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

"Frankie, we gotta get out of here." I pulled gently on his arm.

"Please don't leave me." Kate's voice was so weak, I could barely hear her whisper.

Frankie didn't move. He just looked sadly at the sick Beta, his eyes filled with tears.

"Come on, Frankie." I nudged him again. "We can't be in here right now. Dr. O's on his way."

He hesitated. "We can't leave her like this."

"We aren't going to do her any good if we get sick, too," I reasoned.

He ignored me. I changed tactics.

"Stop being a stubborn ass," I raised my voice. He still ignored me.

Kate moaned and fell into a fetal position. She began to convulse. Frankie made a move towards her, but I grabbed him. Standing in front of him, I took him by both shoulders and stared into his eyes.

"We need to get out of here before she barfs blood all over us. Don't make me go witchy on you."

It was an idle threat. Only a few weeks before, I first learned that I am half-witch as well. My witch abilities were dormant for years — hidden by my vampire genetics — until an unfortunate encounter with a spelled knife turned on the hocus-pocus. I was working with my witch mentor, who's also my aunt, on controlling my newfound abilities. Much to Auntie Babe's frustration, I was not taking to it like a fish to water. If I tried to unleash my mojo in here, poor Kate could very well blow up, taking Frankie and me along with her.

Kate's moaning was now punctuated by high-pitched cries of pain. Clearly in agony, she writhed on the floor. Her hands formed into claws, and she scratched at the body of the seriously dead vampire closest to her. His skin tore like dried papier-mâché as she drove her nails into his corpse. As she tore at his flesh, blood bubbled out of her mouth.

"She not going to make it!" I shouted at Frankie, pushing on his lanky six-foot frame. "And neither are we if we don't get out of here!"

I shoved Frankie harder towards the door. He finally snapped out of his stupor and we fled to across the room to the stairwell door. I pushed on it, but it didn't budge. Shaking the handle, I pressed all my weight against it. Nothing. I moved aside and Frankie levered a kick at the door. He succeeded in denting the door, jamming it even harder into the frame.

"Crap, Frankie! There's no time!" I yelled over Kate's ear-piercing shrieks.

Frankie looked wildly around. "Can we break the windows?"

Everything was soaked in blood. Blood we couldn't touch. Crap. I had no choice.

"Hold on!" I closed my eyes tightly and I tried to clear my thoughts, but between Kate's shrieks and Frankie's desperation creeping into my head, not to mention my own stress, my mind was too unfocused to do this right. Oh well. Close enough was going to have to do.

I felt the air shift around me, and I latched onto this small breeze, willing it to grow to hurricane strength. My hair loosed from its ponytail and slapped across my face. The swelling wind pushed me forward. Grabbing Frankie's hand for stability, I cried out the few words of Latin I could come up with that approximated "break the damn glass." The five plate glass windows on the south side of the room shook. I repeated the words louder, putting more force behind them. The wind turned hurricane strength, pushing us across the room, dangerously closer to Kate. Finally, the windows shattered one by one, shards of glass falling 26 stories to the sidewalk.

I opened my eyes. Kate was about to explode. Blood frothed around her lips, her shrieks now muffled as the blood worked its way up her throat.

Hands still clutched, Frankie and I nodded at each other, knowing exactly what we had to do. Together, we ran straight for the windows, and leapt feet first into the star-filled sky.

Frankie's hand slipped out of mine as we both twisted our bodies and made a grasp for the ledge. I caught it, just barely, almost wrenching my shoulder out of its socket on the impact. Frankie similarly stopped short next me. We dangled 26 stories over downtown Providence.

I heard the rush of blood explode out of Kate, like a broken faucet spewing at high force. We were too late. I only hoped Max and Dr. O wouldn’t be too late themselves. Frankie could survive the drop. I, on the other hand, would totally Humpty Dumpty it.

The elevator dinged open. "What the hell?" Max's voice echoed out the window.

"Out here!" I called, my voice strained by my intolerable position. I was losing feeling in my arms, and my fingers were cramping.

Max peered out the window, and a look of disbelief spread across his face when he saw our predicament.

Max's strong grip latched onto my wrist. He hauled me up and pulled me through the window, steadying me on my feet before reaching down and pulling Frankie through, too.

"What the hell were you doing out there?!" He rounded on us, his Berserker temper at the surface.

"Take it easy, will you? It was go out the window or get super-soaked in opium-tainted blood. We picked our more survivable option." I nodded at the disintegrating vampire bodies at the back of the blood-soaked room.

A second elevator dinged. The doors swept open and Dr. O stood inside, momentarily shell shocked by the carnage in the room. Frankie and I both rubbed feeling back into our shoulders.

"I see I am too late." He stepped from the elevator into the room. He slipped a little on the fresh blood, and Frankie caught him before he landed ass first in the mess.  "Nina, Frankie. Are you both all right? No blood spatter on you?"

Frankie turned me around and started poking and prodding. His scrutiny of my body was awkward, and my face flamed hot when he turned me around to face him and opened my jacket, feeling quickly around my breasts and down my stomach.

"Your turn," he said with a wink that made me want to jump back out the window. I scowled at him and started giving him the once over.

"Um, Doc?" I called, finding a clean slice in the back shoulder of his black leather jacket.

Dr. O came quickly, shining his flashlight where I pointed. He pulled carefully at the opening in the leather, exposing the skin on Frankie's back. The cut went through Frankie's t-shirt as well.

Dr. O pulled his hand away, sticky blood caked to his fingers. He looked troubled. "The skin is intact."

"That's a relief, right?" I asked. My heart was racing.

"Frankie, there's a slice in your jacket, and there's blood around it." Dr. O's voice was measured. "Do you know if you got cut?"

"Cut?" he asked. "I think I would have felt that."

Dr. O's face didn't relax with Frankie's assertion. "Are you sure? Perhaps you already healed?"

"Of course I am sure," Frankie barked. He turned quickly to face us, his eyes glowing and fangs extended.

The force of Frankie's anger jumped from his body and into mine, my own fangs puncturing my gums as they broke out of hiding. I turned just as quickly towards Dr. O, my heart racing as Frankie's adrenaline surged through me.

Dr. O actually took a step away from both of us.

"Is that the binding?" Dr. O asked calmly.

I nodded, breathing slowly to try to shut Frankie out of my head.

When a psychotic vampire named Marcello almost killed me a few months ago, Frankie had to bite me in order to bind me to him so that I could survive Marcello's death blow. Frankie had kept me alive, but I was now bound to him as a "slave" or "companion," depending on which vamp you asked. That meant I could feel his emotions and he could feel mine if we didn't work to keep our feelings closed off from each other. Usually, it was simple, but the more intense the situation, the harder it was to keep the mental wall between us. It was a weird situation, but we were coping the best we could.

"Whoa, Frankie." I slipped in between the two men and gently placed my hands on Frankie's shoulders. "We're just checking, okay. You'd do the same with me."

He nodded, his eyes slowly losing their neon brightness. "I wasn't cut."

"Okay, then, you weren't cut. But you're going to have to toss the jacket. We don't know whose blood that is."

His face fell. "I liked this jacket."

"No doubt, it's a hot jacket. But you'll find a new one. A better one!"

I tried a perky smile, but Frankie's expression remained unchanged. Defeated, he stripped the black leather off and dropped it into a heap on the floor.

Dr. O still didn't look convinced, but he let it go. "Let's not tempt fate. You two need to get out of here."

"What about this mess?" Max asked, frustration creeping into his voice. "I had to pull jurisdiction with the Providence PD to get this building back on the grid. They are going to want to know why. Not to mention a good explanation for all the windows that popped out of the top floor of a vacant high-rise."

"Is there any way to stop their decay, so Max can take the bodies in?" I asked Dr. O. "They made the news the other night. Maybe a bust-gone-bad?"

Dr. O nodded his head thoughtfully.

"With this amount of blood missing and gaping holes for intestines?" Max snapped. "Are you kidding me?"

"Don't worry. The Cleaner is on her way." Dr. O shuffled through the blood to the windows, turning out his pockets, looking for his phone.

At the mention of The Cleaner, Frankie wiped the forlorn look off his face and grinned like an idiot.

"The Cleaner?" I asked.

The elevator rang again. The doors slid open. Despite his irritation, Max burst out laughing.

An old woman shuffled out, pushing a cleaning trolley. She was 94 if she was a day, wearing a flower print housedress. She had sparse white hair and a hump back that made her stoop even shorter than my five feet.

"This it, O'Malley?" She wheezed at Dr. O as she scuffed past Max, giving him a shove that belied her diminutive size.

"Yes, Dora, and thank you for coming on such short notice," Dr. O said as she gave the woman a small bow.

The old lady pulled out a pack of Virginia Slims and a Zippo lighter. With a cigarette dangling from her lower lip, she surveyed the mess as she sparked the lighter and lit up. The smell of lighter fluid and acrid smoke mixed with quickly decomposing organic matter.

"I'll start at the other end while you take the bodies out?" she asked after taking a long drag. "Do you want it spotless? Or do you need a little body fluid left over? And leave the windows out? Or replace them?"

"Let's replace the windows," Dr. O said. "Can you dispose of the glass on the sidewalk?"

"That'll be extra." She waited for Dr. O to nod his approval. "Okay, windows done. And the blood clean up?"

Dr. O turned to Max, hands spread. "What do you think, Agent? How would you like to handle the rest?"

"I think we should leave some blood," Max sighed. "I'll have to get a forensic unit up here and treat this like a crime scene."

"Right, Cookie," Dora blew a perfect smoke ring. "Leave the bodies piled there, then."

"How do we keep them from rotting?" I asked, looking at the festering meat in the corner. To properly kill a vampire, they had to turn to dust. These vampires were molting quickly, the age finally catching up with their flesh.

The Cleaner took a long drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke out in my face. "Trade secret, doll."

"Can you dump some bad meth on them before you leave?" I said as I waved the smoke away with my hand.

"Sure, anything you want, Princess," she wheezed. "How about we burn it down, like a meth lab gone bad?"

"Really, that's not a bad idea," Frankie said with a shrug.

"Now we are planting drugs and burning buildings?" Max asked, looking at us incredulously.

"Would you rather explain decaying vampires?" Dora snapped. "Now everybody out. I have work to do."

Dora snapped on a pair of yellow Playtex Living gloves.

I headed straight for the elevator bank right then. Dora the Cleaner was one lady I hated spending time around. She had a knack for making just about anything — and anyone — disappear.

CHAPTER TWO

"Late night?" Darcy asked, catching me in full yawn. The cold, damp late February air followed her into the bar. She plopped down on the stool in front of me and waved at Alfonso, our resident barfly, who also happened to be one of the four members of my Auntie Babe's coven. I recently learned my mom and my aunt were both two of the most powerful witches to walk the earth. My aunt, who practiced in secret, put together a tiny makeshift group of fellow witches to do spell work. I was the most recent, and grudging, recruit.

"You have no idea," I mumbled. I filled a mug of coffee for her, and warmed up my own.

"What happened?" she asked as she sipped at the coffee, making a face. "Holy crap strong!"

"I don't even know where to begin," I said, shaking my head.

Judas Priest's over-the-top heavy metal song "Turbo Lover" blasted from my back pocket. I just about jumped out of my skin. Goddamn Frankie messed with my ringtones again.

"'Turbo Lover'? Really?!" I yelled into the phone at him, while Darcy giggled at his grade school prank.

"Oh lighten up, Nina," Frankie said breathlessly. "You are turning into Max. At least he has an excuse. Bloody Berserkers. Humorless, the lot of them."

"What do you want?" I asked him.

"I need your help." His voice was muffled. I could hear sounds of a crowd behind him.

My heart skipped. "You didn't lose your daywalking abilities did you?"

Darcy looked up at me, her eyes wide with alarm. Around the same time our demon mayor Bertrand turned Max into a Berserker, he did Frankie a "favor" by spelling him so he could daywalk. As long as the spell was active, Frankie could go out in the sun without spontaneously combusting. For a vampire like Frankie, with his Blood Ops job, it was a hell of a gift to get around daylight hours. But I was on pins and needles when Frankie went out before sundown. Demons were unpredictable. What if Bertrand got pissed and decided to reverse the spell when Frankie was out and about at high noon?

"I found the most extraordinary pair of jeans, but they are over two hundred dollars. That's a bit extravagant, right? Do humans really pay that kind of money for denim trousers?"

I released my breath in relief, but my Jell-O legs needed a minute to recover. I leaned against the bar to keep from dropping to the floor. "You are at the mall. Again."

Darcy guffawed.

"I had to replace the leather jacket!" He reacted immediately to the disapproval in my voice. "I really wish you were here, Nina. I need an honest opinion on how they look on my bum."

Trying to decompress by rubbing my right temple, I handed the phone to Darcy. Her grin spread while Frankie continued to prattle on about the virtues of overpriced designer jeans.

Now that Frankie had extra daytime hours, he discovered the mall. Honestly, it was a full-on addiction. After about the fifth trip, I stopped going with him. I couldn't take it anymore. He was like a vampire at a blood bank. We walked by Cinnabon about 50 times so he could inhale the sweet cinnamon scent. He dragged me to Hot Topic and attempted to outfit me in the most hideous high school Goth wear. He delighted in the watered down drinks from Cheesecake Factory, never mind that I half-owned a damn bar.

Then he discovered the couture section of Nordstrom. Like a beleaguered husband, I sat on an overstuffed armchair while perfumed saleswomen cooed over him and his "impeccable" taste. I had to admit, the vamp had flare. But it was getting out of hand. He hit the mall almost daily, and now that I was apartment-sitting for my aunt, and Frankie and I were no longer living in the same building, I had no idea how much he was actually buying. Sure, he was a 700-year-old vampire and several life times of compound interest meant that he was pretty well off. But Frankie was no billionaire, and I worried he was blowing through his money like a drug fiend on a bender. An eternity was a hell of a long time to be broke.

"He wants you to run down to Nordstrom to look at the jeans," Darcy whispered and handed the phone back to me.

"Frankie...Frankie...Frankie...
Frankie
!" I yelled down the phone at him as he prattled on. "I am at the bar and can't leave."

"But Nina, I need you!" I could hear the pout.

"If you had a smart phone, you could take a picture and then send it to me. Did you know that with the phones that came out like five years ago, you can actually text pictures?" I said with a huff.

Frankie was an amazing tinkerer and could fix just about anything. He even customized my motorcycle into one badass vampire-evading vehicle. But for someone so mechanically inclined, he abhorred computers and the Internet. I recently bought him a flip phone so he could at least send text messages. The relic he had before didn't even have that feature.

"You know, you could go to the Apple store and get a phone." An opportunity presented itself, so I grabbed it. "Camera, Internet, email. You will love it. Promise."

"Come on, Nina, I'd do it for you," he begged. "Well, if you were more...feminine."

He was lucky that I was distracted just before that last crack. A ghost slipped into the bar, and it wasn't Casper, my very own, personal ghost.

Casper and I met in the emergency room of Rhode Island Hospital. He had just died — killed by a cursed knife that drew power out of the witches as their life force bled out of them. The power was channeled into Marcello, the psychotic vampire, who wielded the blade. Casper was my very first contact with the dead. Now that was a hell of a surprise. We've been together ever since.

Just like regular people have different strengths and weaknesses, so do witches. My aunt was a crack potion maker. Our friend Eva was an excellent diviner. Apparently, my witchy gift was whipping up bizarre weather patterns and communicating with the dead who remained here on earth. It was kind of creepy.

After we obliterated the vampire that murdered Casper, I thought my ghost friend would pass on to the other side, but he stuck with me. I was kind of happy about that. I was used to having him around.

But that didn't mean I wanted another Casper in my life. One haunting was quite enough.

"Frankie, I am hanging up now," I muttered, keeping my eyes on the wisp that was floating around the bar. I heard him protest as I pressed the end call button.

"What's back there?" Darcy whipped her head from me to the back tables.

"Not sure but I think another Casper." I vaulted over the bar and headed to the back room.

Darcy followed me. "While you check out the spooks, I am going to the basement to wire in the satellite radio. You good?"

"Yeah," I sighed. My life was complicated enough. I didn't need Babe's to be a new stop on the Providence Ghost Tour.

"Hey!" I barked at the ghost. I had to maintain complete control over the situation and the ghost, or we were screwed.

"Lovely establishment," he said with a note of sarcasm. As I got closer, I saw that he was dressed like an early 20
th
-century undertaker. His face was long and his ears kind of stuck out. His mouth pulled down at the corners in a perpetual frown. “I suppose this will do."

"You can't stay here," I warned. "I will have you exorcised."

"Horse shit," he countered. "I suggest you add some bookshelves to the walls and make a small library back here. This place could use a touch of class."

Was I getting decorating advice from a ghost?

"You can't stay here," I repeated, adding more force behind the words.

"Yes, I can," he insisted. "Please allow me to introduce myself. H.P. Lovecraft."

My eyes went wide, and I think I gasped.

His mouth tugged down even more at the ends. It was like a smile but in the totally wrong direction. It fit.

"So you should be grateful that I like this place. And you must be Nina. Yes, I've heard about you," he said, as a knowing smirk spread across his face.

"Yeah, from who?" I crossed my arms and glared at him. This ghost was getting my dander up, which was dangerous. Ghosts fed off of strong emotions. If I got pissed, he'd get stronger.

"From Cruz." He sat down, stretching his legs out on the table. He removed his gloves, one finger at a time.

"Cruz?" I shook the cobwebs out of my head. Cruz. That was Casper's real name. I started calling him Casper when I didn't know his name, and it sort of stuck. "Where did you see Cruz?"

"The library," he said matter-of-factly.

"The library," I snorted. "What library?"

"The Rock. I would like a Gin Fizz please?"

The Rockefeller Library at Brown University. Of course. Once we executed Marcello, the serial witch-killing vampire that turned Cruz, the man, into Casper, the ghost, I visited Casper's mom. Casper was a smart kid with a promising future. He was going to Brown on a full scholarship to study anthropology with a minor in religion. His family was from Veracruz, like my mom's, and he came from a long line of curanderos — white witches or shamans. His mother was steeped in the art of witchcraft, so it was an interesting afternoon. At first she was upset that his spirit was hanging on, but I let Casper hop in my body to talk to her. Weird as it was, I think it gave her some relief.

So Casper was hanging out at the library with H.P. Lovecraft. When would my life stop shocking me?

Lovecraft snapped his fingers at me, jarring me out of my thoughts.

"No, I will not get you a Gin Fizz," I said, rolling my eyes.

"This is a bar, isn't it?" he scoffed.

"You can't drink. You're a ghost."

"Cruz said you'd say that."  He scowled at me. He was definitely a sour ghost. "Oh! Someone's coming! And you don't like him very much." A puff of air hit my face when Lovecraft disappeared into the wall. 

The hair on the back of my neck stood at attention when I heard the door open. I didn't even have to turn around to know that it was Providence's very own demon mayor, Ami Bertrand, and his undead sidekick, my Uncle Tavio.

"Nina!" Tavio's thick Italian accent made his voice mellifluous.

"Oh crap! Here we go," Alfonso grumbled loudly from his stool at the bar with the shot of tequila he was sipping paused at his mouth. "This is no good."

"Tavio. Mr. Mayor," I nodded a curt greeting at them, but my uncle had other ideas. He crossed the room towards me, arms extended. I ducked around him, leaving him to hug the air.

"You look much better, Ms. Martinez." Bertrand's voice poured over me like silk, and I shivered. I saw him right after Frankie, Max and I took down Marcello. I looked like crap then, which was understandable since Marcello had nearly killed me.  

"Yes, I’ve healed," I said, as I shrugged and climbed back to the other side of the bar, grateful for the thick slab of wood in between us. "Are you ordering anything? Or are you just popping around to annoy me?"

Alfonso guffawed loudly and swallowed his tequila. Bertrand brushed the seat of the bar stool off with a handkerchief before sitting. He was impeccably dressed, as usual, in a slate grey Burberry wool trench coat and soft leather gloves. With close cropped silvering hair and vivid dark eyes, he was striking. A huge part of Bertrand’s success was owed to his model-handsome looks. He was the perfect politician.

I poured Al another shot and filled a second glass for myself. I was probably going to need it. "So what do you want, Tavio?"

"Grappa, please," he said as he walked up and sat beside his boss.

I sighed, reached for the Grappa and grumbled. "That's not what I meant."

Alfonso was muttering under his breath. He'd better not throw a spell at them. The last time he tried, it backfired. It sounded like he was only swearing. A lot.

I poured out the Grappa and slammed it down in front of my uncle. He patted my hand gently. I pulled it away like his fingers were on fire.

"I think I'll take a Gin Fizz," Bertrand said with a sly smile. "Use Bombay Sapphire, please."

Anger welled up in the pit of my belly. Lovecraft was one of his? Of course. Did good old H.P. sell his soul for his success? He trusted the wrong demon.

I wore my best poker face and pulled down the Bombay Sapphire gin from one of the upper shelves. We kept the crappy stuff within easy reach. Babe's was primarily a college bar, so there wasn't much demand for the pricy booze.

In a tense silence, I measured out the gin, soda water, simple syrup and a splash of lime. I dropped a maraschino cherry into the concoction and slid it over to Bertrand. He took a sip and sighed, looking content with the drink.

"Are you here to check on my cocktail-making skills? Or are you going to tell me what this is about?"

"We have someone coming into town, and we need you to keep a close eye on him." Bertrand savored the drink.

"Yeah, well, I'm not a babysitter, so forget it," I said. I reached around and replaced the gin on the high shelf. As soon as I pulled my hand away, the bottle took off like a rocket across the room, smashing against the wall. I froze, staring at Bertrand. Good thing the bar was empty, save for Alfonso. He continued to sip his drink, only raising an eyebrow at the outburst.