Tainted Blood (Hell's Belle Book 2) (6 page)

"
That's
a siren?" I asked, incredulous. I'll admit, I wasn't exactly up on my siren lore, but groupie-as-siren made no sense. Killing Haley's fan base was primarily female. Sirens enchant men, so they rub most women the wrong way. Talk about excluding their prime demographic.

"Wouldn't sirens trailing the band turn off their core female fans?" Frankie asked, echoing my thoughts exactly, which surprised me. I didn't know he was up on the Goth/Emo scene.

"Actually, it's been the opposite," Matteo perked up again, cigarette still dangling from his bottom lip. "I didn't think it possible either, but once Kittie and her girls started showing up to the gigs, things just went wild."

"No doubt," I deadpanned. "So want to talk about the post-show riots?"

"Not really," he responded. "Dad, go get Elias for this. I feel the sun coming up."

He threw an arm over his eyes dramatically.

"Oh this is bullshit," I groaned. "You cannot feel the sun come up."

"Actually, Nina," Frankie said with a slight nod, "maybe we'd be better off discussing this with someone else."

"Good man." Matteo nodded at Frankie as he rose unsteadily to his feet and stumbled to the door. With a small wave and sloppy smile, he fell into the anteroom, yelling for Dominic.

I cracked my knuckles and shifted my glare between Tavio and Bertrand. It was six in the damn morning, there was no coffee in sight and my cousin was a petulant pain in the ass diva who was afraid of sunlight. Ain't family grand?

A knock at the door stopped me from laying into the demon and his sidekick. Tavio uttered a polite excuse me and ambled over to the door. In the dim light of Bertrand's office, I could only see the outline of a tall, lanky shadow stepping into the room. Tavio gave him a warm welcome.

My breath caught in my chest when his face moved out of shadows. His delicate features were partially hidden behind a mop of curly black hair, streaked through with electric blue. His face was ghost-pale and he was noticeably thinner since the last time I saw him, but there was no mistaking him. It was my Chicago fling.

About a year ago, Frankie and I took a long weekend trip to Chicago for a little R&R. We had a rough time clearing out a nest of vampires from a Texas border town. They were crossing over from Mexico, hell bent on getting into the U.S. Once we cleared them out, a whole new crop would show up. It was a good 60 days before we were finally able to stem the wave of vampires crossing over. We finally decided to call in the priests and consecrate the ground on the border line. But even that didn't stop them. They preferred imploding to remaining on the other side. It was one of the strangest jobs I’d ever worked.

It had been a fierce two months, so Frankie and I decided to blow off steam in Chicago. That's when I met Elias. I knew he was a drummer in a band, but that was about all I knew about him. Just one wild weekend. What else did we need to know about each other?

"Elias?" I blurted, before I could stop myself. I was shocked to see him.

He came to a dead stop in front of me, looked me up and down. Absolutely no look of recognition crossed his face. He continued to the couch, where he settled into the cushions.

"What's up?" he said with a raspy voice. He sounded a lot older than he looked.

"You two know each other?" Bertrand shifted forward slightly in his chair, a cold smile spreading over his handsome face.

"Nina?" Frankie looked at me, puzzled.

"We met before. In Chicago," I responded evenly, but my heart raced.

Frankie raised his eyebrows. "That's Mr. Chicago?"

"Chicago?" Elias echoed. He shifted in his seat and the confusion cleared for a moment from his face. "Chicago, yes." He smiled and cocked his head. For a minute, it looked like he remembered our wild weekend in Chicago, but then his face clouded up again.

Bertrand laughed heartily. "What happened in Chicago?"

My face burned. I could not believe he forgot about me and the weekend in Chicago. I mean, it wasn't anything serious, but it was really fun. And we weren't
that
drunk. Maybe he picked up a drug habit over the past year.

"We met in Chicago," I snapped at Bertrand, my pride wounded. "Are we going to talk about the job or what?"

"The job?" A cloud of confusion hung over Elias. My ego slowly started to mend. The guy was clearly on something.

"Yes, did you know a demon was running your fan club?"

"Kittie? She's a siren," Elias said, his voice slow and monotone.

"No, she's a demon," I insisted.

Bertrand laughed. "You are a woman, Nina. To you, a siren
is
a demon!"

"No," I pushed back. "A
demon
is a demon."

Tavio chuckled, and Elias let loose a noise that could have been a laugh. Frankie just looked confused, like he was still trying to place Elias.

"I have to open the bar in less than six hours, and I still need to get some sleep, and apparently there's no coffee here. So what's the purpose of this, Bertrand?" My exhaustion made me more punchy than usual.

"You met your cousin." Bertrand leaned back in his chair, a Cheshire-cat grin spreading across his face. "And we reunited you with a lost love."

That did it. I leapt forward and landed lithely on the top of Bertrand's immaculate cherry wood desk. With one movement, I pulled from my boot the witch-killer athame that I inherited from my father and held it to Bertrand's throat. His smile faded into a cool grimace.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of the old vampire angling toward me.

"Come near me, dear uncle," I said, "and the blade goes straight in."

Bertrand didn't even break a sweat. "Do you think you know how to kill a demon, Ms. Martinez?"

"I'll have a hell of a good time trying, Mayor Bertrand." I flashed my fully extended fangs at him. I'd happily turn full vampire to take this miserable demon out.

Bertrand, himself moving with near-vampire speed, pushed me down onto the desk and leaned into me, his hands closed over my throat.

"Do you want to test your theory, Ms. Martinez?" Bertrand’s eyes glassed over to pure black, and his face contorted into something not quite human.

"I'd be happy to. Want to try me?" I was flat on my back but my arms were still free. I held the point of the knife to his throat. One strong shove would push it right in.

"Drop the knife, Nina," Frankie said calmly.

"It could be over, Frankie," I muttered. "Get rid of the demon and everything goes back to normal."

"Is that what you think?" Tavio's voice shook with anger. "That demon is the only thing keeping others worse than him from taking over this town."

"Bullshit." My hand remained steady, my eyes focused on the point of the knife making a small indent in Bertrand's neck.

From the back of the room, Elias snickered. With a heavy sigh, I dropped my hand away from Bertrand's neck. But instead of letting me go, he leaned closer into me. His breath caressed my ear as he whispered, "Don't test me, little witch. I am not that easy to kill. You, on the other hand...."

He pushed off me and settled back into his oversized leather chair. "Let's get back to business, shall we?"

I rubbed my neck where his hands squeezed, glaring at him.

Frankie cleared his throat. "Right, let's get on with it. The first show is the night after tomorrow. Elias, could you talk us through a typical show?"

"Typical show?" he echoed, staring blankly at Frankie.

I sighed loudly, choosing to wear my frustration rather than hide it. "Yeah, you know, you set up at what time? Go on stage at what time? What time do the riots generally start? What's the atmosphere of the show? When does it turn? We don't know what to look for, Elias. We need guidance here."

He blinked. "You're our security detail?"

This was definitely not the Elias I met in Chicago. Something was not right with this guy.

Frankie had enough. "This isn't going to work. Let the city burn," he said as he stalked to the door. "Nina, you coming?"

"Right behind you!" Keeping my composure under check, I followed. It was all I could do to keep from giggling and running after him. I could not believe he was dissing the demon that gave him the ability to see the sun again.

Frankie and I strutted over the plush carpet of the anteroom and only when we made it into the stark white hallway did we dare breathe.

"Do you think the sun is up yet?" Frankie quickened his pace, the first sign of worry creeping over him.

"I think we can make it back to your apartment." I tried to sound more certain than I actually felt. Time was not on our side. We were about halfway between Babe's and the old factory building where I had built an underground apartment for Frankie. 

We could try to hole up in the Biltmore, but I was worried that Bertrand would send some poltergeist thugs after us. I wasn't sufficiently witched up to deal with them.

The sound of a door cracking open just ahead jarred both of us out of our reckless near-sprint down the long hallway. Our pace slowed in unison, and Frankie motioned slightly ahead and to the right. His hearing was more acute than mine. Where I just heard the sound, Frankie could pinpoint the exact location.

Frankie pressed himself against the wall while I continued moving forward. We were partners long enough to know how to work a surprise threat together, even without speaking. Of course, the binding made it even easier to anticipate what Frankie was going to do, and I guessed he could sense the same from me. Even though I wasn't happy about it at all, it did have some advantages.

I paused quickly to slide my father's knife out from my boot sheath. It was the only weapon I brought with me. I silently cursed myself for trusting Bertrand and Tavio enough to show up insufficiently armed. I vowed not to make that mistake again.

Frankie inched along the wall while I charged down the center of the hallway with purpose. Right in front of Frankie, a hooded figure rushed out from behind the door and almost barreled into me. Whoever it was let out a Scottish Highland battle cry, and I would have laughed save for the shock of a human projectile landing in front of me.

In one smooth move, Frankie stepped away from the wall as his arm shot out. He grabbed the figure at the throat, lifted him off the ground and pressed him against the wall.  My adrenaline surged with Frankie's as the binding made our heightened emotions one. Fangs out, his eyes glowed brilliant cerulean. He looked deadly. And, to be honest, kind of hot. Ew.

Dropping the Highland screamer to the floor with a thud, Frankie turned and stared at me wide-eyed. His pale cheeks flushed slightly, and his mouth softened into a small smile.

Well, crap. Did he feel that last thought? And did he think it
meant
anything?

Deciding to ignore the whole thing, I turned my attention to the figure on the floor. Using my foot, I nudged the hoodie down from his face, and let out a sigh. It was Matty.

"What the hell, Matty?" I was sorely tempted to give him a swift kick in the face and damage some of his perfect features. But Bertrand and Tavio were already pissed at us. Messing up the rock star's face would make it worse. Anyway, he'd heal.

"Sorry, I thought you were someone else."

"Like who?" Frankie's eyes were slowly going back to normal and his fangs were less pronounced.

"Kittie," Matty whispered, his eyes darting nervously up and down the hallway. Climbing to his feet unsteadily, he headed for the doorway that would take us into the lobby of the Biltmore, motioning for us to follow him.

"Hold on, we aren't going anywhere with you. Frankie needs to get underground in case your demon pal decides we're no longer useful and removes the sunlight spell."

"That's why I'm going with you," he said so softly I could barely hear him. Even Frankie, with his amped up vamp hearing, looked like he was struggling a bit. "And I can't bare the sunlight at all. So we must go. Immediately!"

I wasn't sure if his urgency was legit or some bullshit pseudo-celebrity demand. But one thing was certain: We needed to get Frankie underground in case Bertrand pulled the plug.

Frankie gave me a curt nod, agreeing with the plan. The three of us raced down the hallway and pushed open the door to the hotel proper. From a grimy window, I could see the dark sky streaked with pinks and reds. We had about 15 minutes before all hell broke loose.

We sprinted down the main staircase and through the lobby. I pushed through every manner of phantasm, barely feeling the ice-cold plasma of ghost goop since I was moving at such a high speed. We fell out the revolving door and darted across the street where we parked my aunt's Fiat. Frankie grabbed Matty by the scruff of his neck, opened the car door and shoved him into the back seat. He slid over the hood of the car and got into the driver's seat before I could protest. I was barely in the car when he jerked it into gear and we roared off.

CHAPTER SIX

The apartment was in a refurbished old factory in the Olneyville section of Providence. The area was once a booming manufacturing hub, but when the industry went belly-up, this industrial part of Olneyville sat abandoned. On my side of town were a few active factories, but mostly it was desolate. I swear I've heard coyotes howl some nights. Maybe they were shifters.

The building was left to me after Marcello, the mentally unhinged vampire assassin, killed my parents. I turned the first floor into a kick-ass apartment for me. I turned the basement level into an underground tomb for Frankie and a soundproof panic room for Darcy, a safe place for her to do her banshee wail. Mythologically, a banshee wail was an omen of death. In actuality, the wail itself was the killer. So technically, hearing a banshee wail was definitely an omen, since that's what did you in.

Frankie wasn't very happy about sharing his basement space with a howling banshee. He insisted that soundproofing meant nothing because of his vampire level hearing. I kind of thought he was full of shit. The one thing a banshee wail can't kill is the undead.

The second floor was empty. I didn't have enough time to oversee the gut renovation, but eventually it would be two separate apartments. Maybe one would be Blood Ops command center. The top floor I rented out to a novelty toy company.

Since Darcy wasn't wailing, she was staying in my place while I was apartment sitting at Auntie Babe's. I missed my large open loft space. I was still living out of boxes, only about half unpacked from the cross-country move from the Blood Ops campus in Nevada.

Hardcore supernatural activity was generally localized to a few areas in the middle of the country. The East and West coasts experienced hauntings, sometimes the extreme kind. But topnotch ghost hunters, most disciples of Ed and Lorraine Warren, were able to keep it under control. There was a recent spread east that went beyond the usual hauntings and poltergeists. Humans were turning up dead. Frankie and I cleaned out a nest in Newark, New Jersey before I moved out here, and we had our eye on small cities like Pittsburgh, Worcester, New Haven...even as far south as Orlando. Weird shit happened all the time in Florida.

Because of this uptick, I got clearance to leave the base to keep an eye on the East Coast. It was a lucky break. Auntie Babe was getting on in years and needed help at the bar. And I was sick of being landlocked in the desert. I was happy for the change of scenery.

The sun was just peaking over the horizon when I pulled Babe's Fiat up to the front door. I missed my garage door opener, which was with my beloved Triumph motorcycle in the police impound yard.

I got nailed speeding about three weeks ago, doing 110 in a 55 zone. Then I was busted twice more within the week. The final traffic stop turned a little ugly with the cop, so I was brought in on some stupid "you're not behaving like a lady" charge. Max had to intervene to keep me out of jail, but the tradeoff was that my bike was impounded and my motorcycle license revoked.

Anyway, I had turned part of the ground floor into a parking garage, with an electronic garage door where the loading dock used to be. Press a button on and we'd be safely in a dark garage. Instead we were racing against a rising sun.

Even though daylight was peeking over the horizon, Frankie was fine. Matty was, too, but you'd never guess that based on the way he was carrying on. Sprawled out in the back seat, he hid under my jacket, babbling nonstop. We weren't far from the Biltmore, maybe 10 minutes. But Frankie and I were sick of him.

Frankie was already out of the car, front seat down, and holding the door open so Matty could climb out. But Matty didn't budge.

"You gotta get out of the car, Matty," I said as I slammed my hand on the steering wheel. This was the third time I had asked him to move. I was certain that Bertrand was revoking the spell as we stood around like idiots trying to get Diva Cousin Rock Star out of the car. Frankie was out there unprotected. If my best friend fried because of this spoiled little prick, I was going to stake him.
Twice
.

"Oh for fuck's sake!" Frankie exclaimed. A surge of anger and frustration, mixed with a touch of fear, spilled off him.

I gasped from the unexpected potency of his emotions.

"Nina," Frankie said to me. "Go unlock the front door to the building. I'll get him out."

Before I could even get out of the car, Frankie reached in and yanked Matty out of the back seat. He lifted the sniveling pile of vampire over his shoulder, letting Matty's head smack against the car a few times, and then carried him to the front door. I raced to catch up, fumbled with my keys for a moment, and then swung the door open just in time. I think Frankie was ready to just plow on through.

He dropped Matty in the vestibule and yanked my jacket off his head. "You're inside."

Matty looked around the hallway, and then shrieked when he saw the dawn's weak sunlight filtering in through the glass window on the door. 

"Maybe you'll get a sunburn, but you'll heal," Frankie said as he stalked down the hallway to the door that lead to the basement.

"I can't stay here in the light!" Matty was audibly sobbing at this point.

"Frankie..." I warned. Matty was right. Eventually the sun would get him. He had to get into Frankie's room. "Come on, Frankie. We need him alive."

Frankie shot us both a nasty look, but opened the door leading to the basement, bowing with a flourish as Matty rushed towards the pitch-black staircase. Frankie slammed the door behind them.

"I'll be right down!" I yelled at the heavy metal fire door. Then I listened carefully for the sound of a body falling down the stairs. There was a very good chance Frankie would give Matty a shove.

I waited a beat before knocking on Darcy's door. Well, my door, but technically Darcy's since she was staying there.

"Who is it?" Her voice was hard, cautious. She didn't like the barren neighborhood. Where I saw solitude, she saw desolation.

"It's me, Darce." I waved at her through the peephole.

The door swung open. She clearly just woke, but she still looked absolutely sleep-rumpled stunning in a black body-skimming jersey knit nightgown. The camisole-style top was trimmed in black lace. Her long blond hair was tousled to a perfect bed-head sexy.

"What the hell happened to you?" Darcy asked, moving to the side as I stumbled gracelessly into the apartment.

Feeling a pang of jealousy, I yanked at my tangled mess of hair and sighed. I was so tired I could actually feel the bags under my eyes. And to make matters worse, I was pretty sure I smelled like stale beer and dry sweat. A shower and a few hours of sleep were all I really wanted, but since that was impossible, I'd take a steaming mug of coffee.

Darcy padded behind me as I headed to the kitchen. She plopped down at the large wood farm table while I made quick work of prepping a pot of coffee.

"So, what happened to you?" she repeated after a huge yawn.

I shrugged. "The usual Bertrand bullshit. Matteo Purefoy has a team of professional groupies surrounding him that everyone insists are sirens. But I am not so sure of that."

"Sirens? Following around a rock band, whose stock and trade is making women swoon?" She pursed her lips tightly and gave her head a small shake. "Well, that doesn't pass the smell test."

"Thank you!" A pang of relief hit me right in the gut, nearly doubling me over. Finally! Somebody got what I was saying. That's why Darcy was my best girlfriend.

"So, if not sirens, what are they?" she asked.

I stared at the coffee pot, willing it to drip faster. "Demons."

"Demons? You sure?"

"I have no idea what the hell else they could be." I rooted around the kitchen cabinets, looking for some mugs. Darcy moved some stuff around, compounding my frustration.

"Nina, hon, they may be plain old vanilla human," she said gently. "Not everything out there is some variation on us."

I slammed the cabinet shut. "Totally not human. The one I met, Kittie, she had a tattoo of a rattle snake, and it moved. And where did you put the damn mugs?"

She pointed at the cabinet above my head. "Closer to the coffee pot, where it made more sense."

"Oh." I wasn't exactly Suzy Homemaker. I glanced around the apartment guiltily. She piled my still unpacked moving boxes into a corner of the room. "Sorry, I didn't mean to snap. I'm just..."

"I know. You look exhausted." She smiled gently at me. "And you know what, a team of demons arriving last night may explain this."

She turned on the flat-screen TV hanging on the wall. The local Rhode Island news station flickered on. A live shot of a crime scene with a mess of police cars was on. Darcy turned up the volume.

"The medical examiner cautioned that it would be at least two weeks before initial autopsy results would be revealed, but police sources say that the bodies were drained of all blood..."

Darcy hit mute. "There were 17 victims. This was right over the state border, in Fall River, Mass. Weird that this siren rolls into town and this happens, no?"

"Drained of their blood? That sounds like a vampire nest." I triumphantly pulled a mug out of the cabinet above the coffee pot.

Darcy nodded. "I know, but there are no known vampires in the Fall River area. Say what you will about Lizzie Borden, but her ghost usually keeps that city clean of any other supernaturals."

"
Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks." I sing-songed the beginning of the old childhood rhyme. "Babe taught me that one when I was around three. I think we were living in Mexico at the time."

I smiled at the memory, one of the few I had left before Babe took me to Blood Ops. After my parents died, and with Marcello on the loose, it was too dangerous to stay in Rhode Island. So she tried to hide me with our family in Mexico. But when the witch-filled town in Catemaco figured out that I was part-vampire, a mob of witches tried to stake me. Rumor was my own grandfather, Babe and my mom's dad, was leading the charge. Babe never said one way or the other. We fled to the Blood Ops base in Nevada, where she left me in the hands of Dr. O.

The machine finally perked out its last bit of coffee, and I grabbed the pot and poured it into my newly found mug. I drank it straight, too caffeine-deprived to bother with the half-and-half.

"Why don't you go back to Babe's and crash for a while?" Darcy turned off the television.

"Because we're in the shit, and Bertrand may have reversed the daywalking spell on Frankie. Plus Purefoy wanted to get away from his Number One Fan." I raised my eyebrows at that one. "I don't know that he'd want to escape a plain vanilla human so desperately that he'd risk sunlight."

Darcy's eyes got wide. "Vampire?"

I nodded, sipping my coffee.

"Well I'll be damned." She waited a beat, and then her eyes lit up. "Wait, he's here? Matty Purefoy is here, in this building?"

I nodded again.

"Oh my god," she jumped up, suddenly flushed and breathless. "Will you introduce me? I have to meet him!"

Before I could even answer her, she bolted for the door. Hastily, I topped off my coffee, stopping to add a splash of half and half, and followed behind her. When I reached the apartment door, I heard her shouting down to Frankie's lair. "Hey, Frankie! I hope you're decent! We're coming down!"

She was halfway down the dark staircase when I started my descent. I could see the heat from her body glowing in the darkness, almost like built-in night vision except mine glowed red instead of green. It was a wild new ability, which I received courtesy of a wound from Marcello, done with a knife spelled to kill me. The knife was a "witch killer," and one that was not supposed to be wielded by vampires, only witches. Because I am both vampire and witch, it didn't kill me. It actually brought out long dormant witch powers and enhanced some of my vampire abilities. The night vision was vampire and, I have to admit, it was damn useful for stealth operations. The glow of a flashlight would never give me away again.

To be honest, my vampire side totally kicked ass above and beyond my witchy ways. Casper said it was because I didn't practice enough, but since I was hopeless in the kitchen, I wasn't exactly a natural at the spell pot. Still, I didn't need to spell to use some of my abilities. Like, I could control the tides and the weather. Of course, the word "control" was a bit generous. I had a 60 percent success rate using that power. I stopped practicing when I almost made a tornado touch down in the middle of Providence. A tornado in the dead of January in New England? That's not weird. Right?

The door to Frankie's apartment was repurposed from an old darkroom. It was essentially an enclosed rotating door. I installed it as a fail-safe, in case someone blew the top door off the hinges and flooded the stairs and basement with sunlight. Odds were slim that it would happen. But slim odds are still odds, and I wasn't taking any chances.