by Conner, Jack
"Give me a drink?" the wounded man said.
Byron frowned but stuck out his arm anyway. "Drink away," he invited, and turned to Cloire. "I hurt Danielle," he said. "Her blood was everywhere."
"Such concern," Cloire said. "You did fuck her. Either that or baby's developing a conscience." She ran her fingernails along his cheek, scraping his skin. "Which is it?"
"Well, I didn't fuck her," he said. "Whether or not that means I've a conscience is debatable." He jerked his arm away from Loirot. "Enough.”
"Thanks, By."
Jean-Pierre yelled to the back, "The cops are on us. Cloire, you got the grenades?"
"As you requested."
"Bombs away."
Byron and Cloire moved to the extreme rear, dragging their box of explosives with them, and popped open the rear doors with a bang.
Two police cruisers followed immediately behind, lights flashing and alarms wailing. One cop had some sort of megaphone to his mouth and was shouting through it. When he saw the van's doors fly open, he quit the megaphone and reached for a gun.
Too late.
Cloire ripped the pin off one grenade and threw it through the cops' windshield. It detonated a split-second after it had passed into the driving compartment, the windshield bursting outward in a million pieces of charred glass. The cruiser scraped to a smoking halt, almost colliding with the one behind it, which swerved recklessly around and shot forward to get to the side of the van.
The passenger cop was in such a panic he fired his shotgun twice through the glass of his own windshield. The second blast caught Byron in the chest, but not before he'd lobbed two grenades—one in each hand—at the cruiser, which burst into double flames and rolled to a flaming halt.
"God I love roasting pork,” Cloire said. She turned to watch the blood spreading across Byron's chest. The wound itself was closing before her eyes. "My, my, aren't we manly tonight."
He slammed the rear doors closed. "You ain't seen nothin' yet."
"Cloire!" came a shout from the front. With grumbling obedience, Cloire moved forward and blew in Jean-Pierre's ear.
"What can I do for you, sunshine?"
"We're going to need another car here soon: the cops have identified this one. Take a bike ahead and knock us off another van. A new one preferably, something very unlike what we're in now."
"What about our guns? We just going to leave them here in the fucking van for anyone to find? Some of this stuff can be traced, you know."
He grabbed her face with one hand and drew it near his own. Staring into her different-colored eyes, he said, "Just do it."
"Say please, J-P."
He shoved her backwards, and she fell down laughing.
"Please," he spat. He turned his attention back to the road.
Cloire busied herself with the task of readying a bike as Byron approached her.
"Care to lower the ramp, light-of-my-life?"
He popped open the doors and threw down a ramp, then stepped back as she roared away without so much as a nod good-bye.
* * *
Danielle woke to the taste of blood in her mouth. She wiped it from her fingers and licked it gratefully.
"Thanks," she said.
"How are you?"
She examined her chest, trying for detachment but failing. Ruegger had stanched her bleeding with a white shirt from their second suitcase, which he'd managed to hoist into the front seat with one hand. The shirt was soaked through, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped. She was hurt badly and needed sustenance. Shaking her head, she said, "I'll live. We just need a place to crash for a while, if we can get the albino off our backs."
“I’m trying.”
"What happened to the cops?" she asked.
"Dead, damn it. Jean-Pierre’s crew used grenades."
She fell silent. Then: "How long until we're out of town?"
"Too long. Another half hour."
She glanced at one of her watches. "It's going to be close. Sunrise in under an hour." She craned her head to see out the back. There seemed to be gallons of blood back there, but it didn't interfere with the view.
"They're way back there," she said. “But they’re there.”
He nodded. "Every time I try to lose him, he's right there with me. Wonder if he’s still looking through others’ eyes."
"Think he knows where we’re going?”
"He can’t. I think he's tapping into your head."
"He can do that with humans, yeah. But not with shades. Plus, he just used up all his psychic energy on his homeless guys and his other watchers. Otherwise he wouldn’t have had to kill the cops."
"Right. But for a time you two were very close. You developed a tight bond: maybe he's able to use that to a psychic advantage. And in your weakened condition ..."
"Maybe."
He passed her a cigarette and his Beretta.
"More cops," he said.
She groaned. "No rest for the weary."
She leaned out the window, squinted one eye and fired low. The cruiser's wheel blew out and the vehicle started into a dangerously fast spin, finally flipping over and skidding to a halt upside-down.
"They alive?" Ruegger said.
"Yeah, but it was close.” She tried to block out the thought that she might’ve hurt the two in the cruiser. “Hope they don’t find us again. If they only knew we were cops of a sort, maybe they’d ease off a bit.”
She lit her cigarette and leaned her head back out the window, her hair stirring in the breeze.
Traffic, as the sun's advances on the horizon grew more persistent, became thicker and more purposeful, and the albino's ebony van vanished into it so that it was nowhere to be found; when the albino reappeared, it was behind the wheel of a different van, dark and older than the first.
Ruegger and Danielle's spirits sank. Finally, the city of New York began to dissipate, its massive concentration of steel and humanity unraveling to give way to open road and emptier skylines.
"Almost sunrise," she said. One of her worst fears was now making itself realized: being trapped in open country with the sun coming up and sun-resistant killers just behind them, preventing them from finding some place to hole up for the day. If they hid too soon, the killers would catch them and expose them to the sun ... and if they didn't hole up soon enough, the sun would get them anyway.
Their Mustang rattled and groaned around them. The endless highway stretched ahead as they blew past the outskirts of the sprawling metropolis. They headed west, away from the sun.
"We're not gonna make it," she said. "Under nine minutes till sunrise.”
He laid a hand on the back of her neck and massaged the tense muscles there. "We'll look back on this and laugh."
"From our graves, yeah. You want a tombstone or a crypt?"
"Oh, crypt, most definitely.” He checked the rear-view. "Still behind us."
She grunted and tried to throw her legs up on the dashboard, but she was too weak and her legs slid off and thudded to the floor.
"Death sucks," she said.
He reached a hand to the backseat and pulled out second suitcase—the heavy one. Both were densely packed: one with clothes, one with weapons. The arms ranged from the exotic to the mundane, tools Ruegger had collected over the years; when one got too old, he'd replace it. After a while, Danielle had gotten into it, and the guns became sleeker and more powerful. Anything that could fit, fit. Not just guns—bombs, too, from plastique to grenades.
Ruegger was probably thinking of throwing a timed device onto the road behind them, but those things were so uncertain …
He shook her gently, and Danielle cracked an eye. She must have passed out. "What?" she groaned, looking around and closing her eye again.
"We’re there."
He swerved onto the exit ramp. She felt the grating of metal on concrete as their hurtling black contraption smashed against a pockmarked wall.
"What?" She leaned into him, putting both arms around him, letting the blood
drip from her chest.
He glanced at the rear-view mirror. “No sign of our pursuers. We're almost to the Inn.”
"No," she warned, her voice cracking. "Motels are death-traps, baby. All they've got to do is go room-to-room until—"
He pressed his chin against her head. "That's not going to happen, and we have something to do," he said, swerving into the parking lot of the little hide-away motel, the CLEARGLASS INN, just as advertised. He screeched to a halt in front of the lobby doors, and the car shuddered and died. The vampires bailed out of the car, suitcases in tow, and Danielle was almost to the lobby when Ruegger shouted, "Wait!"
She spun. "What?" She looked at a watch. "Under three minutes.”
“We’re just paying a visit, not checking in.”
“Okay …”
“What’s the one thing we learned on our anniversary?”
Comprehension dawned. She swore.
“It’s the best way out of this,” he said.
“But—”
Not bothering to argue about it, he moved into the lobby.
“Where’s Vincent Greggs?” he asked the man behind the counter. “He’s a guest of yours.”
“I can’t give out that—”
Ruegger extended his powers; Danielle could sense it. He wasn’t a strong psychic manipulator like Jean-Pierre, but he could handle one human for a brief time. “Where is Vincent Greggs?”
The registrar blinked. “Let me check.” He typed into his computer, then glanced up. “Room 314.”
Ruegger marched up the stairs to the third floor, Danielle immediately behind. They found Room 314 and Ruegger kicked in the door. Greggs, a prudent vampire, was just checking the windows to make sure his personal blackout curtains had been installed properly. He whirled, anger mixed with fear in his face, as Ruegger and Danielle barged in.
“What the hell—?”
Ruegger grabbed him by the throat and hefted him off the ground. “You were hired to take out someone—someone who knows who killed Ludwig Gleason. Who’s your target?”
The man tried to talk, couldn’t. Ruegger eased up.
“Will you let me go if I tell you?” Greggs said.
“No. But I won’t torture you, either.”
Grimness settled over the other’s features. “You’re the Marshals, aren’t you?”
“That’s right. Now talk.”
“Hauswell,” Vincent said. “I was hired to kill Hauswell. I was just on my to—”
Ruegger tore off his head. Even as the blood spurted, Ruegger tuned, wearily, and offered the body, and blood, to Danielle.
“Drink,” he said. “Go on.”
She hesitated. “You … you didn’t even give him a chance.”
He let out a breath. “I know, but he was a hired assassin, a killer without conscience or mercy. There’s no difference between him and any other shade we’ve taken out before. The sun is almost up.”
Slowly, she nodded, and took the body in her arms.
* * *
The van jerked to a smoldering stop yards from the vampires' Mustang, and Jean-Pierre clambered from the overheated hulk to stare at the rising sun. He heard doors opening and closing behind him, but his gaze was unwavering. If Danielle wasn't in stasis by now, she'd be dead.
"The car's empty!" Loirot shouted. He'd recovered more quickly after imbibing what Byron had given him, and he was up and moving—but still not at peak health.
"Trunk?" Jean-Pierre said.
"Working on it," came the reply.
Jean-Pierre waited, breathless.
"Trunk's empty!"
"Go search the dumpster and outer perimeter of the building," he instructed Loirot. "Keep an eye out for sewer grates and air shafts. If you find them alive don't stay to fight."
Loirot stalked away.
"Check the hollow beneath the back compartment," Jean-Pierre said.
With the help of Cloire, Kilian found the catch and removed it. A metal door lay there, the lid of the vampires' last-ditch coffin.
"Waste of time," said Byron. "Vampires're paranoid about being trapped in their coffins. They'll've gotten as far away as possible by now."
"We've got to open it,” Kilian said. “Just to be sure."
Byron shrugged. "I don't get paid by the hour ..."
"It'll be booby-trapped," Cloire said. "Be sure of that."
Jean-Pierre nodded. "Can you open it?"
"Anything for you, lovey." Quietly, she set to work, and the crew waited tensely. Loirot returned, shaking his head. At last Cloire looked up. “Done,” she said. “Shall I open it?”
The entire crew watched their leader. This was a decisive moment. If the coffin was opened and occupied, the vampires would be struck by the sun and become flaming husks that would blow away in the wind, dead to all the world. Or Jean-Pierre would refuse to open it.
The albino lowered his head, took the last drag on the last cigarette of the pack, and flung it to the ground. When he looked back up at his crew, his face betrayed his thoughts.
"Fuck," said Cloire. "You goddamned pussy-whipped bastard." She turned her back to him and walked away, casting a malicious, if conspiratorial, glance at Kilian.
"We'll wait till nightfall to open the chamber," Jean-Pierre said
“Fuck that,” said Cloire, coming back, with a scowling Kilian by her side. Loirot was with them, too. “We’re opening the coffin now.”
"Get away from there!" Jean-Pierre shouted, stepping forward, but Loirot and Kilian blocked him off.
"Now now, whitey," said Cloire. "It's my turn now. Are you with us or against us?"
Jean-Pierre saw he had no choice, not if he wanted to stay leader of this crew. "You … you've removed all the booby-traps?"
"No promises. They had it rigged pretty tight."
He flicked his wrist in disgust. "Do it.”
She grinned and hopped into the back compartment. After fiddling with the coffin's catch for a moment, she turned toward the others dramatically, a showman's pause, then threw off the lid and leapt back. There was an audible creaking of leather as those assembled leaned forward to peer into the shallow recess.
The explosion sent roaring flame and twisted metal to wash over asphalt and werewolf alike. When the heat died away, it left only wreckage in its wake, with smoke billowing from nearby cars (including the werewolves' new van) and drifting through the shattered glass of the lobby. Charred rubble lay strewn across the ground, and cries of alarm could be heard from inside.
Smoking, Jean-Pierre raised his head from pavement, searching for the others; in turn, they rose and did the same. Jean-Pierre could hear Loirot muttering, "Fucking ruined my suit, the bastards."
Despite it all, Jean-Pierre felt pleased. Run, Danielle.
"More cops are going to come," Byron said.
The albino nodded, watching the others gather around.
"Brilliant disarming," Kilian said to Cloire.
"Fuck off and go to hell," she snarled.
"Knock it off,” Jean-Pierre said.
Loirot snorted. "Don't order them around. Not unless you're going to act like a leader, Jean-Pierre."
"That's right," Cloire said. "You're slipping, whitey."
The albino's lip curled down. "Is there a point to this, Cloire?"
Her eyes blazed. "Shape up or ship out. You're utterly fucked-up, you know, completely eaten up by someone you're supposed to be killing. In fact, I think the only reason you haven't flat out told us to pack up and go home is that you figure the best way to keep dear Danielle alive is to head the team that's sent to kill her."
They glared at each other, both spoiling for a fight.
Loirot cleared his throat. “I hear sirens.”
* * *
What Ruegger and Danielle had learned on their anniversary was the importance of tunneling. So, after swearing profusely, the odd flock took to the dirt, hollowing out what little space they could as deep and dark as they could reasonably want to go.
Ruegger dug de
ep, reaching the cool moistness of the hidden earth, maybe forty feet down. With Danielle’s help, he tunneled sideways, putting some distance between the fugitives and the motel. The dirt was cold, hard, wet, and endless, and Ruegger's telekinetic abilities weren't strong enough to eliminate the need for physical labor.
They hit an underground river and plunged into it unexpectedly. They allowed it to sweep them along. The river brought them into a network of natural caverns, which were very dark indeed. Ruegger helped Danielle out of the water and they lay along the rocky shore in silence, dripping wet, catching their breath.
Danielle laughed. "We should do that more often."
Ruegger moved their two briefcases out of the way and threw his arm around her. "I'm glad you feel that way. It's gonna be hell getting out of here."
He lay down, feeling the smooth stone against his back, and Danielle rested her head on his chest. It was so peaceful down here, if dark. He wondered when and if he'd ever be able to return to New York, but found to his surprise that he didn't care. New York had haunted his dreams for too long.
“You know,” she said, and there was a thoughtful quality in her voice that made him wary.
“Yes?” he said.
“Well, we’re in the dark, underground, with only the babble of a subterranean river for sound …”
“So?”
“Now might be the perfect time for you to tell me your story.”
“My story?”
“Don’t be dense. Your past. Your history. Everyone else knows so much about it—Veliswa, Hauswell, Ludwig, Malie—but I don’t know anything. I’m tired of not knowing about you, babe. About what you’ve been through, who you are. Your famous dark period. Everything.”
He heard the sincerity in her voice, and the pain. He sympathized. Still …
“I’m sorry, Dani, but … I’m not ready,” he said.
In the background, the river babbled. Danielle let out a long breath.
“So, what now?” she said.
“On to Las Vegas,” he said. Both knew that’s where Hauswell would be. It’s where the old vampire based his criminal operations out of. “Time to find out who killed Ludwig.”
