by Mark Henwick
I snorted. The young rely on sarcasm far too much.
“Anyway,” she reached into a pocket, “a bit late for last night, but Ma said to give you this.”
She dropped a bracelet into my hand. It was beautiful, made with lines of little stone beads of different types and colors and sealed with a gold clasp.
“It’s lovely! Thank you. Or thank your mother. What’s it for?” I looked back up at Tullah.
“It’s a protection charm.” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, I know, it’s not as if you need protecting.”
I smiled. “Not what I meant, Tullah. I meant, why is she giving me something so lovely? It’s not my birthday or anything. But okay, let’s talk about the bracelet first. It’s going to protect me from evil or something?”
Tullah answered more seriously than I expected. “Actually, magic isn’t quite like that. It’s kind of difficult to define good and evil in a spell, but it will warn you if someone close by intends you harm. It’ll tingle.”
I believed in vampires, obviously. I was starting to believe in werewolves after last night. But I was having a bit of trouble with a bracelet figuring out people’s intentions.
“I know your mother is into that. I didn’t know you were.” I raised my eyebrows at her. She was a straightforward Denver kid studying in college. Did she believe in this stuff too?
“Some,” she said neutrally. “Go on, put it on.”
I wrapped it around my wrist and clicked the clasp. I really liked the look of it on my arm.
“The pattern’s a wolf’s eye,” she said. “The wolf is your spirit animal.”
After last night’s security footage, that gave me a peculiar little thrill. “Well, I’ll thank her myself when I see her next. But back to my original question. Why is she giving me this right now?”
“She likes you, okay? And maybe she thinks you need it.” She paused. “Don’t even try to think of paying for it—that would, like, so jinx it.”
My cell bleeped and I checked it. There was a text message from David: WTF!? Urgent! Coffee shop. 30m.
Chapter 10
There was only one coffee shop where we met, First Base, a block away from the Civic Center Park. It was quiet, with old-fashioned booths that suited us, and regular clients that made unfamiliar faces stand out. A big mirror ran along the back, giving us a view of people walking in and out. First Base roasted and ground their own beans, so the place smelled and sounded like a coffee shop should.
It was a little after ten when I slid into the booth opposite David. He’d already bought the coffee. Dressed for work at his insurance company, he looked so much more upscale than my running and sparring friend, I had to stop myself from reaching out and mussing his hair.
David looked somberly at my face and lips.
“That wasn’t my punch, was it?” He glanced down. “I think I know how you got that.”
“Yeah.” I tried to keep my tone light. “Four guys in suits tried to kidnap me in LoDo yesterday evening. It got rough. What do you know about it?”
David shook his head. “Almost nothing, but the place went crazy last night when those guys were brought back. What’s going on, Amber?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Dammit, Amber, I don’t know. A couple of days ago, I was motoring. You’d coached me through the hardest physical tests of my life and all you got back was some clues about your condition.” He didn’t like it when I called it an infection. “So what if I spoke to you and it’s against the rules. It didn’t seem like a big deal then.”
A couple of lawyers from the firm across the road walked past our booth with coffee and pastries. David waited till they were out of earshot.
“Now, you’re the main item of news. You took out four guys last night and the security committee is going to be all over you. They’re going to be all over me, too, if they find out I’ve been talking to you. They take secrecy seriously. That was kinda emphasized all over again last night. I may be stopped at the last step because of this.”
I reached out. He didn’t flinch away as my fingers slid over his throat and confirmed to me what had been almost hidden from my nose by the coffee smells. David had been bitten again last night. All that remained were a couple of tiny bumps where the skin was repairing itself, and a subtle rise in the vampire scent. A tremor passed through my arm and I hid it by tucking my arms together and leaning on them.
“Third bite?” I said, and he nodded. “That’s the last step, isn’t it?”
“The start of the last step,” he said quietly. “And no guarantee that it finishes well for me if they think I’m a liability.” He paused. “Amber, from what I heard, last night was just intended to be a discussion.”
“You know that? For sure? To me, four guys in suits means the type of discussion that involves being tied up and blindfolded in a soundproof room. You say they’re not like that, but you don’t know, David. You say they’re hot on secrecy, but you don’t know what it means. Imagine how much more difficult it is for me to know.”
He frowned at his drink. “You’re right that they’re not treating this like I would expect. So, what is it I don’t know? Who am I misreading, them or you?”
“I don’t know.” I rubbed my face and came to a decision I’d put off too long. I reached out and snagged one of his hands. “Look, David, I’m not sure I can answer your questions, but I’ve got to tell you some stuff. Hear me out. I’m praying it won’t change anything between us.”
I looked into his eyes. What did I really see—trust? Wariness, certainly. Was I about to lose a friend? I’d realized I couldn’t go on without being honest with him. I had to fill in the blanks in what I’d told him, but Lord, I couldn’t bear the thought that it would drive him away, even though that might be the best thing for him in the situation.
“You already figured out I was in the army.” He nodded. “One of the reasons I haven’t told you anything about it, was that everything I’m about to tell you is classified at the highest level.” He looked uncertain how to take that, so I went on. “My life in your hands, David.”
“You sure about this?” he said. I was. If I was going to tell him I was supposed to be spying on him, I felt I had to offer something in return. A hold over me that could put me back in that cell. Not a smart move, maybe.
Trust and jump. My old watchwords.
“Two years ago, when I was bitten, I was in South America. I was on a covert mission, helping local forces clear out a drug lord. The reason they hadn’t had any luck against him is that he’d managed to make a deal with some vampires for defense. We knew nothing about that. My team was on reconnaissance when we were attacked by the vampires. I ended up infected. The rest of my team were dead.” I had to struggle to keep my voice even as images of that night crept in. My squad. My command. My fault. “The army didn’t believe in vampires before that op, and suddenly they had proof: dead vampires and me, more dead than alive. They shipped everything back and I woke up in a cell, in restraints.” I shivered with a sudden cold sweat. “I can’t tell you how that felt. I had to make a deal to get out of there, to stay out of there. They own me, David, they watch me. I’m supposed to tell them everything I find out about vampires.”
David twitched, and my heart missed a beat, but he didn’t take his hand away.
“I haven’t told them about you. Please believe me.”
“I do,” he said quietly.
“All this—the mention at the security committee and the four goons last night—could just be the vampire community in Denver hearing about me and wanting to talk to me. Or if they know about the rest of it, wanting me to stop talking to the army.”
“But it isn’t just that, is it?” David was one of the smartest guys I’d ever met.
“No, it isn’t. A year ago, I was a police officer.” I took a sip of coffee and tried to work out the best way to say this. “Do you remember an incident in the news back then, a couple of policemen were killed and a young girl tak
en hostage?”
He nodded.
“The three men who did that were killed. The newspapers said it was done by the SWAT team. It wasn’t.” I took a deep breath and looked him straight in the eye. “Those three were vampires and I killed them.”
He flinched outright this time. “Is that what you do? Are you some kind of vampire hunter?”
“No! I was just there at the time.” I squeezed his hand as if I could press the understanding into him. “But they needed killing, David. You’ve got to understand that.”
He thought that over and relaxed a fraction. His hand hadn’t moved. I allowed myself to feel some hope that we’d stay friends through this. “Yeah, they did, I guess,” he said, and a hint of a crooked smile touched one side of his mouth. “So, I’m not on your list?”
“No, you aren’t, and I don’t have a list anyway.” I bit my lip.
David looked around the shop. “So, how do you find out about vampires in Denver?”
I had to smile. “It’s just background work, okay? I have the full time PI job. But a couple of evenings a week, I’ll trawl places where vampires might be—bars, clubs, raves. Stuff at the edge of society. Like I’ve said before, vampires give off a scent that I can spot, even if no one else can. Kinda coppery smell. Anyway, nothing found. Hints and rumors. A lot of wannabes.”
“Waste of time,” he said. “But you found me.”
“That was a complete accident.” We had both been on a charity run and I had spotted David struggling to get a rhythm in his running. He was going to exhaust himself long before the finish, so I had run alongside him and challenged him to match my pace. We had made it to the line together and the celebratory hug confirmed to me what my nose had been telling me for the last half of the race—he smelled of vampire. It had taken several meetings to take it beyond that with him.
David retrieved his hand. “I understand you don’t want to be a vampire. I understand you want to know about them for your own personal reasons. I understand you need to pass some of that information on, and thank you for making it anonymous. But now that you can make contact through me, you have to do it.”
“Can you guarantee that I’ll be able to walk away from that meeting if I want to?” I put my hands out and this time gathered both of his back. I had the feeling of taking irrevocable steps, but the path I was on felt better than the one before.
I took a steadying breath and had to bite my lip again before I spoke. “David, you’re the brother I never had. Next week, or whenever, if you are part of this vampire community, and you come to me and say it’s safe, I’ll meet one of them. Only one, with you along. My choice of meeting place.”
“I swear I’ll do it, if I can.” He gripped my hands back.
We were silent as the waitress passed the table, hiding a smirk. I could imagine what it must have looked like, but I didn’t care.
“Will you answer some questions for me?” David asked.
Our hands dropped back to the table and lay comfortably between us. “Shoot,” I said.
“Why is the army so concerned about you?”
I winced. “Well, there’s the risk they’ve taken, letting me out of isolation. And there are things I can’t talk about. Things I know from my work in the army. They’ve never said it, but I could imagine their reaction if I became…” I felt for the right words, “anything less than reliably discreet. It would be terminal. As for the rest, well, on a physical level, modesty aside, I’m—”
“Yeah, yeah, lethal.” David interrupted. “Wouldn’t want that to go rogue.” He was smiling again. “What’s in it for the vampire community to talk to you if you’re going to talk to someone else?”
“Maybe I can do some good for them. A halfway house between them and the government. A trusted party. They can’t hide forever, David.”
He took that on board without an argument. He would have thought about all that before setting out on the path he had. He was that type of guy.
“What about the stuff we were talking about yesterday?” I asked. “Have you found out where all the vampires are going?”
He looked disconcerted. “Amber, same as there are things you can’t tell me…”
“Okay, but—”
“I can’t say any more, but it’s not the process of becoming…vampire. It’s dangerous for you out there on your own, but not for me.”
He’d been about to call it something else. I was desperate to dig, but I didn’t want to risk it at the moment. I felt good about where we’d gotten to and there were lots of easier questions I wanted to ask him. The army scientists, the Obs unit, were unable to tell me anything about the progression of symptoms in becoming a vampire and I had a guy on the other side of the table who was going through it.
“Can I ask you some personal questions then?” I would have backed off if he’d looked unhappy.
He didn’t need to think about it. “Can’t promise I’ll answer everything.”
“Can I see your teeth?”
“Normal,” he said, and pulled his lip back briefly.
The waitress refilled our cups. God knows what she thought this time. I read somewhere that you check horses out by looking at their teeth; maybe she thought we were fresh off the farm and didn’t know any better.
At least I could stop inspecting my teeth all the time.
“Nightmares?”
“Some.” He looked up. “You?”
“All the time. Really horrible.”
“Amber, it really sounds as if that’s your subconscious fighting the turn.”
But it might be post-traumatic stress as well. It was important I didn’t panic over any one symptom. Calm. There was another thing that was high on my list. I stirred uncomfortably where I sat. I had never been very good at talking about this. “Do you get urges? Really strong?”
“You’ll have to be a bit more specific,” he said. He was trying to look blank, but the corners of his eyes were crinkling. Dammit, he was laughing at me.
“Sex,” I muttered, hunching my shoulders.
“Getting the severe hots for someone?”
“Not someone. Generally.”
He laughed, a little bark of a laugh, and I realized it wasn’t an easy subject for him either.
“Well, no worse than being a teenage boy. I don’t know, Amber.” He blew out a breath and looked at the ceiling for inspiration. “I have the severe hots for one of the Mentors. I’m told that’s common. I get the impression that it gets worse before it gets better, that new vampires especially are—how would you put it—highly charged. Sex and blood go together. That’s something that lasts, I think, but it’s not so easy for the new ones to handle. They’ll keep us isolated for a while for everyone’s safety.”
He checked his watch.
“You’ve got to get back to work,” I said, and he nodded.
“I’ve told them I’m taking a sabbatical. Business is down, so they’re okay with that. But it means I have to clear my desk.”
“Boulder Charity run on Saturday?” I asked.
David nodded. “I’ll be there.”
I pulled a couple of new pre-paid cells from my bag and laid them on the table, one for him and one for me.
“Burn phones,” he said, smiling. “Cloak and dagger!”
I nodded. “Just one speed dial number in each. Let’s use them when we talk or text.”
He got up and put the cell in his pocket. His hand came out holding a key with a label. He passed it to me.
“That’s the key to my house. If something goes wrong. If you need to do something. You got my back, Amber.”
“I got it,” I said huskily, and he was gone.
Chapter 11
Back in the office, I found Tullah crying at her desk. She got up and rushed into my arms.
“Hey, hey, hey, what’s up?” I had never seen her like this. She was always bouncy and cheerful.
“It’s not fair!” she said. “They’ve given us notice on the office. We have to be out by
next week.”
She sobbed while I held her. I swore under my breath at Campbell Carter and Greg Whitman, our landlord, even though I had been sure this was coming. Carter was Whitman’s biggest client. A complete bastard like Carter would seek out every way to hurt me and Whitman couldn’t afford to stand up to him. Whitman hadn’t even had the guts to come and tell me himself when he caved in.
Tullah was right, it was unfair. There was nothing else I could have done and I was still going to be punished for doing it.
I couldn’t dwell on this. Going and shouting at Whitman wouldn’t achieve anything. The best thing we could do was to make this setback meaningless. And I needed to get Tullah to do it.
“Tullah, I’m going to need you to be strong for me.” I stopped. “For us, I mean, for both of us. I can’t stop the work I’m doing now, so I’m going to have to rely on you to fix this.”
When I let her go, she hiccupped and blew her nose. Then, bless her, she got out her notepad.
“What do you want me to do?” Her voice wobbled a tiny bit, but she was over the worst.
“First task, obviously, find us a new office. I guess we’re going to have to pay a bit more. You know what the business does, you know what we can afford.”
She gulped and nodded. I was taking a risk, but I had come to trust her decisions. Since the crash, office buildings were sitting vacant and she would be able to get a good deal for us somewhere.
“Then you’ve got to find someone with a pickup or van who can carry stuff. You’ll only need one trip to move us—it’s just the computer equipment, phones, cabinets and the safe. You’ll need to go to the discount furniture store and buy two cheap desks and chairs.”
She scribbled away.
“Go to the bank, get a thousand out. Get the phones transferred. Order new business cards and letterhead. Change the website. Write a letter of authority for me to sign.” As her pen came to a halt, she looked up. “That’ll do you for now. I’m in till two this afternoon. After that, if there are problems, call my cell.”