Page 12 of Blood & Bones

“I’m here,” I said, because he wouldn’t believe them if I didn’t answer. They’d both covered for me more than once, and he had been swift to make his displeasure known. Even though he treated me like garbage since I’d been turned, he still wanted my respect and obedience. I only showed up at these calls to keep him from ragging on Camille’s back.

“Yes, well. I have some news for you, and I thought we might as well make this our monthly check-in,” he said. Sephreh was good at hiding his feelings, so whether the news was good or ill, it was impossible to tell.

“What’s up?” Camille asked.

He gave her a long look for a moment. “You’re adapting to being Earthside, I see.” Then, with a blink, he said, “What’s up…is that your great-aunt Lerian was murdered by a pack of bandits. What’s up is that she left you each a small legacy—nothing major, but a memory of her. Camille, she left you an amethyst necklace. Delilah, she left you an emerald ring. And Menolly, she left you a ruby brooch. I’ll send them over with a courier in a few days.”

Camille cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Father.”

I knew full-well that he hadn’t been close to his aunt Lerian. He seldom spoke of her, and I doubted whether he’d seen her in decades. But it was proper etiquette to honor the dead, and so he would, and he would demand that we did.

“Yes, well…I thought you should know.” He fell silent again, then said, “Tell me what you’ve been doing. How goes the assignment?”

Camille took the reins of the conversation, and she managed to shut it down less than twenty minutes later. But I couldn’t help but notice that he actually seemed relieved to say goodbye.

As the fog in the mirror returned, Camille stretched and yawned. “Well, that’s that for a month, barring any untoward events. I need to go to bed. Delilah?”

She nodded. “Me too.” After a pause, she added, “Camille, you know he loves you. He just…”

“I disappoint him at every turn,” Camille said. “Don’t apologize for him. And he barely even acknowledges Menolly’s existence. But yeah, he’s our father and do my best to give him the respect he wants. But I’m not feeling particularly good about it.” She turned to me. “I wish we could stay up later and talk, but…”

“Well, Jocko gave me the next couple of nights off to look for the rogue vamp, so maybe we can do something tomorrow night,” I said, giving her a hug. For the longest time—at least several years—I hadn’t been able to touch her or Kitten. Being so close to their necks, the pulse of their blood, had been too hard. But now I could hug them. Now, I could be close to them without feeling the hunger rise.

“Let’s go dancing,” Camille said. “There are a couple of clubs I’d like to check out.”

“Sounds good,” I said. We all liked dancing, and it was a way to get out excess energy. And I could drop in at the bar and ask Tavah about whom to contact about Laddy and the rogue vamp.

I returned downstairs and decided to spend the evening online looking for reports about missing people. Often newly turned vampires were reported as missing, because there were no bodies to find. Pulling a bottle of blood from the fridge, I warmed it up in the microwave for a few seconds to normal body warmth, then settled down with the laptop. Outside, the storm began to rage, branches clattering against the roof.

CHAPTER SIX

Next evening, I woke to find that the storm had done a number on some of our trees. But I had slept through it, wandering in the gritty streets of a nameless city, under the unending rain. I had passed faceless men and women sleeping under cardboard, and I could feel their fear of the darkness and the hidden dangers lurking in the shadows.

“We should head out,” Camille said. “I made a couple of calls today. It sounds like the Nightmare’s the place to go for dancing. It’s on the second level of the Underground.”

She was dressed in a purple corset with black velvet trim. Beneath the corset, she wore a flowing black skirt and stiletto sandals. Her boobs were as big as my head, but they worked for her. I couldn’t imagine coping with that amount of breastage, and was grateful that I didn’t need a bra. Although, our Fae heritage made everything perkier, so bras were even a choice for Camille.

Delilah was also dressed to go, wearing camo pants, along with an olive tank top and brown cowboy boots. She’d found a brown plaid beret somewhere and, somehow, it fit her outfit.

“Let me go change,” I said. I dashed down to my lair, where I slid into a pair of black jeans so tight they looked painted on, a black turtleneck, knee high black leather boots and a denim vest with rhinestones. Camille joined me and did my makeup for me, and we were ready to rock.

We headed out in Camille’s sedan, heading toward downtown Seattle. Years ago, the city was below sea level in some areas and regularly flooded. Then, in one fateful moment, a huge portion of the city went up in flames. By the time the flames were quenched, a major section of the business district was gone. When the city rebuilt, they built the new level over twenty feet above the original, creating an underground labyrinth of old streets and buildings. Decades later, parts of it were used for underground nightclubs, but as the vamps moved in, the humans moved out. Now, it was primarily vampire-country, so to speak, though humans, shifters, and low-life Fae tended to congregate there. The humans, more to say they walked on the wild side and lived, though there were actually fewer deaths there than in the city streets. The underground was a tangle of shops and nightclubs and vampire lairs.

We finally found a parking space and Camille made sure the protection ward she’d bought was in place to guard the car. She’d tried making her own at first, but that only ended up with the car going into the shop for a week.

“Have you ever been to this club?” I asked.

Camille shook her head. “No, but one of my customers said it’s the place to go clubbing right now. It’s fairly new, and it’s on the second level so it’s still in relatively safe territory.” She pulled her cape tighter around her shoulders, making sure the hood protected her hair.

I wore my hair in tiny braids, with beads that made noise when I walked. That—and the sound of my boots—gave me comfort. Sometimes, because I didn’t need to breathe and I never heard the sound of my heart beating—because it didn’t—I had panic attacks.

So, I dressed to make noise. To distract myself from the fact that I truly existed in a body already dead, but that would never die until I chose death. I avoided thinking of the other ways—vampire slayers, and the like—because I couldn’t control that side of life. Ever since Dredge, my life had been all about control.

The Underground had a number of entrances, and all were, by law, supposed to be guarded. Minors weren’t permitted, though teens—especially—managed to sneak in all the time. The guard at the door took one look at us and nodded us in. He was a shifter, that much I could tell, though what kind I didn’t know.

We entered the hustle and bustle of the first level. The place was always busiest at night. During the day, most of the shops were closed, and the only ones prowling the hallways would be humans, shifters, and the like. The vamps who lived down here were safely locked behind metal doors, most of them in high security complexes where anybody seeking to destroy them would be caught and unceremoniously turned out.

I looked around. The corridors were marked by a complex numbering system that included level, quadrant area, and where you were in relation to the front entrance. Elevators were found by each locator sign, and I led my sisters over to the nearest one.