by Joshua King
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I got a text from Tybalt,” she said. “A traveler at the bar told him he’d heard Aurora had some business to attend to at Nakatomi Tower. That wasn’t too long ago, so there’s still a good chance she’s there. We might be able to track her down and get you through your turn.”
Nakatomi Tower. I knew that name. It was a massive fifty-story building in the business district. I’d never had a reason to go inside, but it was hard to miss for anyone who frequented that part of the city. It occurred to me that if Aurora had business to attend to there, it meant that building likely had something to do with the Underworld. I grabbed clothes out of my dresser and closet and carried them into the bathroom with me.
“Do we have to go barefoot when we go to Nakatomi?” I asked.
There was a pause.
“What?” Ashe finally asked.
“Barefoot,” I said. “I mean, I know it’s not quite Christmas and I’m trying to save my own ass and not my daughter, but is there a rule that if you’re on a quest when you enter the building, you have to go without shoes?”
Another pause.
“What?”
“Die Hard?” I asked. Silence. “Never mind.”
I stared into the bathroom mirror after brushing my teeth, looking at myself for the first time, other than the picture I’d taken when I first woke up. It was a shock to feel like I was looking backward almost a decade. Maybe more. I didn’t even know if I looked that good when I was younger. As I looked at myself, I thought of Ashe’s fangs sliding down out of her mouth and wondered what it would feel like to have them. Even more than that, I wondered what it would feel like to sink them down into somebody.
The bite in my thigh burned, and I looked down at it. “Oh, shit.”
Ashe came to the doorway. Her gaze hit my thigh, and she reached forward to touch her fingertips to the skin beside the punctures. It was redder, more swollen, and as she touched it, a new wave of agony rushed through me.
“That looks painful,” she said.
“It is,” I said. “What’s wrong with it? Am I getting sick or something?”
“You’re not going to get rabies from a vampire bite,” Ashe said.
“That’s not what I asked.” It had definitely been what I was thinking. “Why is it getting worse? I still have time before I start turning grey and falling apart, right?”
“That’s not it,” Ashe said. “This happens sometimes. It means Aurora is close. She’s still in the area. That’s a good thing.”
I started dressing. “Yeah, it feels delightful.”
When I was ready, I followed Ashe out of the apartment and locked the door. As we were getting into the elevator, I heard her phone buzz. She fished it out of her pocket, and I saw her face drop when she looked at the screen.
“It’s Ty again,” she said.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He said a couple of Shades were seen in the area of the Nakatomi Tower. They didn’t look happy.”
We stepped out of the elevator and rushed out of the building.
“What are Shades?” I asked.
“Not what. Who. The Shades are bodyguards. They protect an extremely important family within our world.”
“Why are they called Shades?” I asked. “Because they sink into the darkness?”
She gestured for a cab, and we dove inside as soon as it slowed beside us.
“Because they always wear sunglasses with crimson lenses,” she responded.
“Oh,” I said. “What family do they protect?”
“The Prime and his family,” she answered. “He likely heard someone is after his daughter and sent them to protect her. Aurora would already have one Shade with her. She always does, but the Prime likely sent two more just to make sure she’s safe.”
I looked at Ashe. “Who the fuck is the Prime? Do you have a manual I could read? A handbook or anything to get me up to speed?”
8
The Nakatomi Tower looked even larger when we got up close to it. I had no idea what kind of business was done inside the enormous, mirrored building. As I looked at the revolving doors, it occurred to me that even if I had thought I knew what happened there, I probably would have been wrong.
Ashe didn’t hesitate to walk straight through the door and into the cavernous lobby of the building. I followed her, impressed by the interior as soon as we got inside. As enormous and impressive as the mirrored exterior of the tower was, the interior was just as daunting.
The floors were covered in pale gray marble, and huge columns rose up high toward a dizzying ceiling. Expensive-looking pieces of furniture created small clusters in various places throughout the lobby. They were all empty, and I wondered if anyone ever actually used the seating areas to sit and relax. This didn’t exactly strike me as the type of place where people went to kickback and share a couple of laughs with their colleagues. I suddenly got the urge to shout just so I could hear the reverberation through the eerily still space.
“I don’t see anybody,” she said. She looked across the lobby. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
She walked away, and I saw her headed toward a curved green marble desk at the far end of the lobby. I hadn’t even noticed the woman sitting there. She had been completely silent when we had come inside and still hadn’t said anything. From a distance, all I could see was her inky black hair cut in a severe bob to just beneath her chin, and pale skin that made her eyes look just as black in the expanse of her face.
Ashe rushed up to the desk and leaned against it as they spoke. The acoustics of the lobby made it so I could hear the muttering and murmuring of their voices, but I couldn’t make out any of the words they were saying. I looked around, and a bank of shimmering elevators caught my eye. They were partially obstructed behind two columns and several planters. I didn’t know if that was on purpose to keep the flow of the lobby intact or just an accident of design. One elevator stood out among the others.
Surrounded by delicate scrollwork, this particular elevator had its own dedicated button set apart from the one used to control the rest of them. But it wasn’t the decorative scrolling or high shine of the doors that held my attention. Instead, it was the two massive men who flanked those doors.
The men stood so still, they almost looked like they weren’t alive. It occurred to me then that they probably weren’t. But that didn’t mean they weren’t living. Both stood with their hands clasped in front of them. The position put their broad chests and powerful shoulders on display. These weren’t men anybody would want to meet in a dark alley. They weren’t men anyone would want to meet in a fully lit business tower lobby in the middle of the day. The only word I could think of to describe them was sinister.
Neither of them was moving, and they were both staring ahead of them, completely expressionless. It was hard to tell if they were waiting for someone to come out of the elevator or were preventing others from getting in. Neither option was very uplifting.
Something else about them stuck out to me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. The drugged, groggy feeling that was keeping me from being able to think straight was seriously starting to piss me off. I looked over at Ashe again and saw her still engaged in deep conversation with the woman behind the desk. They leaned closer to each other, and I saw the woman’s eyes flicker over in the direction of the elevators. She gestured toward them, and Ashe looked across the lobby. Her eyes locked on the center elevator and the men standing on either side. The feature that was standing out to me clicked in my head just as I saw her push away from the desk and come running toward me.
They were both wearing sunglasses with crimson lenses.
The Shades noticed us before Ashe got to me. They started toward us as she reached out and grabbed onto me, yanking me with her.
“Run!” she commanded.
We burst out of the lobby, back out onto the sidewalk. There weren’t as many people bustling through the business district that
afternoon as there would have been on a weekday, but there were still enough to provide both an obstacle and a help as we ran. Ashe had continued to hold on to me for the first few strides we took down the sidewalk, but soon, she let go to give both of us the opportunity to move more easily. She maneuvered her way around a small group of women in pantsuits, and I dipped the other way to meet her.
“Those are Shades, aren’t they?” I asked.
It didn’t matter to me anymore if anyone was listening. All of this was going on right around them every day, and none of them noticed. It made me wonder how many times I had walked by a vampire or gone into a business that was actually a front for the Underworld and never even knew.
“Yes,” Ashe said. “Particularly nasty ones. You don’t want to be on their bad side.”
“I don’t want to be on any of their sides,” I said.
Without giving me a warning, Ashe darted out into the middle of the road. Horns blared as cars skidded to a stop to try to avoid hitting her. I wondered what would happen if they did. I knew it wouldn’t kill her. If a wooden stake through the heart was only enough to piss her off, getting pegged by an angry New York City cabbie was probably just an annoyance.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to see if she would fling herself to the ground and try to sell an injury. The cars managed to miss her, and she didn’t even give them a glance as drivers leaned out of their windows to scream creative strings of obscenities at her. If I didn’t have two villainous-looking vampire bodyguards on my ass, I probably would have paused to commend them on their linguistic gymnastics.
I hazarded a look over my shoulder and saw that the Shades were close behind. Their faces hadn’t changed. Their expressions were still emotionless, but the way their bodies moved was enough to know they weren’t happy about chasing us through the city. When I looked back ahead of me, I realized I had lost track of Ashe.
She had disappeared somewhere on a busier stretch of sidewalk, and I felt my stomach sink. I realized as I scoured the crowd for her that I wasn’t as worried about myself as I would have thought I’d be. Instead, I was thinking about Ashe and wanting to make sure she was safe. Ignoring the protests of the people I pushed past, I forced my way down the sidewalk, checking every face I saw for her.
This better not be some sort of messed-up vampire hazing ritual, or I was going to be uber pissed.
I heard a shout behind me and knew the Shades had found their way across the street as well. I felt a hand grab me and yank me so hard, I was nearly off my feet. My back slammed into a wall, and I was about to start swinging when I realized it was Ashe in front of me.
“Stick to the alleyways,” she said in a harsh, ragged voice. “Don’t go back out on the sidewalk.”
“Why?”
“There are too many people. We’re not going to be able to get away fast enough.”
“Won’t having people around help?” I asked. “With people watching, they’re not just going to snatch us up.”
“You have a lot to learn about being a vampire,” she said. “Shit like this happens every day. Humans? They never notice what’s actually happening. If you don’t want to end up on the news as the next case of police brutality or a gang mugging, you’ll stick with me and stick to the alleyways.”
She pushed away from me and started down the narrow, shadowy alley. The farther I went, the more I felt like I was leaving the real world behind. I stayed as close to her as I could as we slipped between buildings to access another alley. She ran up toward the sidewalk and then scrambled up onto a dumpster. I followed, watching her as she leapt without hesitation. Her fingers grasped the edge of a window grate, and she dragged herself up. There was no way in hell I was going to be able to do that. Ashe got onto the window grate and swung up to the one above her. When she was standing at the edge, she looked down at me.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“What do you mean, what am I doing? What are you doing?”
“We have to get to the other side of the building,” she said. “Then we can drop down into the alley and keep going from there.”
“I thought I was a vampire, not fucking Spiderman.”
“You can do it,” she encouraged.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “You seriously think I can launch myself up there like that?”
“You wouldn’t have hesitated when you actually were twenty-one, would you?” she asked.
“No,” I admitted. “That doesn’t mean I would have succeeded. I very well might have busted my ass slipping and falling.”
“But you would have tried,” she said.
I heard angry shouting from the sidewalk, and I knew the Shades had gotten in someone’s way.
“Yes,” I said.
“You can do a lot more now than you ever could then,” she said. “The change is happening inside you. It might not be complete yet, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have access to some of the abilities. You need to trust me. Actually, I don’t care if you trust me. You just need to fucking do it because they’re going to be here any second, and you don’t want to be dangling from the window when they arrive.”
At that, I decided I’d rather at least have a chance than to be standing on the dumpster like I was on display when the Shades got to the alley. Bracing myself for what I figured was the inevitable splatter of my body to the cement below, I jumped toward the window grate.
I was stunned when I felt my hands grab onto the cold metal. Only giving myself a second to feel successful, I pulled myself up and mimicked Ashe to swing over to the next window. When I climbed up, I was relieved to see a narrow ledge that made it easier to scramble up a few more feet until we were on a section of the building that was higher than the one behind it. This gave us room to maneuver our way toward the alley ahead of us. We jumped down onto a stack of crates and then onto another dumpster before touching ground again.
“Where now?” I asked.
Ashe looked up and down the alley and then back to the sidewalk. “We’re going to cross the street again,” she said.
“Are you kidding me? After that, you want to go back out onto the sidewalk again?”
“If we have any luck, the Shades figured out we came back into these alleys. They’ll be trying to follow us. We’ll cross the street into those alleys and make our way back toward Solomon’s. If we can get there, we’re safe.”
I knew I didn’t really have a choice. The number of people out on the streets was already dwindling. Soon, it would be nightfall, and even though Ashe hadn’t said anything about it, I had a feeling the last thing I wanted was to still be trying to get away from the bodyguards in the dark. She took a steeling breath and shot down the alley. I watched her leap toward a car, planting her foot on the hood to launch herself the rest of the way across the street.
I ran after her, darting behind the shocked driver and into the alley where Ashe had disappeared. We ran through dirty puddles and over piles of cardboard to get to the small passage that led into the next alley. We’d only taken a few steps when the Shades stepped into view at the end.
Ashe gasped and scrambled to a stop. Grabbing onto me again, she turned and started toward the next alley. We got into it but had to stop almost immediately. It was wide , and the size made it possible for a truck to park diagonally across it, blocking the way. Massive metal shipping containers sitting on the ground on the other side obliterated any chance for us to slip under the truck. We turned around to start back, but the Shades came into view once more.
We were trapped. Shit.
There was nothing we could do. We couldn’t run. We couldn’t escape. There was no choice but to face them and fight. As soon as I squared up against one of the Shades, he launched toward me. His body hit mine, his shoulder digging into my torso. I grunted as I crashed to the ground.
The man on top of me drew up to his knees and planted a punch directly into my face. I felt the pain, but I also felt something else. It was like a sharp crack cut throug
h the fog and sent a rush through me. I managed to push the Shade off me, but before I could get to my feet, the other kicked me in the ribs. I felt another powerful surge of adrenaline and energy, and a smile started to come to my face.
“Again,” I said.
The Shade paused for a second, seemingly confused, but then kicked me again. The other swung, punching me in the side of the head. Lights burst in front of my eyes, but I felt my blood pumping through me like it was carrying new power to the tips of my fingers and down to my toes.
One of the Shades walked away from me, and I heard Ashe yelp. That brought me to my feet, and I lunged at the man in front of me. He caught me halfway, and we latched to each other. Though we were barely moving, we were both grunting and growling with the exertion of the clash. The longer I fought him, the stronger and more powerful I felt. I gathered it up inside me and pushed it forward in one massive blast that sent him flying. He crashed to the ground, and I threw myself toward the other. I could see the second man getting back up as I fought, and I looked to Ashe. It was obvious she was thinking about getting in on the fight, but I shook my head at her.
“Go!” I shouted. “Go now.”
I didn’t say where I wanted her to go. I didn’t know the details of how this all worked, and I didn’t want to give away Solomon’s if they didn’t already know about it. Ashe hesitated. One of the Shades grabbed me by both arms, and the other punched me in the back of the head, but I didn’t buckle.
“Ashe, go,” I commanded.
She ran past us and back down the passage that led to the other alley.
“Get her,” one of the Shades growled to the other, and he broke away from us and started after Ashe.
Now that there was only one of the men holding me, he had no chance. I surged against him, battling him to the ground and holding him down as I stared into his face. He was nothing against me, dominated fully, and I suddenly felt more alive than I had in a long time.