She took another sip. “For the record, there have been no moans of pleasure between my former jailer and me.”
“Give it time. I know doggy love when I see it.”
Talia’s head spun—either from the alcohol or his comment or both—but she was just about tipsy enough not to care. “He’s a hellhound and I’m a vampire. Doesn’t that make it weird?”
“I’m an immortal living vampire bartender who occasionally turns into a giant wolfhound. Weird is relative.” He gave her an assessing look. “You’re starting to look better. You’re lucky.”
“I wasn’t outside all that long. An hour. Hour and a half max.”
Joe gave a rueful smile. “In this age of instant heat, people have forgotten how deadly weather can be. Now, tell me what happened.”
Talia set down her mug. “I was at the hospital with Lore.”
“Why?”
“To see Perry.” She could tell from his look that this was news. “Perry was shot.”
“What?” Joe’s face registered shock.
“Perry called Lore to say that he had found something out about, you know, what we were talking about the other night. Lore went up to the university to see what it was. When he was there, Perry got shot by a sniper. With a silver-pellet safety round.”
Joe swore, long and in several languages.
“The sniper showed up at the hospital, and I chased him. He’s a Hunter, and what’s weird is that he used magic to pass through the wall.” She didn’t say Max was her brother. It was the cowardly way out, but she felt cold and sick. She was giving Joe the important facts. The rest could wait until she felt up to accusations and rotten tomatoes.
“A Hunter? Are you sure?”
She blinked, staring into her drink. “Yeah, I knew him from before . . . before I was killed.”
Joe gave her a curious look. “Okay. Go on.”
She ended her story with her walk through the underground. “It didn’t strike me until just now, but it’s odd that there weren’t homeless down there. It’s cold in the tunnels, but it’s out of the wind and snow.”
“Even the human homeless are better at sensing threat than those of us who live comfortable lives.” Joe refilled her mug with more of the warm, delicious Empire Bites Back. “Those tunnels haven’t been safe for weeks.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve heard stories about something living down there. People start talking three beers into their evening.” He made a gesture that took in the whole bar. “We get a mixed clientele in here. More and more human yuppies going for a walk on the wild side, but the core clientele is still the longtime Spookytown residents. If there’s something going on, they know about it.”
“Do you think there’s a link to the election?”
Joe shrugged. “Maybe. Nothing surprises me anymore.”
He pulled out his cell phone. “I’m calling the others. They’re going to want to know you’re safe, and I want an update on Perry.”
“Me, too.” Talia wrapped her hand around her mug. She was just about ready to unbutton her coat. Her toes were a mass of pins and needles, bringing back childhood memories of long walks home from school. She and her brother used to stand over the forced air ducts in the floor to warm their bare feet while their mother brought dry socks. Somehow, the cold hadn’t seemed so bad as a kid.
Nothing had. What the hell, Max? You never asked me if I was all right.
And she hadn’t had a chance to tell him about Michelle. Had he already known that she was dead? It was an ugly thought. Talia bit her lip, wondering what the Hunters were doing and how deeply Max was involved.
She looked up as Joe closed the phone. “How’s Perry?”
“I talked to Errata. He hasn’t regained consciousness.”
“Oh.”
Joe grimaced. “Lore filled me in a bit more. Now that the police know you’re still in the area, they’ll be looking for you that much harder. It’s better if you don’t go back to Lore’s place.”
Talia glanced at the frost-painted windows, dreading the cold outside. “How late are you open?”
“As long as you need.”
She gave him a startled glance.
“Hey,” he said, picking up a knife and cutting the end off of a lemon. “Take it easy. That’s what friends are for.”
Talia took a breath to speak, but changed her mind at the last moment.
“Thank you,” was all she said.
Chapter 21
Thursday, December 30, 7:30 p.m.
Downtown Fairview
Darak was walking downtown, minding his own business, when the guy a block ahead walked through the alley wall.
For a moment, he wondered if that last blood donor had been knocking back more than Jell-O shots. She’d been the cheap and cheerful type, but he hadn’t expected chemically altered. It would be a sad day when vampires had to start demanding organic.
Or, something might be more sinister than a funky meal.
Lengthening his stride, he covered the distance to the piece of old brick wall. His boots scrunched on snow and sand, the buckles and metal bits on his jacket jingling in chorus. It was cold enough that the bricks wore a rime of frost that sparkled in the streetlights.
He pounded on the spot where he’d seen the figure disappear just to be sure there hadn’t been a door. Back in the day, secret passages were denarii a dozen.
His breath came out in a puff of surprised steam when his fist passed right through the bricks. Gah! He snatched his hand back. He’d seen too many ghosts to enjoy that.
Except that his hand felt like it was crawling with ants. Magic. Someone was using spells to take a shortcut.
An unexpected ripple of triumph curled his lips. After Michelle’s ghost had fled, he had looked long and hard but had found no real clues to the spell caster’s identity—but this was something. There might be two or three magic users in a city at one time, but not a whole phone book of them. In his experience, one always knew about the others. If he could find the man who walked through walls, he’d be on his way to the necromancer.
Portals closed fast, sometimes in seconds. Without wasting another moment, he pushed through, feeling as if an entire swarm of bees was pressed against his body.
And stepped into an old corridor. It felt clammy, like a basement. The floor was covered in worn green broadloom, the wallpaper flocked red vinyl. A hotel? Something skittered by on the floor. An abandoned hotel?
He was alone. Seconds after the figure used the teleportation spell, the magic would have begun to decay. Darak had followed, but he hadn’t gone as far. His quarry was somewhere up ahead.
He sniffed the air. Yes, there were other vampires nearby. He began marching toward the smell, the heavy thump of his boots barely muffled by the thin carpet. A feeling of profound creepiness descended on him. Outside of his own movements, the place was utterly silent.
He pulled out his Smith & Wesson. It was a .357 Magnum loaded with vampire-ready ammunition. He was a “just in case” kinda guy.
A pair of fire doors blocked his path. He was tempted to kick through them, doing the bad-ass thing, but magic made him wary. He opened the door a crack, looking and listening. He could hear male voices now, and detected maybe a few dozen individual scents. The long hallway ended in a meeting room. One of the doors was propped open with a chair, the barely padded kind found at wedding banquets everywhere. The chair was kept company by a pair of vampires holding assault rifles.
Darak opened the door slowly and went through, sauntering as if he had every right to be there. One of the guards started talking to his shirt cuff.
How many voices did he hear? Three? Four? It would be better if he asked nicely and they told him what he wanted to know. Then they could all get on with their nights. But he was always up for a good Plan B.