Urban Fantasy Collection - Vampires Read online

  Lengthening her stride, she passed Dante, crossing the street to the Subaru. She unlocked both doors, then waited until Dante had slouched into the passenger seat before seating herself.

  “Seat belt,” she said, strapping her own shut.

  “Got a warrant for that too?”

  “No,” Heather said, voice low. “Is this how it’s going to be with you?”

  “Most likely.”

  Heather stared at him for a long moment. Opened her mouth. Shut it again. Pick your battles. This one isn’t worth it.

  “Good to know,” she said finally.

  Keying on the ignition, Heather slammed the gearshift into drive and peeled out onto the street, the Subaru’s tires spitting gravel. Dante pulled the sun visor down.

  Heather drove in silence until her anger and irritation were under control. He’s tired. I’m tired. Cranky is the word for the day. She loosened her grip on the steering wheel. She eased the Subaru onto the interstate and aimed it for New Orleans.

  She wrinkled her nose, puzzled by the buttery, suntan oil kind of odor filling the car. “Is that sunscreen I smell?”

  “Mmm.”

  Heather glanced at her passenger. “You playing up those vampire rumors?”

  “Not playing,” Dante murmured.

  “Right.”

  Heather stared straight ahead, attention focused on the road. She had a feeling Dante wasn’t kidding. His sleepy voice had sounded sincere.

  She’d dealt with this type at the psychiatric hospital outside Boise where she’d done volunteer work in an effort to better understand the difference between mentally ill and sociopath. And in hopes of better understanding Annie. Goth, wannabe undead. Yearning to be special. He probably had dental implants and kept bagged blood in his refrigerator, all part of the delusion.

  Heather glanced at Dante. He slept, his head back against the seat and turned to one side, the hoodie hiding his face, gloved hands relaxed and open on his thighs.

  “Hey, Dante, wake up!” He didn’t stir. Seemed dead to the world. Keeping her gaze on the road, she smacked him lightly on the shoulder. “C’mon, wake up.”

  “Tais toi,” Dante murmured, turning his face away and folding his arms against his chest, snuggled up tight for sleep.

  And he speaks French. Or was it Cajun? He was from Lafayette, Cajun territory, had a bit of an accent.

  Rain began to spatter the windshield, nothing serious, just a dawn sprinkle. Heather switched on the wipers. What was it with this city? Vampires. Voodoo. Cities of the dead. She glanced at Dante. He was still curled up, his breathing low, hard to perceive.

  “Do you actually believe you’re a vampire?”

  To her surprise, Dante stirred, sat up. He tugged the hood’s edges farther over his face. “Nightkind,” he said, yawning. “Belief’s got nothing to do with it. Are you mortal just because you believe you are?”

  “Mortal? Of course not,” Heather said, looking at him, trying to see his hidden face. “I was born human. Just like everyone else.”

  Slouched down in the seat again, arms folded across his chest, Dante turned his hooded head to look out the passenger window. “Mmm. Glad you cleared that up.”

  Heather lapsed into silence. She was failing with him. Maybe he really believed the vampire stuff or maybe he wanted her to see through it. And maybe, just maybe, it was all a rocker prank, a mindfuck for the fun of it and nothing to get worked up over.

  She was tired, and it was affecting her judgment. A quick look at Dante revealed that he slept again—or pretended to, at least.

  Once in the city, Heather steered the car to Canal Street, then from Canal down Royal, finally turning onto St. Peter. Bits and pieces from last night were strewn across the rain-dampened cobblestones: bright paper, beads, empty plastic cups, a black bra. After the madness and frenzy of the night before, the Quarter looked desolate and abandoned.

  Heather parked in front of the club. She leaned over and was about to shake Dante’s shoulder when he suddenly sat up, his shaded gaze on one of the upper floors. Scrunching down, Heather looked through the passenger window to see what had drawn his attention. On the third floor, an open pair of French windows.

  Heather remembered curtains dancing in the night breeze, the orange flicker of candlelight. “Something wrong?”

  “Hope not.” Dante yanked at the door handle.

  Heather blinked. Dante stood on the sidewalk, gaze on the windows. She hadn’t seen him actually open the door or even get out. All she’d seen was his gloved fingers pulling the door latch and then she’d heard the thunk as the door closed after him.

  What the hell? Heather rubbed at her eyes. Had she dozed off for a second? Was she that tired? She joined Dante on the sidewalk and followed his gaze up. The curtains hung limp.

  “Who was up there last night?”

  “I was,” Dante replied—but his voice was further away.

  Looking down, Heather realized that Dante was already at the club entrance, working keys in the locks.

  Wake up, Wallace, Jesus Christ. She hurried to join him as he pulled open the heavy door and stepped inside.

  The stale smell of smoke, old beer, and sex lingered in the dark hallway. Dante stood next to the security panel of the club’s alarm system. Red light from the BURN sign down the hall flickered across the back of his hood. Frowning, he pushed the hood back and slid his shades to the top of his head. Green telltales glowed on the security panel. He no longer looked sleepy.

  “What’s wrong?” Heather asked, stepping up beside him.

  “The alarm’s not on,” he said. He glanced back over his shoulder at the buzzing neon sign. Red light jittered across his pale face. “I don’t think Lucien woulda forgot.”

  Heather straightened, adrenaline pumping into her bloodstream. Her heart beat faster. Reaching into the trench’s inside pocket, she pulled free her .38.

  “Stay here,” she said.

  “Fuck that,” Dante said. Then he was gone.

  “Dante, no!” she hissed into the red-lit darkness, but he was long gone. How had he moved so fast? Reflex boost? Enhancement?

  Sliding the .38’s safety off, Heather ran the length of the hall, her back close to the wall, and into the club. Across an eerie red-lit wasteland of tables, chairs, Cage, and throne, she saw Dante on the staircase, rounding the corner onto the third-floor landing.

  Easing her way between tables, her gaze flicking from shadow to shadow, she hurried to the stairs. The icy sense of wrongness that had seized her at the security panel hadn’t diminished. Something was very wrong. And Dante was about to walk right into it. Walk, hell. Teleport was more like it. But he was a civilian in her custody; her responsibility.

  Heather started up the stairs, her back to the wall, her .38 held in a two-handed grip. Her own dim shadow scouted ahead of her, and she winced every time a stair creaked beneath her foot. Stepping onto the second-floor landing, she brought her gun up as she dropped down into a crouch, checking right, then left, before straightening again. She listened. The old building creaked around her. Soft footsteps pattered above her on the third floor, then stopped.

  She climbed the next flight of stairs, her gaze shifting from the dark third-floor landing to the red-lit club beyond and beneath the wrought-iron railings. Nothing moved in the shadows below.

  On the landing, she dropped into a crouch and cleared right, then turned to the left. Dante stood in a doorway, one gloved hand braced against the threshold. Heather straightened. Gargoyle candle sconces guarded the framed art lining the walls. An old-fashioned Oriental hall carpet cushioned her footsteps. Dante didn’t move, did nothing to indicate that he heard her or knew she was there.

  A thick, coppery smell filled Heather’s nostrils, a smell she knew all too well. Her gut knotted. The steady plop-plop of dripping became more distinct as she drew nearer. She stepped beside Dante, gun still held in both hands, and looked into the room.

  It was worse than she could’ve imagined.

&
nbsp; Much worse.

  6

  Magic and Mystery

  JOHANNA MOORE STOOD AT her office window, watching the snow fall. Snow always made her think of Christmas and of her youth; she remembered the magic and mystery of the tiny glittered windows of the Advent calendar and the surprises they revealed when opened. February in D.C. lacked magic or mystery and held only ice-slicked sidewalks and stark tree limbs.

  “E is in New Orleans,” she said finally.

  “A coincidence,” Gifford replied.

  “I don’t think so,” Johanna said. “And I don’t like it one bit.” She turned away from the window and the snow and her memories.

  Gifford sat in the plush leather chair in front of Johanna’s cherrywood desk, a frown on his face as he thumbed through the thick file in his lap. He reached a hand into his suit jacket’s inside pocket and withdrew a slim brown cigarillo.

  He shook his head, his gaze still on the file. “He can’t possibly know about S. Or Bad Seed.” Flicking open his lighter, he touched flame to the cigarillo.

  Johanna heard the crackle of the tobacco as it withered and burned. A sweet cherry-vanilla scent curled into the air.

  “I wonder,” she said, crossing to her desk. Several more files and CDs were scattered across its polished surface, all marked: TOP SECRET and RESEARCH—SPECIAL OPS ONLY.

  “The last victim had met S.” Johanna sat on the edge of her desk and fixed her gaze on Gifford. “And was slaughtered in the courtyard next to the club.”

  He looked up, gray eyes thoughtful. “Again, coincidence.”

  “And, again, I don’t think so. E burned S’s logo into the victim’s chest.” Reaching over, Johanna plucked the cigarillo from between Gifford’s fingers. Brought it up to her lips. Inhaled.

  Amusement lit Gifford’s eyes. “Maybe E is a music lover,” he said. “Hell, maybe he’s a fan of Inferno. Even serial killers have their favorite bands.”

  Johanna blew out a stream of scented smoke, savoring its tobacco-and-vanilla taste. She shook her head. “No. He’s communicating.”

  She extended the cigarillo to Gifford. He took it back from her, his fingers lingering for a moment against hers, warm and smooth.

  “It scares the crap out of me to think he might actually have an agenda.”

  “Communicating?” Gifford asked. He glanced down at the file in his lap again. His brows knitted together as he flipped through several pages. “With who?”

  “I don’t know,” Johanna said quietly. “S, maybe.”

  “If that’s the case, we don’t have to worry,” Gifford said. Paper rustled. “S doesn’t know shit, right?”

  “Not after the way his memory was torn apart. No.” Standing, Johanna brushed past Gifford’s knees and returned to the window.

  The snow continued to fall. The sky lightened from dark gray to light gray as the dawn deepened into a winter morning. A thick white silence, like the one insulating her heart, encased the world beyond her window.

  The sound of flipping paper suddenly stopped. “Blocked and fragmented,” Gifford said. “According to the history.”

  Johanna heard Gifford’s finger sliding from line to line in the report. “I was there, Dan, from start to finish,” she said. “Torn apart is far more accurate.”

  An image slipped past her guard, her silent white barricade:

  A slender twelve-year-old boy in a blood-spattered straitjacket suspended upside down from the ceiling, chains wrapped around his ankles. Long black hair streams past his face except for a few sweat-and-blood-dampened tendrils clinging to his forehead, his pale cheeks. He hangs motionless, the fight, rage, and grief drained from him like blood from a corpse.

  His punishment ended, no one wants to bring him down—the blood-sprayed walls and the bodies crumpled on the cement floor keep them on the safe side of the steel door.

  Johanna enters alone and alone stabs a hypo full of tranks into the boy’s neck. Alone, she eases the boy’s chains from the butcher’s hook and lowers him to the floor. Doped and dreaming, this beautiful vampire child, lost to the madness of puberty.

  Gathering him into her arms, she carries him to another cell. She trembles, magic and mystery pulsing once again through her veins, glittering like Christmas in her mind. The boy’s psyche is, for her, an Advent calendar; with each compartment she opens or twists or triggers, a wonderful surprise is revealed.

  Johanna ran her fingers through her short-cropped hair, glancing at her faint reflection in the window. Attractive, early thirties, blonde and blue-eyed Nordic, tall and fit. The very opposite of her père de sang in physical appearance. But she and Ronin shared a deep hunger for knowledge. In that they were very much alike.

  Weariness surged through her. She needed blood, then Sleep. She was pushing the pills’ limits too far. She could only postpone Sleep so long.

  “What was done to S’s memory isn’t the problem,” she said, turning to face Gifford. “E’s cross-country killing spree and the Bureau’s involvement in the case is the problem. I don’t know how, but E’s led them, more or less, straight to S.”

  “Do you want E stopped?”

  Johanna shook her head. “I’d like to keep studying his progress. But it’s making me nervous that the Bureau’s so close.”

  “I see,” Gifford said. He leaned forward in the chair. His composed gaze met and held Johanna’s. “What do you want done?”

  LUCIEN SAT IN THE darkened living room, back straight, eyes closed as he guarded those who Slept in the rooms upstairs. Slept deeply. Except for one. Dante’s Sleep-addled thoughts brushed against Lucien’s mind. He felt Dante’s struggle to remain conscious, alert. Damned woman and her damned search warrant. Lucien’s fingers flexed and gripped the easy chair’s armrests. He drew in a deep breath and carefully lifted his fingers. Calm.

  He knew how difficult and contrary Dante could be—the child had often tested his own considerable patience—and Wallace had simply reacted to Dante’s refusal to cooperate.

  But…why did Wallace even wish to search the courtyard? What did she hope to find? And what did any of it have to do with Dante?

  Lucien opened his eyes and stared into the curtained gloom. Shadows draped the sofa, bookcases, and standing lamps, hiding all color. Outside, birds twittered and sang, busy with morning tasks.

  For a moment, Lucien longed to take to the air, to feel the dawn warm against his face, to warble his wybrcathl into the golden sunrise, to await the answering aria of another of the Elohim.

  But his wybrcathl needed to remain unvoiced. The child he guarded needed to remain hidden from the Elohim, undiscovered. Lucien touched the pendant hanging at his throat. Ran his fingers along the edges of the X, the metal smooth and warm.

  The rune for partnership—given to him four years before by Dante, a warm and unexpected token of their friendship. Lucien’s fingers tightened around the pendant. The rough edges bit into his flesh. He bowed his head and closed his eyes. Remembered the wild, rough anhrefncathl he’d answered five years before…remembered landing on a wharf beside the Mississippi River.

  A youth in worn leather pants, scuffed-up boots, and a T-shirt sits cross-legged on the wharf’s warped and weathered wood, something wriggling between his hands caught in a bluish glow.

  Lucien lands lightly on the wharf, his wings expanding in a last flutter of air before folding behind him. Water laps and splashes against the wharf pilings. The strong odor of fish, muddy water, and rank mud layers the air.

  The youth doesn’t look up. Black hair hides his face, his head bowed as he concentrates on the thing squirming in his hands.

  Lucien steps forward, the wood still sun-warm against his bare feet. Pain and power radiate from the youth, sharp and spiky and fevered. Blood drips from his nose and splashes onto the back of his hand.

  The blue light glowing from the youth’s hands, the chaos song swirling up from him, anguished and yearning and heartbroken—draw Lucien closer. His muscles tighten; fire burns through his veins. The
last time he saw that blue glow or heard an anhrefncathl was thousands of years ago from a creawdwr now long dead.

  Has another finally been born? Hidden in the mortal world?

  Lucien’s wings tuck into their pouches on his back as he crouches in front of the youth. Pain pierces him. Drawing his shields tight, Lucien flexes away the youth’s unwanted agony.

  “Child.”

  The night-haired youth doesn’t respond. His hands open, trembling, and the blue glow fades, then vanishes, like a snuffed flame. The thing he held scampers away, bright black eyes gleaming in the moonlight.

  A wharf rat, Lucien realizes in surprise. Or, at least what used to be a wharf rat. The former rat scurries to the edge of the wharf and off. Its many pairs of translucent and delicate dragonfly-like wings lift it uncertainly into the night. It flies away.

  Forever altered by a creawdwr’s touch.

  “Child,” Lucien says again, and tips the youth’s face up with a taloned finger.

  He is too stunned by recognition—the dark, intelligent eyes, the cheekbones, the curve of the lips—to even fend the boy off as he uncoils from the wharf. Lucien falls back as the boy wraps strong, slender arms around him and sinks his fangs into Lucien’s throat.

  Heat radiates from the boy as he gulps down Lucien’s blood, heat and hunger and a deep, deep grief. Lucien holds him for a moment, allowing him to feed, allowing the youth to pin him to the wharf’s old wood with a leather-clad thigh. He smells of smoky autumn fires and November frost, sharp and clean and intoxicating. The youth’s pain and near madness batters at Lucien’s shields like an unrelenting sledgehammer.

  He looks just like her.

  Not possible.

  Her son…

  Gently, Lucien breaks the boy’s steel-muscled grip and rests a hand against his fevered temple. He pours healing energy into the boy, dousing the fire ravaging his mind and easing him into sleep. The youth slumps against Lucien, his bloodied face smearing a red trail along Lucien’s shoulder and chest.