Under the Gun (8 page)

Will crinkled his nose, shifted his weight uncomfortably. “Actually, love, that’s
what I came here to talk to you about.”

I sighed and did my best to shoot
Really? Right now?
daggers at Will. “I thought you came here because you smelled bacon.”

“Well, that was an added bonus. But I was hoping you could help me out. I’m leaving
for London tomorrow morning.” He turned to Sampson. “Going to go visit Mum. She’s
getting on and having some trouble moving around the flat.”

I felt myself gape. “You’re leaving? Now? And what do you want me to do? Fill in as
my own Guardian while you’re gone?”

“With all due respect, love, you’ve spent a good deal of time telling me how lousy
I am at my job and how much you don’t need me. I mean, you are a crack shot with a
Glock, right?” Will smiled, and his humor stabbed at me. My cheeks must have gone
beet red because Sampson looked momentarily alarmed.

“She shot a guy in the arse.”

Sampson smiled, looking impressed. “You’ve come a long way.”

I blew out a sigh that came out an audible groan. There had been a time, once, when
I was afraid of guns. It pretty much extended from the first time I shot a gun (I
cried) until . . . right now. Yes, I’d shot a guy in the butt. But I’d been aiming
for his head. And it’d been a matter of life or death and the backfire had still terrified
me and made me pee a little bit when it happened. But before that, in another life-or-death
situation (you know? I really need a vacation), I’d aimed my gun, steadied it . .
. and thrown it at the red-eyed creature that broke into my apartment. So sue me;
I was terrified. But it was true, I’d come a long way since then.

Well, at least I was able to hold on to my gun.

And the ass thing? Lucky shot.

“So you’re coming over here to let me know you’re out?”

“No. I was coming over here to ask you if you could water my fern.”

“You have a fern? You don’t even have a couch and you have a fern?”

“She’s called Esther. And she likes to listen to the football game in the late afternoon.
Helps her get all bushy and all.”

Sampson nodded as if this were the most normal thing in the world.

“Fine. I’ll water your fern.” I pointed to Sampson. “But that doesn’t mean you’re
any less protected and that we’re not going to get out of this being-hunted situation.”

Will clapped a hand over his chest and cocked his head. “Oh, I feel honored that my
leaving takes nothing from the situation.”

I smiled sweetly. “Your leaving will take nothing from this situation right now, so
why don’t you get to it?”

Will turned to Sampson. “How do you feel about ferns?”

“That’s perfect. Sampson could stay at your place while you’re gone. Esther gets hydrated,
Sampson gets a little breathing room.” I nodded at Will. “You
are
good for something.”

Will raised fawn-colored eyebrows. “She always been this feisty?”

Sampson nodded. “Pretty much. And thanks for letting me stay at your place.”

I crossed my arms in front of my chest and adopted a kick-ass stance. Will seemed
to get the message because he left without saying anything and once again my insides
roiled, tortured and confused.

Sampson glanced at me. “Nice fellow.”

I nodded, my teeth digging into my bottom lip. “Sure.”

Sampson paused for a beat, then held me with a serious look. “I’m not going to put
you in danger, Sophie.”

“You mean—about Will?”

“About everything.”

“You keep saying that and I keep telling you: you’re not,” I said, putting my plate
on top and taking the whole stack to the sink. I looked over my shoulder. “Besides,
it’s been a long time since you’ve been around. I can take care of myself pretty well
now.” I itched the back of my calf with the toe of my shoe. “Totally.”

And it wasn’t a total lie.

In my last couple of years as sole breather in the underworld, Vessel of Souls, and
undefeated holder of the Most Likely to Bleed and/or Get Socked by a Bad Guy title,
I learned a few things. One being that when it came to taking care of myself beyond
the basic eating/sleeping/breathing essentials, I really couldn’t be trusted. The
other was if there was bad to be found, I would run headlong into it (metaphorically),
waving my arms and screaming like a maniac so that said bad didn’t miss me. This wouldn’t
be terrible if I were some kind of supernatural ass kicker or even just a butch chick
with a penchant for black leather, weapons, and wanting to kill a man just to watch
him die. I wasn’t, but after the last couple of ass-whoopings and blubber-fests, I
decided it was about time I put my big-girl panties on and learn some technique.

I signed up for a Krav Maga class at the Fillmore Community Center. I hadn’t gone
yet, but it was all about baby steps. I rented three self-defense DVDs from the San
Francisco Library and Netflixed the entire first season of
Alias
, kicking and jabbing in the living room. And I had even talked Vlad into giving me
the occasional vamp-approved hand-to-hand combat course.

I wasn’t a black belt yet, but I was totally inching above complete imbecile.

“I need to head off to work,” I said, sweeping a rag over the counter. “Do you have
plans? Maybe we could meet for lunch?”

Sampson smiled and for the first time since he showed up, he looked like his old,
relaxed self. “This isn’t a vacation, Sophie. I’ve got to talk to some people, see
what I can find out about the contract, about Feng and Xian.”

“What contract?”

“There’s a contract out on my life.”

I felt myself gape. “So we’re not only dealing with Xian and Feng, we’ve got the mob
after you, too?”

“The contract is Xian and Feng’s.”

I crumpled up my rag and tossed it in my to-be-washed mountain. “I think Xian and
Feng were pretty much kill-at-will.”

“They like people to believe that. But, technically, under UDA bylaws they have to
be contracted or they’re considered rogue and enemies.”

I sat down hard. “Wait. You’re telling me UDA governs the Du family, too? What the
hell?”

Sampson shrugged. “The Underworld is complicated.”

“Well yeah, obviously. But can’t the UDA just override Feng and Xian? Don’t you—or
Dixon, or just the bylaws—override a stupid contract?”

“I appreciate your enthusiasm, but it’s not that easy. I’m just one man and the contract
only pertains to me, to my life.”

“This has to enrage other demons, Sampson. Someone can just contract someone else
and your life is over? That’s a travesty. It’s absolute crap. It’s un-American. We
should protest. Or sue.” I thought of the late-night attorneys on TV, urging people
to join their class-action lawsuits against asbestos poisoning and “vaginal mesh slings”—whatever
those were—and even though I wanted to do everything I could to save this man, to
make things right—I had a hard time imagining the same crooked lawyers imploring demons
to call out the people who tried to kill them. “Or something.”

Sampson was already shaking his head, but I rattled on. “Can we just ask them to stop?
We can tear up the contract!” I imagined myself then, leather clad, because anytime
I imagine myself doing kick-ass things like tearing paper, I’m clad in leather, haughtily
tearing and crumbling, throwing teensy-tiny nullified contract crumbs up into the
air. Then I’d drink a scotch. “What do you think?”

The look on Sampson’s face was one of those sweet, sad ones a father gives his elementary
school daughter when she says she’s going to marry SpongeBob when she grows up. “I
wish it were that easy. These contracts aren’t paper bound and they aren’t as simple
as pen and ink.”

I’ve been in the Underworld a long time, and although the Detection Agency runs on
what seems like thousand-year old Word documents, I’d yet to see any contract come
through that wasn’t “paper bound” or “pen-and-ink.” I licked my lips. “Like, written
in the stars? In blood? On big stone tablets? We can still get it, ruin it, jackhammer
it if we have to.” I’d skirted enough hard-hatted workers to have a pretty good idea
what jackhammering entailed, but that sweet, sympathetic look in Sampson’s brown eyes
said that even power tools were out of the question for this.

“The contract is bound by blood and flesh.”

I felt my own flesh crawl and my mouth quirked into an involuntary grimace. “Flesh?”

Sampson nodded solemnly and I considered a hunk of demon buttock squirreled away in
some file cabinet somewhere. “How is that even possible?”

“You know that things in the Underworld don’t work the same way that things in the
over world do.”

“But”—I pantomimed dumping a hunk of flesh on the table—“I don’t get it.” I was silent
for a minute, considering. Then, with a slight brightening, “Should we just be looking
for someone missing a hunk of flesh? Where do they take it from? Would he have, like,
a hook for a hand, or one of those prosthetic limbs? Or”—that grimace again—“is that
where the vaginal mesh sling comes in?”

Sampson cocked an eyebrow, his brow wrinkling. “Excuse me?”

It may have been a matter of afterlife or death, but I couldn’t believe I had just
spewed the words “vaginal mesh sling” in front of my boss. A hot redness bloomed in
my cheeks. “So, where does the flesh come from?” I asked again.

“It’s mine.”

“Yours?” My eyes immediately slipped over the length of Mr. Sampson, taking in every
chiseled inch. His face and neck certainly weren’t missing any flesh and his button-up
shirt didn’t seem to bow over any fleshless gaps. I tried not to look any lower.

“It was cut from me when I was in my werewolf form. In order for the contract—the
hunters—to consider the contract bound, it must include flesh from the”—Sampson swallowed
slowly, his Adam’s apple bobbing—“
animal,
and blood from the contractee.”

God, I felt bad for their file clerk.

“So, in order for us to end this thing, we have to . . .” I felt my lip curl in a
disgusted grimace. “Get your pound of flesh back?”

“It’s not a pound of flesh. It’s a piece of flesh.”

“So, to end the contract . . .”

“We need to destroy the contract, the contract holder, or the hunters.”

“Who’s the contract holder?”

Sampson shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Well, it has to be someone who knows you—maybe someone who’s holding a grudge? Someone
you met through work?”

“I don’t know. It was all I thought about up north.”

“Okay, well. How about the contract? Hunk of flesh and blood notwithstanding, the
contract is, like paper, right? I mean, it’s not tattooed on the back of an ogre or
burned into the side of a volcano or something, is it?”

“The binding part is written on the flesh.”

I fought the urge to heave while my stomach lodged firmly in my shoes. “So we’re looking
for some wordy flesh.”

“No, we’re not. You’ve done enough for now.” He glanced at the clock on the microwave.
“I know I’m not your boss anymore, but aren’t you about to be late for work?”

“Did I mention how nice it was to have you back?” I socked Sampson in the arm and
pulled a healthy lunch—a Fresca and two Pop-Tarts—out of the fridge, then yelled for
Nina and Vlad to get their undead asses moving. While I waited, I yanked open the
blackout drapes in the living room and let the beams of glorious, rare San Francisco
sunlight wash over me. I was marveling at the way our Ikea furniture sprung to glistening
life in the natural light when Nina tore out of her room, like a tiny, raven-haired
cyclone dressed in a painted silk kimono robe.

“What are you trying to do?” she screamed. “Kill me?”

Sampson raised his eyebrows and I set down my Fresca. “What are you talking about?
And where’s Vlad?”

Nina turned to gape at me. Or at least I think she did, because she was wearing her
enormous dark sunglasses. “Have you not seen the weather?”

Sampson and I exchanged uncertain glances. “We live in California, Neens. We don’t
have weather.”

Nina wagged her head. “It must be so easy to live a life with so few consequences.”

Sampson hid his smile behind his coffee mug and I rolled my eyes, about to remind
her that I had been hung up by my ankles and accosted by a lunatic with a gunshot
in his ass (courtesy of me, but still), when she went on, slapping her arms and raving.
“I’m practically burnt to a crisp thanks to your obsession with opening the blinds.”

I blinked at the blue-white of her forearms. “Sorry. But if you were burnt to a crisp
you’d be, well, burnt. To a crisp.”

She narrowed her eyes. “We’re talking life-or-death situation here, Sophie. You’ll
have to let Dixon know that I can’t come in today.” She shrugged her tiny shoulders
and flopped down on the couch in pure Scarlett O’Hara fashion. “I can’t risk it.”