Blood and Fire

by McKenna, Shannon

  He fought to keep his voice even. “My mother was killed by her asshole boyfriend. Decades ago. These guys would have been just kids.”

  She shook her head. “These guys are just hired muscle.” Her gaze flicked over to the bodies. “Were, I mean.”

  This was great. Just great. A lifetime of struggle to create and maintain that precarious sense of normalcy after what had happened to Mamma, and this crazy girl blasted it to rubble with a few words.

  “Listen, lady,” he said. “I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself mixed up in. If you owe those guys money, if you’re trying to get free of your pimp, if this is a drug thing, I do not fucking know or care. But you are bugfuck nuts, and I am having no part of it.” He grabbed her arm and strode toward the diner, hauling her along behind him.

  She struggled. “Hey! Where are you taking me?”

  “To use the phone at the diner to call the cops,” he said. “Since you killed my smartphone.”

  “No!” She twisted like an eel, but his grip was implacable. “Listen to me! Bruno, please, just stop one second and listen!”

  He cursed himself for being a fucking fool, and stopped. “Make it quick.”

  “I have done nothing wrong! I’m not a prostitute, I don’t sell or do drugs, and I’ve never borrowed money in my life except for college!”

  The outrage in her voice almost made him smile. He channeled stone-faced Tony. “You could be lying.”

  “I don’t lie!” she yelled back.

  “No? You sure suck when it comes to omission of relevant truths. Like letting me know you’ve got a contract out on your life before throwing me down and fucking me blind, for instance?”

  “Oh, shut up,” she snapped. “I understand that you’d rather stay on the right side of the law. So would I, if I was given the luxury. But if you call the cops now, I’m going to die. And probably you will, too.”

  He snorted. “That’s crazy.”

  “No, that’s a mathematical certainty. The only way to stay alive is to fall off the map. That’s where I’ve been for the last six weeks!”

  He looked pointedly at the bodies strewn behind them. “You weren’t quite as far off that map as you thought you were.”

  “I guess not,” she said. “They must have been watching you. Waiting for me to make contact with you. Maybe they bugged your cell. Was it on you when you served me dessert?”

  “Oh. So you’ve got this all figured out? A big conspiracy theory?”

  Her eyes widened. “Does this look like a conspiracy theory?” She pointed at the bodies, finger shaking. “Those guys were not theoretical!”

  “Maybe not, but when you start dragging me and my dead mamma, God rest her soul, into your personal problems with the criminal underworld, I call it a goddamn conspiracy theory!”

  As if in answer, they were blinded by headlights as the SUV came to life, roaring toward them, front grill gleaming like a hideous metal grin. Bruno sent Lily flying and leaped. The SUV bounced over the bodies, glancing against the brick wall where they had been standing. Metal screeched, sparks flew. The SUV righted itself, cut the curb, jouncing and rattling. The taillights disappeared around the corner. He hadn’t gotten the plates. Too dark, too fast. Too rattled.

  He hadn’t checked the vehicle. Christ, what a sloppy, pinheaded, cretinous asshole he was. He didn’t deserve to still be alive. He ran to Lily, who was hunched, trembling on the ground. She’d acquired even more bloody scrapes on her legs. “You OK?” he asked.

  She lifted her face, blinking, swallowing. “I think so.”

  Bullshit. She was terrified. Traumatized. No matter what she might have done to unleash this hell upon herself, he was still furious at the assholes who had done this to her. “I should call an ambulance for you,” he said. “You need to be checked out. Here, let me—”

  “No!” She pushed him, lost her balance, flopped back onto her knees. “The emergency room would be even worse than the cops. And I can’t pay for it anyway. Those places are expensive. I understand if you can’t believe me. But just let me go. Let me run as best I can.”

  Run? She couldn’t even fucking walk. He stared down at the tangled fuzz of golden red curls on the top of her head. “I can’t do that,” he said helplessly. “How could I possibly do that?”

  She looked up. Her face crumpled. Mascara tears tracked down her cheeks. “The cops can’t save me from these people, whoever they are,” she quavered. “I just want to keep on living. That’s all.”

  “But you’re all beat up! You need the cops! That’s what they’re for!”

  “If you don’t believe me, then it’s not your problem,” she said. “Just let me disappear.” She tried again and struggled to her feet.

  “Aw, fuck,” he muttered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He kicked one of the swollen garbage bags, which split open, spilling out a foul, fermented slop. He stared up at the orange-tinted sky, releasing a stream of expletives in Calabrese that would have made Uncle Tony proud.

  “Why, Lily?” he demanded. “Why is this happening to you?”

  She scanned the street behind him, nervously. “Not here. I’ll tell you everything I know, which isn’t much, but not here. They’ll be back.”

  Bruno felt trapped. The zombie masters massacre had shown him how unpleasant it was to be on the wrong side of the law, even for a short time. It had taken a while for the powers that be to sort out who had slaughtered whom.n the meantime, he and Kev and the rest of them had been locked down and examined from all sides. He remembered the stifled feel of it. Like a hand pressing down on his throat.

  Jail would suck. He saw why Tony had run away from the life, many decades ago. Tony had used to work for his cousin, Don Gaetano Ranieri, a mafia boss back in Jersey. Tony had been his right-hand man. The protracted bloodbath of Vietnam had been preferable to that.

  “If I go with you, I’m fleeing a crime scene,” Bruno said. “One that has my blood and vomit spattered all over it. Their first assumption will be that I murdered them, I guess. Since I’m not around to dispute it.”

  The cold wind blew her hair back from her ravaged, streaked but beautiful face. “But you’ll be alive,” she said. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  He grunted. He was being jerked around by a girl because she was pretty, and she was desperate, and he’d fucked her, so now of course he felt responsible. But Christ. Three big guys. One unarmed girl. Dickheads. He couldn’t help it, pussy-whipped sucker that he was.

  “I tell you what,” he said. “I will get you some fresh clothes and get you someplace safe where you can rest. You take it from there. Then I go to the cops and I tell them absolutely everything. Understand?”

  She gave him a tremulous smile. “Deal.”

  “Wait.” He scuffed through the garbage scattered around the alley. Found the trashed remains of his smartphone and pried out the memory chip.

  “Hey,” she protested. “What are you doing? That thing—”

  “Just the memory chip.” He shoved it in his pocket. “It’s mine. I want it.” God knows, he intended for life to go back to what passed for normal as soon as possible. No way was he going to waste time scrounging all his contacts together again, sending out a new number. Hell with that.

  He kept rummaging, kicking. There was her computer bag. He snagged it. There was one red shoe beside the Dumpster. The other was wedged between sacks of trash, next to one of the corpses. He retrieved them, knelt in front of her, placed her blood-smeared hand on his shoulder. Then he lifted one foot at a time to slip those pumps onto her clammy little feet. “Stupid shoes for a fugitive,” he bitched. “You can’t run in them. My car’s parked up on—”

  “No. Not your car.”

  “Huh?” He felt affronted. “What do you mean, not my car?”

  “Not your car, your home or any of your places of employment, your phones, or your computers. Assume that they’re all compromised.”

  “Ah.” He was stymied. “So how are we supposed to—”

&nb
sp; “We’ll just have to be creative.” She grabbed his hand and dragged him after her, deeper into the alley.

  He let himself be towed along. “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know, but if we stay in the alleyways, we’re less likely to be seen when they come back looking for us. Can you hot-wire a car?”

  He froze in his tracks. “Fuck, no!” he snarled. “I do not do shit like that! Haven’t you been listening to me?”

  “It’s you who isn’t paying attention! You know, about the mortal doom zooming toward you as we speak, like a heat-seeking missile?”

  “Wow, Lily. With your sunny attitude and your sense of civic duty, I can see why you make so many friends.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Civic duty? Itms me when my father gets slaughtered. It burns my ass when thugs jump me and stab me and try to kill me! It’s tough to maintain that glass-half-full vibe under those circumstances! So shoot me!” She grabbed a boulder from a wood-chipped lawn and lifted the rock over her head. “This one looks good,” she said, walking toward an aging station wagon. “I like Volvos. They give me a sense of security.”

  He grabbed her shoulders. “What the fuck do you think you’re—”

  “Getting a car!” she yelled, lurching toward the car. “Watch me!”

  “No.” He jerked the rock away. “Let’s think this through.”

  Her face crumpled. “There’s no time,” she said. “I’m out of ideas. I’m done. They’re winning, Bruno. I’m fucked.”

  She was losing it. Damn. He pulled her into a hug. She wiggled in the confinement of his arms. “Let go of me!”

  He didn’t let go. “We’re not stealing any cars,” he told her. “It’s stupid, and it’s rude, and it’s also probably alarmed. And the cops will be looking for us soon enough anyhow.”

  She sniffed. “So what do you propose?”

  “What’s wrong with my car?” he asked, plaintively. “It’s beautiful. Fast. Comfortable. And I have a key to it. And the legal right to use it.”

  “Your car is death,” she said. “Sudden, certain death.”

  “God, you’re harsh,” he complained. “A cab, then?”

  “They’ll be listening. There will be a public record of where we went. They’ll be watching anyone you know. Friends, family. Everyone.”

  “They? Who the fuck is this ‘they’?”

  Her mouth shook. “I don’t know. I hoped to God you might have a clue, but you don’t. I drew attention to you, and if they kill you now, it’ll be all my fault. It was all a stupid . . . fucking . . . dead . . . end!”

  “Hey!” He scowled. “Who you calling a dead end? I resent that!”

  Snorting giggles vibrated against his chest. “Don’t make me laugh, or I’ll start to cry, and then you’ll be in really deep shit.”

  “I believe you.” Bruno stroked her slender, trembling back. Amazed at how delicate she was. Running for over six weeks from those goons, if what she said was true. And still kicking.

  “You know, you’re a pretty good fighter,” he said.

  She snorted. “Yeah? For a girl, you mean?”

  “I didn’t say that,” he said. “But yeah. You’re strong and quick, and you have nerve. Do you have martial arts training?”

  “A little,” she said. “Years ago, in college. Some of it stuck.”

  Which reminded him of something. “Hey. How’s your shoulder?”

  “What about it?” she muttered, soggily.

  “You took a blow to the shoulder meant for my head. Let me see.”

  She flinched away as he reached for her lapel. “No, those blows were meant for me. You were just in the way. And you wouldn’t have been, if I hadn’t hunted you down and pinned a target to your chest!”

  “Let me see it,” he persisted.

  She shoved him away. “We don’t have time for a fucking tender moment, Ranieri!”

  He held up his hands. “Wow. You’re one tough bitch.”

  “Yeah!” she flung back. “That would be why I’m still alive!”

  He pondered that. “Do you really know how to hot-wire a car?”

  She sniffed. “Theoretically.”

  He looked dubious. “You do or you don’t.”

  “I’ve studied how to do it on the Internet. I’ve seen diagrams. I know the principles. I’d figure it out. Eventually. I’m quite bright.”

  He was grinning, which clearly pissed her off. “Eventually,” he repeated. “While the alarm squeals, and the owner comes racing out with a baseball bat. Come on. There’s a gas station a few blocks over. We can clean up. Use the pay phone.”

  “To call who?” she demanded.

  “If you want my help, you’re going to have to trust me, OK?”

  Trust him. What a concept.

  Lily wobbled along, ankles quivering like rubber. She didn’t even know what trust felt like, but look at her, trotting alongside this guy like his pet dog, not even looking at the street signs. Was that trust?

  No, she concluded. It was exhaustion. Burnout. She had no executive energy, no ideas, nothing left. All she could do was glom on to someone else’s strength and cling for dear life.

  She’d never had the luxury before, not since Howard fell apart. If he was leading her to her doom, so be it. She’d almost welcome it.

  She’d never relied on anyone else’s strength before. She’d never seen anyone so strong, either. So quick on his feet and deadly with his hands. The way he fought was practically superhuman, and she hadn’t even seen most of it, being busy fighting for her own life.

  She’d seen high-level martial arts exhibitions, with Nina, back in their college roommate days, when they’d entertained fantasies of becoming women warriors. They’d put in a good bit of training in the dojo back then, and she’d loved it, though she’d been forced to give it up years ago. Dojo fees hadn’t fit into her post–Aingle Cliffs budget.

  But if there was one thing she had developed in her dojo training, it was an eye for the real deal. She could see it and feel it when someone was manipulating energy. Moving chi. Bruno was exploding with it.

  Dawn had officially turned to daylight by the time they reached the gas station, albeit a dreary one. Cars streamed by as the workday geared up, and Lily felt horribly exposed walking around without sunglasses or a hat.

  Bruno led her around back of the gas station to an unmarked door. The lock was broken, and when he opened it, the stench that wafted out was so foul Bruno flinched back, cursing. “Jesus,” he muttered. “Can you stand to come in here for a couple minutes? I don’t want to lose sight of you for one second. Hold your nose.”

  Lily dragged in the deepest breath she could and sidled into the foul little space. “This cannot be a hygienic place to wash a wound.”

  “I’m not going to wash the wound,” he said, turning on the water. “I just want to splash off the blood smeared all over my face. Best not to draw attention to ourselves, right?”

  “Something tells me that’s not your biggest talent.”

  Bruno looked up from his position, bent over the small, filthy sink, and fixed on her eyes in the mirror as he splashed his chin. Pinkish water drained down from his cupped hands into the basin.

  What the fuck kind of comment is that?” he asked.

  She silently kicked herself. “Not an insult.”

  “The hell it’s not.” He splashed again, still gazing at her. “What would you know about my talents, big or otherwise?”

  A lot, after that incendiary half hour in his late uncle’s apartment. She quelled the hysterical giggles and feigned her usual fuck-you nonchalance. “It’s just an observation,” she said. “A neutral one.”

  “Neutral, my ass.” He wiped his chin. His long black eyelashes were tangled and gleaming with water. “Nothing about you is neutral, Lily. I bet you don’t even know the meaning of the word.”

  She couldn’t, in all honesty, deny that. So she didn’t.

  “So you’ve been observing me, then. For how long?”


  She gulped air to calm the fluttering. Hands clenched, toes curled. Cool as a frozen mocha. “A few weeks,” she admitted. “I checked you out online. And I’ve been tailing you physically for about a week now, as best I could, with no vehicle. You’re not hard to find. The nights working at the diner made it easier.”

  Bruno wiped the water off his face with his hands. “That annoys the living shit out of me. That you’ve been observing me. Like some entomologist, studying a fucking bug under glass. Judging me.”

  “I haven’t been judging you.” At least, not in a bad way, she wanted to add, but the words were pinned down by his accusing glare.

  He opened his jacket and ripped off the bottom strip of his T-shirt. It yielded him a long, limp strip of fabric. He pressed against the still oozing wound at his hairline, wincing.

  She couldn’t help noticing, in the unwholesome glare of the fluorescent bulb, how the shortened T-shirt with its dangling threads showed off his tight abs, the glossy dark hair arrowing into his low-slung jeans. He had an innie. One of those taut, stretched ones like an eyelid, the kind you mostly saw on ripped models for men’s health magazines. She’d missed a lot of juicy little details in the dark.

  He looked her over, seized his T-shirt again, and ripped off still another strip, which left the garment barely covering his ribcage. He moistened it under the faucet. “Come here.”

  She shrank back. “I’m all right.”

  “No, you’re not. You look like something out of a splatter film.” He jerked her toward him and started to swipe at her face with the rag.

  Huh. It actually felt kind of good to be groomed like a kitten.

  “This is my blood, mostly,” he told her. “But I’ve got no diseases.”

  “Me, neither,” she offered. The wad in his hand was pinkish gray from blood and makeup. A glance in the mirror showed that she looked only shockingly bad, rather than like out-and-out road-kill.

  “And besides, you’re a fine one to talk,” he said, still daubing.

  She was so distracted by his scorching male vibes, she’d lost the thread of the conversation. “Huh? Talk about what?”