Darkness Unbound
Page 20
He climbed into the car and started it up, the throaty roar of the engine making the whole car rumble and vibrate. “Good grief,” I said, glancing at him in surprise. “What’s in this thing? A V-8?”
“It’s better than that—it’s a revved-up V-12.”
“I thought they stopped making those things when the climate crisis hit and the environmentalists got all hostile?”
“They did, except for a few specialized places. But this baby runs on synthetic gas.”
That widened my eyes. “I didn’t think they had full pump coverage for synthetic yet.”
He pulled out into the traffic, the big engine roaring like a mad cat on the prowl. “They haven’t. Which is why, when I drive beyond city limits, I have to plot my course extremely carefully.” He cast an amused glance my way. “Not only is running out of gas embarrassing, but the tow fees are damn high.”
I laughed. “If you can afford a hand-tooled engine, you can afford tow fees.”
“I’m not rich,” he said, smiling. “Just moderately well off. Where do you live and when are we meeting again?”
Any near-immortal possessing an average amount of smarts when it came to investments would have to be enormously wealthy, but I could certainly understand his reluctance to admit it. I bit into my sandwich, munching for several seconds and making him wait. I gave him my address, then added, “You sound anxious for our next date.”
“I am. I’ve been asked to up my game, remember?”
I laughed again. “I’ve already got a lunch date tomorrow, and I’m working the evening shift. But you can meet me at RYT’s at midnight, and we can go from there.”
“Isn’t the Blue Moon just down the road from you?”
I had another mouthful of sandwich, so I simply nodded. But I was half hoping he didn’t want to go there. After the mess with Jak, I really preferred to avoid the club. Going there just wasn’t worth the risk—if only because Jak still went there on occasion, and I really didn’t want to meet up with him. If I did, I’d no doubt punch him—and that would only give him something else to write about.
“I’ve never been there,” he commented, glancing at the rearview mirror, “but I’ve heard it’s the best of the big clubs.”
Damn. He wanted to go. “How could someone as old as you not have visited the Blue Moon? It’s been around forever.”
He snorted softly. “Hardly. Even white settlement hasn’t been here that long. Besides, I haven’t been in town long enough yet to visit all the local hot spots.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror again, and something in his expression had the hairs along the back of my neck rising.
“What’s wrong?” I resisted the urge to look around and flicked the sun visor down instead, looking into the vanity mirror. The traffic behind us looked normal. Certainly there wasn’t anything I could see that jumped out and screamed Problem.
“See that green Toyota on the right two cars back?”
I frowned. “Yeah. What of it?”
“I noticed it pulling out of a parking space several cars back from us when we left the restaurant. It’s been shadowing us very carefully ever since.”
“He could be just going the same way as us.”
“He could.” His gaze met mine. “But do you really want to take that chance, given what happened yesterday?”
I drew in a breath and released it slowly. “No.”
“Then we’ll question them.”
“How? The minute they have any idea we’re on to them, they’ll f**k off.”
His sudden grin was fierce. “I’ve been a soldier and a cop several times over in my long lifetime. Trust me when I say I know a little about dealing with tails.”
“Then deal away.”
I grabbed the other half of my sandwich and bolted it down. I had a feeling I was going to need the sustenance.
He flicked on the left-hand blinker and turned, keeping his speed even and giving our tail no reason to suspect we were aware of them. After several minutes of cruising, he turned right.
“Okay,” he said, as I brushed the crumbs off my shirt and lap. “We’re going to do another left up ahead. It’s a through-road, but when I traveled down here yesterday they were doing road work and there was only one passing lane. They’ll make us stop.”
“What if there’s no traffic and we’re just waved through?”
“Then we think of something else.” He gave me a smile, his bright eyes alight with anticipation. “I must warn you, I do like a good chase. It makes me hungry.”
And the look in his eyes suggested he didn’t mean food. “I’ve satisfied your hunger enough for one day,” I said, voice dry. “You’ll just have to find someone else, or wait until tomorrow.”
He laughed again and swung left onto a street. Up ahead was the promised road work, and a little man in an orange vest was leaning casually against a stop sign. Lucian slowed, his gaze flicking to the rearview mirror. “Okay, we’ve struck the jackpot. There’s another car stopping behind them. You ready?”
I licked my lips, clenched my fingers around the door handle, and nodded. The car came to a stop. He pulled on the handbrake, slid the gear into neutral, then said, “Go.”
He was out his door before I even had mine open, but the men in the car were faster still. They were out and running in an instant, going separate ways, forcing us to do the same.
The guy on my side was thin and angular, with legs as long as a giraffe’s but possessing none of their ungainly gait. He was over the front fence of the nearest house with an impossibly high leap and quickly disappeared from sight. I leapt, grabbed the top of the fence, and hauled my ass over it—far less elegant, but effective nonetheless.
He was already disappearing around the side of the small brick house. I gave chase, hurdling the trash cans and other bits and pieces he tossed into my path, trying to keep up with him—or at least not let him out of my sight.
He leapt another fence, ran into another yard. I followed, catching my jeans on a nail, the sharp edge tearing the material and my calf. I cursed and dropped down, my fingers brushing the ground to steady myself before I ran on. He was already out into the next street. This one was busier—several cars screeched to a stop, their tires smoking as he leapt over their hoods. I followed, leaving dents in the metal, unable to leap the entire width of the vehicle as he had. Abuse followed me down the street.
A small shopping center came into view. He swung into it, no doubt hoping to lose me in the crowd. I sucked in air, sorting through the flavors running within it, picking out his scent—fear, sweat, and shifter. A mammal of some sort.
He bolted through the doors and into the bright, wide walkway. People scattered, and those who didn’t were knocked aside. A old woman was sent flying, her arms flailing as she teetered toward an escalator. I slowed and grabbed her fingers to prevent her falling, but it cost me. The distance between me and the shifter had suddenly doubled.
I swore and ran on. He crashed through a stairwell door and disappeared from sight. I leapt over a prone teenager and three seconds later hit the door myself, my heart racing and sweat beginning to dribble down my spine. Steps echoed in the concrete well—some going up, some coming down. None of them were running. I flared my nostrils to catch his scent and stepped forward, looking up. I couldn’t see him, but the stairs curled upward for a good five or six floors.
If I ran, he’d hear me. And if I walked, I’d risk losing him.
I took a deep breath, then reached down inside myself to the place where the Aedh resided. She came in a tide of fierce energy that swept across my body, brushing away the pain of my torn skin even as she dissolved my flesh and made me little more than smoke.
I swirled upward through the center of the stairwell. Several people were using them, but none of them was the man I was after. I continued to rise.
I found him near the top floor. He’d paused by the exit into the parking area, his head tilted slightly to one side, expression intent. I waited, hovering near the ceiling, itching to attack but not wanting to run the risk of someone coming through the door and perhaps getting hurt in the fight.
After several minutes, he pushed the door open and walked through. I swirled after him. There were few cars on this level, and no sign or sound that there was anyone else but us here.
Which was perfect.
He paused, his gaze sweeping the area, then he strode across the empty space, heading for several cars in the far corner. After a moment, I realized why—the rotating security cameras didn’t quite make it into this corner. It was a dead spot for them.
He pulled something out of his pocket and pressed several buttons as he aimed the device at the three of cars parked in the corner. The third one beeped, the taillights flashing to indicate a response. A lock pick, I realized. Shit. I’d just run out of time.
I surged forward and formed a mass over his head. As he reached for the driver’s door, I found flesh and dropped right down on top of him.
He grunted and collapsed to the floor on his hands and knees, winded but not knocked out. I remedied that by knocking his head sideways into the car. He collapsed and didn’t move.
I pushed into a sitting position, my legs on either side of his body and my weight resting firmly on his butt, doing nothing more than breathing deeply for several minutes. When the tide of weakness began to fade, I wiped the sweat from my forehead and looked down at my captive.
Now what did I do with him?
It wasn’t practical to drag him back to the car with me—not only because some do-gooder was bound to intervene, but because he was a good foot taller than me. And despite his thin frame, his body felt like steel. The minute he came to, he’d have me beat in reach and strength.
Which meant I’d have to question him here. I glanced around, checking that we were still alone and that the cameras definitely didn’t scan this particular corner, then rose and looked inside the car he’d opened. There wasn’t anything useful in the backseat, so I popped the trunk and checked that out. And discovered the owner was obviously into hiking, because there was not only a backpack filled with gear, but also hiking boots.
I pulled the laces free, then slammed the trunk closed and grabbed my prisoner’s arms, hauling them behind his back. I tied one lace around his wrists, and the other around his thumbs. They might not hold him for long, but I didn’t really need much time.
I rolled him onto his back, then dropped down onto his stomach and slapped his face. “Hey! Wake up.”
His eyelids flickered. I slapped him again, harder this time, the sound echoing.
Brown eyes were suddenly glaring at me balefully. “Get off me, bitch.”
“Tell me why you were following us, and I might consider it.”
“We weren’t following anyone. You’re f**king crazy.”
The words were barely out of his mouth, and he was bucking like a mad thing, trying to dislodge me. I rode the first few attempts, then punched him in the diaphragm. Hard. He gasped, and for several seconds made like a fish out of water as he struggled to suck in air. I felt a little sorry for him—until I remembered that he might just be involved with the people who had tried to kill Ilianna.
“Why were you following me?” I repeated.
“Fuck you, lady!”
I hit him again. He swore—fluently and creatively—when he was able, but otherwise he remained tight-lipped. I sighed. I had two choices. Either I could call Rhoan and let him deal with the man—and in the process lose any hope of gaining additional information on the who and why behind all this—or I could play hardball.
“Tell me,” I said quietly, praying—hoping—that he did talk, “why were you following us, and who put you on to us.”
It couldn’t have been Handberry, because he was dead. But he’d been talking to someone prior to his exit from the club—someone who’d made him so mad, he’d stormed out. Maybe that someone was the next person up the tree of command—and the person behind the current tail.
“Call the cops if you think I did anything wrong, lady,” he spat. “Otherwise get off me or I’ll start screaming for help.”
“Yeah, you do that,” I said, and reached for the Aedh again. But this time, I controlled the surge of power, channeling its fury, containing its strength, focusing it on just my hand. Making it transparent, but not entirely smoke. There, and yet not.
His gaze widened. “What the hell—”
“You will tell me,” I said softly, resting my hand against his chest, just above his heart. Only my fingers held no substance and slipped easily through his flesh, into his body, until they were positioned near his frantically beating heart. “Or I will wrap my fingers around your heart and squeeze every bit of life out of it.”
Chapter Nine
I RE-FORMED JUST ENOUGH FLESH AROUND MY fingertips to carry out the threat. Though I only squeezed gently, because I really didn’t want to kill him. And I could—so easily—if I wanted to. Uncle Quinn had made that abundantly clear when he’d shown me—somewhat reluctantly—how to do this.
The shifter screamed, and it was a high-pitched sound of pain. Sweat broke out across his forehead and fear filled his eyes. I let my fingers become smoke again.
“Tell me,” I said, voice harsh.
“What the f**k are you?” he said, eyes wide as he stared at me in horror.
“I’m nothing you’ve ever come across before.” I kept my voice abrasive, even though weariness was beginning to pulse through my body. I couldn’t keep this up much longer. Going from barely ever using my Aedh skills to using them several times over several days had taken more from me than I’d imagined. And the lack of sleep wasn’t helping, either.
“It’s better than that—it’s a revved-up V-12.”
“I thought they stopped making those things when the climate crisis hit and the environmentalists got all hostile?”
“They did, except for a few specialized places. But this baby runs on synthetic gas.”
That widened my eyes. “I didn’t think they had full pump coverage for synthetic yet.”
He pulled out into the traffic, the big engine roaring like a mad cat on the prowl. “They haven’t. Which is why, when I drive beyond city limits, I have to plot my course extremely carefully.” He cast an amused glance my way. “Not only is running out of gas embarrassing, but the tow fees are damn high.”
I laughed. “If you can afford a hand-tooled engine, you can afford tow fees.”
“I’m not rich,” he said, smiling. “Just moderately well off. Where do you live and when are we meeting again?”
Any near-immortal possessing an average amount of smarts when it came to investments would have to be enormously wealthy, but I could certainly understand his reluctance to admit it. I bit into my sandwich, munching for several seconds and making him wait. I gave him my address, then added, “You sound anxious for our next date.”
“I am. I’ve been asked to up my game, remember?”
I laughed again. “I’ve already got a lunch date tomorrow, and I’m working the evening shift. But you can meet me at RYT’s at midnight, and we can go from there.”
“Isn’t the Blue Moon just down the road from you?”
I had another mouthful of sandwich, so I simply nodded. But I was half hoping he didn’t want to go there. After the mess with Jak, I really preferred to avoid the club. Going there just wasn’t worth the risk—if only because Jak still went there on occasion, and I really didn’t want to meet up with him. If I did, I’d no doubt punch him—and that would only give him something else to write about.
“I’ve never been there,” he commented, glancing at the rearview mirror, “but I’ve heard it’s the best of the big clubs.”
Damn. He wanted to go. “How could someone as old as you not have visited the Blue Moon? It’s been around forever.”
He snorted softly. “Hardly. Even white settlement hasn’t been here that long. Besides, I haven’t been in town long enough yet to visit all the local hot spots.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror again, and something in his expression had the hairs along the back of my neck rising.
“What’s wrong?” I resisted the urge to look around and flicked the sun visor down instead, looking into the vanity mirror. The traffic behind us looked normal. Certainly there wasn’t anything I could see that jumped out and screamed Problem.
“See that green Toyota on the right two cars back?”
I frowned. “Yeah. What of it?”
“I noticed it pulling out of a parking space several cars back from us when we left the restaurant. It’s been shadowing us very carefully ever since.”
“He could be just going the same way as us.”
“He could.” His gaze met mine. “But do you really want to take that chance, given what happened yesterday?”
I drew in a breath and released it slowly. “No.”
“Then we’ll question them.”
“How? The minute they have any idea we’re on to them, they’ll f**k off.”
His sudden grin was fierce. “I’ve been a soldier and a cop several times over in my long lifetime. Trust me when I say I know a little about dealing with tails.”
“Then deal away.”
I grabbed the other half of my sandwich and bolted it down. I had a feeling I was going to need the sustenance.
He flicked on the left-hand blinker and turned, keeping his speed even and giving our tail no reason to suspect we were aware of them. After several minutes of cruising, he turned right.
“Okay,” he said, as I brushed the crumbs off my shirt and lap. “We’re going to do another left up ahead. It’s a through-road, but when I traveled down here yesterday they were doing road work and there was only one passing lane. They’ll make us stop.”
“What if there’s no traffic and we’re just waved through?”
“Then we think of something else.” He gave me a smile, his bright eyes alight with anticipation. “I must warn you, I do like a good chase. It makes me hungry.”
And the look in his eyes suggested he didn’t mean food. “I’ve satisfied your hunger enough for one day,” I said, voice dry. “You’ll just have to find someone else, or wait until tomorrow.”
He laughed again and swung left onto a street. Up ahead was the promised road work, and a little man in an orange vest was leaning casually against a stop sign. Lucian slowed, his gaze flicking to the rearview mirror. “Okay, we’ve struck the jackpot. There’s another car stopping behind them. You ready?”
I licked my lips, clenched my fingers around the door handle, and nodded. The car came to a stop. He pulled on the handbrake, slid the gear into neutral, then said, “Go.”
He was out his door before I even had mine open, but the men in the car were faster still. They were out and running in an instant, going separate ways, forcing us to do the same.
The guy on my side was thin and angular, with legs as long as a giraffe’s but possessing none of their ungainly gait. He was over the front fence of the nearest house with an impossibly high leap and quickly disappeared from sight. I leapt, grabbed the top of the fence, and hauled my ass over it—far less elegant, but effective nonetheless.
He was already disappearing around the side of the small brick house. I gave chase, hurdling the trash cans and other bits and pieces he tossed into my path, trying to keep up with him—or at least not let him out of my sight.
He leapt another fence, ran into another yard. I followed, catching my jeans on a nail, the sharp edge tearing the material and my calf. I cursed and dropped down, my fingers brushing the ground to steady myself before I ran on. He was already out into the next street. This one was busier—several cars screeched to a stop, their tires smoking as he leapt over their hoods. I followed, leaving dents in the metal, unable to leap the entire width of the vehicle as he had. Abuse followed me down the street.
A small shopping center came into view. He swung into it, no doubt hoping to lose me in the crowd. I sucked in air, sorting through the flavors running within it, picking out his scent—fear, sweat, and shifter. A mammal of some sort.
He bolted through the doors and into the bright, wide walkway. People scattered, and those who didn’t were knocked aside. A old woman was sent flying, her arms flailing as she teetered toward an escalator. I slowed and grabbed her fingers to prevent her falling, but it cost me. The distance between me and the shifter had suddenly doubled.
I swore and ran on. He crashed through a stairwell door and disappeared from sight. I leapt over a prone teenager and three seconds later hit the door myself, my heart racing and sweat beginning to dribble down my spine. Steps echoed in the concrete well—some going up, some coming down. None of them were running. I flared my nostrils to catch his scent and stepped forward, looking up. I couldn’t see him, but the stairs curled upward for a good five or six floors.
If I ran, he’d hear me. And if I walked, I’d risk losing him.
I took a deep breath, then reached down inside myself to the place where the Aedh resided. She came in a tide of fierce energy that swept across my body, brushing away the pain of my torn skin even as she dissolved my flesh and made me little more than smoke.
I swirled upward through the center of the stairwell. Several people were using them, but none of them was the man I was after. I continued to rise.
I found him near the top floor. He’d paused by the exit into the parking area, his head tilted slightly to one side, expression intent. I waited, hovering near the ceiling, itching to attack but not wanting to run the risk of someone coming through the door and perhaps getting hurt in the fight.
After several minutes, he pushed the door open and walked through. I swirled after him. There were few cars on this level, and no sign or sound that there was anyone else but us here.
Which was perfect.
He paused, his gaze sweeping the area, then he strode across the empty space, heading for several cars in the far corner. After a moment, I realized why—the rotating security cameras didn’t quite make it into this corner. It was a dead spot for them.
He pulled something out of his pocket and pressed several buttons as he aimed the device at the three of cars parked in the corner. The third one beeped, the taillights flashing to indicate a response. A lock pick, I realized. Shit. I’d just run out of time.
I surged forward and formed a mass over his head. As he reached for the driver’s door, I found flesh and dropped right down on top of him.
He grunted and collapsed to the floor on his hands and knees, winded but not knocked out. I remedied that by knocking his head sideways into the car. He collapsed and didn’t move.
I pushed into a sitting position, my legs on either side of his body and my weight resting firmly on his butt, doing nothing more than breathing deeply for several minutes. When the tide of weakness began to fade, I wiped the sweat from my forehead and looked down at my captive.
Now what did I do with him?
It wasn’t practical to drag him back to the car with me—not only because some do-gooder was bound to intervene, but because he was a good foot taller than me. And despite his thin frame, his body felt like steel. The minute he came to, he’d have me beat in reach and strength.
Which meant I’d have to question him here. I glanced around, checking that we were still alone and that the cameras definitely didn’t scan this particular corner, then rose and looked inside the car he’d opened. There wasn’t anything useful in the backseat, so I popped the trunk and checked that out. And discovered the owner was obviously into hiking, because there was not only a backpack filled with gear, but also hiking boots.
I pulled the laces free, then slammed the trunk closed and grabbed my prisoner’s arms, hauling them behind his back. I tied one lace around his wrists, and the other around his thumbs. They might not hold him for long, but I didn’t really need much time.
I rolled him onto his back, then dropped down onto his stomach and slapped his face. “Hey! Wake up.”
His eyelids flickered. I slapped him again, harder this time, the sound echoing.
Brown eyes were suddenly glaring at me balefully. “Get off me, bitch.”
“Tell me why you were following us, and I might consider it.”
“We weren’t following anyone. You’re f**king crazy.”
The words were barely out of his mouth, and he was bucking like a mad thing, trying to dislodge me. I rode the first few attempts, then punched him in the diaphragm. Hard. He gasped, and for several seconds made like a fish out of water as he struggled to suck in air. I felt a little sorry for him—until I remembered that he might just be involved with the people who had tried to kill Ilianna.
“Why were you following me?” I repeated.
“Fuck you, lady!”
I hit him again. He swore—fluently and creatively—when he was able, but otherwise he remained tight-lipped. I sighed. I had two choices. Either I could call Rhoan and let him deal with the man—and in the process lose any hope of gaining additional information on the who and why behind all this—or I could play hardball.
“Tell me,” I said quietly, praying—hoping—that he did talk, “why were you following us, and who put you on to us.”
It couldn’t have been Handberry, because he was dead. But he’d been talking to someone prior to his exit from the club—someone who’d made him so mad, he’d stormed out. Maybe that someone was the next person up the tree of command—and the person behind the current tail.
“Call the cops if you think I did anything wrong, lady,” he spat. “Otherwise get off me or I’ll start screaming for help.”
“Yeah, you do that,” I said, and reached for the Aedh again. But this time, I controlled the surge of power, channeling its fury, containing its strength, focusing it on just my hand. Making it transparent, but not entirely smoke. There, and yet not.
His gaze widened. “What the hell—”
“You will tell me,” I said softly, resting my hand against his chest, just above his heart. Only my fingers held no substance and slipped easily through his flesh, into his body, until they were positioned near his frantically beating heart. “Or I will wrap my fingers around your heart and squeeze every bit of life out of it.”
Chapter Nine
I RE-FORMED JUST ENOUGH FLESH AROUND MY fingertips to carry out the threat. Though I only squeezed gently, because I really didn’t want to kill him. And I could—so easily—if I wanted to. Uncle Quinn had made that abundantly clear when he’d shown me—somewhat reluctantly—how to do this.
The shifter screamed, and it was a high-pitched sound of pain. Sweat broke out across his forehead and fear filled his eyes. I let my fingers become smoke again.
“Tell me,” I said, voice harsh.
“What the f**k are you?” he said, eyes wide as he stared at me in horror.
“I’m nothing you’ve ever come across before.” I kept my voice abrasive, even though weariness was beginning to pulse through my body. I couldn’t keep this up much longer. Going from barely ever using my Aedh skills to using them several times over several days had taken more from me than I’d imagined. And the lack of sleep wasn’t helping, either.
