Chapter 27
I followed Silas’s rental car to the Jolly Hellhound. I left Linda a voice message while I drove, begging her to let us be present for the meeting and telling her that she could send me the details anytime. Day or night.
I made one other call, this time to the rabbi who’d warded up my condo. There was only one security company in town that handled that and probably only one rabbi. When I explained the urgency of the situation, she told me that she’d installed the wards at the Lions Gallery yesterday, once Shabbat was over.
Pieces were slotting into the puzzle—at least where the Aviyente family was concerned. They were putting all the precautions they could into place for this meeting. Though which shedim attacked Jared and murdered Troy was yet to be determined.
Silas had already gone through the portal by the time I made it into the back room of the pub. One bright spot of all my frequent travels to the Copper Hell was that I’d been allowed to dispense with ordering that gross Bitter Abyss drink.
The three bartenders who worked there were familiar enough with me that when any of them saw me, they buzzed the portal door open.
I stepped into Ezra’s living room, smiling because the portal took me directly into my boyfriend’s private quarters and not the general foyer. When he was nowhere to be seen, I wandered over to the chessboard, which had been reset. I’d never played much chess. Maybe one day Ezra could teach me.
I selected a book of Pablo Neruda’s poetry off the bookshelf, which was next to a sumptuous watercolor of a couple caught in an erotic embrace. The poems were in Spanish, and although I wouldn’t understand them, I wanted to experience them in their original language. I opened the book and settled in on the sofa to wait for Ezra.
He showed up a half hour later and sank down next to me, resting his head on my shoulder. “I hate this.”
“Me too.” I shut the book and placed it on the cushion. “What a thing to live with.”
Ezra threaded his fingers through mine. “Thank you for encouraging him to tell me and for being here with me now.”
“I wish this visit was that selfless. First, though, did you find anything on the names Rylan gave me? The Ashbishop’s crew?”
“Dragomir and Baylor are dead. I’m still tracking Emeric and Zuberi down.” He paused. “I dealt with the employee who took the photo for Natán.”
I squeezed his hand. “Shitty. Sadly, what I have to say isn’t going to make you feel better.”
Ezra’s expression turned more and more inscrutable as I recounted Nancy’s allegations of demon experiments and my suspicions that they contained a grain of truth—except pertaining to vampire procreation.
When I got to the part about Seaside’s parent company owning fertility clinics as well, Ezra made a distressed noise at the back of his throat.
A cold weight settled in my chest. “Your mother received her artificial insemination treatments at one of those clinics, didn’t she? For her pregnancy before you?”
“Yes. Does that mean…” Ezra shook his head. “My mother would never have gone along with any plan to create vampire babies, but my father? Me being a Prime is somehow his greatest achievement,” he said bitterly. “Is this why Mamá killed herself? She found out she’d been used in some sick trial and it’s also why she miscarried?”
“Natán despises dhampirs,” I reminded him, heartsick and wishing I’d never brought this up.
“Because his own was too weak to survive being carried to term?” Ezra said.
“Natán wouldn’t have been the father, though, because he was still human, and even if he had been a vampire, he’s not a Prime. Were there any male Primes in existence when your mother got those treatments?”
Ezra shook his head. “There was only Calista, but the copycat Ashbishop is trying to achieve procreation via a magic ritual. Who knows how these clinics attempted it?” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Natán will never admit it if it’s true.”
“Then this becomes something else you have to decide if you want answers to,” I said. “I hope I’m wrong about your mother, and I’m sorry for causing you pain.”
“You haven’t. Any pain is on my father’s head and will be returned a thousandfold if this is true.” Ezra narrowed his eyes. “I’ll look into the fertility clinic in Caracas.”
“Okay, but do it in a way that doesn’t scare the answers out of them or traumatize them? Please?”
He kissed my knuckles.
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“No? Is this?” He hauled me to him for a hard, hot kiss that left me clutching the front of his shirt and my hair disheveled from his fingers. “I wish we could make time stop for a few days,” he said. “No crises, no cases, no secrets. And especially no fathers. Just the two of us.”
“That sounds amazing.” I nuzzled into his chest. His cotton shirt was soft against my cheek, and when I inhaled the trace of his cologne, the anxiety that had been clawing at my chest since Silas’s confession loosened its grip. Five seconds more. Three. One. I made myself pull away. “I have to go. Michael needs to be told about that brain.”
Ezra gave me a sad smile. “Be safe.”
I’d dealt with a lot of really crappy things in the past little while but leaving Ezra right now was one of the worst. Still, I had my game face on by the time I returned to the pub.
I left a voice message for my mother while I grabbed dinner at the Jolly Hellhound, because my stomach was growling. Damn it. I should have loaded up at the Copper Hell’s buffet. Ah, well, next time.
While I ate, I checked in with Malika, who confirmed Troy’s death occurred via a violent burst of orange flame magic. He hadn’t suffered for long, which I guess was a blessing.
Michael hadn’t phoned back by the time I was getting ready for bed, nor had Linda replied to my request to let me protect her. I texted both of them again but was too tired to stay up waiting.
I was having a very nice dream involving swimming with a magic otter when I was shaken awake before dawn on Monday by my boyfriend frantically whispering my name.
“Whazzup?” I muttered groggily.
He dropped onto the mattress next to me and laid his hand on my hip as if testing if I was real. “I had to make sure you were safe.”
I yawned and sat up, pushing my hair out of my face. “This place is mezuzah warded, there are weapons—including Sachie—stashed approximately every five and a half feet, and the only vampires with leave to come in here are you, Darsh, and…” I grabbed Ezra’s shoulder. “Silas?”
“No.” He was quick to reassure me. “Nothing like that. I couldn’t reach anyone yesterday at the fertility clinic in Caracas where my mother had her IVF treatments because it was Sunday and they were closed, so Silas and I did some digging.”
“And?” I covered my mouth, acutely aware of morning breath, and hopped out of bed.
Ezra stayed in my room while I brushed my teeth. “Nothing nefarious came up about them, and their patient records were encrypted, but Silas hacked into the patient records for the Seaside clinics. Idiots have them all linked in one database.”
I spit toothpaste into the sink. “What did you find?”
“A patient record for a baby boy delivered forty years ago. Alastair Walker.”
I rinsed out my mouth. The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “Who?”
“Dad’s enforcer.”
I returned to the bedroom and sat down next to Ezra. “He looks thirty, tops. Good genes.”
“Just you wait. Why do you think he was delivered at a Seaside clinic?”
My eyes bugged out of my head. “Oh shit. Is he a Prime?”
“That would almost be better. The father listed on the record was some guy we verified as an Eishei Kodesh, and his mother?” Ezra paused. “Emily Astor.”
“Calista’s alias?” I gasped, which turned into another yawn. “He’s a dhampir? Natán is going to lose his freaking mind.” I headed into the kitchen.
“Aviva.” Ezra followed close behind. “You’re not following. Dhampirs can’t have kids.”
The penny dropped. I spun around, almost dropping the coffee cannister in my hand. “Alastair is Ash Lite.”
Ezra nodded. “I headed into Babel last night and spent four hours finding a friend of Evelyn Rue’s who confirmed that she’d been hanging out with him.”
I was going to kill that half shedim murdering bastard. Slowly and thoroughly.
“Get in line,” Ezra said at my obvious train of thought. “I went to Natán with this and to say he’s furious is an understatement.”
Good. Maybe he’d quit being such a dick to us about dating. “You believe him?”
“About this? Yes. He had no idea Alastair was Ash Lite and no part in the murders of the half shedim.”
I filled the espresso basket, shoved the holder into the machine, and hit the button for a double shot. “Did you ask him about your mother?”
Ezra paused. “There’s no point. Not while Alastair is missing. Natán has put out a reward for his capture and return.” He leaned against the counter, the kitchen light catching his hair. “I don’t know how I feel about being on the same side as my father.”
I patted his arm consolingly. “You think Alastair went to the fortress in the Brink to try for the power word?” Espresso flowed into my small cup. “He was too chickenshit to do it himself before, but is his desperation enough to try it now?” I fired half the coffee back, the caffeine a delicious rush to my brain synapses.
“That’s the million-dollar question, so I sent Silas there while I came here,” Ezra said.
I grabbed the bread from the fridge and popped a couple slices into the toaster, telling Ezra about Alastair waiting for me in the lobby of my building the other day.
“He warned me to play nice,” I said, “but he didn’t abduct me or harm me, and it’s not like there was anyone around to stop him. A lot of people would mobilize to find me if I went missing, so did he leave me alone because he thinks I’m not a threat to his plans or because his plans aren’t in place yet and he didn’t want to be exposed?”
“The latter,” Ezra said immediately. His confidence in my ability earned him a peck on the cheek.
“I do still get one ‘I told you so,’” I said. “Hiding in plain sight is a sound strategic move.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Just because you’re safe for now doesn’t make you safe. Natán denied killing Roman Whittaker, and given Alastair lied about why he was in London when it happened, I’m inclined to believe him.” My boyfriend relaxed slightly. “Best-case scenario is that he’s at the fortress, in which case, Silas will find him.”
The espresso cup slipped from my hand and shattered on the tile. “Maud,” I whispered. “Zaven Barsamian, the vamp who was blackmailing her.”
“The one you believed was doing it to impress Natán.” Ezra punched a cupboard, denting it and breaking the top corner off its hinge. His fangs had descended.
Sachie ran into the kitchen, holding a stake and a Taser, both of which she almost fired at Ezra.
He stilled, his fists clenched, and wrestled his very pointy teeth into submission.
I stepped between them. “Everything is fine. We’re all good. Yes?” I made sure both of them nodded.
“Something set you off though,” Sachie said to Ezra.
He updated her on his findings, while I swept up the wreckage of the espresso cup.
Sachie whistled. “Ballsy of Alastair to cozy up to Natán. His focus and determination must be off the charts.”
“Why?” I ignored the toast that had popped up, my appetite gone, and dumped the ceramic shards into the trash.
“Alastair is the most powerful vamp in the Kosher Nostra after my father,” Ezra said.
“And you, Crimson Prince,” Sachie said, taking the broom and dustpan from me. She returned them to the narrow cupboard by our fridge.
“In reputation, not practice,” Ezra admitted. “Alastair is smart enough to have seen past the lie that Natán and I keep up.”
Look at the man with a thousand masks being all forthcoming. I smiled.
“But Sach is right,” he continued. “Alastair has a formidable reputation, and for him to achieve that much power when he doesn’t have the same abilities as the other vampires in the Mafia? It’s impressive in a fucked-up way.”
“We need to get to Maud,” I said. “He could force her to take the test or just want her blood.”
“I’ll go,” Ezra said. “You stay here behind wards.”
“No way.” I was already heading for my bedroom, Ezra behind me arguing.
“I’ll stay with Avi.” Sachie followed us. “Stash Maud with Delacroix. He’ll keep her safe.”
When I looked doubtful, Ezra placed a hand on my shoulder. “Delacroix is territorial. He’s publicly claimed Maud and won’t allow anyone else to hurt her. And she’s no threat to him.”
Unlike me. “Is he even around, or is he still leaving the Hell on errands?”
“He hasn’t gone anywhere since he got the brain,” Ezra said.
Sach frowned. “Did he get a heart and courage too?”
Smirking, I entered my bedroom, picturing Delacroix as the Scarecrow. “I stole a demon brain for Delacroix, learning after the fact that it contains the locations of all those love lock cells.”
“I am not caffeinated enough for this.” She smacked the inside of her elbow. “Just mainline the espresso right in.”
“Am I bringing Maud to Delacroix or not?” Ezra said.
I opened my closet. “I don’t trust Delacroix, but I do trust you. No one can get through your security at the Hell to target Maud.”
Ezra staggered back in mock shock. “Are you saying I was right to maintain my position there?”
“I’m mildly conceding the point,” I said.
Ezra crossed his arms. “Then mildly concede that I’ll keep you safe there too.”
“That wasn’t ever in doubt, but I’m not sitting here like some damsel in distress.” I grabbed my phone. Linda had read my text but hadn’t answered it or returned my initial call. “I have to find out when the Aviyentes are meeting with the shedim to hand over the prison locks.”
After a quick debate with myself about whether it was right to break this confidence, I messaged Linda again, this time with the photo of Rukhsana’s demon-inflicted wounds.
Me: This is what being very, very lucky looks like when dealing with demons. This person has far more experience with dangerous individuals. You and your father are lambs leading themselves to the slaughter. Let me protect you!
“I don’t see you for one day and all this happened?” Sach peered over my shoulder at the photo, shaking her head.
“Go have breakfast,” I said. “Then you can come with me to HQ while Ezra, you get Maud. Check in the second she’s safe, and whether Silas finds Alastair at the fortress in the Brink.”
The two of them graciously allowed it (i.e. did not get in my way when I busted Cherry out on them and reiterated that I was going).
I wasn’t being stubborn or reckless, I truly didn’t believe that Alastair was coming for me, and more importantly, he had no idea yet that we’d unmasked him. This was a valuable window of opportunity.
Sachie drove us to HQ like the devil himself was on our heels, so in her normal fashion.
I approached Louis with trepidation, receiving his usual disdain and disinclination to accommodate my request in a timely manner. It was weirdly reassuring, though I tugged on my sleeve to straighten out a wrinkle, taking his reaction as a personal challenge. I mean, what was the point of a demon reveal if he didn’t jump to do my bidding?
I loomed over his desk. “Announce me or try to stop me. I’m happy to play out either choice.”
He glared at me, but at my hard smile, hit the intercom buzzer to tell Michael I was there.
Since Sachie wasn’t part of the Chandra and Troy murder investigations, she headed down to the basement to do some work. I promised I’d come find her right after this meeting.
“Where were you last night?” I sat down across from Michael, twisting my chair to give me a clear view of her around a stack of folders on her desk.
“Dinner with a friend.”
I leaned forward. “A Trad friend, perhaps?”
“Yes, Aviva, I was with Keira.”
“Making up?”
“Sorting through things. Don’t get all excited that we’re going to be some version of you and Sachie.”
I could hope. I’d love for my mom to have a ride-or-die person.
“What did you need to tell me?” she said.
Oh, where to start?
Michael was annoyed that Mois had snuck back into Canada. She proclaimed that this trade of the locks for his and Linda’s safety was deluded and misguided—to say the least. “I’ll call Keira to pull her officers off watching the gallery and put our vampires in place.”
“Silas is in the Brink right now,” I said.
“Why?”
“Short version? Natán’s third-in-command, Alastair Walker, is a dhampir.”
“Second-in-command,” Michael said.
“That’s Ezra.”
She shot me a flat stare.
“When did you figure that out?” I said.
“The moment I learned he worked for us. Continue.”
“Alastair’s mother was Calista, and he’s the Ashbishop copycat.”
“Until Alastair is apprehended,” Michael said, “I want someone with you at all times.” Her concern both warmed and annoyed me, but it felt good to be in a place where I could see it as concern and not my mother thinking I couldn’t handle myself.
“Sach is playing bodyguard until Ezra can take over,” I grumbled.
“Good.” Michael flipped open the top folder, the pages adorned with “sign here” stickies. “It wouldn’t be illegal for a dhampir to seek out treatment to try and conceive, unlikely as it is, so why did Alastair go to such lengths to hide this?”
“We assumed that in order to achieve his goal, Alastair had to become a Prime, since they’re the only vampires who can have kids.” I shook my head. “Achieving Primehood is impossible for a dhampir.”
My gaze drifted over to the living wall of bamboo to my left as I listened to my mother’s pen scratching across the paper. The thick round stalks and lacy leaves were beautiful and surprising pieces of nature set amid the form and function of Michael’s office. It wasn’t all that dissimilar to what Alastair was attempting. In the same way that bamboo left unchecked would overrun an area, vampires having kids would trample the human garden called earth.
“Our understanding of this ritual is that it’s based on the idea of neshamah,” I said. “The divine spark connecting everyone to the source of all life.”
“Which vampires don’t have,” Michael said.
“True, but half shedim do. We can have kids just like most other people, because we’re half human and our demon magic doesn’t suppress that ability. In fact, the chaotic essence in our shedim magic is what disrupts the stagnant energies in vamps.”
“Vampires no longer have the human capability of procreation,” Michael said, “so they require the divine spark in your blood to be transmitted to them via the blood ritual, with that power word providing the healing magic to facilitate it all.”
“Yes. They don’t regain any human life force but instead are sparked into a higher form of vampire, one capable of having children. But what does this ritual do to a dhampir?”
“When you put it like that…” Michael closed the file folder. “Are we sure the ritual works on full vampires? Or is this higher vampire form an impossibility and the ritual only works on those who still possess human blood?”
I raised my eyebrows. “You think the fake Ashbishop lied to his flock? Shocking.”
She tugged the folders into a neat stack. “He required supplicants to get that power word, and who’d sign up for a deadly magic test if they wouldn’t benefit from the outcome themselves?”
“Okay.” I drummed my fingers on the armrest. “Let’s run with this theory. The ritual only works on dhampirs because it restores their human ability to procreate. It also amplifies their vampire magic. Not to the point of where Primes are, because they’ve started from a lesser place than a regular vampire would, but in terms of strength, speed, and enhanced senses, they’re finally placed on equal footing with all other vampires.”
“A desirable outcome for a dhampir,” Michael said. “It eliminates their weakness, and given they can have kids like only a Prime can, there’s no way for anyone to dispute that status.”
I stood up. “I’ll let Ezra know all this.”
Michael nodded absently, toying with her Maccabee ring.
“What are you thinking?”
“How did you find out about Alastair?” she said.
I shared my suspicions that Seaside was doing experiments into vampire procreation, and how that led me to their fertility clinic. It appeared as advertised, but Silas hacked into the main database of patient records for all the Seaside clinics and found Alastair.
“When you were a baby,” my mother said, “your pediatrician worked at one of those Seaside clinics in the States, after his residency. It’s why I chose him. With his experience treating vampire-inflicted injuries, he’d know what to do should there be an incident with you changing in front of him.”
“Was there?” I perched on the arm of the chair. He would have been under a doctor-patient confidentiality, so I wasn’t worried about that.
“Once. Two tiny horns and these fierce green eyes.” Michael sat back, her fingers steepled together. “I was so relieved at how he took it in stride.” She frowned. “It never occurred to me that maybe his experience wasn’t simply with vampire-related injuries, but dhampir births as well.”
I pressed my lips together. “Okay, this is so stupid and awful?—”
Michael reorganized the pens in their stainless steel cup holder. “Out with it.”
“When I spoke with one of the original Ashbishop’s victims at the Seaside clinic here, I met another patient. Nancy. She wasn’t there because of any vampire, but she mentioned the clinic’s history hid demon experiments. Women forced to birth half shedim. Ridiculous, right?” I said weakly.
Michael leaned forward. “You may have been a surprise, but I was a willing participant that night.”
I covered my ears. “Ew. Stop.”
The last thing I wanted to do was give the idea of demon-human experiments any credence, but my pediatrician hadn’t reacted to me going shedim and Nancy said the clinics’ history was steeped in these experiments. My mother hadn’t been forced into anything, but she was certainly tricked about Delacroix’s true nature.
So was Maud’s mom.
Demons willingly created half shedim to help spread chaos, but were there humans who took advantage of that? Or at least profited from it in some way, like Seaside would through its patient fees?
“Delacroix knows I’m his daughter,” I said.
“Are you worried about that?”
He’d tortured me more than once, but he hadn’t killed me. Not that I was holding my breath for our dynamic to improve now that he was aware we were related, I just didn’t think it would worsen. “No. I’m not worried. See…” I smiled brightly.
Michael crossed her arms. “Aviva Jacqueline Fleischer, that look is just as unconvincing now as when you were sixteen and had just torched my coffee table.”
“Calm down, it’s great news. Do you know what plus codes are?”
“Sure. They’re addresses for places that don’t have them, based on latitude and longitude but displayed as a string of numbers and letters.”
“Right. It turns out, there’s a record with the plus codes of all the demon prisons on earth.”
Michael narrowed her eyes. “And?”
“And they’re contained in a living demon brain that I sort of stole for Delacroix, not knowing what it really was, and now he has it, but claims he doesn’t want to free the prisoners.” I took my first breath of that entire blurted confession.
Michael dropped her head in her hands and massaged her temples. “Couldn’t you have just told me you smashed my car?”
“I mean, I might have if you ever let me drive it. As a teen, or say more recently, like after my first car was blown up or my current one was vandalized.”
Her fingers flexed against her skull.
“All that to say,” I pressed on, “is how about you question my pediatrician about demon experiments?”
“He died a couple of years ago.” She looked up. “Delacroix hasn’t gone after the locks yet. We’d know if any significant numbers had been moved. And there’s no point in confronting him about it now. All that notwithstanding…” She set her mouth in a determined line. “It’s time Delacroix and I had a little chat.”
I gave a defeated sigh. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”