by Chloe Garner
“Like the sport or the shirt?” Colette asked.
Tina looked around the room, then took Colette’s elbow through her own and started for the car. She let the other woman put her jacket on at the door, and Tina put on her coat, just to keep in Nathan’s blood heat for a while if she could. At the car, she started the engine.
“They may have a tracker on my car,” she said. “Keep your eyes open.”
“If they have a tracker on your car, why wouldn’t they just come grab us?” Colette answered.
“Because I’m going to be a lot easier to deal with in a couple hours,” Tina answered. “Polo as in the game. Marco translates ‘where are you’ and Polo translates ‘here I am’.”
“And he knows that?” Colette asked skeptically.
“I’m hoping one of them does,” Tina said. “Otherwise, we’ve got a long few days ahead of us.”
“What’s the first dragon?” Colette asked.
“Yeah,” Tina said. “I didn’t have any better ideas.”
She parked almost half a mile away, watching and listening for any signs of men from the Order, but either Lucas had kept his mouth shut about what had happened, or they didn’t have the means to follow her, because they were on their own all the way to the building where Tina and Tell had found the first Kaija.
The dragon whose much smaller cousin had killed her.
She went to the side, ground-level window that Tell had used to get in, finding it locked. She worked through the process to get the twisting bolt undone and she opened the window, sliding through and reaching back to help Colette.
“What has this got to do with dragons?” Colette whispered, looking around the storage room.
“There was a dragon here,” Tina said. “Mostly a giant paranormal lizard with a big reputation, but it was one of them that killed me. We were hunting them.”
“Hunting them?” Colette asked. “That doesn’t sound right. What is Tell doing for a living these days?”
“Whatever he feels like,” Tina muttered. She could feel the sun coming up; she needed to get someplace safe quickly. “But he’s still a detective. He just had a history with these things.”
“Are they still around?” Colette asked, and Tina shook her head.
“He still goes out hunting them, to try to find the last few individuals, if they’re out there, but we killed the one that lived here.”
Technically, Ginger had killed it. And made a sauce out of it.
Technically.
Tina turned to go down the hallway toward the boiler room, a windowless room where the Kaija had been nesting, and she closed the door after them, locking it.
It didn’t have the hardware that Tell had advocated - it wasn’t built for barricading herself into - but it was going to have to do. This was where he would look for them, and this was all she’d been able to think of.
She’d gotten Colette, and she’d gotten them here, with a clue for Tell to follow.
A damn fine job, if she did say so herself.
“I need to lay down before I fall over,” Tina said. “Find something heavy to put it in front of the door. Hopefully no one tries to come in here today.”
“Hopefully?” Colette asked. “That’s your plan?”
“Is now,” Tina said, going to sit with her back against the corner of the room.
“There’s nothing heavy in here,” Colette said. “It’s just a boiler.”
“You can go to the maintenance closet down the hall if you want,” Tina said, her energy sapping quickly. “But don’t go upstairs and don’t let anyone find you. We don’t want to attract attention. We just want to be hidden until Tell gets here tonight.”
“I’m going to get hungry at some point,” Colette said.
“Should have ordered food at the bar,” Tina said. She was going to lose control of her body, soon, and she wanted to be sure that she didn’t slump over or - worse - tip, after it happened. She finally just lay down with her hands behind her head.
She didn’t get muscle aches from sleeping funny anymore, which still surprised her.
“You didn’t tell me we were going to go hide in some dirty boiler room,” Colette said. “I thought we were going to a safe house with a refrigerator and a bed and stuff.”
“You’re alive,” Tina said. “You’re welcome.”
She had a knife in her boot.
A gun in her backpack.
And Colette was seriously bored.
This was a recipe for terrible things, and Tina spent the entire day hyper-alert, listening to people in the building as they went about their days, to Colette as she paced and talked to herself, imagining Tina to be asleep. The sun was intense. Tina was glad she’d fed; the wound was actually still just a little bit sore, under the intensity of the sun overhead, and she couldn’t have imagined what it would have been like without the fountain.
Tina could hear Colette’s stomach growling, and she knew she had a fight on her hands, when the sun went down and Colette decided she was free again to go find food, so Tina lay still for a long time after she could have gotten up again, still listening hard, feeling some sympathy to the older woman for what was a very long, very hard way to spend a day.
Tina knew it first-hand.
Being a vampire sucked.
Trapped, unable to do anything useful, alone in the dark?
Yeah.
That was every day, now.
Finally, Tina sat up, feeling silly.
“How long do you think he’ll take to get here?” Colette asked, coming to sit next to her.
“I don’t know,” Tina answered honestly. “It depends on whether or not he figures out to come look for my phone.”
“I am very hungry,” Colette said.
“Oh, I can tell,” Tina answered. “I can hear your stomach quite clearly.”
“I let you stop for food,” Colette said.
“We’ve gotten ourselves hidden away,” Tina said. “You don’t just go running out because you’re hungry when there are people set on killing you.”
“I’d rather not starve to death in here,” Colette said. “Is this really as far as your plan went?”
Tina sat up, hearing the window open and the feet land in the storage room. She got up and moved the tool box from in front of the door and unlocked it, stepping out of the way as Tell came storming into the room.
“What were you thinking?” he asked. “The one thing I told you, over and over, was that if they had path back to you, they would eventually kill you.”
“And you knew I wouldn’t do it,” Colette answered. “It’s good to see you, too.”
He hugged her, and they stood in a long embrace that Tina finally looked away from.
“You got old,” Tell said.
“And you didn’t,” Colette laughed. “Somehow I thought you would have. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Tell said. “Not up to full strength, yet, but I’ll be fine. I brought breakfast.”
Tina could smell it, a bag on the floor outside of the room. Tell brushed past Tina like she wasn’t there to get the food and bring it back to Colette.
“I can’t believe you found us based on Polo and dragons,” Colette said. “You’re amazing.”
Tell laughed.
“It took us hours,” he said. “We were going through every auto-correct idea we could come up with, trying to figure out what she might have meant. Even talked about Marco Polo and decided it didn’t mean anything.”
“I found Kyle based on where his phone was,” Colette said. Tina tipped her head, wanting to put in that she’d thought of it even before Colette had mentioned that, but not wanting to seem that insecure.
“That sounds like you,” Tell said. “How is life? Are you happy?”
Colette settled in to eat, talking about life in Albert with a new animatedness that Tina hadn’t seen from her before. Tell hung on every word.
“I met your… friend,” Colette said finally. “She’s interesting.”
“She’s amazing,” Tell said, standing. “One of the smartest women I’ve ever known, and tough.”
“I noticed,” Colette said. “They shot her last night.”
Tell turned to face Tina now.
“Are you okay?” he asked, and Tina nodded.
“That’s why we were in Partridge,” Tina said. “I fed.”
He gave her a little frown.
“Look who’s trying new things,” he said quietly.
“Colette was telling me about the different phases of necromancy,” Tina said brightly. “I think she’s going to be very helpful.”
“Helpful?” Colette asked.
“Phases,” Tell said, turning to look at the woman on the floor again. “What do you know about necromancy?”
“I lived next to them for a long time,” Colette said defensively. “I couldn’t help but notice things.”
“You told me that you didn’t know anything,” Tell said. “You just called the police because you saw them kill Solomon.”
“I didn’t know at the time what was going on,” Colette said, standing. “I’ve put more of it together, since then.”
“Which is why they want to kill you,” Tell said, exasperated. “What were you thinking?”
“That he’s my brother,” Colette said.
“You lied to me,” Tell said. “And then you did exactly what I told you not to do. And then you came here. After all of that.”
“You turned her,” Colette said.
They both stood, stunned and silent, and Tina finally got over her own ego to stand in the middle of them.
“She said that Kyle missed work two days ago,” she said. “It means that they’re probably moving into the last stages of the magic to resurrect him after they kill him, but I’m still skeptical that they actually want to resurrect him.”
“I don’t want them to, either,” Colette said softly, and Tina looked at her sharply.
“You what?” she asked. Colette shook her head.
“If he goes in there and he dies, he’s an idiot, and I’ll be very upset. But if he goes in there and they resurrect him? He’ll be one of them for the rest of his life, and he’ll help them hunt me. I know him. He wants to be a part of something like that. Something powerful.”
“You’d rather he die, because living is worse,” Tina said, hating herself for being so petty, but there it was.
“Shut up,” Colette answered. Tina smirked. The moment broke and they were moving again.
“You have to get him out,” Colette said. “I only came because I was afraid that you weren’t at your office anymore, or that you’d forgotten me and wouldn’t figure out what I was talking about.”
“I will never forget you,” Tell said. “You know that.”
“Twenty years is a long time,” Colette said.
“We ruled out storming the place and just tearing him out of there,” Tina said.
“There’s no way to keep him from just going back,” Tell agreed.
“They’re going to kill him,” Colette said.
“How long?” Tina asked. “How long do you think it’s going to take them to get to the point that they’re ready?”
“A few days, I guess,” Colette said. “Maybe a week.”
Tina looked at Tell.
“Is the apartment clean?” she asked.
“She’d be safe there,” he said after a moment.
“They didn’t kill her right off,” Tina said. “I don’t know what they would have done with her, if I hadn’t gotten to her, but they had a plan for her.”
He shook his head.
“Bellany,” he said. “I swear, I’m going to kill that man this time.”
“Tell, I don’t like it when you talk like that,” Colette said. “They self-destruct plenty fast. We just stand back and watch it happen.”
Tina raised an eyebrow at Tell, who pursed his lips, but shook his head.
“It isn’t fast enough,” he said. “I can’t take them on, directly, and if they’ve circled the wagons to finish what they’re doing with Kyle, I don’t know what else I can do.”
“You should have grabbed him earlier,” Colette said.
“And do what with him?” Tell asked. “He’s there voluntarily.”
“Bring him to me,” Colette said. “I don’t know. Something. It’s too late now.”
“He was always going to get you killed, if you got involved with him,” Tell said. “One way or another. You should have stayed in Albert.”
“They took him because of me,” Colette answered. “I can’t live with that.”
“Can we go?” Tina asked. “I don’t want to get caught down here and have to try to explain our way out.”
Tell glanced at her and nodded.
“Yeah. I’ll take her. Where is your car?”
“It’s a ways off,” Tina said. “Tempted to just leave it, though. You scan your car for trackers before you came?”
He stopped.
“I’m off my game,” he muttered.
“Me, either,” Tina said. “And there was a guy who broke into the garage, the other night. All we have to do is get back to Viella, but there’s no telling who knows where we are, if you parked in close.”
He nodded.
“All right. Then I’ll come back with my hands empty and just leave. But you guys should go out ahead of me. If I have to fight my way out, I don’t want her there.”
Tina nodded.
“Where did you park?” she asked.
“Across the street,” he said, and she shook her head.
“You really are off your game. Get it together, Tell.”
“Be nice,” Colette said. “He was too busy trying to figure out what in the world your dragon clue meant.”
“No, that one I got,” Tell admitted. “I just wasn’t thinking.”
Tina wondered, for a moment, if he hadn’t lied to her about not loving another woman after Helen, if maybe he’d lied to himself about it, too.
“It’s possible they haven’t gotten here yet, if they weren’t following close,” Tina said. “We need to move.”
“I’ll leave at the same time as you,” Tell said. “I’ll go out the front door, you go out the side window. Right?”
Tina nodded.
“Yeah. I can do that.”
“Are you going to be okay?” Colette asked.
Tell grinned.
“Let’s all be honest, here. If Tina hears them get the better of me out front, there’s no way she’s not going to come help me, no matter what I say about keeping you safe. So I’m mostly just worried about you, right now.”
Tina nodded quickly and Colette looked from one to the other of them. Tina thought she read jealousy there, but it could have just been what she expected to see.
“All right,” Colette said. “I’m ready. Let’s get out of here.”
Tina brought her attention to Tell, following him out the door and down the hallway. He paused as she and Colette went into the storage room, where Tina went to stand against the wall under the window.
She listened to Tell’s footsteps on the stairs and then the front doors opening. She paused another thirty seconds, making sure that anyone’s attention who was paying it would be on him. She nodded, opening the window quickly and giving Colette a boost, following the woman out and closing the window behind them.
It was cold out.
“That way,” she whispered, indicating away from the front of the building.
“Is he okay?” Colette asked, her head craning as though she’d be able to see.
“No one has approached him yet,” Tina said. “We need to keep moving. That’s the whole point.”
Colette let Tina drag her back toward the back alley behind the buildings, where the human woman struggled to make it through the trash and debris. It was like dragging a herd of elephants along behind her.
“You’re predictable,” a voice ahead of her said. “He said this was what you would do.”
Tina reached behind her to toss Colette onto the ground - there was glass down there, she knew, but it was better than bullets - and then she sprang at the wall, climbing.
The man wasn’t one she’d smelled before, or else she might have noticed that he was there, even at this distance. He stepped out from behind a dumpster with a gun out. He was wearing goggles, probably night vision, and he had the gun pointed at her.
She should have heard his heart, she realized belatedly. Sure, the buildings all around her were full of noise and voices and people, but she hadn’t noticed the presence of a heartbeat there in the alley with her, and it might cost Colette her life.
Tina climbed up to a window ledge and looked across the alley, trying to find something she could jump to, just to keep moving and make a challenging target of herself.
The man walked forward, still pointing the gun at her, but he hadn’t pulled the trigger yet.
Why not?
Was he trying to avoid attention, was it because he knew it wouldn’t do much good, or was it just that he thought he had her at bay and it wasn’t necessary?
Because it was very much necessary.
She jumped across the alley, grabbing a lip in the brickwork that anyone else would have failed to notice, and the man squatted, trying to find Colette with his hand without looking down at her. Tina was ready to spring at him when he finally looked down, but there was a brilliant flash of light, and he jerked back and away with a yelp.
Tina landed on the ground next to his gun arm, grabbing him by the wrist and the shoulder and throwing him with every bit of leverage she could come up with into the wall. The gun went off as he flew, and she followed after him, jumping over boxes to land with her elbow against his throat.
She kicked his wrist, hitting it with the point of her boot and crushing it against the wall, then she looked him in the face, lying in the deep dark between buildings, nothing but stars overhead.
Decision.
He’d ripped the goggles off, at the flash of light, so he was blind, blinking at her.
It was the sneer.
“If you’re going to die, embrace it,” he hissed.
She let her fangs drop in.
“What was the flash?” Tina asked as she helped Colette back up onto her feet to keep moving again.
“My phone,” Colette answered.