Strangers in the Night

by E M. Jeanmougin

  He tried not to think of Jasper, his entire focus on hitting the marks at the end of his jumps, on getting to the East Village, on finding Alcander. One disaster at a time, as his sire, Apocalypse, would have said.

  When he passed the Empire State Building, he realized Alcander would not be capable of making the mad dash back alongside him. That was no good. He needed him. Maybe not with him, but certainly in range of easy contact.

  Not breaking stride, he juggled out his cell phone. Then he realized he did not know Max’s number from memory, nor did it appear to be in his contacts. Swearing, he tried one of Alcander’s phones, then another, then another. Finally, Max’s voice, sounding groggy and a bit timid, came on the line.

  “Crimson?”

  “Took you long enough,” snapped Crimson. The building in front of him was much too tall for him to leap to the peak of it, so he jumped for the ledge instead. Wedging the phone between his shoulder and his ear so that he could use both hands to scale the facade of the skyscraper, he said, “I need you to go to the Estate center in the East Village. Quick as you can.”

  “I don’t know where that is,” said Max, and Crimson had to bite his tongue to keep from blowing up on him. The vampire’s familiar was less than useless, but it wasn’t his fault, and it was difficult to be angry with someone so eager to please.

  “I’ll give you directions. Write them down.” The climb took him to the top of the skyline. The wind was stronger here, ice cold even in the early autumn, and tearing at the hem of his jacket as if it would like nothing better than to send him catapulting down to the blinking lights of traffic below.

  “It’s kinda hard to hear you. Are you in a tunnel or…?”

  “Shut the fuck up and focus!”

  “Sorry,” said Max, his voice small.

  Crimson heard him rummaging around, looking for paper and a pen. He kept moving. The gaps between buildings were fairly narrow, and where they were not, he took running leaps towards rooftops situated lower than the peaks. In his youth, he had dropped himself from great distances in failed suicide attempt after failed suicide attempt, and he knew a fall from such a distance might not kill him, but it would shatter every bone in his body, burst blood through his insulated skin, and damage his brain badly enough that, even after healing, he’d probably lose a few memories. It would certainly spell the end for both Jasper and Alcander.

  “Alright, where’s the East Village?”

  Crimson recited the street names as he climbed down the building, pausing only to take the last five stories at a jump. He landed in an alley just across the way from the building in question. Crossing the street at a run, he chanced a glance at the clock on his phone screen. He had less than a minute, though he hoped Shane was exaggerating. Surely, he wouldn’t put him through all of this just to kill Alcander. If not out of any sense of decency, out of an instinct for survival.

  Several faces turned towards him when he came bursting in through the double doors. He had never been in this building and he had no idea what the purpose of it was. Modern humans seemed to spend a vast amount of their time standing in lines, and the ones inside the building were no different. When they saw he wasn’t brandishing a gun or wildly screaming threats about shooting the place up, they all returned their attention to whatever it was they were doing: their cell phones, crosswords, playlists, whatever. Crimson veered past them.

  The vents overhead pumped out an oversweet “Hawaiian Breeze” scent, reminding him of every single one of the hundreds of hotels he’d been in, in this century. Here, as there, the smell of industrial-strength cleaner underneath burned his sinuses and stung his eyes.

  “What’s the address?” asked Max.

  Jabbing the DOWN button on the elevator, Crimson took the small white card from his lapel and read the shiny golden print out loud. The doors opened to reveal a smattering of people, most of whom exited immediately, but one of whom took her dear, sweet time, texting on her cell phone as she lingered in the door. Crimson shouldered into her pointedly, and she turned to say something to him, an angry expression on her face. Then she saw his eyes, and her face changed. She took a step back. The doors closed.

  “I’m on my way,” said Max.

  Crimson, his chest too tight to make words, said nothing.

  The lift stopped, and for a hysterical moment of absolute panic, he thought it was stuck. But that was nothing new. He always thought that.

  Then the doors whooshed open (just as they always did) with a soft ping. The basement was dimly lit, with exposed piping on the ceiling and a lane of hot water heaters along the wall. Alcander’s scent was here, soft and clean, surprisingly warm for a vampire.

  Snapping the cell phone shut, he followed the trail through the darkness. On his way he picked up a stray hammer but set it down in favor of a rusty crowbar resting alongside the wall, like it was waiting just for him.

  He found Alcander in the next room.

  He was not, as Shane promised, suspended over a vat of holy water. He was locked in a small steel cage that probably once functioned as a cash office or vault. A burly man in a pin-striped suit was standing beside him, smoking a cigarette as he taunted the vampire with the muzzle of his gun.

  Shane had not given him the revolver back, and the majority of his knives were also missing. The revolver, a vintage Peacemaker, one of only a handful still in working order, had been a gift from Nightwind. Sentimentality aside, the cheap pistol in the large vampire’s hand would work just as well. Holding the crowbar low at his side, he started towards him.

  Crimson was almost on top of the other before he noticed him. It was not his soft steps that gave him away, but the slight flickering and widening of Alcander’s eyes.

  “You’re late,” said the vampire. He saw the crowbar a split second later and flashed his fangs with hints of amusement. “I hope you’re not planning on trying any—” In a single, hard upswing, the crowbar caught his jaw. The steel cage rattled as his back struck it. He started to raise the gun, and Crimson brought the bar back down across his knuckles with a crack almost as loud as a gunshot.

  The pistol hit the cement with a definitive clatter.

  “Holy shit, man.” The flesh on his split knuckles stitched itself back together as if under the needle of an invisible thread. “Take it easy. I’m gonna give you the vampire, just—”

  Crimson struck him with the crowbar again, shearing away his words mid-sentence. The curved tip tore away a sizable chunk of his face, as well as the better half of his nose. The vampire (Rick, he thought Shane called him, but it hardly mattered now) grabbed the bar with both hands and a strangled cry as the werespider came in for another swing, and Crimson took the opening to kick him squarely in the groin. He went down to his knees with a wheezed swear.

  Crimson took two quick but steady steps to the side of him, lined up the bent end with the back of his head, then cocked the bar up over his shoulder like a batter up to swing. He swept the crowbar in an arc, throwing all of his weight and supernatural strength behind it. There was a sickly, wet-sounding CRUNCH and a brief jarring halt as the prongs stuck at the base of the vampire’s skull. It only lasted for the split second it took for the brainstem to break and the vertebrae to fracture. Stepping through the cloud of ash as it settled to the floor, he picked up the pistol and holstered it where the Peacemaker should have been, then wedged the tooth of the crowbar into the steel door seam and wrenched.

  The lock burst away. The hinges screamed. The uppermost one popped loose and dropped the door crookedly to its side as it yawned open.

  On the other side, Alcander stood with his hands fisted at his sides, fangs bared. “What are you doing here? Where’s Jasper?”

  “You’re welcome,” said Crimson, dropping the crowbar on the floor, turning right around, and stalking back the way he had come. The vampire scurried to catch up with him, bitching the entire way.

  “You didn’t actually let him go with Shane, did you? Are you insane?”

  �
��Well, maybe if somebody—” he threw a withering look over his shoulder “—could stay out of trouble for five fucking seconds, it wouldn’t have been an issue.” He jammed at the UP button several times, as if this would somehow make the elevator move faster. It didn’t, of course, but dumb luck brought it down quicker than it had when he was waiting for it to come up.

  “He was going to kill Max,” said Alcander.

  “Great, so you sacrifice yourself for Max. Jasper sacrifices himself for you. And now I get to be the one who actually dies trying to clean up the massive mess created by your bleeding hearts.”

  This put a stop to the bitching. They both stepped into the lift.

  Alcander looked like a puppy whose owner had just dumped him at the pound. Crimson wished he hadn’t been so mean about it. It wasn’t Alcander’s fault any more than it was Max’s fault or Jasper’s. He was the one who kept letting Shane back into his life and, of all of them, he was the one who should have known better.

  Yet it was Alcander who apologized. “Crimson, I’m sorry. I did not know he was after Jasper. I thought he was just trying to con me out of money or get me to help him with some idiotic scheme. If I had known his plan would bring harm to either of you—”

  “Yeah,” interrupted Crimson. “I know. Me too.” The doors opened, and Crimson swept through the lobby, straight out the door, with Alcander following him, having to take two hurried steps for his every one stride. “It’s already done. Forget about it. All that matters now is getting him back.” That scenario posed its own problems, the sheer multitude of which might have been enough to sway a less single-minded man towards despair, but with the two halves of his whole united to the purpose, quitting never crossed his mind.

  “Max is gonna pick you up. You got some way of tracing Jazz?” He could try to follow his trail. Even in a city as large as this one, Jasper’s scent was unique enough that he could probably do so for many miles if he stayed on foot, or even if the window of whatever transport he was in was left open, but failing those two scenarios, he needed a backup plan.

  “I can trace both of your cell phones,” said Alcander. “But if it is not on him—”

  “Is that the best idea you have?” Crimson interrupted.

  “In this moment? Yes.”

  “Okay,” said Crimson. “Do that. Unless you think of something better. Then do that instead.” He didn’t wait around for the vampire to argue with him. If he could make it back to the hotel before Jasper’s buyer left the property, he could follow them that way. And if he made it back to the hotel, only to find that the half-blood’s buyer had butchered him up for pieces, and all hope of rescue was already long gone?

  Well…

  It still ended one of two ways: (a) with a pile of their bodies, or (b) with a pile of most of their bodies, plus his own.

  With the tips of his fangs pressing through the roof of his mouth, and the bitter taste of venom on his tongue, he ran back in the direction he had come. From there on, he didn’t think about Alcander or Max or about the danger that lay ahead of him. His entire focus was on hitting the marks at the end of his jumps, on getting to the Onyx Eclipse, on finding Jasper.

  One disaster at a time.

  #

  Crimson made it back to the hotel in good time. After a brief, mostly verbal, altercation with the doorman, he told the guy he knew Morgaine Onyx and was let in.

  Morgaine, resplendent in a long flowing purple gown patterned and enchanted to look like a starry view of the night sky, was in the lower lobby. The polished ivory of her skull mask looked sharp against her dark skin. Even all the way over at the elevator, he smelled the blood mixed into her lipstick and nail polish.

  “Where were you thirty minutes ago when I actually needed you?” hissed Crimson as he cut across the room, heedless of the two zombified bodyguards who came galloping after him like a pair of clumsy puppets. Morgaine shooed them away as they grabbed for his arms.

  “Crimson darling, did you come for the auction? If so, I’m afraid you’re rather late. We’re at the tail end now.”

  “No, Morg. I didn’t come here to join your rich asshole club. Have you seen Jasper?”

  “Jasper?” repeated the woman, as if tasting the name for the first time. “Which one is he?”

  “He was in the Summerlands with me,” explained Crimson, some of the venom going out of his voice. She was a very busy lady, and he should not have expected her to remember. “He was there when you introduced me to your husband.” If you could call him that. The patchwork man was not so much a husband as a vessel, and the thing inside him, Crimson was certain, was not in this plane of existence by choice. “Little shorter than me. Curly hair, beautiful green eyes, lips that practically beg ya to—” He cut himself off. “He looks around the age I look.”

  Morgaine’s eyes lit up. “Oh yes. I remember. He thought the hallucinistem was a cigarette.”

  “Yes. Him.” It seemed so long ago now, in that strange, uneasy time before the Hunter burrowed fully into his heart. Three months was too short a time to give a name to the feeling, yet he had felt it so many times before, in so many ways, all the same, all different. He knew exactly what it was. “Did you see him?”

  Morgaine’s expression changed from one of curious delight to leery uncertainty. “But… if that was him, then…” Her voice trailed off. “Oh, you poor thing, if I had known that was him… or if you had come a little earlier…”

  He bristled. “Don’t play games, Morg. Didja see him or not?”

  “Yes,” said Morgaine. “Now that you mention it, I did. He was up on the block thirty, maybe forty minutes ago. He went for a very high price. I didn’t know he had been stolen from you or I would have stopped the whole affair… Or at the very least offered you a cut.”

  Crimson had to focus to control every muscle in his face just to keep from cringing. “Who bought him?”

  Morgaine held a finger against her lips in a shushing gesture, her heavily makeuped blue eyes sparkling from the hollows of the skull’s gaze. “You know we have rules about such things.”

  “I also know that you owe me a favor.” He had won it in a poker game of all things. The blood mage had also tossed her firstborn child into the pot, but the joke was on everyone else at the table, seeing as she hated children and never had any. That was more a relief than anything—he couldn’t take care of himself, let alone a child. “I think I’ll be collecting that now.”

  Morgaine scoffed. “You’ve been dangling that over my head for two hundred years. I would be relieved to have it gone. So go ahead, ask away.”

  Crimson paused.

  Knowing the name of the demon who had taken Jasper would do him no good. He needed to buy more time for Alcander to get to a computer, and for him to close the gap between them and him. The only good thing about Max was that he didn’t drive with the caution his age would suggest. He was probably already to Alcander by now; hopefully he’d had enough common sense to bring the vampire’s laptop with him. “I need a traffic jam.”

  “That’s easy enough,” said Morgaine loftily. “Where at?”

  Crimson turned the question over in his head, then said grimly, “Everywhere.”

  #

  When Crimson left the Onyx, Alcander still had not called him. The auction had come to a close, and several of the bidders were letting out at the same time as he. Most of them headed for the hotel’s parking garage, so Crimson went along with them, sniffing and tasting the air.

  Jasper had been here. The scent of his blood was very faint, but there was enough of it to let him know that he had bled; whether because he had been harmed intentionally, or because he had left it as a deliberate lead, Crimson couldn’t guess and didn’t try.

  The trail ended practically before it had begun, on the first level of the parking garage, near the front. There were no indicators as to where he had gone from there. He tried to inquire amongst the dissipating flow of demons and spellcasters, but most of them shied away or outright ignor
ed him when they found out which of the evening’s collectibles he was after.

  That did not bode well.

  The only one who told him anything useful was a friendly, fox-faced anthromorph, whose growly-yipping dialect was so thick Crimson could barely understand him. In bits and pieces, he gathered that the demon’s name was Folami, that he was a very wealthy collector of rare specimens, and that he had left well before the end of the auction, in a big black car. He also kept howling a word that might have been translated as “magic” but could have also been “elephant.” Crimson decided it was probably “magic,” said his thanks, went back outside, and climbed as high as he could to get a better sense of the air.

  His cell phone rang.

  “Gods! You took forever!” Below, there was a series of squalling brakes and clashing metal. Still holding the cell phone, he jogged to the edge of the rooftop. The horns intermixed with the shouts of angry motorists, soon joined by the wail of sirens, both of the police and ambulatory variety.

  He could barely hear himself think over the racket. He looked along the road. Green lights twinkled as far as even his eyes could see. The windows of the Onyx were likewise glowing green, though outside the glamor, he supposed they didn’t appear so. He couldn’t imagine the sort of energy it would take to cast even a small illusion over every streetlight in New York. Morgaine must have had the entire staff of the hotel helping her, their blood aiding her magic. She would not be able to maintain it for long.

  “Where is he?”

  “They are on their way to the Washington Bridge.”