“Son of a
bitch
,” I gasped, and Eli looked like he was about to howl. Eli is not a small man, and even in human form, I couldn’t believe the guy on his side was able to keep him in the seat.
“Stay, boy,” said the giant on my side of the van. He held up a wicked-looking handgun, pressing it against my temple, and Eli went very still next to me.
“Get her out,” ordered the man who’d appeared next to Eli, a weaselly-looking guy in a cheap dark suit.
Eli and I were dragged out of the van and marched around the back. I saw the slick-looking SUV the two men must have brought idling a few feet away. I’d been too involved in my romantic drama to even notice it arrive.
“Cuffs,” said the giant, and the smaller man pulled out a glaringly shiny set of handcuffs. It took me a second to realize why they gleamed.
Oh God
. “Silver,” I breathed.
The giant nodded, looking very smug. “You got it, bitch.”
The weaselly guy put the handcuffs on Eli. “So you can’t follow,” he rumbled, a surprisingly deep voice. Then he kicked Eli viciously in the stomach, and Eli doubled over, gasping. The guy kicked him in the ribs a couple of times for good measure, and I
realized that I was screaming. The giant just reached down and picked me up, throwing me over his shoulder and into the back of the SUV, where he scooted in right after me.
The weaselly guy jumped into the driver’s seat, and I ignored them both, turning in my seat to look at Eli, who was struggling to his feet. The SUV pulled away, and I felt the tug when he left my radius. Eli dropped like a stone in a pond, writhing on the ground in the parking lot.
“What are you doing?” I yelled at the giant next to me. I lunged across the seat and punched him, which would have been completely ineffectual if he hadn’t been taken by surprise. Instead, I got a little weight behind it and hit him straight in the nose.
He cried out in pain, backhanding me across the seat. “You stupid
bitch
!” he hollered.
I was dizzy with pain for a few seconds from where the side of my head had bounced off the window, and when my vision cleared, the big guy was touching his nose, holding his fingers up to see the blood. He did this again and again, fascinated, and I realized that this was a strange experience for him. I closed my eyes and concentrated for a moment, then popped them open.
Vampires
. Which I should have realized a hell of a lot earlier. My fingers scrabbled at the lock on my door, but there must have been some sort of child safety setting on because it didn’t budge.
I turned back and said, “I work for Dashiell, you assholes, and he’s going to be really pissed.”
To my surprise, they both chuckled, and the bloody giant leaned over and leered at me. “Bitch,” he said smugly, “who do you think we work for?”
I stayed quiet for a few minutes, adjusting to both the new information and the pain. If Dashiell had sent these guys to collect me, instead of just calling, he was expecting me to be hostile. To resist.
It’d be a shame to disappoint him. I kicked the back of the driver’s seat in front of me. “Hey. Little guy.”
The giant next to me snickered, and the weasel reached up and fiddled with the rearview mirror so he could glare at me. “What?” he rumbled.
“Why didn’t Dashiell just call me?”
He turned his head to exchange a look with the giant, but neither one of them answered me.
I kicked the seat again. “Hey.”
The big guy reached for me, but the driver barked, “Hugo!”
The giant froze.
So the smaller man was in charge. Interesting.
“We’re not supposed to hurt her yet.”
Fear clenched my heart at the word
yet
, but I pushed forward. “Sit, Hugo. Stay. Roll the fuck over.”
“What’s one more bruise?” Hugo whined toward the driver. “She’s already going to have two.”
“Knock it off,” he commanded, and Hugo sulked back in his seat.
I waited about thirty seconds, and then I kicked the back of the driver’s seat. “Hey. Little guy.”
Hugo snarled, but the weasel adjusted the mirror again and looked at me with a flat expression. “One thing you should have learned by now,” he said calmly, “Dashiell takes care of his own. Now there’s gonna be a reckoning.”
He adjusted the mirror back. I kept trying, but no amount of kicking or whining would get him to say anything else, and Hugo followed his cue. I gave up and leaned into my window, as far from them as I could get. A reckoning? First of all, who talks like that? Well, vampires, obviously, but was there actually a point in history where that didn’t sound stupid?
Focus, Scarlett
, I reminded myself. He’d said that Dashiell takes care of his people. Well, I knew that. It’s half the point of having a vampire leader, along with keeping the peace. So Dashiell thought I had done something to hurt his people or disturb the Old World...
Oh shit
.
“He thinks it was
me
?” I sputtered, and yes, it seriously took me that long to put it together. Both vampires flinched but remained silent as we pulled into the long driveway leading to Dashiell’s mansion. And for the first time since the giant one had said they worked for Dashiell, I was afraid.
When the car stopped, Hugo dragged me by the arm through the front door and into the room with the patio doors. He had a death grip on my upper arm, but I clenched my teeth and stumbled along, determined not to cry out.
Dashiell was sitting in his usual seat at the far end of the big table, tapping into a cell phone. He looked up when we arrived and gestured to Hugo to bring me closer. Ten or fifteen feet away, I felt the immortality drain from him.
“Sit her down,” he ordered, collecting himself.
Hugo shoved me toward the chair next to Dashiell’s, and I nearly tripped, catching myself on the chair back. I fought the urge to rub my arm and sat down as calmly as I could.
Dashiell picked up a file folder that had been waiting on the table and removed a thick white envelope. “Albert,” he said to the weaselly guy, “please go deliver this to our friend in the department. Hugo, give us some space.”
Sneering at me, Hugo retreated a few steps back toward the doors, nodding at Albert as the other vampire went by.
When they had moved, Dashiell leaned forward to place three photographs in front of me. The heads were bloodless and bloated, but I knew without being told that they were the victims from La Brea Park. “Joanna,” he said, tapping the photo of the woman. Next was the young man with the punk haircut. “Demetri. And Abraham,” he finished, pointing to the photo of the black man, whose face was ashen with blood loss. “Demetri and Joanna were a useless couple, lazy hangers-on who required your services on at least one occasion. But Abraham,” he continued, picking up the last photo, “he was integral to my financial structure. Losing him is a blow to my business.”
I groped for something to say, and finally just blurted, “I didn’t kill them.”
“No, you’re not nearly strong enough. But you certainly helped.”
“I didn’t,” I said, working to keep my voice calm.
“Then who did? Abraham wouldn’t have gone without a fight, and you’re the only null within three thousand miles. Do you have an alibi for earlier that evening?”
I bit my lip. I had been with Eli, but there was no point in telling Dashiell; he would either think I was lying or assume that the wolves were somehow connected to the murders. In Los Angeles the different factions of the Old World lived in relative peace with
each other, but it was an uneasy peace built on top of centuries of fighting. As small as my own place was in the grand scheme of things, I understood what would happen if war broke out in LA.
People would die.
“No. I was home, alone.”
“And if I asked Molly, would she say the same thing?” Dashiell shot back.
Oops. Backfire. I didn’t know how to respond, so I stayed silent.
Dashiell continued. “Tell me why I should believe you, Scarlett. Tell me why another null would come all the way to Los Angeles, without alerting any of my vampires or the wolves, just to kill three of my people in a public park? It seems far more likely that you were simply paid to be there. Another one of your ‘freelance jobs.’”
I leaned forward, too. “Dashiell, with respect, that doesn’t make sense, either. Why would I bite the hand that feeds me? If this Abraham—who I’ve never heard of, by the way—is important to your finances, and your finances pay my bills, why would I help kill him? And if I had helped kill these three, why on earth would I agree to help a police officer investigate their deaths? Why would I still be in this hemisphere?”
“To turn suspicion from yourself.”
I leaned back again. All of a sudden, the fear that had been growing since the vampires cuffed Eli just...evaporated. All I felt was tired. “Look, Dashiell, you are scary. The power that you have, vampire or not, is scary to me. If I had crossed you in some way, I would have gotten the hell out of town.”
He looked at me for a long minute, considering. The minute turned into two and then three, and I had to work hard not to squirm under his stare. “Hugo,” he said finally, without taking his eyes off me, “leave us.”
“Boss, you can’t be serious—” Hugo started from the back of the room, but Dashiell silenced him with a glance.
The mountainous vampire spun and retreated from the room, and Dashiell turned back to me.
“Ultimately,” he said slowly, “I do not care whether or not it was you. I just need a responsible party. Do you understand?”
Dashiell takes care of his own
. I knew what that meant now. Dashiell didn’t need the right culprit, he just needed to be able to publicly punish—kill—someone to keep the other vampires happy. And I was the obvious choice. I nodded.
“Good. So let’s say for a moment that I am willing to consider the possibility that you weren’t involved. I will give you until Friday at dawn to bring me the other null, if there really is one, and the person who did the killing. If you don’t know by then, I will assume it was you. If you run, if you so much as leave LA County, I will assume it was you.”
“You can’t possibly expect—” I protested, but he cut me off.
“Of course I can. Dawn is at six thirty-six. I’ll expect you here by six, with whoever is responsible.”
I thought about that for a moment and chose my words carefully. “If I can’t find this person...You’re asking me to show up for my own death. Why would I do that?”
“Because you and I both know that you still have people you can lose. Both here and in Esperanza. You don’t want anyone else to have to die for you, isn’t that right?”
I felt my face turn white. He knew about my brother. How was that possible? I’d been so careful...But it wasn’t the moment to figure that out. He had me, and we both knew it. I would be there at dawn, one way or the other.
He saw understanding on my face and made a dismissive motion with his hand. “Go, then. Bring me the killers, or just come yourself. It doesn’t matter much to me either way.”
My back was straight as I walked out of Dashiell’s, but it was an effort. I went to the end of the long driveway, pulled my cell phone out of my jeans pocket, and called for a cab. I was desperate to get back to Van Nuys and get that silver away from Eli, but I’d still turned down Dashiell’s offer to have Hugo drive me home. I didn’t want to be anywhere near the giant vampire, especially after I’d hit him. I also owed Cruz a call, but my hands started shaking, and I finally just shoved the phone back in my pocket. Tears were blurring my vision. I crouched down to the ground and threw up everything in my stomach. I heaved and heaved until I was empty of everything. Good thing my hair was up.
I scooted a few feet away from the vomit puddle and settled down on the curb to wait for the cab. My insides still churned. Just...goddammit. For a minute there, I’d really thought that Dashiell was going to kill me. And he probably knew about Jack, and maybe Eli, and who knows what else.
Besides, it wasn’t just the confrontation with Dashiell. I had always been comfortable in LA, because from a supernatural standpoint, it was so small—I didn’t have to work too hard or think too much. Now, in the space of two days, I’d been unable to make it to a job, I’d seen the city’s worst crime scene in generations, and my life had been given a short countdown by a very scary guy.
This was not working with my lifestyle at all.
My cell phone rang while I was still calming down. I held it up to see the caller ID—Jack again. I frowned. What the hell? For a brief, dreadful moment I pictured him lying in a hospital bed, dying or in need of a kidney. Jack and I don’t talk, but he’s the only real family I have left, and the image of something happening to him...I couldn’t deal with it just then. I hit
Ignore
. If Jack needed something, he could leave a message. And if I lived through the next thirty hours, I could call him back.
When the cab pulled up, I scrubbed at my mouth with my shirtsleeve one more time and stood up to meet it. The driver was a
little Armenian man with surprisingly perfect English. I gave him the address of Artie’s studio and leaned back, hoping he wouldn’t be too chatty. I hate chatty cabdrivers. He was fairly quiet, though, and I began to organize my plan of attack. First, rescue Eli. Then back to the house to drop him off and call Cruz. I had the vampires’ identities now. We could figure out who their human servants were and interview them or whatever. Maybe that could get us somewhere with the investigation. I frowned to myself. Something else was tugging at me, something about the smaller of Dashiell’s henchmen. Albert. I’d seen him somewhere before, but where? And did it have any relevancy to the murders? Maybe it was the adrenaline or the stress, but I couldn’t place him.
When we were a mile from the studio, I pulled my wallet out of my front pocket. Eyeing the meter through the cab’s bulletproof glass, I counted up the cash I had left. I would have just enough to make the fare, although my tip would not be stellar. When the driver stopped in front of Artie’s gate, I threw the cash through the slot and ran full-out around the building.