Chapter 25
I’d have to tell Michael that a brain existed containing the locations of all the lock cells in the world, but one thing at a time.
First up was a long shower.
Troy Abelman was missing, along with two locks. It would have been nice if I could do more than passively recognize the plus codes, like attach those coordinates to specific shedim. Unfortunately, the locks in Troy’s possession could have corresponded to any of the hundreds of locations I’d seen when I touched the growth on the brain.
Or, they could belong to none of them, if those cells had somehow been removed from the system by the matchmakers.
Sadly, Rukhsana’s network hadn’t yet sighted Troy or learned anything new about the man to help us find him.
Ezra, however, came through as always. He not only got the location of the Ashbishop’s victim from Delacroix, but also that the power word supplicant was Evelyn Rue. Of course, my father had held to the letter of the agreement and not troubled himself to learn anything more than the female vampire’s name.
I crashed out on my sofa.
What if I was too late and Ash Lite had all the elements required for the dark ritual to give vampires procreation?
No, I had to trust that I’d stop him, the same as I had stopped other nefarious players. I stuffed a pillow under my head. Wasn’t everything in my life nowadays about living in a place of trust, not fear? There were times that worked out the way I wanted and times it didn’t. But I kept going. I was still standing and living to fight and laugh and love another day.
Besides, a lifetime of living with a massive secret had honed my instincts and sharpened my training and experience. It made me the excellent operative I was.
I’d find Ash Lite and once again, I’d do my part to make this world a better place.
Tomorrow I’d pay a visit to the Ashbishop’s victim and pray that he gave me something concrete—like the names of the brutal vampire’s crew.
Are you going to deal with the fact that Daddy Dearest knows about you?
Well, Cherry, I’d been planning to save that trauma until morning, but thanks so much for bringing it up now. Delacroix hadn’t exactly liked me, but I’d amused him, and at times, I’d swear I’d impressed him. So why hadn’t any of that mattered now?
I struggled to take a deep breath, but it wasn’t the memory of drowning, it was a wave of hot fury—followed swiftly by self-loathing that I cared. I calmed down by reminding myself he’d also attacked Maud after he realized she was his kid.
Mentally calculating the time difference, I phoned my sister. At least I had someone to bitch about our shitty sperm donor with. “Delacroix just learned he has another daughter.”
She tsked sympathetically. “From the sound of your voice, you didn’t get waffles with a Flaming Flapjacks T-shirt?”
I rubbed a hand over my chest, then clenched it into a fist and dropped it to my side. “I foresee more torture in our dynamic.”
“Sorry Dad’s playing favorites?”
I laughed bitterly. “Me too. Fuck him.”
“Is it fuck Ezra too?” she said, not unkindly. “I saw the photos with that ballet dancer.”
“They’re irrelevant. We’re good.”
Maud teased me about announcing my girlfriend status to the Ezracurriculars so I threatened to have Silas dig up the most unfortunate photos of her ever and post them on websites advertising the next poker world championship she was entered in.
Perfectly normal sibling stuff. It didn’t erase the sting—or the danger—of my interactions with Delacroix, but if erasing him from my life meant losing Maud, too, I’m not sure I’d take that deal.
I woke up Sunday morning to a spate of texts all amounting to the same thing: there was nothing new to report on Troy Abelman or Linda Aviyente.
After a fortifying cup of coffee, I logged into the Maccabee database (valiantly resisting the urge to check the gossip sites) and spent the next hour digging into Evelyn Rue, the female supplicant for the power word.
She’d been registered with Philadelphia HQ for her feedings when she was initially turned twenty years ago but had moved to Babel before joining the likes of Shiny Jimmy as a wall in the Brink.
I forwarded the info to Ezra for him to track down anyone who knew her, and drove out to the address in the Fraser Valley where the original Ashbishop’s victim, Rylan Quinn, lived.
About eighty minutes later, I buzzed in at a high gate. Seaside was an in-patient facility that provided physical therapy and counseling for accident and fire victims, people suffering from PTSD, and, when necessary, survivors of vampire attacks.
It wasn’t like they advertised that particular service in their commercials, but Maccabees were certainly aware of the private clinic, which had locations around the globe. Hell, we sent people there.
Seaside wasn’t a long-term living facility, and the Ashbishop hadn’t ever been sighted in Vancouver, so it would never have occurred to me that one of his victims might be cared for here.
I’d threaded my Maccabee ring on a slim gold chain around my neck, which I held up to the video screen now to identify myself as an operative. I was still undercover and couldn’t openly wear it, but I wanted to keep it close.
Once my official presence was verified, Cara, a bubbly nurse, escorted me past bright exercise rooms with balls, bikes, and all manner of physio equipment, smaller meeting areas with couches and posters with inspirational sayings, a yoga room with mats laid out in neat rows, and an activity room where patients in loose cotton shirts and pants gathered around board games, chatted, or sat on window benches reading.
Patients generally lived here for three to six months before moving into the community and switching to weekly visits until they were well enough to go home.
Seaside was fortunate in that there were some wealthy anonymous donors who supported the global clinics in addition to the regular fundraising they did. No one was turned away based on financial need.
Cara held the kitchen door open for me.
A badly stooped elderly man was wiping down the stainless-steel counters. His thinning yellow hair was tucked under a hair net, and he shuffled on two state-of-the-art prosthetic legs.
“Rylan, a Maccabee’s come for you. You troublemaker.” Cara wagged a finger at him.
Rylan regarded me with green eyes that were clear and alert. “Are you here about my cyberfraud or the seven husbands of mine who died under mysterious circumstances?” he said with an Irish accent.
“Last week it was six,” the nurse teased.
He rinsed his rag out in the sink. “Belvedere sleeps with the fishes. Sorry, Cara. Know you were fond of him.”
She laughed. “When you’re done chatting, Darleen is getting back from physio early. She’ll be wanting to play chess, then.”
“Our tie-breaker match. I’ve got my strategy ready.” Rylan waited until Cara had left. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company, Operative?”
“Fleischer. Aviva.” I looked around. “Is there somewhere we can sit down?”
The older man regarded me shrewdly for a long moment. “Is he dead?”
“The Ashbishop?” I said with a frown.
All the color drained from Rylan’s face, and he staggered backward into the counter.
I steadied him. “I’m so sorry. I thought that’s who you meant.”
Rylan allowed me to help him to a table in the empty cafeteria and bring him a glass of water, though he didn’t drink it. He ran a gnarled thumb around the rim. “I’d hoped to never hear that name again.”
“The Ashbishop is absolutely very, very dead. Forgive me for scaring you, but who were you referring to?”
“My patron.” At my confused head shake, he sighed. “When I was a wee lad, the Ashbishop slaughtered most of the people in my village, including me mam.” He stretched out one of his prosthetic legs. “They thought I was dead too. But I wasn’t. I lived a miserable life until I was about ten, when Dr. Ellis came to see me. He’d been sent by a mysterious patron who knew how I’d suffered and wanted me to be treated and cared for. On behalf of the patron, who’d pay for everything, the doctor offered to take me to this facility in Canada.”
I did the math in my head. “None of the Seaside clinics were established until after vampires came out to the public in the 1960s. You would have been one of the first patients here then.”
“Indeed.” He lifted the glass with a shaky hand and drank.
“Why Canada? Why not Ireland? How did the patron learn about you? Who was this doctor?”
“The clinics started in California and moved up the west coast. Ireland didn’t get one until years later. I don’t know how this patron found me, but I wasn’t the only one. Years later, I learned there were others who’d been brought to different Seaside clinics. All of us with one nightmare in common.”
“The Ashbishop,” I said grimly. “You think he had a change of heart and was repenting for his actions?”
Rylan rubbed his collarbone. His movement shifted his shirt enough to reveal thin white scars like crosshairs. “The devil doesn’t have a change of heart. The Ashbishop was evil incarnate. A monster of a creature, big as an oak, with hair of fire and the face of an angel, who feasted on our blood and our flesh, and laughed while he did.”
Awesome. This did not bode well for the kind of vampires he gathered around him. “You were brought here, cared for, and chose to stay?”
“Another condition of our care. We’re provided with a generous monthly stipend, so long as we give back by volunteering at one of the clinics to help other people who’ve suffered. Not just from vampires but anyone who comes here.”
“How many people have taken that offer?” Where was all this money coming from?
“Only a few.” Rylan shrugged. “Most want to put it behind them and move on with their lives once they’re physically strong enough.”
That was understandable. However, would the mental scars from these nightmarish tragedies ever fully heal, even with the best Eishei Kodesh magic or latest medical technology?
“I wish I didn’t have to tell you this but some other vampire has taken his name.”
Rylan’s grip on the water glass tightened. “Are they like him?”
“They’re looking for a way for vampires to procreate.” I left out the half-shedim murders Ash Lite had sanctioned.
“Vampires don’t care about children,” Rylan scoffed. “Those urges die along with their beating hearts.”
I flashed on the memory of Evelyn Rue and couldn’t say I agreed. But I hadn’t come here to argue that point. “It might be one of his crew.”
“Each as bad as the next.” He crossed himself. “Dragomir, Emeric, Baylor, and Zuberi. There were others, but those were the worst. The ones we feared almost as much as the Ashbishop himself. I pray they’re in Hell.”
Cara entered the cafeteria. “Sorry, Rylan, but Darleen is getting antsy.”
There was nothing more he could add, so I thanked him and followed Cara back to the foyer with photos of past doctors. The center position was reserved for Dr. Ellis, a man in his forties. “Is he still alive?” I said.
“No. He passed away years ago. I never met him. Wish I had.”
A woman snorted. “You’re a deluded idiot.”
Cara sighed and turned to the thirty-something patient with bandages on her face and hands. “Dr. Ellis was a good man, Nancy. He implemented procedures and championed techniques that’s allowed you to get the best care.”
“Now you help people, but that wasn’t always the case,” Nancy said.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“Demons.” Nancy’s eyes gleamed.
“Don’t exist,” Cara said firmly.
Beg to differ . Cherry smirked.
Nancy jabbed a finger at Cara. “Yeah? Try telling that to the women they strapped to tables and used as human incubators. God, just imagine being forced to carry those…those infernal abominations.”
I flinched. I’d heard a lot of shit about half shedim, but this was a new one.
“Three heads,” Nancy said. “Hearts of stone.”
Cara shot me a look of See what I’m dealing with?
The infernal stuff was clearly bullshit, but was a grain of truth buried in there? Had vampires tried to achieve procreation before and covered that up in the same PR campaign back in the 1960s that made them so irresistible when they first went public?
Which, coincidentally, was around the time Seaside was founded?
I narrowed my eyes at the photo of Dr. Ellis. Could Ash Lite have tried this before?
“What about vampires?” I said insistently. “Did they do these experiments?”
“Vampires?” Nancy practically swooned the word, fanning herself. “They don’t have to force anyone. Take that Ezra Cardoso, for example. Or better yet, let him take me.”
“Thanks for your time,” I said sharply.
I sent Ezra the four names that Rylan had given me, then spent the drive back rearranging the precious few facts about Ash Lite to accommodate the new information about the crew or the clinic.
I was almost back at my condo when Silas called.
“Troy’s dead.” His swore viciously. “And it’s all my fault.”