Welcome Party
The MD 520N dropped me off in a field around dusk, all covert-like. I suppose I should have been glad they didn’t merely give me a parachute and expect me to jump, but a little closer to the city would have been nice.
As the helicopter took off and my hair settled back down, I took in a few breaths of fresh-ish air. It actually kinda stank. The area was deep into fall with an edge of approaching winter, grass brown and trees nearly bare of leaves, so it wasn’t smog in the atmosphere—it just had that industrial city smell.
Ah hell, I loved it. I grew up in the country and loathed every minute of it; once I hit my late teens, I was a city girl and never looked back. I was almost looking forward to this little adventure in Macamigon, some Toronto-ish metropolitan area.
But first, I needed a ride.
I hadn’t been totally on my own like this in years—not since Before Everything Bad Happened. Now I had no orders or directions. No resources. Rufus gave me a cell phone the day before—one that he assured me wasn’t tapped by anyone at Bravo Division. I had my own bank account under an alias, though, with a couple grand that I’d saved up over the past few years, pilfered here and there, and snuck from the bank account they did know about. In addition to clothing, shelter, and food for being a company gal, I also received a small pay, like a good little merc. Once I reached the city, I’d buy my own disposable cell phone, just in case Rufus was lying.
I dialled up a cab company once I located an actual street with a name, waited another twenty minutes for a taxi to pick me up, then stowed my bag in the back and rode into the city. Early dark descended but the bright streetlights and lit skyscrapers nearly created a false day—it was bright. Shit, it had been a while since I was around so much damn colour.
For the duration of the ride, I stared out the window and pondered my predicament. Having just learned that vampires existed myself, I wasn’t sure how to go about finding one. I sincerely hoped Zara Lain didn’t hang out at the cemetery or in a coffin. I definitely couldn’t take such a person seriously.
I had the driver pull up in front of an electronics shop, paid him, then went off to purchase a prepaid cell phone. Immediately I browsed for my vampire by name, just in case she was listed. No such luck.
If I was a vampire, where would I be? Occult shops, Goth clubs...shit, I’d been out of the real world far too long. That seemed silly.
So I had to focus on the woman, Zara Lain. If she lived in the bright, noisy city as Delarosa’s notes suggested, someone had to know her. She’d leave a trail. I slung my bag over my shoulder and wandered down the street until I found a tight, empty alley I could slip down for a bit of privacy. The cell’s LCD screen was bright and blue, my only light while in the two feet of shadows between dark buildings; the brick walls dulled the blaring traffic enough that I could hear myself think.
Next I plugged “private investigators Macamigon” into my browser.
Lucky me—there were a few. It was nearly seven o’clock, and on a Friday, few would be open, but I didn’t want to wait ’til tomorrow or god forbid Monday.
I dialled the first number and a man picked up. “Morgan Hall and Associates Security, how may I help you?”
“I’m looking for someone and I need to find her fast,” I said. “I don’t have a lot of information to go by. Can you help or not?”
“We can certainly try, miss. Why don’t you come by tomorrow morning—”
“I need to know now if you can help me or not.”
He sighed. “We’re closing soon. What do you have to go by?”
“Her name is Zara Lain and she lives in this city.”
“Uh huh...anything else?”
“Well, apparently she’s a vampire.”
The line went dead.
The next two investigator agencies had similar reactions to my question. I figured it was best to be honest and not waste time bullshitting around. Anyone worth working with would accept me as a client, vampire talk or not.
I only had one more number on the list. The odds weren’t good, but I called anyway.
“G., J., and R., Psychic Detective Agency,” said the woman who answered. She sounded young. With “psychic” detectives, I figured it was an amateur operation.
“Look, every other agency has hung up on me so far, so I’m going to be frank. I need to find a woman in this city who also happens to be a vampire. This isn’t a prank and I’m kind of in a hurry. Can you help?”
“What vampire?”
Wow, she hadn’t hung up yet. “Excuse me?”
“The name of the vampire? Do you know what it is?”
“Zara Lain.” Silence followed. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. “Hello?”
“I’ll pass on your request to our investigators. Why don’t you come by in the morning—”
“I don’t have time to come by in the morning. If you know where she is, you’d better fucking tell me now.”
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to come by tomorrow. Have a good evening.”
The bitch hung up on me.
I stared at the phone for a moment as my brain shuffled all the pieces into place. I’d had a lot of head injuries over the years, so it took some time. The question remained: was the secretary so quick to get rid of me because she thought the vampire thing was a joke, or because she knew who I was talking about?
One way to find out.
I hailed a cab, gave him the name of the agency, and thankfully he knew roughly the location. I wasn’t the kind of person to wait around ’til morning, to play this one cautious—if they knew where the vampire was, they would tell me tonight.
The storefront was one of many, painted green with gold lettering on the big front window. A CLOSED sign hung on the door, though interior lights glowed. I paid the cab driver and exited the vehicle.
People cluttered the sidewalk, bundled up in the cold. Thank god I had Bravo-issued polypropylene thermal underclothes; I wore simple black pants, sweatshirt, and black runners, so could manoeuver with ease at this early stage of winter. I wove my way through the crowd and strolled up a few cement steps to the agency’s glass front door.
Before testing the door, I glanced inside. A young woman with dark skin and kinky, light brown hair sat at the desk across the room, typing at a keyboard and frowning at a computer screen. Kid couldn’t have been older than twenty and I figured she was the one I’d heard on the phone. No one else was around, but three office doors in the back were closed.
I banged on the glass.
The girl looked up, brown eyes locking on mine. “We’re closed,” she called, her voice muffled through the glass and several feet separating us.
I pounded on the door again.
Three seconds later, one of the office doors beyond the secretary opened, followed by another. A middle-aged woman peered out of the first and a young redheaded twenty-something boy looked out of a second. The secretary’s gaze hadn’t wavered, fixed on me, and she waved off their concern. Still, the tall, skinny white boy left his office and went to her, resting a hand on her shoulder, while the older woman returned to her office.
“Where’s Zara Lain?” I shouted.
The secretary and the redhead exchanged glances. She rose and walked around the desk toward the door, steps slow and careful. She didn’t dress like a suit, instead wearing loose black pants that could’ve passed for yoga ones and a plain blue button down shirt. Something in the way she moved had my hackles up. The boy remained behind, watching with concern—since he let her go up to the strange crazy woman banging on their door, I figured she was the one I ought to keep an eye on.
The girl stopped half a yard from the door, planted her feet, and crossed her arms. “She’s not here.”
“Then where is she?”
“I don’t think it would be good of me to give out a friend’s address without her approval.”
“I don’t think it would be smart of you to piss me off right now. I’m not interested in hurting anyone; I just want to find Zara Lain.”
She lifted her chin, eyes narrowing. “We’re closed. Come back tomorrow.”
The secretary turned to head back to her desk. Well. If that was how she wanted to play it...
I let the strap of my bag slip off my shoulder, got a good grip on it, and swung it at the door. My kamidana and stuff was kept pretty tightly packed in a fireproof box, so I wasn’t worried about damage. The edge of that box, in my bag, struck and shattered the glass.
People on the sidewalk behind me gasped. I ignored them. If the cops showed, the cops showed—this little psychic operation would have explaining to do, not me.
The secretary swung around, tension working up her body as she shifted to a fighting stance. Huh. Figured she was scrappy. The kid stood several inches taller than me, so I guessed she might—mistakenly—think she could take me on.
I pulled the sleeve of my sweatshirt over my hand and pushed back extra glass so I could reach in and flip the lock. The door opened easily and I stepped inside, feet crunching over broken glass. A gun to point and threaten everyone with might’ve been handy, but Fraser said I couldn’t take automatic weaponry with me and I’d yet to procure any. Hand-to-hand was probably less messy at this point anyway.
The redheaded guy moved toward the phone on the secretary’s desk.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I called. “I told you, I don’t want to kill anyone, but that’s what’ll happen if the police show up.”
“I’d listen to her,” the secretary said to her boy. “She’s not human.”
I raised a brow and gave her a cold smile. “Perceptive. Is that a special gift?”
“Very few humans would go to this much trouble to find Zara Lain.” She hadn’t moved, keeping her position between me and the rest of the office. Either info I wanted was back there or she was quite interested in keeping her coworkers safe.
I let my bag drop by the door and stalked forward. “Just give me the address.”
“No.”
“A little vampire is really worth me breaking your arms?”
“Hey, hey, ladies...” The young guy stepped forward, despite a warning glance from the woman. Something in the look they exchanged suggested to me this wasn’t merely a working relationship. Worry touched her face the nearer he got to me. His gaze lingered on her face as he gave her a reassuring smile.
People should probably watch their body language more often—it’s amazing what they give away without knowing it.
“Let’s all just calm down.” He held his hands out defensively, giving me a goofy grin that was likely meant to be disarming. He kept moving, stepping back and forth between me and his girlfriend. I kept him locked in my peripheral vision. “Now, I’ve met Zara Lain—she’s not all that. Cute, maybe, but not worth getting in a fight over. Let’s get some beers and—”
He moved within reaching distance. My arm snapped out and I grabbed his loose shirt, yanked him toward me, whipped out a knife, and planted the blade at his throat. He was enormous to my five-four frame so I peered past his arm to make my threats to the secretary.
The girl’s eyes widened slightly and her nostrils flared with a sharp intake of breath.
“You want your boyfriend to live? Start talking.”
The boy tensed and gasped, sucking in breath after breath, wiggling more than a guy with a knife at his throat ought to.
“Hold the fuck still—”
“He can’t,” the secretary whispered. “He’s going into a seizure—please, please let him go.”
Seizure? As far as tactics to get me to release a hostage went, that was a new one. But even as my grip tightened on the boy, he made it hard to avoid not piercing his jugular by jerking around.
“Please, let him go.” Tears shone in her eyes, fingers coiling into fists.
“Start talking. Where’s Zara Lain?”
She lifted her chin, defiant rage flashing in her eyes. “Right behind you.”
Something cold and hard pressed against the back of my head. “Let the kid go,” a woman’s voice said behind me.
Fuck. What was with people getting the drop on me lately?
I released the boy and shoved him toward his girlfriend; she caught him, just barely, and crouched with him as he dropped to the floor. His body jerked, head swinging back, and he hyperventilated. I’d seen seizures before and this one was a little...off. The middle-aged woman I’d seen previously swung into action, exiting the office with a flask of whiskey, of all things.
Very weird.
“Drop the knife,” Lain said in an overly sweet voice.
I shrugged. Whatever. Like I needed a weapon to kill any of them.
The knife clattered to the floor as I opened my hand and let it drop. Anticipating her next request, I raised both my hands up by my head and turned around slowly. The vampire stood a few inches over me. Long black hair, pale skin. I guess she looked undead enough—I still wasn’t sure what I expected. She wore a pair of boot-cut blue jeans and a little red top under a black vinyl bolero jacket. On the surface, I might not have given her a second glance. But those blue eyes...those looked predatory. I saw cold violence in them. She was a killer—no doubt about it.
I saw a bit of me in those eyes.
She was pretty, too. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised—all the vampires in movies tended to be. Didn’t look any older than the secretary behind me, though. Nothing like immortal jailbait—she must be popular with a lot of guys. Or girls.
“Plenty of people come looking for me,” Lain said. “Most don’t visit psychic detectives in the process.”
“Seemed the most time-effective way of doing it. Looks like it worked, too.”
“Be careful,” the secretary said behind me. “She’s a demon.”
Lain raised a shapely dark brow as she kept her gaze locked with mine. “Oooh, half what?”
“Dunno,” I said. “And it’s quarter, technically.”
She shrugged. “Quarters aren’t usually that much of a concern to me.”
“You might change your mind once this descends into violence.”
“I’m not so sure about that. See, I,” she gestured to her ample chest with the gun, “have fought quarter-demons before. And half-demons. And ran into the odd full demon, for that matter. And I’m still alive. You, however...” She sighed. “Something tells me I’m your first vampire. So why don’t we save ourselves a bit of trouble, and you can tell me now why you came to kill me, and we won’t have to wait until I’m breaking your bones one by one.”
Cocky bitch. I kind of wanted to smack her, but I had to remind myself that I’d come to speak to a living vampire.
“I’m not here to kill you,” I said. “I’m here for answers.”
“I may be old, but I’m not a fucking library.”
“Five years ago you were involved in something that got a lot of people killed.”
Her head tilted to the side. “Your point?”
“You knew someone named Mishka Thiering?”
Lain nodded.
“She was my half-sister.”
Her eyes widened and a beat of silence passed. “Oh.”