Dark Heir

“Or maybe they planned to trick Santana and just steal his blood. Some kind of power play.” It was the sort of thing vamps did. I’d seen Leo after one such gang blood attack when he’d been nearly drained dry. It hadn’t been pretty.

Eli walked around the room, taking care where he placed his feet. He opened the armoire, pulling on the small knob and then inserting his other hand in the bowed top of the door and yanking. The wood squealed and the door popped open with a splintering crack. Inside were piles of clothes that had rotted off the hangers and more evidence of mice. A small travel bag was on the bottom and Eli opened it, shook his head, and left it open. “Empty.” He continued his survey. In a bottom armoire drawer, he found a second leather satchel, much like Bruiser’s in style, meant to hold papers, but constructed of soft leather. Its mouth was open, and it was full of paper scraps, an ancient mouse nest. If the papers had once been important, they were now ruined, chewed and stained with mouse droppings and body fluids. With enough time, maybe an antiques specialist could restore the papers, but time wasn’t something we had. Which left Leo’s search at HQ.

If I hadn’t been mentally wacko the last time I saw him, I could have beaten the truth out of Leo about Adrianna and about what happened the night that Santana had been taken prisoner. I made a mental note to carry brass knuckles next time I saw the MOC.

Eli said, “They might not have planned anything other than a meet and greet. We have no evidence to go on. But we do know that something went wrong.”

“Like maybe Joseph Santana tasted Immanuel,” I said, “and recognized that he wasn’t just a fanghead, but an u’tlun’ta in fanghead skin. And that was when the poop hit the prop.”

Eli nodded, considering, agreeing. “Could be. Could not be too. There was a short, fast fight. Not enough to break the furniture.” He turned his head toward the room door and I heard a phone ring, an actual ring on a landline, and then Pinkie’s voice answering, her tone professionally pleasant.

Eli said, “Headless Barbie tried to stake someone, let’s say Santana. And let’s say he was wearing the arcenciel crystal. The crystal broke, and the arcenciel bit . . . someone.”

If captured and imprisoned in quartz crystal, arcenciels could give their master control over time, much like I had over time when I was in the Gray Between—if I was willing to suffer the illness that followed. The one who captured an arcenciel didn’t have to worry about being sick after. Just about being bitten and poisoned if the creature got free.

“Some ones, maybe. And then, after the arcenciel got free, one of the others beheaded her.”

Eli nodded. “Maybe in retaliation for breaking the crystal.”

I bent over the decapitated head to get a look at the damage to her vertebrae near her skull, then at her shoulders. “Whoever took her head was no novice. It’s hard to take a head, and this was done with a single strike. Long sword, most likely, not a short sword, vamp-killer, ax, or hatchet.”

Eli moved to where he thought the beheader had stood and mimed a sword strike at the likely location of the Barbie’s head, when it was on her shoulders and not on the floor, when she was alive—undead, whatever—and standing. “Not much room,” he said. “Unless . . .” He moved to the foot of the bed and examined the bedpost. “Sword strike continued upward and embedded the blade here. Discoloration in the nick. Blood probably. The wood is slivered, indicating that it took some effort to get the weapon free.” Eli turned his attention to the blood spatter on the wall, which clearly marked where the swordsman had been standing. “We’re assuming the sword’s master was Santana, but that’s an assumption neither backed up by, nor refuted by, the evidence.”

I thought about my sword lessons. “He wouldn’t have had only one weapon. A short sword to back up the long sword, probably, considering the close quarters. When one blade stuck after the beheading, he’d have used another and pulled the sword free later. If he lived. If not, then someone else did. You’re right. Assumptions at this point are stupid.”

“We work with what we’ve got,” Eli said, ever the pragmatist. “So the crystal holding the arcenciel got broken, Santana was bitten, making him have both arcenciel poison and . . .” Eli looked around the room, thinking, evaluating. “. . . and maybe skinwalker blood in his body at the same time, though that too is an assumption.”

“U’tlun’ta, not just skinwalker, blood,” I clarified. Because I could never forget what awaited me at some point in my future. “It makes more and more sense that Joseph was bitten by the arcenciel, because he was captured shortly after whatever took place in this room,” I said.

“We know Leo’s predecessor ordered that Joseph be taken prisoner, but it might not have been here,” Eli countered. “Leo might have tracked Joses from here, found him elsewhere when the SoD was injured and weak from an arcenciel bite and from drinking liver-eater blood. In which case Leo or Amaury could have taken him from anywhere.”

“Right.” I toed the rotten rug, which shredded beneath my faint kick. “We know that Leo drank from Santana for decades. He also drank from someone who had been bitten by an arcenciel at some point because when he was bitten not so long ago, he recuperated quickly,” I said, “an immune response that may have saved his life. We know it wasn’t Immanuel, because if he’d tasted Immanuel’s blood, he’d have recognized the taste of my blood as being the same species. So we might be able to draw the conclusion from this broken crystal that Santana was bitten by the arcenciel”—I held up a second finger—“and that the poison made him crazy enough to be taken captive. That still leaves us with lots of questions and not enough answers.”

“What we do know is that the next morning, when this room was discovered, Joses—correction, Joseph—had been disappeared. At some point after that, the room was sealed; at some point Joseph was turned over to Amaury or Leo; at some point Bethany tasted Santana’s blood; and at some point the SoD was hung on the sub-five dungeon wall at fanghead HQ. At which point he was a raving maniac.”

“Yeah.” It wasn’t enough. I didn’t know enough. As usual. “We need to ask someone what happened that night. And try to get a straight answer.”

“Good luck with that. Adrianna, Joseph, and Leo are the only ones still alive to question,” Eli said, amused. “One has scrambled brains, one is drinking people to death, and the other has never been overly forthcoming with the truth.”