Nerves of Steel

by Lee Hayton

  Mike finally looked up, his brow a thunderstorm waiting to rage and roar. “You good enough with numbers to make my debt disappear?” He shoved the ledgers over to me. “Go ahead. Do your worst.”

  I scanned the values quickly, but I didn’t give a damn about the totals, not anymore. Mike’s conversation may have been short on words but what he had said was very interesting.

  “I might be able to help out with that,” I said, spying the banking code and checking it against my own internal ledger. “How much information would that buy me?”

  Mike’s face turned into a scowl, an expression that fitted him perfectly since he wore it out in public so often. It was his equivalent of a friendly smile.

  “What do you want to know?”

  And now came the tricky part. I pulled up a chair and kept my hand on the ledger. I could help here, more than Mike would think was possible. I had clients all over town at all different strata of society.

  Some of them scraped together my fee by winning bar fights or working the streets for 30 and 10. Others just whispered the amount to a minion, and money appeared like magic.

  The point was, there were people in there who wouldn’t miss the coin it would take to wipe out every last cent of Mike’s debt. At least three of those banked at the same institution noted on the ledger. I could make a transfer, wipe it out, and these men and women wouldn’t even notice. Most of them wouldn’t even see—their accountants were paid big bucks not to flag any irregularities.

  I could couch my request in fancy language or skate around the point until Mike’s head spun from keeping track. I pursed my lips and considered the options. In the end, it wouldn’t matter if I erased my tracks. The query was too out of left field to go unnoticed.

  Bluntness, then. My favorite.

  “There’s a free vampire walking around town at the moment. I want to know who he is, what he wants, and who he’s working with.”

  Mike raised his eyebrows while the rest of his face kept hard at work, sucking lemons.

  “And what are you going to do about that?” he asked, nodding toward the accounts.

  “These?” I picked up the papers and screwed them up into a ball, tossing it over my shoulder. “Forget them, Mike. They’re a thing of the past.”

  “If I tell you no, you’d better have memorized those numbers because you’re going to have to recreate them, row by row and line by line.”

  I smiled. I had him.

  “No need for that, Mikey. Just tell me what you know.”

  He glanced at the open door behind me, and I got up and closed it softly, careful that it didn’t bang. No need for the bar’s clients to know that secrets were being exchanged in the back room. They had other problems to worry about. Alcoholism, for a start.

  “I’ve heard a few things on the street,” he said, starting off reticent like he might hold something back. I settled into my chair, wriggling a bit to get comfy, knowing that he wouldn’t do that. The worry about the bills was genuine. Even when Mike finished telling me every detail of what he knew, he’d owe me a favor.

  Just the balance in a relationship that I like.

  “He comes from over Freemantle way. I heard they get a few runners there.”

  I nodded. I knew Freemantle. I’d come through there once, running for my life, too.

  “Apparently, they’ve formed a little enclave. Nothing to worry about. Not too many heads being raised above the parapets.”

  Mike looked over his shoulder, and I frowned. The man could take out three sailors with one punch—he’d never met a genuine physical threat to his life. Yet, here he was, safe in his office, looking behind him with sheer terror in case someone—or something—was there.

  What the hell?

  Satisfied the coast was clear, Mike leaned forward over his desk and beckoned me to come closer. I did so, feeling the hackles rise on the back of my neck.

  In a faint voice, Mike said, “The word on the street is that he’s recruiting for a vampire force. If the guy can get enough on board, he reckons they’ll be able to start a civil war to free the entire lot of them.”

  I smiled and shook my head. “Don’t be daft.”

  When Mike’s expression didn’t alter, I sat back in my chair and frowned at him. “I know that vampires escape here and there”—boy, did I know—“but there can’t be more than a handful who make it any length of time before being hauled back in to serve the empire. What sorts of numbers is he thinking of, to even have a shot?”

  I started to calculate it then, running the figures for a different scenario than any I’d envisaged. When I got to one thousand to mount a solid attack, maybe half that if a lot of luck was on their side, I stopped and shook my head.

  “Nah. It’s not possible. There’s no way that enough have fled during the years to make up the army they’d need.”

  Not to mention the supplies required to keep them in fit shape to mount an attack. Unless blood banks were being hit up regularly that I didn’t know about—not likely—then the number of vampires on the outside was still relatively low.

  “They’d need such an enormous blood supply that it wouldn’t be possible, even if they’d recruited the men they needed.”

  Mike stared back at me, not blinking, not flinching. With my power, I tapped his mind for a second. Not to change anything—I’m not a rapist, nothing happens inside somebody else’s mind without consent—but enough to register what chemicals were flooding through his brain.

  Every emotion that cascaded through a human body had a chemical root that triggered the whole chain reaction off. The source of fear was different from lying. Unmistakable.

  Mike was scared.

  Fear was also contagious, even when half your body had been replaced with machinery. The cold fingers of anxiety started to tap upon my spine.

  It didn’t matter if it was a load of bullshit. Mike believed it. That lent the crazy theory a lot more weight.

  “Who d’you hear this from?”

  But he’d started to shake his head before I got half the question out. “Nope. Not part of our agreement.”

  “Who’s he working with then?” I demanded. “That was part of the deal.”

  Mike rubbed his forehead, the skin creasing into a bunch and then stretching out again. The elasticity had disappeared along with the years, and a pang of sadness twisted in my gut. At some point, Mike had gone and gotten himself old.

  “I don’t know for sure,” he said.

  This time, I didn’t feel comfortable about prying. Either hesitation or ignorance had powered the words. I couldn’t do anything if he genuinely didn’t know and I didn’t want to force the information out of Mike if he was too terrified to tell me. He was a friend of sorts, and I could count those on one hand.

  “I’ll wipe your debt,” I said. “But remember that you’ve gotten a lot more out of this deal than I have.”

  I stood up and tossed the balls of his accounts up into the air, catching it behind my back like I was trying out for the Globetrotters. I dropped it as I realized that there hadn’t been a Globetrotter’s team for fifty years or more.

  “If I hear anything more, I’ll let you know,” Mike said. “To be honest, I feel better sharing it with somebody.”

  That convinced me that he wasn’t skirting the truth. When you were scared, sharing your fear spread it out a bit into a thinner, more easily dealt with layer.

  Mike stood to see me out. His head measured an inch higher than the door, and he had to turn his body to exit. Otherwise, his shoulders were too broad to let him through.

  As I emerged from The Waterside, blinking in the wan sunlight, the cold creep of fear snaked along my nerve endings. To frighten that giant of a man, what the hell was really going on?

  Chapter Four

  “What a load of rubbish he fed you,” Norman said, a disgusted look plastered on his face. “I can’t believe you ate that up.”

  “He believed it.” There was no use in me getting defensive, I
couldn’t out-sulk a thirteen-year-old boy. Especially not one with Norman’s length of experience.

  I reached forward to snag a candy bar from the bag on the table only to find it empty. Damn. I couldn’t be bothered going out again tonight, and the stash underneath the floorboards in my bedroom was too much effort.

  I groaned and stood up, wandering slowly to the fridge. “Anyway, just because we both believe it’s impossible doesn’t mean the vampire engineering this plan does.”

  “Oh, no,” Norman said, his voice crawling with sarcasm. “Because vampires are so thick that they don’t understand limitations.”

  “You remember what it was like in there,” I said. A memory flicked up in the back of my mind and I pushed it away. Dwelling on the past never helped anyone move forward. “Can you really blame an escapee if his head got a little twisted?”

  I opened the refrigerator door so I wouldn’t have to watch my words land. The leftovers that I distinctly remembered putting in a plastic container a few days before, expecting to throw them away in a week’s time, were gone.

  “Where the hell is my spaghetti?”

  I slammed the fridge door, but between the pneumatic hinge and plastic sealing, the effect was less impressive than I’d hoped.

  Norman looked puzzled for a second. Not eating food tends to leave him forgetting that others still do. Then his face cleared.

  “I gave it to Miss Tiddles,” he said. “She really liked the marinara sauce.”

  “So did I,” I muttered, wandering back through and falling onto the couch. “Where is the damned thing, anyway?”

  “Miss Tiddles doesn’t like you,” Norman said. “So, she’s hiding out in my room.”

  The satisfied tone in his voice irked me, even though I shouldn’t care. Until she ate my supper, I hadn’t remembered the cat was living with us.

  “I’ll get some proper cat food in the morning.” I stared up at the ceiling where a water stain was claiming victory over the plaster. After a minute with no thank you, I offered up an exaggerated sigh as a prompt.

  “She doesn’t like cat food,” Norman said. “So, unless you’re planning on eating it yourself, don’t bother.”

  He looked over his shoulder where Miss Tiddles was sitting near the doorway, her green eyes glinting with curiosity as she stared through the small gap. A shoulder bump and the door opened wide enough for her to exit. She ran, making a beeline for Norman’s lap. As he stroked her back with firm hands, occasionally stopping to tickle her under the chin, I felt the sharp blade of isolation.

  Norman had his cat, and he had me, though he didn’t seem to care about the latter.

  Perhaps I needed to find something to care about me, too. A puppy maybe. One that would wipe the expression of contentment straight off Miss Tiddles' face.

  “I’m going to bed,” I announced and stood, walking over to my room.

  Neither Norman or his cat even bothered to turn their heads.

  Out of orneriness, or just to fill in my days until Mrs. Pennyworth called to take further action, I trawled around a few dive bars the next day. The last one that I walked into, the bartender looked at the rivets in my forehead, placed his hand on his jeans pocket where his phone was, and I scooted straight back out.

  For safety’s sake, I zigzagged along a few roads on my cycle, putting distance between him and me by the most tortured route I could make up. When enough time had passed without the overhead chomp of helicopter blade biting through the air, I relaxed.

  Outside a blood bank, I watched as people were turned away. Odd. Closer to my home they always seemed to be crying out for more volunteers.

  Since blood was the only payment required for a fully grown adult vampire, their slavery had enriched the pockets of down and outs all over the empire. If blood banks were downsizing because another method had been developed, the streets would grow a lot nastier.

  I added that thought to the pile of misfortunes I might soon face and continued cycling.

  A female voice cried out, “Asha!”

  At the unexpected call, I turned, my wheels wobbling as muscles tensed into steel at the diversion. I got off the bike as a woman across the road waved, a smile on her face indicating that she knew me. The enthusiasm probably meant she didn’t know me well.

  I ran her face through my memory program, but didn’t alight on any connecting image. To ignore her would draw more attention than responding to the greeting. I crossed the road, stealing glimpses of her features from beneath my lowered eyes.

  Brown hair, brown face, brown eyes. At least the strange woman was color coordinated. Her clothes were upmarket, but well-worn, and I frowned, searching through my internal listings of past clients again.

  Someone who’d had money and now didn’t?

  Nothing. Nada. Nope.

  I leaned my bike against a lamppost. When I came close enough, the woman reached out a hand to snag my arm and pull me into the recessed doorway behind her. I let her do it, again to avoid the attention.

  “It’s Nika,” she said, lifting the edge of her face to show the darker skin hiding beneath it.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake.” I rolled my eyes at the subterfuge while my heart resumed its regular beat.

  “That’s a good one,” I said after a moment, nodding at her mask. “I couldn’t tell at all.”

  “No kidding. I thought you were going to leave me hanging for a minute,” Nika said. A frown crossed her face like a shadow. “Did you need to get away?”

  “Nah, I think I’m good.” The depth of the recessed doorway helped me to believe it. I looked at Nika carefully, taking in the new features of her mask and storing it away.

  When I first met her, Nika had been a model working for one of the “gentlemen’s” magazines. With the cosmetic changes afforded by latex and makeup, her gorgeous body could frequently be utilized without any consumers growing bored.

  Unlike most of my married clients, Nika hadn’t wanted a husband to fall in love with her again. She needed the man to forget he’d ever met her and his fists to stop aching to hit her face. Once free of his tangled hold, she’d left the city. At least, I thought that had been the plan.

  “How long have you been hanging out around here?”

  Nika checked the street and sniffed. “Not too long. A couple of months maybe. I tried it down in Waverly Heights for a year or two, but there’s no money to be made there.”

  For ‘no money to be made’ I substituted ‘no money the way I’d like to make it.’ Nika would always have the option to make money, looking like she did. At least, like she did underneath her new coating. Whoever had done the new mask had ugged her up a bit. A pity that the latex shields only held fast to skin or I’d have seriously considered making the same investment.

  I looked around, not seeing anything on her patch of street touting Nika’s new line of business. “What’re you up to nowadays?”

  Nika smiled and giggled. “I’ve got a sideline on some faux brands that you’ll swear are the real thing. I don’t store them here, though. The coppers have been a might too fond of this part of town lately.”

  I shook my head. “No, thanks. I have more stuff than I’ll ever need.”

  More stuff than I ever wanted to cart out of the apartment on a moment’s notice, just steps ahead of a bounty hunter, anyway.

  “I could do you a bet on a sure thing down at the Rearborne Track?”

  I laughed and shook my head again. Virtual horses running virtual races. I could have hacked the machines and done that job myself. Not that I was about to. With a price on my head, I was all about keeping a low profile, not giving the largest triad in the country reason to come looking for me.

  I glanced at Nika’s clothing again, and she performed a curtsey, so I knew that she’d seen.

  “I might not be making quite the coin I used to,” Nika admitted. “But it sure feels a lot cleaner. It’s been a long time since I met a man I wanted to get closer than arm’s length to, and I’d quite like t
o keep it that way.”

  I nodded. I should’ve understood without the explanation, but when something’s on my mind, the rest of it tracks a little slow.

  “Anyway,” Nika continued, “what is it that brings you by here? If you’re not in the market for a bargain or a bet, what are you looking for?” She tipped me an over-zealous wink. “I can probably hook you up.”

  “I’m on the lookout for some information, as it happens.”

  Nika tapped the side of her nose and tossed me another wink. “Can’t promise you nothing, but give me a go.”

  I poked my head out, checking that the street looked pretty much the way we’d left it. Satisfied that no nosy strangers had been added to the mix, I pulled my neck back in.

  Nika’s eyes were wide with curiosity. The same way I’d probably looked, seated across from Mike the day before.

  Yeah. I’d caught a dose of Mike’s fear, good and proper.

  “There’s a free vampire walking the streets of mid-town,” I began. Nika slapped her hand over my mouth and pushed me against the wall before I could get another word out.

  “We don’t talk about that,” she whispered. “Got it?”

  Chapter Five

  I nodded, feeling another shot of adrenaline carry my pulse into a higher tempo. When Nika let go of me, I wiped my mouth to remove the imprint of her hand from my lips. The tang of her sweat buzzed on them until I licked it away.

  “You could work for the bounty hunters with reflexes like that,” I joked, trying to bring us back to levity. I didn’t like the sensation this investigation was dragging up. I wanted to get back to my old equanimity.

  Nika tipped me another wink. Set against the anxious lines, so deep they penetrated her surface mask, it looked like a distorted caricature. Something drawn during a day out that would scare the bejesus out of you when you saw it from the corner of your eye.

  I didn’t want to leave like this. Nika had never been a close friend, I wasn’t that unprofessional, but I’d always admired her and respected her spirit. She was a woman who knew what she wanted.