The Man Who Walked in Darkness (Miles Franco #2) (Miles Franco Urban Fantasy)

by Chris Strange

  Miles is back for another round of hardboiled pulp action in the two-fisted sequel to The Man Who Crossed Worlds.

  Freelance Tunneler Miles Franco is having a bad time of it. He’s facing a trial that could see him spend the rest of his days in prison. Hallucinations of dead men haunt him day and night. And to top it all off, one of his bandmates has been poisoned by a toxin from another world.

  Miles doesn’t take kindly to people killing his friends. Now he’ll have to walk the darkest road he’s ever been down. With corrupt corporations on one side and fanatical interdimensional gangsters on the other, he doesn’t hold out any hope he’ll come out of this alive. But he has a promise to keep.

  And Miles will burn every last world to the ground if it gets him answers.

  THE MAN WHO WALKED IN DARKNESS

  Chris Strange

  www.Chris-Strange.com

  PREVIOUSLY IN THE SCREWED-UP LIFE OF MILES FRANCO

  Skip straight to Chapter One

  So here’s how it is. The name’s Miles Franco, and I’m a freelance Tunneler. You see, there’s our world, and then there’s another one, the one some asshole named Heaven. A world of instability and randomness, a cruel parody of our world, populated by a race called the Vei. Sometimes people want to cross worlds or send stuff through without going through the proper channels. That’s where I come in. I open Tunnels and transport people between the worlds, or I can tap into the chaos of Heaven and alter things in our world. I do that, and then I get paid. It’s a living.

  Everything was going swell until the cops caught up with me. They didn’t like the way I’d been smuggling Vei to Earth. But luckily for me, they offered me a chance to escape a prison sentence by helping them track down an interdimensional drug smuggler. There was word of a new drug on the way, went by the name of Chroma. Didn’t sound too scary. Until I saw what the drug could do.

  For non-Tunnelers, Chroma was just a drug. Fun, crazy, damn addictive. But for Tunnelers it was a whole ’nother story. It took a Tunneler’s ability and cranked it up to eleven. Power you couldn’t imagine.

  Of course, there had to be a catch. No one’s mind can handle that much instability, that much pure chaos. If a Tunneler shot up some Chroma, he’d be more powerful than any Tunneler around. And as crazy as a box of doorknobs.

  The job went bad. My friends started getting drawn into the mess, pulled into danger. And as the drug hit, the city of Bluegate—my city—began to tear itself apart.

  I finally tracked the source of the drug back to a local gangster by the name of John Andrews. But it was just little ol’ me against the big bad gang. My friends, everything I cared about was at stake. So I did something that was wrong, awful, terrible. Because it was what I had to do. I dosed up on Chroma and pointed myself at John Andrews’ gang.

  I tore through them, killed them all in the most horrible ways, and I did it screaming like a lunatic. But when I got inside, it wasn’t John Andrews waiting for me. It was his wife, the beautiful redhead Caterina. She’d been orchestrating the Chroma, the gang war, everything, to gain control of the city. She was a Tunneler as well. And she came for me, whacked out on Chroma herself. Except she could control it.

  My Chroma dose ran dry. She had me backed into a corner. Nothing in Heaven or Earth could save me. So I went elsewhere. In desperation, I opened a new kind of Tunnel. A Tunnel of rage and animal hunger. And then, bleeding and broken, I defeated Caterina. And changed Tunneling forever.

  But I was still a murderer. Dozens of gangsters dead by my hand. The cops couldn’t let that stand. So while I recovered, facing the prison sentence I’d been so desperate to escape in the first place, I waited to see what the hell was in store for me next…

  ONE

  I slammed the empty shot glass down on the bar, smacked my lips, and waved to the bartender, an unnaturally skinny guy trying his best to hide a receding hairline beneath a thin comb-over. “Give me another. And set a beer next to it this time, will you?”

  I leaned back on the bar stool, checked my balance, and thought better of it. The glow of drink was coming over me, but it wasn’t yet enough to put down the demons. It was just making them angrier. The bartender looked me up and down. I tried to hide the beer stain splattered across my shirt and tie.

  “You think you really need more?” he asked.

  “The hell are you, a goddamn pastor? Gimme the damn drinks.”

  He scowled, but started pouring. He probably needed the cash; the place was dead. It should’ve been, seeing as how it wasn’t yet midday.

  I squinted up at the TV above the bar, trying to get it to stay still. The familiar jingle of the midday misery broadcast tinkled out, and my gut started sinking before the newscaster even came on the screen. I had a feeling I knew what the top news would be.

  The bartender pushed the glasses of beer and whiskey over to me, but I didn’t want them anymore. He frowned and followed my gaze up to the TV. “Hey, ain’t that you on there?”

  “You want a gold star?” I said, but I didn’t have the heart to put any venom in it. My ugly mug flashed up on the screen for a second, a shot that’d been taken when my dark hair was caked with grease and my eyes were so sunken you’d need to put on a scuba suit to reach the bottom.

  Then the image cut away to a clip of me shoving my way through a crowd of hungry media at the foot of the courthouse steps as I tried to make it to the taxi waiting for me at the curb. I remembered it like it was yesterday, which was probably a bad sign, since it happened only a couple of hours ago. The bruise I’d got shoving aside the Channel 4 cameraman had stopped hurting after the third shot of whiskey.

  Or maybe the fourth. It was getting hard to keep count.

  I caught the bartender reaching for the remote behind him. “Don’t you dare turn that up,” I warned him.

  Fat lot of good that did. The sound crackled to life a second later, loud enough to make me want to smash the beer glass to see if I could cut my own ears off before I passed out. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite that drunk.

  “…at Bluegate Courthouse earlier this morning as prosecutors dropped all criminal charges against freelance Tunneler Miles Franco. Franco was facing thirty-seven counts of murder, thirteen counts of grievous bodily harm, and twelve counts of aggravated assault following the so-called ‘Chroma Wars’ that decimated the city last summer.”

  The bartender’s eyes bugged out and swiveled toward me like they were on stalks. I flashed a grin at him and downed the whiskey in one. In my mind’s eye, I saw the photos of the charred bodies they presented at the trial. I always saw them, now. Sometimes, at night, they seemed to stand around my bed, never speaking. In a messed up way, they were comforting. I figured going crazy was a pretty easy punishment for what I’d done.

  “Franco was convicted of two counts of reckless Tunneling,” the voiceover continued, “for which he was sentenced to time served and had his Tunneling license suspended for sixty days.”

  Time served. They made it sound like a cake walk. Bet not one of those dead-eyed reporters had sat inside a cell that small. They put me in a fucking box, like an animal.

  I slammed the whiskey glass down harder than I intended. The crack of shattering glass only made the bartender’s expression even more comically fearful. He was so white you’d lose him in a bundle of sheets.

  There was something wet on my hand, so I let go of the shattered glass and brought my palm up in front of my face. “Huh,” I said. “I’m bleeding.”

  The TV screen cut away to an image of an overweight woman with perme
d, unnaturally blond hair. “There has been speculation that Bluegate’s new mayor, Juliet White, urged the prosecuting team to drop the charges against Franco in a number of behind-closed-doors meetings. The mayor’s office has so far refused to comment. Mayor White was elected on her promise to wipe out organized crime in Bluegate, and now many are wondering if her dedication to that goal will stretch so far as to include the condoning of vigilante activity. Back to you, Ian.”

  Mercifully, the story disappeared from the screen. The newsreaders rolled right on to some story about the spate of unauthorized Limbus Tunnel openings in recent months. I gave my bloody palm another glance and shot the bartender a look. “You gonna give me a napkin or do I have to bleed out on your floor?”

  He jumped to attention, scrambled around aimlessly for a few seconds, then thrust his cleaning rag at me. It wasn’t the most hygienic thing I’d ever seen, but I took it anyway and wrapped it around my hand. Tying it up had me stumped, though. I grabbed one end in my teeth and tried to pull it tight.

  “Having some trouble, Mr. Franco?”

  I swiveled in my chair, rag still in my mouth, to find the source of the voice. Then it was my turn to freak out.

  Detective Vivian Reed had given up her usual pantsuit in favor of a slim-fitting button-down shirt and a pair of dark jeans that must’ve been painted on. Her dark hair was trimmed into a practical bob-cut that nicely framed the look of disdain on her face.

  And she was drop-dead-and-stand-up-again gorgeous.

  I stumbled off my bar stool, sending it skittering across the floor behind me. I made a half-hearted grab for it, missed, and tried to make it look like I’d been meaning for it to fall all along.

  “Vivian,” I slurred. “Fancy seeing you here. Get you a drink?”

  A flicker of her eyes was the only reaction I got from her dark-skinned face. “We have to talk.”

  I nodded a little too quickly. “Yeah. Sit, sit. Barkeep! Liquor us up.”

  “Not here,” she said, shooting the bartender a look and a shake of the head that she probably thought I didn’t notice. “There’s been an incident. You have to come down to the station.”

  The station. My heart started pounding in a new way. I glanced at the door to the bar. I could’ve made it if I’d been sober. As it was, the tables and chairs in the way looked like a minefield. Still, I wouldn’t go back in a box. I wouldn’t.

  “Take it easy, Mr. Franco,” Vivian said. “You’re not in trouble.”

  “Easy? I’m easy,” I said, letting my eyes dance around the room. There had to be another exit. I wouldn’t lay a hand on Vivian, but maybe I could distract her. “I’m relaxed as a chimp on Valium.”

  “Lady,” the bartender whispered, apparently squeaking out a little courage at last, “be careful. TV says he killed a bunch of people.”

  “I know what he did.” She tapped the badge affixed to her belt without taking her eyes off me. “It’s okay. I’m a cop. And all I want is a little help. Something bad’s happened, and Mr. Franco’s going to help me. Aren’t you, Mr. Franco?”

  “Not if you don’t stop calling me ‘Mr. Franco’,” I said, but she seemed to have one of those hypnotic voices. My heart rate was slowly coming down to a more reasonable level. “Give me a ‘Miles’ and I’ll come with you.”

  I could practically hear her teeth grinding together, but she just sighed and narrowed her eyes. “Fine. Miles. I need you to come downtown with me.”

  “What’s the magic word?”

  She had me by the jacket collar before I could move. I waved at the bartender as she dragged me away. “See you, boss. I’ll be back to pick up the tab, don’t you worry.”

  Vivian shoved me outside into the harsh daylight. Cars barreled past, kicking up smog and heat into a day that was already turning into one of the hottest on record. Summer in Bluegate was usually only distinguishable from winter by the new crop of reality shows that appeared on TV, but today I had enough sweat to make a coat.

  She let go of me, and I rearranged my suit jacket on my shoulders. “Manners, Vivian. You heard of them?”

  “You’re lucky I didn’t have some uniforms pick you up. They would’ve pulled a taser on you if you’d tried that nonsense with them. Let me look at that hand.”

  She grabbed my hand before I could say anything, tossed away the filthy rag, and wrapped a clean bar napkin around the wound.

  “Being tasered isn’t so bad,” I said. “Tickles, though. Haven’t seen you since you gave your testimony at the trial.”

  “I was working. I’m not your babysitter, Miles.” She jerked her head toward her shiny sedan parked across the road.

  “I don’t know what you are anymore,” I said. The drink had done a nice job on my inhibitions, what little I had. “All the shit we went through, and you couldn’t even look at me during the cross examination.”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it again and pursed her lips. “Not now.”

  She strode across the road in a break in the traffic, leaving me to catch up.

  “Should I write you into my schedule?” I asked. “Only I was hoping we could be adults and talk.”

  “We’ll talk about what happened when you’re sober,” she said as she opened the driver’s side door. “For now, we need to ask you a few questions.”

  “We?” I said, getting into the back seat. “Who’s we?”

  There was an asshole in a sports jacket sitting in the front passenger’s seat. I knew he was an asshole from the way he turned and flashed an immaculately white smile in my direction. He had a jawline that could cut stone, and the sort of perfectly sculpted yet dashingly unkempt blond hair you saw on commercials for men’s perfume. Christ, his chin even had a dimple.

  “Detective Gunnar Wade, Special Investigations,” he said, twisting in his seat to offer me his hand. “Good to meet you.”

  “The name’s Gofuck,” I said, shaking his hand. “Gofuck Yourself.” I tapped Vivian on the shoulder as she climbed in behind the wheel. “What’s with Pretty Boy?”

  Wade’s smile didn’t slip, which just infuriated me more. “I’m Detective Reed’s partner.”

  “Yeah? I got her last partner sent to jail. He was a lot bigger than you, as I remember it.”

  His grin just got wider.

  Vivian started the car. “You two want a pissing contest, do it outside. I just got the upholstery cleaned.”

  TWO

  I sobered up when the pathologist pulled back the sheet to show me the woman’s face. She was young, blond, and dead. They’d stripped her naked, and now she was lying on a metal table in a room that predated the rest of Bluegate by about thirty years. She didn’t have any goosebumps on her pale skin, even though the room was cold enough to make me shiver. That’s how I knew this was real.

  Detective Asshole was somewhere behind me, leaning against the wall next to the double doors. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Vivian watching me, but I never took my eyes off the body. Maybe it was just the light, but the dead woman’s cheeks had a tinge of green in them. That didn’t make sense. She always had cheeks that would make roses feel inadequate.

  “You know her?” Vivian asked quietly.

  I nodded. “Name’s Claudia. Claudia Hennel.” I ran a hand through my curls. “She’s…she was a singer. Jazz, mostly. Sang with me and my band sometimes. Not for a while, though.”

  “How long?” Wade’s voice came from behind me.

  I didn’t have the strength to be snarky. “Not since before…before all that stuff with the Chroma.” I tried to work it out. Everything was getting muddled in my head. “A few months before all that.”

  “A year ago, then?”

  “If you say so.” Jesus, had it been that long? “How’d she buy it?”

  The pathologist was a portly man, his lab coat stretching over his pot belly. “Won’t know until we do the autopsy,” he said. “She just came in from Bluegate Hospital this morning. She’d only been there a couple of hours before they called time
of death.”

  “Murdered?” I asked. The word sounded hollow in my head. I had a sudden urge to vomit, but I swallowed it back.

  The pathologist shrugged. “She had a few bruises, but no serious physical trauma. Drug overdose, maybe.”

  “No,” I snapped, tearing my eyes from her to glare at the smug-looking bastard. “She was clean. No Ink, no nothing. Didn’t even drink, not once.”

  He shrugged again. “We’ll know soon.”

  I returned my gaze to the off-color veins snaking up Claudia’s neck. She was German originally. Not much of a beauty, but she had a voice that’d make a gangster cry. She hadn’t hit thirty. She should’ve been healthy.

  A sick thought twisted its way into my mind. I balled my hands into fists. “Was she…tell me she wasn’t…”

  “Raped?” Vivian asked.

  I swallowed back the bile in my throat and nodded.

  “We don’t think so,” she said.

  “No signs of vaginal or anal trauma,” the pathologist chipped in. “We’ll examine the contents of her stomach for semen—”

  I slammed my shoe into the metal frame of the table, making Claudia’s body rock back and forth. The pathologist took a step back, mouth clamping shut.

  “Thank you, Stan,” Vivian said, giving him a look she usually reserved for me.

  A hand came to rest on my shoulder while I tried to quell the burning in my skull. “Come on, pal,” Wade said. “Let’s go have ourselves a chat.”

  “Get your hand off me,” I said, “before I turn it inside out.”

  He took his hand back and crossed his arms.

  “Miles,” Vivian said. “You might be able to help us. But to do that, you have to talk.”

  “Fat lot of good that’ll do,” I said. “I couldn’t do much to help her, could I?”

  Vivian silently took my arm and tugged. I held my ground, feet planted wide, fists balled and ready to take a swing at Wade or the pathologist if either of them came too close. But they stayed back, and it was just me and Vivian and Claudia, the only people who mattered right then.