Chapter 8
Sonya’s desk was empty when I reached the office half an hour before sunrise. The days rolling from one to the next as I finished work still affected me. It made me feel like time was getting away from me. Now, it was heading into Thursday. I had been at this for almost a week and had nothing to show for it.
“Your secretary is missing,” I said to Ruben, walking into his office without an announcement.
“She’s wasn’t feeling well. I let her off early.”
“Big of you.”
I dropped three sets of keys and ID cards on Ruben’s desk. He frowned at my hand. There was blood across my fingers and under my nails, and it stained the cuff of my sleeve as well, although it was harder to see against the black leather.
“Busy night?” he asked. I shrugged.
After I’d left Connor’s place, I’d gone on a rampage. I had to feel like I was still good for something, like I had some sort of worth. I’d stood face to face with one of my marks, and I hadn’t been able to kill him – so I killed every vamp Ruben had pointed me toward.
No, I corrected myself. I hadn’t wanted to kill Connor. I could still do it. I wasn’t getting weak. I wouldn’t let myself get to that point.
“What are these?” Ruben asked, frowning at the three cards he’d arranged in front of him in a row.
“Kills,” I said. Obviously. “I don’t exactly take them out for coffee.”
He looked up at me, his eyes almost yellow, annoyed. “These are low level, Adele. I told you, you need to prioritize that last one I gave you. I’ve got clients on my case about it.”
I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and looked out the window. The sky was changing, the darkness incomplete now with the coming of dawn.
“I’m still tracking him. I haven’t found a solid lead.”
I didn’t want him to know I’d failed with Connor. I didn’t want him to know that I saw Connor as a he and not an it even though he was a vampire. I didn’t want Ruben to know that I thought of him as Connor.
“You’re getting sloppy, Adele. You’re usually on top of them in one night.”
“You just gave me a social security number. What do you expect from me?”
He looked at me, and I looked right back, locking us into a stare-down. In Ruben’s world, it was a warning. Humans did it to emphasize their point, their resolve. They did it to win an argument.
In my world, it was a fight for dominance. If one predator locked eyes with another, it was a challenge. And Ruben sure as shit didn’t want to challenge me. I had a lot on him, speed and strength and two guns and a knife. He was going to end up a very distant second.
Ruben broke the stare and looked down at the ID cards again. He didn’t realize he’d just lost the fight. I was the alpha between me and him, no matter who paid who at the end of the month.
“Just make sure you get this over and done with,” he said, not looking at me. “Talk to your friends, call your contacts. I know you run to a techie when you need something. Now would be a good time to do that.”
The way he said it got my back up. I didn’t run to anyone.
“I said I would get it done,” I said, and my voice was as hard and cold as ice.
Ruben looked up at me. I didn’t know what my face was showing, but he nodded.
“You’d better,” he said, but his voice was empty of the warning his words were suggesting.
I drove home and put away my guns, stripped out of my leather and got into the shower. There, I scrubbed my skin until it was raw. The thing about blood was that once it was dry, it was damn hard to get off. I didn’t want to arrive at training with blood on my hands. Much less at Aspen’s.
By the time I was ready to leave again, it was already heading on towards eight o’clock. I picked up my phone and dialed Aspen’s number, but I only got through to voicemail.
“I’ve got training until ten today. I’ll stop by afterward. Keep something warm for me. Sensei is going to make sure I’m starving.”
I met with Sensei an hour earlier than normal to make up for missing my session yesterday. We started with a warm-up and then some sparring. Everything went well until he knocked me in the head. If I had been fine, nothing would have happened; I would have recovered and gone after him for it. But my head hurt more than I’d expected it would, and I sprawled on the floor. I held my hand up for him to just wait a second. I didn’t have to say anything; he put two and two together.
“Either you’re running with the wrong crowd, or my teaching isn’t working. What happened?”
“I stepped into the wrong territory, is all,” I answered.
Sensei looked at me until I squirmed under his stare.
“Really, it was nothing. You should see the other guy.” I chuckled half-heartedly.
Of course it hadn’t been another guy. It had been a woman. And I hadn’t left a mark on her, save for the burn I was sure she was carrying on her leg after I’d cut her with my silver blade. But I wasn’t going to admit any of that to Sensei. Besides, he didn’t know about all the other injuries.
“I’m starting to think I should be worried about you on more than just a self-defense and fighting technique level,” he said, starting with the stretching routine I mirrored for warm-up.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I can handle myself.”
“Doesn’t sound like it,” he said.
I steeled myself against the insult. I’d prove it to him in our sparring and hand-to-hand just now. I could still put him on his back and make him hurt. I ignored that that was because he was only a human, and my enemies almost never were.
At the back of my mind I wondered if I would be able to find a vampire who would train me in supernatural fighting skills. It might come in handier than what I was doing now. But that meant that I would have to work with a vampire without killing it, and that wasn’t something I liked to do. Not because I killed every vampire I knew, but because I only spoke to them when I was about to kill them. It was a strange, backward situation.
And in the middle of it all, holding everything together like a stake in between us, was Connor. The one vampire I hadn’t managed to kill. The one vampire I didn’t hate, if I had to admit it.
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to admit it just yet. There was still time. Hatred was better when it was left simmering for a while.
“You’re not doing this for fun, are you?” Sensei asked me after I had all but crawled to my bag and fished out my water bottle. I’d taken it all out on him, and he looked like he’d just had a warm-up. Maybe he had energy left because he wasn’t beating himself up on top of everything.
“I don’t—”
“You know, your stories are getting old,” he said, then walked over to the chair next to my bag and sat down. “All I’m seeing is you getting hurt, and then coming down here to take whatever you’re mad at out on me. I don’t mind being a punching bag; that’s my job. But just hitting everything and everyone you see isn’t going to fix whatever’s bothering you.”
“It’s worked for me so far,” I lied.
The truth was, it wasn’t working at all. But what else could I do? Forgiveness wasn’t an option, and it seemed ridiculous for me to scale down to a nine-to-five desk job now.
I threw my things in my bag without ceremony. When I went to stand up, Sensei put his hand on my shoulder. The warmth of his touch made me want to lean into it – and cringe away, all at the same time. Instead, I just froze. My muscles were tense. I could take him again if I had to.
I shook my head to get those thoughts out. This wasn’t an attack. Not everything was.
“I don’t know what you’re doing,” he said. “But you’ve been coming here for long enough with the same routine. All I’m saying is that not everyone is an enemy. There are a few people in your life who are willing to be your friends.”
He stood up and walked away from me without a care in a world, like he always did. I re
sented that. He could walk away and take on his next student without the darkness trying to catch up with him.
I walked out the door into the past.
I reached Aspen’s house half an hour after my training session. Every muscle in my body felt numb, but complained when I slid off my bike.
Zelda opened the front door. “Adele!” she exclaimed, looking at the motorcycle over my shoulder as I walked toward the front porch. “You don’t usually come here on that.”
“I had a change in routine today. I left her a voicemail,” I answered.
When I was on the steps, Zelda shook her head. “Aspen’s gone out.”
I froze in my tracks, one foot still hovering in the air over the last step. I put it down again without climbing further. “Out where?”
“She went shopping. Claude took her about…” She lifted her wrist and squinted at her watch. “An hour ago.”
I swore under my breath in a way that was very unbecoming for a lady. “How could you just let her go?”
“Because I’m her nurse, not her warden,” she said matter-of-factly. “Claude is with her.”
“Claude is a damn driver.” I sneered, then spun around, running for my bike.
Zelda called after me, but I didn’t hear what she was saying. I was already pushing the helmet over my head. I had the bike started and was reeling down the road in a flash.
I was overreacting; I knew I was. But it had been a hell of a week, and if someone was on my case and knew what I was, how was my sister safe? My heart hammered in my chest, and I struggled to breathe. Shopping wasn’t a bad thing, was it? Aspen was a grown woman. But she was also half-vampire, and with her teeth she looked pretty mythical. Plus, she was in a wheelchair.
What if someone decided they didn’t like her? If they accidentally saw her teeth, even though she knew how to smile and speak to conceal them? She was so vulnerable. If something happened to her and I couldn’t save her… it would all be my fault. Again.
I shook my head as I flew towards the mall. I tried to get rid of the images that flashed through my mind’s eye. Aspen had just been a teenager when her whole life was ripped apart. She’d only had me, and I hadn’t been able to save her from a life that was worse than death.
I pulled into a parking space for motorcycles and ran into the mall. I dialed Aspen’s number as I ran, and to my relief it rang.
“Adele.” Her clear voice rang over the speaker.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“I’m at the mall. I’m shopping.”
“I mean, what shop? Let me come find you.”
“You’re here? I’m at the food court.”
I hung up and made my way to the food court. The mall was busy for this time of the morning, and I pushed my way through bustling groups of people. Finally I spotted her at a table with the chair removed for her wheelchair, drinking a soda.
“What are you doing here?” she asked as I collapsed on a chair next to her and tried to catch my breath.
The air came in in ragged gasps and burned my lungs on the way in and out. No matter how fit I was, the kind of fear I kindled when Aspen was concerned got me breathless and heaving every time.
“I just wanted to say hello,” I lied.
Aspen narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re checking up on me.”
“I’m not. I just… Shit, Aspen. What if something happened to you?”
Aspen sighed and put down her soda with a clunk. “Don’t you think you’re being a bit much?” she asked. I knew I was, but I wasn’t going to admit to it. “I’m just shopping. I’m allowed to get out of the house and have a life, you know.”
I nodded, looking around the food court, scanning for anything that might look like trouble.
“Claude is here to help me,” she said, and nodded toward the burger stand, where I saw the driver standing in line. “And, besides, what’s going to happen to me? The worst already has, and I survived it.”
I looked down at her wheelchair. Her words snapped around me like whips.
“I’m sorry,” I said, even though I wasn’t. The only thing I regretted was that she felt I was being overprotective. I wasn’t sorry at all for the fact that I was overprotective. I just needed her to be safe. I wasn’t going to let her get hurt again, even if it killed me.
I offered her a smile that she returned after a moment of hesitation. “I’m gonna head home and have a shower. I’m still sweaty from training.”
Aspen nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow. And don’t worry about me, okay? I’m perfectly fine.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to sound confident about it. Then I turned and walked away.
I’d almost reached my bike when my phone rang. I pulled it out and looked at the caller ID. It was Joel.
“Can I come over?” he asked.
Joel never came over to my place. No one did. I didn’t like showing people the dump I lived in.
“I’m still out. Let me come to you. I’ll be there in ten.”
“No, don’t do that,” he said, and his voice sounded panicky. “Stay where you are. I’ll come to you.”
“What’s going on?”
“Someone trashed my place. I have footage, and I think you need to see this.”
I arranged for him to meet me at the mall, at a coffee shop on the other side so I wouldn’t run into Aspen and make her think I was keeping an eye on her. I hung my helmet on my bike and wove my way through the crowds again. My eyes felt gritty when I blinked, and my head thumped dully. I was running on eighteen hours with no sleep, and after sleeping in yesterday morning and training twice as hard today, my internal clock was off and my body was complaining pretty loudly.
I found the coffee shop we’d agreed on and took a table in the back, where the hum of voices all around us could drown out our conversation. I texted Joel where to find me, then leaned back, waiting. I hated being out in public like this. There were people around me everywhere, groups of three laughing, couples staring into each other’s eyes… It was all very normal.
With my nighttime career of murder and mayhem, it was difficult to remember a daytime life that had looked this ordinary. I wondered what my life would look like if I didn’t have Aspen to worry about. If my mother were still alive. If my father weren’t locked up in a metal cell with no light so he wouldn’t fry or dematerialize.
Joel arrived just in time to snap me out of the downward spiral my thoughts were pulling me into.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said as he sat down. He looked about as panicked as I had felt a half-hour earlier. He let his gaze slide down and back up my body. “You look different.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t remind me.”
“No, it looks good. The whole I-actually-do-have-a-heart look works on you.”
I punched him lightly on the shoulder and he leaned back in his chair, ducking away from me.
“I’m not here for insults,” I said.
“Only you would take a compliment as an insult. If I told you that you look like a serial killer, I might get you to smile. You’re all backwards, Adele.”
“Are we here to discuss you, or me?” I asked irritably.
“You’re right,” he said. “Well, someone got into the pit and trashed everything. All my computers are ruined. When I got there this morning, it looked like a hurricane had been through the place. All my papers were scattered. It’s a hell of a lot of money in damages, too.”
“I didn’t know people knew about your workplace,” I said. Joel was discreet in his dealings.
“Only three people do, and you and I are two of them.”
“You said you have footage?”
He nodded and produced a laptop bag that I hadn’t noticed him carrying over his shoulder.
“This one’s fine, though,” I said, nodding at the laptop.
“I keep this one on me. It has all my cameras linked up to it.”
“Cameras?” I hadn’t noticed any, and for me that?
??s saying something.
“They’re thumbtack cameras,” Joel said, as if he’d read my mind. “No one’s supposed to see them. I invented them myself.”
He said it like he wanted a pat on the back. He wasn’t going to get it from me.
“Do you have more where those came from?” I asked instead. He nodded, a smile slowly creeping across his face. “I could do with some surveillance at my place. Maybe Aspen’s as well,” I added.
“I won’t be able to set it up for you right away. I have to clean up the pit first and find them. I also need to check your system to see if it’s up to date enough to run them.”
I thought about my computer. Up to date enough? Unlikely, but maybe Joel could work a bit of magic.
“I wish you could do it sooner. I have a feeling someone’s on my trail.”
Joel flipped open his laptop. He pulled up a screen split four ways, each of the four showing a black-and-white tape view of the pit. Someone in black clothes appeared and started ransacking the place, throwing over tables, kicking monitors and cabinets over.
“What was he looking for?”
“Not he. She,” Joel said.
The next frame showed the person from the side. It was clearly a woman, and she had white hair. She was wearing a bandana over her mouth, so it was impossible to see her face properly, but I was pretty sure I knew her.
“How did she know we were linked?” I asked.
“It’s her, isn’t it?” Joel asked. “I knew it was.”
“What did she want?”
“I don’t know. As far as I can tell, nothing’s missing. Just destroyed. More like a warning than a hit.”
I took a deep breath and blew it out again. A warning I could believe. A hit would have meant death. I was pretty sure that even the other night’s attack on me had been more of a warning. I doubted she would have fled from an unfinished job.
“I’m going to have to find her and put an end to this nonsense.” It was one thing if I got beaten up. It was different when the people I cared about were thrown into the mix.
“Don’t plan your revenge just yet,” Joel said. “I get all the information my servers find sent to the laptop. Backups and all that. This came through just before the system went offline.”
He clicked on a tab at the bottom of the screen and pulled up a website address. A newspaper article appeared on screen.
Connor O’Neill, king of Westham’s business district and part of Westham’s social elite, has gone missing after a troubling report came to light that suggests he is involved in vampire trafficking. O’Neill, third generation owner of O’Neill & Grodin, Inc., is one of the champions of vampire-human equality and demonstrated his support by employing vampires. O’Neill & Grodin, Inc. was one of the first companies to implement this employment policy, with many other companies following suit. To date, his company employees are 30% vampire, which is one of the highest rates in the country.
Questions are being raised by partners and stockholders as to whether the vampire employment policy was a cover, and some are going as far as saying that O’Neill used it as a front to attract vampires, which he then shipped off to work in illegal blood banks in the Middle East.
Vampire trafficking is a relatively new concept, but there is a growing market for it. Vampires are used for everything from scientific experimentation and the search for a viable means to “cure” vampirism, to the fulfillment of fetishes and fantasies. With their life expectancy being so high, and their ability to heal so rapidly, they are sold at an extremely high price.
Chief of Police Sorrel Marx commented, “Connor O’Neill has always been a big name in Westham. It’s difficult to believe he’s behind something this horrendous, but we’ve been surprised before. The police are working day and night to solve this. Vampires are new to our society, but we will fight to protect their rights, just as we would for humans.”
The case is still being investigated. Jennifer Lawson, O’Neill’s fiancée, has no comment on the topic but she’s been questioned by police about her involvement and she continues to be under public scrutiny.
I frowned and read the article again.
“Looks like your mark is in a lot of trouble.”
“He said he had to change to get out of it,” I mumbled, more to myself than to Joel, but he’d heard me.
“He what? You spoke to him?”
I closed my eyes for a moment and scolded myself for slipping up. “I ran into him while I was searching his house,” I said. I wasn’t going to lie to Joel. There might have been times where I hadn’t told him the whole truth, but I wouldn’t lie to him.
“How much did you get out of him before you killed him?”
“No enough,” I said.
I hadn’t killed him, of course, but that counted as omission of truth, not a lie. Besides, I should have asked more questions. And I would if I saw Connor again. If I could control myself enough to not kill him right away.
Right.
“Was this in the newspapers?” I asked.
Joel nodded. I didn’t read the papers, but then again, neither did Joel.
“Someone’s been lying to me,” I said.
I thought back to my conversation with Jennifer. It must have seemed convenient to her that I didn’t know about the whole scandal. I’d have to have a word with her, too.
“Who wrote this?” I asked, a thought suddenly dawning on me.
Joel scrolled down, squinting at the screen. “Celia Clemens,” he said.
Clemens. It sounded familiar. A name I could trace.
“Thanks for this,” I said to Joel, getting up. “And I’m sorry about your place. I’ll figure it out.”
“You just worry about your face. If she could do that to my hardware, I’d hate to know what she can do to someone who bleeds.”