Dark and Stormy Knights

ROOKWOOD & MRS. KING by LILITH SAINTCROW

“I need to kill my husband.”

Rookwood set the bottle of Scotch on his desk with a precise little click. His teeth were tingling, and he regretted climbing out of bed, not to mention agreeing to meet her so close to dusk. He hadn’t had time for his daily jolt of red stuff. “I think you’ve got the wrong man, lady.”

Rookwood’s rent was due in a week. He was on his last legs as far as funding went. It was foolish to turn away work, even this kind; but when possible, he preferred to err on the side of caution.

She had money, too. Real money. Her shoes—high-end walking numbers—the fashionable gym-toned slimness, French manicure, and the haircut gave away the size of her bank account, but upper-middle-class suburbia was all over her. There was one like her in every minivan in America. This one had nicer breasts than most, big brown eyes, long, glossy brown hair, a pink T-shirt, and jeans. All she needed were 2.5 kids and a golden retriever to finish the picture.

“Not according to Detective Molstein.” She leaned forward a little. That long brown hair fell over her shoulder. She used expensive shampoo. Something with cloves in it.

Damn you, Mole. What did I ever do to you? Rookwood couldn’t settle in the chair behind the desk just yet. Instead, he looked up at the window with its thick iron bars. Rain slapped at the glass, and the night sighed as traffic on Lombard sent splashes of headlight glow through the lattice of blinds. “I don’t care who sent you, lady. You’ve got the wrong man.”

Her lips parted, and the flash of pearly-sharp white in his peripheral vision was all wrong. A burning smell slid across his nose, a tang under her brunette spice.

No wonder the inside of his mouth was tingling. If she smelled like that, there was only one possible explanation. Rookwood’s weight sank onto his right leg, his entire body subtly braced. This is either what I’ve been waiting for or very bad luck.

“You don’t understand, Mr. Rookwood. My husband . . . he’s already dead.” Her shoulders slumped. “Detective Molstein believed me. He said you’d help me.”

He half turned, facing her. Her manicured hand pulled down the scoop neckline of the T-shirt. Her bra was plain and white, the strap cutting into her shoulder, and the deep, glaring red purple bruise on the upper slope of her left breast was as plain as it could be. There were two holes in the middle of the bruising, white and worn-looking.

She was shaking. Her eyes looked even bigger with tears filling them, and his heart thumped twice. This was what he’d been waiting for, it and bad luck at the same time.

Rookwood dropped his rangy frame into the chair behind the desk. Paper crackled and rustled as he poured her a jolt of Scotch and wished he could take a slug of something strong himself. The sensitivity in his canines retreated a little, but his tongue found the sharp places before he took a deep breath and forced some calm. “All right. Pull your shirt up, ma’am, and tell me everything.”

Her name was Amelia King. Thirty on the nose, settled in the suburbs with a husband and a house. They were planning on kids, and she spent her time being the good little wifey, shopping and keeping the house—and herself—trim and clean. Hubby contented himself with making money as a lawyer with Briggs, Fann, and Chisholm.

Mr. King was an up-and-coming criminal defense tightrope walker, successful enough that he was looking at making partner soon.

Which meant he would have security access to the office building downtown. Rookwood’s eyebrow rose a little, but he didn’t say anything. That was probably, he realized later, his mistake.

He should have come clean with her from the beginning.

But by that point she was crying openly. It wasn’t much—a slow trickle from both big, brown, bloodshot, and dark-circled eyes. Her makeup was good, but it couldn’t hold up to that constant leak.

She had no idea anything was wrong until the afternoon she returned from grocery shopping and found out hubby had come home early for once, and in a big way. He’d hung himself with his belt over the banister. Hell of a job he did of it, too. Broke his neck and everything.

Three nights after the funeral, after Amelia had cried herself to sleep again, he’d come back.

“There was a tapping at the window.” She shivered. “I thought I was dreaming.”

The rain swept Rookwood’s window restlessly. His teeth ached, and the bottle of Scotch looked really good. The thought of the canister of red stuff in his minifridge looked even better. “Let me guess. You saw him floating outside. Just bobbing up and down like a balloon.”

“You . . .” Amelia swallowed dryly. She didn’t ask how he knew. It was a stupid question, and maybe she realized it. “It was his eyes.” The color had drained from her face, shadows under her cheekbones turned her gaunt.

“They glowed red.” Rookwood leaned back in his chair. “Are you a churchgoing woman, Mrs. King?”

Her hands tightened in her lap. “No. We were married in front of a judge.”

He waited. An unnecessary detail like that meant there was more to the story. He had trouble keeping his pulse even and steady. This is it. Don’t scare her off. Play this one right, Rookwood.

The traffic outside made wet, shushing noises, and car light ran over the room in waves. The green-shaded lamp didn’t light more than a pool on the desktop. Her eyes glittered a little in the gloom, slowly leaking tears.

Each one was a fresh little nugget of guilt, for him. It was hard to sit still when he wanted to pace.

“My mother was Catholic,” Mrs. King amended slowly. “I thought of going to a priest, but . . .”

“But hubby’s already bitten you, and you didn’t ask too many questions the first time he came in the window. Naturally. Because he’s your husband.”

The first surprise was that her chin came up, and the second was the flash in those brown eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Uh-oh. The front legs of his chair thudded down on the floor. He scooped up a pad of paper and a pen he was fairly sure would work. “Write down the cemetery he’s in, location of the grave, and his exact name—first, middle, last. The fee’s ten thousand. Half now, half when he stops showing up at your window.”

Her hands moved nervously. She didn’t say a goddamn thing about the money. Instead, she went right for the throat. “Will . . . that . . . make the dreams go away?”

“What dreams?” Rookwood asked, but he knew. The same dreams that rocketed around inside his skull every time he settled down on his cot. The red-tinted, hot, squirming little dreams that filled his mouth with saliva and the fresh copper tang, instead of the pale, dead substitute he held the Thirst off with.

God, yes, he knew. Did she want the bad news now or later?

Later, Rook. After she’s paid you.

She shook her head. “If you’re going to treat me like I’m stupid—”

His entire mouth ached, and the crackling in his jaw was clearly audible. He leaned forward into the desk lamp’s glow, knowing it would etch the shadows on his face even deeper. It would gleam along the lines of the sharpening, lengthening canines and fill his eyes with a flat, reflective shine. He hadn’t had his daily dose, and she smelled good—except for the edge of burning to the scent of woman, perfume, and red salt copper.

The edge of burning that tainted his own smell.

His lips peeled back from his teeth. She choked on whatever she’d intended to say next. Under the splash of car tires outside was a nervous, high thudding; it was her pulse tearing through the air of the room and touching his sensitive eardrums.

His mouth ached fiercely as he pulled the Thirst back, the rope he held it on fraying as the sun slipped away over the horizon. His canines retracted, too, his jaw crackling once again. When he was sure he wouldn’t cut his tongue on the sharp edges, he spoke. “The dreams don’t ever stop. But if my . . .” The words stuck in his throat. “If my treatment is successful, they won’t get any worse—and neither will you. That I can promise you, Mrs. King.”

Her rib cage almost fluttered with sharp, sipping breaths. The sweat along the curves of her throat stood out in diamond drops. Her shirt was now damp, and the fresh wave of clove-tinted scent about knocked him sideways.

He’d always wondered what would happen if someone with his particular problem came along. It would be a key to the bigger problem, of course. But he’d wondered what the Thirst might do.

“Am I going to look like . . . that?” She stared at him as though he’d just done something obscene.

Well, he just had. Hadn’t he?

“I don’t know.” He pressed his fingertips together. His mouth didn’t want to work right, wanted to slur the words around as if he were drunk. The Thirst pressed its sharp prickles against the inside of his throat. Soon it would spread over his whole body, and only the red stuff would make it retreat. “But I’ll give you some advice. Get some raw meat from the supermarket and suck on it. The bloodier the better, or tell your butcher you want blood for blood pudding. It’s the only thing that kills that feeling in your throat, and it quiets the dreams down, at least for a while. And that’s all you’re getting for free, Mrs. King.”

Yeah, he was a son of a bitch. But he wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it.

Shady Hope Cemetery and Remembrance Home wasn’t hallowed ground, for all they buried people here and spoke empty words over them. Hallowed ground would have made the dead sleep a little more quietly.

As it was, anything could rise from these graves. In the last six months, Rookwood had gained a thorough education in just how weird and fluid the borders between life and undeath were and an even more thorough education in how someone who didn’t mind a little weirdness could possibly make a living around the edges.

But this was the prize. This was the thing he’d been waiting for since that night of blood and screaming and Chisholm’s fangs in his throat.

As soon as he stepped on the grounds he smelled it, the dry burning rat-fur reek of particular contamination. He’d grown used to the varied and insanely ugly smells drifting across his nasal receptors at the slightest provocation, ever since he’d fought off—

Don’t think about that. You’re on a job, you’ve taken the nice lady’s money, let’s get this dog-and-pony show started.

Caution was called for. It could be a trap.

He stayed where he was, boots planted solidly on wet concrete. Behind him, the yellow-painted bar that was supposed to keep out cars and people rattled in the rain-soaked wind. His sweatshirt jacket was already soaked through.

The cold meant nothing. He was used to it. He still ran at a perfect 98.6, but external changes in temperature had ceased to matter as the Thirst got stronger. Tiny increments of burning inched through him every day, nibbling at the edges of his sanity.

That was another mental road he didn’t want to go down. Instead, he decided the cemetery was safe enough and got to work.

Amelia’s hand-drawn map was exact, committed to memory, and destroyed. He’d also spent a little time looking at satellite photos of the cemetery’s green mournfulness. It would have given him the shivers to see how anyone with a laptop and a connection could cruise the city, but the things no satellite photo would show were still safe.

Like the thing he was hunting. Or the things that had made the widow’s dearly beloved into a monster.

The grave was right where she’d said it would be. He read the name in the wet, dim glimmer, a nice white marble headstone. The widow certainly hadn’t skimped.

Rookwood stood a good three or four feet away from where the corpse’s feet would rest and sniffed deeply at the wet air.

The smell was fading. Mr. King was out visiting. When he came back home, he’d find a surprise.

A faint smile clung to Rookwood’s face, his flesh stiff against the bones. He took the last few steps forward, set the edge of the shovel against the wet turf, and began to dig.

The first faint gray streaks of dawn found him showered and in dark sunglasses, parked in a nice suburban neighborhood. Led Zeppelin was pouring out life through the speakers of his rusted Cadillac. It was a good car, but stood out like a sore thumb here in the land of minivans and SUVs. Still, it ran like a dream. And with the mods under the hood, he could outrun just about anything. He couldn’t quite beat the devil, but it was close.

He waited for “Dazed and Confused” to moan out its last few beats and later thought that if he’d just gone to meet the widow a little earlier, instead of at dawn as agreed, everything would have turned out differently.

The newborn edge of morning sun was struggling up over the rim of the earth, peeking through scudding clouds, as he slammed the car door and hitched the duffel bag onto his shoulder. Jeans, army jacket, boots—he didn’t match the neighborhood, either. It made his back itch. He was used to blending in.

In his slices of the city, that kept you alive.

Rookwood scooped the paper drink carrier off the roof and set out for the widow’s front door. The daylight, weak as it was, was a painful glare even behind the shades.

Nice house, white with two stories, green shutters, and a good lawn. Looked as if she’d planted primroses early this year and lavender a few years back. That was good. One lavender bush was worth ten or twelve crucifixes when it came to the—

Rookwood stopped, frowning.

The cedar green front door was open a crack. He couldn’t have seen it from the street, but six feet from the door it was a wrong note in the newborn symphony of day.

“Shit,” he muttered, and strode up the walk. He hit it with the palm of his free hand, and the door jerked, stopped halfway on its arc by something soft.

Amelia King lay on the floor in the hall. The door had hit her on the head, and her long, glossy brown hair was tangled. She was paper white, in a tattered gray T-shirt and shorts that she probably slept in, and if he hadn’t been able to hear the faint whisper of her struggling pulse, he might have thought she was dead.

The entire house reeked of ash and undead. Jesus Christ. What the hell’s this?

But he knew. The bait had been taken, sooner than he’d thought.

He pushed the door closed and locked it, then knelt at her side. The coffee went on a tiny, spindly decorative hall table. The vase that had probably been sitting there last night was on the floor. He could see how she would have blundered into it, knocking a spray of dried flowers to the floor and smashing something china blue to flinders.

She was taking in little shallow breaths, her lips blue and the rest of her chalky.

“Fuck.” The duffel unzipped with a screaming sound, and the insulated chill-pack crumpled aside as he grabbed the plastic bottle. Three or four quick shakes to get everything mixed together, and he checked her teeth. There wasn’t time for a transfusion, but if she wasn’t far enough along yet—

Reflex snapped her sharp white teeth together, and he almost lost a fingertip. Rookwood snatched his hand back and grabbed her jaw. He jammed the nozzle between her blue lips and gave the bottle a gentle half-squeeze.

“Come on, kiddo,” he whispered. “Come on. It’s instinct, don’t fight it. Come on.”

She went rigid for a moment. Some shred of human decency was fighting for its life, and he found himself wishing it would win and hoping it would lose at the same time. Even when it was clinging to survival, there were some things the human animal wouldn’t do.

Like drinking the red stuff. He’d given up wondering if it made someone better or worse to get rid of the idea that there were some things you wouldn’t do even to survive.

Her lips fastened on the bottle and she guzzled greedily. The sharp points of her extended canines punctured the plastic and she tilted her head a little. The burning smell got stronger as the cold red fluid slid down her throat.

“That’s a girl. . . . Good girl.” But his eyes scanned the hall. He slid the sunglasses off carefully, blinked a few times, and found it was bearable. Visual acuity was a boon at night, but not so good inside a house with the lights on.

She made a choking noise. Her eyes flew open, and he grabbed her, shoved the spout of the bottle in as far as it would go, and squeezed. She swallowed most of the rest in a huge painful gush, then feebly tried to push him away.

“Quit it. This’ll stop the Thirst.” He gave the bottle another squeeze, and it burbled in her throat. Her arms stiffened, then she gulped and pushed at him again. Her pulse came back, the doors of her heart slamming solidly shut and then thudding open.

It was damn near miraculous.

“When was he here?” He restrained the urge to shake her. “When, goddammit?”

The bottle fell away from her mouth, hit the polished hardwood floor. Her lips were still cyanotic, but she blinked and an unhealthy flush crept up her cheeks. “What?”

“When did he come back?”

Sense returned to her dark, swimming gaze. “I was asleep. On the couch.” The gray T-shirt gaped open, torn over her chest.

Rookwood felt the urge to look down. Those breasts were worth a peek or two, even if she did have suburbia all over her. But wherever his gaze wandered, all he saw were the bruises and the fang marks. There was more than one set, and he wondered how many she had on other parts of her body. The ones on her right breast looked fresh, the edges not worn away and whitened. There was a pin-thin scraping along the border of one perky little nipple, as though a fang had slipped.

Rookwood realized he was staring at her chest. It gave him a funny unsteady feeling, as though he’d been caught peeking in her window.

Christ. Bruised all over; and hubby wasn’t too happy last night, either. He tore his eyes away, carefully watched her nose instead, her eyes, the sharp, pearly teeth. Her canines had retracted. A good sign. Her irises were still brown, too—no threading of reflective crimson. And her smell was only tainted, not dipped in the ash and buried. He let out a shaky half-breath.

The widow was proving to be full of surprises.

“There was . . . he was . . . he was angry. Furious. He came in and . . .” The shakes hit her, and Rookwood let up a little on her shoulders. His thumbs wanted to move, little soothing motions, but he pushed the urge down. “God. God.”

God doesn’t help, babe. If He did, we’d be in a better position down here. “I owe you a partial refund.” The words scorched his throat. “I didn’t think he’d’ve prepared a place here. Most of the young ones don’t think that far ahead.” Still, they’re organized here. Other towns, they can’t even cooperate enough to wipe their asses.

Here, they were in a nice, neat little hierarchy. It was an evolution he was hoping wouldn’t spread.

Her hand flew up. For a split second he thought she was going to slap him, but instead her fingers clapped over her mouth and she began to scrub at her lips, weakly, as if something there burned her.

A lump in the middle of Rookwood’s chest was doing funny things. Like aching. It wasn’t the Thirst, it was something else entirely. Amelia King looked up at him, and she peeled her fingers away from her mouth long enough to surprise him again.

“He’s in the basement,” she whispered. “You shouldn’t be here. If he finds out I’ve hired you, he’ll . . .”

She was probably about to say “kill me” but must have realized how that would sound. Ridiculous on the one hand, terrifying on the other. Or maybe she was about to say “kill you” and stopped.

Stopped dead. A grim smile touched Rookwood’s lips. His face felt wooden.

“It’s day, and he’s a newbie. He can’t do a damn thing. We can, because we’re only halfway to where he is.” Reciting the rules to a woman was a new experience, and one he discovered he hated. But duty called. “The basement. Is there bare dirt down there, or concrete?” Bare dirt would be problematic, but this was the burbs. He was betting on concrete.

Her eyelids fluttered. She swallowed audibly, and her lips were slowly losing the blue tinge. “C-concrete. But—”

I didn’t have time for a transfusion, dammit. She’s only halfway instead of all the way because I did the best thing possible. He wished his conscience would believe it and leave him alone. “I didn’t think he’d come back here. I thought he’d be caught out in the dawn.” He was repeating himself, didn’t care. “Go upstairs. Take a shower. By the time you’re done, I’ll have everything fixed down here. Okay?”

Amazingly, she laughed. It was a thin, hysterical sound. “Go upstairs? Are you out of your mind?” She grabbed at the front of his faded green jacket with surprising strength, and Rookwood instinctively shifted his weight back. “Listen to me. Listen. He wasn’t alone.”

He lost his balance and thumped down hard, his teeth clicking together as his ass hit the floor. His pulse leapt like a fish going after a juicy water bug. “How many?”

“J-just one. The two of them. You have to leave—it’s his boss.” Then, the crowning absurdity: “He’s a partner.”

All the better. He couldn’t believe his luck. “Which one? Briggs or Chisholm?”

She stared at him as though he’d lost his mind. He supposed it wasn’t too far from the truth. “You . . .”

“Fann doesn’t leave the offices, I know that much. Which one is in the basement with him, Briggs or Chisholm?”

“How did you—” Then she shut her mouth over the question, knowledge leaping behind those dark eyes. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. It was looking as if Amelia King were too smart by half. “Who the hell are you, really?” Flatly, calmly, and her mouth turned into a tight line.

How do I even begin explaining? “Just call me a knight in busted armor, lady. I’m here to do some cleaning up.”

She didn’t want to take a shower, but the ruin of her T-shirt convinced her to get changed. He should have started while she was upstairs and had it halfway done by the time she came back down.

Instead, he had her stove going and eggs sizzling in a pan. The morning had turned out fine, sun up and patchy fog burning off. The kitchen was bright, open, airy, and indefensible thanks to all that glass—French doors were a security nightmare. He’d already barred the door down to the basement with a long, half-dried vine of wild rose and three silver dollars as well as a splash of holy water. Nothing undead was going to come through there, especially up into a sun-drenched kitchen.

His shades were back on, and he didn’t like how glad he was that they hid his eyes. “You need some protein,” he said when he heard her breathing in the doorway to the hall. “Eggs go down easy. So does toast. Other stuff, not so much.”

Mrs. King apparently didn’t want to talk about breakfast. “I want to know exactly what’s going on here.”

Isn’t it obvious? I’m fixing your problem for reasons of my own, not just because you paid me. “I brought you a latte. It’s on the counter. I figure if you don’t want it, I’ll add some chocolate and drink it myself.”

“I don’t want fucking coffee. I want some answers.”

“Okay.” He slid the eggs out of the pan and onto a blue china plate. The toaster obediently popped up the last two slices of bread he’d found in the kitchen. Her fridge was almost empty. She probably had other things on her mind than grocery shopping. “They’re a small club. They have to be, because if they spread, they would suck a city dry in a short time. Nature’s got her own way of making sure the predator doesn’t overpower the prey completely. And you told me what law firm he worked for. He must’ve been a bright one, and ruthless, too.”

The fight didn’t go out of her, but she deflated a bit. “Robert was very good at his job. I don’t see how that—”

“They look for the bright ones, the hungry ones. You start out as a daylight henchman, and if you’re ruthless and lucky enough—or if you have something they want—you get offered more.” He spread some of the health-conscious soy margarine crap on the toast, sliced it neatly into quarters, and turned around with the plate in his hand. “They invest a lot in each serious protégé. Whoever was with him was probably the one to bring him into the fold. Was it Briggs or Chisholm?”

She had to clear her throat before her voice would work. “It was Harry. Harold Briggs.”

“If it makes you feel better, they left you for dead this morning. The sunlight coming in from the window over the door would have hit your dead body in midafternoon and made sure you didn’t rise tonight.” He set the plate on the tiled breakfast bar with a precise little click and dared to look up at her. “Eat something. I’m going to go down into the basement and fix this problem for you, and then—”

“What exactly are you going to do, Mr. Rookwood?” She folded her arms, not mollified in the least but willing to listen. She wore a white button-down shirt, jeans, and a fancy pair of flip-flops. She’d buttoned the shirt up all the way, though, but the casual look she was going for wasn’t quite working. Her mouth was too tight, and the marks of strain around her eyes robbed her of easiness.

She had the sleeves all the way down and buttoned, too. He wondered again how many marks she had. Usually the new ones fed from only one place. It was only the ones who wanted to hurt who found fresh flesh to bite each time.

Or maybe she’d been passed around a little. It wasn’t uncommon. What woman would talk about it, if she had been? Provided she lived to talk about it.

Still. Careful and cautious had saved his life before. Getting all worked up over this widow was a bad idea. “I mean I am going to find out if the older one is still awake and moving around—a daywalker. If he is, I’m going to shoot him first, then ram a stake through his chest and cut off his head. Then I’m going to find where your husband’s sleeping, and ram a stake through his chest and cut off his head. Once the spinal cord’s severed, the body will turn to dust in a few hours. Then I make sure no more of them can take up residence in your basement and warn you to sell your house soon. I maybe take a look at some of your husband’s paperwork, and then I’m on my merry way.”

“And then what?” She didn’t even look at the plate between them, eggs congealing and toast turning into a slab of cold overprocessing. He didn’t blame her and tried not to look at the way sunlight picked out chestnut in her hair. “What am I supposed to do?”

“I’d suggest leaving town. If Chisholm and Fann find out you’re still alive, you’re going to have problems.” His stomach rumbled unhappily. If she wasn’t going to go for the eggs, he would.

Maybe after he finished up downstairs.

“And that’s it?” That quick, hurtful intelligence in her big, beautiful browns was like a missing manhole cover—a man could drop into those eyes and break an axle easily enough.

“This is what you paid me for. I’ll refund a quarter of the fee for your trouble.” It was the least he could do, and he hated that, too. “I’m going to be leaving town soon myself. Once I’ve done what I set out to do.”

“Which is what? Who are you, really?”

Explaining to her wasn’t getting him anywhere. “I’m the man you hired to get rid of your dead husband, ma’am. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get to work. You might hear some noise and smell some funky stuff, but it’ll be over soon.”

Stairs. God, but he hated open-frame wood stairs. Down one step at a time, the UV handheld not shaking and the modified .45 steady in his other hand. The column of blue light from the UV cut the gloom, and the smell was enough to make him think of retching before his nose shut down. It still coated the back of his throat and touched the place where the Thirst lived. The shades were safe in a pocket, his eyes adjusting to the gloom.

Out here in suburbia the houses had yards to insulate them, and down in a basement half-underground . . . nobody would hear the shots. Don’t worry about that. Keep your mind on your work; this is the oldest one you’ve gone after so far, and they’re tricky. Very tricky. And if he gets loose somehow and gets back to Chisholm . . .

It was a pointless worry. With the sun up, both of the things were trapped here in the basement. They couldn’t leave.

It didn’t mean Rookwood would survive a tangle with a daywalker in a dark basement, without sunlight on his side. Best to be cautious. But God, how he hated open stairs like this.

He paused halfway down. The basement was open and dark as a new grave, a line of white banker’s boxes stacked down the side near the stairs, all of them labeled in a clear schoolgirl hand. Some pieces of furniture under sheeting, standing dumb and quiet under the lash of blue UV when he slid the light across them. A couch, looked like. Maybe a desk. A rocking chair. Another bulky object, looming at the far end.

The fine hairs on the back of his neck rose. Rookwood swept the light one more time, decided not to shift his weight. He was waiting.

Of course, the only place for them to hide—the logical place—was behind the stairs. The husband would be insensate from before dawn to just after dusk, but Briggs was much older. He could easily be a daywalker. He wouldn’t be able to stand the UV or a flood of sunlight, but he could very well—

The sound was very slight, a rustle of fabric against itself. Rookwood dived, twisting in midair as the stairs shattered. He’d prepared for this, having taken down a load of the red stuff before dawn as he sat in his Cadillac. It burned in his veins as the Thirst pulled at his body. The red tide crawled up his vision, and he landed jarring hard on concrete, arm up and the UV burning a smokelash stripe across the creature’s face. The gun spoke, a deafening roar.

Anything less than a .45 didn’t have any stopping power. The hollow points would mushroom and spread a load of tiny silver grains at the same time, and if he hit anything in the core, the resultant damage could bleed one of the beasts out in seconds.

Smoke. Reek. The gush of black, brackish fluid that passed for their blood, pattering down and burning like acid where it splashed. The gun went skittering, because the thing landed on him, claws out. The UV scorched wherever it touched, but it wasn’t enough, it just maddened the red-eyed, humanoid thing that snarled, crouching, over him. It was unholy strong, too, another hot gush of its blackness splashing his clothes as he squeezed its wrists, the Thirst a red sheet over everything and the rest of him snarling back. The sound was an animal vibration in the lowest reaches of his gut, and he hated it even as it gave him the strength to force the Thing’s ancient, rotting arms away, keeping the claws from his throat.

They started to go quick when the shell was breached and the old bad stuff in them leaked out. He heaved up, but the Thing shoved him back down. His head bounced on concrete, and the Thirst slipped.

The Thing’s head exploded. The sound was massive, incredible, to match the stink. The disintegrating body slid over to the side, bubbling with foulness where silver grains burrowed into unholy flesh.

What the hell?

Rookwood lay on the floor, stunned and breathless. The burning sludge blinked out of his watering eyes, and he saw Mrs. King. Her lips were pulled back in a feral grimace, and she was clutching his .45 with stiff, outstretched arms. Tears slicked her cheeks, her eyes blazed, and there were spatters of black, smoking foulness all over her white shirt.

She dropped the gun. Rookwood flinched. It would be just his luck for the damn thing to go off.

There wasn’t any time to thank her. The Thing, its mutilated head crawling with smoking ick, scrabbled against the concrete, its claws leaving spark-strike scratches. The stake ripped away from the outside of Rookwood’s right thigh, Velcro straps giving with a tearing sound, and he rammed it through the Thing’s chest.

It was a good thing she’d blown its head off. Otherwise the death scream might’ve made her pass out or something. As it was, Amelia King was sobbing. The Thing twitched, and she made a miserable, frightened sound, stumbling back and almost falling on the broken stairs.

How the hell had she got down here? Jesus.

“It’s okay,” he managed through a throat gone dry and sand raspy. “Relax.”

She swallowed hard, gulping at air gone close and foul. “Which one? Which one is that?” The words broke on sucking gasps of air, but she didn’t look ready to faint just yet.

Good for you. “It’s not your husband. I’m pretty sure it’s Briggs.” He checked the Thing carefully, moving his eyes over the Brooks Brothers suit, finding the gold-and-opal signet ring. The stone was cracked and discolored. “Yup. It’s Briggs. I wonder . . .”

But he didn’t say what he wondered. There was no point. Instead, he tugged the kukri out of its sheath. The blade gleamed, a clean silver dart. The kitchen—and sunlight—was very far away, but the trickle of illumination down the broken stairs was enough to make him feel a little better. He scooped up the UV, checked it, and was even more relieved when it was still working. God bless quality construction.

“What are you going to do?” She sounded very young, but she hadn’t thrown up yet. She was dealing with this better than he had his first time out.

“Cut off what’s left of his head, babe.” He didn’t sound sarcastic, just tired. “Then I’m going to look for your husband.” And he was pretty sure he was going to wonder, the whole time, how she’d got down the stairs—and why she’d pulled the trigger.

The widow was turning out to be just full of surprises.

“Do they always scream like that?” She hunched her shoulders. Pale, rainy sunlight through kitchen windows flooded her hair, now tangled and not so glossy. She looked a lot less suburbia and a lot more terrified.

And she hadn’t fainted when the Thing that had been her husband had let loose its dying wail.

Rookwood taped down the bandage. He’d heal, but there was no point in irritating the wound. He uncurled his arm, and the white glare of gauze against his biceps tinted itself faint pink. Claw marks stung like hell, and he was glad he didn’t seem to ever get infected. “Every one I’ve killed.”

She swallowed audibly. “How many have you . . . killed?”

I was a cop eight months ago, babe. This is a new line of work for me. “Enough to be a professional.” His shirt was torn, and as he shrugged back into his jacket, he saw that it was also torn, but not as badly. “Listen, Mrs. King—”

“It’s Amelia,” she said flatly. “How long have you been doing this?”

The time for those questions was when you first met me, you know. But she was a civilian. Still, she’d come down to the basement and blown the head off a daywalking old one. She was made of stronger stuff than most civvies.

But then he thought of the bites all over her. The more he thought about it, the more he thought a new one wouldn’t play with her like that. Which made the widow a question mark.

Still, he hated himself for what he was about to do. “Long enough. Look, you should go to a hotel or something. Don’t come back here, unless it’s during the day. Even then you probably shouldn’t come back. They have human bodies to do their dirty work, you know.”

“For Christ’s sake, this is my home!” Her hands on the kitchen counter were white-knuckled. The two paper cups of coffee were probably cold by now, but they smelled good to him. Almost as good as she smelled. The burning tang on her had faded a little.

It wouldn’t go away completely, but most probably the one who’d bitten her was dead. If she didn’t get bitten again, she’d probably be okay. And when she died it would be a true death.

Of course, there was always the alternative. If what he was thinking was right, he’d probably end up shoving a stake through her and lopping off her pretty head as well.

It wasn’t a comfortable thought. Especially when his eyes drifted down of their own accord behind the shades and touched the shape of those bitten breasts under the spattered white shirt. What was a woman like this doing wasting herself as a housewife? Did he even want to ask?

Of course not.

“Stay here and die, then.” The kukri was clean; he slid it back in its sheath. The stake was strapped to his thigh again, hawthorn wood easily shedding acidic corruption. “Or get bit again, maybe by Chisholm or another one of their protégés.” He felt low and dirty even as he said it.

“I hired you for—”

“You hired me to kill your husband. He’s dead. Anything else is extra, and I’m busy.” He checked the gun again. The spare ammo in his jacket pockets was a negligible weight. “Enjoy your coffee.”

He turned on his heel, scooped up his duffel bag, and was halfway down the hall before he heard her footsteps behind him. Staggering just slightly.

“What am I supposed to do?”

It was a forlorn little cry, and he almost stopped.

But his work wasn’t done. He sped up, heels jabbing the hardwood, and crunched through the remainder of the vase in the hall.

Outside, the cool, rainy air was a balm to his burning cheeks. He made it to the Cadillac, dropped into the driver’s seat, and was gone before she could come out in her yard and start yelling. Not that he thought she would—Mrs. King wasn’t the type.

But if she did come out, he wasn’t sure his resolve would hold. There was a suspicious blurring in his eyes, and Rookwood wasn’t sure how much more he could hate what he was about to do—or himself.

The house crouched, one window glowing gold. Someone was up late, probably sitting in the kitchen. He didn’t get close enough to look.

Rain flirted down, kissed the leaves of trees planted when this housing development was put in. It touched the wide sidewalks, drenched the thirsty lawns, dripped from eaves, and gurgled in gutters. There was no drone of traffic as there was in the city, just the sea-sound of the city in the distance and the occasional rolling breaker of tires on wet asphalt closer.

The rain didn’t matter. He stood or crouched easily, moving only enough to keep himself flexible. The night breathed, full of damp dreaming.

The neighbors had both had dinner. Someone brought garbage out across the street behind him. But the widow’s house stood, closed and self-contained as the woman herself.

Rookwood waited. She’d come home before dusk, in a silver SUV, and didn’t open the garage but carried plastic and paper bags inside with her shoulders up, hurrying. Since then, just the light in the kitchen, mocking the gathering and fallen night.

Lights turned off in the houses around hers. A dog yapped a few yards away until someone yelled, “Max, get in here!” A series of happy yips, then a door closing and more silence.

The neighborhood prepared itself for sleep. Rookwood lifted the flask to his mouth, took another swallow of the red stuff. The problem wasn’t with it being cold or the flat copper tang to it.

The problem was how good this pale substitute tasted. And how good he could imagine it coming straight from the vein.

His nape tickled. He eased farther back into the shadows, melding with them, his pulse and breathing smoothing out into an imperceptible hum under the ambient nighttime noise. Quiet as a mole in a hole.

It had taken him two months to get his pulse under control. It was worth the work.

The widow’s house was like a sore tooth. His gaze kept drifting across it. What was she doing in there? What had she brought home? Had she made any phone calls?

Do your job, Rookwood. He was barely breathing under the dripping fringes of some kind of evergreen. He almost stopped blinking, his pulse struggling with the iron grip of training, instinct whispering that it would be soon, very soon.

He still almost missed it. A shadow flitted over the roof, a quick, lizardlike movement. A faint tinkle of glass breaking, almost lost under the rush of rain, half swallowed by the cloak of fetid silence suddenly drawn choking close around the white walls and green shutters.

He moved. Slippery, squishing grass underfoot, getting up a good head of speed. Spatters of rain broke against his face. The UV in one hand, its light stuttering on as his thumb flicked, the gun in the other, he streaked for the French doors with only a slight squelching sound betraying his position.

And hit, hard, the glass shivering away in fragments and long swords. The noise was incredible, a crashing through the silence the Thing had pulled close around the entire house, and he saw the short white blond hair, the blue eyes, the expensive business suit, in flashes before Rookwood’s gun spoke and Chisholm’s arm flicked, throwing Amelia King across the kitchen and into the wall as though she weighed less than nothing. She slid down the wall in a queer boneless way, leaving a huge dent behind, and the hot red fury bubbled up under Rookwood’s skin.

The Thirst screamed as he hit the Thing with a bone-crunching thud. Fell, his head clipping the tiled counter, and the gun tracked the Thing as it loomed over him, snarling. Five bullets, their sound blurring into and over one another. The UV slashed across Chisholm’s face. Smoke burst free.

He looked again into the face of the Thing that had made him, and its mad blue gaze dug into the inside of his skull. It bent down, its snarl ripping across violated air, and he saw a thick, broken wooden dowel protruding from its chest.

I didn’t do that. Confusion fought with the Thirst, and instinct jerked his hand with the UV up again. Smoke boiled through the kitchen, bubbling black flesh rising. At night, when they dropped their shield of humanity, the light hurt them. During the day, they never dropped that mask. Maybe it was a survival mechanism—

“I wondered what happened to you.” Chisholm’s voice, a rich baritone. He reached up, plucked the wood from his flesh with clawed fingers. The mask of humanity was back over the face of the Thing that glutted itself on suffering, and if not for the stripes of bubbling black tissue across his chiseled features, you wouldn’t guess he was a terror as ancient as darkness itself. “Baited a little trap, did we, Rook?” Chisholm dropped the sharpened dowel. It clattered on the floor.

Rookwood raised the gun, the Thirst screaming inside his veins. Kill kill kill! it yelled, pushed, screeched. Kill it, kill it now!

“How’s Fann?” he croaked through a dry-burning throat. “Legs grown back yet?”

Amelia King moaned shapelessly. Rookwood forced himself to stare up at Chisholm. Steady. Pick your shot. Four bullets left. Didn’t hit him, worse fucking luck.

“Your ridiculous little crusade.” Chisholm sighed. He was popular in a courtroom, in a nightclub, with the ladies. Courtly, even.

But the ones who wouldn’t be missed knew what he really was. The trouble was, they didn’t know until too late—and they couldn’t tell anyone from beyond the grave.

Nobody except Rookwood.

Rookwood’s hand tightened. Chisholm smiled. It was a gentle, paternal smile, the fangs curving down to dimple his chin, the black-charred stripe across his face tingeing with red at the edges as it healed. Fann was the oldest, Briggs was the most adept at using people—but Chisholm was the most dangerous. And now Rookwood had him right in his sights.

“It’s not too late to belong to the night, Jeremy.” Again that soft, paternal tone. Patient. Loving. “All can be forgiven. I marked you because you’re one of us, deep down. You know it.”

He’s afraid. Of me. It was like a bath of ice water. “Fuck you,” Rookwood snarled, and squeezed the trigger.

The gun spoke. Chisholm moved with the inhuman speed of the damned—but not fast enough. The bullet tore into his chest, mushrooming, and a huge black blotch appeared.

The Thing’s scream shattered glass, and Rookwood fired again, hit it again. It scrabbled away, still screaming, and smashed through the ruin of the French doors, more glass shivering free.

Got him! Savage joy filled his chest. He struggled to his feet. The Thirst burned, plucked at him. Go now. Hunt him down. He’s bleeding bad.

He glanced over. Amelia King lay slumped against the wall, her glossy hair tangled and matted with bright blood. She was crumpled like a doll thrown carelessly by a child.

Go! Go and get him! He’ll go to ground, you can mark the spot and wait for dawn. Then you can put a stake through his fucking heart and cut off his head and be free.

Six months of training, three of lying in wait for just this chance. He’d just flushed the monster out of hiding, and now here he was hesitating.

Amelia King surprised him again. Her eyes opened. Her throat was smeared with blood, and she blinked, dazed.

Oh, goddammit. He bit her. I’d bet money on it. Probably not for the first time, either. But that dowel in his chest . . .

Rookwood surprised himself this time by reaching down. His hand closed around her shoulder—why had he dropped the gun? That was a fool’s move. “It’s okay.” The words cut through the Thirst. “You’re safe.”

She scrabbled back from his touch. Drywall dust puffed down, snowdust in her hair and over her blood-spattered blue T-shirt. The blood was amazingly red, and his fangs slid free. The bones in his jaw crackled as he wrestled down the Thirst.

She gulped. “Bait.” It was the voice of a child caught in a nightmare. “You used me as bait.”

“I’m sorry.” Pale words for the guilt that twisted inside his ribs, tearing at tender tissue. “Amelia—”

“Molstein’s dead.” Sense came back into her eyes. She scrabbled back even farther, pressing herself against the wall, and clapped a hand to her bleeding neck. “They killed him. Last week before I came to you. I was bait for you, too.”

“I knew that,” he heard himself say. “Don’t worry about it.” It was too much to hope for, that one betrayal would balance the other. “Just stay here. I’ll be back in a little bit.”

She closed her eyes. Her throat worked as she swallowed. He supposed they should both be grateful she was bitten and halfway there. If she’d been safe and uncontaminated, she’d be broken inside. Bleeding to death internally. As it was, her pulse was strong and she looked all right. Pale, but all right.

“You tried to stake him.” Rookwood’s fingers fell away from her shoulder. “Right?”

“Dowels from the hardware store. Didn’t work.” She coughed, a lonely, tired sound.

Get after him. If he gets to a safe place, he’ll come back tomorrow night and kill her. He rose, scooping up his gun, and she sighed.

“Good fucking deal.” His tone was harsher than it needed to be, with the Thirst burning in his throat, spreading down his chest. “Next time use hawthorn. It’s the only thing that works well enough to immobilize them. Stay here, I’ll be back.”

He reloaded as he stepped out into the night. Wet wind slapped him in the face. Chisholm’s passage was a drift of reek against the damp, and Rookwood gathered himself. The last flask of red stuff burned against his lips; he swallowed as he ran. It scorched all the way down, and the Thirst snarled. It wanted him to go back and sink his teeth in the bleeding woman, put his mark on her throat instead of the other bleeding hole of contamination.

And there were other things he thought he’d left behind wanting to be done, too. No time for them, either. But maybe . . .

He finished gulping and stuffed the flask back in his pocket. The UV was out, and the gun, and he pulled on every inch of more-than-human speed he could gather.

Out here in suburbia, there were even parks. In the city, it would have been a chase across rooftops and through alleys, dodging crowds and sliding across neon. Here there were fences, covered swimming pools—in this wet, cold part of the country, they were ridiculous status symbols—and the freeway like a giant artery.

The reek was flagging by the time he got to the park. He had to double back twice, cutting across fences, struggling through wet underbrush, and cursing. If this were his part of city, he’d know every back alley and sight line, every potential hiding place.

As it was, he almost stepped straight across the little depression in a soccer field. The Thirst jerked him back just in time, avoiding the clawed hand that shot up out of the wet turf.

Brought to bay at last, Chisholm dropped all pretense of humanity. Gone was the smooth courtroom baritone, the neatly combed shock of glossy white hair, the waxen, charming smile. This was the Thing without its daylight mask, its canines long and razor sharp, black sludge dribbling down its chin, and the sodden rags of its expensive suit flapping as it climbed out of its death hole.

He hadn’t expected the Thing to have so much pep left. It was still bleeding heavily, the grass smoking as ichor splashed. It crouched, a glassy squeal rising from its foul, bleeding lips. The UV lashed across it, a whip of light. More thin black blood bubbled.

It hit him hard, a last desperate gambit, claws slicing in through cloth and flesh, tangling with his ribs. Agony roared through him, but he was prepared, months of fighting in dark corners and hunting around the edges boiling down to undeniable instinct that had jerked the hawthorn stake free and—

It thudded home. His aim was true.

Rookwood lay flat in the mud, the Thirst burning all through him like alcohol fumes. The stab wounds between his ribs ran with red agony. Chisholm’s body began to vaporize itself, shredding under the lash of water. Stinging needles of rain peppered both of them, living flesh and dead, rotting sludge. The silver had done its work, poisoning and breaking up the fabric of Chisholm’s ancient body. The hawthorn was doing the rest.

Rookwood coughed twice, rackingly. Spat to clear his mouth. The stake quivered in his numb hand.

It took two tries to heave himself up, shoving aside the rotting thing. The rain was a baptism as the Thirst retreated into its deep hole, snarling with each step. Hot blood trickled its fingers down his rib cage. Nothing vital hit. Or so he hoped.

Do it quick, just in case.

The stake was hissing, the wood twitching as what was left of the one who had bitten him jerked slightly. There might have been some life left in the disintegration, but the hawthorn immobilized it. Hate rose bright and sweet in Rookwood’s throat.

The kukri sang free of its sheath. The thing twitched.

“You bit the wrong cop, Chisholm.” His voice sounded strange even to himself. The soccer field was a long, flat dance floor, rain flinging itself down in needle streaks. He lined up the kukri. It flashed down in an arc of silver, and the head was hacked free. More twitching as nerve death took the body, and Rookwood tilted up his face to the rain.

It was over. Finally over.

Except it wasn’t. He wiped the water out of his eyes. Hot trickles had threaded his cheeks. They were different from the scorching trails of blood down his ribs, soaking into his jeans. They vanished under the intensifying rain, curtains of it suddenly pounding the field and his shoulders, slicking his hair down.

Amelia. I promised to go back.

He owed the widow an explanation, at least. And to tell her she was free.

But what if Fann’s bitten her, too?

He told himself not to worry about that just yet.

Rookwood cleaned off his kukri. The hawthorn stake slid free of the sludge of corruption, the slurry no longer even recognizably humanoid. The veil over the night retreated. And he felt like himself again for the first time in six goddamn years, since Chisholm had first handed him an envelope of cash and the whole dirty seduction had begun.

Yes, he owed her an explanation. And maybe something more.

The sob caught him by surprise. He bent over, his arms wrapped tight over his belly, the claw marks stinging as they slowly closed. Rookwood locked the sounds behind his tight-clenched teeth, hunched like an old man over the smear of rotting tissue killing the grass underneath it, open eyes staring sightlessly at the crystal gilding of rainwater on every surface.

It wasn’t crying, he told himself. It was relief. There was no weakness in relief.

But he did not believe it.

The widow’s house blazed with light in every window. As soon as he stepped through the ruin of the French doors again, he knew something was awry.

His boots crushed the carpeting in the master bedroom upstairs. Clothing was pulled out and scattered, a smudge of faintly tainted blood on a white coverlet. Her window faced south, blinds yanked up and scratch marks on the sash outside.

It must have been the very window her husband had bobbed outside, pleading to be let in. His wet skin chilled at the thought.

She wasn’t upstairs, or down, or even in the cellar, where the aroma of corruption lingered. The silver SUV was gone, and a mug lay shattered on the kitchen floor. It was a blue-glazed coffee cup, in pieces.

Shit. I told her to stay here! He checked the rooms again, but she was completely, utterly gone.

Any chance he had of breaking the office building downtown had vanished with her, too. Goddamn it. Her husband must have had a security pass and key codes, but his desk was open and she’d left paper scattered on the floor. There went his chance to get the last of the bloodsuckers. Six months of work and an almost botched operation.

Well, it wasn’t as if he didn’t have time.

Before he left, then, he turned off the lights. He stood for a few moments in her dark kitchen, looking at the imprint of her body on the broken wall. She was damn lucky to still be alive.

I was bait for you, too.

He hoped this wasn’t her last surprise.

He’d known Molstein was gone. There was nothing in the papers, but Rookwood still had a few contacts left on the force. His old partner had disappeared, last seen at midnight outside a deli on Thirty-fourth.

Two blocks away from Briggs, Fann, and Chisholm’s offices.

Rookwood went home and eyed the Scotch on his desk, put it away.

The Thirst retreated. It didn’t go away, but with Chisholm gone it didn’t taunt his every waking moment. He actually felt halfway decent and could hold down cooked steak and cheese again.

He needed a jolt of the red stuff once a week instead of every day. He prowled his office, and some of the widow’s money went for rent. He was in the clear.

Cases trickled in. A poltergeist on Seventh Street, a collection of dry cleaners being extorted by a gang of werewolves, a man looking for his vanished lover. The last case had nothing weird about it, straight-up breakup work. The lover didn’t want to be found, but Rookwood kept the money anyway.

He kept hearing her in the back of his head. I was bait for you. . . . You don’t understand, Mr. Rookwood. . . . Do they always scream like that? That glossy hair, and the way her lips pulled back from her teeth when she shot Briggs in the head.

It took another rainy night, cars shushing by outside his window and the bottle of Scotch singing from the drawer he’d hid it in, before he realized what her last surprise might be. The newspaper lay open on his desk, the local section barely glanced at before something caught his attention and he froze, staring at the black-and-white print:

“. . . since the closure of Briggs, Fann, and Chisholm early last month, after a fire that gutted their offices.”

The article was about a sudden dearth of criminal defense lawyers and a rash of arson involving their offices. It didn’t take a genius to figure out most of them weren’t on vacation or visiting Aunt Mabel. Of course, the real story wouldn’t be in the papers, but there was enough between the lines to sit him bolt upright in his chair, the taste of copper in his mouth and his pulse racing like a stock car.

Holy shit. His hands turned into fists. She learns quick.

Five minutes later he was out the door, sliding through the wet neon light. He hailed a cab at the corner, sat in a fug of cigarette smoke and fogged windows, and tipped the driver too much as he climbed out on Twenty-third.

The office building was a shell of itself, yellow crime scene tape fluttering. Rookwood stood across the street with his heart in his mouth, staring at the wreckage.

Yes, a quick learner. He wondered how she’d taken care of Fann—the old boy was tricky, and even without his legs he was a formidable opponent.

So formidable Rookwood had been working the best way to get at him inside his fortress-building. The same building that was a charred shell right now.

Goddamn, girl. What did you do?

Of course the widow would have visited the offices during the day. Of course she would know the layout and have her husband’s access to the keypads, the magnetic keys, the state-of-the-art systems. Of course she’d be allowed in as the wife of an almost partner, and she’d get past the daytime bodyguards because of her scent of burning.

She’d probably come back and taken care of Fann early. He wouldn’t put it past her.

There was nothing to do here, but he poked around anyway. The reek of corruption had faded, and the Thirst didn’t tingle, warning him of danger.

He caught another cab back home. Dawn was coming up as he put his key in the lock and paused.

The door was unlocked.

Had she been waiting for him to go downtown? He hadn’t even felt someone watching.

His office held a ghost of perfume. Rich, brunette, with a tang of ash. On his desk, placed precisely in the pool of yellow light from the lamp, was a fat white envelope. He peeked in—five thousand in crisp hundred-dollar bills. And a note, on paper that smelled like her. The same clear schoolgirl hand she’d used to label the map to her husband’s grave.

Mr. Rookwood,

Enclosed please find the remainder of your fee. I hope things are even between us now. I have learned a lot since we last spoke. I think I will be continuing the work.

Sincerely,

Amelia King

P.S.Thank you.

“Goddamn,” Rookwood whispered to his empty office. “Goddamn.”

There was no reply except the rain.

Lilith Saintcrow was born in New Mexico, bounced around the world as an Air Force brat, and fell in love with writing when she was ten years old. She currently lives in Vancouver, Washington, with two small children and a houseful of cats. Her Web site is www.lilithsaintcrow.com .