“I’d finished a difficult task in Paris,” Chas interrupted flatly, taking over the narrative. “And the way it all worked out was not what I had hoped. The woman I—well, things were rather…unpleasant—”
“Unpleasant? The way Corvindale made it sound, you were even more of a cold bastard than you are now. And coming from him, that’s saying a lot.” Again, Sebastian with the helpful comment, but this time he softened it with a splash of whiskey into all three glasses. “Alas, that’s what a broken heart will do to a man, non?”
“As you well know,” Chas replied evenly.
“I don’t deny it.”
Macey shook her head. It was as if they were speaking in a foreign language, and that, combined with the drink, made it difficult for her to follow their conversation. So she jumped in. “Are you saying…Wayren brought you here? From where?”
“From 1803. London, to be exact. Though I spent quite a lot of time in Paris,” he added, bitterness in his tone. “Beneath the streets, hunting the infamous Cezar Moldavi. And his sister.”
“Are you saying Wayren brought you through time? She can do that?” Maybe it was the drink, but Macey actually found his tale believable. Maybe she’d read too much Jules Verne.
“Apparently so,” Chas said, looking back down at his glass. “I didn’t really care to know the mechanics. I was simply ready to…move on. So, under the tutelage of Max Pesaro—”
“That I would have liked to see,” Sebastian commented slyly. “You and Pesaro in the same room. It would have been quite entertaining to watch the two of you manage your—”
“—and his trainer Kritanu,” Chas continued from between gritted teeth, “I went through the Trial to become a Venator, and I was granted the vis bulla. Then Wayren brought me here. She hasn’t been specific about my purpose, but I think she simply wants me to play nursemaid to Vioget here. To protect his pretty face and form from the ugly undead.” He grinned darkly.
“Nursemaid my arse,” Sebastian growled, the bottle clinking as he refilled everyone’s glasses.
“Why else would she have offered me this?” Chas replied companionably, lifting his glass. When he set it down, it was empty, and he spoke to Macey. “It’s five years I’ve been here in Chicago, watching over the fanged one here. But I’ve traveled more than a hundred-twenty years, if you go by time measured in stars and planets.”
“You were in love with a woman in Paris, and what happened? You were hunting vampires, so, what? She got destroyed by the undead?” Macey couldn’t help but think of her own father’s story—and that of her mother.
That’s what happens when a Venator loves someone. Her stomach churned in an ugly swirl, and suddenly the whiskey didn’t look quite as appetizing.
As if reading her mind, Sebastian clunked a small bowl of peanuts in front of her. “Eat, cherie.”
Chas had given a short, hard laugh. “Oh, no, it wasn’t as simple as all that,” he said, real venom in his voice…but even in her state, Macey could hear the deep, raw pain he tried to hide with the bitterness. “Narcise was a vampire herself. A Dracule. And that, Macey darling, is the irony of the two men upon whom you rely the most—as you put it. The pair of us—we are the epitome of irony: the vampire hunter who becomes a vampire, and the vampire hunter who loves a vampire.” His eyes were bleary as he looked up at her. “Is it any wonder we’re finished with this world?”
Just then, the outside door rattled violently.
“We’re closed,” Sebastian called.
The door rattled even louder, and someone shouted back from beyond.
Sebastian rolled his eyes and slipped from behind the counter. “I know I serve the best, but when I’m closed, I’m closed. Bloody fools.”
Macey looked at Chas. “I’m sorry.”
He smiled tightly and lifted his glass. “It was for the better. I’m here now, and not just as window dressing, as they say at Marshall Field’s. Wayren, sly as she is, hasn’t told me anything other than I’m needed.”
“Will you go back when—well, after you’re done here?”
“I sure as hell hope not.”
“Macey.” Sebastian’s voice was tight and sharp, and she looked over. He’d stepped back to allow a small group of people to enter.
Five men, three women—all seemed raucous and happy…until she recognized two of the men. Capone’s goons.
And then she looked at the women, who were clearly drunk, hanging on their companions as if they were drowning.
The bottom dropped out of her belly, and all the whiskey inside surged and churned alarmingly.
“Dottie,” she whispered, bolting to her feet so quickly the stool crashed to the floor. And the other two women were friends of hers as well—Mandy and Clara.
They all appeared to be having a fun time…except for the thugs, who made a point of revealing the guns they had tucked in their pants.
Capone’s message was abundantly clear: her time was up.
ELEVEN
~ A Revelation Above the Fold ~
“Before I got coshed on the head, I saw their faces,” Grady told a trio of cops, which included Linwood. “I can identify five of the gang members.”
After successfully smothering the fire, Grady had called the fuzz and directed them to the warehouse while he headed into the office to write his story, in hopes of making the early edition…and possibly the front page.
Once a news hawk, always a news hawk.
Now, he and the authorities were standing in the Tribune’s office, shortly after dawn. The towering building, finished only last year, still smelled of fresh paint and new plaster.
“You really do have nine lives,” his uncle said, shaking his head. A smile flickered at the corners of his mouth.
Lieutenant Jameson Linwood was the only family Grady had, and vice versa. Grady hadn’t even known he had an uncle when he left Dublin to make his way to London, just before England got involved in the Great War. For his part, Linwood, who was barely a decade older than Grady, had no idea what misfortune had befallen his much older sister after she ran away from home, for he’d been a mere toddler at the time.
While working for a textile merchant, Linwood met and married an American girl. He moved to her hometown of Chicago, joined the police force, and had been here ever since.
He had pale, gingery hair and a spectacular number of matching freckles, which for the most part were limited to his muscular forearms and shoulders—with only a smattering of them decorating his forehead and hands. Though of average height, Linwood had the broad shoulders and build of a heavyweight boxer. Though uncle and nephew shared a name, the only physical feature they had in common was the color of their eyes—blue, though the elder relative’s irises tended more toward cornflower than his nephew’s.
“Explain to me again how you didn’t get burned alive,” said Officer Trudell, one of the few on the force Linwood and Grady would trust with their lives. “They had you handcuffed to a pipe? Who do you think you are—Houdini?” He laughed, slapping his uniformed leg.
Grady merely smiled and exchanged glances with his uncle. Linwood was one of the few people who knew the brilliant escape artist and magician was his mentor. “It doesn’t matter now. You have evidence, and I can identify them—one of the men has a deformed earlobe, which will make it easy to spread the word on the force.”
“And the misprinted bills—tens being printed on bleached-out singles. What a damned good idea if I do say so—for a counterfeiter.” At the new voice, Grady turned to Robert McCormick, former war hero and owner and managing editor of the Tribune. The newsman, who was taller than even Grady and sported a neat black mustache, was appropriately called the Colonel. With black-tipped fingers, he held a folded paper that smelled of fresh ink. “Glad you were able to save some of them from the fire, ace. The picture of the bills—and your story—made the front page.”
“Above or below the fold?” Grady asked with a grin, taking the hot-off-the-presses early edition. He didn’t mind when the ink transferred liberally to his own fingers—hazard of the trade—and answered his own question. “Hmm. Below it is. Well, maybe someday you’ll be finding my stories a place on the top,” he said with a grin at his boss, flipping the paper so he could see just what had made it above the fold.
“You’ll get the top when there’s an arrest,” replied McCormick.
But Grady wasn’t listening. His surroundings had fallen away somewhere far from him, and the conversation around him became murky as he looked at the front-page article that had not only usurped the position he’d hoped for, but fairly stabbed him in the gut.
There, splashed on the front page in a huge photo, was Al Capone…with a smiling, stylish Macey on his arm. Satchmo Stuns While Big Al Brags: Armstrong returns to Snorky’s Music Castle. Grady read on:
While Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five played to a packed club last night, Big Al squired about a mysterious new dame on his arm. When asked about his lady, Capone merely grinned and said, ‘Don’t tell Mae!’ Later that evening, gunfire broke out in the club, temporarily halting Satchmo’s performance…but the sweet sounds of his coronet were only delayed a short time, for he swung back into the show with gusto after the wounded Danny Fanalucci was removed from the club. When asked about the altercation, Capone said, ‘Someone draws a gun in my place, he’s not gonna be welcomed back.’ The animosity between the two men is well known. The status of Danny Fanalucci’s health is not currently known, but bystanders indicated he was shot in the chest.