Page 23

Cor acknowledges my existence with a glare out of the corner of his eye through the unruly, knotty mess that is his hair, but that’s it. He stands there frozen, unreadable, arms hanging at his sides deceptively relaxed, focused on Stanley like a cobra poised to strike. Best get Stanley out of here as long as Cor is still willing to play by my rules. “Did you get the vampire blood I asked for?”

Stanley grimaces. “Yes, but…”

Cor has him by the collar before I can react, lifting him in a one-handed grip as he pats him down roughly. It takes him a few moments to find the squishy blood bag tucked into Stanley’s jacket, and he stares at it with a frown as he drops the golden-haired vampire back onto the bench. Stanley tucks himself into the furthest corner, gasping fearfully. He doesn’t have to worry; Cor seems to forget him the moment he has what he was looking for.

The sight of him biting the bag is weirdly fascinating, like he’s biting into a ripe orange, complete with little quirts of juice—apologies, blood—that land on his cheeks. I would have thought that he’d be as stumped by a blood bag as he was by door locks, streetlights, or zippers, but this at least doesn’t seem new to him. His throat works as he drinks, his Adam’s apple bobbing with each mouthful. Of blood. Eww. I shudder and turn my eyes away. “But what?”

“But he will only get more powerful if you feed him,” Stanley finishes hoarsely, keeping his eyes down as if staring at Cor feeding would somehow endanger him. “Not that it matters now.”

I get the sense that I already know the answer, but I feel compelled to ask anyway. “Why wouldn’t I want him to become more powerful?”

The vampire snickers softly, an unhappy sound out of an unhappy face. “If you thought you could stop him if bad came to worse before, you’re a fool. But now that he has fed, his powers will recharge, and there is absolutely nothing a squishy mortal like you could do if he goes and murders people. Hell, he’s the bogeyman to my kind, and we’re close to immortal.”

His words send a shudder up my back, even though I get the feeling that I can’t imagine what it would really be like. All I know about vampires, I got from books. The first vampires I met were stick-in-the-butt-Loreley, the oh so reasonable Stanley, and a baby fang who took a bite out of my shoulder before my brain registered what was happening. The next vampire was rotting alive, which I thought was impossible, and the next vampire I ever met is, well, Cor. And he isn’t like any other vampire in the world. So what do I know about what he can do when he’s fed? Nothing. Jack shit.

The blood bag makes a wet, wheezing sound as it flattens, empty. Cor drops it and rolls his shoulders, then his neck, bones cracking as they realign. The wound on his chest crackles as it shrinks, pinking up at the edges. It doesn’t heal completely, but the damaged flesh already looks like it’s had days—if not weeks—to heal.

“Time for me to go,” Stanley whispers, but he doesn’t move. Only his eyes are flicking towards the hallway every so often, as if he’s planning his escape. Cor is still between him and the exit, and he doesn’t seem to want to get anywhere close to him.

I blink, trying to re-wet my eyeballs and stop them from burning. It doesn’t help. “Take the kitchen door, Stanley. I’ll try my best to keep him here with me,” I say tiredly and home in on Cor. And as if he can feel my gaze, he turns toward me and tilts his head, as if my glance were a kind of sound that only he can hear.

Stanley takes me at my word and gets up, stumbling a little when he lets go of the table. An expression of confusion flits across his face, then he seems to catch his balance again. He glances at Cor out of the corner of his eye, then takes off at a trot, out the kitchen door and through the hallway. Seconds later, the car starts and screeches off, as if he ran the last few feet just to get away a little quicker.

Cor spares him only a brief glance, then his attention is back on me. The wound in his chest has scarred over since I last looked, and even the pink traces of freshly grown skin seem to have turned paler. If I didn’t know how it looked before, I could never guess how badly he was wounded. And all that just from one tiny little blood bag. No wonder Stanley was worried. Which begs the question: why am I not?

CHAPTER NINE

THE SHOPPING BAGS are a pleasant surprise. Not only has Stanley gotten Cor clothes that look like they might actually fit, he also bought some panini and other snack foods for me. Baby vampires might still eat and drink, but the paltry amount of nourishment they get from it isn’t worth the hassle of stacking up on solids. The kitchen came with some juice and chips and other small things, but they are more for tasting and habit than for keeping people fed.

I am not a baby vampire, so the panini are much appreciated. I pop one of them into the toaster oven and decide to leave the unpacking of the other shopping bags for after I’ve had my food.

Cor lost interest in the bags after maybe three minutes of digging through the clothes. Instead, he prowls along the street-side windows, keeping an eye out for whatever danger might arise. Or maybe he is making sure he has an escape route; much to my surprise, he seems okay with this front door being closed. The lock is still intact, and he hasn’t tried opening it once. I see that as a good sign.

I haven’t tried closing any of the inside doors, but it’s as if the windows help with his claustrophobia. Probably because he could crack them with one fist. He just stays close to them, and that worries me a little. If he jumps out the window and breaks it, people will notice him, and probably me too. And they will remember us, and if anyone comes sniffing around… well. It would make playing detective substantially harder.

Not that playing detective isn’t already hard enough. I don’t have the faintest clue what to do now. Everything is moving so fast, I just can’t seem to catch up. Not even to my own ideas, it seems. What exactly did I plan to do once I was safe and Asha gone? I kinda expected that some clue or step would fall into my lap without me having to do anything. Turns out that’s not how life works. I’ll have to actually think things through and hunt for clues like a real detective. It’s frustrating.

The toaster oven whirs, clicking and hissing as it sears the soft panini bread. I tug at my rolled up dress shirt sleeves, trying to flatten a crease as I roll my jumbled thoughts around in my brain. What would Asha do now? Never mind that, what would a Hunter do if he wasn’t sure his target has been killed? Go through the facts. Try to find connections. Find all eventualities. Eliminate the threat. Meaning, whoever killed the theology students. Double-check the result.

Cor never was my mission or target, but somehow, my brain has been fluttering around him ever since he came out of the box. I didn’t think about my actual mission at all until Asha brought it up, and later when I needed it as a cover story. I completely forgot about the people getting murdered, about a serial killer that might still be alive, and about my work. That is worrisome on its own, but that I’m just now noticing it makes my heart quiver just a little. Maybe the venom does still wreak havoc in my brain, but I have a sinking feeling that it’s more than just some vampire poison.

It probably isn’t even anything Cor is doing to me; it’s just me being stupid. I have been running after the loud, shiny, glittery thing instead of paying attention, because what could be a bigger adventure than an ancient vampire that doesn’t want to eat me?

The little oven spits out my panini, one side too dark and the other too pale. I throw it onto a plate and grab a pack of ketchup, then stop to grab the mission tablet from my duffel in the hallway and turn towards the living room, pondering my seating choices. There aren’t many. Cor stops his pacing for a moment, black eyes following me as I cross the room towards the couch-bench-thing. When my butt touches the musty cushions, he turns back to the windows and huffs out a short breath. Then he continues his pacing, if a little slower than before. I get the eerie feeling that he might be listening to what I am doing, but I don’t turn to find out. Might spook him. Or give him ideas.

Leaning forward, I squirt some ketchup on the plate and grab the bread in a three-fingered claw-grip to keep the cheese from dripping out. I tap the tablet with my other hand, pull it closer as it boots, and take a bite of ketchup-y goodness. Time to do research.

I TAKE A minute or two to figure out where to start and what to do, but it doesn’t take long for my bibliothecarial brain to kick in and take over. Working on a tablet isn’t fun, what with the screen being too tiny, but I’ll be damned if that stops me. Since I don’t quite know where to look yet, I focus on the things that I can look up remotely. For example, check where I am at, geographically speaking, and seeing what places are close by and how the district is situated. Turns out, the safe-house is actually pretty ideal for any and every eventuality I might stumble upon; it is three blocks away from the border of the Darkmoon Market veil, so it should be pretty safe to walk around outside.

This close to the veil, Cor running off and flashing people would still be a problem, but much less so than anywhere else in the city. Chances are, he will run into either supes, or people whose senses have been so hardened by the proximity to the veil, that they simply blank him from their mind. Nifty thing, that human brain. Chances I might have to shoot someone for realizing Cor is a vampire are slim-ish here.

The house is also close to two watering holes that my system flags as hideouts for supes, and a small supermarket that seems to be vampire-owned, for whatever reason. Both of those might be good, or they might come to bite me in the ass, depending on how my investigation proceeds. But somehow, I don’t think I will have to worry about hatred-motivated sneak attacks, as long as Cor is still amused enough by me to stick around.

By the time I’m done scrolling around on the map, Cor has wandered closer and is leaning on the armchair left of me, frowning at my tablet. I tilt it a little so he gets a better view, but I don’t think he understands what the shiny thing does yet. Or maybe he does and just finds it an utter waste of his time. Whichever it is, I get close to no reaction from him for my efforts.

It reminds me of a fleeting thought I had when Stanley talked about Cor being Strigan: I never really heard about vampires having bloodlines. I mean, yes, bloodlines in general, because they influence what kind of venom a vampire develops, but not in a sociological context. And it makes me wonder, are those bloodlines like blood relations, Hapsburg style, or are they like dog breeds and just have similar attributes?

I start up the Hunter-made database and fiddle around a little, trying to find articles on the topic. There are some, brushing roughly on the general thought of vampire families, but they change little from a Hunter’s perspective. We already know most of the special powers vampires have, and that they sometimes cluster in a pattern. Like, vampires with agonizing venom usually also are extremely good at hypnosis and telepathy. It’s a no-brainer, really. How are you supposed to feed in peace if your food is screaming the whole way through? Or how super-strong or super-fast vampires are often also very thirsty boys and girls, and able to drink animal blood besides human blood. There are many more examples, but I have never heard of them sorting themselves into Hogwarts-like houses.