Hellforged

IT WAS A COUPLE OF HOURS BEFORE SUNRISE WHEN I CAUGHT a cab outside Logan Airport. The werewolf driver didn’t glance twice at my sticky purple hair. The streets of human-controlled Boston were empty, and we made good time through the tunnel and across the city. As soon as we passed through the first checkpoint, into the New Combat Zone, things got livelier. The bars were closing, and customers spilled onto the sidewalks: humans turning toward their part of the city, PAs heading to Deadtown. The door of Creature Comforts opened, and Axel tossed a vampire junkie onto the pavement. The guy landed on his ass, rubbed his head, and then scrambled to his feet and staggered toward a blonde vampire waiting in line at the checkpoint. Good to see Axel back in business.

Throughout the Zone and Deadtown itself, dozens of posters, plastered over every surface, advertised the free Paranormal Appreciation Day concert by Monster Paul and the Zombie Freak Show. The posters had black text on an orange background, along with a huge picture of Monster Paul’s snarling face. The concert was set for tomorrow night—tonight, now—at seven o’clock on Tremont Street in front of the Granary Burying Ground, one of Boston’s oldest cemeteries.

Zombies would be dancing, no question. And I had no idea how to find Pryce and stop him before they did.

In my building, Clyde was on duty. “Ah. Welcome back, Ms. Vaughn.” He raised both eyebrows as he took in the Glitch spit, assorted bruises, and the condition of my clothes. “Perhaps I won’t inquire whether you had a pleasant trip.”

“Good thought, Clyde, because I don’t want to talk about it.” I crossed the lobby, shuddering as I passed the spot where the cleaning crew had mopped up what was left of Gary. I had to make sure that didn’t happen to another zombie—let alone hundreds.

The other problem nagging at my mind nagged a little louder. I turned around and went to Clyde’s desk. “Is Juliet back?”

“I’m afraid not. I haven’t seen Ms. Capulet for a week. Mr. Kane came by to inquire about her, as well.”

“Yes, he told me. Did anyone else ask about her?”

“Three different pairs of JHP officers.” He looked at me so sourly I felt like I was supposed to apologize for being a bad influence on my roommate.

“Did they go upstairs?”

“Not while I was on duty.”

Good. A homecoming was never all that homey when your place had been torn apart by cops in the interim. “So that was it?”

“As far as I can recall. I didn’t realize anything was amiss until Mr. Kane came by.” He wrinkled his pitted, gray-green brow and tapped a finger against his chin. “There may have been a vampire,” he said, mostly to himself. He shuffled some papers on his desk. “Yes. His name was unusual, so I wrote it down. It’s embarrassing when you call upstairs and can’t recall a visitor’s name after they just gave it to you. If I didn’t discard the paper … Here it is. Piotr.”

He showed me the paper.

“That’s it? No last name?”

“That’s all he gave me. You know how it is with vampires. So many of them use only a single name. It’s an affectation, really.”

I pictured the skeletal, hooded figure who’d stood over Juliet in our living room. “What did this Piotr look like? Was he tall?”

“No, I’d say he was slightly below average in height. Five-eight, perhaps? Dark hair, slicked back. Slavic features—you know, high cheekbones. Quite a handsome man, except he was terribly thin.”

I couldn’t recall meeting anyone who fit that description, but I didn’t know all of Juliet’s friends. She’d had several centuries to make them before I was born.

Clyde continued his chin-tapping, like it could jog his memory. “Yes, quite thin. If he were human, I’d be concerned he was ill. And his manner was odd, as I recall. At first I thought it was because he was foreign. Piotr is a Polish name, I believe. But that wasn’t it. He seemed … vacant. As though he were extremely tired, but it was only an hour or two past dark. Perhaps he hadn’t fed yet; he did look pale.” Tap, tap, tap. “But there was more to it than that. Talking to him was like conversing with a robot. There was interaction, but little meaning was exchanged.”

“The lights were on but no one was home, huh?”

“That’s a way of putting it,” he agreed. “If you specify that the lights were of extremely low wattage.”

This vampire didn’t sound like someone Juliet would hang out with. She preferred life-of-the-party types.

“What day did he come by?”

“I’m not entirely certain. I know it was before Mr. Kane inquired. The day before, I believe.” He shrugged. “So many people come by, it all blurs together.”

For a norm, any one of the visitors to our building would generate nightmares for months. For Clyde, vampires, zombies, werewolves, whatever—it was all in a night’s work.

Upstairs, I paused in front of my apartment door, listening. I half-expected to hear Juliet’s TV blaring. For once, I would’ve welcomed it, knowing she was home and all right. And not involved in an attempt to frame Kane for murder.

I turned the key and went inside. The silent TV greeted me with a blank, sixty-three-inch expanse of gray.

I dropped my duffel bag on the floor and listened. I reached out with all my senses, staying on this side of the demon plane. The apartment was empty. Nothing waited here—living, dead, or demonic.

I went down the hall to Juliet’s bedroom. The door was open, the bedroom still and silent. Juliet’s ebony coffin, lined with red satin and holding two lace-trimmed, heart-shaped pillows, lay open on its trestles. Her closet door was open, too.

Black clothes on hangers were pushed to the left and right, leaving a gap in the middle, like she’d grabbed a handful of clothing without paying attention to what it was. Or like someone had looked in the closet, pushing clothes aside and not caring whether anyone noticed they were out of place.

There was no way to tell what the gap in her closet meant. Probably nothing.

I went back through the living room, picking up my duffel bag on the way. I was worried about Juliet, yes, but I’d have to save that worry for later. She’d taken care of herself for more than six hundred years. Still, I wished I could hear her explanation of why she went to D.C. and what the hell those creatures were that had attacked Kane.

In my bedroom, I hoisted the duffel bag to drop it on the bed, then stopped. A book lay open on the comforter. The book wasn’t mine. I didn’t do much bedtime reading—usually I just collapsed and tried to pull up the comforter as far as my chin before sleep grabbed me. And I didn’t own a book that thick.

I put my bag on the floor and turned the book toward me. Across the top of the left-hand page was the book’s title: The Complete Plays of William Shakespeare. Facing that, across the top of the right-hand page, was Antony and Cleopatra.

My pulse sped up. This was a message from Juliet. She was playing her Shakespeare game, like she always did at Creature Comforts. Somewhere on these two pages was a clue about what was going on.

I’d never read Antony and Cleopatra, not in school and not with Mab. I didn’t much feel like reading it now, but I skimmed the pages that lay open. Nothing made sense; the archaic language and twisted sentences were hard to follow. It was a scene from Act III, well past the middle of the play. Cleopatra was getting some sort of message from Caesar and Marc Antony was having somebody whipped—no clue why. Maybe the guy was just kinky. Even if I could make sense of the language, trying to read the play was like walking into a movie after you’d missed the first hour.

I sighed with frustration. With Pryce on the loose in Boston—and a critical mass of Morfran that might be big enough and strong enough to attack without me—I didn’t have time to play Juliet’s game. I’d have to puzzle it out later. I checked my pockets for a slip of paper, found my boarding pass stub, and lay it on the page to mark the place.

As I was closing the book, a couple of lines jumped out at me:

’Tis better playing with a lion’s whelp