by Virna DePaul
“You all right, Barrett?”
“No,” she whispered. “That girl just died. And I didn’t—I couldn’t save her.” Just like Noah. Maybe like Jane.
“She didn’t want to be saved. There’s no cure for what she was putting into her veins. Xe never caught a break in all her life. She’s in a better place now.”
“How do you know?”
Sam took a deep breath and jammed her hands into her pockets. “Because I want to believe it,” she said in a soft voice. “You gotta believe in something. This business makes it hard. Wish I could get out. But I have a reason to stay.”
Nothing to lose. Barrett went for it. “Can I ask what it is?”
“I hate Vlad’s fucking guts. Hate what he does. But he’s had me by the balls.” Sam rubbed her eyes. “These damn contacts gotta come out. You can’t cry and be beautiful, right?” She lifted an eyelid and pinched the soft plastic lens, flicking it on the ground. Then she did the other eye. “Disposables.”
Barrett figured as much.
“So I’m biding my time, acting nice, like I’m going for Employee of the Week. Hoping I can find a way to take Vlad out and not get sent up for life or killed. But now you and me are on the same side. You some kind of undercover agent, ain’t you? Yeah. Thought so. Wait until the bastard figures that out.”
She turned to look at Barrett. Sam’s beautiful eyes were black with silver pupils.
Barrett gasped. “You’re a vampire.”
“Yeah. I’m a born vampire.”
Barrett stared at her.
Sam shrugged. “There was a human or two or four in the mix somewhere. Another reason I haven’t moved against Vlad. My powers are weak compared to his.”
So they’d been right, Barrett thought. About Vlad. About Jane. Now what were they going to do?
“You might as well keep on asking me questions,” Sam said. “I know you will. If I don’t want to answer, I’ll tell you.”
Barrett was baffled for a moment. But she knew better than to waste time. “Okay. The heroin Xecala used. What was that?”
Sam looked off into the near distance, her silver eyes shimmering. “It’s something new. Vamp Smack Prime is what they call it. VSP for short. Potent shit and not easy to come by. You have to have the right connection.”
“Meaning a vampire.”
“Yeah.”
A drug that enslaved and ultimately killed had to be a Rogue product. Barrett made a note to run it by Collette. If VSP hit the streets anywhere, there would be a wave of deaths far higher than the average.
“Is there anything else I should know?”
“What the hell.” She clasped her hands, not in a casual way. “That I was on to you from the beginning. You didn’t look like no nightclub hostess to me. Then one day, you didn’t know I was there, but you were in the dressing room and your bracelet snagged on something. You took it off and—”
“You read my mind.”
“I sure did.”
Barrett hadn’t noticed it. She had experienced the probing sensation once or twice, long before she got to Club Red. But never since she’d been there. Sam had to be awfully good at subtle mental exploration. Having a human ancestor probably helped her follow the pathways of human thought. And being female had to as well.
“I’m not,” Sam said.
“Beg your pardon?”
“Either put on your bling or get used to having me inside your head.” Sam sighed. “When I said Vlad had me by the balls, I meant that literally. I’m not a biological woman. And that’s the last thing you can’t tell anyone. Everybody doesn’t have to know everything, and the club girls gossip.”
“I don’t. Your secret is safe with me.”
“Good.”
Barrett thought that she should have known that Sam was trans. But she really hadn’t. No big deal these days. It was just a strange time to find out.
“So … Sam isn’t short for Samantha?”
“Nope. My birth certificate says Samuel.”
Barrett looked out into the growing darkness. She didn’t say anything for a while or even think anything. The other woman had brought her clasped hands up to her forehead, her body bowed.
Barrett offered a silent prayer for Xecala, sure that Sam was doing the same, hoping that her soul found the peace that life had denied her.
Xe had tried to help a lost girl she didn’t know. Barrett was infinitely grateful.
She was going to see that Xe wasn’t forgotten, either.
Barrett walked back to the club, got into her car, drove a few blocks away, then parked and took out her phone. She tapped the screen, then switched to her messages.
There was a text from Justine asking for an update. Barrett responded.
New developments. Text you later. Where are you?
Didn’t take a minute for a reply.
Fancy bar. Nice-looking man. Possible not-so-nice association with Club Red.
Be careful, Barrett typed with a fingernail.
I always am.
Barrett sent another text to Collette, asking if they could connect tomorrow. No answer. She knew the former police officer would get back to her as soon as possible.
Now for Nick.
Meet me at the condo, she texted. Then, with tears stinging her eyes, she started driving again.
Ten minutes later, he met her in the parking lot. He’d washed the ugly streaks out of his dark hair and ditched the rest of the disguise. She was relieved that he looked like himself again.
“What’s going on?” he asked right away.
“A lot.” She looked around to see if anyone was watching, feeling even more paranoid than usual. “Let’s go inside.”
She practically pushed him through the door.
He turned around and studied her businesslike demeanor. “You look serious. Guess I have to take a rain check on the kinky sex you were threatening me with.”
“What?” Barrett blinked at him, not even remembering that for a few seconds. Then it clicked. “Oh. Not now. Jesus.” She proceeded to tell him everything she’d found out from Sam. Barrett told him about the vampire, describing her at length but leaving out the part about her being transgender, since Barrett had sworn to keep that secret and it wasn’t really relevant.
“Have you gotten feedback from the micro-sensors?” She went to get the pad of paper.
“Yeah. I have the codes for all three keypads and I know how often they were entered in the last twenty-four hours.” He moved to the table and got his laptop booted up.
She came back, thinking that everything in the hard drive was duplicated in his brain, including the little spinning wheel that signified wait for it. So she waited.
Nick pulled up a frequency graph, separated into three columns marked by numbers:
447574373. 85234647. 5355748.
Barrett slapped down the pad once she’d checked the codes Xecala had given her. “Okay. They’re the same.” She took several jerky breaths.
Nick laid a comforting hand on her shoulder.
She looked up at him. “Xecala probably wasn’t much older than Jane,” she said, her voice quavering.
His eyes darkened. “I’m so sorry, angel.” He reached out to give her a hug, not letting go when she instinctively tried to brush him off. Giving in, she allowed herself the brief comfort of his arms as she blinked back tears.
With a sniff, she drew back, took a slow breath, and nodded, indicating she was calm enough to continue. “I’ve texted Collette, need to see if VSP heroin has hit the streets yet and what the FBI is going to do about it if it has. But she hasn’t gotten back to me yet.”
He studied the frequency graph as she spoke briefly to Collette, then moved to the stored data on the club structure, which he’d stitched into a rotating 3-D display.
It seemed solid. But there was no telling what was down there.
Barrett wrapped it up with Collette and ended the call. “She’s on it. No buzz yet on VSP.”
“Doesn’t s
urprise me if it’s a vampire thing.” Nick blew out a breath. “So we’re dealing with not just a turned vampire in Gil Mansfield, but at least one born vampire. Maybe more. I hate the idea of you going back in there, Barrett.”
“Then don’t think about it. And don’t go all quiet on me, either. Please. Me being inside has been fruitful. Not just because of Xecala and Sam, but because Vlad trusts me. He told me there’s two events scheduled tomorrow. Construction work and a VIP event. We’ve got to get in there, Nick. Get you beyond those doors.”
He nodded, then directed her attention to the graph. “Look at how the dots cluster. Those two doors are used relatively often. The third, hardly ever.”
“Okay. Then that’s the one to use.”
“That’s what I was thinking.” He paused, looking up at her. “You do know we’re outgunned here. We don’t know shit about born vampires, in particular how to kill them. Do you think you’re tight enough with Sam that she’ll tell us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. If she trusts that we’re going after Vlad, I think so. She hates him. Wants to be free of him.”
“She’s not the only one,” he said.
“You think we’re facing impossible odds, don’t you?”
His mouth twisted. “Impossible, improbable.” He shrugged. “Either way you look at it, we’re definitely the underdog.”
“You can’t bring in someone to cover you? Not even Kevin?”
Nick shook his head. “I can’t ask him to risk his neck. Besides, the fewer people who try to go in in a situation like this, the fewer chances there are of being caught. We’re balls to the wall, Barrett. Just like we were when we rescued those sisters, remember?”
She reached out and took his hand. “You’re taking a huge risk,” she said. “I—I can’t thank you enough.”
“You don’t have to thank me. Just keep loving me, Barrett. Even when I mess up. Even when I get quiet and you get insecure. Love me. Believe in me.”
“I do,” she said. “More than you can ever know.”
“Then that’s enough.”
Chapter 25
Inside his office, Vladimir took care of some last-minute details in preparation for the club’s VIP event. The VIPs would be both human and vampires, with the humans dancing to loud music and making enough noise on the club’s main level to drown out the festivities below, where vampires would be secretly enjoying the auctioning off of Jane Small.
The human girl had remained strangely composed in his presence, even after he had told her he was a vampire and made the fate that awaited her perfectly clear. He found her to be … unsettling.
He could not shake the feeling that the girl might be able to outmaneuver him if she had the chance. His usual victims were apt to be emotional, to snivel and beg for their lives and be disgustingly grateful when they were shipped off to their eventual purchasers, thinking that they would be free. In most cases, they were headed for basement dungeons and never-ending rape.
Jane watched him so carefully, as if she was assessing his every move and predicting what the consequences might be.
He wondered if she had been taught to play chess. If so, she was a smart little pawn. And he would have to be careful not to be trapped in a corner and checkmated.
Annoyed by how distracted he’d become thinking of the girl again, Vladimir tried to imagine how his first cage-fighting event would go down once the time was right. By then, he’d have brought in another girl to auction. He had to in order to give the audience the full experience. Sex and death. The ancient Romans—one of his ancestors among them—had done the same. It would be a double bill. An innocent girl for the sex, and turned vampire Tim Murphy chained in the largest cell under the pit to deal out death. If for some reason Murphy didn’t do what he was supposed to, Vlad would move on to plan B—put Gil Mansfield in the cage with a human.
Maybe he’d even play the wretched music Gil liked during the fight to inspire him.
As for the surrounding ambience? The gritty floors and raw walls would pass as an authentic part of the ultimate cage-fighting experience. For the vicious battle to the death that he had in mind, a raw setting was suitable. But unpainted concrete was apt to soak up spilled blood that a paying crowd of Rogues would be avid to see.
The freakiest among them might go so far as to catch the blood in glasses if they were drunk enough and seated close to the arena. The huge cage was designed to swing, to throw the fighters off balance and into each other’s arms. It had been custom welded to take every shock and withstand the ferocity of the combatants, hanging above a pit that Vladimir had intended to be white.
He growled deep in his throat. He was losing patience with these damned details and they were hemorrhaging money by the minute.
They could drape the pit with damask, he supposed. No. The material was far too elegant and the dripping blood would only splotch.
He wanted a vivid contrast. Running rivers of scarlet against gleaming, impermeable white. This was theater—the theater of pain and unbridled violence. Each ticket sold for five thousand dollars. Ringside seats would go for even more. There would be no time-outs and no corner men and no technical victories. The fight began when the bell rang and it was over when one combatant was dead. Both might die if they were valorous. Vladimir hoped so.
The phone rang and Vladimir picked up the receiver.
“Hey, boss,” Gil said.
“What is it?”
“Murphy’s here.”
Chapter 26
Back at the condo, Nick, Barrett, and Justine huddled around the dining table. Nick had set up a triple-encrypted connection and patched in four laptops perched on different objects. One screen showed the fat blue logo of Skype, on hold for a conference chat with Belladonna. Two displayed various parts of the investigation so far. Recon, exterior and interior. Schematics derived from photos. Precise measurements of hallway length and door placement, down to the number of steps it took to move between them all. And one was his, positioned in front of him.
“This is only the main level, correct?” Justine asked, looking into one showing intel.
“That’s right. About ten thousand square feet, not including the interior balconies. I don’t have anything on what’s below it.”
“And you’re sure there is a level below it?” Justine asked.
“I’d like to find out for sure, put it that way. But, yeah. There may be more than one underground level,” he added.
“Pass the potato chips.”
He lobbed the open bag at her and it landed upright in her lap.
“Nice throw. Where’d you learn how to do that?”
“I pitch for a weekend softball league. When I have the time.”
Justine stuck her hand into the bag and munched on the chip she extracted. “So how are you going in?”
“This time, as a contractor.” He nodded to Barrett. “She gets to help me with that.” He returned his attention to his laptop. “Whoa. This just in from Kevin. Looks like the team on the mountain made some interesting discoveries.”
“Share.” That from Justine, along with an avid look.
“Apparently some of the diseased turneds are hiding out in caverns. Tennessee has more of them than any other state. There’s a natural tunnel from one that runs under my mountain. That could be how Tim Murphy got there. And went berserk when he came up into the light.”
“So he was on your mountain by coincidence? I suppose it’s possible,” Justine said thoughtfully.
Barrett heard her cell phone chime. “Let me see who that is.” She looked at the screen. “Ginny. Be right back.”
It was a text. Barrett felt a stab of guilt for not reconnecting with her sooner. But there had been nothing to report.
Any news? Nothing here. Malcolm left. He didn’t tell me why, but I can guess. He won’t answer his phone. I’m dealing with the police now. No leads. Will keep you posted.
Dogged. Unemotional. But Ginny was trying. If Barrett saw Malcolm, she’d be
highly tempted to run him over. But that might affect his ability to confess to the part he’d played in Jane’s disappearance. He had to have had something to do with it.
She texted back.
So sorry I didn’t check in. No news here, either, just a few leads. But we won’t give up. Will get back to you soon. My best. Barrett.
By the time she’d returned to the table, Justine was studying the recon images again and Nick was absorbed in something new, judging by the frown line between his eyes as he concentrated on the screen of his laptop.
Barrett set a hand on his shoulder. “What’s up?”
He tilted the screen so she could see. “Request for information on my original mission. I haven’t touched base for a while.”
“What do they want?”
“Mansfield. The FBI finally traced him to New City.”
“Is that the turned vamp who’s on your kill list?” Justine looked up.
“Yeah.”
“You want my two cents?” She hesitated for only a fraction of a second. “Blow his head off. May he rot in hell.”
“It’s not that easy to kill a turned,” Nick said quietly. “But I hear you.”
The rest of the meeting was routine enough. Barrett caught up with the other agents at Belladonna via Skype, motioning Nick out of camera range when Carly said hello. They knew he was with her and Justine. There just didn’t seem to be a reason to bring him in for an agency discussion.
They wrapped it up around midnight. Justine went for her purse and a light jacket as Nick shut down the laptops.
“Where are you going?” Barrett asked.
“Just out. For a drive.” Justine winked at her.
Nick pretended he didn’t see or hear.
Okay. So she was leaving them alone. Barrett was glad.
The charged mood in the condo was a deeply poignant reminder of how it had been overseas, during the hours before a scheduled raid or an incursion or one of Nick’s secret assignments.
The communication and breakdown of intel so that everyone got it. The guarded references to the heavy stuff. The occasional joke to lighten up.
Those who could paired off afterward and found privacy. She and Nick had been no exception to that unwritten rule. The sex could be tender or almost rough. It didn’t matter, as long as they reached release in each other’s arms.