Ravenous (25 page)

"So, have you found an answer?"

"No. There's nothing special." Ben glared around him. "I don't get it."

You wouldn't
. "What do you want with Pierce?"

Ben's head jerked down as he averted his gaze. "He says he'll show me the sights."

A feeling of sick, impatient pity washed through Alessandro. "You think a tour of our cozy slice of hell will make you understand why Holly chose to be herself instead of turning into a female clone of you? Did you think perhaps you should love her for who she is?"

Ben didn't reply, but took another pull at his drink.

"Go home, Elliot. You won't like what Pierce has to show you, and I don't want Holly reading your obituary. In fact, I'd rather she never thought about you again."

He peeled the rum and Coke out of Ben's hand and hauled him off the bar stool. He could afford to be generous with Ben Elliot. Ben was of no account.

With Perry's help, he got the professor into a cab. The young werewolf left at the same time, catching the last bus in a drizzling rain.

Alessandro stood outside Sinsation, searching for the threads of his thoughts. It was two in the morning. About an hour ago he had been planning to go in search of Mac. There was still time to get something done.

"Where did Elliot go?"

Alessandro recognized Pierce's voice. Irritated, he turned. "He was drunk and obviously didn't know what he was doing. But then, you were quite aware of that."

"You think I was going to show him a good time?"

"That's what he thought."

"Huh. Okay."

"Am I wrong?"

"What else would I be doing?"

Good question
. But maybe he was reading too much into the remark.
Pierce is drunk, too
. Alessandro was faintly impressed. It took a helluva lot of alcohol to get a vampire intoxicated. Pierce's condition showed years of dedication and practice.

"I didn't offer the professor a refund," Alessandro said, guessing it was cash he had seen change hands.

"His money's already spent." Pierce gave an acid smile. "Texas Hold 'Em can be damned slippery. There were some arrears."

"Elliot deserves a fine for his stupidity." And so did Pierce, who was well-known for his gaming debts.

"Why do you care what happens to the professor? He's an ass."

True
. Alessandro lit a cigarette. "Why do you care so little?"

"Because I'm despicable. It keeps things simple."

"And you like to degrade yourself."

"It's my business. Not yours. Not the queen's. I'm just selling what she doesn't want. Who knew it had cash value?"

"It hurts her to watch, you know."

"That's the point."

Alessandro laughed.

"Is that funny?"

"I was really depressed tonight. Then I started talking to other people."

"Whatever. I need a drink." Pierce wandered back inside, his stride unsteady.

Alessandro looked out at the night, marveling.
Everything looks impossible between Holly and me, but maybe there's hope yet. At least we're not insane. That's got to count for something
.

Finally left to get on with his night, Alessandro pulled out his cell and turned it on. He'd switched it off before going into St. Andrew's cemetery.

His stomach turned cold.

He had five messages from Omara, all thirty minutes apart.

What now?

On Tuesdays Holly had two midmorning classes: Marketing and Financial Accounting. She went because she had no idea what else to do, but it was a waste of time. Lectures on income statements and product distribution faded to a drone of white noise. She squirmed in the hard wooden seat, uncomfortable and overheated.

Memories of the night before crashed like a surf, over and over, filling her mind's eye and heating her blood. Images of Alessandro touching her—she could still feel the imprint of his fingers on her flesh—were infinitely more stirring than any fantasy. He was right: She would not forget her night with him. Ever.

And that was without his biting her.
How is it possible that he didn't? Holy Goddess, what would it be like if he had
?

Holly drifted from one building to the next, climbing stairs and fumbling textbooks, wrapped in her private drama. The faces of the other students bobbed by, irrelevant as pigeons.
I'm useless. Maybe he skipped the blood and took my brain instead
.

Holly gave herself a mental head slap. She needed to take control, focus on things that needed her energy. For one thing, the attack by changelings meant they hadn't raised so much as a wisp of a ghost. As a result, they knew nothing more about the demon or the stolen book.

Just before they went into the Flanders house, Alessandro had asked her to use a tracking spell to find out who was casting summoning spells in his client's warehouse. That gave her an idea.

After classes she took a walk to St. Andrew's cemetery. Although it had been crawling with ghouls and changelings the night before, at midday they would be tucked up in their beds. Even demons slowed down a bit in daytime, so she gambled that a solo trip would be safe in sunlit hours.

Not that there was much sun to speak of. That afternoon it poured in fine Pacific Northwest fashion, an uninhibited downpour that brought arks and pairs of animals to mind.

Her aim was to find the area where they were supposed to meet Macmillan, in the oldest part of the graveyard. She was betting the location was significant. Doggedly she trudged up to the iron fence and away from the path, gum boots miring in the soft earth as she worked her way between the graves. The sunken plots were filled with a skim of rainwater, just enough to splash as more drops came down. Holly read the headstones, thinking how cold and dank the earth would feel around her bones. She sneezed, inhaling rain.

Time to get busy before she caught pneumonia. Holly turned in a semicircle, her senses open to energetic disturbances—restless ghosts or the cosmic thumbprint of a possible portal. Holly's boots, long coat, and umbrella made the movement clumsy, their bulk forcing her to move as one unbendable unit. Sinking into the waterlogged turf, her feet moved with a sound like the Swamp Thing taking an ooze bath. Good thing psychic investigation didn't demand fashion points.

Then she stopped thinking about anything but the coppery taste of fear.

The demon was here.

She could feel the echo of its presence, but diffused, the same way one could tell a smoker had passed through a room. What she was looking for was more specific—the actual cigarette. That was harder. There was a spell fogging the energy, much the same as the cloaking spell that had hidden the ghouls and changelings from psychic view.

The energy seemed to settle on a grave to her left—old, unkempt, and spacious. The headstone had been smashed, probably by kids. With umbrella in one hand, she held the other above the grave, feeling for any unusual energy signatures. The technique involved just scanning the surface, looking for the memory of who and what had passed that way. It was easy, painless work that took more subtlety than force, but the slow process worked better without spectators. Alone, Holly could take all the time required to do a good job.

Necromancy—or rather, the dead it raised—might give specific answers, but that was useful only if you knew the right questions. This would give Holly a snapshot. If she was lucky, maybe she'd get some background as to what the hell was going on.

At first there was nothing, just the mute knowledge of the earth and grass. Beneath that there was the shadow of the buried woman, a young mother taken a century ago by the weakness in her lungs. She was nothing but a wisp of memory, her soul long moved on to a new life. She was one of the good dead, the peaceful dead. No demons there. The cloaking spell had pointed Holly the wrong way, but she'd caught it in the act.

Gotcha.

Holly searched outward, her mind probing, ranging in larger and larger circles that spiraled out from the woman's grave. There was no feeling of disturbance. How much was the spell hiding from her sight?

Then she felt
something
, like a cold finger down the back of her neck. Clumsy in her rain gear, she turned. In her mind's eye she saw a memory shadow, a residual imprint of a night not long ago. In the memory changelings were passing by, hurrying to join a group of others who were bowing down, cowering, terrified. Changelings and someone else—a man or a vampire—backlit by torches, reading from a book. Strange gear—sickle knives, torches, bottles made of colored glass—littered the ground around them. The smell of blood and ichor.

The trappings of ritual
, Holly thought.
Not a nice ritual
.

The summoning ritual? Was that book the one Alessandro was after?

Then the image flickered to nothing. Holly dropped her hand, now soaked from the cuff down.

The ritual in the vision had taken place a dozen feet away, right in front of a tall stone angel with upstretched wings. Holly shifted uneasily, and a flood of water sheeted from the edge of her umbrella. A shiver coursed over her limbs, half cold and half creepiness.

The angel was just a grave marker, but it made a perfect focus for the ritual. The changelings had made it represent whatever it was that they desired.
The angel became a demon
.

Holly took a few steps forward, still searching the ground with her mind. Her senses were filled with the tang of damp cedar and wet earth, the drumroll of the rain on her umbrella, but she could find nothing more. As she approached the angel, nothing became less than nothing. The edges of the area's shield were detectable by only the subtlest probing.

Holly sought more carefully now, teasing out one fact, then another, like silver tinsel lost in the grass. Thoughts, ideas, things that the participants of the ritual had known.

Yes, this was where the summonings had taken place. They started in the warehouse of Alessandro's client, but the last, most elaborate, and ultimately successful rituals had happened where she stood. No wonder Mac—or whoever was giving him orders—had tricked her and Alessandro into coming here. This was a place of evil power.

A scattering of junk covered the feet of the angel, telling the tale.
Offerings
. Holly bent, poking in the mud with one cold finger. Candle stubs. Half-burned tablets of incense. Miniature liquor bottles—either libations or party favors. There were a few round metal disks about the size of coins. Holly picked one up, holding the disk to catch the rainy daylight. The metal was stamped with the figure of a man with a lyre.

She didn't know what it was, but it must have significance. She slipped it into her pocket, eyeing the stained, chipped features of the angel as she did so.
Creepy
. The blank stone gaze gave away nothing, but she could feel malevolence coming off it in waves.

The consciousness of the place knew she was there. Magic stirred beneath her, an attack dog getting to its feet. The cloaking spell wanted her gone.

Crap
. Holly backed away from the grave as fast as the mud allowed, turning only when she had made it a few yards away. Her feet managed a slurping trot until she was well out of the graveyard.

Well, that was interesting
. She had assumed the demon was calling the shots. Maybe it was now but, in her vision, it was the hideous quasi-vampires who had desired the spell. The man with the book was no more than a technician. The changelings had opened the portals to call others of their kind. They had raised the army of ghouls. Only then did they summon the big demon guns.

What did the changelings want? Were they planning another revolt against the vampires?

Holly could imagine it all now: She pictured the dreadful creatures, uncool social outcasts hanging out in somebody's basement, sucking back the vampire equivalent of cheese puffs and beer and dreaming of vengeance. Now they had a demon, a supernatural bully to kick sand in the face of the queen who sneered at them. No doubt they'd bitten off far more than—No, she thought. No biting analogies where vamps were concerned.

But who was the guy with the book?

Someone was working with them. The summoner, surely, but it definitely didn't feel as though he were in charge. The energy he gave off in the vision was much more subdued.

She had to tell Alessandro. She hitched up her sleeve to look at her watch. It was just past one. There were still hours to go before any vampire would be up. The only thing she could do right now was get home, where it was safe.

As her feet splashed through the puddles, her right boot started to leak.

"Holly!"

She turned, just in the process of opening the front door. Mac was hurrying up the walk, the collar of his raincoat turned up. "Where have you been?" he asked. "It's long past lunchtime."

What's he doing here
? "Did we have a date?"

"I think we should." His hair was damp, rain glistening in the dark waves, his eyes alight with warmth.

Her hackles rose as he climbed the porch steps.
He lured us to the attack in the cemetery last night
—
but he doesn't know I know that. Or does he? Did he see us fighting the ghouls? Did he watch while we kissed
?

Mac was carrying two paper grocery bags, one with each arm.

"What have you got there?" she asked, forcing a friendly tone into her voice.
Is he the one the changelings worked with to open the portals
? The silhouette she had seen in her vision looked different, but she couldn't be certain. How could she find out?

By luring him in. Gaining his confidence.

"I brought food." Following at Holly's heels, he set his two bags on the floor of the entryway and bent to take off his wet shoes. "We had such a good time the other night that I thought we could do it again."

The night I can't remember. Did he have something to do with that
? Holly's skin crawled. "How could we possibly top that?"