Running in the Dark (10 page)

Behind me.

I turned, felt the guard step forward until he nearly brushed my back. The other room was lit by hundreds of candles and decorated in burgundy and gold. Shards of glass decorated the walls and formed a fragmented mosaic behind the bar. It was broken into conversation areas, and dividing walls jutted out at strange angles, creating small private areas in the open, larger room.

The club was barely open, but there were still fifty or more people there, evenly divided between smooth vampires and excited humans. Most of the humans, flushed and bright-eyed—hopefully from the alcohol—were focused on an area near the back corner. I spied a familiar set of shoulders and tension fled me as if I’d unzipped it and stepped free. He was here, wearing another ridiculous suit—blue with chrome trim—but he was here. I took a step forward and a heavy hand descended on my shoulder.

“He’s right there,” I snapped. “I’m just going to talk to him.” The hand clamped down, contorting the bones in my chest, and I gasped.

Malcolm’s head snapped to the side. He glanced sidelong at me through that room full of fangs and eager strangers. I wanted to throw the guard’s hand off and run to him, to keep running out of that place, to somewhere quiet and alone and safe. Relief and something much stronger bubbled up inside my chest and I blinked rapidly.

“You will leave,” the guard growled in my ear, “or I will throw you out.”

“Get your fucking hand off of me.”

Malcolm turned away, playing the politician, making an excuse so that he could meet with me. He bent down and picked up a metal goblet. Tilted his head. The male in front of him laughed.

My eyes dried out and narrowed.

The male in front of him was Lalo, the weasel who’d tried to feel me up at Vega’s. He wasn’t just alive, he was getting the VIP treatment. After Malcolm had been so angry, after he’d shown up and yelled at me, he was entertaining the rat while I was left to dangle. I’d missed an appointment with Soraya and been—for all he knew—missing for the day.

Malcolm didn’t signal to the guard, didn’t send one of the roving servers to retrieve me. He just kept chatting away with the greasy sucker. I stifled the urge to tap my foot, or kick something.

I had to check in with Carla, and if I was going to leave Chile—which I had a strong urge to do—I needed to do it immediately. Another five seconds ticked slowly by, and still Malcolm didn’t look at me. I chilled abruptly. It wasn’t that he didn’t look at me. It was that he wouldn’t.

I backed up, bumping into the guard as I recoiled. “I’m going,” I heard myself mumble, my body floating, my mind locking down bit by bit. “I’m going.”

The dark corridor seemed to close in on me as I drifted through it. I slid between the doors before they’d fully opened, jamming my shoulder, but I could barely feel it. I crossed the street on autopilot, stumbled as I stepped onto the curb. My stomach wrapped itself into an intricate, impossibly tight knot. I’d walked into his club, hurt, after I’d been attacked. And he wouldn’t even acknowledge me.

The guard had called me desperate. Maybe I was. Not for the bite, but I’d given myself up fast enough. All those years of training, of working to protect myself from influence…all he had to do was smile at me and I fell apart. I rounded the corner, tugging at the brim of my cap as I passed a group leaving an office late.

My breathed hitched and I stopped, my eyes widening. I’d been duped. Malcolm liked to play, and since I couldn’t be influenced, I’d intrigued him. He probably liked the challenge. Anger began to beat between my temples, replacing the sickening numbness. He was such an asshole. And I was such a fool.

I started walking again, head down, picking up speed. “The fucker can’t even cook.”

“Perdon, señorita,”
a man lisped behind me. The hair on the back of my neck rose. Cold jittery energy and fang-impaired speech?

I ran.

And made it exactly ten steps before an arm snaked around my middle. My legs flew up into the air on the remains of my momentum. I clawed at the vampire’s wrist, trying to get free so I could get a hand into my bag. Then he stopped moving, with me tangled up and flailing in his long arms.

“Aerin Crane?”

I jerked my head around, breathing hard, still trying to get my hands free. “Thurston? What the fuck? Put me down.”

“This isn’t right.” His iron hold relaxed and my feet found pavement. I turned until I could see him. One of his eyes was black, so swollen there were no creases in the lid. His throat was nearly as dark.

“Jesus, Thurston! Are you okay? Where’s Livia?” Had she done that to him? Soraya had said drugged-out vampires had attacked their hivemates.

His good eye widened and his fangs retracted. “She’s—”

Tires screeched behind me and the vampire gazed past me, his beaten face going blank. Christ, I could not catch a break. I kicked, the heel of my boot catching the inside of one knee. He stumbled, then twisted me around, manhandling me like a toddler with a doll. He pulled both my arms behind me and the broken parts of my collarbone scraped apart. I screamed.

“I am sorry,” he whispered against my ear.

My vision fuzzed out. Dimly I felt myself lifted, then dropped onto my side. I breathed through the pain and pressure, unable to hold in a series of sad little whimpers. It subsided eventually, enough that I could see again, enough that I could almost think.

I lay on a quilted leather seat, and I was moving. On the road, in a vehicle wide enough that I could lay nearly flat and heavy enough that I could feel the power required to make it move. I could feel, also, the cold aggravation of vampire. I took one final deep breath, wondering whether I’d be allowed to spend the rest of the night facing the back of the limo seat. What the fuck was Thurston doing, outside his territory, without Livia? And who in the hell had done that to him?

“Is she okay?” a woman asked in a small, lilting voice. “You said she wouldn’t be hurt.”

“She was already injured.” A man, with the same accent as Bren, but stronger. Realization clicked. South African. “Weren’t you, Aerin?”

My stomach dropped. At least he didn’t know my real name. I levered myself onto my knees, then collapsed onto my butt. I hunched forward, cradling my left arm. Across from me, in the back of the limousine, sat two people.

The male was pale, blue eyed, a strawberry blond with darker eyebrows and lashes. He seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place him—tall and slender in a slick gray suit with a wide blue tie—in my memory. He was almost pretty, with a long, thin nose and curved pink lips. Well, pretty for a vampire who’d kidnapped me. I couldn’t imagine Thurston was working for two suckers. More likely, Livia’s scheme hadn’t gone down the way she’d hoped. This guy seemed a little high rent to be skirmishing over ghetto property, but maybe he was more interested in what they’d had inside the warehouse.

I suppressed a sigh as I turned toward the other figure. Tilde, curled up beside the vampire, wore a short-sleeved V-neck sweater that matched the sucker’s tie. Her hair hung limp, and blue veins showed across her exposed upper chest and stick-thin legs, very little of which were covered by a loose, satiny white skirt. I couldn’t see any bite marks, but she was clearly unwell. What were the odds she’d been the driver of the pale car that followed me? The Peugeot was white, and she was an agile driver. Plus she’d known I was going to Mickey’s.

A sucker pitting runner against runner. Sweat broke out across my back as I dragged my gaze to the window. Through the tinted glass, I watched us fly farther and farther from Malcolm. Not that he would have helped.

I was on my own.

Chapter Ten

I couldn’t tell if the air in the car was freezing, or if that was just how I felt. I’d never been in such a small space with a vampire other than Malcolm, and he restrained himself even during sleep.
Don’t think about him.
This vampire radiated power, and the longer I was near him, the more certain I became that I knew him. A customer maybe, but not a recent one. My head swam, adrenaline competing with the numbing energy and soothing sway of the car. The sucker waited for me to speak. Rude on top of being the mastermind of a situation borne straight out of my nightmares. Fantastic.

Tilde pulled at his sleeve, ran her hand up and down his thigh until he plucked it up and returned it to her. He also tightened his hold on his energy, pulling it close so it wouldn’t be so irresistible to her. He might as well have said “Stay,” she went so still beside him. I froze as well because I’d never felt a vampire, other than Malcolm, pull that trick. Shock, coupled with the fact that I needed to do something to keep from losing my shit, forced my mouth open.

“I suppose you know we are registered couriers. So what do you want with us?” My voice came out mostly level, but I stopped speaking when his eyes traveled the length of my body before returning to my face. He smirked, eyes half closing, and to my horror I blushed.

“You don’t appear to be on the clock. You do not wear your war paint, and I see no visible badge. How was I to know you were anything but a civilian?”

“There are rules about that too.” Funny that he’d only be concerned with the extension of the law that protected couriers, but it explained why his guys had waited until I returned my roster last night. He didn’t mind paying the fines for damaging a human, but didn’t want to shell out the additional fee to our employer. Tilde was already broken, but he was keeping her around, so biting her hadn’t been an accidental, spur-of-the-fangy-moment thing. He was doing a job, and she’d gotten in his way. So too, apparently, had I. Whatever the hell the job was.

“If you’re trying to disrupt Carla’s operation,” I said, feeling him out, “you should know that we don’t know anything about the business side. And if you think you can run her out of business by picking off her runners, you should have put some research into the job market around here. All she has to do is call a temp agency and she’ll be fully operational. So you can tell your employer that this strategy isn’t working.”

He moved so quickly that I only got the sense of motion before he was inches in front of me, his arms planted on either side of my head. He moved one hand, slowing when I flinched, and tilted my chin up. Power coursed from him, scrabbling over my skin before it sank, throbbing, into my chest. I ground my teeth to keep from making a sound as the chilled river of power ran over and through me.

He turned my head to the right, then the left, his touch as gentle as his energy was disturbing. Not physically disturbing, disturbing because it felt…good. He smiled, all brilliant white teeth and amused blue eyes, and recognition snapped into place. He’d been at the bar the night we celebrated me completing my run. The sucker I’d mistaken for a gentleman.

He slid onto the seat beside me as if he’d been invited and crossed his long legs. Tilde whined wordlessly. Like a damn dog.

“I could not care less about your Carla,” he said. Pleasantly. As if we were in the middle of a long-running conversation. “My name is Hendrik Vorster. And you are Aerin Crane.”

He offered his hand and I reached for him despite the discomfort that turning caused. He held it more than shook it, and the intensity of his energy current increased. I struggled to get enough air and had to work to keep my eyes away from his. Whatever he was doing, it was intentional, an insidious seduction technique. I’d have bet he didn’t even have to speak and women fell all over him. And I’d have bet good money that’s the way he liked it.

Vorster smiled, sliding his fingers along my palm as he released me. I wrapped my right arm around the left, digging my fingers into my elbow in the hope they’d stay there and off of him. I’d never enjoyed the feel of a vampire before Malcolm, had barely been able to tolerate being in the same room as them, but this…his power running over my body, sinking into it, was fucking
intimate.

“I came to this country searching for someone, but I haven’t been able to see him. And then I heard the most fantastical rumor, that he’d taken up with a courier. I thought it was her.” He gestured toward Tilde, who blushed and self-consciously ran her fingers over her neck. “She fits his tastes, my old business partner. He always liked the pretty ones. Not too smart, easily played. Willing to let him get away with anything.”

I swallowed hard, my mind jumping to accept the idea that was forming. It wasn’t Richard Abel who was after me. Not some rival outfit after Carla’s contracts.

Tilde rose on her knees, reaching for Vorster. Her skirt was rucked up, exposing an angry rash on the inside of her thigh. My nose wrinkled. Not a rash. Broken skin and capillaries from his feeding. Vorster crossed to her, not so quickly this time but enough to make my brain do a double take.

“And what do you let Malcolm get away with, Aerin?” His eyes narrowed as his tone hardened. I wanted to throw up, or laugh hysterically, so I didn’t say anything. I glared at the window, making sure I could take my eyes off him, and trying to figure out how to get free. Walking away from one vampire only to fall victim to another. Unacceptable.

The car slowed. A crowd of teens crossed the street behind us. My eyes followed them as far as they could, picking out the corner of a building, giant sconces lighting up the green exterior. I knew the building. It was used for—

Vorster raised his hand and snapped his fingers to get my attention. At the same time he ratcheted up his energy output. A regular human wouldn’t have understood her compulsion to stare at him, the way her drew her. I knew what he was doing, and still had to curl my hands tight to keep from crawling to him. My collarbone started itching so badly that I wanted to tear my skin off so I could scratch at the bone. It wasn’t comfortable, his forcing his power on me. It was like frozen metal on bare skin—a cold burn.

“Are you having trouble focusing, Aerin?” He leaned forward, dumping Tilde onto the floor from where she’d climbed into his lap. “That’s
his
influence. You probably let him get away with all sorts of things. It’s hard not to. He’s so damn
charming.
Isn’t he?”

Oddly, a taste of his will accompanied the question, as if he wanted me to agree with something that clearly aggravated him. I nodded. Not because he forced me to, but because it was true. My stomach clenched. Malcolm was so charming that I was
desperate
to get to him.

“Where did he say he was going last night?” Vorster asked, smiling when I flinched. His eyes softened, making him seem more accessible, more appealing. And he felt so familiar. “Or do you not ask anymore? Where he goes, what he does.”

“That’s a cheap trick,” I muttered, blinking rapidly. It was a ploy, only a ploy. Malcolm went to the capital. That’s where he was when I was attacked. He hadn’t blown me off. Except he had…

“Perhaps.” He spoke to me even as he looked down his nose at Tilde, examining her before he sniffed dismissively. For some reason, that made me angrier than his grabbing me.

“Maybe if you didn’t snatch people off the street, they’d like you better.”

He bared his teeth, and the air grew noticeably colder. “I doubt that.” He laid his hand on Tilde’s head and she swiveled, pressing her cheek into his palm. “You see how she regards me? I stole her from her life and still she adores me. She cannot help herself.” He sounded vaguely disgusted, and I felt about a minute away from vomiting.

“Why don’t you just send him an invitation?” I shivered. I was tired of the car, and sick of the falsely civil tone of the conversation.

“It doesn’t work like that.” We bumped along for a moment in silence, the limo crawling through a maze of people. Each jolt and turn felt like someone tapping a sharpened mace against my chest, and the drone of Vorster’s power made me painfully sensitive. It was like getting my entire body tattooed, all at the same time.

“I have something to trade,” he said. I looked up from where my gaze had rested, on the safety of the dull, gray floor. “Something of much higher value than his treasure. Have you seen it? The Millennium Falcon?”

I tried to appear as though I was giving his question earnest thought, as if it were normal to ask a person if she’d seen a fictional
Star Wars
spacecraft…in real life. Jesus, he was crazy. Just pure, bat-shit crazy. His gaze roamed my body again and something stirred in me, something utterly unwelcome.

“You’re something special too, aren’t you?” Vorster asked. “Or he wouldn’t be keeping you, wouldn’t be trying to keep you hidden.” He licked his lower lip and ran his tongue around the point of one slightly-elongated fang. I swallowed a dry lump. The car braked hard and we all swayed. Vorster’s eyes darkened, and it was a struggle to shift my gaze from his.

“He doesn’t
keep
me. Now, what the hell are you going to do with us?” The itching in my chest rose to psychotic levels and I felt my own sanity slipping under the pain and panic. I needed to get out of the car and away from goddamn vampires.

“It’s a shame you believe that. He keeps all sorts of things that he shouldn’t. Things that don’t belong to him, that he doesn’t deserve. Things you’re going to help me get back.” Outside, someone drummed a beat on the trunk of the car. Hendrik turned, and I shot for the door.

I had one foot out when he grabbed the back of my jacket and we began moving again. I growled against the pain, Vorster cursed and Tilde went fucking crazy. She sprang onto his back, screaming his name and a flood of demands in broken English. She was jealous, I registered distantly as I twisted, and kicked with my left leg. My boot crunched into something solid. Vorster lost his grip, and momentum pulled me from the moving car.

It felt just as bad as I’d thought it would. I bounced, rolled, and squeezed my eyes shut at the sound of a car horn bearing down on me. Nobody ran me over and I fetched up hard against the curb. Thank everything that was holy that we’d barely been moving.

I cracked an eyelid and stared up into a half dozen concerned faces. They chattered at me as I spent five seconds relearning how to breathe. I unwrapped my arms from my middle and pushed up as they pulled.

“Gracias,”
I muttered through clenched teeth, pushing the hands away.
“Gracias.”

The limo picked up speed, moving away. The crowd—the building I’d glimpsed was a concert hall—was too big. Retrieving me would be too public. They’d park somewhere and Hendrik Vorster and fucking Thurston the betrayer would come and find me. They’d probably take their time, thinking I was too banged up to get away.

I shuffled off, dodging concerned faces and hands that meant to be helpful. My right shoulder was raw, ground up by the road, and I couldn’t identify a single square inch of me that didn’t hurt. But I didn’t like being cornered, not by something bigger and meaner than me.

I dropped into the metro tunnel and shimmied through the train door as it was closing. My head pounded and my legs trembled. At least the itching had subsided, which was a fucking relief. Because I only felt like that when I was going through vampire-accelerated healing. And I only experienced
that
when I was with Malcolm.

If at any point I’d thought Vorster was bluffing about knowing Malcolm, I didn’t anymore. They were close at an integral point in their lives or, more likely, their undeath. Because Vorster felt almost exactly like Malcolm. My body responded to him as though I’d consciously invited him in. And that thought was terrifying.