Tainted Blood (Hell's Belle Book 2) (29 page)

"And if you think it only applies to this state, you are wrong," Father Dougherty said quietly. He stared into his beer. "Her reach is worldwide. Every state, every country, is in chaos trying to figure out what to do with all the monsters. The Vatican can't ordain priests fast enough to do all the exorcisms. And they are not even following they protocol they set in place. Anyone who requests an exorcism gets an exorcism."

I shivered, thinking about Casper, and the very real danger that he was in, even in ghost form. Then there was good old Howie, the celebrity ghost that occasionally snooped around the bar. As much as his pomposity rankled me, he didn't deserve to go out that way.

"I'm on the inside, Nina," Bertrand's voice was ice. "And as we all know, I am untouchable."

"Trust him on this," Father Dougherty said. "I trust him more than I trust your...her."

I chewed my lower lip, uncertainty creeping in. I looked to Frankie.

"I think we have to, Nina," he said, nodding in agreement with the priest. "Who else do we have?"

"Each other," I said defiantly.

"I'm afraid that's not quite enough this time," he smiled gently.

"Well I've got dibs on that Kittie bitch," I said roughly, wiping tears from my eyes with the back of my hand.

"Unfortunately, demons can't be killed. Even lesser ones." Bertrand said, breaking into an oily grin. I shuddered that I was in cahoots with him.

I glanced at Frankie, thinking about the stakes he etched with the runes. They killed a human possessed by a lesser demon. Frankie winked at me.

"So let's be clear what we're talking about here. We are taking down that woman. My mother, Leila, I mean."

"We're talking about taking down the
government
, Nina," Bertrand said. He was so excited about this that his cool demeanor cracked a bit. "The government that sent you into dangerous situations, that used you to clean up their messes. And the government that turned on you and sentenced your kind to death."

"Leila did that," I countered.

"Who do you think Leila is?" he asked.

I sat shell-shocked as he took the bottle from Frankie for one more pull of Scotch. "Time to go, Father. Let's get you back to the rectory."

Father Dougherty came over and gave me a hug. "This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. You'll need every ounce of strength — mental, physical, spiritual — for this. You can't go off half-cocked."

He said a quick blessing over me, and I cringed as he recited the Holy Trinity, waiting for my hair to catch on fire or something. When he dropped a kiss on my forehead, I released my breath. Fire and brimstone averted once again. But for how much longer?

"No one's untouchable, Bertrand," I said, as the men walked out the door. "Just remember that."

Bertrand looked back at me, tilted his head, and smiled. "You forget how many deals I've made, Ms. Martinez. And with whom."

<<<<>>>>

RIVER VAMP

A Bonus
Hell's Belle
Prequel Short

Karen Greco

Gowanus, Brooklyn, 12 years earlier

The oar gently sliced through the pitch-black water. It barely splashed at the surface, sending a ripple of tiny waves across the canal.

I wrinkled my nose at the putrid smell. Frankie drew the oars slightly out of the water, scanning through the inky darkness.

"We should have waited until the full moon," I said with a sigh. "I can't see shit."

The area surrounding us was industrial. The businesses were closed and most of the streetlights were out. The only illumination came from a street about a half a mile up the river, where the faint sound of music traveled down to us.

Frankie let the tips of the oars drop back into the water. The left one struck something hard, and a cascade of toxic water spilled into the boat. He pulled the oar back up quickly, lifting it high. Water dripped onto my bare leg.

"Gross, Frankie! I am probably going to grow an extra foot from my thigh now." I refrained from wiping at my soaked leg with my hands, not wanting to touch the foulness.

"Sorry," he said with a chuckle that told me he was anything but. "I think a rash is more likely."

"What did you hit?" I asked, following his lead and staring into the murky water.

He gripped the oar tightly, this time using it to prod at something just beneath the water’s surface. It was large. "I think I hit what we're looking for."

"We found it?" I asked.

Frankie tapped the mass with the oar. It bobbed up and down, and small waves rocked the boat gently from its movement.

"It would appear so." Frankie pulled the oars in, resting them across his legs. He looked at me. "Well, go on then. Pull it out."

"Me?" I peered over the edge of the boat. "Why me?"

"I rowed," he replied in an infuriating, matter-of-fact tone.

"I offered to row!" I protested. "You said it would be ungentlemanly!"

"And you said I was being sexist, so have at it." He spread his arms out with a flourish.

"Come on, Frankie," I countered. "This water is toxic. Isn't that the point of doing runs with a vampire? You're already dead!"

"Precisely," he argued. "This water could Frankenstein me."

"Don't be ridiculous," I said. "It’s just a Floater."

"A Floater?"

"Yeah, Frankenstein. It’s floating isn’t it?"

Frankie shook his head but couldn’t hide a small chuckle. "Well whatever it is, I’m not prepared to take that chance." He dropped the oars back in the water, slapping them against the surface, threatening to splash me again. "Come on, Rookie. Do your duty."

"Coward." I reached carefully towards the Floater, and the rowboat tipped precariously as I teetered us off balance. I flinched when my hand skimmed the top of the water. Then I took a deep breath and just plunged it deeper into the toxic sludge, feeling around until I hit the large, lumpy mass.

"I think I got it." I gritted my teeth and grabbed the body by the back of his white wife beater tank top and heaved. The body lifted slowly out of the water, but the water weakened the fibers in the shirt and it ripped off in my hand.

The body dropped back into the water and rolled over, so he was face up. The water-bloated face stared back at us. The skin was stretched over the face, and the hair had thinned from the chemicals in the water eating away at the keratin. Patches of flesh were missing — either from the chemical content in the water, or from a carnivore fish having a snack. Given the amount of toxic waste dumped in the canal, all the fish were probably mutants.

Frankie poked at the body with an oar. "That's just foul. I can't believe you touched it."

"You're an ass." I wiped my hand on the side of the boat, which made Frankie laugh even harder.

Frankie continued to prod at the body with the oar, laughing at my squeamishness. Suddenly the water around the body churned, and Frankie released the oar in shock when an engorged hand reached up and pulled it. I caught hold of the oar before it got pulled in by the suddenly reanimated corpse.

Frankie sat there, frozen in shock.

"What the hell, dude? A little help here!" I said as I struggled to hold the oar and not get dragged out of the boat.

Frankie, finally over his shock, leaped to my aid. But his swift movement caused the boat to start rocking uncontrollably. While I struggled to keep my grip on the oar and my ass in the boat, my stomach roiled.

"Take it now!" I screamed at Frankie, his hands closing on the aluminum oar just above mine.

With the oar firmly in Frankie’s hand, I gripped the side of the boat, draped my head over the edge, and barfed.

I was never going to live this down.

The Floater in the water finally calmed down, his engorged fingers hanging onto the side of the boat. His mouth worked to form words, but his tongue was too swollen for them to make any sense. From my vomiting vantage point closer to the water, I was pretty sure I saw fangs as his mouth opened and closed.

"That thing is a vampire, Frankie. Our Floater is a vampire," I said, raising my head up once my stomach was empty.

Frankie surveyed me. "You got a bit, just there." He pointed to my cheek. "I'll sort it. A gentleman always carries a hankie." He handed me the oars again and started digging into his pockets.

Frustrated by his inability to communicate, the swollen, floating vampire tried to pull himself into the boat. It wasn't exactly working, but he almost succeeded in tipping the boat over. Frankie threw the guy some side eye but continued searching for a hankie. Not knowing what else to do, I grabbed the oar and started thwacking it against the vampire’s head and hands.

"Stop rocking this boat!" I grunted as I pounded him with the oar.

"Got it!" Frankie yelled triumphantly, waving around a tartan handkerchief like a flag.

My thwacking worked, and with one last hard hit, the vampire slipped back into the water. He continued thrashing around next to the boat.

I gripped the oar tightly with one hand and the side of the boat with the other. "What do you want to do with him, Frankie?"

"Bet it was a mob hit. They just didn't realize he was already dead." Frankie laughed like Herman Munster.

"Focus, Frankie!" My feet were soaked through and I worried that the boat was taking on too much water. Seeing the shape that the floater's body was in reaffirmed my fear of sinking into the polluted water.

"Hang on a minute, mate," Frankie said to the vampire while tying a length of rope around the rowboat's bench. "I am going to throw you a rope and we'll row you in. You're not getting into the boat this way, my friend. No way."

The floater thrashed his agreement to the plan, sending another wave of water into the boat and onto my body. Frankie, of course, was just out of reach.

Once the knot was secure, Frankie tossed the loose end to the vampire, who wrapped it around his hands. "You may want to..." Frankie motioned for him to tie it around his waist, but the balloon-like face just stared at us blankly. "Right, as you were."

Frankie settled back down, picked up the oars and began to row back towards the boat launch. "Want to go for a knees-up once we wrap this?"

I sniffed at my wet clothes. They reeked of the Gowanus. "You're joking, right?"

"I don't joke about samba." He hummed a bossa nova tune, rowing along to the beat. "We'll change first. And maybe you should think about a shower."

"Before we talk about going dancing, I think we should figure out what we're going to do with Mr. Floating Vampire." I nodded at the body that was being pulled along behind us.

"Come on, where's your sense of adventure?" Frankie asked. "We're in New York fucking City."

"No, Frankie, we're in Brooklyn."

"
Start spreading the news
..." he said with a grin.

"Don't you dare!"

"
I'm leaving today
..." he bellowed.

Yup, he was singing it. I wanted to crawl into the water with the vampire. By the time he got to the "New York, New York" chorus, he was belting like a Broadway chorus boy.

When he was finally done, Frankie grinned at me like a lunatic. "So whaddaya say, Nina? Let's hit the town!"

"Are you always like this on missions?" I asked.

"We rarely get sent to places like New York. It's usually places like Peoria. Do you know how many times I've been to Peoria?" He rolled his eyes dramatically. "You've got to learn to take advantage when sent to a top location."

"We'll go to Vegas when we get back."

"You make us gamble downtown," he moaned. "Honestly, Nina. You are not fun."

I bristled at that. "I am too fun."

"No, you are not fun," he repeated.

I scowled. "We'll go to the New York-New York Casino. That's on the Strip. Promise."

He sighed heavily. "Not the same."

"Come on, Frankie. This is my first bona fide mission away. I want to concentrate."

"This isn't even a hard mission!" he argued. "'Clean up the mess the vampire left.' Those were our only orders."

"That's right. Our orders were to dispose of a body. They thought this was a vampire hit. Not that the hit was a vampire."

We were sent here to check on reports of a suspected vampire victim dumped in the Gowanus. We ended up with a water-logged vampire who was left for dead.

"There's a point." Frankie looked from the vampire splashing behind us and back to me. He made a face. "By the way, you still have something, right there." He handed me the tartan cloth.

"So what do we do about this?" I wiped my cheek while we rowed towards the shore.

"Maybe we should haul him in the boat?" Frankie suggested.

I curled my lip in disgust. "We do that, you can forget dancing. We'll both need fumigation."

The vampire was so soaked with water that the slightest chafing of the rope pulled skin off his body, exposing the meaty flesh underneath. He was basically filleted. Each disturbance of the body made the smell of rotting flesh more pungent. We'd smell spectacularly awful too if we dragged him into the boat with us.

"The point may be completely moot if we have to stake him," I added.

The vampire thrashed around violently after I said it. Guess his ears weren't filled with water.

We rowed several lengths in silence, wrapped up in our own thoughts about what to do with our find. The sound of heavy guitar rock blaring from a bar down the street carried over the water. We were getting closer to shore.

The vampire was still hanging on as we approached the boat launch. A lone streetlamp cast a yellowish glow on the body and we were able to get a better look at him. Middle-aged and rotund, it looked like he was wearing the bottom of an Adidas tracksuit, the telltale stripes down the pants leg. Remnants of his wife beater were stuck to his torso. Well, the parts of his torso still intact. A gaudy gold and onyx pinkie ring kept catching the light.

We were reeling in a vampire mobster. 

"Holy crap, Frankie," I whispered for no good reason.  "This guy is definitely Cosa Nostra!" 

Frankie pooh-poohed the suggestion. "The Italians are way too superstitious for that. They all wear the cornicello for protection." 

The cornicello was a little horn that was often worn as a necklace. The Italians believed it warded off the evil eye, among other things.

"Come on, Frankie. And, like, garlic works on vampires? How much of that is superstitious nonsense?"  I nodded in the guy's direction. "The dude is totally Mario Puzo worthy."

A couple more good strokes and we finally made it to the boat launch. I hopped out, and my knees buckled at the feel of dry land underneath me.  Frankie dragged the bloated body in by the rope. Since Frankie refused to touch him, he gave the rope a hard yank, pulling the body about 15 feet out of the water and onto the pavement, the guy's back now torn to shreds after that epic road burn.

As soon as he was out of the water, he started to heal. I stared at his face as it reshaped itself. A bullet hole in his forehead made it look like he had a third eye.

"They totally didn't know, Frankie. Look." I pointed at it. "They shot him."

Frankie laughed. "They're in for a surprise now, aren't they?"

"They sure as shit are." The swelling in the vampire’s tongue had gone down enough that he could finally talk. He had a thick New York accent.

"Are you suggesting that you are planning a return to your previous life? These people think you are dead," I said. "Dead guys don't go back and settle things."

His laughing turned to a hacking cough as he rolled to his side. He spit water onto the pavement beside him.

"Frankie, your new partner sounds like a pain in the ass. Does she make you do paperwork too?"

Frankie was taken off guard. "Do I know you?"

"What? You don't recognize me?" The man grinned up at us, his visage still mangled in areas, but it was beginning to resemble a face again as it healed.