Spider's Bite

21

When we stepped back out on the main floor, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Finn.

“Yeah?” he said over the din.

“Carlyle’s leaving,” I said.

“I know,” Finn replied. “Stephenson’s already out the front door. Chuckie C.’s settling up his tab for the evening with the giant next to the VIP entrance. Seems to be arguing about the price of something. While you two were eavesdropping, I took the liberty of wandering out to the parking lot to see if I could spot the vamp’s car. Carlyle’s driving a sweet little red BMW that’s parked on the west side of the building. Three rows up from our car.”

A hard smile curved my lips. “Perfect. Keep him in sight. The detective and I are heading for the Beamer.”

We both hung up. I wove my way through the crowd, sliding from opening to opening. Donovan Caine was right on my heels. It took almost a minute for us to step outside Northern Aggression. The night air was a cool, welcome kiss on my face after the crush of bodies inside the nightclub.

“This way,” I said.

The detective fell in step beside me. He’d dampened down his earlier anger at Stephenson, although his mouth was set into a hard, determined line. He reached behind him, drew his gun from the small of his back, and held the weapon down by his side. “How do you want to do this?”

“No need for a gun yet, detective. You and Finn hang back,” I replied. “I’ll approach Carlyle and subdue him. That way, he only sees me if something untoward should happen.”

Donovan nodded. “All right.”

The BMW was parked right where Finn said it would be. Hard to miss, really, since the vanity plate on the front read CHUCKEC. Donovan ducked down in the shadows behind a car a few feet over. I slid behind an SUV on the other side of the BMW and peered through the driver’s side window.

Getting close to midnight now, and the air had taken on the sharp chill of fall. The music of the club pulsated outside, and I could hear the vibrations whispering in the concrete under my boots. Classic murmurs of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. A few smokers stood in a cluster two hundred feet away, puffing on who knew what. But other than that, the parking lot was deserted. Everybody was still inside, getting their groove on for the evening.

I palmed one of my knives, hilt out, and started counting off seconds in my head. Ten … twenty … forty-five …

Two minutes later, Charles Carlyle strolled around the side of the building. He walked with quick, purposeful steps. The confident stride of a man who thinks he’s got everything figured out. That the world was his cherry to pop. Still, he cast a cursory look around, the way anyone would when walking through a dark area at night.

But he didn’t see me. They never did, until it was too late. I smiled. Poor Chuck. I almost felt sorry for him. Until I thought about Fletcher.

I looked, but I didn’t see Finn trailing the vampire. Finn could blend in with the shadows too, when he put his mind to it.

Carlyle walked closer, passing the car Donovan Caine crouched behind. The vampire whistled a soft tune and jingled his car keys in his fingers. He hit a button, and the lights on the BMW flashed once, disabling the alarm and unlocking the doors. Time for me to make my move.

I tiptoed out from behind the back of the SUV and approached Carlyle. The vampire had just hooked his fingers underneath the door handle to pull it open when I called out to him.

“Excuse me, sugar,” I drawled in a soft voice. “Do you have a light? I seem to have misplaced mine. Can’t put a damn thing in the pockets of this miniskirt.”

Carlyle turned toward the sound of my voice, a smile already forming on his face. I quickened my steps, getting into position. I didn’t look like he expected me to, and he frowned, suddenly suspicious.

“Who the hell are you—”

I might have been concerned, if I hadn’t already used the hilt of my knife to coldcock him. The vampire blinked once before his eyes rolled up into the back of his head, and he pitched face-first onto the concrete. To my right, Donovan Caine stepped out from the shadows. Finn appeared from my left.

“Come on.” I leaned down and grabbed the vampire under his arms. “Help me get this blood-sucking bastard into the trunk.”

An hour later, I threw a pitcher of ice water onto Charles Carlyle’s face. The cold shocked the vampire back into consciousness. So did the two hard slaps I laid across his cheeks. The stinging sensation in my palm felt good. Finally, I was doing something about Fletcher’s murder, taking the initiative, instead of reacting to others.

“Wakey, wakey, Chuck,” I said. “Time to rise and shine and spill your guts.”

The vampire’s eyes blinked several times in rapid succession before focusing on me and his surroundings. After loading Chuck into the trunk of our stolen car, we’d driven to the vampire’s home in one of the suburbs on the edge of Northtown, the address Finn had found while digging for info. Nice place. Split-level ranch house, big yard, pool in the back. Being an executive vice president at Halo Industries, even in name only, paid better than I’d thought. So did being the Air elemental’s right-hand man.

Finn, Donovan, and I had let ourselves into the house and dragged Carlyle along with us. Now the three of us stood in what passed for a game room — plasma television bolted to one wall, pool table in the corner, stacks of porn magazines and empty beer bottles everywhere. The only nice thing about the room was the stone fireplace that took up the back wall.

Donovan Caine had used his silverstone handcuffs to bind the vampire to a chair, which I’d dragged into the middle of the room.

Carlyle’s eyes went to me, then to the two men looming behind me, then to the silverstone knife in my hand. “Fuck me,” he muttered.

“Quick on the draw. I like that in a man.”

I felt Donovan Caine’s eyes on me, but I didn’t turn to look at the rugged detective. Instead, I wandered around the room, twirling with my knife so the blade caught the light and flashed it back in Carlyle’s eyes. Time to start playing the game.

“Nice place you have here, Chuck. Very nice. Did you pick it out yourself? Or did the Air elemental?”

The vampire gave me a guarded look. “What do you want?”

I smiled and held his gaze until I was sure he’d noticed just how cold and hard my gray eyes were. Carlyle might think himself to be a big man, but he knew when he was outmatched. His face had already tightened with panic, and the muscles of his arms and shoulders tensed underneath his suit as he discreetly tested the silverstone handcuffs that held him down. Bastard shouldn’t have bothered. He wasn’t going anywhere tonight except into the ground.

“In case you haven’t figured it out, Chuck, let me tell you who I am. The Spider. The assassin you and your boss hired to kill Gordon Giles, then decided to double-cross. I’m sure you recognize my two associates.”

Finn gave him a toothy grin that was almost as scary as my smile. The vamp realized there would be no sympathy there and turned his attention to Donovan Caine, trying to see if he had any kind of friend in the room. But the detective crossed his arms over his chest and put on his flat cop face.

“You’ve been busy, Chuck. Working for the Air elemental, framing me, having your men abduct and beat Finn, then doing the same to the detective. And I didn’t really understand why — until I overheard you and Wayne Stephenson talking tonight at Northern Aggression.” I clucked my tongue. “He’s right, you know. Bitch is crazy if she thinks she’s going to dethrone Mab Monroe as queen bee of Ashland.”

Carlyle didn’t say anything, but agreement flashed in his eyes.

“But you know that already, don’t you, Chuck? You know this won’t end well for her, and you’ve already taken steps to protect yourself.”

The vampire’s eyes narrowed. He’d overcome enough of his initial panic to realize I wasn’t going to kill him — immediately. “What do you want?” he asked again in a stronger voice.

I put my hands on either side of him and leaned down until my cold eyes were level with his. “The flash drive. I want the flash drive. The one Gordon Giles made that contains the information on the embezzlement from Halo Industries. The one your Air elemental boss is so eager to get her hands on. That’s your insurance policy, isn’t it, Chuck? The elemental gets too wacko, and all you have to do is send the information to Mab Monroe. And she’ll take care of the elemental for you.”

Carlyle didn’t respond, but the twitch in his cheek was all the confirmation I needed. The vampire really needed to work on his poker face.

“He’s got the flash drive?” Donovan Caine asked behind me. “You’re sure?”

“Oh, I’m positive,” I replied, never taking my eyes off the vampire. “Tell me where it is, Chuck. Now.”

Carlyle’s eyes flicked off to the left, as if searching for an acceptable lie. His tongue darted out to wet his lips. “Say you’re right. Say I … found the flash drive among Gordon’s things when I was looking through them for the elemental. What’s in it for me if I give it to you?”

“You get to die quickly, Chuck, instead of being tortured. That’s all you get.”

He let out a low snort. “Not much in it for me, then.”

I shrugged. “Depends on how much you like pain.”

I pulled back and brought the tip of my knife up where he could see it. Then I leaned forward again and drew the blade down his cheek, not deep enough to break his skin, but enough for him to feel the cold metal.

Carlyle let out a soft laugh. “You don’t have the balls to—”

I cut him.

I carved a line from one side of his jaw, down his neck, and up to the other. The blade didn’t sever his carotid artery, but the knife went in deep enough for him to really feel it. Blood oozed out of the wound and dropped like crimson tears onto the vampire’s pinstripe suit. I’d just upped the ante in this poker game we were playing.

But Carlyle surprised me. He didn’t start begging or pleading or sobbing for mercy. Instead, the vampire clamped down a scream, his yellow fangs poking out through this lips, before his eyes shifted to the left again. I frowned, wondering why he was looking off to the side, instead of at me or the knife. Wasn’t I scary enough for him? Few things could be more important at the moment to the vampire than the blade I’d just dug into his neck. Precious few. So I turned and followed his line of sight to the fireplace. Hmm.

I used the vampire’s pant leg to clean the blood off my knife and stepped away from him. Relief flashed in Carlyle’s eyes.

“Fuck,” Donovan muttered, staring at the blood on the vampire’s chest. “Did you have to cut him so deep? I thought you wanted answers out of him, not blood.”

“I barely nicked him. He’ll live. Watch him a minute,” I told the detective.

Caine stared at me, then shook his head and took up a position in front of the vampire. Finn followed me back to the fireplace.

“What are you doing, Gin?” he asked in a low voice.

“Checking out a hunch.”

I brushed my fingers against the stone fireplace. Behind me, Carlyle hissed with displeasure, but I tuned him out. Listening. Trying to sense any disturbance, anything out of the ordinary. There was a reason Carlyle kept glancing back here. I wanted to know what it was. But the stone’s vibrations were low and muted. Like me, the vampire wasn’t home enough to leave much of an impression in his house.

Still, I kept listening. And I realized there was some thing in the stone. A note of sly satisfaction. Anticipation. Pride. Eagerness. Centered in the fireplace and rippling outward.

Still listening to the stone, I trailed my fingers over the wall and walked closer to the center of the fireplace. It was beautifully constructed, made out of uneven slabs of blue and gray river rock fitted together to form an elegant arch, then the chimney itself. The construction was so perfect, so seamless, it could only have been achieved by magic, by another Stone elemental. It only took me a few seconds to spot the rune carved into one of the bottom corners. Two blocks side by side, with another sitting on top of them — a builder’s rune. I made a note of the faint trickles of magic in the mortar that held the rocks together. Stones were the rarest of elementals, and it always surprised me to find another one, to see her work, to feel her power.

Then I concentrated, listening to stone, trying to find the exact source of the vibrations.

And I spotted one rock that was a little lighter, a little smoother, than the others, as if someone repeatedly touched it, rubbing it for good luck — or to open and close a secret compartment. The stone felt smooth and cool under my searching fingers. There. A small metal button on the underside. I pressed up on it. Something clicked, and the rock shot out, revealing a space about the size of a safety deposit box.

“Got something,” I said.

“What?” Finn asked, trying to peer over my shoulder.

I looked inside the space. A blue folder embossed with the words Halo Industries sat inside, along with a small flash drive. There were also some pictures of Gordon Giles naked, posing in various intimate positions with a smorgasbord of hookers, many of whom sported the heart-and-arrow rune medallion of the Northern Aggression nightclub. Black, white, Hispanic, human, vampire. I flipped through the photos. Whips, leather, masks. Giles had been a little more serious about his prostitute predilection than Fletcher’s file had let on. I turned one of the photos sideways. More flexible, too.

“What did you find?” Donovan Caine rumbled.

“The jackpot.”

I plucked out the flash drive and showed it to Caine and Finn, then stuffed it inside my jeans pocket. I passed the folder to Finn, along with the pictures of Giles.

Finn rifled through them and let out a whistle. “Gordon was into some hard-core stuff. Take a look at this, detective.”

Donovan Caine turned away from the vampire and stepped toward us. Behind him, something flashed in Carlyle’s eyes. I felt a small bit of magic spark to life in the room.

And that’s when the vampire made his move.