Forsaken by the Others (13 page)

After a few wrong turns and a little bit of trouble from the security guard at the
gatehouse guarding the entrance to Clyde’s community, we managed to make it back to
the vampire’s home in one piece. I parked the car as close to the guest house as possible,
intending to hold on to the keys and make use of it later—hopefully without a babysitter
the next time we went out.

Though I knew Clyde needed to be informed about what had happened to Trinity, I wasn’t
looking forward to being the bearer of bad news. Without her around to let him know
we were coming, we were going to be dropping the bomb on him with no advance warning.
Who knew how he might react?

When we got up to the house, the security guards let us in, asking about Trinity and
exclaiming about the stink clinging to our clothes. Since one of them was the guy
who had led us to Clyde the first night we showed up, I didn’t think it would be such
a bad idea to tell him what was going on.

“We were attacked. She didn’t make it.”

The guy gaped. “Are you—she’s—wait, but then why are you—”

“Alive?” Sara spread her hands. “We’re not sure. But we really need to talk to Clyde.
Is he around?”

The security guard held up a finger for us to wait while he turned away and muttered
into the speaker of his earpiece. He waited, then said something else. Nodding to
no one in particular, he took off at a trot, gesturing for us to follow him. “Come
on. He’s going to meet you in his parlor downstairs in a minute. After you talk to
him, I’d like the whole story, and some directions so I can find whatever is left
of Trin.”

“You’re going to need a garbage bag,” I muttered, though I followed him without protest.
Now wasn’t the time to start annoying the other guards. Not if we wanted to be left
to our own devices. I was starting to formulate a plan for how we might lose any tail
Clyde was intent on keeping on us while we continued our “investigation” on his behalf.

Soon we were back in the room where we’d first met Clyde. The moon was still mostly
full, this time gleaming over the ocean, casting a glimmering reflection over the
waves. The lights were low, and Clyde was shirtless, pacing in front of the windows.
Fabian was sprawled on one of the couches, also shirtless, watching us with narrowed
eyes as he stirred some thick liquid in a bowl on the floor with a finger.

They both made faces when we arrived, though neither commented on the scent of
Eau de Zombie
that clung to us like cheap perfume.

“Well,” Clyde said, not bothering to look at us, “I hear you have some unpleasant
news for me. Care to explain why you returned without your bodyguard?”

I frowned at him, though he wouldn’t see it considering how he was so busy pacing
like a jungle cat and staring out the window. “We didn’t have enough plastic baggies
to bring all of her back with us. Sorry.”

That jarred him. He stopped, one hand on the glass, and tilted his head to look at
us. The moonlight cast an eerie reflection on his eyes, making them appear colorless.
Lifeless. Like the zombies. The thought alone made me shudder, but there was no point
in being worked up about it. Royce would get us out of here soon—I hoped—so maybe
Clyde’s problems wouldn’t seem like such a big deal once we figured out how to keep
out of his way until then.

“You ran into Gideon.” At our blank looks, he clarified, the strange lack of color
in his eyes being replaced by the glimmer of red. “The necromancer. Did he kill her?”

Sara and I both nodded.

“Damn it, Fabian, can’t you reason with him?”

Well, this was a new development. We both looked at Fabian, and I’m pretty sure Sara
was exhibiting as much shock as I felt.

The other vampire lifted his finger and sucked off the liquid he’d been stirring in
the bowl, the look he gave Clyde so heated that I’m shocked the guy didn’t burst into
flames then and there. I suspected that the stuff Fabian was playing with was blood,
but either way, this didn’t feel like the right time to be interrupting these two.
The air was charged with some kind of bad juju, and I wasn’t too sure sticking around
to find out why was such a good idea.

“I’m afraid not. He’s quite incensed. I did tell you this might become a problem.”

Clyde hissed, leveling a finger at Fabian. “You did not tell me he would start picking
off my people, one by one.”

“How was I supposed to guess that he would take it so personally?”

Clyde shook his head, turning those red eyes back on us. “Tell me what you’ve learned,
and make it quick. ”

I stepped forward, letting Sara use me as a makeshift shield so she wouldn’t have
to meet his burning gaze. Even if the charm wasn’t at full strength, if Clyde lost
his temper, I was in a better position to defend myself against it than she was, however
marginal that “better position” might be. My mind was racing, wondering just how much
Clyde had kept from us, and just what kind of test not telling us what he knew about
the necromancer—like his name—had been.

“We have narrowed down the list of possible cities where he might be staying, but
that’s about it. He must have known we were in the area somehow. We were interviewing
Jimmy Thrane.” Clyde bared his fangs at that, but didn’t interrupt. “Trinity chose
to stay behind and wait outside. When we came out, she was already dead.”

In pieces. Many, many pieces. And considering how he had reacted to Thrane’s name,
I wasn’t about to tell Clyde that we had gone to visit one of the Goliath werewolves,
either.

He resumed pacing, clenching and unclenching his fists as he did so. This was not
the image of a master vampire in control of his empire. Even so, he was dangerous.
Perhaps more so than before. The veneer had been stripped away, leaving a shadow of
a monster, frightened and backed into a corner, ready to lash out at any convenient
excuse.

“I received a call from your master this evening,” Clyde said, his voice cutting.
“You do not appreciate being hired to help me, I assume. He says you wish to leave.”

Well, yeah. No kidding. However, I didn’t think that would be a wise response. Nothing
appropriate was coming to mind—so Sara stepped in, her voice tremulous and wavering.

“It’s not that we don’t appreciate your hospitality, but we miss our own homes and
families. Our friends. All the things we left behind.”

That reminded me of my idea, and I was quick to jump in, forcing a measure of enthusiasm
into my voice. “As long as we’re here, we’re still on the case for you.”

Sara and Clyde both shot me a look. It was uncomfortable to be on the receiving end
of those mixed signals, but I pressed on.

“It would help if you were a little more open with us about what’s going on—” Fabian’s
black stare felt like a physical blow. I took a hasty step back, bumping into Sara
in the process as I rushed out the rest. “If you can be, that is. We’ve got some friends
who might be able to tell us more about where this guy is. Anything else you can tell
us would help, of course, but we’ve triangulated the area where he is most likely
staying and can probably find him with more time. As long as we’re left on our own
to search, of course, since it seems like he’ll kill any of your people who are with
us.”

Please, God, don’t let him realize why I don’t want him to send any other vampires
out on the road with us.

Clyde studied me for a time. Though I was expecting him to be the one to answer me,
it was Fabian who spoke up, his voice rich with condescension. “You ladies may think
you’re fooling him, but you do not fool me. If you believe you can hide from Gideon,
you are quite mistaken.”

Sara cleared her throat, her voice coming out more steady this time. “Would you mind
telling us what else you know about him aside from his name? We might have been able
to move this investigation along faster if you’d come clean from the start.”

Fabian’s eyes flickered, but he favored her with a lazy grin. No fangs. No threat.
Not yet.

“He was my lover.”

Oh, that was not a happy thought.

“We wish to keep this amongst ourselves, you understand. It is a private affair, not
a matter for the authorities. If we can find him, then I may be able to speak with
him privately. If not, then he will continue this ridiculous assault—”

“Ridiculous? He’s killed some of my oldest and most skilled progeny!” Clyde sputtered,
his voice taking on a slight lisp around the extended fangs. “You can’t possibly think
that this matter—”

“May I finish?”

Clyde glowered at Fabian, but quieted. By this point, it was becoming quite clear
to me who was wearing the pants in this relationship.

“As I was saying,” Fabian continued, turning his attention back to Sara, “he most
likely believes that Clyde worked some form of magic to make me tire of him. Though
it is far from the case, Gideon won’t understand unless he hears it directly from
me. And as I don’t fancy him using his magics to overpower me in the process, I want
to know where he is hiding during the day so that I might seek him out and prevent
him from casting anything truly nasty before I can get in my say.

“Are you satisfied with this, or would you prefer”—he ran his tongue over a fang in
an all too suggestive motion—“more details?”

“No,” I said faintly, “that’s quite enough for us.”

Now that I had a better understanding of what we were after and why, I wished they
had said something about this mess from the start. I might have changed the way I
went at this case. Not by much, but maybe Sara and I would have looked at the behavior
of the necromancer in a different light.

Then again, maybe not. The vampire murders were still pretty insane, even if it was
the act of a jealous lover instead of a power grab.

Love was a potent motivating force, and people did all kinds of crazy things in its
name. Look at what had happened with Helen of Troy. An entire city under siege, gone
to waste, and a war remembered thousands of years later, all because of the abduction
of a single woman.

Max Carlyle had done something similar, planning for who knew how many centuries to
displace Royce as the master of New York and utterly destroy his empire. All because
Royce had killed the woman Max loved.

One had to hand it to the Greeks. They thought big when it came to the destruction
of their enemies.

“I’ll assign you a new bodyguard tomorrow,” Clyde declared, stalking over to the couch
to kneel next to it, his hand drifting over Fabian’s arm, which had resumed stirring
the bowl once more. “Perhaps a human one. I don’t care for the idea of you two running
around town with no protection. Even if Gideon would not hurt you, there are others
who would.”

Though I was thankful for his offer, I couldn’t help but wonder what he had to gain
by keeping us alive. Maybe Royce had threatened him with some form of dire consequence
if he continued to use us to deal with the necromancer on his behalf, or if something
terrible happened to us.

Clyde glanced at us over his shoulder, his eyes once again an icy blue. He had gained
some control over himself, finally, though he was still clearly upset. “If you are
going to continue your search, then we need to rethink how you will be going about
it. I am not certain yet if I want to continue to use your services. We’ll discuss
this again tomorrow.”

We were obviously dismissed. Sara shook her head and tugged on my arm, pulling me
away, but Fabian held up a staying hand.

“Ladies, do not fret. You are still human yet, and Gideon does not trouble himself
in the affairs of those who are not of Other blood, aside from doing his best to maintain
a measure of secrecy about his presence and his actions. If you do continue your search,
then knowing that may be of some use to you.”

I offered him a wan, humorless smile. “Thank you, Mr. d’Argento. We’ll keep that in
mind.”

He nodded, his own smile sly and secretive. I had a bad feeling that Fabian had his
own agenda and was planning something unpleasant for Clyde, who was currently quite
interested in exploring Fabian’s bare chest.

I didn’t envy the vampire. Either one of them.

When Sara and I got back to the guest house, the first thing we did was shower. Well,
second thing for me. First I stored Jo-Jo’s and Gavin’s letters in my bag so I wouldn’t
forget them whenever it was time to leave. I didn’t want to cause the family of werewolves
any more grief than they’d already suffered.

That task out of the way, I spent a lot of time scrubbing and scraping and dancing
around the little globs of ick that came out of my hair. Some of it was probably from
Sara’s clinging to me, and the rest of it was most likely something I’d picked up
during my time passed out on the alley floor.

Discovering just how many tidbits of grossness were clinging to me wasn’t pleasant,
but the relief I felt after I was clean was immeasurable.

Throwing on some sweats, I poked around in the drawers in the various rooms in the
house until I found a pad of paper and some extra pens. Next, I went back into my
room and made notes of what I already knew about this case, and the ties we’d established
the necromancer had. Usually I liked to do this sort of thing on my computer—it made
it easier to cross-reference—but that wasn’t an option here. Spreading the papers
out on my bed along with the map with the notations of where all of the attacks had
taken place, I tried to see how everything fit together.

Fabian was now dating Clyde. He had previously dated Gideon.

Gideon was after Clyde’s people, punishing the new beau instead of Fabian, who was
supposedly the unfaithful one.

Why?

Most people, when cheated on, tried to retaliate by making their significant others
jealous. Thus, Gideon’s response made me believe that he was acting irrationally,
but for a far different reason than a need to get back at Fabian. Retaliatory affairs
were the most common reaction of someone who discovered he or she was being cheated
on.

Granted, magi might have different thought processes than most humans, and who knew
what drove a necromancer to act as he or she did—but attacking Clyde instead of Fabian
didn’t seem quite right.

My PI Spidey sense was tingling.

“You as suspicious of this mess as I am?”

I glanced over my shoulder at Sara, who was in the door rubbing her hair dry with
a towel, and gestured for her to join me.

She tossed the towel over her shoulder and moved over to the bed, placing her hands
on her hips. We both studied the papers, frowning down at them. Sara grabbed my pen
and made a couple of small notations of her own, then traced some of the roads between
the areas where the attacks had taken place.

None of them were too close to Clyde’s home. Another thing that didn’t quite add up
if this was a case of Jealous Lover’s Revenge Syndrome. If he really intended to hurt
Clyde, and he was angry enough to commit murder in the process, then why wasn’t he
attacking the guy directly? Why the bit and piecemeal destruction of Clyde’s empire
instead of an all-out assault? He was commanding enough zombies that he should have
been able to do or take whatever it was he wanted.

Sara tapped the map where Thrane’s hideout was, on the spot where we had been attacked.
“None of this is right. That stink was awful, but the zombies were still in pretty
good shape, considering. If Gavin was right and they were out in the woods or whatever,
from how uncoordinated they are, wouldn’t they have been torn up from stumbling around?
Or maybe a bit damaged from animals or insects? I didn’t see much of anything like
that.”

I rubbed my chin, and then leaned over the map as my finger followed the path Sara’s
had only a moment ago. “Now that you mention it, yeah. Do you think Gideon’s keeping
them in a refrigerated warehouse? Or somewhere else?”

“I’m not even sure if it matters anymore. Are we really still looking for this guy?”

“Cripes, I don’t know,” I said, turning away from the mess on the bed to walk over
to the windows and stare out at the little slice of ocean visible between the mountains.
“I was hoping Clyde would decide to let us do this on our own so we could stay with
the White Hats for a while. Devon probably wouldn’t mind letting us stay there at
night, at least until this mess with the zombies is cleared up.”

“Yeah, maybe. You know more about the White Hats than I do. Will they help us? Or
hide us, do you think?”

I thought about it, frowning out at the dim sparkle of moonlight visible on the water
in the distance. “Possibly. I’ll have to call Devon and see. Though I’m wondering
if it might not be a bad idea to check some of the local cemeteries to see if that’s
where the bodies are coming from. Maybe that’s why they didn’t look so banged up.
He might be getting them fresh from somewhere close, then putting them back when he’s
done.”

“Huh. Didn’t think of that,” she said, a brow quirking up. “One other thing to consider—we
don’t know if Clyde’s going to assign us another bodyguard or not. We can’t exactly
take a vampire’s servant to a White Hat hideout.”

“I know, but I don’t have any easy answers. If we’re going to get out of this alive,
we’re going to have to have some kind of backup plan. Even though we should probably
wait until tomorrow to figure out what we’re going to do, I get the feeling we’re
running out of time. There’s too much we don’t know about this mess.”

“Like what Fabian is up to. I think he’s got his own agenda, and that he’s not entirely
aboveboard.”

I nodded, lightly slapping my palm against the window. “Why is it that everyone’s
been straight with us and given us information about the necromancer except the guy
who should know him better than anyone we’ve interviewed so far?” I turned around,
sudden realization making my eyes widen. “You don’t think he’s working
with
Gideon to take down Clyde’s empire, do you?”

Sara regarded me very somberly, her already pale skin going ashen. “Shia, if that’s
what’s going on here, we better keep our mouths shut. You saw how attached Clyde was
in there—he may not listen to us. Plus they’re already killing vampires. It wouldn’t
be a far stretch for that mage to take us out as collateral damage if we get in the
way. We’re in the middle of something much bigger than a lover’s spat.”

Much like Clyde had been doing earlier, I started pacing, unable to help my imitation
of his actions. Adrenaline was spiking along with my fear, the sensation of being
trapped squeezing my heart with heavy jaws. I needed an outlet for my nervous energy.
Running my hands through my hair, I tried to think of a way out.

“We’ve got to think this through. Be smart about it. If Fabian succeeds at destroying
Clyde before we get out of here, we’re toast. If we don’t keep looking for the necromancer,
both of the vampires will suspect something, and we’ll still be in trouble. As much
as I hate to say it, I’m not as concerned about screwing things up for Royce at this
point, either. If he had any idea what kind of danger we’re in, I bet he’d agree.”

Sara nodded. “You suggesting a plan of action?”

“I think we need to get the hell out of here.”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” a male voice said from behind us. Sara and I both whipped
around to see Fabian in the door, his head down and hands pocketed.

He only took a single step into the room, but it was enough to send us skittering
back, both of us getting as far from him as we could in the small space. He lifted
his head just enough to give us both a wry smile, raising a hand to gesture at us
to stop what we were doing.

“Don’t worry, my little lovelies. No need for that. I’m not here to do you harm.”

I closed my fingers around the window latch at the small of my back, wondering if
I could jump from the second story without breaking my legs in the process. That’s
assuming I could get the window open and leap out before he could catch me. Cripes.

He moved deeper into the room, looking down at all of the notes Sara and I had made.
His lips quirked, though whether he was pleased or not with our work wasn’t clear.
His fingers brushed over the papers, his eyes flicking back and forth as he took in
the details.

I hoped to God he didn’t notice Gavin’s name among the mix. It wasn’t much of a secret
that we’d been talking to the White Hats and to Thrane, but if he figured out I’d
spent time among the werewolves known for hunting and eating vampires, who knew what
his reaction might be. If he thought we were making too many allies among the people
who might want to see him dead, then he might think
we
were better off being disposed of—if he wasn’t considering as much already, that
is.

When he looked up, he focused on me, his expression at first unreadable. Very slowly,
his lips curved upward, though whether he was thinking I was amusing or that I looked
edible was up in the air.

“You’re smarter than Clyde gave you credit for. It’s no wonder Rhathos saw something
of merit in you, Ms. Waynest.”

I didn’t respond, my fingers twitching reflexively as his dark brown eyes focused
solely on me. He put me in mind of a young Robert De Niro, all swarthy skin and smiles,
and with all the Godfather connections and killer instinct that implies.

“You two are so quiet all of a sudden. But you had so much to say a moment ago.” His
grin became a bit more feral, his fangs lengthening as we watched. “Things that are
best kept to yourselves. Gideon and I would hate to have our little surprise for Clyde
spoiled.”

Knowing I was right about a case had never felt so terrifying before.

“W-we won’t say anything to him, we swear,” Sara said, her voice wavering. I didn’t
take my eyes off Fabian, since he’d never looked away from me. “Please, we were trying
to figure out how to stay out of this. We don’t want to get involved.”

“Correct,” he said, moving closer to me until he could tip my chin up with a finger.

His eyes never wavered from mine, and his touch was bitterly cold. I didn’t dare move,
blink, or even breathe with him this close to me. Never mind biting me—the guy could
snap my neck in an instant if I said the wrong thing.

“When Gideon and I are done here, as long as you have kept what you know to yourselves
until then, I’ll see you safely away from this city. It will be our little secret.”
He gave me a wink, like all this was just between friends. “I’m good on my word. You
can count on it.”

“Please,” I choked out, trying not to faint, “we won’t say anything, we swear!”

“Very good. I will advise Clyde to continue to keep a detail on you. What he knows—I
know. Keep that in mind.”

With that, he chucked me under the chin and then silently shot me and then Sara with
a finger gun on his way out the door.

My knees gave out, and I slowly slumped down the wall until I was seated on the floor,
staring up at the ceiling. This guy was going to kill Clyde, or at the very least
take over his coterie, and who knew what he would do to us when it was over. We were
in the middle of what was about to become a war zone with nowhere to hide and no way
to escape what was coming. Fabian’s promise notwithstanding, we had no guarantee that
we would live through whatever the vampire and necromancer had planned.

Sara shoved away from the wall and shut the door, locking it. She leaned her brow
against it, one fist pressed to the wood up by her temple.

Then she said exactly what I was thinking.

“What an enormous asshole.”

We both burst into shaky laughter.