“You need to leave,” said Liselle. She cast a glance behind her, almost like she could see through the door to where Josef was. “A storm is coming.”
“Now there’s the truth,” said John Miles. “And we gonna bring the rain.” He grin faded as no one else joined in. “Wow. I need a beer. Anyone else want a beer?”
“I’ll take a beer,” said the Knight.
“I want one,” said the vampire, “but, well, you know.”
“Sure,” said John Miles, then, “sorry.”
“It’s cool,” said the vampire. “I’ll just suck on some blood and try not to gross you out.”
“You do you,” said John Miles. “Anyone else for a beer?” He tossed a bottle through the air and Liselle caught it out of reflex, the Midas Touch label starting to frost slightly. He frowned. “Uh. You need a bottle opener? It’s just, it would have been less cool if I’d thrown the bottle at you with the cap off.”
She smiled at him, twisting the cap off. This shell might have lacked the strength to wield her birthright sword, but she could still manage the little things. She flicked the bottle cap back at him. He’d already lifted the trash can, and her cap rattled into the bottom. They shared a smile.
“Nothing but net,” said John Miles.
“Do you … do you two know each other?” said the Knight.
“Val,” said John Miles, “this is Liselle. My girl.”
“Your … what now?” Val coughed on his beer.
John Miles ignored Val, pointing to the rest of them out in turn. “Danny. Melissa—”
“Call me Carlisle.” Carlisle still hadn’t moved from where she stood beside Adalia.
“—Melissa, you’ve met Melissa. Jessica’s out front. You’ve met Adalia too.”
“How has she met Adalia?” said Danny, her eyes flashing.
John Miles blinked, then said, “And that there is Sam Barnes. Head of Biomne.”
Liselle nodded. “Who is the vampire?”
The room went very quiet. The vampire’s mirrored eyes reflected the light, little glints of silver. He frowned. “The blood line, that was a little joke—”
“You are one of Kaylan’s children,” said Liselle. “I can smell it on you.”
“Shit,” said Adalia. “Shit.”
“What?” said Danny, all hard angles and tension. “What is it?”
“I’m late for work,” said Adalia. “I’m really late for work.” She slung a bag over her shoulder and slammed through the front door. Her footsteps were lost quickly as she broke into a run — Liselle could imagine her green hair flowing out like a mane behind her.
John Miles looked around the room. “This is going better than I’d hoped.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEEN
Maksimillian saw the woman with the green hair leave the warehouse, her expression harried and rushed — again. As if she were hurrying for a date with destiny. She walked past the the Lost Warrior out front — even without the name, Maksimillian could tell the woman was a fighter from the way she stood, the way she looked around her, the set of her shoulders. As if everything about the soldier was designed to say, come at me, world. Those who are behind me, I will protect. Those beside me are my sisters and brothers. But to those against me, I will show no mercy until my life’s blood is spent.
He nodded. Maksimillian knew exactly how that felt. He had been a soldier once. But he wasn’t here for the soldier, or for the man she was talking to. Maksimillian pulled his cap a little lower, focusing on the man. Of course, he wasn’t a man. He was well known to Maksimillian, almost like they were old friends. He was War.
The woman with the green hair kept such strange company. It was no wonder Maksimillian felt the need to protect her, to be with her. Adalia was special, and the Universe collected around her, light and dark arrayed on all sides.
There was nothing else for it. He would have to ask her out for a drink.
Adalia kept moving, barely pausing as she drew near to War. A glance, a promise, and then she was past, moving into the crumbling edifices of the Bronx. Maksimillian sighed. She was by herself, and this was no neighborhood for a woman alone. He slipped out from the shadow of the warehouse awning he was standing under — hiding, really — and kept pace behind Adalia. Walking casually, as he had been taught.
We needed no teaching.
Perhaps that was true. The Night knew things, it was the very best of hunters. But here, in this city of humans, there were … tricks, techniques that could be used to be hidden in plain sight. The Night could be almost invisible. But he knew how to be visible and unseen at the same time. A turn of the head here. A certain kind of walk there. The right kind of pause, the right way to vary the speed of pursuit. All designed so the—
Prey.
—followed couldn’t tell they were being followed at all.
Her path seemed odd, and Maksimillian considered the feeling, this oddness. It wasn’t that she was walking in a strange way, but that her route was wrong. Ah. He put his finger on it: she was walking a path that was safe for a single man but not a single woman, a path between tall buildings without much street traffic. A path she might not have chosen if she wasn’t so hurried, the messenger bag jouncing against her side, her face turned to the ground, her headphones blocking out all noise. It was as if she didn’t want to see what was around her.
He was pulled up short by a movement, a pair of men stepping out of a doorway. These were not vampiry, but as a guardian angel he was not fussy. Nothing special about the doorway other than it was recessed, dark, a place for bad men to hide bad deeds. One of them had a bandana across his face, the other a ski mask. It was all very Amerikanskaya, props for show, as if a mask could hide what you did from the creature inside you.
Our Pack is dead.
Ah, now this was a time to hurry. Maksimillian forgot about staying hidden, put the shadowed path behind him and began to run. The one with the ski mask — in this heat? At least he is dedicated, this Amerikantskiy — had stepped behind Adalia. A strong hand wrapped around her mouth, and Maksimillian could see in her body language the usual things. What is happening? Is this happening? What should I do? Should I — and right there, she began to struggle, stamping back with a foot. The man with the ski mask stumbled, almost losing his grip, green hair flying wild.
That was when the one with the bandana — with a red-white pattern, it was the unexpected the details you noticed at a time like this — slammed a fist into Adalia’s stomach. Maksimillian could see her body wanting to curl over around the pain, but she was held up by the man in the ski mask. Bandana pulled his hand back for another strike, and that was when Maksimillian reached them. He didn’t even slow down, running at full pace, upright, into the man with the bandana. Maksimillian felt the shock in his body, saw the other man rebound away in an astonishment of limbs. He would not, this Yanki, be getting back up in the next five seconds, which gave Maksimillian plenty of time.
Turning, he saw Ski Mask holding Adalia, tight enough to break her, he was sure. Adalia’s eyes were wild, full of fear, whites showing as she looked everywhere, anywhere, for an escape. So easy to forget she was just a young woman, when Maksimillian saw so much more. Ski Mask was holding Adalia like a shield, her body across his. Sensible, if one was going to get in a knife or a gun fight. Maksimillian could see his eyes too, the hardness there, the excitement of the hunt, as if this were Prey he was going to enjoy. The problem with his approach is that Maksimillian had neither a knife nor a gun. He had just his two strong hands, curled into fists.
“Hey, back off—” started Ski Mask, before Maksimillian punched him in the face. The strike was strong and true, his fist going past Adalia’s startled eyes, connecting with a wet crunch. Ski Mask was falling, dragging Adalia with him, but Maksimillian grabbed her arm, held her upright.
“Will you be okay for just one more minute?” Maksimillian looked into her eyes. “There are things to be done.”
She nodded. “Maks? What are you—”
“Is no time,” he said. He turned back to Bandana, saw that the man was climbing to his feet. Unsteady, but still trying, a little fight or foolishness still inside his frame. Maksimillian took three steps, almost a little run up, imagining a kicking tee underneath Bandana’s midsection. This gridiron wasn’t really Maksimillian’s favorite, his true love was baseball of course, but he liked many sports, and understood many of their moves and tricks. Maksimillian’s foot caught the other man in the ribs, Bandana’s whole body coming off the ground in a crunch of broken ribs and an explosion of air.
There. Now the man wouldn’t get up for many, many more seconds. He could—
Kill.
—finish this at a more leisurely pace. His fingers curled, and he could feel the savage not-grin on his face.
“Maks?” A touch, there on his arm. He almost whirled, almost clawed, but—
Pack.
—held himself still with a massive effort. “Da?” He let his breathing still, the noise of distant New York starting to come back to him. The groaning of the two men at his feet. The tremor of Adalia’s heart.
“Maks, they—”
“Da,” he said. He thought about earlier, as he’d been following her, as he’d been trying to decide what to do with this strange situation he found himself in. Was now the time? It was … difficult to remember the rules. He wanted to ask her out for that drink, but knew that it wouldn’t sit well with either of them. “I was just walking, my morning ritual, da? And who did I see ahead of me, but you! Adalia, I thought to myself, does not look like she wants to go with those men.”
“I did not,” she said. “I don’t know what they wanted.”
“Money. Your phone. Whatever is in that fine messenger bag.” Maksimillian shrugged. “They were hungry, and you were—”
“Prey,” said Adalia, looking down at her feet. As if she knew what the word really meant. Well, perhaps she did.
“If is not too forward, perhaps … perhaps I could finish my morning ritual? With you. Walking, to wherever you are going.” He frowned. “I do not know if this would be better or worse. I admit, even after all this time, Amerikanskaya rules are difficult to understand. Is girl, alone. Should I help? Should I not?”
“You should help,” said Adalia. “Please. I’m … late for work.”
“Ah,” said Maksimillian. “Is Starbucks?”
“Starbucks,” agreed Adalia.
“I could use a spiced pumpkin latte.”
“Pumpkin spice latte,” she said, almost absently.
Maksimillian smiled. “And perhaps, a second breakfast. Big enough for two men.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED NINETEEN
Adalia walked to the familiar front doors of the Starbucks. A haven, where nothing bad ever happened. Nothing bad, of course, didn’t mean that customers weren’t assholes or that she never got dirty shoes. Nothing bad meant that no one died. Not yet. Not ever, she hoped, because a pumpkin spice latte just wasn’t worth shooting someone in the head over.
Yet. She did make a mean latte.
Her hand rested on the door, and she felt that familiar tug, into the Other Place. She didn’t have a name for it, not after all this time, and like always, she ignored it. Every time she’d used the Other Place, people died. The world changed. Horrors happened, like something out of a bad movie, or a good movie with a bad ending. It wasn’t that horrors weren’t real, or they wouldn’t happen without the Other Place. It was that when she went into the Other Place, it was her fault.
Like with Just James, the sweet boy who’d sacrificed himself. She could have stopped him; the world would have burned but Just James would have lived. She didn’t know it, but a small, scared smile touched her lips for a second. Just a flash, a moment that no one could really have noticed, more a tic than a real expression. Just James, the boy who’d died to save the world. Because of her, or for her. And because of the Other Place.
The tug warned her. She’d felt the tug before the mugging, right before Maks came to, to what, to save her? She still had the stun gun in her bag, the one Uncle John had given her after Melissa had tried to teach her to use real guns. Melissa had said You’ve got to learn to protect yourself, and then had gone quiet and walked away when Adalia had said I protected the world and nothing came of that but a lot of ugly. Uncle John had seen the whole thing, watched Melissa walk away, looked at Adalia, and had left for an hour or two. When she’d next seen him, he hadn’t said anything, but there was a present on her pillow, a wrapped box with a crudely tied bow and bad handwriting that could only have been his. Inside, the stun gun, and she’d kept it with her, because the stun gun didn’t kill people, or make people kill themselves, or raise ghosts from the dead. It wasn’t like the Other Place. Simple, ordinary, like her job. Here, at Starbucks.
The door opened in front of her, a harried looking woman pushing past talking too loud and too fast into a phone. Adalia noticed that it was some kind of flip phone, and had a passing thought — the 90’s want their phone back — before she slipped inside. Into a room of warm air fragrant with coffee. Of people about to get their first little bit of happy for the day — even if it was a pumpkin spice latte.
She stepped behind the counter, and snagged an apron from a hook. It was green, all of them were green, and she loved that — not the color, because it was just the wrong shade, and clashed with her hair. The normal-ness of the thing, worn a little where it went behind her neck. Clean, not new but completely fine. She was about to step up behind the big coffee machine, dials and steam ready to go. About to nudge Penny aside, and say thanks for covering for me. But she got a look from Penny, her friend’s eyes flicking towards the back.
Ah. Fuck.
The back. It wasn’t like a dragon lived there, nothing scary really, just Mr. Lawrence. Mr. Lawrence had given her this job, and he’d said that there were a hundred people just like her waiting to take her place if she screwed up. She’d said she wouldn’t screw up, because how hard can making coffee really be, and then for one reason or another she’d been screwing up ever since. Mostly, because she was late, but often because she was tired, or like today, tired and late. She rubbed the side of her face with a hand, smoothed her apron, and stepped into the back.
It wasn’t a long, vaulted corridor of doom, filled with traps and guards. It wasn’t even a corridor — just a small room, a few bags of beans over there, a couple cardboard boxes of various breakfast goods nestled alongside. A door with cheap veneer stood closed, the MANAGER label a little off-center in the slider, like someone had slid it in place and never straightened it, not in the year or so she’d been here. Mr. Lawrence was full of details, about when she was two minutes late here, or when she used too much product there, but he didn’t seem to have a lot of detail around the way things looked, the way he dressed, or the label on his door.
She knocked, heard something she assumed was come in, and twisted the handle. The smell of his office was just south of bad, old mold covered with new cleaner, some blinds covering a window to the alley out the back. They were broken, the metal twisted in some places, and Adalia figured the blinds hadn’t been opened in a hundred years. They kept any semblance of natural lighting out, just shafts of fractured sunlight sneaking in. A single bulb lit the room — not that it was dark. The opposite, overly bright light spreading through the room, like Mr. Lawrence didn’t want anything to hide. Certainly not the truth about where you were for those two minutes you were late for your shift.
“Mr. Lawrence, I…” she said, not even sure what story she was going to tell this time. You’re never going to believe this, but my Uncle called me at three in the morning, and my friend Melissa and I had to go to this crazy woman’s house. Melissa shot another woman after I fought with her using the power of my mind, like a Jedi — you’ve seen Star Wars, right, Mr. Lawrence? — and then I passed out. I woke up too late and then I was mugged on my way here. It was a good story, worthy of her own B-grade movie, and that was just what had happened b
etween dinner last night and breakfast this morning. Except she hadn’t had breakfast.
“You’re fired,” he said, after looking up.
Fired. It was like a stone sat in her stomach all of a sudden, a heavy rock made of fear. The worst part was she wasn’t sure why she was afraid, because she could just step into the Other Place, see the strings, the ones that were all around them all of the time, and pull on just one or two. Just one or two — maybe even three — and Mr. Lawrence would think this was a funny joke, and she wouldn’t be fired. The right string, and he’d even give her a raise, even though last time she’d asked him he’d said that a raise wasn’t in the blueprint, whatever that meant.
You can’t do that. Every time you step into the Other Place, someone dies.
Not even that was why she was afraid though. She cleared her throat. “Mr. Lawrence. I—”
The way he looked at her made the words die inside her, like a spring that dried up in an instant. Mr. Lawrence wasn’t angry. He wasn’t sad. He was tired. She could see it right there, she didn’t need to use the Other Place at all. He wasn’t tired of not enough sleep, he wasn’t tired because he was working too hard. He was tired of her. He cleared his throat. “Ms. Kendrick—”
“Please, Mr. Lawrence. Give me another chance.” She looked down at her hands, saw how they had tangled into each other, her fingers white. “I like it here.”
There. That’s why she was afraid. Because she liked this place, with the worn green aprons and demanding customers. She liked that she worked in a place where she got to meet people like Maks. The everyday nature of the place — the simple fact that there were no werewolves or vodou masters, no zombies or private armies.
Private armies. There was something there, a memory that tickled the back of her mind from a long time ago—
“Ms. Kendrick, you’ve been late every day this week.” He frowned. “I don’t really like firing people, you know. But when people cover your shift, when we’re short on people, when we don’t even know what time you’ll come in, or even if you’ll come in…” He trailed off, thought for a minute, then cleared his throat. “I have a friend who works at the police. If there’s something…” He left that there, an almost-question, and she felt a brief flicker of hope. She could jump on that, say that yes, there was a problem at home, that her boyfriend—
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