Blood Hunt (Codex Blair Book 2) Read online

  We walked on, and I felt the need to make conversation. I didn’t know this person, and the silence was a little awkward.

  He spoke, as if he’d read my thoughts. “So where are you headed so late at night? A party?”

  I laughed at that. “Oh, no, I just finished a girl’s night, much deserved. I’m going home to watch my show.”

  “I’m sure your boyfriend is looking forward to getting you back,” he said, nodding his head.

  “I don’t have a boyfriend,” I said without hesitation, then felt my cheeks burn with embarrassment.

  He cocked his head to the side, looking down at me. “Really? A beautiful woman like you, unattached. That is truly astonishing. A miracle for me,” he said.

  I blushed. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, that I think you’re beautiful, and I fully intend on using this walk home to convince you to go on a date with me,” he said, slowing to a stop. I halted too, looking up at him, a little breathless.

  He was interested in me? That was amazing, he was so gorgeous. I felt my insides hollow, my lips part as a sigh escaped.

  His eyes lowered to my lips, lashes lowering over his eyes slightly. “I should very much like to kiss you, if that’s all right.”

  My heart began to pound, a smile spreading across my lips. He was so polite! I nodded, stepping closer to him. “I’d like to be kissed by you,” I said, breathless.

  He lowered his head slowly, reaching out to capture my chin in his hand as he tilted my face up to meet him. His lips brushed against mine once, twice, before he truly kissed me. It was heaven, the gentle touch of his lips. It had been so long since I’d been kissed that I might possibly think any kiss was fantastic, but I felt certain that this was the real deal. This was amazing.

  A happy sigh slipped out of my lips, and at the slight parting he deepened the kiss. He tasted delicious, and I moaned at the probing touch of his tongue.

  A small sound of protest escaped me when he pulled away from my lips, but was replaced with an eager sigh when he turned his attention to my ear. I moaned as he sucked on the lobe there, gasped as he feathered kisses down to my neck. A more surprised gasp escaped me when he grazed his teeth against my sensitive skin, the hollow feeling within me spiking to unreasonable levels. I was shocked by how much I wanted him, a foggy part of my mind reprimanded me for throwing myself at him so shamelessly, but I pushed it away. I could enjoy this moment, I’d had so few.

  I cried out, startled, when he bit me. I felt his teeth, so sharp, puncture my skin, and tried to jerk away. But his strong arms, previously so comforting and now so terrifying, held me still. I struggled against him, lifting my hands to beat at his shoulders, his head, anything I could reach. He let go of my shoulders and grabbed my wrists, turning and pinning me against the alley wall. His body pressed against mine, firm thighs caging my softer ones, his chest flush with my own. There was no way to move, no way to escape…

  The world was fuzzy and I couldn’t see anymore and what was happening, what was happening…

  I lurched back into my own body, sweating profusely, and staring the woman’s eyes down. They were terrified, her lips twisted in a silent cry for help, the expression held for a moment before the face settled back to its prior dead state. Her eyes shut and I sat there, holding her head for several moments while I choked down breath after breath.

  I was exhausted, soaked with perspiration, and my breathing was laboured.

  I slowly placed her head back on the ground before me, then braced myself with either hand on the ground at my sides.

  “Blair?” I heard Finn’s voice, distressed, as a dull sound somewhere in the distance. My ears were ringing. I had the vague thought that I had used too much magic, that the spell had been active for too long. I felt like a truck had slammed into me, every part of my body hurt so much.

  I closed my eyes, reached for the leather cuff on my wrist with my mind, and tapped into it. Instantly strength and relief flooded my body. I inhaled through my nose, exhaled through my mouth, and opened my eyes. Nudging a foot out to smudge the chalk and break the circle, I looked up at Finn.

  “Well, you don’t need to consult your mortician. There remains no doubt that we’re dealing with a vampire,” I said, my lips set in a grim line. I stood up, turning to face the group of detectives.

  They were all as white as a sheet; Brian’s black skin was so pale as to look dead himself.

  “What?” I asked, frowning and looking around me. “Did something happen while I was under?”

  Krista shook her head, her eyes wide and round. “You…. you, did it? I saw her face, I saw her eyes open, and you were chanting and then you were mumbling the entire time. I can’t…I can’t believe it.” She shook her head, looking all around her as if the ground or the walls would afford her some answer that she could believe.

  But George was shaking his head, having regained his colour now. “No, I don’t buy it. She’s just pulling one over on us, she faked the whole thing.”

  I lifted an eyebrow at him, rolling my eyes and wiping the sweat off my brow. “Yeah, that’s why I’m covered in sweat. I’m bloody drenched, so how exactly did I fake that? I’m not sure how to get this sweaty without going for jog in some ridiculously humid country.” Even a long jog here didn’t get me this sweaty, maybe just a bit, but never enough where I would want to take a shower before even stepping foot in front of someone. That’s how I felt right now, all I wanted was a hot shower.

  The other guys looked uneasily at George, then back at me, and I saw the doubt creeping into them.

  “You could have something on you, pacemaker or something, I don’t know, to speed your heart up. Get you sweaty that way. There’s nothing saying you didn’t fake it, I didn’t see shit that anyone else couldn’t have done. I didn’t see her face. You just sat there for twenty minutes gabbing at a bloody head.” George was intent on disproving everything that had happened right in front of his eyes, and I wish I could say that was abnormal.

  Mundanes don’t want to think that anything is outside of their control, and a person with the ability to speak with the dead—I’m almost certain the spell I’d just done was outside the bounds of The Order’s approved list, should have thought of that before—or call down lighting, or fire, or ice, whatever, that kind of person was outside their control. Vampires even more so, and they didn’t even know what else could be out there. They didn’t know about the demons, the Fae, centaurs, and whatever else existed out there that even I didn’t know about. If they heard about any of those, I think they might just lose their minds.

  “I don’t buy it either,” said Chase, and then Brian and Alex both murmured their agreement, none of them quite able to look at me now.

  I shook my head and sighed, saw the somehow sympathetic and terrified look on Krista’s face, and turned to Finn. “OK, I think that’s enough from me. I’m going to go home and take a shower, I think the boys will have an easier time getting down to the real police work without me here complicating things. I’ve done all that I can do, and I’ve got research to do.”

  Finn nodded. “I think that’s for the best, too. Call me as soon as you know anything, OK?”

  “Will do, besides, we still haven’t discussed my fee,” I said with a wink, turned, and walked out of the alley.

  6

  Halfway home, I started to feel the fatigue again. Frowning down at the cuff on my arm, I wiggled my arm a bit, the chain making a tinkling sound. I hadn’t thought I’d pulled a lot out of it just now, but I had also used it last night. Considering how worn out I’d been at the end of that last spell, I now figured I had used more than intended. I would have to replenish it tonight, then, so that I wouldn’t be caught unaware by any creature I ran into. And I needed to be worried about that now, since I was investigating another case. The closer you get to finding someone, the likelier it becomes that they’ll be alerted to what you’re doing.

  That’s what had happened with the necromancers. I’d touch
ed their circle at Tyburn Tree, examined it, and I still didn’t know how they found out, but they had and they’d come for Aidan. The spell circle had to have been booby-trapped somehow to alert them if anyone of reasonable magic ability got near it.

  While walking, I pondered the scene I had just come from.

  Oh, yeah, I should probably let those emotions back out.

  The thought jumped into my head as soon as I imagined the scene, and I could feel them pounding at the door of the room I’d shut them in. I paused and leaned my back against a building I was passing. I closed my eyes, reached within my mind and opened the door. They all came flooding back into me, wrenching at my gut and tearing at my mind.

  It’s a handy trick to get you through a tough moment, but it bloody sucks to deal with afterwards. Because everything you took in, everything you saw, was still catalogued and prepared by the emotions. You didn’t get to skip it, no skipping ahead to the after-you-got-over-it part, you just paused and had to deal with it when you pressed play again.

  I gripped my stomach and covered my mouth, squeezing my eyes shut.

  It was so horrifying to think about, the way her head and body had been separated from one another, savagely ripped a part. Who could do such a thing? To kill was one thing, killing was something I had soon accustomed myself to seeing, but to desecrate a body like that was an entirely different beast. I had never heard of a vampire doing something like that, from what little I had heard.

  I breathed, in through the nose and out through the mouth repeatedly until I could fight the vomit back down my throat. I was shaking, hands trembling against my skin, and I was having a hell of a time redirecting my thoughts into something more productive, something that could distract me from the horror I had witnessed.

  A hand grabbed me out of nowhere, my eyes popping open just in time to see the punch before it connected with my face. I took the brunt of it on my cheek, head snapping backwards to dull the momentum. I saw stars for a moment, staring briefly at the man who had attacked me, before I felt another hand grab me by my shoulder.

  I was prepared for it this time, though, and ducked before the blow could land on any part of my body. I was staring at the torso of my attacker, and decided to take the opportunity to charge him. I knocked my head into his stomach and shoved him into the wall I’d just been leaning against, winding my arm back and slugging him in the gut. At the same time, I shouted the word, “Vis!”

  My fist slammed into him, I felt the connection with his ribs, and lurched myself back. I danced to the side, to avoid any retaliation attempt, trying to put myself a few paces back from the middle position I’d been in so I could observe both attackers. They were built thick, but their movements were jerky and disconnected. Their skin had a sallow, pale undertone to it, and their eyes were sunken.

  Why the fuck was I being attacked? I had to wonder. I hadn’t done anything wrong, that I knew of.

  I didn’t have time to focus on it, though, because attacker number one was coming at me again. I rocked my weight back onto my left foot, waited until he was moving too fast and too close to be able to stop his lunge, turned to my side and kicked up and out. “Vis!” I snarled yet again, mentally reaching for the tattoo on that ankle. It flared to life, burning against my skin, and the man flew down the street.

  I whirled to look at the man I’d winded, who was currently still wheezing and clutching his sides. Good, I hoped I’d broken a rib, and I hoped he’d be dumb enough to wrap it. Everyone thinks you wrap broken ribs because they watch too much telly, but the truth was if you wrapped them you limited your ability to breathe properly. You could collapse a lung, and you heightened the probability of catching pneumonia, and hopefully dying.

  Hey, don’t judge me for wanting someone who took an unwarranted swing at me to get pneumonia. He probably wouldn’t die if he did, most people can tell there’s something wrong with them and know enough to get to a hospital. It would just be good karma for him to end up that way, not that I believed in karma. There was too much bad in the world for me to believe in karma.

  I legged it out of there and down the street, running as fast as I could. I felt my heart beating rapidly in my chest, the adrenaline pumping through my veins carried me away. I kept turning every corner, right and left, right and left, to put as much distance between me and them as I could, and reduce the chance of being followed.

  Finally, the adrenaline wore off and I collapsed on the pavement, pulled myself to a sitting position, leaning against the closest wall while I panted. Breath after breath, trying to calm my heart and slow my breathing down so that I didn’t begin to hyperventilate.

  Why the fuck had I been attacked like that? Did I look like the type of person who carried cash on them? I didn’t have any valuable jewellery on me, and I certainly didn’t look like the type of person worth snatching to hold hostage. Not that those goons had looked to have the brains to hold someone hostage, so you’d think they’d go for the other two.

  It didn’t make sense. I needed it to make sense.

  My eyes started to drift shut, and I realised the emergency I was in. I couldn’t pass out on a random corner of a random street—not that anyone passing by would care, I’d just look like one more homeless person. It was the fear that the muggers would discover me, if they were in fact following me instead of just looking for someone to steal from.

  “Vis,” I slurred, pulling on both my cuff and my ankle tattoo, flooding my body with the strength I needed to get home. I could collapse on my couch once I had my wards up, and Fred could watch over me while I slept to make sure that I didn’t get any worse.

  I leapt up to my feet, shaking out my arms and rolling my neck as the power coursed through me again. It was bloody annoying to deplete two foci, refilling them was a painful task, but it was better than dying on the street at some mundane’s hand. Gods, that would have been so humiliating. Now that I could breathe again, I revelled in the feeling of air rushing in and out of my lungs.

  I hoped that using magic on mundanes wouldn’t put me on The Order’s naughty list.

  7

  I awoke on my couch sometime after nightfall, curled up against the back. The house was silent, as always. I gave myself a few moments to enjoy the quiet before I opened my eyes. There was work that needed to be done, and I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to relax a bit more, allow my stiff muscles let go of the aches from battle and not sleeping on a bed.

  I didn’t have the kind of life that lent itself to relaxation, though, so I opened my eyes and faced the living room.

  “Fred,” I called, not bothering to raise my voice much at all. Fred had incredible hearing, and I wasn’t certain that it was external hearing that he used. I hoped he couldn’t read my thoughts, but there was no real way of knowing.

  He appeared beside the couch as if out of nowhere, and I squinted at him, still groggy from just waking up.

  “How long was I out?” I asked.

  He tilted his head to the side. “In Earth hours, Miss?”

  “Yes, of course, Earth hours.” I rolled my eyes.

  “Eleven hours,” he said, smiling at me as if his proclamation was the best news in the world. “You had excellent sleep, as I could tell, deep and nourishing. You should be at full strength now, perfect for replenishing your foci before you bed tonight.”

  “I don’t know how I’ll be able to fall asleep at a decent hour…eleven hours, Gods that’s ridiculous,” I said, rubbing the back of my head.

  Between the fight last night, the spell at the murder scene, and the fight on the way home, today had taken a lot out of me. I felt the call from my subconscious to lay back down. It had been a partial lie then, that I didn’t know how I would sleep tonight. Like a log was most likely.

  I lurched into a sitting position. “OK, well, now that I’m up we should get down to business.”

  “No,” he said.

  “No?” I quirked an eyebrow up. “What?”

  “Missy needs to eat,” he
said, tugging at his oversized ears. “Missy has had plenty of rest, but Missy needs to have food before magic.” He nodded his head, almost as if he was agreeing with himself.

  I sighed, shaking my head. “Of course. Fine, I’ll make a sandwich and eat in the basement while we go over lore, OK?” He nodded his head happily. “Oh, and Fred? We’ve talked about this, stop calling me Missy.”

  “Yes, Mistress, of course!” His eyes went wide and he looked well and truly petrified, shaking his head as he walked towards the basemen. “Stupid, stupid, stupid, should be listenings to the miss—no, not the miss, to, no can’t be sayings it, can’t! Is impossible, can’ts be doing it, how is I supposed…” His mutterings faded away.

  “That’s not what I meant!” I shouted after him, wincing. Fred was so weird about this; he wouldn’t just use my name. I wondered if Aidan had encouraged the use of the term ‘Master,’ or if it was just something ingrained into Fred’s psyche.

  Whatever it was, it would take some time to break him of the habit, but I was going to do it sooner or later.

  I headed into the kitchen and fixed myself a simple sandwich, grabbed a coke out of the fridge, and walked down into the basement.

  It hadn’t become any easier to come down here, no matter how much time had passed since I’d been caged in the circle. The apprehension, the feeling of my gut dropping out of me, it all reminded me of that miserable night. I closed my eyes for a moment once I touched onto the basement floor, willing away the memories that threatened to swamp me.

  I took a seat at the table I had dragged down here last year, had a bite out of my sandwich, and promptly moaned. It was so good to have food in me, I never thought I would be so happy to eat something as basic as a sandwich, but here I was almost delirious from the joy it brought me.

  “What lore is you needings?” Fred asked, coming to stand beside the table. He never sat beside me, no matter how many times I had invited him to.