Night Owls

26

OVER THE NEXT few hours, Chaz did everything he could to avoid getting shot by Sean. Mostly that involved keeping his mouth shut and his movements slow. He also had to leave the bathroom door open when he took a piss, but since it was either that or pee in the sink, he opted for the lesser indignity. His headache receded from migraine strength to mild-hangover bad, which was good. He was pretty sure he’d lucked out and didn’t have a concussion.

Despite the glares she kept throwing in his direction, Beth let him help fix lunch. Mostly, Chaz wanted to be sure the plates he ate off weren’t crawling with germs, but part of him hoped he could get on the kids’ good sides in case the shit hit the fan later on.

Shortly after four, a key rattled in the front door lock. Tom planted himself between Chaz and the hallway, as though Chaz might be stupid enough to charge whoever was coming in. I probably should make a go at it. But the logical part of his brain suggested it was wiser to stay alive and learn what he could.

Bitch could have killed him last night, left him dead behind the wheel on Val’s street. She could have offed him on the way here, or tossed him down in the basement with the rest of the Jackals so they’d have a tasty breakfast when they woke up. Plenty of things she could have done, but instead she’d left him aboveground to be watched by the minions, and she must have given permission for him to be out and about. Otherwise Tom could have shoved him back in the bedroom and left him there. These were things he was meant to see, which meant she intended to give him back to Val when this was over.

Probably in exchange for Justin.

Well, fuck that. Val wouldn’t make that kind of trade. Much as he’d appreciate it, they couldn’t be given the power all willy-nilly to go around making new Jackals. So he’d wait and watch, and hope Val had some other plan in mind.

Two people came through the door: a mousy-looking woman in her midforties holding a tackle box to her chest like it had nuclear launch codes within, and a tall man wearing a sweatshirt with its hood pulled up. Chaz could smell the sunscreen on him and caught the glow of yellow eyes in his shadowed face. This must be Caleb.

The Jackal moved wearily, pushing Tom aside to come and look at Chaz. He was in human form, his face bland and forgettable except for the places where someone had drawn the same sigils Chaz had seen around the girl on the dining room table. Was that eyeliner they’d been applied with? Chaz kept his teeth clamped together so he couldn’t be a smartass.

After a moment of silent scrutiny, Caleb grunted and turned back to Tom. “I’m going to bed. Tell Diane I delivered the message.” He lumbered over to the cellar door and, ignoring the Do Not Open sign, cracked it open enough to slip downstairs.

That left Marian in the kitchen, eyeing Chaz. “He’s not one of you,” she said to Tom. She barely spoke above a whisper and flinched when she finished, as if she expected to be hit.

“No, ma’am.”

“Am I treating him?”

Tom thought about it. “You probably should. Diane’ll want to have him in good shape for the meeting.”

She moved closer, but before she could set her tackle box down on the table, Chaz held up his hands. “I can wait,” he said. “There’s kids in the other room that are in a hell of a lot more pain than I am.” He was starting to suspect that “Diane” was Bitch’s real name; Val had said she was likely second in command.

He also wondered if Tom and his crew were being as hospitable as they were because Diane wanted to offer a good trade for Justin, or if her boss—her alpha—was afraid enough of Val that he didn’t want to risk pissing her off by roughing up her Renfield. When I get home, she’s telling me what happened in Sacramento. No more hedging. For years, she’d left it at “Things went bad, I left,” and he’d not pushed for more. Whatever it was still hurt her enough, he didn’t want to dredge up the old and the bad. The time for that was over now.

Marian glanced at Tom for confirmation. The big man’s expression went from surprised to relieved to faintly grateful. “Yeah, okay. That’d be good.” He led them into the parlor where Beth and Sean were tending to their friends. They backed away from the people on the mattresses and gave Marian space.

From her pocket, she produced a small pot of ointment and passed it to Beth. “For Ashley,” she said. “A little goes a long way.” Beth took it and moved over to begin smearing the sunburned girl with the stuff. Marian watched her for a few seconds, then nodded, satisfied, and turned to the other four.

As she set the tackle box down, Chaz realized he’d seen one like it before, at Cavale’s. So they both shop at Walmart. It doesn’t mean anything. Except, when she lifted the lid, he saw neat rows of hand-labeled vials and jars, just like Cavale’s. Runes covered the inside of the lid, the style similar to what he’d seen scrawled on some of the walls at the house in Crow’s Neck.

Marian selected a few jars and drew a small scalpel from the tackle box. She pricked the tip of her thumb with the blade and hovered over her first patient, a boy. She traced a bloody sigil on his forehead, murmuring as she did it.

Chaz watched, wondering if the burns would recede and the wounds would heal before his eyes the way Val’s did. But the kid’s face kept on looking like overcooked pizza cheese.

Marian set her scalpel aside and selected another from the box. She brought this one down through one of the raised, bubbly bits of skin. Chaz braced himself, certain the kid would bolt upright, screaming. Pus wept freely from the newly opened wound, but the kid on the mattress didn’t even flinch. The sigil on his forehead glowed a dull red. Marian’s murmurings took on a singsong quality. Is she keeping him under? Like anesthesia?

She worked efficiently, cleaning out the wounds and applying her salves. Gross as it was, Chaz couldn’t look away. Blood and pus ran down the kid’s face. The sigil pulsed every now and then, but Marian kept him asleep. Then, after inspecting her work, she dipped a finger in the fluids oozing out of the kid and started drawing even more sigils on him. I’m never running Finger Painting Night at the store ever again.

When she finished, she touched the mark on his forehead once more, changing it. Her chanting changed, too, into an intonation that sounded almost like Latin. She slapped her hand down on the floor near the kid’s head. Chaz and Tom both jumped at the sharp, sudden noise.

The kid had apparently heard it, too. His whole body bowed, arcing until only the crown of his head and his heels still touched the mattress. His hands spasmed at his sides, and his mouth opened in a wordless scream. The sigils glowed brighter, then with liquid, sinuous movements, they slid over his skin and into one another, joining together in a twisted kind of web over his face.

Now the flesh knit back together, the dead, burned bits sloughing away to reveal fresh new skin beneath. After what seemed a long time, but must only have been a few seconds, the kid collapsed back onto the mattress, panting.

Marian sat back on her knees and wiped the sweat from her forehead. “Help him up,” she said to Sean. “Let him go wash his face.” She scooted back while Sean obeyed, then fished around in the tackle box for more supplies. She rubbed her hands and forearms down with alcohol wipes and poured iodine over the scalpels.

Then she repeated what she’d done with the first kid three more times. While she was working on the second, Beth finished smearing the girl on the table with the salve. She smudged one of the runes. Chaz noticed that it bore a resemblance to the one Marian had painted on the first kid’s brow. The girl on the table, Ashley, sat up with a jaw-cracking yawn. Her skin was no longer lobster red, but had instead turned a deep tan, as if she’d spent the summer sprawled out on the beach. She stretched and peered around, frowning at Chaz and whispering to Beth.

“He’s not staying long,” Beth told her, raising her voice in reply. “Diane needs him.”

Ashley gave him the hairy eyeball for a little longer, then hopped off the table and crouched beside Marian. “Thank you,” she said. The older woman smiled tightly, but was too deep in her ritual to do more than nod.

Beth escorted Ashley out, their footsteps clumping on the stairs as they ascended. That left Chaz and Tom alone with Marian and her patients; Sean had yet to return.

Marian finished with her second patient, a slight Middle Eastern–looking girl who was maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. Tom stuck his head out the door and hollered for Sean, who shouted back from the kitchen. When he ducked back in the room, he seemed to be weighing something. “I have to get her upstairs.”

Ah. “It’s fine, man. I’m not going anywhere. I haven’t made a break for it yet, have I?”

“Sean’s in the kitchen. He’ll be back in here in a minute. His trigger finger’s kind of itchy today, so, y’know. In case the thought crosses your mind . . .”

“Scout’s honor,” said Chaz, “I’m staying right here.”

Tom stood there a moment longer, but when the girl on the mattress started chattering her teeth, he got moving. He scooped her up and left the room.

Chaz hadn’t made any other attempts at escape today, but not for lack of wanting to. The opportunity simply hadn’t presented itself. Now he had a handful of seconds to see how close he could get to freedom. If he could get outside, he’d see if Sean was any kind of a sharpshooter.

Marian had started in on the third kid, ignoring her own chance at escape.

He should run. But there was something he needed to know first: “You’re Brotherhood, aren’t you?”

She stiffened, but didn’t turn to look at him. “I was.”

“Seems like there’s a lot of that going around.”

That gave her pause. She snuck a glance in his direction. “What do you mean?”

“Just that I’ve met a couple of former members in the last few days.” He folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “But those two hate the Jackals. So explain to me why it is that you’re helping them.”

“I’m healing these children,” she said, a tiny, haughty thread sneaking into her voice. “Not them.”

“Bullshit.” Chaz stepped over to Ashley’s recently vacated table. From there, he could see the floor around the mattresses. Carved into the wood were more runes and sigils. “Most of this is what a friend of mine calls Creepscrawl, but I don’t have to be able to read it to know that some of this lettering’s different. Matter of fact, the different stuff looks an awful lot like the writing inside your little doctor’s bag there, doesn’t it?”

She flinched. It was confirmation enough.

“You drew them. I don’t know how you helped, what blanks you filled in, but you did it. So I’m asking you again: why?”

She took her hands off the injured kid and folded them in her lap. At first, Chaz thought she was being stubborn and refusing to answer him. Then he realized she was fidgeting with something on her left hand: a plain gold band.

Suddenly, it made a lot more sense: they were holding him here to get what they wanted from Val; they held the kids here with the promise of Jackal-hood so they could have lackeys. So how else to coerce a member of the Brotherhood to do their bidding? Chaz moved around the table slowly, like he was approaching a skittish cat. He knelt beside her and stared down at her wedding band. “They have someone you care about, don’t they?”

Marian twisted around to look at him, her eyes brimming. “Yes. My husband.”

“Fuck, I’m sorry.” He risked a glance down the hall. Sean was just visible in the kitchen, hunched over the countertop and eating peanut butter straight from the jar. “Okay. Is he here? Do they have him upstairs? I bet we could take these kids, you and me. They don’t have tricks up their sleeve like you do.” Just guns in their waistbands, he thought, but that didn’t seem too helpful. “And I’m, uh. Spry.”

She shook her head. “He’s not here. The alpha has him. To . . . ‘guarantee my services.’” She sneered the last, though whether the disgust was directed at the Jackal or herself, Chaz couldn’t tell.

It meant he needed a new tactic, then. No way she’d put her husband in danger for him. “Listen. I have friends who can help, okay? Got a vampire, couple of succubi, and like I said, two kids who used to be in the Brotherhood. Or were trained by a Brother, something like that. Help me out now and I swear to God, I’ll make sure we come back for you and your husband. Please.”

Footsteps started down the hall. “You two plotting in there?” Sean’s voice was thick from talking with his mouth full.

Chaz ignored him. “Please. I’m trying to save a kid’s life here, too. But I can’t help either of you if they’ve got me over a barrel like this. Please.”

She paused, watching him. Her shoulders lost some of their hunch. “I can’t get you out, but I’ll see what I can do before I leave.”

Chaz sat back, adopting as casual a pose as he could before Sean entered the room. “Sorry,” he said. “I was just asking her how she does all this. You’ve gotta admit, it’s kind of unreal.”

The Irish kid stared hard at them both; a smear of peanut butter clung to his bottom lip. He clearly wasn’t buying it, but since Marian had gone back to chanting and slicing off bits of dead skin from her patient’s face, he had no proof of shenanigans. He looked sort of disappointed.

IT WAS NEARLY sunset when Marian finished healing the last of the victims. Chaz wasn’t left alone with her again; Sean made sure of that. Marian took her time cleaning up her tools and repacking her tackle box while Tom and Beth escorted the last kid out of the sick room. At last, she got stiffly to her feet and approached Chaz and Sean, who were loitering near the door. She darted a timid glance at Sean. “Caleb told me to look at him before I went home.”

Sean huffed, but didn’t argue. “Go on, then.”

Marian took Chaz’ hands in hers, like they were lovers reluctant to say good-bye. She pressed something small and smooth and hard into his left palm. One of her little vials? Marian’s middle fingers rested on each of his wrists, her touch feather-like against the thin skin. Her fingertips were slick with oil; Chaz thought he smelled myrrh. She traced patterns there as she looked up into Chaz’ eyes.

“He’s all right,” she said, after a moment. She let him go, and he felt warmth spread across his wrists as the sigil settled in. “No concussion.” The headache ebbed a bit.

Luckily, Sean had been watching their faces, not their hands. Chaz pocketed the vial as carefully as he could and stepped back.

“Good. Diane’ll be happy.” Sean pulled a pair of crumpled twenties out of his pocket and passed them to Marian.

Chaz boggled. “That’s it? Forty bucks? She healed the shit out of your people. She . . . fuck, she undisfigured them, and the most they left you to give her is that?”

Sean shrugged. “I just do what I’m told. You want to argue the point, they’re waking up.”

Marian shook her head in warning. “No, it’s fine. It’s enough. It’s what’s left over after room and board.”

“Room and—” Her husband. The Jackal motherfuckers were keeping her husband hostage and charging her for it. If I ever meet this alpha, I’m kicking him in the balls. For now, though, Chaz bit his tongue. He didn’t want to get Marian or her husband in trouble.

A female Jackal appeared in the doorway, looking sleep mussed but still dangerous. She sneered at Chaz before she addressed Marian. “Let’s go.”

“I’m ready,” said Marian, retrieving the tackle box from where she’d set it down. She gave Chaz one last nod. “Good luck to you.” She bustled past them both and scurried to the front door.

That was when Tom came down the hall, grimacing. “Diane’s awake. She says it’s time to go.”

THE WHOLE PLACE reeked of rotten meat and refuse, of blood and ash, of myrrh and rosewater. The first two teams had cleared the way through the upper floors, but the majority of the nest had fallen back to the basement and barricaded themselves in. That’s when the Councilmen had called in Val’s team.

The six of them should have been enough: two vampires, Val and Clara, who after eighty years still kept her coal black hair in a flapper bob; Angelo and Charlotte, Renfields the women had chosen from the Brotherhood’s ranks; and the twins, Kelly and Delilah, who had been full Sisters for over three decades. They were closer than most real families, had probably survived unscathed as much as they had because they were just that damned good together.

They descended in pairs, each checking that the way was clear and covering as the next two moved ahead. It was clean and textbook, just the way Angelo had learned it during his time with the LAPD SWAT team. The smell got worse with every landing; some of the blood spatters belonged to their friends. At least the previous teams had taken the bodies out with them when they’d retreated. They wouldn’t leave their own behind for the Jackals to desecrate.

Or recruit.

The last door waited, marked Private and Keep Out, with a stomach-churning line of the Jackals’ script scrawled beneath in red.

“It says ‘Leeches go away.’” Clara smirked back at Val. “Looks like we’d better give up. They don’t want our kind around here.” She dipped a finger in the writing, and took a sniff. “No, wait. This is Davenport’s blood. I liked him. Fuck these guys, let’s kill them.”

Charlotte needed no further prodding. She traced a sigil around the keyhole and took a step back. Then she brought her leg up and planted a solid kick just beneath. The door swung open, slamming dully against the wall inside. The room beyond was pitch-black, even to Val’s preternatural vision.

“The hell?” said Clara, sniffing the air. “It’s empty.”

“Can’t be.” Kelly pushed past, the scent of myrrh trailing after her. Her hands, already glowing from the runes Delilah had painted on them with henna that morning, flared as she crossed the threshold.

Then the darkness took her.

VAL WOKE WITH their screams ringing in her ears. Ten years gone and it still felt like something had been ripped out of her, the wound left raw and ragged. It had been years since she’d dreamed of them—years since she’d dreamed at all. The last time was the night I took Chaz as my Renfield.

Because even though she knew she needed one, and even though Chaz was exactly who she needed, the idea of losing another had terrified her so much she’d had nightmares.

And now here she was again, on the cusp of losing not only Chaz, but Cavale and Elly and Justin, too. The Clearwaters had already died because she’d failed to protect them. What about her friends? What about Sunny and Lia and the lives they’d built here in Edgewood?

They can take care of themselves; they’ve been doing it for centuries. The others are still safe for now. Worry about Chaz first. The voice in her head chastising her wasn’t her own, but Angelo’s. He’d been their voice of reason.

He’d been her voice of reason.

“I wish you’d known him,” she whispered, though she didn’t know if she was talking to Angelo or Chaz. “You two would’ve liked each other.”

Val heaved herself out of bed and headed downstairs, checking the messages on her cell phone as she went. The stone that had taken up residence in her stomach since Chaz’ disappearance grew heavier as she listened to Cavale’s report. They hadn’t found him yet. They were still looking. The trail was as cold for them as it had been for her.

The mail was scattered across the foyer floor. Most days, Chaz stopped in during the afternoon and sorted through it for her, leaving the important bills on the hall table. Val scooped it up absently, more to move it out of her path than to see what was due. A familiar logo stopped her cold: the bookstore’s owl with his wide-eyed gaze peeked out at her from behind the gas bill. It wasn’t a flyer, but a bookmark.

On the back, where they’d left space for customers to jot notes to themselves, were two sentences:

What is yours for what is ours.

Ten o’clock.