“I woke up in a room. I could hear very loud music, like the radio, but much louder. And it was coming from above me.”
“The club in Ensenada,” Natalie murmured in English. “There had to have been a basement of some kind where they kept the girls.”
Baojia nodded, then turned back to the girl. “Did they feed you, Rosa?”
“Yes. They didn’t beat me or hurt me. I was fed twice a day, along with the others.”
Natalie and Baojia exchanged a look. “How many others?”
“Six. They were all in the truck with me when we went out to the desert last night. Along with some others.” Tears filled her eyes. “What happened to them? It sounded like there were animals. Are they dead?” The girl began to sniff.
“Yes, they are probably dead,” Baojia replied as Natalie slapped his arm. “What? arre w” He switched to English. “They are. I’m not going to lie to her.”
“She’s crying!”
“I will not give her some kind of false hope.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “And if she’s taken Elixir, then she is probably dying, too. Just more slowly.”
Natalie wanted to throw up. This girl, this innocent girl walking to her grandmother’s house, had been taken, held captive and fed poison. Solely to make her blood more intoxicating to the vampires who wanted to hunt her. These monsters had to be stopped. And they had to find some kind of help for her.
Baojia continued while Cirilda comforted Rosa. “So, they took you and held you somewhere with loud music. Did you see anyone else? Anyone besides the other girls?”
“Well, there was one man who came in at night, but he never spoke. And…” Her forehead furrowed in concentration. “I don’t remember him clearly, but I think he came in every night. I can’t remember him now. How strange.”
A vampire. Was it Ivan? Carlos? One of the other, nameless monsters that Ivan employed? It didn’t even matter. They weren’t getting her back, that was for sure.
“Then I remember waking up in the truck heading out to the desert. It was like a delivery truck. And it dropped us off. Some of the girls were crying, trying to ask the driver to take them back, but I could tell he wouldn’t, so I didn’t bother. Then you found me.” She smiled at Natalie.
“We’re going to make sure you’re safe, Rosa,” Natalie said. “We’ll get you back to your family.”
Baojia’s hand darted out to Rosa’s and the girl’s eyes swirled, then winked shut before he turned to Natalie. “What are you saying? Don’t say that.”
She frowned. “We’re going to get rid of these guys and then send her back, right? I mean, she’s innocent. She doesn’t even know anything about vampires.”
“She has taken Elixir, Natalie. She’s walking poison.”
Tulio grunted from the corner. “And an appetizing one, too. Any vampire who smelled that blood would want to have a taste.”
Temper raised its head. “So what? Are you going to kill her when she’s not useful anymore?” She rose to her feet.
Baojia grabbed her hand and pulled her back. “Of course we’re not going to kill her.”
“I would if it were up to me,” Tulio muttered. Cirilda sneered and said something that sounded insulting in her own tongue. Tulio shrugged. “According to you, she’ll die anyway.”
“Then we have to find a way to help her,” Natalie said. “There has to be something we can do.”
She sat when Baojia pulled her down. “We’ll figure something out. According to Dez, they’ve been trying to find the right doctor to study this formula. Hopefully someone immortal with experience in medieval alchemy. Maybe having a live… patient will help whoever they find. But she can’t go back. Not as she is right now. You can ask your friends—she’ll die within months without treatment.”
Natalie sat, irritated with Tulio’s callous regard for the girl and heartbroken over the situation. “It’s not her fault.”
“Of course it isn’t,” he said. “But would you have her spread it to others? What if this is a blood-borne disease and anyone who touches her blood or comes in contact with it is also infected? What if they also spread it? Not only vampires, but humans are in danger until we know more.”
She n
odded. “Fine. But what are we going to do with her? You think it’ou blood-s a good idea to take her to Gio and Beatrice’s House of a Thousand Vampires?”
“Probably not.”
“We will keep her,” Cirilda spoke in heavily accented English.
“I knew you could speak English!” Natalie almost shouted while Cirilda smirked.
“Woman, you do not consult with me on this?” Tulio asked gruffly.
“We’ll take her and keep her until you can find a more permanent solution,” Cirilda said, ignoring Tulio. “She’ll be safe here. And he won’t touch her blood. He only likes mine anyway.”
“He only drinks from you? Is that safe?” She blurted out the question before her brain caught up with her mouth. “Sorry, none of my business.”
Cirilda stood and walked toward Tulio, patting his cheek as she left the room. “Don’t let his face fool you. He is an old, old man. I’ll get some clean clothes for the girl and some food for you. You should eat before you leave.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The road was black and empty on the way to Los Angeles as Natalie and Baojia tossed ideas back and forth.
“You mentioned something about a priest who might know some of the missing girls,” she said. “Was it Father Andrade?”
“Yes, how do you—?”
“The first time I worked with my friend Manuel it was on a drug-mule case and he was a source.” He saw her eyes drift to the window. “That was a good story. Well, not good, but it had good results.”
“These girls, they’re a little like drug mules if you think about it.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” She turned back to him, frowning. “So, Father Andrade? You want someone to go to the mission? I know who he is. I could go down during the day and—”
“Too close to Ivan’s club. Even during the day, he could have people watching and they might know who you are. If Brigid’s husband comes, he’d be the best person.”
“I still think if it was during the day—”
“No, Natalie.”
He saw her eyes narrow, but she changed the subject. “Brigid’s husband was a priest?”
Baojia nodded. “He’s left the Church—well, the priesthood, I guess—and works mostly with Brigid now. But I’ve been told he still maintains a close relationship with the Vatican. He’s an earth vampire. I don’t know him that well, but I know he has a huge clan. From what I can tell, he and Brigid have been quietly investigating Elixir ever since it showed up in Dublin, where they live. They have a lot of contacts and if Father Andrade knows something, he’d be more likely to confide in someone connected to the Church.”
She was silent again, and Baojia could almost hear her brain spinning as she stared out the window. Finally, she said, “I wonder how long Rosa was kept.”
“I was wondering the same thing. Does it take time to work into a human’s system? How much do they give them? Does Elixir make the blood more appealing the longer they’ve been on it?”
Her eyes were lit with wild curiosity. “And why? What’s the point of all this? Pure amusement? Or are they inviting people who might not know what the drug does? Political enemies? People they want to weaken? How would they convince them to come? How much do Ivan’s people even know about it? You said yourself you’d only heard rumors.”
It was a question that had been swirling around ever since they’d made the connection between the missing girls and the Elixir. “It’s entirely possible that they know very little about the lasting effects of the drug. I had heard rumors, but only about the benefits. No one mentioned the downsides.”
“Big surprise there.”
“And Paula doesn’t seem to know anything about it. Rory?” he muttered. “I don’t know what to think about Rory. When di
d the first bodies show up in the desert around here?”
“According to what I could find, the first ones were found on the south side of the border about three months ago. No one made any connection between them at first. It seemed random. Then a month later, they started showing up on the American side. It was a cop down in El Centro who tipped me off. I did some investigating on my own before I made the connection with Juarez.”
“I don’t know if there is any real connection with Juarez, Natalie. The more we find out, the more I think that Ivan or whoever is orchestrating this is using that situation as a convenient scapegoat to cover his actions. He makes it look like Juarez and no one will see what’s really going on. That’s why they’re dumping the bodies how they are.”
“Why not make them disappear? There’s no need to dump the bodies. Where they’re hunting, they could easily bury them and they’d never be found.”
“But they’d still be missing. If too many girls just disappeared, someone might listen to their families. If they’re murdered…”
She nodded. “They could be the victim of random violence because they worked in the city. Or they could be the victim of whoever is killing in Juarez and moving west.”
“Or victims of smugglers who took advantage of them,” he added. “Isn’t that what the police think now? If I were Ivan and wanted to cover my tracks, I’d copycat a human killer. Everyone would be looking the other direction, including his bosses in Mexico City.”
“But why?” she asked again. “Is this some horrible game? Or is there a plan behind it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t recognize the vampire I killed. I’d never seen him before. He could have been a new vampire of Ivan’s, but I think Tulio is right. These are strangers he’s brought in. The one I killed was stronger because of the Elixir, but normally, I don’t think he would have been a challenge. He didn’t feel old.”
He saw a slight shudder pass over her frame. He wondered if she was bothered by him killing the air vampire or whether her more primitive survival instincts were finally kicking in. They would. The longer she remained in his world, the more they would have to. He didn’t live in the kind of polite society where trials and jails happened. And neither did Natalie. She just didn’t realize it yet. He was trying to break her in to the idea slowly, but he honestly couldn’t see her returning to her old life. She knew too much. She had already been flirting at the edges of vampire attention, being close friends with Beatrice and Dez. She was fully on the radar now.
You need me. He found himself reaching across the car to take her hand. More than you know.
She squeezed it as she continued talking. “If we think the first hunts happened around three months ago, it could be that the negative effects of the drug are just becoming known. According to Beatrice, her friend Lucien started feeling strange about three to four months after he had fed from a human who’d taken it. So if they didn’t know about it before, they’re going to start figuring it out now.” She sighed. “Why dgheto fouro I feel like a lot more innocent people are going to die, human and vampire, before this is over?”
Natalie fell silent again, but Baojia couldn’t stop thinking about her mother. It explained so much. She was reckless not because she was foolish, but because she’d experienced loss. He found humans—and vampires—who had lost those close to them tended to live either far more cautiously or with less regard for safety than ever. For Natalie, that meant taking chances. No wonder her father worried about her. One night ago, she’d witnessed a monstrous game that made humans into prey, and yet she still offered herself up to go back to the lion’s den and talk to the priest.
He had to keep her out of this. She was too fragile. She had no combat training. None. Training her satisfactorily would take years he didn’t have. The inevitable confrontation would happen well before she was ready. He wondered if Matt and Dez Kirby might be his best chance at keeping her out of the actual fight. He could knock her out with amnis and lock her up. He didn’t want to do it, but he might if it came down to it. She could hate him later—she probably would—but she’d be alive. He’d have time to ask forgiveness.
“What are you thinking?” Her voice jolted him out of his musings.
“What?”
Her suspicious eyes narrowed on him. “You’re trying to figure out a way to keep me out of this, aren’t you?”
“Absolutely.” And he wasn’t going to lie about it.
“Forget it. Not going to happen.” She crossed her arms and slumped a little. “I’m not a helpless little girl.”
“No. From a physical perspective, you’re a helpless grown woman. You have no natural defenses against these vampires, and you’re a target.”
Her jaw was clenched when she said, “Point taken, but you’re not leaving me out of it.”
Irritated at her willful disregard for her own safety, he gripped the wheel but kept his voice carefully even. “Tell me something, Natalie. When you did that drug-mule story, were the police involved?”
“Eventually.”
“And were there arrests made? Were they taken to your human jails?”
“Yes. What does that have to do—?”
His quiet voice rose. “And did you, the intrepid reporter, actually go along with the police when they made those arrests?” She was silent. Fuming. “Did you? Or did you let the police do their job after you had done yours?”
“It’s not the same!”
“It’s exactly the same!” he exploded, pulling the car over to the side of the road and turning to face her. “And these vampires are far more dangerous than human gangs. These vampires are the people that human gangs run away from!”
She pushed her car door open and walked outside, but he followed her.
“Natalie, don’t walk away. You need to think about—”
She spun. “It’s not the same! It might not seem logical to you, but I didn’t know those police. They weren’t my friends. And it’s my friends I’ve brought into this. It’s my friends who could be in danger because of something that I pulled them into. I can’t just stand by while you all—”
“You are not going into any vampire fight. I will not allow it.”
“What are you going to do? Knock me out? Lock me in a room while you go fight this?”
Yes. That was exactly what he had planned on doing. Perceptive human. He only crossed his arms and stared at her impasd at thisively.
She could read his expression. “Bad idea, Baojia! Bad. Idea. The jury’s still out on you, mister. I haven’t decided whether you’re safe or not, and shit like this is not helping!”
Baojia took a step back, unexpectedly stunned by her words. She didn’t know if he was safe? He allowed her—a human he had known for a matter of weeks—to lay by his side while he slept. Utterly trusting that she would do him no harm while he was at his most vulnerable. But she didn’t trust him?
It hurt, but that hurt quickly turned to anger.
“You can’t trust me?”
Her face fell. “That’s not what I meant.”
“You said you didn’t know if I was safe or not.” He stepped forward as she took a step back. It only angered him more. “What have I done to harm you, Natalie? How have I not protected you?”
The color drained from her face. “Baojia—”
“I have done—I would do anything to keep you safe! Anything. And yet you say—”
“I don’t know if it’s safe to fall in love with you!” she shouted, tears falling from her eyes. “And I am. I’m falling in love with you, and it scares me to death.”
He halted, standing stock-still as her words reached him.
I’m falling in love with you.
In love. With him?
Her words reached him. Filled him. Soothed him. Excited him.
She was still talking. “And part of me still thinks this is nuts. It is nuts! And I have this tiny idea of what your world is, but mostly I feel blind. I’m stumbling into a life I can’t see the end of
, but you’re the only thing that makes me feel the slightest bit sane. And that’s not sane. You’re not human. When you killed that vampire—you cut off his head! You. Cut. Off. His. Head. And you did it like you were taking out the trash. And part of me screamed, ‘That’s not normal!’ while the other part was just happy that it was him and not you. I was relieved!”
He stepped closer, put his hands on her shoulders, and drew her near.
“I would be giving up everything to love you,” she said under her breath. “I wanted a family. I wanted a normal life. I wanted what my parents had, no matter how it ended, but I’ve never—” She choked, and he pulled her closer. “I’ve never felt like this about anyone. I feel crazy, but nothing else makes sense.”
He kissed her forehead, holding her as if she was something fine. Breakable. She was.
“Natalie.”
“What?”
“No one, in my very long life, has ever told me they loved me.”
She sniffed again, and he cupped her cheeks, kissing the angry tears that had fallen.
“Do you realize…” she whispered. “Do you know what loving you would mean for me? For my life?”
“Yes.” He kissed her lips gently, then he whispered in her ear, “Love me anyway.”
“Baojia,” she groaned, trying to pull away. He wouldn’t let her. He wanted it—he wanted her—with a desperate kind of longing he’d never allowed before.
“Be afraid,” he pressed her. “Be angry. Love me anyway. I promise you won’t regret it.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“But I will.” He held her as she stood motionless in his arms. “I will, Natalie.”
He was afraid to breathe until her eyes lifted to his, defiant again. “Then I do.”
Baojia backed her up against the black car. “Tell me.”
“I love you.”
She said nothing else, because he kissed her with a lifetime’s worth of longing. She was his. However she might protest, however they might fight. She was his from that point until the end of her days. His mouth ravaged hers. His fangs fell, cutting the edge of her tongue, but he only sucked it into his mouth, tasting the blood that flowed from the cut. Natalie grabbed his hair, yanking him closer as he lifted her to sit on the edge of the car so they were face-to-face.