The Man Who Crossed Worlds (Miles Franco #1)

by Chris Strange

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Desmond was on his cell phone when I got back to him. He was still looking a bit pale, and his grin hadn’t returned. I gave him a nod and we jogged through the rain to the car, him still muttering into the phone.

  I got into the car and pulled O’Neil’s smartphone from my pocket to go through it again. Before I could, it started ringing.

  I was so shocked I nearly dropped it. A little animation of a ringing rotary phone had appeared on the screen, along with a number. The same number that had accompanied the text messages, if I remembered correctly.

  I exchanged a glance with Desmond, but he was still on his own phone. Heart pounding, I pressed the screen to accept the call, and put it to my ear.

  The sound of rain and muffled engine noises came through first. And then there was a voice.

  “Shirley,” Todd said. “Where the fuck are you? I lost contact with William and Natalie, and the other Tunnelers aren’t picking up. But I got the girl.”

  I clutched the phone tight to my ear, not daring to open my mouth. The girl? Who the hell was he talking about?

  “I’m nearly at the Avenues,” he continued. “I need you to meet me there. The girl’s getting aggressive, and it’s gonna be risky with so much product lying around. Something funny’s going on, and—”

  There was a low bang, and some muffled noises. Then he spoke again. “What the fuck? Oh, shit!”

  Another crackle, like he’d dropped the phone. I heard something high-pitched, something like a scream. A familiar scream.

  And then came the gunshots.

  I squeezed the phone so hard part of me worried I’d crush it. The blasts sounded distorted in the phone’s speaker, but they were unmistakable. A sound like the shattering of glass came through, and a car door opened. Over it all was the scream.

  “Get gone!” Todd’s voice was distant. “Run, you stupid bitch.”

  The line went dead.

  I kept holding the phone to my ear for a few seconds, praying that scream wasn’t who I thought it was.

  “Miles?” Desmond said.

  I turned to him. He stared at the phone in my hand, his jaw clenched, and silently handed me his cell phone.

  “Miles, it’s Rob.” His voice was clipped. “I got into the hospital records for you.”

  “Tell me she’s there. Rob, tell me she’s still there.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

  A punch to the gut would’ve been less painful. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Breathe, Miles.

  “What… You just mean they discharged her, right? Tell me that’s what you mean.”

  I already knew it wasn’t by the tone of his voice and the look on Desmond’s face, but I didn’t let myself believe it until Rob said it. “Last time they saw her was when a nurse took observations a couple of hours ago. They ran her blood, but it came back clean. They were planning to discharge her when her mother showed up. The girl started to get agitated so they decided to keep her in a bit longer.”

  “‘Agitated’? The hell do they mean by that?”

  “I don’t know, Miles, I’m just telling you what’s written down. It looks like she got so aggressive they called the cops. Some detective showed up and took her away.”

  I cradled the steering wheel with my free arm. “Jesus Christ.” I shouldn’t have left her. Why the fuck had I left her?

  Todd was using her to get to me. Only something had gone wrong. Fuck, she could be bleeding in a gutter right now. Who’d been shooting? What had Todd got her into?

  Christ, what had I got her into?

  Desmond had no complaints when I told him where we were going, never even asked that I drop him off home first. On another day I would have been damn near gushing with gratitude, but right then all I could think about was getting Tania home to her mother.

  I’d let her down too many times already. O’Neil’s phone felt heavy in my pocket, but I put all thoughts of that aside. Getting Todd and clearing my name was nothing if I couldn’t protect Tania. So I started the car, gunned the engine, and headed for the center of a city at war with itself.

  It didn’t take long for us to find Todd’s car. It was in the middle of the street just outside the Avenues. It’d been turned to Swiss cheese.

  We stopped, and I practically tore the seatbelt off me. But when I reached the car, I couldn’t find any blood. No sign of Todd or Tania. No nothing.

  Desmond waited while I took my fury out on the bullet-riddled vehicle. White-hot fire bubbled out of every pore of my body, from every sore and every cut. I threw myself against the car, knowing it would hurt me more than it. That was okay. I wanted to hurt.

  Finally, there was no more anger. Desmond came to me, put a hand on my shoulder, and let me back to his car.

  “I shouldn’t have—”

  “To hell with your shouldn’t have, guy,” Desmond said. “It ain’t done, yet, you hear me? We’ll find her.”

  “Fuck you. I lost her. I fucking lost her.”

  I panted, face hot, and swallowed down the pain in my chest. Damn it all.

  After a minute, Desmond put his hand on my shoulder and gently pulled me away from the bullet-riddled car. I let him lead me back across the road.

  “Look,” Desmond said quietly, “what was the last thing the cop said before the line went dead?”

  I tried to piece the call together in my head. “He told her to run.”

  “So maybe she’s not with him anymore. Maybe she got free.”

  He was right. And if that was true, that meant she couldn’t have gone far. But where the hell would a scared teenage girl go in this part of town?

  No. That wasn’t the question to ask. She wasn’t a scared little girl, not at the moment. Rob said she’d been getting aggressive at the hospital. Tania was crafty, but aggressive? That wasn’t like her. Unless…

  “The Chroma,” I said. “Christ. She’s withdrawing from it.”

  Shit. I should’ve seen this coming. It hadn’t crossed my mind that she’d be hooked after a single hit.

  I looked out the car window, down a sloping hill. Down to the Avenues. She wasn’t a scared girl. She was a junkie. And she’d do what junkies do best when their stash runs out.

  “We’re going to the Avenues,” I said.

  Desmond gunned the engine.

  The Avenues were lined with trees, but most of them were dead all year round, their roots covered in cigarette butts and empty beer cans. The place had always been a shit-hole, but it didn’t look like anyone would have to worry about it much longer. It was a goddamn warzone.

  Buildings were crumbling all around us, or destroyed already. The rain hadn’t been enough to wash the debris from the streets; shattered bricks and bits of cars lay scattered across the concrete. One building had spewed its contents across the road, and we had to abandon the car before getting far into the neighborhood.

  The people of The Avenues were scattered around in alleyways and huddling under awnings, dressed in multiple layers of old clothes covered in rain and dust. Humans and Vei hung around in about equal numbers, mostly sticking to their own species. Most of them had a shell-shocked look about them, staring blankly ahead. A few of them stared at the destroyed buildings with real emotion in their eyes, anger and grief clear on their faces.

  My blood boiled as we walked past. These were people that didn’t have much to start with, and now they were left with even less. I wondered if Todd had considered these people when he concocted his schemes.

  I could hear explosions and gunfire, but most of it was in the distance. It looked like the fighting had been here in the early hours of the gang war, but it had already moved on. I didn’t know exactly how many Tunnelers were in the city, but it had to rate in the high hundreds, maybe even a couple of thousand. That was a lot of destruction that could be dished out.

  Few of the displaced residents of The Avenues looked at us as we hurried along, trying to stay out of the rain as much as possible. It was Gravedigger territory, but
they didn’t seem to be around. Probably off fighting somewhere else. The only people that took any notice of Desmond and I were the drug dealers.

  They were easily recognizable by the loose collections of junkies around them. My breath caught when I saw the vials they were selling from cardboard boxes and out of the back of cars. God, if all these dealers were selling Chroma…

  But no, when I got close enough to see, it didn’t have the color of the Chroma vial in my pocket. The fluid inside was black, an impossibly dark black that almost seemed to suck in the light around it. It was just Ink.

  Just Ink. That thought would’ve seemed ridiculous a few weeks ago. But compared to Chroma it was no worse than a cup of weak tea.

  “Any ideas where she’d be?” Desmond asked me when we took shelter under the awning of a mostly-intact building.

  I chewed my lip as I thought. Jesus, this was no place for a teenage girl. “These small-fry dealers aren’t selling Chroma. That’s what she wants. Todd’s probably keeping as much of it in reserve as practical. If I was him, I’d restrict distribution to certain sellers to get maximum bang for my buck.”

  “So we need to find someone besides these street dealers, somewhere a Tunneler might go.”

  “Bingo.”

  The answer ended up being a relatively undamaged bar on the corner of a pair of particularly nasty streets. The bar had a den of violence look about it, less of a speak-easy and more of a Wild West saloon. A lowly Gravedigger initiate was on guard duty outside the old stone building, a few bits of metal in his ears and a leather vest across his chest.

  I pointed the place out to Desmond. “What do you reckon?”

  “Looks like a friendly place. You think they would’ve let Tania in here?”

  I didn’t doubt it. A good-looking young girl, penniless and desperate for drugs, wearing little more than a hospital gown? It made my throat clench to think what she might already have been through. If they’d laid a hand on her…

  “Miles? You’re glaring.”

  He was right. I was giving the bar’s bouncer the stinkeye, and that wasn’t likely to make me any friends. I smoothed my face, pressing my feelings down where they could simmer undisturbed.

  “This has gotta be it,” I said, nearly managing to convince myself. “It’s gotta be.”

  The initiate Gravedigger looked me up and down as I approached, a smirk on his face saying exactly what he thought of me. He was little more than a kid, not much older than Tania. Maybe thought he was cool, standing there in his gimp suit, or maybe life hadn’t thrown any better options his way. Whatever, I didn’t care. All I wanted was to get Tania back.

  “Hit the road,” he said, jerking his thumb at the street as if we were too dumb to hear what he said.

  The two of us stopped in front of him. I shoved my hands in my pockets and glanced at Desmond. His playful half-grin had returned. He had the look on his face he always got when he was reminiscing, a quirk in his eyebrows and his eyes off to one side. Maybe he was thinking the same thing I was: that kid would’ve still been learning his times tables when we were getting scraped off the floor of bars like this.

  Ah, memories.

  “You hear me, asswipes?” the kid said, his smirk fading into a kind of petulant anger. “Get lost.”

  “Kids these days,” I said to Desmond, and he snickered. I returned my attention to the bouncer, affecting a bored expression. “Look, son. We don’t want to cause you any trouble. We just heard there was some new dope floating around, and we wanted to get our hands on some before this whole neighborhood burns to the ground. Can you help us out?”

  He frowned, giving me another once-over. “You cops?”

  “We look like cops?” I said spreading my damp, ripped jacket by the lapels.

  “You don’t,” he said, then nodded at Desmond. “He does.”

  “I’m not a cop, guy.” He shoved his hand in his pocket, and the Gravedigger reached for his belt, but Desmond just pulled out a thick wad of cash. “Can we come in?”

  The Gravedigger gave the bills a suspicious stare, but made no move to take them. He trapped his lip piercing between his teeth, chewed on it for a moment, then gave us each another look. “All right, get the fuck inside. Go talk to Brad Darney in the corner. He’ll set you right.”

  I tipped an imaginary hat to the man. “You’re a gentleman and a squire, good sir.” I feigned a step forward, then paused as if considering. “Say, you don’t happen to know if you’re got any good tail in there?”

  The Gravedigger’s face split into a grin that made me want to punch his lights out. “Matter of fact, just got some fresh meat in a few minutes ago. Young, perky.” He licked his lip piercing. “Might have to fight Brad for her though. He’s always looking for a bit of tight, clean pussy.”

  I shoved my hands back into my pockets to keep them from gouging out the smug fucker’s eyes. What I wouldn’t give for a pair of pliers and the chance to show that son of a bitch what I could do to those pretty little piercings of his.

  Desmond slapped me on the shoulder and gave me a warning look. “You hear that? Let’s get inside before all the good ones are snatched up.”

  He gave me a rough shove in the center of my back, and I grudgingly took a step forward. The Gravedigger gave me a funny look as I went past him. I told myself to be calm. I had more important things to defend than Tania’s honor.

  The inside of the bar was about the sort of hole I expected. Most of the bar’s inhabitants were smoking, giving the place a feel of unexplored rain forests. The bar’s patrons completed the look. They were predators, I could see it in their eyes.

  Most huddled over drinks or leered at the women—some human, some Vei—wandering around in skirts so short I wondered why they even bothered at all. Most of the women wouldn’t have made the cut in one of the Silk Dragon’s brothels—few of them had their entire collection of teeth—but standards must’ve been lower in this part of town.

  I got to admit, I was surprised how many people had stayed around drinking and whoring after the neighborhood had been blown half to bits. I suppose the ones that didn’t feel much like fighting had nothing better to do now. The bar contained humans and Vei in about equal numbers, though the Vei tended to be the dirtier ones, the ones that looked like they’d been inside a building that had come down on top of them. Many of them huddled around the bar, alone or in small groups, slapping back shots of alcohol like they were water.

  I met Desmond’s eyes, and he gave me a wide grin and a couple of raised eyebrows. I shook my head at his eagerness. The quiet life had ruined him.

  I tucked in my shirt, smoothed down my curls, straightened my lapels, and plunged into sweating mass of humanity. The rain and humidity gave everything a wet dog smell. I didn’t mind; it was perfume compared to all the corpses I’d been smelling lately.

  The dealer, Brad Darney, wasn’t hard to spot. He was a human man with his boots up on a table in the corner, one arm around a topless Vei woman while his hand groped her pale breast. In contrast to most Gravediggers, he went easy on the leather and spikes, sticking with jeans and an immaculately clean black shirt. Only a pair of studded gloves and a single cheek piercing indicated his allegiance.

  The booth was occupied by a few girls and someone who looked like a bodyguard. A loose crowd of well-dressed onlookers surrounded the booth. Occasionally one would trade a wad of cash for a vial or two from the bodyguard and steal away back into the crowd. A box sat on the table, stacked with vials. It drew the attention of everyone in the room, including me.

  That was when I saw Tania. She’d picked up an ill-fitting skirt and a shirt to go over her hospital gown. She was soaked through from the rain outside. Her hair was tangled and damp like the rest of her. She hovered just to the left of Darney’s booth while some sleazebag in a hooded sweatshirt pressed in close to her. She didn’t look at him, though. Her eyes were fixed on the box of Chroma. And she was closing in on it.

  “Ah, shit,” I said. “Des, can
you run interference?”

  “On it.” He shouldered his way through the crowd toward Darney’s table while I went for Tania.

  The hooded guy reached for Tania, but she ducked under his arm and slipped out away. Swearing, he snatched at her again, but she kept on the move, sliding through the crowd to Darney’s table.

  I got to her a moment before she pounced like a jungle cat. She reached forward, arm snaking out from behind the bodyguard’s head, her fingers stretching for the Chroma.

  “The hell?” the bodyguard said. He spun in his chair, a snarl on his face.

  I wrapped my arms around her waist and yanked her backward. Her sunken eyes flashed to my face. “What are you doing?”

  There was a scuffle behind me, and I turned to find Desmond staring directly into the bodyguard’s face. It came complete with cauliflower ears and a permanently deformed nose, making him look like a boxer who’d lost more fights than he’d won. Delaney was standing, his hands clutched protectively around his Chroma, all attempt at class gone. The crowd in the immediate vicinity had gone quiet, the sort of quiet that comes on when everyone’s expecting a fight.

  Desmond glanced at me and gave me a smile small enough that only I’d see. He wiggled his hand a little, showing me the Pin Hole etched into a piece of custom brass, already splashed with Kemia. I nodded and took Tania by the hand. Desmond could handle himself against that chump.

  I, on the other hand, had the tough job. I had to get Tania away from the Chroma, and it wasn’t an idea she was taking to.

  “Let me go,” she shrieked, twisting her arm in my grip.

  I held on tighter and tugged her through the crowd. “No. I’m getting you home.”

  The hooded guy reappeared through the crowd and shoved his meaty palms against my chest. “That one’s mine,” he said, showing me his three gold-capped teeth. “Get your own.”

  I sighed. Fucking punk. “Wrong words, kid,” I said. “Wrong words.”

  I slugged him in the chin. My knuckles exploded with sweet, satisfying pain, as the chump stumbled backward and slammed into a group of young Vei men.

  The crowd surrounding me immediately erupted into screams, but I didn’t stop to enjoy the ambience. I gripped Tania’s wrist tighter and kept moving.

  “I just wanted one, damn it.” Tania struggled against me, for all the good it did her. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

  “You’re not yourself.” I shoved through a small knot of gawking Vei women, not giving a damn what they thought. “Come on.”

  Another shout came from behind me, and I sensed Desmond opening his Pin Hole, chaos on the edge of perception. I glanced back through the crowd and caught a glimpse of him grinning. Plucky bastard was having way too much fun.

  I shoved Tania back out into the rain, a little rougher than I intended. The bouncer from before glanced at the girl then looked at me with a grin and a wink, and I just managed to refrain from kicking him in the kneecaps. I fixed him with a scowl instead and pushed Tania out around the corner.

  “I said let me go!” she said, and ripped her arm away from me.

  “Enough!” I roared. My face was growing hot, blood pounding through my head. Something in my expression shocked her into silence, and her eyes opened wide, her eyebrows disappearing up into her hairline.

  She stared at me for a few more seconds with that same look on her face, raindrops trickling down her face. She was shivering. Then she inclined her head and dropped her eyes. Her tongue darted out, licking her lips.

  “I didn’t want to leave the hospital,” she said, hugging herself. “I didn’t want to go with the cop, but he took me anyway.”

  I fought down a tightening in my chest, and I pulled her against me. “It’s okay. We’re going to get you home.”

  She pressed her head against my chest. “Okay, Miles. Whatever you say.”

  I started to breathe a sigh of relief, then I felt a subtle shift in weight in my jacket pocket. I slapped my hand to my side, trapping Tania’s hand inside. “What are you doing?”

  The snarl returned. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand from my pocket. She was clutching the vial of Chroma I’d got off Ugly in Heaven.

  “Tania,” I whispered.

  She bared her teeth at me and struggled against my grip. I held tight. I couldn’t do anything else. I wasn’t angry anymore, or disgusted, or anything else. I was nothing.

  Tania’s anger slipped as I stared at her, then her face broke completely. Tears flooded her eyes and she collapsed into my arms, sobbing violently.

  I ran my hand down her damp hair. She was so small, like a little kitten out in the rain.

  My pocket started making noises. I almost didn’t notice at first, I was so far away. But something about the shrill ringing nagged at me, so I pulled O’Neil’s phone from my pocket.

  I answered the call.

  “O’Neil, where are you?” Todd’s voice was strained. “They ambushed me, and the girl got away. We’re changing up, and we’re doing it now.”

  “Detective, I’ve got some bad news for you about your Tunneler girlfriend.”

  There was a pause and an intake of breath. “Miles.”

  “Why’d you take Tania?” I clenched my teeth, refusing to let my rage boil over.

  “Listen to me you little piece of shit, do you know how much you’ve fucked everything? When I find you—”

  I hung up.

  “Miles.” I glanced over my shoulder to find Desmond standing behind me. “Is she…”

  I stroked her hair again, and she burrowed her face into my chest. “She’s okay. But I need you to take her back to the hospital.”

  He frowned a little. “What are you going to do?”

  I disentangled Tania from my arms and took the Chroma back from her. She resisted a little, then let go with a sob. I passed her over to Desmond.

  “Miles,” he said, louder this time. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to find Todd.”

  Tania collapsed into him, weeping. His eyes went wide and he grabbed me by the jacket with his spare hand. “What? Tell me you didn’t just say that.”

  “You heard me. I’ll deliver O’Neil’s phone to Vivian, then I’m going to track down Todd. I need to have a little face-to-face chat with him. Some things you just can’t say over the phone.”

  “You remember what happened last time you two had a chat?”

  “This is different.”

  “No, this is stupidity incarnate.”

  “Maybe.” I shoved my hands in my pockets and turned away.

  “Damn it, guy, don’t be an idiot. Why are you doing this?”

  “Because,” I said. “Just because.”