Taste (Ava Delaney #5) (7 page)

We rejoined the group in the communal area. “We may have to miss the funeral,” I told the others.

That brought a whole ton of protests down on my head.

“Okay,” I said, holding up my hands. “Maybe it’s worth the risk.”

“You don’t understand,” Leah said. “He was like a father to us. A friend. We have to say goodbye. It wouldn’t be right any other way. We just… we’re sick of hiding away in fear. This is one thing they shouldn’t be able to take from us.”

I nodded. “Just know it’ll be dangerous. I’ll go now, but make sure someone guards the entrance at all times. No slacking. I have a lot to do. Someone work on a list of stuff we’ll need for the move. Pack up as much as you can carry, but make sure you’re prepared to ditch it if you have to. Someone has their eye on us. We have to be extra careful.”

The crowd dispersed as almost everyone found something to keep them busy.

“You look exhausted,” Peter said as he walked me to the exit.

“It’s been the longest day of all time.” I yawned.

“Don’t come back tonight,” he said. “Get some rest before you do whatever you’re about to do.”

I nodded, but I couldn’t imagine sleeping with so many unanswered questions on my mind. I glanced over his shoulder. “Take care of everyone while I’m gone, but Emmett is your personal priority. Don’t forget him in the heat of the moment.”

He closed the space between us and slipped his hands around my waist.

“He’s safe, Ava. I’ll organise people to keep watch at the door constantly. We can protect ourselves for one night.”

“I hope so,” I whispered, but he kissed the words away and pushed me out of the sanctuary.

Next stop: Mrs. Yaga. She lived in a bungalow in the same area as the cul-de-sac, but I hadn’t known that when I moved there. The base of her magic began in her home, and the hairs on my arms rose as I knocked at her door.

“I want to bring them all to the cul-de-sac,” I said when she answered her door.

She stared at me blankly for a couple of seconds before inviting me into her house. She led me into a living room filled with comfortable chairs and cabinets stuffed with brass ornaments. The place appeared pleasant and safe, but some deep instinct warned me to beware.

I took a seat on her couch. “It’ll take a while for me to figure out how to make a proper safe house for them, but the cul-de-sac could be secure for the time being. Plus we have some excellent fighters, better than me, and—”

“You’re a terrible saleswoman.” Mrs. Yaga sat in a chair across from me. “Bring them if you wish. But where are you going to house them?”

“I was hoping you could help with that.”

“How many are there?”

I shrugged. The numbers changed frequently. “At least thirty. That includes some of
my
people.”

“It will take a lot of work. I’ll need to find new accommodations for the occupants and up the protection. It will require energy that I just don’t have anymore. I’ll need to eat. It will take a lot of extra power. Especially once the beasts arrive, if they ever turn up.”

“So… what? You want me to buy you dinner?”

Her gaze locked onto mine. “No, Ava. I need to feed from
you
.”

“What are you talking about? My blood?”

She laughed harshly. “Hardly. I need your essence. Your power. Did you never find out what I am?”

“What are you?”

“Short answer would be a hag. Traditionally found on your chest, sucking the life out of you as you sleep.” She grinned, as if remembering. “Of course, I only take a taste these days, just enough to carry on for a little while longer. But you… you could give me enough to take care of all of your refugees.”

I stared at my feet, rapidly thinking it over. Was that what she’d wanted me for all along? Would she take too much? Kill me? Sweat trickled down my back as thoughts of a certain succubus jumped into my head. Would my landlady control me? Poison me with her own essence?

“Oh, don’t be shy,” she said. “I’ll only take a little. You still need to be able to fight, after all.”

“I don’t think—”

“Do you want my protection or not?”

“Fine,” I said sullenly. “But take too much, and I’ll have to kill you.”

She sniggered, a secretive little laugh that said I knew nothing. “Of course, my dear.” She got up and came over to sit beside me. “It won’t hurt much.”

I closed my eyes and felt her gnarled hand touch my chest then run up to my neck. She clenched her nails into my neck, and my eyes shot open. Her mouth gaped wide as if her jaw had come unhinged. Her skin sagged, unable to contain her large rotting teeth any longer.

My lips fell apart automatically, and a pale wispy light flew out of my mouth and straight into hers. My pores opened, leaking light, and I wanted to vomit, wanted to flee, but I was paralysed by her touch. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. My mind turned inward in blind nightmarish panic, and I was convinced I was dying. I felt life leave me. Felt my soul ripping away. Felt my body sag with every spark of light that left it.

Her eyes brightened, the brown gleaming and shimmering. She made sounds of pleasure that turned my stomach. Then she was gone, moving away from me, and the strange sensations ended.

I choked a little, struggling to catch my breath. My lungs were on fire. I tried to speak, but only emitted a croak.

“You won’t be able to speak for a few minutes,” she said from the corner.

I found her in the shadows. She was licking fingers that seemed impossibly long. I couldn’t make out her face, but I saw her eyes, electric and white in the dark.

“Thank you, Ava. That was
revitalising
. I’ll get started on the preparations. Give me two days, and then you can bring them here. You may leave.”

I got to my feet and almost fell back onto the couch.

She apologised. “Perhaps I took a little too much. You should rest for a couple of hours.”

I stumbled out of her house and found my way home, feeling as though I were high, floating with a weightless body. By the time I reached my cottage, the light-headedness had passed, but my knees struggled to hold me up. Inside my home, I came close to collapsing. I tried to crawl up the stairs on my hands and knees, gave up, and lay on the couch instead. The last thing I did was touch my neck, but there were no wounds from her nails.

Chapter Six

After waking early, I rang Gabe, still unsettled by the way I had practically died in my sleep. “Any chance the funeral can be arranged today or tomorrow?”

“Why?” he asked with a suspicious tone.

“Because I’m moving them all.Soon. Someone got in the sanctuary.”

“What!”

I held the phone away from my ear at his yell. “Okay, Shouty, settle down. Peter dealt with it before I got there. They thought the intruder might have been a half-breed. Esther sensed some shifter in him, and the twins felt fae magic, but…”

“But?” He sounded impatient.

“But he had tattoos on his scalp, under his hair, and Val reckons the tattoos were imbued with fae magic, something that can be done by a kid who used to be in the slave market.” I sighed. “Esther thinks a couple of people who work for the Council have these same tattoos. Then there was the brand on the back of his neck. Slave market markings, same as Val and Emmett. So we’re back to that idea again.”

He was silent for so long that I asked, “Are you there?”

“And it got in? By itself?”

“Yeah, I think the lock is broken now. It could be the reason Folsom was murdered, because his protection is gone or something. I don’t get it, but that’s not even the point. We have to move them now.”

“Moving that many
wanted
people will be difficult,” he said slowly.

“I know, but we’ve no choice. If the beasts came… if they got into the sanctuary… I can’t let that be an option. We can’t afford to wait around for somebody else to sneak in, particularly if the Council are involved. So do you know anything?”

“My hand wasn’t involved in this. I’ll suffer if your people are injured. I’m not that masochistic, Ava.”

“Have you heard anything about this tattoo artist? Or some kind of group within the Council’s staff?”

“I haven’t. I’ll dig up whatever I can, but this is all news to me.”

“Maybe you haven’t been paying enough attention,” I said. “This is big and twisted, Gabe. I can feel it. We’re uprooting trouble, but the people in the sanctuary need this funeral, so we’re doing it.”

“If you insist,” he said. “I’ll organise it for tomorrow. Be ready for my call. It has to be brief, I’m afraid.”

“That’s fine. They just want a chance to say goodbye.”

“They?”

“Okay, I do, too. But I want them in safety before the beasts come.”

“You’re really this concerned about the BVA?”

I exhaled loudly. “Abso-fucking-lutely. This is real, Gabe. The vampire queen and her seer are running scared, so don’t doubt that this is happening. The beasts will go after anything even remotely like you and me. Don’t forget that. Be careful.”

“I’ll need to know where they all are,” he said. “Your humans. In order to keep an eye on them.”

I hesitated, still afraid to wholly trust him.

“I can stay with them,” he pointed out. “You might feel safer if you bring me to them and refuse to let me leave.”

“Possibly.”

“I’ll get organised around here. Try to get all of your humans in the one place if possible.”

Shit. That meant my grandmother, who was not exactly easy to be around, and a policeman who didn’t even know about the supernatural world. How was I going to pull that off?

And what if Mrs. Yaga needed more energy to protect my friends? The thought of letting her touch me—letting her
take
from me—made my skin crawl.

I called Shay and asked him to meet me at my house in a couple of days. I would think of something to tell him before then.

Nancy, my grandmother, would be difficult. The last time she had been in possible danger, she refused to come with me, instead choosing to stay in a hotel. If there were beasts coming, I didn’t want her to be anywhere with lots of people unless I was there to protect her. I might have felt anger and bitterness toward her, but a tiny part of myself couldn’t let her be harmed, no matter what she had done.

I headed to her home, dreading the conversation. Her reactions were unpredictable, something I was beginning to blame on her age, and I wasn’t sure if she would come with me, or if I could have her near me for any length of time without murdering her. I was only partly joking about that.

A familiar sick feeling came over me when I reached her neighbourhood. It had been my neighbourhood, too, but the place never managed to feel like home to me. There had been too many wrongs done to me there, too much isolation and rejection. It would always be a place that made me feel uncomfortable at best and paralysed me with fear at worst.

The door was ajar when I got to her house, and my stomach dropped to the floor.
Not again. Please, not again. No more dead bodies of people who couldn’t defend themselves.
I couldn’t take any more.

I sniffed hesitantly, but detected no death. There was… something. Different scents that I couldn’t explain. I found Nancy in the living room, knitting rapidly.

“Oh, hello, Ava,” she said brightly.

Her out-of-character attitude completely freaked me out. “Your door was open.”

“Did you leave it open again? Aren’t I always telling you to close it after you?” She shook her head and the clacking of her knitting needles grew faster. “The child will be the death of me,” she whispered.

I shifted from one foot to the other, feeling ridiculously juvenile. “So I came to tell you something, and—”

Her head shot up, her eyes narrowing coldly. “What did you do this time?”

“Me? Nothing. It was the vampires. They—”

She made the sign of the cross. “Don’t say that word in this house. You know the rules. Go to your room.”

“My
what
? What are you on about?”

“No answering back! Get out of my sight.”

“Nancy, what the hell are you…”

I caught a scent then, something I hadn’t smelled in over seven years. My breath hitched in my throat, and I froze. There was no escape. The past had just caught up with me.

The front door slammed, and a voice called out, “I have your tea, Nancy.”

I turned in shock as Wesley walked into the room. He faltered when he saw me, a half-dozen emotions flitting across his face in rapid succession. My own mouth had dropped open, and he let a plastic shopping bag fall to the floor.

That broke the spell. Both of us bent to pick it up, our fingers touching briefly. I took a step back in horror as my throat ached with a thirst I couldn’t satisfy.
Not now. Not again. Not with him.

I turned away from my ex-boyfriend, the one I had been tempted to drain, the one I had run away from, the one who had changed my life in a dozen separate ways. My hands trembled; I couldn’t think straight. Between my grandmother acting crazy and my ex walking into the room as if the past seven years hadn’t happened, I couldn’t get a handle on what was going on.

“No funny business, you two,” Nancy said, peering at us. “David, put on the kettle. There’s a love.”

“David?” I gazed at my grandmother, still struggling to catch up.

“It’s okay,” Wesley said under his breath, touching my arm briefly. “Why don’t you give me a hand?”

He escorted me out of the room, and after a second, I heard Nancy’s knitting start up again.

I made it to the kitchen before losing my mind. “What’s going on? Why are you here? And what the hell is with
her
?”

He stared at me blankly for a couple of seconds. “You don’t know?”

“Do I look like someone in the know?” I shouted.

He held up his hands. “I thought you were here because you knew. It’s dementia, Ava. A couple of years ago, she was told she was likely in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Lately, she’s gotten worse. It’s been a pretty rapid decline, actually. We’ve been trying to figure out how to get in touch with you. She never said… my mother’s been taking care of her mostly. I help out when I’m home. And I’m home for good now. I owe it to you to keep an eye on her.”