Shifty Magic (21 page)

Her body trembled as she cried silently,
rocking back and forth as her fear drowned her. Cooper's expression
became an unemotional mask except for his mouth which had flattened
into a hard line that might be a reflection of his anger, or mean
he disapproved of my rough methods, or was just plain annoyed.

A part of me regretted having to ride her so
hard, but I knew it was necessary. Everything I had said was true.
If we didn't get to the bottom of this soon, she'd pay the price
for the murders, guilty or innocent.

"Tell us everything," I said, softening my
tone. "Anything could be important."

"I told you, I don't remember anything after
I went into the meeting house," she sobbed.

"Did Sean know you were a user?" Cooper
asked in a neutral voice.

"What?" she said, looking up. "I don't—"

I threw a quick frown at Cooper for
interrupting me just when I was about to zero in on something that
might be of some use.

"Did he want you to stop?" he continued.
"Was that what started the fight?"

"Who was the practitioner you were meeting
tonight?" I interjected.

Marla shook her head, making her short hair
swing around her ears. "No, you don't understand. We don't fight.
We love each other." Her mouth trembled. "We...loved each other.
And I was only meeting Sean."

"Tests show you shot up just after you left
the club. Did your sponsor get you hooked on VR?" Cooper pressed.
"How'd he take the news when you told him you'd found someone
else?"

"We—"

"Did Sean help you kill him?" he growled and
her face paled.

"He didn't know anything about it, I
swear!"

"How do you know Kathy?" I asked.

"We worked together in New York. Zone eight,
you can look it up!"

"What happened tonight, Marla?" Cooper
asked.

"I told you!" She started sobbing again. "I
didn't see anything. Just images. Dreams. It wasn't real." She
covered her face with her hands. "It wasn't real!"

I turned away from her and leaned closer to
Cooper. "Can this VR of yours cause hallucinations?"

He shook his head and reached for his
iC.

A short, impatient knock hit the door just
before it burst open. Two men in immaculately tailored dark suits
barged in. The younger one, a tall guy who looked more like a
bouncer than a lawyer went immediately to Marla. I thought he was
going to grab her arm and haul her out of the chair, but he all he
did was plant himself next to her and look ominous.

The other one, a powerfully built older man
with a sharp nose and hard, intelligent eyes, stared coldly at
Cooper and me. "This interview is now over."

"Harlow," Cooper said through clenched
teeth. "This isn't vamp business."

An icy shock ricocheted around my
stomach.

"No?" the vamp lawyer purred.

"A practitioner and a Were have also died.
This is beyond the Church now."

"Nothing is beyond the Church. Lord
Bellmonte's protégé was the first to be assaulted. That gives us
prior claim." Harlow quirked one brow as he smirked at Cooper.

Cooper pushed slowly to his feet and braced
his fists on the table. "This crosses race jurisdiction. It stays
with the FBI."

Marla cowered down and cast me a pleading
look. On some level, she must have understood what it would mean if
she were turned over to the Church.

"I have a court order that says otherwise."
Harlow sauntered up to the table and laid his briefcase down.
Snapping the expensive, Italian leather open, he pulled out a
packet of papers and handed them to Cooper. Vamp policy discouraged
keeping important documents in digital form. Too easy to alter.

Cooper glanced through the papers. After a
moment, he smiled. "Tsk, tsk, Mr. Harlow. Someone on your staff
didn't do their due diligence." Dropping the court order onto the
table, he shoved it toward the lawyer. "Don't take it too hard.
Even the best inside sources don't know everything."

Harlow narrowed his eyes at Cooper. "Mr.
O'Donnel," he said to the other man without taking his eyes off of
Coop. "The girl."

Cooper reached behind him and rapped on the
two-way glass. "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

From the open doorway, the sound of a weapon
being cocked filled the tense silence. Stillman stood in the hall,
her legs braced, her arm at her side with her Glock pointed at the
floor. She looked even more exhausted than she had at the murder
scene. A woman on the edge. Even the haughty, over-confident Harlow
tensed up a bit at the sight.

"I hate to disappoint you," Cooper
continued, "but our initial evaluation showed the suspect as
suffering from paranoia, hallucinations, and severe memory loss.
Current policy requires us to do a full psyche eval before she can
be released into your custody. I'm sure you understand."

Hatred burned in Harlow's eyes as Cooper
smirked at him in turn and a dark flush crept up over his face.
"You tread on dangerous ground, Daine," he hissed.

"Don't worry. We'll keep her safe for
you."

The two vamp minions exchanged a look, and
then Harlow snapped his briefcase closed. "We'll be in touch.
Soon."

"I look forward to it."

Stillman stepped back as the lawyers passed
her, but I saw her finger twitch on the trigger. Apparently she
wasn't the only one disappointed that things hadn't worked out
differently.

Cooper nodded to her to escort Marla back to
her holding cell. "Put together a team to keep watch," he said.
"Twenty-four seven. Weres only, and of those, only the ones you
personally know can be trusted. I'll hold you responsible if
anything happens to her."

She nodded and helped Marla to her feet. The
girl sagged against the Were. The last encounter had taken
everything out of her and Stillman had to practically carry her
from the room.

"You think she was telling the truth?" I
asked him. "That she really doesn't know what happened?"

"She was lying. Unfortunately, at the moment
we have bigger problems."

We exchanged a look and I nodded. Someone
had leaked information to Lord Bellmonte, and the Regent needed to
be convinced to back off.

Looked like I had one more social call to
make before I could finally call it a day.

* * *

The hoverbuses ran all night in the city, so I
had no problem catching one to South King and Baxton. I sat down
next to a woman dressed in hospital scrubs and tapped out a message
to Falcon on my loaner iC. Marla's reluctance to out Kathy as her
friend didn't make sense to me. Why protect her if she hadn't done
anything? She'd mentioned the zone they'd worked in New York, and I
hoped Falcon could manage a little research and snooping mojo to
find out more about her.

As an afterthought, I mentioned the extra
symbols that were popping up around the main one, plus a few other
details that were bugging me. Since Falcon liked to keep late
hours, I wasn't entirely surprised when he messaged back that he'd
get right on it. I asked him to send me his latest gadget wish list
and that I'd see what I could do. When I was finished, I pocketed
the iC.

Leaning my head against the seat, I closed
my eyes and tried to figure out what I was missing in this case.
The next thing I knew, the nurse next to me was asking if this
wasn't my stop. Sitting up, I rubbed the grit out of my eyes,
thanked her and blearily got to my feet. She gave me a sympathetic
look and went back to her book.

Despite being nearly two in the morning,
business was booming at V.A.M.P. headquarters. I repeated the
routine of my last visit, enduring the corporate shill stares while
I got a background check, had my hunting knife and both throwing
knives retrieved from my boots and was treated to a thorough
pat-down. Finally, I was whisking skyward in the plush and silent
penthouse elevator.

Ms. Fairview greeted me at the top, her
fifty-something face seeming more care worn than before and her
brown eyes more wary. "Lord Bellmonte is currently unavailable. If
you'll please have a—"

"It's an emergency." I came around her desk,
took advantage of her momentary shock and jammed my palm against
the shiny chrome button that opened the door. As the door swung
outward, I made a dash for it.

She beat at the button frantically, clearly
alarmed. "You can't go in there!" Giving up, she went for one of
the drawers in her desk. I didn't wait around to see what kind of
deterrent she planned to pull from it.

"I'm sorry I had to force you!" I called
over my shoulder as I slipped through the narrowing space of the
closing door.

Unfortunately for me, Lord Bellmonte was
having his dinner.

He looked up from the young, toffee-skinned
woman sprawled across his lap in the throws of profound bliss, his
sharp, curved fangs extended and his mouth red with blood. His face
was as far from the handsome, debonair businessman as a rat was
from a butterfly, and I wanted desperately to look away.

Survival skill number one since the
paranormals revealed themselves? Never look away.

I nervously tugged at the hem of my skirt
and palmed one of the special hard plastic needles from the narrow
pocket I'd sewn into the hem. "Sorry to interrupt," I said. "Matter
of life and death."

The dilated pupils of his blood-engorged
eyes expanded until they were pitch black, a horrifying contrast to
the red surrounding them. I felt his sudden hunger for me ripple
off of him in a wave of power. My knees almost buckled from it.

I'd decided before that his interest in me
was nothing but a kind of curiosity. I'd been fatally wrong.

The need to escape overwhelmed me, and I
reflexively grabbed for the door handle. I could have shot myself
for it.

The show of fear sent his blood lust into
overdrive and the bubbling cackle of a vamp about to charge rattled
deep in his throat. His corpse-like face hardened into a feral mask
as he struggled to control himself. I held my breath, knowing that
a single twitch of movement could set him off, and stared as he
wrestled down his instinctive drive to hunt and feed.

With a kind of sick fascination, I watched
Lord Bellmonte's mania recede and knew that I'd made a terrible
mistake. Only the oldest vamps had that level of control. That made
him stronger, faster and smarter than anything I'd ever
encountered. If he'd wanted to kill me that first day, he would
have crushed my throat before I knew what hit me.

My mouth went dry. Having the interest of a
creature like that was not good. Not good at all.

He watched me processing all of this as his
face smoothed back into human contours. His eyes returned to their
cold, crystal blue and filled with satisfaction. Without taking his
gaze from me, he licked the blood from around the wound on the neck
of the girl, whose eyes had rolled back as she succumbed to ecstasy
and oblivion.

My stomach churned and I tensed, preparing
for retreat while I shifted my weight to shield my right hand.
Rolling the needle-like dart from my palm to between thumb and
forefinger, I pinched it firmly. If he charged, I might have a
split second to defend myself, and I intended to make the most of
it.

"How dare you," he said, his tone
surprisingly mild as he leveraged the limp girl into a sitting
position. He hoisted her into his arms as he stood. "Ms. Fairview
will have to be reprimanded for allowing you to interrupt."

I pushed down my alarm for the older woman's
likely fate and opted for a bravado I didn't feel. "Do you really
think she could have stopped me?"

"I, myself, trained her how to shoot." He
moved carefully around the desk and crossed to the high-backed sofa
in the corner. After settling the unconscious girl against the
sedately beige and gold pillows, he picked up the fur throw and
draped it over the back.

"Boldness can be useful. Many find it
irresistibly attractive," he commented as he spread the blanket
over his donor. "It can also be dangerously rude." He strolled back
to his desk. Crossing his arms over his chest, he leaned his hip
against the edge. "If you have news that pleases me, I may let you
live."

The image of Marla's frightened face flashed
across my mind. "Your lawyer goons showed up at the precinct
tonight."

"Ah. And you don't appreciate them relieving
you of your catch? Your fears are ungrounded, my hunter. Your fee
for capturing the woman has already been deposited into your
account."

A surge of molten fury swept over me. I
forcefully reminded myself of what a dangerous monster Lord
Bellmonte was so I wouldn't do anything stupid. "Thank you," I
gritted out, nearly choking on the words. "But that's not why I'm
here."

He watched me, a cruel kind of curiosity
marking his features, reminding me of a child with a magnifying
glass and a newly discovered ant hill.

"You have the wrong person," I said.

"The human arrested by you and Agent Daine
tried to kill you with the same weapon that was used on my protégé
and the bartender. Is this not correct?"

"Without the body of
your
protégé
, we
can't know that."

An unnerving smile swept his lips up,
revealing the hint of white teeth and the small gaps that marked
the exit points of his fangs. "My staff can easily determine that
fact."

"I don't think it's her. There are too many
contradictory stories, and I need time to sort through them. If
she's not guilty and you kill her, we may never find who really did
it."

"That's for me to determine, not you."

Frustration dissolved the latest shot of
crisis-induced adrenalin in my bloodstream and a wave of exhaustion
slammed into my shoulders and chest like wet cement. I rubbed the
bridge of my nose with the wrist of my right hand and wondered how
the hell I could convince him. If only I could get some sleep, I
felt sure I'd be able to grab hold of whatever key detail kept
eluding me.