The Devil You Know (34 page)

“Wish me luck.” Nude, I tucked an illusion charm into each cheek, slipped between two rose bushes, and dove into the water, my blood already humming with inactive Fae magic. I moved deep, heading toward the large tubing hidden under the bridge. JJ’s reply was garbled. Not that it mattered. At this point, everyone else needed the luck. A couple hours more and I would be dead. Then my job would be done and the others’ would begin.

For safety reasons, the shaft acting as the lab’s emergency exit and the ventilation service entrance must stay unlocked while the lab was occupied—that was why it was hidden so well. But once the last keycard swiped out, the bolts would throw shut on all entrances and exits.
All
but the water tunnels that circulated fresh water to the partially magic-powered cooling units. The tunnels opened at sunrise and closed at sunset so any steam caused by the mixing of hot and cold water could dissipate in the sunlight without being noticed.

I’d reviewed the water tunnels first, thinking I could swim in right before sunset and haul Roskov out after dawn. But the idea had quickly been dismissed. The space was too narrow for a scuba tank and swimming through either tunnel’s swift current without one would be difficult for anyone who needed to breathe. Exiting with Roskov would have been impossible.

Seth’s people had helped with the lab’s construction. He’d been most generous with the blueprints and other information, making me wonder what the normally-not-so-giving vampire was up to. Unfortunately, that was something to worry about another day—one where I wasn’t stuck between a lake and a very cold place.

A ladder led down the emergency shaft from a trapdoor in the floor of the bridge, but I headed for the smaller ventilation portal hidden under the bridge about two feet above the waterline. Because of the portal’s proximity to the water, it was only alarmed with a small ward. Foot traffic shook the bridge daily, so the ward was keyed to sound only if the portal’s cover moved so far from the tubing. I melted three of the cover’s welded edges with a little fire, sparing the side with the ward, bent the portal upward, leaving the side with the ward attached, and hoisted myself out of the water and into the chute. After I was through, I carefully bent the cover into place and replaced the welding. A close inspection would show the difference, but my magical residue would be gone before anyone would know to check the tubing.

I climbed down the ladder, the air growing colder and darker with each step, moving from one shaft to another, following the map in my mind until I heard people talking and water roaring to the coolant system nearby.

Shivering, I wrapped my arms around the metal ladder and hung in the shadows, listening to the chopped conversations filtering through a grate a few feet below my naked toes. I looked down to see slivers of people moving back and forth, their skin shaded blue by the cryo-tank’s light. Until they left, this chute would be my home. I focused my mind away from my aching arms, stiff legs and clammy skin and set my mental clock.

Three hours.

It was Friday afternoon and the end of finals. Even the most dedicated wouldn’t be working late tonight. But they were three long wet
cold
hours as the ventilation system blew frigid air past me. I had to release a small steady stream of magic to keep myself from shivering to pieces. Fortunately, thanks to my beautiful phoenix I had plenty of magic to spare.

Above my head, JJ walked, spraying the last of the roses. A few students would be milling about, taking photos before the next day’s graduation. Three hours would give JJ time to change and be in position for the next part of the run. Three hours for Gem, Marco, and Mynx to meet and swap rides.

Three hours in which Jacq and Fera must be going crazy, stuck at the house playing pinochle with my grandmothers. In my head, I could see Van driving them crazy by commenting on everything and flirting with Nana and Aunt Helena just for the heck of it. Hopefully he knew better than to hit on Jacq or Fera. Either might hit back, and the recovering demon didn’t need any more bruises…to his body or ego.

Three hours before the exit above my head locked down for the night.

I released a little more magic to help warm myself and took a breath, thankful JJ’s illusion charms were amazingly small. At least my cheeks weren’t stretched like a chipmunk’s. I looked again at the people moving below me. Three hours. I could do that. Houdini I wasn’t. But I worked well under pressure, as long as it wasn’t water pressure.

The continued sound of water roaring through the coolant system reminded me of this morning’s foreboding dream. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Death lurked in those water tunnels. Thankfully I’d left navigating the waterways to the fish and Davy Jones.

I had a promise to keep.

* * *

Night Thirteen

The grate popped open with a clang. I winced, waiting to see if anyone would investigate. I counted to two hundred, slowly, holding my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering with the cold. My breathing and the hum of the cooling units sounded loud in the silence. When no one came, I quickly lowered myself down the ladder and into the room, refastening the grate as I did. My first plopping step was into a very large, very cold puddle of water. Staying close to the wall, I sidestepped and shook the water from my toes, looking and listening for cameras.

The overhead fluorescents were out, but the room glowed with the blue light that came through the cryo-tanks’ frosted glass, which covered the walls to my left and right. Dark shadows lay behind many of the square windows, creatures silent and still in frozen death.

I spotted the cameras. As expected, they were dark. Conveniently, something large and hungry had recently chewed through their wiring, saving us the trouble of disengaging them. Thanks to Mynx’s hacking skills, we knew a work order had been placed for their repair, but it would be days before it could be filled. Currently, a guard sat in a small office near the front door watching the only active camera, which faced the underground lab’s official, above ground entrance.

Assured I was alone, I let my fire rise, careful to keep it close. Though the cameras were off, the temperature sensors were not. The cryo-units hovered just above freezing, and the large room wasn’t much better. A major heat spike would draw the attention of security, so I kept my magic low, letting it warm me. Quietly, I moved through the rooms, steaming footprints following me, occasionally stepping in another puddle of water as I passed stainless steel tables and sharp pieces of equipment whose purposes I didn’t want to know, heading for the only two tables that held body-shaped black bags.

As promised, the names on the bags matched those I’d been told to expect. I slid down the zippers, confirming that the faces matched the pictures I’d been given. With great respect, I levitated the bare bodies out of their bags and back into empty cryo-units. As I closed the frosted-glass windows, I apologized to the dead souls.

Finished, I left the bags open and moved deeper into the lab, making my way to the end of the building and the small vault housing the university’s most special
clients
. Holding my breath, I tried the code I’d been given. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the light turned green. The large metal door swung inward, revealing another cold dark room, and I sucked in a breath.

A pair of bright eyes peered at me from the darkness. I opened the door further, letting in a small amount of light. My breath whooshed out. In the middle of the room stretched a stainless steel table. The shadowy form of a body lay on the table, its head closest to me. But where the head should have faced its feet and the far wall, this body’s unattached head sat squarely facing me. Domini Roskov’s eyes were open. Like a cat’s, their black pupils reflected the light, even as they stared directly at me. My mind flashed to two nights before and Ramus’s eyes reflected in Cassie’s mirrored green wards. My heart thudded painfully and my throat closed as if a hand fisted tightly around it. I blinked several times, replacing the nightmare image with the real one. With difficulty, I pushed away the memory and analyzed the room.

What I saw made a long string of curses erupt in my head and I bit my lip to contain them.

I’d been told the body would still be bagged. The examiners wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow. But there Roskov lay in an unzipped body bag with chest open and sundry parts lying on rolling trays beside the table. Fully nude now, the body was more horrific than I remembered. The baseball-sized bloated pustule areas had burst open, spilling their inky mucus onto Roskov’s pale skin, revealing warped tissue and gray bones beneath.

It was hard to believe this monstrous husk had once been Gem’s beloved father.
There would be no hiding this carnage from her.
I suppressed a deep wave of sadness and walked forward. When I was close enough to reach out and touch the grisly tableau, I closed the dead vampire’s eyes for the last time. With my fingertips on his eyelids, I closed my own.

“You can go home now, Domini. We’ll look after your daughter. Let the goddess bless and keep your soul.”

There was a moment of silence, even the cooling unit’s low buzz stilled. I thought somewhere, somehow, Gemini’s father had heard my wish.

Then a quiet, almost childlike voice in my head said,
Such pretty words for a demon-tainted blood-drinker. What would your granny say, Catie girl, about wasting the goddess’s blessings on us undeserving?

I froze. I knew that voice. And it said a great deal about my week that at this moment in time I wasn’t surprised to hear it. “Once, I thought I knew.” Opening my eyes, I raised my head. “But these days, she keeps me guessing.”

A grunting, almost laughing sound rolled out of a dark corner. I searched the shadows there.

“But then, she’s not the only one,” I added.

From behind a large metal cabinet a wiry black-clad form stepped into the soft blue light that flowed through the open door. The light barely reached his location, but it was enough to let me see the owner of the voice fully. For once, the face I saw before me was not a stranger’s. And that truly saddened me.

There, sporting the largest, happiest, fangiest smile I’d ever seen, stood Bon, my favorite of Serena’s guards. His blond-brown hair, as shaggy as ever, stuck up around his head, and his clothes were wet, making his body appear even smaller. Cheeks sunken, face and wrist bones pronounced, he looked as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks. Yet I’d seen him healthy and whole only two nights before.

That was an illusion,
my demon-half whispered, watching through my eyes from behind her prison bars.
This is the truth.

I couldn’t help but agree. Like a clown, Bon’s mouth was smeared with blood. My eyes flickered from his face to the body that lay between us and back again in understanding. Roskov’s body hadn’t been autopsied.

It had been butchered.

My mind went numb. Then anger hazed my sight. I barely restrained the urge to shout. “Why?” I hissed. “Why would you do this?” I waved my hand at the large chunks of missing flesh.

The metal table and its mutilated corpse hid my nudity from waist down but left my wobbling breasts visible. Not that the cannibalistic Bon noticed. The moment of attention he’d shown Cassie Wednesday night had been a truly rare occurrence. His happy, carefree expression never changed, but deep within his dead eyes I thought I saw a flicker of regret. Regret would save neither of us, but I was glad for it. Had there been anything else in his gaze, I would have unleashed my magic, possibly killing him but certainly trapping myself as the sensors set off the alarms.

Bon had been Serena’s friend and trusted guard for years. Her hurt at his betrayal would be profound. The thought made my blood boil, and I had to clamp down on my fire, which was hungry to avenge her sorrow.

Ignoring my question, Bon, who was a mute, smiled and said sweetly in my head,
Don’t worry, Catie-girl. I’m not here to kill you.
He casually moved toward Roskov’s feet, his hands moving along the drawers lining the wall then, the steel rolling trays, touching their strange and sharp instruments as he passed.

Bon moved slowly down the left side of the table. I went right. We circled each other, the mutilated body between us. With his nearness, I felt the first pinpricks of dark magic against my skin, further chilling my already cold body. The magic was old, much older than Bon, and had an insidious seething quality, as if it had its own life, its own intentions. Its own hunger. It was the sort of magic one accumulated over centuries. It couldn’t have come from eating a few pieces of a dearly departed fellow vampire. Bon had hidden it, had hidden himself, until now. He was hiding no more, which frightened me more than knowing where Roskov’s missing bits now resided.

“You’re not here to kill me?” I asked, mirroring Bon’s relaxed tone. “Why, are you saving me as a treat for later?”

No, no,
Bon thought.
Never that. Friends don’t eat friends. I simply wish a favor, an introduction.
He ran his fingers over and into Roskov’s body, caressing parts so black and twisted they were unidentifiable, even with my healer’s training. As a mute, Bon had never said more than a few words at a time to anyone. It was probably his silence more than anything that had allowed him to rise to such a high position in Seth’s forces. This conversation was the longest and oddest we’d ever had.

“Good to hear,” I said with fake relief. “You’d find me a bit bony, anyway.” My smile came out more a grimace. “If it’s Cassie you’re wanting, I think an intro’s unnecessary. She doesn’t seem the shy type.”
Especially not with a gun in her hand.

I looked at the rolling tray nearest me. There were saws, scalpels, metal stakes, mallets, and an assortment of other tools—good weapons in a pinch. But I wasn’t fast enough or strong enough to wield them against a vampire souped up on black magic-infested undead flesh. And earth magic wouldn’t hold this one.

I would have to find another way.