Don’t Bite the Messenger
Page 6
“I’m trying to give you the information you need to take care of yourself. But I’m beginning to think you have no regard for your well-being.”
“I’m careful.” I was so goddamn careful that I’d resisted responding to him for fear he’d make me want to stay. The bomb was a wake-up call. My days here were numbered, and not only by my internal calendar. Why someone would have it out for me just because vampires couldn’t work their influence on me made no sense. I was a courier, a subcontract away from being a public servant. I was supposed to be objective. That wasn’t the sort of thing that should put me on a hit list.
“I can make you safe,” he said.
“What, fly me off to distant shores like you were offering?”
“I could take you somewhere you wouldn’t be recognized for what you are. You would have everything you desired.” My eyes trailed over his body, and I forced my gaze back to his face and his raised eyebrow. “And my people could watch you when I was required elsewhere.”
That sparked my curiosity. His debt didn’t put him at the bottom of the sucker hierarchy, despite it being obscenely close to indentured servitude. If he had his own followers then he probably had wealth and power.
His offer appealed to the little girl in me, the one who’d waited day after day for a white knight to ride up and take her away, to make it all better. She’d never imagined the knight would be gorgeous, that he could make her laugh at one moment and charm her in the next. But that little girl had gotten smarter over the years. Dream offers always had a dark side.
“And I suppose I’d be free to come and go as I pleased?” He went still, and that was answer enough. My throat tightened. “You’d lock me up.”
“It wouldn’t be like that. You’d be safe, and most of the time I’d be there. You could even use your own name.” I started, and his victorious expression told me that I’d confirmed a suspicion, not that he actually knew who I was.
“What is your name?” he asked, but his smile was too bright, too smug. Maybe I didn’t use my real name, but at least I didn’t play with people for amusement.
“I’m going for coffee.” I yanked on my green, wool hat. I couldn’t think while lying in bed, and I couldn’t think at all around him. I needed time and movement to figure a way out of a situation that got worse by the minute.
“You know, I’ve tried to do this your way,” he said, turning to toss a pillow back onto the bed from where it had fallen in my hasty departure. Along his triceps and back, the cuts had smoothed together, leaving behind dark stains. They looked like powder, like I could brush them off and find only smooth skin behind. But even fast healing hadn’t spared him the pain. I swallowed a hard lump.
He turned back to me, his eyes flashing. “I know you’re attracted to me and I’ve worked to get through to you. I’ve been patient. But you’re about as warm and honest as a damn ice rat.”
My mouth dropped open and it took me a moment to regain my faculties enough to close it. He glared at me as if I was the one who had said something offensive. I turned on my heel and walked to the kitchen, pulling open the thin shades over the sink. The sun cast enough weak, purplish light to prevent him from taking more than a step out of the bedroom. I moved to the coat closet by the front door, knelt and reached around to the inside of the folding door to tear loose my envelope of essentials. I jammed it into my bag, fighting to get it past my clipboard and Lucille’s gift.
“What is that?” Malcolm asked from the bedroom doorway.
“Thanks for the rescue last night.” I opened the front door.
“Don’t go.”
I turned back, and the expression he wore now made my chest tighten. “You’re right.” I kept my voice low so that he wouldn’t hear how unsteady it was. “I lied about my name. But I have my reasons. I’m sorry if that doesn’t work for you.”
“Mary.” This time his voice was a warning. I slammed the door behind me.
***
I felt better than I should have even if Malcolm thought I looked like shit, which a reflective window emphatically confirmed I did. Not that I cared what he thought, or the window. He’d deceived me into thinking he was human, the rotten sneak, and had probably untied my robe in the night to steal looks at me. I poured milk into my coffee and stirred it viciously, cursing under my breath and sending another coffee bar patron sidling away. This wasn’t a good time for me to be among people.
I shoved through the coffee shop door hard enough to knock the bell off, then burned my hand with coffee when I bent to retrieve the merry little bastard. Fuck it. The door banged closed behind me. It was biting cold outside, making my lips tingle and my eyes water. Despite that, I stopped, rooted in place. If Malcolm was still at my apartment, I might do something foolish like try to kiss him again or—God forbid—apologize. I sighed. I had it bad for him. I should apologize. He wasn’t the men of my past, had never so much as threatened me, and I had barely been civil to him. Then again…
Malcolm was probably wealthy, was certainly arrogant, and he was stronger than any human man could be. He didn’t want to see me hurt, but he couldn’t see himself through my eyes. He had more capacity to hurt me than anyone else, because I wanted kindness from him. Kindness, and so much more.
The cold, combined with the fact that the sun had set, woke my self-preservation instincts and I started walking. Surely he would be gone. He probably needed to feed—I wasn’t sure how long refrigerated pig’s blood could tide a vamp over for—and check in with Bronson. The Master was no doubt putting together some kind of hunting party. Retribution was high on vampires’ list of likes, and I was apparently his pet courier.
I’d had death wrapped in plastic in my trunk, and all I had to show for it were bruises and a bad mood. I’d won. So why did I still have such a bad feeling?
I started the recalcitrant Suburban on my way in to the apartment to give it time to defrost. I’d head in to I&O to see whether I could get any additional information on that Price guy. And then…then I should leave. McHenry wouldn’t let me drive for a few days after I’d been hurt anyway, and I could probably move up my flight date. The change fee would be worth it.
Price had known that I was Bronson’s courier, which meant he had connections in Anchorage. The news of last night’s events, including my survival, would have hit the street no later than the minute I was wheeled into the hospital. I could lie low with the best of them, but I was only human. I might be able to stand up to a baby vamp, but not much more. All I had on my side was the ability to run.
The door stuck and I winced when I shouldered through it. Inside, the building smelled like bleach, and the soothing sounds of the washing machines drifted out of the open laundry room. In my own house, I wouldn’t have to share laundry facilities. That was something to look forward to.
I paused on the landing between the first and second floor, the back of my hand raw from cold, my palm hot and moist against the paper coffee cup. The building was quiet. It was a workday and early yet for the other tenants to be returning. Still, something felt off. Beneath the soles of my boots the floor trembled, and I relaxed. Only an earthquake. I climbed, clutching the banister as the tremor continued, and stepped from the stairwell into a crackling gale of etheric energy.
The light flickered overhead, illuminating a dark-clad swarm of vampires fighting on my doorstep. On. Off. The images flashed like a hypertensive slideshow. On. Off. Drywall broke and crumbled in the dark, and artificial light from my apartment streamed in through the holes.
Not an earthquake.
I dropped my coffee and sucked in a breath. Three of them turned toward me, the dull sheen of their eyes almost as disturbing as their mouths, distorted around massive curved fangs. From behind them, Malcolm rose up, blood running from his forehead and streaking his cheek and chin. My heart skipped a beat as I gaped at his fangs, the golden glow of his eyes.
“Leave,” he yelled. Then he lunged, and one of the vamps dropped in a dark spray of blood.
A figure stood at the bottom of the stairs, pale yellow hair plastered to his skull. Price’s right-hand man. Richard. A woman lay limp at his feet, and he held her arm as though he was dragging her. She wore green scrubs and looked familiar, someone I’d passed in the parking lot in the morning maybe. The suckers had to influence someone to let them in. I hoped that was all they’d done to her.
The Nazi wannabe dropped the woman, who rolled onto her side, her arms wrapping around her middle. That was a good sign. He climbed two steps and stopped, widening his stance, trying to block me in.
“Come with me,” he said. His words filled my head with cold fog and glass shards of pain. I backed up until I hit the wall, my throat tight as though I was choking on the command. I blinked, clearing my eyes and my head. Go with him? So not going to happen. I had to get past him and buy myself thirty seconds to get to the Suburban.
“Yes,” I murmured, pushing off the wall and picking up speed. His head tilted to the side, probably wondering what he’d done to elicit such an enthusiastic response. I dropped my left shoulder, grabbed the banister with both hands and kicked off of the stairs. My legs sailed out in front of me and I tensed, striking him in the chest. He crashed into the corner.
I landed hard and rolled until the wall stopped me. I pulled myself into a crouch and felt around in my bag until my fingers brushed the scored hilt of my knife. I snapped out the six-inch blade. The woman’s eyes were glazed, her mouth moving weakly. The vamp was motionless. Another howl from above, then the sound of wood splintering. I ran.
Flat-out, barreling out of the building and sprinting for the truck. The door crashed open behind me, and prickly cold energy slapped against my back. He was coming. I slid around the Suburban, bent knees locking as I lowered myself reflexively to stay upright. I ran a few steps into the street when the ice ended.
And then the world tore open. The top of the apartment building exploded in a deafening burst of smoke and wood. I turned, catching a glimpse of the roof blowing outward, and then the sucker hit me. I tucked my chin when he tried to get an arm around my neck, rolled with him as we landed hard against an icy drift. His arm tightened around my waist, and he dragged me up, pushing me back against the snowbank with a cold, hard hand. The hilt of the knife bit into my palm, the blade pressing back along my forearm.
Richard’s mouth moved, lips stretching around partially dropped fangs. I couldn’t hear anything but the underwater sound of my own breathing. Debris rained down on us, broken flaming bits of my home. He twitched, and then he arched backward, hands scrabbling, trying to reach something on his back. Flames crept up his shoulders. I shoved his arm down and swung the knife.
He turned his head, thinking I was trying to punch him. I straightened my wrist and the blade flashed out, slicing across his face. Scrambling backward, I kicked him off of my legs and staggered to my feet. He writhed, his blood steaming in the cold air.
I jogged down the block then crouched between two cars, panting. My hands shook as I wiped the knife on a tissue, forced it to fold and stowed it. The building burned. The fourth floor was gone, the second and third torn open. Orange flames danced inside of roiling black smoke. The squeal of car alarms and the security system pierced the cotton in my ears. People from nearby buildings wandered into the street, staring at the building, dazed. They were all human. My shoulders slumped. Malcolm wasn’t among them.
A hand weakly gripped my ankle, and I leapt to my feet. Richard crawled toward me, his flesh waxen and pale. The yellow hair at the back of his head had burned off, the bottom of his right cheek flapped away from his face, and a thick slick of blood followed him. I backed away, pulled my hat tight and ran around the neighboring apartment building. I kept running. Over chain-link fences, through the narrow slots between government row-houses. My lips formed Malcolm’s name, but I couldn’t hear myself saying it.
Chapter Five
The problem with paradise is that it’s small. For the most part, the real world leaves it be, but the real world is greedy and expansive so paradise has to stay small to remain pristine. It’s quiet, too. Uneventful. I suppose those are parts of the definition of peaceful. They’re also components of the definition of boring.
I traded the Piilani Highway for the Mokulele, the wind wicking the day’s humidity from my skin like a lizard lapping dew. Sugarcane fields jostled in the passing headlights of shiny rental fleets and sun-faded local cars. The national bird refuge smelled unpleasantly swampy. It had been a dry spring.
Traffic all but disappeared a mile down the Hana Highway and the night whispered by, gentle and easy. I flipped up my rearview mirror to dim the headlights bobbing along behind me, breathed in the sweet air—overlaid with salt from the sea—and thought about nothing but the rumble and twist of the road. I could zone out while surfing and driving, but I couldn’t surf at night and there are only so many miles of road on a small island.
I was about a million miles away from the self I knew. Maybe the last few years had hardwired me for tension, repeating patterns of buildup and release, because the more I tried to relax, the itchier I felt inside my own skin. At least in Anchorage I could have driven away at any time. If I wanted off the island, I couldn’t just go.
“Leave,” Malcolm had yelled.
I’d gone, and the memory of seeing him outnumbered, of feeling the force of the explosion was like a dream in which I wanted to run but couldn’t. Maybe he’d needed help but I’d left him torn to pieces in the snow. Maybe he would have come with me, and I could have woken to find him beside me these last few months. Maybe there was nothing left of him to find.
I shook my head, refocused on the road.
I’d hitched my way out of Anchorage and into Canada. In Whitehorse, for the first time in my life, I stole a car. When I crossed the border in Whitlash, Montana, a day and a half later, it had a new license plate, and I was a jumpy brunette by the name of Sydney Kildare. It took me a week to recognize my own reflection. I dumped the car in Spokane, flew to Los Angeles and scored a standby ticket on American Airlines to Maui.
I’d lost my down payment on the house on Oahu. So much for Sunset Beach, but I figured it was worth it not to go the one place vampires knew to expect me. Even if it was only Lucille. Hopefully they’d think I died in the explosion.
I parked the convertible 1970 Bronco under the carport and sat for a moment listening to the engine cool and the sound of old-school reggae leaking out of my landlord’s house twenty yards behind me. I slipped out of the truck, smoothing my skirt over my damp bikini bottom and fixing a tank top strap that had slid off my shoulder. The sunburn I’d cultivated in my first month had finally given way to the deep tan of a habitual surfer. My hair had grown into a sleek, if very short bob, and red highlights were developing in response to the sun. I actually looked like a real girl.
Over the music, a baby insistently made itself heard. I smiled. Mine Kabasawe had almost been born in the back of the Volkswagen Rabbit I’d bought with cash when I first arrived on Maui, not able to completely relinquish my dream of Hawaii. Her mother, Leilani, had gone into labor at the slow French café I’d been having lunch at in Paia. I’d tossed her into the Rabbit and made the hospital in Kahului in twelve minutes flat, despite road construction. It was the most fun I’d had since …well, a long time.
Leilani had been so grateful she’d talked her uncle Hiro into renting me a place on his property near Haiku. It was an old house set in a small clear-cut, surrounded by a protective tropical forest. A porch wrapped around three sides offering a view of craggy cliffs and, far below, a turbulent shore. The open layout made the house feel much larger than nine hundred square feet. It had been built when “outdoor living ind
oors” had been in vogue and the walls were lined with cut-out rectangles covered only in screens. Hiro called them windows and said he would hang shutters in the winter.
I should have felt exposed. My old apartment had been cinder-block construction, with small, high windows. I’d thought it felt safe, but in reality it was like living in a bunker, oppressive and cell-like. But this place reflected the new me: out in the open, wearing my real hair and using my true name. So why was I still so restless?
The music and baby’s crying ending at the same time behind me, replaced by Leilani’s voice singing a lullaby. The sound faded as I made my way up the gentle rise to my house. It looked like a ship resting on a crab’s back. Six beams supported it at the sides, and a round central column rose up through the middle, disguising the pipes and water heater. The jungle leaves flapped in the evening breeze, and the crash of waves onto the rocks below was violently soothing. Hiro had lit tiki torches around my porch, which he did most nights when I didn’t get home until after dark. He must have been a lighthouse keeper in a former life.
I walked around the side of the house to the outside shower, hung my clothes on the bamboo enclosure and showered quickly in tepid water. It felt positively medieval to wash outside by flickering firelight. I groped for the towel I’d left hanging on a peg that morning, shook it to release any insects or lizards that had sought refuge in its folds and wrapped it around myself. I ran up the stairs and pushed open the screen door, smiling at the small basket of spam musubi and fresh tomatoes Leilani left every time she visited her uncle. She really hadn’t wanted to have that baby in a café. I dropped my keys on the small table by the door and carried the basket toward the kitchen, the only room other than the cramped bathroom that had walls.
“You seem to have made an impression on the neighbors,” a voice said. My heart leapt into my throat and I compulsively pulled the basket to my chest, like some kind of sun-bleached Little Red Riding Hood. He let go of whatever strange talent held his energy in check and it skittered madly over my skin, making me gasp.