Raw Deal (Bite Back) (8 page)

I stood and drained my glass too. Time to go, and I couldn’t waste it.

She escorted me as far as the door to her office. She held it open and I walked through.

“
Au revoir
, Amber,” she said.

My French just about extended to knowing that meant until we met again.

I wasn’t as sure about a lot of what else she’d said, but I wanted to talk to Valerie anyway and she was waiting in the lobby, as Dominé had told me she would be.

“Dominé says I can trust you. She said I can leave now and you’ll drive me home.” The strange European accent had disappeared, replaced with mid-western. She could barely look me in the eye. She kept her chin down, her face turned to one side.

I nodded.

“You’re…” she hesitated, unwilling to say it. “Can I
really
trust you?”

“I’m not like them, Valerie. I can’t prove it, but I won’t hurt you. And I’ll try to make sure no one else does either. I just need to ask you a few questions.”

She looked up tentatively. Face on, her eyes looked bruised with worry. Slowly, the tension in her shoulders eased.

 “Let me change first. It won’t take me a minute.”

Before she could move away, I took hold of her chin and gently lifted her jaw up. Her breath caught, but she held still. I slipped a finger into the ruff around her neck and eased the material away from her skin. About halfway down her neck, there were fang marks on both sides.

“We really do need to talk, don’t we?” I said. “I’ll get the car and pick you up outside.”

Chapter 8

We didn’t talk in the car. For my part, I was letting it sink in. She was the only other person I’d met who’d been bitten and survived. It gave me a peculiar sense of kinship with her.

I was also taking time trying to work out my strategy. I needed to reassure her, so I had to appear to know exactly what I was talking about while getting every scrap of information out of her. And my thoughts were constantly being shocked back to realizing that I had the first evidence the colonel had sent me to find.

There were vampires in America. Right here in Denver.

And very good at remaining hidden.

To be that, it was surely unthinkable that they’d casually bite someone and then let her go. So what was the deal here? Were they trying to turn her? Or had they been panicked into making a mistake? If it was a mistake, were they going to come back and fix the problem?

And what would that mean—being taken away or being killed?

I had to work this out for Valerie as well as for the colonel.

She lived on Colorado Boulevard, up near City Park.

We pulled up outside an apartment building that made me think Club Agonia paid better than the Denver PD.

She sat, looking intently at the building, making no move to get out.

“Hey,” I said, startling her.

“Oh. Sorry. I’m kinda scared.”

“It’s okay, I’m coming in with you anyway.”

“Thanks.” She flashed a tight smile and we got out of the car. We must have been an odd sight walking across to the door, Valerie in her jeans and puffy jacket and me in my floaty vampire cloak. It was a shame there was no mist.

Inside, she offered me coffee. I accepted and she walked into a small kitchen area, turning lights on.

“Can I use your bathroom?” I asked. “I want to take the face off.”

That got a nervous laugh and a wave down the corridor.

Valerie’s apartment was a surprise. I’d expected somewhere scruffy, gloomy and full of angst. Instead, she’d decorated in light pastels and put up real paintings on all the walls, mainly of penguins in funny poses. Everything was spotlessly clean and tidy.

I scrubbed my vampire face away.

A cat greeted me as I came back out, demanding attention loudly.

“I can hear you’re meeting Mr. Leo Pardner, the owner of the apartment,” Valerie said from the kitchen. “Leo for short. He normally doesn’t talk to strangers.”

I scratched his ears and he shed hairs on my cloak, buzzing with pleasure.

“Are the penguins your work?” I called out as the coffee machine spluttered to a halt.

“Yeah. I’ve never seen one really. We watch a lot of wildlife on TV where I come from.”

“They’re good paintings.”

She smiled as she came into the living room with two mugs.

We sat on the sofa and Leo claimed the space between us, which was fine by me.

“Valerie—”

“It’s not really Valerie. It’s just boring, odd, plain old Valery Hawks from nowhere North Platte, Nebraska.” Her name lost the tone at the end when she said it.

I smiled. “Everyone has to come from somewhere. Can’t be that bad.”

She groaned theatrically and rolled back on the sofa, clutching a cushion to her. “You know they have the biggest rail yard in the world?”

“So?”

“They have a tower specially so you can go see it. You know you’re running out of things to do when you climb a tower to go look at a railroad junction.”

“Sounds real bad,” I agreed.

“And being, well, different... You don’t understand.” Her eyes flicked to me and away again. She sat up. “Imagine going to school and you’re related to a quarter of the people in your class. You go out to eat and get one cousin waiting the table and another cooking the food. You go to a dance and every other partner is a damn cousin. What are you going to do?”

“You can kiss cousins,” I pointed out.

“
Not
of the same sex.” She put her head in her hands. “Or anyway, not in North Platte.”

I chuckled. “Well, you can’t be odd
and
boring, and hey, North Platte is sort of exotic for a Denver girl like me.”

She glared at me, but without much heat.

“Valerie, being bored is a privilege. Tomorrow, pack up and go home for a while. Please. Take a break.” I kept the French pronunciation of her name—it suited her.

“I can’t leave Dominé.” She saw the expression on my face. “Look, she’s been good to me. You don’t know what she’s really like.”

“Hmm. You mean she put on a front for me? Well, people who put on a convincing front usually have a couple more in reserve. Are you sure you’ve seen her as she really is?”

“Yeah. When she takes you on, she helps you out finding places to stay and getting bank accounts set up, small loans, that sort of thing. And she makes sure we all feel safe. She has those big guys keeping control in case things get out of hand. Kinda have to, I suppose, in a club like ours.”

I leaned forward. “Okay, she’s probably not as bad as she tries to make out. But she’s not good either. And she’s miscalculated this time. It’s dangerous at the moment. The scars on your neck say it’s dangerous. Being scared to walk to your apartment from the parking lot says it’s dangerous.”

She was scared all right. It barely needed me to push and she was ready to head back to North Platte.

“I’ll have to explain to her first,” she said.

“Fine. Call in. Explain. Don’t tell her where you’re going. And don’t let her swing some guilt trip on you.” I sipped my coffee and went on casually. “Want to tell me about it?”

“I don’t…” she stuttered to a halt.

“Valerie, I went through that club tonight and I saw a bunch of people play acting who don’t begin to suspect the truth, even in their worst nightmares. I saw a boss who’s scared and does suspect the truth. But there were two people there who know the truth and they’re both sitting on this sofa.”

She nodded jerkily. I could feel the caution that was holding her back dissolve. I leaned forward. If the vampires were that good at staying below the radar, this might be the only chance that came my way. I needed her to give me a good lead.

“They met you at the club?” I prompted.

She took a sip of her coffee and settled back on the sofa, still hugging the cushion to her.

“They came in a couple of times as guests. They aren’t members.”

“Describe them for me.”

“Three of them. All in their twenties or thirties. Rodrigo and Antonio, I reckon come from Mexico. They’re built like boxers, not heavyweight, more kinda middleweight, but no scars or busted noses or anything. Rodrigo has a mustache. They both have black hair and dark eyes. The other guy is tall, over six feet. Don’t know where he comes from. He’s blond, gray eyes, skinny but strong. They call him Raul, but he’s not from the same place as them. They’re all fit, like they work out.”

“They speak English to each other?”

“Sometimes. Other times, a language I never heard before.”

“The club let them in, so I guess they were behaving reasonably?”

She nodded.

That made them very different than the ones I’d met.

“Surnames? Addresses?”

She shook her head. Her hand was rubbing her throat and she was staring blankly at the floor.

“So what happened?”

She thought about it. “The first time is kinda blurry, like I was drunk or something.” Her lips thinned and she looked over at me. “I don’t drink.”

“Little recreational smoking?”

She nodded. “Some. Not that night, and it’s the wrong sort of feel.” She shifted her weight. “Not, y’know, like I was flying. I can’t really describe it in words. I think of it like painting. Look, dope is watercolors on soft paper, okay?” I nodded encouragement. “Sex is poster paint. Now imagine you smear that sideways, and you can only just make out what it was before. That’s what it feels like in my head.”

The cat moved, as if he sensed my disquiet. I stroked him gently.

“Sex?” I asked. There had been people screwing in the club. I tried to keep my question casual. “Did you have sex with any of them?”

“No. It kinda felt like it though.” She huffed. “I’m not into guys, but if sex with them was as good as that, I sure as hell would be.”

“This was where in the club?”

“They were upstairs in the sofa section. It was early, so the lights were still on. I walked past and I just noticed them somehow, really noticed them. Like they’d called me, but they hadn’t.”

If I could sense vampires, maybe some other people could, too. I stayed quiet, letting her tell it in her own way.

“I sat down on the arm of the sofa, and talked to them. First off, it was just guy stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, they had this joke going. One of them said I was pretty as a picture, he’d hang me on his wall. The next one said I should be in a gallery, and the third one, Rodrigo, told the other two off. But then he said he thought I must have good taste.”

I winced.

“I don’t think he was making a sick joke then,” she said. She finished her coffee. “I said something about feeling they’d called me over. Y’know, just flirting around. They seemed surprised. That’s when they started arguing in that language.”

“Any idea what it was about?”

“Something about me. Rodrigo wasn’t happy I was there. It gets a bit blurry. Next thing I know, I was leaning over Antonio, like we were cuddling. He bit me and there was this feeling. So hot, like I was almost ready to come. Weird or what?”

“He bit you and it didn’t hurt at all?” Again, my experience had been different, but I’d been fighting to the death. Valerie’s comments about her sensations and the blurring of her memory fit in with a couple of the theories the colonel and I had discussed. If vampires could make humans want to be bitten, that would be dangerous enough, but if they could mess with memories and perceptions—that was a whole different kind of dangerous.

“Yeah.” She balled up around the cushion, lowering her face to it. “None of them hurt me.” Her voice was muffled. “That time.”

I reached out and touched her arm gently. Leo twisted around in a flash and latched onto me with his claws. We burst out laughing and had to fuss him until he let go.

“That night was creepy, but I could live with it,” she resumed, when the cat had received enough worship to placate him. “I talked to Dominé. She didn’t like the sound of it and she said they wouldn’t get in again. But she was out yesterday. Someone let them in. I was on the door to the Sanctum, where you saw me tonight.”

She reached behind the sofa, bringing out a huge art folder and putting it on the coffee table. Pinned to the front was a fresh painting. It was done in oils, and looked as if it was still sticky.

Valerie’s mouth twisted, as if she felt sick to her stomach.

“I can’t remember exactly what happened. But I can remember what it felt like to me,” she said, pushing the painting toward me. The intense colors had been spread with a knife, in sharp, straight lines. It was angry, wounded and violent. “I can remember suddenly realizing what they were and being scared shitless. That’s the point where things started to happen and it all just gets…” she gestured again at the painting and then pushed the folder away as if she didn’t want to be reminded of it. “Marcel was on the door with me. He said nothing happened. He couldn’t remember them coming up the stairs at all. They did something to him. Even Dominé didn’t believe me until she looked at the recording from the security camera.”

Security footage? Hard evidence of vampire activity? I felt goose bumps down my arms. 

I’d need that recording from Dominé and I had to get it to the colonel tonight.

“And you, Amber. You’re one of them, but you’re different. How is that?”

It felt like I’d been gut-punched. All the stuff from Dominé about being like them was so much talk, unsettling but nothing more. Here was a girl who could sense vampires, and she sensed I was one. I’d been sitting here with my Ops 4-10 head on, thinking about nailing vampires in America for the colonel. If I was one too, what did that mean for me?

“What do you mean?” I stalled.

“When you got in my face at the club, I felt the same thing I felt that first night with the three of them. It was as if you’d called out something to me. You’re one of them.” Leo uncurled and climbed into her arms, butting his head against her chin. “But you’re different somehow.”

“You’re scared of them, but you’re not scared of me?”

“I’m not scared of you. Not now. I can’t explain. You don’t give off the same vibe.” She frowned. “You didn’t answer.”