“Aaron Sanderson, I know.” Scarlett filled him in on the kidnapping, including her rescue and Jared Hess’s plans for Beatrice.
“You’re okay, though? Is Eli going to be okay?” Although they both seemed to like the same girl, Jesse didn’t want to wish the guy any actual harm. Even with the whole
I can’t involve you
bit.
“I am, and he will be.”
“I can have the cops at Dashiell’s in five minutes,” he said.
“No! The police can’t handle this, Jesse. You should know that by now. Even if we could get Jared Hess out of there, we can never take him to the cops to talk about the Old World. Most of them will think he’s crazy, but a few will start to wonder.”
He gestured helplessly with his free hand. “But we can’t just—”
“Come on. You know Dash will never let that happen.”
Just like that, Jesse saw his dreams of arresting the La Brea Park killer vanish. He rubbed his head, frustrated beyond words. The murders couldn’t go unsolved. It would just terrify everyone—
“Jesse!” Scarlett yelled. “Are you listening?”
“Sorry, what?”
“I need you to meet me in Pasadena. Tell me you’re somewhere close, please.”
Jesse looked up at the bait shop. It was fifteen minutes on the freeway, tops. Less with the siren. “I’m a little closer than usual.”
“Good. Bring your gun. We’ve got to go get Corry.”
“Who’s Corry?”
“The other null.” Her voice grew agitated. “Hess took her, Jesse. She’s only fifteen.”
Pieces fell into place in his mind. “This is why you didn’t want to tell me about her?”
“Yes.”
“You could have trusted me, you know.” She said nothing, and he put it aside for the moment. “Where should I meet you?”
“Dashiell’s.”
Jesse sort of remembered how to get there, but he still scribbled down the directions. The second he hung up, he threw the car into drive and put the siren in the window.
I picked up Jesse at the bottom of Dashiell’s long driveway and cruised toward the house with the headlights off, navigating mostly by memory. When I finally parked and turned off the van, I had the door open and one foot outside before Jesse managed to grab my arm.
“Wait,” he said. “We need a plan.”
After meeting Jared Hess, I was not in the mood for casual touching. “Let go of my arm. Now.”
He released me. “What’s your plan, Scarlett? You’re going to run in there, unarmed, and demand the release of your teenage friend who happens to be co-responsible for the murder that’s ruining Dashiell’s non-life?”
“I admit that it lacks a certain finesse, but—”
“Stop,” Jesse told me, and I closed my mouth, glaring at him. “Okay, look. Where would they be? What’s the most likely place where Hess would confront them?”
I thought about it. “Either Dash’s office or the patio. That’s where Dashiell and Beatrice would have been, if Hess surprised them, and where they would receive guests, if he knocked on the door politely.”
“What’s the best way to get to those two areas?”
I quickly outlined the interior of the mansion: front door leading to foyer, foyer branching into hallway, hallway leading down to living room, which contained doors to patio area.
“And the office?”
“On the other side of the foyer.”
“So basically, we pick left or right the second we get in the door?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Jesse reached behind himself and took something that had been clipped to his belt. “Do you know how to use this?”
A Taser! I almost did a dance. “Yes, absolutely.” He handed it over. It was a slightly more advanced model than my own, but the basics were the same. I should have three crippling jolts before it ran out of power. I felt better.
“Okay, what’s your gut instinct? Patio or office?”
“Patio,” I said immediately, before I could overthink it.
“All right. Stay close to me, be as quiet as you can, and let’s go.”
We snuck around the house via the little sidewalk path, and Jesse eased the front door open. Ordinarily, we wouldn’t have a chance in hell of keeping our approach from the vampires, but I was hoping that all the vamps in the house were close enough to Corry to be human at the moment. Jesse stuck his head through the door into the dim interior, then looked back at me and inclined his head in the universal symbol for
Let’s go
. I nodded.
As soon as we were inside, Jesse gently swung the door closed and motioned that I should lead. In the foyer, I turned right, heading down the long hallway toward the living room. Bizarrely, sneaking around the vampire’s lair made me feel like a little kid again, staying up past my bedtime to play Capture the Flag with Jack and the other kids in our neighborhood. I felt the same rush of fear and excitement, and the sense that I was getting away with something.
Until I heard the gunshot.
Jesse and I exchanged a look, and I darted forward into the house, ignoring caution in favor of speed. The second we reached
the doorway to the dark living room, however, I felt a gun barrel press against my temple.
“Stop right there,” a familiar voice said very softly. In the silence, I could dimly hear muted voices coming from the patio, but I was at the wrong angle to see out the doors.
“Albert?” I ventured.
“Yeah.”
“Who is he?” Jesse asked, hand frozen on his own gun.
“Albert is one of Dashiell’s men. He’s one of the guys who kidnapped me yesterday.” Up close, I had the nagging feeling again that I had seen Albert before that. “But I know you from somewhere else, don’t I?”
“Shut up.”
I snapped my fingers. “The hospital. You were at the hospital visiting Olivia.” Why would a vampire visit a dying null?
Next to my head, the sound of the gun’s hammer being cocked sounded deafening. “I said,” he spat, “shut the hell up.”
My knees threatened to collapse. I shut up.
“First he hands me his gun. Then we can have a nice chat.”
I was afraid to turn my head to look at Jesse, but at the edge of my vision, I saw him hand over his weapon.
“Okay, turn around,” Albert ordered. I did. His small face looked tired and tense, and his rumpled suit looked as if it had seen better days. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“We’re here to help Dashiell.”
Albert snorted, a very human sound. “Like hell. Isn’t Dash planning to kill you in a few hours?”
“That’s in a few hours. Did you see the girl?” I asked bluntly. “The teenager?”
A look of uncertainty flashed across his face. “Yeah, so?”
“Well, she’s with me. And if the guy holding her hostage is trying to kill Dashiell, then I’m all about helping him.”
“Sort of an ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’ kind of thing,” Jesse offered.
Albert considered this for a moment. “Then why were you trying to sneak in the door right behind Dashiell, where he couldn’t see you coming?” He shook his head. “No, I think you’re working with that asshole.” He lifted the gun, which had drifted down a few inches. Those things are heavy when you’re stuck as a human.
“Wait,” I said, confused. “Is there another way onto the patio?”
“Yeah, of course. You think Dashiell would build a patio with only one exit? It’s the servants’ door, behind the big guy and the little girl.”
“May I?” I said, inclining my head toward the patio doors.
He hesitated. “Fine. But he goes, too. Take more than three steps and you’re done.”
Jesse stuck to my side as I took a few steps into the living room to get a better view of the patio doors. Albert stayed in the doorway, pivoting the gun so it stayed on the two of us as we crept into the room. The living room was dark and the patio was bright with torches, so I wasn’t too worried about being spotted. I took the allowed three steps and was able to see the scene outside. Sure enough, Dashiell and Beatrice were closest to the patio doors, with their backs to it. Hugo was on Beatrice’s right. I saw Hess and Corry were standing up at the head of the table—and on their left, Ariadne and two men I didn’t know were sitting opposite Dash and his people. The guy next to her was short and squat, with Hispanic features and a permanent frown. He wore an expensive black suit with no tie, but didn’t wear it well. Next to him, across from Hugo, was a tall, lean man in black jeans and a cowboy hat.
Hess was saying something to Beatrice with a snarky look on his face, while Corry looked miserable and terrified beside him. Her plain green T-shirt was wet at the neck from tears, and—God, was her arm broken? Behind Corry, I could just make out
the outline of a door, which had been painted to match the pink stucco of the exterior walls. No wonder I had never noticed it; I was generally scared and distracted whenever I met with Dashiell. There was a very small window in the door, at eye level, which I’d always thought was just a regular window into the house.
I turned back toward Jesse, telling him who was who, with the exception of the men I didn’t know. “You see the door?”
“Yeah. Come on.” We took the three steps back to the doorway, where Albert waited with the gun.
“Why is Ariadne here? And who is with her?” I hissed.
Albert’s face was grim. “She came to make her move against Dashiell. Carlos is the master who’s sponsoring her. The guy with them is a werewolf, muscle for hire.”
Talk about your bad timing
, I thought. I bet Ariadne was wishing she had waited just a bit longer for her hostile takeover.
“Why haven’t you burst in there yourself?” Jesse asked Albert. “You could probably get a shot at Hess before he sees you. Isn’t that the kind of thing Dashiell pays you for?”
Albert just stared at us nervously.
“He’s afraid,” I said, understanding. “There’s a null out there, and he’s scared of getting hurt or killed while she’s so close. God, Albert, that really is cowardly.”
“Shut up,” he growled. “Listen, if you two are so brave, you’re welcome to storm out there. I’ll take you around to the servant door.”
“Give me my gun and we will,” Jesse retorted.
“So you can shoot me and then Dashiell? Yeah, right.” Albert shook his head. “I may get in trouble for not rushing out there, but I’ll definitely get dead if I let Scarlett Bernard waltz past me and take a shot at him. No, you go without a gun.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he just glared at me. “Or I could always just shoot you here, see if the sound distracts that guy long enough for Dashiell to jump him. That seems like a good plan, too.”
I closed my mouth and looked at Jesse. We didn’t have time for this. He nodded at me.
“We’ll go,” I said to Albert.
“Fine.”
As quickly as possible, Albert guided us in a wide circle around the patio, whispering directions in the dark as he held the gun at our backs. We ended up in a large, lavishly equipped kitchen that I had never seen before.
“Why do vampires need a kitchen?” Jesse whispered, but I just shrugged and rolled my eyes.
“Here,” Albert said, pointing at the interior side of the servants’ door.
I peeked through the little square. The vampire opposite Dashiell, the one closest to Corry, was saying something I couldn’t hear.
“Do you have a plan?” Jesse asked me.
“I’ll get the girl. You go for Hess.”
“And the vampires?” he said, glancing at Albert, who was waiting fifteen feet back, still holding the gun and looking much more comfortable as a vampire.
“Hopefully won’t try to kill us the second we get through the door.”
“Okay.” He took a step toward the door and then looked back. “Hey, I guess you’re off the hook for murder.”
I made a face at him.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Wait! Jesse?”
“What?” His eyes searched my face.
“Um, I’m just sorry. That you got sucked into this.”
He grinned. “Weirdly? I’m not.”
And we burst through the door.
Jesse went straight for Jared Hess as though he had blinders on. Hess heard the door open and swung the gun around, but by the time he had it pointed the right way, Jesse had crossed the five feet between them and tackled Hess around the waist, driving his shoulder into Hess’s wide torso. In his peripheral vision, he saw Scarlett grab the teenage girl and crouch down in the nearest corner, getting her as far from the action as possible.
Hess went down with an
oomph
, and the gun went flying out of his hand—and clattered straight down the long oval table, stopping in front of the lean cowboy-looking guy with the shoulder wound. The cowboy looked at the giant vampire across from him for a split second and then dove for the gun, just as the big vamp pulled his own out of a shoulder holster.
As the cowboy managed to shoot the vampire in the face, Ariadne screamed a terrible, inhuman scream and launched herself over the big table, straight toward Beatrice. She was still in the nulls’ proximity, so her scramble across was more functional than graceful, but she dropped into Beatrice’s lap within a second, trying to dig black fingernails into the other vampire’s eyes. Dashiell cried out and tried to pry Ariadne off his mate, which caused the vampire sitting across from him—Carlos—to jump onto the table himself, trying to protect Ariadne.
Of course, Jesse only barely registered all of this, as he was in the middle of an old-school playground fight with Jared Hess. The two of them made a fairly even match: Jesse had trained in combat at the police academy, but Hess was fifty pounds heavier and fast as anything. Hess recovered from the tackle to pound terrible blows on Jesse’s head and shoulders. Jesse jerked his head upward, slamming it into Hess’s jaw, which snapped shut with an audible click. Hess released him but clubbed Jesse away with a punch on the ear, forcing him to roll away. For a moment, the world seemed to have lost gravity, and Jesse struggled to get his feet under him.
Hess stood up first and aimed a kick at Jesse’s face, which he dodged fairly easily. Hess ducked Jesse’s two return punches, driving a fist into his stomach, which forced Jesse to bend in half and take a breath. Hess took advantage of the pause and looked around frantically for the gun, but it was long since out of his reach. When he turned back to Jesse, though, the cop was ready for him, clasping his fists together and driving them up into Jared Hess’s nose. Hess screamed with rage as blood flooded down his shirt, then swung blindly in Jesse’s direction. Off balance, Jesse stumbled back and couldn’t avoid Hess’s vicious kick to his left knee. Jesse screamed with pain and shifted his weight as the knee threatened to crumple under him.