Karhi Emelyn

Mira and Annie arrived ten minutes later with a spinal board in the back of her car. Karhi didn’t ask why they had one of those. He was learning that Sloane’s family had more tricks up their sleeves than he would have expected.

Annie and Bell worked together to get Sloane on the board and Mira strapped her up. Bell was still limping from when Lunette had shot him. The bullet had gone through and through, but moon silver wounds took several times as long to heal for shifters

When Sloane was secure, they hauled her into the back of the truck. Mira had put the back row of seats down.

Mira handed Bell and Mickey towels that she had in her car to cover themselves up. Bell had to help Mickey put his on. He was still confused.

Lunette had already left to go pick up blood for Sloane for when she woke up.

“Do you have a cup or something?” Karhi asked Mira when she shut the back on Bell and Sloane. Bell was going to make sure that Sloane didn’t get jostled.

Mira tilted her head in confusion, but she went to the front of the truck. She opened the door and pulled out a convenience store soda. It was empty.

He took it, opening the top and dumping what he held into it.

“What was that?” Mira asked, taking the cup back gingerly when he handed it to her.

“I think it was Sloane’s uterus.”

Mira stared at him, looking down at the closed cup. “What?” she whispered.

Karhi shook his head. “I don’t know. I found it by where she was attacked. We can’t put it back in; she’s already healed a lot, and it’s been outside of her body for too long. But I figure it shoulder be up to her what to do with it.”

She stared at the cup for a moment before nodding. “Okay.” The cup went back in the truck, and Mira went to where Annie was coaxing a baffled Mickey into a seat. She told Annie what Karhi had just told her.

Karhi’s eardrums almost burst when Annie screeched. “What?”

Mira shoved her out of the way and helped a freaked-out Mickey into the back seat.

Annie stalked to the driver’s side door, glaring at Karhi as she did. She pulled away when Mickey was in.

It left Mira and Karhi alone next to the mostly decomposed mass of blood flakes.

“Who are we here to see?” Mira asked.

“Zero and Theron.”

She paused. “Isn’t Theron almost as old as you?” she asked. “I can do mindreading and telepathy no problem. Anything else is dicier with older magics.”

“You’ll find him unusually susceptible to your abilities.”

She eyed him but chose not to ask him to elaborate. He didn’t think that she looked in his head, either.

“Did they do this?” Mira asked, glancing in to where Sloane had been attacked.

“I don’t think so,” he said as he set off towards the entrance to Lazarus with Mira in tow. “But the particular cocktail of dead man’s blood and hemlock that I tasted in Sloane’s blood—and have been encountering in general within the past few days—is a sign that they’re somehow involved. Zero’s family is the one who bottles and sell dead man’s blood for a profit. Any vampire hunter worth their salt buys it from them.”

“You were upset when I called,” he said as they strode to the front. It was too early for a line. They got through without any trouble from the bouncer.

“I felt her attack. But it’s been so long since we’ve had that sort of psychic link, where she was in trouble—I couldn’t figure out who it was at first. I had to track down the kids and Annie and Mikko before it even occurred to me that it was her.” She clenched her fists. “If I hadn’t fucked around for so long, I would have figured it out. Maybe I could have—”

“No,” he said as they entered the club. “It was over and done so fast. You couldn’t have stopped anything.”

She didn’t answer.

Sid greeted Karhi as they moved, but Karhi hardly registered him. He went up the stairs to the room where he had seen Theron. Mira kept close to him.

Karhi reached the room and knocked on the door.

He heard movement and then quiet footsteps to the door. Karhi stepped out of sight of the peephole. Mira stayed in sight.

There was a pause and then the door opened.

The vampire who opened the door was roughly the same height as Karhi, just as broad shouldered, but more slender than Karhi. His jaw was sharp enough to cut glass. Around his neck was a thick black line encircling it, a tattoo. Karhi knew there were more on his ankles and wrists that were hidden.

Theron Kaiho.

Karhi heard faint whispers, unintelligible. He knew from years of experience that they weren’t real.

At first, Theron looked confused. But as the whispers started, he saw Karhi, and his eyes widened. The whispers disappeared, and he tried to close the door. Karhi blocked the door from closing.

“Back off, Karhi,” he growled.

“No, I have some questions.”

“I don’t owe you anything.”

“Debatable, but—”

Theron shoved him but Karhi grabbed his arm and as Theron pulled back, he pulled Karhi forward into the room.

Theron snarled, sweeping Karhi’s leg out from beneath him. Karhi took Theron down with him and they rolled to the floor together, claws tearing and shredding.

The sharp report of a handgun close to them deafened Karhi, a high-pitched ringing piercing his ears.

They froze, looking up to see a woman standing at the door with Mira in hand. She had a gun to Mira’s temple.

Karhi couldn’t hear well, but he could see Zero’s mouth moving and got the gist of what she said. “Keep it up, Emelyn. I dare you,” she snarled. “She’ll die.”

Zero looked to be in her late twenties. Faint spots tracked from her rust-coloured eyes, barely visible against her rich sepia skin. Her black hair was in twists that fell to her shoulders. She, Karhi knew, had a tattooed pentagram on the inside of her left wrist made of the same warded and spelled ink as Theron’s.

The thing with Zero was, there was a ninety percent chance her threat was real and a ten percent chance it was a bluff. She didn’t like killing humans.

But he was more inclined to think it was a real threat. When Zero got angry, her Trini accent came out, and it was in full force. Her Ps and Rs were clipped in her speech.

The point quickly became moot. Zero brought her arms down and stepped away. Mira had her hand on Zero’s arm as she moved.

Zero’s movements were stiff, and her eyes were wide with confusion and fear as she moved. None of her movements were her own.

“Zero?” Theron had frozen against Karhi, the will to fight temporarily suspended.

“What . . . what is she doing?” Zero demanded, wide eyes on Mira. She had the ability to move her head, and that seemed to be it.

“Zero,” Karhi said. “Theron. Meet the White Psychic.”

Theron bridged up against his back, but Karhi had been expecting it. Karhi rolled with the movement and kicked, his leg connecting with Theron’s thigh, sending one of Theron’s knees to the ground. Karhi knocked him facedown, pinning an arm behind his back in a position to dislocate Theron’s shoulder if necessary.

“Get out of my head,” Zero growled, glaring at Mira. “I can feel you—”

“Did you try to kill my friend tonight?” Mira asked.

Zero’s growl turned to confusion. “What?”

“What about kidnapping my other friend and torturing him?”

Zero stared at her. “What the fuck? What—”

Mira looked up at Karhi. “She doesn’t know anything about this.” She nodded to Theron. “Neither does he.”

Zero fell on her ass, staring up at Mira with wide, fearful eyes. “What the fuck?” Her voice was breathy and confused. She looked like she’d been electrocuted.

Why was Mira letting Zero go? “What—” Karhi started.

“Just talk to them,” Mira interrupted. She sounded exhausted.

Zero lunged at Karhi but stopped short with a pained look.

“Get out of my head,” Zero growled stiffly.

“Stop,” Mira said, her tone even, like she was talking to a child, “and I’ll stop. I have no intention of hurting you.” She forced Zero to stand up straight.

“You’re doing a very convincing job of showing that,” Zero said through gritted teeth. A muscle in her jaw was jumping.

“I think I am. I haven’t forced you to do anything bad, so . . .”

Zero didn’t have a response. The tendon in her neck continued to jump.

“Are you done? I really do want to let you go. This is just insulting. And cheap, really.”

Zero didn’t respond but the tendon in her jaw relaxed and stopped jumping. Mira must have let her go.

“Why are you here?” Theron demanded. Karhi couldn’t see his face, but he could feel the withering look he’d earned from Theron. “We had an agreement.”

Karhi let him go, straightening up and letting Theron get out from under him. Theron stood up, joining Zero. Their glares were twins of each other as they regarded Karhi and Mira.

“People have been taking cheap shots at my family,” Mira said. “Someone kidnapped him.” She hooked her thumb at Karhi. “And one of the consistent threads is dead man’s blood with hemlock. Something that I’ve been told is your specialty.”

Zero’s glare didn’t disappear, but it lessened as she wrinkled her nose. “We stopped using dead man’s blood all together about three or four years ago.”

Karhi blinked in surprise. They had?

She moved and Karhi tensed, but all she did was head further in the room.

Their room was almost like a hotel room, except it was longer. One corner had a grouping of chairs and a couch around a coffee table. There was a large red bed against one wall with a half-moon bed canopy draped over the head, a dresser with a TV sitting across from it. A door in one corner led to what Karhi presumed was a bathroom.

An armoire five times as broad as Karhi sat in one corner. This was where Zero went. She opened a drawer at the bottom and brought out a duffel bag. She reached into it and pulled out a gold chain with links the size of Karhi’s thumbnail. She pulled it out about a foot and neither end of the chain came with it. It was long.

“Sun gold,” Karhi said. He could feel it from here, clawing at his strength. Sun gold was a tool used by vampire hunters to restrain vampires. It could restrain all but the oldest vampires and it weakened their powers.

“We started using that and moon silver,” Theron said as Zero put it back. “It works faster, and it doesn’t require us get close to inject someone or trick them into drinking it.”

“It also doesn’t smell like piss,” Zero said, disgusted. “I hate that shit. And you don’t accidentally inject yourself.”

That was what Karhi had come against in the past few days. The musty scent of urine that came with hemlock in dead man’s blood. It was how the shifter in the warehouse had died—he had been injected with hemlock blood that had made him seize up. Dead man’s blood wasn’t toxic to shifters, but the neurotoxin in hemlock sure as shit was. That’s why the room had smelled of piss even when Mikko had been using a bucket to go to the bathroom. It was why Karhi’s own cell had smelled like piss. It was what he had smelled in the morgue.

Theron looked between them all, irritation colouring his features. “Maybe, if you two explained what was actually going on, we could help you and get you out of our room.”

He had a point. They hadn’t been very forthcoming with information. Mira had just been pulling it out of them and reporting back to Karhi.

“Alright,” Karhi said. He tried to give the most abridged version of the events of the past few days. His kidnapping. Mikko’s kidnapping. The shifter that had died when they went to investigate Mikko’s holding cell. Sloane’s attack. He left out the bit about his brush with Michael and the prostitute plot line entirely. They didn’t need to know about that.

When he was done, Theron said, “You have a fledgling?”

Karhi glared at him. “Not the point.”

“How is Ilona handling that?” Zero asked, pressing her lips together into a thin, disapproving line. Karhi didn’t know how much Theron had told her over the years about Ilona, but he imagined it had to have been a lot. Theron wasn’t one of Ilona’s—he had long since killed his own sire—but Theron and Karhi had known each other a long time. Theron was very familiar with how Ilona treated Karhi.

“Not well,” Karhi replied, tone clipped. He didn’t want to talk about that.

Zero was willing to move on. “Well, we stopped using dead man’s blood altogether when we got the gold. But the formula we used to use isn’t really a unique formula anymore. My cousin is the one in charge of the operation that produces dead man’s blood. When we were using it, she wanted it to be exclusive. We were the only ones who used hemlock blood.” She waved her hand rolling her eyes. “She’s big on branding.”

“Considering your family is the only one who mass produces that shit, she did a good job,” Karhi muttered.

Zero shrugged. “When we stopped using it, she put it in as one of her rotations. She does a lot. Hemlock blood. Ricin blood. Botulism blood. She’ll put any neurotoxin in blood that can fuck with shifters and mages like the dead man’s blood fucks with vampires—multi-purpose.

“But I know she charges a lot for the hemlock blood. Her whole branding campaign using us made it really popular. Everybody wants to use it. But she charges something ridiculous per vial. I think like ten thousand dollars.”

So, whoever was buying these vials had cash to burn.

“Would you be able to find out who she sold those to?” Karhi asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said, eyeing them. “What’s in it for me?”

Mira, who, up until now, had been quietly listening, stepped forward. Her face was contorted into an expression that Karhi never wanted to see aimed at him. Her eyes flashed, and she snarled, “What’s in it for you? I don’t force you to find the information.”

“You can’t—”

Before Zero could finish her sentence, she was pulling her phone out of her pocket and scrolling through it.

“Find out,” Mira snarled.

Zero’s hand faltered, and she looked up at Mira, eyes wide with horror.

Mira reached into her shirt and pulled out a necklace. An iridescent blue and green labradorite pendant hung from the chain, a symbol carved in it that Karhi was not familiar with. “This paired with the fact that someone tried to kill three of my family members and killed the parents of two more? That’s how I can get into your head so easily. I have a lot if displaced anger right now.”

Karhi had seen Mira’s mind control when she had grabbed Zero and forced her to let go of Mira. That was a normal level of mind control, from everything he had seen in his life. It extended to gross motor control—walking and sitting, things like that.

She had forced Zero to pull out her phone and had started typing on it, making her fingers perform meaningful movements. Not just a wave or something.

Fine motor control like that—Karhi had only heard it was possible. He had never seen it. Even Ilona, who could force him to do things, could only do gross motor control. She couldn’t force his hands to move in a way she wanted or anything even close.

“How in the hell are you a free agent?” Theron asked, staring at Mira in horror and a little bit of awe.

“I have an agreement with Hazel,” she replied, keeping her eyes on Zero, who still seemed spooked.

Zero stared at Mira for a moment before finally getting to work. Karhi saw the slightest tremor as she tapped on her phone.

She put her phone on speaker without being prompted. The ringing tone trilled through the air.

After a moment, a woman picked up. “Ey Zero, waz di scene?”

“I normal, Deisha.” The waver disappeared from her voice as she launched into speaking what was mostly English, but Karhi could hardly understand it.

Trinidadian Creole was a combination of colonizer languages and multiple African languages. Karhi had heard it here and there in his dealings with Zero and her family over the years, but he had never been able to parse it. He usually let Zero or Theron translate for him.

After a few minutes of back and forth, Zero said something and muted her phone.

“She said that she needed to double check her records because it was an online order, but she knows what order I’m talking about,” Zero said. Her Trini accent was pronounced as she spoke.

After a moment, they heard, “Ey, Zero?”

“I’m here.”

Deisha replied to her. They went back and forth for a bit before Zero finally said what Karhi was sure was goodbye, and it was confirmed when she hung up.

“Alright,” Zero said. She glared at Karhi as she spoke. She was probably too afraid to glare at Mira, so she settled for him. “She said it was a corporation. She’s going to text it to me along with the name of their buyer. I’ll text it to you.” Her phone chirped. She looked down and tapped at it before Karhi’s phone chirped in his pocket.

“Thank you,” Karhi said.

“She said that it was a one-time order for a hundred units.”

“That’s all she said?” Mira asked, raising a sceptical eyebrow.

“It sounded like she said a lot more than just that to me because she spent half the conversation complaining about how the high price tag means she hasn’t been making as much money. She was trying to get me to start using it again.” Zero sounded frustrated in the way that only family could make someone frustrated.

That answer and whatever was in Zero’s head seemed to satisfy Mira. She looked at Karhi. “Do you have anything else you want to ask?”

“Does the uterus signature sound like anyone you’ve encountered?” he asked them.

Zero’s lip curled in disgust. “No. Had we come across anyone who did that, I would have killed them myself. That’s misogynistic as fuck.”

Karhi believed her. Mira would have picked up on it if they had recognized it.

“Alright,” Karhi said. “I know it was forced but thank you anyway.”

Zero responded by telling him to do something not physically possible.

“I see now why Ilona is so angry with Sloane,” Karhi murmured as Mira got in the car. He had temporarily left her in the care of the bartender while he went to go get his car, parked only about a mile away from Lazarus. Neither of them had wanted Karhi to carry Mira back to her house.

Mira glanced at him, putting her seatbelt on. “What?”

“Your mind control abilities are absolutely terrifying.”

“I don’t use them often. It requires so much concentration, especially when it’s not someone I’m familiar with. But yeah. My contract with Hazel was out of necessity.”

“How old are you?”

She made a noise of mock offense. “A gentleman never asks a lady her age.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. He noticed her hands were still shaking with . . . anger? Fear? Either way, he would play into her jokes. If this was how she controlled herself, he wasn’t going to argue.

“Twenty-one,” she answered, looking out the window. “I’ve known the Ruaidhrís since I was fourteen or fifteen. Hazel didn’t realize the extent of my powers for years. And this year, she came to me with an offer. She would protect my family in exchange for access to my abilities.” She shook her head bitterly. “Like it did anything.”

Karhi wanted to point out that it wasn’t like Hazel could have prevented anything that happened, but he didn’t. He knew it wouldn’t help. Her point was that, with the protection of one of the most powerful families on Earth, all of this had still happened. And nothing he could say would make it better.

“Thanks,” she murmured.

He glanced at her. “For what?”

“For not saying anything you just wanted to say.”

“Stay out of my head,” he growled, looking back at the road.

“I wasn’t in it. Even without reading minds, I can still feel people’s emotions and inclinations. I knew what you wanted to say.”

He didn’t have a reply for that. Mira was an amount of power that he didn’t think he ever wanted to confront. He was twenty-five times her age and he didn’t know if he would win in a fight.

“Theron seemed almost betrayed that you attacked him,” Mira said. “And I noticed that your anger with him seemed to come from a sense of hurt. You two are close.”

It wasn’t a question.

“I would prefer not to discuss my relationship with Theron,” he said. “It is . . . fraught.” He had a bitter taste in the back of his mouth thinking about Theron.

“What did—”

The windows shattered, and pain tore into Karhi’s side. Metal screamed as it crumpled into him, and his entire world lurched. His vision spun.

Everything went white.