Don’t Bite the Messenger

by Regan Summers

  “You could…come with me.”

  I went still. He didn’t sound like he was making a concession. He shifted, rolling so quickly that I flailed gracelessly when I fell onto the bed. His eyes were bright, and not with unnatural vampire light. He looked excited.

  “I know this is your dream.” The words tumbled out. “McHenry showed me the logs, how a couple of years ago you started working double shifts. I know how hard you’ve worked to get here. But I can’t help but think that settling down doesn’t really suit you. We could travel all around the world together.”

  I don’t know what I looked like, but apparently it wasn’t encouraging. His lips pressed into a thin line, and the veins showing through his pale skin made him look abruptly weary. I was shocked, shocked that he would ask me, that he wouldn’t prefer me safe and sound on a static island in the middle of the Pacific. I’d even started wondering how far into the day we would get before we started fighting about it.

  “Are you sure?” I asked, sitting up and drawing my legs under me. “You told me that you’d take measures…to protect me from myself.” That thought soured my mood.

  “When I said that, I thought that you were impulsive, reckless. That you ran without thinking. But the more I learned about you, the more I’ve seen how you operate, which allows me to worry slightly less.”

  I stood up, smoothing my hair, pacing at the foot of the bed. Malcolm rested his elbows on drawn knees. He was gorgeous. He treated me well, and I had the hazy, fluttery feeling that the more time I spent with him, the more I would want to stay.

  But a man didn’t change overnight, or at least not because of one night. Sitting in the tropics, likely the only vampire for a thousand miles, he could say that I would be free to do as I pleased. But once I was within striking distance of other vamps, what were the odds he’d think boxing me in was a better alternative?

  “Just give me your rules,” he said. “Tell me what you need, what you expect so there’s no confusion later.”

  Vampires and their goddamn parameters and contracts. What did he want me to do? Commit to paper how I wanted our relationship to play out? I had hopes. Bubbly, nebulous hopes. But I barely knew what to do with myself on any given day, and I’d never been in anything remotely resembling a healthy relationship. I looked at his arm. Not that this was exactly “healthy.”

  “I should get something to eat.” I smiled, trying not to look nervous. “I can’t think on an empty stomach.”

  Half of me wanted to jump back into bed with Malcolm and agree with anything he might ever suggest, to surrender to him and trust that he would take care of me. It seemed like it would be so easy. However, the remainder of my brain, the logical part, howled a stubborn warning at top volume. I had been promised things before, and the only person who had ever delivered on a significant promise to me had been, well, me. I edged toward the curtains, expecting his hand to close on my wrist. It didn’t, and I turned back to find him watching me warily.

  “I’m going to run into town, but I’ll be back soon. And then we can, um, finish this discussion.”

  “I look forward to that.”

  ***

  He hadn’t believed me, I could tell. And he could easily have grabbed me, overpowered me, forced me into any situation he liked. But he hadn’t. Just like he hadn’t bitten me. That meant something.

  I wasn’t sure if it meant enough.

  “It’s only three kinds,” Mallow said from beside me.

  I looked up at the big Hawaiian—the nickname a fitting abbreviation of marshmallow rather than a traditional name—then back at the cooler. Three flavors of bottled smoothie lined the shelf, the same as he’d always carried. I reached out grabbed a Gitchy Green Goop, then carried it to the worn picnic table in the middle of Mallow’s little café-convenience store.

  “I’m having trouble with small decisions today.” I picked up the sweet roll he’d dropped off for me. “I have to make a big one, and I don’t have room in my brain for anything else.”

  “You been buying that same smoothie every day for months.” Mallow sashayed his massive form down the narrow aisle to stock snack foods. “Why’s today any different?”

  I picked at my roll, frowned at the bottle perspiring in the growing heat. I’d fallen into an awful routine. Gotten lazy. Sean Oester would have torn me apart for that, if he’d managed to get over the fact that I’d shacked up with a vampire. What had Sean done when he’d gotten out of the game? How had he managed to adapt, to stop himself from constantly checking his mirrors, to walk away from every thrill that tried to lure him in? Maybe he hadn’t. For all I knew, he’d given up the quiet life and gone back to running or started another company somewhere else. I’d been too hurt, too stubborn, to follow up with him after he left. Now I’d give anything for his advice.

  “Thanks, Mallow.” I dropped a ten on the counter.

  “You young, Syd,” he said. “Even if you make the wrong decision today, you still got years to make all kinds of right ones. Hell, you a smart girl. Maybe you need to invent yourself a choice.”

  “Very enlightening. Thank you, sensei.” I grinned and bowed as I backed through the glass door. Mallow waved me off with a smile.

  I unscrewed the lid on the smoothie as I crossed the dirt parking lot. A small pickup meandered down the narrow, two-lane road. Otherwise, the town was quiet. Whenever I screwed something up, Sean would tell me to figure out where I’d gone wrong, and find a way to win. Every task, every mistake was part of the bigger game. Did I want to be with Malcolm? Did I want to explore him, both in my bed and at my side? Hell, yes. Did I trust him? Sort of. But God, if he hurt me I would never forgive myself for having gotten involved with a vampire.

  I shifted my purchases into the crook of my left arm and dug my right hand into my shorts pocket, trying to find my keys. Movement reflected in the strip of chrome trim beneath the window. There was something too purposeful, too quick about it. I spun, and the two men advancing on me slowed. Crew cuts, pale with burgeoning sunburns across noses and cheeks, stiff gray shirts tucked into starched black cargo pants. One blond and one brunette, both wearing the same intense frown.

  “Morning, boys. What’s going on?” I stepped away from the truck to give myself room to maneuver. I hadn’t done anything to raise the attention of the local po-po, though these boys weren’t wearing badges. They weren’t wearing the customary shoulder holsters either, but I’d seen vampires’ human security teams often enough to recognize them. I go out for breakfast, and Malcolm has a team of bodyguards at the ready. Fantastic.

  They split, the blond coming straight for me, the brunette dropping toward the rear of the Bronco, trying to flank me. Not a friendly formation. Not bodyguards, then. A retrieval team. And there went my heart, dropping straight into the dirt.

  I ducked under my rearview mirror, jumped the wooden fence framing the lot and aimed for an alley between a storefront and small house. Haiku was tiny. There were no crowds or office buildings to help me lose a tail. But it was surrounded by bountiful farms and dense forest. All I had to do was get away from the main road and I could lose them. Probably.

  Blondie got a hand on my shoulder. I twisted, trying to tear loose. Rather than letting go, he shoved, sending me sprawling into the grass. I pushed up on my arms before a knee landed on my back, knocking the air out of my lungs and squashing me into the ground.

  “This her?” the blond man asked. He twisted my arms behind me, and secured my wrists with a zip tie. I struggled to breathe, to form a coherent thought.

  “Looks like. Hey, watch it. He said to bring her back, not to rough her up.”

  So Malcolm had decided to take matters into his own hands, and didn’t even care if his security detail hurt me so long as they didn’t rupture an organ. I could have spent all day drawing up a list of rules for him, and he still would have sent his dogs on me the first time I wandered off. One night hadn’t changed him.

  But it had made me stupid.

  “Ke
ep quiet,” the brunette said. “We’re getting in a car. Going for a ride. You yell, we will silence you. You try to run, we won’t be so gentle. Got it?”

  “Understood,” I ground out.

  They pulled me to my feet. Below my shorts, my right knee had opened up and was bleeding freely. My palms were gritty, but I wasn’t hurt, hurt. A point to my befanged lover.

  They pulled me back toward the parking lot, and I watched the door of the convenience store, praying Mallow was in the back and wouldn’t come out and stir things up. No such luck. The big man ambled out onto his small porch, and I swallowed hard. This wasn’t his fight.

  “Them boys giving you trouble, Syd?”

  “Outstanding warrant,” I called back cheerfully, hissing when Blondie’s fingers clamped down on my arm. “Too many unpaid parking tickets. I’ll get it straightened out. No worries.”

  “You want me to call Hiro?”

  “No, no. That’s okay.” No need to embarrass myself in front of my landlord too. God, I was going to lay into Malcolm so hard he’d wish Bronson had killed him. I managed a shaky smile before Blondie pushed down on my head and eased me into the back of a shiny, red Impala. The car was stifling.

  “This your idea of a good time?” I asked through gritted teeth. The brunette started the car, cranked the AC and locked the doors. No doubt the kiddie locks were engaged in the back. “Kidnapping humans for your vampire keeper?”

  “The bennies are good,” Blondie said, barking out a laugh. The car left a cloud of dirt behind as it peeled out. I rocked, spreading my feet to keep from falling over. They hadn’t put me in a seat belt, or even bothered with their own. “Besides, you ain’t got any room to talk, the way you been keeping on with a sucker.”

  “Enough,” the brunette said.

  My brain screeched to a halt. Nobody called the vampire they worked for a sucker. Competitors? Lesser vamps? Sure. But never the direct employer. Cold sweat broke across my back. “Malcolm didn’t send you?”

  “Malcolm Kelly?” Blondie asked. They looked at each other. Not knowing them, I couldn’t read them well, but most people wear surprise and dismay about the same. Big eyes, tight mouths, bobbing Adam’s apples.

  The brunette stared at me in the rearview mirror. “Is Kelly who you got stowed at your house?”

  I stared back. “Who sent you?”

  “You ain’t in any position to be asking questions.” Blondie rocked a little as we came to a hard stop at a stop sign. “Shut it.” He leaned toward the driver, talking low. “Get on the horn to team two. This ain’t right.”

  They weren’t Malcolm’s people. That thought pinged through my brain for a moment while my body went from zero to sixty, heart rate climbing before it leveled out, adrenaline emptying into my veins until I was close to shaking. My eyes narrowed. They knew I was with a vampire, but they didn’t know who until I’d told them. They weren’t Bronson’s men. Those guys were tight-lipped and professional. I wouldn’t have seen them coming.

  We drove down toward the ocean cliffs, closer to my house and the deadly vampire inside. Not that he could help me in the daytime, unless I could lure these guys into my bedroom, which I decidedly did not want to attempt. I tried to squeeze my hands free from the binding, but all I managed to do was cut off circulation and peel away a bit of skin.

  The brunette dialed a cell phone and pressed it to his ear. He glanced at his partner and shook his head, then looked down at the phone as he dialed again. The car bumped onto the narrow shoulder before he swung back onto pavement. Careless driving. I focused on the road ahead, playing the familiar route through my mind. We passed a small house cheerfully advertising fresh produce on the right, and rounded, reddish boulders in a sloping field on the left.

  That put us about a half a mile from a sharp corner, and we were only just starting to pick up speed. I looked at the thick necks in front of me and took a deep breath. My morning’s to-do list had gone from “fret about vampire and get breakfast” to “get the fuck out of this car and the hell back to the house.” I so preferred concrete objectives.

  “You got sent to take down Malcolm Kelly, and weren’t even warned?” I forced a laugh. “Is running around blind your standard MO, or have you been saving up your stupid for this operation?”

  “You keep yapping like that, I’ll find something to shut that mouth for you,” Blondie snapped.

  “Maybe we should call for Richard.” Blondie scrubbed his hand through his thinning hair. “See if he knew it was this sucker Kelly she was shacking up with. This ain’t right.”

  “Stick to the plan,” his partner replied.

  I stared up at the ceiling. Richard. Cheese-yellow hair. That cold blast of power as he’d tried to break into my mind right before I’d left Alaska. He’d been hurt, and I’d cut him but not killed him. He’d tracked me—or followed Malcolm—and now I had fellow humans about to hand me over to a cruel, vengeful vampire. My body hummed with impatient energy. I lowered my chin and focused on the road ahead. Time to get moving.

  “They’re probably on him, and the phones have gone down,” the brunette said. He looked at me in the mirror and bared his teeth. “You hear that, sweetheart? It doesn’t matter who your boyfriend is. It’s daytime. Our team doesn’t even need to get close to pick him off.”

  A team. Sent after Malcolm. In an open house that provided him with nowhere to hide from the sun. I swallowed my unease, leaned my shoulders forward and scooted my ass back until it was flush against the seat, making as much room as I could for my legs.

  “If the phone’s gone dead,” I murmured, “that means they’re close to him. And if they’re close, they don’t stand a chance against him.”

  “Fuck this noise,” Blondie said, turning and pulling a Taser off his belt.

  I threw myself back and kicked upward, my heel cracking against the underside of his jaw. His head hit the roof and he slumped, knocking his buddy’s right hand off the wheel. The brunette yelled, struggling under the dead weight. I kicked the back of his seat with both feet. He shot forward, chest hitting the steering wheel and sending us halfway into the other lane.

  “You goddamn little…” He turned his head, struggling under his partner. The corner rose ahead of us, a sweet ninety-five-degree angle best taken at about thirty-five miles an hour. We were doing upwards of sixty. I shoved my legs against the seats to brace myself, and tucked my head.

  Tires squealed. The driver swung the wheel, but not tight enough as Blondie’s body collapsed, anchoring his right side. The car fishtailed. He overcorrected, and we tipped, the driver’s side tires leaving the pavement for an instant before landing again. Hard. Blondie crashed into the passenger’s side window, his head shattering it. My teeth clicked together and I squeezed my eyes closed. The car jerked, then bumped and slid through a field of high grass before crashing into a pile of rocks.

  I opened my eyes. The Impala clicked and steamed. Bits of glass tinkled merrily as they fell, and I smelled the rotten sweetness of antifreeze. I pushed myself back, the muscles of my thighs screaming, my shoulders stretched to the point of pain.

  I glanced at Blondie and then quickly away. The shape of his head was no longer right. The driver lay slumped, halfway over the steering wheel, but he was breathing. The passenger’s side window had shattered somewhere between the road and the rock. I turned around, gingerly feeling my way with my fingertips, and dropped into a crouch. My knee sank into the seat and I half sat on the armrest, straining to reach the handle on the outside of the door.

  I caught the handle and pressed with my thumbs. My hold slipped and my arm raked across the fragmented glass, making me cry out. I took a breath, blew a strand of hair off my forehead and thought of Malcolm, waiting for me, trusting me to come back to him. Fuck, I hoped he was as scary as these bastards seemed to think he was. I hooked my thumbs around the handle again, and pushed.

  The door creaked open, misshapen metal shrieking, and I staggered out of the car, slicing my arm even worse on the gl
ass. The driver groaned and I bit my lip to keep from screaming. I carefully pulled my arms back through the window and circled the car until I found a nice, short piece of jagged metal that used to belong to a fender. I dropped to my knees and maneuvered the center of the zip tie over the sharp edge.

  I spent about three minutes sawing, cursing violently in my head and sweating like a pig while my shoulders tried to fall off. That shit always looked so easy in the movies. The tie finally broke, and I moaned in relief. Predictably, my wrists were raw, and a couple of deep cuts bled steadily from the underside of my left arm. I gave the driver one last glance, then trotted back toward the road. The grass had already sprung back up. In another few minutes, the path the Impala had taken would be obscured. If Malcolm was okay, maybe I’d call emergency services for these bastards. Maybe.

  I stuck to the shadows under trees, tried not to look like I was beat to shit and made it back to my truck in fourteen minutes. I kept the Bronco between me and the store, not in the mood to concoct a story of how I’d escaped from the traffic police and gotten mangled in the process. I snagged a warm bottle of water and poured it over my bleeding knee and arm, then tore the sleeve off a long-sleeved shirt and wrapped it around the cuts. Peering through the Bronco, I smiled when Mallow’s broad back disappeared into a stockroom.

  I climbed into the driver’s seat, popped on a pair of aviator shades and drifted out of the parking lot. Thank God I’d kept my keys. Maybe I’d find a spot of luck in this screwed-up day after all. A blue pickup truck zipped past me, and then a horn honked. I checked my mirrors, and my fists tightened around the wheel. The blue Tundra swung a jerky U-turn, forcing a small sedan into the ditch, and then bore down on me, the driver’s face a mess of bloody broken nose and rage. I thought I’d at least have gotten out of town before the brown-haired thug came to, and definitely before he stole a truck. Luck never comes to those who need it.