Revenge and the Wild (11 page)

Westie took another swig of her water. “Don’t you worry about that. I plan to.”

Being denied a cure by Big Fish was a blow Westie hadn’t been expecting. She wasn’t angry, though. Nigel had told Westie the Wintu’s healing spells weren’t working, and she was sure their elixirs needed magic. Or maybe Big Fish just wanted Westie to figure it out on her own, only she didn’t have time for that. If she wanted to get sober and regain Nigel’s and the sheriff’s trust, she’d need to figure out a faster way.

A year ago, while in the Tight Ship, she’d heard a drunkard talking about his wife leaving him and how he planned to stop drinking in order to win her back. Everyone just brushed him off and went back to their spirits and gambling. No one thought he could do it until he showed up at the saloon one day, bathed, shaved, and dressed to the nines. Without ordering a drink, he paid his tab and wished everyone well, hardly recognizable except for the shiner he’d gotten
in a fight only two nights before. When asked how he’d cleaned up so quickly, he told everyone, “Sheer willpower, my friends,” but rumors spread that Doc Flannigan had given him vampire blood on the sly.

The man had since left Rogue City with his wife, and Doc Flannigan was far too skilled at keeping secrets to tell her anything, but she needed to know if the blood really worked. The next morning, without waking Nigel or Alistair, Westie crept into the kitchen to brew some of Isabelle’s favorite coffee. She was crazy about the stuff—mostly because it was expensive and rare. Westie refused to even try it. Isabelle would’ve too had she known those particular beans had traveled through the colon of a monkey in order to earn that price tag. Some things were better left unsaid.

Westie rode into town. The streets were filled with miners and gold panners on their way to work. The musty smell of a summer storm warred with the fresh scent of baked bread that hung in the air. Westie stopped when she saw a brownie pushing a cart full of steaming cross buns. She bought two and headed for the apothecary.

Isabelle worked alone most mornings before school. She was busy crushing herbs in a mortar with a pestle, humming a beautiful tune, when Westie walked in.

As soon as she smelled the coffee, Isabelle looked up, mouth falling open. “Is that what I think it is?” she said, leaving her medicines to examine the canteen in Westie’s hand.

“It is,” Westie said, pouring some into a tin cup, “and cross buns to go with it.”

Isabelle started to reach for the cup, then paused, eyeing Westie
suspiciously. “What do you want?”

Westie leaned against a barrel full of medicines wrapped in paper and tied with twine. “Can’t a girl just do a nice thing for her friend?”

“Yes, if that girl was anyone other than you.”

“Hey.” Westie’s brow furrowed. “I do nice things.”

Isabelle took the coffee and the sack of buns from Westie’s hands. “No, you don’t.”

“Okay, fine. I need a favor.”

Isabelle sat down with her gifts. She took a drink, eyes rolling around in her head as she savored the taste. Westie cringed.

“What kind of favor?”

“A tiny one.” Westie picked up one of the packets of medicine in the barrel labeled
Pants on Fire
.

Seeing the perplexed look on Westie’s face, Isabelle laughed, spitting crumbs from the bite of cross bun she’d just taken. “Father let me name it,” Isabelle said. “It’s a powder for burning, itching sensations—it’s very popular in brothels around the valley.”

Westie crinkled her face and tossed it back into the barrel. “Speaking of brothels,” she said, trying to ease her way into the subject. “What do you know about the medicinal qualities of vampire blood?”

Isabelle shrugged. “It cures anything from mosquito bites to old age. Why do you ask?”

Not wanting Isabelle to know she’d been drinking again, Westie said, “I’m concerned about Alistair’s head injury. I thought it might help.”

Isabelle coughed, then hit her chest with her fist. “Have you gone mad? You’ll go to jail if you’re caught with even a drop of vampire blood. Besides, we don’t keep it here in fear of bandits trying to break in and steal it.”

“I know, and I would never ask you for it if you did. I just need to look at your father’s medicine journal to see the dosage it would take to heal him. I don’t want to accidentally turn Alistair into the Undying.”

Isabelle took a bite of her bun, covering her mouth as she talked with her mouth full. “My father doesn’t let anyone read his medicine journal. You’ll need a lot more than a cup of coffee and a bun for me to go against my father’s wishes.”

“I know.” Westie reached into the leather satchel at her hip and pulled out a burlap pouch full of the rare coffee beans, handing it to Isabelle. If Nigel found out it was missing, he’d be livid, but luckily, he didn’t drink it too often.

Isabelle’s eyes gaped when she looked at the tag. “Is this the price?”

Westie grinned, knowing she had Isabelle by the look on her face. “Sure is.”

“I don’t know whether to make coffee with these beans or wear them as jewelry.”

“It would be better than some of the jewelry I’ve seen you wear.”

Isabelle scowled at her. “You’re supposed to be buttering me up, not insulting me.”

“Sorry.”

Sighing, Isabelle said, “You have five minutes.” She reached behind the counter and pulled out a leather-bound journal.

While Westie flipped through the pages, Isabelle kept an eye out the window for her father. Westie barely listened as her friend went on and on about the ball.

“It’s coming up soon and I have yet to find a dress. Can you believe it?”

“Uh-huh,” Westie mumbled. She felt a surge of elation upon finding the page on vampire blood.

She moved her finger down the page until she found the diagnosis of alcoholism. Beside it was the dosage: five drops.

Five drops. That wasn’t so bad. It shouldn’t be too hard to get. Her stomach clenched with anticipation, and she had to fight the excitement she felt spreading across her face.

“Thank you for this,” Westie said, handing the journal to Isabelle to put back. “Maybe we’ll go out later and shop for dresses together.”

Hope turned Isabelle’s voice shrill. “Really?”

Westie smirked. “No,” she said, and walked out the door.

After everyone had gone to their rooms for the night, Westie grabbed a lamp and went to the main sitting room, where the walls were lined with shelves of books. Next to the fireplace was a light sconce. She pushed it toward the ground. The oil lamp in her hand shed watery light on a panel of books that slid without sound on rails and disappeared behind the fireplace. The hidden room was no bigger than a closet and was stacked to the ceiling with shelves of poisons in dainty glass bottles. Oil of oleander, doll’s eyes, and angel’s trumpet. Such pretty names. There was also strychnine and other exotic poisons Nigel brought home from his travels. And of course the local specialty, cyanide, which came from mining the iron hills. Nigel preferred the classics: castor plant, mushrooms, nightshade, belladonna, hemlock, wolfsbane, and the rosary pea. The bottom shelf belonged to the tricky poisons that came from the venom of reptiles such as the
copperhead, rattlesnake, and cobra. So many poisons, each with their own different way of killing, though killing was what they did all the same.

Nigel used to tell her poisons were like women, placed in beautiful packages but deadly within. Westie had rolled her eyes when he told her women also preferred poisons when dealing in death. Less messy. He knew nothing about women.

“I hope you’re not doing what I think you’re planning on doing.”

Westie started but made no sound when she heard the woman’s voice behind her. At first she thought it was Lavina, and that somehow she’d snuck into the house without rousing Jezebel. But when Westie turned, she saw it was Alistair. He stood in the doorway wearing a temporary mask while his was being repaired. The replacement was delicate, made with bits of nickel and lined with lace, and it had a female sound box.

Westie shrugged her lips in a fleeting smile, and then it was gone. “Not today,” she said. “And not like this. I want justice. I want to watch the Fairfields hang on a branch like cottonwood blossoms.”

“Then why are you eyeing a wall of poisons?”

The lamplight filtered through the colorful glass bottles and cast rainbows across the room. All of Nigel’s poisons were the killing kind, but he didn’t keep them for that reason. Used in the proper dosages, they had healing qualities. She ran her finger across the labels and stopped on a green bottle the color of a tropical sea. Vampire blood.

When she pulled the bottle of blood from the shelf, Alistair’s eyes shone, for he guessed her intentions and approved. It made her
smile and gave her more confidence to see his support of her decision. She opened the bottle. It was empty.

The sky was a black sheet over their heads with millions of holes cut out to show the light of heaven behind it. At least that was what Westie’s mother used to tell her about the stars.

A full moon lit the road ahead, and the howls of werewolves completing their cycles filled the night. Alistair shoved a piece of paper toward her. He had taken off the temporary mask after she’d teased him about its female voice, and refused to put it back on, trading it for a handkerchief. There wasn’t much light to read by, so she had to hold the piece of paper right up to her nose to see it.

This is a terrible idea,
the note read.

Westie balled it up and tossed it at him. He caught it in the air.

“You thought this was a good idea when I pulled the glass bottle from the shelf,” she said.

Alistair uncrumpled the ball of paper and scribbled. He pushed it her way again. Westie rolled her eyes, missing his mask.

She looked down at the piece of paper:
That was before you planned to take it from the source,
it read.

The next time she balled the paper, she tossed it over her shoulder. Alistair looked behind him at the crumpled paper on the road and pulled a tablet from his saddlebag. He waved it in her face like a spoiled child. She laughed and dug her heels into Henry’s sides to pick up the pace.

Westie heard the music and raucous laughter before they
reached town. They followed the glow of street gasoliers down the main strip. Alistair steered his horse closer to Westie and tossed a piece of crumpled paper at her face to snag her attention, hitting her nose. She looked at him with a terse glare. He held his tablet in the air, the words written large and dark enough to see in the vague light.

Let’s go back. We shouldn’t be here.

She turned away from him, toward the source of all the sound. The blood brothel was grander and more garish than the other buildings in town, painted a deep, obvious red.

“Vampire blood’s the only true cure for addiction. The sheriff won’t consider any evidence I find against the Fairfields without Nigel’s approval, and Nigel won’t take me serious if I don’t get sober, not after what happened last time I accused a man of being a cannibal.” They tethered their horses at the watering post in front of the saloon and crossed the street to the brothel. “Since Big Fish won’t help me, I have no other choice than to go through with this. Besides, I don’t think I can face Lavina and Hubbard again without a drink. I need them at the ball. Only way to get evidence of their crimes is to get as close to them as possible.”

Human women, naked from the waist up, with pale anemic skin and gaunt features, slumped against the balcony on the second floor, their heads hanging like dying tulips. Alistair pulled his hat over his face to shield his view, but Westie looked anyway. There was no life left in their eyes, and yet they lived. Vampires knew how to drain just enough blood to keep from killing. The women’s faces were slack, their lips parted, too wasted away to call to folks who walked by.

Westie shook her head, wondering why anyone would subject themselves to being drained of their blood until they were nothing more than shriveled slugs. Rumor had it that the venom vampires injected from their fangs before opening a vein was intoxicating, but so was whiskey, and she preferred the latter.

Two vampire guards stood at the front doors of the brothel, blocking their way.

“We’d like admittance. We have money.” Westie pulled out a sack of coins from the pocket of her duster and let them jingle.

“All our girls are busy now,” a big vamp with a lazy eye said.

“I just saw them.” Westie looked up, but the girls she’d seen before were gone.

“We don’t cater to friends of the mayor.” The smaller, stocky vamp whistled through missing teeth. Without them his fangs looked far too long for his mouth.

Westie made a sour face. “We’re not friends with the mayor, and we’re not here for any of your half-dead skinny girls either. I’m here to see Costin.”

“Every bloody human girl is here to see Costin. He’s busy, now go away.”

Alistair reached for Westie’s hand. She pushed him away and grabbed the big vamp by the throat with her machine, sending him to his knees. Alistair’s six-shooters were in the smaller vamp’s face before Westie had time to blink.

“Now that I have your attention, I’d like to see Costin, if you please,” she said, trying to mimic Isabelle’s society politeness.

Costin’s voice drifted out the brothel doors to find his guards. “Let her in,” he said. “The boy stays out.”

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” she said.

Westie released the big vamp and watched him cough and shrink into a ball on the ground. Alistair put his guns back in their holsters and grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to look at him. He shook his head at her, his brows drawn, eyes pleading.

“I’ll be fine,” she said.

She stepped over the big vamp. He looked up at her and hissed. Alistair tried to enter the building with her, but a group of guards emerged from the building and formed a wall to block his way.

“Wait for me by the horses.” Westie was pulled into the building, and the doors shut behind her before she could get out another word.

She was pushed into the center of the room by the guards. The overwhelming scent of perfume went straight to her head and made the spot just above her left eye throb.

Heavy black tapestries embellished with gold tassels hung at the windows. The walls were covered with black-and-white floral-patterned wallpaper, and the floors were blanketed in lush red carpet. To her right was the bar. It was well stocked with bottles of both whiskey and blood.

It looked much like any other high-end gentlemen’s club except for the soiled doves—as wives liked to call the human women working for the vamps—sitting around tables waiting for either their next customer or their next fix. And then, of course, there was the rumpus
of fornication coming from the curtained partitions upstairs and the swings hanging from the ceiling.

“Come,” she heard Costin say.

She followed his voice to a dark corner of the enormous room, blinking to adapt her vision to her hazy surroundings. Costin was slumped in an oversize chair like a heartbroken king, hair pooling around his shoulders. He had beautifully long limbs and perfect symmetry. She thought about him helping her home from the Tight Ship, his hands on her stomach, his cool lips on hers when they kissed, and started to feel giddy with nervousness.

“Off you go,” Costin said to the others. The girls grabbed their drinks and rushed off without prodding, up the stairs and into their individual partitions. The guards were more hesitant. They knew Westie’s reputation for losing her head whenever she was angry. It was hard to kill a vampire, but Westie’s mechanics made a fair foe. “The rest of you too,” Costin said to the guards in the room.

They looked ready to protest but eventually left Westie and Costin alone.

Costin stood, grabbed a chair from a stack against the wall, and placed it next to his. He lit the candles in their sconces for her benefit and motioned her to sit. She did.

“It’s quite an honor having you here. There is only one reason a human girl comes to a blood brothel,” Costin said with a mischievous grin.

Westie screwed up her face. If he thought she was going to let him drink her blood, he had another think coming.

“I need vampire blood,” she said.

Even with blown pupils black as pots of coal dust, she could see the disappointment in his eyes.

“All right, two reasons, but what you’re asking is against the law, as is barging into my establishment and threatening my guards. You could be hanged for your offenses if I were to go to the sheriff.”

Westie knew the sheriff didn’t like her, but his hatred for creatures went deeper than any petty dislike. A fact she didn’t mention.

“If I were the guest of honor at a string party every time I offended, I would’ve died as a child,” she said.

The sultriness crept back into his voice. “Yes, you’re quite contrary, aren’t you?”

She smiled sweetly, then let her lips fall back into a serious line. “Now about that blood.”

“For your long-standing illness?” he asked.

She remembered her kicking and flailing at the airdocks, and Nigel’s quick lie about seizures. “Yes.”

He lifted his head so that he could gaze incredulously down at her. “You come in here wanting vampire blood, which could get us both killed were anyone to know I gave it to you, and yet you lie to me.”

Their eyes dueled for a long moment before Costin turned his gaze away from her. “I know a seizure when I see one, and that display at the airdocks was no seizure. That, my love, was a fit of rage, though I have yet to figure out why.” Westie opened her mouth to speak, but Costin stopped her. “No. Don’t tell me. I like a good puzzle.”

“I wasn’t going to. I need that blood, and I need it before Nigel wakes up and sees I’m gone.”

Costin peeked at her through the corners of his eyes. “What will I get in return?”

“I have money.”

“I have more money than you can imagine. Why would I want your little bag of coins?”

“I don’t have time for games, Costin. What do you want?”

“I want you to drink from my vein.”

She nearly choked when she heard those words. Drinking from a vampire’s vein was erotic for creatures, like sex was for humans.

“No,” she said. “No way, nope.”

He smiled, looking smug. “Then no blood. Do have a good evening, Westie, and be careful on your way home. The werewolves are out tonight; wouldn’t want to get fleas.”

Westie stood from her chair and fought the urge to break it to splinters. “I need that blood, Costin—you don’t understand.” Her hand shook. “I need to cure my addiction. If I don’t get sober for good, Nigel won’t believe a word I say, and he won’t let the—” She started to mention the Fairfields but stopped herself. The fewer people who knew about her vendetta, the better. “I just . . . I need it.”

“What is it you need Nigel to believe?” he said.

She bit her lip to keep from screaming at him. “I can’t tell you.”

“Then no blood for you.” He stood up to walk away.

“Wait!” She put her hands on top of her head, cringing at the stupid choice she knew she was about to make. Costin stopped in
midstride and turned to face her. “All right,” she said. “I’ll drink blood from your vein, but I can’t tell you why I need Nigel to believe me.”

He put his hand to his chin in thought, though Westie could tell by his smirk that his mind had already been made up.

“Very well. We will go to my room, where it will be more private. This could get messy,” he said with a wink.