He wanted to go after Lisa. But how? He couldn’t follow her the way she’d gone. The self-proclaimed second lieutenant, dead behind him, would give no answers. The winged monstrosity that had climbed into the clouds? He didn’t know its scent or sound. And with so many other night creatures on these streets . . .
He glanced at his watch. Damn. He’d lost twenty minutes. Less than two hours till sunset. Not that he’d be able to tell. If anything, the storm strengthened. Lightning flashed constantly.
He didn’t consider himself a hero. He did what he had to, messy as it may be. But now he felt connected, damn them. He had to see this through to the end, whether Jack and Lisa were alive or other.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
1.
Jack Harlow had never felt so weak—physically, mentally, or emotionally. He didn’t trust his legs to hold him, couldn’t connect two coherent thoughts.
Jia Li had pulled her skirt back down and left, returning only to bring a fresh cup of desperately needed water. She hadn’t taken blood this time, but still left him drained.
At least he was no longer fading in and out of consciousness. He was awake, and able to keep his eyes open. He even managed to swivel the chair so he could see both the front door and out the window with just a turn of his head.
It looked like Armageddon out there. Clouds roiled. Natural fireworks exploded. Deep, penetrating dark shrouded everything. Above those clouds, the sun still shone; day hadn’t ended yet.
But dusk was near, and the light low; Jack saw the earliest of the night creatures rising. Some walked during the day perfectly fine (he himself was an example, and apparently the vampire Jia Li). Most were nocturnal and slept through the day.
Fortunately, sunlight fried some.
There were eyes out there. They’d watched him all last night and they would watch again tonight. A wolfish man perched on a rooftop far below, his maw stretched wide to drink the rain. Shadows shifted. These were places Jack rarely saw, the tops of buildings; he was used to the undersides, and never realized so much existed above ground. A gargoyle ripped free from the top of a church, glancing left and right before taking flight. It was hard to believe something so heavy could fly so gracefully.
A brigade of rats marched on a rooftop across the street. It was low enough to not pose a threat, but the gathered rodents continually looked at Jack’s window.
Despite the electricity flowing so freely in the air, things flew: two or three types of demon; a few huge birds—rukhs, Jack thought, though he knew they shouldn’t have been here; a warrior woman on a horse? Jack blinked, certain he hadn’t actually seen a Valkyrie. Was a hero about to fall, or was she simply attracted by the same force that brought everything else? He even thought, briefly, that he saw a flying snake, which could not be as large as he imagined—could not be a dragon.
Faces formed in the clouds, in the shadows, in the rain itself. All these things seemed to circle Jia Li’s aerie.
Flies landed frequently on the window, only to be washed away by the rain. Mosquitoes, too. A lizard, no more than half a foot long, had managed to scale the entire building and now clung to the window a few feet to Jack’s left.
In the glass, Jack saw his own reflection. Ashen. Dark splotches under his eyes. He saw two of himself, first thinking it was his vision (but no, only one lizard stared at him), then maybe the window itself.
But his doubled reflection was real. Substantial. And directly behind him.
Jack drew upon every ounce of strength and willpower he had and reached behind him for the double. He caught the double by the neck before it could move. Yanked it forward—or tried; Jack managing only to pull himself backwards and swivel the chair.
The movement brought him face to face with his doppelganger. One hand around its neck, the other gripping its shoulder.
“What do you want with me?” Jack asked.
The doppelganger was less substantial than Jack, translucent and feather-light, but otherwise identical. It even wore the same clothes. “Ich verstehe dich nicht.”
Jack shook it, wrapping both hands around its neck. “I’m tired of this.”
In fact, Jack was well beyond tired. He couldn’t keep his hold on the doppelganger. It slipped out of his grip, turned, and ran. It got as far as the door, where it bounced off Jia Li. It toppled backwards, stunned. The vampire didn’t budge, but looked down. “What’s this?” she asked.
“Doppel . . .” Jack started.
She shot Jack a vicious look, and then returned her attention to his double. She bent at the knees and, with one hand around its throat, lifted it off its feet. It swung its legs uselessly, gripped her hand. Then it flailed both arms, striking Jia Li again and again without effect.
She pulled its face closer to her mouth. “Looks like you,” she said.
“Nein.”
Smoothly, Jia Li lowered her mouth to its throat . . . kissed . . . licked . . . then bit. And drank.
Jack felt a rush of jealousy as she fed from his duplicate. Also excitement, and desire—an unadulterated, inescapable physical need.
The doppelganger moaned and sighed. Tension fled, visibly, from its muscles, until it slumped in Jia Li’s arms. She tossed it aside.
“Looks like you,” she said, licking a drop of blood from the corner of her mouth, “but doesn’t taste nearly so sweet.”
2.
“That was a doppelganger,” Jack said.
Jia Li tilted her head, then looked at the corpse she’d casually tossed away.
“Means I’m going to die,” Jack said.
“You don’t understand your own mythologies, do you?” Jia Li asked. “You think the stories that survive today are exact replicas of the original tales, based on actual events and creatures. When you say vampire, you think I cannot walk in churches, garlic scares me, I sleep in a bed of earth.” Casually, she strolled toward Jack; close enough now, she leaned forward, put a hand on either armrest, and lowered her face to his. “In fact, I love churches. And the taste of garlic. The bed on which I sleep . . .” She paused to kiss the corner of Jack’s mouth. “Satin sheets. I love all things sensual. Sure, it’s a boring stereotype, but not the one you expected, is it?”
“There are other vampires,” Jack told her, “whose strength fails in daylight. But the idea of turning one to ash . . . Hollywood, I believe.”
“A link to the past,” Jia Li said, “but to stories, and facts, long forgotten.”
“You remember,” Jack said.
“How old do you think I am?” she asked. When he hesitated, she said, “Go on, guess. I won’t be offended if you guess . . . high.”
Jack tried to recall their previous conversations. She’d said something, hinted . . . “One thousand.”
Jia Li shook her head. “Older.”
“Two thousand.”
“Keep going.”
“Three.”
“Almost there,” Jia Li said.
“Do you really count the years?” Jack asked. “Doesn’t it get tiresome after a while?”
“One of the Ramses sent a mission east,” she said. “They brought riches and scrolls, knowledge, and weapons. They meant, eventually, to conqueror. We never let them return. But they brought things they hadn’t realized, things they’d picked up unknowingly as they traveled. A vampire, as you call me now, but quite different than the ones in our legends.” She pushed Jack away, strode toward the office door, and paused with her back to him. “No, I do not count the years, not exactly. I cannot. Our years were different than yours. Calendars have changed and shifted. Time, my love, is a matter of perception, nothing more. I’m twenty-four, according to most who guess, and that works fine for me. As to your doppelganger friend here, you were right. His appearance would normally lead to your death. But he’d be the one to kill you.”
“How do you know about doppelgangers?” Jack asked, not letting Jia Li leave. “They’re not exactly related to vampires. Or China.”
“I’ve been around.”
“Tell me,” Jack said.
She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes.
“Tell me,” Jack said again. “I mean, that’s what I do, I collect stories, right?”
Her smile widened. “What’s your angle?”
“No angle,” Jack said. “I’m just . . . interested.”
“I met one once,” Jia Li said. “She looked just like me. Five, six hundred years ago, I don’t remember. But she hadn’t always looked like me. I saw her shifting from someone else. My eyes were quicker than her transformation. They’re parasites. Need someone’s shape to assume, but they don’t like to be seen. Can’t stand light, either. This one, he might have run away if I hadn’t arrived, but he probably would have come back to kill you.”
While she spoke, she’d walked casually toward Jack. She sat on the edge of the desk, legs crossed at the thigh and hands on her knees. “That good enough for you?”
“You could have told it better,” Jack said.
“More action? Philosophizing, perhaps? Moralizing?” She laughed. “Okay, the moral of this story is, don’t trust what you see in the mirror.”
“That’s a little trite,” Jack said.
She slapped his cheek. It stung. He nearly fell off the chair. “You asked for the story.” She bent forward, gently taking his face in one hand. “Anything else you want?”
Jack met her eyes, felt himself sliding into them. Still, he managed to say, “No.”
She scowled. “It’ll be night soon,” she said. “I imagine we should expect visitors.”
“You sound like we’re a couple,” Jack said.
She smiled. “We are lovers.” She kissed him, hard, warm and moist, open mouthed but gentle. Unnatural bliss, like gauze, veiled Jack’s senses.
Jia Li pulled abruptly away, jaw hanging open, staring out the window behind Jack. He managed to turn.
The rain no longer fell. It floated there, in the form of a face with eyes as large as Jack’s head. It grinned, then smashed the window.
3.
Jack knew names. They often came to him without explanation. He would have recognized Jia Li as a vampire on sight, even if she hadn’t been drinking. He’d recognized the homeless man as an errant zombie, the wraith for what it was. Sometimes, the names meant nothing to him.
The face in the rain was no shadow or phantom; it was the water itself, an elemental. Jack knew nothing about it.
He fell, tumbling backwards in the chair, when the window shattered. He rolled, hitting the bare wall. By the time he looked again, the elemental had assumed a human-sized shape to step into the office.
Jia Li crouched in a fighting stance, low and back, one leg forward, hands open—one straight out, the other near her face.
“He’s mine,” she growled.
The elemental ignored her and turned toward Jack. Wind and rain poured through the open window, spraying Jack, adding bulk to the elemental. It stepped forward.
Jia Li attacked. She leapt, kicking with her back leg, striking the elemental’s head. Her foot splashed through it, sending water everywhere but passing through without resistance. She landed next to the elemental, and smashed its chest with both palms.
Jack had no doubt that, had she kicked his head, it would have come off; and if those palms had hit his chest, they would have shattered ribs.
The elemental collapsed, losing its form and cascading like a sudden waterfall. With the rain being blown in through the window, it drenched Jia Li.
Jack leaned heavily on the wall for support as he stood. The elemental reformed behind Jia Li.
Before she could react, the elemental enveloped her. However she moved, it mimicked exactly, as if a part of her skin. She ducked, then rolled across the desk trying to shake it off. The water clung to her, flowing around her, following her every move. She opened her mouth and took a deep breath of water but didn’t seem to diminish the quantity of it around her.
She spit it out. The water erupting from her mouth fell back, a horizontal fountain, crashing into her face and neck.
She slammed backwards into the outer wall of the office so hard, it shook. They left a damp silhouette. She looked at Jack, and exaggeratedly mouthed the words, “I do love you.”
Then she flung herself out the window.
Jack staggered to the desk to watch Jia Li’s descent. She crashed onto the roof of a nearby building, landing poorly and rolling aside. Water exploded around her. Reforming into the shape of a man, it looked up at Jack. Jia Li, sprawled on the gravel rooftop, lifted her head and bared her teeth—or maybe Jack imagined that. They weren’t close enough to see detail, not through the shifting shadows of the storm.
He didn’t stay to watch. He managed to get to the office door without falling, and clung to the wall in the hallway. He found the elevator. Briefly, he wondered if it was safe; but he was too high up, and too weak, to risk the stairs. He punched the button and waited. Wind rushed through the shattered window and raced down the hall, bringing a spray of mist.
With a soft, high-pitched ding, the elevator doors opened. Jack fell in, not caring if someone was already inside. He found the Lobby button at the bottom of the controls and pushed it—and kept pushing it until the doors finally closed and he started to descend.
4.
On the street, Nick saw the window shatter. And it was there, that office building, that the wind pummeled—and the rain—as if the storm focused all its fury on one spot: the watcher. Jack Harlow.
He was still more than a block away when the vampire leapt from the building. They were thirty, maybe forty stories up. She cleared the street, landing on another tall building.
A moment of decision: get Jack, probably still in that building, or chase the vampire. If Jack still lived, something stronger than the vampire must have tossed her out that window.
Nick crossed the street as he ran, drew his gun as he pumped his legs harder. He didn’t care who saw. There was no way in Hell he would fail both of them.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
1.
The doors slid open and Jack spilled into the lobby. There’d been no stops on the way down, and no one waited at the bottom. He staggering, but remained upright without assistance.
The tiles were white, the walls white, all with black trim. The elevator doors were white, split down the middle by ebony. It felt very futuristic, in the way they used to imagine the future: sterile, high in contrast, disorienting.
He didn’t have much time. The elemental was still out there—as well as Jia Li—not to mention the dozen or so things he might or might not have seen and whatever else had remained beyond his field of vision.
Immediately beyond the elevators, facing two sets of double glass doors (out to the street), was a security desk. The guard, in a blue uniform with a black and white patch, looked up from his panels. “You’re wet,” he said.
“Window broke,” Jack said, not stopping. No time to actually lie or make up a story; he was too weak for that.
“Where?”
“Upstairs,” Jack said. He pushed out the door. The rain wasn’t going to get him wetter. A set of concrete steps led down to the street. A railing bisected the stairs; Jack held it as he descended. He glanced upwards, to the shattered window where he’d been held.
“Wait,” the security guard said, coming out behind him. Jack almost stumbled. “I don’t know you.”
“Just visiting,” Jack said.
“Then you didn’t sign in,” the guard said.
“I don’t have time for this.”
“I’ll have to ask you to make time,” the guard said.
“Or?”
“Or . . .” The guard hesitated, glancing down the street. He was being pummeled by the rain, but it was the appearance of someone—or something—else that had diverted his attention.
Jack looked, too, as Nick bounded up the stairs, gun pointed at the guard.
“Don’t,” Jack said, holding out his hands as if that might actually stop the hunter.
The guard had no weapon; he was probably an hourly employee, minimally trained, unaware of the office suite Jia Li kept, even if he knew her by sight. Whoever the guard was, he was not part of the night.
“Get back inside,” Nick said, pausing on the steps. “Pretend this never happened.”
The guard lifted his hands in surrender. “Right. Yeah. Of course. This never happened. I . . . er . . . should I call someone to fix that window?”
Jack glanced upwards again. The rain now fell straight down. “Tomorrow,” he said.
The guard hesitated, then ran back inside.
“We better get out of here,” Nick said, coming to Jack’s side. “You look like shit.”
“Feel it, too,” Jack said.
Nick propped Jack with an arm around his waist and helped him down the steps. They walked as fast as Jack could, turning down the first alley before the police showed up. They had minutes, at best, to get out of sight.
“Have to get you out of the rain,” Nick said. “Someplace safe.”
Jack shook his head. “There is no such place.” They emerged from the alley on a two-lane side street, still well in sight of the office building. “Lisa’s apartment,” Jack suggested.
Nick shook his head. “I saw a church just down the block. We’ll go there.”
“Church?” Jack asked.
“Isn’t it some sort of sanctuary?” Nick asked.
“You’ve watched too many movies.”
“It’s warm and dry,” Nick said, “and close. That’s most important right now.”
2.
Nick Hunter broke the lock on one of the doors to get into the church. It was huge, shrouded in darkness, Catholic by appearance. After an outer hallway, another set of equally large doors led into the nave. Holy water fonts flanked the inside of the doors. Rows and rows of cherry wood or mahogany pews were divided by a wide aisle. The altar was bare except for a brilliant white Bible. Huge organ pipes rose on either side of the altar; statues of Jesus and Mary stood in front of them. Stained glass windows depicted the stations of the cross. Rain echoed on the ceiling, simultaneously booming and distant.
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