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

by Chris Strange

  “Don’t you get it yet?” She crossed her legs. “The fluid is nothing. A poison, sure, but a slow one, and easily detectable. Pointless. On its own.”

  “What do you…?” The penny dropped. It was a big penny. “Oh.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Do you understand now?”

  “The fluid needs a host,” I said. “That’s why they were poisoning people with it.” The realizations tumbled in one after another. “The pathologist who did Claudia’s autopsy said he found crystals in her blood vessels. That’s it, isn’t it? The fluid is nothing, but when someone’s poisoned with it, it crystallizes, changes somehow. And it’s the crystals they want.”

  I touched my bleeding gums again, and pictured the blood in my vomit, the red spiderwebs on my face. Blood vessels being shredded by the same damn crystals.

  “So it’s the crystals that are useful,” I said. “But why? What are they used for?”

  “How should I know?” Caterina said.

  I chewed my lip and tasted blood. “But if it’s just crystals they want…” I tapped my head with my palm, willing my brain to work faster. “…then why would they come to you?”

  “To poison me with the fluid, of course,” she said. “To make the crystals in my veins.”

  “Yeah, but why you, specifically? They were happy doing it to homeless people and prostitutes before.”

  And how come they didn’t take the crystals before the cops got their hands on the bodies? Maybe they did, maybe there were dozens of deaths, and the few Vivian and Wade had found were just ones who slipped through the cracks. Or maybe….

  “Maybe it didn’t work in those people,” I said. “The crystals were flawed somehow. They thought it would work, but it didn’t. So they didn’t harvest the crystals. Which meant they needed someone different. They came to you.” I met Caterina’s eyes. “But why you? Why are you different?”

  “Do I really need to spell it out for you?” she said, head cocked to the side. Once more, the madness flashed behind her eyes.

  And then I caught up. “Goddamn it. Chroma again. It’s always fucking Chroma, isn’t it?”

  Cat said it herself. Those doses of Chroma had changed us. Claudia’s killers must think that Chroma would affect the crystals.

  Maybe they were wrong. Maybe the crystals had failed inside me just as they’d failed inside Claudia and all the others.

  No. The Collective took a blood sample from me. They said I was positive. And then they tried to put me through their grinder. They tried to extract the crystals. Damn them all. It had worked. I’d become their goddamn lab experiment. I’d become their host.

  My blood. The Collective used my blood to test if it had truly worked. My mind went to my trashed apartment. I’d thought they were looking for the fluid in the container. But that was worthless. Hell, maybe it wasn’t even active once it was back on Earth. But the fluid hadn’t been the only thing I’d swiped when I ran from AISOR. I’d also taken my blood samples. The blood samples I’d given to the cops to test. That’s what they’d been looking for when they tossed my apartment. Maybe they sent that goon to kidnap me from the funeral to get more blood, and when that failed, they went looking for the blood samples that had already been taken. And only AISOR knew about those blood samples.

  “Kowalski,” I said to myself. “It has to be him.” I’m coming for you, pal.

  Caterina was smirking loudly by the time I dug myself out of the avalanche of thoughts. “It’s a rush, isn’t it? Discovery, I mean.”

  She was right, but I wasn’t going to get in the habit of agreeing with her. I stood up and started to put the phone down. I had what I came for. I have a promise to keep, and so many fucking miles to go before I sleep.

  “Wait,” she said. “I can tell there’s one thing you haven’t worked out yet.”

  I stopped, the phone a few inches from my ear. “What?”

  “Your friend, Claudia. They killed her, never intending to harvest her crystals.” She leaned forward. “You’re so predictable, Miles. They knew you’d come snooping, they knew if someone told you to drop it you’d only come on harder. It was the easiest way for them to get you to Tartarus so they could poison you. Claudia’s a corpse so they could get to you. Isn’t that funny?”

  The world swayed like a couple dancing a slow waltz to no music. Something wrapped around my shoulders, took hold of my skin. And it began to pull. I staggered. The weight was too much. Too goddamn much. I looked to my feet and saw the bodies scattered there. They clutched at my shoes, my trousers, my legs, tugging me down into my own personal hell. Too much. It’s too much.

  No.

  I steadied myself against the divider. There was only one thing I could do. It wouldn’t make the guilt go away. Nothing would. This didn’t change anything. I already knew Claudia’s death was on me. I’d be dragging these bodies behind me for the remainder of my short, miserable life. But those bastards wouldn’t get away with it. I’m coming, Kowalski. You’re mine. Bohr, too. You’re all as bad as each other. You can all go to hell.

  “One last thing,” Caterina said. I met her gaze, and the hallucinations faded. “Don’t forget your promise. I won’t be in here forever. And don’t worry, Miles. You’ll survive this. You’re a hard man to kill.” She stood, her freckled nose an inch from the glass. “And when I get out, after you’ve fulfilled your promise, we’ll finish what we started last winter.”

  “Great,” I said. “I’ll pencil you in. Have your people call my people. We’ll make it a fucking date.”

  I dropped the phone handset, letting it dangle, and turned my back on the smartest, scariest maniac I’d ever known.

  Claudia walked beside me and the guard on our way back through the prison. She wasn’t haunting me anymore. Now, she was the only thing that kept me putting one foot in front of the other. My stomach was squirming again. My legs felt like sacks of cement. A cold sweat coated my skin. Just a little longer, she seemed to be saying to me. You’re nearly there.

  I needed to call Vivian and tell her everything. If I died before we got a chance to put Kowalski away, I didn’t want AISOR or the Collective getting their paws on my body. I didn’t know what the crystals did, but if those bastards wanted them, I wasn’t going to let them have them.

  There were other things I should put in order as well. Even if Desmond hated my guts, I figured he’d still be willing to take over Tania’s Tunneling training. God knows I’d done a shitty job of it so far. And then there was the question of what to do with the baby spider-dog terrorizing Vivian’s apartment. As stupid as it was, I wasn’t willing to let Toto get put down or stuck in a research facility. I just wanted to preserve one damn thing before I croaked. My whole life had been self-destruction. My family destroyed itself. I destroyed myself. I was willing to pay for the way I’d lived my life. But I just wanted this, this one last, stupid chance to keep something alive.

  Even if it was a butt-ugly killer animal from another dimension.

  We went back through the metal detectors and signed the log book for the woman behind the counter. She listened to the radio while she got the things I’d left with her before going in. I leaned against the wall to preserve my strength while I pocketed my bottle of Kemia. When I got outside I’d call Vivian. And then I had a date with a man in gold-rimmed spectacles.

  It was the name that caught my attention. It crackled through the radio news bulletin a couple of times before it finally penetrated my thick skull. After all, it was always on there. But never like this.

  I steadied myself against the desk and tuned in my hearing. No. I misheard, that’s all. You’re crazy, Miles. You can’t trust your ears anymore. But I knew what I’d heard.

  “Holy shit,” the guard said, shaking her head and turning up the radio. “Can you believe it?”

  I could. I could believe anything.

  Juliet White, the mayor of Bluegate, had taken one shot to the heart and one to the head in the middle of the street. Point blank. Execution-style.
Witnesses reported that the suspect, still at large, was a six-foot-ten Caucasian man in a black coat bearing a short-barreled shotgun.

  Add another corpse to the list.

  TWENTY-THREE

  I popped the clutch, shifted into fifth, and burned through the evening. The sky was red, the sun giving up its last photons before it dropped below Bluegate’s skyline. My last sunset, maybe. Night was hitting the city once more. And it wasn’t going to be any more peaceful than the day.

  The bike screamed under me as I pushed it to its limit. An evening wind blew in, buffeting me, slicing through the thin department-store shirt Vivian had given me. The taste of blood never left my mouth, and I swear I could feel more leaks all through my gut. I was in no condition to go racing through the streets like this. I’d left a message on Vivian’s voicemail, telling her everything Caterina had told me. I’d made a deal with Vivian, and I was going to hold to it. But there was also someone I wanted to see. The last person I’d seen with Mayor White.

  The woman who’d killed me.

  In the fading light, Zhi Lu’s neighborhood took on an ominous tone. These buildings were built on the backs of the unluckier citizens of Bluegate. What kind of cut did she get? Is that how she could afford those dresses and that car and that apartment and those wads of bills in the secret compartment of her handbag? Did she have an account in the Cayman Islands with a nice big payday waiting for her? Probably. Bad guys always had accounts in the Caymans.

  Traffic was light in this part of town. Clean riding all the way through. Rows of parked cars shone in my headlight. Nearly there. I pushed back my helmet visor to get the wind in my face. I needed the sharpness to keep me awake. To keep me moving. I was going to find Zhi. I told myself this was logical. I’d make her talk, see what she knew about Mayor White, about Kowalski, about Tartarus, about everything. Gather evidence. And then I’d make her give me something so I could get to Kowalski. He’d probably be protected. I needed her.

  But in the deeper recesses of my mind, the bits I didn’t like to look at too closely, I knew that wasn’t the only reason I wanted to see her. My visit to Caterina had awoken something inside me. Cat had seduced me and betrayed me. She’d tried to use me, and when she was done, she tried to kill me. Zhi did the same thing. Only this time, she succeeded. And I didn’t take kindly to that.

  A kid on a Vespa darted to the side as I zipped around a corner. There, I could see her building now. And there, her blue Ford parked outside under a street light. And in the orange glow, I saw little dark-haired Zhi Lu toss a black duffel bag into the car and climb into the driver’s side. The brake lights lit up and clear fumes puffed from the exhaust.

  The bitch was running.

  The Ford swung onto the road and tore away from me. I pulled my visor down and opened up the throttle. I was too sick for this shit.

  She wasn’t going toward the AISOR offices, or to the hospital where the Vei prostitute Penny Coleman took her last breaths. She was headed east, for the highway. She was leaving town. Guilty conscience?

  Damn it. I really did like her for a little while.

  I leaned low on the gas tank to try to coax a little more speed out of the groaning bike. It had good acceleration, but it didn’t have the power to match Zhi in a long distance chase. Her car kept a tight line around the corners, avoiding routes that would get her stuck at traffic lights. I couldn’t tell if she knew I was after her, but she sure as hell knew what she was doing, and by the speed she was going, she wasn’t going to make this easy.

  I was half-dead, so drained I could barely keep the bike beneath me on the turns, and I was getting worse by the second. If Zhi got outside the city, she was home free. My ability to Tunnel depended on my proximity to the Bore, the huge Tunnel hovering a few inches above the surface of the river that ran through the city. I needed to end this now.

  I’d lived in this city pretty much my whole life. Things had changed in the last few months, but that was only the surface. The veins of Bluegate wouldn’t be so easily reconfigured, and if Zhi was making for the eastern highway, there was still only one way out. She’d have to take the East Bridge. To get there, she’d be going through the tight, twisting streets that were the territory of the 23rd Street Bikers. Streets connected by shortcuts that only a motorbike could travel.

  I slammed on the brakes, shifted down to third, and pulled a tight turn that made my stomach drop out the bottom of my shoes. My line of sight to Zhi’s Ford was cut by a pair of parked cars, but that was okay. It was a risk, but I had no choice. My tire bounced as I mounted the curb and darted between a pair of dumpsters. Then I was in the alley, my headlight shining off the eyes of the stray cats that scattered in front of me. The bike’s rumbles turned to thunder, the sound echoing between the brick walls closing in on either side of me.

  Out on the road again, the rumble dropped away. A car’s brakes screeched and someone leaned on their horn, sending my heart rate up a few notches, but I only gave them a fleeting wave before I dove back into another alley. Darkness swallowed me again, with only the glow of my headlight to guide me.

  I mapped out the streets in my head as I rode. I’d only get one chance. If I miscalculated her speed, I could come out onto the road when she’d already passed, and then I’d have no hope of catching her before she hit the bridge. What if she stopped, or took a strange route? If she pulled off the road when I couldn’t see her and waited me out, I’d never find her. Too many streets, too little time. No, she wouldn’t. I’d seen the way she moved when she jumped in the car. She was nervous. Scared. A couple of days ago, she saw vulnerability in me and took advantage. Now it was my turn.

  I tore out onto the road, jammed on the brakes, and brought the whole bike squealing around to face the oncoming traffic. I could hear my heartbeat pounding inside my helmet, with a beat to match the twisting of my stomach. With my left hand I kept the clutch lever pulled, and with my right I flipped up my visor and dug in my pocket for a coin and my bottle of Kemia. I was lucky it hadn’t flown out during my manic ride, but no time to be thankful. The road was too tight to try anything fancy or original, and I couldn’t afford for her to crash the damn car and get herself killed. So I went with the coin that’d already saved my life once in the last few days. I poured a splash of Kemia over it, felt the fabric between our world and Heaven weaken, and shoved the bottle back in my pocket.

  Just in time for a blue Ford to come racing around the corner in front of me. I imagined I could see Zhi’s eyes widening behind the steering wheel. She didn’t slow. I shoved the coin between my teeth, gave the throttle some revs, and released the clutch.

  My tire skidded for a moment, caught, and shot me forward. I hummed as I rode toward Zhi. It was easy to get in the right frame of mind for the chaos of Heaven to do its thing. I was half-mad anyway.

  She was hammering her horn when she came in range. Her headlights blinded me. I grinned around the coin, trying to pretend like I knew what I was doing. Then, with a blow of energy, I ripped a Pin Hole open in the universe and turned the road ahead of me into wet tar and melted concrete.

  I swerved and mounted the sidewalk to avoid the slush. With cars lining the street, Zhi couldn’t do the same. Her tires sunk into the road, kicking up wet, gray slurry. The car came to a growling stop.

  I grinned despite the ache in my gums and the cracks in my lips. “Gotcha.”

  I released the Pin Hole. The concrete solidified, with the Ford’s tires sunken half a foot inside. Zhi stared at me for a moment, revving her engine, then scrambled for her seatbelt. I gunned my engine and came around to the driver’s side of her car just as she threw open the door.

  “License and registration, ma’am,” I said, planting my hand on the door and putting out the kickstand.

  She didn’t think it was funny. I could tell by the revolver she pointed at me.

  “Don’t move. What the hell are you doing?” she said. “What’s wrong with you?”

  I’d had guns pointed at me plenty of
times before. For the first time, it didn’t scare me. I slowly climbed off my bike and stepped forward so the barrel was right against my chest. “There’s a lot wrong with me. And some of it’s your fault. But that can wait, can’t it? We’ve got plenty of time. Unless you’re in a hurry to get somewhere?”

  “I….” She chewed her lip. “Where have you been, Miles? You ran from AISOR before I could talk to you. I’ve been trying to find you.”

  “I bet you have. Were you the one who tossed my apartment? Or did you get someone further down the ladder to do that?”

  “What?”

  “I figure you probably wouldn’t want to get your hands dirty. Same goes for killing the mayor, right? Did you have another argument? Disagree on how to divide up the spoils of whatever the hell it is you’re doing? Were you there when Stretch killed her, or were you safe and sound at home?”

  Her mouth dropped open an inch and her brow wrinkled. “Wait. You think I killed Mayor White?”

  “Not you personally, but yeah, pretty much. I kinda wish you’d killed me more like that. Getting shot in the head would be a lot easier than this slow death bullshit.”

  “You…you think it was me who got you poisoned on Tartarus?” She pushed her hair out of her face and waved the rod at me. “Are you a moron?”

  She was a better liar than I thought. Tiny cracks appeared in my resolve.

  She lowered the gun, pulled something small, black, and rectangular from her pocket, and shoved it into my hands. “Read it. Go on.”

  My gut told me it wasn’t wise to argue. The rectangle was like a wallet, only smaller. I flipped it open. There was a picture of her with a shorter haircut alongside her real name, Brittany Wei, and an ID number. And above that, a badge.

  “You’re a cop?” I said dumbly.

  “I was,” she said. “In Corton. Mayor White set up an undercover task force independent of Bluegate PD. Someone to look into the new gangs hitting the city and their links to AISOR. You think you’re the first to figure out something’s going on with them? Then the poisonings started. There were too many leaks in your police force. We were reporting directly to Mayor White.”