One (Rules Undying Book 6) Read online

  “I’m not the sheriff,” Gail blurted out as she stomped her way past the dumpsters. “Can I just go to work?”

  “Gail?” asked a far more timid voice than one would expect from such a large frame. Gail’s face softened slightly.

  “Williams?”

  The big guy stepped into the radiance of a street lamp. Gail did a double take at her former coworker from Austin. While still enormous, Tom Williams now sported the body of a bouncer or even a pro wrestler. His dark hair had turned into an Undertaker-worthy mane, and he sported quite the stylish goatee and sideburns. “Why is it that the werewolves automatically get hotter, but the vamps stay the same?” Gail whispered under her breath.

  “Oh hey, I was hoping I’d get to see you. I, um, got assigned to patrolling the lab tonight. Sam thinks it will help me work on the stealth, and the sniffing, and stuff. Plus, I met the human guard in front. That Bill guy is a riot, you know.”

  “He’s a riot that doesn’t know what we are though, remember that,” Gail warned him. “I don’t think that Steve is in much of a mood to clean up tonight.”

  “Oh, he’s already been by. He and the supermodel were talking a while ago.”

  “Which one is the supermodel? Most of the pack—”

  “Look like they were ripped off the pages of some fitness magazine?” Williams offered. “But come on, that Dean guy sort of puts them all to shame. He even manages to make a tail look hot.” Williams waved his hands and turned a bit pink. “Not that I like guys or anything, but I see the looks, you know, from you ladies.”

  “I’m not getting between him and the pint-sized Punisher, thank you very much.”

  “Oh yeah, you went out with the janitor vampire—”

  “Broke up,” Gail said quickly as she tried to slip around the big guy. Williams turned even brighter pink.

  “Oh, oh yeah, I didn’t see him around anymore, right . . .”

  “Right,” Gail said flatly as she finally got to the door. She quietly grumbled a, “thank you,” as she rolled her eyes, but there was no reflection in the door to tip off her aggravation to her companion.

  “You know, there is a movie theater a few blocks away,” Williams said. Gail could see his awkward smile clearly in the glass. “Do you like superhero movies? Maybe a comedy? I know we can’t really share popcorn, but what about gummi bears?”

  “Yeah, maybe. I just need a little time,” Gail said, turning back to face him. “Vampire breakups take a little, um, a little bit of time to get over.”

  “Oh yeah, of course, of course! Still, a group of us might go. I know Bernard and Jonathan like them . . . Sammy and Riku might too.”

  Gail forced her smile further. “How nice.” This time she slapped her keycard and whipped opened the door before Williams could dig the hole further. Mercifully, no more guards seemed to be waiting in the hall. She darted into the bathroom, changed quickly into scrubs, and sniffed. Despite her workout, her pits smelled more like almonds than funk. She looked over at the mirror and groaned at the nothingness staring back at her, then did her best to put her hair into a bun and center it via feel.

  “Come on Gail, you were never athletic. Stop comparing yourself to the super squad. You’re gonna march right into that lab and be useful.”

  A minute later, she found herself staring at a room that held more PhDs than fingers and toes. Kyle debated organic chemistry furiously with Dr. Reiko Nakano, while her son Rikuto went all A Beautiful Mind and scribbled long strings of equations on a whiteboard. “Nope,” Gail muttered, before slipping out the door like a ninja.

  She walked around to the actual working lab full of mundane samples to be tagged and processed and devoted much of the next hour to labelling urine in a Zen-like trance. Just as she was finally in the flow, she heard a bitter, “What a pissy job,” from the doorway.

  “Oh boy,” she muttered as the aroma of alcohol drifted by. “What are you doing here, Steve?”

  “I said I’d give the nerds some blood and tissue samples, and all things considered, I didn’t have anything better to do. I had vicious grief sex with Pearl while I was at it.”

  Gail gagged. She whirled around to see a lame smirk on Steve’s pallid face. She eyed his half-unbuttoned shirt and the same pants he had worn to the funeral earlier. A rogue curl flopped in his eyes.

  “I hope you were on top,” Gail said as she spied makeup on his collar.

  Steve bared his fangs, now tinged with pink. “Dr. Nakano ordered me to eat,” he said with an eye roll. “Apparently, I had more whiskey in my blood than actual blood. What? Were you jealous?”

  “Not the first adjective I’d use.” Gail displayed a look of disgust as she asked, “How is she?”

  “Surprisingly full-bodied and mellow in flavor. She’s definitely quit smoking recently, but she is a rather spicy A-positive—”

  “I meant, how is she doing after being fed upon? Do I have to check on her?”

  “I’m an expert at biting under the influence. Don’t you worry about me, mon capitan!” He tried to salute but missed his forehead. Gail now rolled her eyes and shoved past him to check on the human overseer of the Nashville branch of Biogenesys Labs.

  Gail peeked into the tiny office adjacent to the breakroom. Loud snoring echoed from the face planted firmly on the keyboard. She slipped around and moved her boss’s head onto a softer pile of papers, took her pulse, and then deftly discarded the email full of random letters that her faceplant had somehow created. Gail even took a tissue and fixed the most egregious stripe of lipstick off a pudgy cheek.

  “Spicy, huh?” Gail sniffed the tiny pinpricks on Pearl’s elbow. A faint, sweet scent came from the wound as well, telling Gail that the right venom had indeed been injected, and the poor human would neither bleed to death nor feel any real pain. Gail took her pulse one last time. Once satisfied, she slipped back into the hall. A flicker of lights made her insides churn a bit.

  She peered into the breakroom. The fluorescents flickered once more. “Javier?” she whispered into the shadows. One of the plastic chairs wobbled slightly against the vinyl flooring. Gail glanced over her shoulder as the door began to shake. “If this is your idea of sneaking back into my life—”

  A chill ran up her spine, followed by a vibration from her purse. She raised a brow at the 313-area code and the unknown caller tag. She let it go to voice mail, but the phone immediately rang again. This time Gail hit accept.

  “You don’t ever screen calls from this number, Gail,” a flat, Canadian-accented voice said the moment the phone was pressed to her ear. “Mother gets terribly miffed if her calls are missed.”

  “Is this Edwin?” Gail asked.

  “Gail, I’m afraid I am calling with terrible news . . .”

  “Javier,” Gail blurted out.

  “How did you know? His body was only found this morning—” Gail tuned out as Edwin described the chilling details of the vampire’s murder. She slumped into the rickety seat, dumbstruck as the words echoed in her ear. She muttered all the appropriate responses—“Oh god,” “that’s terrible”, and “whatever should we do?”—but the words were hollow and emotionless.

  “Mother wants you to return to Detroit considering everything that has happened. We can only assume that it is not safe for anyone that opposes Arthur—”

  “Arthur … did this . . .?” Gail choked on her words. “Why would he . . . why would he break the first law?”

  “Javier died with a secret. He came looking for my mother, but never got to deliver his message. We have no proof, of course, but he could have commanded anyone—”

  “I need to go now,” Gail whispered. She didn’t wait for a response before hanging up. Instead she focused on the little drawers full of instant coffee packets—the same packets that graced every breakroom at every Biogenesys Lab. Her gaze drilled into the packet of Donut Shop Blend with an askew label. Before she could walk over to it, a shadow crossed the table. A trembling hand plopped a bottle of bourbon on the Formica.
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  “Did you get a call?” the hoarse voice of Steve asked. “I don’t know how the brat found me but . . . yeah. Damn it, it’s not important right now, is it?”

  Gail blinked a few times. She listened to the shallow whoosh in her chest that echoed behind her as Steve hovered over her sagging shoulders. The amber liquid sloshed enticingly in the bottle. The light over the sink flickered again, drawing her attention once more to the coffee station.

  “Do you believe in ghosts, Steve?” Gail asked, her voice still barely above a whisper.

  The other vampire slipped around the table, snatching the bottle back for a swig before he stumbled into the chair opposite her. He stared at the flickering light, surprisingly pensive, before taking a deep breath. “No . . . no, I don’t, but right now, I want to so badly that it hurts.”

  “This has to be a trick, doesn’t it? Javier is the kind of asshole that would fake his own death, isn’t he? He’ll wait until I’ve had a good long cry over him, and then he will pop out of the shadows and say ‘surprise, mi amor!’ or some nonsense like that. He’s a scrappy survivor, not the jerk who runs off to get killed. Right? Right?”

  Steve slid the bottle towards her again. This time she unscrewed the cap and took a long drink. She shook her head and let out a long, low, “woof,” before slamming the bottle down. The liquor burned her throat, making Gail shudder as she slouched in her seat. She finally met Steve’s bloodshot gaze.

  “Vampires are assholes,” she muttered. “He’s playing dead to spy on Arthur or some nonsense like that . . . he has to be.”

  “Gail, why would a vampire who can turn invisible fake his own death? Why would he upset Mina, his only ally?”

  “He could be working with Mina . . . conspiring . . . um, against . . .” she trailed off as Steve raised a brow.

  “Mina, the pacifist vampire who tries to create harmony with everyone? The same Mina who has served as peacekeeper for generations? I mean, she can be capricious and jealous at times, but she is probably the only gentle soul our kind has. She’s neutral in all this madness, so why kill someone on her turf?” Steve asked. “Nothing makes sense anymore. Vampires have always fought, but there have been more killings now than I saw even when I was turned, and hell, that was in WWII.”

  “He can’t be dead,” Gail said, now shaking her head. “And Georgia—”

  “Don’t—”

  “Georgia can’t be—”

  “Don’t say it!” Steve said, slamming his fist down on the table with enough force to crack the surface.

  “But—”

  Steve’s eyes turned from brown to blood red. Gail shoved away from the table. Her companion snarled, bearing fangs that seemed longer and sharper than ever. Gail hissed reflexively. Steve shook his head a few times, and his eyes returned to their less-sinister tone. He buried his face in his hands.

  “I can’t hope, Gail. If I hope and I’m wrong, it’s gonna crush me. Don’t you see that?” he asked softly.

  “Well, I’m not believing anything until I see a body,” Gail snapped.

  “Good luck with that. Didn’t anyone ever tell you what happens when vampires die, kid?”

  Gail gulped a little and shook her head. Steve gave her a bitter smile. “Our goopy insides pretty much melt within hours. Oh, and the older you are, the more bacteria have built up in your guts. As soon as you are dead, it’s full-bore flesh-eating feast from your belly out. Some really, really old ones explode. I got to see that one while cleaning up for dear old mom.”

  “But I saw pictures of mummies . . . I did!”

  “Yeah, you saw mummies of people who had their vampire bits ripped out. Javier hasn’t been dissected as far as I know—”

  “No, there has to be something. I just need proof. It’s the first rule of any great story—if there’s no body, they aren’t really dead,” Gail said, picking up speed in her voice. “It’s simple really, Javier had to disappear, so he’s totally faking. I just have to figure out why, so that . . . so that . . .”

  “This isn’t a story, Gail!” Steve barked. “Bad things happen to good people, and worse things happen to bloodsuckers like us. Stop kidding yourself—”

  The lights flickered again. Gail shoved away from the table and darted over to the coffee display. Her hands shook so badly that the Donut Shop drawer rattled rather than opened. Finally, she gave it a good yank, sending packets of coffee flying across the floor. A neatly folded slip of paper landed between little pictures of donuts. Gail held her breath as she picked it up. It simply read, “Gail Harker.”

  “Javier,” she whispered as she looked around the flickering room. Even Steve paused to take in the light. The magic subsided a little as Steve drained the bottle, then used the empty to tap the light fixture over the sink so that it shone solidly again.

  “He was here,” Gail gasped as she opened the note. Her eyes darted over the painfully neat script. “‘My dearest Gail, I can only hope that the more you change, the more stays constant within you, and that you find this letter before it is too late.’”

  “What is that?” Steve asked as he turned back to face Gail.

  “‘If only I had learned the truth sooner, I never would have given myself to you, but know in my heart that I did what I did out of the tragedy of ignorance, not out of perversion. Gail, the sheriff has spies everywhere, but none of them are a match for me. Her physician spy in Tokyo discovered that an Azarola walked hidden among the Pendragons. My own son was hidden from me for centuries. Mina Harker lied to me, and I must face her at last.’”

  “Gail?” Steve reached a tentative hand towards her. She shoved past him and gagged over the sink. “Gail, what is it?”

  Gail scanned over the rest of the letter another few times, and then practically ripped the faucet off as she fought to get cold water to splash on her face. Once drenched, she turned to Steve and blurted out, “I fucked my own grandfather.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Gail shoved the now damp letter into Steve’s hand, then grabbed the empty bottle and hurled it against the wall. As it smashed against the painted cinderblocks, she let out a feral growl. Steve blinked a few times as he read Javier’s note.

  “Holy Hannah!” he gasped, rather Georgia-like in his expression. “My best friend . . . and my sister, ugh! Is that why things got so awkward between them?”

  “Minerva and Mr. Lambley,” Gail said. “And Mina and Javier . . . they did sleep together, and . . . oh . . . oh god, just the thought of it. He went to confront Mina, but . . . but . . . But why did this happen? Why does he say I’m in danger, Steve? Why does this whole note make it sound like he’s terrified at the end, Steve? God, Steve, are you even listening to me?”

  Steve braced himself against the kitchen sink. “Geoffrey doesn’t know,” he said softly. “He thinks he’s the bloody grandson of Arthur, and he’s running around him like a puppy. If it were to get out that Mina lied and was an adulterer . . .” Steve shook his head. “I’m pretty sure King Arthur still holds a big old grudge against that after everything that happened before. You might say it’s a pet peeve of his.”

  “But Mina always . . . come on . . .”

  “There’s a big difference between gossiping about something and having irrefutable evidence. Vampires are sticklers for the letter of the law. At the very least, Mina would be stripped of her title and her house. She’d be ruined and forced to kowtow to Arthur for the rest of her life. And if she loses her house, then her illegitimate children would lose status too. That would leave my friend helpless in the lion’s den, with monsters like my mo— like Claudia free to do whatever they want with him.”

  “And what about me?” Gail dared to ask.

  “Oh, you mean the potentially embarrassing-to-the-Jaeger-family bastard child of another bastard? Yeah, I’m sure you’ll last,” Steve said bitterly. “And before you call out the first law, let me tell you, honey, Arthur doesn’t seem to hold it in high regard. As for Claudia, she’ll enjoy torturing you, then killing you.
You have to get out of the way, or her daughter is damaged goods.”

  Gail stared at the shattered glass on the floor. Her hands balled into fists. Steve pulled a flask out of the pocket of his sweatpants, prompting Gail to snatch it and shove him against the cabinets. The force of her push sent him flying off his feet.

  “Would Mina kill him to keep her secret?” Gail asked, before tossing the flask into the sink. “Would she fucking murder him to shut him up?”

  Steve scrambled along the floor. Sparks showered around Gail as a row of fluorescents burst overhead. Steve began to shake his head ferociously. “Mina would never kill anyone. I have to believe that. She’s like my father. She’s one of the good guys. I have to believe . . .” Steve’s eyes widened in shock as Gail stomped her way towards him.

  Gail lifted Steve back to his feet using only one hand. Even she had to stop for a moment to appreciate the surprising strength found within her spaghetti arms. She cocked her head and stared at his terrified face. He shuddered as electricity coursed from her hand into his chest. Gail pushed him away, careful this time not to send him flying.

  She picked up Javier’s letter and folded it up neatly again. Steve clutched his chest and stared at her, awestruck. “Now why can’t I do that?” he wondered as he surveyed the burns.

  “Well, if Mina wouldn’t kill Javier, then we have two options—either someone else killed him, or he’s not dead,” Gail said coldly. “I’m choosing to believe the latter. You can go wallow somewhere else, Steve.”

  “Gail—”

  The lights flickered one more time. A tiny smile creeped across Gail’s lips as she brushed past the shaken Mr. DeMarco. She gave one last glance to the flickering mess in the room. “If he is really dead . . . then I think I believe in ghosts.”

  3

  “They say when a human dies, their life flashes before their eyes. Tell me, is that true, Georgia?”