Staked Page 20

  “He’s been covering for her,” Talbot said patiently. “He took you to a hockey game, got you drunk, and let eighteen werewolves try to kill you.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Eric,” Talbot said. “Where is he right now? Did you call him?”

  “No, I haven’t called him yet. Greta and I ran into some werewolves here at the club. Real Lycan Diocese types that William called in.”

  “You both okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, no problems here. Tiko and some of his cousins are taking care of the bodies for us.”

  “Good. Now listen. I want you to go back to the alley where you fought the Alpha’s son. He was killed at Thirteenth Street and Eleventh Avenue. I want you to go there and see if you recognize it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t trust Roger, damn it!” he snapped. I heard him take a deep breath and his next words were calmer. “He gave Veruca that night off and she had the gun with her. We can’t ask Lillian where she picked you up, because Tabitha killed her when she went loco.”

  “Talbot, I did kill a werewolf in an alley.”

  “I believe you, boss.” He sighed. “I just want to make sure you killed the werewolf that you think you killed.”

  “Ask Froggy,” I said. “Make her tell you.”

  “I would if I could, Eric, but Tabitha put a stake through her heart.”

  “Poof, huh?”

  “Poof,” he confirmed. “We found the gun before Tabitha fell asleep. It looks like Veruca was wearing leather gloves in order to fire it. They’re scorched through on the palms. The silver crosses on the grip must have burned her even through the leather.”

  “It can happen,” I said noncommittally.

  “I think I’ll hole up here with Tabitha until she wakes up tomorrow.”

  “And what if Roger comes home?”

  “I don’t think he will,” Talbot said. “The sun will be up too soon. Roger takes a lot more sleep than you do and he’d never cut it this close. Wherever he is, I think he’ll stay there until sunset. Besides, he hasn’t been here since Friday. I don’t think he’s going to come back until this whole thing is over.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s setting you up. Veruca was the fall guy in case anything went wrong.”

  “I don’t believe that,” I said flatly.

  “If you don’t believe it, then check the alley.”

  “I—”

  “Eric, please. Will you check the damn alley?”

  No, Talbot, I can’t, I wanted to say. I don’t want to look in the damn alley. If Roger set me up, I don’t want to frickin’ know about it.

  “Fine,” I answered, “and thanks.”

  Greta and I walked back across to the Pollux. The bodies and trucks were all gone. Tiko and his crew had worked fast. “So, who else knows?” I asked her as we walked.

  “About the alley?”

  “No,” I said. “About the super vamp thing.”

  “Dad, I don’t know.” She put her arm around my shoulders, emphasizing the fact that she was over two inches taller than me. “But look on the bright side. Most of the people who knew got killed before they could tell anyone. I’ll bet Roger doesn’t even know, with the way he runs away from fights so fast.”

  Reminded of Roger, I plopped down onto the sofa in the Pollux’s lobby and punched buttons on my cell phone until it decided to dial his number for me.

  “Hello?” The voice on the other end sounded strange, like he was whispering into the receiver from the bottom of a giant tin bucket.

  “Roger?”

  “Yeah. Dude. I’ve been trying to call you. Why the hell did you close the club? Marilyn says you sent everyone home with pay.”

  “You talked to Marilyn?”

  “I’m at her place now. She needed a little help. Seems some asshole broke her arm.”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled. It was a classic Roger deflection. Question: Roger, why are you trying to put my club out of bussiness? Answer: Hey, do you remember that time you broke Marilyn’s arm?

  “Same asshole killed Brian,” I blurted.

  “What?” he demanded. “You killed Brian? Why?”

  Why? What an interesting question. I didn’t know why. Another good question was why Roger didn’t seem more upset about it.

  “Because he annoyed me, I guess,” I said vaguely. “I don’t remember.”

  “It’s all right, man. He was always picking fights with you and it wasn’t like he hadn’t been warned.”

  “He was your friend, though. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Roger assured me. “He was just a Soldier.”

  Huh. I wonder if he would’ve responded the same way if he’d known Tabitha had killed Froggy. Besides, Brian hadn’t been a Soldier, he’d been a Master. What the fuck?

  I tried another tack. “Do you know anything about a check for thirty thousand dollars to some guy named Fergus?” I asked.

  “I’d been meaning to ask you about it,” Roger countered. “You can’t just spend money like that without clearing it first. We’re flush and it’s not a problem this time, but what if I hadn’t had enough money in that account to cover it? The money moves around, man. I gotta keep it working for us, not just sitting in an account in case you overspend.”

  You fucking liar, I wanted to scream, you’re behind everything! Then, again, this was Roger and he could have been covering up for something else, maybe just some run-of-the-mill embezzlement. If that was the case, I didn’t care. He’d always taken a little without asking. When an investment deal paid off later, he’d slip it back in and tell me I’d okayed everything. It usually worked out.

  “Yeah,” I whispered, “my mistake.” Please just be embezzling money, I thought at him.

  “Gotta let you go, pal,” he said. “I want to hunt before I turn in.”

  “Which gives you what,” I said, checking the clock, “fifteen minutes?” Roger had to be lying to me. He always hunts first thing. “You’re going to hunt and make it back to your place in fifteen minutes from Marilyn’s?” I willed him to say yes. If he said yes then—

  “No,” he answered. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I have a place nearby. Look, don’t worry about it, Mom. I’ll be fine, but I’ve got to go if I’m going to hunt. Like you said, fifteen minutes.”

  “How close by?” I asked, but he was already off the line.

  Rachel was up and moving; I could hear her rummaging around downstairs in the dressing room she’d confiscated. “Sounds like the Pierced Princess is awake,” Greta said snidely.

  I shushed her and walked upstairs to my office, opened my desk drawer, and pulled out a pair of sunglasses to conceal my eyes, since I didn’t want to scare anyone without meaning to do so. Eyes safely covered, I went back down to the dressing room and checked on Rachel.

  She was naked except for a pair of lacy white panties. Her scent filled my nostrils and I pulled her into my arms. God, she was warm. She kissed me and I caught a faint hint of cinnamon.

  “You smell nice,” I told her. “I keep smelling cinnamon around you, but only sometimes.”

  “It’s a special trick for girls with vampire boyfriends.”

  I let her step back and playfully tugged one of her piercings. “More fun facts from the Irons Club?”

  She let out a little sigh followed by a wicked grin. “Do we have any plans or do we get to play all day?”

  It was tempting, but I walked away from her, toward the door. “As much as I’d like to, I need you to take me for a walk.”

  “Does it have to be right now?” Rachel ran her hands suggestively over her breasts.

  “Yes,” I insisted, ignoring the part of my anatomy that disagreed. “You can get a shower over at the Demon Heart if you need one.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Do I?”

  I shook my head. “No, but I thought I’d offer.”

  She smiled. “Are we taking a cab?”

  “It’s only
three blocks,” I answered. “Get dressed and bring your purse.”

  I walked out past Greta, who was leaning against the wall in the hallway.

  “Do I need a shower, Dad? Can I use the one over at the Demon Heart? Can I? Please?”

  Ignoring her as best I could, I went back to my office to wait for Rachel. Soon I heard a loud thump, the sound a body makes when it hits the floor. “Sun’s up,” I muttered to myself. Out in the hall, Greta lay in a heap. Dawn always hits her hard and like me, she never seems to remember that it’s coming. I don’t know if she does it on purpose to be more like me or not, but I find it endearing in a dysfunctional sire sort of way. Unlike me, she’s impossible to wake up during the day. At least when she wakes each evening she’s cheerful and well rested. Some days I envy her. I picked her up in my arms and carried her back to my Pollux bedroom, tucked her in, and kissed her on the forehead.

  “You ready?” Rachel called from the doorway. “How am I walking with you somewhere, anyway? You’re not going to turn into a virus and infect me are you?” Her heart rate sped up. “I mean, it’s okay if you are, I guess. It’s just that…”

  I turned into a mouse and back again, the rapid transition feeling only slightly more comfortable than a shot to the nuts. I really needed to stop showing off for this girl. “I want you to jog up to the intersection of Thirteenth Street and Eleventh Avenue with me in your purse.”

  She knelt down and opened her purse on the floor. It was smaller than I was happy with, but it was leather and I doubted enough sun would get through the material to be a problem. I admired the view down Rachel’s top before transforming. Rachel zipped me up in her purse and away we went.

  I really wanted Talbot to be wrong, but in the back of my furry little undead mind, I already knew that he wasn’t. Roger had betrayed me. Froggy was too stupid to come up with a plan so complex on her own. I don’t know if he wanted me dead—I hoped he didn’t—but he definitely wanted me at odds with William. Maybe that’s all there was to it. Maybe he wanted me to kill William and knew that I wouldn’t do it just for shits and giggles, so he’d arranged for William to come after me, knowing that I’d be able to defend myself.

  But why?

  Deep down, it didn’t matter why he’d done what he’d done. He’d betrayed me and I’d found out about it. I silently hated him for not being clever enough to slip it all past me. Dot your damn i’s, I thought again. If only he’d done a better job of forging the check. If only he hadn’t lied about it. If only we could go back to being best friends, like none of this had ever happened….

  24

  ERIC:

  THE OTHER SHOE

  Checking out the alley took about an hour, but only because I made Rachel investigate all four intersections that were three blocks from the club. If Talbot’s suspicions were correct, then two werewolves had been killed three blocks from the Demon Heart at the same time. I’d killed one and Froggy had killed the other.

  We found the place where I’d killed Brian first. I knew it was the right alley because long scratches in the concrete showed where I’d dragged the Dumpster to the sidewalk. I examined the scene from the safety of the shadows. That alley, at Thirteenth Street and Fifth Avenue, had been completely cleaned. The Dumpster wasn’t there anymore, but the wall still bore a scorch mark from where I’d beat my head out when I’d caught fire.

  We checked Thirteenth Street and Eleventh Avenue last. The odor of gunpowder and werewolf permeated the site. It wasn’t the scent of the werewolf I’d killed. This one smelled stronger, more primal. I smelled Veruca in the alley, too, and sex. What pissed me off the most, though, was the smell of my own blood. Someone had siphoned some off of me and sprayed it on the walls. Werewolves have a better sense of smell than vampires; I wondered momentarily if William thought I’d slept with Froggy there, rolling around in his son’s remains.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said, standing in a shadow. “Talbot was right. Roger played me. Why the fuck would he do that?”

  “Maybe it isn’t what it looks like,” Rachel offered. “Maybe he didn’t know what to do. Maybe he knew that the werewolves were after his girlfriend. He could have been scared.”

  “So he set them on my trail because he knew they couldn’t kill me?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” Rachel said with a shrug.

  “Nah, I don’t think so. He sent Veruca out here to kill Willie Junior so that Willie Senior would come after me. He sent Veruca to kill the werewolves at Orchard Lake because he wanted to make sure I didn’t talk it over with William and make peace. He’s behind everything. I wonder if he’s still over at Marilyn’s.”

  Cars whizzed past dangerously on Eleventh Street heading for the interstate on-ramp one block down. I stood along the edge of the shadows and watched the people inside. Were any of their best friends trying to screw them over? Fucking their spouses, cheating on them, framing them for murder? What would Roger say if I confronted him? And why did the thought of him having a place close to Marilyn’s apartment suddenly make me queasy? She’ll be fine, I told myself. Besides, like a lot of vampires, Roger slept all day, every day.

  I was going to ask Rachel to drive me over there when horns honked on the street outside the mouth of the alley and two identical trucks, one black and the other blue, peeled past on the wrong side of the road, within ten feet of me. In the back of one of the trucks, I saw a big metal box studded with crosses, secured to the bed of the truck with elastic cords. I thought I heard a scream.

  Instinctively, I took off after them, running right out of the shadows into the sun.

  “Shit!” I jumped back into the shadows, on fire again. “Fuck!”

  “We need to get back to the Pollux,” I growled after I’d dropped and rolled to put out the flames. “Run.”

  The Pollux felt wrong. I knew it the moment Rachel panted across the threshold and let me out of her purse. Old buildings have moods, especially those full of personality, like the Pollux. She had once been a grand affair, a celebrated showplace, and the center of attention. Now she had been reduced to a quaint old memory of better days. She was distressed about something; a palpable sense of anxiety resonated through her. Something was out of place. Something was wrong. Rachel seemed to feel it too. It was as if, while we were away, the proverbial other shoe had dropped.

  “Greta,” I said under my breath. Rachel and I both hit the stairs running, but I was in full-on combat mode and had already thrown open the door to my bedroom by the time Rachel was clearing the fifth step. My bed had been made and the sink had been cleaned. It even looked like my towel had been washed and dried. Maybe Greta had woken up early and headed out, but it wasn’t like her to clean stuff up and she’d only been asleep for an hour, tops. She had to have been taken.

  I went into my office, and noticed some stuff had been moved around. The light on my answering machine was blinking. I pushed PLAY as Rachel walked in and closed the door behind her.

  “I have your whore,” growled a voice. It was the same voice I’d heard on the answering machine when Kyle died: William. “Your Jezebel is with me. Is it true that you make her call you Daddy? How can you compare this twisted unholy family you have created to the son you stole from me? The brethren you killed? Their souls cry out for vengeance. ‘Vengeance is mine,’ sayeth the Lord, but I am his instrument. Through me you will be returned unto the dust from which you came.

  “This time you will come to me, vampire. You will walk into the sunlight and face us in a place of our own choosing. Come for your so-called daughter to Bald Mountain State Park, Campground B. If you are not here by five p.m., I will end her miserable sinful existence once and for all, freeing her soul from its cage so that God may judge her and she may receive her eternal damnation.”

  Rachel hugged me from behind and cinnamon filled the air. I didn’t even feel angry, just empty. She whispered her sweet nonsense words into my ear and told me everything was going to be okay. I turned to her and before I knew it we were kissing. My daught
er needed me. I didn’t have time for this, but I couldn’t stop myself. Rachel helped me out of my clothes, undressing herself in the process. I was lost in her warmth, her need, and the beating of her heart. Her own natural smell blended with the cinnamon on her breath and I couldn’t stop myself.

  As we neared climax, writhing on top of my desk, she put both hands on my chest to support herself and looked deep into my eyes. “Bite me, Eric. I need it and you need it.”

  I held back. She seemed okay, but I had never fed on the same person so many times in succession, not even Tabitha. “It’ll be okay, baby,” she said. She ran her left hand across the top of my head. “You’ll know when to stop.” Her hand moved over my forehead. “I trust you.” She touched my throat. Her hands wandered lower, touching lightly over my heart and on my belly. She reached between us to cup the base of my testicles.

  It wasn’t right. It felt completely wrong. A line of heat shot through my body from the crown of my head to my groin where she still moved, grinding against me. Internal alarms were going off in my head, but I couldn’t interpret them properly. She kept moving on top of me, but slowed her rhythm, prolonging the inevitable. “Please,” she whispered. The smell of cinnamon replaced everything; it was the only odor in the room, overwhelming all else. I bit into her neck, white pinpricks of light searing my vision. My teeth went numb, fangs retracting, and my taste buds awoke, assaulted by stimuli to all their receptors, as if I’d bitten into a jalapeño rather than an eighteen-year-old girl.

  My heart spurred to life, beating as if it might burst from my chest. I couldn’t breathe properly; each breath came fast and furious, too short and too quick. Heat spread across my body from the core outward. I stopped drinking and we both cried out in unison, reaching completion.

  In Rachel’s eyes, I could see a vague reflection of myself. Hazy, but me. I didn’t want to look at myself, not in her eyes, not in a mirror. Purple light flickered from my eyes and the reflection faded. An urge to hurl her against the wall, to break her in half, to fight her, fight something, came out of nowhere, but I suppressed it. Cinnamon was replaced by the smell of sweat and sex. She looked down at me, her wide eyes torn between terror and exhilaration.