6 Under The Final Moon (3 page)

And before you go saying that San Franciscans are crazy, envelope-pushing, leftist tree huggers and it’s no wonder we cohabitate with the undead, you should know that you’re doing it, too. The undead are everywhere, separated from our human vision by that thin, magical veil and the completely human rationale that there is no way the guy bussing the table at the local Chili’s is a centaur. It’s sort of a mythical hand-in-hand kind of thing.

I, however, had the aforementioned honorable distinction of seeing through that magical veil whether I wanted to or not. So when a three-foot troll dressed in a velour track suit and smelling like the devil’s dung heap hit on me, I could see every one of his snaggleteeth and smell that horrifying scent that clings to my hair and clothing for hours after our encounter, like some sort of unholy bonfire smoke.

And, since the supernatural super-vision also comes with the power to be completely unaffected by magic, I’d never be turned into a toad or charred by a pissed-off witch’s thunderbolt, but I couldn’t ever experience the beautiful incantation that puts a six-foot wall between me and that oversexed troll.

So I couldn’t sing or dance, but I could see through supernatural veils and avoid magic and it had really never been more than a giant pain in my ass—except, of course, that my special abilities allowed me to enter the underworld and take a full-time job at the UDA. Even with the occasional death threats and sexual harassment via troll, running the Fallen Angels Division of the Underworld Detection Agency was as cush a job a chick with a BA in English could get. The dental care was superb (gotta love those vampire staff members), and I got paid vacation, weekends off, and the world’s largest stash of fake sugar and non-dairy creamer since the majority of my coworkers took their blood red.

I supposed I owed a debt of gratitude for my abilities to my deceased mother, who had been a seer, and my absent father, who was probably Satan. Not Satan in the couldn’t-you-at-least-pay-child-support kind of way, but Satan in the Prince of Darkness, Lucifer, Legion kind of way.

It was probably a good thing that he hadn’t been around for the father-daughter dance in junior high.

After my mother’s death, when I was a toddler, my grandmother hadn’t talked much about my father, leading me to fantasize that he was some CIA super spy with a James Bond suit and George Clooney hair who would come and swoop in to find me one day. He would pepper me with apologies for never making contact, but it was all for my own good as he was such a wanted man from all the evil plots he’d foiled while I was being stuffed in my locker by the mean girls at Mercy High. We would run off together and live in a chalet in some part of the world where chalets were prevalent, and we would drink cocoa and he would tell me how he’d cried when he’d missed my eighth birthday, but he’d had to protect the prime minister of Dubai and there really was no safe way to send an American Girl doll at the time.

I fantasized much less about my father as I grew older, but I’d still found it a stomach-lurching shock when I’d realized that Dad’s digs were probably more charcoal than chalet and that my direct bloodline contained a tendency toward belly fat, high cholesterol, and soul-stealing eternal torture.

I was pacing the apartment, pretending to be completely cool and unaffected when Nina pushed open the front door. She broke into an instant grin when she saw me, her tiny fangs pressing over the Corvette red of her lipstick.

“There’s the little scamp who took off two hours early and didn’t even bother to come get me.”

“Sampson gave me the rest of the day off.”

Nina kicked off a complicated-looking pair of Jimmy Choos and pulled a blood bag from her Plymouth-sized Marc Jacobs purse. She massaged the pouch for a beat before piercing it with one angled fang. “So, what did you do with two hours’ worth of freedom? I’d shop. Or get a massage—you know, if I could.”

Truthfully, there wasn’t any real reason that she couldn’t—except possibly that her cool, bloodless, breathless, marble-hard torso might make it a little rough for any living masseuse to get the knots out.

Nina glanced at the television and her face fell. “Please don’t tell me you squandered your time watching marriage-to-murder stories on Lifetime?”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, best friend.”

She grinned, her teeth tinged a heady pink. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You are. I had to stop into Alex’s office.” I took my time, letting the words come out slowly. Nina’s eyes grew with every syllable.

“You saw Alex? How was he? How were you? Did you tell him you were dating someone?”

“I’m not dating anyone.”

She sucked the last of the bag and massaged the bit of plasma at the bottom, tipping her head to slide it down her throat. “He doesn’t need to know that. He just needs to know that you’ve moved on.”

“Oh.” I waved at the air. “I’ve totally moved on. Totally.”

Nina gawked at me.

“Well, I’m no longer wearing sweatpants, okay? But we didn’t talk about any of that. There was an incident.”

The lock on the front door tumbled, and Vlad walked in, a backpack slung over one shoulder.

“What?” he asked as we stared up at him.

“Nothing, Count Chocula. Sophie was just telling me about an incident.”

Vlad’s face remained unchanged. “There’s been an incident?”

“Nothing major,” I said, eyeing Nina. “Just something Alex was a little concerned about. But I told him there was nothing to worry about.” I shrugged, even though my anxiety seemed to inch up every time I thought about Lance Armentrout.

“Oh, God,” Vlad moaned. “Is this another chapter in the Sophie Lawson/Alex Grace love story? Let me guess: you told him you loved him, someone dropped dead, now he won’t call you back.”

“Vlad, that’s not nice. Besides, I think we’re on Will now, right? She slept with Will last time.”

Vlad rolled his eyes. “So hard to keep track.”

“Do you guys want to hear this or not? And it’s not about me and Alex. Or me and Will. It’s about a dead guy.”

“It’s always a dead guy with you two. Or three,” Vlad said, dumping his backpack and heading toward the kitchen,

I started telling Nina about my run-in with Alex, about Lance D. Armentrout, the barbecued vampire. Nina just sat there, gaping at me. “What?” I asked her.

“What? What do you mean, what? You just lay it all out there and that’s it?”

I popped open my second Fresca. “What were you expecting?”

“Crying! Screaming! You to hide under the covers watching
Bandslam
while you mainlined chocolate marshmallow Pinwheels. What is this?”

“This? This is my Zen.”

Nina leaned back, crossed her arms in front of her chest, and eyed me, the depth of her coal-black pupils shooting a chill right through me. “By this time you’re usually hysterical, having slept with Alex or Will or possibly both while claiming that you love—no, hate—either or both.”

“I don’t fall into bed every time. That’s just your favorite part to focus on.”

“But you panic. And then there’s always a run on marshmallow Pinwheels and soothsaying cantaloupe.”

“You’re right. That’s my usual M.O. Obsessive panic, rash decisions, supernatural fruit. But you know what I figured out, Neens? We’re going to be okay. We’re always okay. We kick down a couple of doors, get into a few scrapes, but we always save the day. The five of us. As long as we’re together—”

“Oh God,” Vlad moaned from his spot at the kitchen table. “Is this the one where we have to sing? I’m not singing.”

“No one’s singing, Vlad.” I stood up, the eighties sitcom we’re-going-to-have-a-moment music playing in my head. “Everyone says they’re going to start the apocalypse, but no one ever does it. It’s not like starting a car. It’s not like any idiot on the street or in a robe or lighting a candle can do it. If it ever happens, we’ll have plenty of warning. And we can handle anything that comes our way until then.” I looked at my friends. “Together.”

Nina nodded, pleased. “Huh. I kind of like this kinder, gentler Sophie.”

I sat down, slung my arm over the back of my chair, and kicked my feet onto the coffee table. “I prefer to think of it as the cooler, kick-assier Sophie.”

“I think you mean more kick-ass.”

I glared at Vlad. “More kick-assier Sophie is totally going to kick your sorry ass, Vlad.”

He looked up, cocked a wicked eyebrow, and grinned. “Noted.”

Nina shuddered. “Still. The guy was burned alive? I hate stories that have fire in them—blech!”

There are only three ways to kill a vampire: the Hollywood stake-to-the-heart (which is a lot more difficult than modern media would lead us to believe, I’m told), a full-scale beheading, or death by fire. And while very few things ever rattled my ever-living roommate, fire was one of them. Polyester was another, but other than me lighting a warehouse full of pants on fire once, one had nothing to do with the other.

I watched Nina swallow. “Do you think whoever lit up this Armentrout guy knew he was a vampire?”

Vlad sat down next to us, looking at me intently. “Is Alex working on this? Are you?”

“No.” I shrugged. “You guys, I told you it was no big deal. This happened almost a week ago and not a single other body has turned up.”

“I don’t like this,” Vlad said, shaking his head.

“I don’t either, but I don’t think we should be panicking.”

“No. I don’t like you sitting here, being so calm.”

“Maybe I’ve learned a few things in my years of demon slaying and Vessel of Souls-being.”

In addition to the roots of my family tree being Hell-adjacent and my penchant for attracting the worst and most evil in society, I also functioned as a kind of supernatural Tupperware. The Vessel of Souls is a non-tangible entity where souls not yet ready for Heaven or Hell are stored. A bunch of Holier-than-thou monks thought it would be nothing but shits and giggles to hide that entity in Satan’s pug-nosed kid. On a day-to-day basis it really didn’t affect me much, but in the grand scheme of things, it made my father (should he ever truly know I am the Vessel) want to kill and/or possess me, and kept the fallen angel I pined for (one Alex Grace,
natch
) in an eternal state of Earth-walking limbo.

“Grammar not being one of those learned things,” Vlad said.

“As lovely as this is, I’m pretty confident that everything is under control.” I stood up, but neither Nina nor Vlad moved.

“I told you, you guys—there is nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, crime is up everywhere. All crime, not just supernatural.” I forced a chuckle. “What? Are you expecting the apocalypse?”

Vlad shook his head slowly. “No one expects the apocalypse.”

I snorted at Vlad and was reveling in the sunshiny warmth of my newfound lack of crazy when we heard the thumping on the stairs.

“What the hell is that?” Vlad wanted to know.

I pulled open the door. “Sounds like someone is dragging a body. Oh my God, Will!”

Will Sherman looked as if he’d used the last of his strength just to crest the landing. His dark eyes were downcast, his hair dirtied with soot. There was a wide gash across his cheek, but it wasn’t fresh. The blood had already congealed in some spots, was drying to a burnt rust color in others. He looked up when he saw me, his lips parting delicately as he flashed a weak smile. He gave me a two-finger salute.

“Consider yourself saved.”

Normally, I would have come back with some sort of smart remark about him finally doing his job. When he wasn’t rushing into burning infernos as a firefighter, he was my Guardian—not in the until-you’re-eighteen or until-you-stop-being-a-nutter kind of way. It was more in the saving-you-from-ancient-evil-and-mortal-danger kind of way. And he’s usually pretty good at it.

Unfortunately, I’m pretty great at plopping myself right back into mortal danger, ancient or otherwise.

I stepped in front of Will, his arm around my shoulders just before he fell. He trudged along, half helping while I walked him into the apartment. I gestured for Vlad to give up the couch and was expecting a growl in return, but his coal-black eyes were big as he took Will in.

“What happened to him?”

“The fires,” I said as Will pitched onto the couch. “At least I’m assuming so, right, Will?”

But Will was already stretched out, blanketing our crumb-covered couch with soot. His eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow, but steady.

“I’m going to get something to put on that cut.”

I couldn’t have been gone more than a minute—we generally don’t bother to put the medical kit away—but when I returned Will was sitting up slightly and Nina was sitting on the chair-and-a-half across from him, her face drawn as she leaned in. Vlad had taken the other chair, and for the first time, possibly ever, he looked interested, which I’d thought was physiologically impossible for a sixteen-year-old, regardless of how many years he’d been sixteen.

I broke up the little caucus. “What’s going on? What happened, Will?”

“The fires,” Nina said authoritatively. “He worked all night.”

I fished through the medical kit, looking for something to clean Will’s wound. “I thought there were only three fires this morning?”

Will pulled away as I dabbed Mercurochrome on his cheek. “They’ve been happening all night. Not huge ones, but enough to keep us in our boots.”

I examined my handiwork before extracting a handful of butterfly bandages from the kit. “So how did you get this cut? Fire kick your ass?” I grinned, hoping to inject a little humor into cocktail-hour surgery.

Will’s hand closed around my wrist. “About that, love.”

Will had been born and raised in Chester, England, and in situations that didn’t include blood and soot, his smooth British accent made me swoon.

Yes, I know. There’s Alex and there’s Will. Like I said, we’ll get to that.

I let out a breath. “What?”

“These weren’t your normal, garden-variety fires.”

“What? Why?”

“Arson. All of them.”

I shrugged, not understanding. “So there’s a serial arsonist on the loose.”

Will sucked in a breath. “Every one of the fires has been burning hotter than any other fire on record. We haven’t been able to find an accelerant or point of origin. There’s nothing.”

Vlad looked up. “Then how do you know they were arson? I mean, other than the idea that it’s pretty weird to have multiple spontaneous combustions in the same city on the same day.”

Will shifted and pulled a tiny hippopotamus from his pocket.

“That’s a hippo. Unless it’s also a junior pyromaniac, I can’t exactly see what that proves.”

Vlad came by and snatched up the little hippo. “It’s a jump drive, brain trust.”

I rolled my eyes and grabbed Vlad’s laptop, handing it to him.

He scowled. “Use your own laptop. I’m in the middle of a game.”

I yanked the hippo and glared at him. “You should start saving your games, brain trust.”

I pushed the hippo bottom into the USB port and we all watched Vlad’s
BloodLust
game—a fearsome-looking vamp a la Bela Lugosi—freezing on the screen, little animated drops of blood falling from his mouth, pausing in midair. A new screen popped up, black and white and grainy. The camera holder was walking quickly, as sirens and chaos wailed in the background. There were people crying and the rush of water spraying.

“Where is this from?” I asked.

“The fire. The most recent one. It’s from the body cam on my uniform.”

The camera finally settled on a building, huge flashes of white fire roaring through the windows.

I squinted. “What is that?”

Will leaned over and turned the volume up on the laptop. The camera focus became a little sharper and the shape standing in front of the house was a man, arms raised in a sloppy V, head thrown back. He was shouting something incoherent and seemed to be stomping or dancing. I could feel myself pale.

“Mentally ill? Terrorist?”

Vlad cocked his head. “He’s speaking Latin.”

“
In voco te Satana! Et educam vos de igne! Flamma tibi fortitudinem,”
Nina repeated. She took a miniscule step back. “He’s calling Satan.”

“He wants him to come through the fire. The flame will bring him strength, right?” Will said.

I looked at the drawn, studious faces of three of my dearest friends and felt like the village idiot. It wasn’t that my Latin was rusty—it was more that it was completely nonexistent.

“You speak Latin, too, Will?”

“Don’t look so shocked, love.”

“Oh, you probably had to learn it as a Guardian, though, right?”

“I had to learn it in primary just like every other kid in England.”

I threaded my arms in front of my chest and nodded nonchalantly. “Yeah, sure. Us too.”

Nina turned to me, her mouth so wide open the knife-sharp tips of her fangs were visible. “It doesn’t matter where he learned Latin, Soph. Are you hearing this? Is this the guy who lit the fire?”

Will nodded, raking a hand through his hair. “Gerry Ford. The homeless guy, not the president. Said he set the fire because the devil told him to.”

I snorted. “Typical nutter.”

Will, Vlad, and Nina all turned to me, faces serious.

“His Latin was impeccable.”

“The incantation . . .” Nina shivered.

“What? This guy is a crazy. They’re all over the place. If they’re not screaming for Jesus or The Gap or a shot on Google Maps, they’re screaming about Satan, right?”

Will reached out and poked a key and the video started over again.

“When he says ‘the flame shall give you strength,’ look in that window right there.” He pointed to the screen and slowed down the video, the man’s speech stretching out. If it didn’t sound devil-like before, it certainly did now. When he got to the phrase, “
Flamma tibi fortitudinem,”
the flame in the window doubled in size, leapt from the window with a whooshing roar, and began raining flaming bits of detritus down to the ground. A piece of the flaming debris fell into the man’s outstretched hand and he pulled his palm toward him, fascinated. Even with the grainy output, I could see the flame dancing in his eyes, illuminating the weird smile on his lips.

“Sir, sir, you’re on fire! Let me help you!”

I could barely make out Will’s accent behind the respirator as he yelled at Gerald Ford. When Will’s gloved hands came into view, moving closer and closer to the man with the flame, Gerald looked directly into the camera, his eyes fearful but wild. He pulled his burning hand into his chest and I could see his skin crackling and bubbling as the fire engulfed each finger, then rose up his sleeve.

Bile itched at the back of my throat. “Turn it off, please.”

Will looked at me with pity in his eyes, but shook his head. “In just a second. You need to see this.”

Gerald Ford approached the camera—which meant he approached Will—the fire crackling up his arm and singeing the edges of his longish hair. His face was completely serene.

“The fire lives,” Ford said in a delighted whisper. “The fire lives and so does he. You don’t have much time, Will Sherman, and neither does she.”

Breath choked in my throat and my eyelids felt as though they were glued open as the man crossed his arms in front of his chest and caught the rest of his clothing on fire. The flames rose and swallowed him, licking across his chest and his arms, moving toward his throat. Finally, they were at his chin, the flickering firelight reflecting in his wide-open eyes, illuminating the grotesque smile on his melting face.

I heaved and clapped a hand over my mouth. Nina handed me a glass of water and I sipped, grateful for her sympathy until she used her vampire strength to shove my head between my knees.

“Nina!”

“Just breathe, Sophie, honey. It’ll be okay.”

I pushed myself up to sitting again and glared at her, then looked at Will. “Why did you show us this?”

“Because that guy was talking about you,” Vlad said as though it were the clearest thing in the world.

“Uh, no, I don’t think so.”

“Sophie, he knew who I was. He knew my name,” Will said.

I felt a surge of vague hysteria and just as quickly stamped it back down. “You were wearing your uniform. Your name is right on your jacket, right there. And it’s on your helmet!”

“My last name is on both of those things. Not my first name. And no reference to any kind of bird, let alone you, love.”

I knew exactly what Gerald Ford meant. I know exactly
who
he meant. But I wasn’t ready to let go of my cool new sense of not-freaking-out-ness just yet so I tried to play the logic card.

“San Francisco is a small place and you’re out patrolling a lot. You talk to everyone. It’s totally possible that you talked to Gerald once and he remembered you.”

Will nodded. “True. And what do you make of the bloke setting himself on fire?”

“Crystal meth.”

I had no idea whether or not crystal meth would turn someone into a human torch, but given that the alternative explanations were that my father had turned a homeless guy into an inflammable minion of Hell, or a homeless guy just decided to up and smoke himself for hellish glory, it didn’t seem that far-fetched.

Nina swallowed. “I hate to tell you this, Soph, but—”

I held up a silencing hand. “Don’t. I have a couple hours off work for the first time in I don’t know how long, and horrible camera video aside, I would like to have at least a tiny sliver of enjoyment. Just an hour or two.”

I could feel the sweat beading along my hairline and upper lip while Nina, Vlad, and Will looked at me, each with a mixture of incredulity and sympathy in their expressions.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure what was worse.

As I’d spent most of my adult life running from crisis to murderer to sadistic police officer, I knew how bad the video, the fires, and Lance Armentrout were. And what was far worse was the gnawing, warning ache at the pit of my stomach telling me that this case—these circumstances—would make everything I had faced in the past look like pure child’s play.

“Please?”

My blood was already humming at a frenetic pace, but I was damn determined to keep a bit of normalcy in my early weekend. Will was exhausted and sooty and looked like the most beautiful calendar fireman in all of humanity, but he wasn’t hurt. The fire had been contained, and it was a balmy and unreal sixty-six degrees outside my apartment window. I was pretty sure the entire world was going to come crashing down anyway, so I figured I deserved a few minutes of what passed as sunshine out here on the coast.

“I’m going to take ChaCha for a W-A-L-K.”

Everyone stared at me, but no one spoke. I took that as a sign of agreement and stood up.

My little dog couldn’t tell me when she had to pee and spent forty-five minutes each night fighting with a sock, but she knew how to spell “walk.” She immediately tore into the living room and popped up on her hind legs, jumping around like a circus poodle.

The expression on Will’s face was skeptical so I put a hand on his shoulder. “We’re just going to the park and back.”

He heaved himself up. “Just give me five minutes to change.”

I shook my head. “Appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t need an escort.”

I looked to Vlad and Nina to back me up, but they were both staring at me, wide-eyed.

“Soph, I’m not sure going out alone is such a good idea.”

I forced a smile and pointed to ChaCha. “I won’t be alone.”

“Right,” Will said. “You’ll be with your attack mop.”

Vlad shook his head in disbelief as I scooped ChaCha up. “Something bad is simmering, Sophie.”

“Yeah, well, call me if Armageddon breaks out while I’m out scooping poop.”