Running in the Dark (6 page)

Bronson didn’t get majority ownership of the mines he discovered or expanded, and had to follow the human guidelines for punishments related to infractions involving humans.
If
the government found out about them. Malcolm was dealing with Vega, and most likely the vampires took care of things quietly unless the crimes became public, like the girls who’d been attacked. I’d seen just enough of the news to know that I didn’t want to hear about another attack like that.

I pulled my clothes on, thinking back to Jace’s comment about more bodies. Maybe she hadn’t just been trying to scare me. “Has it? Gone all to hell?”

“Nothing that can’t be fixed with proper effort,” he said through gritted teeth. I had a feeling those were words he’d been told.

“Did you hear about the other dead feeders?” I asked, worming into my tank top. “Or, I guess they might not have been feeders, but they were found in a hive. That wasn’t part of the ripple, was it?” I surfaced from the shirt to find him staring at me, gold smoke rolling through his eyes. “One of the other shops said they’d walked in on a couple of dead people.”

“It wasn’t the same, no. Have you had unusual deliveries to the hives recently? Very large packages, or not so large, but perishable?”

I chewed on my lip, staring at the ceiling as I thought. If I had, I couldn’t come right out and tell him things I’d seen while on the job. But it was a nonissue anyway. “How do you define large? I haven’t seen anything bigger than a shoe box. And what’s perishable? Is somebody running a meals-on-wheels service for the undead?”

“Don’t laugh,” he said, the light receding from his eyes. “That concept was tried once. Everything tasted like duck blood.”

I threw a hand up. “You don’t know what duck blood tastes like.”

He stared levelly back. “Hints of webbed foot.”

“Agh!”

Shallow lines crinkled around his eyes and I couldn’t help but move toward him. I wrapped my arms around his waist and leaned against him.

“If you see something odd, will you tell me?” There was something to the way he asked, something off in the cadence or intonation, like he’d wanted to add a dose of influence to his request. He stroked my back, his fingers tripping down my spine.

“What are you expecting?” I hedged. I didn’t want to snitch for anybody, not even him, and especially not him in that role.

A familiar feeling streamed across the base of my brain. Fear. Fear that our relationship was too complicated, too difficult. It would be easy to cut and run now, before one of us screwed up majorly, or he forgot himself. My gaze rose to his mouth, the flash of teeth as he spoke. He fought—I’d felt the strain in his body—against his desire to bite me. And if he could do that, I could try to make things work. Odd how the person I felt easiest with right now was the most different from me.

“It’s the strangest thing,” he said, squeezing my arms. “You’re right here. I can feel you, but it’s like you’ve checked out.”

I shook my head. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

“There’s a chemical component to these breakdowns, and it’s not produced locally. It’s being delivered.”

“If the packages are large, maybe it’s being sent direct.” It took me a moment to get my brain back on track. “Not everybody uses couriers if they aren’t concerned with anonymity or safety. The parcel-delivery companies charge a shit-ton extra for it, but they do deliver to vampires. It wouldn’t even have to be a legit business or home. Runners don’t usually handle anything bigger than we can carry. In case, you know, we actually have to run with it. You’re sure it’s sizable amounts?”

“We’ve seized a couple of decent stashes. It seems unlikely it’s coming in one vial at a time.” His fingers lingered on the ragged scar on my left arm. Maybe that was what the vampire with them at Vega’s, the one who’d scurried out with a large box, was doing. Confiscating. I opened my mouth to ask, and then froze at his next words. “Christ, I’m late. Come, you should meet Soraya. I invited her in.”

Oh, yeah.
Her.
Technically this was his house, so he could invite anybody he wanted in. And she didn’t have access to me anywhere else. His invitation was specific to him and his spaces.

I didn’t like the sound of that either.

She stood in front of the door leading to the tunnel, hands clasped behind her back, her beautiful face utterly blank. Creepy as shit.

“Syd, this is Soraya, my vassal. Sora, Sydney.”

His vassal. Some vampires lost their makers by force, and if they didn’t want to follow the vampire who bested the head honcho, they could pledge to another. A vassal was a symbiote, bound to loyalty but also guaranteed protection. It was a mutual agreement, and a vampire almost never took another under his protection unless he got something in return. She walked toward us with smooth, sure strides, and terrible ideas of what she had to offer filled my mind.

“It is my pleasure to meet you, mistress.” She had a strong, clipped accent, and the way she said “mistress” was more formal than I’d have been able to pull off if I’d put in a year at charm school. She barely touched my hand when she shook it, but there was something familiar in the rattle of her energy. It was like a scent triggering an old memory. I’d have bet dollars to doughnuts she’d been following me.

“Oh, please,” I said, feigning the fuck out of friendliness, “Sydney is fine. And it’s really great to meet you too, Soraya.” She nodded, her eyes already focused over my head. On Malcolm. I was a duty discharged, and one she didn’t seem particularly pleased to have performed. Statuesque vampire warrior vassal in nice clothes disses little human in faded cotton. Awesome.

Malcolm’s hand slid up the back of my neck and he kissed my temple. “She’ll be able to teach you. Start with the basics, Sora. Try not to let her get carried away.”

“I don’t get carried away.” And I didn’t just sound like a spoiled child.

“I’ll be in Valparaiso through tomorrow, back the following night. You know how to reach me.” The last was said to her, and Malcolm brushed past before I fully registered what was happening.

The female remained beside me as Malcolm opened the door to the tunnel. This equation wasn’t right. Not only wasn’t I getting sweaty combat, I was being left in the care of someone who could very well be an enemy. I glanced sidelong at Soraya, who stood motionless against the wall.

“Well, have a great trip,” I said, turning back to Malcolm as bitterness curdled my tongue. “Give my best to
el presidente
.”

“Any special requests?”

“Yeah, tell him he needs to take care of the pothole issues on the edge of Recoleta.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” He smiled, his expression full of warmth. It flattened when his gaze moved to Soraya. She nodded, and then he was gone. I leaned back against the wall opposite the vampiress, doing my best to appear relaxed.

“You’ve been following me.”

Her eyes widened a fraction, then she shrugged and looked away. “He said you might notice.”

“It’s not nice to stalk.” I headed for the kitchen. “I’m free next Tuesday, if you’d like to come back then.”

Malcolm had a lot of wine in the house. I’d never taken the time to inventory, but I was in the mood to start counting with a glass abacus. Soraya snatched the corkscrew when I reached for it, then leaned down. Orange smoke rolled through her dark eyes. “I don’t know what game you are playing with him, human, but you are free right now.”

I crossed my arms. “I’m getting the feeling you don’t like me, vampire.”

Chapter Six

I was wrong. She didn’t dislike me. She hated me.

“I haven’t done anything,” I pleaded, swallowing hard when my stomach suggested throwing up as a course of action. “Or if I have, I’ll stop. I swear. Just please…no more.”

“He wants you to be able to protect yourself. I am simply giving you the skills to fulfill his wishes.”

“What’s with you guys, anyway? Where did you meet, some Big Fangsters Big Sisters program?”

“He has not told you about me?” She sounded disappointed, which I found ridiculously satisfying. “You will have to ask him. It is not my place.”

I rolled onto my back. Soraya’s boot had left a tread print on my gray T-shirt. “I think you broke my bladder.”

“You are not broken. Up. Again. This time, do not come straight forward. That was a front kick. It uses your own momentum against you. When you face only one opponent, keep circling. Away from the dominant hand or weapon.”

“What if they have a gun?” I made it to one knee, paused to wipe sweat from every pore on my face. If I weren’t already charged up from being with Malcolm, I would have been in a coma. We’d discovered that the longer I was in contact with him—close, physical contact being preferable for several reasons—the better my body was able to utilize the energy he gave off. All humans were able to do it to some extent, which explained why live-in feeders’ life expectancies didn’t change much despite being literally drained on a regular basis. Vampires mutate during the undeath process, and the power that sustains them after they rise also keeps their bodies from decaying. I tried not to think about it too much, because the idea that I was absorbing the energy he shed and using it to regenerate dying or damaged tissue more quickly was freaky. It was also pretty fucking handy.

Soraya crouched in front of me. I flinched when she raised her hand, then realized she only held a bottle of water.

We were in a warehouse, on a small patch of concrete near the entrance. The rest of it was paved in steel, from the floors to the walls to the weirdly cell-like rooms filling the remainder of the space. She’d tried to explain what they were for, and it came out sounding like a cube farm for vampires. Apparently they didn’t outsource things like money counting, and most communication was written by hand. I only saw the rush deliveries and packages sent from outside, but there was casual correspondence within the city, and some kind of newsletter. An old school printing press lurked like a metal praying mantis in the back.

“We do not use guns. Slashing weapons to open veins, blunt instruments to crush bones. These things we prefer.”

“Awesome.” I gulped water and it ran down my front. Maybe it would wash away some of my sweat and failure. We’d been going at it for less than a half hour and I was seriously considering quitting. Except that would mean she’d won, and I wasn’t
that
desperate yet.

I made it to my feet, pressed a hand to my stomach and grimaced as I set the bottle on top of a crate. Soraya lifted my shirt and I tried to slap her hand off but missed. I couldn’t tell if she was that quick, or if I was that tapped.

“I’d rather you undressed me with your eyes, if that’s cool.”

“You’re bruised,” she said, retreating a good ten feet in the blink of an eye. Quick, then.

“You just kicked my ass—and several of my more tender organs—all over this warehouse. Of course I’m bruised.” I turned my left shoulder toward her, bringing my hands up and balancing my weight. Her lessons, when they weren’t punctuated by soft-tissue damage, were actually pretty good. “So, what’s next? Lemme have it.”

She shook her head, and the lines between her eyes smoothed as her expression flattened. “He said you could heal.”

I blinked, wondering exactly how much Malcolm had told her about me. Wondering what else they talked about. He was playful, for a vampire. She was about as fun as a two-by-four full of rusty nails.

“Sure. But it takes time, maybe a couple of days.” And I had to open up and accept the vampire’s energy, which I wasn’t about to do with her. For all I knew, she had some secret vampire ninja technique for inserting poison into her energy. “Now, come on. It’s almost morning, and I’m sure you need to turn back into a bat or something.”

“Maybe you should not think of fighting vampires.”

“Believe me, I have never once thought it would be a good idea to fight a vampire. Now, come along…” Why the sudden reversal? She didn’t seem like it bothered her to toss me around, but I couldn’t get a good read on her. She’d gone from businesslike to hesitant in a heartbeat. Well, my heartbeat anyway.

“You are too slow, too weak. I cannot help you.” And now she sounded almost fearful, which made no sense, because it wasn’t like I was getting stronger or faster.

“You say the sweetest things, Soraya. But seriously. What’s next?”

She paced back and forth on a small, precise circuit. “Very well, if you wish to continue. But you cannot fight to win. If you can distract or disable, do that. And then run.” She crouched and her fangs half dropped, visibly denting her lip. The hairs rose on the back of my neck. “You know how to run, don’t you? I will give you a minute’s head start.”

I ran.

I wouldn’t ever break any land-speed records, but I could move. And better yet, I could run in urban environments, like those that butted up against the warehouse. I sprinted past my sedan and up the road Soraya had pointed out on a map before meeting me, then took a left onto a side street I’d glimpsed on the way in. It was a tight residential area—the kind you find in old, poor communities where nobody cares about following ordinances or fire codes. There were lean-tos attached to houses, stairs chained off and scrap-metal walls thrown up between buildings to create shabby new living spaces. Some blocks had fifty houses on them. Others were vacant except for rusted heaps of refuse.

I cruised down a narrow, rutted alley, then dodged through a grease-smelling shed that seemed to be shared by two small single-story homes. A chain rattled to my right, and a dog growled as I passed. Down ten stone steps and a right that had me vaulting over a retaining wall. I brushed gravel from my hands, leaped over sprawled and disemboweled lawn furniture and took another left toward a row of junked cars. Soraya’s chill presence brushed against my back, and adrenaline heated my veins. I smiled, deked around a puttering Moped and took a right.

Three blocks away lights coursed evenly along a busier street. Streets meant witnesses, cabs and possibly unlocked doors. Doors meant vampire-proof barriers. I skimmed the long cinder-block wall of an apartment complex cracked by quake damage and nearly collided with a woman as she backed onto the street.

I twisted, lost my footing and fell. Rolled, popped up and made it to the other side of the road before looking back. The woman squeezed against the wall and her hands rose defensively as a man stepped out of the alley she’d come from. He was big, solid, and she was terrified. My steps faltered, the sounds of traffic in the distance and my heavy breathing fading as he yelled at her. He jerked, one of those fake-out threats to hit, and she flinched, her arms covering her face. He laughed.

I turned on my heel, but didn’t complete my first step before Soraya landed on me. She was just
there,
left arm wrapped snug around my throat, right hand catching my wrist as I tried to swing at her.

“Uncle,” I croaked. It took all the control I’d cultivated to suppress my primal need to get loose. Fight or flight, it’s all about being free, and the vampire would let me go when she decided to let me go.

She spun me to face her and I almost slumped in relief. Across the street, the predawn bully was shaking his lady by the shoulders.

“Your initial route was good. Trying to lose your scent in those chemicals, among other breathing humans. But you need to get to where others can protect you. A crowd. Officials of some sort. Or lock yourself away.”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s where I was going, but—”

“No
but
. When you train, you must move as if this is real. You must know what you are capable of so that you can do what you must to survive.” She pulled both my fists up, pressed the bases of my palms until they opened. “You did not even pick up a weapon.”

“I have a knife,” I said. “Now if you will excuse me.” I peered around her just as the man hauled off and hit the woman. Soraya’s head snapped around as the woman slid to the ground, curling up behind her knees. I stepped forward but the vampiress shoved me back with a hard hand to the center of my chest. Her eyes flashed with red-tinged orange light. It dimmed when she closed her eyes to mere slits.

She marched across the street, silent but with predatory focus. The bully must have sensed something because he turned. Soraya didn’t register as a problem, probably because she was a woman and he couldn’t see past that to the muscle and the ferocity and the fangs. He smiled, the dumb bastard. And she calmly reached out, grabbed his arm and broke it over her knee.

I jumped.

He staggered back, howling. The woman scrambled up and away, making a high-pitched keening sound as she ran. Soraya looked both ways and crossed the street again.

“Holy shit,” I whispered.

“That is why you stopped?” She pointed at the man, now slumped where the woman had been. “You thought you would take on that bigger man?”

“Not so big where it counts, if I had to guess.” I shrugged, trying to shake off my unease. “I couldn’t walk off and let him treat her like that, you know?” Men like him were typically cowards, but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t have knocked me out cold if I’d tried to intervene. Someday I really needed to work on my impulse control. That, or always hang out with Soraya.

“I see.” Her tone did not convey understanding.

The sky was starting to lighten, moving from gray toward pale yellow, as we started back toward the warehouse. The only sound was my footsteps and the rattling of dog chains every now and again.

“Malcolm told you to be careful,” she said in a way that sounded like a command rather than a question. I nodded. “Even with vampires you think you know, you must be on guard.”

“Yeah, I get it. Because of the one that lost control.”

“More than one,” she said. If they could have, my ears would have pricked up. “They’ve turned on feeders, hivemates in a couple of cases.”

My head snapped toward her and her mouth twitched downward. I’d bet she hadn’t meant to spill that. “I don’t remember seeing this on the news.”

“It is one of the concerns he will discuss with your human government. It’s not always our kind that chooses to conceal.” She raised her hand as if she was going to voice a strong opinion, then closed it into a loose fist. “In any case, the change is not immediate. The substance they are using corrupts the body before the mind. Veins crumble, cease to deliver blood throughout the body. The remaining veins burst. They bleed out through their skin. You will be able to see if something is wrong.”

“Do they swell up?”

“Perhaps. It’s possible the blood pools before finding its escape.”

“That’s got to be uncomfortable.”

Soraya stopped and her lips peeled back from her teeth. Then she shuddered, and started walking again. “I do not know. I would not
want
to know.”

“Because of the puking?”

She tilted her head to the side. “What is ‘the puking’?”

“You know. Vomiting. Throwing up.” I mimicked the action, quietly, since we were walking through someone’s backyard. Soraya started to laugh, then abruptly schooled her expression.

“If we overindulge, our bodies burn off the excess more quickly, turning it immediately into power. We do not…puke.” We walked on, Soraya facing forward, even though I could feel her attention on me. Livia was swollen as a pregnant cow, and I hadn’t imagined her throwing up. But she hadn’t been spewing extra energy. I’d barely felt any power from her, even when she tried to glamour me.

“A vampire who glutted himself to the point of overflowing,” Soraya said slowly, “would be…ill. It would not be natural, but it would be something different than this. You will tell me if you have seen such a thing.” Her words slid, a jagged cage of ice squeezing my eyes, and I made a show of staggering under the slight influence.

“I haven’t,” I said dreamily. “I was just wondering.” It was my turn to face forward and appear oblivious. So Malcolm hadn’t told her I couldn’t be influenced. Good to know he kept
something
from her.

Maybe Livia wasn’t a newbie with an overeating problem, but what I’d seen had been in the course of the job. While I wasn’t ruled by a strict client-messenger confidentiality clause, registered couriers don’t talk about what they see on the job unless it breaks human law. Making an ass of oneself on one’s own property is a universal right, and Soraya didn’t think it was related to the cracked-out vampire problem. I didn’t want to turn Livia in for being a little different, even if Soraya thought it was unnatural, but if it was serious, I’d figure out a way to tell Malcolm.

“Again tomorrow,” Soraya said. “Daybreak at your home. He will not be back until that night. We’ll spend the day working there on close-quarters techniques.”

“A couple hours after dawn.” I yawned. “I have to have my car worked on. I take it you’ll be following me tomorrow night.” She nodded curtly. “Hey, try not to be so obvious. When you stayed behind to spy on me at Vega’s, they were totally on to you. If I become known for having a vampire shadow, my rep will be in the gutter before it has a chance to take off.”

She craned her head around, eyes flaming. If I let Mal’s vassal intimidate me now, she would never respect me. I stared levelly back, my pulse pounding in my temples. The orange fire faded slowly from her eyes.

“I will do my best, mistress.” Her voice sounded strained and her pace picked up. I grinned at her discomfiture, not because I was totally relieved she’d blinked first. Maybe she was like the family that Mal said didn’t walk human streets. A recluse with no idea of what to do with a human.

“Cool. And, for the love of God, please stop calling me that. It makes me feel like we’re in some really awful BDSM movie.”