Blood of the Dead, page 13
“So how’s he taking it?” Nilesh asked, after we were both in a sedan that had as many screens as a Star Trek set. I sat primly among them, trying not to smudge them with my knees, feeling vastly out of place.
I knew he was talking about Paco. “Not well. But what did you expect?” I said, and shrugged.
“You didn’t tell him about your theory that Jack was still alive?”
I shook my head. “If I had, he’d still be out there, digging.”
Nilesh mistook my tense posture for chill, and turned on a heated seat for me at the next stoplight. Being “pure” apparently paid pretty well.
And I bet they all had health insurance.
“Am I right?” I pressed.
“In a Schrodingarian sense. Vampires are a little like cockroaches with fangs; they can withstand a lot.”
He pulled us into a diner’s parking lot and I got out, trying to pretend I wasn’t with him, even as he held the plate glass door open up for me. I ducked in, made sure the waitress gave us the backmost table, and kept her there so we could order quickly.
When that was through, I stared at him until he continued. “We do think he’s alive, yes.”
“Where!” I quietly hissed.
“That’s the question. Near as we can figure, they zipped through a dimensional gate,” he said, and the waitress returned with our coffees. “Probably not to hell,” he went on, like that was a real thing. Then again, given what he was, I felt like I didn’t know shit anymore. “Just somewhere. But it took both of them. Your Jack, and our Sam.”
“Why her?”
“Because she’ll be tasty?” he said with a painful wince, then jerked his chin at me. “Be honest—how long do you think he can hold out?”
“Isn’t she like an expert magic user?” I’d seen her levitate things before.
Nilesh held up his two hands evenly. “Sam against a normal vampire, any day.” Then he hoisted his right hand high and his left hand low. “Sam against a starving vampire with his back against the wall, potentially possessed by a primordial evil entity?”
“Possessed?” I said with a gasp.
“Potentially,” he corrected me, and I frowned.
“So you do know what took him! That thing they went to go look at—in Rosalie’s mine!”
“Yes. In hindsight, sending them both out there to investigate was probably the worst decision we’ve made in a long while. That’s probably when it got the idea to steal her, as well as him. Although it’d already started stalking Jack—through you.”
I blinked. “Wha—?” I started, with every intention of defending myself. I was smart, I was cruel—I was a regular little Rosalie. Then our plates came, and instead of fighting, I started scarfing down real food—because if Jesus’s BFF here was buying, I was eating every crumb.
“We searched Vermillion, after the leadership change,” Nilesh said, starting in on his own plate of poached eggs and home fries, far more slowly. “And when we couldn’t find it, we figured Maya’d been an idiot and sold it.”
“You’re telling me you just sent a Faithful trapsing on in there?” I asked around a mouthful of gravy covered biscuit.
“They were already there.”
I almost let the food fall from my mouth. “You . . . have a mole inside Vermillion?”
“Three. We’ll cycle two out though—Maya’s strong, but she’s not currently a player. She’s a little too petty. Lacks vision.”
I was absolutely going to throw that in Maya’s face, if I ever saw her again. “How do they stay pure in there?” I tried to ask without laughing. The only reason Vermillion wasn’t a wretched hive of scum and villainy was because the janitorial crew was well paid.
“There’s a lot more of us degraded types like myself than you might think. People who want to suffer for the cause. Or they’ve already done things and are looking to repent.”
“And you think my side’s kinky,” I muttered, and he snorted.
“Why’d you take it in the first place?”
“It told me to.” I dabbed a napkin at my face and tried to regain some feminine wiles. “The second after Rosalie died, the thing started whispering to me. I gave it some blood, and we were off to the races.” I frowned. “What was it?”
“A piece of baleen, for filter feeding, only instead of krill, when it has a form, it absorbs blood and sorrow.” He put his hands out in front of his face and clamped his fingers back and forth like the Predator’s lower jaws. “It has a lot of them.”
I swallowed. “What does the rest of it look like?”
“Kind of insectile. Why do you ask?”
“Because . . . we did things,” I confessed with reluctance. “And before you judge me, you were kind of present for some of them. Like, say, a half-angel, half-very-bad-thing DP.” I walked my fingers out on the table as I talked, rather than dare looking up. “That’s why I had to leave your place. It was with us.”
“And I didn’t know?” He sounded bewildered.
“Yeah.” I shrugged one shoulder. I wasn’t happy that I’d apparently had sex with some sort of psychic bug-type creature. If I’d wanted to fuck a Pokémon, I would have, I don’t know, gone onto Second Life.
“Mind control,” Nilesh muttered. “That’s new.”
I frowned. “It wasn’t like you weren’t willing. Me either, for that matter.”
He ignored me. “Or, if it was there, it was mostly incorporeal—except for where it chose to apply pressure—” His voice drifted, talking to himself as he thought, and it was unfortunately attractive. For all of Rosalie’s many, many other flaws, she was smart, and I’d loved to watch her think. “That’s hugely powerful, and even more dangerous, Luna,” he said, resurfacing, seeming unsettled, before refocusing on me. “If even I didn’t know it was there . . . all things considered, you’re lucky to’ve gotten out alive.”
“It was talking to Paco, too.” Nilesh’s eyebrows rose and I continued. “Telling him Jack didn’t love him—or how now that he was dead, they wouldn’t last.”
Nilesh made a thoughtful sound. “Preying on fears for sustenance, or encouraging isolation?”
I considered both options. “The latter, I think.” And that meant Paco’d been lucky, too. If he hadn’t taken my Master’s voice at face value, so to speak, the only thing that would’ve made Jack more reckless than Paco’s denial would have been losing the man entirely. “Because it wouldn’t let Jack turn me. He offered, and it made me refuse him.”
He nodded, and tucked back into his breakfast with intent, like he needed to finish it quickly. “So it could keep you weak enough to use you to lure him out there—and who knows what it promised the Rojo. Did they tell you anything?”
“Not really. But you know how they are.” Then I remembered the other woman. “What about the one you rescued?”
“Same,” he answered. I thought back to how I’d found her, and gave him a look. “Don’t worry. We’ll repatriate her to humanity.”
“Doesn’t that sound like fun.”
I watched him run a piece of toast around to catch the last bits of his eggs. “We could do that for you, too, you know. Or, even better yet, you could stop worrying about your cred and come work for my team.”
I gave him a face like I’d just sucked on a lemon. “I’m not entertaining it, but—how would that even go?”
“Well, first I give you a website URL and a login, and you watch about ten hours of instructional videos. It’s like ‘How To Be Good’ driver’s ed.”
I put a hand to my mouth to stop from laughing. “You’re really selling it.”
“You think I’m joking?” A genuine smile cracked his face, and suddenly it felt like I was back at that diner the other night with him, when I hadn’t known who he was. He waved the waitress over for the check, grinning. “I keep telling them they need to move into the twenty-first century, and at least do a Zoom call, but no one listens.” He waggled his eyebrows at me. “Tempted?”
“Not in the least,” I said with a head shake. He gave the waitress a credit card without looking at the bill. “All I want to be right now is free.” And I realized as I said it, it was true. “Even if it does kill me.”
“The Huntington’s. Yeah,” he said. He was distracted when she returned, so he didn’t see me gawking, feeling blindsided—but after he’d tipped well and quickly signed he looked up. “If there’s one thing the Faithful are good at, it’s snooping through records,” he said. “So I get why you fell in with them, starting with Rosalie. But what if I told you there was another way?”
My eyebrows crept up my forehead. “Church? God and all that? Online curriculum?” I snorted. “I’ve done the kind of stuff you don’t go and get forgiven for, Nilesh, no matter what it says in your little book. And what’s more is—I don’t want to be.” I knew it even more than I knew I wanted my freedom. “I’ll sit with who I am. I’ve made peace with that, even if some things I’ve done were shitty. But I don’t want to belong to anyone, ever again. I just want to be me.”
Nilesh’s eyes considered me, and for a moment, I saw exactly what he was inside of them—I felt the longitude of his age and the latitude of his denied divinity—and then he looked away, to begin writing on his receipt.
“Well, Luna, who is now a free agent in her own life,” he said, before handing it over with a number scrawled on it. “Call me if you hear anything.”
My phone had been in Jack’s car when it crashed; who knew when I’d be able to get that number back again. “And how will you call me?” I asked, as he stood up and scooted his chair politely back under the table.
“Don’t worry. If I need to, I’ll find you. We’re obnoxiously good at that, too.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Luna
I sat in the back of a cab on the way home, trying to figure out what precisely I’d tell Paco when he woke up.
I knew I couldn’t lie to him. But there had to be an easier way to present the truth than: Hi, yeah, we’ve lost your boyfriend. He may be in another dimension somewhere? But not hell, so that’s good, right? Oh, and also, you were being played, so it’s kind of your fault. Mine too!
Plus, who knew what kind of wreck his life was right now, personally? And it wouldn’t help that he’d likely wake up starving.
At least that last part I could fix.
Maybe.
I blew air through pursed lips, let myself back in Jack’s apartment door, and went through my extensive personal roster from having been a vampire’s long term number one sidekick.
First things first—physical comforts.
I went into Jack’s room and tossed on the light, finding Paco asleep in Jack’s coffin. He hadn’t bothered pulling the lid on and even dead he looked distressed.
“Poor fucking bastard,” I muttered as I picked his clothes up. He and Jack were different sizes. If I did his laundry, he’d at least have something clean to wear when he woke up this evening.
I unlaced his belt and freed it, tossing it onto the bed, and fished around doing a pocket check—when I found something and pulled it out.
A faceted stone I recognized, dangling from a chain.
It glimmered underneath Jack’s piss-poor apartment lighting pretty much like my hope did, and I instantly dropped the slacks.
This could change the game.
I’d managed to set the stage before Paco woke up and came out into the living room, and the sheer look of relief he had at seeing me made me feel a little queasy, because I didn’t really deserve to ever have anyone look at me like that.
Then again—
“Where the fuck did all these candles come from?” he asked, taking in the rest of the room.
“Yeah, about that . . . I bought a Costco out. I also bought a Costco membership for myself. Thanks.”
“Do I want to know why?” he asked, as he tilted his head.
“You do—but you’re a lot taller than I am. Go take the batteries out of all the smoke detectors first,” I said, sitting down on the couch to pat a warehouse-store-sized box of matches his credit card had also purchased.
He gave me a wary look, but then went back into the bedroom to do as he was told—which was the only place that’d been safe from my “let’s try magic” scheming.
Otherwise, there were candles on every flipping surface in Jack’s house—the kitchen table, the top of the fridge, the counters, his desk, on top of his monitor, all over his coffee table, which I’d pulled to one side, and on the little bit of tile around his entryway—I wasn’t sure how many of the candles were required for magic, versus just setting the mood, but I didn’t want me being cheap to fuck it all up.
By the time Paco returned with two nine volts in hand, I was braced.
“So there’s a chance Jack’s alive.”
He surged towards me with frightening purpose. “Where?” he demanded, and I could sense he wanted to whammy me to take me to him.
“That’s the problem. No one knows. The Faithful are working on it, but I figured we should work some too, ourselves.” I fished the gemstone out of my pocket. “This is how you found me, right?”
“Yeah. Because I bled you.”
I nodded. “Well, as Jack’s creation, you’ve got a little bit of his blood inside you, too.”
“Which means we can reverse this?” he said, snatching the stone out of my hands.
“Easy there, tiger,” I said, taking it back. “We can, theoretically, but it’s going to take some work.”
He eyed me dourly and one of his eyebrows quirked. “Of what nature?”
“You could either go and find a couple virgins to sacrifice—although in this town, at this time of night, good luck—or you could sleep with someone who also likes Jack like you do, who happens to live a few doors down.”
Paco’s expression dropped. “I don’t want to involve that kid again,” he said and closed his eyes.
I waited meaningfully until he’d opened them back up. “If you keep calling him that, when he’s not, this is never going to work,” I said, and I watched his jaw grinding. “He doesn’t have to be your equal, Paco. You just need to accept that he’s Jack’s ‘and,’” I said, and he frowned.
“It’s not just that, Luna. What if we involve him and bad stuff happens?” His full lips pursed. “No one wants Jack back more than me. No one. But—”
I reached up and put a hand over his mouth. “It’s a lot, right? Can’t even decide who you’re going to trust with the knowledge of your curse, much less your heart? Sound like anyone you know?” I asked, and when he nodded, I dropped my hand.
“It’s harder on this side of things than I thought it’d be,” he confessed, then swallowed, and I thought I saw a little bit of light cross his face, without a single candle going. “But . . . if he’s out there . . . and we can get him back . . .”
“Exactly,” I said, jerking my chin toward the door. “So let’s go see what the hot blonde guy down the hall has to say.”
I was the one who knocked.
Now that this was the second time we’d done this, I felt like we were some kind of strange sex missionaries, out here doing the Lord’s work.
Someone shuffled on the door’s other side, and then we heard Zach announce “I don’t want any” after having seen us through the peephole.
I knocked harder before Paco could be tempted to whammy him—we’d gone over the rules for the evening, and everything had to be given freely, or it wouldn’t work: which meant we had to legitimately clue Zach in.
“Yeah, you do,” I said, still knocking.
He groaned and I heard a latch slide. “What?” he asked, opening the door a crack, looking pretty much how Paco felt. I belatedly remembered that Jack had gone and broken up with him—which explained how come the “I’ve been crying” bags under his eyes looked like he’d been three pints of ice cream deep.
“We need to talk,” Paco intoned.
“What does it matter? He doesn’t want to see me again—and it’s all your fault.”
“Yes and no, k—” Paco said, then stopped himself. “Zach,” he said, with determination. “A really bad thing happened to Jack, and honestly I don’t have anyone else who gets it to talk to.” Zach blinked a little as Paco went on, some genie inside of him suddenly uncorked. “And I need your help, because if I can’t fix things. If I can’t find him again—and if I can’t make things right—then I’d rather be dead than feel like this for an eternity.”
Zach appeared to carefully weigh Paco’s confession against whatever harm Jack’s rejection had done to his pride—and I suspected his intrinsic kindness would win out. I didn’t think he’d been in Vegas long enough yet to have fully squashed it, and when he asked, “Did you want to come in?” I knew that I was right.
“Could you maybe come back to our place?” I asked, with feigned timidness and genuine hope.
Zach sighed, then shrugged. “Sure. Why not,” he said, then tucked his feet into flip-flops he had near his door, to followed us back down the hall.
He balked, however, when I opened the door and he saw all the candles.
“Just go inside,” Paco said quietly, and Zach was compelled to obey.
He whirled on the both of us however the second I’d closed the door, and Paco held up his hand.
“I don’t want to have to do that to you again, Zach, ever, but we needed to skip to the part where you just believe what I tell you, because we’re running out of time.”
I slunk off to the kitchen to make myself a sandwich, because if this was ever going to happen in any meaningful way, Paco needed to be the one driving the car.
“Jack’s a vampire,” he announced, and I managed to keep my mouth shut.
Brutal, yet efficient. All right.
“So am I,” he went on—and then he looked at me. “And Luna here’s—some kind of Renfield.”
My jaw dropped like I’d been punched.
“What did you just call me?” I asked, my voice arcing up. I shook my peanut-butter-covered bread at him. “Does this look like bugs to you?” I demanded—and then Zach laughed, almost to the point of tears.
