Hellforged (6 page)

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Authors: Nancy Holzner

Tags: #Fantasy, #Contemporary, #Fiction, #General, #Demonology

BOOK: Hellforged
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That surprised me. “Who, Romeo? Don’t tell me you’re getting all nostalgic about young love.”
“Hardly. What I miss are the days when you could drain a body dry and cast it aside.”
My roommate was
the
Juliet—as in Juliet Capulet, sweet-heart of Romeo Montague in fourteenth-century Verona. That’s why she hated Shakespeare; everyone knows his version of the story and, according to Juliet, he got it all wrong. The way Juliet told it, Friar Lawrence hadn’t given her a sleeping potion; he’d made her a vampire. Later, when she woke up in the family tomb, the grieving Romeo had been her first victim. One she’d drained dry and cast aside.
“Is that supposed to be a joke?” I asked.
Juliet shook her head. She seemed in a strange mood tonight. “Let me try to explain what it’s like for me. Imagine you’re hungry, absolutely starving, and you go into a restaurant. All around you, people are eating delicious meals. Juicy steaks, delicious-smelling pasta, roast turkey …”
I was suddenly aware that I hadn’t eaten since before the MIT job. “You’re making me hungry.”
“Good. So at the restaurant, you start with an appetizer. Say you order scallops.”
My nose wrinkled. “I don’t like scallops.”
“All right, make it shrimp cocktail, then.”
“Actually, I’m not all that big on seafood.”
“Oh, for Hades’ sake. What would you order?”
“Um, nachos?” I picked up my bottle. “To go with my beer.”
She raised one perfectly arched eyebrow. “So that’s what you’re drinking. I wondered. All right, nachos. Fine. Now may I continue?”
I nodded graciously.
“So you order nachos. And the waiter brings you one. Just one. A tortilla chip with some cheese, a jot of salsa, and a single jalapeño. A dollop of sour cream, and another of guacamole. It looks delicious, and you’re hungry, so you eat it.”
“Then I tell the waiter to hurry up and bring the rest of my appetizer.”
She shook her head. “Then the waiter tells
you
that’s it. Pay up and get out. If you want more food, you’ll have to find another restaurant.”
Oh. Now I saw what she was getting at. Vampires were legally allowed to take one pint of blood per human per night. Getting greedy and sucking down more than a pint could lead to expulsion from Massachusetts and taking your chances in a state that was less enlightened about PA rights, a state like New Hampshire or Rhode Island, where unprovoked staking was legal. For Juliet—or any vampire—getting a full meal meant negotiating with several humans each and every night.
“It’s not that bad, is it? I mean, to use your own analogy, you’ve got the best restaurants in town begging you to stop in for a bite. On the house. You could have any human in this place.”
“I know.” Juliet turned on her bar stool, surveying the room. She turned back to the bar and sighed. “But when the hunger is deep, it’s hard to get a satisfying meal from a bite here and a bite there.”
I pondered that. Before I could reply, the vampire junkie was back, his eyes bloodshot and a little wild. “You’re interested. I know you are,” he said to Juliet, slurring his words. “I saw you looking at me.”
Wow. How could she resist a smooth line like that?
Juliet didn’t reply. I glanced around for T.J., but he wasn’t in sight. Instead, Axel appeared. “Looks like you’ve donated enough blood for one night. Go home and sleep it off.”
The norm didn’t even flick Axel a glance. “I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to the lady.”
Axel leaned across the bar, grabbed the norm’s tie, and stood, pulling the tie upward as he went. This forced the guy onto his toes and made him look up—way up—at Axel’s face.
“
I’m
talking to
you
. Out of my bar. Now.” Axel let go of the tie, shoving the norm backward. The guy stumbled, gaped up at the bartender again, then turned and fled through the front door.
“Junkie.” Axel’s voice held oceans of disgust.
Axel had reason to be concerned. The law saw the junkies as victims. It wasn’t illegal for a junkie to give more than a pint; instead, there was big trouble for any vampire who fed from a norm who’d already passed the limit. Vampires had to screen their donors carefully. And Axel could get closed down if illegal blood-taking happened in his bar.
I wondered how much blood a norm could lose before he was drained dry, as Juliet had put it. “What if there were no limits? Would you have killed that norm?”
“Probably not. Too anemic-looking. He’d be half a meal at most, so he wouldn’t satisfy that deep hunger.” Another sigh. “Mostly, I’m glad to be out of hiding. It’s a lot more fun to hunt by sitting here chatting up hot guys than it is to knock out some bum and drag him into an alley. But not everyone feels that way. The Old Ones—the really ancient ones, I mean—prefer to keep the old ways.”
Juliet was six hundred and fifty years old, give or take a couple of decades, so the vampires she was talking about must be close to prehistoric. I was about to ask her who these Old Ones were, when the front door opened.
“Over there! That’s her!” In the doorway stood the vampire junkie, looking even more wild-eyed and disheveled than before. With him were two plainclothes cops.
“That’s the vampire who took me over the limit!” he shouted, pointing at Juliet.
4
THE BUZZ OF CONVERSATION DIED AS THE TWO COPS—A human and a zombie—moved into the room. One of each meant the Goon Squad, officially known as the Joint Human-Paranormal Task Force, whose task was patrolling the monster-infested parts of Boston where regular cops didn’t want to go. I recognized these two: Norden and Sykes, the Goon Squad’s finest. A couple of months ago, they’d dragged me out of my nice, warm bed to arrest me. It wasn’t much more pleasant seeing them now.
Norden, the human, swaggered over. He hadn’t gotten any prettier since the last time I’d seen him. He was short, maybe five-eight. His skin was greasy and pitted, his eyes mean, his mouth curled in a permanent sneer. His partner, Sykes, towered over him by nearly a foot. The big zombie, with his broad shoulders and bull neck, rivaled Axel in size. Sykes hung back from his partner to wave surreptitiously at a table of zombies.
“Hey, Carlos,” he said.
Carlos grinned. He was good-looking for a zombie; his smile was nice, not nightmarish. He raised his mug in salute. Sykes nodded, then shifted his focus to the bar.
Juliet stirred her Bloody Mary and watched the Goons’ approach from under her lashes.
“Name?” Norden demanded.
Juliet said something in rapid Italian. She looked at the cop expectantly, then threw up her hands. “Non capisco.”
“Huh?” Norden turned to me like he expected me to translate. His face screwed up into a scowl. “Oh, God. It’s the shapeshifter. What, does this place attract every freak in Boston?”
“Well, you’re here, so …”
Behind Norden, Sykes stifled a laugh, and I liked him a little better. He wasn’t bad for a Goon. When these two had dragged me out of bed, Sykes had been almost polite about it. Norden was the finalist in the Mr. Jerk America contest.
“We’ll need your temperature reading and a saliva sample,” Norden said, turning back to Juliet.
Except Juliet wasn’t there.
In fact, the bar had only half as many patrons as there’d been two seconds ago. All the vampires had disappeared. If I could have just one vampire trait, it’d be that superfast movement ability.
Juliet was probably home by now, calling Councilor Hadrian to complain. Whenever she was mad about something, she called Hadrian—she had that vampire’s number on her speed dial. He couldn’t do much, but he did have a talent for calming her down.
“Damn it, Sykes, where were you?” Norden growled. “You were supposed to put that silver bracelet thing on her so she couldn’t
do
that.”
“Wasn’t any reason to think she’d run.”
“They always run, Sykes. You’re supposed to grab them before they can.”
“No one to grab now. Let’s go.”
But Norden wasn’t finished. He looked around the bar, his gaze washing over everyone like a beacon of hatred. It landed on Axel. “We’re gonna search the premises.”
Axel stepped out from behind the bar. “What for?”
“This citizen complained of illegal blood-taking in this establishment. We got a right to search it.”
“What citizen?”
All heads swiveled toward the door. The junkie was nowhere to be seen. Either his conscience had gotten the better of him for lying about Juliet or he’d decided to try his luck at a bar that had some vampires. I could guess which.
“We’re still gonna look around. You got a problem with that?”
Axel walked up to Norden. The two of them stood toe to toe. Except it was more like toe-to-tiptoe, the way Norden had to crane back his head to try to stare Axel down. But it was Axel who blinked first. He shrugged and went behind the bar, where he picked up a towel and started wiping beer mugs.
Norden smirked at Axel’s back, then looked around for his partner. Sykes sat at the table with his zombie pals, who’d poured him a beer from their pitcher. He grabbed a fistful of pretzels and started to chow down, then laughed at something Carlos said. “Sykes!” Norden yelled. “Quit screwing around and do your job.” Sykes shot his partner a murderous look as he slowly stood up. He leaned over and said something to the zombies, who roared with laughter. Then he lumbered across the room to join Norden.
“We’ll start with the bathrooms,” Norden said. “You take the ladies’.” Sykes growled, but he went with Norden toward the RESTROOMS sign at the back of the bar.
“Hey,” said Norden. “Which one’s which?” The signs on the doors, recently added by Axel to amuse the norms, said BOOS and GHOULS. Norden scratched his head for a second and then said, “Oh. I get it.” He pushed open the door marked BOOS and went into the men’s room, one hand on his gun.
The way Sykes glared at the closed men’s room door, I expected the wood to start smoldering. The big zombie turned toward GHOULS and tapped on the door, opening it a crack. “Anyone in there?”
No one answered, so he pushed the door fully open and disappeared inside. After about a minute, both Goons were back in the hallway.
“You find anything?” Norden demanded.
“Yeah.” Sykes nodded, and Norden leaned forward. “The ladies’ room is out of paper towels.”
Norden swore, clenching a fist like he wanted to take a swing at his partner—which would’ve been about as smart as using a bull elephant for a punching bag. After a second, Norden seemed to realize that. He turned and disappeared into the rear storeroom. Sykes cast a longing glance at the table where Carlos and his friends sat, then followed Norden.
I finished my beer and ordered a glass of club soda. More flavor.
T.J. slid onto a bar stool beside me. Most of the customers had drifted out. “Man, what’s that blood bag’s problem?” he asked me. “He’s costing me some serious tip money.”
“Just his charming personality, I guess. I’ve run into him before, and he was the same then. He really hates PAs—makes you wonder why he ever wanted to be a Goon.”
“Why would
anybody
want to be a Goon?” He drummed on the bar, restless, his gold ring flashing. “Do you know what time it is?”
I pulled up my sleeve to read my watch. “A little past five thirty.”
“Might as well start cleaning up. Hey, that’s a cool watch. Can I see it?”
“Okay, but be careful.” I unfastened the black leather strap and handed him the watch. As he studied it, I explained. It was a new watch, and I enjoyed showing it off. “Besides the two dials, it’s got a built-in compass and temperature sensor. But the
really
great thing about this watch is that this dial”—I pointed to the upper one—“keeps accurate time in other people’s dreamscapes. When I go in to exterminate a pod of Drudes—those are dream-demons—I need to keep track of how time is passing outside. If the client wakes up while I’m still inside the dream, I can get stuck there.” Being trapped in someone else’s dreams was
not
my idea of fun. It was like endlessly watching a stranger’s home movies, only freakier. “I give the client a sleeping pill, so I’ll know how much time I’ve got. But time passes differently in dreams, and most watches get screwed up. So far, this one hasn’t.” I knocked on the wooden bar for luck. I’d never had a watch last more than a couple of dreams before it died. This one had kept on ticking through a dozen Drude exterminations. I knocked on the bar again, just in case the good-luck gods hadn’t heard me the first time.
T.J. laid my watch on the bar and picked up his tray, then went off to clean tables. Norden and Sykes were coming back down the hallway from the storeroom. From the look on Norden’s face, they hadn’t found anything more interesting than some kegs and cartons of bar snacks.
Norden stopped. Across from the restrooms was a metal door with a NO ENTRY sign. And the door seemed to mean it: Three deadbolt locks lined up above the doorknob. Norden tried the knob, then shook it. Even if the knob had turned, I don’t know how he thought he’d get through those deadbolts.

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