by Arthur Slade
Coincidence? I think not.
I sniffed loudly and with such vigor that the single mom beside me looked over.
“I’ve got a cold,” I said.
She nodded, clutching her sleeping toddler. Put your kid to bed, I wanted to say.
But in that inhalation, I found a few more particles of ol’ Dermot. And I sniffed again. Nudging my way to the left, then right through the crowd. Each moment, his scent grew a little stronger. The traitor had actually tried to kill me. After all that talk. The long inane conversation. The flowers. The compliments he’d given me about my ability to kill.
Well, he’d see that first hand.
I followed my nose. Literally. Sniffing here and there, getting a few odd looks from the humans around me. His scent grew fresher as I worked my way along the street then turned down an alley. He’d run this way; I could tell by the way his particles were spread out. He had paused and leaned against a brick wall. His hands were wet. I actually found a palm print. The bastard had been there not five minutes ago. He’d dropped sweat on the ground too.
With each step, I was getting closer. He must have spent a good thirty seconds in that location to leave all of those pheromones.
Then he went down another alley. I was no more than two minutes behind him judging by the distribution of particles. The alley opened up onto the eternally busy Avenue Van Horne. His scent was so strong, I expected to bump into him any second. I pulled my hood up tighter and sniffed.
His scent stopped on the edge of the sidewalk between two parked cars. Cabs of all colors were going by. A city bus squuuueaashed its brakes.
He had hailed a cab. And was gone. Not less than forty-five seconds earlier. If it was on this side of the street, he was heading west. Traffic was slow because of the “accident.” The police had likely already set up checkpoints.
So I ran down the street to where the cars were stopped for a red light. I kept low and glanced through the windows of the cars, dodging pedestrians who were coming home from work. I looked at the occupants of each cab I passed: frumpy old man, a businessman, an old woman clutching her groceries.
Then the familiar back of a head with short, curly hair. He had his face in his hands. I skidded to a stop and backed up. Soon, I would have his head in my hands.
I cut between the parked cars and briefly toyed with the idea of smashing through the window and poking out his eyes. Instead, with a burst of adrenaline, I sank my nails into the door and pulled it off the cab. Vampire strength comes in handy when you wanted to, well, take a door off a cab.
I grabbed him by the front of his long jacket and yanked him out of the car. Lucky for him, he hadn’t fastened his seatbelt, or I might have torn him in half.
He smashed into a red VW, and for a moment, I thought I’d killed him. Then he got to his feet.
“Amber,” he said. His eyes were red.
“Yes, surprise, surprise, I’m not dead.” I smacked him in the head.
Normally that would have killed someone. I must’ve held back because he rubbed his face and stood up.
Then I came for him, nails out. He caught my hand and with a Jiu-Jitsu-type move, tossed me into the side of a blue city bus. It was a nice flip. And it hurt like hell.
“Stop it,” he said.
“But we’ve only started!” I flipped back onto my feet and charged toward him. He stood still for a moment then turned and began to flee.
Ah, there was nothing more exhilarating than chasing prey.
I pursued.
14
STAND DOWN
The bastard could run.
But I gained on him. He turned to ward me off, so I shoved him through a shop window. Male mannequins went flying, arms and limbs scattering as if a grenade had gone off.
“Stop it!” he said. “Stand down!”
I swung. He caught my hand. I swung with the other. And he caught it. “Just stop fighting and listen.”
The words were an invitation to do more damage. I twisted up and kicked him in the chin. He fell back, knocking over another mannequin. An alarm was ring-ding-dinging madly.
I leapt on him, held his shoulders down with my knees, and clamped my left hand around his neck. I was so tempted to just pull out his esophagus. He was breathing hard.
He looked as if he’d been crying. Weakling. I almost slapped him.
I released my pressure.
“Speak,” I said. “Why were you trying to kill me?”
He blinked. “I wasn’t. I didn’t.”
“Don’t lie! You were there. You fired the rocket launcher at my apartment.”
“I’m certain it was a rocket propelled grenade. I arrived a few minutes after your apartment was hit.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’ve been keeping my eye on you.”
I squeezed a little tighter. “I bet you have. To terminate the contract forever?”
“I told you, I didn’t fire the RPG.”
“Then which one of your henchmen did it?”
“None of us. We don’t work that way. We never kill innocent bystanders.”
I was tempted to stick my fingers in his ears and make them meet in the middle. “Why should I believe a backstabber?”
“Amber.” It was still odd to hear him say my name. “We wouldn’t have been this messy. We’re not an organization that draws attention to itself. At all. We would’ve chosen a much quieter death for you. This smacks of ... well ... of heavy-handedness.”
“What heavy-handed thugs want to kill me?” I asked. It was becoming clear that I had perhaps—just perhaps—jumped to the wrong conclusion.
“It’s not a coincidence this occurred so soon after your trip to Dubai.”
“I killed Gabriel. He didn’t organize this. He couldn’t.”
“No. But he was a cog in a very large organization.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know Blackwater and all the other security organizations? This one dwarfs their resources.”
“And you sent me to kill their leader?”
“Leader? He was just one of their lieutenants. And we hadn’t calculated any blowback as long as everything was done properly. I mean, no one has caught you for any of your other crimes. You’re very good at hiding your tracks.”
“Are you suggesting they tracked me all the way back to Montréal because of a mistake I made? That’s impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible. Especially with the resources they have. Did you leave anything at the—uh—the crime scene?”
“The dining scene,” I corrected. “I left a good portion of my own blood.” I thought a bit longer, reliving the event. Dropping down from the vent. The fight with Gabriel. Saliva when I was talking? No, they wouldn’t have any way to track me using my DNA. I wasn’t on any donor list. Part way through the confrontation, the guard had come in and I’d kicked him. And broken my shoe. No, not just any shoe. My Edwardian Hamburgers.
I loosened my grip on Dermot.
I remembered reading in the paper that Genevieve, the sales clerk, had been murdered in the shoe store. The place where I’d bought those very shoes. “I left my shoes,” I said. Oh, how stupid of me. How very, very stupid. “They tracked the shoes back to a store in Montréal and found my home phone number in their records and used that to figure out my address.”
He nodded. “This does seem like an arms dealer’s way of sending a message. The bigger the boom, the louder the message. I’m surprised they didn’t use a howitzer.”
Genevieve had died a horrible death because of my stupidity. An innocent life was lost. She was the closest thing I’d had to a friend. I shook my head, surprised at the emotion welling up in me. I’d sort out my feelings later. I needed answers.
“Why the hell did you come back?” I said. “The contract was done.”
“Let’s say I didn’t agree with the terms handed down from above.”
“Was it just a negotiation tactic?” I asked.
“It was a li
ttle of both, I guess. You may need our help to survive.”
“Well the arms dealers won’t be able to track me any further. What’s this arms organization called, by the way?”
“ZARC,” he said.
“Does that stand for something?” These acronyms were going to drive me crazy.
“No. It’s named after the CEO. Anthony Zarc.”
I released Dermot. “I’ll go underground. I’ll be gone.”
“In the next few hours, they’ll know your body wasn’t found. They may know already, depending on how many cops they’ve bribed.”
“I still don’t see how they can trace me.”
“We did. And their resources are much deeper than ours.”
He was herding me toward his organization. I also saw that standing inside the store arguing with him, broken glass all around, we were attracting a bit of attention. Sirens were getting closer. I helped him up and we stumbled to the sidewalk.
“Will you trust me once more?” he said.
“No,” I answered. “Never.”
He pressed a button on the side of his watch. Nothing happened. Then a few seconds later the sirens stopped.
“Was that a coincidence?” I asked.
He shrugged a coy shrug. “You need me, Amber. You need us. ZARC will be watching every airport. Every bus station. Every border. We can keep you safe.”
“How do I know you won’t just stick me in some kind of sick experiment?” I asked.
“You don’t,” he said. A black car had pulled up beside him, and the door opened of its own accord. I needed a watch like his: the magic siren-stopping, black-car-summoning watch.
I rocked on my heels. There was a straight line down the sidewalk, then I could duck into an alley and be gone. Forever. But at the last moment, I rubbed the snake ring on my little finger, rocked forward, and stepped inside.
I hoped it wasn’t the stupidest choice I’d ever made.
15
THE WHITE HOUSE
We were whisked out of the city and sped south toward the border. The driver was a Chinese man with a square, bald head who looked like he’d perhaps fought in several of the communist wars, judging by the scars. The driver was now the third person I’d seen from the organization. Well, third if you counted the guy I’d followed in an alley a million years ago.
Dermot was on his smartphone, which looked like it had been designed in the 1980s. He shook it several times, as if expecting that to scramble the words or change whatever text he’d just received.
“What will you offer me?” I asked.
“The same terms as before.”
“No, I mean you, Dermot—what will you offer me?”
“What do you mean?”
I pointed at him. “You’re the only one I know from your organization. I want your word.”
“I promise to keep you safe.”
“Safe? This girl can look after herself. Promise to find my mother.”
“We can’t.”
“Again, I’m talking only to you. Not your organization. I want you to promise.”
He scratched his head. “I’ll do my best.”
“Promise!”
“I promise to do my best to find your mother,” he said. “Is that enough?”
“Good,” I said. “At least that’s something. I don’t even know the name of your organization. I’ve been calling it the DBI.”
“DBI?”
“Yes, Dermot’s Bureau of Investigation.”
He laughed. “It’s a little bigger than that,” he said. “We don’t have an acronym, though. We just call ourselves the League.”
“League of what? Supernerds?”
“Just the League.”
“That tells me nothing.”
He shrugged. “It’s our name, nonetheless. Will you be in league with the League?”
“I want right of refusal on my missions. More control. I don’t want them just plopped on my lap. I want choice.”
“That can be done. But we need something from you.”
“Which is?” I, for some reason, expected him to say genetic material.
“More training. There are some who believe you are a loose cannon. You need to focus.”
I bit my tongue. “Yes. I can do that.”
“Then it’s a deal?”
I looked at him. He was smiling. “Yes,” I said after a moment’s pause. “For now. You seem to be my best option. By the way, what’s the whole point of this organization?”
“To bring peace to mankind,” he said. He didn’t seem to be joking.
“What do I care for mankind?”
“You do. I can tell. As much as you try to be cynical.”
I snorted.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“To a safe house in Vermont,” Dermot said.
“Ooh, that actually sounds comfortable.”
“It’ll be adequate to your needs.” His stiff and proper English suggested he hadn’t spent much time in the real world. Perhaps he was raised from a test tube inside this League of his.
We drove through the Blackpool border crossing into New York state without stopping. Yes, that’s right. A lane was made open for us. The border guard at the window didn’t even look up, perhaps had been given orders not to look up. Maybe we were invisible.
“That’s impressive,” I said.
Dermot shrugged. “The perks of being in the League.”
I still had to stifle a laugh every time I heard the name of the organization. I imagined a coalition of comic book nerds sitting around arguing about what they wanted to call themselves. “The League! No, the Guild of Do-Gooders.”
“I suppose ‘Guild of Do-Gooders’ was already taken,” I said. No sense wasting a clever thought inside my head.
Dermot didn’t deign to answer that question.
We went east along several quiet highways, crossing bridges here and there. My eyelids began to droop. Along with my attention span. Blink. Blink. Then came longer periods of darkness. I was rather exhausted—a run up and down a mountain, a near-death experience, a battle with the hairy man next to me ... oh, and I’d had classes that morning. So, I slept.
I awoke with a bit of a start and was momentarily bewildered and short of breath.
“You snore,” Dermot said. “Did you know that?”
“I do not!”
“Yes, you do. It wasn’t an entirely horrible sound.”
“Vampires don’t snore,” I said. Of course my mother had informed me that I was a Grade A snorer. She had looked into surgery, suggesting that my snores might compromise our ability to hide.
“It’s not your least attractive feature,” Dermot said.
I laughed.
We wove and weaved and turned our way into Vermont, passing all the stereotypical white houses and pretty little towns. My thoughts returned to Genevieve, and a lead ball of guilt formed in my stomach. My own stupidity had caused her death. I hadn’t intended it, of course, but from now on, I needed to be more aware of the ramifications of my actions.
Grief. That’s what I was feeling. I’d only known her for half an hour, but she represented so much that I admired in humans. And she’d been snuffed out. Revenge would be a great course of action.
Eventually we drove down a country lane and stopped at an old, white house. It was the perfect place to hide since there were thousands of these houses in Vermont. This one was guarded by a line of white pines and yellow birch and a maple tree in the front yard.
I followed Dermot into the house. “Welcome to the White House,” he said as he opened the front door.
“Creative name! I hope your organization is more creative when it comes to hiding its clients.”
Inside, the house was warm and homey. The furniture had a bit of a 1950s feel to it: braided rugs on the floor and quilts on the couch. There was a rocking chair next to the fireplace. It appeared to be brand new. He showed me the living room, the washroom, kitchen, then pointed at the door to an offic
e but led me past it.
I smelled other human pheromones and could hear the distant thud thud of a heartbeat. “Who’s in there?” I asked.
“A friend. Don’t worry, you’ll be meeting in a few minutes.” He led me to an open door. “And here’s your room.”
It was a large bedroom with a double bed. Several piles of clothing were on it: long sleeved shirts. T-shirts. Blue jeans. Dresses. Even eight boxes of shoes.
“Are those clothes for me?” I asked.
“I took the liberty of calling ahead.”
“You know my size?”
“I’m a good guesser.”
“Well, that’s very thoughtful of you. I’d like some time to freshen up.”
“Take all the time you need.”
There was an en suite bathroom. A shower rejuvenated me. After drying off, I picked a nice pair of blue jeans and a black sweater that made my pale skin stand out. The clothes fit perfectly. Dermot had a good eye. Or he was a professional dresser in another life.
Dermot was waiting in the living room. He had changed too. I guessed he had his own room there. Or a suitcase in the trunk. “You look better,” he said.
“I feel better. Are we roomies?” The possibility was intriguing.
He shook his head. “No. I’m needed at Central. But I do have a surprise.”
“I hate surprises.”
“Well, it’s a good one. The chairman is here to see you.”
“Am I that important that I get a visit from one of the bosses?”
“He just happened to be here. The chairman will be out of the office in a moment.”
Dermot stood up and headed for the front door.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To Central.”
“Don’t you need to protect your chairman from me?”
“He doesn’t need protection.” Then Dermot walked out the door.
So much for sappy goodbyes.
I was expecting an old white guy to come out of the office door. Maybe in a wheelchair—one of those comic book clichés. But the door swung open, and the man who came through was black. He was in blue jeans and a dark shirt and looked a little like an African American Steve Jobs.
“So you’re Amber Fang,” he said. He had a rather deep voice and warm eyes. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Amber.” He extended a hand. “I’m Ernest.”
