Under the Gun

by Hannah Jayne

  I looked up at Dixon. “Is there an article about Bat Boy in here, too?”

  Apparently Dixon and I didn’t share the same sense of humor. He blinked at me and I refolded the paper and cleared my throat, folding my hands in front of me.

  “No, I hadn’t seen that article, nor did I know that Bigfoot lived in the Marina. Must be making good money; I know I can’t afford a place down there.” I grinned.

  “So, you’ve not heard of any sightings from any clients or any of your”—Dixon’s eyes went up the ceiling—“other friends?”

  “No, Dixon, I haven’t. And you know as well as I do that Bigfoot is a myth.”

  Dixon quirked an eyebrow and I sighed. “An actual myth.”

  Finally, Dixon’s shoulders slumped a quarter inch and he eyed me. “I ask because there was another killing.”

  I stiffened. “There was?”

  “It was before the Sutro Point homicide and it was one of our own.”

  I swallowed hard, my mental Rolodex scanning through UDA employees, staff members I hadn’t seen lately. “Oh my God, who was it?”

  “Octavia.”

  “Octavia Aronson? But she’s a—” I held a hand out, gesturing toward Dixon, finding myself strangely unable to say, But she’s a vampire.

  “Yes, she was a vampire.”

  “But you’re immortal.”

  Dixon laughed, a mirthless, short bark. “No one is truly immortal, Ms. Lawson.”

  “Right, but . . .”

  “Whoever attacked Octavia Aronson was able to kill her.”

  I leaned back in my chair, sighing. While the Underworld Detection Agency is the only agency tasked with keeping tabs on underworld inhabitants, the occasional over-world “protection” agency has been known to spring up. Usually a host of Buffy-slash-Blade type vampire killer wannabes or the intermittent Van Helsing throwbacks. They were rarely successful and generally fell out of their chosen paths when a new superhero took favor or Comic-Con ended, but now and again there was enough hubris to cause my clients harm.

  “I don’t see what Bigfoot has to do with a vampire slayer.”

  Dixon laced his fingers together and pursed his pale lips. “I think whatever Ms. Holt saw was what attacked Octavia. And we both know it wasn’t Bigfoot.”

  “She wasn’t staked?”

  “She was beheaded.”

  Ice water shot through my veins. “Beheaded?”

  “Torn apart, actually.”

  Though Dixon’s voice was steady and held his usual air of nonchalance, he seemed paler than usual and was still having a hard time getting comfortable.

  He was actually upset.

  “Why are you telling me this? And why—” I gestured to the newspaper.

  He cleared his throat into his fisted hand. “I know that you and Mr. Grace—”

  “Alex,” I corrected.

  “I know that you and Alex tend to look into certain police cases that—” Dixon cleared his throat again and looked away. “That may pertain to supernatural assailants. And, frankly, I’d like to ask your assistance.”

  I felt my eyes bug unnaturally. “You want to ask me for help?”

  Finally, Dixon met my gaze. “I’m not certain, but I think we might be dealing with a rogue demon.”

  I nodded, unsurprisingly used to the hypothesis.

  “I think the demon we’re looking at is a werewolf.”

  I sat in silence after Dixon left, my hand hovering over my cell phone. I began to dial Sampson and then hung up before the call connected.

  Do I ask him if he’s beheaded any vampires lately?

  I almost lost my lunch when the phone rang on its own.

  “Sophie Lawson?” I asked into the receiver.

  “I’m bored,” Nina whined on her end.

  “Well, play a board game or something. What’s Sampson doing?”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Well, where did he go?”

  I heard Nina blow out an annoyed sigh. “I don’t know, Soph. He wouldn’t take his leash. Can’t you come home?”

  “Nina, I’m working.”

  “What am I supposed to do here?” She stretched out every word to emphasize her all-encompassing boredom.

  “Go for a walk,” I said.

  “I’ll die!”

  “Risk it.”

  I hung up and tried my best to focus on the work in front of me, but my thoughts kept creeping back to Sampson, to Alex, to the mercury gradually rising on my Internet weather tracker. A bead of sweat rolled from between my breasts to my belly button and I sighed, making a mental note to check property rates in Antarctica.

  By 1 PM I had highlighted the same papers over and over, and my olfactory senses closed in on themselves when Steve, a troll, appeared in my doorway. At barely three feet tall Steve has the ego of a much taller man and the stench of a rancid hunk of blue cheese smeared on a decomposing cow.

  And also, he’s in love with me.

  “Steve needed to check in on his woman,” Steve told me, his little troll legs bobbing two feet from the ground.

  “I’m not your woman, Steve.”

  “Sophie will be Steve’s woman,” Steve reported, undeterred. “It is very hot outside. Sophie makes Steve’s temperature rise.” He waggled his bushy caterpillar eyebrows, grinning at me with a mouth full of yellow snaggle-teeth.

  “What do you want, Steve?”

  “Steve has some information that Sophie might find useful.”

  I stiffened and surreptitiously moved my scented candle closer to my face. “Oh yeah, what’s that?”

  “Might Sophie enjoy a cold drink?” Steve waved an icy bottle of water in front of me, his grey hand gripping it tightly.

  “What’s the information, Steve?”

  “Drink?”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Sure.”

  Steve unscrewed the cap and pressed the bottle to his mouth. I watched his lips part and his narrow knife of a tongue dip into the water. He took a long drink, then held the bottle out to me. “Lovers share everything.”

  “So share.”

  “Steve saw you at the crime scene.”

  My ears pricked. “On Sutro Point?”

  He nodded.

  “And?”

  “And Steve saw the werewolf hunter.”

  I crossed my arms, growing annoyed. “So did I. So did Alex.”

  Steve thumbed his own chest. “Steve knows why she was there. Steve and Feng made small talk.”

  I cocked my head. “You and Feng made small talk? She doesn’t seem the warm and fuzzy, sharing-small-talk type.”

  He grinned, supremely satisfied, then looked alarmed. “Don’t worry! Steve likes it rough sometime, but Steve will always return to his beloved.” He licked his lips and my stomach lurched.

  “So why was Feng at the crime scene?”

  Steve launched himself out of the chair and stuck his arms out. “The clue is in Steve’s pocket.”

  “Get out of here, Steve.”

  He waggled his left hip at me. “It’s in this pocket right here. Does Sophie want the clue?”

  I folded my arms and raised an annoyed, stench-soaked eyebrow. “Sophie doesn’t want anything that badly.”

  Steve shrugged and dropped his arms to the side. “Okay then, Sophie will never know what Feng was doing at the crime scene.” He turned on the stacked heel of his cowboy boot and I bit my lip.

  “Fine, Steve. What’s the clue?”

  He turned around, grinned, his eyes going toward his pocket. I held my breath, crouched down, and dug a single finger into the pocket of Steve’s track pants. A low, approving rumble emanated from his chest while bile rose in mine.

  “There’s nothing in here!”

  “Oh.” Steve frowned, then jutted out the other hip. “Must be this pocket then. Innocent mistake.”

  I groaned, dug into the pocket, and extracted a single silver bullet.

  The heft was familiar. The construction was impeccable. It was one of Fe
ng’s.

  “Where did you get his?”

  “Steve told you: at the crime scene.”

  “And what did Feng say?”

  “Feng told Steve that her sister Xian knows there’s a werewolf in town. New scent. Old blood. Feng knows who this werewolf is. So does Steve.”

  Heat, like a live wire, raced up my spine. Feng knows that Sampson is here? I pushed myself up and began to pace.

  “Who else knows, Steve?”

  Steve mimicked zipping his lips. “No one else knows. Steve’s good at keeping secrets.”

  “Good. Let’s keep it that way.”

  “Zip my lips?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, right.”

  “Seal them?”

  “Sure.”

  Steve’s zipped lips rolled into a salacious smile. “With a kiss?”

  My allegiance to Sampson was huge, but I wasn’t crazy. “Not a chance.”

  Steve shrugged and kicked the leg of my visitor’s chair. “Sophie’s love will come in time,” he said before disappearing in a blue-cheese-scented huff.

  I rolled the bullet around in my palm, thinking of the tragic crime scene—the bodies destroyed, lives cut short—and then of Sampson.

  “No,” I said to my empty office. “I know Sampson had nothing to do with this.” I slipped the bullet into my purse. “And I’m going to prove it.”

  I was able to slip out of the UDA without much problem. The heat had thinned out the clientele and was slowing down the employees, and Steve’s odor knocked out everyone else. With each floor the elevator climbed, my confidence grew. I was going to talk to Feng and Xian. Let them know their wires were crossed. Pete Sampson had nothing to do with this murder. Maybe it was another werewolf. Maybe it was a marauding band of horrible humans. Either way, I would get the werewolf hunters to lay off. I felt myself smiling, even.

  “Well, don’t you look like the cat that swallowed the canary.” Alex grinned at me from the police station vestibule. It was a smile that went to his eyes, that made their deep blue sparkle with a kind of sexy mischief that cut right through me and did things to my nether regions. Bad things.

  Focus, focus, focus.

  “Hey,” I said, using my best attempt at nonchalance. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Actually, I was heading down to see you.”

  Another zing, this one starting at my belly button. “You were?”

  Alex nodded and held up a stuffed manila envelope. “I was hoping we could go over some of these pictures from Sutro Point.”

  And just like that, the delicious zing of angelic sex was vanquished.

  I bit my lip. “I’m actually on my way out. Later?”

  “Yeah, sure. Where you headed?”

  I looked over my shoulder at the sunbaked parking lot. Think, I commanded my brain, think! I had the introductory paragraph of my Krav Maga class and three whole seasons of Criminal Minds under my belt. I was practically a special agent.

  “I’m going for a pap smear.”

  Yes. I was Sophie Lawson: Special (Ed) Agent.

  I was closing in on Chinatown when I had the overwhelming feeling of being followed. But unless my pursuers were a Vanagon full of photo-snapping German tourists, my intuition was way off—which wouldn’t be totally unheard of for me. I nabbed a space right along Stockton Street and was skipping through Grant’s Gate before the full weight of what I was about to do—and who I was about to see—hit me.

  The last time I’d met Feng on her turf, she’d greeted me with a chokehold. I could still feel her fingers, like steel bars, closing in on my windpipe. I hightailed it back to the car, popped the trunk, and shook the knife out of a plastic Big 5 bag.

  To answer your question, yes, I have a gun. But the last time I’d used it, I was forced to shoot a person—a sweaty, bat-shit-crazy, murderous person—but still. He screamed. He bled a heavy river of bright-red blood. And although I only shot him in his plentiful ass, the idea that I could have killed this human being—ended his life—was rough on me. So, I bought a knife. Not so much with the intent to gut and fillet; more with the hopeful idea that my brandishing such a weapon would incite a fearful retreat by whomever was ready to pounce.

  I was tucking my new weapon into my shoulder bag when the hairs on the back of my neck shot up. I cocked my head, trying to decipher the sound of footsteps, of heavy breathing from the huffing grunt of the Muni buses and the general clatter of downtown.

  I was definitely being watched.

  “I have a weapon,” I murmured without turning around. “And we’re in a very public place.”

  “I have a weapon, too,” he murmured back.

  I turned around, groaning. “Alex! What the hell are you doing here? Were you following me?”

  He was looking at me with that stupid, sexy half smile, one eyebrow cocked. “Who says I was following you? Maybe I was in the mood for some chow fun.”

  I slammed my trunk down hard and crossed my arms in front of my chest. “Are you in the mood for some chow fun?”

  “Are you asking me out?”

  I felt the unattractive flare of my nostrils and Alex broke into a gale of laughter. “Okay, fine. Sorry,” he said.

  I eyed him.

  “I was following you.”

  “I told you I was going to get a pap smear and you follow me? Man, you’ve got some weird sexual fetishes. No wonder they kicked you out of Heaven.”

  Alex rolled his eyes. “So you’re honestly telling me you go to a gynecologist in Chinatown?”

  I hitched up my chin. “Dr. Kwan does good work. And I get a free egg roll afterward.”

  “You’re a nut.”

  “And you almost got yourself gutted,” I spat.

  “Is that so?”

  “Why are you following me?”

  Alex fell in step with me. “Because you didn’t tell me where you were going.”

  I opened my mouth and put up my hand to answer—as I had, in fact, told him where I was headed—but Alex grabbed it, pushed it down by my side. “You lied. That much I knew.”

  “Since when do I have to tell you where I’m going?”

  “Since when do you lie to me?”

  I jammed my hands in my pockets but didn’t answer him.

  “So, where are we headed?”

  “If you must know,” I said, slipping around a heap of tourists posing for pictures at Grant’s Gate, “I’m visiting a friend. And no, you can’t come.”

  Alex looked almost hurt and I was surprised to feel a pang of sadness. I sighed. “Okay, you can come, but you can’t come inside. She and I need to talk.” I caught his questioning gaze. “Girl stuff.”

  I had some questions to ask Feng, and if I was going to keep Sampson’s secret safe, the less people who heard, the better.

  Alex just shrugged. “Sounds fair,” he said. “But do I get to know who you’re visiting? Wait.” He splayed his hands. “Let me take a guess. Can I take a guess?”

  I rolled my eyes and jutted my chin in the universal sign for Get on with it.

  “You’re going to visit the famous werewolf hunter.”

  I stopped dead in my tracks. “How did you know that?”

  He slung an arm over my shoulder. “I’m an angel. I know all sorts of things.” He pointed to a bakery. “Pineapple bun? You know there’s not actually any pineapple in them, right?”

  “I don’t want a pineapple bun.”

  “Well, I do want to talk to the werewolf hunter myself. She was at the crime scene, right?”

  “Yeah on the crime scene, still no on the pineapple bun. Come on.”

  We walked in companionable silence, huffing our way up two hills and zigzagging through tourists and pop-up sundries shops while doing our best to avoid the wilting, fetid stench of vegetables left to rot in alleyways. I stopped when I saw it and sucked in a sharp-edged sigh: Feng’s workshop.

  “That’s it? They set up shop in a Chinatown delicatessen?” Alex asked, skepticism all over his face.

&nbs
p; The Du family factory—or at least where Feng and Xian did their tracking and hammering out of silver bullets—was creatively disguised as a Chinese delicatessen. According to its peeling, fading sign, the place was called CHINESE/AMERICAN FOOD DIM SUM FREE WI-FI RESTROOM FOR CUSTOMERS ONLY.

  At least some of their wares were transparent.

  I shrugged. “Great location. Best dim sum in town.”

  “Because that’s what everyone wants right after they meet up with their local werewolf hunters.”

  Alex went to grab the handle of the door, but I put my hand on his, stopping him. “I think I should go in alone.”

  “I don’t think so. It doesn’t look safe.”

  I’m not exactly sure how he could surmise whether or not the place was safe as every single inch of the floor-to-ceiling windows was pasted over with sun-faded Chinese calendars from the years before I was born and curl-edged posters of pretty Asian girls hocking everything from videos to glazed crockery with cute, fuzzy kittens poking out of them.

  “I know what I’m doing, Alex. And besides, I have a weapon.”

  Surprise registered on Alex’s face. “You do? Are you carrying your gun? Weren’t you the one who told me that of all the weapons one of us breathers could have, a gun would be right up there with a teaspoon in terms of effectiveness?”

  “I believe I said a gun would be about as effective as a ladle, but yes. And that’s why I have this.” I dug into my shoulder bag and whipped out my brand-spanking-new Big 5 knife.

  I’d expected Alex’s eyes to go wide or at the very least, go slightly hooded and bedroomy (what was sexier than a chick with a knife?). I hadn’t expected him to clap a hand over his mouth and break down into near-snort-worthy guffaws.

  “What’s so damn funny?”

  Alex, shoulders shaking as he tried to control his torrent of laughter, said nothing. He just pointed at my knife.

  “You’re really going to sit there laughing like an idiot while a woman brandishes a weapon at you?” I unsheathed the blade, hoping to scare the piss—or at least the giggles—out of him.

  He just laughed harder, tears slipping down his cheeks.

  “What the hell is so funny? Don’t think I won’t use this on you!”