Charlotte tried to smile again but succeeded only in baring her fangs. “I don’t hunt humans.”
Octavian could practically hear the unspoken ending to that sentence:
anymore
.
“Look, just because I’m what you call a rogue, that doesn’t make me a monster.”
“Then why aren’t you registered?” Keomany asked. “And how is it that you need our help?”
Charlotte nodded. She scratched at her arms and fidgeted a bit. “There you go,” she said. “That’s where we need to be in this conversation.”
The waitress arrived, delivering their coffees and Keomany’s cheesecake. As requested, she laid three forks on the table, but when she walked away, no one touched the cheesecake.
“Go on,” Octavian urged.
Charlotte hesitated, holding her coffee cup in both hands as though to warm her. The rain pounded the plate glass windows of the café. The lights flickered from the storm.
“You swear you won’t kill me?” the vamp girl asked.
Octavian stirred sugar into his coffee and raised it to his lips.
“No,” he said, taking a sip, letting the heat of the drink sink into him. “But I promise I’ll hear you out.”
For the first time, Charlotte looked truly afraid of him, and a dreadful sorrow filled her, as though she had been hollow before and now that sadness was all that she could contain.
“I promise you’ll get a running start,” Keomany told her. “But that will have to be good enough.”
Octavian glanced at her sharply, but Keomany ignored him. She stared at the vampire, rubbing her numb hand as if it had fallen asleep.
Charlotte glanced around, scratched her arms again, and ran her tongue over her fangs before nodding. “All right, fine. Whatever. It’s not like I have a lot of other people lining up to help me.”
She took a sip of her coffee, unsweetened, and grimaced at its bitter strength, but she did not add sugar or cream.
“You once knew a vampire named Cortez,” Charlotte said, steadier now that she had the coffee cup to hold on to. She glanced at him and then looked away. “Seventeenth century, I think it was. Somewhere in Italy.”
“I knew him,” Octavian allowed.
“Wait, Cortez? As in the conqueror?” Keomany asked.
Octavian gave her a sidelong glance. “So he claimed. I was never convinced.” He ran his thumb across the smooth ceramic rim of his mug. “What about him?”
Charlotte glanced out the window, watching rivulets of rain run down the glass. “I had just turned nineteen. My friends took me to this big party at this guy’s house. I had spent my whole life as a good girl, y’know? No sex, no booze, no drugs. They had a fire pit in the back and everyone was hanging out, drinking. This one guy, Nick, took out his guitar and started playing, and the whole thing was just . . . it was bliss.”
Her eyes began to fill, not with tears but with blood. She wiped it away, idly licking it from the back of her hand, barely even noticing what she’d done.
“This is stupid,” she said abruptly, shaking her head. “I’m not going to bore you with my human life.”
Despite his suspicions, Octavian pitied her, for he sensed where the story was headed . . . somewhere that shouldn’t have been possible.
Keomany had not touched her coffee. Now she put her hands over it, perhaps hoping its warmth would take away the numbness, and shivered.
“There were drugs. Cocaine. Ecstasy. I wanted to leave but my friends—such as they were—wanted to stay. I got pissed off and left without them. This was in San Diego, okay? Pacific Beach. I guess I could’ve called a taxi, but I decided to walk home, burn off some of my anger. It’s a party town, but that area’s usually pretty safe. Usually.
“I was so mad, I barely heard the van pull up beside me. Two men—I thought they were men—dragged me into the back. Duct tape, a black hood . . . it’s fucking redundant, right? You’ve watched that scene a thousand times in movies or on TV. It’s trite.”
Charlotte faltered, licking her lips and once again dabbing at the bloody tears in her eyes.
“Unless it’s happening to you,” Keomany whispered.
Charlotte glanced at her sharply, almost angrily. Octavian could feel the pain emanating from her.
“Yeah,” the vampire girl said. “Damn fuckin’ straight. It’s not trite when it’s happening to you. When you’re screaming and then you can’t scream anymore. When they’re beating you. When they do whatever the hell they want to you. When they
play
with you.”
She smiled, and with her long fangs and the blood smeared around her eyes, she had become something terrifying.
“I survived,” she said, uttering a horrid laugh. “And what was my prize for surviving all of the things they did to me? They said I was tough. They said Cortez wanted survivors. Fighters. And they brought me to him, and he took care of me, nursed me back to health . . . and then he killed me, and made me
this
.”
She looked down at herself in disgust.
But Octavian had forgotten his sympathy for her. He set his coffee down.
“Charlotte,” he said. “Look at me.”
The vampire girl did so. The waitress chose that moment to approach. Likely, she meant to ask them if there was anything else they needed, but when she got a look at Charlotte’s face, she made a tiny yelping noise and then muttered something about God as she hurried away.
Octavian ignored her, focused entirely on Charlotte.
“What year did you die?” he asked her. “What year were you turned?”
The girl laughed hollowly. “What do you mean, ‘what year?’
This
year. I turned nineteen in February.”
“But Cortez died in London, during the Blitz.”
Charlotte frowned. “World War Two?”
“Yes,” Keomany said. “World War Two.”
Octavian could feel Keomany staring at him, but he kept his focus on the vampire girl. “Cortez has been dead all this time. Most of his coven died in a single night’s bombing. Whoever turned you, it wasn’t Cortez.”
The girl looked confused. “Well, whoever he is, he certainly hates you.”
“So, there’s some rogue out there creating new vampires—” Keomany began.
“A lot of new vampires,” Charlotte said. “There were dozens just in the one building in L.A. where he kept me. And the guys in the van? They aren’t the only ones. They hunt, have their fun, and pass on the best ‘candidates’ to Cortez.”
“I don’t understand,” Keomany said, turning to Octavian. “How is it possible that an operation of that size can exist without Task Force Victor finding out about them?”
Octavian pushed his coffee mug away. He’d lost interest. Charlotte’s story weighed heavily on him. Task Force Victor was a joint United Nations operation. Allison Vigeant—one of Octavian’s closest allies, one of his shadows—had once hunted vampires for them. If TFV knew about this “Cortez,” the group would have been wiped out, which meant they did not know. But someone had to. That many people disappearing, that many new vampires being created. Someone had to know.
“Is this Cortez connected to what’s happening here in Hawthorne?” Octavian asked.
“What?” Charlotte said, frowning. “No. I took off months ago. Cortez wanted us all to be killers, to be what he called ‘real vampires.’ We were forced to . . . to feed.” She shuddered. “I’m not a killer. I get hungry, yeah. But I’m young and pretty enough that if I want blood, I never have to force a guy to give me some, y’know?”
Octavian nodded. He could imagine that, especially in a world that knew vampires were real, it would be a simple enough matter for a girl as lovely as Charlotte to persuade a young man to part with some of his blood.
“All of us were supposed to hunt, eventually. They sent me out with two others who had been recently turned. But we’d talked in advance and agreed we weren’t going to kill to feed ourselves, and we sure as hell weren’t going to kill for Cortez. We had a babysitter, of course—one of Cortez’s faithful, who was there in case something went wrong, or one of us decided to run. He wasn’t ready for all three of us trying to run. It turned ugly fast. Ugly and bloody.”
Charlotte shrugged. “But here I am. I don’t know if Cortez is looking for me. I’m gonna guess no. His operation’s too ambitious for him to chase down one girl from Pacific Beach. Anyway, I made my way east—wanting to put as much distance between myself and him as possible—and ended up in New York.”
“You’re not in New York,” Octavian reminded her.
“I was. And that’s the weird thing,” Charlotte said. “I’ve been living in New York. I work in a theatre on Forty-fourth Street. This morning I was going to an acting class, and halfway there I felt this
compulsion
. Maybe that’s the wrong word. It didn’t feel like something was driving me, but luring me. The savage part of me . . . the demon taint, right?” She nodded at Octavian. “It reacted. I felt like a sailor in some old myth, like the sirens were singing and I had no choice but to come to them.”
“And when you got here?” Keomany asked, sipping at her coffee and making a face, as though the cream in it had spoiled.
Charlotte threw up her hands. “Nothing. I felt it under my skin. Felt it rattling around my skull. But once I got into town, I had no direction. I’m hugely on edge, ready for a fight. Hell, I want one. I feel like I just want to
hurt
someone.”
She smiled, but it turned into something resembling a snarl. All through their time in the café, she had been fighting the hunger that gnawed at her, and Octavian thought she had been struggling to rein in the irritation the chaos around them was causing . . . the aggression growing in all of them. And now she’d put it into words.
“I wouldn’t, though,” Charlotte said. “Not without a reason.”
Attempting a smile again, she picked up a fork and dug into the cheesecake, popping a bite into her mouth.
“Maybe not,” Octavian said. “But you’ll understand if we want to keep an eye on you.”
“Absolutely,” Charlotte replied over a mouthful of cheesecake. “Hell, I want you to. The feeling isn’t gone. It’s still buzzing in my head, so I can’t exactly leave here. I tried to, before I went to the club, but it’s like I can’t make myself. The dark part of me wants to be here. But if I’m going to be here, then I want to help you. And when it’s all done, show me where to sign, and I’m totally on board with the Covenant. I never wanted to be a rogue.”
“What about this Cortez?” Keomany asked.
Octavian had been wondering the same thing. “It doesn’t sound like his operation is connected to what’s happening here. So we’ll deal with Hawthorne first, then we’ll worry about this impostor pretending to be Hernando Cortez.”
“Assuming we survive,” Keomany said drily.
Charlotte stared at her, upset by the words, and then she laughed. “Aren’t you a ray of fucking sunshine? I thought you Wicca-chick earth mommies were supposed to be all sweetness and light.”
Octavian couldn’t help smiling. The girl might be a vampire, and she might be bristling with unspent violence, but he liked her.
“Absolutely,” Keomany said. “Sweetness and light. Until dark magic starts messing with our goddess. Then we’re all business.”
“Good to know,” Charlotte replied.
Octavian saw the corners of Keomany’s mouth twitch as she fought a smile. Her instincts probably told her not to, but it was obvious that she, too, had been charmed by the vampire girl.
“All right,” Keomany said, turning to Octavian. “Assuming Charlotte here isn’t going to rip my throat out in the next sixty seconds, what’s the plan?”
Her voice had a tired rasp and Octavian could see she was exhausted. A glance at the clock confirmed that midnight had come and gone, the hands ticking toward 1 A.M. Though Octavian was flesh and blood—technically human, and mortal—he had acquired such magic that he could go without sleep or sustenance for long periods, if circumstances required it. Keomany might be a powerful earthwitch with a direct line to Gaea, but she had never mastered the kinds of magic that Octavian had spent a thousand years in Hell perfecting.
“You’re not going to like it,” he warned her.
“Try me,” Keomany said.
Octavian glanced at Charlotte, then back to Keomany. “If you can’t pinpoint the source of all of this, then more traditional methods are called for. That means poking and prodding, asking the wrong people the right questions, sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong. With all the years I spent playing private detective, I have a little more experience in that area than you do.”
“Granted,” Keomany said.
“You’re going to head over to the hotel. You can check us in—”
“Bullshit—”
“—I’m going to have a look at your hand, try to dispel whatever’s troubling you, and then you’re going to head over there and get some rest,” Octavian continued, ignoring her interruption. “It’s the only rational thing to do, Kem. You might not be bleeding, but you’re injured. If I find any decent leads, anything to direct us to the source, I’ll come and wake you. But if this thing is still raging tomorrow—and we both know it will be, unless I get lucky tonight—I’m going to need you sharp and focused in the morning.”