Midnight Ash (A Blushing Death Novel) (22 page)

He was quiet for a few minutes, looking at me with irritated but thoughtful eyes.

“I’ll accept that . . . for now,” he added at the last minute. “I’d never walk into a vice operation without some sort of training but when this is over, we
are
going to revisit this issue. I want to do more than clean up your messes.”

“I clean up my own messes, thank you very much!”

“Dahlia!” he snapped. He rarely called me by name so I knew to pay attention.

“All right, agreed,” I conceded, but I didn’t like it.

I stepped out into the sunshine and slipped my sunglasses on as the wind whipped around my face. The sun seemed really bright as I squinted up at the clear blue sky. Maybe I was spending too much time in the dark. I pulled my phone from my bag and dialed Jade’s number. It rang twice before she picked up.

“What’s up?” The car stereo died to a quiet murmur in the background as she spoke.

“Where are you headed?” I asked.

“To your house, actually. Kurt and I are going to finish setting up the computer system,” she said. I could almost hear the smile in her voice.

“Good, I’ll meet you there,” I said with long strides back to my car.

“We got a lead?” she asked. The smile faded from her voice. She was all business again.

“We got a lead,” I confirmed as a satisfied smile crept across my lips.

After Jade and Kurt managed to get all the circuitry hooked up and working in my training room, it was almost three in the afternoon and we were running out of daylight hours. There was no way in hell I was chasing Derek’s lead while the vamps could be awake. I wasn’t stupid or suicidal.

“So you said the guy’s name was Simon Tacoma, right?” Jade asked as her fingers flew across the keyboard. Three screens in front of her hummed to life and filled with data, pictures, spreadsheets, and numbers. Two other screens off to the side were split into four shots on each side of the outside of my house. Unless someone was watching them continuously, I didn’t really see the point of having them. I didn’t want to have that argument again with Patrick, though. These cameras made him feel better. Who was I to argue?

“What system are you in?” I asked with a skeptical tone. Derek hadn’t been able to find anything but Jade pulled screens full of information up instantly.

“You don’t want to know,” she warned, sliding a sideways glance and a coy little smile in Kurt’s direction. He’d been disturbingly quiet through the whole thing but he smiled back at her in a way that made me feel like a third wheel. I had the sneaking suspicion that I
was
intruding.

Jade sifted through the information and narrowed her search parameters, which seemed to take the longest. The clock ticked away as she typed.

“Well, there’s no birth date, no birth certificate, no home address, no VISA records, or even a country of origin,” she said, still staring at the screens. Kurt pointed to the one on the left and she turned her head.

“Then how did you find him?” I asked as I moved up closer behind them.

“He has a Japanese credit card,” Kurt said matter-of-factly. “There.” His focus and his voice were sharp and determined like the hunter he was. He pointed to a list of ‘1’s and ‘0’s on the screen

“Can we find out if he rented a house, an apartment or a hotel room here in town?” I asked, getting excited. I could feel it. We were getting close.

“If he used that credit card or a bank account, we’ll find him,” she said, following the infinitesimal, digital trail Simon Tacoma had left behind like a bloodhound.

I watched as bills, trails of numbers, and other binary code passed before my eyes. I didn’t understand it but Jade and Kurt seemed to. That’s all that mattered.

After another half an hour, I’d lost track of what they were doing and had moved on to cleaning my gun. It was soothing.

Jade gasped in surprise and I shot out of my chair. “Gotchya!” she shouted.

“You got an address?” I asked as I stared at the screen.

“We sure do,” Kurt said, resting his hand on Jade’s shoulder, giving her a soft squeeze. He peered down at her with pride and complete adoration. She turned her brilliant green eyes up to him and smiled in return, staring at each other like I wasn’t even in the room.

“Can you write it down for me? I still have a few hours before sundown.” I turned to my weapon’s cabinet and slid my gun back in the shoulder holster. Then I snagged my favorite bowie knife and its calf sheath and strapped it on underneath my jeans.

“You’re not going without me,” Jade said in a tone that told me she was ready to fight with me to get her way.

“Or me,” Kurt added.

Truthfully, I was glad. I could use the company and Kurt was enough backup to make me feel as snug as a bug in a rug, or something like that.

“Then suit up,” I said, removing the crossbow from the peg for Jade.

The address Jade found for Simon Tacoma was campus housing. Lower class than I would have assumed but they could come and go all night long and no one would think twice about it. The house itself was dilapidated, needed repainting and probably would’ve been better off condemned. The dwelling, if you wanted to call it that, was just off of Greek row with the dirty outlines of Greek letters still visible on the front of the house above the porch. The windows were grimy and there were no curtains or blinds blocking the sunlight on the second floor.

We advanced up the uneven concrete steps from the street with caution. I opened my jacket and unsnapped the guard over the butt of my Smith and Wesson. Kurt stepped onto the porch first. I gladly let him. The porch looked rickety at best and deadly at the worst.

I gave Jade the signal to hang back and she didn’t argue, holding the crossbow confidently, the butt pressed into her shoulder. I stepped up and banged my fist on the heavy front door. The solid oak would probably take a battering ram to get it open. Good thing I brought Kurt.

We waited a few moments in silent expectation. No one answered.

I pulled my gun and glanced over at Kurt. “Would you like to get the door or should I?” I asked, holding up my gun.

He shook his head in exasperation with a quick eye roll but I could tell he didn’t mean it. He couldn’t hide the twitch at the corner of his mouth and the jump of his square jaw. “I think my way would draw less attention,” he offered, shoving his sleeves back.

I backed away from the door with a flourish of my arm, giving him full access. He snorted to himself and stepped up to the door. He gripped the doorknob and turned, bracing his shoulder up against the heavy door. Kurt rammed his body hard into the wood, forcing all his strength into the solid structure. The doorjamb cracked and finally popped away from the casing.

Kurt stepped back and the door swung open wide. I held my gun with both hands, aiming into the darkness of the house beyond. Ladies first.

I took that first step and the scent of musty indifference of a home long locked up and abandoned filled my nose. There was something feral in the air that I couldn’t place, thick, dirty, and filled with the humidity of growing mold. The carpet was brown, I think, and each step I took rustled up dust and dirt into the air. I wanted to choke as my lungs filled with years of dirt and God knows what. I couldn’t. If there was someone in there, I didn’t want to alert them that I was in the house. I stopped breathing instead. That seemed safer anyway.

Kurt and I treaded through each of the rooms on the bottom floor but the house was empty, eerily still. There wasn’t even furniture except for the small table in the kitchen that wobbled on three legs. We came around the corner to what should have been the dining room. Four coffins were laid out in a neat little row, head to toe, head to toe.

I stepped up to the coffin closest to me. Solid pine with a high gloss finish. Quality stuff. Kurt stepped up on the other side and got ready to open the lid. I retrieved the silencer Patrick had ordered special for me as a Christmas gift and twisted it into place. The soft grind of metal on metal filled my ears and the empty space. Once the silencer was secured, I took a firm stance with my gun aimed at what could be underneath the lid. Kurt yanked the lid up.

My pulse raced through me as I peered down into the empty coffin, which was oddly familiar. The coffin had a rich burgundy liner with a gold and beige woven bed and pillow. On the inside of the coffin lid was the fresco from my dream. Except it was a mural on the inside of a coffin. A shiver ran through me as the idea of being locked in Midnight Ash’s coffin with her settled over me.

My body tightened and I clenched my fist into a white-knuckle grip around the butt on my gun. My heart pounded in my ears as the scent of those candles filled my sensory memory again. Whether it was her coffin or her mind, I didn’t want to be back there ever again.

“Dahlia?” Kurt asked, his voice barely a whisper.

I glanced over at him, startled. I nodded and motioned for him to move on to the next one. One after another was empty.

We moved into the den to find walls covered in empty bookshelves and another three coffins. Kurt and I moved with expert efficiency as we opened the last three coffins. They were just as empty as the first four. None were as ornate as Midnight Ash’s, though. A part of me wanted to destroy it just so I would never ever have to relive that dream again. There wasn’t time. The sun was fading and I didn’t want to be here when they woke up. Wherever they were.

“I don’t get it,” Kurt said, glancing around at all the empty coffins. “Where are they?”

“Basement?” I asked. If six vampires were up and walking around in the basement, I didn’t want to be down there with just me and Kurt, especially if they were ninjas. That was a bad situation waiting to happen.

We stepped to the only door on the bottom floor that we hadn’t opened. Kurt stepped in front of me. I gave him a dirty look but he just shrugged his shoulders and gripped the doorknob in his large hand. He was under direct orders to protect me. I wasn’t about to argue. It wouldn’t do me any good and it would get Kurt in trouble with Dean. I didn’t want that.

He pushed the creaking door open and sniffed the stale air from below before he took his first unsure step down the rickety stairs. The smell hit me before I had a chance to be afraid of the dark abyss below. The air was pungent and almost debilitating as it filled my nostrils.

My heart beat faster and faster with each step we took into the dark, dank basement. The walls were stone that hadn’t been refurbished or insulated in the last 50 years. Water seeped through the stones from the ground beyond. The smell was different than the one on the first level. Instead of being stale and choking, the air was moist and thick, with a hint of the sickeningly, sweet smell of metal. I knew what that underlying smell was and so did Kurt. Blood, death, and decay lay at the bottom of the stairs.

“I don’t like this,” Kurt whispered back at me but I didn’t respond. “There’s a smell I can’t place.”

My night vision was pretty good but it wasn’t that good. Once we got past the little crack of light from the open door at the top of the stairs, I was completely blind. I carefully stepped down from the last step onto a squishy floor. The ground was solid underneath but there was a film of something about half an inch thick that oozed around my feet. It was slimy and for everything I was worth, I didn’t want Kurt to find that light switch. I didn’t want to know what I was stepping in and what slowly seeped through my ballerina flats and over the top of my feet.

“I think I found the light,” Kurt whispered.

I took a few shallow breaths before the click of the chain from the dangling light bulb echoed in the darkness. I tightened my grip on my Smith and Wesson until it was almost painful. I didn’t want to see. God help me, I didn’t want to see.

A single light bulb in the center of the basement flashed to life, swinging back and forth like a hangman’s noose. A soft yellow light emitted a few feet around the orb as it swayed. My eyes adjusted to the low light. We were free from vampires but we weren’t alone.

I glanced down at my feet and bile rose in my throat. I tried to slide my foot through the thick layer of gore covering the floor. The dark, rust-colored stain of blood both old and new covered my feet. Human body parts littered the floor like trash, a leg here, an arm there, and a head a few feet to my right. A bit of unidentifiable flesh rested next to my toe, the skin and muscle still attached.

What is that?
What is that?
I repeated over and over in my mind as if identifying that one piece of flesh would cause everything else to fall into place. A little voice inside me kept screaming to run away but I couldn’t seem to move my limbs and make them do what my brain knew was smart.

Three heads with horrified expressions still etched on their faces had been tossed in different corners, their dull, lifeless eyes fixed on nothing. I took shallow breaths, trying not to vomit. With each breath, the smell of blood and decomposing meat filled my senses. A delicate hand reached up through the sludge of blood and mutilated flesh, her wedding ring and engagement ring still attached to the dismembered hand.

FUCK!

I couldn’t tell how many bodies were down there. The floor was covered in too much blood for it to be one or two. A sound from the first floor drew my attention away from the horror that surrounded me. I took a step back and peeked up the stairs but Kurt knew before I did.

“Jade, don’t come down here,” he ordered.

“What’s taking you guys so long?” she called, her voice shaking and unsure.

“We’re going to be a few minutes,” I said, my voice quaking with the horror that was etched on Kurt’s face. He moved forward, toward the far corner where small movements through the debris on the floor echoed in the tiny space. I followed him, trying to lift my feet through the thick fluid pooled and congealed on the floor. I gripped my gun as hard as I could. As long as I had that, nothing, not even what was in that corner could hurt us.
Right?

Just outside the light, chains moved. A chink . . . chink . . . chink filled the claustrophobic space as they beat together before being dragged through the blood and gore. The high-pitched clank of chains softened to a muted clunk as they were coated with blood. I inched to the edge of the light, not daring to move any further. Kurt remained shoulder to shoulder with me.

“What is it?” I asked in a desperate whisper. Even I heard my voice tremble as I spoke.

“Fae!” he said, astonishment filling his voice.

“What?”

Kurt glanced around me, evaluating our surroundings and moved back to the light bulb. He forced the bulb in the direction of the dark corner, revealing a man, huddled in on himself. Chains restrained his wrists, ankles, and throat.

Heavy black irons bound his wrists, ankles, and a thick collar clamped around his neck. His skin beneath the blood and filth was the most beautiful copper color I’d ever seen, like a shiny copper pot that glowed. His skin shimmered through the gore as the light reflected off his arm and exposed back. His hair was the color of wheat in the summer, cut at odd angles like it had been hacked off with an ax or a large dull blade. Large chunks were missing from his mane and the strands were uneven. He shivered and shook against the cold stone and iron bonds.

“What have they done to you?” I asked in a soft gasp of horror.

His head turned, glancing at us over his shoulder. His eyes met mine and I was struck by the color. Polished amber swirled in his irises. The depths or sorrow in them filled me with grief as I drowned in those eyes. His age washed over me like an ocean wave, never ending and constant. His gaze was filled with pain, defeat. He glared at me as if he could see straight through to my soul.

“They’ve kept him encased in stone and bound with iron for what looks like a very long time. He’s lost his mind and it appears he’s acquired a blood lust,” Kurt whispered almost to himself as he took another step back.

“I don’t understand.”

Kurt gazed at me with sadness furrowing his eyebrows together and my heart skipped a beat. “The Fae need nature to draw power from. The iron hurts them like silver hurts us. Do you see the skin beneath the chains? He’s scared beyond repair. The vampires have kept him from his natural environment and tortured him. They’ve turned him into a monster, Dahlia.”

“Can we help him?” I asked as I peered down at the Fae crouching in the pool of gore covering the floor. The empty stare that the Fae gave me chilled me to my core.

“I don’t think so,” Kurt said.

I took a step forward, looking for some type of recognition in the Fae’s amber eyes. He jumped at me so quickly that I didn’t see him move until his hands were only a breath away from my throat. The chains caught him and he fell to the floor still straining to reach for me. I took a large step back, scanning his body as he sat crumpled in a heap of flesh and gore. His wrists and neck had developed deep, ugly scar tissue where the iron had pressed against his beautiful, glimmering skin, burning and wounding him over and over again. A tiger with a sword strapped to its back had been burned onto the Fae’s back and covered him from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. His skin puckered where the hot iron had burned into his flesh, marring his beauty forever.

“Kurt, look at this,” I said, pointing to the Fae’s back.

When he didn’t respond, I turned.

Kurt wasn’t watching me or the Fae anymore. His eyes were on the stairs.

“He’s their pet, Dahlia. They drove him mad and fed him as they feed.” Kurt’s voice filled with anxiety. He wanted out of there quick and I couldn’t blame him. He finally turned to me, sadness filling his expression. “We should put him out of his misery.”

“How do you kill a Fae?” I took the silencer from my gun and returned it to my jacket pocket. I shoved the gun back into its holster but I left the guard unlatched.

“Iron.”

It seemed so simple but who carried iron around? Not me! I dealt in vampires and werewolves . . . not Fae.

“I don’t have that,” I said in an almost lost voice. I was suddenly tired of killing. This man had been something beautiful once and now he was nothing but a beast to be slaughtered. I swallowed hard and closed my eyes. I was surrounded my nothing but death and horror. I hadn’t realized I was crying until I tasted salt on my lips.

“We’ll have to burn it then,” Kurt said, interrupting my internal demoralizing. “We should burn it anyway.”

“I don’t even know his name,” I said absently, still staring down at the magnificent monster crouching in the dark corner.

“Does that really matter?” Kurt snapped as he moved closer to the stairs.

I knew he was worried about Jade and had probably had enough horror for one day. To be honest, so had I.

“It matters to me,” I answered, regret making my voice small.

“Do you know the name of every vampire you killed?” Kurt snarled and his tone held a quick edge of animosity. We’d been down in the blood-soaked basement among the dead for far too long.

I turned on him with trembling hands, fire burning in my gut and shining in my eyes. “No, but perhaps I should’ve. Maybe that would make me less of a monster.”

“Byron,” a deep, gravel-filled voice said from the dark corner. “My name is Byron.”

I snapped back around. The Fae shivered and hugged his legs in the dark. I was quiet for a moment as I recovered from the shock of hearing his gruff, hoarse voice. He sounded as if he hadn’t used it but to scream in too long. Underneath the crag of unused vocal cords was a clear melodic quality that once would have sounded like bells. It seemed like those few words took more energy and more humanity than he had left.