henri dunn 01 - immortality cure (18 page)

“What happens now?” I asked.

“You wait here. I tell Caz. Maybe they hold a trial, maybe they just snap the guy’s neck.” Aidan shrugged, like none of it mattered to him. “Be right back.”

I finally collapsed into one of the hard-looking Victorian chairs. My throat felt dry and my nose itched. A headache was forming behind my eyes. I produced the Altoids tin from my purse and popped a mint into my mouth. I let the sharp peppermint burn away the icky taste.

“You cannot subsist on candy mints alone,” Sean said, his voice soft. The room was dimly lit by electric candelabra that didn’t throw out much wattage, and he hugged the shadows, so I could only see his profile and the glow of his eyes.

“Maybe I can,” I said, because I was feeling obstinate. “What difference does it make to you? You clearly don’t care whether I subsist at all.”

Sean frowned so hard I could see the shift in the lines of his face. “Of course I care, Henrietta.”

“Then why didn’t you come?” I rose to my feet, at first to run at him and bang my fists against him, but I thought better of it and merely started pacing again. “The moment you fucking heard I’d been stripped of my immortality, why the hell didn’t you rush to my side?”

Sean did not speak. He didn’t have to. We both knew the answer: he didn’t love me the way I loved him. The way I’d always loved him. And it carved pieces out of me, tightening my throat and squeezing my mortal heart. I had been a phase, and while vampires like Sean were prideful and protective of their ilk, it wasn’t the same as loving them. Not really.

“You know what, forget it,” I said.

“You’ve always been far too impatient,” he said.

I balled my own fists, nails biting into my palms, and resisted the urge to punch Sean in the face. Punching a vampire is rarely a good idea, especially if you’re human and don’t have a death wish.

Thankfully, Cazimir appeared (who knew I’d ever use those three words in that order, huh?). He swept into the room like a king who expected us to bow before him. Neither of us did. Aidan trailed on his heels.

“You found the killer,” Cazimir said after a considerable pause, waiting for applause that never came.

“I found a suspect,” I corrected, folding my arms over my chest. “I’m sure his blood will tell you what you need to know.”

Cazimir made a face, as if the suggestion was utterly distasteful. “It will be up to Lark to determine his fate. After you convince her, of course.”

I stared. “Convince Lark?” I finally asked.

Cazimir smiled his fake stage smile, complete with fangs. “
Mais oui
. Certainly you knew you could not bring a lamb to slaughter without proving it was, in fact, a lamb.”

I groaned and turned to catch Sean’s eye, grateful I wouldn’t face Lark’s wrath alone. But Sean was gone. My heart sped up. I dropped my arms and moved deeper into the room to examine the shadows. There was no one. He must have slipped out the door while Cazimir acted as an unwitting distraction. Surely Caz had seen him, but maybe he didn’t give a damn.

Well, shit.

“Something wrong?” Aidan asked, amused. He must have seen my sire flee, too. Goddamn that selfish prick.

“No,” I said firmly. “But aren’t you guys going to have some kind of ridiculous trial or something? Why can’t I just make my case then?”

“Normally, we’d have a trial,” Cazimir said with an official air, ignoring my comment that such a thing was absurd. “But Lark wants this matter settled and put behind her so she can move on. Come, come.” He clapped his hands and spun on his heels, his pearly-white velvet cape swinging around like a curtain. “Let’s get this over with.”

I swallowed, rolling my tongue around the sour taste in my mouth. I popped a second Altoid.

“Don’t look so nervous,” Aidan said, punching me on the arm. “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” He grinned maliciously, and for the first time, I really didn’t like him. I couldn’t tell if he was being flippant for my sake because he thought it would help or what, but it really, really did not.

“You know what could happen,” I said stiffly. The grin dropped from his face. He started to say something else but I didn’t wait around to hear it. I didn’t need his apologies for shitty-timed jokes. I needed to convince Lark I’d found the real killer or I wouldn’t be caring about anything ever again.

CHAPTER 19

C
azimir led me through a kitchen, where mortals with dark circles under their eyes gathered and ate bowls of cold cereal or chugged various forms of caffeine. The smell of coffee was so strong I almost stopped and demanded a cup, but I didn’t think my roiling stomach would handle it well. It was after midnight, but I was willing to bet none of them kept regular schedules, and they all probably lived on coffee in an attempt to keep up with their immortal lovers and friends.

The mortals paused in their routine as Cazimir blew through the room, watching him race by like a tornado and giving me curious looks as I clipped his heels. But as soon as Caz was through the door, they went back to their food and drink.

We passed through a recreation room that was much the same: full of mortals actively not watching a television, which had been left on a reality program about deep-sea fishing. There were maybe half a dozen people, reading books or playing handheld video games. One girl with three lip piercings hunched over the coffee table as she colored in a coloring book. It reminded me of a mental hospital from a movie. I’d never been in a real mental hospital, but this room struck me as very much a busy room. A room of distractions and ways to pass the time. Card and board games were stacked on a shelf, coloring books and markers sat on an end table. There was nothing wrong with games or coloring books or knitting like the guy at the end of the sofa, but none of these people looked interested in whatever task they’d chosen. Two of the mortals played checkers, but neither paid much attention to the board, checking their phones and not taking their turn.

Life wasn’t being
lived
here: it was being waited for. All of the dozen mortals gathered in the kitchen and this room were biding their time, passing their days, until … what? How many of them would truly be made immortal? How many would be turned, and how many of the rest would die having wasted their lives pining for something they could never have?

A shiver went down my spine.
You’re one to talk
, I could almost hear Neha’s voice chastise me.

But it wasn’t the same for me. I’d been immortal, and I was so much older than any of these kids. The world was a cruel and uncaring place, but I knew how to bend it to my will. I was biding my time, too, true, but I wasn’t waiting for vampirism to fall upon me like mana from Heaven: I was going to make it happen.

I thought of Sean, slipping out of the room like a vampire ninja, without so much as a goodbye, and my stomach churned uneasily again.

The next room was a small sitting room, a miniature version of the one in the front of the Factory, all Victorian-style furniture and hard oak pieces that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a period film set in the 1890s. My parents used to have a sofa like the one Lark sat on, rounded back and thinly padded cream-colored velvet cushion.

She wore tight jeans and a blue peasant top, and held a laptop on her lap. She could have been a college student if not for the inhuman stillness of her chest or the ashy tone of her skin. She wore a black band around her right upper arm, a show of mourning. She shut the computer when we walked in and straightened in her seat, fixing her glare on me.

“Come to confess?” she asked.

Words failed me. Her gaze was piercing and her grief cloaked her like a blanket. She was too still to be a living thing, though she tilted her head slightly.

“Henri has found the killer,” Cazimir said with an exaggerated bow. “She apprehended him and brought him here. He’s been detained.”

Lark’s eyes narrowed and then her gaze jerked to Caz. “Leave us.”

Cazimir bowed to her again, a gesture of politeness if not deference (though Lark did have a commanding presence) and he quickly left the room, shutting the door behind them.

The parlor wasn’t big and I could feel it narrowing around me.

Lark didn’t move, or do anything to suggest I should sit, so I stayed standing a few feet from the door. It wasn’t close enough to make an escape if she decided to kill me. There was no such thing as a safe distance from a predator as efficient as a vampire.

Silence mixed with her grief and filled the room like a fog. Finally, she spoke in a low, even voice. “You’re willing to throw someone to the wolves to save your own skin?”

I shivered at the ice in her words. “I didn’t kill Thomas. I had no desire or reason to hurt him.”

She stared at me for a long time. Vampires can usually tell if people are lying, since they can hear how erratic their heartbeat is, but it’s not a perfect science. They’re like polygraph tests: they can only measure so much and there are plenty of reasons why a human alone in a small room with a vampire might have an irregular heartbeat.

“Then who did?”

I hesitated, trying to figure out the best (and fastest) way to explain it and get myself out of the room. “Remember Katelyn Beyer?”

Her expression darkened and she nodded. “Thomas’s mistake.”

“Don’t call her that,” I said, the anger bursting out of me before I could rein it in.

“I do not mean to insult her, Henrietta. Thomas deeply regretted what happened to that young woman.”

“Kate has a brother,” I explained. “He had access to the Cure. He was getting”—I paused, trying to come up with a safe explanation—“treatments from the lab that Cured me. He killed Ray, the scientist whose body I brought here earlier this week, and stole vials of the Cure.”

“Why would he do that?” she asked. It was a reasonable question, but there was no way I was going to mention the whole werewolf drug motive. Let her see that in his blood when she drained him dry, after I was a safe distance from the building.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it was the motive for Ray’s murder, maybe it was just the aftermath.”

She considered for a long moment and then nodded once, stiffly. “And then he went after Thomas?”

“So it seems. Maybe he hunted you guys down, maybe it was just shitty timing and he took his chance when it came. I’m guessing he only meant to turn Thomas human in revenge, and it backfired, but you’ll have to ask Jake. He’s the only one with access and motive,” I repeated my internal monologue and ignored the voice in my head that added,
Except Neha
. “Drink his blood. His thoughts will probably reveal his guilt.” I did not mention that I sorely regretted not doing that myself when I had the chance and now it was too late. I couldn’t check him without revealing this power to the vampires, and that might be the thing that sent them over the edge of tolerance and made them decide it was time to destroy me for good.

Lark considered. Then finally she let out a small sigh and said, “Okay.”

I stared at her, disbelieving. She didn’t expand on that point. “Okay?”

She shrugged. “We’ve not always gotten along, Henri, but I know you well enough to know you’re not stupid. If you were responsible for Thomas’s death, I highly doubt you’d be dumb enough to let Cazimir leave you alone in a room with me.” She smiled. There was no mirth it in but it showed her fangs, which was the point. “If you say this man is guilty, I’ll rip out his heart and eat it. He deserves no better. But it’s an empty gesture. Nothing will bring Thomas back.”

I wasn’t stunned, exactly, but I was surprised. Lark had never been a frothing fountain of rage, but I didn’t expect anyone to handle such a devastating loss well.

Also, I hadn’t really expected her to believe me. I was anathema to the vampires now, proof that immortality was not always permanent, insofar as it had ever been. A reminder that even undeath had no guarantees. It was easier to blow me off, call me a Blood Traitor, and find a way to destroy me so they could go back to their pretty illusions. This would have made a damn good excuse. I was surprised she wasn’t taking it.

“I am sorry for your loss,” I said. It didn’t feel like enough. Words rarely are when the loss is big enough to tear holes in one’s being.

“Thank you,” she said and looked away. “You may go.”

I didn’t need to be told twice.

CHAPTER 20

I
passed back through the dimly lit rec room. The game of checkers had been abandoned with most of the pieces still on the board. Both players were now texting furiously. I wondered which vampires they belonged to, so to speak. Vampires are not known for their ability to share, though I supposed if some mortals were just there to make blood donations, it was possible they went with whoever asked.

I lingered for a moment, trying to get up the nerve to ask them a question I could not quite form into words. The guy knitting at the end of the sofa glanced up at me. He had red streaks in his dark hair and piercings lining his eyebrows. He studied me for a moment and then returned to his knitting.

I left.

I did not see Cazimir or Aidan or anyone else I really recognized on my way out. There was no sign of Jake, nor any indication of where they’d taken him.

Something slick as an eel wormed through my midsection. Had I been too hasty in handing Jake over? I shook my head to dispel the thought. He was guilty. Had to be. End of story. And anyway, it was out of my hands now.

I left the Factory intending to go home, but I was too wound up, so I walked around. I found myself in front of Underground. It’s strange how places in a city become haunted with the ghosts of your former lives. I’d only lived in Seattle for a decade before my transformation, and yet it, like the cities before it, had become my home. Now I felt untethered from places like this, where Vampire Henri had thrived.

The awning over the entrance made it look like an old-fashioned apartment building. It said “Underground” in faded letters on the door, with the hours (open til two) and a sign warning that no one under twenty-one was allowed inside.

I hesitated and pulled on the metal bar to open the glass door. The entrance was a small square of scuffed hardwood about four feet wide, with a staircase heading down. Underground was, unsurprisingly, in Seattle’s Underground, which was really just ten to twelve feet below street level.