Blood Bath & Beyond (23 page)

Uneasily, I took another glance at the ring. It looked like something you might find at Blood Bath & Beyond, a random Goth trinket to make someone look dangerous and edgy. The ring itself was deeply etched with small symbols on the burnished silver. And the spikes themselves…now that I was paying attention, they looked a whole lot like sharp vampire fangs. Stab this in a victim’s jugular and the resulting wound would look exactly like a vampire bite.

My mind immediately went to the serial killer—the last victim grabbing hold of me and trying to tell me who’d killed him:
Vampire.

Kristopher, at first glance, looked exactly like a vampire should if you didn’t know any different.

And…did Thierry just say
dark wizard
?

“You’re right,” Kristopher finally said. “It is dangerous. Which is why I use it only rarely and when absolutely necessary.”

“Then why wear the ring now?”

“Because it looks badass.” Kristopher smiled, but it didn’t look friendly. His spooky eyes took in both me and Thierry as if seeing us for the first time. “What do you want from me?”

“We want you to summon one who has recently died so we can question him.” Thierry didn’t ask if Kristopher could do it. The confident look on his face was enough to show that he was totally convinced that this guy was legit.

“Difficult,” Kristopher said.

“For someone with as much power as I can sense from you, I find that hard to believe.”

Kristopher’s unpleasant smile held. “Sometimes those with power are unable to fully tap into it.”

“Oh? How so?”

“Let’s just say I have limited access to the full extent of what I can do.”

“Is that your own doing or did someone else put these restrictions on you?”

Kristopher looked at Thierry with a distinctly unfriendly expression. “You are a bit too insightful for your own good…Thierry, was it?”

“I’m just a good judge of character.”

“And what do you see in my character?”

Thierry’s eyes narrowed slightly. “A man who is hiding from what he really is and his full potential. Why would one who has touched dark magic be working in a low-end dinner theater telling fortunes for pennies?” Thierry studied him for a moment. And I studied Thierry, surprised by just about everything that was happening here. “It’s a punishment. You’re condemned to be this way for some crime in your past. Being here, putting up with regular humans who look at you as no more than momentary entertainment, it must be torture for someone like you.”

Kristopher’s expression tightened. “You have no idea.”

“You might be surprised.” Thierry was silent for a moment, as if mulling over what he’d gleaned. “What happens when you access your true power and don’t just put on a flashy show to distract from the truth? What do you lose that you value more than anything? What is the punishment?”

“Stop,” Kristopher warned.

“Is it pain? No. Beneath the frills and makeup you think masks the real you, you strike me as someone who can take a great deal of it. Is it someone you love you’re concerned with hurting?” He cocked his head. “A woman who meant everything to you? No, I don’t think so. My guess is if there was anyone like that, she’s gone—a long, long time ago.”

A split second later, Thierry flew backward and smashed against the wall next to the door. His eyes flashed and moved to me, but the rest of him seemed pinned. For the first time since we’d arrived here, an
edge of worry went through his previously confident and assessing gaze.

Kristopher’s arms were tense, his fists clenched, and he stormed toward Thierry. I cut him off, putting myself between the two men.

“Take it easy,” I said, panicky. “Seriously, just relax. I’m sorry for what Thierry said…. Sometimes he can be a little too blunt for his own good. Just don’t—don’t hurt him. Please.”

Kristopher’s gaze snapped to me and beyond the fury in his strange eyes, I saw something else now—madness. It hadn’t been there before. Only since he used whatever magic he normally kept under lock and key.

He shook a little, but I wasn’t sure if it was from anger or frustration. “Why did you have to come here?” he demanded.

“I’ve heard they make a fantastic Tequila Sunrise.” I tried to breathe and do whatever I could to defuse this particular bomb. “And also, because we desperately need your help.”

“Get out of my way.”

“Not a chance.”

He shook his head, his face etched in misery and that touch of crazy. I suddenly realized that was what Thierry had guessed at, although he’d been wrong and only provoked the man further. There was a price to pay for Kristopher tapping into his magic. It was his sanity.

“You think you can protect him from me?” A dark smile flashed on his face. “You’re barely powerful enough to continue breathing.”

I didn’t budge. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

He stared fiercely at me for a long time—maybe a full minute. I forced myself to hold his gaze and not flinch or look away. Thierry didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. Whatever Kristopher had done to him had stopped him cold and kept him immobilized. I could only assume he’d be able to kill Thierry just as easily if he wanted to. It was a chilling thought.

Finally, Kristopher glanced past me at Thierry. “You’re a lucky man. Many women would flee the moment they felt threatened, not stay and defend someone else when they’re obviously outmatched.” Sanity had slowly returned to his gaze.

“Release him from whatever this is,” I said firmly.

“I don’t like him.”

“You don’t like him only because he hit too close to home. There was someone who meant everything to you and you lost her, right? And now you want to take it out on someone else.”

His eyes slid to mine. “Believe me, I’ve taken it out on many over the years. But here we are. If I kill this vampire with my magic, I will go completely insane. Would it be worth it?”

A violent shiver went through me. “I’m going to vote no.”

“I don’t know. It might be.”

Did anyone else have any idea who Kristopher DeMon the Magnificent really was? Or was his Goth pirate persona enough to fool everybody except Thierry?

Sometimes that man
was
too insightful for his own good.

“I’m sorry for whatever you’ve been through.” I sounded totally sincere because I was. I hated seeing anyone in pain and it didn’t really matter who they were. I didn’t know what Kristopher had done in his life, but the fact that he’d all but admitted he’d lost someone he loved was enough to coax out a tune on my heartstrings. “But we still need your help. If we don’t find answers, then we’re going to be torn apart, too—and I bet it’s going to end just as badly as whatever happened to you. So please, help us contact somebody.”

“I don’t usually help vampires. I don’t count them among my friends.”

“What about Josh?”

He laughed softly, humorlessly. “Yeah, that fool. I’ll admit it. Over his head and overworked. When he’s not working, he’s got a grand thirst for the roulette tables. Keeps channeling what money he has left into losing ventures like that money-suck of a store of his. And that new vamp show that’s opening next week is sure to be another failure.”

“You mean
Fang
?” I said, surprised. “Josh is an investor?”

“He is. I want to help him out, but he wants to do it all on his own. So be it.”

I smiled. “You want to help him—a vampire. You see a friend in need and you want to lend a hand. I knew you weren’t unredemptively evil.”

He glared at me. “Don’t try to see light where there’s only darkness, vampire.”

“You might be a dark room, but there’s a night-light glowing in the corner, even if you don’t believe it. So are you going to help us or what?”

His glare wavered just a little. “You don’t exactly make a great bargain for yourself. What does it get me?”

“The satisfaction of helping two people in need, and knowing you did it to help that glimmer in the corner get a little bit brighter.”

He stared at me so long I was afraid he was going to hypnotize me with those mismatched eyes and make me start clucking like a chicken. Or worse.

“Say please,” he said.

“Please.”

Thierry gasped from behind me and was finally able to move. I hadn’t realized it before, but he hadn’t been breathing until now. He’d been suffocating. Vampires didn’t need to breathe as much as humans, but they did need to breathe. I wasn’t totally sure if suffocation could eventually kill us, but it would be extremely unpleasant. He recovered quickly and came to my side, sliding an arm around my waist. I looked at him with concern, expecting him to do something in retaliation, but other than that firm grip on me, the tension in his body was kept under control…although I felt the potential violence humming all around him.

“Let’s get this over with.” Kristopher held out a hand to me. “Give me something that belonged to whomever you wish to contact.”

I stared at his hand. “You need something, like, specific?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t just pull a spirit out of the air if we give you a name and description?”

“No. Spirit magic is different. I need something to
ground me, to help me pick through the world of the dead and summon their ghost here.”

“I can go find a Ouija board for you if it’ll help.”

“That won’t do it.” His hand was still extended. “If you don’t have anything, you yourself can work as an anchor if he touched you. It’s more difficult, but there’s still a chance.”

My stomach sank. I’d been consciously avoiding any physical contact at all with Duncan and I knew I’d never touched him once. “There has to be another way.”

“There isn’t.”

I looked at Thierry. “Did you know this?”

“That to summon the ghost of one who has died you must be in possession of something he or she owned? Yes, I knew that.”

I stared at him blankly. This was bad. Another dead end, after everything we’d just gone through to convince Kristopher to help us. He was willing, ready, and able to do just that—but now we were stuck again.

“If you knew that, why did you even agree to come here? I have nothing of Duncan’s…unless you do? I mean, he was an informant for you, right?”

“Correct. But I have nothing of his. Any money that passed between us went in one direction only, from me to him.”

Hope was slipping away from me with every second that passed. “So how are we supposed to summon Duncan’s ghost?”

“We’re not,” Thierry said simply. He was so calm about this that it was driving me in the opposite direction as my anxiety and confusion grew bigger and bigger.

“Okay, then why did we come here at all?”

“To summon a ghost. But not Duncan’s.” He raised an eyebrow at my bewilderment.

“Then, whose?”

He pulled me closer to him, my back to his front, and slid his hand into the front pocket of my jeans. My eyes widened. This felt a bit too intimate to be done in front of someone else.

“Thierry…”

He pulled the safety-deposit key that Laura gave to me out of my pocket and looked at it for a moment. Then he handed it to Kristopher. “Use this.”

Kristopher took the key from him and formed a fist around the small piece of metal. “Do I have a name to work with?”

“Bernard DuShaw.”

“You think Bernard knows who hired Duncan to kill him?” I asked breathlessly as I felt magic begin to charge the small dressing room. The fine hair on my arms stood up.

Thierry’s expression was unreadable, as usual, but he flicked a glance at me. “I do. And we’re about to see if my guess is right.”

B
efore I had a chance to ask any questions, it felt as if a tornado had just entered the room and my hair blew straight back from my face. The temperature in the room plunged twenty degrees in five seconds and continued dropping. Kristopher held the key clenched tightly in his fist and was chanting something. His hand started to glow. His lips moved, but I couldn’t make out the words. His eyes—they freaked me out. I thought that black eyes on a vampire were scary enough, even when they were mine, but on a witch or wizard—try dark red on for size. Kristopher suddenly looked in major need of about a quart of Visine.

Finally, as I held tight to Thierry’s arm so I wouldn’t get knocked off my feet, the violent wind ceased and the room was still again. The crack in the mirror had only grown larger.

“He’s here,” Kristopher announced, his eyes still that scary shade of red. The room remained cold enough that a shiver went through me.

“Yeah,” I said. “I can see that.”

And I could. Bernard DuShaw now stood to Kristopher’s right, looking at me and Thierry with complete and utter shock.

Kristopher frowned. His face was strained and his fist glowed with bright red light from where he held on to the key. “You can see him? Even I can’t see him. I’m supposed to be the medium and tell you what he says.”

I looked again, now not positive that I was seeing what I was seeing. But it was true. Bernard stood in the room with us as if he was really here and totally alive.

“Quoi?”
Bernard said, glancing around.

“You can really see him?” Thierry asked, touching my shoulder.

I looked up at him, stunned. “Yeah.”

A glimmer of a smile played at his lips. “I had a feeling you might be able to. After what you said about sensing death earlier.”

“So, what? Now I can see ghosts?”

He nodded. “It’s a rare ability for some vampires.”

“Can you do it, too?”

“Yes.” His smile widened. “And here you thought we had nothing in common.”

“Great,” I murmured, my heart pounding. “We can start a ghostbusting business together.”

“What the hell is going on?” Bernard boomed. “Where am I? What happened?”

“Those are all very good questions.” Thierry swept his gaze over the length of the other man. Bernard looked exactly as he had last night at the after-pageant reception out on the terrace balcony. He wore a tailored designer suit with Italian leather loafers, and had that pinched look on his face he got whenever Thierry was around.

“Well? Answer me, de Bennicoeur.”

“For starters, you’re dead.”

“What?” Bernard’s eyes bugged. “How?”