Natural Consequences (26 page)

If her good looks weren’t enough to draw him in, her accent provided the rest of the lure. “No, not at all,” Alex said. He sat up straight and found himself unable to take his eyes off her. Her natural confidence and smooth manner held his attention. “I’m glad you decided to come over and say hi. I just didn’t want to get up and abandon my friends here.”

She turned the natural side of her face toward Jason and Amber to casually say, “Hi,” giving Alex another good look at her sugar skull make-up. “So you here alone, or is your date ditchin’ you?”

“She’s around,” Alex said, unable to hold back a flirtatious grin, “but we don’t have to be hand-in-hand or anything. We’re not a jealous couple.”

“No?”

His cellphone vibrated. “This might be her, sorry,” he said, slipping it out to check it quickly. The message read: “Gonna b a bit. L says go have fun. –-O.” At that, Alex just smiled. “Nope. No jealousy issues at at all.”

Amber leaned over to Jason. “Can you hear them?” she asked, unable to follow the conversation with the newcomer’s back to them and the dance floor music still thumping.

Jason just shook his head. “Shit happens all the time with him anymore,” he shrugged. “Minute Lorelei’s gone, girls just flock all around him.”

“She’s not bothered by that?”

“You did catch on that she’s kinda freaky, right?” he said. “Sometimes I wish I had his problems.” Amber’s hand came over his and gave him a squeeze, and he smiled at her for it. “But only sometimes.”

“I like your problems better,” she said.

“So what’s your name?” the sugar skull asked, ignoring the pair behind her.

“I’m Alex,” he answered. He saw nothing suspicious in the slight rise of her eyebrow and her tiny nod at his name. All he read from her reactions was a continued interest in flirting. “Who are you?”

“Rosario,” she said. “I’m up from Las Vegas. Came to see my boyfriend, but turns out he’s a drunk asshole so I’m single now, I guess. Figured I’d just have to find my own fun tonight.”

“I like fun,” Alex smiled.

“You look like it,” she said. “Least you’re dressed to be ready for it.”

He snorted. “Well, this is an actual costume. It’s from a book… y’know, whatever. Can I get you a drink?”

“The bars outside the dance rooms have shorter lines,” she suggested.

He stood up and looked past her. “Hey, I’m gonna go get a drink with Rosario here,” Alex said to his companions. “Looks like Lorelei’s gonna be busy for a bit anyway. You don’t have to have me tag along with you all night.”

“Your friends can come, too,” Rosario said loudly enough for their benefit, but then winked at Alex and dropped her voice to add, “or not.”

Amber looked to Jason and found that his face had grown noticeably more serious. She rose as he did, leaning in to ask, “Is something wrong here? I mean other than the obvious?”

“Alex has a girl problem,” Jason said, lowering his voice to ensure neither Alex nor Rosario could hear, “but it’s not the kind you’d think.”

They followed Alex and Rosario out of the ballroom, taking a couple of turns in the hotel’s hallways. “I thought the bars were out the other way?” Alex asked, pointing down in the opposite direction as Rosario guided them.

“There’s a second one upstairs from here,” Rosario said, turning around and taking the loose ends of his bathrobe belt to tug him along. “We don’ wanna have to deal with the crowd in the main lobby, right?” She walked backwards for a few steps, her eyes and her smile promising much more than idle conversation, before leading them around another corner.

Alex had no particular reason to suspect anything. He’d never seen Rosario before in his life, but that meant little. Women flirted and made passes at him all the time now. Lorelei was busy with the witches, probably doing exactly what he wanted to do with them. Rachel was nowhere to be found. A little time with a pretty stranger might lead to something unexpected and fun, or to nothing at all. He had nothing to lose. He followed.

Jason and Amber followed, too, suddenly feeling like a fifth wheel in all this. They both found themselves slightly uncomfortable when they passed a trio of large men in bulky black cloaks and generic monster masks at the corner of Rosario’s next turn. “Uh, this just leads to a service exit,” Jason observed.

“Yeah,” Alex frowned, “
are you sure—?” The rest of his sentence was suddenly smothered by the moist bandana Rosario shoved against his mouth and nose. She threw her other hand around his neck, holding on tight as Alex struggled and tried to spin away. The first involuntary whiff of the chloroform on the rag already had his head spinning. Rosario hooked one leg around his, throwing her hip into his midsection to bring him down to the floor as she clung to him.

Alex saw Jason and Amber grabbed from behind by the men in the cloaks. Another of them loomed over him, presumably to help Rosario, but that was about all his mind could process before he blacked out.

He awoke on hard, flat ground. He lay either indoors on some stone floor or perhaps on a road. He felt the incredibly soft fabric of a blanket around him. The fabric was too thin to keep him warm but it was softer than any of his clothes… no. Not a blanket. These
were
clothes. Softer than wool, certainly softer than leather, and not nearly as warm.

It was hard to think.

He heard no birds or wind, just the echoes of voices and steady, far-off noises. He had to be inside somewhere.

His eyes would only open for the briefest of moments, and blearily at that. He fumbled about for something to hold and found only a flat, cold floor.
This is not Roman stone
, he realized.

Wait. Roman stone?

“I think he’s waking up,” said someone in a language he didn’t understand, and yet he did. Why wouldn’t he understand it, though? He’d grown up speaking English all his life.

English? What is that?

“Pull him up. Pull him to his knees,” someone said. He recognized that as English. The Queen’s English. Proper English. Like the captain, or the lieutenant.

Who? What in Juno’s piss is a lieutenant?

Wait, Juno’s what? Who the fuck is Juno? Who the fuck talks like that?

Strong hands grabbed him on
both shoulders and pulled him upright, settling him—roughly—back down on his knees. He fought to get his eyes open. The light wasn’t too bright, and clearly artificial—electrical lights, he now understood, and look how slick it all was!—and then he saw the concrete ceiling and the tan, smooth marble tiles of the floor. Green metal railing stood wherever a purposeful gap opened between the floor and the concrete walls. Signs saying “Westlake” and “Metro” could be seen here and there, along with what looked like advertisements for things he didn’t recognize.

A great many people surrounded him in a crowded arc
. Most wore black.

Where in Christ’s name am I?

His vision cleared. Several dozen people, mostly pale, watched him intently. Their garb tended toward dark colors, but the styles and fashions spanned centuries. Many bore weapons: swords hung on hips, or modern guns sat in holsters, and even one or two people carried genuine black powder pistols.

Signs and maps here and there offered directions to var
ious streets or other destinations. He thought he might be underground somewhere. Perhaps in a subway tunnel? This one seemed nicer than the ones in Paris or Detroit… but when had he been to either city?

The war. He’d grown up in Detroit, but then he got drafted and went to Paris to fight the Cong and then Siobhan left him and he had that fight at the saloon, and then…
no. That can’t be right.

“Alex Carlisle?” asked a voice. That same voice with the proper English accent again. He placed it with a man toward the center of the group directly ahead of him.
Standing nearby, amid men and women in dark clothing, was the girl with the sugar skull make-up on one side of her face. Rosario.

The Englishman gestured to him with his cane. He wasn’t small. He wore a dark suit, made entirely of wool, with a silk pocket handkerchief, nice hat and all the trimmings.

He had Alex’s wallet. He looked at it one more time and nodded to himself. “You are Alex Carlisle, are you not?”

“Yuh. Yeah?” Alex blinked. That sounded right. Alex Carlisle. This was
one of the downtown Seattle bus tunnels, underneath a shopping mall and department stores. The buses ran one floor below—but he didn’t hear them running now.

The Englishman looked at Alex’s wallet one more time and nodded to himself. “Excellent. I suppose I should wish you a happy birthday, though in truth I am here to ensure otherwise,” he said mildly. He handed the wallet to a pale man in an extravagant crimson toga with a laurel wreath on his head. “Lord Cornelius, once again you have earned the admiration of us all. I confess I expected this to take hours. Your people do excellent work.”

Alex looked over his shoulder. There were more men behind him, too, though not all were pale like the rest. The pale ones wore ‘80s fashions that didn’t seem intentionally ironic; the others dressed in ordinary street clothes. Alex saw guns in their hands. He also saw Jason and Amber stuck on their knees in front of the standing men, their hands on their heads as if awaiting arrest or execution. Neither looked particularly happy to be there.

“You okay?” Alex asked.

“Yeah,” Jason grunted, “just holdin’ out as long as we—“

“You shall not speak,” interrupted the Englishman, loudly and forcefully but with notable calm. “You have already been instructed. Disobey at your peril.”

Alex looked over Jason and then Amber, finding no obvious injuries or signs of panic. They both seemed to be holding up fairly well, but that did little to assuage his feelings. Anger bubbled up within him, quickly overwhelming his fear and confusion. Anger seemed the wrong response, given his predicament, but he didn’t question it. Better to be angry than to panic.

Amber watched everything with a sense of great dread and creeping despair. She’d seen many of these faces on the sketch files kept by the task force. Most were from the west coast, but she recognized faces from New York and Miami and cities in between. Cornelius, in particular, looked exactly like
his sketch. She’d thought the bit about him wearing a toga and laurel crown was ridiculous, but here he was in all his anachronistic glory. She saw the others give him all the deference suggested by his alleged lordship over Southern California.

They
took her keys, her wallet and her phone when they grabbed her. Amber’s prized prop replica assault rifle now lay in a gutter outside the hotel.
Thank God I didn’t keep my badge in my wallet
, she thought for the third time, but that didn’t resolve one bit of this predicament.

There had to be at least forty vampires here, give or take a few mortal goons. Nobody would be impressed if she identified herself and demanded they all surrender into her custody.
She didn’t think she could take even one of them out unarmed; the single vampire she’d arrested in LA weeks ago absorbed several gunshots like so many weak punches before he’d been brought down by sheer muscle and weight. The bullets that struck Kowalski’s torso that night punctured and stunned him for the briefest of seconds, but beyond that he seemed indifferent to their effects.

She watched as Lord Cornelius moved over to Rosario and handed her the wallet. “You have done well, my dear,” he said in a thick accent. “You
must be rewarded.”

Rosario nodded eagerly. “Thank you, my lord,” she said, though the form of address sounded awkward from her mouth. “And my boys, too, right?”

Cornelius brushed a fond hand over her hair. She whimpered. “I know leadership when I see it,” he said. His other hand touched her collar, then trailed down her chest and her belly without regard to propriety or privacy. Rosario seemed excited by it rather than put off, and shuddered as his hand kept moving lower until he lewdly clutched at her groin.

She inhaled sharply. Cornelius swept back her hair and placed his mouth on her neck. Rosario’s eyes rolled back then and she surrendered to him as his lips spread over her flesh and then stiffened.
A trickle of blood escaped his kiss to run down her front.

The crowd went silent. The distant echo of the bus tunnel remained, but aside from that the only sound anyone could hear was that of Rosario’s blissful
gasps. Her breathing became labored, and then raspy, and finally ceased. The other vampires and their attendants looked on, most with obvious lust in their eyes as Cornelius drained Rosario dry.

Cornelius
released her with a flourish, holding his hands up and out wide as if expecting applause. She fell away from him, but a pair of pale, young-looking women in ancient dress caught her and gracefully carried her back. Scattered applause and a few calls of approval followed, but the reactions were not uniform. It seemed as if Cornelius had just violated some social taboo, yet was powerful enough to get away with it.

“Ah. Well,” smiled the Englishman crisply. “We shall welcome her into the family, as it were, when she rises again.”

“Ugh,” grunted Alex.

The Englishman looked at him curiously. “I take it you disapprove?”

“Yeah,” Alex fairly sneered. “Gross.”

“You must have found her
enchanting to have followed her so blindly.”

“I did up until
this,” agreed Alex, “She’s got the vampire herp on her now.”

Cornelius became indignant. Blood still coated his chin. The crimson color of his robe made the stains hard to see except where the light reflected off the wettest spots. “Mortal chaff, have you any idea whom you address?”

“It sounded like you’re the Great Cornholio? Did I hear that right?”

Though the word meant nothing to him, Cornelius recognized the insult for what it was
. The Englishman held up a calming hand, though his head bowed somewhat in a show of deference. “Lord Cornelius, if I may,” he said, and then raised his eyes toward Alex again. “Mr. Carlisle, you speak to Gaius Cornelius Vespasianus, Consul of the Republic of Los Angeles, one of the eldest of the society of night in this country. And I—“

“That name doesn’t even make any
sense
,” Alex spat without a second thought. “Nobody has people address them by their gens. Cornholio is either a poseur or an idiot.”

Amber heard it all, but couldn’t follow. “What’s he talking about?” she hissed.

The other young man caught it as well. At first he just shook his head, but then understanding crept over him. “Oh, no.”

The blood-stained face under the laurel crown screwed up in a rage. Cornelius tore a short sword out of a fold within his toga. “Impudent brat!” he snarled, “I will cut—
!“

“Lord Cornelius, please!” cautioned the Englishman again. Two other vampires stepped out of the crowd, both of them
rough, muscular men in dark leather and denim that seemed somehow just a bit off from what they should be wearing.

Alex looked at the pair curiously. Something about the
long, scraggly blond hair of the one and the red beard of the other seemed familiar to him. He knew those rings on their fingers and the gold bands on their arms. They both carried large blades, one on his belt and the other over his shoulder. Both had small, light axes tucked in their belts.

If he’d been angry before, the mere sight of these two brought his feelings to a fever pitch. Old, simmering
hatred welled up inside. Alex had never seen them before, couldn’t know them from Adam, and yet his hands balled into fists and began to tremble. It was all he could do to keep control of it.

The Englishman sighed for effect and turned his attention back to Alex. “I am the Lord Mayor George Wentworth of New York. Like my friend and ally,
Lord Cornelius
,” he said, emphasizing the words—though several behind him smirked at the sound of it—he continued, “I am a longstanding ally of the Lady Anastacia of this city. I believe you may have met her?”

“I might’ve heard that name,”
Alex growled, “but I don’t remember.”

“You would remember the Lady’s grace and majesty,” assured Wentworth.

“That’s not how I’d describe you guys,” Alex shook his head.

“Mr. Carlisle, we know you were the subject of a search by her court and by the Brotherhood of Apollo. We know of the involvement of demons from the Pit. You will find no salvation in being either evasive or insolent.”

“What do you want?”

“Closure,” Wentworth said, his calm returning once more. “We seek to resolve this issue and move on. It must
be conducted in front of many witnesses so that no accusations of skullduggery or treachery live on after the fact.” His arms spread wide to indicate the assembly of vampires around him. “Your opinions and motives are irrelevant… though we would like to hear whom you serve. The Lady also sought out someone named Lorelei. Lord Cornelius knows of a certain demon by that name. Is she your mistress?”

“
I don’t serve anybody,” Alex replied, still holding his anger in check. His thoughts bent further and further toward violence, but he had friends here. He had to think of them first. Stalling offered the best bet for their survival.

“There was a party hosted by the Lady,” Wentworth went on, “and now the home that held it is nothing but ashes and ruin. Do you know what happened there?”

“Your lady friend and her buddies kidnapped me. They wanted to hand me over to bad people. It didn’t go so well for them.”

Hisses and murmurs swept the crowd. Wentworth looked to Cornelius before speaking again. “Mr. Carlisle, is the Lady dead?”

“I don’t know,” Alex answered honestly. His eyes stayed mostly on the pair of long-haired vampires. He knew they were deadly raiders. He knew they were liars and scum. They’d ruined his life… when?

“You don’t know?”

“Like I said, they were working for other people,” Alex shrugged. “They got in the way. All I did was defend myself. I had no beef with them.”