Bloodshifted Read online

This was exactly what I’d been afraid of happening this afternoon. How had Natasha done it? How had she managed to shorten the death-to-vampire change by three whole days? Anna could make an infinite number of vampires—but she couldn’t make them change that fast.

  At least I wasn’t the only one in the dark—it’d surprised Wolf and Estrella too, and it would have surprised the fuck out of Rex if he’d been alive to see it. He’d bet on Raven not having enough fresh blood to be powerful, when what’d probably happened was that Raven had drunk all the lovely pre-vampired blood out of successful test subject sixty-three.

  But how? I wasn’t the only person wondering—all of us daytimers were looking at one another now, waiting patiently for the vampire buffet to end.

  Wolf rose up first, but Estrella waited until the woman began to dust. Without clothing, the remaining leads stuck to her skin fell as the flesh that’d been beneath each of them crumbled away.

  If I’d had a lighter now I could have blown them both up. Vampire dust was flammable—I’d found that out a very, very long time ago.

  Wolf looked to Jackson with clots of blood in his beard. “I’ll go open the front door and let the bouncers, bartenders, and DJs in. We’ll tell them what they need to know and open thirty minutes after that. Estrella, you’ll be a fallen angel tonight and monitor Hell, which’ll mean you’ll have to be on your toes alone in Heaven, Celine. Jackson, you’ll run Purgatory, and Edie, you’ll be cleanup on all floors, after you change for it. Jackson will show you what to do. Go.”

  Everyone else exited the room on their assignments, leaving Jackson and me behind with the woman’s remains.

  * * *

  “So what the fuck just happened?” Jackson asked the second we were sure we were alone. “I brought this woman in less than twenty-four hours ago. There is no possible way this should have worked.”

  “But it did,” I said, staring at the table, running through possibilities in my mind. Jackson started pacing in a tight circle. I opened my mouth to tell him not to do that—if he built up a static charge, there was a small chance he could light the very flammable dust. Then I realized I should keep the fact that I knew that to myself.

  “It’s not right. It’s just not right,” he went on without noticing me.

  “You got her two test subjects last night, didn’t you?” I asked, and Jackson nodded. “Where’s the other one?”

  “In the holding chamber. Locked up.”

  “And when’s the last time you disposed of a corpse again?”

  “A month ago. I figured Natasha was doing it on her own.”

  “Or this—whatever this precisely is—started working.” If all the victims turned to dust, that also explained why the prisoner hadn’t been recently fed. “Which was also how Raven was able to heal me and still be strong enough to fight Rex and win—and why he could afford to give the rest of Rex’s blood to Lars. He’s been doing this for a month.”

  Without a mask to protect myself, I cupped my hand over my face and went over to the body, looking for answers.

  “But vampires frown on eating their own kind,” Jackson said, despite what we’d just seen. “It’s usually a losing proposition. You never get out as much blood as you put in to make them.”

  “Maybe he’s not using his own blood.” If Natasha’s father had been searching for human blood substitutes—maybe Natasha had actually found one. Only for vampires.

  “But what about entropy? That’s how the world works. You don’t get to make vampires easy-peasy for free. It costs blood to make blood. That’s why we’re us, and they’re them.”

  He didn’t know what I knew about Natasha’s lineage, and I didn’t want to share that with House Grey just yet. “Let’s skip the how and get to the why. What’s the point of being able to speed the process up?” I thought I knew the answer, but I wanted to hear someone else say it.

  Jackson’s face went dark. “You’d be able to make full vampires who’re beholden to you immediately.”

  I reached in and grabbed a pinch of dust. The test subject had looked like a vampire, felt like a vampire, and died like a vampire. “I don’t think Anna has the vampire army market cornered anymore.”

  “Fuck me,” Jackson said. He exhaled raggedly and hit the counter nearest him with his fist. “We’ll clean this up later. We need to open the club now.”

  * * *

  It felt absurd shifting gears to go to work upstairs after Natasha’s spectacle. I wanted time to think and time to plan. Anna needed to know what had happened here—I was afraid that Natasha’s research had changed the game in ways I couldn’t comprehend.

  But I couldn’t ditch my “job”—Wolf would know, and I didn’t want to make him angry. I hoped watching over the club would keep him busy and that our paths wouldn’t cross.

  Jackson waited outside Celine’s room for me to change. The light was on and my fry bag was where I’d left it, and there wasn’t an ant trail of fries to underneath the bed—I’d figure out what was up with the Shadows later on tonight. I pulled on an all-black outfit: leggings and a dress. The top was low-cut, but I hoped if people were looking at my breasts they wouldn’t be looking at my stomach. I pulled my hair into two quick low ponytails on either side, and pushed my feet into heels. Asher’s necklace at my throat made it look like I’d actually tried.

  “Not bad,” Jackson said when I emerged. “You’ll pass for hired help.”

  My job was going to be to circulate and pick up glasses and bring them back to the bars on all three floors. Each floor had its own style of glasses so that people on higher floors could come down and mingle while still having something on them that showed that they were special—and Jackson warned me that sometimes people snagged empty glasses and tried to go up. He introduced me to the bouncers, so they’d know me, and so I’d know them if I needed to call for help. They were all big guys, and several of them carried barely concealed knives. “Remember how strong you are. If people get fresh, don’t hurt them, just let the bouncers know.”

  I didn’t feel strong in this outfit, but that wasn’t the point—I just needed to not stick out for a few hours. DJs set up their booths, bartenders wiped down their bars, and voilà, the Catacombs were open.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I hung out in the back of Hell feeling like a mime. There was no work for me to do until people started to drink—but the announcement of two-for-one specials on all levels of the club was getting out; I could see people sending texts to tell friends. And music started to pound at the level you could feel in your chest when you walked by the speakers. Hope this isn’t giving you hearing damage, baby. Although it’s never too early to learn to appreciate a good beat.

  I used to frequent clubs, back in the day. I’d met Asher at one, in fact, although I hadn’t known it at the time. It was hard not to think of him when I saw people dancing, remembering how once upon a time he’d watched me.

  Soon the crowds meant I was too busy to reminisce. Girls swirled out first, braver boys followed, and then I was having to press through them to get back and forth with payloads of glassware for the bar. I swept through one level at a time, and then started over again. It wasn’t so bad and people were more interested in themselves—my clothes marked me clearly as unimportant, so I was completely ignored.

  Celine and Estrella kept their eyes on me in their respective habitats, and I made sure to wave to Jackson each time I passed through Purgatory. By my twentieth pass even he began to look slightly more relaxed.

  And I didn’t have time not to work—people were drinking with abandon. On a round through Hell, someone pushed a door open, and a wave of smoky air flew in. I’d found the smokers’ deck. Made sense that it was down in the inferno.

  I glanced over at Estrella—she was dressed far more elegantly than anyone else in Hell, with her otherworldly beauty. Men and women were attracted to her, and she circled the bar like a shark, gracing groups of people with her presence, even dancing hypnotically at the edge of the floor to
pull more people in. For someone who wasn’t technically alive, moving among humans made her seem full of life, as if she were a mirror, reflecting their life back at them.

  I waited three more passes as the crowds grew, until I was sure she couldn’t see me, and then I bolted outside.

  The smoking deck was protected from wind by buildings with brick walls on either side—it had a Garden of Eden theme, metal trellises supporting winter-dry vines, giving me a chance to see the bronze snakes that’d been welded on. Bushes circled the edges of the patio, and in the back were two large topiaries trimmed to look like genitalia, one carefully shaped penis with testicles on each side, the other a vulva with a spotlight pointed at its most sensitive part.

  There were heat lamps at regular intervals, which girls in sleeveless club gear congregated around like moths. Ashtrays overflowed and small tables held an assortment of glasses from each of the floors, giving me a good excuse to be there. I picked up glasses slowly while scanning desperately for forgotten lighters.

  If I did my job right, I’d be out here several times tonight—but Estrella or Jackson could come out at any moment and forbid me from leaving the Catacombs again, assigning a bouncer to the chore. I got an idea, and chose my mark.

  “Trade you a pass up to Heaven for your lighter.” I shook one of the Heaven-themed glasses in front of him. Hell had normal barware, sturdy and strong. Heaven’s was more delicate, appropriately.

  “I already get up there, thanks,” he said, brushing me off. Entirely possible—since this was the only smoking deck, people from all levels were forced to mingle.

  “I don’t suppose I could just have your lighter?” I pressed. I needed it, to see in dark hallways to look for prisoners to help free me, and maybe also to light dusted vampire remains on fire.

  “Nope.”

  My shoulders sagged, and I picked up the glasses I’d collected, looking for another mark, when someone tapped me on the shoulder.

  I jumped, almost dropping the glasses I held as I whirled. I’d been caught, this was it—but no, it was a strange conventionally handsome man standing behind me, not Jackson or, worse yet, Estrella or Wolf.

  “I heard you needed a light,” he said, his voice kind, offering a lit lighter out with an expectant look on his face. I didn’t recognize him, but something about him seemed familiar—oh, God, I wanted so badly to hope.

  “I actually needed a lighter,” I clarified. “For someone else,” I went on to lie badly.

  His face broke into an easy grin. “That’s good, because smoking would be really bad for our baby.”

  My eyes went wide. It was him—Asher—wearing someone else’s form. I didn’t dare say his name, because if I did I would tackle him and cry. He stepped closer to me. “Did you honestly think I got back on some plane?”

  I shook my head. “I hoped you had, though. You don’t know how dangerous it is here—”

  “All the more reason I should stay.”

  “If something happened to you, though—” I cast another nervous look around before turning back to him. “I couldn’t do this without you.” Where this was the next thirty minutes, or thirty years.

  “I’m going to be fine. It’s you that I’m worried about.”

  Says the shapeshifter who came into a vampire enclave, unarmed. After watching Raven dispatch Rex—I shook my head to dispel the thought.

  “What do you need this for?” he asked, handing the lighter over. I took it from him, fingers thrilling at the slight touch.

  “To go places I shouldn’t. And also maybe set things on fire.”

  His lips pursed. “And you’re worried about me?”

  “Asher.” I lowered my voice so that only he could hear. “It’s bad. They’ve come up with some way to speed up the changing process, to turn someone overnight.” I saw the look on his face and went on. “Don’t tell me it’s impossible—I saw it happen with my own two eyes.”

  His face turned grim. “That changes things.”

  “I know.” As desperately as I wanted to be saved by him right now, this very instant, Natasha’s experiment trumped everything else. “I have to get back and figure out how so we can stop it.”

  “Don’t do anything foolish,” he warned, his voice low.

  “I’ll be as careful as I can,” I said, taking a step back, even though I wanted to throw my arms around him and never let him go.

  “You’d better be. We’re coming for you.”

  “I know.” I bit my lips together so I wouldn’t say anything more, and then turned around quickly and counted to ten. When I looked back after that, he was gone. The only thing I had to prove he’d ever been there was the lighter in my hand. I pushed it into the cleavage Estrella’s bra gave me, and scooped the bar glasses back up.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A girl was puking into a bush outside the entrance to Hell and I stopped to help her to the bathroom—it gave me the perfect excuse for why glass retrieval was taking so long.

  By the time I did make it back to Hell’s bar to drop off its corresponding glasses, Estrella had noticed my absence. “Where’ve you been?” she asked, sniffing the air before stepping away.

  “Someone puked. I had to clean it up.” It was hard not to grin at her displeasure. Your dad’s coming for us, baby.

  She was still frowning, but I knew there was no way for her to monitor all three floors, much less their bathrooms. And smelling of puke was better than smelling of lighter fluid.

  The rest of the night it was easy to stay busy. I worked without complaint through closing, and helped check the bathrooms for drunks and herd the last few of them out the door.

  “Good job tonight,” Jackson said after paying the last of the DJs out.

  “Thanks, boss,” I said with more than a little sarcasm.

  He snorted. “Go change, and we’ll get to vacuuming.”

  Nice to see that the industry standard for cleaning up vampire dust hadn’t changed while I’d been trying to have a normal life.

  I’d hardly seen Celine all night, she’d been so busy celebrating her “birthday” upstairs. She’d beaten me back to the room, though, since as soon as the bar closed all of her chores were done.

  She’d showered and changed into something frilly, and was blow-drying her hair in front of her mirror. She hardly noticed me when I came in, and I changed quickly, middle-school-locker-room-style, not showing any skin. I managed to shift the lighter from my cleavage to the pocket of the rompers without her seeing it in her vanity.

  Celine finished with the blow dryer, set it down, and opened up a makeup bag. She touched a roller ball of perfume to the inside of her wrists. It was such a subtle scent that I could hardly smell it.

  “Why’re you doing that?” The club was closed. Who cared anymore?

  Celine looked back in the mirror at me. “So I don’t smell like you.”

  “Sorry. I got puked on. And now I have to go clean up dust.” I could see myself in her mirror now—after a night of hustling in the club I looked bedraggled.

  She set the perfume down and pulled out lipstick instead. “He’s never going to want you, looking like that.” She dabbed a fingertip against the red, and then patted it against her own lips, giving them a calculated natural flush.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re not just interested in blood. They’re interested in life—what goes with the blood when they drink it, the life, the soul, the fragile part of you that wants to stay alive. That’s what they like—and it’s something only humans can give them.” She smeared the same color from her fingers on her cheeks, livening herself up. “It’s easy for us to forget that sometimes. We try to be too much like them, when that’s not really what they want.”

  I bit my lips in thought. “Thanks.” Baby, I’d say we should always try to be uninteresting to vampires, but I’m afraid that it’s too late. “I’ll try to be quiet when I get back.”

  She waved me off, and I headed for the door.

  * *
*

  Jackson was waiting for me in Natasha’s lab, where everything was just as we’d left it. They’d always wanted us to wear masks on Y4 when we were dealing with ash, but I hadn’t seen any when I’d scouted the drawers earlier, which pissed me off. I was a daytimer now, true, but I didn’t want particulate vampire crap in my lungs. I’d be really sad if I came down with mesothelioma later, and I didn’t want to think about what it could do to my child.

  Jackson had brought a vacuum cleaner with a long attachment, and I used paper towels and cleaning solution to start cleaning off the loose wire leads for the EEG and the ECG. Because each of the pad’s sticky surfaces were completely bonded to vampire dust, there was none of that tape-sticking-to-fingertips-or-gloves action you got at the hospital. I put as many as I thought I could get away with in my pocket. Between them and the lighter, I could make a rudimentary bomb. If the Shadows could find the prisoner and his silver grate, I might actually be able to set him free.

  “Jackson,” I began when he’d turned the vacuum cleaner off, hoping talking would distract him from my last palmed handful of stickers. “Celine told me something just now.”

  “I’m sure it was profound.” He was scrubbing at the tabletop angrily.

  It sort of had been. “About vampires being more interested in life than blood.”

  He paused, mid-arc. “I suppose that’s true.”

  “Is life blood? Is blood life? Where’s the line?” Dren had once wanted to murder me for my soul. Was that the same sort of thing?

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Do vampires have souls? Or lives, really? As daytimers, do we?” I didn’t ask what I really wanted to know—if I was losing my soul because of vampire blood, what did it mean for my baby? I wouldn’t have ever believed in a soul if vampires hadn’t once threatened to take it from me.

  “I don’t know, Edie.” Jackson sounded exasperated, and started scrubbing again. “I feel alive. Do you?”

  “So far.” Alive, but not the same as I had been before I’d gotten Raven’s blood. I’d never been violent before—or been in helpless thrall.