Chapter 23
I woke up on Saturday and snagged an early appointment with my longtime stylist. “To be clear,” I said to Ezra, “I’m doing this for me, not you.” I tossed my fake contacts in the trash.
He hung out at my place while I was gone. We were going to retrieve “the brain of my enemy” for Delacroix when I returned from the salon. Ezra had argued that there was no point helping Delacroix anymore when we’d agreed to it in exchange for a victim of the first Ashbishop, not our copycat.
However, I pointed out that we had nothing on Ash Lite, other than Silas being worried that it was one of the original crew. Thus every scrap of information on the Ashbishop and his vamps was essential to help us find our current suspect.
More importantly, back out now and Delacroix would tattle to the Authority about our role in Silas’s escape.
Besides, I wanted to see this brain for myself and figure out what the shedim planned on using it for.
While I was sitting under the dryer with the foils on, I checked in with Michael.
None of Keira’s colleagues in Argentina had made contact with Mois Aviyente yet, and Linda remained in her house, with no unusual activity and no one else coming or going.
I hid in the salon’s bathroom to make an encrypted video call to Silas. “Where are you now?”
“Just outside Calgary.”
“Troy crossed the border into Alberta?”
“Yeah. We caught him on CCTV footage in Banff. Pretty place.”
“Never been,” I said, “but I’ve seen photos.” The tiny town was nestled in the majestic snowcapped Rocky Mountains near crystal blue lakes. “What makes you think Troy continued on to Calgary?”
Darsh edged himself into the frame, draping an arm over his boyfriend’s shoulder with a look that dared me to comment on it.
I made kissy noises at them.
“You colored your hair back already?” Darsh said. “It would be such a pity if all those chemicals made it fall out.”
Silas pushed him out of the frame. “If you can’t say anything nice…”
Darsh instantly reappeared on-screen. “That’s what you’re for.” He smacked a kiss to Silas’s cheek.
The other vamp blushed, his freckles darkening. He rubbed his hand briskly over his short copper-colored hair. “Back to Troy,” he said pointedly.
Darsh grinned.
“I left the Seattle Spook Squad running down leads north of us in Edmonton,” Silas said. “The Portland bunch doubled back into British Columbia, and Nasir and Cécile went south into Montana, but since the Trans-Canada Highway runs from Banff to Calgary, Darsh and I are hunting Troy here as the most likely city where he can go to ground.”
“All work.” Darsh threw the back of his hand to his forehead.
“You could find ways to play in a nuclear disaster,” Silas grumbled affably.
“It’s one of my many talents.”
Someone knocked on the salon’s bathroom door.
“One moment!” I lowered my voice. “Much as I would love to stick around and induce myself into a diabetic coma gorging on the sweetness of you two, I must dash. Keep me posted?”
“Of course,” Silas said.
Darsh blew me a kiss and the screen went black.
When I got home, Ezra nodded in approval at my return to regular Aviva. I made a note to dump the padded shapewear I’d purchased to transform into Jackie’s curvier body, then followed him into the elevator.
Ezra had gone back to the Hell to change. He now wore his gorgeous cashmere trench coat over dark jeans and a fitted black sweater while I had on a short puffy winter jacket that made me vaguely tomato shaped.
“Whatever happened to that cool gothic hunter jacket of yours?” I said, watching the floor numbers and tapping my foot impatiently.
“Because you want it?”
“Vampire detective badge unlocked.”
Ezra laughed. “We can discuss you borrowing it.”
“Borrowing, huh? What would it take to upgrade to ownership?”
A wicked grin blossomed over Ezra’s face and he reached for me but the elevator chimed.
I ducked under his outstretched arm. “Duty calls.”
We bypassed the lobby and exited out the fire door into the alley. A soggy bag of trash had been tossed next to a dumpster, and a rando vampire leaned against the wall, smoking a cigarette. Two bags of trash, then.
“Where are you lovebirds off to?” He spat out a phlegmy glob and I shuddered.
Always nice to know Natán had efficient underlings.
“The happiest place on earth,” Ezra said. “Fuck off.”
In half a heartbeat, the strange vamp was behind me, his arm wrapped around my throat. It happened so fast that my brain was still processing the glowing tip of his cigarette discarded on the concrete. “Think I could get mouse ears?” he said.
Ezra’s fangs descended. “You’re about to have no ears if you don’t let her go.”
The other vampire tightened his hold on me, my air supply almost cut off. “I don’t think you understand what I’m willing to do for those mouse ears, bud.”
Ezra’s smile unfurled in much the same way that the glacier must have appeared to the Titanic : sharp and cold, promising danger and death.
I sighed. There wasn’t time for the boys to play. I morphed my left hand to claws and stabbed my captor’s eyes out.
He screamed and released me, spinning around with blood spurting out of his empty sockets.
I ducked out of the splatter zone and shook my hand to dislodge his eyeballs. Only one fell off.
“Need some help?” Ezra said, amused.
“You fucking bitch!” The vampire flailed around attempting to grab me. A milky film with green dots appeared in his sockets, his eyes already healing.
I flung the other eyeball against the wall and nodded at Ezra. “Have at it. But quickly.”
The still-blind vampire snapped his head up, spinning around to block Ezra’s attack, but even with sight he wouldn’t have been any match for the Prime.
Ezra snapped his neck before Natán’s minion completed his ninety-degree turn, the crunch echoing in my ears.
Catchy , Cherry said.
The vamp’s face grotesquely contorted in surprise in the split second before he crumbled into ash—a fun little snapshot to carry with me.
I wiped my hands off on my jeans. “My magic kingdom for some hand sanitizer.”
A mesh portal shivered into existence.
Ezra offered me his arm. “My lady?”
I looped my arm through his. “Thank you, kind sir.”
We stepped into the foyer of the Copper Hell and immediately back out onto manicured grounds, the silhouette of a grand Tuscan villa looming against the star-studded sky.
“It’s a bit much to clean on a regular basis,” I said, “but it also doesn’t scream ‘this way there be evil.’”
“That’s not true.” Ezra scanned the darkness. His heightened senses would pick up anyone—or anything—long before I did, so I remained relaxed until signaled otherwise.
“The place seems pretty tasteful from out here. Are you getting an evilcore vibe?”
We avoided the gravel path leading to the circular driveway, sticking to the grass.
“I was referring to the ‘bit much.’ There’s a cleaning staff,” Ezra said in an “obviously” voice.
“Oh, sunshine,” I said, patting his arm. “It must be so nice in your reality.”
“It is rather.”
We jogged up the front stairs.
I eyed the large brass knockers adorning the high wood doors, then shook my head. “Too easy.”
“Your restraint is admirable.” Ezra ran a hand over the mezuzah mounted to the doorframe and raised an eyebrow. “This is top-of-the-line.” He rattled the doors, but they didn’t even budge. “There’s rebar in these. Majorly reinforced. Even I’m not busting the doors down.”
The heavy bars on all the windows also proved resistant to Ezra’s super strength.
“Think all this security is merely for some pickled old brain?” I said.
“Only one way to tell.” Ezra shrugged out of his trench coat and dumped it in my hands.
“You’re going to break in?”
“As that’s the first step in this theft, yes.”
I swatted his arm. “Ha. Ha. I meant how? This is a private building, and you haven’t been invited inside.” I frowned. “How did Delacroix think this would work? There’s no way he didn’t consider every little detail.”
Ezra screwed up his face. “About that…”
I took a step backward, my eyes wide. “Vamps don’t have to be invited?!”
He waved his hands. “Breathe, Avi. That’s still a safeguard.” He paused. “Against other vamps. Primes, not so much.”
I smacked him. “So, you were just paying lip service to me the first time you asked me to invite you into my home?”
He wagged his eyebrows suggestively. “As I recall, you had no complaints about said lip service.”
“Ugh. Delacroix knew this, didn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
I swatted Ezra’s arm again. Harder. “Begone.”
He chuckled. “Back in a moment.” He dug his fingertips into some barely visible crack in the wall of the villa and hauled himself up, climbing it like a gecko.
Good thing Sachie wasn’t here to take notes.
I admired the tight clench of my boyfriend’s glutes and the flex of his biceps until he got too high up for me to ogle him anymore, then I hopped down the wide shallow stairs to see where he was going.
Ezra pulled himself over the lip of the roof and vanished from sight.
Less than two minutes later, the door was opened by a very sooty vampire. “The place is empty.” He reached for his trench coat, then grimaced, and opened a small portal that hovered above the stairs. “Toss the coat in.”
I pitched it through the portal into Ezra’s living room at the Copper Hell where he could retrieve it later, and entered the villa here in Tuscany. “You went down the chimney? How did you fit?”
The villa’s interior was a maze of opulent rooms filled with sheet-covered furniture and winding corridors that smelled of mold.
“I may have broken it open in a few places.” He brushed soot off himself, then just gave up. “It was my only option.”
“No. You also had ‘we turn around and go home without the brain’ as a choice.”
“Sure, but”—he flashed me a sheepish grin—“my mom and I used to watch Mary Poppins together and there’s this one song with chimney sweeps that I’d make her replay.”
“‘Chim Chimeree’ or whatever?”
“No. The dance one. ‘Step in Time.’ They made being a chimney sweep seem like so much fun.” He did a little two-step.
I got a pang in my chest. That was sweet, but also incredibly sad that he’d stuffed himself down a chimney to feel connected to his dead mother.
We descended a spiral staircase, the air growing thick and oppressive. Cherry whispered at me to be careful.
“Thoughts?” I tapped the toe of my boot against the stone wall at the bottom.
“Delacroix told me about this.” Ezra ran his hands over the smooth surface. “It should be right about…”
There was a soft pop and the wall rippled like water. Symbols appeared, glowing an eerie green, then the stones parted like they were curtains, revealing a corridor bathed in a bloodred light.
“Who can resist an invitation like that?” I said.
Ezra took my hand. “We’ll be fine.” But he quickly tugged us through the gap in the wall before the curtain came down on us.
The rocky, uneven corridor was so narrow that we had to walk single file. Ezra went first, keeping a tight grip on my hand.
My hair stood up on the back of my neck and every step wound my shoulders higher into my ears. I’d have jumped at every little sound but there weren’t any. Even my breaths felt stolen away before they left my lips.
I blotted my forehead with my sleeve because our passageway was growing hotter and drier.
Ezra stopped suddenly.
I bonked my nose on his back. “What is it?”
“Wind. A faint whisper.”
I strained to hear it but couldn’t. However, should it come with a cooling breeze, I was all for it. I prodded Ezra between the shoulders to get him moving again.
Six feet later, we turned a corner, and I blinked up at the wash of stars in the vast night sky, a sea of reddish sand cascading away from us in undulating dunes. Far in the distance was a single cactus.
“Rich people,” I said. “They have cleaning staff and their own private indoor deserts.”
It was magnificent, but neither Eishei Kodesh nor vampires could create an illusion like this. Either we’d been transported to an actual desert (not great but the better of our options), this was a demon illusion (Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!), or we’d accessed some demon realm (see Will Robinson comment).
“How are we supposed to find the safe?” I shifted my weight to keep my balance against the pull of sand on my feet.
Ezra pointed off into the distance. “I think it might be that cactus.”
“Oh, fuck right off.”
We trudged toward it. I tried not to think about quicksand, lest I invoke anything. Our journey was slow and sweaty, but we arrived at the cactus without incident.
The very prickly, scarred motherfucker of a plant was a solid ten feet in circumference.
I gingerly touched one of the fat, sharp thorns. “Ready?”
Ezra nodded. “Three-minute time delay once you punch in the code. You remember it?”
I tapped my head and nodded.
“Stay vigilant.”
“Really? Because a nap seems like such a good idea right now.” I pressed my palm against the thorn, swearing as it sliced my flesh.
A holographic keypad shimmered into the air, and I punched in the eight-digit code.
The cactus shuddered like a cat blinking off sleep. It didn’t have eyes, but I felt something wake and study me.
A three-minute stare down? No problem.
Two large hands made of shifting grains magically reached inside me, their knuckles scraping abrasively against my organs.
I gasped and doubled over.
Ezra tried to pull me clear, but his hold slipped right off like I was a greased pig.
Abomination. The magic hands snapped out of my body with a sharp sting, grabbed my ankles, and flung me into the desert.
Screaming, I squeezed my lids closed against the hot, gritty wind scratching my face. I hit the ground, bounced four times, then rolled down a dune, bruised but unbroken.
“Ezra!” My voice echoed mockingly around me, but I was alone.