Sacrifice (Dylan Hart Odyssey of the Occult) (16 page)

Only one
cursed son of a bitch at a time please.

The doors opened simultaneously. I
expected Malcolm to be there, distraught and impatiently waiting for us, but that
was not the case. The tall skinny guy who had answered the door the day I’d
arrived at House of Porte for the first time, stood in the doorway. His attire
was atrocious, worse than the first time, and he was so skinny I could hardly
look at him –it- whatever it was I couldn’t look. He smiled halfheartedly and I
swear I saw a sneer in the mix. He scowled at the three of us, Mike especially.
Certainly, police were not a welcome sight at a vampire House.

From somewhere in the house, a woman’s
voice called, “Welcome. Cyrus, please see your guests in.”

He nodded, but didn’t really look at
anyone. “Dylan Hart, of Los Angeles California and Michael Petersen of Los
Angeles California, sponsored by Cyrus Atossa of House of Cailleadh.
Acquiescence to pass?” It was a formal introduction like the others I’d been
present for. Nothing new to this vampire veteran. Mike looked like he’d just
woken up in a Hammer film.

“Granted,” the woman cheerfully
welcomed us from an undisclosed location within the house.
 

“Acquiescence to pass?” Mike snickered
under his breath.

“It’d serve you well to mind your
manners, Detective,” the unseen woman said to the surprise of us all. Well,
Mike and me. Cyrus looked like he might throw up.

The tall skinny guy used his long gross
arm to allow us entry, or acquiesce our passing, or whatever.

“Out of the pan into the fire,” Mike
whispered.

If he
only knew. The poor bastard.

Chapter Twelve

Marienne lay sprawled out on one of her many couches, in the
room with the curtains I’d made the mistake of peeking in on once before. It
felt awkward without Tatum. I did not belong with that crowd, and everyone knew
it. And it wasn’t my faded jeans and worn out sneakers that gave me away. It
was mostly the I-don’t-drink-blood thing. And fuck those assholes, The Smiths
shirt rocked.

“Where’s Malcolm?” Cyrus asked, not wasting a second for
pleasantries.

“Where are your manners, Secondus?” Marienne pushed her
weight around. Her being Primus of the House of Porte and all, I suppose she
was within her funky Sanguinarian right to do so.

Mike curled his lip and simultaneously looked both confused
and arrogant. You know, the way cops usually look. I closed my eyes and shook
my head, now was not the time for explanations and back-story. He really needed
to chill the fuck out.

“Madam.” Cyrus dipped his head at his superior. “My
apologies. Michael Petersen and Dylan Hart of Los Angeles-
“
she
cut him off with one dainty, lace covered finger jutted in the air,
ticking back and forth like a metronome.

“Don’t you mean Detective Michael Petersen? The man has a
title; it should be used.” Marienne’s light French accent just tickled her
words instead of trampling on them as most accents had the tendency to do.

Cyrus pinched his lips between his teeth and closed his
eyes. “Madam. Detective Michael Petersen and Mistress Dylan Hart of Los
Angeles, attending under the sponsorship of House of
Cailleadh.”

Everyone was quiet while Marienne
took her sweet-ass time mulling over our introduction. Can we say power trip?
At this point, she was just fucking with him. There were far more pressing
matters at hand here than formalities in introductions.

She tapped a long pale pink nail
against the arm of the couch on which she lounged. Her honey brown eyes slid
smoothly over the three of us. What a foolish sort we must have seemed, not one
of us sure as to what the other was thinking or planning. Mike was likely
scouting exits while forming his plan B. Cyrus, who knew, that guy was all over
the map. He could be singing the Oscar Meyer wiener song for all I knew. I was
overthinking everything and had a bad case of the butt sweats.

A full minute had passed, and I just
couldn’t take it anymore. “Look here lady.” I poked my finger in her direction.
“I’m no blood sucker and I don’t have to follow your bullshit rules. We’re here
for Malcolm McTavish. We are here only because he called us here to help him
find my friend Tatum Price. Both of whom were last seen here. Either you choose
to help us or-“

“Ha! Or what, my darling?” Her wide
grin flashed a lovely set of fangs. Lord knew if those bad boys were real or
the plastic variety, but real or not real wasn’t the question anymore. At this
point, the only question was – where were they located with respect to me, and
could they get me before I could run for my life.

“Or I formally charge you with obstruction,” Mike piped in,
saving my ass. “You were the last…” he paused a millisecond, as though maybe he
was trying to find the right noun for the situation, “person,
”
he had chosen wisely, “
to see a missing person alive. Do you know what
that means for you?” His cop talk wasn’t doing much in the threat department.

“Oh, Detective, you think the law has power over me?” Her
condescending tone was not lost in her accent.

“You can’t avoid the law.” Mike took two long strides to
tower over the small woman. “Who do you think you are? I don’t care what you
choose to eat for dinner lady, the fact of the matter is, I am a law
enforcement officer and I have no qualms about dragging your ass in on murder
charges as well, if Tatum Price doesn’t turn up, unharmed.” He was serious as a
fifth of tequila on a Monday night, but then again, so was she.

Mike was still operating under the assumption he was
currently dealing with mundane matters of lawbreakers and law followers. From
my moderate experience with the asshole suckers in question, I knew assuming
anything would just get you dismembered.
You
know the saying, trust but verify, I think he was speaking directly of the
underground vampire society.

Marienne stood, but only came to Mike’s chest. Not very
intimidating honestly, but I suppose neither was I. I did kill two
motherfuckers though and didn’t think much of it, so I can’t say her size made
her any less dangerous.

“You will listen or you will learn very quickly how wrong
you are. You are in my house, in my cabal, and as long as you are under my
authority, you are mine to…” her eyes slid to me and back to him, “do with as I
see fit. If you’d rather refuse my hospitality and hunt for your friend in my
city alone, please feel free to arrest me now.” She laughed, a huge belly laugh
that wrinkled her eyes at the corners and made her appear older than I thought
she was. “Go ahead, Officer, cuff me.” She laughed again and extended her
wrists to him, a patronizing offer.

She had Mike by the short and
curlies
.
He honestly had no jurisdiction to do anything to her to begin with. The most
he had was a citizen’s arrest, but the circumstances were so loose and
downright ridiculous, it was pointless. Not to mention she was likely a
heavy-duty vampire bitch and would surely rip his head right off his shoulders
in the event he did attempt to detain her. Unless of course, the cunt liked it
rough.

Having no answer, Mike clenched his jaw and glared at the
woman nearly half his size. Mexican Stand-off vampire edition. Marienne’s
straight face changed like someone had flipped a switch. A smile pulled the
corners of her lips up and into her cheeks. Her brown eyes wrinkled again and
her smile twitched, just enough to right those pesky crow’s feet. Stupid,
vapid, bitch. I prayed to God I was that hot by the time I started crinkling
around the edges.

Her smile stayed and
a humph
of a
laugh pushed through her mauve-tinted lips. She looked Mike from his head to
his toes like he was at auction. Maybe to her he was. A small shrug lifted her
shoulders. Her tiny hands gently tucked her Victorian replica white linen and
lace gown under her butt before she sat back in her place. Marienne adjusted
her dainty legs to rest them softly on pointed-toed boots. White and obviously
expensive leather, her period boots hardly looked big enough to be an adult
size shoe.

So small and perfect, Marienne could have been plucked
directly from the eighteen hundreds. She and her damn house. Her size, and even
her age, wouldn’t make a lick of difference if she really were as badass as she
pretended to be. Someone like Marienne was likely better an ally than an enemy,
if I had to guess. In the end, we needed her, even if only to ensure she didn’t
become an enemy.

Fuck you, rock. You
and your bullshit hard place.

I could see all this mull through Mike’s head. He was, once
again, considering all the possibilities before proceeding. Smart. If only he
could do the same when dealing with me, we’d be golden. His temper and tendency
to want to make everything black and white would be his worst enemy when it
came to our new found life amongst bad things. A hard lesson I had to learn as
well. Luckily for me, I’d been there and done that, and was ready and waiting
for the next turd to plop. Mike, poor Mike, was about to get his ass handed to
him on a sacrificial platter.

“I am looking for Tatum Price. Malcolm McTavish alerted us
to her disappearance and asked for our help,” Mike spoke again, this time
firmly planted in
good
cop
shoes. “I am here on behalf of
Malcolm McTavish as a law enforcement officer to assist in finding the
whereabouts of Ms. Price. Seeing as though this is
your
house, and the person in question was last seen at this
residence, I’m sure you don’t want local police involved should Malcolm be
forced to file a missing persons report.” He stopped just long enough to let it
sink in. “I would appreciate any assistance you and your associates can
provide.” He was giving in, but on his own terms. Sounded like Mike. And maybe
someone else I knew.

Name-dropping was clever, but without Malcolm to back it up,
we were fucked. We’d been inside for ten minutes and the ginger fuck still
hadn’t made an appearance. If it were me calling for help to find my fuck
buddy, I’d probably be downstairs waiting for the cavalry. Instead, we were
stuck with
Bloody
Mary fucking
Poppins and her Richard O’Brien henchman guy. Something was
fucky
.

“Well, was that so hard?” she giggled like a six-year-old
girl. “Now, of course I don’t want police in and out of my home. Who would?
However, I haven’t laid eyes on either of them in hours.” Her lacey fingers
tickled the air in my general direction. “As I haven’t seen the likes of you,
in quite some time either. Did we scare you off?”

“You could say that.” No need to divulge more than necessary
to those not neatly chilling in the Dylan Hart circle of trust. “Where’s my
friend?” I asked, having little patience for her crap.

“Perhaps she was scared away as well. Maybe she ran for her
life in the middle of the night…all the way home.” The skinny alien henchman
guy made annoying little squeals back in his throat, imitating a pig. The
ironic
fat pig
reference did not go
unnoticed. He’d pay for that later.

“Marienne, if Malcolm is not with you, where do you suppose
he is? I know for a fact he is still in New Orleans,” Cyrus finally chimed in.
These were his people; he really should have been handling the bribes and
threats from the get go.

“Do you? The lot of
you
were perfectly capable of hopping on an airplane back and forth more than once
this weekend. Is it not possible your Primus has done the same?” She had a
point. I wanted desperately to round house kick her, Chuck Norris style, square
in the throat.

“I am no fool.” Cyrus clenched his jaw, muscles twitching
and ticking in his temples. “You and I will have words, but now, I need to find
my Primus.”

He hadn’t moved, but his body seemed larger. Like his very
mass had extended outward and into the room. He didn’t say a word before
turning, and leaving Mike and I alone with the short woman in lace.

“Malcolm!” he hollered from the base of the wide staircase,
and waited just long enough to catch a response before moving along and calling
out again. “Malcolm?” He made his way up stairs.

One glance at Marienne and it was obvious there was no other
option than to get as far away from her as possible. If she had me alone, I
just might be strung up and flogged, for whatever God-awful thing I’d done
today.

I turned and followed Cyrus up the stairs. “Malcolm?” I
yelled down the hallway on the second floor from the top of the stairs. Someone
had cleaned up whatever mess I was sure Azelie and I had left behind
twenty-four hours ago. I heard Cyrus bellowing from the third floor. I bounded
up the second, smaller staircase to find him. Mike hadn’t followed me, but that
was his problem. He was a big bad policeman. I found Cyrus in the room I’d once
occupied. He was standing in the center of the room with his hands on his hips.

“Any suggestions now,
Hoss
?” I
asked from the doorway.

“If Malcolm is in this house, he is hidden away somewhere,”
Cyrus talked to the air, to no one in particular.

“Hey, the mirror is gone,” I proclaimed, a little too
animated. The mirror I’d been so intrigued by, the one that reflected my
phantom wounds, was not hanging where it had been. There was just a bare wall
where it’d been behind those odd, heavy drapes.

“What are you blabbing about?” he sighed and snapped at me
in irritation.

“Hey, I’m on your side,
asshat
.” I
moved to stand in front of the space the mirror once occupied. “Right here,
there was a mirror.” I waved my hands around the empty spot. “I showed it to
you this morning, remember? It had naked people all over it. You had a name for
it…” My tired brain couldn’t dredge up the name.

“Yes, yes, yes.” He
shooed
me away
from the wall and out the door. “Not here, not now,” he whispered. “Malcolm!”
he called out again, too close to my ears.

“He’s not here, obviously. And neither is Tatum. So why the
fuck are
we
still here? You don’t
have a plan B?” That’d be too much to ask for at this point, something to
actually work out. “Follow me.” I ran down the stairs, well, as fast as my body
mass would allow anyway, and down the second-story hall.

“Where are you going?”

“The one place no one looked. The one place I’d stick around
this dump for.” Down the wide staircase, we tromped. My speed was too fast, and
I knew that at any moment I’d be tumbling ass over face. I hit the last step
and victory spread across my face in the form of a grin. I used my hand to
anchor me as I swung around the post like I had once before. My rubber-soled
sneakers kept me from sliding around this time. I didn’t stop to ask for
permission before I swung open the little door under the stairs. I was wide
awake, and Cyrus wasn’t about to stop me. I took the cement stairs slower and
cautiously – a trip down those bad boys would end up with me bleeding and
broken. The lighting was just as I remembered it. Dim and ever changing. I knew
at the bottom of those stairs had to be rows and rows of coffins and stone
walls lined with flickering candles.