Chapter Seven #5
Walter tilted his head to show he accepted the change in status and circumstances.
They angled their bodies to better watch Angie, though both had kept her in line of sight during the exchange.
If he’d had breath, EJ would have laughed.
Pissing contests were fun. As soon as he had the thought, he inhaled, coughed, and began hyperventilating.
He didn’t really need the air he was sucking in like a bellows, but the human body doesn’t know how long it can go without breathing, and his lungs were hyperventilating on instinct.
The stench of brimstone and charred bones wafted as Angie’s staff sucked the last of the demon into itself. Somehow. By some power he hadn’t known existed.
Villetti grunted softly and knocked back his head in a gesture from his youth in Italy, the sound and gesture of skepticism. “What do you think happened here?”
Walter raised his brows as if surprised the detective would ask. “I believe I don’t have enough evidence to make a supposition. Reading evidence because it suits one’s narrative or one’s expectations is the act of a fool. What do you think happened?”
Villetti gave a stiff, cop-professional smile. “Are you asking me if I’m a fool, Walter?”
EJ didn’t have enough control of his breathing to laugh, sucking down oxygen he had been unable to access while the stasis working was active.
Walter said, “There have been times, in my very long life, when I wish I had been a fool, Detective. It would have been easier than the truth.”
Villetti’s mouth tightened.
Angelina made a pained sound, a muffled scream, as if her throat shredded.
EJ’s hand fell to the floor. Ah hell, he thought.
Angie dropped, as graceful as if she were giving a royal court curtsy.
Villetti bolted from his place in the kitchen, catching her head before it hit the bloody floor, and gestured Walter over. “We’ll lift her on three. Carry her to the sofa in the next room.”
Walter didn’t need the help, but he didn’t remind Villetti of his vamp strength. He simply positioned his hands beneath Angie’s shoulders and knees and lifted her from the floor.
Villetti said, “Oh. Right. What about the staff?”
Walter slid his fingers free and lifted the staff, rotating it across Angie to Villetti’s free hand.
Villetti’s eyes went wide at the feel of the staff in his hand. “Okay,” he said.
Walter carried Angie around the corner toward the sofa in the sitting room.
Villetti still held the staff. Time caught up with the headset and EJ, on the floor in a pool of blood.
He watched through Walter’s cam as the vamp settled Angie on the sofa.
When Villetti tried to cover her with the cloak, Walter intercepted it and deftly twisted the staff away at the same time.
“She will be uncomfortable with the cloak, and her staff will help her to heal,” he said, lying about the last part. “I need to feed her to heal her hands. Will you check on the others and give Angelina some privacy?”
Villetti looked at the cloak. At the staff. At Angie. His face said he wanted to confiscate the cloak and the staff for the local woo-woo department, but Walter had displayed the queen’s standard. The thought was as clear on his face as if he had cursed: Politics.
EJ chuffed out a laugh.
Villetti said, “You Everharts will be the death of me.”
“We all die, Detective. Some more than once.”
Without reacting to the small joke, Villetti walked to the front of the house, stepping carefully to avoid EJ and blood spatter.
EJ had no cam on the cop, but was able to watch his sister and follow Walter’s actions as his own body began to come back from the stasis working.
His bones ached. His eyes were dry. The blood he was sitting in was coagulating and gummy.
But Angie was still breathing. Heart beating. Not bleeding. Not possessed.
Walter stepped away and checked on EJ, bending to look into EJ’s eyes.
“I do believe you are coming to, boy.” Walter lifted him like a baby, carrying him to a chair in the same room with Angie, so he could watch them both.
On the way, EJ got a glimpse of the kitchen and the blood, reminding him of the women Walter had carried outside.
Rocas had been alive, though seemingly spelled asleep.
Londyn was dead. Her throat had been torn out.
He had a partial memory of Walter trying to heal her.
A third woman had been dead in a corner of the kitchen. She was still there.
Which vampire faction had killed Londyn?
His former girlfriend had been well placed to keep watch on them and to cause problems as needed.
Had she fulfilled her purpose and been eliminated?
Had she overstepped her responsibilities when she delivered a demon bomb?
Were there two or more factions working against one another?
How did Ivyanna Holmes and Chancy/Cennet fit into all this craziness?
Or were they part of a different puzzle entirely?
Back in the sitting room, Walter lifted Angie’s frostbitten hand. The skin was white, split, showing flesh beneath, too pale. As though he knew EJ could hear him, Walter said, casually, “No familiar vampire scent is in the house.”
Walter ripped his wrist and held the bloody slash to Angie’s lips.