Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Dieter had been meeting Mark at an abandoned warehouse in an area of town surrounded by used car lots and small-scale manufacturing facilities. We figured he wouldn’t still be there, but if he’d had to abandon it quickly, then he might have left something behind.
This time, Nick insisted we wear actual protective gear, so I was standing with my arms out scarecrow-style as Nick strapped a Kevlar vest on me.
“What I can’t figure out is why we haven’t found Acacia yet,” I said, as he double-checked the straps and then smoothed a hand down my arm.
“The girl you were looking for?” Nick asked, distracted as he checked his sidearm. He re-holstered it and asked for the status of the support team on his radio.
They were still a few minutes out and so Nick leaned next to me against the car.
He pulled out the snack pack the department’s alchemist, Zahide, had pressed on him.
Apparently he hadn’t quite gotten to magic depletion for the second time in as many days, but he was close enough it had taken a lot of sweet-talking before Captain Tate let him lead the search.
“Yeah, I mean, we found the rest of his victims almost immediately once you knew to look for them. Why haven’t we found Acacia’s body yet?”
“Maybe he hid it because it might link him to the crime?” Nick suggested. “She was his student.”
“Yeah, but he left Tim to be a booby-trap for us,” I said. “I don’t think he cares about subtle right now.”
“I don’t know,” Nick said. “Is there a reason he’d keep her alive?”
I scratched at the back of my neck where the Kevlar vest rubbed. The sun was hot in the afternoon. Even with the ocean so close, summer in Southern California could be unpleasant.
“The summer solstice is tomorrow, isn’t it?” I asked.
Nick glanced at me over the rim of his sunglasses. “Am I wearing a black pointy hat? Do I look like a witch who keeps track of that sort of thing?”
“Alchemists don’t keep track of the solstices?” My nose scrunched.
“No,” Nick shook his head. “We don’t need to. Phases of the moon a little, but my father always says if you’re relying on external factors like moon phases or seasons, then your magic isn’t strong enough to stand on its own.”
“Well, he sounds pleasant,” I said. “I’m pretty sure the solstice is tomorrow. Which means the Summer Queen will be at the height of her powers tomorrow.”
Nick finished off the snack pack and pulled out a second. He offered it over to me and I absently took a couple of pieces from it. They looked like dog kibble, and when I popped them into my mouth, they tasted like dog kibble, too.
Spitting them out, I said, “What in all the grey hells is that?”
“Regeneration bites.” Nick put another handful into his mouth, his teeth crunching down on them. The sound was like a handful of lug nuts in a garbage disposal.
“Let me guess, made by alchemists for alchemists, with everything you need to regenerate your magic and nothing you don’t need, like flavor or sugar.”
“They’re an acquired taste,” Nick said. “My parents’ chef makes special ones just for the family, but the mass produced ones will do in a pinch.”
“I can’t believe I kissed a mouth that put those in it.” I wiped at my lips as though I could wipe away our kisses.
Nick laughed and then grew quiet. He frowned at a building a few yards away. We’d parked far enough from Mark’s warehouse that he shouldn’t have noticed us, but it was always possible he was running patrols.
“What is it?” I murmured.
“I think I saw a vampire,” Nick said.
“This is the sort of place they like to hang out at.” Mostly empty, a few people coming in and out for work, lots of places to hide a body if you needed to.
If a rat could get up on two legs, dress itself like an eighties punk rocker, and talk like it had a mouth full of marbles, people would mistake it for a vampire. Sociopathic, disgusting, and willing to eat anything as long as it could bleed, vampires were my least favorite paranormal creatures.
That didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous. One of them, you could fight off. Two and you’re breaking a sweat. Once you get to three, you should run.
I watched as the vampire wove towards us. It moved with the slick grace of something not quite from this world. You could blink and it would be a few feet away, like a horror movie in real life.
Laurel had this knack for taking care of attacking vamps. I’d seen her take one down with twine and a pair of scissors. My magic was more defensive, although I’d been learning to use it offensively the past few days.
The SAPD policy was officers could kill vampires if they were obviously feral and attacking. Most cops used that as an excuse to take potshots at vamps from the safety of their cars. Knowing Nick, he was going to wait until the thing was on top of us, teeth in our necks, before he took out his gun.
“Sir,” Nick called out. “I’m going to need you to step back.”
He held out his arm, his other hand hovering at his holster.
“Sir, do you understand me?” Nick asked. “Stay back.”
The vampire cocked its head. It was wearing a torn black denim jacket and matching pants. The white shirt under its jacket was covered in brown stains I identified as blood. Its face contorted as it came towards us. Fangs snapped together, and it whined, neck curving up.
Slowly pulling out his gun, Nick aimed it at the vampire. “Do not come any closer. Please indicate if you understand.”
“Indicate?” I reached down to drag my fingers through the dust on the road, waking it up. “What are we, in debate class?”
“Some vampires are still mentally acute, but they’ve lost the ability to speak,” Nick said. “Policy is to give them multiple ways to communicate and not limit it to a verbal acknowledgement.”
“You’re too nice.” I pulled more dust towards me, until I held a mini sandstorm in my hand. “Most cops think as soon as they see fangs, it’s open season.”
“That’s against policy.” Nick’s eyes were fixed on where the vamp had crouched down, fingers brushing the ground. The vamp glanced at us through a dark fringe of hair and hissed, teeth snapping.
I raised my eyebrow. “That’s cute that you think everyone follows the same rules you do.”
The thing was, some vamps could blend. It seemed to depend on how long they’d been alive, but I wasn’t an expert.
I’d met a couple of vampires who could talk, even hold a full conversation, but for every one who resembled their human selves, there were a few dozen reduced to walking predators.
Creatures moving with the sort of grace that made your brain think something was profoundly wrong.
The vampire scuttled backwards, eyes narrowed and hissing. Nick relaxed. I didn’t. I could feel the dust nearby whispering about footsteps. A lot of them were coming this way, and I didn’t think it was going to be good for us.
“Nick, get ready.”
Shoving off the SAPD windbreaker, Nick revealed arms covered in alchemist circles. He activated two, and a shield appeared around us, while the other sent up a bright light which had the vampire wincing back. They don’t like bright lights any more than rats do.
The next two vampires came from behind us, but I turned and convinced the concrete to liquify just long enough to sink them ankle deep. Vampires are strong, but not werewolf strong. They’d need time to get themselves out of solid concrete.
Then there were four more that Nick took out with a sleeping spell. I watched him, sweat beading on his forehead. My stomach clenched. We should run, but there was no guarantee they wouldn’t track us or, worse, find some other victim.
“Call for help,” I directed. “You’re not in any shape to be fighting for too long.”
“I’m fine,” Nick snapped, but he pulled at the radio on his shoulder and requested backup. A body slammed against the shield and I heard a crack. I spun.
It was one of the vampires I’d sunk in concrete. That was impossible. It should have been stuck there for a while, if it could get out at all. Its bare feet were discolored from broken toes and bones where it had dragged its feet out of its shoes. How the vampire was even walking was a mystery.
“Nick,”—I sent a jet of air to knock the vampire back—“something’s wrong.”
Nick grunted and lifted his gun. He took a breath and spoke a word which lowered the shield around us. Then he was firing at the vampires, bullets flying as true as if they were spelled. Who knows, with Nick maybe they were.
I started whispering to the sand in my hand, reminding it of when it had been in a storm, when it had been drawn from the seaside and drifted over the air.
“If you did that again,” I suggested, “you could rip their faces off.”
The sand liked the idea of chaos, of bouncing against other grains until it had the momentum to do actual damage. With the wind pushing it, the sand whipped together, and the vampires coming close to me paused, trying to shield their faces.
The sandstorm was merciless, pulling more and more sand from the surrounding areas.
Dirt and leaves got caught in the whirling, and two of the four vampires dropped to their knees, hands over their faces.
The other two kept coming, even as they closed their eyes, blindly reaching for me, my scent impossible to catch with the wind.
Nick had downed four vamps on his side and was reloading. More were coming, slower now they saw we weren’t easy prey.
I searched underground and found a water pipe eager to flow. It burst upwards, sending two vamps flying. Nick picked off another one and listened to his radio.
“We are under attack,” he yelled. “ETA?”
The garbled response made him bare his teeth and huff out a breath. “We need to survive until the SWAT team can get here.”
A vamp reached me and I shoved a sharp gust his way, toppling him. He opened his eyes, cheeks scratched from the sandstorm. His eyes were dark and clear.
“Help me,” he said. “Stop me.”
“What?” I said. “What did you say?”
He clawed at his skin, as though trying to get under it. “He won’t stop. He did something. I have to do this.”
I could see his sharp nails scratching until his arms were bleeding.
“Who did this?” Anger brewed underneath my lungs. I wanted to scream the words, but that wouldn’t help anything.
“Don’t know. He gave us food, made us say thank you.” The vamp wasn’t wearing the costume of a Lost Boys extra. Before this he’d been living his life, blending.
“Okay,” I said. “Hold on.”
My new powers still felt foreign, and I didn’t know where they began or ended, just that they were more expansive than what I’d had before. The Windrose would have to be able to see obligations. Otherwise, how would he know if his judgements were fair?
I reached out and looked deeper. I could see all the things I usually could, the flow of water under my feet, the soft murmurs of trees and grass. But like the cord connecting the oak tree to the Windrose, I also saw threads leading away from the vamps. Obligations.
Nick’s gun kept firing, and I saw more and more blink out, their obligations fulfilled by their deaths. Opening my eyes, the vampire in front of me had scratched almost all the way to the bone. He shrieked.
“I am not an animal.” Which is not something you hear a vampire say every day. Sociopathic rats, all of them. Except for this one, apparently.
The magic in my blood sang and I felt the oak tree growing in my mind, its branches reaching out and behind me, Nick swore.
“Where did this tree come from, Parker?”
“I am the Windrose,” I intoned. “I am the arbiter of justice and the sword of retribution. The one who tied this obligation around your neck has no rights to do so under fae law. His magic is stolen, his powers counterfeit. I determine you free.”
The words took immediate effect and the vampires all sagged. The windstorm stalled with no power to feed it, and sand drifted to the ground. I wasn’t sure where I’d found that language, because it sounded fae. Old fae.
Behind me, the oak faded as I released the Windrose powers. Nick retreated until he was at my shoulder, his gun still facing the vampires. “What was that?”
“I think it comes with the new job.” I rubbed a hand over my face.
Most of the vampires were fleeing, their fluid movements looking a lot better when they were moving away from us.
“I’d ask where the tree came from, but then I’d have to ask about all the other trees,” Nick said. “Is it like an arborist thing? Are we going to have a tree growing in the bedroom?”
Snorting, I said, “This one came from my mind. Or my powers? It has to do with being the Windrose, I think it’s what ties the fae and the human realms together.”
There was one vampire left, the one who’d fought the obligation with everything he had. His arms were shredded, and I knelt near him.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Thank you.” His face turned towards the concrete. “Thank you. I couldn’t stop myself. I had to kill you.”
“Don’t sweat it,” I said. “I have some experience with the feeling. What’s your name?”
“Luciano.” He inhaled and then pushed himself up. “I should go. I can hear the police.”
“Wait,” I said. “Can you tell me where he is? The guy who pulled your puppet strings?”
“Warehouse over there,” he pointed.
“Is he alone?” I asked, but Luciano took off, his movements jerky for a vampire. The obligation must have truly messed with him. It had turned him into the animal he clearly spent almost all of his time fighting.
Nick bent down, examining one of the vampires he’d shot. I walked over, unable to shake the sense of unease forming in my stomach.