Ara tried not to feel too left out, but it was difficult to compete with the instant bonding that veterans shared. The chief had mentioned he’d fought side by side with Edon during the War, and as Deming was yet another hero of that long-ago conflict, of course she knew him, too. And apparently she’d slept with him. Didn’t seem to regret it too much, either. Well, Edon wasn’t as wrecked and destroyed looking back then, and he was clearly charming enough for Deming.
“Is the reunion over?” Deming’s partner, a crusty, white-haired Venator named Gavin Acker, asked grumpily. “Or are you two gonna get a room?”
At least someone felt the same as she did. There was work to do, and the sooner they did it, the sooner they could get out of this dark, abandoned tunnel.
“We took a few scrapes for the lab,” Deming said, turning serious. “Acker set up a dampening zone, in case there was any dark magic in it. Should be neutralized now.”
“Did you run a blood test?” asked Ara.
Deming shook her head. “It’s dead. There’s nothing to be found from it. It won’t call up any memories.”
“But you didn’t try?” Ara insisted. Working with blood was what Venators did; they used their senses to unlock the memories, truth, and history hidden in its makeup, and she couldn’t hide her surprise that the senior Venator hadn’t even attempted it.
Deming frowned, obviously annoyed at being questioned. “No. Like I told you, it’s useless.”
“And you haven’t found the body yet?” Ara asked. Chief was sure there was bound to be a body somewhere underground, not too far away—a body that had been drained of its blood to make the pentagram. He had pressed upon them the urgent need to find it before the regular police did. The Venators didn’t usually concern themselves with the murders of mortals, but the pentagram was a magical instrument and fell under their jurisdiction. If it had just been a smear of blood on the wall or even a regular dead body, the chief would have kicked it over to his Conduit at the NYPD. What the chief didn’t say, didn’t need to say, was that there had not been a death related to the Coven in a decade. The Venators were supposed to keep everyone associated with the Coven safe, vampire and human alike, and for ten years, they had succeeded.
“We’ve searched every inch of the tunnels underneath from Battery Park to Harlem. Perhaps you’ll find something we missed, but I doubt it,” Deming said coldly. “Come on, Acker. Let them take it from here. Maybe they’ll find something we didn’t,” she said, in a tone that indicated she didn’t believe they would.
When they were out of sight and hearing, Edon gave a low whistle. “What did you do to her? When I knew Ming she was pretty chill.”
“It’s complicated,” Ara said with a shrug. She didn’t want to get into it, and she bristled at being admonished. What happened wasn’t her fault really, although she should have known better, and she couldn’t help it if Deming was a cold bitch.
He nodded and didn’t press for more, which was a relief. They studied the bloody marker in front of them.
“I thought pentagrams were a witch thing, you know, drawn with chalk,” said Ara. “But you know about them, huh? I thought wolves didn’t mess with magic.”
“We know some,” Edon allowed. “They’re often used to call up power or magnify your own. That’s what the witches do with them, if they’re practicing white magic.”
“And if not?”
“Then it’s illegal. Their Council doesn’t allow it, nor does yours,” he said, as Ara leaned in for a closer look.
Edon took out his phone and took a few pictures. “Hey—” he said, making a face as Ara scraped some blood off the stone with her fingernail and licked it. “That’s disgusting.”
She didn’t answer and instead concentrated on the blood on her tongue, closing her eyes and letting it disintegrate until it was part of her, so that she could try to access the memories hidden in its makeup. Edon was right—it was disgusting and probably as useless as Deming had insisted; it was too cold, the blood trail was dead. But sometimes you could catch a feeling—a faint echo of the living soul that had given the blood. Ara pushed her senses as hard as she could, but there was nothing. It was cold, dead, useless, gray; wait a minute—there was something—she was in a dark tunnel, like this, but it was narrower, smaller, and suddenly Ara was overwhelmed by terror, by a fright that chilled her to her soul. Her hands began to shake and she was suffocating, drowning in blood, and there was a familiar smell she couldn’t place—she knew that smell—but before she could figure out what it was, it was over, and she jolted back to reality with the sensation of her blood being drained from her body.
“You all right?” Edon asked. “What did you see?”
Ara nodded, trying to shake off the fear and panic that she had tasted in the blood; her throat hitched and her heart was pumping fast—just like the girl’s, right before her death. “A girl. I read her death in the blood. Come on—she’s down here somewhere.”
“Not much of a first date, is it?” Edon joked, as he and Ara circled their way through the dark, abandoned tunnels one more time. “Me, I like a little wine, candles to set the mood, maybe one of those violinists or two—or better yet, those dudes who come by with all those roses in a basket—you know? They force you to buy one or you’ll look cheap in front of your lady?”
“Like you ever would,” Ara said absently.
“Feel cheap?” He grinned. “Nah.”
“Hush,” Ara said, tired of his endless chatter. Their footsteps echoed across the cavernous space as they scoped every inch of the tunnel slowly and methodically. So far they had found nothing aside from the remains of a few homeless camps, but there was no sign of the people who lived there.
Ara led the way, not caring if she was splashing through grime or walking through cesspools. Neither of them needed flashlights, as vampires and wolves could see in the dark. Edon was breathing hard beside her, sniffing, coughing, wiping his nose.
“What’s wrong? Smell getting to you?” she snapped.
“Relax, I just have allergies… mold. I used to live in Hell, so this don’t bother me none,” he said, and she could sense his sideways grin in the dark.
She could also sense that he spoke like that, in the rough slang of the street, just to rile her up. Prove to her how unlike him—and his world—she really was.
He didn’t know her at all.
“Sure you’re from Hell and not the hood?” she scoffed.
“What’s a little Merryvale girl like you know about the hood?” he bantered back.
“You did some research on me?”
“Had to know who was on my ass now, didn’t I?” Edon sighed, and she could hear his bones crack as he stretched his neck.
“Why don’t you go?” she offered. “I can finish up here. There’s a stairway not too far back from where we ran into that homeless camp.”
“Are you kidding me? And let you take all the credit?” he asked, but his tone was joking.
“Fine,” she said, as they passed a large wet puddle filled with something Ara did not want to think too long about. They kept walking in the dark until she stopped short and Edon bumped against her back.
“Whoops, sorry.”
She held up a palm to quiet him. There was something—she could feel it, sense it, something hidden that she couldn’t see—a feeling of menace and foreboding lingering in the air, and the trace blood memory from the pentagram awakened in her brain. Ara walked toward a deep fissure in the wall and pressed her hand against it, then almost fell into unexpected air.
Edon caught her before she stumbled. His hands were strong and firm as he helped tip her back to regain her balance. “Thanks,” she said. “See that?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. There was a hole in the wall, but one they couldn’t see until they were standing right in front of it. Ara would never have known it was there if it wasn’t for the blood memory. She tried not to feel too victorious, but she knew she would enjoy seeing Deming’s face when she discovered
they had indeed found something her team had missed.
Ara stepped into the hole, which opened up into another tunnel, a smaller one. Beside her, Edon drew his gun and held it away from his body, pointing it forward. She did the same. They walked a few feet away from each other, in order to provide cover.
“Stronger this way,” she said, as the tunnel veered sharply to the right, and the walls became much narrower, closing in on them. She walked into it until the walls were so tight there was hardly any space for her to walk through. The space was only as wide as her shoulders, and Edon had to walk sideways.
“She’s here,” he whispered.
“No shit,” she said, trying to keep her breathing even. Something black and fast and disgusting ran past her face and she screamed. Bats—or rats—what was it? Bats, she thought thankfully, since they could fly—she had felt their leathery wings flapping against her cheeks.
“You all right?” asked Edon, his voice shaky.
She felt better knowing he wasn’t pretending that it didn’t bother him. And she was glad at that moment that she had a partner again, even if it was a total hound like Edon. “Yeah.”
“Come on.” He nodded and pushed forward.
They kept walking through the tiny, narrow tunnel, which suddenly opened up again, and for a moment Ara was worried they were back where they started or that this was some kind of trap—until Edon put his nose in the air. “Smell that?”
“No, what is it?”
“She’s right here,” he said. “Death, rot, I can smell it—”
But the tunnel was empty. There was nothing except crumbling brick walls, the empty aqueduct, pools of murky water. They began scanning the wall, putting their hands on the stone, to see if there was another offshoot, another hidden wing. There was a similar dark crevice, and Ara put her hands tentatively on the wall, expecting to find nothingness again, air, but instead she hit something solid, something that was not made of stone, something fleshy and cold—something or someone—that had once been alive. “Here,” she said. “She’s here, Edon.”
The dead girl had been folded into a crevice. Stuffed, like trash, into a hole, Ara thought. As if she were garbage. As if she didn’t matter. Ara knelt down and touched the dead girl’s skin. She was covered in her own blood, and her left arm ended in a bloody stump. Whoever killed her had used her own hand to draw the pentagram.
Edon shook his head.
Ara felt a deep, welling rage and helpless sadness at the sight. The girl looked young—early twenties—not much younger than Ara herself.
“Look,” Edon said, kneeling down to examine her neck, where the blood was darkest, thickest. He wiped the blood to reveal two deep and ugly puncture wounds. Bite marks. “Call it in.”
Chief was right. Her killer was a vampire. The Venators had failed.
5 THE LATEST CONSPIRACY
A STATELY DOORMAN HELD open the lobby door, and as Oliver walked through, he spotted his driver holding the door open to the town car that was parked nearby. Such was his life now: servants at the ready, everything he wanted at his fingertips. He flipped his aviators over his face even though it wasn’t terribly sunny, but as he’d grown older he found his eyes had become sensitive to light. He blinked at a small smudge of dirt on the glass doors that the doorman held open. Were his eyes deceiving him—or was that a pentagram?
“Arthur,” he said. “What is that?”
The doorman peered at it. “Looks like some dirt. We’ll take care of it, sir.”
“Please do,” Oliver said, concerned his mind was playing tricks on him.
He made his way to his car as the pack of reporters who were idling by the falafel cart jumped to attention upon sight of him. He frowned, bracing himself for another round of this nonsense. He had hoped that by ducking into the office after midday the reporters who congregated in front of his building every morning would have dispersed. No such luck.
“Mr. Hazard-Perry! A few questions—”
“Care to comment on the upcoming exhibit?”‘
“Sorry, sorry,” he said, wading through and brushing them off like pesky flies. He had almost made it to the car door when one question stood out from the rest.
“Is it true that your company condones the deaths of young women in the name of art?” The reporter was an angry-looking young woman, probably from one of the louder tabloids. The Daily Post had been milking this “controversy” for all it was worth since the exhibit had been announced in the press.
“Excuse me?” he asked, stopping in his tracks.
The angry reporter shot him a smarmy smile. “One of the artists who is part of the exhibit is said to have used his dead wife’s blood in the paintings.”
The Overland Trust was the finance arm of the Coven, and the Overland Foundation was its nonprofit charity organization. One that funded concerns that were of interest to their kind: blood banks, blood-borne disease elimination (just because they were immortal didn’t mean they couldn’t get sick), DNA research, and the occasional cultural grant, including the upcoming Red Blood exhibit for the Four Hundred Ball.
The reporter pressed forward, so that Oliver could almost smell her gum-scented breath. “If the rumors are true about the paintings, you have blood on your hands,” she hissed.
“Is that right?” said Oliver mildly, nodding to his driver and handing him his briefcase.
“Yes. The paint used in the works contains the blood of a girl who has been missing for over a decade now!” the reporter barked. “Missing and presumed dead!”
Well, he wouldn’t call Allegra Van Alen a girl, really. Even when she had fallen into a vegetative state and had been kept alive for years in a room at NewYork-Presbyterian, Allegra wasn’t a girl. She was a vampire, an angel, and for sure, she was gone. But she wasn’t dead. When the vampires had been offered salvation after their victory in the final battle, the majority of the Coven accepted it and returned to their home in Paradise, including Allegra. But try explaining that to this scandalmonger.
The whole event was turning into quite a headache. He’d only agreed to sponsor the exhibit as a favor to Finn, since one of the most prominently featured artists in it was her father—Stephen Chase, Allegra Van Alen’s husband and human familiar. Finn was his daughter with a mortal woman, conceived before he married Allegra. Oliver agreed that Stephen deserved more recognition for his work when Finn had campaigned for this splashy exhibit.
Besides, the reporters got it all wrong. While Stephen’s paintings of Allegra did contain blood, it wasn’t hers—all the blood in the paintings was his own. Oliver rubbed his temples in annoyance. He should never have given in to this exhibit, the path to Hell being strewn with you know what.
He held up his hands and grimaced as flashes popped and microphones and smartphones were thrust in front of his face. “Ladies and gentlemen, there is no truth to these despicable rumors. The Overland Foundation is a patron of the arts. These are important pieces of work by an artist who has been overlooked by the culture at large and who has made important contributions to the history of art. We are very proud of our participation in this groundbreaking exhibit. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for a meeting.”
Oliver gave them his most charming smile, even though it was the complete opposite of what he was feeling, and settled into the backseat of the plush vehicle at his disposal. Even if he wanted to, it was much too late to call the whole thing off. He was starting to believe that the sooner this party happened, and the sooner this exhibit opened and closed, the better. Showcasing Stephen’s controversial paintings was a bad idea. Some things were better off left in the past.
It was the future Oliver cared about, and the future of the Coven was foremost in his mind as he toured the gleaming rows of books in the Repository of History when he finally arrived at work. The secret Coven library filled with all the important books on vampire lore had burned down during the War, and Oliver considered its reestablishment inside the Orpheus Tower one of his greatest succ
esses.
“What’s all the hubbub?” he asked, noticing a group of excited human Conduits and young vampires gathered around a tall and austere middle-aged woman, asking her for autographs. “Isn’t that Genevieve Belrose?”
“Indeed,” Fletcher Heller, his assistant, told him with a twitchy smile.
“What’s she doing here?”
“She’s on tour for her latest book.”
“Another?”
Fletcher, a sharp young man with a supercilious way about him, gave him a knowing look. “Conspiracy work, of course.”
“Of course,” said Oliver. The Conspiracy was one of the great secrets of the Coven. The vampires disseminated false information about their kind in the mortal population—popular falsehoods included the notion that they were hideous creatures of the night who were to be feared and that a vampire’s bite could turn a mortal into one. What a laugh. Genevieve’s breathless and best-selling vampire romance series was the latest contribution to the canon—mortals couldn’t get enough of her troubled and eternally hunky vampire hero, Alden Cummerbund. Sometimes Oliver wondered if the Conspiracy was having too much fun.
“You can’t say she’s not doing good work, considering she’s somehow convinced the public that all we do is woo young women whose blood smells good to us,” Fletcher said, wrinkling his nose. “Who even likes the smell of blood? Gross.”
Oliver agreed he had a point. He was about to congratulate Genevieve personally, when from the corner of his eye he spotted Sam Lennox making his way toward him.
The Venator chief looked rumpled and worse for wear. Regents and Venator chiefs never agreed on much, with the Venators demanding more freedom to cross boundaries in order to keep the Coven safe, while Regents were careful not to allow them too much opportunity to use the dark arts against their own people. For instance, permission to look into dreams? Without the vampire’s knowledge? Yeah, no. But while the two of them had battled in the past, they had a good working relationship.