Steal the Moon(16)

Declan’s whole face flushed. “You told me he did not fornicate with the vampire.”

“He feeds Daniel on occasion,” I clarified. Despite my best efforts, I hadn’t managed to get them to do more than have Daniel suck on Dev’s neck. I had pointed out that there were other veins he could draw from. “Other than that, they share me. Why would you care even if he did?” I had to ask because the Fae weren’t known for their homophobia.

“If the vampire has forced himself on my brother, then I will be honor bound to kill him.”

I laughed a long time at that one. I was going to have to tell Danny, and he’d have a laugh, too. “Well, let me spare you an ugly death, Declan. I assure you that apart from high-fiving at basketball games, the boys don’t exactly get physical.”

“I can handle one small vampire,” Declan assured me with a snooty arrogance.

Daniel Donovan had once killed twelve vampires in the course of an hour in the arena, and he hadn’t been full of companion blood at the time. He was the first vampire in more than a millennium to earn the title of Death Machine. I once watched him decapitate a vampire with one hand as he flew through the air, and he’d managed to catch the head before it hit the ground. If Declan thought he could take Daniel out with his little bow and arrow, I was willing to buy a ticket to that show.

“I bet you can,” I offered as the cab stopped at our first destination.

I asked the driver to wait as we hustled out of the cab. Declan was back in his Dev glamour as I’d decided that running about town with a character from Lord of the Rings was bound to attract attention.

“I can kill the vampire for you if that is your wish, Zoey,” Declan said confidently as he strode beside me. “If he is cruel, then I will slay him and you, my brother, and I will return to the sithein together.”

I rolled my eyes and kept walking. “He isn’t cruel. I’m not using Dev to try to escape Daniel. I love my husband. I love your brother, too. We’re happy together.”

Well, we had been until I’d shot my bodyguards and defied both their orders.

I opened the door to the small meat market. There were signs in both English and Filipino in the window. The store was neat and clean, but a butchery still smells like meat.

“Ah, it is a ménage?” Declan asked. “I always thought Devinshea would be happy in this sort of arrangement. I rather thought he would be at the center, however.”

I glanced around the shop. There were only three customers, and I disregarded them. I was more interested in the woman behind the counter. She was a small woman with tired eyes. Weariness was stamped on the lines of her face, but if I had to guess her age, I would put her in her early thirties. It was the tired look that made me suspicious. The aswang was always weary during the day from all the prowling it did at night.

This was the part where one of my werewolf bodyguards would have really come in handy. If Lee had just come with me, I wouldn’t have had to look like a complete idiot. He would have been able to smell the decay that hung about the corporeal undead and I wouldn’t have to identify the fucker myself. There are many creatures in the supernatural world that can perfectly mimic the human form. It’s one of those Darwinian traits that makes a species successful. Werewolves are successful because they can pass for human most of the time. Vampires can pass. Dragons got their asses slain because they were scary. They were no longer on this plane because they couldn’t hide what they were. Humans tend to hunt down and kill what frightens them.

My point is, when dealing with supernaturals passing for humans, there are always tricks to identify your prey. Hunters wrote entire books about it, passing these tomes from generation to generation. In the human world, they’re called superstitions, but in my world, it’s called a good defense.

There were a couple of tricks I’d discovered for identifying the aswang. I could find an elder to mix a special concoction of coconut oil and herbs and leave it on the suspect’s porch. When the aswang walked by it, the oil would boil, thereby unmasking the creature. As I didn’t know any Filipino elders who wouldn’t laugh me out of their homes, nor did I have any suspects, I had to go with option two, which I did, much to everyone’s surprise.

Right there in the middle of the butcher’s shop, I turned my back to the suspect, hiked my skirt up as modestly as I could, and bent over to view the possible ghoul through my legs.

Like I said before, I was going to spend the day looking like an idiot.

“We are doing this for what reason?” Declan asked from beside me. He had taken up the same position, and I was glad I wasn’t the only one looking foolish. “Are we trying to anger the creature by…what is the human term…mooning it?”

I sighed because the chick behind the counter was still human. Just to be sure, I checked out the customers because as long as I was down there, I might as well.

“It would only be mooning if our asses were bare,” I corrected Declan as I stood back up and smoothed down my skirt. That had been a waste of time.

Declan gave me a sly smile. “If your ass had been bare, I would not have mimicked you. I would have stood back and enjoyed the sight.”

“The two of you were hell on your mother, weren’t you?” Everyone was staring at us with looks ranging from disbelief to anger at our disrespect. I gave the crowd a little salute. “Thanks for the cooperation, folks. Carry on.”

I walked out, already pulling out the next address. I glanced up and down the street but the cab was gone. I was never going to find another freaking cab in this part of town. The next address was only a block over, but then they started to spread out. Declan was just going to have to suck it up and get on a bus or walk his ass around town.

“Miss,” I heard a soft voice call from behind me.

I turned to see the woman from behind the counter trying to get my attention. She was slightly shorter than me and up close, she seemed extremely fragile. She was thin to the point of worry, and her eyes hadn’t seen sleep for many days. I immediately felt sympathy for her because it was so easy to see she was in pain.

“I apologize for disrupting your business.” It certainly wasn’t her fault something was out to get me. I was just some crazy white chick making an ass of herself. It was rude so I tried to make up for it. “I won’t bother you again. I promise.”

I began to go, but she caught my arm.

“You are looking for her?” There was hopeful expectation in her quiet voice, and I knew I had caught a break.

“I am hunting her,” I corrected.

“She came only weeks ago,” the woman explained in a haunted voice. “She opened a shop, and I went to welcome her. We are a small community here, and I was looking for news from home. I thought perhaps since we did the same work, we could be friends. She told me how beautiful my baby was…”

Her eyes were glassy with tears, and I understood why she had not slept.

“This creature took your infant?” Declan stood tall, his whole body becoming tense as though he’d finally found a reason to be serious. It hit me that he was responsible for his people’s welfare. Dev had been the priest but Declan was the warrior. He would be the king one day. It was a heavy mantle of responsibility to wear.

She looked at Declan and nodded. “The authorities said she died in her sleep, but I know that body I held was not my child. She took my baby and she…I know my child is gone. I know I will not hold her again, and I know beyond a shadow of doubt that she was responsible. There have been two more infants dead, and I know it was the creature. No one will believe me.”

What she had not said, what she could not say, was that her child had been a meal for the creature. It was too horrible to comprehend. “Do you know where she is?”

She didn’t answer, simply pointed. I followed the arm and saw a small, rundown shop with a hand-drawn sign in the window. Grime coated the storefront and the windows were dark. Everything inside me that had hunted or stolen before told me this was the right place. This was the creature’s home.

“Will you kill her?” the woman asked.

I stared down at her and hoped she felt the depth of my vow. This went beyond my own concerns. This was suddenly about more than just finding a creature that had tried to hurt me. This was about protection for people who wouldn’t find it from the police. This was about justice. “I promise you that she will take no more children. She will feed no more after this day.”

She smiled, though it was a sad one. There was a glimmer of tears in her brown eyes. “I thank you.”

I turned back to the small shop as she returned to her customers, steeling myself for the work ahead. I was going to kill her, but not until I had my questions answered. The neighborhood was quiet during the heat of the day, but I noticed even the few people out crossed the street to avoid the shop. Though they might not know what the creature was, these people instinctively knew to avoid her.

“You are a warrior,” Declan said, and I found him staring as though he was reconsidering me.

I started to walk down the street. I had to case the place before I went in. I might have considered a full-out assault if I had Lee with me, but I didn’t know how Declan would handle himself, so I had to be careful.