Ten, p.33
Ten, page 33
“Maybe he was just getting ideas. There is a girl with a saddle and ponytail after all,” Toy added. “Can I watch the whole thing when you’re done scanning, Freckles?”
“Look, I need a lab—” he tailed off as Kyle too looked at the screen and cocked his head. “Oh, that’s impressive. Wow.”
Paige closed the laptop and pointed to the van. “Maybe we should finish up and get to a lab, so we can figure out why someone murdered Dr. Langer,” she said.
“Yeah,” both twins said quickly. They plowed through their portion of Mexican food and headed to the vehicle. Paige hopped to the back with Nadia and a body wrapped in plastic wrap.
“We’re going to go to a lab, but I think we should—” Paige started.
“We have to dispose of the body,” Nadia said ever so calmly.
“Nadia—”
“Paige, I know that if I was in your place, I would tell you to embrace your feelings and grieve,” she said as she continued to stare out the window. “However, our places are not reversed, and I’m not you.”
“So, what are you going to do?” Paige asked.
“I’m going to find out what happened, why this happened, and exactly who is responsible,” Nadia said softly. “And when I find them, they will discover exactly what kind of monster I am. It’s as simple as that.”
“Simple as that?” Paige asked.
Nadia smiled sadly. “What can I say, I’m Russian. We tend to be.
. . practical,” she said.
They drove in silence to a run-down clinic about forty-five minutes north. True to Steve’s word, no one batted an eye as two vampires and five werewolves dragged a body into the back of the office.
“I just told the clerk that he called my mom fat. She doesn’t really care,” Steve said.
“That’s because you had me give her five-thousand dollars,”
Lorcan sighed.
“Standard rate for a body around here. That Missy has two kids to get through college,” Steve said. “Um, Wonder Twins, there are computers, and lab stuff, and a table.”
“Ooh, a table,” Kyle said as he rolled his eyes.
“Nadia, keep watch out front. LaToya, take the back,” Lorcan ordered. “Kyle, do whatever you need to do quickly so that we can put the man to rest.”
“What do you want me to do?” Paige asked.
“I need to talk to you alone,” the vampire said. “Master DeMarco, can you keep that lovely receptionist occupied?”
Paige bristled as she found herself face-to-face with Lorcan in the alleyway behind the clinic. She blanched at the aroma of the dumpster baking in the unseasonable heat.
“Miss Paige?” he asked.
She took a step back from him. “Sorry, the last time I was with you behind a dumpster—” she said as her cheeks flushed.
“Miss Paige, my intentions are quite different this time,” Lorcan said. “What I need to know is how much of that scene back at the fertilizer plant was familiar to you?”
“You mean how much did I recognize because I still have flashbacks every damn day from when you were. . . when you were inside me?” she hissed. “I could somehow read that inscription on the wall.”
“So, you know exactly who that message was for,” he said as he drew closer once again. Paige backed against the wall but bared her teeth menacingly.
“Forhæte Moderātus. . . um, ‘renounce the devil Mordred,’ right?”
she asked.
“I honestly couldn’t tell if there was a comma or if that was just more blood spatter,” the vampire confessed. “But someone either wants me to renounce the devil—”
“Or us to renounce you,” Paige countered as she slipped around him, so he had to turn his back to the wall. “I was actually rooting for that meaning, I must confess.”
“If Mr. Blaylock got in there and saw that—”
“Do you really think Morgan was there?” Paige asked softly.
“I think someone let him get in there and let him lure us in to see my grandfather’s handiwork. There is no way he could have gotten back out without—”
“He could have used the same Taser trick that Kayleigh and Toy figured out to fool the vampire sensors. He’s resourceful—” Paige said.
“He could also be compromised,” Lorcan said. “Miss Paige—”
“Morgan is many things, but he would never work for vampires. I mean, he’d never work for a vampire other than you,” she said.
“Morgan has survived a lot longer on his own than you give him credit for. I didn’t tell you, but he was hunting vampires even when he was working for you.”
The vampire shook his head in disdain. “Miss Paige, you never had to tell me. Who do you think was feeding him information on all my enemies? Do you really think that one mortal could possibly break into a vampire hideout unless he was invited?”
Paige snarled at him, “You’ve got it wrong. It’s vampires that need the invitation. Now are you going to keep warning me about Morgan, or should we tell the others what it really looked like in there?”
“My grandfather performed a ceremony like that once before, it’s true, but it was to save my father from the slow death. The mixing of the blood was purposeful, calculated, and all the subjects were willing volunteers to save their king. I can’t imagine that a group of thugs would throw their lives away to save a vampire’s life or that Dr.
Langer would do so either. Perhaps Lady Jaeger did find some of Merlin’s notes—”
“There’s one little flaw in your logic, old man,” Paige hissed.
“And what is that?”
“That note was addressed to Moderātus, you know, Latin for Mordred. I may be a mere mortal, but even I can tell when someone is giving you the finger. Is there anyone else besides me, and you, and possibly Morgan’s subconscious who knows who you really are?” Paige asked.
“Merlin,” Lorcan said.
“Yeah, Merlin, so why would you even want to defend him and think it’s the Jaeger?” Paige asked.
The vampire collapsed against the wall and rubbed his temples.
As he looked up with bloodshot eyes, Paige shuddered. “It’s not because I want to defend him, Miss Paige,” the vampire sighed. “I
just held on to that tiny shred of hope that it wasn’t him because it was the only chance we all had to survive.”
23
“HE WAS A GOOD MAN AND A FRIEND,” Lorcan said as he shut the trunk to their stolen Crown Victoria.
“A good scientist,” Kyle added. He tipped back his flask and then poured a bit on the ground. “Rest in peace, Kunal.”
Nadia took the flask and sighed, “Do svidaniya, old friend. Rest assured, I will find out what happened to you. I hope that you are giving them hell in heaven.”
She then took a drink and glared at the redhead. “Wasting good vodka is a sacrilege,” she said before chugging the rest down.
Paige remained in the back with a surprisingly somber Toy. Toy nodded to the group. “Are you ready for me to call this in? He deserves to be found and taken to his family,” she said.
“Nadia?” Lorcan asked.
“Call it in,” she said flatly. “Toy is right.”
“You know on any other day, I’d be recording that, using it as my damn ring tone,” Toy muttered. “But this just sucks.”
Paige watched the twins escort Nadia back to the van. She then motioned to the other outlier to start heading back. Steve whispered something as he walked by the Crown Vic, but Paige could only hear the “amen.”
“I never knew you were religious, Steve,” she said as they hopped in the back.
“Ever heard the expression ‘there are no atheists in foxholes?’
Well, it holds true for later wars too,” Steve sighed. “Your great,
great-grandma was terribly Catholic, and it was a bit contagious, Pip.”
The van peeled away from the alley and the now reported-as-stolen car. Lorcan leaned back and closed his eyes with a contented smile on his face. Kyle glared at him.
“Grandpa, seriously?” he asked. “How can you look so smug when we basically just buried a friend?”
“When you’ve seen as much death as I have, you have to find the joy in it. Also, that car belonged to human trafficking scumbags. It was my little gift to Nadia,” Lorcan said. “How much evidence did you plant in that car, Kayleigh?”
She gave a little salute. “Oh, the cops are going to have the bust of a century,” she said. “Sorry, Mr. Jaeger, but it might disrupt your little crime empire a little more.”
“First off, the name is DeMarco, Steve DeMarco, babe, and secondly the crime empire is my mom’s so go ahead; please make that bitch miserable for treating me like a dog all these years.”
“We need to get back to work,” Nadia said flatly.
“Nads—” Toy started, but she shut up when she saw just how cold Nadia’s eyes had become. “Um, fine, I’ll see what I can find out about all the victims, but it’s going to be really hard to explain these pictures.”
“I think we can identify them all without it coming to that, LaToya,”
Lorcan said.
“Really?” she asked.
“We know Dr. Langer, Knives Belinsky, and Billy Long. We have pictures of the fourth victim whom I’m sure will turn up soon enough and be identified by the police—” Lorcan said.
“His name was Branco Filipovic,” Steve sighed. “He was an employee of mine back in New Jersey.”
“Of yours?” Lorcan asked.
“My sister and I have friends with a few Eastern European families, yes. Sometimes we liked to do things on our own without having to ask mommy,” he said. “Running drugs and running blood take surprisingly similar skill sets, but they were mostly just thieves, not the most violent of criminals.”
“So that just leaves the last two tables, and all we have is blood and a watch,” Kyle muttered. “Also, where am I driving us, by the way?”
“One of the other victims, he was Ren Matsuoka,” Steve said softly. “You can take us to Daugherty Field, err Long Beach Airport.”
“The airport?” Kyle asked at the same time Lorcan said, “Ren, are you certain?”
“Hey, I don’t have to drop my jet off to its new owner until tomorrow, so unless you guys want to drive or fly coach we should get going. I might need you to pay for the fuel though, Lord Pendragon,” Steve explained. “And yeah, I know exactly what my servant’s blood tastes like. . . tasted like.”
“Kyle, do as he says. We need to get back and see if we can identify the sixth victim—”
“Who gives a damn about the victim?” Steve snapped. “Seriously, don’t you think it’s a little more important to figure out what was in that box?”
“If we know the victims—” Lorcan said.
“The victims are already dead,” Nadia snapped. “Whatever crawled out of that box is still alive.”
“And I’m betting you know what the hell sort of voodoo was going on in there, Lord P,” Steve said. “I want to know why your family killed my people!”
“You’re familiar with the slow death, Master DeMarco—”
“Yeah, it was your son that had it. I kinda remember you doing approximately jack shit to help him too—”
“Steve!” Paige barked.
Lorcan shook his head at Paige. “He’s right, I’m afraid,” the vampire said sadly. “The slow death is something we all fear, but what you saw back in that warehouse was the only alternative that I knew of—”
“Yeah, well you’re lucky that Geoffrey had me, and Minerva, and Georgia to take care of him. Wait, are you saying that bloodbath—?”
“A long time ago, before I was born,” Lorcan said with a sly look towards Paige, “Arthur Pendragon grew ill with the slow death.
Merlin tasked the combined tribes of Britain with the quest to save him. He called it the ceremony of the Grail.”
“Oh god,” Toy interjected. “You mean all that legendary stuff about a magic cup was real?”
“The cup was a symbol. The real quest was to find knights worthy enough to sacrifice themselves to save their king. These knights had to be young, strong, and all possess different blood types,” Lorcan continued. “They were then bled into a single vessel with a mix of acids and minerals that would promote healing. My father was willing to kill his finest servants just to survive.”
“You mean that, back there, was a cure for the osoi-shi?” Steve asked. “Your family has had it all this time?”
“Do you not see what it costs? The victims have to be slowly bled for days and combined with alchemical formulas that Merlin claims took centuries to develop!”
“But you had a start!” Steve snapped. “You could have shared it with the other families, and maybe they could have found a better cure.”
“Oh, please,” Lorcan said. “Do you think for even a second that a vampire like your mother wouldn’t try this? Do you think she’d bother getting willing sacrifices?”
“Oh yeah, I’m so sure that these people volunteered to save some vampire! You know what, Lord P? Your family is just a bunch of lying, hypocritical bastards! You claim that you value life, that humans are just as important as our kind, but in the end, you’ll torture them and kill them just to save your own skins. At least my family is honest about it!”
Lorcan said nothing. A deathly silence fell over the van as Kyle maneuvered it onto the freeway.
“Geoffrey’s mother wouldn’t allow another to die, even to save her own son,” Lorcan finally whispered. “If I dared to mention it, Meenakshi would command me to silence. Unlike some of us, she does believe in those principles, Master DeMarco.”
“Yeah, well there’s a reason everyone likes her and hates you, Lorcan,” Steve blurted out. “So, if Merlin couldn’t do his voodoo to
save an heir to house Pendragon, just who was he fixing up in the bloodbath?”
“I would assume himself,” Lorcan said. “Maintaining a body that is thousands of years old is difficult.”
“Does he wear about size eleven shoe?” Toy asked as she looked at her phone. “If he has average-sized feet that would put our man in the box at over six-feet tall.”
“Excuse me?” Lorcan asked.
“Yeah, sorry, while you boys were comparing your vampire penises, I was trying to get some answers. I just took some measurements of the hand and foot prints we got from the scene.”
“Well that rules out Merlin,” Lorcan said. “He’s one of the few vampires shorter than me.”
“Definitely man hands and feet unless it was one big bitch,” Toy continued. “Frankenvampire climbed out of the box and walked to table number one then the footprints just disappear. I found some really long black hairs—”
“Ren, he had long hair. He also had pretty big feet,” Steve said.
“Well, I guess we know where frankenvampire got his shoes,”
Paige chimed in. “Think about it.”
“Yeah, no more footprints. Good work, Shorty Spice. OK, the monster got some shoes and whoever was with him gets rid of the body in the chipper-shredder,” Toy said.
“Because he was a servant to a vampire, I bet,” Nadia added.
“You’d want him disposed of quietly, but the criminals would still be useful.”
“Not to mention, Ren was supposed to already be dead,” Steve said. “Talk about being awkward to explain.”
“What do you mean?” Lorcan asked.
“He was dying, so I thought he went out to California to get some sort of out-there treatment, but he comes back and apparently was killed. . . oh. . . oh man.”
“What?” Lorcan asked.
“You said that when Merlin did it before, they were all volunteers.
You don’t think that my servant volunteered to bring a vampire back from the slow death? It doesn’t make any sense, I mean, he hated
vampires,” Steve said. “But it fits why there was no body. Oh God, I have to tell Georgia that her boyfriend isn’t in an urn, that he played a part in a ritual and ended up as fertilizer?”
“You will tell her nothing!” Lorcan snapped.
“He might have volunteered, but why would a loan shark, or a hit man, or Dr. Langer?” Paige asked.
This time Kayleigh chimed in. “I may have something. I started doing a search on Belinsky, and it looks like a Sasha Belinsky was just released from prison after new evidence was mysteriously found on his twenty-twelve murder case. Do you think that’s a coincidence?” she asked.
“Branco Filipovic has a niece that went missing over a year ago,”
Toy said.
Steve stared out the window. “I’m pretty sure that has nothing to do with this mess, trust me,” he said.
“Still, if she shows up, I’m guessing that was his incentive,” Toy added. “Freckles, let’s see what we can do with the internet and our amazing spy skills.”
24
“IT’S BEAUTIFUL,” Georgia said as she ran her fingers along the fabric on her bed. Nicolette put her hands on her hips and shook her head at the cut-up pieces and pattern books.
“It’s a big-ole pile of nothing right now,” she sighed. “But with a little help from Gordo and the next two weeks off, I’m pretty sure I can make you something fan-fucking-tastic.”
“I really appreciate you doing this for us,” Georgia said. “It’s one less thing to worry about, you know.”
“Oh. . . Hon,” Nicolette said with a little sniffle. “Don’t you dare ruin my mascara before midnight. Come on and give old Nicolette a big hug.”
The much taller, broader woman with faint five-o-clock shadow devoured Georgia in a hug so fierce it lifted the poor girl off her feet.
She squeezed her friend right back and fought some sniffles of her own.
“I didn’t get a chance to tell you how sorry I was about Ren,”
Nicolette said. “He was a nice guy who always made sure we were paid on time.”
“Don’t you ruin my mascara either, Nicolette,” Georgia warned.
“The flowers were really sweet.”
“Well, I was just so shocked, we all were. I mean every bondsman knows that one day their luck is gonna run out, and you know, I knew he was sick, but, yeah—”
