The small woman sat alone at the end of a row of machines. Slightly plump, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, she didn't feed any coins into the machine, simply stared down at her phone. Even from across the room, I could see the faint trails of tears drying on her cheeks.
Calix didn't even so much as glance in my direction, but I couldn't shake the feeling she knew I was there. Draping herself across the machine, she sat down next to the other woman, her darker hair soft against the woman's light blonde aura.
Slowly, the blonde woman responded to her friendly overtures, putting the phone back in her purse, wiping her cheeks.
Within moments, Calix had her laughing at some small joke.
And something else. I'm not immune to the energy that builds up in people that can only be released through violence or sex, and these two were building up some serious vibes.
With a rapidity that had me biting back jealousy, Calix stood and offered the woman her hand. She took it and followed Calix toward the back of the casino floor. Muttering my apologies to the people I bumped into, I hurried to follow after them.
I wasn't sure what I expected to find when I came out the back of the building. The casino had the usual squirrelly layout, coupled with some security. Calix seemed to simply drift through, the other woman protected by her casual trespassing. I got dirty looks and an attempt to stop me that only failed because I'm good at sprinting.
To the back of the building, I found an empty alley. The night sky had clouded over, but the lights from Old Vegas reflected back a glow that settled over the area like fog from a brooding weather giant.
There were a few dumpsters, and some puddles of unidentifiable origin on the ground, but no place where I could see Calix bringing a–date? Paramour? Inside, the curiosity driving my steps was getting the shit pounded out of it by a growing rage that this person could talk a big game about wanting to protect Karen, and yet could so easily betray my friend. A friend who, I knew from personal experience, did not casually divulge or dedicate her affections.
A soft breeze brought their scent back. This time, the trail didn't blaze in front of me. Instead, it had gone back to normal. Perhaps I'd seen all Calix meant me to see. Perhaps I'd been given enough of a head start.
Whatever. Pissed off to be still stuck on two legs, and trying as hard as I could not to think of the change–ow! Fuck–I headed down the alley toward a parking garage structure.
The garage was about five stories high, filled with all manner of vehicles smelling of booze and Happy Meals. I slipped into the garage, the shadows covering my approach, following the scent of sex and chocolate and cinnamon–and blood.
Up the stairs, past the landing, I came out at the top of the parking garage. The structure was open at the top, with a shallow ledge around it to prevent people from driving off. Not sure how effectively it stopped people from jumping off. I wondered if it had ever been tested.
A soft sound came from around the corner of the enclosed stairwell. Clothing rustled, and flesh caressed flesh. Now that I was there, I wasn't sure if I wanted to see what was going on. But of course, I couldn't stop now.
All pretense at subterfuge aside, I turned the corner and stopped.
About ten yards away, Calix and the woman from the casino sat on the parking garage ledge, wrapped so deeply in each other that a wave of embarrassment at my own voyeurism threatened to turn my steps back.
More confused than ever, I stepped back, trying to melt into the shadows. I'm better at it when I'm furry.
I'd caught them mid-kiss. Or maybe at the beginning of the kiss. At the five-minute mark, I started getting concerned if they were going to breathe any time soon. Anything to keep my mind off the pheromones that wrapped me up and squeezed. It had been a long time since I'd shared that sort of embrace with anyone, as my body reminded me. Insistently.
The woman slumped slightly, her kisses straying from Calix's lips to her ear, neck. Lower. Calix held her, wrapped in her legs and arms. I had a quick flash/vision of the taller woman as a preying mantis, all long limbs and predatory hunger.
Even as I blinked the vision back, the scene shifted. At first, I thought the movement to be a simple caress of a momentary lover. Calix brushed the other woman's hair back over her shoulder, her two hands moving along the woman's back and arms in what could have been an embrace or a bracing gesture.
With the woman steadied in her hands, neck bare, Calix looked up. Her eyes met mine, and this time I could not mistake the dull red glow emanating from within. Again, the thought flashed through my mind, how did this color penetrate the monochrome sight I was cursed with twenty-eight days out of twenty-nine? She held my glance deliberately, not mocking, but as if to say, look and learn.
And then the light caught just the barest hint of a flash off a mouth full of sharp teeth as she bent to her lover's jugular.
I felt like the world's dumbest supernatural nuke. And also, kind of hungry.
∞ ∞ ∞
My stomach growled for the third time as I waited outside the parking garage. After witnessing the little show, I'd decided to head back downstairs, give the ladies their privacy. I hadn't really eaten, save for that half a bottle of Yuengling, and I needed to eat, but I had too many questions to concentrate on figuring out how to get food. Conveniently, I had no wallet, no car, and no way of knowing if the woman Calix had seduced would wake up groggy somewhere with her memory wiped, come flying off the top of the garage, or be disposed of some other way.
"She'll be fine."
I nearly fell off the curb. Calix had managed to walk up behind me without me noticing, definitely not something that should have been possible. I scrambled to my feet.
"So … do vampires mind read as well?"
Calix shrugged. "For a secret agent, wolf, you're surprisingly easy to read, my friend."
Oh, we were friends now. Excellent. Maybe she would answer some questions.
She held up a set of keys and jingled them to get my attention. "Come on. We're going to borrow my friend's car. MONIKER is probably freaking out right about now, and I don't want to get fired."
There wasn't much to say to that, so I nodded and followed her around the corner and into the garage. The keys belonged to Subaru station wagon of an indiscriminate grayish color. Typical soccer mom vehicle. Maybe the blonde woman actually was a soccer mom. A kid's sweatshirt and various food wrappers littered the back seat, and I spotted a seat that sort of looked like a car seat, kind of a raised platform with arms.
We got in the car, Calix driving, me rolling down the window to bask in the fresh air. The seatbelt prevented me from hanging my head out. This form has all sorts of disadvantages.
She started the car and pulled around to the exit gate. We both shrank into the shadows of the car as she paid. The gate lifted, and we headed back out.
Calix drove carefully, yet aggressively. She knew her way around, too, swinging us through the maze of streets until we were headed back out of town. As we drove, I thought of and discarded the questions that welled up. I mean, where do you start?
Once we pulled out on the highway, Calix seemed to settle back, as if a tension had left her suddenly.
"It's always the worst with the ones in the closet." She spoke more to herself than me. "You get stuck in their headspace and can't get away."
"You actually get in their heads?"
"In a matter of speaking," she replied, never taking her eyes from the road ahead. "It's part of the process."
"You want to fill me in on the rest?"
"Sure don't." She drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the window, fingertips drumming a rhythmic pattern that kept time with the car's pace.
"Does Karen know?"
"No, she doesn't." The fingertips stilled. "And if you tell her, I will cut you into ten pieces and feed from your remains."
That was a curiously specific threat, but I had no doubt she meant it.
"You want to share with the rest of the class what all t
hat was about?" I asked. Because I hadn't been wrong–she had meant me to follow her. She had known that I was there and waited until I arrived to feed in front of me. I'm not a fan of theatrics. Unless, of course, they're mine. "Inquiring minds want to know."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"There are a lot of people pissed off at you right now," Calix began. "There've been rumors for the past, I don't know, fifty or sixty years or so, that the mundanes had gotten ahold of proof of things–people, creatures–that exist outside of the scope of explainable science."
Oops.
"We've been getting complacent, I know," she continued. "We were comfortable with the fact that modern science didn't seem to have a place for us anymore–and that was fine. I mean, I'm pretty much over getting accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake."
"When you say ‘we,' you mean … vampires?" Even saying the word out loud made me feel ridiculous. I get it, I'm a werewolf. But still. I grew up in a pack and lived my life with humans who wrote off the supernatural as a freak accident. Forgive me if I was still getting used to it.
Calix rolled her eyes and gave me the finger, then went back to driving. "It took us a while, but eventually we learned about MONIKER. And then Black Mountain. I was sent to infiltrate your agency."
"And Black Mountain?"
"We still haven't yet heard back from the agents we sent there."
"Was your sister … was she part of it? Was she a–whatever you are?"
Calix's face turned to stone.
"Let me explain this to you, Rick, and then I'd like to never talk about it again."
"Fair enough."
"We–vampires, yes, is the popular term–we call ourselves Family." She left off the fingertip drumming, grasping the steering wheel with both hands, knuckles white. "We are most often born in sets of twins, unless there is a complication in the womb." She shook her head. "I was born a twin. My sister–well, it's usual that one twin will be born like me. And the other twin–Arista–she's… She was–" She broke off, taking a moment to regain control over the emotions that seethed under the outwardly calm surface. When she spoke again, her preternatural calm had reasserted itself. "Arista was as human in nature as anyone else in that room."
"What were you both doing here?"
"I followed Karen, Arista followed me." Calix relaxed her grip on the wheel. "We were collecting as much information as we could. I was doing it within the organization. She was working as a waitress with a temp agency. It was supposed to be so she could get placed around a bunch of different places, see if she could make any additional inroads. Find lower-level geeks sneaking out on the town, make some friends, get some intel. It wasn't the first time we'd been in the field together."
So many still unanswered questions. Were vampires–sorry, Family–as long-lived as our pack? What about the human twin? Did they heal or rejuvenate? Where did they come from? Why didn't we have supernatural meetups so we could get to know each other? Did MONIKER know about them?
"Did you kill the little girl?" Not the question I'd meant to ask, but one that had been preying on my mind since the last time we'd painted the town red.
"No." She took a quick glance at me, eyebrow raised. "I did take some of her blood–it's how we glaze." Blank look. "Sorry, Family slang. We kind of massage people's memories when we feed. Glaze over them. It's hard to explain."
Inside me, the change rolled over and pressed against the walls of my consciousness. I tamped it firmly back down, quite well aware, thank you very much, that the waxing moon was rising higher over the desert.
"She remembers a night when bad men came for her, but her daddy was the hero who saved her life by giving his," Calix said. "It's not going to make her life any easier. But no, I didn't kill her."
She turned to me again, and this time, the red lurked in the back of her eyes. I don't know how she kept it hidden. Maybe it was the sort of thing that once it had been seen, you couldn't ignore it.
"But her father is very, very dead." She put her eyes back on the road, slowing and flicking on the turn signal. "And I enjoyed sharing his last few moments with him." Again, glints in the moonlight of teeth that formed and re-formed to very sharp points.
She pulled to a stop. Ahead of us, the narrow mountain road stretched up to the facility.
"Rick. I want to take down this agency. I want to remove all traces from human awareness that we exist. And I want Karen to come with us, because I do not want to see her destroyed with the rest of them."
A thought occurred to me. Did Dmitri know who or what she was? Did she include him in her calculations? And Dr. Gratusczak… I realized she was waiting for me to say something.
"I promised Dmitri I would help him find his daughter." I peered at her face to see if she reacted to the mention of the old Russian. Nothing. "You may be a pointy-toothed creature of the night, but he's something else entirely."
"Yes, he is." Calix put the car in drive. "Fair enough. You pay your debt. Then we take them down."
Sounded like a good plan to me. Or good enough.
∞ ∞ ∞
Talk is cheap. When we pulled up to the front of the facility, I forgot all the fancy words about debts and honor, about to suggest we just head back down the mountain and drive away. MONIKER had sent a party to meet us. They looked pissed. And carried weapons. Including a net with which I was very familiar and didn't need a refresher.
What were we doing? Karen didn't need our help. She was no damsel. And if there was distress, she was probably the one causing it.
I caught the smallest signs of tension returning to Calix. A tightening around the eyes and corners of her mouth. The smell of cinnamon intensified.
Calix killed the engine. At this point, I really had no choice. Get out of the car or get dragged back. I'd much prefer to walk in under my own power, if I got the choice. As if on cue, my stomach growled. If there were a chance of food, I'd sign up for another four-year tour.
We covered the short stretch of turf between the mom-mobile and the group of MONIKER soldiers in a few seconds. They surrounded us and began ushering us to the yawning door of the facility. It wasn't quite frog-marching. But it came close.
Karen caught my eye, but didn't otherwise acknowledge me. A curious absence surrounded her–where normally I found rosemary, only the sharp tang of silver remained, and a scar like something had been excised.
Once inside, the troops closed the door behind us. A few feet in front of us, another door opened. As we went through that, it closed and locked as well. My cuff twinged. With the full moon so close, every part of me strained for the Change without even thinking about it.
"Rick." She nodded at the MONIKER troops to dismiss them. "Calix. Had fun?"
Calix shrugged. I grinned.
"Viva Las Vegas." Now, to important business. "What's for midnight chow?"
Karen rolled her eyes. The two women fell into step together, and I followed them down the hall. There was no sign of anyone else–perhaps Dmitri was actually human and slept at night. As for Dr. G., with any luck, they'd locked him in a cage, too.
∞ ∞ ∞
The cafeteria had been shut down for the night, but someone named Jared had left a chicken sandwich in the fridge. I knew this because it said: JARED'S SANDWICH. Now it was "Rick's Sandwich." And it was delicious.
There were a few other, more anonymous, leftovers in there, some of which were very dubious indeed, but I still ate them. When I'm caught in a pre-Change appetite, I'll eat pretty much anything. And if I hadn't been wearing the cuff, I would have eaten Jared, too.
Both women turned down offers to share in the spoils, choosing instead to nurse identical cups of hot, black coffee. The smell of it crept into my senses and threatened indigestion, but my insides don't give up food easily.
I polished off the last of someone's tapioca pudding they had left, half-eaten, in the back of the fridge. By this time, the morning sun had risen high enough up the mountain side to drag its way across the room wher
e we sat. A tall man who smelled of curry dropped in briefly to stow his lunch in the refrigerator and grab a mug of hot water. I almost waited until he was out the door before I stole his lunch and sat down happily.
"Very ballsy, my furry friend," Calix noted.
"If I were furry, I wouldn't have to settle for stealing his lunch."
"Rick would probably just eat him." Karen rolled her eyes, an old, familiar gesture that clashed with the strain on her face. We'd only been gone five or six hours. What the hell…
Calix moved right past that one. I thought it showed great restraint on her part. Also on mine, for not pointing out I wasn't the only cannibalistic biomorph in the room. "Find anything while we were gone?"
Karen sipped her still-steaming coffee. "We're still crunching data. Probably will be for a while." Her normally alert eyes deadened for just a moment. I paused in eating to see what would happen, but in the next second, she came back to us. "We do have a lead. It looks like Black Mountain is flowing a lot of money through a certain currency exchange bureau in Germany."
Road trip? Please, please, please, let us go on another road trip.
"It came to our attention, mostly because MONIKER uses the same bureau for essentially the same thing." Karen shrugged. "Money–and people–flow in. Nothing flows out, not that you can tell. Whatever pops up is clean as a whistle, and mostly used to fund our research and development arm."
"So that's where you guys get the money for Dr. G's delightful playroom."
Karen ignored me. "We could stand to do some more surveillance, but it looks like our target for all the right reasons."
"Any sign of the woman?" Calix asked.
"Potentially." Karen finished her coffee off in one long gulp. "Your little field trip got everyone worked up, but now that you're back, we'll have Dmitri confirm it. We've got a couple of blurry photos and possibly a conversation, and that's about it."
"You said, MONIKER uses the same bureau for its operations," I said. "That's a hell of a coincidence."
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