Her heels scrabbled the floor and the vampire proceeded to do just as he’d said. November clawed at his wrist. Wounds on her shins and ankles healed as fast as they opened on the steel reinforcement strips cornering every riser.
He was hauling her to the surface.
Mad terror had her reality strobing into fragments by the time he pulled her onto the landing in front of the second door.
“Stop!”
He had the thing open.
“Don’t do this!”
She was going to get burned to a crisp.
“Come. On!” The other vampire flung her out into the open air with a final burst of force.
Rows of parked surface vehicles spun around her as she wheeled in horror. Overhead was the black of a real, breathing night sky, and her arms snapped to clasp over her own body, as though they could block the UV that way.
“November.”
Her muscles screamed, all clenching against the pain at once. She dropped to her knees, balling up. Pointless.
“November.”
His voice was nearly overhead, and …
She could hear the rush of her own heavy breath, coming against the tops of her knees.
Nothing was hurting.
The soles of her feet. Her bare upper arms.
Her eyes came open. She uncurled just enough to spread her own palms under her face and stare at them. They weren’t burning.
Alongside her folded legs, a pair of black boots waited, impassive. Radoslav wasn’t making a sound. Her head cranked around on a slow swivel, to look up at him through a sea of shock. A lump was condensing in her throat.
“What …”
He put a hand down. “Come on.”
November could only stare, wide eyes slipping from his face to the sky behind him. The sky that was supposed to kill them.
When she didn’t move, he reached down for one of her hands and pulled her to stand anyway.
Cool air moved on her skin. She understood the word ‘fresh’ in a way that the underground had never been prepared to teach her. Bright pinpricks stood out on a field of black so infinite and far above, Rado had to catch her by the shoulders when she nearly fell backward trying to look at it. She’d seen images of the sky her whole life, but they meant nothing. Not against … this.
And when her gaze fell to find the horns of a thin crescent moon—the Moon!—November tried not to choke.
Instead, the sensation imploded. She spun on the man at her back.
“What. The fuck.”
He gave her a look, the few artificial, outdoor lights attached to the building putting a sharp gloss on his eyes and hair.
“How long?” she demanded.
Radoslav tucked thumbs into the front pockets of his dark pants. “About”—his eyes rolled up to look for a number—“seventy-five years after the Tenacity left.”
“What?” The world’s governments had sent the colony ship out in the early twenty-second century, before the scientists had figured out how to swing the climate back around far enough for at least negs to live on the surface. And then they’d lost communication with the ship, no chance to call back the crew.
“That’s almost two hundred fucking years!”
“We know.” He was straight-faced in the spray of her venom. No doubt he’d expected as much.
“Who is ‘we?’ ” She gestured, calm not even within grabbing distance. “Who knows about this?”
“Presidents. Prime Ministers. A very few military leaders.” He gave her a cool tilt of his head. “A few down below.”
November’s grasp on the world was crumbling. It no longer mattered that she was on the surface, yelling at another vampire and wearing only a shirt. “I don’t understand,” she said, “If they know it’s safe at night for us now, why are they keeping it a sec—wait, people underground know?”
He nodded, pulling at his lower lip with an idle fang.
“That makes zero sense!” She flung a hand at him. “If vampires knew we weren’t stuck down there w—”
“This is why you were attacked.”
She blinked at him. “But those people are idiots! No one believes their bullshit.”
“But they heard the rumors from somewhere. Didn’t they?” He was ice to her fire, and November wanted to throttle him. “It’s getting around.”
They’d called her ‘traitor,’ the Goodnighters.
All you HateSec cunts are in on it. Just taking their money. Looking the other way.
They’d hit her with sunshine. Beaten her to the ground.
Fucking keep us down here! We know the truth!
November wanted to beat someone bloody, too.
“I have to get back.” Her eyes went to the ground, more concrete, scanning. “I have to tell someone.”
“You do,” Rado said, taking a step toward her. “Just not the people you think.”
Her whirring plans came to a halt. She looked back up at him. “What do you mean?”
“Who do you think keeps GateSec running on your side?” His question was a dangerous whisper, and November searched his face. “You go back there and make an official report, you’re going to disappear.”
But …
You and the fucking Athanati.
“No.” She refused. “That’s not even real.” People just liked to keep myths alive about some ancient vampire mafia. That was old-world bullshit like holy water and having to be invited into a building.
“November.” His eyes were intense, now. “On my mother’s fucking teeth, it is real. You can’t go back the way you came.”
Too many things were tumbling in around her. The way he looked at her. If he’d wanted to lie, he could have just told his stories down in the apartment. The real and true night sky was over her unprotected head that very moment, and nothing was happening. Nothing.
“Then …” She hadn’t felt this tiny in decades. “Then who am I supposed to tell?”
“I can give you that information once we’ve figured how to smuggle you back underground.”
Her arms weighed a thousand pounds each, and her knees wanted to fold again. “All this time,” she said, eyes beginning to burn. “All of us … just … down there.” She put a hand over her mouth and moaned between her fingers. “Why?”
The tears welled, whether November was giving permission or not, and her face stung with grief. In the last move on Earth she might have seen coming, Rado stepped close. Arms came around, folding her into darkness. Into warmth.
She wadded up into an angry little brick and sobbed.
November had been born underground. Generations of V-positives. It was all they had known. Down there never seeing a real sky. Or the real Moon overhead. Working all those jobs the insurance companies preferred them for over negs. Dangerous jobs. Liability jobs.
And for what? The government wanted to keep them down there? And lie to them to do it? And she still almost refused to believe the Athanati were even a thing. Running GateSec?
“God dammit!” She warbled into his chest, unable to give one shit that she was having a breakdown all over some dickhead vampire she barely knew.
Radoslav cradled her head and spoke quiet words in what was probably his native tongue just above her ear. She felt him move—he was stepping backward to lean against the trunk of one the vehicles in the lot, and November followed him, like a shitty dancer, too overwhelmed to question why he’d gone from prick to protective. Why she was letting her weight lean into his chest, and he stroked her hair while she sniffled into his shirt.
“Shhh … știu, știu.”
At some point, another vampire had to have told him. That was her only guess. Someone had broken his understanding of the world in the same way, and perhaps his reaction had been just as bad. Maybe worse. It was the only way to make sense of the how he’d softened.
And somehow, November knew she wouldn’t have let herself lose her shit this way if it had been her gate partner standing here. How would Leo understand? He could go
wherever he wanted, day or night. The vampire here now shared with her a kinship of struggles the sleeping young man back at the apartment could never experience firsthand.
After a time, the rush subsided. November felt emptied, a lanced wound that needed to breathe. To heal. Rado had loosened his hold but left her the option to stay or retreat. The silence of the outdoor parking lot was of a different kind than the sublevels where she lived and worked. Echoless, and swallowing up even the small sounds of her wiping her face dry with her hands.
Still raw with catharsis, she raised her eyes, at least to the level of his neck. “I had a Vision,” she said, high on uncomfortable truths. “Leo let me feed. Again. And I … he thought I blacked out.”
“Tell me.”
There was never a question of whether she’d told Leo. Radoslav knew better. November stayed in the circle of his arms, shifting her weight where the concrete began to bruise her bare feet, and described what she’d seen. The conflict. The gate exploding. She didn’t mention the man in the white suit—it would make her sound insane.
When she finished, the idea of eye contact was too much. She turned to lean her back against him, instead, and his fingers stayed laced around her middle. Stars—real stars—splayed out in the impossible black, a ceiling above them that wasn’t. Her staring seemed to bring them closer and push them further into the void, at once.
“Am I nuts?” Her head was on Rado’s shoulder. “I’m too young, right? For a Vision?”
She felt him shrug. “Maybe not.”
He was warm at her back. In the ebb of her freakout, the night air had licked gooseflesh along her naked arms and legs.
“How old are you?” she asked. The question was more about pecking order among vampires, and not the social faux pas it was for negs. There was no guessing age from looks—occasional dated fashion choices aside—but longevity was a decent indicator of drive and at least persistence, if not ambition.
“Seventy-six.” His arms tightened just a little, and he’d leaned down a hair to deliver his answer closer to her ear—a less-than-subtle flex of power that told November not only did he already know he was older, but that he also knew it gave him the slightest edge on her, even if he would only ever be a convert.
In another century, though, that twenty-five-year gap wouldn’t mean shit. She was bloodline. They both knew that.
The moon was sinking lower toward the tops of buildings in the distance. November sighed.
The tops of buildings. I’m outside. On the mother-loving surface.
Her head cocked to the side. Eyes narrowed.
“Are you … kidding me right now?” she said to the vampire who hadn’t bothered to let go his hold.
“Sorry.” Rado shifted a firming ridge away from her ass, sounding not sorry at all. “You’re kind of my type.”
November leaned far to one side and gave his profile a skeptical eye. “The fuck type is that?”
He grunted amusement, and it was the first of anything like it she’d heard from the man. “Impatient,” he said. “Bitchy. Not wearing underwear.”
“Yeah, well whose fault was that last one?” she said. “Dragging me out here.” But the crossed forearms below her breasts now meant something else. Not just comfort for a fellow V-positive after he’d shattered her universe.
“You let him fuck you,” Rado said, curling close again. “Before you fed.”
“My business,” said November, preparing to lock horns again as needed, but she made no moves to extract herself from what might be a different sort of embrace.
“I can smell it on you.”
She couldn’t tell if he was making it an accusation or if the idea aroused. He drew his arms apart so his hands could settle around her waist.
“I fuck who I want,” she said. Leo was sweet, but if this one wanted to be salty, November could play those games, too.
“Yeah?” Rado pulled her against him, hiding nothing this time. “Well, don’t break this one. I need him intact. I meant what I said, November.” The voice threatened and seduced at once. “You might get me hard, but I have no problem ruining your li—”
His head snapped up.
She followed his gaze, muscles tightening to alert, but saw nothing. Heard only some scuffling, steps on concrete, distant and retreating, well past the far end of the lot.
“We should go back,” Rado said, his hold coming loose. “We might not be burning, but we’ve been up here too long.”
November stepped away, eyes still on the stars.
They want us to never see this. To never be up here again.
“Come on.” He jerked a nod to the door where he’d shoved her out into the night. “If we’re lucky, he’ll still be asleep.”
But how long before her gate partner woke up?
Before they all did?
Chapter 5
Leo had been asleep. Then he’d woken up and gone to work again, leaving November to drift in and out her own cycle of listless napping and haunting the living space of his apartment. Hovering over secrets.
Radoslav was gone, having left her with no hints as to where, considering it should be daytime up there. Where else he was holing up during the Sun’s hours was beyond her.
Wild curiosity had November slipping into the single, separate bedroom at one point, to see if the other vampire had left anything obvious or out of place lying around. Anything that might back up or contradict his outrageous revelations outside under the stars.
The man lived like a monk in the compact space. Bed made military tight. No clothing draped over the back of the lone chair at a bare desk along the far wall. No shoes on the floor. Every storage cabinet and drawer thumbprint-locked. She’d slid the door shut behind her when she’d left, knowing no more about the other vampire than she already had: that he was in some capacity trying to look out for Leo, that he seemed to have insider knowledge about a whole bunch of nefarious shit, and that he was kind of a prick.
You’re kind of my type.
Of all the things he’d said out there, it was the entertaining one she’d chosen for a distraction. It didn’t make her guts twist or her head ache like contemplating the inevitable shitstorm her news would bring to the right people underground. She was no conspiracy nut. She’d seen it with her own eyes. Felt it on her skin.
She’d felt Rado on her skin, too. And pricks were kind of her type. Sometimes.
November had burned a segment of time masturbating. Why not? One leg sprawled off the edge of the sofa, fingers lazy between her thighs while she’d imagined patient tongues and teeth on her body. Male hands gripping, cocks pushing. Sometimes Leo, baring his throat in unearned trust for her to feed. Sometimes Rado, pinning her to the back end of that surface vehicle, jerking his fly open. Sometimes both, and her touch had come with a fury, climax singing out uninterrupted at the thought of rolling between two pairs of hips. Of stretching for the two men.
She’d nodded off after the rush of release, and only opened her eyes again at the sound of the front door.
Leo slipped into the apartment while November was pushing herself upright on the couch. She blinked and made a face when he turned on the light panels, but the man had some mercy and only brought them up to maybe half-brightness. He was carrying a small duffel over a shoulder.
“I got you a new uniform,” he said, and tossed the bag to the cushion beside her.
She groaned into a stretch, and he already had one foot up on one of the chairs at the small dining table so he could lean down and unlace his boots. His shift had clearly come to an end for the day, but November resisted the urge to ask how it had gone—the scene was feeling far too domestic, already. Instead, she turned to the bag and began to pull out clothes.
“Um”—she unfolded a slate blue shirt—“I’m not trying to be ungrateful here, but, uh … this is a surface uniform.” Underground guards wore black.
“Yeah, well.” He pulled off the second boot and set the pair near the door. “It’s the best I could
do. Just try not to smile at anyone, and we ought to be able to make it back.”
“Did you find a way?” November put her feet on the floor and sat forward, full attention on her partner now.
Leo’s mouth made a flat line. He started unbuttoning his uniform shirt. “Kind of?” he said. “I don’t know. Every plan I can think of has holes.”
She raked a hand back to sort out her sleep-mussed hair. “Holes?”
“That uniform is only going to get us so far,” said Leo. “The second checkpoint when you approach our gate—any of the gates—needs a thumbprint ID on every body. So the minute you hit the scanner, the system will read you as V-positive. Then it won’t matter if I get you through the gate, or not.”
Leo pulled out one of the chairs from under the table and sat. November made a sour face. He was right. As soon as GateSec registered a vampire above ground, there’d be an escalation unit trooping down there before they could think. And simply slipping underground didn’t mean she would be home free. There would be questions. An interrogation, even.
Why are you in a surface uniform? Where have you been these last few days? Why haven’t you reported to your post? Why was there a sunshine canister on the floor the night you went missing?
And how would the truth sound at a probation hearing? She was still in the middle of working off a sentence. ‘Oh no, see, I was attacked by Goodnighters, and my gate partner panicked and dragged me to his apartment. So everything’s fine, right?’
Forget the rest of the truth. Radoslav’s warning still reverberated in her head.
You go back there and make an official report, you’re going to disappear.
Her toes had curled, body balling up against the thought. She made a conscious effort to let go the muscles, and to turn her attention to Leo. “So that’s our only plan?” she said. “You take me back there and we wait for shit to go sideways?”
Her gate partner leaned back and pushed his palms down his thighs. “Unless you want to keep hiding out here while I try to come up with something else.”
“She can’t stay here.”
Rado slid the door shut behind him, and the two gate guards both started. Leo swore under his breath and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, regaining composure.
Bite Me: A Vampire Anthology Page 21