Page 54

Holy. Shit. With a deep breath, I turn and walk back to Cor, returning his wide-eyed stare with my own. Neither of us can talk though, not yet, not within earshot of the whole Viking vampire clan, so we just kind of walk off, shoulders and fingers touching with every step. We make it out of the main floor and into the hallway unscathed and I almost stop to say what is roaring through my head, but Cor shakes his head and pulls me along. We don't slow down until we have reached the third floor metal fire escape leading away from the burning buildings and down into a neighboring street. Who'd thought fire escapes might actually help escape fires? Ha.

Cor herds me down the escape and into the street, looking over his shoulder every so often as if he can’t believe we are being let go. I can’t, either, but my head is back to swimming and throbbing, and turning back more than necessary seems like too much of a risk.

As we trot along, I throw a glance into the factory yard to see if my rental is still there. I spot the wreck between two fire engines, blackened and crushed as if some force had stepped on it. The way both police and fire department are ignoring it tells me they already checked and found nothing noteworthy, which means I have some time to figure out how to make it disappear before they find incriminating material, like my phone, or the tablet, or the papers describing in great detail how I think the serial killer was actually a vampire. Yeah, that would be bad.

Cor drags me along at an unhealthy pace, keeping to the shadows and side roads until we reach a deserted strip of riverside. There, he pushes me against against the concrete river wall and slides down to the water to wash the blood off his arms and face as good as he can. The river water won't help with the blood on his shirt or pants, or the gaping wounds, but it is an improvement that might just get us out of the district and back to the hotel without getting arrested.

I lean heavily onto the concrete ledge as I wait for Cor to finish up, gingerly touching the half-healed laceration in my face and contemplating if my hand is salvageable, when someone grabs my collar and whirls me around.

"What the fuck, Gideon," Colton snarls, his face a mixture of relief and outrage. The cavalry has arrived.

OPIATES ARE THE best invention since the book press. I float on fluffy clouds of starbursts and cotton as the surgeons try their best to fix my wrist. I should have been anesthetized completely for this kind of injury, especially since I feel intermittent pain without it and keep twitching, but the illegal clinic we are at didn’t want to risk it. Instead, they let me fly high as a kite and as close to an overdose as they will go.

I think Cor is actually there for parts of it, ignoring people yelling at him about the sterile environment, but I cannot be sure. All I know is that an hour or two later, I am finding myself in a suitably comfy hospital bed with a giant, poofy bandage around my damaged arm that leaves only my fingertips uncovered. For checking the blood flow, you see. Wouldn’t do to have my fingers fall off because they got too generous with the wrappings.

I take a moment to notice that someone is sitting at my bedside, and at first I think it is Cor. When I finally manage to turn my head without getting faint, I realize it’s Colton. Going by the page he has open on his copy of ‘War and Peace’, he has been here a while. And surprisingly, we are alone.

“Your vampire is in the hallway, being watched by Dallas and Gray,” Colton says as if reading my mind. “I told him he can either wait outside for us to finish, or get shot. For a moment there, I almost thought he’d pick the shooting option.”

Sounds like Cor. I manage not to grin like an idiot, which I attribute at least in part to my medicated daze.

My boss doesn’t dwell on my vampire for long, though. Instead, he scoots around a little on the chair, closes his book with a thud, and sighs deeply. “Tell me about what happened with Asha. I know she worked with the cultists, but what exactly happened tonight?”

I blink slowly, feeling the meds swirl around in my brain like a lazy river. "Asha?" I echo, trying to pull my thoughts together. "Yeah, that was... messy." Understatement of the year, but how else should I describe it?

Colton raises an eyebrow and waits. Patience isn't usually his strong suit, but right now he seems to understand I'm not exactly at peak performance.

"Well," I start, my voice trailing as I try to piece together the sequence of events. “After we talked, I caught her peeling out of the hotel parking lot like her butt was on fire, so I assumed she was going after—” I lick my lips with a tongue that feels both swollen and too dry, trying to decide if now is the time to tell Colton everything. On the one hand, Hunters don’t like vampires. On the other hand… if not now, then when?

With a fortifying breath, I keep going. “I thought she was going after Cor, since she and her cultist friends had been salivating over getting their hands on him for days. She probably thought she had run out of time and decided to do something drastic, or so I assumed. So I panicked and went straight to Cor’s hiding spot. The cultists actually tried to grab Cor shortly before I arrived, but he drove them off, and we had… a falling out, so he ran off too. And that’s when Asha grabbed me.”

Colton frowns through most of my stammered retelling of my day, but he doesn’t interrupt me until I have to pause for air. “Why would Asha want some random vampire?”

That requires some more explanation, but I do my best. I tell Colton about the amulets, about how Asha left me stranded and how I caught her with Arzel, about my saving of Cor and finally how I found out who Cor is. He doesn’t stop shaking his head in disbelief until I reach the part where I explain my conclusions about why they wanted this vampire of all vampires, and when I finally run out of words, he hacks up a bewildered laugh. I can’t blame him to be honest.

"Sounds like the most convoluted, crazy bullshit I’ve ever heard. Honestly, Gideon, if I didn’t have proof for everything you just told me, I would probably have you locked up," Colton mutters, tapping his fingers against the cover of his book. “The only thing I’m still not clear on is what happened afterward at the factory. She brought you there and then what, waited for her chance?”

“She actually pulled me out of danger when her cultist buddies ambushed the vampires. I can’t say why, but she gave me the impression that she was feeling guilty about what she was doing.” I scratch my nose, blinking as the memory sneaks up on me, way too vivid for comfort. Asha’s face, her eyes flashing with fear as the vampire jumped her, her outstretched hand, her voice… I shudder and lick my lips. “Not guilty enough to set me free. She was about to shoot me when I got lucky. A random vampire jumped her and gave me a chance to run off. And after that, …”

I pause, realizing that the details of the factory fight are scattering like leaves in a storm within my hazy mind. "After that, it was chaos," I say, trying to keep the images clear. "Vampires and cultists were everywhere. It was like a supernatural brawl straight out of a bad movie. Everyone was fighting everyone. I just... tried not to get killed."

Colton’s expression morphs from disbelief to a more resigned shake of his head, the kind you'd expect from someone trying to unpack a particularly bizarre dream. "You 'just tried not to get killed.' Right," he echoes, a smirk playing around the corners of his mouth. It's the kind of comment that makes you glad your boss has a sense of humor, albeit as dry as day-old toast.

He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and gives me a long look. "Well, I guess it’s a good thing you have cat-like reflexes or... vampire friends," he adds with a pointed glance toward the hallway where Cor is supposedly being road-blocked by my fellow Hunters. Colton’s eyes narrow slightly as he seems to consider his next words. “This Cor… He’s important to you?” His tone is neutral but probing, the way it gets when he’s sniffing out more than just facts.

I hesitate, knowing my answer treads into dangerous territory. “He’s… complicated. But yeah, he’s important.” My cheeks warm at the admission, and I'm grateful for the dim lighting in the room.

“Complicated,” Colton spits and drops his heavy book on the small nightstand next to my head as he pulls in a deep breath. The thud makes me twitch and my mangled wrist throb with pain, but I’m too surprised to make a sound besides a strangled grunt.

“Complicated is when an orthodox Jew falls in love with a Protestant and tries to decide on a wedding venue.” He leans forward, weirdly angry as he growls, “Complicated is when you married your car and your financial adviser asks for the maiden name of your wife. Complicated,” Colton almost yells, sitting upright again as he keeps barking at me, “is when you try to explain to the police that the screams in your house weren’t those of a dying toddler, but of a Siamese cat in heat and then they find out that you don’t even have a cat. That is complicated! This,” his hand flaps back and forth between where I lie and the door that hides Cor, Dallas, and Gray, “this is a clusterfuck!”

Any reply I could think of gets stuck in my throat. I try a few times, then look down at my bandaged hand on the white bedsheets and shake my head. “I know.”

Colton gasps in his next breath to calm down. I steal a glance at him out of the corner of my eye, watching him as he rubs his face furiously. He takes a little while to calm down enough, but this isn’t his first rodeo. When he lowers his hand again, his collected calm is back. And with it, something akin to guilt.

“Part of this is my fault,” he admits and shakes his head. “I don’t know how the cultists could find a way around the Hunters’ mark, and it worries me greatly that they did. What else can they do? How deeply are we compromised? I can’t imagine that Asha is their only test subject or helper, or whatever. You need more than one Hunter to study the mark. There had to have been some trial and error, some tests, deaths maybe, that we simply don’t know about yet. I have to find out, Gideon. This is too big to ignore. Which is the only reason I’m not taking action against you and your vampire. He can still be useful as someone who knows a lot about cultists. He can keep an eye on you, make sure you don’t fall into their hands as well. And he can help you look for clues around here.”

I blink at him, mouth agape. “You want me to stay? Here? With… with Cor? Is that a good idea?”