Maksimillian reached out, the other man cringing, but Maksimillian only smoothed the man’s jacket. “There. Your jacket, was crooked. Is better now.” He turned back to the woman with green hair, her pen still poised, her posture saying bored, bored, bored. Maksimillian thought he heard the man behind him say Fucking Russians, and he felt he was losing the moment. “Maksimillian Kotlyarov,” he said to her, “is the only name I have.”
She looked him up and down. “Maks,” she said. “You’re a Maks.” With quick strokes of her pen, it was made so, the countless years of his life carrying a heavy name nothing in that moment, that one moment his mother had predicted.
He swallowed, then nodded. “Da. Is good? This Maks?”
“It’s great,” she assured him. “The best part is that it lets you move along over there,” and she pointed with her chin, “so this next gentleman can order.”
“Da,” he said. He was about to step away, then said, “Is only fair. You give me new name, I do same for you. You are no Ady.”
“You’re damn right there,” she said.
“I give you,” he said, “Adalia. Is your name.”
“How…” She blinked at him. “How did you know?”
“Like … famous sculptor. His name…” Maksimillian frowned. “Ah. Michelangelo. He saw man,” and here, Maksimillian held his hands up, pantomiming a rough shape of a person, “inside rock. He would let man out, da? Is same. Inside,” and here, he pointed at Adalia, “is your shape of person. Is Adalia.”
“Okay, Maks,” said Adalia. “Well, thanks for letting my name out. It appreciates it. Now, could you do me a favor and move along?”
“Da,” he said, catching one last smile from her.
Maks. Who knew that he could change such a big thing after so long? Maksimillian went to wait for his breakfast with the faintest hint of hope in his step.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED NINE
It had been such a long night, but Liselle didn’t mind. If she were being honest — by the Father, I’m on a date — she didn’t want it to end. The man, John Miles, sat across from her, his strong shoulders and easy smile catching her eye. They were in a … she guessed it would be called a ‘diner,’ the kind of place that was open more than it was closed. John had led her here, not to a bar, not to a restaurant, but a diner. A couple of menus were spread on the table in front of them, stacked condiments to one side. The Formica of the table was worn, but in a happy way, and she let her fingers rest on the surface. She felt as if a thousand thousand people had been here, been content here with simple food and easy conversation.
There was something different about a man who tried to impress over waffles.
The walk here had been accompanied by talk of everything and nothing, she couldn’t even remember what, but she did know that they hadn’t spoken a single word about what had happened back at the bar, about the dying, about the vampires, and about the other — the Night — that must have been there.
“You want coffee?” John hadn’t looked at his menu.
“Of course,” she said, “but I’m not sure if this place will do ‘coffee.’ It will do some kind of liquid with caffeine in it, which might be colored black.”
“Oh, they do coffee all right,” said John. “The pancakes are good too.”
“I haven’t had pancakes in…” Liselle trailed off, thinking about it. “It must be over twenty years.”
John looked at her for a moment. “Couple of comments come to mind on that one.” He nodded to himself, as if making a list. “First, were you a zygote? Jesus Christ, but you must have been barely out of preschool.” Liselle felt the warmth come to her face at the compliment. “Second comment, and not in priority order, is how can you go twenty years without pancakes?”
She thought about it. Last time—
The streets of Khorramshahr burned, vehicles and people blazing after the rain of munitions. Liselle looked at the ruins of the table she’d been sitting at, the newspaper open in front of her. Josef had promised her a City of Blood, something to flush the pestilence from hidden burrows, but all he’d given her was death.
Her breakfast, half-eaten, was a plate of Western-style pancakes. They were ruined now, dirt and debris and crumbs of concrete and plaster mixing with the fake maple syrup. She wiped a hand through her hair, looking at the death around her. The room was shattered, crushed inward by the massive hand of the explosion right outside the window, and the humans who’d been here with her were flung around like insects, their faces showing nothing other than surprise, if there was a face left at all. She reached a hand out to pick up a chunk of concrete, her fingers finding the edges rough and hot — still carrying the fiery heat of the explosion that had broken it — and turned it over. Looked at the body of a man underneath.
Josef was behind her. “Just like you asked.”
“Did I?” She looked at him. “Did I ask for this?”
“You’re getting too attached to Liselle.” He shrugged. “You know that. The real you, that’s who asked. Not this shell.”
Liselle gave her head a tiny shake, her smile feeling brittle. Who was she, to be here with this man, after what she’d done? She didn’t deserve it. But she couldn’t make herself stand up, not yet, so she said, “They … weren’t very good.”
John watched her for a moment. “Yeah,” he said, “okay. Well, your face looks like you’re sucking on a lemon, so I’m guessing it was more than the pancakes. I tell you what.”
“What?”
“I, John Miles, will order the pancakes. You should get something else, and … look, I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but if you like the way the pancakes sit on the plate, you know, the way they smell, maybe I can share.” He sat back. “Least I can do.”
“That’s a big sacrifice,” Liselle said, her smile coming back, the memory of Khorramshahr fading in face of the light peeking out of this man. Sometimes it was there, sometimes it wasn’t, or perhaps she just couldn’t see it all the time. She picked up a menu. “I think I’ll have the waffles. Just to do my part.” She kicked off her Louboutins under the table, looked up as the waiter arrived. She knew it was wrong, but she couldn’t make herself take an interest in this man with his order book and fake smile and ma’am and sir. She’d seen a million like him before. But John Miles, this ordinary-but-not-ordinary man was looking at her, something expectant in his look. She wanted to live up to that expectation, so she picked up the menu. “Are the waffles good?”
“Ma’am, the waffles are heaven sent,” he said. The lettering stitched to his shirt said Luke, and she wondered if he knew anything about the gentle doctor from Antioch who’d made the name popular. “You want a coffee with that?”
“I … I need a coffee,” she said. “Black.”
“Like the night,” he agreed, turning to John. “How about you?”
“Hell,” said John. “Give me the pancakes, maybe four. I’d like bacon, eggs over easy, some of your famous potato hash, sausage, and a single slice of toast.”
Their waiter looked up from his order book. “Just one slice of toast? You don’t want two?”
“Diet,” said John.
Liselle laughed. “John Miles,” she said, “that is not a low-calorie breakfast.”
“Diet,” said John, “and today is a cheat day.” He looked back at their waiter. “It’d be great if you could bring me a coffee so large it’s embarrassing. You know what I mean? And a little cream.”
“I know what you mean,” said Luke. “A coffee it takes two people to carry, coming right up.”
The waiter left, order book tucked into the back pocket of his jeans. Liselle watched him go, waiting for … what? Distance? Time? “So, do you cheat?”
John watched her across the table. “Not in any way that counts.” He shrugged. “Depends what you mean. Cheating is just an excuse to do the shit you were going to do anyway, like eat a breakfast for four people.”
“Sugar,” she said.
“Sure,” said John.
“What?”
“Do you take it in your coffee?” Liselle paused as the waiter arrived, a simple cup for her, and a cup plus a carafe for John.
John nodded his thanks at the waiter and poured himself a cup. He reached across the table, grabbed the sugar from the island of condiments, and spooned two generous piles of snowy white into his cup. He seemed to be thinking for a moment, then picked up the cream and stirred it in. “I take pretty much everything in my coffee,” he said. He took a sip, fought a grimace, and said, “This is not as amazing as I … well, it tasted better inside my head.” He looked at the carafe.
“You’re not … you’re not selling it to me,” she said. She tasted her coffee. It wasn’t amazing, but it was far from the worst she’d had. A little sugar would definitely help.
“Why are you here?” said John.
“You were going to tell me—”
“Oh, sure,” said John. “So what happened was this vampire, right, this vampire comes in, and my buddy Val and his girl Danny beat the hell out of him. Actually, it was a little more even than that, two on one I thought it’d be easy, but shit, those fuckers can fight, right? Carlisle, she was there too, shot it a few times, and then they all ran off.” He took another sip of his coffee, fighting a wince again. “That’s not what I meant.”
Liselle blinked at him. She had expected … something else, some form of struggle extracting the information. She realized, with a faint touch of surprise, she had expected John Miles to lie to her, to play some kind of game. Their breakfast arrived, plates and plates of it, buying her a little more time to think. As their waiter left, she tried the waffles. Crisp, and light. Perfect. “I’m here because I … need something.”
“Information.” John was working on his breakfast like a lumberjack. He spoke around a mouthful. “Right?”
Yes, she should have said. Just the information. “No.” She sighed. “John, do you know what it’s like to live forever, or as near as it as counts? But on the day you’ll die, the day it all ends for you, it’ll be because you’ve helped kill every human everywhere?”
“No, I don’t know about that.” He thought for a moment. “Doesn’t sound cool, though.”
Not, I understand, Liselle, or, Man, that sounds bad. Just, No. “I don’t know either, not all of it. Not yet. But I will.”
“Sure.” He put his knife and fork down. His voice got a little softer, a little gentler, and she saw that beautiful light inside him flare for a moment. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
Liselle picked at her waffles. She wanted to say, I’m here because I need someone, or, What is that light inside you? It comes and goes. Can’t you see how bright you can be? Can you shine all the time? But she didn’t. People didn’t say things like that, not over breakfast. “They want to kill you all,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “We know. You want to know the neat part?” When she nodded, he smiled, like the sun coming out. “We’re going to kick their asses. Just absolutely monster those throwbacks, you know?”
She laughed at the audacity of it. “You … John Miles, I don’t know what you are, but I don’t think you’re a match for a vampire.”
“That’s what the last guy thought too,” said John, before his smile flickered a little, the light inside him going out. “Before the sky fell.”
Liselle didn’t know what made him falter, but she wanted to. “What happened?”
“Wasn’t vampires,” he said. “First time, just some PMC and an evil megacorp, the usual kind of first world problems. Second time, this whole bunch of black magic, I guess you’d say voodoo—”
“Vodou,” she corrected.
“Sure, voodoo guys, so they come all the way over here, and I don’t mean from Brooklyn, I mean from over the sea, and they try and, I dunno, maybe steal the Night. The Night, you know about that?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Figures,” he said. “Didn’t work. Stealing the Night.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” she said. “It’s a singular force.”
“Right,” he said. “Did you know? My best friend, he’s a werewolf.”
She gaped at him for a moment. “You are friends with the Night?”
“So I guess, that’s why we’re going to kick their asses.” He sighed, picking up his knife and fork again. “Because we need to. Because no one else is going to. Because we can.”
“You…” She picked up her cup, then put it down again, leaning forward. “You … can’t.”
“Says who?” He gestured with the fork at the room around them. “The Universe?”
By the Father. “Why are you here, John Miles?” Sometimes the light inside this man made him hard to look at. In his words, not arrogance, but certainty. “What do you want?”
“A few good times, before the end.” He frowned. “Cold beer on a hot day. What’s Melissa say? Champagne and happiness. But you mean, here, in this diner?”
“Here, in this diner,” she agreed.
He smiled. “Just breakfast,” he said. “I think we both need a little breakfast.”
Just breakfast. It had been such a long time since she’d had the time for just breakfast. Liselle picked up her knife and fork, suddenly hungry, suddenly starving, wanting to eat it all, to experience it, like it was the first meal of her life. Just breakfast was okay. It was … amazing. Liselle Vitols sat across from John Miles, and talked, and laughed, and talked some more, until the sun was high in the sky and the events of last night seemed so far away.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TEN
Val sat in the back of the van, Danny across from him. It wasn’t the kind of van with lots of windows and seats. It was the kind of van with no windows, a couple bench seats, and a cage. The cage was the important part, and he hoped they’d made it right.
“It’ll be fine,” Jessie had said, wrench in her hand, grime smudged on one cheek. “Those steel bars are as thick as my arm.”
“It wouldn’t slow me down for long,” said Val. “Not if, you know.” He made clawing motions with one hand.
“What, if you put a sock puppet on one hand?” She eyed him critically. “I hadn’t, well, maybe I’m being hard on myself, but I feel a little foolish for not thinking they might have a sock puppet.”
“No. Jesus. I meant—”
“I know what you mean,” she said. “Couple of things. First, I think this would slow you down. This is stainless, precipitation hardened, and since you’re asking, it’s been a bit of a big deal to make it. You know, here.” She gestured with the wrench at the room around them. “This isn’t General Dynamics.”
“Could General Dynamics make it stronger?” said Val. “We could go there.”
“Second thing,” she said, “is that you’ll be surrounded by all that sunlight.”
“At least,” said Val, “for as long as it’s daytime.”
Whatever it was, it was heavy. Danny and he had wrestled it in here together, and the van sat low on its shocks, shocks Rex had modified for just this reason. Val still felt every bump and jounce as they’d rumbled through midtown New York.
“Something about this broad daylight thing is bugging me,” said Rex, to no one in particular. He was sitting behind the wheel up front. “It might be all the people who are staring at us.”
“It’s Times Square,” said Jessie, who sat beside him. “They’re not staring at you, they’re just staring.”
“I guess … well, maybe that’s the point,” he said. “We’re in Times Square.” He drew a triangle in the air with a finger. “Technically not square in shape. More like three sides, about a million people a side, cameras everywhere.”
“No second chances,” said Val. “We’ve—”
Hidden in the dark.
“—stayed underground for long enough. Now we—”
Hunt.
“—take these assholes.”
It was, all macho bullshit aside, a ballsy plan. Break into the Renaissance hotel, grab the vampire staying in 2602, and get
him back out to the van. Put him in the cage, drive like hell, hope the cops didn’t come.
That last one was pure fantasy. The cops were going to come. It’s whether they were the cops, or their cops. The vampires had control of just about everything, everywhere, which made it a little difficult. The thing was, it’d be helpful — just this once — if the cops were their cops. Far more likely to try and resolve this off the books. Off the books was good. Off the books meant no jails. Probably meant no SWAT in Times Square, because that would leave a trail on YouTube a million clicks wide, and probably at least one front page article no matter how many newspapers the bloodsuckers had in their pockets.
Time to test the theory. He gave Danny a little nod. She gave him a nod back, red curls bouncing, holding up the black polythene bag, then pushed it into a knapsack. She kicked the back door of the van open, Val following her onto the street. Yellow cabs surrounded them, people everywhere. Not just people but tourists, cameras and selfie sticks and gaping. They moved like zombies, eyes up, the pan handlers moving among them with the usual lost my leg in the Gulf or it’s the GFC, man, those fucking bankers took my house stories. Val pushed the doors of the van closed, looking up at the Renaissance. The popular hotel reached for the sky, a stubby hand held up in surrender. He walked with Danny on the sidewalk, moving at a brisk pace towards the entrance.
“It feels good,” he said.
She gave a tight grin back. “Not hiding,” she said. “Hunting.”
Hunt. Kill.
“Hunting,” he agreed. “Nervous?”
“Shaking like a tree in the wind,” she said, holding out a hand. It was steady as a rock.
“Me too,” he said, feeling the thrill of the upcoming events in his step, his feet feeling lighter than air. “I love you.”
She stopped, grabbed his face, and kissed him hard. “I love you.” She kissed him again, then let him go. “Let’s go bag some big game.”
They put in their earpieces, tiny things Jessie had got through her network, milspec comms that didn’t have a fat wire hanging down from your head. Battery life wasn’t for shit, but they wouldn’t be here that long. “You hear me?”
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