Night Owls (8 page)

The woman didn’t wait for the whimpering to stop. She shrugged and faced Val. “Fine. Lead the way.”

As much as she loathed turning her back on a Jackal, Val stepped away from the register and headed toward the back. She took the aisle that Chaz and Right Hand were in, pausing before them to bare her fangs at the creature holding her friend. Up close, she could see beneath his hood. A network of scars covered his face, souvenirs from years of fights. She wondered how many times he’d challenged an alpha and lost.

Right Hand flashed long canines at her. One of the front ones was chipped. She imagined the ragged bite marks he would leave on Chaz’ flesh if she screwed this up.

She dipped her head in acknowledgment—
you win this round
—and turned to Chaz. “Will you be all right while I . . .” She gestured at the rare books room, but what she meant was, “while I leave you with these things that wouldn’t mind having your spleen for a snack.”

He grinned at her despite the smell of fear-sweat rolling off him. “Peachy keen.”

Then the Jackal woman gave her a shove and got her moving again.

 • • • 

V
AL OPENED THE
door for the Jackal bitch but didn’t follow her inside. She wanted to be able to keep an eye on the two up front. “The book’s on the desk. Take it and get the hell out of here.”

But of course that wasn’t good enough. The woman seemed content to leave Val in the doorway. As soon as she set eyes on the book, it was as if she’d forgotten about the vampire behind her altogether. She stood staring down at the top of the desk for a long moment, the set of her shoulders rigid, breath coming in a pant as she sniffed the air. New mothers weren’t half as careful with their firstborns as the Jackal woman was as she lifted the book.

The Ziploc bag fell to the ground like a discarded candy bar wrapper. The woman’s eyes shone as she leafed through the onionskin-thin pages. She turned toward the door as she flipped, enough for Val to see the rapture on her face turn to rage. “Where is it?” she snarled, flipping faster.

“Where is what?”

The Jackal woman looked up at her, tawny eyes flashing. “You changed it. You
stole
it.” She turned the book around and showed Val the pages.

Blank.

Not the whole book, but a page here, a page there. Val couldn’t make sense of the text that remained. A mere glimpse of the writing made her stomach roil. But there were definitely whole chunks of it missing. “I didn’t do anything to it. I don’t even know what it
is
.”

“You did it. Or
he
did it. But since he’s dead,
you
get to fix it. But first.” She strode past Val and shouted to Right Hand. “Kill him.”

“No!”
The Jackals could move fast, but so could Val. She grabbed the bitch and shoved her back against the wall. The book thudded to the floor in a flurry of pages. After a moment, the Jackal woman stopped fighting, laying her throat bare for Val—a dog submitting to its master. Val shifted the key in her palm so it protruded out from between her middle and index fingers. She held it against the woman’s throat. The flesh sizzled and burned like a piece of plastic held over a flame.

Despite the pain, the woman didn’t scream.

Right Hand paused, poised on the edge of carrying out his order. Left Hand wavered up by the register. Val could see him weighing his options—would a sudden move help or hurt?
He’s still a pup. Too indecisive.

“Here’s how this is going to work: you do it and I’ll kill her,” Val called. “Then since my hands will be free, I’ll come for you two.” The key made a pretty terrible knife, but Val wasn’t afraid of a bit of a mess. Using it to cut the woman’s jugular would be like cutting twine with a dull blade.
But if they hurt Chaz? Worth it.

The woman had the balls to smile. “You think you can take them both?”

Val kept her hand at the bitch’s throat, but glanced back at Right Hand. She thought about the scars on his face again.
He might just be old enough.
The other two seemed oddly young, as Jackals went, but this one struck her as more wary, more weathered. “Has your alpha ever mentioned Sacramento?”

“What’s that have to do with—” The bitch hushed as the silver pressed in harder.

Right Hand nodded, wary.

“I was there. So you know that means I can kill the both of you, easy. Don’t you?”

Left Hand whined low in his throat, still sucking on his burnt fingertip. Beneath Val, the Jackal bitch had gone very still, her eyes darting from Val to Right Hand and back. “Let him go,” the bitch said. The panicked, wheedling tone from this morning was back.

Right Hand did as he was told, pushing Chaz away from him with a bit too much force. Chaz stumbled forward. He caught his balance with the broom and held it out in front of him as he put distance between himself and the Jackals.

Val dragged the bitch down the aisle and past Right Hand. They swept past Left Hand, too, straight to the door. She shoved the abomination out onto the sidewalk and held the door open for the other two. They got the hint and squeezed past, trying not to touch her as they slunk out into the night.

The bitch crouched down, one hand to her throat, gulping in the chilly air. “Two days,” she rasped.

“For what?” Val twirled the key around on its chain.
Wish I’d thought to use it as a garrote. Then she wouldn’t still be talking.

“To find what’s missing. To make it whole again.”

“You three really want to come back and try my patience?”

“Not just us.” Right and Left helped the bitch to her feet. She lifted her glittering eyes to meet Val’s. “If you don’t get those pages back, we’ll bring friends.” They backed away, until the shadows covered them. The bitch’s voice hung on the air: “We’ll bring a whole nest.”

8

C
HAZ HEARD THE
woman’s threat float through the door. It should have chilled him, he supposed, but he had something slightly more pressing to address first. “I take it you two are acquainted?” Now that the three were gone, his pants-shitting fear was rapidly melting into anger. He figured that nearly getting his eye poked out—
oh, and then nearly getting killed on command, let’s not forget
—gave him the right to kick up a bit of a fuss.

Val locked the door and leaned back against it. “Chaz, I’m sorry. I—”

He didn’t bother tamping down the fury in his voice.
She fucked up, she gets to hear it.
“No. Not good enough. I asked you earlier tonight if you knew anything, and you said
no
. Then these three whatever-the-fucks walk in here and it’s clear you and the woman have met before. I’m guessing shortly after we parted ways last night.” His knuckles had gone white on the broom handle. “You lied to me. Which, you know, whatever, I expect you to now and then. I’m sure there’s obscure vampire shit I’m not allowed to know. But not when it’s important. Not when one or both of us could get
killed
.”

“I know. I was wrong.” She spread her hands wide, but stayed where she was. “I thought it was taken care of, and I screwed up, and I’m sorry.”

He realized he was shaking. Chaz wasn’t the kind of person you crowded when he was angry. He didn’t take well to being placated, either. He’d never swung on her—never
would
—but Val was giving him his space all the same. He throttled the broom a little longer, then let it clatter to the floor.
Better than a stress ball.
“What now, then?”

“Now . . .” She hesitated, but seemed to think better of something—probably a suggestion that he go home, which wouldn’t go over well. “I’m locking up and going to the Clearwaters’. You coming?”

The words were barely out of her mouth before he answered. “Hell yes.”

 • • • 

C
HAZ WAS QUIET
as he drove to the professor’s. The ride wasn’t long enough for her to tell him very much, aside from that the creatures were called Jackals and she’d chased the woman out of Bryant Hall the night before. He gripped the steering wheel and kept quiet. Sure, not asking questions was borderline petulant, but he hadn’t had a chance to properly seethe yet. Five years as her Renfield—five years under the impression she told him the important shit—made this omission hard to simply shrug off.

Chaz killed the engine in front of a sprawling old Colonial a block down the street from the Clearwater house. He would have thought that every house in the neighborhood would be lit up, but only a few seemed to have anyone left awake. They hopped over a low fence, sneaking past a two-car garage and into the backyard. When he squinted, Chaz could make out the faint spindly shadows of a swing set just before the tree line, but even those melted away as heavy clouds covered the moon. Val led them across the yard and into the woods.

The darkness didn’t hinder her, but Chaz didn’t have the luxury of night vision. He moved quietly enough, drawing on what little knowledge he’d retained from his Boy Scout troop back in the day, but as far as he knew there wasn’t a badge for skulking around in the pitch blackness with a vampire. Or trespassing on a murder scene to see if the crazy dog-people had left any clues behind. Without the moonlight, he was blind out here. Chaz waved his arms in front of himself so he didn’t get a branch to the face.

Everything was so quiet. He could hear the shuffle of leaves beneath his feet and his own harsh breathing, but other than that, the night was silent. No night birds called to one another, no crickets chirped. Nothing went scurrying through the underbrush at his approach. Was it the kind of silence that descended when animals caught the scent of a predator?

Val’s the predator here. Nothing else. She’d have called it off if there were Jackals lurking.

But if Val was nearby, he couldn’t hear her anymore.
Did we get separated?
Chaz stopped walking and peered around, straining to make sense of the darkness. His eyes were as wide as they could go, but all around him was seamless black. He felt his breath grow ragged and raspy edged with panic. His chest tightened even as he gulped down a lungful of air. Shame mingled with the fear; he didn’t think
chickenshit
went with the whole Renfield persona. He didn’t know if it was more embarrassing for the Jackals to know he was afraid, or for Val to see the fear on his face.

Cold fingers closed over his. Somehow, he managed not to yelp. Or piss his pants.
It’s only Val.

“Come on,” she said, and gave his hand a squeeze. “I’ll lead you.”

Relief flooded through him, stronger than the shame. He could feel like a pansy in the morning. In the daylight. “Yeah. Okay.” He closed his eyes and let her tug him forward through the woods.

 • • • 

C
HAZ COULD FEEL
the wrongness as soon as they crossed onto the Clearwaters’ land. He couldn’t have said quite
what
felt so wrong, but the knot of fear that had settled in his stomach twisted into something new. Where before he’d been afraid of Jackals jumping out of the shadows and killing them, or cops tramping through the trees and arresting them, now the panic was on a purely animal level. His lizard brain wanted him to run, and his logical brain couldn’t think of a good reason not to. Except for Val. Her presence kept him from letting the flight instinct take over.

By the time they reached the flagstone steps of the patio that had been Helen’s last home improvement, Val was breathing through her mouth.
She’s smelling them.
It must have been overpowering.

Once Val had started leading him along, he’d kept the freaking-the-fuck-out down to a minimum by wondering how they’d get inside. Turned out it wasn’t an issue: the back door had been torn off its hinges. The only things keeping anyone out were a few strips of police tape strapped across the doorway to deter the law-abiding. Now that they were out of the woods and in semifamiliar territory, Chaz let go of Val and reached into the pocket of his Windbreaker. “Here,” he said, and pressed a soft bundle into her hands.

“Are these from the rare books room?” Val stared at the cotton gloves, then at Chaz.

“Yeah. I thought . . . fingerprints. I don’t know if you’d leave them, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to have them. Plus, you know.
I’d
be smearing them all over the place.” Talking made the fear recede a bit, enough that he could tamp down the urge to snatch up Val’s hand again.
I have to be the world’s worst minion.

She tugged on the gloves while Chaz fumbled out a pair of his own. “Can’t have my employees getting arrested. It’s bad publicity.”

They exchanged tense smiles; Val lifted the yellow tape enough so she could duck through it, but she seemed reluctant to pass through the doorway.

“Val, what’s— Oh.” It dawned on him: she’d been in the house before—the professor often had her come by to appraise his newly acquired rarities—but now that her former hosts were dead, had their invitation been rescinded? Chaz stepped around her. His boots crunched on broken glass as he walked into the kitchen and turned around. “Come on in.”

Val gave him a nod of thanks and joined him across the threshold.

The kitchen was a shambles: scratches covered the hardwood floor, as if several dogs had come scrabbling through and dug deep gouges with their claws. The table had been overturned, the contents of the cabinets strewn about the room. Val sniffed. “No one’s inside. Hasn’t been anyone here for a few hours.”

“What about the cops? Is there a car out front?”

“Wait here. I’ll check.” She headed off into the dining room, then along the hallway that led to the front of the house.

While he waited, Chaz dug his penlight out of his pocket. Outside, it might have given them away, but in here, unless anyone was patrolling the backyard, he figured it was worth the risk. He thought he could re-create the Jackals’ movements by the marks on the floor. They seemed to have gone straight through the kitchen and deeper into the house. The ransacking must have happened afterward; he found human footprints in the rubble.

When Val came back into the kitchen a few minutes later, Chaz had just about forgotten his earlier terror. As hard as it was to be rooting through a dead friend’s cupboards—and now that the professor was gone, Chaz couldn’t help but think of him as a friend despite the whole I-think-you’re-a-werewolf bit—he was
doing
something, and that steadied him.

“Nothing unusual here,” he said, straightening up from looking under the sink. “Unless you count an industrial-sized bag of salt.”

Val raised a brow. “If the professor knew what was coming . . .”

“It becomes ordinary, yeah.” Salt was for rituals and protection. Chaz hadn’t
totally
dozed through Val’s Vampire’s Minion 101 lessons. But what was Professor Clearwater doing performing rituals?

“All right.” She glanced at the stove clock: four thirty. They had an hour before sunrise, an hour and a half if they wanted to push it. “Let’s start in the library, then. The real one.”

 • • • 

V
AL LED THE
way upstairs, following the trail of debris. At the top of the landing, a bloody handprint smeared down the wallpaper. Ragged claw marks marred it further. One of the Jackals had taken some damage. The air was heavy with the smell of burnt fabric, singed fur, and something oddly sweet. Across the top step, rune marks were melted into the rug. Val smiled. “You clever old son of a bitch. They tripped your wards.”

Chaz leaned down and touched the rune, which was brown and shiny in the beam of his penlight. “Do you think he killed any of them? The ones at the store didn’t seem all that hurt.”

“God, I hope so.” Not that a dead Jackal balanced out the Clearwaters’ deaths. A whole
nest
of dead Jackals couldn’t do that. But it helped to know they’d gone down fighting nonetheless.

A few steps down the hall, a long, greasy streak of ash on the floor answered the question. Laid atop it was a snapped-off rowan stake, its bottom half covered in ichor. “They got one, at least.” She didn’t want to look at it too long. She’d seen plenty like it on the West Coast, and heard the screams that went with the burning.

The library door hung crooked; the top hinge was all that held it up. The lower was still fastened to the frame. Runes drawn in blue chalk covered the door. Val could make out some of them—spells of protection, spells set to ward off evil—but others were completely unfamiliar. She traced one with a gloved finger, smudging the chalk. Even out here, with the room closed off, she could smell the blood: Jackal and human, making her want to gag.

Making her want to drink.

She clenched her fists and fought against the fangs and claws that were clamoring to come out. Her dead heart thumped to life, her already-sharp senses kicking even higher, amplifying the coppery tang on the air. She spoke through gritted teeth. “You should stay out here.” Without waiting to see if Chaz obeyed, she shoved through the door and into the library.

The furniture had been smashed to splinters. Not a book remained on the shelves. All around the room were piles of ruined covers and torn pages. And everywhere, the blood. The scents mingled in her nose—the heady smell of human blood with the rot and sulphur of the Jackals. She struggled with the urge to drag her finger through a puddle of the human kind and lick it off like frosting.
No. This is the professor’s and Helen’s. They’re your FRIENDS.

But maybe just a taste . . . Wouldn’t it be like honoring them, in a way? She’d never drunk from them in life, wasn’t that respectful? Wasn’t it all just going to waste, there on the floor, soaking into the Oriental rug, dripping down the walls? Wouldn’t it be cleaned up tomorrow and discarded like trash? Blood was meant to sustain life, and if the original owners were dead, well, wouldn’t they have wanted it to go to a good cause? Feeding a friend was a good cause. In fact, it was an
excellent
cause.

“Val? Are you all right?” Footsteps shuffled behind her, and Val groaned.