Roaring Dawn: Macey Book 3 (The Gardella Vampire Hunters 10)(6)

“Remember to time me,” came the muffled voice from inside, followed by a thump. “Use the stopwatch.”

“Right.” Linwood looked down at his handiwork—at the padlock hanging near the edge of the coffin, of the chains wrapping it like a Christmas present. (That thought brought back to mind the memory of his wife, Camilla, and the way she’d make him use his finger to hold the ribbon in place as she tied them in this very room. Ah, Lord, he missed her.)

“Did you start the timer?”

“Yes, yes, I did,” Linwood said. That was a little white lie, for he’d glanced at the clock on the fireplace mantel after he set the coffin lid in place. He didn’t see any need to start the stopwatch. Even if Grady did manage the impossible, who cared whether it took twenty minutes and five seconds or twenty minutes and fifteen seconds?

He turned and wandered into the kitchen where he knew his nephew, like the good Irish Catholic boy he was, kept a fine bottle of whiskey beneath a loose floorboard.

Linwood poured two fingers of the liquid amber, then splashed in a third one to help wash away the memory of Camilla, and looked out the window.

The house—the one he’d lived in with his wife until she was gunned down in the crossfire of two feuding gangsters and he realized he needed a change of scenery—overlooked a small park. As it was May, even though it was nearly eight o’clock, the sun still cast a welcome light over the swings and climbing bars below. All were in use, and he felt a twinge of sorrow that he and Camilla had never had children. Grady was as close as they’d come, and they hadn’t even met him until he came to Chicago after the war.

That in itself had been Divine Providence if it ever was, and Linwood gave thanks every day for bringing the boy—who had never even been a boy as long as he’d known him—into his life. It was miraculous, truly, for, thanks to his mad, deeply disturbed sister’s elopement and disappearance, Linwood hadn’t even realized Grady existed until the boy looked him up in Chicago.

He didn’t know what he’d do without him.

He rested his glass on the windowsill so he could take out his handkerchief and blow his nose. Boy needed to dust his damned house once in a while.

When he looked down to pick up his drink again, he noticed something most curious. Crosses, carved into the wood, there on the sill. Three of them. They were filled with something metallic, something shiny. Like silver?

Linwood frowned. They certainly hadn’t been there when he’d lived here. What a strange thing to do.

His attention strayed to the kitchen counter, where Grady had set his pocket watch along with the signet ring he’d been wearing. The ring was silver. And come to think of it, it was a relatively recent addition to his nephew’s wardrobe. A silver ring. And silver crosses set in the windowsill.

What was the boy up to?

He heard a rattle and a thump from the other room and grinned to himself, picturing the blarney-brain kicking ineffectively at the coffin from inside. A glance at the kitchen clock told him Grady’d been messing around in there for less than four minutes. I’ll give him another five or so before I check on him.

“Got some of that for me?”

Linwood nearly dropped his glass—which would have been a waste—and whirled. He couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw his nephew standing there, rubbing his wrists, wearing a very smug expression.

“Holy Mother of God,” was all he could say.

By now, Grady’s smugness had exploded into a delighted grin as he held out a tangle of ropes.

To be honest, Linwood was happy to see such a carefree expression on the man’s face, for the last few weeks had been dark ones. It was as if something had happened to change the easygoing yet determined Grady into someone withdrawn, irritable, and frustrated. He’d been the kind of man who could charm the knickers off a nun and have her apologize for taking so long to pull ’em down, but lately, things had been different.

Ever since Linwood had come home from the hospital, in fact.

Part of Grady’s change was due to his uncle’s near-fatal injuries, he knew, as well as the shocking death of Harry Houdini. But Linwood sensed something else was wrong with his nephew.

He’d tried to ask about it, even probed a little about the sweet little colleen he’d been seeing—Macey was her name, he thought, and she had beautiful, dark eyes—but Grady had simply acted as if he didn’t know what Linwood was talking about. He looked at his uncle as if he’d lost a few marbles, to be honest.

Maybe he had been confused himself.

After all, that attack—some of the details of which were still murky in his mind—had really set him back. They’d given him a lot of medication in the hospital, and everything before and during his recovery was fuzzy.

Linwood still wasn’t completely back to normal—though he’d gone back on the beat—and his scars had been slow to heal. Grady wouldn’t talk much about what happened either, even when Linwood tried to resurrect their theory that vampires had been involved.

Both he and his nephew had long shared a belief in the existence of vampires, for they’d seen evidence in attacks occurring in Chicago for years. And even if they hadn’t, after Linwood’s near-death at the hands of red-eyed men with fangs, he, at least, had no choice but to believe in the undead.

But Grady had become reticent about it. He didn’t actually deny their discussions, but he didn’t engage in them as he had done in the past.

Still. There were the silver crosses embedded in the windowsill. And Linwood sure as hell hadn’t put them there.

“How long did I take?” Grady demanded, dragging Linwood’s attention back to him. He picked up the ring on the counter and replaced it on his finger.

“Uh…” Linwood scrambled around in his brain, looking at the clock and calculating.

“You didn’t use the stopwatch,” his nephew accused, picking it up. “Why not?”

Linwood shrugged. “I figured I’d be unlocking the bleeding thing and it wouldn’t matter.”

Grady shook his head. “Oh ye of little faith. Now how am I going to know if I’m faster next time?”

“You’re going to do it again?” Linwood asked.

Someone knocked on the door, and they both turned. It was eight at night, and Grady—being a top investigative reporter—had a telephone installed so he could be called for any urgent stories instead of wasting time for a courier to arrive. So the visitor probably wasn’t from the Trib.

“Expecting anyone?” Linwood asked as his nephew went to answer it.

“No.”

Moments later, Grady was back in the kitchen, looking at a piece of paper that had been folded. His eyes were filled with surprise and wariness—and enthusiasm.

“Well, this is quite unexpected. Linwood, I’m going out.”

He handed the message to his uncle.

Meet me at Clancy’s Gold Coast at nine o’clock. Come alone.

“What the hell is this? One of your sources? And what’s that little squiggle on the bottom there? Is that supposed to be a signature?”

“In fact, it is. As Conan Doyle wrote: ‘The game is afoot.’” He already had his hat in hand. “Don’t wait up, uncle.”





FOUR

~ Of Cobras and their Comparison to Dangerous Men ~





“A photography exhibit?” Macey repeated as she dropped her stake onto the counter of The Silver Chalice. As it was approaching dawn, the place was silent and empty. “You want to go to a photography exhibit?”

There were undead to hunt, an immortal lord to track down and assassinate, plus a city to keep safe…and Temple wanted to go to a picture display.

The woman in question was replacing clean glasses neatly on their shelves, and she gave the stake on her counter a dark look. The pub had just closed, and Macey had wandered in from a night of searching out vampires.

“Look out, I just cleaned the counter,” Temple said, giving the stake a little shove to send it rolling onto the floor. She snatched up a rag to wipe off the bar again, putting as much elbow grease into that task as she did taking Macey through her paces practicing in the kalari. The shellacked bar shone like a mirror, and Macey was often bruised and sore when she was finished with her work. Temple was very good at what she did. Whatever she did, and that included getting her way.

“Don’t knock it, sister. The exhibit looks interesting.”

Temple was tall and lithe, with long, sleek muscles. Her age was near thirty, and she resembled the singer Josephine Baker, with her smooth, coffee-with-cream skin and shiny blue-black hair crimped into waves that just covered her ears. In fact, the first time Macey had seen her, she’d been singing in a cabaret called The Gyro.

Temple had come from New Orleans more than a year ago—not long before Macey learned about her calling as a vampire hunter—ostensibly to assist her Aunt Cookie in the hat shop she owned. But in reality, Temple had been assigned to Macey as her hand-to-hand combat trainer, or comitator. She was also well versed in the history of the Venators, as well as the prophecies of the Venator Lady Rosamunde Gardella, which had been written in the twelfth century. Additionally, Temple had recently taken over the ownership of Sebastian Vioget’s pub.

She was not, however, a Venator like Macey, Chas, and Sebastian.