Bloodlines (Demons of Oblivion) (37 page)

I go by his grave now and then. It’s on the family plot and his headstone lies between the one shared by his parents and the one above the empty coffin that was supposed to hold his brother. I think a distant cousin or something took care of the funeral arrangements.

I’ll be heading back there in a few years to dig him up. I’m not going to wait the full ten it’s supposed to take a human to turn, as experience tells me that date isn’t exactly set in stone.

He may hate me when he awakens. I can’t say for sure. I just know that even if he decides to leave me, his cruel and evil maker, for subjecting him to immortality as a demon with the curse of requiring human blood, at least he’ll have some amazing strength and stuff to keep his ass safe.

With the world thinking he’s dead—whether he leaves me or not—he’ll be okay. I’ll be able to sleep easy as long as I know that.

Author’s Note

While I was out for a walk with my dog late at night, mid-2004, Zara Lain first came out to speak to me.

Almost literally.

She strolled up, tapped on my shoulder, and started talking. As I walked, I felt her there. Saw the world as she did. Heard her chatter about her awesomeness. I had an image in my mind of a young woman, being stalked through the streets at night, only to leap onto a shop and become predator instead of prey.

I had other books to work on so I ignored her. Or, rather,
tried
to. After reading the book, I’m sure you can guess how impossible that was: what Zara wants, Zara gets. And late one night when her name popped in my head—Zara Lain—I knew there’d be no shutting her up. I had to start her story.

She’ll always be one of my favourite characters to write. When she shows up, the whole book goes smoothly for me because she just never stops talking, always eager to show me what’s going to happen. Though the next two books (
Hunter
and
Lineage
) in the series deal with different narrators, Zara makes appearances in both and is very much part of the story, setting up for her return to narrate in the fourth book,
Exhumed
. She also narrates various short stories and novellas in the ’verse, a list of which can be found at www.zaralain.com.

As a special bonus, you’ll find the short story
Thrall
next. Written from Nate’s point of view, it’s set during the time Zara was hidden underground in
Bloodlines
while he was looking for her, and it gives some hints with where things were going. After that, get a glimpse at the next novel in the series,
Hunter
.

My sincerest thanks for reading and I hope you join us for future installments.

Thrall

A Nate O’Connor Short Story

She wasn’t dead.

I paced the length of the room, steps heavy and deliberate. The murmurs from the hall beyond the closed door to my left were loud enough for me to hear; no way would they miss my stomping around.

Just a friendly reminder I was still there. Waiting.

Impatiently.

And an impatient warlock was a dangerous warlock; I’d rather my hosts keep that fact in mind.

The “waiting” room, for lack of a better term, redefined the words “dank basement.” Decorated in the seventies and not updated since, it boasted wood paneled walls, mustard coloured carpet, and a brass floor lamp with decades’ worth of dust. Swirls of brown water stains ran along the off-white ceiling tiles and the air had a noticeable damp, musty smell to it.

They didn’t just have an impatient warlock on their hands; they had an irritated one.

The door creaked open at last. I ceased my pacing and turned, dark hair brushing my shoulders. My fingers twitched, magic rushing through my veins and twisting around my limbs. Hot with a prickly edge, it begged to be used. I clenched my fists. Took one long, steadying breath. Then another.

It didn’t help.

Felix Laurent stepped into the room. He stood tall enough that he ducked slightly in the doorway. White teeth gleamed in his dark face, fangs extended as he gave an unfriendly smile.

It was all show, of course. A lot of vamps dropped their fangs when greeting my kind, as if reminding us they had their own ways of kicking ass, should we feel the need to attack. Felix would, of course, be dead before his body settled on the seventies shag carpet, should I decide against the direction our conversation might take—underestimating a magic user was usually their biggest mistake. For now, though, the vamp could have his little show if it made him feel better.

“O’Connor.” He tipped his head in greeting, mumbling my surname around his teeth.

“It’s a little hard to talk with those out,” I said coolly.

Felix shrugged his broad, hulking shoulders. I wasn’t short by any means—I stood well over six feet—but this vampire made me a midget in comparison. Felix retracted his teeth but kept up the feral grin.

Magic hadn’t abated; instead it sped, licking my skin and dancing along my fingertips. I swallowed and kept my focus. “Do you have information for me?”

The vamp walked with a quick grace he shouldn’t have been capable of with that linebacker build. “Sort of.”

Dread rolled as dryness down the back of my throat. Something was off. “Meaning?”

L'accent québécois
thickened his words, but I made them out well enough. “Meaning the shortest way to find the people you’re looking for is for them to come to you.”

Motherfucking, double crossing vampires.

Felix sprang forward.

I anticipated. Extended my hand, muttered the last words of the spell I’d already prepared. Let it go.

Magic slammed hard, a tidal wave hitting. Even as it left me, it struck with a force that nearly knocked me from my feet—hard, violent, with the clarity of liquid crystal pouring through the room.

Felix froze.

Literally.

The atmosphere had gone milky and swirly, colour desaturated. I breathed deep, sucking in a breath of hazy air. A dull ache thrummed in my head, starting at the back of my neck and winding to my forehead. The weight of magic in the room pressed down on me, a steady pressure on my shoulders.

But I moved. Past the ugly brass lamp. Past Felix. I glanced at the vampire and thought of the stake holstered under my jacket. He’d double crossed me, sure, and the desire to drop him on the ground was tempting—

And then the crystalline world around me cracked.

Colour seeped back into the room, bleeding through fractures in the air. Panic seized me, heart rate going staccato, and then the headache intensified, like claws tearing behind my eyes. Foreign magic slithered into the room, destroying the last of mine and dropping me square into the world again.

Shit
.

Felix blinked; I had precious seconds to move before he turned and found me, so I raced for the door. Too late, he swung around and caught my arm, mouth parted and fangs glistening in the poor light.

This close, with him moving and on top of his game, I probably wouldn’t get too far with the stake. Instead, I slipped out the gun holstered at my waist, lifted the barrel to his forehead, and fired.

His grip slackened; I wrenched away and backed up. His shoulders slumped, head lolled forward, body fought to remain upright. Unfocused eyes looked back at me, lips parted in a wordless cry. His fangs had retracted and he stumbled forward.

Not much of a threat now. But I remembered he wasn’t alone.

“
Parietis
.”

The barrier went up just as Felix staggered into it; he struck and went crashing back, landing on the floor and whacking his head on the baseboard.

A second party stopped in the doorway. She was short, petite, with a porcelain doll-like appearance. Big round eyes set in an alabaster face looked up at me from beneath a fringe of dark brown hair, and her head seemed almost too big for her body.

Her gaze trailed over the barrier, as if she saw it despite the invisibility. Studying. Weighing. Then a wicked smile flickered across her lips.

I swallowed dryly. Shifted from one foot to the other and moved to the balls of my feet, ready to dart away. At this point I couldn’t shoot her through the barrier; either I’d have to dispel it or she would.

I decided to let the little China doll do all the work.

Her dainty hand moved to the pocket of her dark cardigan and withdrew a red velvet sachet. A tug on the drawstring let the top fall open, and she scooped out a handful of shimmery powder.

This wouldn’t be good.

She held her hand an inch from her pink painted lips, palm toward the ceiling, and blew.

The powder scattered, striking the barrier with sparks. Powder slithered down, shattering the spell; a tinkling like breaking glass sounded in my head and pain bloomed as if I’d smacked into a wall. I staggered, energy draining from my limbs. Something wet dripped from my nose and I dragged the back of my hand across it to see blood.

Son of a—

She moved fast—faster than a vampire. I blinked and she was before me. Splayed fingers reached up and touched my chest; I flew back, wood paneling creaking behind me as I struck the wall hard.

Behind China Doll, Felix was lurching, hands fumbling around the bullet hole in his forehead. At least he was out of commission for the time being.

That didn’t make me feel much better.

The small woman stalked forward, head tilted to the side. “You are worth a lot of money.” She grinned again, tiny fangs peaking out.

Vampire
and
magic user? Didn’t run into a whole lot of those.

I took in a ragged breath. My nose still bled, trickling onto my upper lip. “You know they’re abducting vamps, right? Turn me in, they’ll take you too.”

“Not if we leave you secured for them to pick up, Mr. O’Connor.” Her voice was lilting, almost childlike, and she stepped forward with careful grace. “I need not be in the country when they wire the money to me.”

I swung the gun up and fired.

She anticipated and knocked my hand aside—but then I figured she would. The bullet went wide, striking the wall on the other side of the room. I twisted at the hip and sent a punch her way; she leaned back with ease, my hit missing her jaw by an inch.

She didn’t plan for me hooking my ankle around hers.

China Doll dropped, suddenly graceless, and landed on the shag carpet.

I sent two bullets into her chest and took three quick steps to the door. A hiss and she was moving, launching herself my way.

“
Parietis
.” I slammed the door behind me just as I reached the basement hallway. The girl screamed on the other side and the door rattled as—presumably—her fists struck, but with the extra barrier, I expected her to be stuck for a minute.

I wiped at my bleeding nose again and took a deep breath, heart rattling in my chest. My head throbbed and nausea rose, twisting in my gut and burning my esophagus. Even as magic swam through my veins in a comforting buzz, like a fresh shot of whisky...I knew burn out approached. Fast.

With heavy steps I started for the staircase. Stopped.

A pair of tall dark figures waited at the top, each carrying a pair of knives.

Burn out will have to wait, I suppose
.

****

Peter sat in the den on the same couch where he’d been when I left several hours ago in the morning. The only difference was the blue mug on the mission end table next to him. When I left, he’d had a green one.

He glanced up from his tablet and gave me a once over. “Hello.”

I closed the front door and grumbled a greeting, then kicked off my boots and strode for the powder room nearby.

“Kind of like old times,” Peter called. “I’m studying and you’re covered in blood.”

I slapped my gun and holster on the counter, and stripped out of my jacket. “I’m not
covered
.” A glance up at my reflection, though, told another story—I
was
pretty saturated in it. At least most of it wasn’t my own. My metal stake was gone, buried in one of the very-human knife wielders who came at me. I yanked off my torn shirt next and dumped it in the trash, and then surveyed the knife wound. Just nicked my left side—wasn’t deep at all. Now, the cut on my scalp wasn’t pretty and bled like a motherfucker, but then head wounds were like that, even when shallow.

“You left a trail on the floor.”

A glance back outside the bathroom and, yep, there was a trail of dark red staining the granite tile.

“We’ll lose the deposit,” Peter said. “Like the last one.”

By which he meant
I
would lose the deposit as I was the one renting the house, as I rented the last one. And the one before that. And the one before
that
.

“So who tried to kill you this time?”

“The usual.”
Fucking vampires
. Of all the leads I’d tried, I was
sure
Felix would work out. The covens were pretty tight-lipped but Heaven had been keeping us updated on anything she learned from them—which tended to be nothing. Meanwhile I sought every demon, every human with connections, and every bottom feeder I could locate...and nearly all of them tried to kill me. Even if I didn’t announce who I was—even with a fucking full beard—they all still knew and all tried to turn me in. Even vampires would risk their own hide to cash in.

Heaven and Peter, of course, had no idea what I was actually doing with my days. My former mother-in-law wasn’t around much—we’d banded together to survive and find answers, yes, but she generally kept her own apartment—and Peter confined his time to research, which I had no desire to interrupt.

Not until I finally had a
real
lead.

I knew what they’d say—had to sit through the lectures again and again three months ago. The words to that song hadn’t changed a whole lot since then, and whether Heaven sang lead vocals or Peter did a half-assed cover, I didn’t want to listen to it. While their lectures didn’t involve violence, I’d learned long ago that the thing to do is keep your head down, your mouth shut, and do it your fucking way regardless.