Under the Gun (6 page)

“There isn’t one yet. Once everything gets processed, we’ll have a better idea.”

“Okay,” I tried, “what’s the unofficial thought?”

Alex swung his head and blew out a long breath. “I thought that one of these days
I’d walk into a crime scene that wouldn’t surprise me. Guess today wasn’t that day.”

I sighed. “I’ll say.”

We walked the rest of the way up the bluff in silence. I fell behind and trailed Alex
until we reached the crest. “Geez,” he muttered. “Doesn’t anyone work anymore?”

I followed his gaze to the looky-loos being herded back by the police and their ineffectual
metal fencing. The crowd size had at least doubled while we’d been checking out the
bodies, and a steady stream of cars was clogging the street and the mouth of the parking
lot.

I opened my mouth to respond but froze dead when the girl at the very front of the
crowd caught my eye. Her long, dark hair was impossibly straight and glossy, barely
rustled by the wind. She stood still, her back ramrod straight, her knuckles white
from her death grip on the metal top of the fence. Everything about her said she was
ready to jump, to fight, that at the slightest provocation this woman would snap.
Everything about her was on high alert.

“Feng,” I whispered.

Feng turned as though she’d heard me and her razor-sharp gaze split me in half. There
was fire in her eyes and a determined angle to her mouth.

“Did you say something, Lawson?”

“Uh—” I stumbled. “Nah. Nothing.” I pulled open the car door and slid into the warm
cab; Alex did the same. “I just think I know someone in the crowd.”

Alex dipped his key in the ignition and the car roared to life. “Demon or breather?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Nice with the lingo. She’s a breather.” I gestured toward Feng
with my chin. “Right there. Up front. She’s Chinese with the long hair.”

Alex shook his head appraisingly. “She’s pretty.”

I got a weird stab of jealously but shrugged it off. “She’s an assassin.”

Alex clicked the engine off and he turned in his seat. “An assassin?”

I nodded, my eyes still on Feng, who had lost interest in me and was staring back
toward the crime scene. She looked incredibly calm and statuesque among the other
onlookers; most were shuffling, moving, jockeying for a better view. But Feng stood
still, her eyes focused as if she could see something no one else in the crowd could.

I swallowed and faced Alex. “She hunts werewolves. Her family makes silver bullets
and is responsible for slaughtering pretty much every wolf in San Francisco.”

“So she’s like a werewolf slayer?”

“Not like,
is
,” I said morbidly. Alex seemed supremely unaffected by the disgust I felt when talking
about the Du family’s “work.” “They work out of a deli in Chinatown.”

“I wonder what she’s doing all the way out here. And, you know,
here.
”

I shrugged and Alex went for the ignition again and then stopped. He looked at me
and the flick of the muscle in his chin made my heart sink. I knew that flick. It
was the “I’m not letting this go” flick. “Why do you think a werewolf hunter would
come out to a crime scene?”

I crossed my arms in front of my chest, giving Alex a hard look. “I have no idea.
Maybe she did it. Maybe she wanted something else to hunt since the family business
is going through a bit of a dry spell.”

“You mean because they killed all the werewolves in town?”

I didn’t say anything, but Alex still didn’t start the car, still didn’t break his
gaze. “Are there any new werewolves in town, Lawson?”

I shook my head. “Haven’t processed any in I don’t know how long.”

I saw Alex’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed slowly. “How about a werewolf who isn’t
new in town?”

A wire of heat snaked up the back of my neck. I stared out the windshield and focused
on the line of trees edging the scene in front of me. “What are you talking about?
And can we get going? I have to get back to work.” I checked my wrist bone, hoping
Alex wouldn’t notice that I wasn’t wearing a watch. Or possibly hoping that he
would
notice and change the subject. Instead, I felt his hand on my shoulder, his fingers
warm on my cool flesh. Unwillingly, I turned to face Alex, to look into those earnest
cobalt eyes. Eyes that a girl could fall into.

“Is he back, Lawson? Is Pete Sampson back in San Francisco?”

I looked out the window, doing my best to focus on a crushed Starbuck’s cup in the
parking space next to ours. I knew Alex could read minds. I also knew that he rarely
did it to me, likely because the few times he did, my mind was full of him, wearing
nothing but coconut oil and a cocktail umbrella. But I couldn’t afford for him to
do it now.

“I’m not going to read your mind, Lawson.”

I bristled in an attempt to hide my fear. “Then how did you know what I was thinking?”

“Because I know you.”

My heart throbbed, caught between wanting to tell Alex everything and wanting to protect
Sampson.

“And I guess I’m just supposed to trust your angelic promises,” I said, arms crossed
in front of my chest.

Alex looked away. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”

“What? What are you talking about? You did it before.” Heat rose to my cheeks, remembering
his slick grin after the coconut oil thing.

“Something’s changed now. Something’s different.”

I was genuinely curious. “What’s different?”

His shoulders rose. “I don’t know.” He sighed, turning to me, and the look in his
eyes truly wounded me. “I wish I did.”

I felt the need to confess to everything I’ve ever done that may have hurt him, but
he went on. “I tried to reach you when I was gone, and all I got was static.”

“You tried to reach me?” It was a mere whisper, the words sticking in my throat. Tears
stung at my eyes.
He had reached out. He had tried . . .

Sampson. Focus. I let a little niggle of anger boil up, reminding myself that Alex
wasn’t trying to reach me: he was trying to read my mind. And a telephone was readily
available and a hell of a lot more reliable than the “loving” mind dip.

I broke his gaze, seeing the tip of his police badge winking on his belt. “No, Alex,”
I said, shaking my head. “Pete Sampson is not back in San Francisco.”

Alex started the car and I tried to quash down the guilt that welled up inside me.

I generally have two complexion colors: impossibly pale or lobster red. But as I drove
home from the Underworld Detection Agency—and the heinous crime scene on the bluff—I
realized there was a new hue to add when I checked myself in the rearview mirror:
ashen. It was the complexion equivalent of the way that I felt. Murder, I was sadly
getting used to. Ditto with crime scenes. But lying—scratch that—lying to
Alex
, was a different thing entirely.

I trudged up the stairs and brightened when I stepped into my apartment and ChaCha,
in a bout of spastically happy yips, tossed herself at my ankles. I scooped her up
and she gave me a comforting nuzzle.

“Wow, Soph,” Sampson said, stepping out of the bathroom. “You don’t look so well.
Everything okay?”

I pinched my bottom lip, trying to think of a better greeting than, “I saw the gnarled
remains of a pair of college coeds on the Point; what did you do today?”

“I need chocolate” was my kindly response.

In a matter of moments I was stationed at the kitchen table wearing a stack of chocolate
marshmallow pinwheels on my index finger. I was eating them like candied apples and
dumping the remains of a chilly chardonnay in my
Carrie for Prom Queen
coffee mug.

“It was awful,” I said to Sampson, shuddering so that a spray of chocolate fell into
my cleavage. “The destruction was . . . complete.”

“Did Alex have any leads? Did anyone?”

I frowned, shaking my head. “Nothing. But . . .” I let my word trail off as I bit
into my cookie, hoping the chocolate-marshmallow goodness would dull the ache of those
sightless eyes.

“But what?”

“Well, I wandered away a little bit—and ended up sliding in the—in the blood.”

Sampson gestured to my turban of gauze. “I was wondering when you were going to mention
that.”

“I just hit my head. But before that, I’m almost certain I saw something. A figure
or something in the bushes.”

“Something or someone?”

I looked at Sampson and was taken aback by the intensity of his gaze. “I’m not sure.
It was hard to tell.”

He nodded and there was something unreadable in his expression. It was almost heartwarming,
the way he focused on me, on my wound, on my story.

I gulped my mug of wine. “It may have been after I fell. But I felt it watching me.
I felt it—or him—watching the whole crime scene.”

Sampson bristled. “Does Alex know about this?”

I nodded, bit into another cookie ring. “I told him, but I think that he thinks—”
I paused, picked at a chunk of chocolate on the table. “I think that he thinks I was
seeing things.”

I saw the question in Sampson’s eyes, and I immediately changed the subject. “No leads.
They found some hair, but I’m not sure what came of it.”

“Hair?” Sampson’s brows went up. “Victim or perp?”

I grinned. “You sound like a real detective!”

“Well, I did spend the afternoon watching
Law & Order
.”

“Same detective school I graduated from,” I said, glugging the remains of my wine.
I stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to scrape the crime scene from me, now that
I’ve been fortified. Oh—” I paused, turning slowly to face Sampson. “There was one
thing that was weird though.”

Sampson was gathering up my cookie crumbs with a napkin. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“Feng was there.”

Sampson stiffened and I saw the tremble go through his body. He tried to hide it,
tried to brush it off, but I noticed the crumbs he had just palmed were sprinkled
back on the table. “Feng? The werewolf hunter?”

I nodded.

“Sophie, why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

I looked from Sampson’s pinched expression to my empty wine mug. “I—I only thought
it was weird—not important.”

Sampson let out a long sigh and lowered himself to the dining chair. I could see the
cogs turning in his head.

“She doesn’t know you’re here, Sampson. She was at the crime scene—miles from here.”

“You said that they found hair?”

“Yeah,” I stumbled, confused, “one of the officers was bagging it.”

“Do you know anything about it? Were they planning on running it for DNA?”

I smiled. “You must have caught a couple of
CSI
episodes, too.”

Sampson avoided my gaze. “I’m not joking.”

I was taken aback. There was nothing overtly angry in his statement, but the way he
kept his eyes averted from me let me know that, suddenly, a wall was up between us.

I gripped the back of the dining chair.

“She’s looking for us, Sophie.”

I straightened. “She saw me. She didn’t try to talk to me. I really don’t think she
knows you’re here. And if she did—I know her, Sampson. Why don’t you just let me talk
to her? I can tell her about you, explain that you’re not a threat to her. Or to anyone
else.”

“No!” Sampson’s eyes flashed with a rage that was buried in fear. My breath caught
and I saw his expression immediately shift from surprise to sadness. He reached out
and patted my hand, used his other hand to rake his sand-colored hair back from his
forehead. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to startle you. I just—please, don’t contact Feng.
Don’t say anything to her until I can figure out what we’re going to do.”

I nodded, but unease thrummed through my body. I was comforted that Sampson referred
to
us
; I wanted to do everything I could to help him. But as I looked at the exhaustion
in his eyes, the way he worried his bottom lip, I wondered if everything I could do
was going to be nearly enough.

I’d thought it was a physiological impossibility for a good-looking man to snore.

And if it isn’t, it should be.

“Is he dying?” Nina wanted to know.

I gnawed on my bottom lip. “No, unfortunately not.”

Nina’s eye’s flashed, part shock, part careful consideration. “Sophie Lawson!”

I rubbed my temples and moaned softly. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he doesn’t turn into
a werewolf. Maybe he turns into a Boston terrier.”

We were standing in our living room, tiny slivers of yellow-grey San Francisco morning
light-slash-fog poking in through the blinds. I was pajama clad and bed-headed, Nina
was Audrey Hepburn chic complete with signature boat-necked black dress and broached
chignon. All that was missing were the elbow-length gloves and one of those long,
elegant cigarettes.

“What do we do about it?”

“It” was Sampson. He was a beautiful specimen of a man, indeed—his sandy brown hair
was peppered with steely grey and it made him look distinguished, sexy. He had one
of those incredible Roman noses and full lips that fell apart just a quarter inch
in his slumber, letting out the most raucous, brain-shattering snores.

Maybe it was a paranormal thing.

He had a nice chiseled chest and well-muscled arms, but after three nights being serenaded
by the nose symphony, I couldn’t see straight, let alone appreciate anything other
than a man who slept in beautiful silence.

And Sampson was not that man.

Seriously, I was about to consider snuggling up with Vlad, if only for the blessed
silence of a breathless vampire.

“I don’t think we can do anything about it, Neens. The man’s been on the run for over
a year. He said he’s always had to look over his shoulder, to question his safety.
This is the first time he’s felt safe since—since the incident.”

The night Pete Sampson went missing and I was nearly bled to death by a Snuggie-wearing
maniac had become known as the night of “the incident.” It was easier to explain,
and for me and Sampson to remember it, that way. For me it was simply traumatic, my
first (and, unfortunately, not my last) run-in with someone who thought this world
would be far better without me in it. For Sampson, it was the night his life had gone
from simply complicated to in desperate danger.

As I looked over the peaceful, rhythmic rise and fall of Sampson’s chest, I couldn’t
help but feel a glowing sense of pride. I hadn’t necessarily had anything to do with
saving his life and had been a very good part of the reason Sir Snuggie almost ended
his, but protecting him here on my couch seemed like the least I could do.

And then his mouth dropped open again, breathing in a rush of air that came out again,
rattling our picture frames and my brain more than any of our native earthquakes ever
did.

Nina looked at me, her perfect, coal-black eyes actually seeming to show a bit of
purple-tinged exhaustion. “We have to find out who’s hunting him so we can get him
out of here.”

I nodded. “ASAP.”

In the eight blessed seconds of Sampson-breathing-in silence, our front door opened,
and Vlad poked his head in.

“It’s bad enough I have to smell him, now I have to hear him, too?” he growled.

I looked from Nina to Vlad; the family resemblance was undeniable now as both of them
glared at me, fangs at the ready. I held up a hand, slight panic rushing through me.

“Okay. Nobody eats anyone. I’m going to take ChaCha for a walk and clear my head.
Then I’ll get this sorted out and get Mr. Sampson on his way as soon as possible.”

Sampson, still dead to the world but as loud as a freight train, snored his agreement.

I clicked ChaCha’s leash around her tiny neck and stepped into the hallway. I was
going to lock the door behind me, but I figured with a werewolf on the couch and a
two silence-deprived vampires, our collection of Ikea furniture and Burger King china
would be safe from looters.

“Whoa, love.” Will Sherman, standing in his open doorway across the hall, stepped
back, the expression on his face one of sheer shock, quickly covered by something
that was supposed to resemble—I guessed—nonchalance.

“What happened to you? Been out hunting the nutters and whatnot?”

Though I like to think I’m not one of those women who go all quivery-jelly around
good-looking men or who feel the need to slap on pearls and lipstick to impress the
hairier sex, I still felt my hand fly up to my bedhead nest of orange fuzz and my
cheeks burn a little.

Will shook his head, clucking his tongue. “You look a sight.”

I tried to narrow my eyes, but lack of sleep disallowed their free movement. I wanted
to look hard and angry, but that was impossible with my spastic pup, ChaCha, doing
her love-starved dance at the end of her leash, throwing her entire eight pounds against
Will’s calves, rolling over like the pet-slut she was to show off her rubbable dog
belly.

Will grinned, leaned over, and scooped ChaCha into his arms.

“I thought I wasn’t allowed to do any hunting without my Guardian in tow.” It wasn’t
meant to be a compliment, but Will took it as such.

“Ah, a Guardian’s work . . .”

I shifted from foot to foot, still stupidly holding ChaCha’s pink, camouflage leash
while Will nuzzled ChaCha, who threw her head back in ecstasy, little dog legs kicking
at the air.

Will Sherman is my Guardian. And no, I’m not under eighteen—far from it. I’m also
not a trust fund baby à la Athina Onassis or Paris Hilton (pre–sex tape/pantiless
partying/jail time). I’m simply the Vessel of Souls and Will is, simply, my Guardian.

Yeah, I really thought I could get that one past you.

I didn’t always know—nor was I always, I guess—this otherworldly Vessel for all human
souls as they cross from the human plane to the either angelic or
other
plane. It’s not like the souls are inside me—no, that’s actually more like a steady
stomach of chocolate-marshmallow pinwheels and anything that ends with the phrase
“on a stick.” And it’s not as though I could burp up the soul of say, Bea Arthur,
at any moment. I prefer to think of myself as more of a gateway rather than a gag
gift from some ancient congress of angels who thought it would be a real gas to hide
the one thing that both the angelic and demonic plane want more than anything—me,
the Vessel of Souls—in plain sight. Yeah, plain sight. Me.

So even if I wanted to describe myself as a rare, exotic beauty the likes of which
you only see in storybooks or in the
Sports Illustrated
Swimsuit Edition, I couldn’t, as I am supernaturally bound to be this “plain” thing.

At least that’s what I keep telling myself when I stare into the mirror and find that
my has-a-mind-of-its-own red hair has decided to curl in its own circus clown fashion,
whipping and swooping into my lime Jell-O-green eyes. Plain, yes. Regular? Not so
much.

As I was saying, Will Sherman is my Guardian, bound by all things holy and un to throw
himself in front of me in desperate, pointy situations, lest I fall into the wrong
hands and get gutted, clubbed, or locked in a public restroom with nothing but hand
soap as an escape method.

Yeah, he’s not great at his job.

I blinked at Will. “I’m having a hard time sleeping.”

“That explains why you’re up at a decent hour.”

“We’ve got a houseguest and he”—I considered my words, as a simple “snore” didn’t
seem to capture the gravity of the situation—“rocks the city as a whole.”

Will cocked an eyebrow and stopped nuzzling ChaCha. She whined.

“He snores. Loudly. I can’t believe you can’t hear it from your place.”

Will grinned and looked over his shoulder, his hazel-flecked eyes going from sparkling
and friendly to sensual and fierce.

“You could have always come across the hall. There’s room in my bed.”

I swallowed heavily and my stomach began a raucous flutter.

Any other woman would have swooned to get an offer like this from Will. He is nothing
short of gorgeous with his always-mussed gold blond hair, hazel eyes that sparkled
with bits of mischievous gold, and a body that was carved from a soccer god.

And then there was the accent.

Will is English and has that lilting, melodic voice that makes anything sound wildly
intelligent and sexy. He uses words like “nappies” and “loo,” which I know mean diapers
and bathroom, but when he says them, they tend to be nothing short of panty melting.

But I had already gotten myself into that situation once and due to the werewolf snoring
on my couch, I was still in the midst of processing my tryst with Will, whether or
not it had been a mistake made out of need or something more, and whether or not I
had ruined everything with Alex Grace.

My body hummed with a nervous energy as Will’s eyes flashed over mine, almost daring
me to respond.

I wanted to say something very Carrie Bradshaw, very kitten-with-a-whip.

“ChaCha needs to go to the potty.”

Hey, I’m the Vessel of Souls. I can’t expected to be a sexy linguist, too, right?

 

 

I took ChaCha downstairs and once her little legs hit the sidewalk, she beamed like
only a dog can and pranced in front of me, wagging her tail and her tongue at everyone
we met, peeing on everything static or everyone who moved slowly enough to allow her
hindquarters adequate aim.

We walked over to Huntington Park, a luxurious little patch of green not far from
our neighborhood where ChaCha could sniff until her little heart was content, and
I could find a free park bench on which to lay down.

With lack of sleep, comes lack of shame.

I slipped the loop of her leash around my wrist and closed my eyes, letting the rare
shard of sunlight wash over me, relishing the delightful feeling of warmth bathing
over my shoulders, my cheeks.

In my uber-relaxed state I could hear the sharp barks of dogs overwhelmed at the abundance
of new things to pee on and the steady hum of traffic as it ambled up California Street.
I liked to imagine that I was lying on the beach and every whooshing Metro bus was
a wave crashing against a coconut-scented white sand beach. In my imagination, I was
wearing a tiny turquoise bikini and showing off the six-pack that currently lived
somewhere underneath my hibernation flab. In actuality I was laying spread eagle on
a park bench with my mouth partly open and my hand dangling in the grass. ChaCha must
have seen the opportunity in my dozing because halfway through my fictitious daiquiri,
she gave the leash a yank, slipping the loop off my wrist, then took off yipping and
yapping across the lolling green hills of the park, her little dog eyes glued to the
jaunty butt of a brindle terrier. The little jerk on my wrist sent me sputtering and
coughing and sitting up, feeling lost, confused, and blinking into the sunlight.

“Oh, crap!” I saw ChaCha’s pink leash slithering through the grass and I launched
myself off the bench, running after her. “ChaCha! ChaCha, stop!”

The little dog didn’t abide and seemed to just get faster, and within seconds she
had zigzagged through a tight congregation of boxwood bushes, barking as though she
were a Doberman or a wooly mammoth. I was sucking in my stomach, following her, getting
angrier by the second.

“ChaCha! You better stop this right now or Mama is going to be—”

It was nothing overt. Call it a feeling, a whisper on the wind, but something rushed
by me and made my blood run cold. I stopped short, my hackles up. I felt the hot prickle
of someone’s laser gaze on me and gooseflesh bubbled on my arms. “ChaCha?”

I heard the crush of tanbark, the crinkle of leaves.

Low, ragged breath.

The air suddenly smelled salty with a weird mix of earth and sweat. I whirled all
around me, seeing dogs running with wide, toothy dog-smiles, tongues wagging, their
owners chanting, clapping. The noise of the park and the animals blurred into one
solid cacophony and I couldn’t make out another sound.

The footsteps crushing the tanbark; the low breath—had I imagined them?

“ChaCha?” My heart slammed against my rib cage. My saliva went sour, my voice starting
to quiver. “Come here, girl.”

I felt it before I heard it, and then I was on the ground. My forehead thunked against
the tanbark, my teeth smacked together. All the breath left my body and I opened my
mouth and sucked uselessly at the air, trying to get something into my failed lungs.
My ribs screamed. My wrists ached. There was a burning swath across the back of my
calves where something—or someone—had swept my legs out from under me.

I dug my palms into the tanbark, ignoring the bits of wood that embedded themselves
into my skin. I tried to push myself up, but then I felt hands on my shoulders grabbing
fistfuls of my shirt and yanking me up. I kicked uselessly at the air. I tried to
squirm to see my attacker, but he must have seen me first because he dropped me, fast,
another rib-crushing belly-flop to the earth. I heard his footsteps as he stumbled
backward.

I knew I should move. I knew I should get up, should run, should find help. But everything
ached and my whole body felt as if it was made of lead. I heard footsteps and everything
tightened, waiting for another blow. But none came. The footsteps disappeared and
the raucous crunching of leaves and twigs and tanbark was gone, replaced by a breezy
silence, punctuated by the occasional dog bark, the occasional belch of a Muni bus.

“ChaCha,” I was finally able to croak, feeling the sting of tears at the edges of
my eyes.

I pressed myself up onto my haunches and my little pup came barreling toward me, yipping
as though someone had just released her. I curled her into my chest and stood, holding
what little breath I had and listening to the silence. I felt at the bandage on my
forehead, then glanced back at the tiny tears and splinters on my palms, an unabashed
fear washing over me. First the Sutro Point murders and the person watching me there.
Now I’m manhandled by—what? I looked around me, my stomach going sour. I wasn’t sure
I wanted to know what had knocked me down.