A Secret to Die For (Secret McQueen) (3 page)

Chapter Four

“Hey, Jimmy Cagney. If I wanted a facelift, I would seek out a professional, thanks.” I swatted the gun away, though my heart was hammering from the surprise of the weapon suddenly being in front of me.

Keaty lowered the gun and took a half step out of the house, glancing up and down the block. Only once he’d scanned the street did he acknowledge Desmond, Holden and Genie by giving them all a terse collective nod.

“Who’s the girl?” he asked me.

“My sister.”

He stared at me, gave his head a slight shake, then stepped back into the brownstone. With a man like Keaty, there was always a chance he might shut the door in my face. He didn’t believe he owed anything to anyone, and in spite of our long and storied history, he could easily turn around and tell me to get off his porch.

“Come in if you’re coming in,” he grumbled, holding the door open for us.

I ushered the others in ahead of me, doing a final visual sweep of the street before ducking inside myself.

The interior of the house was illuminated mostly by candles and a few oil lamps—who the hell had those sitting around?—but to my surprise Keaty’s office was fully lit. Of course he’d have a generator so he could keep working.

Inside, my group remained huddled together, as if no one was prepared to let the others out of their sights.

“Guys, why don’t you find some place to sit down, relax a little. I need to talk to Keaty.”

“If he knows something, I want to hear it,” Holden said.

Keaty, who had no particular love for vampires, gave Holden a scary, serious look. Francis Keats might be the only human man I’d ever known who could intimidate a vampire with nothing more than a glare.

Holden didn’t back down at first, but when it became apparent Keaty wasn’t going to speak, Desmond finally said, “Let’s go see if there’s something in the kitchen.”

I waited until I was sure they’d gone, then I fixed my own well-honed death stare on my former partner.

“What’s go—?”

He lifted a hand, silencing me. “Come on. We should sit down.”

That didn’t bode well at all. My blood ran cold, and it was as if he had caught me doing something I shouldn’t. For a moment I was alight with nerves and guilt, until I realized the most fearful part of his words was that they didn’t apply to me at all. He had bad news, and it had everything to do with what was going on in the world outside his door.

After following him into the office, I shut the door for privacy, then settled into the big chair facing his desk. I tried to get a sense of what might be happening from his appearance, but it told me nothing. His shirt was crisp and perfectly white, he was wearing his contacts rather than his glasses, and not a single one of his dark blond hairs was out of place.

He looked ready to get down to business.

I hugged my legs to my chest and made myself comfortable in the chair, and for once he didn’t make any comments about what my feet might do to the leather. Normally I took my shoes off in the brownstone, but today I’d left my boots on when we came inside. His focus had to be somewhere else entirely if I wasn’t getting a lecture.

“What’s going on?” I was able to finish my sentence this time around.

“I don’t know.”

Not the most inspiring words to hear from the man who was supposed to know everything. “How can you not know?” An edge of hysterics snuck into my voice, and I didn’t speak again for fear I might start shouting unintelligibly.

“It’s not that I don’t know
anything
,” he went on. “But I don’t know all the details yet. Certainly not enough to come up with any kind of workable plan.”

“Do you know what those things are?”

“Of course. Animated corpses. I thought that was apparent. Or didn’t you see any on your way over here?”

Offended, I replied with an embittered, haughty tone. “I
did
see them, and yes I know they’re animated corpses. But, I mean…they look like…” I drifted off, too embarrassed to continue.

“They look like zombies.”

“Yes.”

“But you know there is no such creature as a zombie.”

“That’s what I thought until I had to hide from a half-dozen bodies who were moving around of their own free will.”

Keaty clucked his tongue at me. “Therein lies the problem with your assessment. They are
not
moving of their own free will. They’re dead. They have no free will. Someone else is dictating their actions.”

“Someone is controlling them?”

“That’s what I just said.”

“But this many? There must be thousands. Hundreds of thousands, maybe. The cop I talked to said the bridges are all blocked off because of the bodies. We’re talking about a
lot
of animated dead, here.”

“We are.”

For a moment we stared across the desk at each other, and neither of us spoke. I’m not sure if he was trying to psychically give me the answers I wanted, but it wasn’t helping.

“A necromancer,” I said at last, though I wasn’t sure it was the right response. Certainly, a necromancer could raise the dead. And there was historical precedence for their existence. But in those records a powerful necro could raise a dozen corpses, perhaps a small cemetery at best. There was nothing in the histories I’d been forced to read in my youth that could account for thousands and thousands of dead rising under the command of one person.

“Yes, as far as I can tell this is the work of a necromancer, though admittedly I don’t think we can pin it all on one individual.”

“So, multiple necromancers.”

“That seems the most likely conclusion.”

“Have you ever heard of necros teaming up?” It was a genuine question, since none of the material I’d read covered anything about an ability to combine powers.

Keaty sat back in his chair, loosening his light blue tie. “I’ve heard about two or three getting together, usually doing some kind of experimentation. Nothing has ever been mentioned on a scale this large. At least not on North American soil. And records in Europe and Asia where necromancers are more active are a lot harder to come by. Especially with no Internet. So, to answer your question, no, there is no historical precedence for this.”

“But necromancers are human. Humans with powerful magic, but they’re mortal. If we find them and kill them, we cut the head off the proverbial beast, right? The necro dies and the magic dies with them?”

“In theory.”

“In theory?”

“Yes, they’re human. And under normal circumstances if you kill them, their risen dead will fall as well. But the trouble here is, with a number of them working together, we don’t know how their power is divided. And chances are there isn’t just one we can target, we’d need to find them all.”

“And we don’t even know where to start looking.”

“Exactly.”

“Awesome.”

“It’s less than ideal. Did you come up with anything useful on your way over?”

I tried not to read too much into his words, though Keaty often came across in the disapproving-father role, making it hard for me not to be offended and hurt by his insinuation. “The more recent dead have been processed by funeral homes, so there’s a low risk of bites for the time being. Not to mention the only harm to come from the bites would be a nasty bacterial infection. Undead mouth germs, ew.”

Keaty rolled his eyes and held his hand out in a
go on
gesture.

“Anyway. They behave and sound like people think zombies do, combined with the whole
being dead
thing. It’s limiting the number of civilians on the streets, thankfully. If we are looking for a group of necros, what do you think the chances are we’ll find them out in the open?”

He reached towards the desk like he was going to pick up a coffee mug, but only once his fingers brushed the smooth wood surface did he realize there was no mug to pick up. He thrummed his fingers on the desktop, considering what to say next and trying to make his initial gesture appear intentional.

“I don’t know. It depends on what kind of death dealer we’ve got on our hands. Normally they need to be quite close to the area they’re working on, but these dead seem to be coming from multiple places. Either they’ve grouped themselves all together to spread the magic out from a central location—in which case I suspect they’ll be quite well protected—or they’ve split themselves up. If it’s the latter, we might be able to find them by following the risen.”

“The risen?” Given a full week, there was no way I’d have come up with that one on my own, but it did have the ease of use I’d been hoping for. Now instead of struggling to think of them as zombies or the animated dead, I could call them the risen. “I like it.”

“I’m so glad my word choices meet your approval, Secret. When I wake up in the morning, I think to myself,
What could I say to amuse the girl today
?”

“If that’s true, I’m sorry to tell you you’ve been failing pretty miserably for the past eight years.”

“I’m heartbroken.”

“All right, genius.” I smiled, having missed the familiar good-natured teasing he and I shared. Keaty’s love wasn’t easy to see or understand, but it was most definitely there, and in spite of all the difficulties he and I had, I knew he cared about me the same as I cared about him. “What’s the next step?”

“You’ll like this one, I think.”

“I’m all ears.”

“We go ask the vampires.”

Yeah. I was totally thrilled.

Chapter Five

“The vampires? Why the hell do we need to talk to the vampires?”

I was in no hurry whatsoever to get back to the council, in spite of my recent communication with the Tribunal Leader, Sig. Last I’d heard, a suspected traitor, Arturo, who I thought had a hand in trying to kill me, was on his way to New York. Adding to my difficulties was the fact my werewolf half had been outed during my trip to Paris, and long story short, things didn’t look too good for me in the vampire world right now.

At best, the elders would find some way to punish me.

At worst, they would elect a member of their ranks to be my chosen assassin so the killer could take my place among the Tribunal when I was dead.

The last thing I could expect if we went to the council headquarters was to find willing help.

“Necromancers manipulate the dead,” Keaty replied.

“And?”

“And vampires are dead. They should be able to feel the pull of the magic, even if they don’t choose to respond to it.”

Oh.
“Okay, I never thought of that. Why can’t I feel it, then? I mean, I’m part vampire.”

“But you’re not dead, are you? Nor have you ever been truly dead.”

I’d been so close I had wished for it. “No, I haven’t died.”

“Then their magic wouldn’t work on you. Or any other half-vampire, should such a creature exist.”

Creature. Nice, Keats, real nice.

“We can use Holden,” I suggested.

“And with your one pet vampire we’ll find everyone responsible for taking over an entire city? You really think so?”

“Pushing all the buttons tonight, hey, Keaty?”

“Apologies.”

He wasn’t really saying sorry, but I wouldn’t have expected him to. I knew perfectly well how he felt about vampires and werewolves, and I’d brought both into his house tonight. I’d always been the exception, but I could tell he didn’t extend my free pass to those around me.

“If I’m going to go to the council for help, you need to be prepared for the chance they say no,” I warned.

“I’m always prepared for the council to say no. It’s their favorite word.”

“Actually I’d argue
retribution
is their favorite, but let’s not pick nits. The point is, if they turn me down, they also probably won’t let me leave.”

“Why? I thought you were running things over there these days.”

I gave a half shrug and tried to smile, but failed. “Remember how there used to be, like, five people who knew what I was? Then ten?”

“Too many,” he grumbled.

“Yeah, well, now there’s a nasty rumor spreading through the vampire underground faster than herpes at a No-Condom Convention. Basically—cat’s out of the bag. Or wolf is out of the cave? I don’t know. Either way, people are talking, and it’s too many people for me to control it. They know.”

Keaty was stone-faced as usual, but the throbbing artery at his temple told me everything I needed to know. He was super pleased.

“Surprise!” I offered weakly, giving my best beauty-queen smile.

“I’m amazed they haven’t killed you already. This changes things substantially. We can’t send you to the council. Send Holden instead.”

“Riiiiight. They want to find me, so our best option is to send my well-known lover, former partner and official vampire consort in instead. Very clever.”

“He’s expendable. You’re not.”

While I was touched to learn Keaty deemed me too important to lose, I didn’t agree with his math. “Holden isn’t expendable.”

“Sure I am,” came a voice from the door.

Since I’d closed it on the way in, Keaty would have seen the vampire enter. Which meant Holden had been standing there when Keaty announced his plan. Keaty watched the vampire closely now that he didn’t have to pretend to be looking elsewhere. “See, he agrees.”

“No, this is fucking stupid. No one is going in as cannon fodder or whatever. If this is our plan, I’m fine with that, but we’ll use Holden and we’ll go get Sutherland. With two vampires we shouldn’t have any trouble locating the people we’re looking for. We can split into two groups. Safety in numbers, and all that.”

“That’s your brilliant compromise?” Keaty was none too impressed with my suggestion. “We use two vampires to find God knows how many necromancers? You’re out of your mind. You are a part of the council, Secret. I’ve never abused your position before, or asked you to use it, but right now your connections are worth more than whatever trouble you might be in. We need help from the vampires, there’s no way around it.”

I glanced over my shoulder to Holden, hoping he might offer me some support in this fight, but he stood there staring into the middle distance like he couldn’t stand to meet my gaze. Maybe he couldn’t. This had gotten so messy, and I knew it was all my fault.

These things usually were.

“I’m not sending Holden,” I said flatly.

“And we can’t send you,” Holden agreed. “But maybe there’s a way we can do this without going to the council directly.” He was still standing in the doorway like he was uncomfortable with the idea of stepping farther into the room, and I didn’t think it was Keaty who had him on edge.

“What do you suggest?” Keaty asked.

“If we can find enough wardens or sentries who are on their own, they won’t have any choice but to obey her orders. We can seek them out on the individual level. Secret is still a Tribunal Leader, at least until the council puts her on trial. And given the current situation in the city, that will obviously take some time. I think as long as we can approach them one on one, we’ll have no difficulty whatsoever getting them to work with us.”

Keaty scratched his cheek and seemed to regard Holden in a wholly new light. He typically gave the vampire only a cursory glare if he looked at him at all. But now there was something approaching pleasure on his face.

“You know, it could work. Do you have a way to find them?”

“I know where they all live.” Holden sounded as bored as if he were reporting on the weather. “The biggest difficulty will be getting from place to place safely. That’s where Secret’s initial suggestion will come in handy. Safety in numbers. If I find the wardens, they’ll listen to me. You’ll need Secret herself to get the sentries to agree. I have no power over them.”

“Can we stop talking about Secret like she’s not here? I mean, unless you guys want me to leave you alone.”

They both turned disgusted looks in my direction.

I’ll take that as a no, then.

“Do you have a map?” The vampire finally came in and stood next to the desk. He must have sensed Keaty’s unease because he settled into a crouch so he wasn’t towering over the two of us. Keaty got up and located a spiral-bound map book of the city, thumping it down on the desk in front of Holden. “Go nuts.”

Without asking, Holden took one of Keaty’s fountain pens and started flipping through the pages. Every two or three pages he would stop and circle something, writing a name near the circle, then began flipping again. Keaty and I both watched him, neither of us saying anything as he went through the book grid by grid. Eventually he seemed to have circled at least fifty places on the map.

“We likely won’t need them all, but it gives us options. Most vampires like to stay within a certain area close to the council headquarters, but there are always outliers. Point being, we should be able to divide the city into its upper and lower parts and work our way around. How many do you think we’ll need?”

“A dozen, at least,” Keaty said quickly. “The more bodies we have out looking for these people the better our chances of finding them and shutting them down.”

“And if we find them?”

Holden’s question made me turn my attention back towards Keaty.

“I would prefer we deal with each individual using as much firepower as we can, but should you find them while we’re still separated, try to get them to talk, and regardless of whether they give up the others in their group or not, we have to kill them.”

“Wait, shouldn’t we at least try to—”

“To what?” Keaty gave me a sour look. “Talk them out of it? Take them down peacefully? Since when were you a cheerleader for passive resistance, hmm? No, I think we all know the only way this ends is with a trail of dead necromancers. Anyone willing to raise thousands of corpses to incapacitate a city isn’t going to yield to reason.”

“He’s right,” Holden agreed, handing the map book to me. “Besides, are you really going to choose now to decide you don’t want to get your hands dirty?”

I didn’t like the snide way he said it. Considering the last two people I’d killed had been instrumental in ruining my life, I hardly felt it was fair to compare the situations. Yet in another sense they were right. Spilling blood wasn’t something that bothered me in the past, so why did I care now? Was it because the necromancers were human?

Their humanity hadn’t stopped them from laying siege to a city.

“Fine.” I grabbed the book and got to my feet. “But I’m taking the south. If we need all the help we can get, there are a few people I have to find who aren’t on this list.”