Hell's Teeth (Phoebe Harkness Book 1) (22 page)

She shook her head.

“No, we had to
settle
for Oscar. If it was him we wanted, we could have taken him any time at the club. No theatrics needed, no dramatic rat-a-tat-boom and all that crap.”

“But then…?” I was confused.

The door opened and my least favourite person in the world strode in.

Gio wasn’t wearing his customary pale suit, probably because I had bled all over it back in the van. He was wearing jeans and a black cotton jumper. It was like dress-down day at the vampire office. He smiled at me as though we were the best friends in the entire world, his too-bright eyes flashing happily on his thin pale face.

“We were
there
to collect the
old
man
, my precious girl,” he trilled. “Dear old Marlin Scott. One has to seize the opportune moment when one can.”

He closed the door gently behind him and stalked across the room, his shadow thrown up against the wall. I saw from his glance that he noticed I was no longer tied to the chair and he shot a rueful look at the two female vampires.

It was a strange sight, like seeing one of your teachers outside of school in their own clothes. A bit comical, but his towering presence rolled into the room before him, an almost physical thing, a wave of power. I shrank back in my seat involuntarily as he made his way across the chamber to me. Once bitten, twice shy. That’s me.

“It was
easy
to take Vyvienne Trevelyan,” he explained. “She lived alone, she’s not very high profile, and she drove the exact same way to work every day – so predictable.”

He shook his head, evidently amused by the quirks of humans.

“We had to pick her up ahead of schedule, of course. She wasn’t a
completely
unintelligent woman and she knew she was being watched, being followed.”

He reached me and hunkered down in a squat, rocking on his heels as he brought himself to my eye level. He looked like a little league coach about to give his team a pep talk.

“When we saw she was spooked, we moved in and took her, right off the street, just like that,” he clicked his long white fingers in front of my face, making me flinch. “Trouble was, we also needed her information. I’m sure you agree that I can be
very
persuasive when it comes to getting people to tell me what I want to know, so you can imagine my irritation when she told me she had destroyed all her files – destroyed everything
we
needed access to.”

A tiny frown creased his brow.

“Troublesome bitch,” Jessica growled from the sofa.

“Access to what?” I asked, still trying to lean back out of his reach.

“Not your concern,” Gio said. “We did eventually convince her to share the fact that she had another copy. We even got her to tell us where it was, in your very own workstation, safe down in Blue Lab where none of us wicked, wicked Genetic Others could get our nasty mitts on it.”

“Did you
convince
her with a pair of pliers?” I asked, forcing myself to meet his stare.

Jessica snorted a harsh laugh.

“Not me, my dear,” Gio replied, his eyes narrowing.

He didn’t like my defiance. Not one bit. For all his friendly airs, he wanted me scared, cowed by him. The friendly smile returned quickly, though.

“That work was done by another. Our dear friend the Bonewalker needs the teeth, you see. We need to supply the goods so it can do what must be done. All that hoodoo-voodoo nonsense is the Bonewalkers’ area you see. They’re good with the dead. I simply haven’t the time.”

He spread his hands plaintively. “I have an entertainment industry to run after all.”

Gio and his crew were working with a Bonewalker? This was unheard of.

“And Jennifer Coleman?” I asked. “Are you behind that too?”

His head was on one side like a curious cat. I hadn’t forgotten the feeling of his teeth tearing into my throat. Looking at him was like staring down a panther, who had decided to be playful but might tire of it at any moment. He was searching for a reaction. I gave him none.

“She just
loved
vampires,” Gio said. “She thought, as all her activist friends do, that we should all just fall into line and pay taxes and mow our lawns, like the rest of your little world.”

His smile fell instantly.

“We didn’t have to pull her off the street.” He snarled. “We just invited her here. Of course, it wasn’t
quite
the meeting of inter-species minds she had been expecting, but … the end justifies the means.”

“She put up a bit of a fight that one,” Helena grinned, raising her coffee cup to Gio. “I liked her. While she lasted, I mean.”

“
Marlin
Scott
, however, now that’s a trickier fish to catch,” Gio said, nodding knowingly at me. “How exactly does one get one’s hands on one of the city’s most powerful men? A man who is famously anti-GO, hugely paranoid and lives in a high security, private estate surrounded by security twenty-four hours a day? He’s almost impossible to gain access to, even for us.”

“But thanks to Oscar…” Jessica piped up.

“Ah yes,” Gio smiled benevolently. “Dear, sweet, stupid and delicious Oscar, my little baby bird. I was so happy when we saw him in the district. Imagine our good fortune, a Helsing right within the old man’s camp. All we had to do was invite him to Sanctum, ply him, spoil him, make him feel welcome. Give him what he wanted.” Gio looked nostalgic. “I do truly find myself fond of the child. His blood is sweeter than most.”

My skin was crawling. Gio was deeply unhinged, that much was clear.

“He certainly gave us what we wanted, information on his father’s movements,” the vampire told me. “I don’t know if you know this, Doctor, but Marlin Scott is not a well man. He hardly ever leaves his estate these days, barely ever attends any society functions anymore. He’s like a ghost. When Oscar let it slip that his dear old daddy would be attending his annual fundraiser in person … well, we had to seize the moment, didn’t we? To strike, as they say, while the iron is hot.”

“Harder to get to him than the others, though,” Jessica said. “Big public event, lots of security, hence the ‘terrorists’.”

She actually made quotation marks in the air with her fingers. Gio just nodded.

“The DataStream news is frantic with it already this morning,” he smiled. “You’ve been out cold all day. It’s all over the news. The attempted sabotage of the Mankind Movement by suspected GO rights militants. Let them take the blame. We left enough evidence at the scene to incriminate them.”

He shrugged. “We can’t afford to have the full fury of the Cabal rain down on us before our work is done. We of the Black Sacrament are only five, you see. Even if your people are weak, they outnumber us enough to make a difference so I didn’t use any vampires at the library. All my men at the fundraiser last night were human. You would be amazed what services money can buy, and I am not a poor man.”

“What did you want with Marlin Scott?” I asked. If he was going to kill me, I wanted answers first.

“What the hell are you people trying to achieve? And what does
any
of this have to do with my father?”

Gio held up a finger. He looked impressed.

“Ah, clever girl. You’re a natural detective it seems.”

He actually sounded pleased.

“What we wanted with him was his
teeth
,” he hissed, his mood darkening a little.
“But the best laid plans of mice and vampires … you can imagine the irony, when I had gone to so much trouble – causing a scene, frightening all those poor, innocent people who were just out to have a good time and show their support for the abolition of my kind – when we cornered old man Scott in the chaos, only to discover…”

“… The old fuck didn’t have any,” Jessica interjected.

Gio frowned over at her, irritated at having his monologue interrupted. He’s eyes flicked back to mine.

“
False
teeth
,” he muttered, spitting the words disgustedly as though they were rude. “You humans. Honestly. Seventy or eighty years and you all start falling to pieces. Marlin Scott had not had his own teeth in his wrinkled head for many a year.”

His face had darkened. I’m a big enough girl to admit that look scared me.

“Lucky we had a plan B,” Helena said soothingly to Gio.

She seemed to sense his temper was rising and was trying to buck him up. I wondered at their strange relationships. He simply nodded, blinking away the fury.

“Yes, of course. Dear little Oscar. I would have liked to have used the original. The Bonewalker tells me it’s stronger that way, for the sacrament it will perform for us. Otherwise, of course, I would have used the boy weeks ago, but we work with what we have. Oscar the blood junkie is to come in useful after all. The same bloodline, you see? The same DNA, the same family.”

He couldn’t help but see the disgust on my face.

“You still think we are the bad guys here, don’t you, Doctor? That
we
are the monsters under the bed? You haven’t got a clue. You sit there judging us, when you know nothing.”

He wasn’t remotely smiling now. Helena made a soothing, shushing noise at him but he ignored her.

“What we want is
revenge
; for what was taken from us to be returned. And what we want is for you humans to be held accountable for destroying this world we all used to enjoy. If you want to know who the villains are, look to your own.”

“The sun will rise,” Jessica said, her drawl making the words sound odd, “and the Pale will become once again what they were always
meant
to be.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I said. “You all seem to think I should, but I’m fucking clueless here!”

“You don’t have to know anything, my dear,” Gio told me. “All I need from you are the files I should have gotten from Trevelyan and then, once everything is in place, your teeth. The files are no good to me whatsoever encrypted. I want to know if your flunkies at the Cabal have managed to open them for us yet.”

His eyes flashed at me and I felt his power suddenly rush out and engulf me, as it had back in Sanctum. He was trying to roll me under his mind again.

“Who has the files?” he demanded inside my head.

But I was astonished to find that this time around I
could
resist.

I hadn’t stood a chance last time we met. In the club he had rolled me over like a puppy and I had wagged my tail, but now, although I could feel his will crushing down on me, I found myself pushing back against it.

“Fuck … you!” I managed through gritted teeth, struggling against his willpower.

I pushed all thoughts of Veronica Cloves and the Cabal deep down in my head. I didn’t know how I was managing to withstand his mental assault so well but I reasoned that if he couldn’t get the information out of me, it could buy me some time before the overenthusiastic dentist arrived.

Gio looked momentarily shocked. I felt him redouble his efforts, glaring at me. His presence hit me again like a wall. Pain shot through my head but my body felt strong and I pushed him away with my own mind.

“Answer me, damn you!”

He was becoming annoyed. Behind him, Jessica watched with detached interest, seemingly impressed, but it was Helena who came forward and put her hand on his shoulder.

“Gio, honey, you bled her remember? You won’t be able to.”

Realisation dawned on Gio’s face.

“I can still crack her,” he insisted. “It’s been long enough for her to build her blood back up.”

“Evidently not,” she said, her tone still calm and relaxing. “Here, let me.”

Gio stood, evidently irritated. He shook her hand off her shoulder and let the blonde vampire take his place in front of me. She smiled down at me encouragingly.

“Look at me, please.”

I stared determinedly at her chin. I had no idea why the fact Gio had drank from me meant I was immune to his persuasion, even if it was only temporary. I had no idea how these things worked. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to look into this woman’s hypnotic, friendly eyes.

“Come on now, don’t be silly about it,” Helena purred softly, as though she were trying to coax a nervous child.

She bobbed in front of me, trying to catch my eye. I stared down in avoidance, focusing on the pink and coral broach which she had daintily pinned to her jacket lapel.

She slapped me suddenly, across the cheek and very hard. The motion was as swift and unexpected as a viper strike. The pain and shock was so sharp that my head whipped to the side and I found myself staring furiously at her. She was still smiling, and in that second she had me in her eyes.

I immediately felt her mind cover mine like a smothering blanket.

Shit. I am comprehensively terrible at vampires. This much I have concluded.

There was no resisting her as I had done with Gio. I could see him stalking around in my peripheral vision irritably. I had wounded his pride by resisting him. The others had said he was moody, after all. Psychotically volatile, I would have said, but hey,
tomayto tomarto
, right?