Queen of The Hill (Knight Games) (5 page)

I cupped the base of my head. Where had all the air gone? Each breath stung and my eyes burned with the need to cry.

“You intended to take her up on her offer. You intended to leave me,” I stammered.

“Never.” He took a step toward me, but I leapt from the sofa and dodged backward, evading his touch.

“Then what
was
your intention, Rick?” I asked through my teeth.

“I intended to die,” he said flatly. “Why do you think I lit the candle before our battle with the nekomata and Bathory? I knew what it would do. I battled your demons knowing they would kill me and set both of us free.”

My gaze snapped to his. “But … then you deceived her. Tabetha believed you were giving yourself to her to be her caretaker. You led her on. She was a victim of your vindictive suicide.”

All at once his features hardened, and his soul seemed to leave the room. The man in front of me was an ice sculpture resembling my beloved. “Yes.”

Lips trembling, I tried to focus. “Assuming you don’t want to give yourself to her now, how do we get you out of this?”

Rick grimaced. His irises had gone black again, the beast coming to the surface. “Of course I do not wish to give myself to her,” he spat. “I love you. You must consider the circumstances. Unrequited love is a particularly painful torture, Grateful. You were doling out that cruelty in spades.”

“So this is my fault?” I said.

Poe chose that moment to interrupt. “May I propose the two of you focus on the problem at hand? The sun has almost set. Time to punch the clock.”

My familiar was right. Rick and I had work to do tonight. “What was in the contract you signed? She said you signed in blood.”

“I don’t remember. I never thought it would matter.”

“Well, it matters now.”

The space between us widened into a black hole that sucked the life from the room. I’d thought he’d cheated on me, but in some ways this was worse. His jealousy had put both our lives in jeopardy. I didn’t know what Tabetha would ask for to settle the debt, but I was willing to bet it would be no small thing. The worst part was that I couldn’t blame her. Rick had used her. She was as much a victim in all this as any of us.

A vibration from my back pocket pulled me out of the tense moment. My phone. I brought it to my ear and tapped the screen to answer the call. “Grateful Knight.”

“Grateful, it’s Silas.”

Silas worked as a detective for the Carlton City PD. He was also a werewolf and dating my fae friend, Soleil. He rarely contacted me to chat though. A call from Silas usually meant a police case involving a missing or dead human by supernatural hands. “Is this call personal or professional?”

“Unfortunately, professional. There’s been a murder. I need you and Rick down here right away.”

I glanced at Rick and mouthed “Silas” pointing at my phone. “Sure. Hit me with the address,” I said.

“You won’t need an address. You’ve been here before and under circumstances I’m sure you’ll remember.”

“Where?”

“The Thames Theater.”

T
he Thames Theater was the current living quarters of the Carlton City free vampire coven. A little more than a month ago, the coven’s leader, Julius, had almost drained me dry before Rick blasted a hole through the place and saved my life.

“They’ve renovated,” I said as we pulled into the parking lot near the location of my rescue.

“Amazing what the undead can accomplish when their existence is at stake.” He climbed from the Tesla and opened my door for me. It was a completely unnecessary gesture—I could open my own door. Hell, I could kick the fucker open if I wanted. But as someone born in the 1600’s, it was a habit Rick wasn’t keen to give up. Still, I avoided his hand as I rose in the small space between him and the door. There was unfinished business between us.

“Thanks for coming,” Silas said from the entrance to the Thames. I navigated between the police barricades to join him. The theater was a recreation of a medieval castle, all old world stone and rough-hewn timber. Silas was a decent-sized guy, supernatural to boot, and he had to lean his shoulder in to hold open the front door.

“What’s going on?” I asked, giving him a quick, one-armed hug.

“Girl was murdered. I need your help. Follow me.” He led us through the foyer and down a back stairwell to another heavy wooden door crisscrossed with police tape. “Brace yourself. This isn’t pretty.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice; I could smell the blood. I glanced at Rick, then nodded that I understood. The detective opened the door.

The only reason I could tell the victim was a woman was that her breasted torso was semi-intact at the center of the room. Her head and limbs were detached, although I saw the length of an arm near the foot of the silver bedspread. The wood floor was saturated with blood, the top of the puddle already coagulated, thick and shiny.

“This is Julius’s room,” I said. “I didn’t recognize it from the hall. I was unconscious when he brought me here.”

Silas rubbed his chin. “Are you okay to do this?”

“I’m fine.” I stepped over the threshold.

“Don’t touch anything without gloves,” Silas warned.

I answered with a tip of my head, my lips tightly closed against the force of the stench around me. Rick moved in the opposite direction with the quick, graceful steps of the immortal. Slowly, carefully, I traversed the kill on heeled boots that clacked on the wooden floor.

Silas hovered near the door, hands in the pockets of his suit jacket.

“Why would he rip her apart like this? Why here?” I asked. “Julius is smarter than this.”

“Good question,” Silas said. “One my department has as well.”

I stepped deeper into the room. I found the woman’s bleached-blonde head under the bar where Julius kept his Scotch. The amber liquid I remembered him offering me was in a crystal decanter resting on the dark wood. “Who called this in?” I asked Silas.

“Vamp named Gary. He claims he found her like this.”

I rolled my eyes. Great. My ex-boyfriend-turned-vampire. Was this Punch Grateful in the Gut Day? “Where is Julius? Have you questioned him?”

“Missing. Gary said Julius hasn’t been seen or heard from since this happened.”

“Do you think he ripped her head off and then ran for the hills?”

“I don’t think anything yet. I’m investigating. Unfortunately, vampires don’t leave fingerprints, which is why I called you. Frankly, I’m not sure we can trust Gary.”

“I am certain we cannot trust Gary,” I said adamantly.

Rick rubbed his chin. “There is too much blood.”

“I know. It’s gross.” I covered my mouth with my hand.

“No.” He shook his head and spread his hands toward the puddle near our feet. “A vampire perpetrator would not leave this much blood.”

I looked at the room again with new eyes. When Julius drank from me, he hadn’t spilled a drop, and when Rick saved me, he’d said I was ghost white, a few quarts shy of a full load. It was hard for me to believe an ancient vampire like Julius would leave this mess behind.

“The way she’s torn apart, it looks more like the work of an ogre,” Rick said.

Silas jotted something down in a notebook he pulled from his pocket.

“What are you writing?” I asked.

“Just some questions to ask Gary later.”

“Yeah, I might have my own questions.” If I knew Gary, he wouldn’t tell Silas everything. My eyes fell on the bar. There were two glasses offset near the edge, one empty aside from a dried streak of amber at the bottom, the other a quarter full of Scotch. I glanced at the woman’s head under the bar, then back at the Scotch-filled glass. “Looks like our victim wasn’t a drinker.”

“No lipstick on either glass,” Silas said. “And there is definitely lipstick on the corpse.”

Rick glanced in our direction and continued searching the room.

Next to the crystal decanter and behind the glasses, a plate with the remnants of some kind of flaky, fruit-filled pastry cradled a fork. “Looks like she had dessert though,” I said. “Unless Julius ate the whole thing himself.” A smudge of purple fruit with green seeds trailed across the plate. I caught myself wondering what flavor it was and realized I still hadn’t eaten today. No wonder I felt weak and nauseous.

“Vampires don’t usually go for sweets,” Silas said.

“There’s no lipstick on the fork either. Although I know plenty of women who can eat without losing their lipstick.”

It was a common misconception that vampires only drank blood. They could eat; they just didn’t need to. Nothing tasted better to a vampire than blood, so for Julius to finish an entire pastry when he had human flesh in the same room would be rare. Then again, I knew Julius had an affinity for expensive Scotch, so maybe he was the exception to the rule.

The entire situation struck me as odd. Julius had poured his guest a drink. They’d likely shared dessert. So when did he rip her apart? And why?

Carefully picking my way around the room, I found the victim’s legs under the desk. “An arm is missing,” I said.

“It is here.” Rick pointed to the space between the headboard and the end table.

The path Rick took to reach the arm was narrow, and he returned the way he’d come to make room for me. When I saw what he wanted me to see, I frowned. Scotch and glass littered the space around the fingers in the crevice between the headboard and the wall. It was impossible to see from the door or even from the foot of the bed.

“A third glass,” I said.

Silas’s bushy eyebrows collided over his nose. He traversed the room to see for himself. I backed out of the spot and let him view what we’d discovered. After a long, hard look, he turned on his heel and caught my eye. “Grateful, why didn’t you sentence Julius to the hellmouth when you had the chance? He tried to kill you. You had every right to judge him.”

I startled slightly at the question. “Julius also saved me. He rescued me from Bathory, twice: once when she was torturing me, and once when she tried to sacrifice me. Honestly, I think the draining part was mostly an accident. Don’t get me wrong, Julius is a vampire, totally driven by appetite, but he’s also an important political figure in this coven, one who has benefitted me in the past. I thought it was a better idea to keep him around.”

With a glance toward Rick, Silas ran thick fingers through his bushy brown hair. Even in his human form, his wolfy features were obvious—untamable eyebrows and perpetual stubble. “And you are absolutely right. Julius was the only vampire in Carlton City strong enough to stand up to Bathory.”

“Where are you going with this, Silas?”

“Have you made any progress tracking down Bathory since we last spoke?”

“No,” I scoffed. Was this an indictment on my abilities as a Hecate? “We’ve searched the entire city. I have a spell around the Mill Wheel; she can’t return without me knowing. She’s on the lam.”

Silas bobbed his head. “I’m not interrogating you, okay? I just needed to make sure.”

I retreated to the space near the door where all of us could stand without disturbing the evidence. “Why? Do you think Bathory’s behind this?”

“I hope not.” Silas held up one finger and pressed his ear against the door. After a second of listening, he began again. “When Bathory ran, she gave up control of her coven. The vampires she abandoned joined this one, Julius’s coven.”

“And now Julius is gone,” Rick said.

“Exactly.”

“Maybe Bathory exacted her revenge,” I said.

“Makes sense. If she wants to return to power, she needs numbers to protect her—a vampire army. With the combination of the two covens, she stands to gain those numbers.”

I laughed. “It’s not as though she can just walk back in here and take over. Several of Julius’s vamps ended up here after escaping her tyranny. She has a terrible reputation for torturing her own vamps. They hate her.” I didn’t mention that my ex-boyfriend Gary was one of them. There was no way he’d allow Bathory to take Julius’s place without a fight. “Believe me, if Bathory was anywhere near this place, vampires would be ratting her out.”

“You would think so, but make no mistake, our sources say that Bathory’s ruthlessness is missed amongst the strongest and most brutal of vampires. It seems Julius has a reputation for following your rules. He doesn’t allow feeding on humans without consent. Bathory, on the other hand, encouraged and enabled it.” Silas shifted his feet and pointed emphatically at the floor. “If Julius does not return by the next full moon, his leadership will be challenged. Vampires will compete for his title and a new leader will rise from the ranks. It’s in our best interest that the leader chosen is from Julius’s camp.”

The lesser of two evils. Silas was right. If Bathory’s vamps took over the free coven, it would lay the groundwork for her return, and with a coven this size, Rick and I might not be able to get close enough to take her down. “How can I help?”

“Find Julius,” Silas said. “And Bathory.”

“I’m on it,” I said.

Rick took my elbow. “
We
are on it.”

His words burned. While I loved Rick, learning that he’d played Tabetha to get what he wanted didn’t set well with me. He’d effectively given up on our relationship without talking to me about it. I hadn’t had a chance to digest the storm of feelings I’d experienced today, but just now, that one tiny word
we
grated on my nerves.

“I need to talk to Gary,” I said.

“Sun’s down. I think he’s gone for the night,” Silas said.

I frowned, cursing under my breath. “Where’s his room?”

“Down the hall and to the right.” Silas motioned with his head.

With a nod in Silas’s direction, I muscled the door open and moved into the hall. Rick followed. I stopped short.

“Hey, maybe you should run patrol while I’m following up on Gary. If I catch up to him, he’ll be more open with me because of our history.”

Ricks expression hardened. “I don’t like you seeing him alone.”

I scoffed. “You of all people have no right to pull the jealousy card with me tonight.”

“Grateful …”

Blood boiling, I opened the floodgates. “No. Don’t try to downplay it, Rick. You can say you loved me, and I believe it. You can say you obtained the candle because you thought it was what I wanted, and I believe it. But what I don’t believe is that you weren’t attracted to her. I could see it in your eyes. And on some level, it made you feel like more of a man to know that another Hecate wanted you. You led her on. As much as you say you knew you would probably die, you also knew there was a chance you might survive, and you would have been happy to go to her if it hadn’t worked out between us, like some supernatural consolation prize.”