Loki's Gambit, page 221
part #1 of I Bring the Fire Series
“Of course,” Penny responds, wrapping her arms around herself.
As soon as the cars and the ambulance are gone, Todd says, “Penny, if you want to stay with us tonight … ”
“It’s okay,” she says. “Dare can stay over.”
Instead of looking suspicious that an unmarried man and an unmarried woman might be cohabitating for the night, Todd looks relieved. “Okay, then … see you in the morning.”
As soon as they’re out of earshot, Dare whispers, “I still don’t know how a window can be in a computer … was the computer really small enough to fit on a desk?”
“Yes, it was small enough! I have a computer in my home too, Dare.”
“I didn’t see it.”
“It was on my counter,” Penny replies.
“All I saw was a plastic book.”
“That was my computer,” Penny groans.
His eyes get comically wide. “No!”
Penny rolls back on her heels. “You look a lot more shocked by that than you were by the fact that there was a dead guy on my lawn.”
For a moment, his face goes completely expressionless, and then he shrugs. “Last time I was here I found myself in London during the Blitz. I’ve seen worse … and frankly, couldn’t have happened to a more deserving vampire.”
Penny frowns. “I thought you don’t like that term.”
Dare looks away. “It fits him.” His tone is light, although the words are heavy.
Penny feels a shiver. “Did Nor deserve it?”
Dare shrugs again. “Accidents happen?”
“Yeah …” she says, her voice hushed. And that vampire probably participated in Chantilly’s death too. She shakes her head. “Look, the important thing is, they had their …” She figures Dare won’t understand QuickBooks and says, “ … accounting books open, and I could see that they run a blood bank.”
“A blood bank,” Dare says, his tone changing again.
“Yeah, that’s when—”
“I know what it means. We must go there, now! There may be humans in danger.”
Penny’s eyes widen. “The keys I found, I wonder …”
Dare says, “Grab them. I’ll be pushing the car.”
A few minutes later, they’re driving down Orange Blossom Boulevard, and Penny’s having second thoughts. “Are you sure this is more important than the club?”
“The essence we need starts degrading as soon as blood leaves the body,” Dare says. “The blood they tried to give me was fresh. They weren’t harvesting it at the club … I … I know … but it must be somewhere close by.”
“But Hickey Man … and my sister!”
Dare wipes his eyes. “I’m not engaging in podsnappery here, Penny.”
“What?” One of Penny’s eyebrows dances.
“Not everything that goes on at the club is … innocuous … but more people are at risk at the blood bank.” He drops his hand. “Though we will have to think of those romantic human partners at the club when we take on Aurel, and get them out somehow beforehand.”
Penny bites her lip. “I wonder if the fire alarm would work again … would they pay attention to it after the false alarm last night?” She blinks. “I bet the sprinklers would work.”
“Sprinklers?” Dare asks.
“Yeah, the building had some. They’re heat activated. Most public places have them. They shut down fires pretty fast.”
“What do they look like?” Dare asks.
“Silver nozzley things in the walls near the ceiling,” Penny says, trying to explain.
“I remember seeing them when I … ”
“Yeah, there was one by our exit,” Penny says.
Dare inclines his head. “Yes, right, of course.”
Against her better judgment, Penny goes to the blood bank first. But when they pull into the mini-mall where LifeBlood is located, Dare says, “This can’t be it. It’s too far from the club.”
“It’s only a few miles,” Penny says, parking the car.
“It’s too far,” Dare says again.
“So should we leave?” Penny asks.
“No,” says Dare, already stepping out. “Let’s back slang it.” He shuts the door before she can ask what that means. Cutting the engine, she runs to catch up with him. They don’t go to the front door, but walk around the block of buildings—which she supposes it what “back slang it” means. When they reach LifeBlood’s backdoor, Dare holds out his hand, like he’s going to try the knob, but Penny cries, “Wait, let me try the key!” She looks around and can’t see any cameras, so holding the key with a Kleenex, she slips it into the keyhole, and turns. The lock gives and they enter. A light flickers above Penny and she finds herself in a garage. There’s a narrow little van parked to her left that has the LifeBlood logo emblazoned on its side. Dare charges past it, murmuring, “No one is here.”
Penny looks down at the second key on the key ring. It does look like it belongs to a vehicle. Shaking her head, she skips to keep up with Dare.
The room just past the garage is lined with blood horchata mixers on either side. Dare stops and stares at them dumbly. Penny passes him and checks out the rest of the place. There’s a waiting room, a room that is obviously for collecting donations, a receptionist area, and bathrooms … absolutely nothing nefarious.
“No one is here,” Dare whispers.
Penny finds her skin heating. “Looks like they just pump it and dump it in these machines.” Using a Kleenex to hide her fingerprints, she opens a cabinet. It has a whole shelf full of shot glasses. Taking one out, she says, “I’m guessing that most blood banks don’t keep these around, at least without alcohol.”
“I expected there would be prisoners …” Dare says, as though he’d not heard her.
“No, they probably just advertise like everyone else,” Penny says. “Offer juice and cookies and the reward of knowing you’ve done a good deed. If they’re not completely legit, they might offer an enticement under the table … money … or drugs.” Had Chantilly been lured here for money or drugs—or had she gone to the club hoping to score some? Had the bouncer let her in because she was alone?
Going over to one of the machines, she pulls the handle of one of the mixers, and the glass in her hand fills with warm liquid. She takes it over to Dare. “Is this nutritionally sufficient?”
Dare stares down at the glass. “This is an abomination.”
“Does it have everything in it that you need?” Penny asks again. Something dark is starting to churn in her mind.
“Yes … no …”
“Take a sip and find out!” Penny demands, and somewhere in the back of her mind it occurs to her that she’s almost shouting.
Dare starts to shake, and she shoves it at him. “Take it.”
And Dare does takes it, but his hand is trembling.
“Sip it!” Penny says, and now she realizes she is shouting, and she’s not sure why.
Dare tips back the glass, his eyes slide shut, and then he downs it. Lowering it, he says, “It is … it works.”
“Then why did they kill my sister?” Penny roars. Waving her hand at the mixing machines, tears rise in her eyes. “If they have this!”
Dare at her, mouth agape. “This is wrong!”
“Killing people is better?” Penny snaps, tears spilling from her eyes, her mouth tasting like steel.
Somewhere she hears a far-off rattling noise, but she’s too keyed up to focus on it.
“We don’t have to kill,” Dare exclaims.
“They killed my sister!” Penny shouts.
Dare lifts his arms and shouts back at her, “Without the bond, the power differential is all wrong!”
There is the sound of shattering glass. Ducking instinctively, Penny sees red, feels warm wetness, pinpricks on her sides and arms, and gives a cry of pain. She hears water splash, blinks, and realizes it isn’t water … it’s blood, all over the floor, Dare, and her. She hears the sound of her own panting.
“I’m sorry … I’m sorry …” Dare murmurs.
Penny straightens and looks around in shock. It seems half the horchata machines in the room have exploded.
Dare steps toward her and Penny backs up instinctively. “I don’t want to go to jail,” Penny says. It’s weird, but it’s the first thing she thinks.
Dare shakes his head. “My word, I will never let that happen to you.”
Penny looks around the room. “We have to get out of here.” She walks to the edge of the pooling blood and slips off her shoes, picking them up behind her. “Can you hide our footprints?” she asks Dare.
“Yes,” he says.
Walking toward the garage, she says, “My tissues are all bloody; I don’t have anything to hide my prints.”
Penny isn’t precisely shocked when the regular-old-not-automatic door opens in front of her all by itself, or when they walk by a security guard and Dare holds up a hand and says, “You will remember nothing,” and the guard just nods and walks off.
Dare’s fangs have descended and they refuse to retreat.
Penny pulls out of the parking lot without a word, as though he had compelled her to silence, but he hasn’t. In the distant the horizon, the sun is rising. “Your arm is bleeding; it might need stitches,” he says, his voice thick from his fangs.
She doesn’t even look down.
“I can fix it for you,” he offers.
“Sure,” she says, eyes straight on the road.
He is surprised she’s taken him up on the offer. But then he is surprised by how little she cares that her kind is having their blood systematically harvested. Reaching over, he lets his thumb hover over the cut, closes his eyes, imagines the healing layers of dermis, presses down, and feels her flesh mend together.
“Thanks,” she says as he pulls away. He presses his thumb to his lips without thinking, and then can’t stop himself from licking the pad clean, looking guiltily at her as he does. She doesn’t look up.
Penny breaks her silence in a rush of words so fast, Dare isn’t sure he catches them all.
“Most Night Elves aren’t strong and can’t open doors or compel people to forget them, or make them shoot themselves, or drop trees on them … ” She glances at her arm. “ … Or fix them … are they?”
“Most can’t do those things.”
“Aurel?”
“He is one of the more powerful Night Elves.” She doesn’t ask if he is more powerful than Aurel.
“Are most Night Elves …” She licks her lips. “Like vampires … like … Aurel?”
“No, they aren’t.”
Penny shifts her hands on the steering wheel. “Are you going to take care of Aurel … and the rest of them?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Penny says.
He holds his breath, waiting for her to ask the question he really expects, but it doesn’t come.
“It’s getting close to dawn,” Penny says. “I think we should go home and get cleaned up before we get stopped by the cops or …” Her brow furrows. “I guess it doesn’t matter. You could just … ”
Outside, the blocks of scattered buildings are starting to give way to trees.
“We should return to your home,” Dare says, because the sun is coming up, and because he can’t ask Odin to let him stay. It won’t be good for either of them—but he doesn’t want to leave, either.
Penny doesn’t ask him questions.
It’s a very quiet morning when they reach her home. They take turns cleaning up and Penny ushers Dare into a spare room with a bed slightly larger than the couch. He pretends to sleep.
Sometime after dawn Penny surprises him, coming in and offering him her wrist.
“I don’t need this,” he whispers.
“But I need to sleep!” Penny half-cries.
Blood bonds might lie, but nothing could keep him from pulling her into his arms at that moment. When he wakes up, him beneath a sheet, her on top, she surprises him again.
Chapter Six
Penny feels Dare wake up, he moves beside her, and she feels the musty mattress that has probably not been used since Emma and Todd’s kids slept in it shift. Before he can get up, she throws a hand over his arm that’s around her waist.
“You should take the horchata machine blood with you … back to Alfheim.”
“What?” he asks, sleepily, warm breath on her neck.
She doesn’t look at him; she just keeps her eyes focused on the window where early afternoon light is seeping in. She has a feeling that if she looks at him, she’ll see that look, that I-am-going-to-kiss-you look. A part of her is curious. She’s never had sex before, but she’d thought at some point she might “find some asshole to do the deed” just to say she’s done it, but Dare is no asshole. She really likes him … but just likes him. Even she can admit he’s beautiful, but it would just be a curiosity thing for her. She’s heard that guys don’t mind that sort of thing, but she would mind if their situations were reversed, and she can’t do it. Curled in a ball, still not looking at him, she says, “I mean the blood machine, mixers...they must be oxygenating it and circulating it in a way that keeps it fresh. You should take it with you.”
She swears she can hear his ears twitching and his teeth grinding. She remembers him saying, “Without the blood bond the power differential would be too great.” She has a horrible suspicion she knows what the blood bond is, but is afraid to ask. Taking his hand, threading their fingers together, she whispers, “If other Night Elves are lawful good like you, but weaker, you have to take it.”
He goes too still. In a chiding voice he asks, “Lawful good?”
… and Penny finds herself explaining Dungeons & Dragons and ethical and moral alignment.
Dare sighs. “Lawful good … well, I do like to think of myself as a defender of the dark, but I don’t know if it is possible for anyone to always be good. There’s a bit of brightness in us all.”
It takes Penny a moment to realizes that to a Night Elf, “dark” might be “good” and “brightness” might be “evil.” But ... “I think you’re trying to distract me. Dare, if human technology can help you save your people, you have to use it … and we don’t mind giving blood, we give to each other!”
“But without the bond, my species could treat yours like sheep,” Dare whispers.
“No,” Penny says. “Because you didn’t. When we were in prison, you didn’t try to bite me.” She swallows. “Dare … Aurel may be bad, but the technology he’s created might be good. Like … like … Hitler cracking down on smoking … or something. You have to use it. Sometimes good ideas come from bad people.”
“Loki … Human technology …” Dare whispers, and his body gets very still. “New ideas …”
Penny rolls over. He’s staring off into space, but then his eyes snap to hers. “I need your cheaters … also is your sunscreen really waterproof?”
“Yes … but what are cheaters?”
“The dark glasses?” Dare says, miming putting them on.
“Sunglasses,” Penny says. “Sure.” She doesn’t move, and Dare doesn’t move either. He’s staring at her far too intently. She really likes him and doesn’t want to say goodbye, but the way he’s looking at her … he’s going to kiss her and …
Sighing, Dare leans forward. He does kiss her, but only on her forehead. It’s kind of perfect.
Pulling away, he says, “If I’m going to take on Aurel and make it look like an accident, I need to get going. Early to bed and early to rise, and all that.”
Penny squints at the clock. For a Night Elf “early to rise” is apparently 4 p.m..
It’s only when they’re in the car, zipping down the highway, that Penny asks him, “So what are you going to do, exactly?”
When he tells her, she doesn’t even pull over, she just stops in the middle of the highway. Granted, it’s in the middle of nowhere and there are no other cars.
“You’re going to what?!” she shouts.
Chapter Seven
Penny drives the car up the access alley to The Cove so Dare can “back slang it”.
“Did you use compulsion to make me do this?” she asks, disturbed that she’s letting him do this.
“No, I did not use compulsion,” Dare says, his voice defensive. “I’ve only ever used compulsion in your presence when I thought you were in danger. It was instinctual and—”
“I’m kidding.”
He meets her gaze—or she thinks he does. He’s wearing her “cheaters.” Nodding, he puts his hand on the door handle.
“I’m just worried about you,” she says.
He smiles like he’s really incredibly pleased she said that. It makes her heart hurt a little.
“Don’t be,” he says.
“You never know,” she says. “They might have spiders.”
Dare chuckles. “Would you believe, they’ve never discovered my one true weakness?”
Penny knows that isn’t his only weakness.
With that, he walks to the backdoor of the club, his shoulders slouching a little more with each step. When he reaches the door, he looks in her direction, and she remembers his one order to her. “Don’t be seen. Wait for me out of sight.”
Penny nods, drives over to the pawn and gun shop across the street, parks, and lets the engine idle. She can’t see Dare, but she imagines the plan unfolding exactly as he’d told her.
“I’ll walk up to the door, knock, and surrender.”
“They’ll let you in?” Penny had asked incredulously. “Won’t they think it’s a trick?”
“It doesn’t matter if they do,” Dare says. “You may have noticed, Penny, that my brethren don’t think highly of me. My most dangerous talent is that I am … well, rather non-threatening.”
And that was so true, but … “Will it be enough?” Penny had demanded.
“I have no idea if it would be, normally, but you see I also have something else going for me. I have their prejudice working in my favor. A count is not an inherited title; it is bestowed.”
“But they gave you the title, so obviously you must have done something that earned their respect!” Penny had protested.
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