Chapter One
Marcy dropped her duffel onto the cheap, worn
motel duvet covering the queen-sized bed, and tossed the over-large room key
beside it. She glanced around the dingy paneled walls and vintage lamps. It
smelled musty. She pressed her lips together to suppress the coming sigh. Not
the greatest hotel in Shabla, but at least they had a little view of the Black
Sea . . . from the parking lot.
If only vampire hunting paid well.
Behind her, a slim, fair, well-manicured hand
slapped against the open door.
“Hey! This is both heavy and awkward. A little
help would be nice!”
Marcy turned wearily, flipped her braid over her
shoulder, and crossed to the door. Siobhan’s face was blotched and sweaty in
the faint yellow light of the broken sconce outside their room; tendrils of
blonde hair were sticking to her forehead where they had escaped her headband.
Marcy grimaced. Sweating made Siobhan bitchy. Anything requiring physical
effort, other than a work-out, made Siobhan bitchy. Hauling their footlocker of
equipment out of the van and into the motel room was nearly crossing her line
of permissible manual labour.
Wait until she saw the condition of the battered
old TV. Or opened the little bar fridge, which was probably coated in mildew.
Marcy enjoyed an inner shiver of pleasure when she
looked at the bed again, anticipating Siobhan’s perfect body next to hers.
Why this stylish Irish flower had ever decided to
go into the dirty business of finding and destroying the undead was beyond
Marcy, but she had every reason to be glad of her lover’s choice.
“We’re coming up on four years this December, Em,”
Siobhan told her through huffs and puffs. “The least you could do is remember
that I am not the butch in this relationship. You are.”
“So, what you’re saying is, I’m the guy,” Marcy
retorted, the words both stinging a little and bringing heat to her cheeks. It
had to be love, if she could put up with crap like that remark. “Funny, that,
coming from a gargoyle.”
If the reference to her alter ego had come from
anyone else, Siobhan would have bristled immediately at the insult and morphed
into her winged stone shape in order to drive home the significance of
offending a supernatural creature. But because it was Marcy, Siobhan simply batted
it back, sniffing.
“Well, your people are wood nymphs. It makes sense that
you’d be built like a lumberjack.” She wrinkled her nose at the TV, just as
Marcy had known she would, studiously ignoring her shapeshifting lover.
“Remember when you asked me to tell you if you
were being obnoxious?”
“Mmhmm?” Siobhan tilted her head slightly as she
examined a chip in her fingernail.
“You’re doing it. Right now.” Marcy folded her
arms. “We’re both tired and cranky, but there’s no need for name-calling.”
“You started it.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Whatever.” Backing down from the fight as usual,
Siobhan turned her back and started rummaging through the duffel on the bed. “I
need an emery board, help me find one, would you?”
Siobhan took more care with her physical
appearance than Marcy ever had. She carefully styled her sunshine-yellow
tresses each and every morning, even if it was only for a five-minute braided
coil that somehow always looked perfect. She could work miracles with a single
stick of eyeliner. Marcy figured that some women were just plainly gifted with
makeup, and it didn’t hurt that her partner already had so much to work with:
big, blue eyes, lush pink lips, a pert nose, and a scattering of freckles that
Siobhan claimed to despise. Most people described them as cute. And then there was her incredible cleavage.
The Twins had gained the two of them entry to many clubs and offices that would
otherwise have been off-limits...
Not only was Siobhan beautiful and bisexual, she
was also good with money, incredibly intelligent, and had a fantastic
vocabulary.
“We’re not done here.” Marcy fought to keep her
voice low. “You called me ‘butch’. Again. It hurts me when you do that,
Siobhan.”
“Em. Excuse me, Marcy,” the little blonde turned
and threw her arms around Marcy’s tall, willowy frame. “You know I didn’t mean
it. It’s like you said, I’m cranky. I’m sorry, I’ll try not to say it again. I
promise.”
Siobhan was so energetic, so confident in herself,
it was like walking around a permanent sun. Marcy gave in to the heat of her lips,
relaxing into her girlfriend’s soft arms. Siobhan’s mercurial nature was
congruous with her magickal gifts, as a stone-morph; her personality matched
her body, swinging between the extremes of hot to cold, soft to hard, beautiful
and delicate to dangerously cutting. Her doll-like body, barely passing 5’,
looked too vulnerable for the work they did, but Marcy knew from experience
that her abundant bosom and hour-glass figure belied an incredible strength. It
wasn’t just her magickal nature that made her strong -- it was also her
dedication to fitness training.
Marcy had never met another woman like her.
“Go on and take your shower, Rocky,” Marcy
muttered her pet name for her girlfriend, after one more delicious squeeze.
“I’m just the sensitive wood nymph. Bend, don’t break, and all that.”
“I really am sorry, Em.” The blue in Siobhan’s
eyes deepened, reminding Marcy of the sky at sunset. “Forgive me?”
“Yes.” Marcy cupped the blonde’s velvety chin
between her own slender brown hands. “And I love you. Go on, take your shower
first. I need to check in with S.H.I.P. and Dad, anyway.”
The gargoyle’s routine was predictable, which was
really somewhat dangerous in their field, but Marcy knew it helped Siobhan to
cope with the nightmarish memories that came with the job. Five minutes to pick
and complain, then a shower, then lounging pyjamas and an instant cappuccino
while they went over their next move and filed the latest report. She would
then touch up her French manicure, buff her feet, wax wherever a stray hair had
dared to appear, and disappear under the down quilt currently stuffed into a
plastic bag. Unless there was an emergency, she wouldn’t emerge again until it
was time for her workout in the morning.
Whenever it was safe, or time allowed, it was
Marcy’s pleasure to slip into her 300-count cotton nest for a few sessions of
passionate, energetic, and/or tender love-making. Her body warmed at the
thought that tonight, the probability of sex was looking better and better by
the moment. From the look Siobhan gave her as she closed the door, her lover
agreed. But first, she had to take care of their professional obligations.
Marcy was fully aware that there were some
individuals in the Society of Investigators and Hunters of the Paranormal who
were doubtful of the practicality of their partnership. Never before, in the
history of their peoples or in the records of the Society, had wood and stone
formed a working pair like theirs. Hell, it had been decades since others of
their species had even revealed themselves, let alone offered to work alongside
humans. Maybe the prejudice was understandable on that basis, but it still
burned.
If they could only track down and destroy Malcolm
de Sade, the vampire on the top of S.H.I.P.’s most-wanted list, the nay-sayers
would have to eat their words.
Before she and Siobhan had brought their relative
inexperience to the table, the Society’s best hunters had been on the
creature’s trail for two centuries, yet he had always evaded them somehow. He
was smart, quick, ruthless, and a loner. Two years ago, he’d vanished from
Toronto just when two teams had been ready to move. By the reports Marcy had
read, they had delayed by thirty minutes, making sure everything was ready. It
had been thirty minutes too long, at the least.
Tired of being given token assignments and pats on
the head, Marcy and Siobhan had borrowed a copy of the de Sade file and gone
off on their own, following the crumbs that other, more senior Society members
had dismissed as unlikely or unimportant.
“Your people are starting to slack, Bill,” Marcy
murmured, looking at his signature on a report two decades old. “Isn’t that our
motto, not leaving any stone unturned in the search for truth and elimination
of threats?”
It seemed that ever since the Society had acquired
their living vampire specimen a few years earlier, all efforts had turned
inward. Scientists and hunters were burning the candle at both ends, using
their specimen to test new detection technology and micro-biological weapons at
the expense of real hunting. Marcy didn’t understand it. What was the use of
making a new weapon if the enemy was breeding, unchecked?
The response to her query on the organization’s
recent withdrawal from field work had been brusque, to say the least. “If you
think you can do better than those with experience, by all means. But you won’t
find a vampire who’s gone to ground, especially one without a coven like de
Sade.”
Marcy ground her teeth at the memory.
“But waiting for him to surface -- for any of them
-- is like asking innocent people to be bait!” Her temper had risen enough that
she’d given into shouting. “We have to keep looking! It’s not fair --”
“Life isn’t fair.” The squat, overweight
bureaucrat behind his polished oak desk had steepled his fingers, pressed them
to his nose, and looked over them at her as if she were a bug in a petrie dish.
“The board of governors has decided that the best use of our efforts at the
moment is to find a rapid and convenient solution for all vampires. Tracking
and killing one or a few at a time is no longer good enough, not now that we
have a specimen to use for tests. There will be some losses, yes --”
“Collateral damage, you mean,” Marcy spat.
“-- but in the end, it will be worth the
sacrifice.” The fat, balding ass had
leaned forward at that point and flicked the thick de Sade folder in her
direction. “As I said, you’re welcome to go with your gargoyle partner and try.
The trail is cold, and under the current climate, I can’t offer you more than
token support . . .”
Marcy had taken the file and left without
speaking. It had not been worth her job to unleash the torrent of insults
building inside her. At least, not then.
It could wait until she had de Sade’s ashes in a
sample bag.
Shaking the mental cobwebs from her head, Marcy
knelt down before the footlocker and pressed her thumb to the high-tech lock
fastening its lid. The tones it emitted as the computer registered her print
were almost in the same key as Siobhan’s singing voice, as she warbled a
Beyonce tune in the shower. Flipping open the top of the long metal box, Marcy
did a quick inventory of their weaponry and investigatory equipment, as she did
every night. A thumb-sized acorn strung on a simple leather thong around her
neck swung forward as she leaned over. She rubbed it absently between her
fingers before tucking it back inside her shirt.
It always seemed a little superfluous to carry
stakes, considering that Siobhan could morph her arms into stone tough enough
to decapitate. But they did come in handy: since some of their hunts took place
in relatively public areas or confined spaces, the women never tracked a
vampire without them.
In addition to the stakes, they had a supply of
holy water in little vials arranged in rows inside the lid, like oblong glass
bullets. Under the tray of stakes in various lengths and sizes were two
cross-bows and a folding long-bow. Everything in its place. The basics for
battling a scourge that never seemed to end.
Pressing another button caused a drawer in the
bottom of the footlocker to extend itself on invisible tracks. One of the
toughest computers in the world had been built into the box, for security as
much as ease of transportation.
Beside it was an equally tough combination
scanner, fax machine, and printer. All the information they gathered each day
was uploaded to headquarters and their encrypted online cloud, as well as
neatly catalogued and filed in their field notes. More often than not,
combining the resources of all the independent vampire hunting cells led to
successful kills.
Except when it came to de Sade.
Marcy’s lip curled when she thought of him. Keying
in her password, she mentally reviewed, once again, the last two reports the
organization had registered.
Sighting: Summer, downtown Toronto in Canada, two
years prior. A homeless man had reported that a woman had been attacked in an
alley. The subject had appeared to come from nowhere, as though he had been
part of the shadows. The woman had thrown him off in an incredible display of
strength, and then run away.
Her concentration was momentarily swayed by the
sounds of thumping and ecstatic groans issuing from the other side of the wall
behind her. Marcy rolled her eyes. She pivoted on the balls of her feet and
turned on the ancient television behind her to try and cover the sex noises.
The Bulgarian news anchor’s cheerful and unintelligible-to-her reporting barely
drowned out her neighbours; as if in competition, they raised their volume.
“Unbelievable,” Marcy muttered. While the computer
finished booting and buffering, she sat fully on the floor, spreading her notes
around her to look again for a clue to de Sade’s whereabouts.
The woman in the report had had long, dark hair.
Tall. Caucasian.
The attacker had had long, stringy dark hair.
Overly pale skin. Strong features.
Her name was Charlotte Fanning. She had made
reports to the police that someone had been stalking her, but no evidence was
ever filed and her case had been dismissed.
And then she, too, had disappeared, as had Alma,
Fanning’s mother and only surviving relative.
Headquarters had marked Fanning as an unsolved
mystery. Had she been turned? Perhaps. Killed outright? More probable. But what
made Marcy pause was the fact that the woman had survived de Sade’s aggression
for so long. And her ability to fight him off was definitely unusual. Not all
Powers were registered with the Society, like Marcy and Siobhan’s. It made her
a little nervous, considering all the possibilities that an unknown Power
presented, but it also gave her some hope. If they could locate this Fanning,
if she was still alive, her information could help them finally burn the
murdering bastard creep who had eluded vampire hunters for three hundred years.
Without anything solid, Marcy and Siobhan had
continued to follow the rumours and false leads considered insignificant by
their superiors, praying that the next clue would actually turn into something
useful. Somehow, their journey had landed them in the middle of Bulgaria.
Siobhan’s gift for languages was helping, as she was learning new phrases almost
as quickly as she heard them, but the trail had dried up once again.
Marcy paused in the middle of chewing a cuticle on
her thumb to check her email. The name in the subject line was unfamiliar.
“Rayvin Woods. I don’t know you.”
It was a forward from her father, a highly reputed
paranormal investigator and hunter who had retired six months earlier.
Marcy leaned closer to the glowing screen.
---- Excerpt from BLOOD AND FIRE, book two in the Talbot Trilogy by Tori L. Ridgewood.
