Dead Waters - Anton Strout [8]
2
We stepped out of the antiques warehouse and back into what looked like an empty shopping mall. The space was cavernous and modern, and rose up several levels above us. Off in the distance floor-to-ceiling windows showed the traffic going around Columbus Circle.
“Very disorienting,” I said. “Coming out of that old antiques shop that feels like it’s down on the docks and back into the modernity of the Gibson-Case Center.” Cassie’s emotions faded as I took in sights other than the mess we had left behind in there.
“Surreal,” Jane added.
“What can I say?” a voice called out from off to our right. “Our kind does Old New York well.”
I turned and looked over at Aidan Christos as he walked toward us. The forty-year-old vampire looked all of eighteen in his skull and bones Hot Topic hoodie, his emo swoop of black hair hanging down into his eyes.
“I appreciate you stopping by,” he said, walking past us and off across the empty mall. When he moved, the steps from his Doc Martens didn’t even make a sound.
“Can you at least pretend to make footsteps?” I asked. “It’s creepy.”
Aidan sighed and clomped around in a slow, deliberate circle. “Better?” he asked, but before I could answer he stopped and stared at us. “You’re wet. Why are you two wet?”
I looked over at Jane and smiled. “That must be those keen vampiric powers of observation I keep hearing about.”
The vampire smiled from within the darkness of the hoodie he wore, the tips of his fangs the only thing visible on the teenage boy’s face. He stood there, glaring at me, and I felt a wave of terror project over me directly coming from him—an oldie but goodie that I was already familiar with in the vampire’s bag of tricks.
“Cut the crap,” I said, pushing past him into the darkened atrium of the Gibson-Case Center, the secret home of New York City’s greatest concentration of vampires. “I’m not in the mood, Aidan.”
Aidan grabbed my arm and stopped me. It was like being grabbed by a stone statue.
“So, how did it go?” he asked. “Did you take care of her? And again, why are you all wet?”
“Oh, we saw her all right,” Jane said. “That’s one creepy bitch.”
“We might be talking some property damage in there,” I said. Aidan looked concerned and I sighed. “Okay, fine. We’re probably talking a lot of property damage in there. There was a small fire and the sprinklers went all Singin’ in the Rain on us, not to mention all the broken lamps . . .”
“There was a fire?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Well, good to see the fire-suppression system works, anyway,” he said. “I’d hate to think of Vampire Central going up in flames.”
I shivered as the images of Cassie taking the needles to her eyes came back to me. “That spirit was messed up,” I said. “You’re going to get a lot of property damage with something like that.”
Jane walked over to Aidan. “You really didn’t have any way of dealing with her?”
“We’re biters and fighters,” Aidan said. “Hard to drain the blood from something you can’t touch. So, as you might have figured out, we’re not really fans of haunting.”
Jane laughed. Aidan and I looked at her.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just. . . well, technically, I haunted this place once.”
Aidan shook his head. “We’re not talking about a ghost in the machine here, technomancer. You saw that woman. My master, Brandon, tasked me with checking it out after shoppers started complaining, but, well, there’s really nothing one of my kind can do to something of her kind, you know?”
“Which is why you called in the experts,” I said.
Aidan nodded, and then started walking again. “Believe me, Brandon considers this a huge favor, stopping to check it out.”
“So, why didn’t Brandon ask us himself, I wonder?” I asked.
“Maybe there’s a 90210 marathon on?” Jane offered. “I mean, the great vampire lord did take his name from it, after all.”
Aidan jammed his hands into the pockets of his hoodie and shrugged. “He’s a private guy,” he said. “King of the castle and all that.”
“Literally,