“What would I have told Rick? That my brother is mentallyill and fixated on him? I had Jason in therapy and... I thought he was getting better.”
“Until he left twelve months ago. He’s a blood junkie, Loriann,” T. Laine said gently. The words hung in the air like a note tapped on a warped brass bell, ugly and flat. “A magical blood-junkie who has created a spell for things we can only imagine. All of them bad. His magic involves Blood Tarot, just like yours does. And Jason’s been tracking Rick, showing up on the banks of rivers, laying a blood-magic curse on Rick.Rick. Who saved him. A federal officer. Creating a spell that calls Rick and then leaving before Rick arrives, which we don’t yet understand.”
Loriann gave a tiny shrug. “Jason’s deepening the blood bond in the tattoos until he’s ready to use it.” Loriann waved that away as if it was unimportant. “I know PsyLED is the agency that will find Jason and stop him. That’s why I’m here. To help you bring him in. Alive. That’s the price of my assistance.” Loriann’s face took on a hard cast, demanding, “I want my brother alive.”
Rick and Occam appeared behind us, silhouetted by the hallway lights. I didn’t know where they had gone, but I was glad they were back. Occam flashed his cell at me and I realized that JoJo had sent the live feed to Occam’s cell and the two cat-men had been following along. Smart move. Rick said, “Jason is a sick little fucker.”
It was coarse language, words that made me cringe, but he was right. I turned my chair to study him standing in the doorway. Occam stood behind Rick, not touching, but close, like a mouser cat offering comfort, and maybe using his cat magic to keep Rick calm.
I said, “So is Loriann.”
“Yeah. She is,” Rick said shortly. “I never saw it. I never realized any of this.”
JoJo said, “Jason’s eighteen. He’s a legal adult. He’s already helped vampires kidnap, torture, and drain a teenaged girl. There’s no way to return him to his sister. She knows that. No matter what happens, Jason goes into a null room for decades. If he survives the vampires.”
“So we get him first,” Rick said. “We get him help.”
JoJo shook her head. “Do-gooder.”
Rick smiled slightly. “Yeah. I’m trying to be.”
“Is it the tats talking?”
Rick shrugged. “I’m not sure it matters at this point.”
On the screen, T. Laine said, “That’s not all, is it?” Loriann’s eyes flashed down, hiding her expression. “Tell me the rest,” Lainie said.
Loriann dropped her head, hiding her eyes and her expression. “I had to protect Jason, even from Rick,” she whispered.
“While you were being forced to ink Rick with a binding to a vampire, you also, voluntarily, inked a restraining order and a protection order into Rick’s flesh,” T. Laine clarified.
JoJo said to Rick, “No wonder you had such trouble talking about the tats and the Ethier sibs. You were bound against testifying.”
On-screen, it looked as if steam was coming out of T. Laine’s ears, but she forced it down. Her face smoothed and she said, “Tell me about the curse spell Jason is using. What effect is the curse having on Rick?”
“I don’t know. The circle is Jason’s design and he never talked to me about it. But I think... I think Jason is stealing Rick’s years. Using his life force to power a multipurpose working.”
“So you think the curse part is secondary to whatever the circle’s real purposes are.”
Loriann didn’t answer, still keeping her head down. I glanced at Rick, who was now sitting in his chair. He had gone still as stone, his silver hair bright against the black strands in the overhead lights. Jason. Jason was responsible for Rick’s aging.
“Okay. I’m taking a break,” T. Laine said. “I’ll see you get coffee and a bathroom break in a bit.” Without waiting for a reply, T. Laine rose and walked from the room, shutting the door and securing it with the numeric punch code. She laid her head on the wall and cursed softly, over and over again.
“Get in here!” JoJo called to her.
T. Laine’s movements were stiff as she covered the distance to the conference room and practically fell into her chair. I poured her a fresh coffee and JoJo pointed up, saying, “We have an incident. City cops are on scene now and uploaded a vid to us.”
On the screen overhead was footage of a vehicle, similar to the one the vamp’s humans used to kidnap Raynay Blalock. The van was turning into a convenience store, parking beneath a high, flat-topped, metal roof. The passenger door opened and Jason Ethier stepped out. The sliding side door opened too. The footage was grainy and coarse and there was no audio, but the man with Jason was, without a doubt, a vampire. He was vamped out, his eyes flashing black, his fangs long and curved, his skin pasty, glaring white. This was the first time I’d seen a modern photo of Godfrey, who wore dark pants and a light-colored shirt. And he was walking outside. In daylight. The old and powerful ones, like Ming, could stay awake in their lairs in daylight. But this was something more. Way more.
It had been posited that the very old ones could go about in daylight if they had heavy oxidized zinc or titanium oxide sunscreen on and stayed out of direct sunlight. Now we had proof of that.
I watched as the vampire and Jason entered the store. Jason walked up to the clerk at the checkout counter, and they seemed to be speaking. Godfrey walked around the long counter and behind it. Up to the clerk.
She was a pretty woman, African-American, well rounded in all the right places. She smiled at Godfrey as he walked to her. He bent her head to the side and casually ripped out her throat. Blood shot out everywhere. Godfrey unhinged his jaw, the way the old ones do, and placed his mouth over the pulsing wound. And drank. Jason went to the cash register and emptied it of cash. He also picked up a six-pack of beer and some Slim Jims. Godfrey dropped the woman. The two walked away and got into the black vehicle. Shut the doors. It drove away.
In sunlight. My mouth was so dry I couldn’t swallow.
Jo said, “I can guarantee we just got leeway to take out that son of a bitch. With prejudice.”
