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Authors: Regan Summers

Tags: #Romance, #Vampires

Running in the Dark (9 page)

BOOK: Running in the Dark
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“We’ll move when it gets light,” Mickey said. The door squeaked when she pushed it open, and she hissed when she saw how I was holding my arm. “You need a doctor.”

“No.” I opened my eyes, tore at my other laces. She crouched, untying them with deft, stained fingers. “I think it’s a clean fracture. The bone’s in position.”

She scrunched her nose, stood up and reached around the tile wall to start a shower, then trotted out of the room. I perked up. Warm water sounded like heaven. The room, despite the mildew in the corners and industrial-solvent-strength soap, wasn’t that different from the garage bathroom Malcolm had arranged for me. That thought sent a pang of longing straight through my center, and I felt a little guilty because I wasn’t thinking about
him
so much as what he could give me. A couple days of lying around with him would be enough for my body to use his ambient energy to seal the fracture in my collarbone. Healing without him would take weeks.

I managed to get my pants off, and one soggy sock, when Mickey reappeared with a wicked pair of scissors. She’d taken her hair down and it twisted around her face like spastic snakes.

“Here,” she said, “this will make it easier.” She reached for the left sleeve of my shirt, and I shoved her with my good arm.

“This is from Shinzu Cormera’s ’97 Japan tour. I would rather chew my own arm off than cut it. It’s a classic.”

Mickey pointed at it and grimaced. “It’s already ripped on the shoulder. And the lettering is all peeled off. I always wondered where you came from. Now I know it’s the place that says ‘classic’ when they mean ‘garbage.’”

“You just don’t know quality when you see it.” My condescending tone lost its strength when I couldn’t get my head all the way out of the shirt and started worming around frantically. Claustrophobia, I has it. Mickey pulled the shirt gently over my head and slid it off my bad arm.

“Is there someone you need to call?” she asked.

“Yes,” I mumbled, then immediately snapped, “No.”

She looked at me, puzzled, while I smiled, a pathetic attempt to reassure her I was okay while I was shivering and mostly naked. “Are you sure?”

Malcolm needed to know what had happened but I couldn’t call him, because he wasn’t human. And I couldn’t order delivery of a message, because I would either have to ask Carla to send someone or walk in to another shop. While the odds were low that anybody else would recognize me as the new runner in town, once my name was linked to Malcolm, I’d be compromised. There was no law against having a relationship with a vampire. Couriers just didn’t do it…not unless they were compelled to.

I sighed and rubbed at my eyes. Maybe the situation wasn’t so bad. Maybe this was a fluke, some Chilean version of hazing, but with less beer and more broken bones.

“You tell me if you change your mind,” Mickey said gently. “Sometimes we think people do not care about us when they still do. Then, sometimes we think people care about us when all they really want is to know what’s for dinner and when we play Argentina.
Hijos de puta.

She raised the scissors in her fist and I leaned back. “Yikes. Thinking about any particular son of a bitch, Mick?”

A car rattled outside, slowing in front of the shop. We both froze. It sputtered, picked up and drove on. Mickey put her hands on my hips and pulled my panties down my legs.

“Whoa!”

“I don’t want to be caught in here by fangers.” She unhooked my bra and pushed me toward the shower. “Be quick. Two Brujas Found Naked and Dead in Kinky Vampire-Courier Sex Crime
.
My mother will kill me if she sees that headline.”

Chapter Nine

Mickey slid a heavy red platter onto the table and pushed it toward me as she nodded at whatever Jace told her over the phone.

“They are bored,” she said, shoveling food onto my plate until I raised a hand to defend it. “And Tilde is very angry to be kept. Carla will not pay them for the hours.”

I rolled my eyes. With so much competition, Carla wasn’t raking in the dough, but damn if she wasn’t tight with her margins. I was glad not to be trapped in the garage with the two runners and the boss. Mickey’s apartment, while small, was quiet and comfortable.

“And…” Mickey’s voice rose half an octave. Her eyebrows knit together as she listened, still nodding as though Jace could see it. She turned toward me. “There’s been another body. A dead-ender in a mansion in the hills.” Her nose scrunched up and she pressed the cell phone against her chest and whispered, “His fangs were still out.”

I almost dropped my fork. “A dead sucker?” She nodded and we stared at each other.

“Wait, if there’s a body—if he hasn’t burned—then how can anybody tell if he’s actually, truly dead? Maybe he’s just resting.” Malcolm didn’t breathe when he slept. He needed to in order to talk, but I think he did it out of habit. A conscious habit. He moved sometimes in his sleep, smooth, undulating motions that made me wonder what vampires dreamed of. Probably not chasing rabbits.

Mickey raised the phone again and relayed my question. I leaned back, grunting as I landed too hard against the chair back. I breathed out a curse when Mickey made a sharp, horrified sound.

“The other vampires were scared,” she said, one hand fluttering over her mouth. “It was…inflated. Red all over. Skin, eyes, everything. Like it had—”

“Overfilled with blood.” I stared at my plate, my gaze moving slowly from one grain of rice to the next as my mind tried to make sense of what I was hearing. Livia, flushed and bloated. The van. The men in blue. Did Thurston know what was happening to her, that the drug she was taking—I had no doubt it was Goya’s product—was killing her? Really killing her.

“Can Jace ask the other shop if it delivered anything from a corporate sender to the dead…” Mickey glanced down at her phone and frowned.

“She’s gone. Her phone was dying when I called. Eat.” She dropped into the chair across from me and smiled, any disturbance over the conversation gone. Of course, she didn’t know that this true death was connected to the dead humans, and that it probably wouldn’t be the last. Or she just wasn’t easily disturbed. Her place was cheerful—bright yellow and orange walls, tinkling beaded curtains, and a selection of brand-spanking-new electronics that looked suspiciously like they’d fallen off the back of a truck.

“Just ask her when she gets home if the other runners delivered anything from Goya Worldwide.”

“Bueno.”
Mickey mounded rice and fish together on a tortilla. “Now, since you will not let me take you to a doctor, at least eat. Otherwise I might think you are a robot.”

“I’m not a robot.” I grinned.

“So you say. You drive too fast. You learn too quick. You don’t eat.” She raised her eyebrows. I took a bite.

I spent the day alternately dozing, staring suspiciously out the window at Mickey’s innocent neighbors and being stuffed with endless leftovers. She had a thing for American pop music, the New York Yankees and delicious, delicious food.

She also slept with a stuffed B. A. Baracas doll in her arms and the hilt of a knife sticking out from under her pillow. My kind of gal. Jace didn’t call back and night fell too soon. I tiptoed to the front door and pulled on a stiff blue ball cap. The clothes I was wearing—hers—were tighter than I was used to. My boots and coat were still damp and I didn’t have the tools for a proper makeup job, but it was time to move. Malcolm was due back at nightfall, and I had all kinds of things to tell him.

He’d given me the address of the blood lounge that served as his headquarters in the city. Vampires liked to conduct business socially, probably because they were sneaky bastards and everybody wanted to see what the other guy was doing. Mal had said that if anything happened, I was to go there. Something had sure as shit happened. Soraya might have been there during the day, but since I got jumped while she was supposed to have been watching my back, I was leery of running to her for help. He trusted her, and maybe he had a reason to. I didn’t. I slid the last of Mickey’s four locks free and poked my head into an empty hallway painted just as brightly as her place.

I locked the knob—she would be pissed about the rudimentary security when she woke—and headed out. Protocol dictated that I go to Carla, who would report my attack to her senator. Except the senator was only human, and I wasn’t sure about Carla. Not about her being human, but about her allegiances.

I’d spent the day replaying the night in my mind. If I’d been marked due to my position in Santiago rather than who I was, that had something to do with my employment with her. Her other runners were safe. I was the only one who had been attacked, on the same night that she’d been surprised by a big deal and suddenly become interested in where I’d come from. That didn’t sound like a coincidence.

Carla dressed well. She drove a pearlescent blue Porsche Cayenne, and she’d had enough work done that she looked a well-preserved forty instead of what I suspected was closer to fifty. I had no doubt her house was as new as her eyelids and as slick as her ride. She liked expensive things, and three runners on the low end of the spectrum weren’t enough to finance a high-end life. There was at least one person who would pay big money to know my whereabouts.

Alternatively, I was alone when I was jumped. After Malcolm had made it clear to his vassal, who should have followed his orders at least as well as he followed Bronson’s, that she was to watch over me.

I hopped a bus to downtown and sat near the door. Twilight rolled over the mountains and rendered the city a spray of twinkling lights in a bowl of darkness. It had stopped raining, at least. I wasn’t looking forward to walking into El Arquero. The place was a blood lounge. I’d entered them a few times, pushing through the waiting lines of humans to make deliveries, but I’d never been inside one. The idea was creepy even if Malcolm was there, and if he wasn’t… I shifted in my seat, my stomach churning, my chest and shoulder throbbing despite the eight Tylenol I’d taken.

Around me, people climbed on and off the bus. Going home to families, to daylight lives where they didn’t have to use other names or wear disguises. I scrubbed at my face, feeling silly and strange without makeup. I smelled like Mickey’s floral detergent, which was pleasant rather than revolting, and wore only a couple passes of navy eyeliner.

I got off the bus as a group of young men clambered on in a cloud of boisterous singing, musky cologne and flashy threads. My breath plumed the air as I fast-walked, head down, through the business-casual crowd and jogged down the stairs into the metro.

I switched trains twice, then cabbed it a half mile, getting out three blocks from the club. It was on the edge of a renovated industrial strip in between retail commercial and high-end lofts. The old, flat-roofed stone buildings had been cleaned up and given larger, modern windows, which were full of small locally manufactured goods—clothing, rugs, a stoneware company capitalizing off of Pomaire-style pottery.

In the middle of these enterprises stood El Arquero. I’d driven by a couple of times while figuring out routes and surroundings. The building was tall and spare, separated from its neighbors by the dark twin slashes of alleys. An orange patina covered the heavy tile facade, intersected by strips of smoked black glass that were thicker at the bottom and narrowed toward the top of the third story. Bronson’s lounges in Anchorage, if they still stood after his war, featured a lot of neon and winking chrome. Flashy, bright and colorful against the grayscape of winter. El Arquero was designed to look like the freaking front doors of hell. All it needed was smoke and brimstone.

I paused around the corner and pulled Mickey’s hat lower on my forehead, grimacing when my clavicle grated. It was one thing to walk into a nest while working, with my clipboard and a purpose. The laminate meant I was more than just a human, a courier rather than a woman, and I rarely had to venture any deeper than the entryway to get a signature.

Blood lounges weren’t just for socializing and holding meetings and being seen. They were also sanctioned feeding grounds. Approved and regulated by human authorities, at least on paper, they were still buildings in which humans cut themselves open and bled for money. If that was all they did.

My mom had been a feeder. Scars ran the length of her arms, precise and parallel, except for those that weren’t. When I was very young, I’d run my fingers over them as she rocked me out of whatever nightmare had woken me or happened while I was awake. She hadn’t been pretty enough to work in a lounge but her blood was desirable enough for house calls. Or the backseat of a car at the edge of a darkened parking lot. Or a vacant building.

I’d wait outside, shrinking back against whatever solid surface I could find, wondering if that would be the time she didn’t come back. The vampires would parade out, flushed and satiated. At least the vamps in the lounges followed the rules. And Malcolm was in there, probably lording over them, all decked out in his pimp rags.

I blew out a breath and kicked the toe of my boot against the sidewalk. I knew what Malcolm was before I hooked up with him. In theoretical, Wikipedia terms, I understood how he survived. But I wasn’t sure I’d see him the same after I witnessed him behaving as a vampire. Then again, I had a strong desire to live, so it wasn’t like I had a choice. Maybe they’d be between meals.

Three heavy vehicles hulked in front of the club, exhaust fogging the air. The crowd that would gather later in the night, hoping to be allowed inside for a peek at the vampires, was absent. The club appeared closed, but energy crackled around the building. I jogged across the street, peering both ways and into all the shadows big enough to hide a person. The doors opened as I reached for them, swinging inward, which would be odd for a human business, but a lot of vampire places worked like that. It added to their freaky factor. As if they needed it.

The doors shushed closed behind me, the cool air cut off and replaced with the cloying scent of lilies. I ignored the rise of claustrophobia and aimed for the warm, flickering light and polished glass visible through a doorway. A body stepped out, so large that it eclipsed the light. I slowed but didn’t stop. This wasn’t my first rodeo.

“¿Que quiere?”

I almost laughed. The list of things I wanted was nearing infinite, but seeing Malcolm had a long lead on all the others. The vampire sounded local, from what I could make out through the baritone rumble. Hell of a welcoming committee.

“Tengo que ver Malcom Kelly. é les…“

“Imposible.”

The vampire, who had to be six foot four, stepped back when I kept moving, pivoted away when I raised a hand. He stood beside a lectern, but the brawn of his shoulders and biceps beneath a dark suit coat indicated he was more security guard than concierge. Coarse black hair jutted away from his head over thick brows and a square jaw. Square head, more like it. He must have had a terrible time finding hats.

A large mirror hung on the wall opposite me in a wrought-iron frame. I looked frumpy and coltish. He didn’t have a reflection, which was ten kinds of disorienting. Behind me, glass clinked and people talked in low murmurs, typical restaurant sounds minus cutlery and chewing. I ignored that. Malcolm would be working, not hanging out.

I glanced past the guard, down a short hallway that opened up to the business side of the lounge, a room that resembled nothing so much as a library. A dozen small square tables topped with candles, identical pads of paper, and fountain pens stood obediently in even rows. Booths lined the room, discreetly closed away behind sliding glass doors that were no doubt soundproof. Several of them had thick privacy curtains drawn. I cleared my throat.

“Me está esperando,”
I said slowly, conjugating in my head and hoping I was telling him I was expected.
“So solo le dijiese—”

“Solo te repito una vez mas, jovencita, no es posible.”
It wasn’t possible to see Malcolm, and the meathead didn’t want to repeat himself. That made two of us. He shifted, not moving toward me but somehow inflating himself. Turning up the intimidation factor. I dropped one hand to my hip and pointed at him.

Frustration jumped on top of eighteen hours of fear and pain, and I struggled with the words. This was supposed to be my safe house in times of trouble, and yet all I’d gotten was more trouble. “
Me está esperando…
I don’t think you understand who I am. My name—”

This time he did step forward. I stiffened, refusing to retreat when he leaned down and bared his teeth. At least it was only his regular teeth.

“You are not listening,” he said, thankfully also switching to English. “This is El Arquero. It does not matter what your name is, girl. You are not welcome here. Walk away. Find yourself a hive that enjoys the taste of desperation.”

The guard straightened, his eyes gleaming with malicious amusement. He was calling me a fang-banger, thinking that I’d come for the bite. Because I wasn’t beautiful. Because I wasn’t well kept. Not the kind of girl who was worth Malcolm’s time. I took a deep breath, so angry that I actually needed more oxygen to function.

Vampire energy assailed me, riding in on my drawn breath, but not in a directed way. The guard wasn’t trying to influence me, because to him I wasn’t worth it. So Malcolm hadn’t told the doorman to expect me. Fine. That was smart. Couldn’t have these people—Bronson’s people—knowing I was alive and running. There were other ways to play this. I rubbed my eyes, sorting through the ambient power, searching for the familiar heat that meant
him.

I didn’t get a fix on him like I would if we were alone together, when I knew exactly where to find him, but he was definitely close. I focused.

BOOK: Running in the Dark
4.93Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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