She placed the jack beneath the edge of the door being propped up by Leo’s body and worked the small handle. The door raised up a couple of inches before the jack reached its maximum length. Castillo grabbed Leo under his shoulders and was able to slide him out from beneath the slab of steel.
Tortured metal shrieked and the remains of the loft’s roof collapsed atop the wreckage. The walls had contained most of the blast, sending the force of the explosion through the windows near the top, but enough energy remained to create considerable damage to the interior structure. The internal supports began falling in a domino fashion, collapsing inward. One wall toppled and crumbled outward, kicking up a fresh cloud of dust. The rest of the roof immediately followed.
Castillo pressed her ear to Leo’s chest but felt no movement and heard no heartbeat. She touched her fingertips to his throat, but felt only cold flesh. She dropped onto her backside and held her head in her hands. Could the source of her deepest nightmares really be dead? She started to reach for her phone, but she could already hear the approaching sirens.
Leo’s body jerked and he bolted upright with a grating snarl. Castillo yelped, rolled away, and sprang to her feet with her gun drawn.
“Fucking Christ!”
Leo rolled onto his hands and knees and moaned. “Sonofabitch.” He raised his head and gazed at the shattered remains of his loft. “Sonofabitch!”
He took a few staggering steps toward the ruins of his home. He sensed Castillo’s presence, stopped, and turned. Leo took in the gun she held in her shaking grip and curled his lip in a sneer.
“I hope you don’t plan on shooting me. It is the only thing that could possibly put me in a worse mood.”
Castillo’s eyes were wide with fear. “What the fuck are you?”
***
“Goddammit, Trinh!” Carol shouted into her headset.
“Do you have eyes on Malone?”
“To hell with Malone, you almost killed that cop!”
Trinh cursed herself in her head. “Is he okay?”
Carol watched the thermal luminescent shape get out of the car through her rifle scope. “Yeah, he or she is moving.”
“What about Malone?”
“You are like a dog with a bone. Forget Malone!”
“What about Malone?” Trinh shouted.
“I can’t see him. I can’t see anything other than the cop and the blast site. I can’t believe you set off the explosives with that cop here.”
“I didn’t have time to let Malone get inside the building. The cop would have been too close and gotten killed for sure if I waited. I had to set them off when I did. I didn’t have a choice.”
“Yes, you did! You could have aborted like I said.”
“Then Malone would have seen the explosives and known we were onto him. I never would have had another chance like this again. Do you see him yet?”
Carol bit her lip to stifle any further rebuke and peered through the scope. A vampire’s natural body temperature ran at about eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit, but they could raise or lower it at will. It was doubtful that Malone was bothering to expend even the slight effort to change it, so his heat signature should stand out against the background.
Carol watched the cop struggle with something on the ground. A new thermal image emerged as Castillo dragged a body out from beneath an object.
“I see him.”
“Do you have a shot?”
“No.”
“Carol. Kill Mode…”
“Call me whatever you want, I am not shooting Malone right in front of a cop. You have already exposed us too much. I am aborting. You do whatever you want. I signed on to kill vampires, not blow up cops.”
“You know what he did to me, Carol! You know what he did to my family!”
“And you know what his kind did to mine! Do you think I hate them any less than you do just because you have more bodies to mourn? They took my family too, but I will not let them take my identity, my humanity, too!”
Trinh mentally berated herself again. Carol was right. She had gone too far, let her hatred of Malone and his kind strip her of her sense of right and wrong. She almost killed someone, and she had no problem justifying becoming a murderer. The one thing Malone had not taken from her when he slaughtered her village she nearly gave him of her own free will—her sense of self.
“You’re right, Carol. I’m sorry. Let’s get the hell out of here. I really screwed up this time.”
“We’ll get him next time.”
“Damn right we will.”
CHAPTER 16
“Fuck off!” I snap at the paramedic trying to examine me and push him away.
I look over at Castillo, laid out on a stretcher while paramedics examine her injuries. Her head is turned toward me, her eyes locked onto my face. Pulling out my phone, I am once again glad I invested in the ultra-rugged case. The other end picks up after a single ring.
“What the hell is happening, Leonard?” Vincent asks.
“Someone just blew up my loft and almost me along with it.”
“You obviously survived.”
“Obviously, but I need a team here ASAP. Cops are crawling all over the place, and there are things I would rather they didn’t find.”
“Your armory.”
“That’s right.”
“I will have a team on site in fifteen minutes. Can you hold that long?”
“Yeah, it’s hard enough to find my armory even without a few tons of roof and walls covering it.”
“Do you have any idea of who did this?”
“My guess is whoever jumped me earlier.”
Vincent rumbled in his throat. “Even if the bloodling survived your encounter, I cannot imagine how she would have been fit to plant explosives. Given your account and what I saw on the video, she should have been dead or at least incapacitated for days if not weeks.”
“It could have been her partner. Whoever planted the bomb obviously wanted it to do the work for them and had no intention of facing me.”
“Quite. This presents a very inconvenient variable in our hunt for Montague.”
“Inconvenient is certainly a word.”
“I know this is now rather personal for you, but keep in mind that Jack is our primary concern.”
“I’ll send her over to your penthouse to do some redecorating and see if she still rates as just an inconvenience to you.”
“Don’t get pissy, Malone.”
“Don’t get pissy? Someone just blew up my house!”
“Let us be honest; it was an eyesore that should have been demolished years ago.”
“It was my home!”
“It was urban blight. Now you can find someplace proper in which to live.”
“Maybe I’ll get an apartment beneath your penthouse.”
“You could not afford to rent my parking space. You have the fiscal responsibility of a drug-addicted gambler.”
“I’m also a shopaholic.”
“Yes, the flagstones paving your path to failure are many, but none of them are my concern. You are a resourceful man when you choose to be. I have faith that you will overcome this minor obstacle.”
“With such encouragement, how can I not? I don’t care what everyone says about you. I know that beneath that arrogant surface, below the substrate of pomposity, and deep within the thick core of just plain dickheadedness, lies a real heart of gold.”
I mentally give Vincent the finger when he cuts the connection. My head snaps up at the sound of someone shouting near the rubble of my former home. An officer is waving his cohorts from EOD away from the scene. I turn at another shout and see Castillo leap off her stretcher and stalk toward the officer who has taken charge of the scene.
“What the hell is going on? Where are they going?” Castillo demands.
“Feds called in and ordered our people away from the site. They said it could be a terrorist attack and that there could be some chemical or biological contamination.”
&nb
sp; “Terrorists my ass!” She stalks toward me but doesn’t come closer than ten feet away. Her hand rests on the gun at her hip. “This is you, isn’t it? Just like all the other times. Who do you work for? Who is cleaning up behind you all the time?”
“I think you’re concussed, Castillo. You are finding grand conspiracies where they don’t exist.”
“Tell me who is trying to kill you.”
“I wish I knew. Sadly, I can’t even narrow down the list to a manageable number.”
“Dammit, Malone, I can help you find out if you will let me!”
I shake my head. “No, you can’t. Trust me on this.”
Two vans skid to a stop at the police cordon. An officer opens a section to let them pass. The vehicles pull up next to the smoldering remains of my loft. A crew in hazmat suits begin sweeping the area with miscellaneous electronic devices.
One of the men in a hazmat suit jogs over to the officer on scene. “We have a definite contamination. I need you to move the perimeter back at least a block in cast the wind shifts.”
The cop nods and begins ordering everyone back. The cleanup crew begins erecting construction screens around my loft to block their work from observation.
I wave the guy over. “Have someone bring me my bike.”
He nods and returns to the cleanup site. Someone returns a minute later, pushing my bike. Luckily, it was not in line with the direction of the blast. The explosion had knocked it over, but hadn’t done any real harm beyond further cosmetic damage. I straddle the seat, but Castillo stops me before I can take off.
“I will find out what this is about and what you are.”
“For both our sakes, you had best hope you don’t.”
I snarl as I try to align my mirror. I give up, rip it off, and cast it to the ground. I leave my threat hanging in the cloud of dust my bike kicks up, as I speed away. I also leave a lot of questions, and once the proverbial dust clears, the cops are going to want me to answer them. Good thing for me that suspected terrorist bombings make for a great distraction.
The cops can’t help me with this, but I still need to get answers for myself. The biggest question I need answered is who this bloodling is and why she is so dead set on killing me. I’m certain finding out who will reveal the why, so that is my focus.
My subconscious is nagging the crap out of me. It’s practically screaming that I know who she is, but until it can get more specific, I tell it to shut the hell up. What I do know is that she somehow managed to recover from what should have been a critical wound. Even if she had gotten to a surgeon before she bled out, it would have taken a bloodling at least a week, probably closer to three, to heal.
It must have been her partner or the people in the van. It’s the only explanation. She has a skilled team and that makes it a problem. I learned all too well how easily a good team can take down a vampire, even me. Too many questions. Too much speculation. I need facts, and to get them I need to see who broke into my loft and planted a bomb.
My phone is buzzing in my pocket, but I have little choice except to ignore it until I get to where I’m going. I park my bike outside a large brick building in the southeast corner of Forest Hills. Small stores fill the building front that runs along Queens Boulevard, but the majority of the building is offices and apartments. Marvin moved to better digs once he started getting regular contract work from Yuri.
I park my bike outside the building and pull out my phone just in time to catch another call. “Yeah.”
“Yo, Leo, do you know your cameras are out again?” Marvin asks.
“Yeah, in fact I’m outside your place now.”
“What happened, you lose power?”
“You might say that. Buzz me in.”
The door buzzes, and opens with a click. I jog up the three flights of stairs and knock on the steel door. It isn’t as bombproof as mine, but it’s respectable and enough to thwart all but the most determined intruder. The door opens and Marvin lets me in. His apartment covers the entire eastern corner of the top floor. Bars and steel shutters secure the windows. The sheer number of computer displays, enormous televisions, and various electronics makes me feel as if I’m in a Best Buy wet dream.
“So what happened, your shithole lose power again?” Marvin asks.
“No, someone blew it up and nearly killed me.”
“Serious? Damn. You gotta learn to stop pissing people off so much.”
“Yeah, it’s my New Year’s resolution. Can you look up the video footage, or did I lose that in the explosion?”
“Do you seriously think I would leave any kind of data storage at your house? I’m insulted that you would even think that.”
“I don’t know how this shit works, Marvin. Just bring up the goddam tapes so I might see who else tried to kill me today.”
Marvin’s eyes widen and he takes a step back. “Goddam, how many people have tried to murder you today?”
“Two, possibly three if this turns out to be someone else.”
“Are you familiar with the laws of causality?”
“You mean like how running your mouth can cause my foot to become lodged in your ass?”
“I’m just saying maybe it’s something you’re doing. Have you ever thought about going to one of those rehab centers for assholes. You know, like Mel Gibson.”
I roll my eyes. “It has been discussed. Can you just bring up the tapes?”
Marvin moves toward an elevated corner of the room that looks like something from a sci-fi movie set. “Sure, let me hop in my time machine over here and travel back to 1995 so I can buy a VCR and play those tapes.”
“What the hell is this, Marvin?”
Marvin beams and waves a hand like a The Price Is Right model. “Welcome to the bridge of the USS Mo’ Money! It is a complete reconstruction of the bridge on Next Generation’s Enterprise, and it’s fully functional.”
“This is the shit you spend your money on?”
“Hey, at least I have money, you broke ass motherfucker. If I was born a hundred years ago, I’d be a damn billionaire by now.”
“If you don’t pull up that video, you might not live to tomorrow much less a century.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were here asking for my help. I don’t know how I got that mixed up.”
“Just bring up the video before I start pulling all your toys out of their boxes.”
Marvin flashes me a salute. “Aye, Aye, Captain Betamax!” He takes a seat in a chair I vaguely recognize from the TV show and starts tapping away at a console. “Those are valuable, collectible action figures, not toys!” he mumbles as he works. “Okay, here’s all the footage from yesterday and today. Where do you want to start?”
I stand behind him and stare at the large screen on the wall. “Let’s start at midnight and work our way forward.”
Marvin speeds up the video until I spot a dark shape flash across the screen, then the image vanishes. “Stop! Back it up a few minutes.”
Marvin rewinds the video and plays it again. I watch the figure dressed in black sprint across the open space. She disappears from view for a moment before reappearing, her masked face just inches from the camera before the image goes dark.
“Damn, Leo, it looks like you got hit by a ninja. You piss off the Yakuza?”
“No, but I’m almost positive it’s the same woman who attacked me earlier, but that’s impossible.”
Marvin pushes back in his chair and covers his mouth with the back of his hand. “You mean that was a chick in that video? Oh, man, why you always getting beat up by women?”
“She didn’t beat me up.”
“You Skywalkered your own hand! So, you just sewed that shit back on and it’s good as new? Hey, have you seen the one where they overlaid Miley Cyrus’ ‘Wrecking Ball’ song on the video when that van smashes into you? Hold on, let me bring it up. I got it bookmarked.”
“Leave it, Marvin. Is there any way you can get an idea of who this is?”
“Hold
on. She was obviously doing something to the camera other than breaking it.” He scrolls through what looks like a large document on the screen. “Here we go. The log shows that the camera was disconnected right here, and just a couple minutes later, someone shuts the alarm off from an outside system. I bet they used the camera feed to get access to the system, so she had help.”
“Yeah, I saw another girl when the van hit me.”
“It came in like a wrecking ball!” Marvin sings before my stern, unamused look shuts him up. “I assume she’s another vampire, like that sexy French woman.”
“No, she’s a bloodling—a sort of hybrid. She’s killed two other vampires that I know of.”
“So this is a Van Helsing kind of thing, but she’s come after you twice. Sounds to me like it probably wasn’t a random encounter.”
“That was my thinking, as well. I think our first meeting was by chance, but she’s looking for me now. The other two vamps she killed simply because of what they are. I can’t help but feel as if she is after me not just because of what I am, but who I am.”
“If she knows you, then you probably know her.”
“Exactly, but of the list of people who’d like to see me dead, I just can’t find where she fits on it.”
“I could poke around, ask some questions. It’s not as if you guys stand out on the street and advertise who and what you are. I bet she’s using some of the same dark web forums I’ve been in.”
“What are you talking about, Marvin? I told you, you can’t tell anyone about us.”
“I know and I’m not, but you people aren’t as unknown as you think you are. There are dozens of vampire fan pages on the dark web. Most of them are bullshit wannabe fan forums where people dress up and drink cherry Kool-Aid, but a few are very serious about your existence and people post possible sightings and encounters. I started looking into them after you told me what you were.”
“All right, but be very careful. I am serious about the importance of keeping what you know a secret. The enclave is uptight about people knowing about us and completely unforgiving to anyone who might expose us.”
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