FORTY-EIGHT
As night fell, and Jane continued to sleep in their bed, Vishous went out naked to his computers and sat in his Captain Kirk chair. He had taken his leather jacket with him as he’d left their room, and after he lit up a hand-rolled, he went fishing in its pockets.
The civilian Whinnig’s gun was your garden-variety poodle shooter, a nothing-special Smith & Wesson nine millimeter, and as he kicked out the clip, he checked the bullets. There were three left, and he freed them of their confines, rolling them around in his palm.
Why hadn’t they worked against that entity? V had shot the shit out of the shadow that had gone after him and had wounded it. But Whinnig had said that his bullets had gone right through without effect—and his injuries had certainly been consistent with an undeterred attack from a strong enemy.
Maybe the report was false. After all, the kid who had died—and come back, hello—hadn’t been combat trained. But, Jesus, how trained did you have to be to notice whether or not you were wounding the thing trying to kill you?
Sitting forward, he lined up the three bullets in a little row, their flat bottoms and copper-colored hats exactly what you’d expect to see from the kind of civilian ammo you could get in a Dick’s Sporting Goods store.
The thing V worried about was whether the Omega was improving on a prototype. Shoring up weaknesses in a creation to make it a more effective weapon. The vampire race’s enemy was soulless, evil, and a scourge on the fucking planet—but it was far from stupid. And a weapon that couldn’t withstand getting shot at was less effective than one that could.
V sat back and smoked for a while, his brain cranking along on the variables.
When his mental calculator kept showing him zeroes, he got frustrated and decided to check in with some of the Facebook groups to see if anything was out in the species yet about the attack. The brother, Aarone, had gone home and was undoubtedly talking to people in the glymera.
Nope. Nothing yet.
Then again, the aristocracy did consider themselves above social media—
As his cell phone went off with a text, he threw out a hand and grabbed the thing. When he saw who it was from and what it was about, he cursed and got to his feet.
Heading back to the bedroom, he snuck in, not wanting to disturb Jane—or Butch and Marissa, who were sleeping next door. And he was doing okay on the whole getting-dressed thing until he slammed his bare foot into the corner of the dresser.
Sure, he managed to keep the HOLY FUCKING WHAT THE FUCK
“V?” Jane said in a sleepy way.
“Hey.” MOTHERFUCKINGOWFUCKOW—he rubbed his foot. “Sorry. Didn’t want to wake you.”
Of course, now that you’re up, honey, can you amputate my lower leg on this side? That’d be great. Thanks.
“You okay?”
“Perfect.” Fishing through the dresser, he grabbed and yanked on the first pair of pant-like anything he came to. Then he pulled on a T-shirt. “I gotta leave for a second before the Brotherhood meeting.”
“Mmm, love you. I’m going to go down to the clinic—what time is it?”
“Six p.m. You have another twenty minutes. Love you, too.”
Closing his eyes, he concentrated…
…and after a Tilt-A-Whirl, came out on the Other Side, in the Sanctuary. Without missing a beat, he strode across the cropped Astroturf-but-it-was-“real” lawn toward the Treasury.
As he closed in on the building, Phury stepped out of its entryway and lifted a hand. “Hey, my brother,” he called over. “Thanks for coming.”
“No problem.” V slowed as the guy gave him a strange look. “What. Why are you staring at me like that?”
“Interesting pants.”
“Huh—oh, fuck.”
As V checked out his lower half, his only thought was thank God it was Phury and not anyone else: He had on Jane’s pink flannel PJ bottoms. The ones that had My Little Cocksucking Pony all over them. The ones that had been given to all the females in the house by Lassiter—not because he liked My Little Motherfucking Pony, but because the fallen angel knew when the ladies wore them, their hellrens were going to have to see Apple Jack and Rainbow Dash in their nightmares.
And now V was sporting a set like he was a fan.
Oh, and P.S., they were high-waters because he was ten inches taller than his shellan.
“That is the last time I get dressed in the dark, true,” he muttered.
“Hey, it could be worse.”
“Yeah? How.”
“You could have put the top on, too.”
“Will you be offended if I just take them off?”
“Do you have boxer shorts on?”
“Fuck no.”
“Then let’s keep those puppies where they are, shall we?” Phury gave him a condescending smile. “Just in case any of the Chosen are up here. Modesty, you know.”
“Personally, I’d pick my one-balled wonder routine over this, but yeah, sure. Whatever you want.” V nodded toward the Treasury’s interior. “So what we got, Primale?”
“It’s bad.” Phury’s glowing yellow eyes narrowed. “Epic bad, actually.”
The two of them went inside, the bins of sparkling gems like fires banked, the wealth at once extraordinary and an as-you-do.
The brother went over to the display case with the burn mark. “So guess what was in here.”
“Fritz’s cookbook and he finally got it back.” V patted around for a hand-rolled and realized he hadn’t brought any with him. “Damn it.”
“I wouldn’t let you smoke in here anyway.” Phury opened the case’s glass lid. “And this was a cookbook, actually. But it’s the kind you don’t want in anyone’s hands—which was why it was here.”
“I’d like to remind you we can’t get lung cancer,” V muttered. “And everything is perfect up here, remember. I’ll bet if I exhaled, rose petals would come out of my mouth—but I digress. Cookbook? What are you talking about?”
“It’s a book of conjuring spells. Whoever has it can bring bad things to life.”
V ditched the levity quick. “The shadow entities.”
“That’s what I’m thinking. Those things just started showing up, didn’t they.”
“But why would the Omega need a book? If he knows how to—”
“You were right that first night. I don’t think it’s the Omega. Which is only one of a whole host of problems we’ve got.” The brother passed his hand over the burned spot. “Because check this out, the other reason the book was stored here was because it can’t be destroyed—if you burn it or try to rip up the pages, you release all of the spells at once. So this was deemed the only safe place. No one was supposed to get to it.”
“Where the fuck did it come from?”
“I don’t know about its origins. I’m just passing on what Amalya, the Directrix, told me. She’s really upset—not just because of the book being gone, but because we’re both wondering who got access to the Sanctuary when they weren’t supposed to be here? Let me ask you, when were you and Jane up here that you noticed it was gone?”
“I told you the night after. When I saw you at the Great Camp. Jane and I were just—well, she ended up here after she was shot.” He thought about Lassiter. “And I came to her. She pointed it out to me.”
Phury cursed. “I’m going to have to talk to Wrath about this.”
V stared at the doors that were open. And decided that if there were ever a moment in his life to be diplomatic, now was it.
“Listen, my man, I don’t know how to say this nicely.” He tried to pick his words carefully. “But is there any chance one of your Chosen might be doing an end run on this thing?”
Ooooooor he could just put the shit out there.
“Absolutely not.” Phury glared at him. “Those females are—”
“Out in the world. Making connections. Forging relationships with people they meet at the Audience House, online, while they work. How do you know that one of them didn’t take it, either for their own use, or someone else’s.”
Phury crossed his thick arms over his chest—and V was pretty damn sure that if the brother wasn’t a gentlemale, he’d have been throwing the kind of punches that knocked out teeth.
“My Chosen would never do anything to endanger the race.”
“But think this through.” V put his palms up, all let’s-chill. “No one else is allowed here without permission. So either one of two things happened. Someone who does have access took the book, or someone who has access took the book for somebody else. There are no other logical explanations.”
At eight o’clock that night, Vitoria pulled her brother’s Bentley into a parking space about seven blocks down from the gallery. It was a legal space, although there was no reason to put anything in the meter because it was after six p.m.
The snow that had been forecasted had arrived, and before she opened the driver’s side door, she pulled the hood of her black sweatshirt into place and zipped up the parka she had used to keep warm while climbing the mountain. After a pause to check her phone, she got out and kept her head down as the wind blew flakes into her face.
As she walked away from the Bentley, she left that door open and the key fob on the center console.
Pity that she did not have someone to bet with concerning how long it would take for somebody to steal the Flying Spur. The weather was bad, it was true, and that could decrease foot traffic and therefore the number of thieves. But it was a $250,000 sedan. Some junkie or another would take advantage of good fortune. It was the way of the human race.
Vitoria kept up a brisk pace as she went along, hands in the pockets of that parka that added to her bulk, head still down, her face obscured by the hood.
She went deeper and deeper into downtown…until, some number of blocks later, she got to the bridge that spanned the river.
Courtesy of the many on- and off-ramps that fed the four lanes across the waterway, there was a vast, dark netherworld underneath the great elevated stretches of pavement—and she kept her pace as she proceeded into the sheltered area. Here, the wind gusts lessened and the snow was blocked from falling to the rock-hard, frozen dirt. Cocoons of homeless people dotted the barren landscape, their bodies curled up in filthy blankets such that they became boulders on the face of poverty’s moon. And all around, loose newspapers danced about countless abandoned bottles empty of booze, like children showing inappropriate levity.
Overhead, traffic was a steady stream of ambient noise, the heavy weights of cars and trucks bumping along, coughing out the occasional horn or siren.
Vitoria walked all the way to the far side, to the place where the highway began its elevation from the earth, the parting of two planes creating an especially private area.
And there he was.
Streeter was precisely where they had agreed to meet, his tall body likewise in the same clothes he had been wearing during their arctic trip. As she approached, he flicked his cigarette away and exhaled.
“Hey, what’s going on—”
She shot him twice. Both times in the chest.
The suppressor did its job beautifully: The loudest sound was of him falling to the ground and landing faceup in a flop.
Two steps forward brought her to him. As he gasped, he lifted one hand up as if to ward her off while the other grabbed on to his chest.
She put a bullet into his forehead and a final one through the front of his throat.
Then Vitoria re-tucked the weapon into the waistband of her snow pants and walked away, head down, hands in pockets.
As she went, she noted the warmth of the barrel as it rested against her body, and thought, oddly, about the last time she had had sex. It had been a while since she had had something hot, round, and hard against her lower belly. Too long—although part of that was because it was difficult to be discreet back home. She would not have that problem here.
But that was a concern for another time. Now, she had to continue with her plan for the evening.
She would much have preferred to catch a bus or a subway back to the gallery. A taxi would be even better. But she couldn’t risk anyone seeing her or interacting with her. So she walked out from under the bridge and hooked up with a city street.
Now the snowflakes fell upon her once more, and her breath came out in puffs, like smoke from a locomotive’s engine.
It was nearly forty-five minutes of trudging before the gallery came into view, and she avoided entirely the rear entrance. Instead, she went in through the front, just as though she were a legitimate customer. Thanks to de la Cruz, she knew that, for some reason, her brother had no monitoring cameras on what was the primary entry. Then again, his illegal associates had come and gone through the back one—and Ricardo certainly had never had any intention of turning security footage over to the police.
No, upon further reflection, Vitoria was willing to bet that he had kept it for his own records, as an insurance policy in case anyone got any bright ideas.
She’d left through the front, too. And had not engaged the security alarm.
That way, there would be no record of her having left the premises and returned. And to that end, she was careful to circumvent the camera field that monitored the gallery space and the doorway up to Ricardo’s office.
One other advantage to her having watched the footage de la Cruz had showed her so many times was that she had figured out where the blind spots were.
Accordingly, she went into a dark corner that had no security coverage and changed back into the office clothes she’d left there. Then she stashed the parka, snow pants, hoodie, and gun in the hollow three-dimensional representation of a toadstool. After that, she took a circuitous route around so that she could go into the staff area unseen….only to make a show of striding out of there with her coat and bag.
Certain she was being watched and recorded by the cameras, she walked through the gallery space and checked the front door even though she was out of frame for that…then she reentered the camera’s eye and walked to the rear exit.
After engaging the alarm, she stepped out and locked up.
Then she looked left. Looked right.
Frowned.
Walking out of frame, she waited for as long as she guessed it would take for her check around and see where the Bentley should have been.
With hands that deliberately fumbled the keys, she let herself back in and disengaged the alarm, making sure to relock the door. Then she got out her phone. Dropped it. Picked it up and pushed her hair out of the way.
With hands that she made shake, she dialed a number and put the cell up to her ear. When the call was answered on the third ring, she made sure her voice was panicky.
“Detective de la Cruz? I’m so sorry to bother you, but you told me to call you if anything strange happened? Well, my car appears to have been stolen.”