Blood Legacy (6 page)

The vines and triangles of the panel seemed to unlock, reaching out for me, pulling me into their fantasy world. Oh, no. I threw out a hand to steady myself but only succeeded in whacking a fellow passenger. Not this again. The capsule seemed to melt away around me as the vision took hold.

I was in a darkened chamber, candles crackling and guttering around me. I’d been here before, in other woozy visions brought on by rapid blood loss. Hallucinations were a common side effect of Donations, the posters at the station read, but I’m not sure they me
ant anything quite like this. A candle flame danced, slanting to one side as a figure rushed past me, then another. All of them wore dark robes with deep, billowing hoods. They were just blobs of blackness, really, in the dark chamber.

“The blood shall not run cold.”

“We shall rise, and rise again.”

A call and response, tangling around me, like a spider’s web knotting me up. I was on a platform of some sort—my ankles and wrists bound to an iron X I couldn’t see.

“This is purity. This is our charge.”

And then the knife
—nicking into that soft patch of my elbow, just like the Donation machine. Hot blood welled and ran down my forearm, flooding my nostrils with a tangy metal scent. The cold stones beneath my bare feet and the cold iron against my bare skin warmed as I felt the blood warm me . . .

“Child, you don’t look so good.” An old Laborer woman’s face bubbled throug
h the vision, her wrinkled skin thrown in sharp relief from the harsh capsule lighting. “You skipped the crackers, didn’t you?”

I blinked furiously, part of me wanting to sink back into the vision—despite the major creepiness of the setting, there was something comforting in it. It . . . called to me; I could think of no other way to describe it.
But the woman was right. It was just a hallucination.

“Guess I did.” I smiled, and leaned against the cold metal panel, waiting for the fuzziness throughout my body to ebb away as my blood started to replenish itself.

Finch was waiting for me outside my compartment complex, thirty stories deep into Undertown. He leaned against the railing, smoking an unfiltered cigarette and tugging at one of his thick dark dreadlocks. His deep brown skin looked
blue and sickly in the fake Undertown light; he melted into the shadows so easily that only the intense whites of his eyes and his cigarette’s cherry gave him away at first.

I gave him a sharp scowl and tu
rned away from him to punch in my compartment’s code, shielding the code pad with my hand while I did so. “You shouldn’t come to my place.”

“Sorry, girlie. I didn’t think this could wait.”

I arched one eyebrow and held the door open, just a hair, so he could follow me inside.

Compartment
was about as accurate a term for my prison cell as they came. I’m told that even at the height of human civilization, when cities were home to tens of millions of festering human bodies, most people had a couple rooms they could call their own. But here, it was one room, everything stacked and jumbled together so I could lie in the bed that stretched across my kitchenette, loft-like, and reach almost everything else.

I checked the package chute; as promised, a large box sat waiting for me. Glossy black cardboard, with a black velvet ribbon tied around it.
I scooped it up in a hurry and carried it over to my wardrobe. Finch reached over to the wall panel and turned it on with a jab of his thumb, popping on the default Stream media feed.

Noise, constant bleeping and digital trilling and spiraling noise. I shot him a look and spun the volume down as low as I though
t I could get away with while still hoping to conceal our conversation.

“So,” he said. He propped against my kitchenette counter. “The archive you nabbed.”

As I rooted through my wardrobe, I caught a glimpse of his sculpted behind in the mirror, perfectly squared off beneath his warm orange carpenter pants. There was a time—not as long ago as I’d like—when I would’ve given anything to see just how sculpted it was. But it wasn’t quite the thrill I’d been hoping for. Finch was my first, but I was just another in a long string of girls looking for direction and maybe a father figure, and if he had to whore himself out a little to get them to do their share for the Resistance, then that was what he’d do.

Of course, I’d thought it was true love. A hollow ached in my chest at the thought of it, just beneath my breastbone. But I was over it. I had no choice but to be.

“Pretty vicious encryption on it. High-level stuff. Coven-level. Not the sort of easy, half-assed shit my boys are used to getting their hands on. They’ve only been able to crack a few of the files in the archive so far, and even then, only part of the way. But this looks pretty . . . serious.”

“Serious, how?” I asked.
I tugged at the black ribbon on the cardboard box, keeping my body positioned in the opening of the wardrobe so Finch couldn’t see inside.

And let out a sharp gasp. The dress inside was exquisite—soft chiffon and tulle in shades of peacock blue and royal purple, with a metallic waist piece that curved up one breast and shoulder. I couldn’t see it clearly, but it looked like the segmented metal belled out at the hips, nipped in the waist, then cupped the one breast before crowning in a cap sleeve, while the other shoulder and breast were exposed to the ethereal tulle and its shifting hues.

This wasn’t your typical Vampyr extravagant fashion statement dress. This was better.

“It’s all transaction records so far, but it’s incredibly vague as to what they’re recording. They’re old records, too—the oldest is twenty-five years ago, but then it all stops abruptly at the twenty-year mark.
Then, two months ago, it starts up again.”

“Weird,” I agreed, but I was barely listening.
I started to close the wardrobe door behind me so I could change, but then remembered the interesting morning I’d had, and decided a shower was in order. I glanced back at Finch, a scowl on my face. I’d long gotten over any sense of propriety around him—once I’d gotten over the initial sting of being dumped for the next bright young Resistance fighter in need of persuasion—but letting him see the bruises that were no doubt sprouting on my bottom was another matter entirely. I shimmied out of my dress and threw a towel around my body before I emerged from the wardrobe, and then quickly darted into the adjacent shower stall.

Finch arched one eyebrow. “Is everything okay, Raven?”

“Yeah—just fine. I’m getting ready to go back out, is all.” I debated telling him about Victor’s invitation, but quickly decided I wanted to keep that knowledge to myself for now. Whatever Bressov had in mind for me, I wanted to find it out on my terms this once—not as an operative for the Resistance.

Doing something for myself, for a change? Who did I think I was, anyway, a bloody Vampyr?

Finch rolled his eyes. “This is important, kiddo.” Great. He was pissed—I could always tell his mood by how condescending of a tone he was taking with me. “Think about it. What happened twenty years ago or so?”

The water turned on in one frantic blast, peeling away Victor Bressov’s scent from my skin with all the zeal of caustic chemicals. That was one thing they didn’t skimp on in the human slums—anything relating to washing away our stinky humanness. “Um. Twenty
plus years ago—the Phantom Coup?”

“Right. When a Vampyr or Vampyrs unknown overthrew the Onyx Queen and her entire Coven, leaving the Republic ripe for the taking.”

Suddenly, the scalding hot water didn’t feel quite hot enough. A chill raced up my spine.

“Then,
a month ago—the brutal assassination of Lucio Bressov,” Finch said.

“Transactions,” I echoed, from his earlier comment. “What kind of ‘transactions’ do you think these records are about?”

Finch cleared his throat. “Well, it’s all gross speculation at this point, of course.”

“Of course.” I scrubbed the rag between my thighs. With a flash of heat, I remembered the feeling of Victor Bressov’s fingers down there, goading me to climax. And then that brief, tantalizing touch of his cock, ready to plunge into me—

Thirteen families, Raven. Get your mind out of the gutter and back on the task at hand.

“But you said yourself that these are Violetta Stregazzi’s files, and they’re residing on Bressov Industries servers
.” Finch said. “What if she and Bressov are behind the Phantom Coup?”

I clenched my thighs shut against the rag. “Well, we’ve always suspected that one or both of them want a bigger role in controlling the Republic.” But my heart was hammering away in my chest. Oh, god. Was I playing bedroom games with a vicious, politically motivated murderer?

Well, of course he’s a murderer
, a taunting voice in my head answered me.
He’s a Vampyr, isn’t he? What good are they for, besides killing?

Well, the fresh memories of pain from that morning answered the question of what else they were good for, but I knew what my conscience meant.

I glanced through the frosted glass at the dark blob of Finch. Was he snooping around my compartment? I hurried up my washing, determined to keep him out of my stuff. Especially that Uptown package.

“If Bressov were involved, though, wouldn’t he have jumped at the opportunity to take Lucio’s seat at the Coven of Families? As of this morning, he still hasn’t made up his mind.” There—done washing. I shut off the water, cracked open the stall door,
grabbed my towel from its hook on the wall, and threaded my towel through the crack.

“No? That’s not what the Stream says.”

My chest tightened. I hastily wrapped the towel around me and staggered back into the room, where Finch’s finger hovered over a Stream video selection on my wall panel. He called it up—a perky olive-skinned Vampyr from one of the minor Families was standing in front of a news desk. She tossed her hair over her shoulder.

“Great news, dear citizens of the Sanguine Republic! The Coven of Families should be back in session very soon. Lord Victor Bressov, the Bressov family’s nomination to fill the seat vacated by the—” the broadcaster’s vacant eyes crossed as she squinted at her monitor off-screen—“tragic and untimely demise of Lucio Bressov—intends to announce whether he will accept the nomination at tonight’s gala in New Sanguinus!” She shifted her weight, thrusting the opposite hip out to the side and setting off a glissando of sparkles from the glitter painted on her face.

“If he accepts, then the Coven will reconvene very soon, and it’ll be back to business as usual!” She forced an awkward giggle. “But if he declines, it could be a hotly contested race, as the seat would then open up to
all
Vampyr families, including those who don’t currently have a seat in the Coven. Either way, it’ll make for an interesting night, and you can watch it all unfold live on the Stream.”

Finch powered off the wall panel. I looked down, realizing I was dripping all over my compartment’s floor, but my thoughts were elsewhere. Victor was a powerful—and power-driven—man, of that I had no doubt. The proof was in my bruises. But somehow, he didn’t strike me as someone determined to kill—his own “brother,” no less—to gain a se
at on the Coven. Then again, if Finch was right about the meaning of those vague transaction records as being part of a larger conspiracy, involving Violetta Stregazzi and possible others, besides . . .

“Hey, girlie, are you okay in there?” Finch stepped toward me and made a show like he was rapping his knuckles against my forehead. “You look lost in thought.”

“Sorry.” I shook my head. “It was a long, grueling day.”

Finch tilted his head to one side; though his dreadlocks were wrangled back in a ponytail, they shifted with the movement as if they had a life of their own. “This can’t be easy for you, being right there in the lion’s den. Look, baby, if you don’t think you can handle this . . .”

If I didn’t think I could handle this, what? Ten hours ago, I would’ve been dying for a way out of the situation, but even then I would’ve known Finch’s offer for empty lip service. Here it came now—he brushed my cheek with the side of his hand. I shivered, but was relieved to find it was only from the cold as water evaporated off my skin. Well, maybe not completely. But his touch certainly didn’t rile the same desperate passion in me that it once did.

“I can do this. He’s not as scary as he seems, at first.”

Finch arched one eyebrow and laughed, though it sounded bitter to my ears. “You sure about that? I mean, the stories I’ve heard . . .”

“Like what?” I took a step back from him, pressing up against the shower stall.

“The usual rumor mill junk—I’m sure you’ve heard it too. Sick games he plays with his Donors, and that they burn out even faster than usual. All the Bressovs are that way—the backhanded dealings, the abuse and scumbaggery. You know how it is with the old Families. Money, power, and centuries upon centuries of life at the top of the food chain keeps them full of themselves.”

“Lucio wasn’t so bad,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, and look what it got him.” Finch ran his finger around the curve of my shoulder and along my reedy arm. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

He leaned forward. His breath was hot, and spicy with the smell of a real-meat meal. For the leader of a ragtag band of freedom fighters, he sure ate well.
His eyes locked onto mine; his pressed his mouth forward.