Blood of the Dead, page 10
“We do outnumber you currently,” he pointed out.
“In here, maybe. But not outside,” she said with a wide fake smile. “Plus, you two are hampered by morals and compunction. My lot are . . . not.”
Paco eyed her, his gaze as steady and unreadable as a snake’s. “I don’t think you know shit about my morals, lady.”
Her lips pursed a little. “That might actually be true. Still, though,” she said, tapping long painted nails against her cheek as she squinted at him. “Magic always costs something.”
“You want my firstborn or my kidney?” I said, trying to interrupt their standoff, as my phone buzzed. I whipped it out and found a text from Sam.
Seeing some strange Rojo behavior in the field here.
I put my phone on Maya’s desk and shoved it over, screen up so she could see. “Whether you like it or not, I think this problem still concerns you.”
Maya gave a beleaguered sigh, and said “Fine, fuck it” before jerking her chin at Paco. “He’ll pay.”
“Why not me?” I protested.
“Because if you die doing dumb shit, me holding your punch card’s no good.” I inhaled to protest as she continued. “Right now you look like you need to concentrate on breathing, Jack, and I should make you wear a bag when you get escorted back out, so you don’t scare off customers.” She ripped open a desk drawer and started rummaging inside, then pulled up a chain with a dangling green gemstone, beginning to offer it over, before taking it back. “You’d better return this when you’re through. It’s worth more than your”—she scanned us both, before settling her eyes on Paco’s wrist—“watch. And more than anything you possibly own,” she told me, with an eyeroll.
“Thank you,” I said dryly, and snatched it up from her. “How do we make it work?”
“Have loverboy there bleed some on it, and then think about Luna real hard. Without puking,” she added cattily. “It should swing in her direction—it’s got a dowsing spell embedded in it.”
“And the cost?” Paco asked.
“Just a simple ceremony we’ll have to perform together in the future, to juice it back up again.”
“Which will involve?” he pressed, far better at doing contract negotiation than I ever was.
“You and me in a dark room, forty or so candles, a bottle of lube, and a penchant for experimentation.”
“I don’t sleep with women,” Paco growled.
Maya gave him a slightly baffled look, clearly playing the innocent ingenue that the men in the strip club beyond wanted to see. “Who said anything about sleeping?”
I watched Paco’s jaw ground, and assumed this entire plan was crashing and burning, but then he surprised me by enunciating “Fuck. The both. Of you” very clearly, and before biting his own thumb to blood.
The scent of his blood was still familiar to me, and it made me salivate without thinking. Even though my hunger knew we couldn’t feed from Paco now, he was still him, and years of Pavlovian training wouldn’t go away overnight.
I handed the gemstone over, and he milked a few drops onto its faceted surface, which the stone seemed to absorb, going cloudy inside. He put his still-bleeding thumb to his mouth after that, such a human gesture it made me ache, and swung the stone by its chain in his free hand. It spiraled in the air and then pulled ever so slightly east, just a centimeter off from center, back to the center of town.
“Ta-dah!” Maya announced, standing up. “All right, then. I’d wish you all good luck, but I honestly don’t care what the fuck happens to that bitch, other than a bit of morbid yet entirely professional curiosity. Report back, and even if that thing only leads you to her corpse, remember that you owe me,” she said brightly, before giving Paco fraternity bro-style finger guns with a wink. “No take backs!”
He didn’t deign to answer her as he stood back up.
Paco pocketed the gemstone, and I followed him outside, where we found ourselves chased down by Zevvi. “Hey! My keys!” she said, trotting after us in entirely precipitous heels.
I groaned. “Please, Zevvi?” I asked her, but her full red lips pulled into a frowning pout.
“No, Jack, I’m sorry. You’re going to go get into trouble. I’ve been doing this long enough; I’ve got a second sense about these sorts of things,” she said, twirling a hand around her head and indicating Vermillion’s well-lit sign behind her. “I already need to get your blood out of the upholstery from this morning, most likely.”
“I was pretty done bleeding by then,” I muttered—but she probably wasn’t wrong, and she’d already helped enough. I handed her keys over, letting them drop into her waiting hand.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling tightly. “Whatever it is you’re off to do, stay safe, all right?” she asked, backing up. She pointed between us. “That goes for both of you.”
“We’ll try,” I said, waving her off.
Paco and I both watched her go back into Vermillion, and then he eyed me coolly. “You realize I had a car at the club I was at, right?” he asked.
“Yeah, no,” I said with a shrug, pulling my phone out to summon us up a ride.
“We’re going to go defeat evil in an Uber, is what you’re saying?”
I summoned up the dregs of my strength to give him a winning smile. “Apparently.”
He blew air through pursed lips at me and rolled his eyes. Another long uncomfortable silence passed between us, while I watched our upcoming driver and their Kia Sorrento cruise closer on the map. He pulled the stone back out, and while it swayed slightly when he shifted his stance, it stayed pulling to one side.
“So that was your blood I smelled in the Volvo earlier then?”
I shrugged without answering. “I wasn’t aware you knew the scent.”
“This week’s been full of a lot of firsts for me.”
“I bet,” I said, then more foolishly added, “The Faithful told me you’d been living clean.”
His eyes narrowed again at that. “You’ve been spying on me?”
“Settle the fuck down, they spy on everyone. I think.” I turned towards him. “Although, yeah, it would’ve been nice to know, well, anything. I was worried about you.”
“I should’ve sent you a picture postcard? From the other side of town?” he asked, as his eyebrows shot up. “Hi Jack, having fun fucking without you, glad you’re not here?”
“Fuck,” I cursed, stepping forward to impale myself on whatever argument was seemingly required for us to possibly achieve sanity on the other side of it. But then my screen flashed and the driver was near.
The man looked between the two of us, me sitting in the front seat, and Paco in the back, and the place he’d picked us up. “Short night out, eh?” he asked.
“Not short enough,” Paco said, and fastened his seatbelt.
Chapter Eighteen
Luna
“So, I don’t know if I made this clear earlier, but I really don’t want to be here,” I said aloud, as the vampires around me began to wake up. I’d miscounted prior, there were twelve of them, and there was no place for me to run, trapped like I was in a stupid blood-fueled magical cylinder-thing.
I did stand up, though. All the better to see my oncoming demise, rocking back and forth like I was surfing as the contraption we were in—which I now realized was some kind of cargo truck—drove down city streets. I could feel it pause at stoplights, and then the engine rev as it kept going.
I expected us to hit highway speeds any moment now—Vegas wasn’t that big a city—and was surprised when we did not.
One by one, the waking vampires headed into the same room the girl had left for, at the back of the truck—I realized now the one wall cut the available space in half—and while at first I found that comforting, as the last ones rose up, I started to panic. My fear of being around strange vampires was outweighed by my fear of being alone and not knowing what the fuck was going on.
“Where are we headed?” I asked quickly. There was no question they were Sangre Rojo; they were all men and dressed the same, in dapper suits, with tightly cropped beards and moustaches. When none of them answered me, likely because I was a woman, I tried a different tact. “You know there are people who’ll pay good money for my safe return.”
The one I assumed was their leader—in addition to a suit, he also had a silver wallet-chain—looked at me. “I doubt that very much, little sacrifice.”
I did not like the sound of that. “First off, fuck you, secondly, what the hell are you talking about?” I made myself as big as I could, which was hard because of my aching ribs.
“You’ve been chosen. You should be pleased.”
“Well, I’m not!” I said, stepping forward, only to get myself painfully repelled off the magical walls. “Chosen for what?”
He didn’t answer me, turning instead to discuss things with another his kind, while the truck we were in slowed and eventually jackknifed through a significant right-hand turn. I heard a squeal of a woman from the other room and started freaking out.
“Hey!” I shouted, beating my hand against the wall to utter silence. “Talk to me! Chosen for what?” I screamed, my volume rising. “Hey-hey-hey-hey-hey!” I started shouting, demanding their attention.
The last of the vampires rose up slowly, dusting his knees before yawning. “How much longer will we have to listen to her?” he asked the only one that’d bothered to speak to me.
“For as long as we perform the ceremony,” he answered his companion with a shrug, before turning to walk after the others.
“Ceremony?” My voice went up to dog whistle levels. I reared back, flinging myself against the walls that contained me. It repelled me so hard I rebounded off of the wall behind me, and slid down it into a crumpled ball, clutching my ribs in agony.
Since I wasn’t going to get any help from anyone currently present, I switched gears. “Master!” I said, gasping the word in pain, hoping he would answer and come down here and punish all of them, like he so often did me. “Master—I know you’re awake now, somewhere—please help me!” I pleaded up to the heavens, wondering why now of all times he wasn’t bothering to watch. I rocked back into the wall behind me with an unanswered sob, and saw that rather than follow the other vampires into the cordoned off back room, I now had the lead vampire’s glittering attention, framed by the door behind him.
“Yes. Call for him. Keep going,” he encouraged me, and then disappeared, closing and audibly locking the door behind him.
Chapter Nineteen
Jack
Paco sat in the back, with the gemstone cupped behind one hand where the driver couldn’t see it, and I could see him doing map-math, trying to get the man to aim towards whatever semi-public landmark was in the direction we currently needed to go.
It was rough though, because the gemstone seemed to keep shifting—making Paco seem indecisive, which I knew was probably killing him.
“Look, guys—while I want a good rating—I just need you two to make up your mind,” the driver protested, after our third course change, and I gave up.
“Just drive where we want and don’t ask any questions,” I told him, and he straightened up.
Paco flashed me an irritated look in the rear view. “Sure, take the easy way. Like always,” he said, and I lost my mind, whirling on him.
“I don’t know what crawled up your ass and died before I made you a vampire, but if I had known, I would’ve taken it out.”
He ground his teeth audibly, and I had a sudden flashback to the two of us off on a trip and him forgetting his bite guard and his grinding freaking me out the first time I heard it—and then me stupidly wondering if he’d need that now, or if he’d get a new one, to occasionally accommodate his fangs—and I rubbed my temples with the forefingers of both hands.
“Left,” he said, and the driver threw his turn signal on before taking it. At least my whammy had kept him legal.
“Look, can we truce or something right now?” I asked him, as my phone rang. I picked it up. “Luna?” I hoped, without looking at the number.
“No, Sam,” the voice on the other end of the line corrected me. “Any luck?”
“Yeah,” I said, casting a look back at a still pissed off Paco. “We’re using a blood-charm thing right now to follow her.” I watched the gemstone swing again. “But it seems like she’s on the move.”
“Take that soft right up there,” Paco told the driver around me.
“That’s . . . odd,” Sam said. “Where are you at?” she asked, after clearly putting me on speaker phone.
I looked out the window to get my bearings. “Freemont and Charleston, and headed east. Not sure how long that’ll last.”
“We’re on our way,” she said. “You still in your ridiculous muscle car?”
“Nope. We’re in a red Kia Sorrento, with an Uber sticker in the window,” I said, as I eyed the thing.
There was a sharp intake of breath on her side of the line. “Did you involve a human?” she asked, as Paco glared.
“There were extenuating circumstances at the time,” I complained to both of them.
“Okay, we’ve got you on traffic cams now,” Sam said, after a slight pause. “We’re on our way. Let me know if anything changes.”
“Sure, will do,” I said, hanging up. “Truce?” I asked Paco, again.
He inhaled to answer me, but before he could, his eyes widened, as the stone at the end of the chain went from a mere fifteen degree angle off of center to a forty-five, then a ninety. I turned to look at what it was pointing toward, behind me, and saw a white-painted semi-truck up ahead of us, idling at the stop light, same as we were.
“Of course.”
It made total sense that she was in another vehicle—and when I looked around, I realized some of the cars nearby had drivers that had suspiciously vampiric looks to them.
But why the hell were they driving Luna around in circles?
I supposed it didn’t matter—I just needed to get her back. I tossed my phone into Paco’s lap. “Sam’s the last number in my recents, and the passcode’s still the same as you remember.”
“What?” he asked, picking it up with disdain, as I turned to the driver.
“Pull in behind that white semi and stay steady.”
“Jack? What’re you doing?” Paco said, leaning forward.
“Some badass Fast and Furious shit,” I muttered, rolling down the passenger window.
“No—” he said, then he inhaled again, and I knew he was going to try to whammy our driver.
“Don’t listen to him,” I told the driver quickly, before he could get a word in edgewise. “Not ’til I’m gone.”
“What the fuck are you doing!” Paco lunged forward as I pulled back.
“Why do you care?” I taunted him from just outside his reach, my back plastered against the Sorrento’s dashboard, while the driver wove up to position his car like I’d told him. “It’s clear you don’t give a shit. You should be glad I’m gone.” The window was all the way open now, and we were closing in on the truck. I took a moment to drink him in, having no idea when I’d manage to see him next, and finally barfed up the words that’d been lodged in my throat for the past hour and a half. “I wasn’t strong enough to just stand there and watch you die, all right? But—I’m not fucking apologizing for it. Not fucking ever,” I growled at him. “I loved you then, I love you now even though you’re being a dick to me, and I guess I’ll just get to keep loving you for eternity.” I gripped the edge of the window tightly, readying to pull myself through, shouting at him over the rising wind because both the truck and car were on the move again. “Even though today is probably the shittiest day of my life so far—which believe you me, is saying something—I’d still rather be here arguing with you about it face to face than you being underground!” I snapped.
He rocked into the seat behind him, his mouth a little open, blinking at me like I were a very bright light.
“The only thing I regret is that I’m sorry you’re disappointed in being stuck with me for the rest of your life—but I’m fucking not and never will be,” I swore to him, then stepped up on the seat and pushed my way out the window.
A lifetime of action movies had made clambering out of a moving vehicle seem easier than it actually was. But what they hadn’t gotten wrong was the pure rocket fuel of the right kind of rage in your heart.
I put a foot on the windowsill, grabbed hold of the car’s roof for balance, and levered myself up ’til I could step out onto the hood of the Sorrento like I was surfing on it.
“Get back in here, Jack!” Paco demanded, having climbed into the front seat after me, hanging half-way out himself.
I ignored him; I was busy. I took one big step down the hood and then threw myself at the back of the truck, catching hold of one of the poles that were part of the lock mechanism, with my boots firmly on the diamond deck bumper.
I grabbed hold of the lock itself and fisted it with my hand, feeling the metal warp and give, as I yanked hard, and pulled the lock’s loop free.
“Jack!” Paco shouted for my attention. I looked up, out of habit—and saw several of the cars that’d seemed like they’d all belonged to the same vampiric car club flanking him. But half a block back, there was a wall of black sedans catching up, and I suspected that that was the Faithful cavalry.
I twisted the lock free, chunked it behind me onto a Rojo’s car hood, so that it’d bounce up and shatter their windshield, then slammed the truck’s door open, and threw myself inside.
I didn’t see Luna anywhere—just ten or so vampires milling, and some girl in a getup I couldn’t afford the time to currently parse.
“Luna!” I shouted, as the first one swung an uppercut.
I let him hit me, making my jaw clack and my brain ricochet, probably just like the night before in my poor Betty . . . because I knew to kill this many vampires, I was going to have to be very, very pissed off.
