Page 14

CHAPTER 14

S omeone’s phone was ringing, and I wished they would answer it. It was pitch dark outside. Then the cat began bumping me with her head.

It felt like I’d barely fallen asleep, but the ringing was very close. I finally figured out it wasn’t my phone—it was the one Master Adolphus had given me. No one had ever called me on it, so I didn’t recognize the ringtone.

“Hello?” I answered blearily in English.

A blizzard of Swiss German responded. I was too groggy to make sense of it. Most people quickly realized that my German was not up to snuff and spoke slowly to me.

“Can you run that by me again in English?”

A pause, then, “Kaitlyn, this is Captain Le Pen. We need a tracker. Two teen girls are missing.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Uh, give me an hour or so.”

“Half an hour. I’ll send a car to the Platz at Master Adolphus’s house.”

“I’ll need something of the girls’, preferably with DNA. Their hairbrushes would be great.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

I got dressed, gathered my weapons, then made my way down the hall to the Master’s room and knocked on the door. He answered after a couple of minutes.

“Kaitlyn? What is it?”

“Captain Le Pen called. Two teenaged girls are missing.”

He nodded. “Call me if you need any help.”

That surprised me. “I will.”

I went downstairs and saw car lights enter the Platz on the other side of the fountain.

Just as I opened the door to step out into the street, Frau Buckner came out of the kitchen and pushed a small cloth bag into my hand.

“Water and a snack,” she said.

“Thank you.” I threw an arm around her shoulders and gave her a quick hug, then dashed out into the street.

Captain Le Pen was the driver, and I slid into the passenger’s seat. He handed me two hair brushes.

“They went out to a teen dance club with some friends,” he said as he wheeled the car around and back 0nto the only street leading to the square that was wide enough for a car.

“Let’s go there first,” I said. “How about their friends? Are all of them accounted for?”

“Yes. I spoke with the other girl they went with. Her boyfriend escorted her home. I didn’t speak to him.”

“How long are they overdue?” I asked.

“About two hours.”

“Plenty of time to die.”

He nodded, a grim expression on his face.

“I was accosted by six Knights about eleven o’clock last night.”

“All sorts of nasty people are out on weekends.”

We drove to a club near the train station. The streets were deserted, and the club was closed. I got out and walked around, checking all the doors to the place. After about fifteen minutes, I went back to the car.

“Not a sign of them. I would bet they weren’t here at all tonight.”

“You’re sure?”

I shrugged. “How do you prove a negative?”

His jaw locked, and his lips thinned as he took off, tires squealing. I wasn’t sure where we were going, but after winding his way up the hill into the Altstadt , he pulled up in front of a building. It appeared to have four apartments. We entered on the ground floor, then climbed the stairs to the second floor—or what I would have called the third floor in the U.S.

Le Pen knocked on a door, and a man opened it.

“We need to speak with your daughter again. Is she dressed?”

I followed the captain into the hallway, and the man went to get his daughter. When she came out of her room and saw us, the fear on her face was obvious.

“Where did you really go tonight?” Captain Le Pen asked. “We took a tracker to that dance club, and it doesn’t appear that either Elise or Anna were there. Now, where did all of you go tonight?”

She cast a fearful glance at her father, whose stern expression left no doubt about how much trouble she was in.

“It’s not a huge deal,” I said, “but it will make it a lot easier to find their bodies if we know where to look. They’re more than three hours overdue now, so that’s more than enough time for the strigoi to have finished with them.”

The girl broke down, burying her face in her hands and sobbing. I walked over and put my arm around her.

“Was it a party?” I asked in a very low voice. “Someone’s house whose parents are out of town?”

Still sobbing, she nodded.

“Okay, tell me where it is, and we don’t have to make a big scene in front of your parents.”

She gave me an address, and I turned to Le Pen. “I’ve got what I need.”

When we got outside, I said, “They were going to stop off at someone’s house on the way home—that’s why we can’t find them.”

I ushered him out and down to the car.

“None of them were at the club. It was a party at a private residence with no chaperones.” I gave him the address—which meant nothing to me—and we drove off.

We reached the house in less than five minutes, and I jumped out of the car, picking up both girls’ essences almost immediately. Le Pen pounded on the front door, and shortly after, a teenaged boy appeared. He was slightly disheveled, half clothed, and fully drunk. Le Pen forced his way in, and I glimpsed a half-naked girl of about sixteen peering from an upstairs doorway to the foyer below.

Le Pen asked about the girls and if they were there. The house looked as though there had been a party, and I assumed the boy planned to clean up in the morning. I backed out and scouted around for a trail, which I found.

The girls had only one trail, so I assumed they left in the direction they had come. When Le Pen came out, I said, “Their trail is this way,” then took off on foot. He followed me, talking on his phone.

The trail split a few blocks from the house, with the older trail going in the direction of the Guild Hall and the newer trail heading toward the river. I waited for the captain to catch up.

“They took a detour here,” I said, “and I pick up the essence of two strigoi joining them.”

He cursed, then said, “Follow them.”

We followed the trail to the river, then crossed a bridge into the Langstrasse. There was a lot more activity there, and the strigoi-run nightclubs were going full blast. We skirted that activity and soon found an area that was quieter.

I rounded a corner and almost stumbled over a young girl’s body lying in front of a closed shop. Her eyes stared at infinity, her neck was bloody, and her skirt was raised above her waist. I didn’t need to check to know she was dead.

Then I saw a strigoi leaning against the wall of a building a few feet away, watching his buddy rape another girl while feeding on her.

The one nearest me turned when he heard me draw my katana , but he wasn’t fast enough to avoid the strike that severed his head from his body. He crumpled to the pavement, and that drew the attention of the second strigoi.

I took his head as he reared up to his knees, and he fell onto the girl. Le Pen rushed forward and shoved him off her, then checked her.

“She’s still alive,” he said, and started speaking rapidly into his phone.

I knelt down beside her and used a strip torn from her skirt to press against her bleeding neck. Her eyes were glassy, and her breathing was ragged. I looked into her body, found her torn jugular, and pinched it to slow the bleeding. Her carotid artery was still intact.

“I have help on the way,” Le Pen said. “Can she hold out for a while?”

“I think so, but I really don’t know what I’m doing. Captain, I’m just an apprentice, and the Master hasn’t taught me any healing yet.”

“You’re doing more than I know to do,” he said. He left me to look at the other girl. I saw him pull her skirt down to cover her and close her eyes.

“Young ones. Newly turned,” he said when he returned.

I agreed. Not only had the strigoi been young when they were turned—barely out of their teen years—but also older vamps would have taken their victims to a lair instead of feeding in the street.

A few minutes later, several Enforcers showed up with a medic. They loaded the living girl on a stretcher, and I walked with them to an ambulance half a block away. It sped off to the hospital, and I went back to where the other girl lay.

I sat on a porch step and watched as the Enforcers cleaned up the scene and wrapped the girl’s body for transport.

“Are you okay?” Le Pen asked, squatting down beside me.

“Yeah. I wish we had been able to find their trail sooner. I don’t know why they hauled them all the way here. They entranced them and could have fed on them back where they attacked them.”

“Probably looking for familiar ground. Our Enforcers and the Knights patrol the other side of the river.”

“Captain, it’s been a helluva night. Think I can get a ride home?”