henri dunn 01 - immortality cure (14 page)

Aidan ran his fingers through his hair and stepped toward me. “Incompetent, useless asshole.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Those idiot pets Cazimir keeps have OD’d. Like, hardcore. One of them won’t stop puking and the other won’t wake up. If she’s not dead already, it’s only a matter of time.” He spoke with sheer disdain, no hint of concern or feelings of mourning, but then he’d never shown much love for Cazimir’s other mortal consorts. “And of course, it’s somehow
my
fault, like I’m their goddamn babysitter.” He looked around at the gathered group and grabbed my hand. “Come on.”

He stopped and got one of the women’s attention. She was middle-aged and looked wrung out, like an overused sponge that needed to be replaced. “If that asshole Dr. Whitman shows up, send him in, okay?” The woman glared at Aidan but muttered an okay in reply. Then Aidan dragged me into the room and shut the door. Cazimir was seated in the far corner on a chair that looked like it had been stolen from King Louis XIV’s court three hundred years ago. He was dressed in a white waistcoat embroidered with gold accents and had his long blond hair pulled back. It was a look the French king probably would have approved of.

There were two twin beds in the room, divided by a nightstand, and a matching dresser against the wall. These pieces were more IKEA than royal court. The closet door was open and a pile of clothes spilled out onto the floor, with only a few sad items dangling from hangers. A pile of books and DVDs sat on top of the dresser next to a laptop. Socks and other clothes were scattered all over the floor. It smelled stale, like the sheets needed to be washed.

A door to an adjacent bathroom was open. Legs were visible on the tile floor, and the sounds of someone retching echoed out into the room. A young woman lay on one of the beds. She was still, with her pale arms crossed over her chest, and I thought of Snow White in her glass coffin. The girl had jet-black hair, probably dyed, and ruby-red lips. But unlike a fairy-tale princess, her skin was slick with sweat. I grabbed her wrist to feel for a pulse solely for my own information—if her heart had stopped, Cazimir would already know. Vampires could hear those things. Her skin was clammy and cold but she had a faint pulse.

Cazimir watched me without comment and then turned to Aidan. “The doctor?”

“Asshole isn’t here. What do you want me to do, call 9-1-1?” Aidan leaned against the wall furthest away from the passed-out woman. “Who cares? They were suicidal to take that shit.”

“What shit?” I asked.

“Who even knows?” Aidan rolled his eyes. “They’ll take anything anyone hands them. They’d happily shove cyanide in their mouths if someone told them it’d be a good time.”

“Aidan.” Cazimir’s tone was stiff with warning. The retching in the bathroom stopped and there was the very distinct sound of someone slumping against the tile and moaning. Cazimir tilted his head toward the bathroom. Aidan threw his hands up in the air.

“Whatever, babe. But I’m telling you, they’re not fucking worth it. You ought to slit their throats and be done with it.” I winced at his viciousness. He stormed into the bathroom to check on the other mortal.

It was one thing to harbor those thoughts, but to shout them in earshot of the people he was talking about was pretty crappy. Not that I gave a damn about some mortal pets Cazimir had driven to the brink of death-by-addiction with the vampire groupie lifestyle. But it was pretty idiotic for someone who was in the pot with them to whine about how they’d gotten themselves into hot water.

“You look worried,” I said to Cazimir.

“You smell like your sire.” His eyes found the mark on my throat. Vampire saliva will clot the blood and start the healing process, but it still leaves a mark that doesn’t fade for hours. I tugged the collar of my leather jacket up around it. “He was here, you know. Pleading for your life. Very sweet of him.”

“You know Sean. He likes to play guardian angel.”

Cazimir’s lips quirked into an uneasy smile. “Is that what he calls it?” A pause, as Caz considered. Then he said, “You know why I haven’t turned them?”

I glanced behind me and saw Aidan crouched on the bathroom floor over the prone figure spread out on the tile. “Because they’re groupies, not friends?”

“Because it’s a responsibility. Sean has never understood that.”

I didn’t want to talk about Sean. Sean was an asshole. A seductive, irritating, maddeningly beautiful asshole. I sort of thought he loved me about half the time and was convinced he regretted me the other half. “Come on, Caz,” I said softly, moving closer to him. “You don’t want to turn every mortal who bats their eyes at you.”

“I want to give them better than this!” He rose to his feet in a motion so fast and fluid it was like he’d levitated. Aidan stood in the doorway of the bathroom. He didn’t flinch at Caz’s outburst. I didn’t either, but I’d had decades of practice. I was sort of impressed.

“James is passed out,” Aidan said.

“If they overdosed, shouldn’t they be headed to the ER?” I asked. It was a reasonable question. Unless Cazimir planned to attempt turning them, there was nothing he could do for them to help flush the drugs from their system.

“There’s no point,” Aidan responded, though I’d been talking to Caz. “They’ll just OD again. They’re useless junkies. All they’ve done for the past year is get high as kites and pass out. They’re barely awake enough to make decent blood bags.”

“Mind your place,” Cazimir hissed, and Aidan finally flinched, as if he’d been slapped. “Watch them until the doctor arrives.”

Cazimir swept past me and out the door. I glanced back at Aidan and saw so much anger in his eyes it might have set fire to the room. Then I followed Caz.

T
HE CROWD
outside hushed when Cazimir appeared, and moved to let him pass. I followed him down the stairs. I didn’t see a doctor heading up. Cazimir stopped on the second floor, where we were alone, and turned to me.

“Mortals who court me dance with death,” he said. “I should not be surprised they find other means than my fangs to reach it.”

God help me, Cazimir sounded sad. Melodramatic, like he was reading the script of some gothic romance movie, but still sad. I didn’t know how to react to the idea of the guy having real emotions, so I shifted uncomfortably. He reached out and swept my hair back, pushing my jacket aside to look at the wound Sean had left in my neck. He stared at it for a long time. “He braved your blood but did not offer his?”

I shrugged and inched back, out of the grasp of his icy hand. “You could save your pals,” I said, glancing up toward the third floor and trying desperately to change the subject.

“You cannot save those who drown their sorrows in chemicals, Henri.” He looked at the floor as he spoke. “A vampire who’s that blatantly self-destructive will not last long as a vampire.”

I sighed, but he wasn’t wrong. Vampirism hardens the physical body, makes it powerful. But it doesn’t heal the mind. Vampires who suffered from depression and anxiety as mortals will continue to suffer. Some dementia could be reversed and some chemical imbalances evened out a little, but others were thrown even more out of balance, and it was impossible to predict which direction the pendulum would swing. It was why vampires who were addicts in life had a harder time controlling their bloodlust. A few managed it. Many didn’t.

“I came here hoping to talk to people who knew Thomas, see if anyone knows anything that might help me figure out if anyone wanted him dead.”

Cazimir’s eyes focused on me. “Someone did.”

“Maybe. It’s possible someone injected him with what they thought was a mortality serum, not a poison.” He considered. “And Lark blames me, so she won’t give me anything worthwhile. But he lived here, so he must have had friends. Who did Thomas spend time with? Friends, mortal servants … fledglings?”

“This is a bad time,” Cazimir said.

“And time is not something I have the luxury of. Sean said you gave me two nights.” Caz’s lips tightened together. He hadn’t wanted me to know that part, which pissed me off. “Well?”

“I am doing what I can, but as you can see”—he swept his hands around the room, “I have not had much time myself. If you want, you can go to Lark’s room. She can tell you who—”

“She’ll rip my throat out,” I said. Cazimir sighed, and I folded my arms across my chest. “You know she will.”

“Fine.” Someone stomped up the steps. The young vampire in heels who’d told me to fuck off. She held a mixing bowl full of ice. Cazimir snapped at her, “Fiona, take Henri to talk to Thomas’s friends. Not Lark, but the others. She needs to ask them questions. She’s trying to determine who killed him.”

Fiona’s lips curved so far downward I thought they might slide down her chin. I couldn’t tell if that was because she thought it was obvious I had killed Thomas or because she was offended to be burdened with yet another errand. She held up the ice and shook the bowl in protest. Cazimir took it from her. “Thank you,” he said. “Go.”

Fiona glanced from him to me and back to the ice, and then back to me again. She looked furious. Lovely. As if this wasn’t going to be a nightmare already. “But—” she started to protest.

Cazimir shook his head once. I tried to tell if there was a connection between them, if he had been the one to turn her. Sometimes you can tell with sires and fledglings. It’s strange, because they never look alike the way mortal relatives might, but sometimes there’s this invisible thread that connects them. I didn’t get that sense from these two. Whoever had turned Fiona, it probably wasn’t Cazimir, or else my mortal eyes weren’t letting me see the connection.

Fiona let out a sigh and then said, “Let’s go.”

I didn’t want to follow a cranky vampire somewhere alone, but I didn’t seem to have much choice. Hopefully the fear of Cazimir’s wrath was enough to keep her bloodlust in check. She led me back upstairs and we parted ways with Caz, who took the ice toward the ailing mortals as we continued up to the fourth floor.

CHAPTER 15

F
iona opened a set of double doors at the end of a short hall. Inside was a library. It took up half the fourth floor and books lined all the walls. Shelves of more books filled in the middle of the room, though there was a corner with a fireplace and soft-looking chairs, and I saw the edge of a table in the stacks. A young woman with glasses came out of the stacks to peer at us.

“Hello,” she said in a friendly but uncertain way. She was in her late twenties or early thirties, with bright red hair and thick-framed square glasses on her face. It took me a moment to realize she was a vampire because most vampires didn’t wear glasses. They certainly didn’t need them.

“Hi,” I said.

Fiona turned left without a word, apparently having done as much of her job as she was going to. The door shut behind her.

“She’s kind of moody, right? I have no idea what Thomas was thinking.”

“Thomas?” I asked, nearly choking on the name and staring back through the door, as if I could see Fiona’s retreating form through it. “She’s his fledgling?”

The redhead nodded came closer. She wore jeans and a gray peasant blouse. Her hair was up in a tight ponytail. She looked me over suspiciously.

“I’m Henri Dunn,” I said. I saw the flicker of recognition light up her face but powered forward to forestall questions. “I’m an old friend of Cazimir’s. You are?”

“Bea.”

“You knew Thomas well?” I asked.

She shrugged. “He spent a lot of time in here. So do I. Hard not to get to know someone when you’re in the same room all the time.”

“I’m trying to figure out … ” I trailed off, trying to decide on the most tactful phrasing. Being overly cavalier about his demise wouldn’t make his friends want to open up to me. “What happened,” I finished.

“I heard it was terrible,” she said, gesturing to the chairs near the fireplace. “Someone poisoned him.”

“Yes,” I confirmed. “Was anyone mad at him?”

Bea sighed. “Thomas was gentle-hearted. He … ” She hesitated, fiddling with the books in front of her, stacking them and unstacking them on the table. “He had strong ideas.”

“About what?”

Bea studied my face before turning her gaze back to the pile of books in front of her. They were all fiction, I noticed: epic sword-and-sorcery fantasies. “He put a high value on a human life,” she said, smoothing a cover that featured a dragon and a knight. “Which is not a bad thing,” she added quickly, glancing up at my face. “But he acted like humans were better than vampires. Like vampires were meant to be their record keepers and guardians, rather than predators. He had problems with how some of the mortals living here were treated, and he wasn’t shy about advocating for human welfare. He wanted to kick the humans out and put them up in their own apartments, let them have lives beyond their blood donations and ween them off the dream of immortality. He’d started getting pretty worked up about it.”

“Worked up how?” A picture was forming in my mind and it made me uneasy.

Bea nodded towards the door. “Fiona was one of the … forgive this term … ’groupies.’ She ran away from an abusive home at a young age. She found her way to a vampire and fell in love. And then that vampire tried to kill her. She escaped, obviously, and arrived here a few years ago. But being human started making her … itchy. Like so many of … ” She looked at me again and hesitated as she tried to find the right word.