6 Under The Final Moon (20 page)

I tried to point to it, but my hand was locked at my side, my outstretched index finger pointing at the concrete ground. Alex shot me a look and slid the pages back into the envelope.

“Thank you, Father. I will take these in for analysis. I think they will be very helpful.”

The priest nodded as we turned on our heels, me biting the inside of my cheek the whole way out. When we opened the double doors, I snatched the envelope out of Alex’s hand and started to sputter.

“Who did these? What are these? Oh my God!”

The crude drawings started with pink, smiley women with bell-jar-shaped hair and triangle dresses. There were men by their sides in boxy suits and wide smiles, stick feet jutting out from their trousers. Progressively, the pictures got darker until the woman and the man were covered in thick red and yellow slashes and two new characters were drawn into the picture: a little boy and an older man. They were smiling broadly, their smiles getting bigger with each progressively more heinous picture until the triangle-dress woman and the boxy suited man were completely engulfed by angry-looking red slashes.

“These were Oliver’s, weren’t they?”

Alex nodded solemnly.

“And that’s Oliver.” I pointed. “And that . . .”

The man holding Oliver’s hand had pale red hair and red eyes. He was wearing a hat, a little, stocky fedora, and even though his expression was child-artist crude, there was something unsettling about it.

“Oliver says that’s his friend, Lucas.”

Alex and I got back into the car, and the air in there seemed solid, incredibly dense. I could feel it pressing against my chest, and as much as I wanted to cry, to scream, to say
something
, it snatched at my breath and sucked the moisture from my eyes. We started to drive.

“No.” I heard myself saying the word and then I was shaking my head. “I can’t believe that he’s going after a little child like this.”

Alex pulled the car over on the shoulder of a road that abutted a park, and I hopped out immediately, relishing the cool air.

Alex came around the car. His eyes slipped over mine but wouldn’t focus on them. “Lawson . . .”

I pushed myself back, still shaking my head. “I can’t believe he did it. I can’t believe that little boy did it. He drew Lucas. It was Lucas who probably killed the kid’s parents, not Oliver. Not Oliver. He’s just a kid, Alex. Why—why would my father come after a little kid?”

I knew that Alex wanted to tell me something, but I also knew there was nothing left to say. Evil was evil, and whenever Lucas Szabo was around, even the innocent weren’t safe.

Alex raked a hand through his hair, the loose curls springing back under his palm and I remembered the first time I saw him standing in the Underworld Detection Agency, his badge winking on his belt, those curls lolling over his unlined forehead, licking the tops of his ears. If I had known then that I would be standing on the precipice of Armageddon—or possibly causing it—would I have turned away? I knew the answer would be no. Even at this moment when the world was whirling toward a giant sinkhole of doom, I wanted to get lost in those eyes; my fingers ached to feel his silky hair wrapped around them.

“This can’t be happening.” My voice came out meek in the darkening cab and in a half-second, in a heartbeat, Alex’s arms were around me and I was crushed against his chest, my body instinctively curling into his. His arms were around my waist and then his hands found their way up my spine, fingers gliding over my neck and tangling themselves in my hair. For once, my body didn’t spring to inappropriate sexual attention. It was more than that. I didn’t want Alex near me; I needed it. I couldn’t bear the tiniest bit of space between us, and I felt myself press against him, felt his body respond with equal pressure.

“I’m sorry, Lawson.”

I nodded against his chest, tears running over my lips. I still wasn’t sure what to believe. I had spent the last five years of my life on high alert, jumping to crime-fighter attention when even the slightest thing seemed off. But now, in the face of earthquakes and hellfire and aged rock stars falling from the sky, I didn’t want to believe. I
couldn’t.
If I did, it would mean that my father really didn’t love me and he was everything everyone else said he was. Evil. He didn’t see me as his daughter with a life and feelings and friends. He saw me as an item, a stumbling block to his essential power, and my life was only valuable as long as he could manipulate me into doing everything he wanted.

The sad thing was, as a daughter who never could give up the need to please an absent father, I would have done anything for his approval if only he had asked.

Alex kissed the part in my hair, the gentle brush of his lips sending shivers throughout my body.

“Lawson, this is happening. This is real. You can’t deny that the gates of Hell have been blown wide open.”

I unclenched the fists that were holding him to me and blinked up, pushing away. “With all due respect, Alex, I think you underestimate me.”

Alex paused for a beat, and his lips edged up to that familiar half smile. “Lawson . . .”

I sniffed and used the heel of my hand to wipe at my wet cheeks. “I know. But can’t we pretend for a few more minutes?” I took a step closer, my arms snaking over his neck, my hands playing with his hair. “Just a few?”

I felt the heat surge through his body even before the sly smile reached his eyes. He slid his hands around my waist and yanked me toward him, his hips firm against mine. The feeling was amazing, intense, and every nerve ending in my body shot off like Fourth of July firecrackers.

“What exactly did you have in mind?” he asked.

I walked my fingers down his well-muscled back until I came to the waistband of his pants. I paused on his belt, then inched toward his navel. I felt his breath break over my cheeks as his sighed, a slight groan escaping his lips.

My smile grew.

I took two fingers and dug into his front pocket, snatching out his keys. He cracked open an eye, his eyebrows rising.

“Someone’s got to get the cake.”

I spun on my heel, warm but smug, and went for the door. But Alex’s arm slid around my waist before I could. He pulled me against him, his every inch on fire and lighting mine as his lips found my ear, nibbling gently.

“If we’re going to Hell anyway, the cake can wait.”

I’d thought the weirdest thing I would ever see was a vampire blowing purple Hubba Bubba bubbles through her fangs, but I’ve amended that. The weirdest thing I’ve ever seen is a one-hundred-and-thirteen-year-old vampire wearing a shiny red cowboy hat and gleefully tearing the pony-printed wrapping paper off a
BloodLust
game. And then doing a keg stand of O-neg. If the world wasn’t going to Hell in a hand basket already, it was now.

Even Will and Alex were making nice, and that unnerved me more than an upside-down, bloodstained Vlad did. I was staring at them both as they leaned up against the wall directly across from me, deep in conversation, and I was torn. I loved Will. He was easy and uncomplicated, and being with him was fun. But Alex pushed my buttons and got on my last nerve and struck something inside of me that made everything right with the world.

Both of them deserved more.

While Nina had an arm thrown over Kale’s shoulder as the two cheered on Vlad’s chug, I disappeared into my bedroom, found Abelard’s card, and took my phone into my closet.

My hands were shaking and my chest was tight, but I dialed, slowly, carefully. I pushed my phone to my ear and listened to it ring, the tears rolling over my cheeks, rolling down my chin.

“Ms. Lawson, I was hoping you’d call.”

“The ritual, Abelard. Tell me about the ritual.”

Satan, hellfire, and murderous children had been mercifully quiet for two whole days and while the time-out should have calmed my jangled nerves and soothed me, all it did was ratchet up my blood pressure and made me jump and scissor kick anything that snuck up or frightened me.

Which was why the Xerox machine had a size-seven-and-a-half dent in the side of it.

I had spent my free time Googling Lucas Szabo as if I hadn’t been doing it all month. I found a few listings, including the address of a house that Lucas once lived in with my half sister Ophelia, but that had since been blown sky high. Possibly while I was there, huddling under Alex and a shower of flaming debris.

Considering I was a city girl, there was an awful lot of flaming debris in my life.

I tried old-fashioned searches, too, using actual books and library data, and even scanned a few biblical passages that gave general areas (i.e., “Hell”) but no actual specifics.

My head was swimming in a mass of unanswered questions and aborted quests, and it throbbed while my fingers cramped as I started yet another search. Finally, I pulled out my phone and dialed.

“I need to see you,” I said, my voice low. “It’s important.”

I wrapped my hands around my steaming-hot paper cup, letting the hot liquid sear my palms. When Nina dropped her size-of-Long Island shoulder bag onto the table, I jumped, my tea burning my hand.

“Okay, I’m here. What do you need?” Nina frowned. “Blush, obviously, but I’m assuming your need extends beyond the cosmetic.”

I rubbed at the throbbing ache that was starting on my forehead. “I feel like I’m going crazy, Neens. This whole apocalypse—”

“I thought it was Armageddon.”

“Pretty sure they’re interchangeable, and if not, pretty sure the confusion will clear up once we’re all burned to a nice, charcoal crunch.”

Nina shuddered, nostrils flaring. “Way to paint a picture. So, what do you have in mind? A caper? I love a good caper.”

I took a delicate sip of my coffee, wincing when it burnt my tongue. “Armentrout, Oliver, the Grigori, the fires—if all of those are happening because”—I tried to breathe, tried to squeeze an inch of air into my already screaming lungs—“because of my father, then I have to stop him.”

Nina’s eyes flashed and I could see the real fear in them. Seeing terror reflected in the eyes of the blood-sucking undead didn’t make me feel any better about my decision, but I knew what I had to do.

“Sophie, he’ll kill you. He’ll kill you and then he’ll possess the Vessel of Souls, and creep-o kids and weeping statues will be the absolute least of our worries.”

I bit my thumbnail, the coffee feeling as though it were burning a hole in my stomach.

“He’s not doing all this to play around, Neens. I mean, why now, right? He’s been—I don’t what you call it, dormant?—for all this time and then suddenly he comes calling? Suddenly ‘it’s time’?”

Nina drummed her fingernails across the wood grain of the table. “Vlad and I were thinking the same thing. It’s not like it’s your thirteenth birthday or you got your period or one of those momentous moments in your life. It’s just you, on a Tuesday in November. What’s special about that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just wish I had some answers, you know? Or at least some way to know where he is or where’s he headed. Is he watching us now? Inside, outside, through binoculars?”

We both looked around the sparsely populated coffeehouse. A teenage girl in a white tee was intently studying her cell phone. A man was sipping an iced latte while looking over his laptop and loudly smacking his lips around a hunk of strawberry coffee cake. A blind man was maneuvering his walking stick amongst the chairs.

“None of these people could be him.”

“Maybe someone could be working for him?”

We did a scan again, this time factoring in the skinny barista with the fire-engine-red hair tied at the nape of her neck, a leafy peace sign tattoo poking out from her tight-fitting tee, and the matching soccer moms with their strollers outfitted with off-road tires. In the middle of the city. On a stroller.

“I don’t know,” I sputtered, the tension sinking into my every muscle and making my left eye twitch.

“Okay, so maybe he’s not here and maybe none of these idiots are his minions. But there is a way we can find him.”

I raised my eyebrows, expectant.

“The flowers.”

“The flowers?”

“They were sent from Lola’s on Harrison.” Nina whipped her cell phone from her purse. “All we have to do is ask who sent them and from where.”

“They’re not just going to give out that information, Neens.”

But Nina was already on her way, her sparkly black and pink phone pressed her ear, her index finger raised in the universal sign for “hold please.”

“Okay. I still don’t see how that is going to help us.”

Nina brushed me off, and I could hear the nasally voice of the information lady on her end of the phone. I heard Nina ask after Lola’s Flowers, then watched her grab the paper bag that, until very recently housed a maple scone, and jot something down.

“Satan’s number?”

Nina rolled her eyes, our special sisterly moment obviously over. “Lola’s Flowers. Call. Ask who sent the flowers.”

“I thought we were pretty sure it was . . .” I felt the saliva in my mouth turn sour, my stomach rolling over as I swallowed. Instinctively I wanted to say “dad,” or “my father,” but my lips wouldn’t form the word. “Him.”

Nina held the paper bag out to me. “Well, now we can be sure, and not only that, we can get the address where the flowers came from. Then it’s just a matter of a Sassy Stakeout!”

I stopped. “A Sassy Stakeout?”

“I know, but it was the best I could come up with on such short notice.”

“I don’t really think our stakeouts need names.”

“No.” Nina put her hands on her hips, nodded defiantly. “They definitely do.” She waggled the paper again.

I started toward it and then pulled back. “They’re probably not going to tell me anything.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

My stomach was still wobbling, but I took the paper anyway, staring at the ballpoint-printed blue script. It was only the number of a flower shop, but it seemed like the start of something—something I wasn’t sure I was all that ready to deal with.

I folded the bag in half. “I’ll call when they’re not so busy.”

“How do you know they’re busy?”

“Oh, it’s common knowledge . . . among breathers. Everyone knows that people always order flowers at”—my eyes cut surreptitiously toward the clock—“four twenty-seven p.m.”

Nina crossed her arms in front of her chest. “You know I’ve been alive a lot longer than you have, sweet cheeks.” She held her phone out for me.

I took the phone, then flopped back into my chair, sliding the phone across the table back to her. “It’s not that I don’t want to, Neens. It’s just that I’m not sure that I can.” I stuck out my lower lip. “And I’m not sure that I want to. I mean . . .” I worried my bottom lip, trying to garner sympathy from Nina, who sat glaring down at me with those dark, fearless eyes. “What if, after not talking to him for most of your life, you were faced with the possibility of finding out where your dad was?”

I stopped, immediately, the stupid truck bashing into my forehead. Nina tried to keep her face neutral, but I could see the almost imperceptible look of sadness that flittered through her eyes. She hadn’t been able to speak to either of her parents since she was twenty-nine years old. And she had been twenty-nine over a hundred years ago.

“Oh, Neens, I didn’t mean—”

She held up a hand, her entire countenance back to her effortless cool. “Not a big deal. I get it. And not only could this be the start of a very quick trail to your father, and whether or not he’s planning on sucking us all to a fiery grave, but you also have that other thing to deal with.”

“That other thing?”

“Yeah, you know? The whole ‘unable to commit wholly to a man yet always in need of male approval’ thing.” She shot me a smug smile, and I crumpled and tossed a napkin at her, missing her by a mile.

“Okay, okay.” I pushed myself up into a more sitting, less slumping position. “I can do this.”

“Besides, even if Lola gives you your dad’s number or address, it’s not like you have to use it.”

“You’re totally right. I mean, after more than thirty years he can’t just get to walk into my life whenever the hell he wants.”

“Right!”

“And you know what? Maybe I don’t think it’s time. Maybe—maybe I decide when it’s time. I mean, why now, anyway? Why now, out of blue, huh? Did he even consider that I have a life? And maybe I have things to do?”

Nina paused. “What kind of things?”

“I was going to give ChaCha a bath on Wednesday and I’ve got a Bed, Bath and Beyond coupon I should probably use.”

“Maybe just leave that part out.”

“
If
I decide to call him.” I tossed the paper, watching it flitter down to the table. “I call the shots now.”

I got to absorb my second round of badassedness for approximately thirty-four seconds before Nina thrust the phone and the bag at me all over again.

“Do it now, badass.”

I grabbed the phone but took my time carefully typing the numbers on the keypad. Nothing ruins a devil-may-be crackdown like a wrong number.

“This century, Soph.”

I typed in the last number, then held the phone to my ear, every single ring searing into my brain.

“Lola’s Flowers?”

The voice on the other end was sweet. The singsong quality of it should have put me at ease, but it didn’t. I started and stopped several times and cleared my throat until Nina snatched the phone from me, put on her sweet-as-pie voice, and asked for the sender’s address.

“I’m sorry, I can’t do that,” the woman on the other end of the phone said. I saw Nina’s lip twitch, showing off the smallest hint of angled fang.

“Oh, but I think you can,” she answered, her sweet voice now tinged with something slightly sinister. “You see, the man who sent these flowers is a sexual predator. And while I can certainly run on down and slap you with a search warrant, that would take a few moments and in those few moments a woman could be dead and you know who would have blood on their hands, dear? That’s right, Lola’s Flowers. So I suggest . . .”

The woman began to backpedal, though whether it was because she believed Nina’s episode of
Law and Order: Special Vampire Edition
or just because she wanted to free up her phone line I couldn’t be sure. Nina leaned over and scribbled down the address the woman read off and then thanked her gratefully and commended Lola’s commitment to the community and willingness to keep law and order. Once she hung up the phone, Nina pushed her dark hair over her shoulder with an elegant flourish and dangled the page between forefinger and thumb.

“Care to go for a ride?”

I was too nervous about tracking down Lucas Szabo to fear for my life as Nina pinballed her little Lexus coupe down the 280 freeway. The address wound us through town onto a weird exit, then dumped us into a nondescript section of town that looked like it masqueraded as the set for
Happy Days
.

“Make a left over there.”

Nina pointed. “Six-six-three-three. Should be right there.”

I followed Nina’s gaze. “Oh.”

My father’s original house had been in a chichi section of Marin and was firebombed about a year ago. Even with the new address pinched in my fingers I didn’t have a high expectation of finding the spot where the devil kicked up his cloven feet, but I didn’t expect this.

“Haven Crest Mortuary.” Nina blinked. “So . . . your father is an undertaker? Isn’t that kind of unfair?”

I shook my head, bat wings in my stomach going bonkers. “This can’t be right.”

Nina kicked open the car door, then turned and looked back at me. “Only one way to know for sure, right?”

I sucked in an uneven breath and attempted to shake some blood into my frozen fingertips. “I guess so,” I said to the dashboard.

Nina was rearranging the arc of her Peter Pan–collared vintage blouse when she stopped and looked at me, lips pursed, hands splayed on her small hips.

“Are you coming?”

I licked at my bone-dry lips. “Of course I am. What makes you think I’m not?”

“Because you’ve been rooted to the cement for a solid three minutes.” She held out a hand. “Come on.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

No one else save a vampire with super-vamp hearing could have heard me. Nina was at my side in a millisecond, her cold, stony hands rubbing comforting little circles on my back. “You can do this, Soph. I’m right here for you. We wouldn’t even have to tell anyone who you are.”

I worked to swallow. “What if he already knows?” My hands flew to the corkscrew curls of my bright red hair. “What if I look just like him?”

Nina cocked her head, her lips pushing up into a motherly smile. “I don’t think you look a thing like Satan. I would think he’s more”—she made little wispy motions with her hands—“smokey.”

She wound an arm through mine and began to budge me forward—inch by miniscule inch. “It’ll be fine,” she coaxed. “Just breathe. I can hear your heart hammering from here.”

I supposed I’d walked along with Nina, though once on the base steps of the mortuary, I couldn’t remember crossing the street. I was suddenly raging hot and I prayed to God that it was a nod to early menopause rather than the crackly glow from the Hell-bound. Nina whipped up the stairs and had her hand on the doorknob. I followed her up and put my hand on her arm.

“Ready?”

I wagged my head. “No. But I’m going in there. Alone.”

Nina’s arm dropped to her side. “Are you sure?”

I nodded, trying to muster up a touch of confidence with my certainty. “Uh-huh.”

Nina was my best friend and I’d already put her through too much. She’d risked her afterlife for me once already, and I wasn’t about to let her do it again—Satan or no.

“Just wait out here. I’ll try not to get turned into a flaming pile of ash.”

Nina forced a smile. “That’s comforting.” She pulled me into a tight hug anyway. “I love you. No matter what happens, I love you, Sophie.”

I nodded, feeling the emotion well up behind my eyes. I pulled open the door and stepped into the mortuary.