Pack of Strays (The Fangborn Series Book 2), page 9
“Doesn’t leave a lot of room for us dissenters, does it?” For a moment, I felt a kinship with her. I recognized the loneliness of her self-imposed isolation.
“No, not a lot,” I said.
She gave me a funny look, but we all have our secrets.
I was uncomfortable with the discussion. I never thought of myself as any kind of dissenter, only an unwilling outsider. Realizing, only now that I’d sat down and relaxed, that I needed to use the bathroom, I stood up. I found the most likely direction of the toilets, and made the “same again over here” circle-over-the-table gesture. The bartender nodded. “Be right back,” I told Vee.
I didn’t know if she’d be there when I got back, but I had to take the chance. It had been a long day.
If the ladies’ room had been darker, or less dirty, I might have gone to sleep, but brightly lit and unclean don’t make for a soothing combination, even when I was ready to fall asleep on my feet.
I stopped to wash my hands on the way out, after briefly debating the value of doing so with only cold water and no paper towel.
I looked into the mirror. A thought pounding in my mind, my proximity sense warning me:
There were strangers in the bar.
Well, duh. Of course, there are strangers. That’s one of the principal virtues of a bar …
There are strangers in the bar looking for me.
The ladies’ room was a dead end, no windows, down a hall with no other exits. Only way was back out past them.
No sense in waiting, no sense in subtlety—
A voice in my ear, with no one around. “Zoe, wait!”
“What Sean?”
“Um, isn’t there a better plan?”
“Like what?”
“Uhhh … anything?”
I shook my head. “No time.”
I barreled down the hall, stopping short of the beaded curtain that led to the bar. Nothing going down yet, but that didn’t mean—
Vee was gone.
Maybe she’d left before, ditching me and my problems, or maybe some oracular something told her it would be better to skedaddle. Maybe she’d called in the bad guys herself, and her story was horseshit? In any case, I was on my own.
Best thing to do: Throw money on the bar—no use getting the bartender pissed and calling the cops or pulling out his own piece—walk straight out the door, and lose myself, fast as possible. Hold my phone up to my ear to look like I’d had an emergency call, and there’d be no reason for me to stop and talk.
I tucked my phone between my ear and shoulder, put a frown on my face, and moved determinedly toward the bar. Reaching into my bag, as soon as I touched my wallet, I remembered.
My luck has ever been epically shitty. This time, my memory was, too.
I was out of cash. Used the last twenty at the other bar, this afternoon. Had never made it to the ATM today.
Plan B.
I pulled out a credit card and went up to the bar, beckoning.
“My friend didn’t happen to …”
“Didn’t pay, no.”
I handed him my credit card, and he swiped it. Seemed to take forever.
I tried to compose myself, which was getting harder and harder. Warning bells were going off in my head, and I felt a rumble of the Call. I used everything I could to tamp it down, and to my surprise, I felt it decrease a little.
But it was as if the bartender had grown roots, he was moving so slowly.
I all but snatched the slip and my card away from him. “Sorry,” I whispered. “That guy who just came in?” I nodded toward the source of my anxiety, who I could now see was Buell. He’d cleaned himself up, lost the backwoods look, and was well dressed in a suit for bigger business than anyone would have found in this bar. He’d had a good shave, and his hair now looked like expensively styled waves, not a wild tangle. It did nothing to calm the dread that was filling me. The malice in his eyes was still the same, and now that he saw me, it was mixed with triumph.
My stomach clenched; memories of pain and despair came rushing back. “He’s my ex, and nothing but trouble. I need to get out of here fast. Any chance you could help me out?”
I sensed movement behind me and knew that my anxiety had more than one focus now.
“Sorry,” the bartender said. “His friend over there told me you ran out with his kid.”
I was totes screwed.
There were four new guys, plus the bartender. Of the original four in the bar, two had gotten up and walked out. The other two were uncertain of what was about to happen, but liked the idea of a fight. Four of them were there for a reason, and that reason was me. They’d be the real problem.
And I couldn’t Change. Not with those civilians there.
I picked up a beer bottle. For an instant, all I could imagine was the bartender lying on the floor with a broken jaw. I could almost feel the impact up my arm, the idea of cracking him in the mouth with the bottle was so strong—
With a wrench, I changed my aim and threw the bottle at the mirror behind the bar. He ducked and swore as the glass shattered and bottles tumbled to the floor. I moved straight for the door, hoping we could take it outside. Two stepped in front of the door right away.
Okay, then. If I couldn’t Change, they couldn’t afford to kill me right there, and they couldn’t use their guns or Tasers, either.
Buell stepped in front of me and grabbed my wrist. “We need to talk.”
I punched him straight in the nose. Before I could bring my knee up into his groin, a sharp blow fell across my back. I slammed forward into Buell and barely had time to tuck my chin. That worked for me, and my head smashed into his jaw. He went down, and I reeled to one side, my back ablaze with pain, and my forehead cut and bleeding.
One of the onlookers had decided it would be helpful to break a pool cue across my back. He still held the short thick end of the cue, a look of puzzlement on his face that I was still standing. His eyes widened, and my proximity sense told me one of Buell’s men was closing in behind me.
I stepped forward and stooped. Buell’s guy went right over me, into the joker with the cue. I picked up the long thin end and brought it down on the back of Buell’s guy’s head, and he slumped unconscious on top of the struggling should-have-been observer.
The Pool Cue’s friend picked that moment to leave. I decided to follow suit. The other two of Buell’s guys were at the door; he fought to get through.
For a moment, their eyes were on him. I ran, shoved him through, and tried to duck out. Something sharp bit deeply into my arm. I ignored the pain, knowing I had to get out of there. I threw some elbows, stomped on a couple of feet, and forced my way out.
I lit out of there, running as fast as I could. I tried to make it back to the street, where there’d be more of a crowd, but saw a van’s headlights come on. It pulled out and headed straight for me.
The Order.
I dodged down an alley, figuring the dark would help me escape or cover me if I needed to Change and fight. It was blocked, so I turned around to recover some ground.
A young woman was at the mouth of the alley. I must have appeared quite a sight, covered in blood and my clothing torn, because she actually came down into the alley toward me. “Hey! You okay?”
New York City will surprise you. “I’m fine,” I said. “I tripped back there, and so—”
The only thing lamer would have been for me to say I was looking for a lost contact. The girl shook her head. “You look like you’ve been in a fight. Let me call nine-one-one.”
She was a Normal, and she was sticking up for me. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be, and she was going to get us both killed, if I wasn’t smart and very, very lucky.
“Look, don’t get involved!” I said. “It’s better if I … if I handle this. I’m okay, really.”
Which wasn’t the truth, and it wasn’t a believable lie, either. My right arm was still bleeding pretty good, as was my forehead. What I really needed to do was ditch her before I started healing noticeably, too fast for a human, and before I needed to summon the Change to fight off these assholes.
She wasn’t going to let me do it. She planted her feet, dug out her cell phone, and hit a button.
Keen ears let me hear the voice on the other end. She’d called 911.
I couldn’t afford this; we were in a dead-end alley a couple of blocks down from the dive Vee had taken me to. We had about fifteen seconds before Buell found us.
This Good Samaritan was going to get herself killed and get me locked up in a lab cage or strapped to an exam table.
Before she could say anything, I slapped the phone away from her: it shattered against the pavement with an expensive crack of glass. That wouldn’t stop the authorities from coming, but it might buy me some time.
“Hey!” Her disbelief was nearly comical; she’d temporarily forgotten our peril with my rude disregard for her property. “Why did you—?”
I couldn’t stay here and lead the Order to her.
I ran back toward the street.
“You’re crazy!” she yelled behind me.
Probably so, I thought. Definitely so.
I was five feet from the sidewalk when the silhouettes of the men lengthened in the alley and cut off my escape.
Too late.
Worse, I could hear sirens in the distance. I didn’t know if they were for us, but things were getting complicated.
I was about to rush them, draw them away from the girl who was trying to recover her phone, when I saw the weapons. Similar to what I’d had used on me outside Ephesus, they employed a combination of electric shock and an evil potion containing black hellebore. It would stop me in my tracks and make me miserable—and unable to move—for an hour or two. I couldn’t let that happen. They’d get rid of any witnesses.
They weren’t taking any chances, and neither could I. I ran back to the woman.
“Hey, uh, these are … very … bad people. You’re going to want to … uh, I dunno. Get ready? Something. Things are going to get bad, and I’m going to try to draw them away from you. If you see a way past them, run for it.”
“What the fuck?” She stood, saw the guys, and wilted. They were for real, and there was no mistaking their hostility. “Oh my god. Get ready? Are you nuts or—?”
“Yes.” With that, I turned and ran a few paces, then half-Changed. I felt the familiar thrill of adrenaline and magic as I stepped out of my shoes and ran.
I needed speed and I needed strength. I needed to come up with something they weren’t going to expect, these predators who’d been studying my people for centuries.
I saw one of the hateful weapons, and three more guys with more ordinary handguns. Bullets could kill me, but unless they were very lucky, they were only going to slow me down first.
I wondered how many Hong Kong action films they’d seen.
I zigzagged, which was crazy in that confined space, but I was fast enough to have them miss me. They fired shots—if the woman’s call didn’t bring the cops here, that might speed things up—but the guy with the blaster couldn’t get a bead on me.
I tried to figure the angles, then gave up and prayed. I took a last step, then jumped to the top of the dumpster and then, diagonally, onto the guy with the blaster. He shot, trying to tag me as I was landing on him. He missed, but the acrid fumes of the hellebore toxin burned my eyes. He went down, and I pulled the wires from the gun. I shoved the guy nearest me into the one behind him.
That gave the third man barely enough time to draw down on me. I hesitated—it takes guts to run toward a gun aimed at you at close distance—too long.
I heard the shots as a bullet blasted into my shoulder. I tripped, felt my feet leave the ground. I landed hard in a heap on top of two of the other guys, blood rushing.
I struggled to get up; I wouldn’t wait for him to finish it. Or stab me with a hypo and haul me off to their personal zoo and Buell. I wouldn’t sit there, waiting for the beginning of the end.
I couldn’t do it. I was woozy from blood loss, and even Fangborn healing wasn’t going to give me the seconds I needed. In an act of desperation, I raised my hand and aimed a thought at him. Maybe what tiny bit of vampiric ability I had would throw him off for a second.
“Sleep,” I said.
An unearthly rush of power. I saw the bracelet go mad with neon color. Caffeine didn’t have a kick like this, and if cocaine did, then I could understand the attraction.
He stepped forward, crumpled, and fell over.
The light persisted. It drew the woman over, who came with trembling steps. “Whaaa …”
I hauled myself up, painfully. “It’s okay. Um, I—”
It took me a moment to figure out the orientation, like when a train moving past convinces you your own train is moving. Several problems presented themselves.
The police were on the way. The woman had seen—what? I still wasn’t certain what had happened myself.
Then a gasp. “Jesus, what the fuck?” The horror on her face was beyond that from seeing a woman fight and get wounded. It wasn’t even the glowing light on my wrist. I was still half-Changed.
It was the look of someone confronted with every one of her bogeymen.
I tried to Change back to skinself. I snapped back, effortlessly, the drag and drain of the toxin evaporating. My wounds healed, way faster than usual.
“Um. Please. Just … run away. Pretend none of this ever happened,” I said.
“What … what … what …?” Her words were as unsteady as her hands, no sense getting through.
A second shadow intruded on the diminishing neon yellow light. “Give her another memory, if you can really do that,” said a muffled voice. “And let’s get out of here before the cops come.”
Vee stood in the mouth of the alley, and she looked like hell. She had a handkerchief pressed to her nose, bright red with blood. There was bruising under her eyes.
“Did they find you?”
She stepped over the prone men and pulled the blood-soaked cloth away from her face. “No, I found you. I can’t do this much longer, so let’s get moving, shall we?”
I turned back to the girl, who was crying now, unwilling or unable to move.
I decided to take Vee’s word for it, and tried to focus my intent on the girl. “Um … it’s okay. You’re going to leave here and go home as if nothing happened. Forget everything you saw here. You lost your phone, but although it’s a pain, it was only an accident.”
The girl nodded. “I just want to go home.”
Vee blotted her nose again. “Contact your service provider, and tell them the phone was stolen. And if you haven’t invested in cloud storage backup, do that next time.”
The girl nodded, taking a deep breath and looking as if she was feeling better. “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to.”
I looked at Vee, who said, “People spend all that money on a phone, put their lives on it, then don’t even take basic precautions like a password. It’s kind of a thing with me.”
I tilted my head; the sirens were getting louder, closer, more insistent. As we escorted the girl past the bodies and out of the alley, another noise caught my ear. One of the men had a headset, and I heard a voice from the earpiece.
“Have you recovered the subject? Do you need reinforcements to bring her in? Over.”
Vee turned when I hesitated; she didn’t have a werewolf’s keen hearing. I grabbed her arm and pulled her along with me.
“Keep going,” I said, feeling more secure now that the bracelet’s glow had dulled and disappeared. The police were pulling up to the alley, and I wanted us as far away as possible. “They were trying to bring me in … to their lab, I guess.” I remembered the last time I’d been apprehended by Buell, and shivered.
We found our way back to 36th Street, and Vee stopped. She took out a sandwich bag, one of a roll in her pocketbook, and put the handkerchief in it.
“There’s a trash can right there.” I pointed. “I don’t think you’ll be able to get that clean.”
She shook her head. “I don’t let anyone near my blood. I’ll burn it at home.” She looked me up and down. “You might consider the same protocols, the eldritch shit you got going on.”
“I’m weird? What the hell was that glowing?”
Vee regarded me, her face as stony as any I’ve ever seen. Then she sighed. “I have a little of the sight—it’s sporadic. Three minutes ago? I saw you get put into a cage in a minivan. And as you’ve seen, I can give a Family member a boost, if I’m nearby, though it doesn’t come easy or without a cost.”
She paused. “I wasn’t expecting that when I gave you the bump. I expected you to heal faster, fight harder, not … use vampire suggestion.”
“I’ve got a few traces of vampire powers. I figure it happened when they messed with my mother’s blood chemistry.” Then I changed the subject. “The bump … that was the source of your friction with the family? I can see how it would be something that would get overexploited in a hurry. That was why you left?”
She hesitated a little too long. “That. And some other stuff.”
I had to wonder what the other stuff was. “So you’ll come with me, then? Now that you’ve seen what I’m up against—and it’s not just me, it’s everyone in the Family—”
She held up a hand. “No. I said, I’m not interested. I did this much because I didn’t think bailing on you would get you into trouble, and I was sorry. We’re even. I’m going back to my life. You can forget about me.”
She began walking down the street. I ran in front of her, hands up. She stopped and pulled back, giving me a look of hostility. “Look, you leaving me wasn’t what got me into trouble. It was the Order, and you know it. So there must have been another reason for you to bother coming after to help me. A reason you should come with me.”
Vee bit her lip. In a monotone she said, “I saw what I saw. I don’t see anything else. We’re done. Get out of my way.”
I held up my hands; her tone suggested she’d be happy zapping me with whatever if I didn’t move. “Well, thanks for helping me, anyway.”
“Forget you ever knew anything about me,” she repeated.
