Chapter 33

The two bloodsuckers Mikali was holding at gunpoint in a dark cavern looked exactly like what Jo had been imagining when she’d picked out two potential snitches in her mind. Both of them were groveling on the ground, sweat pouring from their undead foreheads as they pleaded with the Guardian to let them go. Mikali was glaring at them, standing at his full height, which had to be at least six three since he towered over Jo, alternating the target at the end of his Beretta from one sniveling bastard to the other.
She left Ping out in the hall to “guard the door” and then went inside. “Nice job, man,” Jo said, coming up behind him but hesitating to actually touch the large man on the back the way she might pat a teammate on the back if they were playing a team sport, rather than hunting monsters. “Have you figured out which one of them gets to live yet?”
“Not yet,” Mikali growled in his Eastern European accent. Jo still didn’t know exactly where he was from, but she also didn’t care. He was scary, and at the moment, that would work to their advantage. “I figured I’d let the boss bitch decide.” Through her IAC, he added, “No disrespect intended. Just trying to frighten them.”
“I understand,” Jo assured him, though her first instinct had been to be instantly offended at the title. “I know an easy way to narrow it down,” she said, standing with her hands on her hips as she looked from one of them to the other. “Does either of you know the code to get into that vault?”
“No, neither of us does!” slimy bastard number one, a balding man who was probably in his mid-to-late forties when he got the kiss of death said, shaking his head desperately. “It won’t do you any good to interrogate us. We’re both lower level scum. We know nothing. Please, just let us go, and we’ll deliver a message to the higher ups in the next clan. Anything you want us to say.”
Jo was slightly impressed that he was attempting to save both of their necks, not just his own. “Somehow… I don’t quite buy that,” she said, folding her arms under her chest. “You look like a man who would have some information,” she said to the other guy.
“No English,” he said. She believed him, too. Short, stocky, with a bushel of brown hair that had to make his comrade jealous, he was shaking enough, she thought he might piss his pants.
Rather than arguing as to whether or not that was true, she looked at Mikali, whom she knew was fluent in Russian. She didn’t even have to say anything. He barked out a question in Russian that had to be similar to what she’d asked a moment ago, even though she was pretty sure Mikali didn’t know anything about the vault since he’d been tied up leading the raid.
As soon as the question was out of Mikali’s mouth, the bastard’s head began to rock back and forth quickly, and he said what Jo thought was the Russian word for “yes” followed by a whole bunch of other things she didn’t know. Whatever it was he was saying, the other asshole didn’t like it. He was shouting at the other Vampire, his voice cracking in desperation, as he attempted to reason with him. If it was true this guy could actually get them into the vault, that made baldy a lot less useful.
“He says he can get us in the room, but there’s nothing in there but papers. Nothing important. Still, he says he’s happy to help,” Mikali translated for her.
“Great. Take him over there. People don’t lock up unimportant things behind bank vault doors. Neither do Vampires.”
Mikali nodded, signaling he already knew that. He grabbed the Vampire by the collar and hauled him to his feet, sparing no show of power, and dragged him out the door, the smaller man doing his best to keep up but failing, his feet tangling as he tripped over himself.
“Keep me informed,” Jo ordered to Mikali via IAC.
“Will do,” he replied, and she returned her attention to the asshole on the floor.
“Guess I don’t need you anymore,” she said, pulling her Glock out of her waistband where she’d tucked it into the back of her pants earlier. She had two perfectly good holsters on her hips, but she found it more intimidating to be the bitch with the bullets at her back.
“No, please!” he shouted, putting his hands up in front of him. “I can be of service. Believe me. Please!”
“Oh yeah?” she asked. “You just lied to me. You said neither one of you knew how to get into the vault.”
“I didn’t know Yosef had that information.” He was pleading, the sweat continuing to pour down his face. “Please, miss. Please.”
“The only way I let you walk out of here is if you can tell me where the red headed woman is,” she said, wishing she had a cigarette to light, not that she smoked, but she was really feeling this badass interrogator bit now, and that would’ve made it even badassier.
The Vampire’s eyes swelled to twice their size. “No, miss. Please--I cannot. I do not know.”
“You can’t--or you won’t? Because those are two different things, comrade.”
“Neither. I mean both.” The sweat continued to pour down his face as he tried to reason with the crazy woman pointing her gun at his face. “I do not know where she is, so I cannot tell you.”
“I think you’re lying,” Jo said, narrowing her eyes at him. “At least, for your sake, I hope you are. Because that’s the only thing I want to know. If you can’t help me, then there’s really no point in keeping you alive.” She uncocked her gun just so she could recock it.
At the familiar noise, he began to wave his hands. “No, please, Ms. Vampire Hunter Lady. I can help you in other ways.”
“Like how?”
“I can deliver a message for you. I can tell the other clans in the area that you are coming for them, make them stop raiding the villages.”
“I don’t give two shits about the villagers,” Jo said. It wasn’t quite true. She didn’t particularly like the idea of Vampires feasting on innocent lives, but it wasn’t number one on her priority list. It wasn’t something she would’ve added to her online dating profile. “I want to know where the red headed woman is.”
“I don’t know where she is. No one knows. It is kept secret.”
“Why is that? Why is she so important?” Mikali let her know that he was in the vault, and Jo thanked him, telling him she’d be there shortly.
“She is… important because of her powers,” he said. “She has immense powers, like none ever seen before, not even from Daunator, the ancient.”
Jo was familiar with Daunator. He was the one who’d exploded and sent her mother over a cliff when Cadence was pregnant with Jo and Cadon. Her mother had died but later came back to life. “Why is she so powerful?”
“I don’t know,” the Russian Vampire said, shrugging in an overly-exaggerated manner.
Once again, Jo made her gun click, wishing she could make that noise without having to uncock it first. “Okay. You go bye bye now.”
“No! I, uh… she has her powers because she has been through many portals. Many, many portals. She has died and come back to life time and again. She knows many secrets.”
Chills went down Jo’s spine as he described what, to her knowledge, could only be Holland. “What is her name?”
He shook his head. “She has no name. We only call her The Queen.”
“What was her name?” Jo pressed the barrel of the gun against his forehead.
He closed his eyes, his mouth moving as whispers of Russian that sounded like a prayer came out. She almost laughed aloud. What god would save a Vampire? Especially an unsouled one. “She has had many names.” His eyes were still closed as he answered.
“Give. Me. One.”
His lips were trembling as he whispered, “Asteria.”
All of the blood in Jo’s body ran cold. “Son of a buttfucking cow,” she muttered. The Vampire opened one eye to look at her nonsensical stream of curses. It was true then. Holland was back. Asteria was what she’d called herself when she’d come back through the Blue Moon Portal, before she’d been sent to the Blood Moon Portal and assumed dead by everyone. Apparently, that wasn’t what had happened. She’d managed to escape.
Jo withdrew her gun and placed it in her holster. She’d gotten what she needed from this bastard. He didn’t know where Holland was, but he did know that she was back. Mila came in the room, and Jo started back pedaling out. Maybe there would be more information in that vault, information that could lead her to the Vampire Queen.
She passed Mila, whose look of confusion barely registered as Jo stared past her blankly. “We done with this one?” Mila called after her.
“Yep,” Jo called over her shoulder, heading back to the vault. The sound of a single bullet dispatching the Vampire to the god he’d been praying to didn’t really register either. Holland was back. Her dad was right. If he was right about that, what else could he be right about? If Holland was here, maybe her mother really was still alive. And if that was the case, wouldn’t Holland be the most likely candidate to reveal where Cadence Findley McReynolds might be?