Meg had thought about pointing out that in a way, that was the truth. But it would sound too much like she was disagreeing with him.
Jusef didn’t like that.
The ocean was blue, the air salty. She was young. There was no reason to anger Jusef or disturb the peace between them.
He had a temper, it was true.
Her skates were sleek and beautiful; she was almost flying off the ground, like a winged goddess. She passed the Dumpster, one of her landmarks, and hopped off the curb with a graceful leap.
She hurtled across the street, then up the driveway to the right, and around the corner. The apartment complex where Olive lived was next and —
Meg gaped at the smoking rubble where the building had stood.
And at the charred body on the sidewalk.
She screamed.
A blond woman, looking rumpled and tired in a khaki raincoat, flashed her a badge and said, “Please, move along.”
But Meg froze. She stared, transfixed. She couldn’t look away.
Olive’s body was a black, melted ruin. Meg wouldn’t have even known it was Olive, except for the few strands of bright orange hair clinging to the skull, and the tatters of Olive’s brightly colored housecoat.
It didn’t happen, she thought as old memories tried hard to surface. It never happened.
She began to shake.
The policewoman looked at her intently and said, “Did you know this woman? May I ask you a few questions?”
Beneath the bustling morning city of Los Angeles, Angel the vampire bolted awake.
Something’s wrong, he thought.
CHAPTER ONE
Los Angeles, two weeks later
Flames geysered through the floor of the filthy apartment in East L.A. as Angel clutched at the enormous winged demon wrapped around his chest and neck. The monster snake hissed and writhed, so very eager to squeeze the life out of its intended victim. That being a totally useless effort, since Angel was already dead.
At least, technically.
The white-hot creature coiled tighter, burning a path through Angel’s shoulders and upper torso. Good thing breathing was not an issue.
Too bad pain was.
Worse, I didn’t bring marshmallows.
The apartment was an inferno. Towers of lottery tickets, racing forms, and foreign-language newspapers crackled and blazed as the shoddy furniture practically exploded in the heat.
Angel was appalled. This is where the sweatshop bosses make their workers live. In fact, these are the good quarters. The ones you get if you exploit your own people.
The rank-and-file workers existed in worse conditions than the average American prison inmate. In maximum security. In places where the prisoners rioted and killed guards because they were tired of living like animals.
With each flap of the serpent’s large leathery black wings, the flames rose higher. A lamp with a red silk-fringed shade went up like a torch. Hordes of panicked rats scurried through the debris. One rodent burst into a writhing ball of flame, then fell through the rickety, burning floor and disappeared.
Atop a crate of charred sewing machine parts, a hand-painted fan decorated with green-faced demons and a shriveled-up Styrofoam bowl from Rice King vanished, incinerated.
As Angel battled the monster, a tall male figure appeared in the doorway. Angel had the sense that he had simply materialized, like a ghost. Though his features were obscured by the flames, Angel could see his silhouette in tight black clothing. The man said nothing, did nothing. He simply watched.
As Angel managed to get his hands around the snake’s thick body again, the man gave his fingers a snap. The snake’s hide became as rough as shards of broken glass, piercing Angel’s palms and fingertips. With a sharp hiss, the snake lunged, fresh, evil intelligence in its gaze. Its black tongue flicked as it struggled to sink its fangs into his face.
“Your workers are going to burn to death!” Angel shouted.
The man made two fists, then extended his arms and stuck out his thumbs. From his knuckles, blue flames crackled and hurled across the tiny room.
Without a moment’s hesitation Angel released the snake’s head and tucked in his chin. He kept his eyes closed against the ultrabrilliant intensity of the magickal energy as he grabbed at the snake’s thick coils and hefted them into the path of the energy burst.
Seconds before it was hit, the snake sank its needle-sharp fangs into the crown of his head. Then it shrieked in agony and let go of him as the blue energy penetrated its body. Angel managed another successful block with the creature’s convulsing body as the man tried one more time to strike him.
Pieces of the snake thudded to the floor. Angel dropped the rest, successfully dodging another barrage of blue flame erupting from the stranger’s hands. Crouched tight and low, he rolled to the right, seeking protection behind a dressmaker’s form.
The man muttered in a language he didn’t know, and a phalanx of wicked-sharp, curved knives screeched through the air like heat-seeking missiles. They struck the dressmaker’s form. From the cuts, blood gushed. The blood reeked and smoked.
The man moved his hands again, giving form to whatever he was going to launch at Angel next.
It was not one, not two, but three winged serpents.
Angel yanked two of the knives from the dressmaker’s form and held them up and out, impaling two of the creatures. They screamed, wriggling like eels on fishhooks. Angel deftly flung them into the flames, where they exploded in showers of nottempting bite-sized pieces. The third, still intact, sailed over Angel’s head.
The man clapped his hands. A human skull formed between them. The skull bulleted directly at Angel, coal eyes glowing, teeth clacking.
Angel lunged at the skull and grabbed it with both hands, then slammed it against the floor. It shrieked like a dusted vamp, and exploded just like a dusted vamp. Into, well, dust.
The third serpent took that moment to charge him again. This time, it dropped to the overheated floor and wriggled toward Angel, moving with lightning speed. Angel timed his leap into the air; the serpent flew upward after him, but Angel landed well behind it. His boot heels crunched through the burning floorboards and he purposefully landed on his back, out of the way of the weakened area.
The serpent fell through the newly created gap in the floor. Then it exploded, sending a shower of half-cooked meat everywhere, including on the sleeve of Angel’s black leather duster.
“Hey,” the vampire protested.
Across the room, the stranger’s hair began to smoke. Light flared around him; by his features, he was Asian, possibly Malaysian. His brows were heavy over eyes like black holes. His nose was hooked, his chin square and jutting.
Thick, black smoke poured from his nose and eye sockets. He raised a hand and pointed at Angel. His eyes, encased in blistering flesh, gleamed scarlet, blank and dead.
“You,” he said, though his lips didn’t move, “half-living. This world does not want you. You will never be safe. You will die alone, and forgotten.
“My god will eat your soul.”
The room whipped into a firestorm. A rushing whirlwind of fire vortexed around Angel, surrounding him. The room became nothing but a smoky blur of orange and red. Tendrils shot out at him, grabbing for him like fingers. They ripped at his clothes, his hair, his face.
The bottom of his duster burst into flame, and he beat it out with his hands. His skin began to blister. Even his eyes got hot.
Then the fire turned blue. Everything in the room was tinted the same crackling, intense hue as the energy the tall man had sent out.
The blue flared, then hardened. It froze. Ice formed. Where flames had danced, icicles crackled and glittered. Frost formed on the windows and the piles of dead rats.
Inside the fire, where the man had stood, the figure of a lovely, slender woman materialized. She could be no older than nineteen or twenty. Her blue-black hair bobbed around her head, as if she danced under rushing, turbulent water. Leav
es and flower petals of gold threaded through her hair glanced and glistened.
She was dressed in a tunic of gold cloth so shiny it gave off a supernatural brilliance. Scores of gold bangles shimmered as she waved her curved hands very slowly. Tapered golden fingernails extended several inches from her hands. Leggings of darker gold molded her firm thighs. Her knees were bent and her feet tightly flexed as she dipped and bowed.
Angel thought of Siamese shadow puppets, their ornate decorative surfaces invisible to their enraptured audiences, who watched their mythic performances for ten, twelve hours without a break. Of exotic lands where saffron-robed men lost themselves in meditation and ritual. He heard temple bells, gongs, the rhythmic pounding of bamboo on stone, and the sweet, clear soprano of a young girl.
He had been to such places. Lived in such places.
Slowly she lifted one leg behind herself, tilting her head as she struck a pose. Shifting her weight ever so slightly, she began to inscribe a circle in the world of blue ice.
As she turned, she saw him.
She stopped dancing.
Tears coursed down her face. She opened her mouth and formed words he couldn’t hear but nevertheless understood: Help me.
Slowly the blue ice melted away. The room looked like an underwater wreck. Where flames had risen to the ceiling, now there were only piles of ash and misshapen hulks that had been pieces of furniture. A blackened painting of a lush, mountainous landscape slid off the wall, scattering charcoal remnants of wooden boxes and crates.
A rat, its back smoking, skittered over Angel’s shoe and disappeared.
Of the beautiful girl, there was no sign. Nor any of the magick-wielding stranger.
Then he heard distant screaming, drowned out in seconds by the wild shrieks of ambulance and fire-engine sirens.
The sound of his movements masked by the din, he slogged through the room and barreled through the crumbling doorway. He flew up the stairs, taking them two, three at a time, expecting at any moment that they would give way.
They didn’t. He reached the landing and ran to the nearest door. It was black and smoking, like the walls around it. There was sobbing and pounding behind it. The knob was white hot.
Behind him, the stairway collapsed with a roar like a huge, dying demon. The sobbing became screams of terror.
“It’s okay!” Angel bellowed, straining to be heard.
He put his shoulder against the door and pushed steadily. The boards bowed but did not give way. He pulled back, then rammed, hard.
The wood cracked and splintered. Smoke streamed out, catching him unawares. He coughed and took a step backward.
A hand shot through one of the splits and reached wildly, grabbing at Angel’s pants leg.
“Help us!” came a frantic plea. The voice was that of a young woman.
“Angel?” a second female voice yelled. It was Nira Surayanto, his client, who had called him for help. She was the reason he had come here tonight.
“Nira?” he called.
“Get us out of here! We can’t breathe!” Nira broke into a fit of coughing.
“Stand away from the door,” Angel ordered.
He rammed harder and burst through. The room was completely filled with smoke.
He squinted through the haze. A hand clasped his. Then he was surrounded by at least half a dozen young women, none older than eighteen, and a gaggle of children. They were grabbing at him, shrieking like they were drowning.
Moving swiftly, he led everyone into the hall. Nira was the one holding his hand. She was around eighteen, short and thin, her hair black and cut along her jawline. Her jeans and orange boat-necked T-shirt were covered with soot.
As she gazed up at him, her fingernails dug into his palm. She burst into tears. Two of the other women joined in. Then Nira wiped her eyes and spoke resolutely to the others, and all of them forced themselves to be calm. The tears mingled with soot had turned their faces into monstrous masks.
“Nira, is there a fire in there?” Angel asked, holding her shoulders and peering into her face. The smoke was thick and oily, billowing around them as it poured from the room.
“Yes.”
“Is everyone accounted for?”
“Yes, pak,” she told him, surveying the group.
“Come on,” he urged, mindful that their escape route in the front of the building was cut off.
Just then a group of firefighters burst through the front door. One of them stared up at Angel and said, “Don’t move! The floor’s about to go. Man, we got here just in time.”
Nira asked Angel, “Do you believe in miracles?”
The centuries-old vampire replied, “Something like that.”
The firefighters brought in a tall ladder and leaned it against the shuddering upper floor. They raced to help the women down before the creaking ceiling gave way.
The fire captain ordered Angel to leave, but he pointed out — reasonably, he thought — that he was already standing on the unstable surface. There was no sense risking sending the survivors crashing through the floor by his moving off the platform just so another person could take his place. The captain retorted that a gas leak was likely, in which case the entire building was going to go up.
“Your family would sue the dickens out of us if you went up with it,” she concluded.
“I don’t have a family,” he said flatly. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
Maybe she realized it was useless to argue with him. She gave him a nod and snapped, “You guys, move your butts. This civvie goes up, someone besides me is going down.”
* * *
They worked together, the captain giving orders to the firefighters while Angel supervised the survivors. Two of them succumbed to smoke inhalation and had to be carried down the ladder on stretchers. One little girl was badly burned on the back. Her eyes were clenched in pain, although not once did she cry out. Angel would have felt a lot better if she hadn’t remained so rigid and composed. Better to get the fear and horror out of her system. Purge. Only then could the healing begin.
As Nira was taken to an ambulance, he walked beside her gurney and said, “I’ll be by later tonight. I’m going to need your help to shut these people down.”
She pulled her oxygen mask from her face. “No,” she breathed. “You got me out. That’s all I asked you for.” She coughed. Her voice was hoarse. “I’ll pay you as soon as I get back from the hospital. I’ve got some extra money stashed, for back home, and —”
“Not an issue,” he told her firmly. “But this isn’t over, Nira.”
“But —”
“Help me stop this from happening to someone else,” he said. He had no idea if she knew about the use of magick. And he didn’t want to talk about it with onlookers.
“They almost killed me,” she croaked. “That man . . . a man came upstairs after I phoned you. He said we’d make great sacrifices.”
“Miss, please keep your mask on,” said one of the paramedics.
Nira did as she was told.
Her huge eyes stayed on Angel as they loaded her into the ambulance. He watched it pull away, slowly, the driver dodging the crowd that had formed. Slack-eyed druggies, wide-eyed children. Women from the neighborhood, making the sign of the cross, causing him more mental discomfort than anything else.
Angel had no clear sense of how long it took to get the scene locked down. That happened to vampires sometime. One lived so long that sometimes hours flew by like minutes. Other times a few minutes could telescope into a lifetime —
“Question: Do you always ignore police officers, or just the ones you know?”
Angel blinked. Detective Kate Lockley was facing him. Her blond hair was twisted in a makeshift coil, and she wore a khaki raincoat. No makeup, but she looked equally beautiful with or without it. She held an umbrella. He glanced up at the night sky, surprised. It was raining, and he hadn’t even felt it, hadn’t noticed it.
“Just the ones I know,” he told her.
&nb
sp; She sighed. “I asked you what you were doing here.”
“Living la vida loca.” He didn’t want to test her goodwill — such as it was — so he added, “One of the survivors is a client. She wanted out. Apparently the ringleaders enticed girls — Asian immigrants — with promises of teaching them English and giving them decent jobs. Then they used them for cheap labor. Sewing mostly. Or farmed them out to other rich Asians as maids and waitresses.”
“And hookers?” Kate asked sharply. “Was your client working as a prostitute?”
Angel shrugged. “I don’t think that word came up.”
“Did the initials I.N.S.? Are these women in this country illegally?”
He frowned at her. “Kate, lighten up. They almost died in that fire.”
“I can’t look the other way just because they’ve had a hard day, Angel,” she said, her blue eyes flashing. “We have laws in this country. Which, it may surprise you to know, help prevent situations like this one.”
“You’re right. It may surprise me.” He turned to go.
“Hey.” Her irritation level rose. “Don’t go all self-righteous on me. My job is to protect and serve.”
Angel ran a hand through his hair. He was tired. He was filthy.
And it was almost dawn.
“I won’t kid you that I think our immigration policy is just or fair,” she said. “But it’s the policy we have. Complete with laws to enforce it. These people want better lives, but they automatically victimize themselves and their children by getting into this country illegally.”
“All some of ‘these people’ want is any kind of life,” Angel replied. “Freedom from starvation. Or political persecution.”
“You running for office?” she snapped.
They regarded each other. She was the first to sigh. Maybe she was too tired to spar. She didn’t usually give up so easily.
“I’ll get her name from the hospital if you don’t give it to me,” Kate said, more gently.