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As they bustled out of the booth and headed toward the door, Trillian lingered behind. "Eyes open," he said. "The Elwing Clan will take to Wisteria like a duck to water. Keep a tight watch on who comes through the portal."
I nodded as he turned to go. I might not like him, but he had a good head on his shoulders. I turned back to the bar and surveyed the room as the crowd thickened. Within five minutes, the joint was packed. Over the past month or so, the Earthside Supes had discovered the Wayfarer and were making their way out of the closet in droves.
In addition to several run-of-the-mill Fae from Otherworld, I spotted two lycanthropes whispering in a corner booth, a gorgeous werepuma woman who was reading a copy of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, a half-dozen house sprites engaged in some sort of drinking game, and a couple of FBH neo-pagans who were taking divination lessons from one of the Elfin seers who'd taken up residence Earthside. There were also four Faerie Maids, all looking for a good, hard fuck. They'd been here two hours and had bought two rounds of drinks.
I was headed over to shake them down when the front door burst open and Chase Johnson strode through, a nasty ketchup stain covering the front of his shirt. About to make a snarky remark, I stopped cold when my nose picked up the fact that it wasn't ketchup after all. Chase was covered with blood. Swept under a sudden wave of dizziness, I forced myself to close my eyes and count to ten.
One… two… Don't even think of attacking. Three… four… Remember that I ate before I came to work. Five… six… Chase is Delilah's boyfriend, hurt him and you piss her off. Seven… eight… Push the temptation to the side. Chase is a nice guy, don't even go there. Nine… The blood isn't coming from Chase, it's merely on his suit. Ten… Take a deep breath even though I don't need to breathe, let it out slowly, loudly, send the tension and thirst with it to be cleansed and negated.
As the last of the air left my body, I opened my eyes. Each time, it got a little easier. Each time, I felt a little more control returning to my life. During my hunts, if I wasn't out scouting for pervs but instead had to drink from someone who was just an innocent bystander, I made use of the technique. It kept me from doing permanent damage, although I'd given up retraining my psyche to view the process as nutrition rather than pleasure. It always felt good, and it always would.
"Chase, what's going on? Are you hurt?"
His eyes widened as he met my gaze, but then he shook his head and nodded toward the door. "Across the street, at the theater. We got a report about some sort of fight going on. By the time we got there we found four dead. Two men, two women."
"What went down?" Whatever it was must have been bad. Chase knew better than to come around my bar all bloodied up. With Earthside Supes and denizens of Faerie hanging out here, it was an unwritten rule: If you were sporting a nasty laceration or a woman in the middle of a heavy menstrual flow, stay away from the Wayfarer. Blood scent risked setting somebody off because blood was an aphrodisiac to a number of Supes.
Yeah, something had happened to make Chase break with convention.
"Vampires," he said. "The victims were drained of blood but no obvious cuts or wounds. Sharah examined their necks and sure enough—twin punctures on every one of them. They were up in the balcony, near the back, where nobody else was sitting. So nobody saw what happened."
Vampires? Of course there were vamps in Seattle, but ones who would resort to attacking humans in a theater? That didn't track right. Vampires Anonymous (V.A.) had been working hard to combat feeding on the innocent.
I shook my head. "Did you catch them?"
Chase frowned. "We couldn't find any sign of them. We thought you might be able to help. The wounds are fresh; the vamps are probably close by. If anybody can find them, you can."
I groaned. "You want me to play Buffy? Give me one good reason why I should go staking my own kind."
Chase gave a rough laugh. "Because you're part of the OIA. Because you're on the right side. Because you know what they did was wrong. Hell, you can dress up in drag and call yourself Angel, for all I care. Just help us."
Great, just great. This was the price I paid for being nice to my sister's boyfriend. But as he stared at me, pleading for my help, how could I say no? I untied my apron and tossed it on the counter.
"Chrysandra, I'll be back in awhile. Watch the bar for me." I hurried to follow Chase out the door, into the dark January night.
My name is Menolly D'Artigo and I used to be an acrobat. In other words, I was damned good at getting into places and spying on people. Or rather, most of the time I was damned good. I happen to be half-human on my mother's side, half-Fae on my father's. The genetic mix leads to trouble, and whatever powers a half-Fae, half-human child is born with tend to get swallowed up in a mix of uncertainty. My sisters—Camille, a witch, and Delilah, a werecat—learned that lesson only too well.
During a routine spying mission, thanks to faulty wiring and a random roll of the dice, I slipped up. It was the last mistake I ever made. The Elwing Blood Clan took me down, and they play to win. The torture seemed to last for an eternity, and now—so will I. After Dredge killed me, he raised me into the world of the undead, turning me into a vamp just like him. But I refused to let the bastard win. Nobody ever gets the last word with me, especially a sadist like Dredge.
My sisters and I work for the Otherworld Intelligence Agency, which went bust a couple months ago. Civil war broke out back in Y'Elestrial, our home city-state in Otherworld. Queen Lethesanar recalled all operatives and filtered them into the military. We opted to stay Earthside, especially since she'd stamped a death threat on our heads at home.
Now we're in a race against time against a powerful demon lord named Shadow Wing. He's big and he's bad, and he's currently ruling over the Subterranean Realms. Together with his hordes of Demonkin, Shadow Wing intends to raze both Earth and Otherworld to the ground and take over. We do have a few allies back home in Otherworld. The Elfin Queen, Asteria, is giving us all the help she can, but it isn't much. Together my sisters and our ragtag group of friends are the only ones standing in Shadow Wing's way. And that's a scary proposition, at best.
The Delmonico Cinema Complex is the oldest theater in the Belles-Faire district of town, where the Wayfarer is located. Still outfitted with the original decor complete with squeaky chairs and a balcony right out of the fifties where lovers used to grope and fondle their way to celluloid ecstasy, the Delmonico had seen better days. But it still held nostalgic charm for the Seattle suburb, and hearkened back to a time of ushers who actually did their jobs and real butter on popcorn and monster movies on Saturday afternoons.
The theater was empty. The moviegoers hadn't even been aware of what happened. I doubted there had been many patrons to begin with. There wasn't much call during the week for late shows unless it was a cult classic, like The Rocky Horror Picture Show or Plan 9 from Outer Space. A young woman, the ticket taker by the looks of her uniform, and two food-stand attendants were sitting on a bench waiting for Chase's team to give them the go-ahead to leave.
"They don't know why we're here, so don't say a word in front of them," Chase said to me in low tones. "Depending on what happens, we'll tell them that a fight broke out and somebody ended up with a nasty broken nose."
He led the way up the threadbare carpet-covered stairs and I followed. Luckily I had enough control to keep my instincts reined in. I shook the smell of fresh blood out of my thoughts and focused on what he was saying.
"We received an anonymous tip about an hour ago. The call came directly to me, so somebody knew this was a case for the FH-CSI," he said.
The Faerie-Human Crime Scene Investigations unit was Chase's baby. He'd created it when he was first accepted into service by the Otherworld Intelligence Agency, Earthside Division, and it became the standard for all nationwide divisions that followed in its wake. The team responded to all law enforcement matters dealing with the Fae or Earthside Supes.
"Direct to your office, you mean? Your number isn't public, is it?" For some reason, the situation seemed odd to me.
