Better Off Undead: The Bloodhound Files Read online

  “Oh, I know. Once I’d adjusted to my rebirth, I looked into it. I had two very powerful mystic items in my possession for a while, and then I went to work for an international arms dealer. Believe me, before Charlie here separated Silver Blue’s head from his shoulders, the man had every criminal organization in the world on speed dial. Using his contacts to find out what the Carcione family was up to these days wasn’t hard.”

  He stops and waits for me to process that.

  I nod. “I’m guessing the Carcione family isn’t around anymore.”

  “I wouldn’t know. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if some of them ran into a little bad luck.” He pauses, then lets the steel show in his voice. “In fact, I’d guess that bad luck affected every—single—one of them.”

  I frown. I thought he was building up to some kind of pitch for revenge—but it sounds like he’s already taken care of that. “Tair, what do you want?”

  “Back in the day—the nonexistent day, you understand—the Carciones’ biggest rivals were the Falzo family. They were the ones I betrayed the Carciones to, the ones who wiped them out. I didn’t do it on a whim; I was very, very careful. Revenge has to be meticulous to be successful—otherwise it’ll blow up in your face. I did a lot of research on the Falzos, studied them, got to know who they were and what they were about. A good assassin has to know his weapon, and the Falzos were going to be mine. I did this at the same time I was trying to convince the Carciones that I was a loyal and faithful employee, turning out illegal lems in an underground factory. It wasn’t enough to just be convincing—I had to be perfect. I immersed myself in their world, became what they wanted me to be. Holding just enough of myself back to remember why I was there in the first place.”

  He falls silent, gathering his thoughts. I have no idea where he’s going with this.

  “It changed me,” he says at last. “Made me who I am today. But it wasn’t all bad.”

  “Yeah,” says Charlie. “Look where you are now.”

  Tair ignores him. “See, it’s never as simple as who’s good and who’s not. People are complex. Some of the people in the Falzo family turned out to be honorable, if not law-abiding. I made more than just alliances, I made friends. After the Carciones were wiped out, the Falzos offered to take me in. I accepted.”

  “No, you didn’t,” I say. “None of that actually happened, remember?”

  “As far as I’m concerned it did. I know them, even if they don’t know me. Which is why I approached them after I’d dealt with my … unfinished business.”

  After you’d executed your pack’s killers, you mean. “And they were receptive?”

  “Considering recent events I’d had a hand in—events that proved quite favorable to them—yes. The Don, in particular, was intrigued to hear about my situation. He was skeptical at first, but I knew things he would only have revealed to a close friend. Examinations by his own shamans verified my condition.”

  “So you and Don Falzo rekindled a relationship he didn’t know existed. So what?”

  “So that’s what I want in return for my cooperation. I want you to do a favor for Don Arturo Falzo.”

  TWO

  I’m pretty quiet on the drive back to Seattle.

  Charlie generally respects my silences, probably because he doesn’t get too many of them—maybe enjoys is a better description than respects.

  This time, though, he just can’t keep quiet. About twenty minutes go by before he says, “Bad idea.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “You being sure has nothing to do with it. Bad idea.”

  “What could it hurt?”

  “You’re a federal agent. He’s the head of one of the largest organized crime families in the state. Yeah, no way that could go wrong.”

  “It’s not much of a favor.”

  “I’ll bet the guy who got those theater tickets for John Wilkes Booth had the same thought.”

  “Booth assassinated Lincoln here, too? With what?”

  “Wooden gavel with the handle sharpened to a point.”

  “Huh. Anyway, I still don’t see the harm.”

  “Look harder.”

  I give him a glare instead. “I’m not big on helping out La Lupo Grigorio either, okay? But it could get Dr. Pete back.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Why?” I demand. “I had Eisfanger check out the whole procedure. He says it could work.”

  “If Tair cooperates.”

  “He’ll have to, or I won’t give him what he wants.”

  “Sure. Let me ask you one question, okay?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “What would you say is the single defining aspect of Tair’s personality?”

  A number of terms scroll through my brain: Cocky. Ambitious. Obnoxious. But there’s only one that really applies to the whole package.

  “Ego,” I say.

  “Yeah. You really think a guy like that would willingly give up his sense of self in order to help anyone?”

  That, of course, is the question that’s been bouncing off the inside of my skull for the last thirty miles; I’ve been trying to find a different answer than the one that keeps popping up.

  “So he’s playing us.”

  “Like a three-card monte dealer. What’s to stop him from pretending the procedure took when it really didn’t?”

  “Eisfanger says there are tests, ways to confirm that.”

  “Tests can be beaten.”

  “So can know-it-all partners. Shut up and drive, okay?”

  Which is exactly what he does. No matter what I may say to his face, as a partner Charlie really can’t be beat.

  It’s the end of my working day, so Charlie drops me off at home. I live in an apartment building in an okay part of town—respectable, not too flashy, a little larger than I could have afforded at my previous job as an FBI profiler. Of course, in a world largely populated by supernatural beings there’s a lot more nocturnal activity, but I’ve adjusted to that pretty well. I was always something of a night owl, and my current work schedule has me starting my shift around 7:00 PM and getting off at 4:00 in the morning. It’s around four thirty when I open my front door.

  And encounter pandemonium.

  A middle-aged, paunchy man with brown-and-white hair, wearing nothing but baggy, bright pink sweatpants, is charging around my living room on all fours. He’s got a toddler riding on his back, holding on to his ears with both hands and screaming with glee, while a teenager with a double row of razor blades embedded in her skull is sitting at the dining room table, tapping away at a laptop with earphones on, managing to look bored and impatient at the same time.

  “Um,” I say. Nobody appears to notice me.

  “Um,” I repeat, then, “HEY!”

  The rodeo comes to a crashing halt against the dining room table. The toddler looks at me and giggles. The teenager—Dr. Pete’s niece, Xandra—looks annoyed and tries to yank the headphones off, but the cord catches on one of the razor blades, which severs it neatly.

  “Jace!” the man says, radiating joy. His name is Galahad, and despite appearances he’s actually a St. Bernard—one with the lycanthropy gene in his DNA, probably introduced when an ancestor survived a thrope bite. He’s a dog were, transforming into a mostly human being every night when the sun sets. He’s also boisterous, good-natured, loyal, and can brew a pot of coffee on command. What more could you ask for in a pet?

  The toddler is my friend Gretchen’s daughter, Anna. Anna’s barely a year old, but she’s amazingly advanced; I guess vampire babies have certain natural advantages.

  “Guh buh bep!” Anna blurts out from her perch on Galahad’s back, and points at me imperiously. She’s as dark as her mother is blond, with beautiful brown eyes, dusky skin, and coal-black hair. From her father’s side of the family, I guess.

  “You said it.” Thank God the full vampire speed and strength don’t kick in until they stop aging—regular babysitting duties are stressful enough without wo
rrying about a toddler who’s faster and stronger than you are. Not to mention more resilient—even at this age, Anna’s more or less invulnerable to everything except sunlight, garlic, anything sharp made of wood or silver, and decapitation. She still cries when she bonks her head, though, and I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the bottles of pink milk.

  “Hey, Jace,” Xandra says. She looks a little like a tropical fish with two stainless-steel fins on her head. “How’d it go?”

  “Complicated. Thanks for covering for me with Anna.”

  “No problem. Gally did most of the work, anyway. Anna thinks he’s a horse.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Yeah, so, I’m gonna take off now.” She gets to her feet, grabs a backpack from the table, and stuffs what’s left of her headphones into it.

  I head for the kitchen, Gally trotting along behind me on his knees. Anna squeals. “Really?” I say over my shoulder. “I was hoping we could hang out for a bit. You could fill me in on the new hairstyle.”

  “It’s called blading,” she says. “Implants, with a charm that lets the skin and muscle grow around it to keep it in place. Otherwise, it would just kind of get pushed out as it healed.” And as a thrope, she doesn’t have to worry about infection. What is it with teenagers and sticking things in their bodies that don’t belong there?

  My brain replays that last comment inside my head, and I’m really glad I didn’t say it out loud. I mean, that’s basically a teenager’s job description, right?

  “It looks very …”

  “Don’t say sharp.”

  “I was going to say dangerous.”

  “Yeah, isn’t it great?”

  I shake my head as I dig out the coffee and the grinder. “Yeah, absolutely. You’re gonna spend a lot of money on headphone cords, though.”

  “S’okay. I was about to go wireless anyway.” She slings the backpack over her shoulder. “Sorry I can’t stick around, but I’d rather not be here when the Gretch arrives.”

  Gretchen and Xandra don’t really see eye-to-eye. Well, Gretch is a 130-year-old vampire and intelligence analyst for the NSA, while Xandra is a teenage werewolf with authority issues. Go figure.

  “Okay, but we’re still on for the actionfest, right?”

  “Hey, would I miss Charlie Chaplin and John Wayne kicking some serious ass?” On the surface, Thropirelem looks a lot like my world—but dig a little deeper and you uncover all sorts of weirdness. Hollywood plus vampires plus werewolves equals some truly bizarre productions. I have a particular fondness for the action-comedy buddy-cop genre—maybe because I live one every day—and you can’t do better than Chaplin and the Duke.

  “The Little Trampire and True Grit Three,” I say. “It’s the best one in the series.”

  “You won’t say that when you see number five. Truest Grit: Down and Gritty.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Later!”

  The door bangs shut and then she’s gone. Too bad—I really could have used someone to talk to about the situation, and I already have Charlie’s point of view. Xandra would have taken the opposite stance, I’m sure—Dr. Pete was her favorite uncle, and she misses him terribly.

  I take off my holster and gun, lock them away where neither Anna nor Galahad can get to them, then pour myself a cup of coffee and get some food ready for the baby and the dog. Anna gets a bottle of pink milk warmed to body temperature, and Galahad gets a plastic baggie filled with kibble, which he promptly sits on the couch to eat, like a kid with a bag of potato chips.

  Anna’s halfway through her bottle when there’s a brisk knock at the door. Gretchen, no doubt. She’s a little early, but that’s hardly a surprise; Gretch’s never late for anything, and when it comes to her child, I’m amazed she lets Anna out of her sight at all.

  I get up, cradling Anna in one arm while she greedily slurps back her dinner, and open the door. “Hey there, Mother—”

  Of the three guys standing in my hallway, none of them is Gretch.

  “—sucker,” I say.

  All three are thropes, and two are in half-were form—hulking, muscular wolf-men with long muzzles full of razor-sharp teeth and hairy, clawed hands. They’re wearing expensive, hand-tailored suits, a lot of gold jewelry, and some god-awful kind of cologne designed for thropes that smells like a wet dog who’s been rolling in week-old liver.

  The third guy stands between the two brutes. He’s wearing much the same thing, but he’s in human form so he’s a lot smaller. His hair is black and oiled, he’s got a greasy little mustache and sideburns, and in general reminds me more of a ferret than a wolf.

  “Good evening,” he says. “Jace, right? We’d like to offer you—”

  “Not interested,” I say, and slam the door in his face. Or I would have, except he puts out his hand and blocks it.

  “—like I said, we’d like to offer you a ride to your meeting.”

  “What meeting?”

  “Your meeting with Don Falzo.”

  “I don’t have one.” I’m painfully aware of the toddler I’m cradling in one arm.

  “No? Your invitation musta got misplaced—I apologize for any inconvenience. Shall we go?”

  “I’m sort of occupied. If you could just wait until her mother shows up—”

  “I’m afraid time is kinda of the essence. The kid can come along, though—we love kids. Don’t we, guys?”

  The two well-dressed thugs growl in response. Right.

  I weigh my options. No weapon, baby in the line of fire, three of them and one of me. Galahad would get his throat ripped out in a second. Goddamn it.

  “Okay,” I say. “But if she needs a diaper change, I’m gonna expect some help.”

  So they hustle me downstairs and into a waiting sedan, a long, black thing that looks like they stole it from a funeral home. The ferrety guy drives, while the two thugs keep me company in the backseat. Anna just keeps working on her bottle, more or less oblivious. A predawn light is creeping up the horizon, but it doesn’t worry me too much; I grabbed a hooded blanket on my way out the door, big enough to protect her from the sun if we’re out that late.

  The car takes us from my modest neighborhood to a much more upscale one known as Queen Anne. Its houses—or should I say, estates—are perched on a hill, with the best views on the west side overlooking Puget Sound. The Falzo grounds are pretty close to the top, surrounded by high, red-brick walls topped with silvery razor wire and security cameras every twenty feet; I doubt if so much as a ninja mosquito could get in without setting off alarms. The Don’s obviously paranoid about security, and probably has extremely good reasons for it.

  There are more thugs at the gate, armed with crossbows, and I see at least another half a dozen once we’re inside the grounds. The house is an appropriately monster-size fortress, more castle than mansion, with the odd turret sprouting here and there from the roof like granite mushrooms. All the windows seem to be barred, and behind its mahogany exterior I think the front door used to seal a bank vault.

  None of this impresses Anna, or me. I’ve been around rich crooks before, and generally they use houses the way a middle-aged man uses a sports car: as compensation for insecurity. The more ostentatious the furnishings, the easier it is to spot the dirt-poor, two-bit criminal yelling at the world: I am too somebody! Yeah, somebody who doesn’t understand he’s living in a cliché. So I’m gonna skip the description of the rugs, paintings, marble statues, wood paneling, and all the other crapola that wise guys seem to think exude class, and just say it was a big house with a bunch of expensive junk in it being guarded by professional killers.

  Plus a vampire baby and an extremely irritated NSA agent.

  I don’t take well to being kidnapped. I take having a child along as an implied hostage even less so, and having it done by guys who smell this bad is just about making my eyes cross.

  They take me to a room. A home theater, it looks like, with five rows of comfy, plush seats, a screen that takes up one wall, and
a quaint little popcorn machine on a cart. There’s a single chair at the head of the room, in front of the screen and facing the rows of seats—maybe they expect me to do some stand-up. I can see the backs of three heads in the front row.

  The goons stay at the door, as does Ferret-face. I walk in, hearing the door click closed behind me. Anna’s fallen asleep in my arms—car rides seem to do that to her.

  I walk to the front of the room, but don’t take the chair. I study the three men in front of me, trying to get a feel for just what I’ve gotten myself into before I open my mouth and probably make things worse. Hey, knowing your weaknesses is a strength.

  Don’t see that many fat thropes, but I guess the guy on the end has been putting away the pasta as well as the veal. He spills out of his seat on either side, dressed in what seems to be a velvet tracksuit of deep purple, with matching leather loafers. He’s got a jowly face, thick lips, and a shiny black pompadour in an oily, frozen tidal wave on top of his head. This is what Elvis would look like if he’d retired and gone into the fried chicken business.

  The second guy is wearing a sharkskin suit in a dark gray, the body inside it lean and muscular. He’s tall, pale as a hemovore, and has only the barest dark fuzz covering his bony scalp. He makes up for that with a pair of bushy black eyebrows, waxed into curving points like devil horns.

  Number three looks like an aging football player—wide shoulders, gut starting to bulge, thick arms ending in big hands. He’s got salt-and-pepper hair, neatly combed back. He’s wearing a suit, a simple black number with a thin tie, like he’s on his way to a funeral. Hope it isn’t mine.

  “Miss Valchek,” number three says. Deep, rumbly voice. “Thank you for joining us on such short notice. My name is Dino. This is Louie”—he indicates Mr. Sharkskin—“and Atticus.”

  “Atticus?”

  The fat guy shrugs. “To Kill a Mockingbird was my mom’s favorite book. Whatta you gonna do?”