Roaring Shadows: Macey Book 2 (The Gardella Vampire Hunters 8) (9 page)

The blue eyes—still with no trace of red or malevolence—remained steady. “
I know
.” Her voice dropped to barely a whisper. “Macey, I’m frightened. I know I shouldn’t ask. I have no right…but please…can you help me?”

“Help you how?”

Tears filled her eyes again. “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to be damned…I don’t want to be this way. I—I made a mistake. Please…you must know how to fix this. How to fix me. Please, Macey,
help me
.” This time when Flora reached for her, Macey didn’t move away. Her friend’s hands closed warm and familiar around her arms as she pleaded, her teary blue eyes filled with sorrow and fear.

Suddenly realizing how vulnerable she was, Macey yanked her wrists away and stepped back. A quick look around confirmed they were alone. The moment of pause told her the temperature at the back of her neck hadn’t changed.

This wasn’t a setup. This wasn’t a trick.

Flora had waited for her. Alone.

But that didn’t mean Macey could help her. She looked back at her friend—her oldest, dearest, closest friend—and told her the truth. “I know of no way to change…
this
.”

Flora gasped and stepped back. “Truly?” Those huge blue eyes became even larger, even more frightened and shocked. “There is no way?”

“I know of no way,” Macey said, her voice thick and steady. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”

Her friend looked at her, a flicker of hope in her face. “You’ll try to find out?”

“I will. If that’s what you truly want.”

“Of
course
that’s what I want. If I had known…” Flora trailed off. “But why
would
you believe me, after the things I said and did to you? I understand that, Macey. I do. But if you could help me…” She smiled, her normal, beautiful smile that never failed to bring light to her eyes and roses to her cheeks and warmth to Macey’s heart.

It did this time as well, despite everything that had passed between them.

“If you come back to The Silver Chalice with me, I’m certain Sebastian will take you in. And keep you safe.”

Flora appeared startled. “You’d do that? For me? You’d let me stay with you?”

“Not with me. I’m not…I’m living elsewhere. But you’ll be safe with Sebastian Vioget.”

And if anyone would understand about being an undead and wishing he were not, it was Sebastian.

But that very thought sobered Macey. If Sebastian knew how to undo his undeadness, wouldn’t he have done so a century ago? Then she remembered something Chas had told her about Sebastian.
He has a chance for redemption. And he needs you to help him.

Maybe there
was
a way.

“Let’s go.” She gave a jerk of her head for Flora to follow her. Somehow she had to get out of The Music Castle and Flora to The Silver Chalice without Al Capone or his goons interfering.

She paused when they got near the lobby, an interesting and yet discomfiting thought occurring to her. Nevertheless, she plowed on. “If anyone tries to stop us leaving, can you…er…change his mind?”

Flora looked surprised, but then the flicker of a smile twitched her bow-shaped lips. “I can do that.” She laughed, bumping companionably against Macey as they peered around the corner of the hallway, looking into the lobby.

It was like old times, sneaking around spying on Lillie Bentley and her beau Royal Yates.

Once assured there were only two potential hazards to their exit, in the form of a pair of burly guards at the closest set of doors, Macey boldly led the way across the lobby with Flora in her wake. When they got to the doors, as expected, the men brought them to a halt.

“Now where might you be going, there, Miss Macey?” asked the shorter of the two—which still put him more than a head taller than her.

“I was just taking my friend here out to get some air,” she replied, and nudged Flora.

“It’s awfully hot in here,” said the redhead in a sort of singsong-y voice. And then she looked at the men, one at a time. “We’ve got to get some air.”

“You should get some air,” said the shorter one after a moment. His eyes had gone glassy. “Open the door for these dames, Bart.”

The rush of balmy spring air was welcome, but just as Macey was about to step outside, she heard a noise behind her. A shout, and then a scream.

Then a gunshot. More gunshots.

She pushed Flora all the way outside. “I’ve got to go back.” Her neck was still chilly, though whether that was from the proximity of her friend she didn’t know. “Stay here. Don’t come back in.”

Macey hardly waited for Flora to respond in the affirmative before she was bolting off across the lobby, heading toward the music hall. But she was only a few steps away from the outside doors when one set of double doors burst open. Two men staggered out—and they were dragging a third one, whose white shirt had blossomed red on one side in the front. The wounded man appeared to be dead or dying, and the men dragging him were Capone’s goons.

“Who’s that man?” she demanded of Bart, the guard at the door. “The one who’s shot?”

“Looks like Fanalucci,” said Bart, squinting at the scenario. He seemed as unmoved, as if he were surveying his shirts to decide which one to wear. “He hates Big Al. Can’t believe he had da balls to come in here tonight. Poor bastard. Ain’t gonna have da balls to bug Snorky ever again.”

Macey shook her head, stunned by the casualness of the violence, and the fact that someone had been shot during a jazz performance…and the spectators weren’t running and screaming to get out of the place. What was wrong with people? Were they so inured to violence they didn’t care?

The back of her neck was still frigid, and it was too cold to be merely the warning of Flora’s presence. She hurried toward the music hall, where the sounds of excited, angry people poured through the open doors, although none of the audience members seemed ready to take themselves away.

“Now, now, everything’s all right now,” Capone was saying when Macey came through the doors. “I’m sorry about dat little disruption there, everyone. Let’s just get back to the music now. We wanna get our money’s worth from Satchmo, don’t we? Cost me a pretty penny to bring his black ass back here to Chicago when he thought he was going to The Cotton Club in New York.”

A nervous laugh rippled through the crowd, but people sat back down in their seats. Louis Armstrong, who seemed to have ducked off the stage during the altercation, walked back on to a roar of applause. He picked up his coronet and nodded to his piano player, who launched into a song Macey didn’t recognize.

She was still scanning the hall, but the chill at the back of her neck had abated. If there were any undead around, they weren’t nearby.

“Where da hell have you been?”

This time it wasn’t Chas who spoke in her ear.

Macey turned to find Big Al nearly breathing down her neck. He looked furious as he clamped a hand around her arm and tugged her away from the door and into a dark, private corner.

“I was doing my job,” she retorted, keeping her face close to where he’d thrust his.

“Your job,” he said from between clenched teeth, his chin protruding belligerently, “is to
protect me
, first and foremost. I don’t know where you were, but—”

“I was dispatching a tableful of vampires,” was her even reply.

“You missed a few. And one of ’em nearly put a damned bullet in my face.” His eyes bulged and his temples dripped with perspiration. He whipped out a handkerchief and mopped his face roughly.

Macey drew back a little. All right, so maybe he had the right to be a little annoyed. Still. “You’re a Venator. Did you stake him?”

Capone looked as if he were about to explode. “In front of everyone here? I can’t do that. Why the mother-fucking hell do you think I’ve hired you, ya damned broad? I can’t shove a goddamned stake in an undead’s chest in the middle of one of my clubs. How the hell would I explain
that
?”

“So where is he?” Macey’s knees
might
have been trembling a little in the face of the violent fury directed toward her by the most dangerous man in Chicago, but she wasn’t about to show it.

“I put a damned bullet in him. You just saw him being escorted out by Rudy and Sam. Now you’re going to have to finish him.”

Macey blinked, trying to understand. “But bullets don’t affect the undead…”

Capone gritted his teeth and spoke sharply and succinctly. “They do if they are studded with silver. It’ll keep him immobile and he’ll appear dead until you can dust him. No pulse, no nothin’. But the minute the bullet’s taken out, he’s back to normal.”

It took her a moment to process this, and that bit of information answered a whole lot of questions she’d had and never asked. So that was how Capone was killing his vampire enemies. How many of his dead rivals had already been
un
dead, shot with the special bullets?

“Where are they taking him?” Macey tilted her head as the sound of sirens streaked through the distance. The warning was high and loud enough to be heard above the crooning of Louis Armstrong’s horn.

“To da morgue, of course, ya dumb broad. Where the hell else do they take a goddamned corpse? And now I’ve got da fuzz coming in here and messing with my club—” He cut himself off and got in her face again. “You fuck up like this again, and I’m gonna—”

“What?” she fired back. “You’re gonna
what
? Don’t forget, Scarface—I know your secret. Maybe you shouldn’t be threatening me quite so much anymore.” Her fingers itched to slam her stake into the man’s barrel chest, vampire or not.

The police sirens were so shrill, she knew they had to be just outside the front doors.

Al stepped back. His eyes glinted coldly. “You don’t wanna play dat game with me, Macey Gardella. I don’t lose. And I don’t back down. And I’m a hell of a lot smarter than you.”

“We’ll see about that,” she muttered as he turned away.

SEVEN

~ An Unbearable Reality ~

Macey was able to slip unnoticed
out the side doors of The Music Castle as the fuzz arrived. Bystanders, both in and outside of the club, gathered to see who got shot or arrested, and they crowded the sidewalk outside.

Traffic rumbled past, and the marquee lights flashed red, yellow, and blue over the tops of the cars, pedestrians, and the few bushes that managed to exist on the street. Above, a half-moon glowed in a dark blue sky, surrounded by a freckling of stars and some dark wisps of cloud. People walked by, chatting and laughing across the street and around the corner, and the smell of coffee rolled from the open doors of a nearby cafe.

Macey looked around for Flora, pausing to let the night breeze filter over the back of her neck and then to determine if there was another, ugly sort of chill that portended the presence of her vampire friend. At first, when she didn’t see Flora, Macey thought she might have run away.

But what would have been the purpose of doing so? She’d already had the opportunity to escape from the threat of Macey and Chas—why would Flora have stayed if she didn’t truly want to talk to Macey, if she didn’t truly want to warn her…and ask for her help?

Uncertainty niggled at her. Could she trust her old friend? She fully understood that when a mortal was turned, he or she ceased being the person they’d been. The soul was lost, and the need and obsession for blood and violence took over their lives.

Yet Sebastian Vioget had existed for more than a hundred years as an undead without taking one drop of human blood. He fought alongside the Venators. He
was
a Venator—he’d been one before he became undead.

Could a vampire change? Could a vampire control those urges? Could a vampire be saved?

“Macey!”

Her heart leapt and she turned. Flora emerged from the shadows, tall and slender, eyeing her nervously. “Is everything all right?” her friend asked.

“It’s fine. I have things to do, so let’s go to The Silver Chalice so I can get back to work.”

“I was afraid you’d changed your mind,” Flora said as they fell into step together. “And decided not to help me. I don’t want to go back.”

“Where have you been staying?” Macey asked. “Now that Alvisi is gone.”

The count had been the one to turn Flora undead when he hired her to work at his Blood Club—a nightclub that offered mortals and immortals alike the opportunity to mingle, feed, have sex, and enjoy other hedonistic pleasures. Unfortunately, The Blood Club and the few other establishments that catered to this sort of entertainment were also more like feeding farms and slaughterhouses for the undead. A good number of mortals who entered those places never left again. Some died, some were recruited to join the vampire-protection society known as the Tutela, and a select few were turned undead.

At the original The Silver Chalice in London, on the other hand, Sebastian Vioget hadn’t allowed that sort of mingling and feeding. Back then, he served both undead and mortal, but he hadn’t ever, as he put it, procured or pimped for either side. There’d been no violence, no shedding, spilling, or sucking of blood in his place unless it came from the jugs of animal blood he kept for his own sustenance. None of that was true at his new establishment here in Chicago. He was the only undead who crossed the threshold there.

“I sort’ve ended up in Iscariot’s camp,” Flora told her as they stopped at a busy intersection. “He knows about you and me—our connection. He’s anxious to get to you in any way he can.”

“Including using you.”

“Yes.” Flora looked at her sidewise as they started across the street. Someone honked at them, and there was a shrill catcall-type of whistle, which they both ignored. “That’s why I wanted to warn you. Iscariot is planning something big. He’s determined to kill you and Sebastian Vioget. He says there are some rings, and the only way to get them is to slay Vioget.”

Macey gave her a wry smile as they turned onto a side street. “Vampires have been trying to dust Sebastian for over a century. He’s not very easy to kill.” She saw something moving in the shadows ahead and narrowed her eyes. The back of her neck was still chilly, of course, because of her friend’s proximity. But was the prickling getting stronger?