Page 35

My teeth chatter so much I almost bite my tongue, but I huff out a single word without bloodying myself. “Beast?”

Surprisingly, it’s Cor who provides the answer. His voice is flat and unhappy as he says, “It was Sabueso Infernal.” He says it as it’s supposed to be said, with a heavy accent and an ease that can only come from one’s mother tongue. And Cor being from a Spanish-speaking country is both surprising and not surprising at all; he’s got the skin, the face, the hair. I just didn’t expect a vampire to come from a land as sunny and bright as Spain. But although my Spanish knowledge is enough to have full conversations on a good day, I take a moment to figure out what he is saying. It means hellhound. Great.

“Whatever that is. You alright there, Mr. Hunter?” The girl’s voice sounds closer this time, amused, sharp-edged, as if she is talking around too many sharp teeth. I lift the blanket a little to peek out of my warm cocoon, but no, she looks perfectly normal. Or as normal as a red-haired goth punk chick can look. She keeps an arm’s length of distance from Cor as she steps a little closer, eying me as if the blanket weren’t there. As if she’s expecting me to answer, as if my answer were meaningful. Makes me wonder what she is doing here.

“Who are you again?”

“Maggie. From the club.”

“I knew that. What I want to know is, who are you?”

She sighs and rolls her shoulders. “You’re not gonna like the answer to that question.”

“Answer it anyway.”

Her eyes flick over to Cor, who hasn’t moved from his vigil next to my legs. I can’t see his face, but going by what I experienced in the short time of our acquaintance, he is probably glaring at her as if pondering how edible she might be. He might not be quite himself right now, but he still feels possessive of me. She won’t get any help from him; that much I know. In the end, she sighs heavily. “Will you get mad if I tell you that Todd sent me?”

“Why should that make me mad?”

She looks surprised. “Because a werewolf sent a werewolf to shadow a Hunter. But you don’t look mad. Why?”

I shrug half-heartedly. “Because I try not to get mad at people who save my life. And because I figured part of that when you and your friends were so very forthcoming at the nightclub.”

My fingers and toes are already prickling with increasing warmth, which means I can feel my extremities again. Chances are good that I’ll survive. Hard to feel cranky when you’ve just jumped off death’s doorstep. My leg wounds are throbbing, and a stabbing pain is setting in, but it’s nothing compared to the agony I was in before Cor washed off the poison. I can deal. For now.

Maggie raises her eyebrows at me. One of them is pierced, but the little ring is black and almost vanishes in her tightly groomed brow. The dark violet eye shade does the rest to hide the piece of jewelry. “That’s decent of you.” Decent for a Hunter, her tone of voice says, and she doesn’t bother keeping the surprise out of her voice.

The blanket hides my nod, so I add, “I try. But honestly, what was that thing? And don’t say ‘hellhound’ again, I got that part. What does it mean?”

The blanket rustles and slides down, covering the space where my legs were. Cor’s heavy steps pass behind the couch and echo out of the room as he leaves. Seems like we’re back to being cold and closed off.

Maggie stares after him with a worried expression that quickly slides back into youthful disdain when she catches me watching her. “Your friend is weird,” she says, as if that's my fault. Then her suddenly serious eyes find mine, even with the blanket covering my head. “I would have assumed a Hunter knows about the side effects of ley nodes, but live and learn. That thing was a hellhound, something that amounts to demonic vermin in simple terms. They have a tendency to pop out of ley nodes if someone pokes at them, but you’d have to poke pretty hard, and at just the right spot. Which sucks if you’re from around here; the Darkmoon Market sits right atop the strongest ley node this side of the Atlantic, and we’ve seen a few of the hell beasties over the years. Never pleasant when it happens.”

Ley nodes are the spots where two ley lines cross; that much I remember, and I knew before that they cause bursts of chaotic energy, as magic is never constant. Ley lines pulsate and thrum, as if the forces flowing through them have their own frequencies. And when those frequencies slap against each other at just the right—or wrong—moment, things go awry. How awry, I never considered.

One thing bugs me, though. I pull the blanket back a little so my head isn’t lost in the cozy warmth anymore, because somehow thinking is always harder when your head is covered. Especially when you’ve lost a lot of blood and almost died. “How hard would you have to poke at a ley node? And how do you even poke it?”

Maggie tilts her head a little and sneers unhappily. “I don’t know. Most of the time it happens because some warlocks party too hard when they shouldn’t. I’ve seen small hellhounds appear at a particularly raucous New Year’s Eve party, you know, cat size, up to Labrador size. Nasty little buggers, but easier to kill since you can smash them with a bat. I don’t know if the ‘locks do it deliberately or if it just happens, but from my experience, such a big hellhound can’t be a coincidence. That is above ‘oopsie’-levels.” She shrugs gracefully and steps back, sitting down on the coffee table. “As to how, again, no idea. I’m just your local werewolf liaison. That’s a question you’ll have to ask a ‘lock.”

What she says makes an unfortunate amount of sense. Enough sense that I’m wondering why I haven’t heard about this before. Warlocks draw power from the abyss, the demonic underworld, and not because they want to. It’s more of a natural reflex, a curse, if you like, that they can’t turn off. The sad thing is that some of them are born with this affliction, but most of them actually make a pact with a demon for the exact purpose of getting that connection, to tap into that abyssal power.

Witchcraft, warlock magic, isn’t clean either. It leaves metaphysical dirt, grime, almost a coating of poison, on everything it touches, up to where a warlock’s ritual circle can lead to an entire city block turning into unholy ground if it gets activated often enough. So what if that power, that poison, rubs up against a ley node? Bad stuff is bound to happen. “Let’s say that beast has been conjured, called, whatever, on purpose. Why would anyone do that?”

“How should I know? Ask a warlock. Or, you know, a cultist.” A frown appears on Maggie’s face, and she glances toward my covered legs. “How are the burns feeling?”

Okay then, seems like we’re changing the topic. A part of me wants to ask her why she doesn’t want to talk about potential motives anymore, but a bigger part of me is too busy being confused by blood loss, almost dying, and all this new knowledge to bother, so I let it go. “Still burning, but it’s less than before. I don’t feel like I’ll die anymore.” And because I realize I haven’t said it, I add more quietly, ‟ Thanks, by the way. For helping Cor help me.”

Another thought flits through my mind, and I bolt semi-upright. A wave of pain makes me freeze halfway up and gasp for air as I try to get a grasp on my racing heart. ‟Wait, I rotted. Cor touched the rot!”

‟And nothing happened to him, don’t worry,” Mags says resolutely and pushes me back down with a feather-light touch against my shoulder. ‟Hellhound poison is only dangerous to mortals, or creatures with an immune system, like Shapeshifters, Warlocks, and so on. Worry about yourself, your boytoy will be just fine. And you will be too, if he got everything off you in time. Which he did, since you’re still breathing.” At the look on my face, she sighs deeply and growls, ‟Seriously. We have seen a lot of those things, and people have been bitten before. No vampire or werewolf deaths by infection so far.”

Mags has no reason to lie to me, but still. I smelled it. Saw it close up. It looked exactly like the rot on the serial killer vampire. That can’t be a coincidence, can it? Or maybe it isn’t, and that is the purpose. What if these cultists recreated symptoms that vampires would ignore because they have seen them before and think they are going to be fine? That would cause them to wait way too long until the rot cannot be stopped anymore.

That doesn’t mean I know why anyone would want to invent a rotting vampire disease at all, but since cultists are involved… I have a vague idea.

‟I do wonder why the thing followed you. They usually go after deviants,” Mags mutters and pats my chest through the cozy blanket.

‟I’m not a deviant.”