Stones Unturned (4 page)

It was best that his mother left Conan Doyle's house and headed home, especially after the kind of night it had been.

Now Danny was lying on his bed, trying to calm down. His head buzzed like he'd drunk five Red Bulls. He was even desperate enough to have attempted some of the relaxation techniques the psychiatrist he used to see had tried to teach him, but it didn't do a damn bit of good. All he could think about was the head shrink's gorgeously blond receptionist, sitting behind her desk, and what he would have liked to do to her.

Vivid images filled his mind, loaded with sex and violence — heavy on the violence. Danny recoiled, the scenes appearing in his head disturbing even to him.

Whoa, where'd they come from?
he wondered, sitting up in the bed, the sights inside his skull gradually beginning to fade, but not fast enough.

He guessed that this was all part of the transformation — of becoming what he was — and tried to play it down. Eve and Graves had been telling him all along that whatever his origins, he could choose to be whatever he wanted. Hell, Eve was a pretty damned good example of that.

He scratched vigorously at an extremely itchy patch of skin in the center of his chest. It felt even weirder than the thick scaly hide usually felt, and he got up from his bed and walked across to his bathroom. Flicking on the light, he winced. Bright light was starting to hurt his eyes. On the other hand, his night vision was awesome.

Danny squinted, adjusting to the brightness of the bathroom, and was finally able to look at himself in the medicine cabinet mirror.

What a piece of work,
he thought, gazing at his reflection with a mixture of disgust and awe. Every time he looked, there seemed to be something different. For example, he was certain that his horns had gotten longer since that morning.

The irritated patch of flesh on his chest called attention to itself again, and he lifted up his
Reservoir Dogs
T-shirt to get a look. Every inch of his exposed body appeared dried and irritated. It seemed like he was sloughing off his skin at least once a week, but the spot on his chest looked different somehow.

What's up with that?
He leaned in closer to the mirror as he poked and prodded at the area with a clawed finger. Something was growing in the center of his flesh. It was small, about the size of a grape, and if it weren't for the ridiculous itch, he probably wouldn't even have noticed it. It felt different than the rest of his changing skin; squishy, like it was filled with fluid. Danny was tempted try and tear it open. He pressed one of his claws into the little nodule, but then became distracted.

Distracted by a smell.

Danny tilted his horned head back and breathed it in. The scent wasn't from within the house. It came from outside. Leaving the bathroom and forgetting all about the weird growth on his chest, the teenager stood in the center of his room, the enticing aroma luring him. He walked to the door and stepped out into the hall. It was eerily quiet in the house. As far as he knew, nobody else was home.

Danny squinted, realizing that he could actually see the scent writhing in the air like smoke curling from a cigarette. He followed it to another set of stairs that led up to the brownstone's roof and began to climb them. The closer he got to the roof, the stronger the smell became.

Unlocking the heavy wooden door, carved with all manner of bizarre ancient symbols that he couldn't begin to decipher, Danny emerged onto the rooftop. A gust of cold November air blasted him, but he was undeterred. The scent was even stronger now, and he followed it across the rooftop. He sprang up onto the wall that ran around the roof perimeter, perching there, head tilted back, like some kind of living gargoyle.

The scent came from across the way, from a building on Mount Vernon Street, and more specifically, from her.

In the darkness, Danny smiled, feeling the teeth within his mouth grow. The cute girl that he'd seen a few times going in and out of the building over the last few weeks was standing on the steps down below. She was dressed in a leather jacket and a short black dress and was clutching a tiny purse. Waiting for somebody to pick her up, he imagined.

"Ain't it a little late to be goin' out now?" he asked the night, watching as she pulled up the sleeve of her coat to check the time.

Danny inhaled sharply, differentiating between all the different smells that filled the night air of Boston, until he found the one that he was looking for — the scent that had pulled him from his room onto the rooftop.

He had smelled the girl before — a mixture of perfume, body soap, and shampoo — but this was different. The other scents were all still there, perhaps even a bit stronger than usual, almost as if they were there to cover something up. But he could still smell the odor underneath it all, pungent and sharp. It took him a moment to realize exactly what it was.

The smell of blood; a woman's blood.

Danny smiled again, amused by what his heightened senses had revealed to him. He'd wanted to talk to the girl from the first time he'd seen her, but knew it was impossible. The way he looked, she'd probably start screaming the minute she laid eyes on him.

He saw the scenario play out in his head; him going out on the street to just say
hi,
and suddenly she'd be screaming, running into the house and slamming the door. By the time he made it back to Conan Doyle's, the sound of police sirens would be coming closer.

"Fucking bitch," he growled, the ever-present ball of anger inside him increasing in size as he raked his fingernails over the granite of the wall he was perched upon. He was tempted to jump down there; knowing full well that the fall wouldn't hurt him. It gave him pleasure just imagining the look on her pretty stuck-up face as he came at her, letting her know that he could smell her stink from inside his house.

The muscles in his legs tensed as he prepared to actually carry out what he was thinking, but a silver-gray BMW came roaring down the street, traveling way too fast, and came to a screeching halt in front of the girl's house.

She stood on the steps for a bit, arms crossed, pretending not to notice that her ride had arrived. The guy opened the door, coming around the car to escort her to the passenger side. He was pulling her close to him, whispering in her ear, and kissing on her neck. Danny couldn't quite make out the words, but he heard her call him an asshole. The guy just laughed, returning to the Beemer's driver's seat.

As they pulled away from the curb, tires squealing just to show anybody around how cool they were, Danny came to the conclusion that he didn't like them — the girl or her boyfriend — and had the overpowering desire to share that with them.

In a move that seemed perfectly rational to him at the moment, Danny leapt from Conan Doyle's brownstone, landing in a hunched crouch in the middle of Mount Vernon Street.

Pretty good jump,
he thought, sniffing the air, finding what he was looking for.

And he began to follow their scent.

CHAPTER TWO

Eve let the music of the dance club fill her, the rhythmic pulse of the loud, techno beat acting as a kind of surrogate heartbeat. It wasn't anything like having the real thing, throbbing around inside your chest, but in her situation, it would have to suffice.

It was hot inside Sultan's, the hottest new club on Lansdowne Street. Three hundred or so sweaty bodies moved to the music on the dance floor, and she was in the middle, pretending she was one of them, acting like she belonged. And for moments, here and there, as she allowed herself to get caught up in the music, she could almost believe.

But eventually something would come along to screw it up. Something always did.

Eve saw him across the room, an island of absolute stillness in a turbulent sea of gyrating bodies, and he was watching. She closed her eyes, wanting to lose herself in the pulsing beat, wanting to be part of this microcosm of humanity, even if it was just for a little while. Maybe he'd go away if she ignored him.

"You dance beautifully," said a cold, soft voice that somehow managed to be heard even over the blare of the club's sound system.

She opened her eyes to see that he was closer, less than two feet away. Eve doubted that the others could see him, but they still gave him space as he moved across the dance floor, unknowingly moving out of his path.

Jophiel
. He was part of the heavenly host, one of the Cherubim. Eve had not seen him since they had run into one another at a symposium in Tel Aviv on the forgotten books of the Old Testament. That had been five years ago, and the time before that . . .

Eve turned her back to him and tried to lose herself in the moment, hoping the physical act of dancing would keep the painful fragments of her memory at bay. It did not. In her mind's eye she saw Jophiel as she had the first time, so very, very long ago, wearing armor that seemed forged of the sun, brandishing a sword of fire. The beating of his powerful wings as he chased them out of the Garden had sounded like the end of the world.

And in a way, that was precisely what it had been.

"What do you want?" she asked the angel, continuing to dance.

Several people around her shot confused glances in her direction — obviously believing she was talking to them — and they moved away, allowing Jophiel to glide closer.

"It amuses me to see you here — among them." The angel smiled, and it was the most hideous thing she had ever seen. "What would they say, do you think, if they knew?"

Eve turned her back on him, directing her attention to a darkly handsome college guy dancing with an attractive blonde. It only took about a second for him to notice her. He danced closer, leaving the blonde to continue her dance alone.

"If they understood . . . truly understood who you are, and what you and your mate stole from them . . ." Jophiel whispered in her ear.

The angel's mere presence sickened her, dredged up within her all of the terror and anguish of her existence. All the regret. All the pain. Ignoring him simply wasn't going to work.

Eve continued dancing, but, masking the motion as part of her gyrations, she shot her elbow back hard, gauging the distance so that she would hit the angel's face. She'd anticipated a satisfying crunch. Fully manifested, angels could be hurt. They healed quickly, but it would still feel good to shatter Jophiel's nose or cheekbone.

The angel wasn't there. Her elbow shot backward, and she danced into its momentum. As she turned, she realized that she had nearly struck a heavyset bald man with glasses, who seemed oblivious to how close he had just come to dying. With her strength, that elbow would have shattered his skull.

Eve had no idea what had made Jophiel so obsessed with her. The angel took it upon himself to track her down every few centuries to remind her of the magnitude of her sins, as though he worried that she might, even for a moment, forget the horror she had caused and have a day or an hour without the weight of the world's guilt on her shoulders.

Really, he was just a whiny little shit.

As if she could ever forget who she was and what she had done. There were nights when the wind was just right and the sky clear and pure that she could close her eyes and still taste the sweetness of the forbidden fruit on her tongue and lips.

The original sin. The original crime. Yes, she was guilty. But she was just a toy, a puppet trapped in a tug-of-war between the Creator and Old Scratch. The Creator should have trusted her. If He'd not made her so ignorant, she would have known better than to fall for the serpent's lies.

Now here Jophiel was to remind her again, and all she wanted to do was scream at the angel and tear out his eyes. Hadn't she suffered enough? Driven out of the Garden, raped and tainted, turned into a monster. When was it enough? She was the mother of men and the mother of all vampires, but she had never wanted to be either. She had been innocent and desired nothing but the feel of her man beside her and the warmth and sunshine of the Garden.

Eve was Forsaken. That much was clear. The Creator would take no responsibility for the soul-destroying evils that had befallen her, turned her into what she had become. For so long afterward — after the demons had used her up and cast her out and she had become this thing — she had been a mad, ravenous thing, spreading the plague of vampirism. Now she did her best to eradicate it from the world, to destroy the monsters who were her children. She wanted — needed — to redeem herself, not in the Creator's eyes, but in her own.

And if that meant the Creator would forgive her, would open His arms and gates and let her in, all the better. That way, she could look into His eyes and ask why he had forsaken her.

Someday, she would know.

The Cherubim stood five feet away beneath a spinning disco ball, his eerily pallid features bathed in reflections of colored light.

"Could their simple little minds even grasp the enormity of what you stole — that you took Paradise from them?" Jophiel asked.

She locked eyes with him, allowing the intensity of the hate she felt for him, and for herself, to travel across the crowded floor.

Jophiel smiled then, and she knew that this time it was indeed an expression of pleasure, for he'd gotten exactly what he'd wanted from her —  exactly what he came for.

The angel slowly bowed his head and turned to disappear into the sea of bodies. She considered going after him, plowing through the dancers, fangs bared, but managed to restrain herself. The bastard would've probably enjoyed a tussle, not thinking twice about unleashing his full angelic fury on her among the club's patrons.

Eve seethed, her body trembling from the anger she was keeping bottled inside. No longer dancing, she had faltered at Jophiel's words and now could only stare at the place where the angel had been. Thanks to him, she could not stay here. Eve often took pleasure in losing herself among humanity, reveling in the scents of their blood and sweat, the sounds of their laughter. If she could sweat and bleed and laugh with them, then for a little while, she could feel human.