The paramedic looked at me, surprise lifting her eyebrows. “Yes, you do need to go to the hospital, because you need a doctor. More so than the others.” She gently sat me down at the back of the ambulance, then placed an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth. I winced when it touched my skin, knowing then I must look worse than I felt. When dizziness sent me weaving, the paramedic grabbed my arms. I let her and the other EMT settle me on a gurney.
“Did a doctor see this wound on your leg?” she asked.
“It’s healing, don’t worry about it.”
“I’m coming with her.” Elsa didn’t wait for an okay. She merely flashed her badge and crawled into the back. Somehow, she’d managed to grab jeans, a gray sweatshirt and shoes.
Lucky.
She leaned close to whisper, “Hey, I do have some good news. Think I found us an ancient.”
Adrenaline flooded my muscles and I tried to sit up. We needed the blood of an ancient for the spell that ripped open the deeper hell dimensions. I could peel into several, but the deepest, darkest ones were beyond my capabilities. I wanted that blood badly. Finding it put us one step closer to getting Nikolos back. He’d jumped into a portal to one of those layers of Hell, freeing souls, saving my sister. I knew he was alive. Alive but trapped.
It was driving me crazy.
Elsa narrowed her blue eyes and pushed me back down. “Nikolos isn’t going anywhere. We can take the time to get you checked out first.” She crinkled her nose. “Besides, you’re awfully pale and that looks weird with that copper hair of yours. Blythe’s fireman”—she paused with a dramatic eye wiggle—“is driving the witch and your brother to the hospital in your Jeep. Apparently he has a buddy there who will give him a ride home.”
“I don’t think he’s really a fireman. And I hate that place.” My voice sounded funny because of the raw throat and oxygen mask. I pulled it off my nose and glared at the paramedic when she reached out to push it back. She hesitated, frowned. Too bad. I wasn’t here to make friends. Not that I did that easily in normal circumstances.
I looked back at Elsa. “How’d you find one?” I knew she’d understand what I meant.
“Remember Selena Mathews?”
I nodded, though my stomach clenched. I hated the pain of that memory. She’d been a serial killer victim, a preteen. I’d helped catch the guy who did it, but none of us had realized Selena was a werewolf. Her pack had broken into the killer’s cell before he went to trial and left little to identify him. Were-animals had their own sort of justice system. After watching her sad, silent spirit following that poor excuse for a human, I’d felt he’d gotten what he deserved.
“What about Selena? She wasn’t one of the—” I glanced at the paramedic to see her prepping something in a needle. I shook my head at her, nearly laughed at the ferocity of the new frown she turned on me. “Old kind?” I finished for Elsa. It was the best I could come up with under the circumstances. My brain was damned tired and who knew whether this health worker had knowledge about the creatures that live hidden among us. I wasn’t sure where Elsa was going with this. Were-creatures had normal life spans—they didn’t qualify as ancient anything.
“No, she wasn’t,” Elsa agreed. She pulled her long blonde hair into a high ponytail. “But her pac…um, family is pretty powerful. They have claws in everything, and I guessed they’d be the ones to know.”
It was a good idea. A really good one. My sister rocked. I’d planned to start questioning old clients as soon as my body finished healing. Of course, I’d expected it to be much earlier than this. So I was glad my sister had jumped the gun.
Elsa wasn’t really my sister. I’d grown up in foster and children’s homes. She’d been a part of the last foster family to take me in. Her parents hadn’t been able to deal with the changes puberty brought me, changes like superstrong muscles and the ability to see into other dimensions. Oh, and the time I’d cut off my long copper-and-white-striped hair and it had grown back overnight. But Elsa and I remained close—like real sisters—even after they’d sent me back to the kids’ home.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“They didn’t give me a name—just his location. We’ll check it out when we leave.”
Since it was well past midnight, I grinned. “You don’t think we should wait until morning?”
“Not with this one. He’s only awake at night.”
My head plopped back onto the gurney. Had to be a vamp. She’d found us a damned vampire. They were stingy with blood, so getting one to share some of his would be tricky and probably require a bit of force. Not that I minded. These creatures weren’t one of my favorites.
They were tricky and very, very dangerous.
I couldn’t shake my entourage. Every single one of them wanted to go once we left the hospital. I put my foot down about the smitten fireman, tried to send him home with a glare. It didn’t work. Blythe’s three-minute tongue probe did the job. I wish I could erase my brother’s look of interest while he watched that kiss.
Hell, I wished I could erase the image from my own mind altogether.
Physically, I was okay now. I heal pretty fast from normal wounds. By the time we arrived at the emergency room, a lot of the smoke damage had already cleared from my lungs. The paramedic had been eyeing me with suspicion, so I ducked out as soon as Castor and Blythe arrived. I would have had Blythe use a spell to smudge their memories, but the accidental fires were worse than usual—if she could even get a spell to work.
My lungs, eyes and throat felt sore, but I could deal with that. I’d had worse. The scars on my arm and leg—now thankfully covered with the clothes I’d had in my Jeep’s trunk—attested to that.
“Too bad you can’t keep that sexy, throaty voice,” Phro drawled from the backseat as we parked my sad-looking vehicle a block from the address Elsa had been given. My Jeep was fairly new and had been a beautiful, shiny red, but a nasty, vengeful ghoul had keyed it recently. He’d also drawn a huge black happy face on my driver’s side door. Blythe had hand painted some flowers over the face, but she’d used watercolors. Still kind of cracked me up. They’d bled off with the first settling of morning dew.
“You’d attract boyfriends like crazy,” Phro continued.
“Don’t want boyfriends.” I looked up and down the street and found pretty much what I expected out here.
Nothing.
This rumored ancient lived in an old warehouse a couple of miles south of the city. The place looked deserted, so I couldn’t help but wonder if the address was bogus. In my admittedly limited experience with vampires, I’d found they liked living in style. This dirty concrete-block building in the middle of nowhere certainly had no panache.
“Why’d you park so far away?” Blythe asked.
Was that movement by the right side of the building? I squinted, trying to see through a thick stand of holly trees. “He could be skittish. We should walk up slowly.”
Three of the streetlights were out, creating dark pocketed corners we’d be avoiding. The blanketing cloud cover made it worse. There wasn’t a light near any of the doors—not even the heavy, industrial metal ones. Apprehension skittered up the back of my neck and I held out my hand. “Let me have the instructions again.”
Elsa passed me the paper.
Go around the first building and down the narrow alley to the one in back. Knock on the door and wait.
“Everyone wants boyfriends,” Phro said, continuing a conversation I’d already forgotten about. She never gave up easily.
“Drop it, Aphrodite. I just want the Minoan.”
Elsa opened the passenger door. “Let’s get some blood then.”
“Wait.” I turned in my seat so I could see them all. Castor and Blythe sat in the back with Phro and Frida, Blythe’s spirit guide, practically in their laps. I never understood why they rode in the car like us. They could just hover above or blink into this dimension whenever. Maybe it made them feel more a part of things. I don’t know.
Blythe was still in her robe-covered pajamas, Castor in jeans and a faded red T-shirt under a brown jacket. Castor’s guides only became visible when he was in danger. I was glad too. They creeped me out with their tall, still bodies and their silent, expressionless stares. Castor was supposed to be something special and the army of protectors around him proved that. None of us knew what kind of special. Nikolos had called him the next messiah, but Castor had absolutely no religion to speak of. He was pretty damned sweet though. Kind. To everyone.
The kind of kind that got you killed by skittish vamps.
“Maybe you should wait in the Jeep, Castor.”
“Why?” Two copper brows, the same color as mine, shot up. “I’ve never seen a vampire. Excited about it.”
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath. “Because having all of us descend on him will already make him nervous. A nervous vamp can be a bad, bad thing. But you also have that…that—”
“Golden aura?” Blythe supplied, looking up at him like he’d hung the moon just for her.
I nodded. “Yeah, that. Not to mention the whole ‘good to the bone’ thing you’ve got going. Who knows? You might be like a cross to it or something. Wouldn’t want him to poof into smoke before we bleed him.”
Castor glowered at me, which didn’t detract from his looks at all—instead, kind of enhanced them. Not for the first time, I was struck by how beautiful he was. I’d thought the necromancer, Dubious Silo, the long-bodied, graceful guy we’d hired to help translate the ancient spell book, was pretty, and he was, in a girly, silky-haired kind of way. But Castor, with his short, spiky hair that he cut daily—also copper-colored like mine—and his light-amber eyes and golden skin—also like mine… Well, let’s just say on me the combo didn’t look bad, but it could put him on the cover of every magazine in the world. On me, the over six feet in height was considered unusual. On him, it was the ultimate in desirability. Seriously not fair. But I didn’t really care all that much. My confidence levels were up enough these days to deal with having a brother who was prettier.
Sighing, I ran my hands through my hair, grimacing when the scent of smoke hit me. I opened the door and stepped from the Jeep. “We might as well get this over with. If he doesn’t agree to come with us, we’ll…I don’t know…think of something.” Luckily, I kept extra clothes in my monster investigator bag in the trunk. Extra tennis shoes too. And since I had to blend into the night in my work, everything was in black. Even the shoes. They weren’t pretty, but they worked and that was what I was after.
I had a cross in one pocket and a vial of holy water in the other—though the water had not worked the last time I’d tried that. Never hurt to try one more time. My knives were in the handy wrist sheaths, out of sight under my leather jacket.
My sneakers didn’t make a sound on the asphalt and still not knowing how this vamp would handle the crowd at his entryway, I quietly shut my Jeep door and motioned for the rest of them to follow. Castor got out too, and I glared and gestured at the car. He lifted one reddish eyebrow, crossed his leanly muscled arms over his chest and glared right back. I grinned. He grinned.
Damn, I really like my brother.
“The
weres
gave me more advice,” Elsa whispered. She’d pulled out her Glock. She knew the gun would have no effect on the vampire, but it probably made her feel better. Besides, who knew when a mugger might jump from the trees? Jacksonville did have a pretty high crime rate. “They said to approach with caution.”
I held a “duh” back with effort. “I don’t know anyone dumb-assed enough to run up to a vampire. They wouldn’t have time to blink before they’d be drained and dumped into the ocean. And that gun will do little good.”
“I’m just telling you what they said,” she whisper-snapped. “You don’t have to be a twat.”
Castor chuckled behind me. I just shook my head. I intimidated most people, but not Elsa. Never Elsa. Not even when we were ten and eleven and I’d shot two feet taller in less than a year. Now, at five-eight, she was no shrimp, but her pretty, girl-next-door looks kept most people from seeing the sharp wit she used with deadly precision.
We walked around the right side of the front building, as told, and found the narrow alley. The faint smell of turpentine filled the air as we crunched drying holly leaves beneath our feet. In the next instant, that icky smell was gone and something fantastic replaced it. The aroma of a well-cultivated garden. The fresh, flowery scents did not belong in this damp, dirty place. Some sweet, some spicy, but all the odors were natural in the way of a really well-thought-out garden. When we reached the door to the back warehouse, we did as told. Knocked and took several steps back.
The vamp didn’t come right away. Since it was the best time to get its hands on sleeping panhandlers, I thought it might be out feeding. I tapped my foot, waited a few minutes more. Just as a snarl crept over my mouth, I heard a faint, fluttering noise. Confusion hit me mid center. That didn’t sound like any vamp I’d heard.
Truth to tell, I’m not a fan of them. Though most had started gathering to write what they called “mystic world” rules, which included a lot less murder, they were still violent, nasty creatures. I had yet to meet one like those in the movies—tall, handsome or mesmerizing. The closest I’d come to a friendly one had been Miss Noodle, the vampire night librarian from Okeechobee County. Even then, when it first got dark, it was better not to be hangin’ and havin’ tea, if you get my drift.