Finn hated herself for what she was about to do, but she couldn’t help it. She lowered the backseat window. “Scooby?”
He nodded. He was a stringy, pimply, gangly fellow, and for a hysterical moment Finn wondered why his nickname was Scooby instead of Shaggy. “Wass up?” he asked.
Was she really going to do this? She felt uncertain and a little frightened at the prospect, even if her heart was beating rapidly and her mouth was starting to salivate. She had never done anything like this before, and she worried that the driver would say something to Oliver. Maybe she could bribe him to stay quiet, hand him one of the hundred-dollar bills in her purse. That might do it.
“What’s your poison? We got it all, Molly, crystal, bennies, Acapulco gold, candy, Ivory, dollies, downers, horse. What’s your ride, pretty lady?”
“Take me to Paradise,” she whispered.
“Vitamin P?” He squinted. “Mmm. Gonna cost you.”
Finn looked through her wallet and held out five one-hundred-dollar bills. “That enough?”
“Double,” he said, making a come on, come on gesture with his hand.
She handed him ten.
“Pills or powder?”
“Oh, um… powder.” Ivy put it in wine. She would do the same. He handed her a small foil-wrapped package and slapped the car door to indicate they had to get out of there.
“Thanks.”
The car rolled forward. She put the drugs away in her handbag, her heart beating. She noticed someone at the corner, someone she recognized, one of those new Venators—a young one and cute. Ben Denham, she thought his name was. Then she realized there were more of them, more Venators, coming out of the woodwork, fast, their guns drawn and their blades glinting, swarming into the warehouse building at the corner where she had just scored.
It was a Venator raid.
And she was right in the middle of it.
“Let’s get out of here,” she told her driver.
But as she watched the Venators swarm the building, she saw a figure run out of it. Someone who ran right in front of her car, and who stumbled across the hood, and their eyes met hers through the windshield. Her blood ran cold. She was caught red-handed.
There was no getting out of this. Except…
He was running out of the building, not running into it like the other Venators.
What the Hell?
24 LOSS
THE NEXT DAY Ara was working late when there was a rap on her office door. “You still here, Scott? I thought they’d have buried you in paperwork by now,” Sam asked.
“Venators never sleep. Where’ve you been all night?” she asked.
“Meeting with the Regent. Wanted an update on that Nephilim raid.”
Last night the Venators had finally caught a break and uncovered the location of the hive—the largest nest yet—five Nephilim huddled together in a Brooklyn warehouse. In the melee, the Venators had shot them dead. It was a shame they hadn’t been able to take one alive to answer questions. Ara hadn’t been on duty, but she knew Rowena had led the investigation, her first in her new position. They found a few more of the same plastic bags marked with the five silver triangles that Ara had found on the Neph downtown. It looked like they were selling crystal; there were traces of methamphetamine in the bags this time. Rowena grumbled that since the Venators had burned down the place, they’d never find out exactly what the Nephilim were doing there, but orders were orders.
She’d told Ara in confidence that the conclave was beginning to think that someone in the Coven was tipping off the Nephs, and she had been asked to head up the internal investigation. She’d been promoted to head spook; basically, her task was to spy on her fellow Venators. Rowena and her team were running deeper background checks on Venators, from noovs to commanding officers, as well as comparing notes to see if anyone could possibly have tampered with files or evidence.
Ara hoped the conclave was wrong about that. She didn’t like doubting or distrusting her colleagues. She was happy, though, for her partner’s new responsibilities and the trust she obviously had with the conclave, but she missed Rowena in the trenches. Ara stared at her partner’s empty chair and wondered who would fill it. She would be getting a new partner soon, but she liked working on her own.
“You know, I think I’ve found a way to link the pentagrams around the city to the Nephilim,” she said to Sam.
“Yeah, how so?”
“The five triangles on the dime bags.”
“Yeah?”
“I started playing around with it, and look, when you draw the outline—look what it makes.” She showed him the paper she was working on.
“A pentagram,” he said, impressed.
“Right? It can’t be a coincidence.”
“Nothing ever is,” he agreed. “Good work. But I mean it. Knock it off. It’s way past noon. Go on home.” He stopped by the door and turned. “I’ll see you there?” he asked with a wink.
“You bet.” She smiled.
A few hours later, after dinner, he was helping her with the dishes when he pushed her against her sink, kissing and smelling her neck. “You stink,” he said.
“You like it.” She laughed against his mouth, let him kiss her.
“I do,” Sam said, helping her out of her tank top.
“You smell good, too,” she said. “Aftershave?” It was a comfortable, manly smell, and it made her feel protected.
“You like that,” he murmured, lifting her easily so that she wrapped her legs around his waist as he carried her to the bedroom.
They made love quickly and furiously. When they were done, they lay in an exhausted heap, his arms still wrapped around her. “Sex and blood, that’s all there is to life,” he whispered.
She started to laugh softly. “You’re a philosopher now?”
“Maybe. You ever taken a human familiar?”
“Not yet.”
“I noticed—you haven’t registered one. You should. Blood’s all we have left. That’s all there is to this life.”
“Pretty bleak way to look at it,” she said.
“Just being realistic. This is no way to live.” The bitterness in his tone surprised her.
“Considering what we just did, I have to take that as an insult,” she said lightly.
“Sorry,” Sam said, kissing her forehead. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant—”
“Forget it, Chief,” she said. “I understand.” Even though she really didn’t and wasn’t sure what had brought on that sudden darkness in him.
They went to bed. When the alarm rang, she turned it off and slowly moved from underneath his bulk, feeling guilty and awkward. She began to dress quietly and had just sheathed her blades when he woke up.
“Midnight already?” He yawned.
“Yeah, I thought I’d make it in on time for once,” she said. “I have a hunch about those pentagrams. I think they’re using it as some kind of marker.”
“Who?”
“The Nephilim.”
“Okay,” he said, rubbing his eyes and reaching for his clothes. “You might have something there. Keep working on it.”
“Sam,” she said hesitantly, while he got dressed and put on his shoes.
“Yeah?” he asked, immediately concerned when he saw the look on her face.
It had been on her mind and she had to say it now or she never would. She took a deep breath. “I don’t think this is a good idea… us… what we’re doing.”
He looked surprised. “Oh?”
“I mean, you’re my boss, you know?”
Sam crossed his arms and nodded. “Yeah, I’m aware.”
“I just—”
He took a sharp breath. “Don’t worry about it. We had fun, right?” he asked lightly, even though she could sense the trace of bitterness in his voice.
Blood’s all we have left, he said. That’s all there is to this life. It was as if he had nothing to live for. He was a good guy, but there was a bleakness in him that she ha
dn’t expected to find. It creeped her out a little.
“Well, I guess I should be going,” he said, turning around.
“I hope we can be friends?” she said faintly.
He nodded. “Don’t worry, Scott. We’ll be friends. You still work for me. And I’ll still look out for you. I promise.”
“Thanks, Chief.”
She closed the door behind him and exhaled. She felt as if she were free again, unfettered, unburdened. Alone. It was a good feeling.
The next evening, she ran into Deming Chen, who deliberately pushed her into the wall with her shoulder and muttered “bitch” under her breath.
“Excuse me? Do you have a problem?” Ara asked, confronting her.
“He wasn’t good enough for you?” Deming asked, wheeling around. “Why lead him on, then?”
“I didn’t do anything of the sort,” Ara hissed. “He was the one who picked me up. And explain to me how this is any of your business?”
“It is my business.”
“Why? Who’s he to you anyway?”
Deming leaned in so that she could see her ivory teeth and her poreless, perfect skin. “He’s the twin brother of my lost bondmate.”
Twins who had married twins. Sam and Ted Lennox. Deming and Dehua Chen. Ara remembered the story now. But she had never put it together that Sam and Deming had been the surviving twins, that they each had suffered two great losses.
“I’m sorry.” Ara felt the fight go out of her. “I didn’t know.”
“You should be,” Deming said. “You don’t know what it’s like to lose somebody.”
No, I guess not, Ara thought bitterly. The War only took my parents, my friends, and everyone I ever loved.
When she went home that night, she decided not to do the dishes from the dinner she and Sam had shared the night before. She was exhausted from work and feeling low about the awkwardness that had crept into her formerly healthy relationship with the chief. The next day she couldn’t make the effort, either, and soon the garbage overflowed and the dust balls resembled gray fungus, like the darkness she was worried was growing around her heart.
Was Sam right? Was there nothing to this life but sex and blood? Not that she was having either at the moment.
Sam remained a friend, just like he’d promised, even though Deming hated her and turned the whole team against her. After a week or two, Ara began to feel better and vowed one day soon she would clean her apartment.
25 WOLF IN THE DESERT
FUCKING DUST HOLE. You want to see the Sahara Desert? It’s right in the middle of this goddamned city.” Edon shook his head. There weren’t a lot of places in the world that were pleasant in August, and Morocco sure wasn’t one of them. Marrakech’s famed marketplace was supposedly full of the treasures of an ancient world, except everything was covered in the same red-brown layer of fine dirt.
Edon took a swipe at a pile of elaborately hooked rugs on a bazaar table next to him. A cloud of dust rose at the touch of his hand. “You want a rug? Here’s one. Brown, just like all the rest.” He nodded at the rug salesman, pushing him aside with one hand when he got in Edon’s face to cuss him out in a singsong Arabic.
The man walking next to Edon laughed. “I don’t want a rug, asshole.” Rodriguez was a suit, regular brass, right off the plane from the States. Edon didn’t know what he was doing here, but he didn’t like it. Excepting his own kind, it didn’t make a difference which asshole he worked for, which asshole he took his orders from. They were all the same.
Not his kind.
Creatures of Heaven and he was a wolf bred in Hell.
Edon grinned because that was what you did when you were handling a snake. “See that hookah? You can have it in brown. Brown, brown, or brown.” He pointed into the nearest stall, where a table was piled high with intricate brass figurines, baskets of pipes, rows of hookahs and lanterns.
He held up a lantern with one hand and blew on it. Dust flew into Rodriguez’s face, and he started to splutter and cough. “Christ, Marrok.”
“Wait, I got something for that cough.” Edon grabbed an orange off a nearby fruit stand. “You want an orange? I got one for you. Only it’s brown. Seriously. That orange is fucking brown.”
“And your point?”
“Orange is a color. Oranges are supposed to be orange, brother.”
Rodriguez took the orange out of Edon’s hand, shaking his head. He sniffed it. “What’s wrong with you, brother?” The ancient woman hovering over the fruit stand started to howl, and Edon flicked a coin at her.
“Get me out of here before I lose what’s left of my shit, that’s what’s wrong. Brother.” Edon glared at Rodriguez. Cut to the chase, man. I hate this dance.
“Yeah? You really want to get out of here? Because the way I see it, you seem pretty happy. Look at yourself. You’re wearing a scarf on your head.”
“It’s a djellaba. You want to get knifed in the back while you walk down the goddamned street? Don’t wear one. I’ve been undercover for almost a year, man. Don’t fuck around.”
Rodriguez raised one hand. Half an apology.
Edon snorted. “You got something to say to me?”
“Me? What makes you say that?” The suit tossed the orange up and down in his hand, looking like he was savoring the moment. Like he wants me to beg for it, Edon thought.
“You’re a long way from the city for a boy with no djellaba. Must have a hell of a message, if you couldn’t just spit it out over the phone,” said Edon.
“Or maybe I was just in the mood for a brown fucking orange.” Rodriguez smiled, sort of. Then he finally shrugged.
Here it comes, Edon thought. Say it. Please. Get me the hell out.
“You been good out here. That’s what I heard, anyways.”
“Damn right I have.” Edon nodded.
“You took down that Neph cell. Rounded up a fucking harem’s worth of pros and hos. That got some notice back home.” Rodriguez tossed the orange, up and down.
Edon looked away. “It was all part of that Neph gambling ring. They weren’t just betting on camel races. Tough little shits.”
“So I heard. Impressive. And the drug-trafficking thing, that was a nice catch.” He didn’t sound so impressed. He was trying to keep it together, but you could hear the jealousy in his voice.
Interesting.
Edon shrugged. “You mean an easy catch. Warehouse full of silk pillows and shit, and not one of them was brown.” He winked, then ducked to avoid getting clipped by the front of a spluttering truck as it careened through the narrow street.
Rodriguez watched the truck disappear around the corner. “You got somewhere we can really talk?” The streets were safe, but not completely.
Edon nodded. “This way.”
The room was dark and the coffee was even darker. Rugs piled on rugs beneath their feet. Brass lanterns—the same ones that had been hanging in the marketplace—hung over their heads, filling the room with soft flecks of light. Not enough to illuminate a face. Not enough to give away the kind of detail that could get someone identified by the local authorities.
Rodriguez replaced a little brass cup on the painted, carved table between them. He shifted uncomfortably on the hard wooden seat. “Nephilim activity in New York.”
“No shit.” Edon was unfazed.
“Pentagrams are turning up everywhere. Across the city.”
“Whatever. So some psychopath tagger gets a little wild with his spray paint. Mortals think pentas are cool, you know.”
Rodriguez shook his head. “It’s the real deal.”
“So?”
“So some brass wants you taking one of their Venators under your wing.”
It wasn’t what he was expecting, and Edon grimaced before he could check himself. “I don’t babysit.”
Rodriguez shrugged. “I know. It’s an asshole job. I’m not here to sell it. Thing is, I don’t know what a guy like you did to end up on the shit end of this stick. As far as I can tell, you’ve be
en tearing it up out here.” It was as close as he could come to trying to be sympathetic.
Edon didn’t buy it. “Thanks. You’re a prince.” Of course he could go back to his people, back to the timekeepers, but ever since the War, Edon hadn’t wanted to get in the way. He had never been top dog with his guys. His younger brother, Lawson, had won that spot, and while he didn’t begrudge it, it never ceased to sting a little. And so he had found a place with the vampires, with the Fallen. They resented his help, but they couldn’t live without it, either. Cracking that Neph cell was hard work, but he’d gotten them all, except for that one little slipup that had almost caused the death of innocent mortals. It was a close call, and no one had been harmed, but the brass saw red. He was being punished for that mistake, he could tell. Thanks for hunting them demons, dog, but you’re off the team.
Rodriguez looked genuinely sorry for a minute. “Chief says she’s a real wild card, that she needs handling.”
Edon looked at him blankly. What kind of shit assignment was this? He was a demon hunter, not a babysitter.
Rodriguez sighed, examining the contents of his cup. “Buck up, asshole. At least it gets you out of this place.”
“She’s a wild card?” Edon raised an eyebrow. “What does that mean back in New York City? She rides the subway? She runs in the park at night?”
Rodriguez looked at him now. “She’s been taking Death Walks.”
Death Walks. That was some dark gig. Edon couldn’t help but be a little impressed. “No shit.”
“Oh yeah.”
“Jesus. Why me?”