Under Witch Curse (Moon Shadow Series) (26 page)

“Whoever they are, they kept the same MO that he described. Take a victim, do a tat, check the joint is empty and rob it.”

“Only we interrupted the process with Nick.”

“For what good it did.” I rolled a ball of silver between my thumb and forefinger. “The best curses are spelled to a specific person. But I could load a couple of these with a curse. Or a fireball spell. Be good to have some silver shrapnel flying around, right?”

White Feather kissed the top of my head and left me to my spells. In the end, I made a fireball with silver, holy water, stinging nettle, and some explosive firepower. “Hmm. A little of Granny Ruth’s spider poison in here would force a neurotoxin into the blood along with silver. A shifter could have a real problem staying upright.”

Borrowing from the design used in the arrowhead necklace, I melted silver to the back of a steel tip and packed the spell. I used the kitchen burners to complete some of the work. It wasn’t entirely safe, but until my lab was finished, it was the best I could do.

White Feather appeared from the bedroom. “Ready?”

I jangled my silver bracelets. “Showtime.”

The entire way to the hospital, I pondered what to use as leverage to convince Zandy to spill his guts. Difficult that. He was on the hook for murder. Lee stood the better chance of negotiating a plea deal with prosecutors, and he’d be more than happy to place Zandy at the scene of the crimes. Deals weren’t my cup of potions anyway. Gordon would be the one to offer or fake it.

As expected, Zandy had been admitted to the building across from the main Santa Fe Indian Hospital where Patrick worked nights as a nurse. Come nightfall, if Zandy was still a patient, there was no way he’d live through the night. He was too treacherous for the vamp community to allow him to continue breathing.

“That’s it!” I whispered, even though we were alone in the elevator headed to the second floor. “I bet Zandy knows Patrick works here, because all the shifters and vamps know Patrick has a safe place in the basement. Zandy knows Patrick is on the lookout for him after that vamp went rogue. We can tell Zandy that if he cooperates, we’ll transport him to a nice safe jail cell before sundown.”

“Good idea.”

White Feather’s phone rang the second we stepped out of the elevator. “It’s Gordon.” He read the text. “He’s running late.”

“Good. Then he won’t hear our conversation about Patrick.”

We knew the room number, but even if we hadn’t, the guard was obvious.

White Feather showed his ID, and it was enough to gain us entrance. That was the good news. The bad news was that we were too late.

Zandy wouldn’t be sharing any secrets ever again.

Chapter 34

White Feather dialed, even as we stared at the lifeless body that had once been Zandy. The hospital curtain had been secured more than halfway around, blocking anyone entering from immediately seeing the damage. An IV hooked up to his arm dripped slowly, but the blood could in no way replace the amount that had been taken out.

“Bled dry,” White Feather said into his cell.

That was a good assessment. The ripped carotid artery at his neck wasn’t leaking more than a drop or two anymore. Whoever had done it had been fast and clean. Or really hungry. My eyes flew to the window. It was still daylight. “Aztec sacrifices!” It had to be the work of a vamp. But it wasn’t dark outside.

Gordon being late must have meant “Gordon is waiting in the parking lot until we ask our questions” because his voice boomed in the hallway as White Feather provided a terse description of the situation.

Gordon burst through the door, breathing hard. “Shit. Damn vamps. What shift does your vamp buddy work? Did he have to be this obvious? Some kind of freak warning, maybe?”

Fear began to build in the pit of my stomach. “Patrick didn’t drink his blood. Not on his worst day.”

“Now ain’t the best time to stick up for him.” Gordon gestured at Zandy’s form in disgust.

I shook my head. “His shift is at night. He’s a
vampire.
” I looked at White Feather for backup. “Insanity, remember? Patrick said Zandy’s blood drove the other vamp insane. Patrick didn’t like Zandy, but he isn’t stupid. There is no way he’d bleed him, not even a mouthful.”

An uncomfortable silence followed my declaration.

“Then who—or what—did it?” Gordon asked.

“It can’t be a vamp. It’s still three o’clock. No sane vamp would attack in the daytime. Only a completely dumb vamp with no survival skills whatsoever...wait a minute!” My thoughts raced ahead of my mouth. “Fat old guy who tried to use his own tattoos...Lee said Jedi was sick. Joe is sick; he’s somewhere past death’s door. Patrick said he had to stay here at the hospital otherwise Joe became confused and went out in the daytime!”

“What?”

Neither man was following my confused ramble. I grabbed White Feather’s arm. “Patrick! He disappeared. Basement! Mat has a key!” Over Gordon’s protests, I confiscated the cell phone still in White Feather’s hand and dialed Mat.

“We need the key to the hospital basement,” I told her. “As in yesterday. Although it’s really too late.”

The thing about girlfriends is that they aren’t like men. They understand an emergency and don’t demand logic on the spot. Sure, you’ll have to provide the gory details eventually, but best friends trust you’ll share when the time is right. Meanwhile, they hop in the car and drive faster than the legal speed limit allows.

I hung up. “I think the key she has opens the inner door. It had better.” We’d only used it on the outside door.

White Feather said, “Patrick’s new vamp? The sick vamp you just visited drained Zandy?”

“Joe. It has to be him. Lee told us that Jedi decided to use his own tats to form constructs to control. What he didn’t say was that Jedi had to first create new tats on himself. I didn’t think of it at the time, but new tats are the only possible way Jedi could have animated them. Old tats wouldn’t contain the black magic or Zandy’s blood, both of which were used in the construct formula.”

“And Joe died from new tats,” White Feather said.

“Exactly. He died from tats gone wrong, tats he admitted used Zandy’s blood. And Patrick mentioned he was staying with Joe in the basement because Joe kept trying to leave during the day. What he didn’t say, maybe because he didn’t know, was that Joe
could
go out in daylight because he was never completely turned!”

“Who the hell is Joe?” Gordon demanded.

“The ugliest, unhealthiest not-a-vampire I’ve ever seen. And the last time I saw him, he was dying in the basement of this place.”

“And you’re considering waltzing in there to find him? Shoot’m full of silver bullets?” Gordon’s eyes bulged.

My own panic was worse than his, but for entirely different reasons. “I don’t think Patrick knew any more than Joe told us during the visit, but the timing fits. Joe died about two weeks ago, right after these robberies started happening. Patrick believed Joe’s lack of respect for daylight was partly responsible for Joe’s illness, but my guess is that the whole turning vamp failed, leaving Joe somewhere in between. There was black magic in the tats, mixed with holy water and church grounds. There’s no way any spell could have gone as planned with those circumstances.”

“If Joe can operate during daylight hours, wouldn’t that make raiding the basement right now damned dangerous?” Gordon asked, single-minded as ever.

“It wouldn’t be any safer at night. And I wonder what happened to Patrick. Lynx said he’s missing.”

White Feather handed me the phone. “Call Lynx. If he’s on Patrick’s trail, you better tell him about Joe.”

While I placed the call and left a message because Lynx didn’t answer, Gordon said, “We need a plan.”

He was right. Even if Joe had cleared out...Patrick had been watching over him for the last few days. He wouldn’t allow Joe to go rogue without putting up a fight. Had he taken Joe to his own home? That was doubtful, but I didn’t know vamp etiquette.

Patrick had kept Joe here for a reason, so why move him? They had easy access to blood here. Blood was the universal food for a vamp, right?

Thinking of the red stuff had me reaching for the IV pole before Gordon could prevent me from tainting the evidence. If Patrick was hurt or had been without blood for a while, he would be hungry. I wasn’t offering anyone I knew as the main course. Better to have a safe source if we found him in time.

I tried hard not to think about Joe filled up on Zandy’s blood, roaming somewhere in the daylight and soon-to-be dark. A rogue vamp who could waltz right into my old house—and maybe even my new one because he had tainted blood from an old spell.

Gordon was only worried about storming the basement, but he hadn’t seen the rogue vamp. No point in telling him that basement might be the least of our problems.

Chapter 35

Gordon voted to bring in a SWAT team, but we didn’t have time. The flash of his badge did buy us the information that Patrick had missed his last two shifts.

“He’s been out of circulation for at least two nights. If he’s been bled dry or staked, there’s no rush. But if he is still...functioning, he’s somewhere that he can’t escape. And getting hungrier. And it takes three days to turn a vamp. I don’t think we want to wait a third day to see what Joe might be up to.”

“What does three days have to do with Patrick? He’s already a vamp,” Gordon pointed out.

“Nothing unless... well, I’m almost positive that Joe can’t do any turning because he isn’t a proper vampire, but I know it takes three days to turn one. Joe has been turning tats into constructs and obviously has a thing for creating monsters. We don’t dare wait through tonight to discover his plans because if he is up to something that includes a three day time limit, we’re about to hit it.”

White Feather sighed. “Wind can only reveal so much about what might be in a basement behind a locked door. We’ll have to go in.”

“Why did you call Mat? She’s a civilian!” Gordon exploded.

“She has the key to the basement. I don’t. You haven’t seen the place. It’s built like a tomb. One that isn’t meant to be opened all that often.”

Gordon found himself inundated with the police business of the dead body that had been Zandy, but the second Mat buzzed my phone announcing her arrival, he turned the mess over to someone else.

We spent a few minutes by the basement door reviewing details, none of us happy. Dusk was no more than a half hour away and cold had already arrived.

I tried Lynx again. I didn’t like that he wasn’t answering, especially since he was supposedly searching for Patrick. If Patrick wasn’t in the basement, he could be at his home in Los Alamos. Maybe Lynx had gone there. I shivered inside my jacket, and it wasn’t from the cold air.

We had minutes to sundown.

“Let’s go.” I broke into the terse argument between White Feather and his brother.

Gordon glared at me and adjusted the strap on the pair of stakes he had across his back. The tips were steel with serrated edges. They’d been dipped in silver more than once. Of more comfort to him was his gun. I didn’t need to ask to know the bullets were silver. I could sense them.

“There’s no silver in the hallway below. I checked. Mat?”

She held up the key. Gordon reached for it and met her closed fist and raised eyebrows. The key disappeared inside the lock before he could argue with her. She did take his advice and stand to the side while opening it.

White Feather sent in his wind. “No one breathing.”

That wasn’t all that reassuring in this case.

We trooped in, one at a time, as Gordon had instructed. I positioned myself behind White Feather’s left side. Mat hugged the right wall and Gordon brought up the rear, closing the door behind us.

My ring was warm, either from nerves or because White Feather was floating wind everywhere at once, a constant search. The lights were dim and the only switch we knew about was near the door down the hallway.

It wasn’t a long walk. Lynx had implied there were other rooms down here, but if they were as invisible as the one we’d visited, it could take a while to locate them. If not for the light switch I’d seen Patrick use, finding the outline of the door we were after might have taken longer too.

As soon as I spotted the light switch, I adjusted it to full power. White Feather and I both did reconnaissance. I sensed bare hints of silver this time, nothing more than atmospheric noise. White Feather interpreted a lot more.

“Patrick’s there. Vamps have a signature that wind recognizes. There’s a presence with no sound.”

“It’s not Joe?”

“I’ve met Patrick on enough occasions. There’s a certain smell on the wind. It’s vamp and it’s Patrick.”

“He’s alive?” I whispered.

White Feather snorted. “He hasn’t started breathing, but he hasn’t stopped existing either. There’s a...there are two others breathing.”

“Any other vamps that might be Joe?”

He shook his head. “No. Vamps are a vortex of negative energy, like an empty space, only when the wind goes there, it dries up. I’m not getting that except from the one corner.

The hall lights were at full power, but the keyhole was still almost invisible. The door itself was no more than a line of oddly layered concrete blocks. When White Feather inserted the key, it refused to budge left or right.

“Are you sure this is the right spot?” White Feather asked.

Had I not been searching for silver, I might not have felt the tingle of magic. “Let Mat turn it,” I said. “Patrick gave her the key.”

“You are not entering first,” Gordon growled. He was still thoroughly angry at being shoved in the backseat. But a gun with silver bullets was not as advantageous as wind. It might be on par with a thrown spell, but Mat and I not only had various weapons at our disposal, we both had the advantage of having been in the room before.

Mat and I switched places, putting her within reach of the key.

She turned it easily. It didn’t even click. With a hop, she was back in position behind me on the side of the door.