“The sun doesn’t agree with me, either,” I eventually heard myself say.
The vampire took the Informer from me then firmly linked my arm through his. “I thought as much with your kind.” He said the last two words as if they left a bad taste in his mouth. “Then you will be agreeable to finding a more private place to continue our conversation.” He tossed the tabloid in the nearest trash, which was really where it belonged.
I wasn’t running this time; and with my arm locked down, I couldn’t. Besides, vampire or not, I’d seen him rip the ass out of his pants. That and knowing what color underwear he wore took a little of the edge off my fear. It was also broad daylight and we were in the middle of a relatively crowded street. If I had to, I had a scream that’d put a banshee to shame.
The vampire jerked me in closer, facing him. “Is the package in place?”
“What?”
“My package. Is it in place?”
I resisted the urge to look down at the front of the vampire’s pants. “Uh . . . yes?”
“Good.” His fingers curled in a crushing grip around my hand. “Now explain to me why you apprehended the assassin and delivered the keys and flash drive into SPI’s hands?”
I didn’t know him, but he obviously thought he knew me. Plus, the homeless guy knew Ian. This was officially beyond confusing.
When in doubt, go with the truth. “She killed our source.” I remembered Ian dumping out the contents of the purse. “The SPI agent took the keys, and I didn’t know about the flash drive.”
“Tarbert had far outlived his usefulness, and paid the price for his greed.” He lowered his face to mine, and I could smell whoever he had for breakfast. “The head of the beast does not matter to me, but if you do not wish to share Tarbert’s fate, you will retrieve that flash drive.”
“I . . . I don’t think I can do that.”
“You derive great enjoyment from toying with me, demon. Perhaps our employer is correct and you have outlived your usefulness as well.” He adjusted his grip on my arm to get a better hold. “Your behavior has become increasingly erratic, and the risk of exposure is too great.”
A black van with blacked-out windows pulled up to the curb. The door slid open. I caught a glimpse of two men in black suits, white shirts, black ties, and sunglasses, putting off a serious Men in Black vibe.
“Get in,” the vampire ordered.
It didn’t matter where you were from—backwoods or big city—you didn’t get into a van full of strange men, and they didn’t come any stranger than this.
I didn’t act. I reacted.
With a scream that could be heard for blocks—probably above and below ground—I punched the vamp in the face with the hand holding the scalding coffee. I’d forgotten until that moment that I was still wearing the brass knuckles under my glove. I felt teeth break. The vamp’s hold on me loosened, and I yanked my arm free, inadvertently knocking off his hat and sunglasses in the process.
Now the vamp was screaming, too—burning from coffee and the sun, and bleeding from broken teeth, including one fang.
I ran and kept running, down the stairs into the subway station, slowing only enough to swipe my MetroCard at the turnstile. I rounded the corner and was going full speed when I hit the men’s room door with my open hand and plowed into Ian, knocking him to the floor and landing on top of him. Yasha and Calvin were carrying a crate now marked “Defective Toilet.” They looked just as stunned as Ian, minus the pain.
I panted to catch my breath. “Need any help?”
10
WE were in the SUV headed back to Manhattan. Yasha was driving and Calvin was literally riding shotgun. Ian was in the backseat with me, and Grendel’s head was in the cargo area right behind us. When we’d gotten topside, there had been no sign of the vamp, van, or MiBs. Heck, even the vamp’s blood was gone. And the people on the street were acting like nothing had happened. I had to hand it to them; it took a lot to ruffle New Yorkers.
“When he asked if his package was in place, I told him yes.”
Calvin shot me a bemused look.
“Yeah,” I said. “That was my first thought, too. And ‘yes’ seemed to be the answer he wanted. When I’m dealing with crazy people who can rip my throat out with their teeth—or who want to take me to a mystery employer who thinks I’ve outlived my usefulness—I tell them what they want to hear.”
In addition to freaking out over nearly being kidnapped, my skin was trying to crawl off and hide from a mummified monster head sitting mere inches away. I turned in the seat to put my back to the door. I didn’t care if the thing didn’t have a body; I wasn’t taking my eyes off of it, but it didn’t stop me from finishing my bagel. I had my priorities. What I didn’t have was any coffee to wash it down with, but who needed caffeine when you had adrenaline.
I’d given them the Reader’s Digest condensed version of the Informer getting wind of our monster problem, but a word-for-word report of my encounter with the vampire. As a former reporter, I was good at remembering exactly what someone told me, especially when it involved personal threats of the fatal kind.
Ian’s response when I finished was to run his hand over his face. “Let me get this straight. The dead guy from Ollie’s had your picture in his pocket, and now this vampire—also from last night—thinks that you and he work for the same person.”
“That person couldn’t possibly be Vivienne Sagadraco, could it?”
Ian didn’t even dignify that with an answer.
“Hey, I’m still new here. Just checking.”
“Did he give any indication of what was in the package and where it is?” Ian asked.
“None.” And I could’ve smacked myself for not asking. “I wanted to ask, but if I had, he’d have known I wasn’t the person he thought I was—whoever that is. And he acted like I should know what he was talking about, like I’m in cahoots with these people—whoever they are.”
“How could vampire mistake you for demon?” Yasha asked.
I threw up my hands in an I’ve-got-nothing gesture.
“I’m more concerned about how he knew exactly where you’d be last night and today,” Ian said. “Maybe once Kenji gets a look at what’s on that flash drive, we’ll have a big piece of the puzzle and some of this will start to make sense.”
“Nothing that’s happened since this whole thing started has made sense,” I told him.
“Is true,” Yasha agreed.
Ian shot the Russian a look. Yasha ignored him.
“We have Tarbert’s killer in custody,” Ian reminded me. “Our people are the best. If she knows who hired her, the name of her contact, and where the drop point was for the flash drive and those keys—they’ll get it out of her.”
I leaned back and ate the last bite of bagel. “I’d forgotten about the mausoleum and crypt keys. And the vampire said that the head of the beast didn’t matter to him.” I tried to put the pieces together in my head. “Adam Falke wanted to buy the arm and head; now Falke’s dead, probably killed by the beast the vampire was talking about. Ollie was going to get the arm and buy the head to sell to Falke. And now Ollie’s kidnapped and the guy selling the head is dead.”
“We have the head,” Ian said. “And the flash drive.”
“And ghouls took Ollie and the arm.”
“In a decommissioned military helicopter.”
We all thought about that.
As I swallowed the last bite of my bagel, my fear gave way to anger. “And just what the hell did he mean by ‘my erratic behavior’?”
Ian just looked at me. Yasha and Calvin stared straight ahead and didn’t say a word.
I glared at all of them.
“We’ll check in with Moreau when we get back to headquarters,” Ian said. “See if he has any leads on who the vampire is.”
A vampire that thinks that I’m working with him, the same vampire who orchestrated at least one murder—and possibly two. I could hardly forget the pieces of Adam Falke scattered around Ollie’s office—a victim who was carrying a blood-spattered photo of me.
I thunked my head against the window. This couldn’t be good for my next performance review.
• • •
The monster head was a big hit at SPI headquarters. People in white lab coats immediately surrounded the box labeled “Defective Toilet” and whisked it away.
Ian went in search of Alain Moreau. I went in search of answers. Alone. By myself. Without having to account to Moreau for dealings with shady vampires, men in black in black vans, and erratic behavior. I’d have to talk to him eventually, but it wasn’t going to be now.
There was something I could do to help that I was actually good at.
Get to the bottom of a story.
There’d been three murders in two days, and two of those killings had been committed by a ten-foot-tall monster with five-inch claws who’d come to town not as a tourist, but to eat the tourists, and anyone else who looked tasty. Connected to all that in some way was a team of ghoul commandos who’d taken Oliver Barrington-Smythe. Ollie wasn’t just a source; he was a friend. Occasionally obnoxious, but always a friend. It may not have been my job to save him from those ghouls; but dammit, it was my job to do everything I could to help get him back. And the thing I did best of all was to stick my nose where it didn’t belong. One of my dad’s best hunting dogs had gotten a piece bitten out of her nose by a raccoon that way, but it hadn’t stopped her from doing what she’d been born to do.
I was a hunter, too, only I tracked down information, waded through facts and rumors, picking through the truth and lies—until I’d found all the pieces of a puzzle and could put together a picture of what had really happened. Like one of Dad’s hounds on a scent, I wasn’t going to let anything throw me off the trail. Yes, a scarab-tattooed guy who’d been carrying a picture of me had gotten himself gutted, but if we didn’t get to the bottom of this by New Year’s Eve, more people would die; a lot more.