**NB. This story is as it comes – straight out of my head and may contain typos**
CHAPTER 4 – BLANE
“I promised Jack that I wouldn’t mess around with strangers anymore.”
Ah, a vampire with a conscience. A true novelty. And in all likelihood, Vee was also the only vampire in Plane Five who was dating a cop. Jack Callahan was a detective with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, and he was far better at keeping secrets than I’d ever imagined. When a friend was murdered in my nightclub earlier in the year, he’d headed up the investigation, and the killer wasn’t the only person whose dark side had been revealed. Perhaps it was Callahan’s near-death experience that had made him bite his tongue? Or maybe a touch of fear?
Whatever, Callahan was dating Vee now, and he also provided her with sustenance, a situation that both of them found acceptable. Vee no longer had to suck blood from drunkards and drug addicts, and Callahan didn’t have to investigate any reports of unexplained puncture wounds. Although Vee had always been careful while dining out, I had to concede. Her saliva contained a healing enzyme, and as long as she didn’t drink past the point of death, the holes disappeared fast.
“A little sip won’t hurt.”
The prisoner’s gaze pinged between them. “What you talkin’ about?”
“Your fate,” I told him. “We wouldn’t want to let you go, only for you to spill the beans about our meeting to Zion.”
For the first time, the man seemed to realise he might be in serious trouble.
“Hey, I’m not gonna do that, I swear. You can trust me.”
“Can I? They say there’s no honour among thieves, and I’m sure the same holds true for kidnappers.”
“I wasn’t exactly gonna kidnap the girl. It was more of a relocation.”
“You still planned to take her against her will.”
“How many more young women have you ‘relocated’?” Vee asked.
“She was the first. I’m a good guy, honestly. I just needed to make a few bucks.”
Really? A good guy? Well, we’d see about that. Did you know that you can tell a person’s character by the shade of his soul? In the Planes, we referred to it as karmic tint. The darker the soul, the more negative karma had accumulated over its lifetime. Theoretically, two separate earth-based teams—the Electi and Opus Vi—were meant to weed out those folks and send them to Plane Three so they didn’t find their way back to the mortal world. The Electi had the power to condemn the dark souls right away—do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars—while Opus Vi sent them to face Ad Tabulam, a council that sat in final judgment. Ditto for the light souls, which actually took on the appearance of a rainbow with the accumulation of significant positive karma. Factora Angelus should have been nominating them to spend eternity in Plane Two as reward for their good works. The problem? Both Opus Vi and Factora Angelus had gone AWOL, and the Electi had only recently gotten their act together after several centuries of absence. As a result, Planes Two and Three were under-populated while Plane Five—aka Earth—was full of assholes.
And Ad Tabulam spent much of their time playing poker.
So, was this man a good guy, as he claimed? Was his attempted “relocation” of Wren a one-off? Fortunately, I had a way to tell.
When my siblings and I were created, the Celestial Council had bestowed a gift upon each of us. My ability to move souls around had been useful in the unruly environment of Plane Three, but in Plane Five? Not so much. Tonight might be a rare exception. With a flick of my wrist and a little concentration, I separated Wren’s visitor into his constituent parts—the meat-covered skeleton that was stuck here on Earth, and the soul.
Vee gasped as the body crumpled to the floor.
“What did you do?”
“I’m just checking something.”
Hmm, that soul looked quite dark to me. A little extra focus, and it stretched apart into its two components: the secondary soul that contained a person’s memories, likes and dislikes, that sort of thing, and the primary soul that held the human essence: the subconscious and the conscience. Yes, I’d been right.
“See? He has the midnight of souls. Prussian blue and heading toward indigo.”
The darkest souls were almost black. This man wasn’t quite there yet, but he was well on the way. His essence shimmered under the lights of Wren’s hallway, a malevolent shadow. His secondary soul—the image of him in life—looked on, and it wasn’t happy. More incredulous than angry, but give it time.
“Put that back!” Vee screeched.
“Why? So he can do even more damage here in Plane Five?”
“Because…because you can’t kill a man in Wren’s freaking apartment.”
“It might actually be advantageous. The cops would come, and then they’d search for her.”
“They’d also search for us. The upstairs neighbour saw our faces, remember?”
She did make a good point. I didn’t want to draw any unwanted attention to my presence here. Detective Callahan had been remarkably understanding about the whole situation, but his colleagues might not share the same attitude.
“Okay, then we can take him somewhere else. If we carry him between us, it’ll look as if he’s walking.”
“Forget the location; we shouldn’t kill anyone, period.”
“Then what do you propose we do?” I ticked off the points on my fingers. “This man is a criminal, he’s a liar, and he’s an all-around nasty piece of work. He’s only going to hinder our search for Wren, and I won’t risk him speaking to Zion.”
“I’m dating a freaking cop.”
“Unfortunate, given your purpose.”
Rumour said that vampires had been an early prototype of the Electi, a theory borne out by the fact that for years, the only newcomers to Plane Three had been a trickle of European ingénues, glowing souls with bewildered expressions who reported spending time with a charming Frenchman before they woke up dead. I very much suspected the Frenchman was Vee’s estranged husband, Voltaire. But that was an issue for another day.
“Enough with the ‘killing is your destiny’ crap. I’m an artist, and when I’m not painting, I’m a cocktail waitress.” But Vee took a step closer. “Is that really his soul? Why is it in two parts?”
“Conscious and subconscious. When the soul is assigned a new body, the conscious part gets discarded, and they’re given a fresh one. But the subconscious is the important part. That dictates a person’s nature, and his is disappointing. Definitely a candidate for Plane Three.”
Vee reached toward the pulsating shimmer, then paused, her finger outstretched. “What would happen if I touched it?”
“Nothing. You can’t interact with it outside its host body, and you can only see it because I’m holding it here. There are trapped souls everywhere in Plane Five, so I’ve heard, but only the Electi can see those.”
“Your Uncle Tiberius is an asshole, you know that, don’t you?”
Ah, Uncle Tiberius. The flawed genius who’d dreamed up this convoluted system. Several thousand years ago, he’d decided to decentralise parts of the soul management process, and he’d succeeded to the point where each team had no damn clue what the other teams were doing. Then he’d vanished.
“You’ll hear no arguments from me.”
Vee waved a hand through the man’s soul, curious. “The darkness is bad, isn’t it?”
“Indeed.”
A shudder. “I feel it.”
“Good. You’re supposed to. What’s it to be, Vee? I can’t hold him here forever.”
Ten minutes or so, that was my limit. After that, I either had to put the soul back into a body or let it pass to another plane.
“What if we just gave the information to Callahan? Let him look for Wren?”
“Because Callahan has procedures to follow. All those pesky rules. Firstly, we’d have to submit statements explaining that we’d also broken into Wren’s apartment, and secondly, this fool would be out on bail before you could blink. If he just vanishes quietly, he won’t be able to warn Zion, and we’ll have a better chance of finding Wren.”
“I don’t like this. What if Callahan finds out?”
“I’m not going to tell him. Are you?”
“Killing’s still wrong.”
“I was the Lord of the Underworld, Vee. I checked my morals at the door.”
“Does Plane Three even have a door?”
“Okay, so it’s more of a portal.” A one-way trip for the damned. I was one of the few who could leave at will. “Don’t think of it as death. Think of it as recycling. He’ll get a new body; it’ll just be a smaller one, and he’ll struggle to do so much damage for another decade or two. We’ll be doing him a favour. Aren’t your school years meant to be the best time of your life?”
“I’m not the best person to ask; I went to school two hundred years ago.”
“And I was home-educated.”
“For the record, I hate this idea.”
“Does that mean you’re on board?”
“What if I say no?”
“You’ll probably want to close your eyes for the next part.”
“You’re such an asshole, Blane.”
“Now you sound just like my older sister.”
“How are we going to get him into the car?”
I knew she’d come around. “Relax, I have a plan for that.”
“Do you have a plan for finding Wren? Because I can’t see any clues around here.”
“If she’s on the run, she probably went to stay with her brother. He lives in Mesquite.”
“The sun will rise soon. I don’t have time to go to Mesquite.”
“I can take Joseph.”
He’d love to visit Wren’s brother, but he’d probably insist on swinging by the barber on the way. Another delay. When he stole a lawyer’s body, he’d somehow managed to inherit the man’s vanity as well. Although perhaps we should speak with Zion first? Find out a little more about the man? If Wren was still in danger of being abducted, she wouldn’t want to come back to Vegas.
With a sigh, I pushed the souls back into the man’s flesh and chuckled at his bemused expression when he opened his eyes and found himself on the floor. A few seconds passed before he got his bearings and scrambled to his feet.
“What happened? What did you do to me?”
“Absolutely nothing. I guess you must have been overwhelmed, because you fainted.”
“Fainted? No fucking way.”
“We’re a little concerned you might have a medical issue, and neither of us wants to be blamed for your untimely demise. If you give us your assurance that you’ll play no further part in Wren’s life, we’ll drive you home and forget about the whole thing.”
As I’d hoped, he seized the lifeline I offered. Too bad I’d had an eternity’s practice at lying.
“Yeah, sure, sure, I promise. Like, Wren who?”
Did anabolic steroids rot a man’s brain, or was it the other way around? Did he have to be a fool to take them in the first place? In truth, it didn’t matter either way, and I held Wren’s door open for the man, ready to grab his collar if he tried to run. But good little soldier that he was, he just followed me to the car.
“Nice wheels.”
“You think? I was worried the Bentley might be too flashy.”
“We’re in Vegas, man.”
“An excellent point.” I opened the rear door, pleased that Joseph had shown the foresight to select the tinted rear windows. “You’ll have to give me directions to your place. Don’t forget to wear your seat belt.”
Vee climbed into the front beside me, and as soon as we pulled away, I flicked our passenger’s soul out of his body again. This time, I let it go.
“Enjoy Plane Four, you dumb chump.”
After a quick look behind her, Vee clasped her hands in her lap.
“Which one is Plane Four? I forget.”
“Humans call it Limbo. Do you want a drink? His heart will beat for a few more seconds while it catches up with the program.”
“Nothing tastes as good as Callahan.”
“So you’re not going to indulge?”
Another glance.
“You could give Callahan a night off.”
“I thought we didn’t want him asking questions?”
“True.”
“Maybe I’ll just have a mouthful. I need to give the punctures a moment to heal before he breathes his last.”
A moment later, she scrambled into the back seat, gone in the blink of an eye. I watched in the rear-view mirror as she bit into the man’s carotid artery and drank, making a face when his blood didn’t taste as good as she hoped. Vee wanted to believe that she was still human, that her own karma was firmly positive, but at heart, she was still a vampire. She couldn’t change her raison d’être any more than I could.
“Don’t break the speed limit,” she instructed between mouthfuls.
“Yes, Mom.”
But I lifted off the gas. Neither of us wanted to answer awkward questions about why we had a dead body strapped into the back of the car. I drove to the outskirts of the city, keeping an eye on the horizon. There was a faint glow, but the sun wasn’t ready to make an appearance quite yet.
“Did his wounds heal okay?” I asked Vee.
“I do know what I’m doing, thank you very much.”
When I spotted a tangle of scrubby bushes by the side of the road, I pulled to a stop and tucked the car in alongside. It was still too early for much traffic, and it only took the two of us a few seconds to dump the body into the undergrowth. The wildlife would be feasting before dawn.
And I had a choice to make—where should I go next? Should Joseph and I have a chat with Zion? Or was it better to head directly for Wren’s brother’s place? I knew what Joseph’s answer would be, which was why I didn’t ask him. No, this decision would be all mine.
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Where should Blane go next?
Option 1: Into the lion’s den to see Zion
Option 2: To visit Wren’s brother – she’s the priority
Decision made – Blane's going to visit Wren's brother (who I've managed to give two names so far – names are my nightmare – we're sticking with Kayden, lol)
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Go to Chapter 5
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