“Fine, so I have to blend with feeders. What does that mean, to you?”
“You can do it however you choose, but it would be better if you avoid your regular clothes. They’ll be expecting something different.”
“And what kind of girl will they expect to see you with, Malcolm Kelly?” I smiled a brittle smile.
“Expensive. Sometimes gaudy. Definitely transitory.”
“Uh-huh.” I raised my eyebrows. I guess it was better than bimbo or showgirl. “Sounds like fun.”
“Petr will take you to the hotel.” He eyed me warily. “I sent a list before we departed, so he’ll make arrangements for you to acquire everything you’ll need.”
Petr was human, small and bland on the outside, but some kind of master concierge for vampires on the inside. He was good with details and, for all I knew, he’d seen Mal with girls before. He’d know his type. As would a bunch of strange vampires. I swallowed bitterness and nerves I thought I’d moved past. Everybody had exes. Mal had been around for a while and he was gorgeous. It was stupid to think he hadn’t dated…or maintained willing feeders. He’d probably been with tons of girls. Expensive girls.
My lip curled and I dropped my head to hide it. The clothes he’d handed me were all black and white. No candy colors or sequins or cutaway parts or anything. I’d done a lot of things I hadn’t particularly enjoyed while working around vampires. Dressing really nicely shouldn’t have felt like a sacrifice. In a way it was just another job. I respected their rules and wore my disguises, and in return they left me alone. That was a fair trade. So why did the arrangement he was proposing make me feel so rotten?
“I think I can manage.”
“Thank you.” He knelt, laying his arms tight against my thighs until I met his gaze squarely.
“If you’d been able to control this plan…” But he was shaking his head before I’d gotten the question out.
“You’d be a thousand miles away, wearing one of those disintegrating rock band T-shirts, and you’d be happy.”
He dipped his chin when I stroked his hair, and a smile forced its way through my tense frown when he made a soft sound of contentment.
“I am happy,” I said. When he looked up, squinting in disbelief, I rolled my eyes. “All things considered. I wish there were fewer things to consider, but it’s not so bad.”
“Not so bad,” he repeated, resting his forehead against my shoulder and nudging my hand until I began stroking again. “It shouldn’t be comparative, happiness. You deserve more.”
“So do you. We do things. Things happen to us. That’s life. Who’s happy all the time?”
The sound of the engines lowered further and the plane tilted as it circled, and those things that happened—or one, anyway—moved to the forefront of my mind.
Richard Abel had built himself up as a hatchet man for the Vasilievs, an old Russian family that had attempted to take Alaska from the Master. They’d attacked, publicly and violently. Bronson had responded with an iron fist. I imagined it like a movie, a bunch guys showing up with Tommy guns and shooting thousands of rounds into a house only for a bigger guy to kick the door down and stomp out with a couple of rocket launchers on his shoulders.
Coups and assassination attempts weren’t rare in the vampire scheme of things, but there were few humans alive who’d been around for the last public attempt. After that, instead of migrating to his southern holding in Argentina when the seasons changed, Bronson had sent Malcolm. A master vampire in his prime didn’t send people to manage his territories—too much chance of them gaining power or loyalty or whatever.
My hand slowed as I thought that through. But Malcolm didn’t owe loyalty to anyone else—his maker being dead—and wasn’t strong enough to challenge Bronson even if he’d wanted to take over his territory. When Bronson finally did land in the Southern Hemisphere, his peeps had fallen all over themselves to show loyalty. That appointment suddenly made more sense, except…
“What did Santiago think when Bronson sent a gambler down as his stand-in?” I asked. Malcolm bit my collarbone gently.
“That they’d been misinformed, to an extent. I haven’t mingled much with Bronson’s people. It’s easy since they wouldn’t gain anything by associating with me, and I made a few capricious enough decisions that they were able to reconcile what they saw with my reputation.”
“Why did Bronson stay in Alaska?” If masters had the option of migrating, staying in a territory through the summer was crazy rare. Alaska was the richer of his territories, as far as natural resources went, but it was obvious from our conversation that Bronson wasn’t over the attack.
“While the coup was dismantled fairly quickly, the leaders weren’t all killed. It’s a vast state, with too many miles to search. But Bronson wanted every last one of them hunted down. He wanted to personally see them dispatched.”
“Except Abel.”
“He bolted after the head of the Vasilievs died. He had to flee south because no other master would shelter him.”
Then Abel had sent mercenaries to take me out, which seemed more like a point of personal pride because the last time we’d met, I’d slashed his face and—with the aid of a timely explosion—escaped him.
“And Bronson didn’t want Abel dead? After what he did?”
Mal raised his head. “They have a history. Abel once offered his services, but Bronson wasn’t interested at the time. Abel needed security so he went to work for the Vasilievs, but he wasn’t part of the original feud. Just a tool.”
“A psychotic tool.”
“That’s not as much of a drawback for a vampire of Bronson’s stature. The Master wants Abel to confirm that all the Vasilievs are dead.”
Everything about this sounded awful. I’d been concerned when Mal was supposed to kill Abel. Capturing a snake alive was much worse. “And what does Abel want?”
“A new deal. Bronson is still, maybe more than ever, the strongest vampire in the Americas.”
“Are you going to be safe, dealing with him?” I combed my fingers through his hair again.
“We have superior resources and more freedom of movement.” He watched me through half-lidded amber eyes. “Plus, I have a better incentive to survive than he does.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re charming?”
“They have, yes.” He grinned, and damn if my heart didn’t skip a beat. “But I don’t care what anybody else says.”
“Aww.”
“So what did he demand of you? How bad is it?”
“On a scale of picnic to clusterfuck, it’s like a ‘c’mon, man.’” I shrugged. “He asked me to check out Goya, the company that makes Radia. And I was not keeping it from you. I simply hadn’t gotten around to telling you yet.”
“Uh-huh.” Mal’s eyes narrowed.
“I’m sure he’s got all kinds of people who could do it better than me.”
“You told him that?” His voice was light, at odds with his expression.
Even though it was true, Bronson probably thought that questioning his request implied disrespect. I cringed. “I was thinking I could take a tour or apply to intern or something.”
“That’s it? That’s all he asked for? What did he offer in exchange?”
“A dozen hot virgins and all the Top Gear I can watch—British edition.”
“What would you do with twelve virgins?”
I considered. “Probably make them cook for me, or do my taxes. They could be like minions. Sexually ignorant minions.”
He shook his head as though trying to expel the notion.
“I’m not doing it because Bronson told me to. The things that we saw in Santiago—that can’t happen anywhere else. And there’s nothing on the news, nothing to warn people that this thing is out there.”
The memories of blood splattered on walls and vampires so mutated you couldn’t tell they’d ever been human made me shudder.
“Maybe we covered it up too well.” His eyes narrowed and he chewed on the ins
ide of his lip for a second before shaking his head. “It has to be dealt with but, as you said, Bronson has resources. So what do you have that he wants?”
I raised my hands, and Mal caught the covers when they started to fall, then sank around me with them.
“Whatever he’s doing, mind your reactions to him,” he said. “He’ll put his arm around your shoulder so he can wrap a chain around your neck. Hopefully this is a passing thing and he’ll grow bored and move on to someone with less self-control.”
“Maybe he just sees us as having a common goal with this drug.”
“It would be a mistake to think you have anything in common with him.” Mal’s hands tightened around my thighs and his eyes, full of concern and something more desperate, searched mine. Worry. He was the one rounding up a killer, and he was worried about me. I forced a smile and ran my finger along his lower lip.
“I get it. I’ll pay attention. God, I cannot wait to be done with all this conspiring and cross-conspiring.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. “You’re leaving as soon as we land?”
“Yes. We’re going to survey locations that Bronson’s advance team believes Abel has used.” At my fallen expression, Mal shook his head. “They’re old. He may still be in the area but he’s moved on. I don’t expect to encounter anything urgent today.”
“And after today?” I asked. I couldn’t go with him. I’d be a liability. But I still needed to know what he was doing. I didn’t want him sneaking off to be heroic again. The last time had nearly killed us both.
“When I have some real information, something new, I’ll share it. I want you to look at the information we dig up anyway.”
“Oh, yeah?” That was new.
“You have four routes in and out of every situation. I want your eyes on him, looking for habits, patterns. I couldn’t ask for a better strategist at my side.”
“And after that?”
“After that, we’ll get away. For as long as I can arrange.” He kissed my fingertips and rose to prepare for deplaning. The plane shuddered as the landing gear deployed. The brief flare of pride his comment had sparked disappeared as my stomach spiraled, and that sensation had to do with more than the plane banking sharply. We were minutes from being back in the States, but things didn’t feel settled. Not in the least.
* * *
“I trust the flight was good,” Petr said from the plush bench seat across from me. Quiet and tidy as a butler, the human only seemed to appear when the shit went down or a hundred things needed to happen in the next ten minutes.
He’d met us at the airport in a light linen suit with a small, impersonal smile. In the space of five minutes, Malcolm, Soraya, and about ten other vampires—along with all those trunks Malcolm had brought—were packed into a fleet of dark, vampire-proofed vans and trucks and speeding away. Their human drivers all looked and moved like ex-military.
We were now rolling in the other direction, along the predawn 101 while our guide spelled out our itinerary for the upcoming day. He didn’t seem overly pleased with his assignment.
“It’s quite exciting riding in a vampire airplane,” Mickey said. “More so for some than others.” She grinned without looking at me.
“I see you’ve already been attired,” Petr said. “You’re nearly presentable now.”
“You going to take me home to your mom?” I asked, smiling when he blanched.
The outfit Malcolm had provided consisted of skinny black jeans, a black tank top with a low neckline, and a gauzy white sweater that slumped dramatically off one shoulder. I’d tossed the gold hoop earrings and gold-and-jade mess of a necklace into my bag and hoped never to see them again. If his plan was to disguise me as rich and ostentatiously fashionable with no concern for whether my ass went on display when I bent over, he’d succeeded. How such a disguise could keep me discreet I had no idea. Maybe vampires were unable to stare directly into the face of plumber’s crack.
Thurston sat beside me but faced away, and I rubbed my arm every few minutes, warming it from the steady trickle of flat, cold energy that leached out of him and into me. The windows of the limo were tinted so dark that he probably wasn’t looking out so much as simply not looking at the rest of us. He had no luggage, and the teal sweater with the ratty cuffs he wore wasn’t going to cut it in the summer heat. He dressed like an old man. All he was missing was a pipe and an ear horn.
“Do we have time to go shopping?” I asked.
“There’s no need,” Petr replied without looking up from the folio in his lap. “The wardrobe in your room is fully stocked.”
“Not for me.” I pointed my thumb at Thurston. “For my friend here.” The vampire didn’t react except possibly to go even more still. He didn’t even sway when the car cornered. The corners of Petr’s mouth turned down.
“Perhaps he can go out and scratch something together while you’re receiving your services.”
“I will not leave her,” Thurston announced.
Mickey frowned and said something to him in Spanish. I was nowhere near fluent, but thought I caught the words for daylight and burn the hell up. He glanced sidelong at me and went back to window gazing. Of course he wouldn’t be able to escort me during the day. Plus, there was the whole Goya thing to deal with. Better to get that out of the way early. Bronson would appreciate a prompt response, and then I wouldn’t have to think about it anymore. Unless…
“Will you be accompanying us all the time, Petr?” I asked, trying to sound inquisitive rather that suspicious. He eyed me from beneath drawn eyebrows. For a small man with such smooth hands, he did stern quite well.
“No, Miss Franklin, I will not.”
I scrunched up my nose. “You’ve got to stop calling me that.” I’d only just gotten to the point where everyone I associated with knew me by my real name. It was kind of nice.
“It’s to help you remember. All of you.” He handed me a large envelope, then gave another to Mickey. “Andrea Franklin. Maria Fuente. Passports, papers, IDs, room keys, and credit cards. You’ve got some background information in those packets. We kept it close to the truth so it would be easier to remember. Familiarize yourself with them. Track the details you add.” As if it was that easy to make up a new identity. I’d been two other people in my short life and found that the best way to keep others from becoming suspicious was to say very little, not invent extra details.
“Why did you set up an ID for Mickey?” I asked.
“Her family had a series of misfortunes at their recreational property. Flash flooding. They’re dealing with the cleanup to the house and excavation of several vehicles.”
“They’re not coming back?” Mickey asked, apparently unconcerned with Petr being up to date on the details on her extended family.
“Not immediately,” he replied.
“I hope they like the mud as much as I like this.” Mickey jerked a credit card out of the packet and beamed. “The thing you must understand about Maria Fuente is that, when she was very young she fell out of a tree and bumped her head. Ever since that day, she has been unable to stop herself from compulsively buying clothing and cutting-edge electronics.”
“You damaged the shopping restraint section of your brain?” I asked, laughing.
She nodded solemnly, fully in character. “The doctors were perplexed. It was written about in medical magazines.”
“Anything you use should be verifiable.” Petr smacked his hand against his folio with each detail. “These names in search engines will yield old addresses, defunct or idle social media accounts, and references to your schooling.”
“How good are these IDs?” I asked, turning over the passport in my hands. It appeared real, down to the weird dot-matrix-looking print and seal. Money really could buy you anything.
“Infallible.”
“On Facebook, Maria Fuente ‘likes’ many boy bands,” Mickey said mournfully as she read from her dossier. “I don’t think I can pull this off.”
I rifled through my packet.
The room key wasn’t the card kind, but a large, antiquated metal key.
“What’s this hotel like?” I asked. Petr closed his folio.
“Luxurious. It’s an inclusive destination resort for affluent vampires from all the territories. It’s regarded as neutral ground, and governed by a female named Chev. She’s the face and the voice of her tribe, and is involved in everything from the entertainment and oversight of the staff to discipline of the guests who violate the rules of Tenth World.”
“Tenth World,” Mickey cooed. “It sounds amazing. Will there be many vampires there?”
“Hundreds. You’ll enter and exit through a side stairwell off the parking garage. It’s used by the human staff and companions. I advise you to segregate yourselves from the other guests. The arrangements for your accommodations were made with Chev herself. She will honor Mr. Kelly’s security specifications as she can, but the guests are under no such restrictions. It would be best to avoid them.”
“Why a vampire hotel?” I asked. “We’d blend better with humans.” Mickey stuck out her lower lip and I scowled at her.
“In the event this…negotiation becomes unfavorable, you will be safer there than in the open. Chev owes a debt to Malcolm and nobody would dare attack Tenth World, not without an army.” He smiled blandly. “Our intelligence has revealed no approaching army.”
“It’s not a negotiation.”
“Miss Franklin, these are vampires. Each word has dual meaning. Each action is strategic. Your every breath is a negotiation.”
Unable to meet his patronizing smile, I turned toward the window and swallowed a hard lump. I’d thought I was doing well. Not blending, certainly not belonging. But I’d been navigating the world of vampires pretty successfully. But I’d never be able to think that way, never be able to scheme my way around my honest reactions. And one day soon that could be dangerous.
Falling from the Light (The Night Runner Series Book 3) Page 4