The Graves of Saints (7 page)

Soon, if she wanted to get away from Metzger and his team, she’d at least have a shot at making it before they hit her with another dose of the toxin. But before she took any action, she
wanted to see Octavian and find out what this was all about.

‘She has no ID,’ Sergeant Omondi told the cops barring access to the elevators.

‘Then she stays down here,’ the older of the two cops said, lifting his chin in pride and defiance, wanting to make sure they knew who had jurisdiction.

Galleti smirked, closing her eyes a moment.

‘Something funny, Miss?’ the older cop asked.

Metzger shot Galleti a dark look. She stood up a bit straighter, no smile on her face now, chocolate brown eyes very serious. Omondi and Song followed suit, perfectly grim, but Barbieri shook
his head in open pity for the uniformed policeman.

‘This should be –’

‘Barbieri,’ Metzger said, the warning clear in his tone.

Then he turned back to the cops, who had already seen the identification of each member of the team from Task Force Victor.

‘Officer, maybe you’re not aware that Task Force Victor is charged with its duties under the United Nations amended charter, and has been given jurisdictional authority over all
vampire-related incidents,’ Metzger explained, feigning patience.

The cop sniffed, shot a can-you-believe-this glance at his partner, and then cocked his head to look at Metzger as if he were an unusual animal on display at the zoo.

‘Given I haven’t been in a coma or on the moon, yeah, I’m aware. But let me tell you what we’ve got upstairs. A murder victim and a
magic
-man,’ the cop
said, waggling his fingers at the end, mocking the idea of magic. ‘There’s no vampire here.’

A chill went through Charlotte. Octavian had come to Philadelphia to reconnect with his girlfriend, now he was in a swanky hotel room with a corpse.

‘Shit,’ she whispered, ‘it’s not Nikki, is it?’

The cops both glanced at her, as did Barbieri. The soldiers did not.

‘Your victim was killed by a vampire. The investigation is yours; that’s not what we do. But you’re bound by your own government’s laws to cooperate with us. If you
impede us – ‘

‘Didn’t say you couldn’t go through, Van Helsing,’ the cop said, then pointed at Charlotte. ‘But she’s got no ID, and my orders are clear. You want to cross
swords over jurisdiction, that’s fine, but until someone changes my orders—’

‘She’s our new Bloodhound, you idiot,’ Barbieri growled. ‘She’s a vampire!’

The cop laughed. ‘Hell, that’s not going to win you any points. You want her with you, go through channels. Get my lieutenant on the line and have him order me to let her pass. Until
then, no go.’

‘Points?’ Metzger said, his patience frayed.

His nostrils flared with anger. He cast a sidelong glance at Sergeant Omondi and gave a curt nod. With a clatter, Omondi, Song, and Galleti put their hands on the butts of their weapons but did
not draw them. The younger cop, who looked like he might piss his pants, started to reach for his gun, but the older one shouted at him and grabbed his wrist to keep him from doing so.

‘You’re wasting my time,’ Metzger said. ‘Both of you step aside. One of you call your lieutenant. If he has a problem with us being here, he can damn well come up and
tell us himself. He can tell Octavian. I have a feeling he won’t want to do that. Now, cooperate or I take you into custody and we let the city of Philadelphia fight it out with the UN, if
you think they’ll even bother.’

Charlotte shuddered in disgust. ‘Enough with the dick-waving contest,’ she said, turning to the cop. ‘You lose. Right now you’re just trying to find a way to save face.
Well there isn’t one. Fucking get over it.’

The cop glared at her for a second, and then laughed. It wasn’t a derisive laugh, more an appreciative chuckle. He put his hands up in surrender.

‘All right, Commander. You and your team can take your ferocious vampire upstairs.’

The cops made way, letting them through, and aside from a cold bit of courtesy from Metzger, they were all silent as they waited for the elevator. Charlotte kept glancing around at their faces,
but none of them looked back at her until they were on board, ascending toward the seventh floor.

‘What the hell was that?’ she said.

Metzger watched the numbers light up. The others ignored her as the elevator passed the fifth floor with a ding. Finally she turned to Barbieri.

‘They didn’t believe you were a vampire,’ he said. ‘Young, pretty, mouth like a street kid.’

‘I should eat his face,’ Charlotte said, knitting her brow.

‘You should,’ Galleti muttered.

Metzger shot her a withering glance that caused Galleti to stare straight ahead at the elevator doors.

‘Sorry, sir,’ Galleti said. ‘I didn’t mean literally.’

Charlotte threw up her hands. ‘For fuck’s sake, neither did I!’

Both Song and Galleti smiled at that. Sergeant Omondi remained stoic as ever. When the elevator dinged to a stop on Seven and the doors slid open, Metzger was the first one off and the others
all followed in his wake. Barbieri made a flourishing bow and gestured for Charlotte to precede him.

‘It’s going to be an interesting day,’ he said.

Half a dozen other cops were in the corridor, either carrying crime scene equipment, taking statements at the doors of other guests’ rooms, or standing guard at the entrance of one room.
When Metzger and his team approached, the sentries just muttered a greeting and waved him through, and Charlotte figured the asshole downstairs had radioed up with a warning.

The minute she walked into the hotel room, all of the trivial politics and posturing of the authorities was forgotten. She had smelled the blood as soon as they got off the elevator, but now the
smell filled up her head, rich and powerful. Metzger had called ahead for a volunteer – someone to give her blood – but nobody had shown up for the job as yet. The Philadelphia police
would have some on hand, as would any hospital, but she didn’t think she was going to get any handouts here in the City of Brotherly Love. The hungry animal inside of her stirred in its sleep
and she licked her lips and swallowed drily. This was a problem that needed solving, but not yet.

A couple of plainclothes detectives stood inside the hotel room, which seemed crowded to Charlotte even before she heard Barbieri start bitching.

‘What the hell is this?’ the forensics expert asked, pushing ahead so he was just behind Metzger. ‘You’ve had the Macy’s parade in here. How am I supposed to
–’

‘Whoa, hold up,’ one of the detectives said. ‘The job is done, pal. CSU has been here and gone already. They just took away the last of their equipment. The scene’s
already been processed. Only thing still here that shouldn’t be is the . . .’

He was about to say ‘victim’. They all knew it, could feel it, but he faltered and just let the sentence hang there unfinished. When the detectives turned to glance awkwardly back
into the room, they could all see why.

Peter Octavian lay on the bed, fully clothed, beside the body of Nikki Wydra, the woman he loved. He had stripped the sheet from the bed and swaddled her in it, wrapped her as if he’d been
preparing some Egyptian pharaoh for burial. He lay there beside her cocoon, studying her face with a longing that broke Charlotte’s heart, unconcerned by the knowledge that there were
witnesses to his anguish. Charlotte studied Nikki’s face, the only part of her that was exposed. Even her lips were so pale they seemed made from alabaster.

The awkwardness of the moment expanded until it filled the room. Charlotte lowered her gaze and half-turned away, wishing they would all have given Octavian his privacy. The mage looked
terrible, his eyes rimmed with red, his hair mussed and his clothes rumpled.

‘Goodbye, love,’ Charlotte heard him say, and she glanced back in time to glimpse him brushing his lips against her forehead.

Octavian climbed to his feet, cast a final look at Nikki’s corpse, and then turned to the detectives. ‘Finish your work. Let me know if you have any further questions and I’ll
do the same. Task Force Victor will need to be kept informed of your progress.’

These detectives weren’t likely to appreciate being told what to do any more than the uniformed cops downstairs, but they weren’t going to argue with this man.

Octavian slid past the detectives, glanced once at Metzger, and then went to Charlotte. He took her hands and kissed her cheek, peering at her with those dark eyes.

‘Thank you for coming,’ he said, as if she’d had a choice.

Then he looked at the other members of Task Force Victor gathered there and nodded once in greeting before turning again to Metzger.

‘I’ve secured us a room down the hall where we can talk,’ Octavian said. ‘Do what you need to do and let’s get to it. The balance of things is shifting, and we need
to act before it’s shifted so far that it can’t be righted again.’

Metzger ordered Barbieri to examine the crime scene, regardless of the fact that the Crime Scene Unit had already been and gone and many people had trampled through the room since then. The
forensics man got to work immediately, putting the detectives on notice that he’d want someone to take him to the police labs as soon as he was done there. Song stayed behind to assist him
and to look out for him in the event that something went violently wrong. Where Shadows and the supernatural were concerned, it was always best to be careful.

Octavian gestured for Charlotte to walk with him and she complied, the two of them leading Metzger, Sergeant Omondi, and Galleti down the corridor to the second to last door on the seventh
floor. Charlotte expected him to produce a key card but instead he rapped lightly on the door in a certain rhythm, a signal knock, letting whoever was inside know it was him. She glanced at Metzger
and saw him frowning in confusion.

They heard the deadbolt click open and the chain on the door slide back, and then the door swung inward.

The woman who stood there holding the door open looked incredibly familiar. Something was different about her, though, and it took Charlotte a second to realize that it was her hair. Once upon a
time it had been a dark red and now it was a light brown, long and lush and veiling part of her face. But she knew the face.

So, after a moment, did the soldiers from Task Force Victor.

‘Holy –’ Galleti began, drawing her gun.

Metzger snatched up his own weapon, quick as a gunslinger, and in his eyes Charlotte saw death. She understood it, too. The woman was Allison Vigeant, who had murdered his predecessor –
torn his throat out with her teeth. She had been Task Force Victor’s most wanted for years.

With a flick of his wrist, Octavian froze them where they stood. Their hands and weapons crackled with a silver, electric mist. He looked at them with a ferocity that would brook no
argument.

‘We’re going to talk.
All
of us,’ he said. ‘Which means you’re going to put your weapons away and you’re going to listen. Do not make the mistake of
thinking you have a choice.’

‘Fine,’ Metzger said, staring at Allison before he flicked his gaze toward Octavian. ‘But whatever you’ve got to say, it better be good.’

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The hotel room unsettled them all, not because there was anything unusual about it but because it was so ordinary. Octavian had counted on them being inhibited by the mundane
setting, enough so that the soldiers would hesitate before they opened fire. Thus far, he was not disappointed.

Allison stood by the sliding glass door that led onto the balcony. The door was open perhaps eighteen inches but all she needed was a crack. If Commander Metzger or either of his soldiers tried
to shoot her with Medusa-treated bullets, she’d shift to mist and be gone. Octavian didn’t think it would come to that, but the situation was volatile and unpredictable.

Not just the situation
, he thought. A cruel smile touched his lips but there was no humor in it. Instead, he felt a trace of madness tickling at his brain. In the hours since he had
found Nikki dead, his mind and body had undergone a strange, invisible metamorphosis. His grief had split in two, one part a terrible numbness that made him feel hollow and light – as if he
were a ghost haunting his own life – and the other a burning, seething rage.

‘What the hell is this?’ Commander Metzger asked, in the clipped tones of a man used to giving orders.

He looked awkward as hell, standing there by the bureau with its flatscreen TV. They all did – him, Sergeant Omondi, whom Peter knew, and the woman on his team, who was unfamiliar. The
hotel room was nothing special, but large enough to fit two double beds, which meant that nearly anywhere they stood, there would be furniture separating them from their potential enemies.
Furniture wouldn’t stop bullets, but it made maneuvering difficult, whether to attack or retreat. These were tight quarters to be in for any hostilities that might unfold.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked the woman from Task Force Victor.

‘Galleti.’ Last name only. A soldier, through and through.

Octavian nodded, then turned to Charlotte. Poor Charlotte, thrown into the midst of something she had never asked for, first by Cortez and now by Octavian himself. The vampire girl stood in the
middle of the room, in the no man’s land between the two beds, caught in the crossfire of mutual distrust.

‘Charlotte, come sit down,’ he said quietly, gesturing to the two comfortable chairs that flanked the floor lamp, blocking the immobile side of the slider.

The vampire girl did as she was told. With her copper hair and delicate features, she had always been lovely, but she was even more beautiful in distress. As she sat down in the chair, Octavian
noted that she did not sink back into it, instead sitting just on the edge. She could taste the possibility of violence and wanted to be ready for it.

Octavian took the other chair, so that he sat with Charlotte on one side and Allison – in front of the open slider – on the other.

To his credit, Commander Metzger had not asked his question a second time, letting it hang in the air as his distrust and wariness grew. Galleti looked anxious, and of the three of them she was
the one who worried Octavian the most. They had already drawn their weapons once before he had forced them to put the guns away, but Galleti seemed like she wanted to give it another try.