Silver-Tongued Devil (5 page)

He twisted the knob and pushed. The portal swung inside slowly but the air, heavy with the stench of death, slammed into us like a sucker punch.

I swallowed hard. It was one thing to see a crime scene when the victim was a stranger. Easy to compartmentalize. But knowing that the victim this time was someone I’d known and liked made me pause at the threshold. Almost as if I knew that once I crossed into that room, life would never be the same.

I licked my suddenly dry lips. “Let’s get this over with.”

Marty’s body hung from hooks like a macabre mobile. Pinned like a bloody butterfly. Displayed like a gruesome objet d’art.

A single, surgical line ran from his Adam’s apple to his groin. Wounds ravaged his neck, his thighs. But his lips tilted up in a secret smile.

Whoever strung him over the bed hadn’t worried about the mess. The formerly white sheets looked like Rorschach ink blots made from pools of blood and entrails. The air stunk of sex and fear.

Oxygen was suddenly too heavy for my lungs. Cold sweat coated my chest. And my mind turned into a sadistic time machine, forcing me back to a night thirty years earlier.

The virgin corpses hang from hooks like grisly angels
.
The Dominae stand below, their moonbeam skin bared to our eager eyes. Blood rains down, coating their hands, their lips, their breasts.

I tried to blink away the memory. Wanted to dig it out with those hooks. But it wouldn’t budge.

“No,” Lavinia’s voice cracks through the temple. “Not her.” My dreams disintegrate, choke me. Wet cement hits my lungs. My cheeks burn with shame. But Lavinia’s smile is cold.

“Sabina?” Adam’s voice sounded far away. But it somehow managed to break through the haze of remembered pain. I swallowed hard. My eyes focused again and they found the carnage that met them a relief. The blood and the gore and the thumbprint of violence were preferable to the bitter memories of that night long ago. The night Lavinia stole the future I wanted and replaced it with the one she needed. The night that left me fractured. Gave me the wounds that never fully healed. The night she made me an assassin.

“Red?” Adam said, closer now.

I blinked. Confusion on his handsome face and worry. Worry and love I never saw in Lavinia’s cold mask.

“Sorry. You were saying?”

Adam watched me warily, as if he expected me to bolt. He placed a hand on my arm. The contact was my undoing. I saw his lips move but I couldn’t hear him anymore. The overpowering scent of blood, the nauseating reek of decay, the biting sting of those black memories suffocated me. I clawed at the collar of my coat. I needed fresh air. I needed space.

“I need to go.” I barely managed to force the words out over the rising tide of bile and shame. Adam didn’t try to stop me. Bless him.

I groped past Slade, past the nymphs clogging the hallway. Didn’t bother with manners. Just pushed through them like a drowning woman straining for the surface. Soon but not soon enough, I burst through the women’s restroom door. I slammed it closed and clicked the dead bolt.

The stalls and walls were painted industrial gray. Dingy white tiles looked like decayed teeth with plaque for grout. One of the faucets dripped methodically, like a counter ticking down the seconds to my nervous breakdown. I sucked in lungfuls of fetid air despite the scent of old mildew and wet cardboard and pine solvent. But what the restroom lacked in fresh oxygen it made up for with privacy.

Fluorescent bulbs overhead sputtered light like strobes, flashing in time with my heartbeat. The mirrors were little more than scraps of polished metal. Apparently, the clientele of Vein had little interest in using the mirrors as intended. Instead, they’d graffitied every inch of the surface with markers and lipstick. My mirror, for example, served as a canvas for a spurned lover who claimed that “Ben Charles is a fucking liar!” The last two words screamed across my face in harlot-red lipstick.

I turned on the tap and splashed water on my face. It stunk like rusty pipes, but it was as cold as a much-needed slap.

“Get it together, Sabina,” I said aloud to my reflection. But that face with the wide eyes. That pale visage with its lips pulled back in fear. That face wasn’t impressed by my bravado. That face knew things I hadn’t been able to admit to myself. Not yet.

I focused on getting my hitching breaths under control. On convincing my heart to stop trying to claw through my chest cavity. For a few moments, I hovered on the knife’s edge between sanity and hysteria. Then, thank the gods, I finally took my first painless breath. My neck muscles unclamped, leaving behind a dull ache in my jaw. I took another handful of water and rubbed my hands over my face. When I looked up again, the panic in my eyes had dulled. But the smoky gray shadows still lurked.

I released a long, slow breath. And with it, Lavinia’s ghost. But I knew the relief would be short-lived. Demons like Lavinia Kane never stayed exorcised.

The door handle shook. I swiveled, automatically crouching into a fighting stance.

“Sabina?” Adam’s muffled voice drifted through the door.

I blew out a breath. “One sec!” I used my shirt hem to wipe away the rest of the water. Checked my reflection one last time in the mirror. I glared at the strange chick staring back at me. “Suck it up.”

With that, I turned and went to the door. My hands shook as I flipped the bolt. The door whipped open with more force than necessary. It slammed against the gray wall like a gunshot. Adam flinched and narrowed his eyes at me. “Everything okay?” The question was hesitant, the kind one would use with a woman on the edge.

“Yep. All good.”

“What happened back there?” He jerked his head toward the door down the hall.

This was definitely not the time nor the place to have a heart-to-heart with him about how seeing Marty strung up like a virgin sacrifice had resurrected feelings I’d believed buried for good. Feelings of revenge and loss, guilt and victory, disappointment and pride about Lavinia’s death. One of the shittiest parts about mourning is that just when you think you’ve moved on, someone else dies and all that grief rises up, resurrecting all the pain and anger and remorse. But, like I said, not the time or the place. Hell, if I had my way, no time or place would ever be right to talk about it again.

“The smell got to me.” I shrugged and forced a self-deprecating laugh to hide the lie. “Guess I’m losing my edge.”

“I don’t think anyone has an edge sharp enough not to be affected by that.”

True enough. Even Adam, who was normally unflappable, looked green around the gills. “Does Slade have any idea who did this?”

Adam shook his head. He turned to walk back down the hall. I froze, my feet glued to the grimy tiles. My gut twisted at the thought of going back into that room. But then I noticed someone had closed the door. Swallowing my resistance, I marched toward Slade, determined to ignore the fear and the memories and focus on the job of finding out who killed Marty.

When we reached Slade, Michael Romulus was by his side, going over what they knew so far. Adam and I exchanged quick handshakes with the werewolf Alpha before we all got down to business.

“None of the girls saw anything,” Slade said. “Cinnamon found Tansy knocked out in the supply closet. They found the body together.”

“How many entrances and exits are there to this area?” I asked, switching to just-the-facts-ma’am mode.

“Just the one door. None of the rooms have windows either. Best bet is the killer did the job and slipped back into the club while Pussy Willow was playing. Looks like probably a fifteen-to thirty-minute window between his escape and Cinnamon finding Tansy.”

In other words, he had fuck-all in the way of leads.

“From the looks of it,” I said, “the culprit is almost definitely a vampire.”

Michael frowned at me. “What makes you say that?”

I hesitated, not wanting to go down this path but knowing I had to. “The position of the body.” I couldn’t stand to say Marty’s name right then if I was going to maintain my distance. “There’s an old Dominae ritual where they string up virgins above an altar and bathe in the blood.”

Adam’s eyebrow raised to his hairline. Something in his eyes told me he was connecting the dots about my earlier reaction. Luckily, Michael jumped in before the mage could question me about it.

“Or someone wants us to think it was a vampire to throw us off their scent,” Michael said. “Any number of beings could have done it. Several classifications of demons would be capable of this.”

“Or a rogue werewolf,” Slade said.

Michael tensed like he wanted to get defensive about that theory but thought better of it. “A rogue wolf wouldn’t make it far without me picking up a scent, but it’d be foolish to rule any possibility out at this point.”

“He’s right,” Adam said. “A mage could flash in and out unnoticed, which blows Slade’s escape-through-the-club theory out of the water. Hell, even a faery with enough motivation could have pulled this off.”

“There’s something else,” I said to the mancy. The other two males knew this already but it was time to fill Adam in on the truth about what I’d seen earlier that night. “Remember how I said there was a murder in Central Park earlier?” He frowned and nodded. “When Slade asked me to come to his office it was to discuss that killing. When I saw the body, it had bite marks and there wasn’t enough blood at the scene to show for the extent of the male’s injuries. That means vampire.”

“She’s right,” Michael said. “My boys saw the body and believed the culprit was probably a vamp, too.”

“So you think the two murders are connected?” Adam asked.

“I think it’d be a mistake to think two sadistic murders happening on dark-race territory on one night is a coincidence,” I said. “The real question is, are we dealing with a garden-variety psycho or someone with more strategic reasons?”

“Do you think this is related to the peace negotiations?” Michael asked.

My stomach tightened at the possibility. “Like you said, we can’t rule anything out yet. But for the record, I sure as hell pray this is just a psychotic vampire with a hard-on for drama.” I didn’t even want to contemplate the alternative. I’d worked too hard, sacrificed too much to face yet another roadblock to peace.

Slade ran a hand over his face. “Christ, what a clusterfuck. When the Despina finds out about this, she’s going to rake me over the coals.”

“Forget the Despina,” Adam said. “When Orpheus finds out a mage was murdered—possibly by a vampire—he’s going to shit bricks. With the peace treaty signing looming, he’s going to lock this city down until the perpetrator is found.”

Slade looked like he was going to be sick. “Speaking of, I’d better go call the High Councilman now so he hears this from me. In the meantime, Mike, I want you and your boys to get statements from everyone in the bar. Maybe we’ll get lucky and someone will have seen something.”

“And if they didn’t?” I asked.

“Then I’m going to tear this city apart until I find the asshole responsible.”

6

T
hat morning I had the dream again. The same one I’d had at least once a week since that fateful night in New Orleans. The night everything changed.

I am tied to a cold marble slab.

“Look at what you’ve done to them,” Lavinia whispers. I jerk my head, desperate to block out the sight of Maisie’s red-and-black head bobbing against Adam’s chest.

So much blood. Too much. Adam’s face contorts into a grimace of pain. Lavinia’s fingernails dig into the soft skin around my eyes, drawing blood. But I am too crazed with guilt and horror to register the pain. If anything, the red blurring my vision is a blessing. “Oh, no, you must watch and understand. Your existence brings pain to all unfortunate enough to meet you.”

Here the dream deviates from memory. Instead of calling on the powers of Lilith and Hekate for aid as I did that night, I rise from the slab under my own power. The shackles fall away. I inhale Lavinia into me until she is me and I am her.

As I rise, the walls of the temple fall away and reveal a dusty crossroads with Adam and Maisie in the center, locked in their bloody embrace.

“Sabina!” Adam shouts, but his voice shatters and disperses like blood mist. I run toward him, but it’s like running through a deep tide. When I finally manage to reach them, Maisie looks up.

I still and my heart stops. It’s not Maisie who looks up. It’s me. My face is smeared with Adam’s blood. I smile and flash my sharp, red fangs at myself.

Cain appears. His red hair flashes brighter than arterial blood and his green eyes glow with evil intent. “Finish him,” the father of the vampire race says. “Finish him, Lamashtu, and we can finally be together.”

For a moment, I inhabit my vampire half’s mind and I look up at my mage self. I pity her with her tears and sickening vulnerability. I can’t blame her for her weakness for the mage, though. His blood tastes like candy. Like a drug I can never quit. I raise an eyebrow and smile at my mage self. Once I’m sure she’s looking, I go back for more.

I slam back into my mage self. The greedy slurping sounds make my stomach turn. “No! Stop! You’re killing him.”

“Why do you deny yourself?” Cain whispers in my ear. “You are a killer.”

I shake my head. “Not anymore.”

A sword appears in my hand, as if summoned. I white-knuckle the grip. Adam sags as my vampire drains his life away drop by drop. Tears wet my face. Indecision shatters me.

Adam’s face is pale, too pale. His eyes burn into mine, pleading. “Kill her, Sabina. One last time and then you will be free.”

I peer down at the bloodthirsty incarnation of myself. The self I’d known for fifty-four years. The one whose past was soaked in blood and anger. I barely recognize her now. She’s all fangs and hunger. A wild thing. Uncontrollable. Savage.

“Don’t listen to him,” Lavinia’s voice comes from the vampire-me’s lips. “Without me you’ll fade to nothing.”

“Sabina,” Adam pleads. “I love you.”

Those three words work on me like a spell. Like a sleeper awakened, I know what I must do. My vampire self is a cancer. And like all cancer, it must be excised before life can flourish. The blade glints on its downward path. Slices clean through the neck. I feel the impact severing the umbilical cord connecting my two halves. My vampire explodes in a cloud of black smoke and flame.