So?
It’s Jacques Williams. These are Lord Ruthven’s goons.
Motherfu–
There’s more. Jacques just told them to kill Olivia.
Before I could ask for more details, Adrian suddenly hung up his phone and returned to the living room, looking somewhat peeved. “Your arrival here has complicated things,” he said. To his companions, “We have our instructions. Get rid of the girl.”
“Whoa!” I held up both hands. “You’re just going to kill her?”
“This is too important to leave a trail,” Adrian said. “We have instructions to clean up. She’s a covenless witch. No one will miss her.”
I looked with alarm toward Olivia, wondering if I could draw my Glock faster than a vampire could move. To my surprise, Olivia was quicker than either of us. She suddenly collapsed, as if fainting, toward her sofa. The vampire next to her moved out of reflex, going to catch her, but Olivia produced something from beneath a cushion and jabbed upward. The vampire gurgled, clutching at his throat, and staggered back.
Several other things happened at once. The second vampire lifted his sword, leaping across me with the point toward Olivia. My tattoo of Mjolnir flared to life and I rabbit-punched him in the side of his head. He dropped like a sack of potatoes, thumping to the floor. Adrian drew his own sword, looked at his two companions, and suddenly made a break toward the back door. I drew my Glock in one smooth motion, firing twice. The tinkling sound of breaking glass – my magical silencer – filled the room. Adrian stumbled, hitting the back door hard. He managed to get it open and stagger outside. I made to follow, but Olivia was suddenly at my side, restraining me with a hand on my shoulder.
Her hands and arms were covered in blood, her face red, her eyes misty and furious. “Wait,” she told me. “Rocky hasn’t eaten all week.”
Adrian managed three steps down the back garden path when a piece of granite the size of a mailbox hit him from above, turning his head and the bulk of his torso into a crimson smear. It took me a moment to realize that the granite was the fist of Olivia’s garden-alarm rock golem. The creature leaned hard on what was left of Adrian, grinding him into pulp on the garden path, then looked through the door at Olivia.
“It’s fine,” she told him in a soothing voice. “That’s a good boy.”
The rock golem scooped up what was left of Adrian and shambled off.
I tucked my Glock back into my belt and checked the two other vampires. Mjolnir had collapsed the side of one’s skull. He was very dead. The other had been stabbed in the throat by a little silver spike, which Olivia still clutched in one hand, and was noisily dying on the living room floor.
“I’m going to need a new carpet,” she said. “Here, get his legs.”
I had a lot of questions, but having just participated in the murder of three of a Vampire Lord’s servants, I didn’t really feel like any of them were very important. I grabbed him by his legs, Olivia by his arms, and the two of us carried him out into the garden. He was still gurgling when we tossed him onto the compost pile in the corner. Rocky was sitting beside the compost pile, blood on his granite fists. I followed Olivia back inside, and when we returned with the body of the vampire I’d killed, there was nothing left of the first. Rocky, however, looked somehow more content.
“You have vampire blood on your arms,” I pointed out. “Also your left leg, just above the knee.”
Olivia wiped off her leg with a dishtowel, then washed her hands. “Water?” she asked. There were smears of Adrian’s blood on the kitchen linoleum. I stepped over them and looked around. Everything in the kitchen was still taped off for her paint job.
“Sure?”
She’s in shock, Maggie told me. She’s a cool customer – that’s a great way to get rid of bodies – but I bet she doesn’t do that very often.
Olivia handed me a glass of water from the sink and poured herself one.
“You okay?” I asked.
She stared at the opposite wall, sipping her water until it was gone. She took a deep breath, shuddered, and looked around. “Shit.” Her blinking gaze finally found me. “Shit. Shit. Shit. I don’t know how the fuck you knew it was me who did the scrying, but I’m glad you came to yell at me.”
“Yeah,” I told her truthfully. “Me too.” I was almost certain that even if I hadn’t showed up, Olivia would have ended up dead. I wanted to ask myself why, but I already knew. It was Boris’s damned blood tally. Lord Ruthven didn’t just want those contracts – he didn’t want anyone knowing that he had them. Olivia suddenly pushed herself away from the sink. Before I could ask where she was going, she stalked past me and into one of the back bedrooms.
“Look,” I called after her, “I think you might want to stay somewhere else for a couple of days. Or weeks.”
“Way ahead of you,” she responded from her bedroom. She emerged a minute later with a duffel bag and spent the next few minutes rushing around both bedrooms and her living room, throwing stuff into the bag. She emerged a final time, having changed into jeans and a fresh T-shirt, and tossed the full duffel bag onto the couch before attacking the floor with a razor blade. I pitched in to help, and within minutes we’d taken up a six-foot-by-six-foot piece of carpet and padding. Both went onto the compost pile. She mopped up the blood in the kitchen with a sponge and bleach and added the sponge to the compost pile as well. Finally, she looked around the small house, wincing. “This is going to put me back months. Oh well. Let’s go.”
“Let’s … ?” I asked.
She glared up at me. She was still a little misty-eyed still, but determined. Also very, very annoyed. She might be a civilian, but I’d also just watched her shank a vampire without hesitation. That took balls, and I already knew Maggie was impressed. Well, me too.
“I’m staying with you,” she said. “Hope you’ve got a couch or an air mattress or something.”
There was something deeply appealing about Olivia staying with me for a while, but I kept my head about me. “I … don’t know if that’s a good idea. Do you know who those guys were?”
“Lord Ruthven’s goons. Yeah, they told me. You scared of a Vampire Lord?” There was that same “challenging authority” look in her eyes from the first time we’d met.
I held up one finger. “First, yes. I am. He’s a fucking Vampire Lord. Second, I’m about to do something to piss him off really bad, and I don’t think you want to be around me when that happens. In fact, they’re probably going to forget all about you soon enough. I know of a safe house I can put you in …” I trailed off as Olivia locked the back door, then walked out the front and waited for me expectantly. I followed her out. She locked it, made a handful of arcane gestures on the front door, then whistled loudly. A little bit of gravel scooted across the front walk and she leaned down and spoke to it like a puppy.
“Okay, Rocky. You’re the man of the house while I’m away. You can eat vampires, but no one else. Hear me?” Seemingly satisfied, she shot me a glare and walked toward my truck, tossing her duffel into the bed. “I’m staying with you,” she said again. “This is about that Michael Pavlovich thing, right? You still need to find him?”
“Yes,” I said hesitantly. “But it’s more complicated now than it was yesterday.” A little help here, I said to Maggie.
What do you think I’m going to do? Talk sense into her? You’re on your own, bud.
Olivia folded her arms. “I still have my rolling scry on Michael. I stay with you, and we find Michael. Is that going to make all this vampire stuff go away?”