A Perfect Blood With Bonus Material Read online

  “About bloody time. I think they might be ready,” I said when the FIB car swung around to park beside Glenn’s, and Nina and I started toward it. “Ivy, have you heard from Jenks?” I asked, and she shook her head, clearly as worried as I was.

  “Ahh,” Nina said as she gazed at the sleek black car and rubbed her hands together as we walked. “Have you met Teresa Cordova, Ms. Morgan? She’s the woman that Detective Glenn probably told you about. She wants to talk to you. Something about . . . a list?”

  My pace bobbled, and Nina smoothly put a hand to the small of my back, propelling me forward. The scent of vampire incense rolled over me, and my pulse hammered as I was reminded of Kisten. “Uh,” I said, halting ten feet from the still closed car.

  Nina leaned close, laughter in her voice as she said, “That’s what I told her you told me when I brought it up. I don’t trust her any deeper than I can bury her. Watch her face when she realizes who I am. She’s fun.”

  The car door opened, and Jenks darted out, his dust a bright silver, telling me he was fine. “I could have made better time if I’d flown!” he exclaimed, making bright circles around me. “Tink’s panties, Rache, the guns they got over there! You ready? Seen the plan?”

  I held my breath until his dust settled. I had seen the plans—several times, actually. And “fun” wasn’t the right word to describe the older woman getting out of the car.

  Impatience colored her motions, making her look jerky as she tugged on her gray business skirt to get rid of the wrinkles. She looked about fifty-something, a very unhappy fifty-something in low heels and hose. It was hard to tell in the dark, but it looked like her hair was an attractive mix of hard black and silver that only a lucky few women get as they grow older. A lined face, narrow chin, and no makeup made her look even more severe. She sent her gaze over the assembled team, her expression looking as if she smelled something bad.

  An aide had his head near hers, and the woman’s eyes flicked to mine and held when he said something. Putting a small hand on his arm, she brushed by him, headed for me.

  “Watch now,” Nina said as she took a deferential step backward to leave me all alone. “She doesn’t know it’s me,” she said into my ear, leaning forward to whisper it. “You can’t pay for entertainment like this.”

  Curious, I thought, feeling vulnerable until Jenks landed on my shoulder. A vampire with a sense of humor? Perhaps the fun-loving, skydiving Nina was rubbing off on him.

  “Teresa,” Nina said suddenly, her voice pointedly cheerful, “have you had the pleasure of meeting Rachel and her team yet? They’re one of the biggest assets this city has. Look, she brought her own spell pistols. Grand little weapons, those. I wish we’d had them when I was still in the field. They’re powered by compressed air and don’t need to be licensed!”

  The woman’s hand extending toward me faltered, and then she grimaced, reaching out to take mine in a firm grip, warm from the glove she was wearing against the chill. “I see you’ve met Felix,” she said, her aide standing an irritating three feet behind her, talking into a cell phone.

  Nina laughed at her sour expression, and I wondered. Felix? I thought he hadn’t wanted me knowing who he was. “Pleasure,” I said, wincing when my band of charmed silver slipped down to thunk into my wrist.

  “I’ve explained this, Teresa,” Nina said as our hands parted. “Call me Nina now. That is who I am.” Leaning conspiratorially to me, she whispered loudly, “Felix was the name of the man I did my daylight work through when we first met. I guess that sort of thing sticks with the living. I miss him,” she said, and I leaned away as Jenks buzzed a warning that she was too close. “He was very small, but quick. Died of an infected tooth, poor boy.”

  “You don’t get out much, huh?” I said as I stood between Cincinnati’s head of the I.S. and the head of the FIB, wondering why they were here. Really. Why were they here?

  Nina smiled deviously, and something in me twisted. She looked like a woman, but the arrogant eyes raking over me were very male. “Not that anyone can prove, no.”

  Lips pressed, Teresa brought her attention back from Glenn, waiting a respectful distance away. “Thank you for your help today, Ms. Morgan,” she said, a big “however” in her tone.

  From my shoulder, Jenks coughed, saying, “Lame!”

  Her eyes tightened at the corners. “And your help in the past as well,” she said, her eye twitching as she saw the tattoo fluff visible on my collarbone. “It’s the future that concerns me.”

  I kept my hands in my pockets as my tension rose. “We get the bad guys and go home. What’s more to know?” This was taking forever. If it had been just Ivy, Jenks, and me, we would have been in and out by now.

  The woman sighed, and Nina shifted, smiling as if waiting for the expected punch line. “Ms. Morgan, we would appreciate a list of the magic you can do as a demon,” she said, and Jenks made a weird, almost unheard whine. “For your own protection.”

  “That’s a cap of toad shit!” Jenks said, and I raised my hand as if to cover his mouth.

  “Ms. Cordova,” I said firmly.

  “Doctor, actually.”

  Well, la-di-da. “Dr. Cordova,” I started again. “If you want to know what demons can do, then go to the library and look it up. Then subtract ninety percent of it and you’ll be close. I’m not going to give you a list so you can blame every demonic act on me.”

  The woman glanced at Nina as if for support, but the vampire was stifling a laugh, badly. Dr. Cordova’s finger and thumb rubbed together, the fabric of her glove scratching, and I thought she ought to lose that particular tell. It made her look like a bad movie villain. “We’re concerned that—”

  “No.”

  Nina made a dramatic sigh. “She won’t give me one, either,” she lamented, and I tugged out of her grip when she tried to lay claim to me. What was it with vampires anyway? No sense of personal space.

  Dr. Cordova’s eyes squinted, and seeming to give up for the moment, she turned to Glenn. “Detective, I’m anxious to see how you work a team. I suggest you get to it.”

  Jenks hummed his wings as he stood on my shoulder, whispering a delighted, “Ohh, she’s pissed, Rache. You made her look bad in front of walkie-talkie man.”

  “Then she shouldn’t have asked for something I didn’t want to give,” I said, but I was starting to fidget, and I wished I could slip out from under her sharp gaze. You don’t get to the head of Cincy’s FIB division by being nice and working well with others.

  Glenn had shifted closer, his uncomfortable stance melting into determination. “Jenks,” he said, and the pixy took off from my shoulder, leaving a softly glowing dust. “We’re under radio silence. Will you tell team two six minutes from . . . mark?”

  “Gotcha,” he said, and he was gone, his dust dissolving to nothing in time and distance.

  Glenn’s dark eyes took in Ivy, not wearing her vest, and me in my stylish, sulfur-coated nylon. Beside the car, Wayde stood in frustrated silence. He wanted me to stay with him at the transport van. It wasn’t going to happen. Glenn clapped his hands together once. “Everyone’s set. Let’s go. Rachel, stay with Wayde.”

  Like hell I am. I shook my head at Wayde, making him grimace. My pulse jerked into a faster pace, and after checking my splat guns, I broke into a slow jog after Glenn, now headed for the building. Ivy was behind me, her footfalls almost unheard over my come-and-go breaths.

  “I am not going to run over there.” Teresa’s voice came faintly. “Get in the car, we’ll follow at a discreet distance and time.”

  “Rachel . . .” Glenn all but growled, and I smiled slightly at him as I jogged. Dr. Cordova’s car door thumped shut, and he winced at the noise.

  Looking back, I was surprised to find Nina tagging along with us, looking especially trim in her suit as she effortlessly loped along. “Storming HAPA with two dozen guns is safer than sitt
ing in a parked car with Dr. Cordova,” she said.

  “Yeah!” Jenks was on Ivy’s shoulder so his dust wouldn’t give us away. “That woman is a pterodactyl.”

  “There,” Glenn said, and we angled to the service door I’d seen earlier with the binoculars. There was an FIB man decked out head to toe in anticharm gear beside it, complete with a helmet, night goggles, and a weapon as long as my arm that looked like it should be in the armed forces, not a residential arsenal.

  We came to a stop, none of us breathing hard. “Did you know he was coming?” I whispered to Glenn, and his eyes flicked to Nina behind him.

  “I didn’t know you were coming,” he said sourly, looking at the red-glowing screen the FIB officer held out to him. It was a breakdown of where everyone was. I hadn’t known the FIB had such technology. Neither had Nina, if her high-eyebrow expression meant anything. The vampire had put on an I.S. armband during our jog here. It looked vaguely like something I’d seen in an old ’40s movie, and again I wondered how old this guy was.

  “Rachel, I appreciate your zeal. Go back to the car,” Glenn said as he studied the screen, the information electronic, not magic, and Jenks snorted.

  “The pixy is right,” Nina said, and Glenn’s eyes fixed on hers with a hard intensity. “Rachel is safer surrounded by the I.S. and FIB than sitting in a car, even if she is in close proximity to the very people who would like to see her captured. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

  Glenn glanced at his watch, then dropped his head, tired. “You good with that?” he asked me, and as Jenks hummed his approval, I nodded, even as I edged away from Nina. I’d go with a chaperone if it got me inside. Once the fur started flying, it wouldn’t matter, and I felt the bumps of saltwater vials I had in my belt pack, nervously counting them.

  For another long moment, Glenn looked at me, his brow furrowed. “You stay behind us,” he finally said, and I nodded. “Okay, let’s go,” he added, and eased to the door, already open and waiting for us. I slipped in after him, immediately sliding to the side and out of the small patch of lighter darkness. Ivy and Nina followed, and the FIB guy eased the door shut and remained outside to keep our retreat open.

  I was in. Elated, I breathed the smell of moldy oil and decayed sawdust. It was a single large room with the ceiling girders glinting softly in the skylights. In the corner came a flash of a penlight, one, two, three.

  “The primary entrance to the lower floor is over there,” Glenn whispered in my ear. “Stairs. That’s what we’ll take. There’s a service elevator outside against the far wall where the majority of the men will come in.”

  Ivy took off, loping toward the light when it blinked again. Clearly it was another FIB guy. They had this place stocked with them. I followed her, Nina taking the position behind me, and Glenn bringing up the rear. We said nothing as we passed the man at the top of the stairs. He was suited up head to toe in ACG like the one outside, making me feel naked with only my vest, but Glenn was wearing only a suit. And a pistol. And a really big grudge that Dr. Cordova was here.

  The stairway was painted cement block, and the round pipe railings on either side were cold as I followed Ivy belowground, the air becoming chill and stale as we descended. Another man waited at the bottom. This one was an I.S. cop, which surprised me until I remembered living vampires could see in the dark better than the best night goggles. It was a joint effort in the truest sense of the word, which made me feel good.

  The man respectfully inclined his head at Nina before gesturing Glenn closer. Apparently word of top I.S. brass possessing DMV workers got around. “There’s an air shaft not on the plans,” the living vampire said softly to Glenn, pointing behind him into the dark. “It vents out into the parking lot. They, however, are over there.” He pointed in the other direction to a hazy light showing the low ceiling, and my teeth clenched.

  Glenn nodded, and we crept farther into the dark. I wasn’t used to having this much vanguard on my runs, but there was no such thing as being too careful when it came to black magic and HAPA. My pulse quickened at the growing light, and we slowed. The area downstairs appeared bigger than the area upstairs, a mere eight feet above our heads with thick pylons holding up the ceiling. It looked as if they’d stored huge tooling machines down here at one time, but the space was mostly empty now. My heart hammered when I heard a feminine voice call out, but it wasn’t in anger or surprise. It was them.

  We stopped at a thick ceiling support where another I.S. officer waited. His small pistol was holstered, but the look in his black eyes said he was ready for anything. “There,” he said as he pointed, and I leaned around him to look. My mouth went dry, and I felt for my splat guns.

  The suspects had hung milky plastic sheets from the ceiling to the floor to make an indistinct thirty-by-thirty room. Fuzzy shadows moved in the bright light behind it. It looked as if the plastic was two layers thick to help retain heat. I could hear the soft droning of a machine, and the easy talk of two people who hadn’t a care in the world—and it pissed me off.

  Glenn pulled back into the shadow, and we clustered around him. He glanced at his watch, grimacing. “We have two minutes before they come in the far end through the elevator shaft on the other side. How many people are there?”

  “Two males,” the I.S. guy said, glancing first to Nina, and then Glenn. “Three females, one in a modified dog cage. We can’t tell if she’s conscious, but we’re getting good aura impressions from her. We might be in time for this one.”

  God, I hoped so. I thought it odd that vampires preyed on people and yet had a huge drive to protect, but that’s the way it was.

  Glenn checked his watch again, and I wiped my hands off on my leather pants. Ivy retied her hair back out of the way. Nina cracked her knuckles and took off her coat.

  Ivy stared at her. “You’re not coming any farther,” she said flatly. “I’ll watch Rachel.”

  Nina stiffened. Silent, she handed her coat to the I.S. officer and commandeered his pistol.

  “You don’t have the practice resisting your instincts in a high-stress environment,” Ivy said, her voice low but intent. “Felix, listen to me. You will lose control.”

  “You overstep yourself, girl.”

  Nina/Felix’s voice was angry, tight, and threatening, and I edged back. Glenn was getting huffy, but the I.S. officer had retreated, too, his eyes going dark as he read the emotions flowing between the two vampires, one dead for at least a hundred years, and the other living, but the epitome of vampiric lust, desire, and restraint all rolled up into my roommate.

  “With all due respect,” Ivy said, not backing down an inch, “you’ve been out of the field too long, and the child you’re in has no experience at all. Stay here. Otherwise, I’ll be watching you so you don’t kill your host and you’ll be more of a hindrance than a help. You’re more of a liability than Rachel.”

  Glenn’s frown deepened, and he turned his back on the room glowing with light and warmth just a few yards away. “If your presence is going to jeopardize a safe acquisition, you will remain here. Sir.”

  Yeah, like that was going to happen.

  Nina sighted along the pistol at nothing. “I’m older than all of you together. I have control.”

  “Your host doesn’t,” Ivy insisted. “Felix, please. You know who I am. You know I understand what I’m talking about.”

  I held my breath as Nina finally looked at her, eyes squinted in thought. “Aye, you might at that. I’m thinking Nina is tired of her desk job and is impinging upon me more than I’m wont to accept. She’s enjoying the adrenaline far too much. You’re correct. I will stay and observe.”

  My exhaled breath slipped from me in a slow sound of relief as Nina gave the I.S. officer his gun back. But then Nina’s head came up, and I watched her eyes dilate.

  I spun when a high-pitched beeping came from the glowing rectangle of light. It was followed by harsh, femi
nine swearing, and behind the milky plastic, people moved. Someone had tripped an alarm, and I didn’t think it was us.

  “No!” Ivy hissed, her hand outstretched as Nina darted into the dark for the quickly moving shapes behind the plastic.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Glenn exclaimed, and we followed.

  Something had given us away before we were all in position, and if we didn’t catch them in the next thirty seconds, there wasn’t going to be anything left to catch.

  Reaching them long before us, Nina tore a sheet from the ceiling, her trim, feminine outline suddenly sharp against the backdrop of silver machines, lab equipment, and people scrambling. A blond woman in a lab coat sitting on a rolling chair stared at Nina as she ran an arm over a countertop, sending glassware, papers, and samples into a sink. “Accendere!” she shouted, and a ball of flame rose up in it, incinerating everything.

  Magic. HAPA was using magic.

  Nina shouted her outrage and leapt at a military-looking man wearing a beret and a necklace of amber nuggets fumbling at the woman’s cage.

  “Ivy! They’re hot!” I shouted as I burst in, meaning they were magic users, but she’d probably figured that out. Gasping in fear, a second dark-haired woman in high heels and jeans ran for a desk, and with tiny puffs of smoke, more evidence vanished.

  “Felix, no!” I yelped when Nina yanked the man away from the cage, wrapped her hands around his neck—and squeezed. Ivy ran forward, and I drew my gun, hesitating when she got in my way.

  “Get the women!” Ivy shouted, and I turned back to the blonde, who was laughing manically as she threw everything in the cupboard onto the floor and started another bonfire.

  “Everyone freeze!” Glenn shouted, his stance domineering and his voice hard as he slid in with the I.S. guy behind him, screaming into the radio.

  Dropping the radio in disgust, the I.S. officer ran for a second man in a pair of overalls trying to get that terrified woman out of her cage, and I heard a soggy thump of fists into flesh as they met. The alarm was still beeping. Where was the second team? Were they deaf?