Брайан Макклеллан - Blood Tally

“Have you ever stood toe-to-toe with the servants of a Vampire Lord?”

“My ancestors fought vampires and worse to protect our goddess.”

“Sekhmet is dead,” I said, plopping him onto the passenger seat. “I don’t think she’s going to be lending you much power. I promise I’ll get you some albacore tonight.” I ran back into the house, past Olivia, and gave the whole place a once over. I was in a hurry, but that didn’t stop me from feeling a pang of sadness. I’d lived in this place since I moved out of Ada’s house in my late teens. It wasn’t much, but it was home. I had no idea if I’d ever see it again. I wondered if Olivia had felt the same thing as she rushed around her own house less than an hour ago.

We were back on the road quickly, driving in silence. I went over checklists in my head, wondering just how paranoid I should be about Jacques finding me. According to the movies, I should discard my phone and ditch my truck and do go completely off the grid. That didn’t seem realistic, not when I didn’t really believe that I was just going to hide for an indefinite amount of time.

I was still going to ruin Jacques’s week. I just didn’t know how yet.

Olivia found us an AirBnB in Glenwillow. It was a quick drive to the highway and less than an hour from anywhere I’d want to be in the Cleveland area. But it was also a relatively small town – a good place to lie low in the downstairs in-law apartment of an old couple who owned a house way too big for their age. The old couple was on vacation in Europe, so I parked around back and typed in the code they gave me for the AirBnB, and we let ourselves in.

I carried in our bags and left Olivia to wash the vampire blood out of her hair while me and Eddie ran to the closest supermarket to grab some food and a litter box. We were soon back, Eddie happily munching on a smelly can of tuna in the corner while I collapsed on the couch. I was more exhausted than I expected and, as there was just one bed, I expected this was where I was going to sleep. And boy, did I want to sleep.

Olivia came out of the bedroom wearing the same outfit as when I’d first met her – yoga pants and a tank top. She hovered around the groceries I’d brought back. For a few moments I let myself daydream that I was on a little date holiday with a girlfriend, rather than on the run with a witch I barely knew. The jarring difference between fantasy and reality grew too painful too quickly and I let it go. Olivia didn’t talk to me, making herself busy in the kitchen. I tried to meditate on what the hell I was going to do about all this, but was interrupted by the ringing of my phone. It was Justin.

“You’ve stumbled into quite the shitstorm,” he said when I answered.

“I figured that out myself.”

“I’m not joking. You’re in a genuine shitstorm. I got ahold of my boss’s boss’s boss. He’s in DC, and he really hates vampires so I knew that he wouldn’t sell you out to Lord Ruthven. Turns out he runs a little thinktank meant to come up with worst-case scenarios regarding the Other so that OtherOps can make contingencies against them, and this exact thing is one of their scenarios. He called it a Level Four, whatever the hell that means. He says that you’re absolutely right – that this is an end-of-the-world-as-we-know it kind of threat, but it also isn’t immediate, so the government doesn’t give a shit.”

“That … doesn’t sound helpful.”

“It’s certainly less helpful than I’d hoped,” Justin admitted. “The best he can offer is to put you and your witch friend in witness protection while he puts together a taskforce that will spend the next couple of years convincing an OtherOps judge to create new Rules to specifically eliminate this loophole that Boris is taking advantage of.”

“Years?” I asked incredulously. Olivia had moved from the kitchen and was now fiddling with something behind the TV. Her head popped out briefly, and she eyeballed me. I tried to ignore her.

“It might be quicker,” Justin said, “But it might not.”

“And in the meantime, what will you do about Boris and Lord Ruthven?”

“Lord Ruthven has powerful friends in OtherOps. If it was Dracula or someone else, we could probably get together a team to jump in and confiscate Boris’s blood tally. But not Ruthven. Our hands are tied.”

I considered this for a few moments, feeling ill. “I have an idea. Can you fake an investigation?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, let’s say that the OtherOps Cleveland office has had their eye on Boris for a while. They knew he was up to something shady but they couldn’t prove it – until they found those redacted contracts in the Cuyahoga County courthouse.”

“You want me to confiscate those contracts and create a paper trail that proves we’ve been investigating Boris?”

“Yup.”

“To what end?”

“To keep Lord Ruthven from killing me. Here’s what’s going to happen: I call Jacques and agree to finish the job. I bargain for my life or whatever. Then I finish tracking down Michael, but when I go to return him to Boris, an OtherOps team steps in and relieves me of the blood tally. Lord Ruthven’s name is never mentioned in your records. He has nothing to do with this.”

“How is this going to save your life?”

“Because then you can file a report to the Vampire Lords, with a straight face, that you’ve completed an investigation against Boris Novak. You hand the blood tally over to your boss’s boss’s boss, who makes it disappear. Jacques might still try to kill me and Olivia – but it’s more likely that he’ll back off once he knows that OtherOps is involved. Vampires don’t like the attention, after all. And no one is ever going to believe that a reaper agent went crying to OtherOps. Shit, I’m the one saying this to you, and I don’t believe that I’m running crying to OtherOps.”

Justin was quiet for a few moments. “Okay, hold tight. I’ll call you back in five.”

I did just that, sitting up on the couch and putting my head between my knees, wondering if Olivia was still in shock. She sure didn’t seem in shock. She’d successfully connected her Nintendo Switch to the flat-screen of the AirBnB and was now flipping through games. “You hear that?” I asked her.

“I got the gist,” she replied, setting her controller aside and turning toward me. “You really think it will work?”

“Maybe. Do you want to go into witness protection for a few years?”

“Fuck that.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Mags?

It’s … not a great plan. But it’s not your worse plan either. If it works.

Every plan is a good plan if it works.

You’d be surprised. What are you going to tell Nick the Necromancer? If everything worked out, he’ll be out of prison in a few days.

And if this plan works, this whole thing will be done by the end of next week. Besides, hanging out with a powerful necromancer might be another good reason for Jacques to leave me alone after OtherOps steals his glory.

Fair enough.

“Where do you go?” Olivia suddenly asked.

“Huh?”

“When you cock your head like that? It’s like you’re on the phone, but there’s no phone.”

I felt a chill go down my spine. People had called me out on my conversations with Maggie before, but everyone always seemed to chock it up to me being a little bit off . No one had ever described it as an actual conversation before. “Just thinking,” I answered as nonchalantly as possible.

She’s very perceptive, Maggie grunted.

Still have a crush on her?

Absolutely.

I was relieved when my phone rang. It was Justin. “Yeah?” I answered.