Tainted Blood (Hell's Belle Book 2) (5 page)

"It's illegal, Nina." His voice was stern, matter-of-fact, like a father scolding his child. Or like a really self-righteous, inflexible cop. My face flushed with anger.

"I will not apologize for making sure we stay underground. The goddam world would end if we were discovered. It's better this way."

"It's a miscarriage of justice."

"Seriously?" I rolled my eyes. "This isn't
Law & Order
, my friend. This is real life, which can get real ugly real quick. Whose side are you on, anyway?"

"This isn't about sides!" Max said. His left eye started to twitch as his voice raised a measure. "This is about illegally planting evidence. This is about arson. This is about making those people appear guilty of a crime they did not commit. Not only that. They were clearly the victims!"

I slammed my fist on the table, and my soda bottle overturned. Black cherry soda streamed across the table and onto the floor. Dog was up like a shot, happily lapping it up.

"This is about survival, Max." I grabbed the paper towels, and Dog growled lightly as I cleaned up the puddle. "My survival, Frankie's survival, Darcy's survival, and now your survival. So don't pull this crap on me. If we were discovered, there would be a lynch mob. And don't you think for a second that the witches and demons won't be leading them straight for us. They can pass for human, and history taught us that they always turn on the ones who can't. Your kind included. Why do you think you’re the only Berserker left?"

His face turned red and twisted. I held my breath, hoping he didn't Berserker out on me.

"Well, I don't like it," he said quietly.

I tossed the soggy paper towels into the trash. "I'm not asking you to like it. But you have to accept that it's the way we do things. We don't have a choice."

"I'll see if Dora is almost finished so we can get out of your hair. Do you want to plant drugs on this one? I assume that you don't want her to burn down the place."

I seethed. "All she needs to do is clean. He's a missing person now."

"With a family that loves him and that is worried about him."

"He's a vampire, Max. He has no family."

"You don't know that," he countered.

"We're monsters, Max. Family tends to walk away from that sort of thing."

"Yours didn't," he pointed out.

"I'm not dead yet. When I turn, my relationship with Babe will change."

"Bullshit."

I shrugged. "You have a lot to learn before you can begin to understand."

"How am I supposed to learn? You aren't exactly giving me lessons." He looked genuinely hurt.

I yanked open the door to the stairs that lead down to the bar. A blue puff of The Cleaner's cigarette smoke wafted into the apartment, and Max stomped angrily down the stairs.

"Stop thinking like a human. Maybe then you'll learn something!" I yelled after him before slamming the door.

CHAPTER FIVE

It was six in the damn morning. After the events of the past two nights, I was a sleep-deprived grump. So Ami Bertrand and his henchman, my Uncle Tavio, were the last fools on this earth that I wanted to see for a breakfast "meeting." But here I was, Frankie by my side, staring at the brass revolving doors in front of the Biltmore, Providence's peculiar hotel.

Once the elegant reflection of Providence's glory days as a manufacturing hub, the hotel, like the rest of the city, had fallen into extreme disrepair. To pay the bills, the hotel's owners had turned some floors into de facto single-room occupancies, a slightly upscale version of a flophouse. As the city floundered, the hopelessness of the Biltmore's guests — sad-sack businessmen, over-the-hill hookers, drug kingpins and their addled clientele and the poor lone tourist who relied on out-of-date AAA tour books — festered. With all that bad juju, the Biltmore became a magnet for supernatural entities. Now, the place was infested.

Most humans only felt a strange and uncomfortable sadness weighing on them when they entered the place. And apart from the weird poltergeist-y happenings — the sort of haunted house stuff like ashtrays flying across the room or lights flickering — most only felt the crushing blow of depression, which led to a number of suicides. Given my particular "gift," as it were, I not only saw dead people, I also interacted with them. Hell, a few months ago, a gang of restless spirits full out attacked me as I walked down one of the hotel's hallways.

The best way for me to get through the Biltmore was to have Casper as my shield. If he possessed my body, no other ghost could get in. But the effect of the last ghost attack on us left him dangerously damaged, with his ethereal flesh melted off parts of his body. Fighting these particular beasties turned him into ghost goo. Bits of his ghost form where still missing. That's how we learned ghosts didn't heal.

So where the Biltmore was concerned, I needed to fly solo. The place gave me the heebie-jeebies.

I pulled my aunt's talisman from my back pocket and palmed it. Without Casper, this would have to do. Nodding at Frankie, I muttered an incantation as we moved through the revolving doors.

"Don't worry, you've got this," Frankie mumbled under his breath. I wasn't sure if that was to reassure me, or him. At least he was walking into this healthier than last night. His cheeks had a bit of color again.

As a pair of supernats, Frankie and I were not only ghost magnets, but we also made them completely rabid. Hence, the attacks. The talisman was supposed to keep the ghosts from coming after us. I just hoped I got it right. I didn't exactly take to this witch stuff like a fish to water. I was a way better vampire.

The air in the hotel was stagnant. The odor of old gin and stale cigarettes clung to the stained walls and threadbare carpet. It mingled with the stench of fresh vomit. Max lived here for several weeks when he first arrived in Providence. I don't know how he could stand it.

I gagged slightly, mucking up the incantation just enough to catch the backdraft of a malevolent spirit. But Bertrand's bellboy was at the ready and pushed the poltergeist away.

Not that the bellboy was much of a tradeoff. Also a ghost, his brains were perpetually oozing out of the back of his head, where he was shot gangland style in the 1930s. He motioned for us to follow him up the stairs. My stomach flipped a bit as leaking brains plopped rhythmically onto the carpet. I wondered why he never seemed to run out of them.

We climbed to the second landing, and the ghost held open a large white door, motioning at us to move through. "He's in the office. Please go right in."

My ears popped when I stepped over the threshold and entered the hallway. The air changed to clean smelling and climate-controlled comfortable. I filled my lungs with the fresh oxygen, but still felt like I needed a scalding hot shower to scrub the dank hotel smog off my body.  Even Frankie looked relieved to be away from the hotel's grotesquerie.

Bertrand, of course, had the cleaned-up wing of the hotel. There were no spirits haunting his section, and the place had recently went through a pristine renovation. The hallway was stark white, with the mold accents painted in gold. The thick white carpet was shockingly spotless, so I scuffed my dirty boots deeper into the plush. Glancing back, I saw the dirt I tracked in disappear into the thick wool. Demon magic was even better than a maid.

We stopped at a closed door about halfway down the hallway. I turned the cut crystal knob and we walked into a circular anteroom that led into Bertrand's office. There was an overly muscled goon standing guard — he was bursting out of his suit jacket, and his neck was just way too thick to even entertain the idea of a tie. An Uzi machine gun was strapped around his expansive chest.

"Bertrand needs a doorman?" Frankie snarked, his mouth caught somewhere between and laugh and a sneer.

"That's Mayor Bertrand to you, Fanger," the guard said. His gravelly voice and black, menacing eyes screamed demon. He shoved Frankie against the wall and patted him down with more than a little gusto, causing Frankie to fang out a bit. He simply asked me to remove my jacket, with an apology at that, probably because Tavio didn't want me manhandled.

It was stupid for Tavio and Bertrand to trust me, but I wasn't carrying anyway. What good were my weapons against a demon? And anything more than a cross would probably set off some sort of Mephistophelean alarm system. I bet Bertrand was hooked up with some crazy demon tech. I made a mental note to ask Darcy if demon tech even existed.

The super-sized demon pushed open the door to Bertrand's office, and Frankie and I pressed into the sleek, Zen-inspired room. The lush cherry wood office furniture mixed sublimely with muted moss green and sandy beige, hints of forest and ocean. Directly in front of me, the sleepy city of Providence was slowly awakening, with lights flickering on along College Hill and city buses and garbage trucks kicking off their routes. Since I was last here, Bertrand had added a waterfall along the opposite wall. The sound of the cascading water should have been soothing, but it only made me feel like I had to pee. Great.

The smell of really good coffee and bacon perked me up. My eyes darted around the room, looking for the source of the deliciousness.

Bertrand was behind his enormous desk, with Tavio sitting in his usual spot across from him, a marked up
Daily Racing Form
opened in front of him. A shockingly pale woman, her hair in long black dreadlocks, reclined on Bertrand's couch. She wore skintight black pleather pants and a tank top that was two sizes too small, cleavage spilling out. Her lazy eyes were rimmed with kohl liner, and her lips were painted garish red. They were slightly smeared, like she was at the tail end of a really good night out.

I hoped I wasn't related to her, too.

No bacon or coffee was anywhere to be found. I seethed silently at its absence. Maybe being a coffee-deprived grump would work in my favor.

Tavio, of course, was the first on his feet, crossing the room with vampire speed that was completely at odds with his stocky, old-man appearance. He rushed at me, arms outstretched, playing the ever-loving uncle. I swiftly lifted my hand in the internationally understood back-off signal, and he came to a dead stop.

"We are not that kind of family," I growled.

Keeping his distance, he nonetheless grinned and gestured us into the room. "Please, come in. Meet your cousin."

A slight young man, hidden from behind the languid woman on the couch, shot up, his jet-black, Morrissey-style emo hair spiked in twenty different directions. He rubbed sleep from his violet eyes, and glanced out the window.

"Is it time to go underground?" he croaked.

"Matteo, no, not yet," Tavio said. He looked slightly annoyed. "Your cousin, Nina, is here. Remember? You were going to meet her this morning."

"Underground? Why don't you do a little of your demonic mumbo jumbo so the poor man can daywalk?" Frankie asked, puzzled.

"Did you speak, vampire?" Bertrand drawled from behind his desk, his hands steepled under his strong chin.

My face flared and I glared at Bertrand. Demons considered vampires beneath them. Truthfully, they considered
everyone
beneath them.

I crossed my arms and scowled. "Frankie's got a very good point. Why didn't you jack him up with your demon mojo like Frankie and Tavio?"

Bertrand flashed a small, cold smile. "That's not for me to say."

Matteo yawned and gave a small wave and a broad smile, barely exposing his fangs. "Okay, hey, what's up? You're Nina? Yeah, hey, I don't wanna daywalk."

He sounded more like a stoner than a vampire. His accent was pure Chicago Midwest without a trace of the Italian that thickened his father's speech. I uncrossed my arms and stepped a bit closer, squinting to get a better look at him, fascinated by his ability to smile without flashing full-on fangs. Could he be...? No, no way.

Frankie's arm shot out in front of me, stopping me from moving any further forward. He shook his head slightly in their direction and mouthed "Beta" at me, and then shrugged. Guess Frankie didn't want to embarrass him.

I turned my focus away from Matteo's teeth to the broader scene on the couch. The woman in front of him sat bolt upright, her arms extended, effectively blocking Matteo from the rest of the room. I noticed she had a rattlesnake tattooed around her chest and back. The snake's tail ended on her neck. A slight rattle sound seemed to emanate from it as it shivered with vibration. That's when I noticed her eyes turn black.

My fangs pushed through my gums, and I curled my lips just enough to show them off. The rattle was a threat, and a bold one at that. I didn't like her.

"Whoa, ladies, relax," Matteo flopped back on the couch behind the snake charmer and rubbed her back. "You got a smoke, babe?"

"Are you security?" I eyed the woman up and down, flashing my fangs through my sneer.

She turned, placed a cigarette into Matteo’s mouth and lit it by blowing gently on it, a self-satisfied smile on her face as she reclined back on the couch again.

"Who's the freaky demon girlfriend, Bertrand?" I asked our demonic mayor, who grinned from behind the safety of his expensive cherry wood desk, clearly enjoying the show. At least Tavio had the good taste to look slightly mortified.

"There is only one demon in here, Ms. Martinez," Bertrand said, his mellifluous voice sliding around the room. It eased listeners into a kind of agreeable stupor. I ground my teeth to get his vocal notes out of my head

I jerked my thumb towards the woman on the couch, who was now writhing suggestively in Frankie's direction. "So, you're saying that's not a demon?"

"Me? A demon?" she thrilled. Her high-pitched voice was almost childlike, which I found grating. But judging from the testosterone I felt surge through Frankie, it had the opposite effect on the men. I visibly shuddered. Sometimes this binding was simply TMI: too much information.

"And you are?" I pulled myself together enough to ask.

"President of the Matty Purefoy fan club! Duh." She stretched her arm and protectively slipped it around Matteo's head.

"Oh for fuck's sake. Demon
groupies
?" I turned on my heel, ready to walk right out the door.

Tavio cut me off before I reached for door. For an old man, he moved damn quick.

"Please, Nina, stay," he pleaded. And damn it all if he didn't tear up when he said that.

I sighed, my hand on the doorknob. "He has a gaggle of demonic groupies to protect him. What do you need with us?"

"We're not demons," she purred.

"The problem needs to be dealt with," Tavio said calmly, ignoring the demon on the couch. Despite his calm voice, his face barely masked his fury. The tips of his fangs just peaked out from under his lip.

Even Bertrand stared at him warily. "Matteo, put out the cigarette. Kittie, why don't you check on Matteo's room. Make sure no sunlight can get in."

"Youse didn't do that already?" Between her voice and her crappy grammar, I was ready to jump out of my skin.

"It doesn't hurt to double check," Bertrand said. His voice could charm the chastity belt off a medieval nun. Damn demons.

Kittie stood slowly, sulking. At full height, she was over six-feet tall with a solid frame. Between her size and her nutty outfit, I had to admit she was pretty intimidating.

Frankie, on the other hand, was enthralled. I punched him in the arm to shake him out of it. He shot me a dirty look.

"
Demon
!" I mouthed and punched him again, this time harder. At least he had the sense to look chagrined this time.

"Dominic will show you to his room," Bertrand called after her as she swept out the door, leaving a trail of cheap perfume.

"You guys really find that attractive?" I asked as the door closed behind her.

Bertrand laughed. "She's a siren, Nina. Of course they do."