Night Owls (24 page)

“Val, we don’t know how far the Creeps’ illusion carried. Maybe they were doing something that made him think he couldn’t get down the street.”

“I’d have heard the car half a mile away.”

“Okay. Well, he’s a smart guy. He’s probably going to roll in here with a perfectly good explanation in a few minutes.” They didn’t like one another, Chaz and Cavale, but Cavale could find a compliment for Chaz now and then. Where
was
he?

She shook it off and turned to the pair on the couch. “How’s our man of the hour?”

Elly looked up. “We’re out of puking danger for now.”

Justin gave Val a weak smile as she crouched down in front of him. “My arm hurts.”

“Yeah, it’s going to.” Val couldn’t help but stare at the change in his eyes. Last night, they’d been dark brown. Now, they were the color of burnished amber, maybe a little darker than your average Jackal’s, but not by much. She sniffed, trying to separate Justin’s scent out from the rotten meat stench of the corpses in the room. To her relief, he was easy to find—not because he was sitting right there before her, but because to her nose he was still bright and human, smelling of sweat and blood and the same soap Cavale used.

“Why did they run?” He addressed the question to Val, but looked around at everyone. “I didn’t think that last one was going to stop.”

“I don’t know.” She smiled at him gently, at first confused as to why he looked so alarmed.
Fangs,
she realized.
And blood.
She swiped her sleeve across her mouth, but it wasn’t going to do much more than smear the Jackals’ ichor around. “Justin, do you remember what you said to them? What it was you yelled?”

“You were right there, didn’t you hear?”

“Humor me.”

He looked, if anything, a little embarrassed. “I told it not to touch me. And, um, to go away.”

“No you didn’t,” said Elly softly. “At least, not in English.”

Justin twisted to stare at her. “What are you . . . Oh. Oh,
shit
. Seriously?”

“You said earlier you were starting to understand some of the writing. Maybe you picked up a phrase from the book.” The lie was obvious in the flatness of her voice and the way she ducked her head to look at her hands.

Cavale came to crouch beside Val. “I don’t think he’s buying it, El,” he said, and passed a shard of a broken mirror to Justin. “Look at your eyes. I think it dug in further.”

Justin took it and stared. And stared some more. “What the hell is this?” That yellow gaze swung wildly among them. “I’m still human, aren’t I? I don’t
feel
any different.”

“You still smell human,” said Val, pushing as much certainty into her tone as she could. “You’re not one of them.”

But she didn’t miss the uneasy glance that passed between Elly and Cavale that said they weren’t so sure.

Footsteps came clumping down the stairs as Sunny and Lia reappeared. They’d gone back to their preferred faces, and had donned paint-splattered sweatshirts and jeans. Lia carried a basin full of cleaning supplies; Sunny had an armload of rags.

Justin looked at them, then at the ash-smeared, blood-spattered disaster area that had been their living room. “Oh, no. Your things. Your
house
. I’m so sorry, you guys. I’ll—”

“You’ll nothing,” said Lia. “You’ll sit there and let Elly see to that arm.”

“But there are bodies. What do we do with the bodies? You can’t just, like, bury them in the backyard. The neighbors will know something’s up, wards or no. It’s an eleven o’clock news story waiting to happen.”

Elly blinked. “Your arm’s dislocated and we just got attacked by Creeps, and you’re worried about what the neighbors will think?”

“He’s polite,” said Sunny. “And probably in a fair bit of shock. As for the corpses.” She let the rags tumble from her hands and picked through the splinters that had been the coffee table. Her fingers closed over one of the rowan stakes. “There won’t be any.” She stepped over to the closest Jackal and toed it so it lay on its back. In one swift motion, she brought the stake down, into its heart. Ash began to spread from the spot. “It’ll take a little longer since it’s rowan, but it gets the job done.” She grinned at Elly. “That spike of yours would make it go even faster, but I know some women don’t like others touching their partners.”

The spike sat to Elly’s left. Her fingers twitched toward it, but she didn’t snatch it up. After a moment, she smiled, chagrined, and pulled her hand away. “It’s all right. I’ll try not to be jealous.”

“Good girl.” Sunny took the stake with mock reverence. It lasted about ten seconds, until she turned to the small pile of Jackals she and Lia had taken care of in the fighting. She hauled them out one by one and set to staking.

Cavale glanced sidelong at Val. “I guess the meeting with the vampires didn’t go so well?”

She shook her head. “Ivanov said we could handle it on our own. It was a test.”

“What kind of a test?”

“He knows who you two are. Your Father Value’s something of a legend. He wants to meet you, offer you some sort of jobs.” Elly perked up a bit, but Val cut her off. “You don’t want to take him up on it, Elly. Vampire turf wars never end well.”

“I think I can decide that for myself,” the girl said primly. “It’s not like I have any other offers on the table.”

Cavale grunted. “We’ll talk about that later.” He peered at Val. He knew her well enough to sense she’d left something out. “So he was testing us?”

“. . . and me. He wants me to Hunt for him.”

Cavale went still. The sounds of Sunny’s staking and Lia’s sweeping paused. Elly looked thoughtful.

Justin laughed into the silence. Hysteria tinged the edges of it, made it harsh. “Val’s not a hunter. She’s a
bookseller
. Booksellers are, like, peaceful, and . . .” He faltered and looked at Elly for help, but she was shaking her head.

“Are you kidding? You saw the way she took out those Creeps. Of
course
she’s a Hunter.” Her eyes shone as she said it, like a kid describing a cool scene in an action movie. Val half expected her to get up and start acting it out.

She couldn’t deny it: fighting them had felt good. Like she’d never stopped.
No. Justin’s right. I’m a bookseller. I am.
Only, she was more than that, too. She sighed. “I was a Hunter before I came out here, and Ivanov knows it.”

“Why’d you stop?” She could see Justin reassessing his image of her, and it stung. She couldn’t tell if he was disappointed that she’d stopped Hunting or if he was uneasy that she ever had in the first place. Those yellow eyes were too hard to read.

“There was a raid. Biggest nest we’d ever seen, probably a hundred Jackals squatting in an abandoned apartment building. Three stories aboveground, couple more below. We went in to wipe them out. We
did
wipe them out. But I was the only one who survived.” If she closed her eyes, she’d see the carnage all over again. Bad enough that she could still hear Angelo’s last labored, rasping breaths; she didn’t need to see the light going out of his eyes, not right now. “I left. I gave it up and came here.”

“Funny,” said Elly, tapping on her knee. “You came here to get away from Hunting. So did Professor Clearwater. Any particular reason you picked Edgewood?”

“Aside from it being on the other side of the country from Sacramento, no.”

“And yet you both ended up here, and when Cavale left us, he settled down in the next town over.” She cocked a thumb at the succubi. “From what I understand, Sunny and Lia came here to get away from things, too. Isn’t that . . . a little bit much for coincidence?”

Before any of them could mull it over, Val’s phone rang in her pocket, making her jump. She snatched it out, not bothering to look at the caller ID. “Chaz? Where the hell are you?”

There was a pause on the other end, then an older woman’s voice spoke: “Valerie? It’s Mrs. Hagerty from next door. I’m sorry if I’m interrupting you at the bookstore, but your friend’s car is out in front of my house. It’s running and the headlights are on, but I don’t see anyone inside it.”

Val’s heart dropped into her stomach. “Thank you, Mrs. Hagerty. I’ll come move it.” She snapped the phone closed and stood, trying to keep the anger at bay.

“What is it?” asked Lia. “What’s happened?”

“He never even left my street.” Her hands balled into fists. The claws were back, digging deep into her palms. There was only one thing she could think of that could have stopped him from trying to get to Sunny and Lia’s to help, and Val could see the sneering, foxlike face in her mind. “Katya took him.”

24

T
HERE WAS NO
conversation on the ride to Boston, even though Elly must have been bursting with questions. Val was glad she kept quiet, though. As well-intentioned as the girl’s inquiries might have been, Val was only barely holding her rage in check. She didn’t want to go snapping Cavale’s sister’s head off after she’d spent the night protecting one of Val’s own from the Jackals.

They parked on a side street in Southie. The Mustang was a bitch to parallel park; Val would make Chaz figure out how to wrangle it back out of the space if he was worried about his paint job.
Provided he’s capable of driving at all.
The thought made her pick up the pace.

South Boston was predominantly Irish, which made Ivanov and his people the outsiders. Val had heard stories of mob activity, but the players were almost always human. She saw a few ogham marks scratched into brick walls, a clear indication that there was at least a coven or two of Irish bloodsuckers, but Ivanov’s crew was in charge here as far as the supernatural set was concerned.

The
Stregoi
hung out at a bar on L Street, a tiny place that had been built during the Depression. The sign by the door suggested its maximum capacity was fifty people, but any more than thirty would feel cramped.

Ogham marks gave way to Cyrillic lettering as Val, Cavale, and Elly got closer. She couldn’t translate the words, but she knew Ivanov’s sigil. It was everywhere here: chalked onto walls, spray painted onto street signs, carved into doorways. Every now and then, though, she saw something surprising. Some of the Cyrillic symbols had been slashed through, as though someone were trying to erase them.
No, those aren’t scratches.
They were too uniform. They were Ogham runes. Ivanov’s rival, looking to send a message.

A bouncer stood outside the bar, arms folded, an expression of boredom on his face. Ivanov’s mark stood out on his arm in fresh, dark ink. It was so new, the tattoo was still smeared over with Vaseline. He held up a hand to stop them, maybe check their IDs, but Val growled, “Let us in,” and pushed some Command into it. He stepped aside obediently, his eyes wide with outrage. It wasn’t nice to order another vampire’s minions around, but considering how Katya had
kidnapped
Val’s, she couldn’t really muster a shit about protocol or good manners.

Inside, the bar was wasn’t quite at capacity, but it was damned close. Picking the vampires out of the crowd was easy: plenty of heads swivelled around as the three of them entered, but the humans quickly dismissed them. The four vamps kept staring, gaping at Val. A few sets of fangs slid out, but no one made a move. Elly and Cavale flanked her, just in case.

“Where’s Katya?” she asked, catching the eye of the closest vampire.

He was tall and bulky, his tee shirt stretched tight over his muscled chest. Yet, when Val stepped up close to him, he looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I . . . I don’t . . .”

“I’m right here, Valerie,” came her silken voice from the rear of the bar. The crowd parted, revealing her standing beside a pool table. She’d shucked the suit and returned to her regular street-rat chic: a manufacturer-distressed tee shirt with the logo of an ’80s hair band artfully flaking off, an equally fake-scuffed leather jacket, jeans that had been ripped on the assembly line, and a pair of Doc Martens that had possibly actually
earned
their scratches. “I didn’t think we’d see you so—” she choked on the words. Val had been moving from the first syllable, crossing the room in the space of a breath and catching Katya by the throat.

Katya snarled. She planted her palms flat on Val’s chest and
shoved
. It felt more like a kick. Val went flying, crashing back into a cluster of barflies and knocking them down like bowling pins. Cavale and Elly had started forward to help, but neither of them got very far before they were each restrained by a pair of regulars. One of the vampires made a grab for her, but Val was too fast, already back on her feet and lunging for Katya once more.

Her claws raked down Katya’s face before the other woman could catch her wrist.

“I’ll have your fangs for that,” Katya hissed, squeezing until the bones ground beneath her fingers. Val swung her other arm up, but someone reached out and held it steady.

“Valerie. Katya. What is this about?” Ivanov had emerged from his office, still in his impeccable suit, and stood regarding the two vampires as though they were unruly siblings scuffling over a toy.
That’s all Chaz is to them, really.

“I came for my Renfield.”

“He’s missing?” Ivanov frowned. “He was with you when we left.”

“And she was talking to him alone while you and I were in the house. Probably giving him Commands. I should never have—”

Katya let go of Val’s wrist. “I did not.”

“You did it once before. Why would I believe you now?”

Ivanov smiled. “Valerie. Katya wouldn’t do that.” He glanced at his second in command and corrected himself: “. . . again.” He considered Val a moment. She’d managed to get the Jackals’ blood off her face, but she hadn’t taken the time to change her clothes. “I see your Hunt was successful.” He gestured behind him and the men holding Elly and Cavale released them. “And I also see you’ve brought me Value’s children.”

“She didn’t bring us,” said Cavale, brushing off the sleeve of his jacket. “We came on our own.”

“To hear my proposal?”

He ignored Val’s warning look. “If you’ll agree to help Val with the Creeps, sure, we’ll hear it.”

The smile turned shrewd, one businessman recognizing another. “I believe we can work together. If you’d be so kind as to step into my office . . . ?”

Elly cleared her throat. “What about Chaz?”

Ivanov answered her, but it was Val he spoke to. “So quick to blame my Katya. I give you my word, she does not have him, and did not order him to make his way here. These Jackals you fought—is it safe to assume they know your boy has what they want?”

“They do.”

“And they’ve seen you with Charles?”

Ice coursed through Val’s veins as Ivanov’s meaning sank in. “. . . yes.”

“Then perhaps they’ve taken what is important to you, so you’ll consider a trade.”

“We never saw Bitch.” Elly’s voice was hushed. She looked at Cavale for confirmation. He nodded back grimly.

It made sense—more sense, even, than Katya trying to steal Chaz away again. The scent she’d caught outside of her house earlier hadn’t been the Jackals descending on Sunny and Lia’s. It had been Bitch, lying in wait. “I have to go,” she said. There might still be a trail, if she could get home fast enough. She could have easily dismissed Bitch’s scent as part of the Jackals’ blood that covered them all. But if she went back to where the Mustang had been abandoned, got out of these clothes and retraced . . .

“I’m owed an apology,” said Katya. “She can’t come in here and
threaten
me, then just walk back out.”

Val tensed. She could fight her way out, but not without endangering Elly and Cavale. She had no doubt that they were both good—she’d seen more than enough evidence of their skills in the last two hours—but the three of them against six vampires and a bar full of regulars weren’t odds she wanted to play.

Ivanov spared her the decision. “Later, Katya. Let her tend to her own, hmm? If she can put her worries about Charles to rest, I believe her apology will be more heartfelt, don’t you?”

Katya looked like she’d stuck her fangs into a lemon, but she relented. “Fine. Go. Give him my regards when you find him.”

Cavale came forward and placed a hand on Val’s shoulder. “You go on ahead. We’ll come find you when we’re done here.”

She almost argued, but leaving Cavale and Elly here would kill two birds: the meeting would appease Ivanov, and Val could get to Edgewood much faster if she didn’t have to drive. She handed the keys over to Cavale. “Be careful, okay?” It was almost exactly what she’d last said to Chaz, too. She fought down the pang of guilt.
No time for that.

Cavale pocketed them and grinned. “If you find him before we’re back with you, don’t tell him I’m driving his baby.” He gave her a little push. “Go,” he said. “Before they change their minds.”

With a deferential nod to Ivanov, Val got the hell out of the bar. She was halfway down the street before the bouncer on the door even realized someone had passed by.

 • • • 

E
LLY WATCHED THE
door swing closed behind Val. The vampires backed off, their expressions oddly relieved. What had Val done to set them all on edge like that? The only one who appeared sorry to see her go was Katya. She was old—Val had pegged her at around a hundred and fifty—but she looked like a grounded teenager, pouting at the door. She’d picked up a pool cue and was wringing it in her hands, probably imagining it was Val’s neck. Elly could hear the wood cracking; she almost expected Katya to bite off a chunk of it.

“If you’ll follow me,” Ivanov said softly. Even he seemed reluctant to provoke Katya. The hush followed them down the short hallway, the murmur of conversation only starting up again as Ivanov closed the door.

The room was elegantly appointed. Where the front of the bar belied its age in its creaking floorboards and dated décor, Ivanov’s office would have done equally well serving the head of a law firm. Leather-upholstered chairs sat on either side of the massive desk. A crystal decanter sat on a silver tray, though Elly was fairly certain the red liquid inside wasn’t wine set to breathe. The framed paintings on the wall were probably originals, worth more money than she could ever imagine.

Cavale pulled out a chair for her. She could see him scanning the room for potential weapons. Aside from the door behind them, the only other way out was a tiny window about five feet off the ground.
You’d have to be a contortionist to get through that.
If there was trouble, it was a squeeze through the window or a dash through a bar filled with Ivanov’s lackeys.

The back room of a tiny pub seemed like a strange place for someone like Ivanov to make the base of his operation. Father Value hadn’t talked too much about the vampires’ organization. Maybe being on his own away from the Brotherhood, he hadn’t thought she or Cavale would need to deal with them. The best she could come up with was that the vampires tended to keep within their colonies, no more than ten or twenty per. In bigger cities, there might be ten major ones, usually less.

The rest of what she knew about vampires had to do with killing them.

“Would you like a drink?” Ivanov sat, glancing between the two of them with a satisfied smile.

“No, thank you,” said Cavale. “We can’t stay very long. Val needs us.”

“Ah, Valerie.” He said it with a sigh, as if she were a wayward child. “Quite the Hunter, isn’t she?”

It was probably a rhetorical question, but Elly saw an opportunity. “She is. But I was told there weren’t many Creeps left up this way to fight. Why are you looking to bring her back to it now? And hire us, too?”

Ivanov smirked at her barrage of questions. “Even if their numbers are dwindling, it’s still a job left unfinished, isn’t it? And, since Valerie came to me needing help with a nest of them, I think you’d agree that they can cause much trouble even in their decline.”

“Why us, then? The vampires out front looked tough enough. Why not appoint Hunters from your own ranks?”

At first, Elly thought he was gesturing between them. Then she realized he was motioning at her arm, where Silver and Pointy lay nestled against her skin beneath her sleeve. “Why use a rowan stake when you have silver to hand? It’s the same principle. Use the best tools you have before choosing from the lesser.”

She couldn’t argue with that; the way Val had fought at Sunny and Lia’s spoke to years of training. And she’d said she was rusty. “All right, then why us? Why not find the Brotherhood and bring them in on it? They have to know more than we do.”

Ivanov shook his head. “But they don’t, my dear. Not from what I understand.”

Elly stole a sideways glance at Cavale. His posture was casual, almost bored, but below the desk’s level—and out of Ivanov’s line of sight—his index finger tapped rapidly against his thigh.
He’s nervous.