Princess Bride, but I was only mostly dead. You can’t be turned into a vampire unless you’re truly and properly dead. I guess I got lucky.” She glanced at all her wounds as if she didn’t think she was particularly lucky in that moment. But Sig’s blood was helping to heal her, so I doubted most of the scars would last. She added, “And I’m not going to a hospital. I’m coming with you.”
Naturally.
I didn’t even have the energy to try to talk her out of it, either, not that she would listen to me one way or the other.
“Fine, but if you get killed for real this time, that’s on you.”
Chapter Thirty
We had one missing person located and one more left to round up, but the problem was that the bar had been my only lead. It turned out to be a good one, considering we’d found Ingrid, but it was also the end of the line as far as available clues.
The four of us opened all the other rooms, hoping to find something that might indicate where Sig had been kept or what they’d done with him, but unfortunately no one had left behind a handy We Are Here map with a big red X on it.
Pretty inconsiderate of them if you asked me.
Once we had exhausted searching every nook and cranny of the shady basement prison, we left the bar, glad to put it in our rearview at last. Night had settled in fully at this point, the cloak of darkness wrapping the city up entirely. New York fought back, shining its own brightness into the night, but it was obvious that we were now well beyond the protection of sunlight.
Even though Davos was locked up, his people were free to do the nasty deeds he had planned.
Which meant we were truly running out of time. His people had Sig, and there was nothing to stop them from opening up their Hell gate.
I considered heading back to the High Line, because he’d tried to open one there before, but something about that choice didn’t feel right. At the High Line he had used two female human victims. He couldn’t have expected too big of a gate from such a small offering. No, this time around he would be looking for something a lot bigger.
And probably more private.
Unfortunately, my brain wasn’t coming up with any viable locations. I needed help of the magical variety, and I needed it now.
“I know where we have to go,” I declared.
“You know where he is?” Ingrid asked.
“No, but I know who does, and I know someone who can get us through the door.”
The three of them exchanged uncertain glances.
“We’re going to see the Oracle,” I explained. “But first we need to go get my dad.”
The Starbucks on the corner of West 52nd and 8th didn’t look like much, though it had been renovated in the past two years to have more of an upscale aesthetic. It wasn’t the kind of place you would pass by and think, Now there’s a portal to a reality between dimensions.
But that’s precisely what someone would find, if they were in dire need and passed through that door.
The need was key. You couldn’t be perfectly content and still find yourself in Calliope’s realm. Nor could you get there if you were human, unfortunately. Which meant Emilio, Ingrid, and myself were all shit out of luck in getting past the threshold.
I wasn’t sure about Cal’s demon policy, and I didn’t think it was a great idea to make Harry a guinea pig in this particular experiment. Calliope’s realm didn’t adhere to the laws of physics as we knew them, meaning the phases of the moon all happened simultaneously there, something that really fucked up werewolves when they tried to enter.
Who knew how things would impact a demon, or if she had barriers in place to keep them from entering at all.
No, what we needed here was a vampire, and as luck would have it, I knew one who happened to live a few blocks away.
We made our way to my old apartment, a basement suite in a cute little yellow building on West 52nd Street, not far from Cal’s Starbucks. There was a light burning in the living room, so I took my chances that Sutherland might be up and about.
Eternally seventeen and out of his goddamn mind, Sutherland had a bad habit of sleeping his nights away and forgetting to go out into the world. And when he wasn’t napping, he was awake all night watching terrible 80s movies on TV.
He was a man of simple pleasures, my father.
A while back I had hidden a key outside that would allow me access if need be. I’d stowed it out of sight when I’d realized Sutherland tended to avoid contact with others, and often wouldn’t answer his door even if he was at home.
I couldn’t blame him for doing the whole introvert thing, but at the same time, sometimes I needed his help. Our relationship wasn’t a stereotypical father-daughter bond in that I took care of him more than the other way around. I also wasn’t entirely certain Sutherland was capable of conventional love anymore. I knew he was fond of me and liked it when I visited, but there wasn’t much connection beyond that.
I’d saved his life during one of the darkest periods of my own, and I think he was grateful for it and made an effort to live that life as best he knew how so as to please me. I just wished I could offer him something more, something that would make him feel involved and welcomed as part of vampire society.
He was, technically, of Sig’s bloodline. A rogue vampire who had been sired by Sig’s lineage was responsible for killing Sutherland and then letting him rise with no guidance or help. Unfortunately that was what caused Sutherland to go insane, because his first act upon rising from the dead, in a state of blind hunger, was to attempt to kill my pregnant mother.
Long story short, that’s how I ended up as both a vampire and a werewolf. Mother wolf plus Daddy vamp equals messed-up baby Secret. Scientifically it was obviously a lot more complicated than that, but since I wasn’t either anymore, it didn’t much matter.
I decided to see if he was in a good mood before asking for any major favors. Rather than going to the door, I tapped gently on the window to his living room, which faced the street. A moment later the curtain rustled, and he peered out at me, his permanent baby face something I would never get used to.
He looked like a towheaded varsity football star, the very definition of the All-American boy, except for the fact he should have been in his forties now, and drank blood instead of Budweisers with the boys.
He stared at me uncertainly, as if he had no idea who I was. This wasn’t uncommon. I sometimes thought Sutherland was like the Drew Barrymore character in 50 First Dates who loses her memory every night as she sleeps and needs to relearn everything about her life the next day. My dad often took a long time to catch up with things he should already know.
Things like recognizing his own daughter’s face.
The problem was he was permanently stuck in the year he had died, and in that reality I was just an unexpected teenage pregnancy. I hadn’t been born yet. A full-grown woman in place of the idea of a baby was a lot to take in.
We hadn’t even met until I was in my twenties, so I couldn’t really blame him. He didn’t have a lifetime of memories to draw from. Still, it made me sad. My mother had hated me because she could only see him when she looked at me, and when he’d been turned, she’d lost everything she cared about. And my father barely knew me. The man who had been the closest thing I ever had to a father, my former partner Francis Keats, was dead.
All of this added up to a long list of reasons I should probably start going to therapy more.
After a long, agonizing moment, Sutherland’s face lit up, and he gave me a wave. I pointed in the direction of the outside door, and he nodded and let the curtain drop. A couple seconds la
ter the exterior door opened, and there stood Sutherland, with his mussed hair, wrinkly pajama pants, and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt.
“Hey, guys.” He stared at the three people I’d brought with me, and I could tell by his seeking expression that he was trying to find them in his memory. I decided it was best to put him out of his misery.
“Sutherland, these are some friends of mine. Ingrid, Emilio, and Harry.”
Sutherland nodded, but his gaze focused on Harry longer than the others. “There’s something wrong with him. He doesn’t fit inside his body.”
I glanced over at the demon, who self-consciously looked down at his human suit. “Did he just say this vessel makes me look fat?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Don’t worry about Harry. That’s temporary housing.”
“Oh.” He stared at the demon a little longer, then shrugged. “Do you guys want tea?”
Tea, I think, was the only kitchen-based item Sutherland knew how to make, and he absolutely loved to offer it everyone. Over the winter, my sister Genie had come to town to hunt down my back-from-the-grave mother, and the first thing he’d done after we’d told Sutherland his life was at risk was make us some peppermint tea.
As far as I could tell, it was a holdover from his Southern upbringing, where mothers and grandmothers would bridge awkwardness with the offering of tea, both hot and cold.
“Tea would be lovely,” I said. “But I’m wondering if we could take you out for some.”
“That’s okay. I have tea inside.”
I exchanged a quick look with Emilio. I needed to impress the urgency of our situation on Sutherland without spooking him, but it was also important he understood what I was asking for. If he went through the Starbucks door without some sense of desperation, he wouldn’t get to Cal.
“Sutherland, we’re actually here for your help.”
“That’s nice. Okay.”
I hated doing this. In a way, I was using him, and he wouldn’t think of saying no, which made me feel even worse. He might not love me, but he was always doing his best to please me, and sometimes it I felt like I was taking advantage of that open generosity.
Admittedly, I only visited him once every month or so when there wasn’t something more demanding luring me to his door.
“Do you remember Calliope?”
“You mean Cal-ee-ope,” he scolded, incorrectly correcting me and going with the phonetic reading of her name.
God, I hope he had never said that to her face.
“You remember the Oracle?” I asked, trying to avoid an utterly unimportant argument over pronunciation.
“Yes, she gives me blood.”
I was relieved to know he was still visiting her regularly. Cal usually only helped newborn vampires, since it was easier for them to initially get blood from her than to hunt in the open. Baby vamps didn’t know how to use the thrall immediately, so if they bit any humans, it wasn’t a pleasant experience, even for the most willing of victims. Cal provided an option for those vampires to eat without being a danger to themselves or others.
I think, beyond the fact he was crazy and a little helpless, she continued to feed Sutherland years later because he reminded her of me. But I had no way of knowing that for sure since I hadn’t been able to visit Cal now that I was no longer a vampire.
Rules are rules.
And metaphysical rules are pretty damn rigid.
“We’re going to visit her.”
“But I have blood already.”
“That’s all right. I need you to ask her something for me.”
“Can’t you ask?”
“No, I need you for this. It’s very important.”
He mulled this over for a bit and then said, “Okay.”
A pang of guilt stabbed my stomach. I wasn’t making him do anything risky or dangerous, but I felt shitty for asking at all.
He turned around to close the door, and I stopped him. His feet were still bare. “You can’t go like that.”
Sutherland looked down at himself then took in each of us in turn. Admittedly we were not a fancy-looking group, and Ingrid and I had both obviously been badly hurt recently, she had visible scars peeking out from under her shirtsleeves.
I made a mental note to give her some of my scar-fading cream. She might need it.
“Right.” He ducked inside, and after a few drawn-out moments he returned, wearing the exact same thing except he had put on a pair of battered tennis shoes to cover his feet. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Thirty-One
The last person I expected to see waiting for us outside of Calliope’s Starbucks was Holden, yet there he was in all his well-pressed, tailored glory.
“Hello, Holden,” Sutherland greeted pleasantly.
“Sutherland,” the Tribunal leader replied with a nod.
I approached him warily and gave him a half hug and a peck on the cheek before asking, “Not that I’m not happy to see you, but what the hell are you doing here?”
Holden inclined his chin towards Sutherland. “He called me.”
I looked from my father to Holden and then back, and my expression must have projected my disbelief, because Holden actually cracked a smile.
“Holden helps me get blood,” Sutherland declared. “You wanted to go see Cal-ee-ope, so I called Holden.”
I stared at my former lover long enough that he said, “Close your mouth.”
“You go with him every time he needs blood?”
Holden gave a half shrug that implied this was no big deal, but to me it was a very big deal indeed.
“How often?” I asked.
“Once a week, usually.”
In that moment I thought I might cry. I had broken this man’s heart—by his own admission—and I had made him kill me, and yet here he was, taking care of my father regularly like it was something he needed to do.
“Why?”
“Because he’s your dad.”
What was unspoken here was that Holden had been with me in California when we had gone to get Sutherland. And Holden had been with me when Dr. Kesteral had held all of us against our will and performed those unspeakable experiments.
Holden might be the only other person undead or alive who knew what Sutherland had experienced there. Maybe this wasn’t all about me. There was a chance he felt responsible in his own way for Sutherland’s well-being.
But at least a small part of it was about me.
Oof, and I thought I felt guilty before. There’s nothing like finding out your ex was visiting your mentally unstable father more times than you were, and was making sure he got the food he needed on a regular basis.
This was a debt beyond the scope of anything I could ever hope to repay.
“Sutherland didn’t tell me you were with him. I thought you’d be out looking for Sig still.” Holden was obviously trying to ease us out of awkward territory and back towards the task at hand, which I appreciated. He peered over my shoulder and spotted the rest of my motley crew. “You found Ingrid.”
“I found Ingrid.” I’d meant to tell him after we left the bar, but things had started to move very quickly after that, and it had slipped my mind as we continued our search for Sig.
“Rumors of my death were only slightly exaggerated,” she said by way of greeting.
“Emilio,” Holden said with a polite nod. The two had met before on several occasions. Not buddies, per se, but they knew and respected one another. “And it appears you have found another man for your entourage.”
“Jealous?” Harry quipped without missing a beat.
Ah, so the demon had clearly picked up on a little lingering tension between the vampire and myself. Good to know that hadn’t fizzled out entirely.
“That’s Harry.” I waved in his direction without looking. “He’s a demon.”
“Ah.” Holden put his hands into the pockets of the lovely wool peacoat he was wearing. God, it was absolutely unfair of him to be so handsome. Couldn’t he have
gotten really ugly while I was away? “I take it we aren’t here to get blood, then?”
“We need to find Sig. Ingrid doesn’t know where Davos took him, and I’m pretty sure they’re about to sacrifice him to open a portal to Hell.”
“And you think Calliope can help?”
“I doubt there’s much that goes on in this city she doesn’t know. She’s an oracle.” Then I dropped my voice and added, “Plus, Sutherland is of Sig’s bloodline. If she needs the blood, he has it.” I didn’t want to spook my dad with that bit of information, but magic always demands sacrifice. Cal usually preferred male virgins, but she wasn’t beneath taking blood if it was necessary, and Sutherland had the blood she needed.
“That actually makes a remarkable amount of sense. I’m not sure why I didn’t think to ask her sooner.”
“Probably because Cal hates Sig, so she’s not the most obvious person to ask about him. Or maybe it’s because you’re not enough of a jerk to use your own father to hunt down information. It requires an especially duplicitous mind to come up with an idea like this, and your brain apparently isn’t as evil as mine quite yet.”
“Right, because asking for help from willing volunteers is the same thing as being evil. Makes perfect sense.”
“You be quiet with your logic, sir.”
Holden smiled, and then after a beat said, “I miss you. Miss you being here.”
“Between you and Desmond I’m pretty sure you could start a two-man band singing the song ‘Secret, Come Back to New York’. It would be a huge hit.”
“Never thought the dog and I would agree on much, but it seems you are still the one point where we find ourselves standing on the same ground.”
He wasn’t exactly flirting with me. There were a lot of modern things Holden was bad at, like understanding pop culture and euphemisms, but he was no slouch at the flirting game. When he was hitting on you, you knew he was hitting on you. Mostly because your lady parts suddenly went haywire and your brain stopped forming rational thoughts.