Awakened (30 page)

“No. By that bench.” She nodded toward a bench with a high back not too far from the building’s outer wall. “I sit behind it. Sometimes I sleep under it. I’m homeless.”

Guilt slammed into Barrett. She was asking a lot of someone who had nothing to give.

“I don’t care anymore.” Xe coughed again. She walked to the bench and Barrett followed. She didn’t want to watch. But she didn’t want to lose the girl before she found out where Jane was.

Without saying a word, Xe found the drug paraphernalia she’d stashed and got to work. Her hands trembled when she cooked up a nickel bag and slipped off her shirt to tie off, tapping her skin, looking for a blood vessel that hadn’t collapsed.

Lewis had told the truth. Xecala’s arms were scarred with ugly tracks. Barrett felt sick. There was no way to help this girl.

Xe positioned the needle and looked up at her. Her voice had an odd clarity. “I saw Jane, like I told you. They took her from a truck into the club through a hidden entrance.” She shook her head. “They didn’t hide it too good. No one saw me when I followed.”

“Through the same entrance?”

“No. I went in through a side door, a different one, when the guards weren’t looking. I figured out the keypad code before that.”

Xe paused, getting her breath. Barrett waited.

“One of Vlad’s guys … he took me down there … wanted privacy. He thought I was too stoned to see. But that’s just what I wanted him to believe.”

Deftly, she pierced the skin of her inner elbow with the needle tip, going into a threadlike vein. Then she stopped. Xecala rocked a little, smiling in a weird way, as if she were anticipating the rush to come.

“Want the code?”

“No. I can go in through the front. But—”

Xe held a thumb over the plunger of the syringe.

“Stop that. Please,” Barrett begged her.

The girl shook her head. “Maybe you saw the three doors on the inside that don’t open out.”

She knew what she was talking about. Barrett had to find out more. “I saw one. I heard about the others. Do they all go to the same place?”

“Dunno. But I got those codes, too.” She gave a low laugh. “I know you have a pencil and paper.”

Barrett grabbed both from her bag, writing frantically as Xecala told her the codes: 447574373, 85234647, 5355748. If the microsensors Nick had hidden by the doors were found before the keypads were used, they had something to go on. She prayed the numbers weren’t changed every day.

“Which one would get me to Jane?”

Xecala shrugged, frowning when the needle tip moved. A bluish spot of blood pooled under her skin. “Maybe all three. I heard someone say to take her to the little room.”

Barrett didn’t bother to ask why Xecala hadn’t helped. The girl would have been overpowered instantly. As a witness, her life was worth nothing.

“I couldn’t do nothing. Then I sorta forgot about her. And then there she was. Like a ghost on the page that you drew.”

“Do you have any idea where the little room is?”

“Underneath the pit. I heard that, too. I guess that’s where they take the kidnapped girls in this club.”

A horrifying understanding came to Barrett. “Were you one, Xecala?”

“Almost,” she said, her voice ragged. “At the other place, before it burned down. I didn’t make the cut. For some reason, Vladimir just let me go. I figured he forgot about me. But I still don’t know why the others didn’t kill me.”

“You doing a damn good job of that all by yourself.” Barrett whirled around. “Sam?”

“I dropped my house keys when I got in the car.” The other woman bit out the words. They didn’t sound like a lie. “Came back to get ’em and saw you here with Xe.”

Sam hadn’t made the slightest sound when she approached the bench. She could have flown there on silent wings, for all Barrett knew. She had no time to wonder why. Xecala moaned when the needle went in.

You couldn’t just jerk it out. Barrett thought she’d heard that or read that somewhere. The syringe was empty, the plunger down. Xecala’s veins glowed blue from whatever it was she’d injected. “Oh, God. What is that?”

Sam crouched by Xecala, helping the girl rest against the bench for support. Sam’s voice dropped to a whisper. “A strung-out bitch at the other club got her hooked. Wasn’t long before she started to wander between this world and the next. That shit she uses is different. Real strong. Can’t buy it on the street.” Xecala moaned, the color draining from her face.

“Jesus, she looks like she’s going to die! Sam, we can’t just—”

“Let her be.” With considerable strength, Sam forced Barrett to move back, then kneeled by the girl. “Let her go easy. That’s all we can do.”

“No—how—”

“Sam …” Xecala’s voice. So faint the word could be her last.

Sam stroked the girl’s tangled hair.

“Just wanted you to know …” Xe murmured. “Wanted to … do one right thing before …”

“Shh.” Sam tried to soothe her. “You did, baby girl. You did right.”

A supernatural glow emanated from Xecala’s eyes. Then they closed. Her lips turned blue but she smiled. To herself. She saw only the hallucinations in her mind.

Barrett was speechless. She could see them, too, as if the girl’s skull was made of glass. Visible under her translucent skin, the lethal drug coursed through her veins, spreading in a delicate tracery of death.

Xecala took her last breath.

They both stared at the girl for several minutes before Sam turned to Barrett. “No one can know she’s dead. Especially not Vlad. Help me get her in my car.”

They put Xecala in the backseat of Sam’s car before she drove them away, pulling into an isolated parking garage about five blocks from Club Red. Leaving the girl where she was, Sam got out of the car and Barrett followed. “You’ll have to walk back to the club. I’ll stay with her. Take care of her.”

“Why can’t Vlad know she’s dead?” Barrett asked yet again.

This time, Sam answered her.

“I’ve worked with Vlad a long time. He trusts me more than most, partially because he knows I love Xecala. He likes the people I know, the favors I can bring him, and by promising to leave Xecala alone, he knew I’d give them to him. If he knows she’s dead, he’ll know he no longer has his hooks in me. Not in the same way. He won’t trust me the way he’s trusted me. And that won’t be good for me. Or you.”

Exhausted, Barrett leaned against the outside of the car. She couldn’t stop herself from looking at Xecala. “How much did you hear of what I said to Xecala?”

“Enough to figure out that you’re hunting for someone hidden here. Probably one of Vladimir’s auction girls.”

“So you know about them?” Barrett wanted to scream, to accuse, but if Sam knew anything at all about Jane, going ballistic wouldn’t get her more information.

“That’s right.”

Barrett cast her a sideways look. Sam’s beautiful face was stony. Maybe she had been auctioned, too. The more Barrett found out, the uglier it got. But she couldn’t hold back the next question. “Have you seen the little room? The one under the club?”

Sam frowned slightly and shook her head. “No. Don’t know nothing about that. There is a fight pit, wasn’t on the grand tour for the media. Vlad’s got something in the works there, but I couldn’t say exactly what. Xe was s’posed to go on the block at the other club. But she didn’t make the cut, not after she started using again. Vlad was going to kill her, but I bargained with him for her life. What little life she had left. Someone smuggled in nickel bags for her but she never got enough. Sold herself for more. Then she started using the other stuff.”

Barrett felt sickened all over again. What if the same thing happened to Jane? She could have been injected with a lower dose of the strange drug to keep her under control.

“She started wasting away, got to where we could practically see through her.”

“How come the bouncers let her hang around Club Red?”

“She kept ’em supplied at the other club. A couple of them use, too. I ain’t gonna name no names. And so do some of the girls. Smack for sex.”

Barrett closed her eyes. Said nothing.

“You all right, Barrett?”

“No,” she whispered. “That girl just died. And I didn’t—I couldn’t save her.” Just like Noah. Maybe like Jane.

“She didn’t want to be saved. There’s no cure for what she was putting into her veins. Xe never caught a break in all her life. She’s in a better place now.”

“How do you know?”

Sam took a deep breath and jammed her hands into her pockets. “Because I want to believe it,” she said in a soft voice. “You gotta believe in something. This business makes it hard. Wish I could get out. But I have a reason to stay.”

Nothing to lose. Barrett went for it. “Can I ask what it is?”

“I hate Vlad’s fucking guts. Hate what he does. But he’s had me by the balls.” Sam rubbed her eyes. “These damn contacts gotta come out. You can’t cry and be beautiful, right?” She lifted an eyelid and pinched the soft plastic lens, flicking it on the ground. Then she did the other eye. “Disposables.”

Barrett figured as much.

“So I’m biding my time, acting nice, like I’m going for Employee of the Week. Hoping I can find a way to take Vlad out and not get sent up for life or killed. But now you and me are on the same side. You some kind of undercover agent, ain’t you? Yeah. Thought so. Wait until the bastard figures that out.”

She turned to look at Barrett. Sam’s beautiful eyes were black with silver pupils.

Barrett gasped. “You’re a vampire.”

“Yeah. I’m a born vampire.”

Barrett stared at her.

Sam shrugged. “There was a human or two or four in the mix somewhere. Another reason I haven’t moved against Vlad. My powers are weak compared to his.”

So they’d been right, Barrett thought. About Vlad. About Jane. Now what were they going to do?

“You might as well keep on asking me questions,” Sam said. “I know you will. If I don’t want to answer, I’ll tell you.”

Barrett was baffled for a moment. But she knew better than to waste time. “Okay. The heroin Xecala used. What was that?”

Sam looked off into the near distance, her silver eyes shimmering. “It’s something new. Vamp Smack Prime is what they call it. VSP for short. Potent shit and not easy to come by. You have to have the right connection.”

“Meaning a vampire.”

“Yeah.”

A drug that enslaved and ultimately killed had to be a Rogue product. Barrett made a note to run it by Collette. If VSP hit the streets anywhere, there would be a wave of deaths far higher than the average.

“Is there anything else I should know?”

“What the hell.” She clasped her hands, not in a casual way. “That I was on to you from the beginning. You didn’t look like no nightclub hostess to me. Then one day, you didn’t know I was there, but you were in the dressing room and your bracelet snagged on something. You took it off and—”

“You read my mind.”

“I sure did.”

Barrett hadn’t noticed it. She had experienced the probing sensation once or twice, long before she got to Club Red. But never since she’d been there. Sam had to be awfully good at subtle mental exploration. Having a human ancestor probably helped her follow the pathways of human thought. And being female had to as well.

“I’m not,” Sam said.

“Beg your pardon?”

“Either put on your bling or get used to having me inside your head.” Sam sighed. “When I said Vlad had me by the balls, I meant that literally. I’m not a biological woman. And that’s the last thing you can’t tell anyone. Everybody doesn’t have to know everything, and the club girls gossip.”

“I don’t. Your secret is safe with me.”

“Good.”

Barrett thought that she should have known that Sam was trans. But she really hadn’t. No big deal these days. It was just a strange time to find out.

“So … Sam isn’t short for Samantha?”

“Nope. My birth certificate says Samuel.”

Barrett looked out into the growing darkness. She didn’t say anything for a while or even think anything. The other woman had brought her clasped hands up to her forehead, her body bowed.

Barrett offered a silent prayer for Xecala, sure that Sam was doing the same, hoping that her soul found the peace that life had denied her.

Xe had tried to help a lost girl she didn’t know. Barrett was infinitely grateful.

She was going to see that Xe wasn’t forgotten, either.

Barrett walked back to the club, got into her car, drove a few blocks away, then parked and took out her phone. She tapped the screen, then switched to her messages.

There was a text from Justine asking for an update. Barrett responded.
New developments. Text you later. Where are you?

Didn’t take a minute for a reply.
Fancy bar. Nice-looking man. Possible not-so-nice association with Club Red
.

Be careful
, Barrett typed with a fingernail.

I always am
.

Barrett sent another text to Collette, asking if they could connect tomorrow. No answer. She knew the former police officer would get back to her as soon as possible.

Now for Nick.

Meet me at the condo
, she texted. Then, with tears stinging her eyes, she started driving again.

Ten minutes later, he met her in the parking lot. He’d washed the ugly streaks out of his dark hair and ditched the rest of the disguise. She was relieved that he looked like himself again.

“What’s going on?” he asked right away.

“A lot.” She looked around to see if anyone was watching, feeling even more paranoid than usual. “Let’s go inside.”

She practically pushed him through the door.

He turned around and studied her businesslike demeanor. “You look serious. Guess I have to take a rain check on the kinky sex you were threatening me with.”

“What?” Barrett blinked at him, not even remembering that for a few seconds. Then it clicked. “Oh. Not now. Jesus.” She proceeded to tell him everything she’d found out from Sam. Barrett told him about the vampire, describing her at length but leaving out the part about her being transgender, since Barrett had sworn to keep that secret and it wasn’t really relevant.

“Have you gotten feedback from the microsensors?” She went to get the pad of paper.