by ST Branton
The warehouse lot was poorly maintained, an uneven pit of rocky debris and loose gravel that sprayed from underneath the van’s tires as it pulled into a space. I hung back under cover of the tall, scratchy grass along the side of the street, observing the panel door slide open again. One guy lumbered out with SplitScreen practically tucked under his arm. Her obvious squirming didn’t seem to slow him down one bit.
He joined up with the driver at the back and walked into the building with SplitScreen slung between them. I could see her thrashing, but again, her efforts were spectacularly ineffective.
She kind of reminded me of myself in the early days, except I didn’t have anyone jumping into a heap of garbage to rescue me.
I cased the van with as much as a two-second sideways glimpse would let me while I tiptoed up to the warehouse door. Leaving it uninspected made me itch. That vehicle had to be a goldmine of information, but the blogger’s safety took precedence over all of that.
After all, she was the one who could talk.
The only thing I saw with any clarity was a weird strip of white running down the body of the vehicle. The telltale sign of a careless sideswipe. So, these guys were shitty drivers, too. Maybe SplitScreen was lucky she’d made it this far in one piece.
I doubted she would agree with me on that one.
The door was solid and very locked. Soundproof, too, judging by its apparent weight and thickness. A rock began to form in the pit of my stomach. None of these signs were good. I hadn’t forgotten what I’d found in the last large abandoned structure I broke into.
And I kept thinking about SplitScreen’s story about those exsanguinated bodies.
“How long does it take to set up a vampire factory?” I whispered to Marcus, sidling along the edge of the wall. “Could there be a new one in two or three weeks?”
If the benefactor is powerful enough, supplying the initial blood source would be a trivial matter. So, yes. Far too easily.
“Great.” I felt for the shape of the sword hilt in my bag. “Maybe the cage will be full of grizzly bears this time.”
The side of my foot struck something hard. I glanced down at a stack of cinder blocks, then up at the window just above them. “Don’t tell me I’m not the first one to bust in here.”
I suspect you will be the first to remain undetected.
The back of my neck prickled. I hoisted myself up onto the blocks and stood on my toes to peer in through the dirty pane. Unlike the New York location, this place was only one big, barren room. Naked lightbulbs hung on wires from the exposed beams in the ceiling. Whenever they were jostled by doors opening or heavy footsteps approaching, all the light jumped up along the walls.
I shivered. “Man, that’s creepy.” A few chairs and a battered table furnished the space. Suspicious stains dotted the floor.
I didn’t see a pit or anything that looked like it might be concealing a pit.
I do not believe this to be a vampire creation facility, Marcus declared.
“Why doesn’t that make me feel any better?”
Because it means we do not know who or what is using this place—and why.
At that moment, SplitScreen and her two escorts came into my field of vision. I shut my mouth, directing all my focus into sight and hearing. The guards shoved their captive into a chair. One started to secure her with some kind of cable. The other ripped the scarf and glasses from her face.
SplitScreen said something clearly nasty, and the goon hesitated, half a step from hitting her. Thinking better of it, he got out a roll of duct tape and taped her mouth shut instead. Her death glare transcended the distance and the grimy glass.
It made me want to be her friend—or, failing that, at least not her enemy.
The windowsill vibrated under my hand, a sensation I recognized from living in a half-condemned loft, indicating that a door had been opened somewhere. Sure enough, both burly guards glanced up and backed away at the same time. I knew that gesture well, too.
The boss had arrived. All these idiots were basically mirror images of Rocco’s cronies, so naturally, I expected their chief to be more or less his clone.
No words in existence could define precisely how wrong I was.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Who the hell am I looking at?” I jerked backward away from the window, and then leaned forward again very slowly until my forehead touched the glass. “That is definitely not a vampire.”
On the contrary, the woman in the room was without a doubt the most beautiful I had ever seen. I had thought the guards were shrinking deliberately from her, but as she drew level with their position, I saw that she was just extremely tall. Long red hair, like the deep embers of a bonfire, framed her oval face in flowing rivulets. I swore she had a visible glow.
Not a vampire, no. But still not to be trusted. Marcus was not having any of this lady’s undeniable badassery.
“No kidding.” A little awestruck, I watched her move around the back of SplitScreen’s chair. “I just want to know what her deal is. I’ve never seen anything like her before.” He didn’t answer me right away, and that gnawing curiosity refused to go away, so I prompted him again. “Hey, are you listening?”
Do not be seduced by this woman’s beauty, Victoria. Not all monsters have fangs.
“Noted.” I noticed the woman engaging SplitScreen in conversation. The words were ninety-nine percent inaudible, but I was still able to discern some of the expressions on their faces.
Boss lady started out friendly, handing out smiles that showed all her perfect teeth. But she wouldn’t stop circling the chair like a shark around a sinking ship, and after SplitScreen failed to respond with the same warmth, the boss’s demeanor slipped. She would occasionally turn her face toward the wall or toward one of the guards, and in those instances, I got a snapshot of a completely different person.
“Right,” I said, frowning at the dark mask stretched across her otherwise flawless features. “I really hope she doesn’t try to murder the blog chick. She looks like she can kick my ass.” Not only did Marcus not dispute the statement, he didn’t even make fun of me for making it.
That was when I started to worry.
The Gladius Solis still hung wrapped up in my bag, always ready for duty. “Marcus, if things turn ugly, do you think it’s fine to just, like...whip the sword out in front of SplitScreen?” It was looking like we had no other choice, but everyone else who had seen the legendary weapon up to now had either known about it or ended up dead. “She’s a blogger, Marcus. What if this gets out?”
Perhaps it is time. The entrance of the gods is imminent. The world must know there are instruments against them.
“What happened to not making our move until the gods go public?” I kept my gaze fixed firmly on the scene inside the warehouse. The redhead was glowering now, her face a mask of frustration. We were running out of time.
Under present circumstances, I am afraid discretion cannot be helped. This child must be saved. And I believe that ensuring her salvation may grant us a certain amount of leverage over her sphere of influence, would it not?
Sometimes I forgot Marcus had a flair for strategy. Unable to deny most of his points, and increasingly convinced that things were going south on the other side of the window, I resolved to just cross the present bridge and handle the consequences later. That was my usual MO, after all.
“Dude, she’s not a child,” I scoffed. “You’re only saying that because Gargantua in there would make Bigfoot look like a halfling.” The next time I looked at SplitScreen, though, I found myself unable to deny that she did look little. Her voice hadn’t sounded too young, but I could no longer be positive until I saw her face up close. “Dammit, she better not be a kid.”
I told myself it didn’t matter and forced the issue from my mind for the time being. Whatever her age, we had to get her out of there. If she was running some kind of scam on me, I could deal with that later. For now, I needed to keep SplitScreen alive.
O
n the other side of the gross window, the woman made one final orbit around the chair, her face marred by exceptional discontent. I still had no clue what SplitScreen had to say specifically, but it was not to her captor’s liking. The fire-red mane of hair swished angrily as Gargantuan turned to her guards for a moment. Then, shooting the blogger one last, withering glare, she marched from the room.
Seventy feet away from me, the door to the warehouse swung open.
Acting on pure instinct, I dove for cover in the overgrown weeds, flattening myself as much as possible. I couldn’t see her this way, but a velvety female voice drifted into my ear.
“The little one is no longer an issue mylady.” Feet crunched on the gravel. A purring car pulled up, received its passengers, and pulled away. I leapt toward the window.
The guards remained in the empty room. One of them stood by the table now, casually loading a gun. He glanced over at SplitScreen, who sat with her head down, mouth still taped over.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what was coming next.
Hopping backward, I hefted a cinder block in both hands and hurled it through the glass. The other guard fired, but the sound of breaking glass surprised him, and his shot went wide, burying itself in the wall. SplitScreen flinched and hunched down lower in the chair. Strands of dark hair were falling from beneath her hat. I’d hoped she would look bigger, less utterly vulnerable, once I levered myself over the sill and into the same room as her. She did not. In fact, she appeared to be even tinier.
Another shot rang out. I heard the bullet zing past my head and into the floor. To my left, the first guard popped the last round into the chamber. He cocked back the hammer and leveled the barrel at me.
SplitScreen’s shout was muffled through the tape, but it sounded like, “No!” He was standing a little too close to her, and she lashed out with her boots just as he squeezed the trigger. He missed me, and like a bull, I put my head down and charged.
He attempted to get off one more shot, but I was faster. I slammed into him as he frantically hammered his finger on the trigger. In a second, the gun was in my hand. In two seconds, it was connecting rapidly with various parts of his face. In five, I spun around and chucked it viciously at the other guard, whose crooked nose exploded in a gush of blood.
He clapped his hands to his newly messed-up face, making a strained, honking wheeze through his fingers. It was almost too easy after that. He didn’t even have the chance to guard his nuts before I kicked them back into his body. On the floor, the honking turned into more of a pathetic gurgle.
My work done, I turned to SplitScreen. The tape left a pink rectangle below her nose when I pulled it off.
“Son of a bitch, ow,” she said. “But also, thank you.”
“Don’t thank me until this place is in the rearview mirror,” I answered. “And maybe not even then.” Using my pocket knife to cut her bindings, I pointed toward my original point of entry. “That way. I’ll give you a boost.”
She shook the blood back into her hands. “Are those guys gonna be okay?”
“You mean the assholes who kidnapped you?” I gave her a look. “Did you forget what just happened? They were totally going to shoot you.”
She scowled. “Look, I’m always the girl behind the curtain in case you haven’t noticed. I just write about this shit… I didn’t sign up for murder.”
“Let me guess.” I led her pointedly toward the window. “You have people who do that for you.”
“Ha ha.” She jumped up to grab the windowsill and let me push her the rest of the way. When we were both on the other side, she finished her thought. “No. I don’t hurt people. I simply expose them.”
“Right. And how was me telling you Silas Monk runs with vampires not exposing the shit out of him?”
SplitScreen pulled out her cellphone and punched a number into the keypad. “About that. I think I was wrong. If you have a minute, we should go somewhere and talk. For real this time.”
“Okay, but it’s gonna take more than a minute. And I have no idea where the hell we are, so we’re going to need a car. How do you feel about hotwiring?”
“Don’t worry about it.” The blogger glanced at her phone. “I’ve got it covered.” Two minutes later, a sleek silver sedan with tinted windows pulled into the lot. “Get in, and don’t talk to the driver.”
“Uh, fine?” I got in the back seat. An opaque partition separated the front and back. SplitScreen disappeared into the front passenger’s side, leaving me alone in an odd cocoon of silence. We eased back out into traffic, and soon, the freeway streamed past the window.
I started to drowse a little, but then a thought torpedoed into my brain. I wrapped the medallion chain nervously around my finger. “Marcus?”
Victoria. I see your mission was successful.
“Do you think I screwed everything up by getting in her car?”
I doubt the recent victim of a kidnapping is going to turn around and kidnap you. He paused. Besides, you are twice her size. You could easily overpower her.
“That’s true.” I stared at the partition and pretended I knew where we were going. “I wonder what she’s going to tell me.” An image of red hair flashed through my mind’s eye. It had been a long time since I’d met someone so intriguing. I already knew I didn’t like her, but she was just inherently fascinating.
Like the next piece of a puzzle I was hell bent on solving.
***
The car dropped us off outside of a sketchy little storefront with painted signs I couldn’t read hanging in the windows. Realizing SplitScreen expected me to accompany her inside, I balked. She looked over her shoulder. “C’mon. I promise it’s clean.”
“Clean of what? And what is this place?”
“Bugs.” She spoke with an air of forced patience, as if we had spontaneously swapped ages. “It’s a net-café. I know the owners. And I don’t want to stand around outside.” With that, she went to the door and propped it open for me.
Do you want to make an ally out of this child or not? Marcus asked.
“You know what I want? I want you to call her a child to her face. I have a feeling that’s something I’d pay actual money to see.”
Just go inside, Victoria.
I smirked, jogging a little to close the gap between us. “That means I win.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“I want to make something clear.” SplitScreen sat across from me again, only this time, her face was in full view. Her huge brown eyes remained unnervingly steady on my face as she spoke, hardly even blinking. The hair I’d seen tumbling out of her hat turned out to be jet black and straight as a pin. “I’m just as paranoid as you, if not more. So, you can at least trust me as far as confidentiality is concerned. I have a blog, yeah, but I won’t use it to sell you out.” She chewed her lower lip. “I know how shitty that is.”
“Fine.” I decided I could live with that if it facilitated an open exchange of information. Trust never came easy, but I was in a damned tight spot. “Do you care if I ask you some questions, then? I don’t mind working with you as long as it benefits both of us, but I’m not super into the whole cloak and dagger bit. Riding in that car was like solitary confinement.”
She turned a little sheepish. “Sorry. Maybe it’s sort of over the top, but when I started writing the articles about Monk, you know what happened? My inbox filled up with threats, people asking where I lived, people saying they’d find and kill me. So, these days, I feel it’s necessary to take some extra precautions.”
“Hold up. Death threats? I feel like I’m missing something. Why is this rich nerd such a threat?”
“Have you never seen a Bond movie? Rich nerds are always trying to blow up the moon or some shit.” She opened an ornate little bottle, which she poured into a square cup. The liquid was strong enough that I smelled it from my seat, like flowers soaked in mean booze.
“And he’s more than just that anyway. More than what people think. And that’s the probl
em.” She lifted the cup to her lips and sipped it delicately. “He’s walking down a dangerous path. And rubbing shoulders with some real asshats along the way.”
The scent of her drink both burned and delighted my nose. It sucked all the excitement out of my regular stout. “What sort of dangerous path, and why do you care? The dude’s a freaking billionaire. Something tells me you don’t run in the same circles.”
“Are you kidding?” She huffed. “He revolutionized my industry. Monk has everything to do with me. He is the reason we’re sitting here today, right here, right now.” A beat passed. She let out her breath. “Do you want some sake? You might need it if you want me to tell you everything.”
“That’s what this stuff is?”
“Yeah. I’ll only pour you a little to start. It’s an acquired taste.” She poured what looked like three drops into a cup and pushed it across to me. “So, a few years back, I was a recently graduated computer science major from Stanford. My dream was to be at the absolute forefront of the technological world. It wasn’t enough to be on the cutting edge. I wanted to be the one creating it.” A wry smile curved her mouth. “What better way to realize that dream than to pack it to Palo Alto after I got my degree, right? There were things being developed here that couldn’t even have been imagined anywhere else. A utopian enclave of geniuses.”
The smile turned bitter. “I was naïve. I really thought this place was full of visionaries, innovators, and people who wanted to make the best version of the future come true. But then I got here and took a job at this startup that was pitching a way to redefine communications. The way people thought. The way people saw themselves, saw each other. What an amazing new Earth that would be.”
“I’m guessing it was all bunk.” The tiny sip of sake I’d just taken burned down my throat like sweet fire. I swore I felt it land in my stomach.
“Not all of it.” She stared into her square cup. “But there was a lot—most of it—that they didn’t tell us, such as what they meant by ‘communications.’ The company grew like crazy, and a couple years in, I found out our main source of income was mining and selling customers’ data. I mean millions of people who just became commodities. Everything they were, and everything they wished they weren’t, out there for someone to buy. Just so they could market stupid shit even better.”