From what I can gather, the Sacred Kiss on the couch was their first hookup.”
“Are you saying Evan Howe should be a suspect?”
“In the absence of one, I’d say he’s as good as any,” Oliver said.
Mimi’s waved her hand dismissively. “You can’t seriously believe that. . . .”
“I’m just putting it out there.” Oliver shrugged.
“But you of all people know how human familiars are bound to love their vampire masters by the Caerimonia. No familiar would ever . . . could ever . . .” She shook her head vehemently. “It would never happen. Even the Venators ruled it out. The Sacred Kiss precludes any of that; it’s impossible.”
“Nothing’s impossible. Sure, it’s never happened before, but it doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen in the future. Who knows? The power of the Caerimonia may have been corrupted somehow, or lessened, we don’t know.”
“But it’s preposterous! They’ll laugh me out of the Conclave for even suggesting it!”
Oliver was stubborn. “Even so, we’ve got to follow it up.”
NINETEEN
Venators’ Quarters
It was painful to see the Lennox twins sometimes. It reminded Mimi too much of her assignment with Kingsley. She had traveled the world as part of his team for a year, keeping him at arm’s length all that time except for that one hookup in Rio. Their time together in New York was too little, too late. She’d realized her true feelings for him only at the very end, and now he was gone. A bubble of grief welled up inside her, but she pushed it away—she had no time to feel sorry for herself.
She was glad Sam and Ted never brought it up—the brothers were too discreet for that. They had asked her to meet them at Venator headquarters, a former tenement building in the far West Village. It was Thursday, three days until the crescent moon, and she was getting nervous. The Venators were doing their best, but so far had turned up nothing of any significance. They should at least have a suspect, by now—a clue, something. They were Blue Bloods—keepers of the secret history, vampires who knew the truth about the world—they were not used to being threatened, to being kept in the dark.
Mimi let herself in the gate and pricked her finger on the blood-lock on the front door. The shabby interiors were the complete antithesis of the slick, polished perfection of the Force Tower. She pursed her lips at the sight of the dusty banister, the broken stairs, and the peeling wallpaper. The Venators had moved to this location in the nineteenth century, and it still looked exactly as it had back then. She had a memory-flash of visiting during debutante season, when everyone in the Coven had been called in for questioning during Maggie Stanford’s disappearance.
“Up here!” A cheerful voice called. Ted stood at the top landing and waved. “Elevator’s broken.”
“Of course,” Mimi muttered.
Dormitories occupied the first and second floors. Since the Venators traveled so much, the Committee provided housing. Many of the rooms were empty. To serve as a Venator, one had to display an extraordinary amount of courage, honor, and loyalty to the Coven in at least fifty lifetimes. But even if the Conclave had lowered the threshold for acceptance so that more vampires could join, its ranks were still stretched too thin.
Only very few Blue Bloods aspired to become Venators these days. It was as Cordelia Van Alen had said—most of the vampires were content to live their lives as little more than extra-privileged Red Bloods: humans with a touch of immortality, a little more money, and not a whole lot of responsibility. Why couldn’t she get Cordelia out of her head, Mimi wondered. How could it be possible that Cordelia Van Alen, a fearmonger and conspiracy theorist who had been demoted from the Conclave, could have been so prescient, while her father, Charles Force, who had led the vampires since the beginning, had been so obtuse?
Ted ushered her into the office he shared with his brother, a cramped space stacked with books and antediluvian police technology that the brothers had collected over the years: fingerprint ink pads, analog lie detector machines, yellowing evidence tags, broken binoculars. Ted in particular had an affinity for the Red Bloods’ quaint idea of law enforcement. Venators had no need for such things, as most of their work was done in the shadow world of the glom.
Still, they kept to some of the same protocol as their human counterparts. Taped to the wall were photographs of each person who had been at Jamie Kip’s party that night, arranged according blood status and position: BB, RB, FAM, CON. Mimi peered at the pictures. There was her own 8x12 modeling shot right in the middle. Did that mean she herself was a suspect? she wondered. She’d hardly known Victoria even though they were in the same elite clique of friends.
“So what’s up?” she asked, leaning on the messy desk stacked with file folders waist-high. She picked up a pair of steel handcuffs and began to play with them.
Sam wheeled his chair around to face her. There were dark circles under his eyes. Mimi remembered that, of the two brothers, Sam was the one who felt the assignments more keenly, and clearly the frustration was beginning to take a toll.
“Tech has been able to zero in on the computer that uploaded the file,” he said. “We traced it through the ghost connection—it zapped it from here to Moscow—and the line led us to an Internet café in the East Village. We got a list of everyone who was there the afternoon the video was sent, and each one checks out. Normal Red Blood kids, no association with the Coven.” He sighed. “But the good news is we’ve been able to reach Victoria through the glom, so we have confirmation she’s alive. Scared and mute, but alive. Here’s the thing, though: her signature is being clouded—we can’t get a physical location on it.”
“A masking spell, maybe?” Mimi ventured.
“We’ve tried all the counter spells to an oris, but if it is a masking spell it’s one we’ve never seen before,” Ted said, looking wary, slouched against the doorway. “If it is a masking spell, whoever did this isn’t going to take chances with moving her around. You’ve got to take off the mask to move a body. Our guess is she’s still in the same room where the video was filmed, so if we can figure where that is, we can find her. We’ve run the video dozens of times to see if we can find anything in it that’ll help us zero in on her location.”
“Anything?”
Ted shook his head and tossed a crumpled piece of paper into a nearby trash can. “Not yet. But we did catch something interesting. Remember all that hoopla about subliminal messages back in the fifties? No? You weren’t in cycle then? But you’ve heard about it, right? What we found is sort of like that, except no one is selling Coke or popcorn in this one. Show her, Sam. It’s right in the beginning.”
Sam fired it up on his desktop screen, and the three of them crowded around the computer to watch. He played the video on super-slow motion, one three-hundredth of a frame per second. Mimi watched as the black darkness filled the screen, and then, in a blink, there was an image of a lion mounting its mate.
Okaay ...
“There’s more,” Sam said, hitting fast-forward. The next image appeared in the middle of the party shot. It showed a ram’s head on a stake, dead eyes open and unblinking, tongue lolling, flies circling the carcass. The final image appeared a second before the video ended: a king cobra, coiled and ready to strike.
“So?” asked Mimi impatiently, shaking the handcuffs so they made a loud clicking sound as she pulled them apart. They were looking for a missing girl and her strike team was showing her photos from National Geographic.
“We think it’s some sort of code, a message of some kind. We’re having Renfield take a look. See if the Repository can cough up an explanation,” Ted replied.
“All right. Not sure how that helps us find Victoria, but what could it hurt.” Mimi pushed off the desk and faced the boys. She would always think of them as boys, since technically, as Azrael, one of the First Born, she was centuries older, even if they were Enmortals and senior Venators to boot. “Anything else?”
“Yep,” Sam said, straightening
in his chair and springing forward. “We found Evan Howe. Or at least, we know where he is.”
Mimi put down the handcuffs. “Does he know where Victoria could be?”
“Doubtful. But since you wanted us to check on him—we did. Figured he’d show up sooner or later, after recovering from the Caerimonia. You know first bite’s always the hardest.” Sam winced.
“And?”
Ted removed a business card from his pocket. “Witness saw him take a cab out to Newark.”
“Newark? What would he be doing there?” Mimi scoffed. What would a pampered prince from the Upper East Side be doing out in some crime-ridden New Jersey township? “There’s nothing for someone like Evan in Newark!”
“Nothing but abandoned buildings and a blood house.” Ted handed the card to Mimi.
“No way.” Mimi shuddered, reading the card. The Familiars’ Club, it read, in fancy red lettering.
“It’s the only logical place he could be. I’m sorry,” Sam said.
“I didn’t know him. I’m not . . . It’s just . . .” Mimi sputtered. A blood house? Evan Howe? That nice-looking boy with the dimples? He was sixteen years old . . . He was so young. . . .
“You wanted to know.” Ted shrugged. “So that’s where he is. But take it from us, you don’t want to go there. Not worth it. This human kid’s got nothing to do with whoever took Victoria. Familiars aren’t made that way, you know that. And if you go out there you won’t find anything but the same old story. Old as Rome.”
TWENTY
The Blood House
Newark was across the river just a quick shot through the tunnel and lately enjoying something of a revitalized image, but as a rule, Mimi, like many Manhattanites, avoided going to New Jersey unless it was to the airport (and thus on the way to somewhere else). Even then, she only went to Teterboro. She had left the Venator station a few hours earlier and made no comment as the car drove past the charming waterfront neighborhoods and took them deeper and deeper into a gritty industrial section. She was just glad she wasn’t alone that evening.
“Right here,” Oliver told his driver. “You can drop us off in front.” He had been silent during the forty-minute trip, and had not appeared too surprised when she told him where they were going to look for Evan.
After she’d left the Venators, Mimi had picked him up at the Repository, where he had been since yesterday afternoon, reviewing the video over and over again, searching for clues. She told him about the three images the brothers had found.
“The scribes will figure it out. Everything’s in the Repository,” Oliver assured her.
“I wish I had your confidence,” she said. She also hoped visiting the blood house wouldn’t be a waste of time, even though the Venators certainly thought so.
Mimi followed Oliver out of the car and looked around balefully. It was a neighborhood of abandoned warehouses and empty lots. The street was littered with broken bottles and used needles. There was a junkyard lined with barbed wire, and several aimless junkyard dogs, lean and mangy, prowled the street. She shuddered.
“Come on, I think it’s over here,” Oliver said, leading the way to the nearest building, where Mimi saw a steel door marked with a slash of red paint.
The door opened a crack. “Members only,” a raspy voice growled.
Oliver nodded to Mimi, who said her line. “I’m a friend of the club. We need a room.”
The door slammed then opened again. A tough-looking middle-aged woman chewing gum blocked their entrance. Mimi had heard of lowlife vampires—they usually lived off-Coven—but she had never met one before. “You’ll have to pay the nightly rate, and if you want anything else off the menu, you’ll have to keep an open tab.”
Mimi handed over her credit card, and she and Oliver were allowed inside. They found themselves in a small lobby area, two armchairs sitting in a pool of red light. The house mistress looked them over. “Boy or girl?”
Mimi shrugged, unsure of what was being asked of them, so Oliver took the lead. “Er, girl, please.”
They watched in morbid fascination as a group of Red Blood girls, their necks sporting fresh bites, blood dripping from their wounds, lined up in front of them. The girls looked dazed and drugged, used and drained. They wore low-cut dresses or flimsy nightgowns. Some of them were barely out of their teens.
Mimi knew all about blood houses, of course—she wasn’t born yesterday, duh. They were places that familiars who had been abandoned went to experience the Sacred Kiss with any vampire. It was a disgusting practice, the Caerimonia was intimate and sacred, not to be squandered cheaply. While the Sacred Kiss ensured that no other vampire could take a human that had already been marked, there was an ancient, dark magic that removed the poison. It was a dangerous process that weakened the human, but those who made it to the establishment didn’t much care. It was the only place left for former familiars, as well as for Blue Bloods who didn’t care about using humans in this way. Needless to say, it was completely against the Code, and highly illegal. The Venators made a practice of raiding them once in a while, but it was a low priority, what with everything else going on.
It smelled like blood and misery, like love squandered and spent. The faces of the familiars were hollow and empty, their eyes dead and glassy.
“You’ll do,” Mimi said, feeling sick in her stomach as she picked one of the youngest girls in the bunch.
“Second room to the right,” the madam barked, pointing them to the banister.
They walked down the hallway. The rooms were barely rooms—mostly walls with curtains that shielded the couples inside. They found their assigned space and parked the girl on the bed, which was a mattress on the floor. “You’d think they’d at least spring for a futon from Ikea.” Mimi curled her lip.
“Just stay here,” Oliver told the girl, helping her lie down. “Sleep.” He turned to Mimi. “They don’t let them rest here.”
Mimi nodded. She pointed down the opposite hallway. “You take those rooms, I’ll do these.”
“Right.”
“Be careful,” she told him.
“There’s nothing to fear here; everyone’s so gone, they won’t even notice us,” Oliver said grimly.
“You’ve been here before?” Mimi asked.
Oliver didn’t answer. “Call me if you find him.”
Mimi pulled back the first curtain to find a vampire feeding on two humans at once, the three of them splayed out on the bed in a languid embrace. The vampire, a blond male, looked up from the pale white throat of the nearest human girl. “Join me?” he smiled. “She’s lovely.”
Mimi frowned and shut the curtain. In the next stall she found a Blue Blood girl lying asleep, curled up next to a human boy. He wasn’t Evan, so she left them alone. She was about to open the next curtain—Let’s find out what’s behind door number three! she thought somewhat hysterically—when she heard Oliver’s fierce whisper carry over the sound of moaning and slurping. “He’s here.”
She ran to the far end of the other hallway. The curtain had been pulled back and Oliver was standing over the limp form of Evan Howe. The boy had been missing less than a week and already he was unrecognizable. Skeletal, with dirty hair, sunken cheeks, and no more dimples. No more Evan, really, Mimi thought. Not with those dead, unfocused eyes. Too many vampires sucking on a human’s blood could result in a milder form of the schizophrenia that afflicted the Corrupted. Mimi remembered the dead gaze of the ram’s head, and felt cold.
“He’s alive,” Oliver said. “Evan, get up.”
The boy heaved himself to a sitting position. He leered at Mimi. “Well hello, gorgeous.”
“Mimi Force.” Mimi shook his hand. “Evan, we want to ask you a few questions about Victoria.”
“Who?” He drooled.
“Victoria Taylor? Your . . . girlfriend?” Mimi prodded.
“Oh yeah. Vix. Haven’t seen her. She left me.” His eyes came alive, alert at the sound of her name.
“When was the last time you
saw her?” Oliver asked gently, kneeling down to speak to the boy.
Evan slumped. “Dunno.”
“You don’t remember Jamie Kip’s party? Last weekend?” asked Mimi.
“Who’s Jamie Kip? Look, you going to suck me or what?” Evan demanded, annoyed, and began to paw at Mimi’s short dress. Mimi rebuffed his efforts and exchanged a strained look with Oliver, who helped her get Evan to lie back down on the mattress, where he promptly fell asleep.
“How many vampires have had him?” Mimi whispered to Oliver.
He crossed his arms and shook his head. “I would guess a lot. . . . He’s pretty messed up. I’m surprised he even remembered Victoria.”
“You always remember your first,” Mimi said. It was true of the familiars, at least. They never forgot—they didn’t have a choice. But for the Blue Bloods? Did she remember the first human boy she’d performed the Caerimonia with? What was his name—Scott something? She shook her head.
“Scan him,” Oliver suggested.
Mimi nodded. She prodded Evan’s unconscious in the glom. She saw him wake up on Saturday morning on the couch of Jamie Kip’s penthouse, alone, groggy and disoriented, but happy. Over the weekend he was still in a daze. Then it wore off. She’d seen that look before: the first flush of love. He dialed his cell phone. He was calling Victoria. He needed her. He loved her more than ever. He went to her apartment, but she wasn’t there. Called all her friends. No one knew where she was. A day went by. He started to itch. To shake. The yearning. The Caerimonia had bonded him to her for life. He wanted it again, for her to suck his blood, but she was gone. Now it was Tuesday. He was feverish. He was losing it. Wednesday. He didn’t go home, he didn’t go to school. As if in a dream, he found himself at the blood house. He’d been there since. The Venators were right: he had nothing at all to do with Victoria’s disappearance. He was just another victim. Collateral damage.
“Evan, we want to take you home. Your parents are worried about you,” she said, shaking him awake.
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