3. Soren
Soren
“Vex got out again.”
The line goes quiet. I can picture Lazarus clearly in my head. Probably pinching the bridge of his nose and holding his breath as he counts to ten.
Five, usually. Tonight, given the hour, ten. Maybe twenty.
“How long?”
“An hour. Two.” I roll the brandy I’m not drinking around its glass.
Calliope’s scent still lingers in the office.
That specific note under her shampoo, the one that says human and interesting and don’t fucking touch her.
“The chains aren’t broken. They’re unlinked.
The wall isn’t destroyed. He removed it.
” When he doesn’t reply I go on, “He’s getting smarter. ”
“A smart fledgling vampire.” He sighs. “I almost prefer a violent one.”
I prefer a smart fledgling over a violent one.
It’s late morning, the sun is already awake and climbing the sky.
I still ache for a window in here. But Lazarus set up a projector on my wall of a castle window overlooking a rocky shoreline.
He may be stiff. Unmoving in his ancient ways.
And yet, he cares. He shows it in little ways. Like the projector.
This time the silence stretches with tension. Pulling tight until I hear Lazarus exhale over the line. “Where is he?”
“Get this,” I keep pacing because my legs need something to do. “Calliope locked him in the basement.”
“And?”
“And what, Laz?” I pause. How can he not put two and two together. Must I do everything for him?
“That is where he should have been, Soren.”
Ah yes, I must.
“He was in the subbasement, Lazarus.” I mock his uptight tone. I love the guy but some days I want to wring his neck. Like today. “He was locked in the cell in the labyrinth beneath the museum.”
“I know where I put him, Soren.”
The things we hide in the subbasement of the Penn. The things that if humans were ever to uncover… There would be mass panic. Riots.
“Ah yes, well, he escaped that. He was in the regular basement. With the archives and studies and labs.” It’s not that hard, he was too close to humans.
Calliope is very, very human.
“What aren’t you getting at, Soren?” He sounds absolutely bored of me. “He should have been locked in the subbasement.”
He fucking was. He escaped.
“Just come get him.” The brandy glass cracks in my grip.
This is why we rarely turn humans anymore. Not because most of them nearly die. But because of the babysitting.
No one wants to babysit a freshly turned vampire. That and most of them die. Vex didn’t die and thus he is officially a thorn in my side.
“Is he in the basement?”
“Which one?” Am I being childish? Yes.
My office door swings open to Lazarus, just pocketing his phone. Those pale eyes of his scan the office before landing on me. “She was in here.”
“I know.”
I can still smell her and the bitter coffee she drinks. Mixed in with those damn BBQ pretzels I swear she has stashed throughout the museum.
And she sat in my chair again. Likely skimming my notes with her gaze. She never touches anything. Just lets her eyes brush over my things. Which is worse, somehow. As though she is marking territory. Territory she has every right to mark.
The chair is angled just so. A slight degree off center from where I prefer it.
“Did you leave anything out?”
I should lie. I won’t. “A tablet.”
Lazarus closes his eyes. Inhales. Holds it. He hates when I work on anything upstairs, and he hates more when I leave it somewhere a security guard with an archaeology degree could lay eyes on it.
The thing is the size of my palm. A disc of cold black metal stamped with a sigil older than most countries currently in existence.
If Calliope had so much as picked it up, and read one of those glyphs, every dig site she’s ever read about would have started making a different kind of sense to her. Including the ones we’ve made sure she can’t read about.
“Where is it?” he asks in a clipped tone.
“Put it in the clean room,” I say carefully.
“What are you hiding?”
“Right so, Vex.” I clap my hands and pace.
“What are you hiding?” he asks again.
“I’m getting to it.” I wave him off. “He got out of the cell but he didn’t go outside. Right?” I look to him like he’d know. He doesn’t. I do. “He came up here.”
“Up here.”
“Right. In here.” He’s looking at me with those cold pale eyes. “Just use your nose.” I grab his arm dragging him into the hallway. “Smell.”
Humoring me, Lazarus inhales slowly, his brows pull low before he jerks his head to the left.
He’s smart as hell but slow on the uptake for other things. He walks down the hallway, his shoes tapping on the floor.
He heads down taking a sharp right before pausing. “She didn’t come this way.”
She did not.
He follows her scent to the door where it locks. “He followed her.”
Finally.
“He followed her,” I parrot. “If I were a betting man, and I am not, I always lose. Vex scented her and followed her.”
“Take me to him,” Laz demands, his thoughts running a mile a minute.
I lead him to the subbasement. The one only he has a key to, and me. Because I’m the babysitter.
Most nights. Just not last night. I really thought he was doing well enough to be alone.
I was wrong.
The weird part is he isn’t like other baby vampires. He isn’t ripping any throats out. He’s just curious and that is a different kind of danger.
When the door creaks open stale air spills out. A sneeze rips through me as I flick on the light and descend into the dark dungeon.
Which is what we call it down here. The dungeon. Where we hide the priceless artifacts we cannot allow the world to see or even know about.
Like Vex.
As we walk through the vast halls, whistling reaches us.
“Of all the humans.” I shake my head. Not that I don’t like Vex. I do. I really do.
“Don’t start.”
“But I want to.”
“Leave it for Vex.”
I chuckle because Vex is… Well Vex is Vex.
“Oh hello boys.” He smirks at us as he comes into view. Naked and sitting on his cot with one leg propped up and the other thankfully hiding his dick, he leans against the cold stone wall. Blood dripping from his fangs. “When do these retreat?”
“What…” I pause looking at the cell door. The unlocked. Open. Cell door.
“Vex,” Lazarus pinches the bridge of his nose. “This is pointless.”
“I didn’t want to say it,” Vex counters.
Lazarus steps into the cell. His fancy shoes out of place down here. Chains hang limp against the wall. Reinforced steel links sit there unbroken.
I lean against the doorframe and pop a blueberry in my mouth. “Told you.”
“You did not tell me he was sitting here,” he waves his hands around. “Naked.”
“I told you he got out. The details seemed unimportant next to the getting out part.” I stress the words.
“I would like to note that I locked him up.” Vex stretches like a cat awakening from a nap.
Completely at ease in his nudity. While I struggle to explain his actions to Laz.
“Put some clothes on, man. Nobody wants to see that.”
Vex flashes me a grin, bloody fangs catching the dim light. “I’m just getting comfortable. Never know when I might have to escape again.”
Lazarus kneels. He stares at Vex and I know he’s trying to figure out how the hell he did it.
“How did you do it?”
Vex shrugs. Only giving us a half smile that’s all rogue.
I push off the doorframe. “You’ve been a vampire for what? Three weeks? Four?”
“Time flies when you’re having fun.” He tilts his head, studying Lazarus. “Speaking of which, when do these go away?” He taps one of his fangs. Again.
Lazarus stares at him, really not knowing what to do with the fledgling. “Put clothes on.”
“Are you breaking me out, daddy?” Vex pushes.
“Yes. Put your dick away.”
“Speaking of my dick.” Vex stands grabbing one of the many pairs of sweatpants and stepping into them. “I smelled heaven last night. Gave me a hard-on that put all my other hard-ons to shame.”
“Vex, please,” I roll my eyes. “We don’t have time for your hormones.”
“No, seriously.” He pulls a shirt over his head, emerging with his dark hair tousled. “It was intoxicating. Like someone bottled up the most perfect scent in the universe.”
Lazarus stiffens beside me. I know that posture, it’s his warning stance.
“Where exactly did this scent lead you to?” I ask cautiously. But I already know the answer, hell I hypothesized it. He’s just proving me right.
Vex runs his tongue along his fangs, looking thoughtful. “Not sure. I followed it upstairs, through the museum. Then it disappeared.” He shrugs. “Figured it was a trap or something. So I came back down.”
“Through the reinforced door?” Lazarus asks quietly.
“Yeah. Figured I’d save you the trouble of unlocking it.” Vex smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He’s not telling the whole truth in typical Vex fashion. “What’s down here anyway? Some kind of prison?”
“Something like that,” I mutter.
“Did anyone see you?” Laz asks carefully.
“Oh yeah.” Vex smiles, his lips stretching across his face in a disturbing way.
Fuck. That means Calliope saw him which means one of us is going to have to talk to her. And I really don’t want to. She hates me as it is. Like well and truly hates me. Not that I blame her. But I’m definitely going to beg Lazarus to talk to her.
Lazarus turns to me. “This changes things.”
“It certainly does.” I run my hand through my hair again. “If he can track her scent through stone walls and reinforced doors—”
“I can track anyone,” Vex interrupts. “It’s kind of my thing now.”
That isn’t at all the issue and I’m honestly glad Vex is a fledgling.
“Your thing,” Lazarus repeats flatly.
“Well, yeah. Enhanced senses and all that jazz.” Vex stretches again, rolling his shoulders. “So, when do I get to see the sun? I’ve been down here for weeks.”
I look at Lazarus, who seems to be doing some rapid calculations in his head. His jaw is working again, the muscle under his left eye keeps twitching.
“The sun will kill you right now.” Lazarus turns from the cell and walks away.
“What?” Vex shouts. “You said, and I quote,” Vex poses like Lazarus, “the sun merely renders a vampire weak.”