Negative Space Ch. 15

"Who is he?"

"He's one of the Shadow Directors. He's nearly four hundred years old. He claims that he was the first vampire ever turned in the new world, but I know that to be entirely false."

We lapsed into silence again, and I thought of the feel of Julian's lips. He was clean shaven, so he didn't rub against my cheeks the way Theo did. His mouth had felt almost indecently soft, intimately smooth and slick. He reached out and took hold of my elbow and guided me into a small alleyway behind the Hoover building. We squeezed past a dumpster and threaded between two towering buildings that seemed to yawn over us like a forest canopy. At the end the alleyway opened up again, leaving us in a forgotten space. It was tucked between four separate buildings, none of which had taken advantage of the 10 by 10-foot dirt and gravel square. A single tree grew up high, leaning lovingly against one of the buildings.

"Follow me now," Julian said, his voice low and quiet. "And if you can, use some of that glamour you have to protect us."

"Protect us? What are we going to do? I thought we were just going to walk by the building, get a sense of how to access the info!"

"Well, when we saw my boss I realized that we were here just in time for the night shift's dinner break. We'd be fools to ignore this opportunity." Julian began climbing the trunk of the tree and paused to call back over his shoulder, "Don't waste time arguing with me."

I sighed and followed him, grasping the trunk and heaving, clambering up awkwardly until I reached the first branch. Julian stretched down and grabbed my wrist, hoisting me up so I could stand on it. Just beyond Julian's shoulder I saw the first row of windows, one of which was left conveniently ajar.

"It won't help us," he said, following my gaze. "That one won't open any more than six inches or so, not enough to slide a body through. But we can use the sill to get up to the second row of windows, which DO open all the way."

"How on earth will we get up there?" I eyed the sheer face of the building. Adrenaline seeped into my system, inching bile up in my throat. Why was I doing this? We didn't even know what to look for at this point—and why on earth was I letting myself be talked to scaling the outside of an FBI building? This was stupid. Before I could voice my opinions, though, Julian lifted me up by my waist and pushed me up to the ledge of the window that sat ajar. Gritting my teeth I scrambled to get my feet beneath me on the cement window sill, glaring at Julian still balancing on the tree branch.

"You need to climb up to the windows above," he said, pointing up the wall above me. "We'll be able to open those wide enough to squeeze through."

"I can't do that!" I shouted in a stage whisper. Julian just glared back at me. I turned back around and pressed my palms to either side, bracing them against the window frame. If I couldn't get up there, what use would I be? I clamped down, pushing back against the bile that threatened to rise up and scald my throat. I clung to the wall and managed to inch my way up until I could reach the ledge of the window above.

I pushed and pulled and finally manage to sit my butt on the ledge in time to see Julian following me up, with absolutely no effort expended. I accidentally glanced at the ground, about three floors below us, and had to lean back against the window to soothe the sudden whoosh of fright. Julian pulled out a pocket knife and fiddled with it in the window crack, flipping back an unseen lock. I clambered through the window onto some unwitting FBI worker's desk while he was out for the night. Once the window was closed behind us, Julian crossed the room in two steps and locked the door.

"Now's your chance to give us a little protection. I can't help at all since vampire glamour only works on humans. Very few of the people on this floor are human."

"God, I don't even know what I could do! I'm not a witch."

"Yes you are. To a certain extent anyway." He sighed. "Look. Start by giving yourself a mental shield. I could feel how nervous you are from anywhere in this building right now."

I closed my eyes and tried to pretend that I wasn't currently trespassing and in danger of being arrested, or worse. I built a little wall in my mind, closing out all the interference. It was strange, not being able to feel the other beings around me. I realized then how strange it must be that my baseline was being able to hear the emotions and feel the life forces of all the people nearby me, whether I could see them or not.

"Good. I can't hear you anymore. Do something to make us invisible. I'd like to be able to walk down the hall without worrying that someone is watching us."

This was a little more difficult. How could I make us invisible? After focusing for five minutes on making my hand transparent, I realized that was impossible. Instead of making us invisible, I'd have to make us uninteresting. I thought of my protective Khrusos, the energy I had generated to heal Elliott the time I bruised his mind. It was easier for me to manipulate if I imagined it as a substance, a fabric I could drape over myself and Julia.

"Whoa." I heard Julian murmur. I opened my eyes and realized what he had been talking about—I couldn't see him. Or, it wasn't exactly that I couldn't see him, since I knew he was there, it was just that my eyes slid right off him each time, and I couldn't quite remember what I had just been looking at.

"Good job. Let's go." The door opened up, and for a moment I couldn't figure out why—but I realized it was just Julian. He grabbed my hand and pulled me out, then down the brightly lit hallway. We waited patiently by the elevators until a woman in a suit walked up and pressed the button. Slipping in after her I was sure she'd be able to smell us—I could tell she was a vampire, but any time she looked over in our corner of the elevator she just shook her head and looked away. She exited on the fourth floor, and when no one else got on, I heard Julian sigh in relief. The button for the ninth floor lit up, and the elevator shuddered and heaved, moving upward again.

"Once we get up there," he whispered into my ear, "stay close. Try to make less noise when you walk. We'll go into the fourth door on the left."

I did as he said, certain that every person we passed, vampire, were, or other, knew we were there. No one looked twice, though, and soon we were safe in an empty office.

"This was my desk, and that one was my partner's. I doubt there'll be anything left, but let's look through these papers. You get that stack, and let me know if you find anything."

We leafed through pile after pile of papers, stacks of folders, and entire book shelves, moving from one office to another. Nothing unusual, nothing out of the ordinary.

"That's fine," Julian muttered. "I figured that'd be the case."

"Should we get out of here then? They've got to be coming back soon."

"Just one more office."

"Are you sure? We've been here an hour now. You can't take more than an hour's dinner break. We should leave."

"I'm sure. It's gonna be painstaking to try to get back in here another time—I'm sure they'll notice the disordered papers we left behind. Let's do one last office while we have a chance. We'll keep an eye out."

He led me out of the office we were in, closing the door as carefully as possible, and down the hallway to the fancy smoked glass door at the end. Pulling out a lock picking set, he didn't even try the handle before he had the pins in the keyhole. With an expert jiggle the door swung open, showing a clean, stylish office. The lights from nearby buildings lit the room through a wall of ceiling-to-floor windows. A shiny metal plaque on the desk read "Vivian Carl" in thinly etched letters.

"Who's she?" I whispered.

"Vivian is the Deputy Director of the FBI. She answers only to the Chief of Staff and the President. Not to mention that she is in charge of my old branch, the Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services branch, as well as the Science and Technology branch. Both were involved in all the money funneling and other underhanded business, so if this goes all the way to the top, there has got to be record of it here somewhere. You search her desk—I don't think you'll find anything, but give it a shot, and I'll grab the file cabinets."

We set to quickly flipping through as much as we could without missing anything, but most of it was notes from meetings and reminders about important legislation she needed to deal with. There was nothing interesting in the desk, and I was about to move on when I decided on a whim to check for a hidden compartment. If I were in the FBI I would definitely have one. I sat down on the floor and felt the underside of the desk, working my fingers along the sides of the drawer banks and looking for some sort of seam or latch. I pulled open each of the drawers again, searching for missing space or unusual markings. I noticed that the third drawer down wasn't as deep as the others, something I had missed the first time. Using my nails, I pried the back wall of the drawer forward and suddenly it clicked, falling open. Behind it was a stack of envelopes.

"Damn." I muttered as I flipped through the envelopes.

"What?" Julian asked, pausing in his rifling.

"I found a secret compartment, but all that was in there were love letters."

"Love letters? Vivian's not in a relationship. She's never been married."

"Well, maybe she's in one now." I shrugged, reaching to put them back in the compartment.

"Wait, who is it?"

"Um, some guy. Signs with an I."

"Just an I? No name?"

"Here," I handed him the stack. "Look for yourself. I'm going to start on the bookshelf over here."

I had just started sifting through the books when Julian let out a dramatic gasp.

"What?" I asked, freezing for a moment as someone walked past the door, darkening the glass with their shadow.

"This is not just some GUY, Lana. This is Ishkur. She's dating Ishkur!"

"Does it really matter? I don't know who that is, and I don't think the Deputy Director's sex life has anything to do with us. I think you should put that back. We need to leave."

Julian was about to argue with me, but a shadow fell on the door and didn't leave this time. He quickly tossed the stack of letters back into the secret compartment, closed the drawer, and ran over to the wall where I stood. I heard some jingling, and a key was slipped into the lock. The door opened. Julian held my hand tightly, looking like he might try to run for it, but the woman closed the door immediately. I held my breath. She had long blond hair pulled up in a professional French twist, and wore a perfectly fitted pant suit and heels. It must have been Vivian Carl. She stood facing her desk and scanned the room, her eyebrows furrowed. When she made direct eye contact with me I thought we were about to be found out, but her eyes slipped right over me and she just rubbed them as if there was something irritating them. Vivian sat down and set her purse beside her. Flipping through the papers on her desk, she sighed, stretched, and reached for the phone.

"Yes, can you postpone my appointment for tomorrow afternoon? Please apologize to the minister for me, but I simply cannot make it. Yes. Next Tuesday should be fine. Good." The phone clicked back into its cradle and Vivian rolled her shoulders. She glanced down at her desk and froze when she saw the open drawer. Julian must not have closed it all the way in his rush—I held my breath again as fright filled even my arms and legs. Taking a handkerchief out of her pocket she used it to slowly open the drawer. The papers were all out of order. With infinite patience Vivian took the papers out and organized them, assuring herself that nothing was missing. Reaching deep into her drawer I heard the click of the compartment and she pulled out the stack of envelopes. They were clearly tampered with. One of the letters wasn't even in its envelope. She looked up sharply and glanced around the room searching for us. She rushed to the windows and tried each of them—locked. She opened them and looked out, but there was no way that anyone could have gotten out that way. There was no one in the closet or in her private bathroom. She paced back over to her desk and grabbed the phone.

"Ish—I need you," she said after a moment, her voice startlingly different than it had been before. "No, I mean really. Someone has broken into my office. There's stuff from you here. They saw it." She sounded almost scared. The voice on the other end was suddenly loud, and from the way she flinched, extremely angry.

"I know, I'm sorry. I had them in a hidden compartment. I didn't think anyone would do such a thing! I'm—I'm sorry Ishkur. Please, tell me what to do!"

I felt a sudden pity for her. She seemed far out of her depth. Maybe she was the Deputy Director for the FBI, but she sounded entirely unused to having secrets, as if she had no idea how to keep them. The voice on the other end quieted and she nodded twice, murmuring her assent.

"And what about Delgarth? Should I contact him? Okay. No. I'll leave right now. I love y—" she called out, glancing at the phone as if she had been hung up on. She grabbed her purse and her coat and rushed out of the room, locking the door.

I exhaled. Julian let go of my fingers and I realized then just how tightly he had been squeezing them. He put up his hand, reminding me to stay still. He walked to the door and closed his eyes, listening for passersby. After a moment he waved me over, unlocked the room, and we slipped out, running down the hall to the elevator and sliding in right before it closed. We disembarked on the ground floor and snuck behind the guards as they watched people passing through the metal detectors. As soon as we were inside I let my Khrusos snap back inside of me—holding it out over Julian and myself had been exhausting.

***

As soon as we got back to the hotel room I collapsed onto the bed. Julian had been quiet the whole way back, and now he stood, pacing between the bed and the kitchenette.

"Who is Ishkur, Julian?"

Julian's head snapped up, as if he had forgotten I was in the room with him.

"He's Anu's fledge."

"Who's Anu?"

"You don't know who Anu is? Jesus. Okay." Julian sat down at the desk and crossed his legs. "How's your Sumerian mythology?"

"Um, slightly lacking?" I rolled onto one side to look at him.

"Well, do you at least know that the Sumerians were one of, if not the first civilization? Cradle of civilization? Remember any of that from school?" Julian snorted his distain at my shrug. "So their gods are some of the oldest gods, then. And Anu is the sky god. The king of gods, lord of constellations, ruler of sprits and demons, leader of the star warriors who destroy the wicked. I'm sure you would not be surprised to learn he is the second oldest vampire known to us, and therefore one of the three who make up the Top. The oldest is Ket'thul. He was known as a god as well, but to a now-forgotten civilization. The third is Arachne, a Greek. Together they are the single ruling body that holds more authority than any other in the entire world."

"Okay, and so Ishkur is some sort of god too?"

"Actually, he was the Sumerian storm god. But none of them were really gods, just vampires living in impressionable times."

"So why is it a big deal that Ishkur is with Vivian?"

"Vivian is human. Ishkur has long been known to be a vampire supremacist. There's no way he would be 'dating' her without an ulterior motive."

Julian stood up again and popped open the plastic container that held two Styrofoam cups by the sink. I listened to the rattle of the pipes and the rush of the water as it filled his cup.

"I think we need to talk to someone with some real information," I said quietly. Fingering the Freyja necklace beneath my collar, I let myself sink into it. It held the magic, the history—all of Freyja's blood line. Since only those related to her could touch it, every moment it sat against my skin felt like a blessing, a gift. The magic in her godliness was able to be passed down through the generations in the necklace, and now it sat with me. I hadn't practiced with it much, but as I let myself explore it now, it felt as if I were falling head over heels into the necklace. Nausea clenched my stomach, and I struggled to push down the bile. Suddenly I could see everything. I was surrounded by my entire family. I felt around for Prometheus. He had to be here somewhere. I felt close to him, and there in a vague mist in that surreal moment I saw his face. He looked up at me and made eye contact.

"I have a question." I said. He nodded. I let go of the necklace and reality snapped back, leaving my ears ringing and my stomach pushing up through my mouth. I leaned over the side of the bed just in time to grab the trashcan and retched violently.

"That's what happened to me the first time I used it like that too," a voice floated over, clearly not Julian's.

When I opened my eyes I saw that Julian was down on his knees with his eyes wide, his mouth slack. On the divan beside him sat the unworldly flickering image of Prometheus, same as I met him the first time.

"Thanks for coming."

"Certainly, granddaughter. What question did you require an answer to?"

"Can you tell us about Ishkur?"

"I'm sure you know enough as it is," he said, gently flipping through my memories. I clamped down, feeling as if I had snapped the lid shut on his fingers. He chuckled. "My apologies. I'll stay out of there from now on."

"What we need to know is what on earth Ishkur would be doing with Vivian Carl, the FBI's Deputy—"

"The Deputy Director, yes, yes I know." Prometheus waved as he cut me off. "What do you mean 'doing with'? Are they engaged in a relationship?"

I grinned. "Please tell me this is something I know that you don't! We found love letters between the two when we were searching her office today."

Prometheus shook his head distractedly, scratching at the base of his neck. "That can't be."

"I know," Julian butted in. "But that's the thing. I saw them with my own eyes."

"Grant me access, child?" Prometheus asked, extending his hand to Julian's head. Julian sputtered a little and frowned, shrugging his shoulder.

"Sure, I guess."

Prometheus sunk his flickering hand into Julian's skull, closing his eyes and rummaging. When he withdrew I took one look at Julian and offered him the trashcan, but he smiled a thin, pale smile and held himself together.

"I see. That was pretty risky of you two," he said, winking at me. "I have a theory I have to test out before I say anything more..."

I tensed. "Please, Prometheus, if we're the ones doing the heavy lifting here, you have to be straight with us. We need to know why Ishkur is involved, and what you know about everything."

Prometheus was silent a moment, absently picking at his immaculate fingernails. He looked at me once more, and made a decision. "Alright, little granddaughter. Since you are my blood, I suppose I shouldn't leave you uninformed. My guess is that, as you have already presumed, Ishkur is courting the human woman with an ulterior motive. Since she wields substantial power, I expect it could be anything. However, there are more hints that indicate that he plans to eradicate the vampires of the Eastern Seaboard Alliance."

"Is that the alliance of states that Theo is running?"

"Officially, I am the one leading it. But yes, that is now Theo's cross to bear. Ishkur has always hated me and the ease with which I rule and exercise power. Ishkur has never been as adept. I wouldn't put it past him to stage a full-scale annihilation of all the vampires on the East Coast just to obliterate a few."

"All the vampires? What do you mean?" My thoughts raced, and suddenly clicking into place. "You mean the plague?"