Always the Vampire

I took Saber’s hand and squeezed. “It seems that Saber is infected.”


Triton cut his gaze to Saber. “But Cos said the Void feeds on magical beings, not humans.”

“I’m somewhere in between,” Saber countered with a tight smile.

“Saber’s been in direct contact with super-sick vampires for weeks, Triton. You have to help us. Please.”

Triton gave a jerky nod. “I’ll call Cos again.”

But before he could reach for the cell phone on his desk, little bursts of hell broke loose.

Vibrations shimmied through the room, rattling the artifacts in their display cases. The floor beneath us heaved, and Triton’s creaky barrel chair lurched sideways.

Just as the three of us shot to our feet, the air in front of me shimmered like a heat wave rising from summer-baked pavement. The shimmer solidified into the human form of Cosmil, but he looked nothing like I remembered. Not the Santa in a sapphire wizard cape, not his scruffy carriage driver guise.

Instead, he looked like he’d been on the bad end of a back-alley brawl, inky dirt streaking and rips rending his white duck pants and tunic.

And then there was the blood.

So much smeared blood.

In another instant, Cosmil collapsed.





THREE




Triton and Saber leaped to grab Cosmil by the arms before he smacked face-first into the tiled floor.

I fought nausea. Not from the sight of blood, but from the smell. Coppery tinged with the taint of tar, like newly laid asphalt.

“Tell me what happened,” Saber said, kicking into cop mode.

“Attacked,” Cosmil gasped. “Void in the Veil.”

“The Veil,” Triton supplied, “is what he calls the passageway between dimensions. Think wormhole with scenery.”

The injured wizard inhaled a raspy breath. “Get me home. Pandora at risk.”

My chest ached with fear as his eyes fluttered closed. It hurt to see the quiet, confident wizard as an old, beaten man, but to lose him and Pandora, too? The panther shifter might be a cryptic critter, but she’d pawed her way into my heart. We had to save them. Both of them.

“We can take him out the back,” Triton was saying to Saber.

“Done. I’ll drive, you follow.”

“I can drive him,” Triton argued.

“Yeah, but I’ve got lights and sirens.”

Saber fished his keys out of his jeans and tossed them to me. “Pull the car around, Cesca.”

I sprinted through the store and outside, beeped the locks, and climbed into Saber’s black SUV. In no more than a minute, I’d cut across an empty lot, dodged five old oak trees along the way, and angled the car behind Triton’s store at the rear entrance. With the passenger-side door toward the building and Saber’s tinted windows providing extra cover, a causal observer would see nothing amiss.

Like the bloodied man Saber and Triton half carried between them.

“Lay the passenger seat back,” Saber commanded. “As far as it will go.”

I reclined the seat then scooted out of the way to watch the guys load Cosmil in the car. Saber buckled him in and slammed the door.

“Okay,” he said, grabbing my hand. “Triton gave me directions, but keep your phone on in case I need to check them.”

“I will.”

He gave me a peck on the cheek and sprinted around to the driver’s door.

“We’re right behind you,” Triton called as Saber got in the car.

I watched Saber peel out, then Triton nudged me. “Move, Cesca. Help me lock up.”

We sped back inside, down a hall, and through to the shop proper. I followed Triton’s instruction to flip the dead bolt on the main door, and he set the security alarm mounted near his desk. His movements were quick and efficient, just the way I remembered from watching him cast fishing nets centuries ago, but I caught the fine tremor of tension in his hands and the worry in his eyes.

When we exited in the back, Triton bounded up the wooden exterior stairway I assumed led to his apartment. I trailed after him but waited on the small, east-facing deck filled with potted plants while he ducked inside. Seconds later, he emerged with a gray duffel bag.

“Just a few more things to get,” he said as he locked up.

He strode to a monster-sized wood fern in a glazed yellow pot at the left corner of the deck and thrust his hand in the middle of it, ignoring the tiny sparks that fizzled on the fronds.

“Catch.”

Good thing for vampire reflexes, because he tossed a missile at me. When I looked at the object in my stinging hand, I saw the amulet. Immediately, the hexagon-shaped crystal, shot with silver and gold lines and framed in copper, pulsed in my palm, warm and steady as a heartbeat.

“Tell me you don’t leave this out in the open where anyone could take it.”

“The fern hides it,” he said as he crossed to the same fern in a matching pot in the right corner of the deck. “Plus Cos has warded the whole place against theft.”

“Then why the alarm system for the shop?”