Power Game Page 8

  And then everything fell dark.

  11

  “You said Wall Street and Broad, right?” the cabbie asked, glancing at the rearview mirror.

  Though Arnaud’s eyes were already hidden in the shadow of the fedora’s brim, he lowered them to conceal the glints of yellow in his irises. It had only taken a short walk into Midtown to notice the way people reacted to them. Women paled; men lurched from his path. Unconscious reactions, certainly, their souls correctly perceiving in those sulfurous yellow slivers the infernal depths from which he had risen.

  In time, he would display that feature openly, proudly, but for now the word was discretion.

  “That’s correct, young man,” Arnaud said, pushing a little vampiric charm into the raspy words.

  The cabbie smiled and gazed out his window.

  “Is something amusing?” Arnaud asked.

  “Today’s gonna be a great day. I’ve just got a feeling about it.” The sun cresting the buildings over Brooklyn bathed his face in salmon pink. “That ever happen to you? This sorta gut certainty about how a day’s gonna go?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Arnaud replied.

  “Hey, nice suit,” the driver said. “You heading to an interview or something? They say the downtown firms are hiring again.”

  Arnaud steeled himself at mention of his former dominion before reminding himself he had loftier ambitions than the city’s purse strings. “More like an opportunity,” he replied with an easy smile.

  “You sound confident.”

  “Do I?”

  He had been anything but confident last night.

  Even after Malphas had restored his leg and infused him with power, even with the promise of a pact-breaking scepter, Arnaud feared his return to the city. It had been more than a year, after all. He had only recently taken form. He was no longer the vampire who had ruled lower Manhattan, inspiring veneration and fear. Now he was the fearful one. A human soul would salve that, he’d decided. With morning nearing, he left his lair for the final time. An urge came over him to collapse the opening to ensure he couldn’t come back, but Arnaud was not foolish. He was a survivor.

  At his island’s edge, he scanned the distant shorelines in his sharpening vision.

  In the gray dawn, a lone figure walked the park at the southern tip of Roosevelt Island. Alone. Plunging into the cold water, Arnaud raced toward him like a predatory fish.

  The short man in a business suit and fedora, cigarette pinched between finger and thumb, never saw the naked, gray creature coming for him. Nor did he hear him leave the water and creep low around the giant slabs of granite that hid the man—and soon Arnaud—from the rest of the still-awakening city.

  It wasn’t until Arnaud was almost on him that the man seemed to sense danger. He dropped his cigarette and turned, but Arnaud was already around him like a giant spider. The man jerked once as Arnaud’s teeth punched into his jugular, the hot release of blood flooding Arnaud’s senses. He pulled the sagging body into the deep shadows of a slab and fed quickly, as he had with the woman the night before.

  When the blood was exhausted, he went deeper—coaxing, then seizing the man’s soul and drawing it into him. As a vampire, he had believed he could consume souls, but he’d been doing little more than scraping off the emotional outer layers. As a demon, he had license to the entire mystical entity, which he could turn into raw power and infernal spells or simply place in bondage. Higher demons, such as Malphas, built armies.

  As Arnaud fed, he bristled at the notion of sharing his stake on this man. But curse it all, he needed to remain on good terms with his master until he could kill that connection—perhaps one day kill him.

  With a scowl, Arnaud released the soul and funneled it through the umbilicus that connected him to Malphas. There, he thought bitterly, you have the fool for your army, where he’ll last a minute, if he’s lucky.

  Whether or not it was Arnaud’s imagination, the hooks that tethered him seemed to relax slightly. That was something. The meal of blood had strengthened him too. And he had appropriate attire now to wear into the city.

  Arnaud peeled off the man’s clothes and dressed in the shadows of the granite slab. To his right stood a monument with a former president’s quote on the four human freedoms for which this particular park had been named.

  “‘The fourth is freedom from fear,’” Arnaud read aloud and snorted.

  He dragged the man’s drained body to the park’s edge and dumped it into the river.

  The cabbie released a hearty sigh, returning Arnaud to his present surroundings. “Yeah, gonna be a great day.”

  A slow smile crept over the vampire-demon’s face.

  “I’m beginning to agree,” he said.

  Arnaud paid the driver from the dead man’s wallet and then stood on Wall Street for a moment to get his bearings.

  In the year he had been away, the place had changed. The wall on Liberty Street that had protected him and his fellow vampires from the mortal rabble was now gone, removed. For a dizzying moment, Arnaud felt vulnerable, especially on street level. He’d become accustomed to viewing his domain from ninety stories up, controlling the movement in and out.

  Now, everything seemed chaos: the rattle of jackhammers where pockets of reconstruction remained; the constant revving of engines and the racket of car horns; humans bustling around him with their stupid, bovine faces. Assailed by the confusion, Arnaud was tempted to pull his hat off and put the fear of God into them!

  “In time, Zarko,” he whispered, the promise calming him.

  Luther Underhill’s former building was a half block away, and he walked there quickly, head down. He moved with a wide-legged gait, his form not developed to the point that he could remain comfortably upright. But while crawling on all fours was fine for the island, he was in the world of humans now.

  Inside the building, he made a line for the reception desk.

  A young man seated behind a computer raised his head. “Can I help you?”

  “Yes, kind sir.” He had to strain to be congenial. “I require an elevator card to access the L2 level.”

  “Your name?” the receptionist asked, his fingers poised over his keyboard.

  Arnaud took a moment to size the man up. He was slim, his chestnut hair gelled in a tousle. Not a look Arnaud cared for, but there was something in the young man’s eyes—just enough turquoise to set him apart. Yes, in the old days Arnaud might have expended energy to seduce the young man and add him to his collection of blood slaves. Now, he was just someone to manipulate.

  “You won’t find me in your system … Ronald,” Arnaud said, reading the man’s name tag. “Or do you prefer Ronnie?”

  “Well, the L2 level is a restricted area, and all permissions are stored—”

  “I’m afraid we’re not hearing one another,” Arnaud interrupted, tapping the counter with a wrinkled gray finger. He pushed a little more suggestion into his voice, reaching deeper into the young man’s mind. “You won’t find me in your system because I am the system, young Ronnie. I am all systems. Do you follow me?”

  “I’m … Well, I’m not sure I do…”

  When Ronald lifted his gaze, Arnaud traced out a series of designs on the counter to distract from his yellow eyes.

  “Yes,” Arnaud whispered. “Everything flows from me.”

  “So…” Ronald said, watching his finger. “You give the permissions?”

  “That is precisely so, Ronnie.”

  A change came over the receptionist’s eyes as if it all made sense now.

  “The access card?” Arnaud prompted.

  The young man nodded and unlocked a drawer beside his left knee. A moment later, he held out a white card with a metallic strip on the back. As Arnaud accepted the card, he caressed the back of Ronald’s hand—a gesture he couldn’t resist—and smiled as a small shudder passed through the young man.

  “Good day, Ronnie,” he said. “Perhaps I’ll see you again.”

  “I—I’d lik
e that,” the young man replied, though Arnaud could see he had no idea why.

  As Arnaud walked toward the elevator, he reflected on how the power to seduce remained seductive to him. It had fallen in the hierarchy of importance, yes, but that it was still there filled him with a pleasant nostalgia. Vestiges of his old self remained in his new form, demonic or not, alchemized or not. And the one vestige that presently encumbered him—his connection to the Brasov Pact—was about to be negated once and for all.

  At the elevators, he remained back from the people until he could be assured a car to himself. Inside, he held the card to a metallic pad, waited for an indicator light above it to turn from red to green, and then pressed the button for the bottommost floor. When he arrived, he navigated the corridors from memory. The closed rooms he passed were mostly storage spaces for the building’s various tenants.

  At the end of a corridor, he listened before pulling open a locked door with such force that the bolt fell to pieces at his feet. His eagerness had overcome him. The room, another storage space, was empty by all appearances.

  “But we know better, Zarko.”

  At the rear wall, he depressed a power outlet, worked his fingers into the slot, and pulled. The wall slid to one side on hidden tracks, revealing a vault door. Clever, but Luther had been a fool to share the location with his blood slaves. Now, infernal magic seeped from Arnaud’s fingers and slipped into the vault’s dial. Clicks sounded as it began to turn, one way and then the other. The sound of the lock’s release was sudden and satisfying.

  Stale, cool air wafted past Arnaud as he opened the heavy vault door, his confidence surging now. He could already picture the look on Croft’s face when that whelp of a wizard tried to cast through his grandfather’s ring and nothing happened. His lady friend, the detective, would lose her protection too. Oh yes, he’d felt the bite of the pact coming off her last night, preventing him from going near her.

  Now it would be no deterrence at—

  His smile fractured as he peered into the darkness. Something was wrong. Containers lay open, their contents either missing or scattered. The damned vault had already been looted!

  But how, Zarko? By whom?

  He wondered whether Luther had come here prior to the war for downtown Manhattan. Like most elder vampires, he had amassed a collection of valuable artifacts over the millennia. Perhaps he’d come in search of a weapon. But Arnaud remembered that day. Luther had gone into battle with an enchanted broadsword and a ring of protection, items he’d kept in his armory. Little in here would have been practical for battle.

  Arnaud searched through what remained. When he found no scepter among the rubbish, demonic anger flashed hot inside him. He thrust a hand forward, releasing a wave of infernal energy that sent the containers and spent items crashing into the back of the vault. The noise rang around him, but he was too furious to care.

  Damn this world! Damn it all!

  From the moment he had returned, forces had conspired against him. Now he was weak, dependent on Malphas, and vulnerable to Everson Croft. Without the scepter, it was only a matter of time before he was cast back to the Below. Once there, Malphas would have him brutalized and ground to dust for his failure.

  “Which is why you must recover the scepter,” a voice whispered.

  Arnaud whipped his head around, his anger suspended. “Zarko, is that you?”

  “Find the one who has taken the scepter, and you will find the scepter.”

  He was hearing the words as if his faithful servant were standing beside him, breathing them into his ear. It didn’t matter to Arnaud that he was alone or that the words were likely drifting from his own mind. They infused him with a wild joy. He had spoken to Zarko often since returning to the world, but this was the first time his servant had answered.

  “‘Find the one who has taken the scepter,’” Arnaud repeated slowly, “‘and you will find the scepter.’”

  He paced the vault deliberately now, nostrils drawing in the air. The scent was old, but unmistakable. Humans had been inside. More than one. Could the order of magic-users have found the vault and cleaned it out?

  Perhaps, but Arnaud sensed no magic save remnants from some enchanted items.

  “What say you, Zarko?” he asked. But his former blood slave fell silent now.

  It suddenly occurred to Arnaud that Luther’s restored blood slaves, the ones young enough to have survived the transformation back to human, might have informed the authorities about the vault. Then why hadn’t everything been collected and catalogued? Why had he found it closed and locked?

  At that moment, something on the floor caught his eye. Arnaud knelt and peered over a scatter of dull granules. When he touched it, the infernal magic running through his finger guttered for a moment.

  Gray salt, he realized, cleaning his fingers on a pant leg.

  It was of a kind used to store magical items for transport in the Middle Ages.

  “Looters,” he hissed.

  He was considering the implications when two pairs of approaching footsteps sounded in the corridor. By their crisp cadence he guessed security, no doubt coming to investigate the racket he had made earlier. Lights turned on. The footsteps slowed as they neared the door to the room—the door whose bolt lay in pieces on the floor.

  He picked up the whisper of a woman’s voice.

  “Hello?” a man called a moment later. “Is someone in there?”

  “Why, yes, just me,” Arnaud replied. “Please, do come in.”

  The man peeked around the corner. Arnaud had moved to the front of the vault where he stood now, his hands out to the sides to show they were empty.

  The man entered, his service pistol drawn. The woman came in beside him. Their uniforms of black pants and white shirts looked cheap, and the man’s collar was starting to yellow. Distasteful, Arnaud thought. Not nearly as dignified as the tailored suits he’d dressed his blood slaves in.

  “Do you have a reason to be down here?” the man asked.

  “I’m searching for something,” Arnaud answered as pleasantly as his raspy voice would allow. “Something very important.”

  “And what’s that?” the woman demanded.

  “Well, since you ask, perhaps you can assist in my search.”

  The security guards glanced at one another. When the man reached for his walkie-talkie, Arnaud raised a hand. Why he had toyed with them, he didn’t know. But he’d enjoyed it. Only now did he slip power into his voice.

  “Oh, there’s no reason to involve anyone else,” he said.

  The man’s hand hovered uncertainly over his walkie-talkie before relaxing. His stupid face softened.

  “Why, you’re all the help I require,” Arnaud said.

  “What can we do?” the woman asked, but without the prior note of challenge.

  “You, sweetheart, can wait for us there while your partner joins me in the vault.”

  “Me?” the man asked. His eyes were working hard now to focus.

  Arnaud grinned, already retreating. “That is correct, big boy.”

  He stepped backwards until he was in full darkness, still grinning as the security guard holstered his sidearm and lumbered after him. He would not share this soul with Malphas. It would belong to him.

  From the back of the vault, Arnaud released his mental hold over the man just long enough to savor the inrush of confusion and fear: Why am I following this strange man into the dark where I can’t see him? Why is my weapon no longer drawn?

  And then Arnaud was sinking his teeth into the man’s throat. The victim’s pulsating lifeforce rushed inside him. Arnaud stroked the back of the man’s head as he fed on blood and soul. Minutes later, he released his throat with a wet gasp. The nearly-drained man moaned weakly. Arnaud hadn’t killed him. That hadn’t been the plan.

  “Now,” he whispered into the man’s ear, “I would like to bring you into my service. Ah, but with your consent, of course.”

  The man moaned again.

  �
�Was that a yes?” Arnaud asked in a taunting voice. “I believe it was.”

  The city was too large to track down the looter’s scent himself, he thought as he sliced his wrist with a talon, sending up a crude oil of demon essence. His new blood slaves would perform that duty for him.

  “Everything all right in there?” the other security guard called.

  “Right as rain,” Arnaud replied, dribbling the dark fluid over the man’s neck. The demon essence gathered and then slipped, worm-like, into the deep puncture wounds left by Arnaud’s canines. The transformation wouldn’t take long.

  In the meantime…

  “Say, sweetheart?” Arnaud called toward the opening. “A little help in here?”

  12

  The brassy ring of the telephone shattered my deep sleep. I opened my eyes to a bedroom just beginning to glow with sunlight. The hands of my bedside clock pointed to 7:50. When the phone rang a second time, Arianna’s words returned to me in a rush. This was the call that was supposed to direct my next move.

  I jumped out of bed and rushed toward the kitchen, cycling through all the people it could be. Vega? Gretchen? Budge?

  “Hello?” I answered.

  But I didn’t recognize the woman’s voice. “Is this Everson Croft?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “You’re needed at the Centre Hotel. Do you know the location?”

  “Yeah, but can I ask what this is about?”

  “Room B-6, basement level.”

  “What’s this about?” I repeated more firmly.

  “A conjuring.”

  A second voice entered in the background, this one distinctly male.

  The woman lowered her voice to a whisper. “Only you can stop it.”

  “Who is this?”

  But the caller had disconnected. I made sure she was really gone before returning the phone to the cradle, my mind tense with suspicion. Arianna’s words had been clear: do what the person asked, and I would find Sefu. But was I supposed to run blindly to a hotel basement on an anonymous caller’s say-so? This could be Arnaud, or any number of the recently arrived demons, laying a trap.