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Chapter 1
The world looks so different upside down. Try it. Hang off the side of your bed, then stare at something. But don’t do it for too long or the blood rushes to your head, doing funny things to your mind and your vision. You have the luxury of setting yourself upright.
I didn’t. This bald dude who was clearly a fan of protein shakes and leather jackets had me dangling by the ankle. Sad story, really. All I wanted was a burger, and the Happy Cow was closing soon, so I shadowstepped, took a back alley, then wham! I ran into mustachioed Mr. Clean and his death-grip of a hand.
Hi. My name is Dustin Graves, and I’m in trouble.
The attacker – let’s call him Meathead – was the schoolyard bully, and I was the scrawny kid with all the lunch money. The way he had me completely at his mercy shouldn’t have been physically possible. It was effortless, how he held me up with one hand locked like a manacle around my foot.
“Is there some way I can help you?” I huffed.
The man responded by shaking me. Trust me, not the greatest feeling. All the blood pooled in my head started sloshing around, and the dimly lit alley swam in my vision. I was going to have such a headache, damn it.
“Buddy,” I said. “Ouch. Seriously.”
I was still trying to size him up. Definitely supernatural. Way, way too strong to be a normal. Maybe a troll with a glamour cast over him? But where would a troll even find a camouflage spell? Those beady little eyes didn’t seem very intelligent. They were mad, though. That, I can tell you. Dude looked pretty upset.
He shook me again. Something fell past my ear and tinkled as it hit the ground. Loose change, I hoped. Times like these, I thought back to Vanitas and how life was easier, and more fun with him around. I had someone to talk to, and someone to count on for slicing up bad dudes and thugs, like Meathead here. But Vanitas was gone. How things had changed.
I studied my options while Meathead toed at the detritus on the ground, examining whatever he’d gotten out of my pockets by shaking me down like a coconut tree. There weren’t many possibilities for me, frankly, and I needed to wrestle my way out of my attacker’s grasp before my blood or my brain found its way out of my nostrils and dribbled to the floor.
Is that what happens? Hell if I know, I’m not a doctor. Worse, he could have dropped me on the concrete and split my head open. And where would that leave us? Me, snuffed out in a decidedly unglamorous fashion, and you with nothing left to read about poor, handsome, dead old Dustin Graves.
Hmm. But maybe I wanted him to drop me on my head.
“Hey buddy,” I grumbled. “Buddy, come on, you keep jiggling me like that and my brain’s gonna fall out of my ears. What do you want? Money? A puppy? A hug? You look like you could use a hug. Or how about a burger? Let’s go for a burger. I know a place.”
I yelped when the man’s fingers tightened around my ankle. In my head I saw an X-ray of my foot with all the bones in it splintering. Maybe smart-ass wasn’t the best approach.
“Looking for Diaz’s gem,” the man said. Finally, some words. He had a voice like gravel, if gravel smoked cigarettes and had a terrible whiskey habit.
“Okay,” I said, trying to make my voice a little cheerier, a bit friendlier. “First off, I don’t know any Diaz, and second, I don’t know what you mean about any gems.”
I cried out when the man squeezed even harder, and I swear that time I heard something crack and splinter. I bit back the tears forming in my throat. Big boy, I told myself. Be a big boy, even if it feels like the bridge troll in human clothing just shattered your entire foot.
“I swear,” I said, in my calmest voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Silence. I breathed in careful sips and winced, waiting for the man to crush my bones to powder, when he started to speak again, his voice rolling like distant thunder.
“Then we go to Diaz,” he said.
Now, I hear you. At that point anyone sensible would have agreed on pain of losing an entire foot. For all I knew Diaz was a perfectly lovely person who just wanted to drink tea out of pretty little cups and ask me some very nice questions. But being sensible clearly isn’t my defining trait. You and I wouldn’t be here if that was the case.
“Nice shoes,” I said.
“Huh?” Meathead looked down at his foot, which was already smoldering from the tiny little ember I had stealthily dropped onto his sock. His eyes went huge, and he started stamping out of shock. I concentrated on the ethers, on the little fibers of the sock sheathed over his other foot, and how it would be so nice of them if they too decided to go warm and toasty, and burst into flames. And so they did.
Meathead did a weird little dance, hopping from one shoe to the other, which had the effect of jostling my brain around the inside of my skull. I clamped down and focused, waiting for my opening, and when it was clear that my assailant was no longer looking, I reared my free foot back and kicked the shit out of his jaw.
Not the most elegant of attacks, but the man yowled, stomping his feet and clutching his chin, and dropping me in the process. And as I fell, I held my breath. If I got the timing wrong I’d break my head open like a raw egg. But if I aimed my fall into the pool of shadow beneath me on the asphalt, if I peeled away the veil of our reality, knocked on the door of that old, familiar dimension –
Ah. Cold, and quiet, and filled with gloomy, shapeless mist. I was back in the Dark Room, and never happier to be ambling about in that bizarre, terrible realm. It was odd, perhaps, to continue thinking of my ability as shadowstepping, chiefly because I’d learned to enter the shadows with any part of my body. I guess the bit about moving through the Dark Room on my actual feet still counts, but I digress.
I wanted to reappear just at the end of the alley, at a point where I could still see. Sure, I was more confident about my abilities the more I learned to control them under Carver’s tutelage, but I wasn’t about to shadowstep blind to a further destination. What if I appeared in oncoming traffic?
The shadows of the Dark Room dissipated, and I emerged in the relatively warmer clime of the alley. I looked around, and hah. Perfect. I’d
escaped my attacker.
Then something slammed into me with the force of a speeding car, pounding me against the alley’s brick wall. The pain crashed across my back like boiling water, and maybe I heard something crack. I saw stars, and in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help wondering if oncoming traffic would have been a more merciful way to break every bone in my body.
My vision swam back into focus as I struggled against the pressure bearing down against my neck. The pressure turned out to be Meathead’s entire hand wrapped around my throat like a grappling hook made out of solid, frozen beef. Huh. Cold skin. To further express that he wasn’t fucking around, Meathead bared his teeth. Correction. Fangs. I should have guessed he was a vampire.
Why didn’t I just set him on fire, you ask? Hey, baby steps. I couldn’t actually throw fireballs yet, so I improvised like I always did, by starting smaller flames, or sneaking little embers where I could put them. Still, the urge to burn rose in me again as I squirmed in his grasp. Carver once told me that an easy way to quickly diffuse a situation was to set someone’s hair on fire. But this guy was totally bald.
So I focused on his eyelashes.
“You burned my shoes.”
I blinked, distracted. “Sorry?” I looked down at his feet. His footwear was still mostly intact, but the bits around his ankles were somewhat blackened, the ends of his jeans singed. “Hey, let me make it up to you. If you don’t snap my head off, I’ll buy you some new kicks.”
His lips drew back further, exposing the full length of his fangs. I should have been more terrified, but something about those chompers was so familiar. Maybe spending time with Sterling had desensitized me. But Meathead bent closer, and all numbness washed away when I saw his fangs from up close, shining wet and white in the streetlight.
“Can’t replace them,” he muttered. “I took these off a dead man.”
I swallowed thickly. “What about a trade? My shoes for – ”
“Diaz’s jewel. That’s what I need.” His eyes cast downward to look at my feet regardless, and for a brief second I thought I had a chance of trading my shoes for my life. “Plus those are hideous.”
I squirmed, taken aback. “How dare you, sir. I paid twelve whole dollars for these.”
“Salimah. He’s trying to be cute.”
Something – someone, rather, stepped out of the shadows. Long tumbles of black hair, skin deep and dusky, lips painted blood-red. She wore a tight leather jacket, and equally tight jeans. What’s with vampires and leather, seriously? Valero could get chilly at night, sure, but what was wrong with a sensible hoodie, or a nice, fuzzy sweater every now and then? Of course, vampires weren’t affected by the weather, so none of it mattered. Weird perk for people who could be obliterated by sunlight.
The woman called Salimah watched me with a cool, cautious gaze, her arms folded across her chest. She raised her hand, spreading her fingers out, examining finely polished nails that were also painted blood-red. In ways, she reminded me of Layla, a succubus who had once sucked out part of my soul through a terrifyingly sexy and sexily terrifying kiss. But Salimah opened her mouth to speak, and from her fangs I could tell that she was the kind of supernatural creature who didn’t deal in souls. A bloodsucker through and through.
“On any other day, Mr. Graves,” she said, “I would find your cheeky banter amusing. Tonight, however, my patience is short. If you do not start giving us straight answers, my colleague here will be more than happy to rearrange your face.”
I gasped. “Not my face.” Seriously, though. Never the face.
The bald man growled. “Salimah, I swear.”
