Page 119 of Demon's Bluff
“I’m sorry,” I said, thinking vampire mores sucked.
“Good God. It’s really old. Are you sure it still works?” echoed out from the furnace room, and my jaw clenched.
“Yes!” It worked, leaving no digital record, no image capture.Thank you,I thought as I took in the young man’s torn neck and bloodless pallor.Thank you for helping me save the man I once loved.“You think you could give me a hand here?”
“Sure.” Leaving the door open, she sauntered out. “Mmmm,” she added, brow furrowed as she took up his death chart. “Ophees was right. He’s scheduled for four weeks of storage to allow for identification before being disposed of. The I.S. has zero information on him. Looks like he’s a D2. Drained and dumped.”
Irritation sparked. “You could have a little compassion,” I said, and her gaze shot to mine. “Sure, his master treated him like a chunk of meat, but someone loved him.”
Elyse scowled, clearly annoyed. “You want to stop? This was your idea.”
“No,” I said immediately. “He is one of the lost. But living vamps stick together in the face of the abuse they put up with, and I know to the bottom of my soul that Johnny would go along with this if only to make things better for his surviving kin.” I fought the urge to smooth out a forehead wrinkle. “And this will make things better.”
Elyse was silent. “So…Johnny in the wheelchair, and Kisten in the drawer? I’ll get Kisten.”
Depressed, I tucked Johnny’s modesty sheet around him as Elyse trundled Kisten closer. I wasn’t sure whom to move first, but Elyse went right for Johnny’s shoulders, waiting until I took his feet and together we lifted him up and out to set him gently on the floor.I am so sorry…
“You want to unstrap him?” Elyse suggested, and I fumbled for Kisten’s waist belt.
I am putting Kisten into a morgue drawer…
The reality of that hit me hard, and my hands shook as I grasped his feet, struggling to lift his weight.
Kisten took a breath as his body came to rest, and I almost lost it.
“Ah, Rachel?”
“I’m fine,” I said, jaw clenched. He was in a morgue drawer, and my heart was breaking. “Let’s get Johnny in the chair.”
I sort of blanked out the next few minutes. Fortunately we didn’t have to change their clothes as the glamour charm would do that for us, but I did take Kisten’s shoes off so I could put Johnny’s toe tag on him. Even so, a rigorous inspection would see through the deception. Good thing that wasn’t in anyone’s playbook down here. As I did the charm twice to exchange their images, I couldn’t help but wonder if Elyse was helping me with the intent to bring me to trial for everything we were doing once she got home. The leader of the coven of moral and ethical standards could not be known for stealing trucks, moving bodies, or knocking out city workers.
But if I believed that, I was screwed twice to the wall.
“Well?” I said, gut tight as she strapped Johnny into the chair and arranged his bare feet on the footrests. I thought about putting Kisten’s shoeson him, then stuffed the flat boat shoes into my shoulder bag instead. He still looked the same to me, but Elyse bobbed her head, her obvious satisfaction convincing me the switch had been made.
“It would fool me,” she said, her gaze fixed on Kisten. “Damn, I can’t tell, and I know it’s fake.”
My hand was on the drawer, but I couldn’t seem to shut it. He looked like Johnny, the deception furthered by the toe tag now dangling from his foot. As a John Doe Vamp, he’d be safe here.I will be back for you, Kisten.Throat tight, I closed the drawer, tensing at the loud snap.
“Great. Let’s get him to the boat,” Elyse said, her mood clearly good as we ticked one more thing off my list before I took her home. “Kisten’s aura looks great, by the way.”
“Swell.” Head down, I pushed Johnny into the lobby. Iceman was still out cold when I hung the doll on the nail behind the desk. The numbers on the wall clock had gone red, meaning the sun was up. Johnny wouldn’t care. He was already dead twice.
Elyse got the door for me. Her silence remained intact as we found the elevator and she hit the button for the upper lobby. “This feels too easy,” she said, and I unclenched my jaw.
I’m so sorry,I thought again as I glanced down at Johnny.Thank you.“Piscary has a history of leaving corpses,” I said aloud as I watched the numbers count up. “The entire city is on edge with Al running around, breaking things to get me to come to him. No one cares about one dead vampire.”
Elyse fidgeted, starting when the elevator dinged and the door opened. “I don’t blame you for staying clear of Al. In this time, I mean,” she said as she strode out. “You’ve got two demon marks, after all.”
I glanced at my wrist, wheelchair bumping as I followed her. “He wants me to testify on his behalf, and I’m rightly afraid that it will end up with me as his familiar.”
The lobby had gotten busy in the twenty minutes we’d been down there, and Elyse moved quickly to the door, ignoring everyone as if taking a corpse-white body out into the sun was an everyday occurrence. “But that’s what happened, isn’t it?” she asked. “You became his familiar?”
“Not exactly.” Not surprisingly, the very thing that had freed Al from the accusation of uncommon stupidity had bound me even closer to him. He’d been forced to take me as his student, not his familiar. It was a claim that was still being played out even though my position as a witch-born demon was indisputable.
Elyse held the door for me, and I bumped over the sill, head coming up at the dawn-clean feel of cool air. My smile vanished.
“Son of a bitch,” Elyse whispered, her gaze tracking mine to the truck. A huge crow stood on the tailgate, head bobbing and wings flashing open as it saw us. But it was the tall figure getting out of the adjacent rental car that had pulled us both to a stop.