“What are you,” he said, panting. “A Stone Woman?”
“A Stone Woman?” She spat on him. “A woman wants more than you have and she’s a godsdamn abomination. I was going to let you go easy.” She put the toe of her boot into the small of his back and pressed.
He screamed.
Before she did anything more, the curtain ripped back to reveal a man so large he eclipsed the dance floor entirely: Walsh, the bar’s owner and minder.
“Ms. Elle,” he said. “Is there a problem?”
She shook her head, and the world shook with her. Somewhere behind the mass of Walsh, the party continued. “He called me a Stone Woman, Walsh.” She heard the plaintive, angry whine in her voice and hated herself for it. “Can’t hold his blood, and he attacks me and calls me a Stone Woman.”
The vampire writhed on the floor. She had removed her boot from his back when Walsh arrived.
“This woman hurting you, buddy?”
The vampire muttered something in the negative, and pushed himself onto his hands and knees. It took him a moment to stand.
“Don’t forget your tip,” Cat said, not breaking eye contact with Walsh. The vampire cursed her in what sounded like Kathic and scuttled out. He took the coins.
“You can’t keep doing this.” Walsh’s voice was so deep it competed with the bass. “I run a clean place.”
“Guy was a cheat. A hungry cheat.”
“Being hungry’s not a crime.”
“Used to be good vamps in this city, Walsh. One sip and I was gone. What happened?” The bad comedown was getting to her, haze clouding the edges of her vision like spectators at a crime scene. She staggered forward, put out a hand, leaned on him for support. He hesitated before resting one ham-hock arm around her shoulders.
“You ever think the problem isn’t the vamps?”
“Whatchyou mean,” she murmured into his chest as he guided her out of the booth.
“I mean you’re in here every night, here or Claude’s or one of a half-dozen other places. You started with the kiddie leeches, and you’ve been moving up. Before too long, it’ll be you and the real old ones, and they can drain you in seconds. You won’t be able to give them lip or beat them up if they mess with you, either.”
“I c’n beat up anyone.”
“Sure you can, Ms. Elle.”
They made their way back to the bar, skirting the edge of the crowd. Somewhere in that dancing mass a young kid was getting her first taste. A quick bite and she’d be flying.
The bar was sparsely peopled. Walsh pulled a glass and a bottle of gin from the middle shelf and poured the glass half full for her. “Look, Ms. Elle. Do me a favor. Drink this, go somewhere, clean yourself up. Read a book or something. Don’t hurt any more of my customers.”
She downed half the gin with her first pull, the other half with her second. “You shouldn’t let that trash in anyway. Gives you a bad name.”
“Will you go? Please? One night, clean and mostly sober, no sticking anything into any veins?”
She looked at him incredulously. “You’re kicking me out.”
“Better to drink and run away and live to drink another day, kiddo.” He motioned to one of the bouncers, a tall, square-shouldered chick with bright orange hair and a blouse cut off at the sleeves to expose daunting musculature. She escorted Cat to the front door, pushed her outside, and shut the door behind her.
The dark alley stank of stagnant water. Two gas lamps shed pale light on the cobblestones, and a large metal dumpster a few yards away swelled with trash. Halfhearted graffiti overlaid deep old scars left by the talons of Stone Men.
A score of back doors led into this alley, but only the Undercroft had an entrance here.
Bums and hobos lay against bare brick walls, hats out to catch change from the passing night scum and the Northtown nobs who drifted east to the Pleasure Quarters after nightfall for their fun. The beggars kept their hands to themselves. If they chased away custom, Walsh would have them cleared out overnight.
Cat staggered upstream against the intermittent current of customers, ignoring the outstretched hands and needy faces and the smiles of the pushers near the corner. She’d tried their drugs before, their Old World poppy milk and their pills stuffed with ground herbs from the Shining Kingdom. A vampire’s fang made them all seem frail, flabby jokes. She had less patience for the pimps, and promised herself she would return some night soon when she was on duty.
The alley opened onto a broad and crowded street lit by ghostlight. You could tell the priests from the other reprobates by the hooded cloaks they wore to hide their tonsures.
The world grayed out and her veins ached for something sharp to spread poison through them. Her sweat was cold. Her legs twitched under her and her back hit the brick wall. She slid down until she was sitting on her heels, shoulders bowed forward and hands resting on the sharp toes of her boots. Some Blacksuit would be along soon, to sweep her off the main street and set her on her way home.
It was barely nine o’clock. It had been an early morning at work, with the murder and all. She was okay. Right?
Breathe in, breathe out. Don’t look up, because the light hurts your eyes.
A pair of black-clad legs trespassed on the upper edge of her field of vision. That hadn’t taken long. She prepared herself for the Blacksuit’s words to rake across her mind.
They never came.
Instead, a voice she hadn’t heard in far too long said, “Cat, is that you?” It wasn’t the most gallant one-liner with which to re-enter her life, but Abelard had never been a gallant type.
“Abe!” She reached out and grabbed his legs, using his body as a prop with which to lever herself, slowly, to her feet. “What the hell, man! What are you doing here?”
He was wearing a black felt hat, she noticed when she climbed her way to his shoulders. The hat covered the tonsure, which was about all you could say for it.
There was a woman with him. Age hard to place; smooth tea-and-milk skin dusted with brown freckles, and her snake-hazel eyes were smooth as well, the way eyes got when they saw too much. She was dressed oddly for a night out, in a black skirt and a blouse with a neckline that barely showed the hollow of her collarbones. Too simple for eveningwear and too severe to be casual.
“Abe, are you working?” Cat put all the scorn she could muster into that word.
His eyes searched the graffiti on the wall behind her for an answer, and in his pause the woman extended her hand. “I’m Tara Abernathy. Abe”—she said it with an amused glance at Abelard—“said you might be able to help us.”
“Sure,” Cat replied. Her head spun from gin and blood loss. “Soon as I finish being sick. Excuse me.”
8
Ms. Kevarian received the letter at the door of the small suite that served as her office and quarters. Her features tightened when she saw the seal, as if it were a vicious insect that she couldn’t decide whether to crush or fling away. Quietly, she closed the door.
She laid the letter in the center of her desk and sat in an armchair across the room. Light filtered through the narrow windows from the city and cast a long shadow off the rolled parchment. Her elbows pressed against her knees, and she clasped her hands in front of her face, one atop the other. Night deepened, and still she sat, pondering.
At last she moved to the table and held one hand above the letter, palm flat and fingers splayed as though testing a skillet’s heat. Starfire glimmered faintly between her hand and the scroll. The seal sparked, hissed, and emitted a line of sick black smoke. She caught the smoke and crushed it into a tiny crystal, pea-sized and jagged-edged, which she tucked into her jacket pocket.
She opened the letter.
It was written in the flowing, watery hand of a person who normally used small, rapid letters but on rare occasions allowed himself a calligrapher’s flourish. As she read, the corners of her lips curled downward and fire crept into her eyes.