| 19 | KILL SHOT |
LATE JULY IN THE CITY was always too hot and empty, Ara thought, as she stood with a watchful eye in a hot and empty alley in the Lower East Side. It was one of those rare and forgotten side streets that had escaped glamorous reinvention of the area during the early twenty-first-century boom, when the lox-and-pastrami district anchored by Katz’s Deli became as polished and shiny as the rest of town, with pricey hotels and limousines lining the former Bowery. The alley was a seedy and grimy throwback, and at first glance Ara thought the pile of rags underneath a streetlamp was just that. It was a few hours after midnight, and she and her partner had swept the whole block and had found nothing so far.
The demon they had captured the other week had lied then, even in its dream. Ara had risked her immortal life, had performed that Death Walk for nothing. The Venators had kept that sucker alive long enough to try to get information out of it, but the thing was stubborn; it wouldn’t tell them anything, wouldn’t give up one name, or one reason why the Nephilim were back in the city. It was half-starved, weak, stark raving mad. Yet as broken and terrified as it was, it remained silent and would not surrender the hiding place of its brethren.
Stubborn, stupid beast.
Ara was sick of the stonewalling. And so one night she had invaded its dreams. Its mind was a free-floating psychotic mess of hatred and malice, but in that darkness she had seen something.
This street, this alley.
There was something here.
She was sure of it.
She couldn’t tell the rest of the Venators, because she couldn’t let them know she had broken the rules, and so it was just she and her partner in this empty abandoned building in the dead of night. But the only thing there was a pile of rags in a dark corner behind some trash cans.
Ara should have known better, but she kept walking, and just by luck, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the rag pile move; it was a blur of black and red, moving so fast, so fast toward her, a set of gleaming sharp teeth in an ash and dirt-streaked, crimson-eyed face. She had nothing to rely on but her training, her reflexes, her instinct, and as quickly as the monster leaped toward her, she had moved even faster, had drawn faster, and had fired her gun right into its head, so it dropped dead right on top of her, so close that she could smell its foul breath.
Her partner, Rowena Bailey, a hard-bodied African American Venator with the face of a movie star and the attitude of a swaggering samurai, swore loudly and creatively. “Scott, you all right?” she asked, after she had let out a string of expletives that would have made Dirty Harry blush.
“I’m fine,” Ara called, grunting as she pushed off from underneath the dead body and rolled it off her. She took Rowena’s outstretched hand and stood up, brushing the dirt and blood off of her shirt. “Did I get him?”
“Oh yeah,” Rowena said, tentatively touching the dead thing with the edge of her boot and pushing it away from them.
“Good,” Ara said, breathing heavily. Her hands were still shaking as she put away her gun.
“Yep, that’s a Neph all right. If it had been a Silver Blood, you’d have needed the moon shanks.” Rowena smiled, using her nickname for their crescent blades. “And you’d be lying where he is.”
Ara took a deep breath and nodded, acknowledging how lucky she was to be alive. No, not lucky, said the voice in her head, not lucky. Deadly. You’re a Venator. You were the one to be feared in the fight, never forget that. The demon had jumped her without warning because it was afraid of her, and the element of surprise was its only advantage. Like its comrade whom the Venators had put to the fire soon after she had invaded its dreams, the creature was slow, almost lumbering. But maybe that was only what it looked like to her, as if everything seemed to unfold in slow motion; that was how fast she was, how quickly she had reacted to the threat.
“Check its pockets,” Rowena said. “See if it has anything we can use to track down the rest.”
Ara fished around the demon’s clothing, trying to control her revulsion. It was one thing to kill it; it was another thing to have to touch it. She pulled out a few tiny glassine bags, the kind that jewelers used to keep loose stones, stamped with five silver triangles and the words “Chocolate Factory.”
“Drug dealer?” she asked. “You know how they brand their products now? ‘Ace of Hearts’? ‘Government Shutdown’?”
Rowena peered at it. “Yeah, looks like some dime bags. Let’s take it to the lab, see if we can catch a trace of what was in them. Maybe this was his corner.”
Ara bagged the evidence to take back to the station.
“Not bad for a night’s work,” Rowena said, kneeling down to pour holy water on the body, making it sizzle. The human demon slowly disappeared in a cloud of black smoke.
Ara helped Rowena kick the rags back into a pile in the corner. It looked remarkably similar to how it had before. Except now it really was just a pile of rags.
She studied the plastic bags. “Five triangles. Chocolate Factory. What the hell does that mean?”
Rowena shook her head. “Who knows. Let’s worry about it tomorrow. Come on, a good kill means you get the first shot,” she said, slapping Ara on the back as they made their way out of the alley.
Headquarters was buzzing when they returned, and Ara was surprised and touched to find the Venators on duty cheering, hooting, and clapping at her arrival. She never got used to it and was gratified when it happened. This was her family now, her brothers and sisters in black.
“That’s right, my friends, Scott put another mark on the board!” Rowena announced, slashing a big red X on the board in the hallway that was littered with bloody X’s, one for each demon’s death they had wrought in the last decade. “Who’s up for the Holiday?”
Another round of cheers erupted from the demon hunters. They’d been working on uncovering the location of the Nephilim nest for weeks, and this was the closest they had gotten to finding them. Rowena was the tracker while Ara was the quick shot, the one who ended up pulling the fancy blades and beheading their enemy or shooting it down. It never stopped being satisfying, sending monsters back to the underworld where they belonged. But she was spooked as well, as she often was after a kill, jittery from having been seconds from death herself. She caught a glimpse of her reflection on the glass door, and her face was as pale as her short hair.
“Hey, hey! What’s going on out here? What’s all the hoopla?”
The Venators quieted down as their chief emerged from his office with a frown. Sam Lennox glared at the rowdy, black-clad Venators. He was beloved by his team, but it was well known that he didn’t put up with a lot of nonsense.
“Scott put another X on the board,” Rowena said. “Shot a Neph dead to rights before he could move. A beautiful thing.”
“Did she now?” Lennox asked, turning to Ara with a frown. Then his broad face broke into its familiar, fatherly smile. “Well, why are all you losers still standing around here, then? First round at the Holiday’s on me!”
“You think you’ll take the promotion?” Ara asked, as she and Rowena took their drinks to a booth in the back. As two of the best Venators on the team, with the most kills due to Ara’s quick hand, they had both been offered an opportunity to move up in the organization.
“Yeah, maybe,” Rowena said. “Between you and me, I’m tired of patrol. Tired of smelling like blood and death. War’s been over for a long time now, but try telling that to the underworld trash we find all over the city.”
Ara sighed. She had a feeling Rowena would take the new gig. “Leaving me behind, sister.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” Rowena said. “Why don’t you take yours? They want you, too, you know.”
“Nah, I like it here. Unlike you, I like the taste of blood.” Ara smiled dreamily.
“It’s addictive, I’ll give you that.”
“Yeah, I guess. Or maybe I just know I’ll ruffle some conclave member’s feathers, and that’ll be it for me. I’ll get kicked out of the Coven for sure, pissing off the likes of Chris Jackson even more.” She made a face. When she’d been a young vampire on the Committee, Chris Jackson had been the bane of her existence. Even if Ara had been known as Minty back then, the seeds of rebellion had already been planted. She remembered arguing with Chris when the Committee head had asked her to comport herself as a young lady. “I’m not a young lady, I’m a vampire,” she’d shot back.
Rowena laughed. “She’s not so bad. Anyway, I’m proud of you. Wonder Woman. Demon huntress.”
“Thanks,” Ara said, feeling both touched and sad. After her family had died in the final battle, Ara had joined the Venators to find a home again. Rowena was more than a partner to her, she was a sister. They’d fought demons together, side by side, and on the weekends they saw movies and cooked dinner. Until Rowena started dating one of the junior conclave members, of course, which was probably why she wanted to transition over to security strategy rather than continue street work; it would enable her to see her girlfriend more often. Venators were often single because no one could keep up relationships with the hours they kept.
Sam Lennox sidled up to their table. Not for the first time, Ara noticed that he wasn’t as old as he tried to appear, although, of course, like all of them, he was centuries old. But to mortal eyes he looked early forties at most. “Good work today, ladies,” he said, smiling. “Can I get you anything? Refills?”
Rowena winked at Ara. “I’m all right, Chief. Sully owes me one. He bet we wouldn’t catch the Neph today. I’m gonna go find him and make him pay up.” She slid out of the booth and Sam sidled in taking her place.
He had trained Ara and taught her how to shoot, how to kill. It was his voice she heard in her head when she was afraid. The one that reminded her how truly dangerous she was. He had crafted her into a weapon. “You know, I’m not too happy with the way you found that Neph,” he said. “I know about that stunt you pulled with the Death Walk.”
“You here to chew me out, Chief?”
“Maybe,” he said. “What you did was dangerous—you could have let that thing into your mind. There’s a reason those things are done in controlled environments. If you had traveled too deep, Rowena would never have been able to pull you out.”
“But I didn’t,” she said with a smile.
He scratched his cheek. “All right, all right.” He returned her smile to let her know he wasn’t there to lecture her; tomorrow he might, but not tonight. “I heard you got him right between the eyes. Bull’s-eye.”
“It was him or me,” she said. “And you know me, I like a clear shot.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” he said.
She smiled at him and he smiled back. “Chief…”
“It’s after hours, Ara—you can call me Sam.” He winked. His face was a little pink from the lights in the bar, or maybe he’d had a lot to drink, although alcohol wasn’t supposed to affect vampires that much.
“All right, then, Sam…,” she said. She had known the chief for a long time, but tonight, she savored his name as if it were a brand-new present, something rare and hardly used. Samuel Lennox.
“Yes, Ara?”
She leaned forward so that she could look deep into his clear blue eyes. “You know what I heard in my head, right before I shot the fucker? What I hear every time I kill one of those mofos?”
“Tell me.”
“Your voice, telling me to hold it steady. Telling me to choose my life instead of his. Show no mercy, Scott. You’re a Venator.”
Sam slapped his hand on the table and let out a loud guffaw. “That’s good advice, right there.”
They grinned at each other, and Ara felt a tingle, an electric sensation pass between them. Caught up in the euphoria of the kill, at that moment, it felt like anything was possible, even that the chief might be making eyes at her. Sam was one of the Coven’s heroes. The one who kept the Coven safe after the War. The one they all looked up to. And if she wasn’t imagining things, he was looking at her, not as a Venator, but as if she was the most beautiful woman in the bar. Ara had never felt beautiful before. In high school, she’d run with the pretty crowd but had never felt pretty herself, just passable. And with Rowena, everyone looked at Rowena, beautiful, gorgeous, caramel hottie Rowena. Ara, with her short platinum boy’s hair and lanky body, was no one’s idea of a beauty. Or maybe not…
“What are you drinking? Let me guess, water?” Sam asked.
“You know me too well,” she said, raising her glass. “It’s sparkling.”
He let out another hearty laugh. “Come on, Scott. You had a big night. Let’s get you something stronger.”