by Lee Hayton
“I don’t know.” After the deluge of experiences from the past few days, just those few simple questions had me edging into irritation. Or maybe that was just my natural reaction to other people. As I sat back down on the couch, trying to calm my breathing, I wondered if I should just spend my life alone.
“There’s a witch I used to know,” Asha said. She sucked in her lips, making a pout that looked sexy as hell, though I doubted she knew it. “Dunno if she’s still alive, though. We used to go out on jobs together occasionally back in the day. She was a consultant with the government, same as me.”
“When was that?” I frowned, trying to find her life story in my memory. She’d told me enough damn times, I should be able to bring it up on cue. Nope.
“In the seventies.”
“The nineteen-seventies?” Miss Tiddles frowned. “That’s like a hundred years ago. Don’t you think she might be—” She slit a sharp claw across her throat and rolled her eyes back into her head.
“Where would she even be after all this time?” I asked. “How would you get in touch with her?”
“I don’t know,” Asha said, turning away.
I frowned. Sometimes Asha did that when the conversation bored her, other times it was to hide her expression.
“We need to move on, anyway,” I pointed out. “Why not try searching for this guy while we’re doing that?”
Asha snorted. “We need to move on to another apartment, not a different city. Do you know how many checkpoints have sprung up since your escape attempt? Hundreds.”
“It’s not my escape attempt.”
She shrugged. “Doesn’t change anything, either way. We’re not getting past the first ID check.”
Miss Tiddles sat down on the couch beside me, caught between her two forms. Before I’d been taken away, I’d seen her change exactly twice. Seeing her do it that many times in just the past few minutes made me feel like I was stepping on uncertain ground.
“Thought your weirdo dude sorted out the bounty on your head, anyway. Isn’t you ID as good as anyone’s now?”
“No.” Asha paced over to the window, crossing her arms as she looked out at the street. “It just means nobody’s looking to turn me in to the empire right now. From what Mrs. Pennyworth told me, they’re tracking everything we do. If we jump stakes and head up the country, they’ll know.”
“And? What if they do? What’s that to us?”
“We don’t know.” A frown began on Asha’s brow and slowly swamped her entire face with worry. “That’s the point.”
“There’s a flash drive,” I said, pulling it out from my other pocket. “The guy at the rest home said it was some sort of interview the old lady did.”
Miss Tiddles stretched out her arms, pummeling the sofa until it was the right shape. “Sounds riveting.”
“Someone from the government wanted him to box it up and have it ready for collection. They obviously thought it was worth something.”
“Burying the lead again.” Asha leaned over and grabbed the small memory stick out of my hand. “This is soaking wet.”
I swept my hand down the full length of my body. “Like the rest of me, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“You know where the towels are,” Asha said, turning the stick over. “I’ll pop this into the computer and see if it still boots up.”
Halfway between the couch and the bathroom, I hesitated. “Shouldn’t you wait for it to dry out or stick it in a bag of rice?”
“I don’t even know if this thing was working to begin with.” Asha held it up and twiddled it between her fingers. “It looks like its twenty years old if it’s a day.”
“Who cares?” Miss Tiddles leaped up to swipe it out of Asha’s hand. “If the government wants it, then we can always arrange to sell it to them. That way we all work out winners.”
Asha cocked an eyebrow. “If you’re still on good terms with your old boss, do you think you can ask him for safe passage out of the city?”
“I can ask, but I’ll tell you right now, he won’t be interested unless there’s money in it.” She turned to me. “You’re sure it was the empire that wanted this? Not some weird corporation with pockets bulging with credits?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure, just repeating what the guy said. But until we learn what’s on there, how about we don’t sell it to anybody?”
While the cat and Asha looked at each other, I continued on into the bathroom. My hair had stopped dripping rivulets into my face, but I still looked like a drowned rat.
Two towels and a change of clothes later, I rejoined the group discussion in the lounge.
“It doesn’t work,” Asha said. She had the disk poking out the side of an old laptop, concentrating on the screen.
“Can’t you just do a mind meld thing and clear it up?”
“Not if it won’t turn on.” She pulled it out of the computer and tossed it over to me. “You may as well throw it out. Selling it’s off the table.”
“Not necessarily.” Miss Tiddles slumped back on the sofa. “It’s only out of bounds if the person buying it knows that the thing is wrecked.” She shrugged. “They might want it anyhow. Sometimes there’s money in being absolutely sure.”
“So? Are you gonna call your old boss, then?”
“Nope. You’ve got his number. If you want to talk to him so badly, why not call him yourself.”
Miss Tiddles flashed a grin that contained way too many sharp teeth at Asha. When the cyborg shook her head, it widened even further. “Thought not.”
“We could head down to The Waterside. See if Mike has any ideas.”
In lieu of any other plan to follow, we all fell into step behind Asha as she led the way. At least the damned rain had stopped.
Eagerness lit up Asha’s face when we turned the last corner and saw the sign for the bar. She may have suggested that Mike might have a solution, but it seemed pretty clear to me that all she actually wanted was a drink.
Chapter Ten
The look on Mike’s face when we all trailed into The Waterside consisted mostly of scowling. There was a bit of anger tossed in there, sure, and a sliver of regret. The totality made one thing perfectly clear: we weren’t welcome.
“Hey, Mike,” Asha said, ignoring what his face was saying in favor of the sign on the door which said Open. She slid onto a bar stool right in front of him. “Can you get me a bourbon, top-shelf? We’ve got a few things to ask you.”
“Na-ha. Get out.”
At the low growl of his voice, Gwen, the barmaid, came out of whatever back room she’d been hiding away in. I couldn’t understand why she’d even bothered to turn up for work. Except for staff and now us, the bar was empty.
“It’ll just take a few minutes, Mike.” Asha twisted on her seat to point over his shoulder at a bottle. “Pour us one, I’ll ask my questions, and then we’ll all get the hell out of here.”
“I want you out of here right now.” Mike flung the cloth he’d been polishing glasses with over his shoulder and crossed his arms. “First off, that kid is too young to be in here. I’ve got a license to protect.”
Miss Tiddles burst out laughing at that one, and I puffed out my chest in indignation. “I’ll have you know that I’m a hundred and forty years old. Whatever age requirements you have in here, I’m well past them.”
“Pity you don’t go over so well on the height restrictions then, kid.” Mike held his arm up to shoulder height. “In this bar, you need to be this tall to ride.”
“What else are you going to do tonight?” Asha asked. She swept her arm around the empty room. “It’s not like you’re crawling with other options.”
At that, Mike’s face twisted into pure outrage. He poked a finger straight into Asha’s face, hitting her between the eyes. “If I were you, I wouldn’t be in here mentioning the lack of patrons. You cost me my entire clientele with your foolish racket. The ones who survived that massacre you led them into, are so scared they stay away.”
Asha pushed his finger away and tried on a smile. “Exactly.” She placed her hands palm-down on the countertop. “The worst has already happened, so all you’re doing now is refusing the only customers you’ve got left.”
Gwen reached for the bottle and poured out two fingers in the base of a glass. I don’t know where she got it from, but if I’d been Asha, I wouldn’t have drunk from it so eagerly.
“What about you, love?” she asked Miss Tiddles. “You want milk or you going to branch out and go crazy?”
“Milk’s good.”
Gwen turned and raised her eyebrows at me, but I shrugged.
“Don’t be stupid, Gwen. The kid’s a vampire. Unless you opened a vein up out the back, we don’t serve anything he wants.”
“Grab a table,” she told us, ignoring her boss. “I’ll bring the rest across in a minute.”
Asha picked her drink up and turned from the bar with a finger wave at Mike. He followed along behind her, landing in a chair with such force that it left dents on the hardwood floor.
“Fine. Since it seems to be the intention of everyone in here to ignore or undermine me, what the hell do you want?” Mike leaned forward and stabbed his finger on the table. “There’d better be money in it, mind. You already owe me a week’s custom, and there’s going to months more before this place gets back on its feet.”
“I’ve already wiped your debt out once,” Asha said.
News to me. But I’d started to understand that most of what went on in her life was kept hidden. Apparently, our evening talks were just the highlight reel. If Miss Tiddles hadn’t done me the favor of filling me in on what happened while I was still down in the slave pits, I wouldn’t even know what had upset Mike so much.
“Next time, you can add a bloody tip in for good measure. If I’d known the price I’d have to pay at the end for that information, I never would’ve bothered.”
Gwen snorted as she brought a refill for Asha, a double shot of vodka for Mike, and the glass of milk for Miss Tiddles. “Like you could stay out of trouble for ten minutes,” she said. “You let her in the place”—Gwen jerked her head at the cat—“without giving it a second thought, even when you knew where it was headed.”
“Hey, that’s enough.” Mike held up his hand. “I thought that we were going into battle for justice and goodness and all that crap, not turning half the city into new fodder for the slave pits.”
“Can we just get to the point?” Asha said. She’d already downed her first drink and was making inroads into her next. “I need to talk to you about how to get out of the city safely.”
“You can’t.” Mike drank the rest of his vodka in one swallow and slammed the empty down on the table. “Thanks to his lot”—he jerked his head at me—“every road in and out is bunged up as good as a clump of hair in a drainpipe. They’re searching every car, every bus, every train. Not that you have access to any of those.”
He stood up and wandered back behind the bar, slapping down the raised wood partition, so it sounded like a gunshot.
“Even the old tunnels and stuff from the changeover have been sealed up. Now, you can crawl on hands and knees for three miles and just end up with a gun in your face at the end.”
Although I wouldn’t admit it to the others, I was glad of that. The tunnels had flashed into my mind the instant we started this discussion. Even in my state, I wasn’t protected from claustrophobia. Being one of the undead wouldn’t help if I was trapped under a pile of crushing rubble. My strength wouldn’t last for long enough to claw my way out. I’d stave and turn rabid while my mind flipped into the white of pure panic.
So, yay!
“Who gets through, then?” Asha turned back to the bar, nothing if not persistent. “Don’t you know someone who could draw us up a fake ID? I can afford to pay for quality.”
Mike snorted and leaned on the bar, looking out the window at the late-night custom deliberately choosing not to enter. “That was the first thing the empire did. Rounded up the usual suspects and gave them a fright.” He shook his head. “Nobody’s going to risk it, not at the moment. There isn’t enough money in the world.”
Asha downed the second drink, her lower lip pooching out while a frown distressed her forehead.
Gwen seemed to understand the way the wind was blowing and leaped in with an idea. A stupid one, as it happened. “Why don’t you get a real pass?”
Asha didn’t even let that one settle in her eardrums before she snapped back, “How? Want me to apply to become a soldier bot? If they won't even let me out of the city, I somehow doubt they’re going to let me join their ranks.”
“You don’t have to get that close in.” Gwen tapped her knuckles on the table when Asha’s gaze started to move away. “But the empire’s always hired freelancers to do their dirty work. Get a contract as a bounty hunter, and they’ll give you a free pass to go pretty much anywhere and do anything.”
I laughed, pumping that sucker as full of derision as I could manage. “Good one. It’s only been a week since you were most wanted, why not join the hunt? Perhaps you’ll get to bring yourself in at the end.”
But the frown on Asha’s face no longer broadcast petulance. That was her thinking face. She was computing the options and coming up with the result that I didn’t think would work out the way she hoped.
“You know—” she began, but I cut her off with a raised hand.
“If you go into one of their recruitment offices, I don’t think you’ll walk back out.”
“The Pennyworth’s said I was safe until they wanted something from me again.” Asha shrugged. “They know how to reach me, either way. I can’t imagine that they’ll care what I’m doing in the meantime.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “You can’t be fucking serious. A week ago, you had a bounty on your head, and you think it’s safe to walk straight into HQ and apply for a job?”
“Got a better idea?”
“How about anything else?” I rocked back in my chair, pushing away from the table. “I’d rather take my chances down the old tunnel system than have you try this daft idea.”
Asha stood up, pulling her hair down over her face to disguise the worst of her joins. “Well, it’s either that or we go home and stop this nonsense right now. It’s going to be a hell of a lot harder to find what you’re looking for once we’re past the border. If you’re too scared to even try to get that far…” She shrugged as the sentence trailed off.
“I’d rather go back and sit in our crappy apartment until things die down.” I leaned forward, my chair legs striking the floor with a squeal of protest from the wood. Elbows on the table, I pointed at Asha. “We don’t have to go now. We don’t have to get this done today.”
“A far cry from what you were saying back home,” Asha said.
I colored at her words but swallowed down my shame to carry on through. “That’s before we knew how difficult this was going to be.”
Miss Tiddles put a hand down on the table, sliding a fingernail that looked suspiciously claw-like down the grain. “To be fair, we knew it was going to be hard. This is a crapshoot, either way. If you don’t want us to go, then say so now. We’ll all head back home, and you can watch your fellow vampires—including the ones you helped to create—trailing around the city, doing their work.”
She shrugged and looked over at the wall. “If it doesn’t bother you, then neither of us care.”
“I’m just suggesting—”
“You’re suggesting we wait,” Asha broke in. “You think that at some point in the future everything will be so much easier.”
She slapped her hands down on the table and leaned forward until her face was almost touching mine.
“It’s about time you grew up. This isn’t ever going to be easier. The vamps are still under the control of the empire at the moment, but that’s about to change. If you think that once they’re in private enterprise, you’ll ever have another shot at getting them free, then you need to think again.”
“You keep insisting that you’re not a teenager, but then think and act like one. Nothing in this city is ever going to get anything but worse. You’ve been alive for long enough to know that. Make your choice.”
With a flick of her hair, Asha folded her arms over her chest. “Are we doing this, or are we going home?”
I stared up at her. If the bounty office decided to haul her in, regardless of what promises the low lives Asha had been dealing with said, I’d never see her again. They’d haul her back into the prisons, and the only chance of springing her out would leave me trapped back there. I knew myself. I knew my limits. I might insist to others that I’m a nice guy, but inside I’m a craven coward who doesn’t understand the meaning of sacrifice.
“Fine,” I said, shaking my head in a repeal of what my mouth was saying. “Go ahead and try.”
Asha strode across the room and was out the door in a second. Hopefully, not to a fate worse than death.
“You know,” Miss Tiddles said, slumping back in her chair and keeping her eyes slit as though the low wattage bulb overhead was bright sunlight. “I could get used to this milk. It tastes a bit funny, but it sure makes me feel good.”
She stretched out, her limbs going to impossible angles as the bones made a popping sound for the length of her spine. As she reached for the glass of milk again, I picked it up first and gave it a sniff.
Vodka.
I looked over at the bar and saw Gwen suppressing a grin. The lady wasn’t trying very hard—the damn smile spilled out at the corners. Very funny. I put the laced drink back on the table as Miss Tiddles reached out for it and missed.
“Maybe you should take it easy with that for a minute,” I said, turning on the TV that sat in the main bar for the patrons. Or, rather, just for us. If my heart had still bothered to beat, it would have been hammering along at a rate of knots by now. It had been at least an hour since Asha left The Waterside. Plenty of time for her to be arrested and dragged away to lock-up.