Tainted Blood (Hell's Belle Book 2) (16 page)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The capacity crowd of mostly disaffected youth danced themselves into a small frenzy during the opening act, amping up the energy in the venue.

"You sure you can hear me over all this screaming?" I muttered to my chest. It wasn't my idea to wear a low cut V-neck tee, but Darcy insisted on a microphone placed in the middle of my cleavage.

"It's almost like I have vampire hearing," she responded.

I snorted. So much for my own vampire hearing. My earpiece was turned almost all the way up to hear over the noise of the crowd.

"I can't see you," Max's voice thundered in the earpiece.

"Can you flash something?" Darcy giggled at the 7
th
grade humor. I pulled out my Zippo and sparked it up for about 10 seconds. I caught a similar flicker across the room, and closed the lid quickly. We had visual contact.

Apart from my low cut t-shirt, I was outfitted in my black bomber jacket, unzipped just enough to keep the microphone uncovered, and my combat blacks, including a knit skullcap in case the stage lights caught my copper-flecked highlights. A chain-mail choker kept my carotid artery safe from any hungry (or angry) vamps.

Surveying the crowd around me, I was glad I opted for "blend into the walls" rather than "blend into the crowd." These kids were exactly that, kids. Barely 18; maybe a sprinkling of 20-somethings. And while my half-vampire nature ages me more slowly than normal people, I felt like a damn granny next to them.

They were a strange bunch. The women wore leather skirts and halter-tops, the men skinny leather pants and tanks. I didn't fit in with this crowd. I was surrounded by a bunch of Kitties.

"Darcy, you look lovely this evening. Have I told you that?" Matty's voice boomed in my earpiece. "The black really brings out your...pale."

I gritted my teeth and punched impatiently at the black-painted brick wall beside me.

"Matty, that's a lovely thing to say to Darcy. But we really need to keep this channel open," I said calmly.

"It is open," he said. "I can hear you just fine."

"That's not what keeping the channel open means," I said, leaving off the words "you fuckwit." It was not my idea to give my moron cousin access to our communication system. Bertrand insisted, in case Matty needed us. "It means no talking on this frequency unless it has to do with the operation."

"It does have to do with the operation! It has to do with her looking all hot in her operational outfit."

Great. It took all my willpower not to storm backstage and kick the living crap out of my idiot cousin.

"Let it go, Nina," Max said. Based on his tone, he was annoyed too. At least I wasn't alone in my irritation.

I glanced over at him. There was no way Max blended into this crowd. Every guy had jet black, blue or purple hair spiked up into a style similar to Matty. When Matty pulled out an extra pair of skinny black leather pants from his luggage, Max actually paled at the threat of wearing them.

So like the chaperone at the high school dance, Max dressed up in the official Killing Haley security outfit. We knocked out one of Killing Haley's actual security guys in the alley behind the venue to acquire it. Kittie handpicked the security staff, and Matty didn't want her to know one of us was backstage.

Kittie's hatred of Darcy made her a target. Backstage was a place of prestige and privilege, and it was Kittie's domain. So Darcy hid with the sound engineers at the back of the venue. With her laptop and other tech accouterments, she didn't look at all out of place next to the sound nerds.

A kid barely 18 years old crashed into me. He steadied himself by gripping my shoulder. After muttering his thanks, he licked my cheek before bouncing back into the crowd.

"Ugh. Nasty." I wiped at my cheek with the sleeve of my jacket.

"Did that guy just...?" Max's voice was tinged with jealousy. That'll teach us for spelling without casting the damn circle.

"We aren't discussing this," I said, still shuddering from the nasty lick. "We need to keep this channel clear."

The crowd was growing, flattening me against the back wall. There were so many bodies wedged between me and the entry to my left, I no longer felt the icy blasts every time the door opened.

"Hey guys, this crowd is crushing towards the stage. If shit hits towards the front, Max, you're probably on your own. I won't get through this crowd."

"Wow. I had no idea you were so popular, Matty," Darcy said, sounding a bit breathless.

I groaned audibly, and didn't give a shit who heard it.

"Everyone here is so..." Max stopped, giving Darcy room to jump in.

"Sexy. Seriously, everyone in here is really kind of oozing sex." Her voice was kind of husky.

"Because of us, Doll, because of us," Matty crowed.

I ground my teeth and kept my mouth shut. At least we knew the love potion was working on its intended targets.

"I was going to say 'young,'" Max sighed.

Tuning out their chatter, I scanned the now-capacity crowd. Sweat dripped down my neck, trickling in a salty stream down my spine. I unzipped my bomber jacket a few more inches, but couldn't risk much more than that. Stakes crisscrossed my chest in a specially made holster. Frankie etched them with some weird runes, making them look even more bizarre than carrying around just plain old stakes. Of course, given the crowd, my "look" wasn't all that weird.

The audience jostled against me, and I pressed my body into the wall, trying to make myself as small as possible. Tonight didn't feel right. It was my first job ever without Frankie. When it came to the work, I trusted Frankie to have my back. No offense to Max and Darcy, but I wasn't sure about bringing them into this. Darcy managed communications from home base, and she was hardly ever with us in the field. I was worried about her safety.

Then there was Max. He was a good cop, no doubt. But he was definitely a cop first. And sometimes we had to do some very illegal things to get the job done. Was he up for that? I wasn't so sure. Add to it the love potion problem. He was clearly crushing on me, and his attentions were almost suffocating. With jealousy clouding his brain, his Berserker roiled just beneath the surface. Given the number of humans in the crowd tonight, if he didn't control it, he was a total liability.

And Frankie was out there, somewhere, probably in some manic frenzy.  But I didn't have a clear handle on him. Our psychic connection was nearly severed. Every once in a while, I felt a strong sense of elation, which told me he fed. This was often followed by panic, which told me that he’d lost control and killed. If Frankie came back from this, and there was a body count, would he be able to survive the guilt? Before he met my dad, Frankie was a monster. And those many, many years of violent kills left a dark mark on his soul.

Then, like a weak cell phone signal cutting out, my line to Frankie was gone. And that was my time of sheer terror.

Was he dead? Frankie was a full vampire — centuries old. He had more strength than a Beta-Vamp to stay alive. He just needed to fight. And with each of his kills, I feared he'd lose a bit of the fight that was in him.

Casper gently oozed into me, pulling me out of my thoughts. For once I was grateful for the ice of ghost that washed over me. My temples pulsed at the invasion, but it was nothing compared to the usual screaming migraine he ignited.

"Nice landing," I complimented him, and meant it. 

"Been working on it," he said proudly, but he sounded winded.

Whatever he just did cost him a little bit of his strength. I found out the hard way that the more Casper exerted himself, the more chunks of his ghost form got ripped away from him. Like decomposition causes physical bodies to rot away, certain stressors attack his ethereal form. The Blood Ops Spectral Research Team had no idea if ghosts eventually lose so much of their ethereal selves that they finally disappear, or if they just continue on as ghosts, with chunks ripped out of them. Studying ghosts wasn't easy. The ability to communicate not only with ghosts but also see them in their astral form was quite rare. So far, I was the only Blood Ops member in the history of the organization capable of doing it. Casper and I, we were groundbreakers.

"Did they find him?" I wanted to give him a minute to get his strength back, but I was anxious. Casper followed Bertrand's goons after our scrying session. But when they got close, Frankie ripped one goon's head off and sent the other one running. By the time they regrouped, Frankie was gone.

We had an idea on his general location, near the old train tunnels at the base of College Hill. If they found where Frankie was holed up, and he needed me, I was ready to cut this stupid mission short to go out and grab him.

"No, sorry," Casper wheezed into my brain.

"Dammit!" I pressed my head against the rough brick behind me, trying keep myself together. "Where'd they look?"

Casper mentally traced his steps, each location vivid in my mind's eye as he walked through them. From the bar to the base of the Hill, along the dark roads and alleyways in between, and then down into the dank tunnel. He turned up nothing.

"Something else," Casper said before taking control of my body and forcing my neck to turn towards the bar. I tried really hard not to fight it, knowing that wrenching my neck wouldn't feel so great. But it's damn hard not to fight against your body's possessor.

There, perched on a stool, was Alfonso. He looked annoyed, which probably had something to do with Eva, who sat right beside him, running her mouth. It looked like she was really going at a solid clip, too. He saw me watching them and gave me a sheepish salute while I just shook my head. It was bad enough that Darcy was in the thick of all this crap, but now Al and Eva? An old, alcoholic witch who couldn't remember spells and a clairvoyant who believed she was defrauding her customers with her psychic abilities.

"Why are they here?" I snarled.

"With Frankie down, they thought you could use the extra help."

"Casper, this isn't extra help. These are extra bodies that I have to watch out for if the shit hits the fan." Which it probably would, considering why we were doing the job in the first place. They had to get out of here.

"Hey, guys?" I groaned into my chest. "Eva and Al are at the bar. Helping."

"I love being part of a team!" Matty cooed.

"Shut up, Matty, or I will rip your goddamn throat out." My frustration had finally boiled over.

"She didn't mean that," Darcy jumped in.

"Yes, Darcy, I did."

"That's the stress talking, Nina. You aren't ripping anyone's throat out."

Gritting my teeth, I offered a half-hearted grunt of agreement. Darcy was already fragile, and I couldn't risk her getting emotional again. The last thing we needed was a wailing banshee.

But Eva and Al needed to leave before things turned ugly. The crowd at the concert was young and virile, and most of them looked pretty damn high. This was a dangerous combination.

"Going off comms and getting onstage. Roger. Over and out," Matty said. He sounded like a kid playing cops with his friends.

I felt slightly better with Matty off the network. Not only was he a prima donna, but he was also a damn fool and liable to screw the whole thing up. Especially with his number one demon fan drifting around backstage.

The audience surged forward when the band filed onto the stage. With the dense crowd finally moving away from the wall, I inched my way against it towards Eva and Al at the bar. Theoretically, it should have been easy, but I was also moving against the tide, so it was kind of like walking through mud. The sound of a cymbal crash drew my focus to the stage for a split second, and I saw Elias behind his drum kit, his mop of black curls dancing against his face, his eyes glowing red. Were those contacts? He looked almost rabid.

Then Matty bounded onto the stage, and the crowd pushed in a wave towards the band, screams of excitement cresting with the movement. In his torn up Sex Pistols t-shirt and skinny black jeans, he looked every inch the rock star. His violet eyes were lined in thick kohl, and when the guitars powered up behind him, they glowed a full-on purple. The preening, insufferable brat that I knew was left in the wings. On stage, he was almost a god. He may be a Beta-Vamp, but he sure knew how to harness a full vampire's irresistible sensuality when he was performing. With one pose, he had the crowd — both genders — completely lusting after him.

And I was related to that?

A sharp odor hit my nose, and I wrinkled it in disgust. The air around me turned slightly musky, like a feral animal staking out its territory with a pungent spray. Steam rose from the hundreds of bodies crowded in front of the stage, removing the rawness from the frigid February air that leaked into the drafty club. The air was thick, and the crowd pulsed with the rhythm that Elias was pounding out on his drums. Matty loosed a primal scream. The crowd joined him.