Unseen (The Heights, Vol. 1) Page 2

  She nudged the vamp with her foot, clenching her ID in an outstretched hand. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t just leave him on the sidewalk. His glamour was gone, so some poor kid would probably find him and spend the rest of his life in an insane asylum. Not to mention all the cops, paramedics, and gossip rags that would be brought into it.

  She called her friend Dawn’s cell number, not the official call-in line.

  “Hey, I can’t talk,” Dawn whispered. “My boss is on the prowl.”

  “I’ll be quick. You need to call the tech who cleans up around my place and tell them they missed a spot.”

  “What do you mean? Nothing’s been logged in for that area.”

  “Can you check again?” Because if it hadn’t been logged, things were as bad as Addison thought they were. She waited, her eyes never straying from the vamp.

  “I’m back,” Dawn said. “No fights logged in around there.”

  “I don’t care if no fights were logged in, and I’m guessing the guy lying and dying in front of me doesn’t care, either.”

  “You know we can’t do anything unless someone logs it in. Shit, he’s coming. Gotta go. Talk later?”

  “Sure, later.” If there was one.

  Normally, supers were so careful. Addison had never even heard of someone having to do a pickup on an unofficial site. It just didn’t happen. Not since the races gathered up all the seers and threatened them with what would happen if they didn’t do what they were told. But that had been eons ago, part of the system built after the Treaty of All Races was signed and everyone pretended to get along.

  The sun was just peeking over her building, shooting a ray of light onto the building across the street. Good and not good. Sure, the vamp would turn to dust in the sunlight, but the process was slow and the neighborhood was about to come alive with humans who would see it happen.

  Grimacing and nauseous, she considered sprinkling some dusting powder on him. She didn’t know if it would work on a still-viable vampire, though, and if he woke up and started screaming as it burned him alive-ish, it would only make things way, way, way worse.

  She leaned down and grabbed the stake to see if she could wiggle it a little. If it accidentally punctured his heart, it wouldn’t count as a kill.

  “What are you doing, Addison?” Mike, her one-hundred-percent-human neighbor asked, peering over the railing.

  “Nothing.” As she straightened, the chunk of wood came with her.

  “Is he okay?”

  As long as the vamp’s mouth stayed shut, he would just look like some other guy. Well, an incredibly attractive and pale other guy who had a gaping hole in his chest no human could survive.

  “He’s…fine.” She tossed the stake into the pile behind her.

  “Then why’s he lying in the garbage?”

  She pretended to lose her balance. “We had a bit too much to drink.”

  Mike came down the steps. “Do you need help bringing him inside?”

  “Inside?” Crap. “No, that’s okay. I can do it.”

  “Yeah, right. How drunk are you?” As Mike came closer, Addison pulled the lapel of the vamp’s suit over the hole in his chest.

  “It’s okay, really,” she said, adding a little slur for dramatic effect. “A friend is coming to help.”

  Mike shook his head as he bent down. “Is that—?”

  “Wine. Yep, almost a full bottle. It’s a very expensive way to dye a shirt red—I wouldn’t recommend it.” She had about another minute before there was enough daylight for Mike to see clearly. If the vamp dusted right in front of him, he’d have to get his memory wiped, something Addison couldn’t allow to happen.

  “Don’t you have to leave for work or something?” She tried pushing him away before it was too late, but he didn’t budge.

  “Man, I’m coming with you guys next time you go out.” He laughed as he stepped around her. He pulled the vamp up by both arms to a sitting position, and then quickly bent to hook his arm around him.

  “Let me help!” She went to the vamp’s other side and they hauled him off the ground. The jerk groaned as they lifted him, and she adjusted his jacket again.

  “If he pukes on me, I’m gonna kill him.”

  “It won’t happen.” How was Mike going to kill something that didn’t eat and seemed exceptionally hard to kill, even for a vamp?

  Each stair was painful. Between the weight of the vamp, Mike’s blabbering, and the idea that she was bringing an almost-but-not-quite dusted super into her apartment building was excruciating. And nauseating. The closer they got, the more she regretted promising Mike he wouldn’t get puked on.

  She fumbled for her keys and unlocked her door with the vamp’s arm still around her shoulders. Disgusting. Truly, truly disgusting. After she opened the door, they tried to bring him in. ‘Tried,’ because the doorway had just become an invisible and unbreakable force field.

  “Come on in, gentlemen,” she said, horrified she’d just invited a vamp into her home. As soon as the words left her mouth, they could all go inside.

  Great. Welcome home.

  “Where do you want him?” Mike asked as she handed over her half of the dead weight so she could close the door.

  If he was on the couch, he’d dust when the light came through her bay window. Then maybe with a thorough vacuuming, she could pretend nothing had ever happened. “The couch—” Shit! Mike was already dragging the carcass into her bedroom! “Wait!”

  Too late. He’d just dumped him on her bed. On her beautiful duvet that she now had to replace because no manner of cleaning could wipe that image away.

  “Dude’s heavy. And big.” Mike smiled, wiping his hands on his pants. “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”

  “Yeah, well…it’s pretty new. And I don’t think it’s going to last much longer.” Hopefully. She smiled, trying to herd Mike towards the door before he figured out that nothing she was saying made sense.

  “Make sure he drinks lots of water or he’s gonna be feeling like death when he wakes up.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “You should sit down,” he said. “You look like you’re gonna faint.”

  “Just tired.” She slapped her cheeks lightly. Maybe he was mistaking her horrified expression for something else. “It was a long night.” She thanked him repeatedly and shooed him out the door.

  The only thing worse than having an almost-dusted vamp in her place was locking herself inside her place with one. Hopefully it would all be over soon, and not in a her-death sort of way.

  Okay. Reassess. She needed to get the vamp off the street. Now he was off the street. So, all she had to do was sit here and wait for him to die. Crap. He was going to dust in her apartment. In her bed. She leaned against the doorframe and stared at him, the reality of what she’d just brought into her life settling in.

  A mage could track him down. But who’d deal with a crazy being with a magically fried brain just to find a random vamp? And from what little she’d heard, hiring a demon wasn’t cheap. It would be a nonissue soon anyway—no amount of magic could track down a pile of dust. Of course, if he didn’t dust soon…or at all…

  “What then, Add?” Well, if he didn’t die, all she’d have to decide was how she wanted to.

  If anyone found out, she was dead. If he got free before she could talk him out of killing her, she was dead. The biggest damage was already done and acting rashly or out of fear might screw things up more…or faster.

  What she needed was a chance to think, make a plan, weigh options and all that crap. Therefore, the first order of business was making sure that if he woke up, he couldn’t get up.

  Silver. She needed silver. And lots of it. The only thing worse than having a vampire in her bed was having said vampire get out of said bed and attack her. Once he was chained, she’d be safe and able to think rationally. Probably.

  She eased her jewelry box out of the top drawer of her dresser. She wasn’t a jewelry-wearing kind of girl, a
nd most of the pieces she owned were gold, not silver. If she clasped everything she had together, the length would probably work, but their gauges might not.

  She tiptoed closer to the vamp and wrapped the chain around his wrist. Tiny threads of smoke lifted off his skin where the silver touched, but he didn’t react with anything more than a slight finger twitch. After gently lifting his arm above his head, she used the inadequate chains to hook his wrist to the iron headboard and then moved on to his other wrist and both ankles. A limp and lifeless body wasn’t all that surprising considering he was a vamp, but she’d never seen one asleep or been this close to one who wasn’t dust.

  It wasn’t like there were textbooks on this kind of thing—not that the lower castes of seers were privy to, at least. So she’d found other sources of info, on a rack with a big sign above it that said “Fiction.” They weren’t the most reliable sources, but a lot of the details went along with what she knew. Not the happy endings, of course, but a lot of other things.

  Logan or his roommate probably had more silver and, since both men were about three times her size, theirs would be thicker. She stopped before even looking for her phone. The reason a vamp was lying in her bed right now was to keep her neighbor from getting wiped. That was her call, and so was not re-staking the vamp. Bringing Logan into her dangerous stupidity wasn’t fair.

  Even if Addison just asked him to stop by and shove all his silver under the door, he’d be late for work. And the kind of punishment a box mother gave might actually be worse than death by vampire. Probably not, though.

  While she chewed on her lip, she considered her incredibly small amount of options, and then a good one finally occurred to her. “Mom’s stuff.” Addison had a big storage box filled with things her mom couldn’t use anymore—there might be some jewelry in there, and silver went better with her mom’s coloring than gold did.

  The incredibly heavy box was at the very top of her closet. Most of its contents were souvenirs of times her mom would never remember again and Addison didn’t want to remember again. A scrapbook filled with mementos and pictures of a small but happy family. Newspaper clippings—all good news except for one of them. The kid-sized hospital wristband Addison was wearing when she woke up even had the date on it—as if she’d forget the day she and her dad died. Not many pictures from after the day, though, maybe because he hadn’t been there to take them.

  Underneath all of that was a large wooden box, intricately carved with swirls and suns. She put it on her lap and opened the clasps on all four sides, oddly nervous about what she’d find. Idiot. Her parents were human, so the worst thing she’d find would be dirty pictures and—

  Eww. Maybe she should give up now. She pried the cover off and set it to the side, sighing in relief. Not only were there no naked pictures, there was silver. Necklaces and bracelets made from thick strands, stuff that seemed completely polar from her mom’s minimalist style.

  A few charms jingled as she pulled out a big ball of knotted chain. It would take forever to untangle, but at least there was a lot of it. So much that if Addison didn’t have definitive proof her mom was human, and she hadn’t seen the look of horror on her mom’s face when she caught Addison disposing of the weres, she’d have wondered.

  Three

  Rhyse could ignore the pain in his chest. He could ignore his hunger, for now. But what he couldn’t ignore was the panicked voice he heard—soft, melodic even in its fear, like something out of a dream. His weakness left him unable to make out the words. Until his body had enough time to heal itself, he could do nothing but lay there. Vulnerable. With an enemy nearby.

  It had been centuries since he’d been this weak—not since he’d been human, a time contentedly forgotten. Whatever his captor would do, she would do, so he felt no fear, but he did feel anger. Anger that he’d let himself be brought to this point by an enemy he had not even seen. An enemy who had been fast enough to put a stake through his ribcage at the cusp of his phase.

  But, he still lived. Hell wouldn’t smell like synthetic vanilla and the remnants of an extinguished candle, and the pain would not be concentrated in his chest. If he were in hell, his torture would be encompassing, unbridled, eternal. So this wasn’t hell, nor was the voice that of an angel, though it sounded similar. No angel would come within fifty yards of him outside the Council, and Rhyse would never be welcomed in heaven. Therefore, he was still on Earth—halfway to both heaven and hell.

  This was entirely his fault. Although his position in the Highworld allowed certain privileges, he abided by the law—feeding from the source only once per year, then immediately wiping the human’s mind of the experience. But knowing that his thirst would increase his pleasure and that of the source he chose, he had denied himself for days too long. His thirst distracted him, making him far less observant than usual.

  The hole in his chest proved he’d become too complacent. As soon as he’d phased into the alley, he saw the bodies of a werewolf and a human, both dead. He’d never needed to call in an unsanctioned kill before, and his marshal was nowhere to be seen. All he remembered, seconds before he phased, was pain.

  Now he found himself in none of his homes, the alley, nor any other place he’d ever been. His current predicament would play out in one of two ways. Either he would die or his captor would. His strength was returning even now, though it would be slower without nourishment.

  His marshal should have been there, observing the area, which meant Graham was dead, subdued, or involved. Rhyse had entrusted his life to Graham for more than a century and had never noticed a hint of anything but devotion.

  It could have been anyone, from any race, although none but another vampire would have cause. In the North American zone and almost all others, his kind would always rule above the rest.

  Yet whoever tried to kill him had known where he would be. So, perhaps he was wrong to trust Graham after all. Trust was a flaw—one that Rhyse would never again be burdened by.

  Until he recovered, he had no choice but to find out what the being who’d brought him here wanted. And then, once he’d healed, he would do what he wanted. According to Treaty law, it was illegal for a vampire to drain another being completely.

  Thankfully, the Prime was bound to a different set of laws.

  Four

  ~ ~ ~

  Tempest & Graham, vampires

  “Tempest, wake up.” Graham nudged her, vampire-style, i.e., really fucking hard.

  “I’m up. I’m up. I was just resting my eyes.”

  “Until I met you, I didn’t know our kind could sleep in.”

  “What can I say? I’m young—I need more sleep than you old guys.” She slipped out of bed and into her robe. “I had a long night and no, I wasn’t out drinking. You know how exhausting it is to wipe a human? Try doing a sextet.” Not that she was complaining. Her way-better-than-average talent for wiping minds without being detected had gotten her a spot in the big house, close to the Prime. An impossible feat for any vampire under one hundred, let alone under twenty-five. Graham and the Prime trusted her with almost everything. Probably. They’d kill her if she screwed up, though. That was something about vampires she was still getting used to—they could like you and trust you and still rip your motherfucking throat out.

  “Don’t expect it to get better any time soon.” Something in his tone made her look at him again. His eyes were dark, his face even more pale than normal, his cheeks hollowed as if he hadn’t fed in a while.

  “Oh wow, Graham, I didn’t think you could be unattractive,” she said. “What happened to you?”

  “The Prime chose to take his stipend. I went to assess the area, like always, but something struck me just before he was to arrive. It was seconds, Tempest. Seconds. When I regained myself, I saw the bodies of a werewolf and a human. The Prime wasn’t there. Nor was he in his rooms or office or anywhere else I’ve looked.”

  All the WTFs going through her mind created a long pause. “What?”

  “I f
ailed him.” Graham opened his shirt and showed her a faint line on his chest, above his heart, dried blood covering his shirt and skin. “Perhaps if it had pierced my—”

  “Whoa, settle down, boss.” Tempest held her hands up. “I don’t think you can call it a fail if somebody put a stake in your chest.”

  “He is not here and I am, Tempest. How is that not a fail?”

  “Did anyone know he was going to be there? He doesn't post his feeding schedule on his Facebook page, does he?”

  “I don’t know what that is. But to my knowledge, I was the only one to know where he was to go. I phased back here hoping he hadn’t left yet, but he had. So I returned to the alley to search for signs of a struggle. All I found were the human and the werewolf.”

  She rubbed her lips together. “No…remains at all? Like, did you look for a vampire-shaped pile of dust?”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “How could I have forgotten to look for the only thing a vampire leaves behind?” he asked dryly. “If only you had been there to give that brilliant suggestion.”

  “I’m not quite awake yet,” she mumbled. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Help me find him, Tempest. I can’t do it without you.” Graham was solid and straightforward. The vamp was smart, loyal, and dependable. Back in her human days, she would've been on her back for him in 3.2 seconds flat. Even faster for the Prime. But now, they were both off-limits for a number of reasons, the clearest being that they didn't seem to be interested in her for anything other than her abilities. And they were abilities, even though some would say ‘gifts.’ As if somebody gave them to her for her birthday.

  “I’ll throw some clothes on and we can go.” She went into her closet and put on whatever she grabbed first. The Prime was missing. That was a big problem. Graham looked as if he was an inch away from losing it—also a big problem. “What’s the plan?”

  “You spend the remainder of the night reading as many minds as you can. From all races. The event involved a vampire, a werewolf, and a human.”

  “Sounds like the beginning of a joke.”