As far as Sherlock was concerned, he’d never been forced to heave a purse around (or even a man-bag), or he’d have understood that rummaging through a bag in an emergency took time you didn’t have and you almost invariably grabbed the wrong thing anyway. As a woman, I’d already learned that lesson a loooong time ago. So I’d refused to even think about carrying the backpack until he could hoist the damn thing up on his spindly, Ichabod Crane-esque frame and then run a mile. He’d given up after around twenty steps. Maybe twenty-five. A genius Sherlock may have been, but he was no paragon of health.
“That freakin’ backpack will break my back, Lock.”
“Hyperbole,” he grunted. “You can lift a car.”
“Not all the way,” I hedged.
“Miss Westenra…”
“Lucy.”
“Lucy, you can lift a car.”
“Maybe a little bit. Like just enough to change a tire.”
He faux-yawned. Ugh, he was such a wanker. “With one hand, Lucy. Your vampire biology allows for greater feats of strength. You can carry the pack.”
I scanned the alleyway self-consciously, almost as if I expected someone to be eavesdropping. Silly, really. Anyone who could pick up that whisper of staticky sound from my earpiece wouldn’t be human, anyway. Regardless, Lock was right. I was a vampire. Well, sort of.
“The elixir makes me human,” I argued.
“For three days, perhaps. Testing shows your base genetic code is still rife with the vampiric virus. Suppressing it does not mean it is no longer there.”
Like I wasn’t aware of that every damn day. Lock didn’t have to live with the sleeping monster. He didn’t deal with the toothaches, the nausea from the suppressed blood hunger. He didn’t have to deal with that secondary voice in his head—the one that tried to talk him into things he shouldn’t be doing. He didn’t wake up, night after night, aching with need, not just for blood, but for the tangle of sweaty limbs and the release that followed.
“Details, Lock. Now... please.”
I resumed walking, passing the malodorous dumpster as I held my nose. My sense of smell was unusually keen tonight, which meant I’d almost passed the point of no return. If I didn’t take the elixir tonight, it was back to vampire life—for good this time. Lissa Ravenwood’s spells and potions had saved my life after I’d become a vampire, giving Van Helsing and the others an option other than staking me.
Sometimes I wondered if I wouldn’t have been better off dying in the crypt. To forever live with the knowledge of what I’d done? To constantly feel the monster lurking inside me? That was worse than the drip of elixir I was forced to down every third day.
Paper rustling on the other end of the line sounded like white noise in my ears. Soothing like the cool autumn breeze sweeping in from the north. Sacramento was never as wet or as gloomy as England, even when winter rolled in. Maybe that was why I’d stayed in New England so long after arriving in America—homesickness. But when the Americans started migrating west, their monsters migrated along with them. And since I was now carrying that esteemed label, I’d been to most of the coastal states and California was, by far, my favorite.
“Harvey Lawson, aged forty-eight, is a pyromancer and an exotic animal tamer,” Lock said in his monotone that made the teacher from ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ sound high-pitched. Bueller? Bueller? Sherlock?
I chuckled in spite of myself.
“Is something funny, Miss Westenra?” Lock barked. He didn’t like things that were funny.
“Um, no, I just… I got something stuck in my throat.”
“Ahem,” he grumbled. “As I was saying… Lawson specializes in black market phoenix egg trading.”
I took the corner slowly, fighting the urge to sprint. Barreling around corners with pyromancers on the loose was just asking to be turned into a briquette. My vampire sixth sense could feel dawn coming in only a few short hours. No, the early sun wouldn’t kill a vampire (if only life were so kind) but it would make my vampire-half sluggish. The human part of me wanted to hurry too. I had an afternoon class to teach. The longer this stupid mission took, the less time I had to sleep.
“And that’s bad, right?” I asked, even though I wasn’t fully paying attention.
“Is what bad?”
“Whatever you said about black market something-or-other.”
He sighed. Really long and hard this time.
That’s what she said.
I really tried not to laugh. I really did. I even cleared my throat and made a choking sort of sound.
“As far as I can tell, you aren’t within the company of an extremely interesting blank wall, and yet you still aren’t able to pay attention,” he complained.
“Don’t know what to tell you, Lock.”
“Black market phoenix egg trading,” he repeated.
“Right.” I nodded. “Now that I am paying attention, I can answer my own question. Phoenixes equal bad news. California doesn’t need supernaturally induced wildfires on top of the ones we’ve already got.” Hey, might as well throw in a jumbo earthquake and ice that cake!
He made a thoughtful humming sound.
“Indeed. Geothermal readings indicate Lawson is probably hiding in the sewer system three blocks east of your location.”
“The sewer?” I said, turning up my nose. “Bollocks!”
“Pyromancers run hotter than the ground around them.”
I almost responded, but then I remembered the part about Lawson hiding in the sewer and guess who was going to have to go down there, after him? Right—my dumbass. Double bollocks!
But back to straight-faced Sherlock… he had a computer system that would be the envy of any government agency. It was sort of scary just how much he knew… not only about Sacramento, but the rest of the state, as well. Half the reason he’d ever agreed to team up with me in the monster-hunting business was to test his skill and knowledge, using me as a semi-human guinea pig to further his understanding of the things he didn’t already know. And he wasn’t doing it for the money. Sherlock Holmes wasn’t hurting for cash. He didn’t need the five grand this hunt was worth.
I, on the other hand, did.
“Gee, Lock. It’s so sexy when you go all Dark Knight on us.”
“Dark Knight?” Lock asked, clearly missing the comparison. I heard the distinct slurp of tea on the other end of the line. “Find the manhole cover and drop down into the first level. Lawson won’t risk a possible conflagration in the small space. He’d kill himself, as well as you.”
“So I’m risking my own life on the bet that Lawson won’t risk his?”
“Yes.”
“Great. Just checking.”
Just because Sherlock was unswervingly logical, didn’t mean Lawson was. I’d have to make a detour into one of the surrounding buildings, just in case.
“Sherlock?”
“Yes?”
“Was there a fire extinguisher in that pack?”
“Of course.” He seemed offended I’d even asked. I could just see him primly puffing smoke rings into the air that read, “I told you so.”
“Ah crap-and-a-half,” I sighed. “You win. I’ll take the pack next time. But, listen to my words… Essentials only. I want it fifty pounds or less.”