Blood of the Dead, page 8
“You?” I asked. I knew she was one of Maya’s favorites—at least that’s what Maya had told the others.
“Don’t feel too special, we’re racing daylight, and I was the only one still up.” She grinned and shook car keys for me to follow.
She led me to a silver Volvo in a distant parking lot, and let all three of us in: her, me, and my hunger, which felt big enough now to have its own seat. I couldn’t help but watch the way Zevvi walked out to her car, and I sensed that she was tired, which whatever was left of my humanity felt bad about, whereas my hunger merely said it’d make her easier to catch.
“Maya also asked that you not bleed all over everything,” she informed me, as we took off.
I caught another glance of myself in the rearview mirror, after giving her directions. My jaw still ached, from where it’d been healing, and while I thought my fractured nose had straightened itself, I hadn’t done anything about all the blood. “You’re not . . . scared?” I asked.
“Of what?”
“Of coming home with a strange hungry vampire.”
Her knuckles flashed white around the steering wheel, but that was her only tell. “You’re not a stranger,” she said, like that would make it true. “I remember you trying not to let the Rojo kill me. And . . . I overheard you earlier. You’re helping Luna. That’s sweet.”
“Sweet. Huh,” I said, as we raced against the dawn beneath streetlights.
“Yeah. I don’t even like her—oh my God, she was always glued to Rosalie like a barnacle—but you’re trying, for her sake, and I want to think that says something about you.” She twisted briefly to look over at me. “So don’t prove me wrong?”
Wicked things inside me wanted to run wild and taunt her, to be ominous in the face of so much raw trust. But I could sense the uptick of her pulse, and knew that this was costing her. “I’ll try not to,” I promised with a low voice.
I’d finished a slippery slope of calculation by the time the Volvo coasted into my apartment building’s parking lot. If the Rojo had wanted Luna alive—because not only could they have killed me, but her, too, right there, I’d realized—then surely she was living still. And they were bound by the same rules I was—none of them would be able to stay up after daylight.
So I had another night to find her.
I hoped.
Zevvi followed me to my apartment’s door—luckily Zach-free tonight—but somehow I’d still gotten a visitor inside.
“Excuse me?” I said, walking in to my place. Sam was there, sitting on my couch in what looked like a full-body hazmat suit, only it was covered with arcane symbols and markings, all sorts of nonsense words that I couldn’t read, while Luna’s strange bone-scythe weapon was sitting in front of her on my coffee table. I took everything in, and then flew at her without thinking, picking the weapon up on the way. I had my arm across Sam’s neck, and the tip of the scythe pointed at her side just beneath her ribcage. Her eyes were wide with terror behind a thick film of plastic, and her back was plastered against the wall behind my couch. “Where the fuck is Luna at?” I demanded with my powers.
I felt the pressure I was using lessen, as I was pushed back by an unseen force—her own magic, answering me. “I was going to ask you!” she shouted when she could catch her breath, then she glanced over my shoulder and realized it was a different woman by my side.
Before she could make me hover off the ground I relented, pulling back, the weapon still in hand, and she reached for her own neck with gloved hands, as if to protect it from further attack. “Unlike you, I don’t have to ask permission to go anywhere,” she said, like that explained things. “So I just let myself in.” Sugar, my cat, meowed unhappily from the bedroom, like she was confirming Sam’s story. “But instead of tossing your place and just taking that,” she said, pointing towards the scythe I held, “I decided to wait. I didn’t want to be a hundred percent rude.”
“No? Just what, forty?” I gestured around with the thing and saw her wince—so I pointed it directly at her. “You don’t know where she is?”
“No. I thought you two would just go to the ballet was all. And then I could sneak in and out. Then I started to feel bad about things, because also unlike you, I have a conscience, and I thought I’d wait—plus I had questions for the girl.” She looked me up and down. “What happened to you?”
“My car was crashed off the road, and whoever did it took Luna.” I looked between the weapon in my hand and Sam’s partially hidden face. “Do you know why?” I commanded the truth from her again.
“Stop that,” she said, looking angry enough to spit, before fading into mystified. “But—no. She’s got a dark heart, but as far as we know, she’s human,” she said, but then she pointed at what I held. “That thing, on the other hand—it’s malevolent. I wanted to ask her about it.”
“It was Rosalie’s. Malevolent was her middle name.”
“Then you won’t mind if I take it?” Sam asked, standing up with her hand out.
I yanked it behind me. “Only if you agree to help me find Luna tomorrow night.”
Sam appeared to consider this. “On two conditions.”
“Name them.”
“You give me the weapon,” she said, and I nodded, “and you never, ever, under penalty of death, use your powers on me again.”
I felt Zevvi’s hand gently touch my back, and knew that was her way of telling me not to make this trade. But I didn’t have any choice. Sam was in a much better position to make progress on Luna’s disappearance than I was, seeing as she wasn’t about to die shortly. “Done,” I said, agreeing, flipping the weapon in my hand to lightly hold the knife’s blade carefully as I offered the handle out.
She took it, and put it into a wooden and velvet case with the same markings as was on her suit burned into it. “I’ll have my people look into things, and check in with you tomorrow night.”
I fished out my phone. “And give me your number. I’m tired of our relationship being one way.”
Sam pouted behind her headpiece’s plastic screen, but sighed in defeat. “My phone’s in here too. I’ll text you from my car, once I get all of this off of me.” She cast a glance at Zevvi, who’d been standing quietly behind me this whole time. “Are you here of your own will and personal volition?”
“Yes,” she answered, without hesitation.
Sam considered her with dismay. “You don’t have to do this, you know. The Faithful can help you escape. We know ways to break your bonds.”
Zevvi took my hand and sidled up to me, casting a dismissive glance back at Sam. “I have a job to do, do you mind?”
“You told me to stay topped up. I’m only doing what I was told.” I wrapped my arm around Zevvi without thinking. “I mean, not that I wouldn’t be interested in trying telekinetic sex, if you’re offering.”
“Tele-what?” Zevvi looked up to ask me, as I gave Sam a leer potent enough to make her go away.
Sam shuddered hard enough for it to telegraph from beneath her suit, then stepped out into the hall, slamming the door shut behind her with her mind.
“You shouldn’t even be talking to them,” Zevvi told me once she was gone.
I looked at her. I mean, really looked at her. “If you want to take her up on her offer, you should go. I won’t stop you.”
Zevvi reacted like I was clinically insane. “What is wrong with you?” she asked me, but she didn’t budge.
I sighed. “Nothing. I’ve just had some fuck-ups recently is all.” First Paco, now Luna—being with me as a human was a losing deal.
“Maya said you were difficult, but sheesh,” she said, beginning to take off her clothes, starting with her top, and suddenly my hunger was back in charge. I took a step toward her without thinking, then forced myself down.
“Go home, Zevvi. Thanks for the ride.” I turned on my heel to head for my shower before morning.
“You can’t wake up like this, Jack,” she called after me. “You won’t be safe.”
“I know,” I agreed with her. But currently I just wanted to be in charge of one thing in my life. “But I’ve got friends. Werewolves. I’ll go to their place when I wake up. Shoo.”
I undressed in my bathroom, finally getting a good look at myself in the mirror. Judging from my injuries, the crash had probably dented part of my skull in, which was why it’d taken me so long to recover. I never would understand the magic that made me me and how it could heal my body all night long, as long as there was blood or life inside me to do so, then just go and give up during daylight hours.
I showered quickly, scrubbing the dried on blood off my skin and clumps of it out of my hair, before grabbing a towel. I heard my phone buzz on the bathroom counter—hopefully Sam’s number incoming—and I picked it up on my way to my bedroom, wearing just a towel, heading for my coffin.
Only to find Zevvi ensconced inside of it, naked.
“Cozy,” she said, looking around at the plywood walls.
“Cat proof,” I corrected her, with a frown.
She eyed me smugly. “You look a lot better after a shower, Jack.”
“Feeding me is not your problem.”
She batted her eyelashes at me. “Maya told me to service you. And I like to do what I’m told,” she purred.
I had a feeling she meant every double entendre she was offering, and my hunger was listening. She was here, she was beautiful, and she was giving me permission—and if I fed from her, I wouldn’t have to waste time feeding tomorrow night before attempting to find Luna.
“Even if every human I touch has bad things happen to them later?” I asked her.
“Jack,” she said softly, giving me a momentary look of charmed disbelief, sitting up. “Some of us like bad things.” Her hands reached for the knot on my towel and when I didn’t stop her, she used the edges of the towel to pull me to the bed’s edge. I could feel the pressure of the upcoming dawn like a quiet hand pushing me forward to rest and the pull of my unsated hunger, holding me back to feed. “So can we do it in here?” she asked, beaming at me. “Like, coffin-style?”
For some ridiculous reason I’d always assumed the first time I fucked in my “coffin” would be with Paco. He’d slept in my coffin with me for three nights while I’d waited for his vampirism to kick in—the first and only time he’d ever spent the night at my place.
And just before he’d bitten Luna . . . .
“No,” I told her, then retook my towel from her and stepped back. “Get out, Zevvi.”
She pouted, but she still stepped down onto the ground, just as beautiful as all the other times I’d seen her nude before. She had perfect proportion of soft flesh over strong muscles, the kind of woman who had some give to her. My hunger wanted to lunge at her like a rabid dog, but it wasn’t in charge of me—yet.
“And now what?” she asked, her tone bright.
“Get dressed. Call a ride back to Vermillion—but leave me your keys and your car. Tell Maya I’ll bring back her ride back tomorrow night.”
Right after I hunted Paco down and enlisted his aid to my cause.
Zevvi frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m not hungry,” I told her, slightly more stern.
She boggled at me. “You probably just washed more blood than I’m willing to give you down your shower drain, Jack.”
“I don’t want your blood.” I hitched the towel around my hips tighter, and went into the living room to find a pen and paper and wrote down Betty’s license plate number before returning with it. “What I want is for you to call around tomorrow and figure out which impound lot Betty went to and get her out—tell Maya to put it on my tab.”
She took the paper from me and gave me a mystified look. “Jack—”
I didn’t have time for this—and the sooner I died, the sooner I could live again to find Paco. “Do as you’re told,” I snarled, and Zevvi’s head reeled back just like I’d slapped her.
She picked up her clothing and pulled it back on quickly. “You’re mean and that’s rude,” she said, jumping her jeans back on.
My hunger gave me a crisp and disturbing vision of all the things I could do to her between now and the moment she got her top button fastened, like picking her up and planting her against the wall to fuck, not even managing to get inside her, just me ramming my dick into the soft place where her thighs met, grinding my shaft against her clit until the friction made her moan—but then she was finished and the temptation was gone, even if my hard-on wasn’t.
She noticed me looking at her though, saw my expression, and blanched. “Maya promised me you weren’t scary,” she said, like telling me that would make it so.
I let the towel drop to the floor, and mounted my bed to lie down in my coffin, hoping beyond hope that this would be the last time I would be alone inside it.
“Do me a favor. Don’t tell Maya she was wrong,” I told her as I pulled the lid of the thing shut above me.
Chapter Sixteen
Luna
Waking up in total cave-like darkness was not all that unusual for me. Living at the beck and call of a vampire practically guaranteed it, and it was easy enough to manage in Vegas with all of its 24/7 amenities. I only had to see daylight when I filed just enough paperwork for Rosalie for her businesses to stay legal, or made personal trips to the DMV.
But what was strange about where I was in total darkness right now—with the exception of the fact that I didn’t know where the fuck I was—was the scent of blood.
Strong and metallic, wet and coppery, like a mouthful of cold pennies. If all of what I smelled had come from me, I was dying for sure.
Which might explain how at peace I was here, wherever this was, in the dark.
Even though I was on . . . stone?
And I was freezing.
I was only wearing the thin dress I’d gone to the ballet in, but I suspected I was cold due to blood loss.
You needed blood to feel warm. Rosalie had taken me to bed with her so that she could feel alive often enough—not just from sex or blood, but just to feel my heat beside her, while she read a book or checked her phone, petting her free hand through my hair like one might idly stroke a beloved pet.
She had been my sun and my moon—my goddess, really, because she promised to save me from my inevitably horrible fate but . . . now?
I was sore all over, and more certain I had bruised ribs with every breath. Where was I, and where was my current Master? I’d been lying earlier with Jack at the ballet—while he might now know true freedom, I was only dabbling in it.
“Are you up?” a disembodied voice in the darkness asked of me.
It didn’t seem worth pretending otherwise. “Yeah.”
A dim light flickered on, revealing the space I was in.
It was narrow—and three of the walls around me were corrugated, like some kind of cargo container. And there were piles of people I didn’t recognize around the edges of the space, vampires that’d had fallen dead where they had stood.
I sat up. I was on a strange stone dais in the center of the room, surrounded by what appeared to be a moat of blood a handsbreadth wide, a few millimeters deep. I carefully pushed my hand over it, and felt a charge of magic push me back. The blood was swirling, I could see it moving, like the water at the edge of an infinity fountain, and I could see who it was coming from—a woman chained by her foot, outside the moat’s circumference. There was a contraption leading from her arm to the moat itself that looked like it was quietly breathing, pulling blood from her and sending it around me.
She looked worse than I felt. The sad overhead light wasn’t doing her sallow color any favors, her hair looked matted, and there were deep circles beneath her eyes. She was in a green dress, and there was a healing cut on her chest. While I couldn’t really place her, she felt oddly familiar to me, although she wasn’t the person who had spoken.
“I was talking to her, not you,” said a woman coming up, in a clingy black top and jeans, her low heels clacking on the metal floor. She’d entered through a door on the only non-metal wall at the back of the room. She picked her way through the collapsed vampires, to kneel beside the chained girl with a thermos in hand.
“Of course you were,” I muttered. She had dark brown hair swooped up one side in a floral clip, and warm brown skin, like the healthier version of the girl who was chained, and I realized where I’d seen the chained woman before.
“You,” I breathed, in recognition. The girl in the green dress had come with the Rojo, and we’d fought at the back of Vermillion. I’d swiped at her with the nightblade before passing out entirely. I could still remember how greedy the weapon had been for her blood; somehow, I’d felt it thirsting in my hand. And now, here I was without it, trapped in a Rojo nest by her blood.
“Do you know her?” the girl who was mobile asked me as she settled the other woman into her lap and untwisted the top of the thermos.
I belatedly remembered to try for innocence, and looked around, pretending to be horrified. “No—you have to let me out of here! Where am I?”
The woman snorted as she poured fluid into the chained girl’s mouth. “Nice try,” she said quietly.
I tried pushing my hand out again—I felt like I could probably out run the healthy girl with enough adrenaline on board. All I had to do was break through the magical barrier.
“You can’t cross it,” she said, and in answer to my unspoken question, “and neither can I.”
“You could stop it, though,” I said, looking at the machine that was sucking out the chained woman’s blood slowly.
“They wouldn’t like that.”
And by they she meant the ten or so vampires surrounding us.
“She’ll die,” I said.
“It’s been decreed.”
“Which is why . . . you’re trying to keep her alive right now?” The scent of chicken soup made my mouth drool—I was both hungry and thirsty.
She shrugged. “You’ll die too, once they’ve had their way with you tonight.”
I got to my knees, hissing with pain and holding my side. Now that the light was on, I could see additional strange carvings in the stone that I was trapped on. “My name is Luna. I’m still human, and I don’t want to die.” Her dark eyes flashed over at me, and I recognized the similarities between her and the woman on the floor. Related for sure. “She your sister?” I asked, then didn’t wait. “I know other vampires. If you can get me out, I can keep us safe.”
