I stared at him, my knuckles white as I gripped his jacket, my brain doing a loop-de-loop. “Your people are the ones destroying the city.”
“My people are defending our territory.” He practically growled as he spoke.
“A territory that’s expanding considerably.”
He shook his head. “This is not possible. My lieutenants…”
“Fuck your lieutenants, John.” I didn’t have time for this shit. Vivian was dying. “I’m not going to give you three seconds. I’m not even going to give you one. You’re going to tell me, right now. Where is the Chroma?”
“I’m sorry Mr. Franco,” a woman’s voice came from behind me. “He really doesn’t know.”
I was too tired to spin around, so I shuffled on the spot until the source of the voice came into view. Caterina Andrews wore the same dress I’d pulled off her in the motel room, along with a leather handbag over one shoulder. Her red hair flowed freely behind her like a mane. My heart managed a feeble jump, and the image of what she looked like with a few less clothes flashed uninvited into my mind.
She strolled into the room, her white sandals barely whispering on the floor. Somehow she had escaped the dust of smashed masonry that coated me and Andrews, giving her a kind of pure angel vibe.
“Cat, you got to beat it,” I said, suddenly conscious of how ridiculous I looked in my ripped clothes. “You’re lucky I didn’t accidentally kill you.”
“I wish you had,” Andrews said, his scarred face twisting horribly. He tried again to push himself to his feet, but did no better than spreading his blood pool a little wider. “One lover kills another. Poetry, eh, you treacherous little bitch!”
The look that Caterina gave her husband would have flash-frozen Hell itself. She had bags under her eyes. Had they been there the last time I’d seen her?
“My dear John,” she said, almost purring. “There’s no need for insults like that.”
“Look, seriously, I don’t got time for marital spats,” I said, trying to put myself between the two of them. “He’s got something I need, and—”
I stopped talking as I felt something shifting in reality. Someone was opening a Pin Hole. It didn’t me long to work out who.
Caterina’s homely clothing was gone, replaced with a slinky red cocktail dress with a neckline that plunged so low I worried the dress would tear in two. Her footsteps became the click of stiletto heels. Only her hair remained the same, still that free-flowing wave of bronze, but now it seemed more like Medusa’s snakes.
In spite of myself, I found my palms sweating, my heart thumping with its good old fear of beautiful women. “Jesus H. Christ,” I said. “You’re a Tunneler?”
She didn’t look at me; she had eyes only for her husband. With every step she took, her clothes changed a little more, each time baring a little more skin, each time more and more likely to slip off completely.
“Husband,” she purred, “you have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this.”
The look on Andrews’ face must have mirrored mine, an expression that was one part slack-jawed yokel and two parts sheer bewilderment.
Then it struck me. It was so obvious I can only blame Caterina’s tantalizingly shifting clothes for distracting me. She wasn’t using a circle for her Pin Holes.
She was on Chroma.
Neither I nor Andrews had the gumption to act before Caterina slid her hand into her handbag. I couldn’t even get the breath out of my throat to speak when she pulled free a handgun and aimed it from the hip. The damn thing looked like a howitzer in her slim hands.
“Caterina…” John’s voice had a note of pleading in it. It didn’t do him any good.
The gun barked twice, ejected shell casings tinkling as they hit the ground. My hands went to my stomach of their own volition, but I hadn’t sprung any leaks. No, those bullets weren’t for me.
John Andrews slumped over, a hiss of escaping breath the only noise he made as he died. The first shot had hit him right where my hammer had got him, the other had blown a hole in his skull. His white tuxedo wasn’t so white anymore.
Caterina lowered the smoking gun and turned to me, a crazed, lopsided smile snaking across her face. “There. Isn’t that much better?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Just for once, I’d like everyone to be who they goddamn say they are. Was that too much to ask?
Caterina stared at me with her Cheshire cat smile, the gun hanging from her side as if it were no more than a shopping bag. Jesus, was I the only sane person in this city?
Well, given the trail of bodies that lay behind me, my sanity could be debated. Probably in a court of law.
My gaze slid from Caterina to her husband’s body and back again. Her eyes were bloodshot, her mouth twitching every few seconds. She was handling the Chroma well; neither Tania nor I had stayed so calm.
She was waiting for me to speak, it seemed. Christ Almighty. I was being thrown around so much I was getting whiplash.
“Cat,” I started, raising my arms in a desperate pacifying gesture. “Why don’t you put away the cannon?”
She just smiled wider and kept the gun in her hand. With a few slinking steps she was in front of me, close enough that I could feel the heat of her breath against my skin. My legs had checked out along with my brain, and I was stuck standing against the piano, a drugged-up murderess in front of me and a dead gangster at my side. This fucking day…
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Caterina said, “but it needed to be done. You understand, of course.”
The Chroma had sent her round the bend. At least, I hoped it was the Chroma. What the hell had she been thinking? And since when had she been a Tunneler?
“He was a very bad man,” I said, raising my hands. “I’m sure the world will be better now he’s got a few extra holes in him. Now about that gun…”
“He wasn’t bad,” she snapped, and I flinched as she twitched her gun arm. “He was stupid. Inefficient. He would have let the whole Chroma incident pass him by, thinking of it as some new-fangled drug he didn’t need. He’s always been too caught up in the Ink and alcohol trades to see what he could really do.”
“Christ, Cat, tell me this is the Chroma talking,” I said, pushing myself back against the shattered piano. I was still flashing with impulses to flee, but the logical part of my brain kept me still. Something told me that in her current state she’d be something like a wild dog chasing the mailman. Your best bet was to look it in the eyes and keep it from biting you in the ass.
Caterina didn’t seem to be paying much attention to me anyway. She prodded Andrews’ body with her toe, her lips twisting with disgust.
“It was always money with him,” she said. “The territory, the gang, even his marriage to me, it was all just a means to an end. He couldn’t see what the Chroma could truly be used for.”
I didn’t like where this train of thought was going, and I wanted to get off. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be an emergency brake. “Well, it looks like you fixed that. Chroma can’t be used, Cat. It doesn’t play nice with others. I learned that the hard way.”
She smiled then, a smile to set my knees shaking. “Look around you, Mr. Franco. Look what we’ve achieved with Chroma.”
“‘We’? Much as I’d like it not to have been me who scorched those gangsters, I did this. Not you.”
She looked away from Andrews and moved so close I could feel the tips of her breasts pressed against me. Another time, that might have got my engines running, but right now it just made my guts twist all the more fiercely.
I could feel the cold metal of the gun pressed against my side as she wrapped her arms around me, one hand sliding up to stroke my stubble. “Oh come now, Mr. Franco, you’re much too smart to think that. It wasn’t all a lie, you know. Yesterday morning, in the motel room… I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you the truth before, but I just couldn’t take the risk. I didn’t know whether I should trust you. But when I followed you here, and saw you t
ear apart my husband’s mansion…” She licked her lips, moaning softly. “Then I knew.”
Hell. I’ve met some loony women in my time—in fact, I was having a tougher time thinking of ones who were sane—but this one took the cake.
Still, even despite the gun and the crazy eyes, I wanted to believe this wasn’t truly her. She was jacked up on Chroma, it was a miracle she’d only killed her husband. She didn’t know what she was saying. She couldn’t.
Oh, Cat. I should have known, the first time I saw her.
Beautiful women. They’d be the death of me.
She was so close I could look nowhere but her eyes. In spite of everything, they looked just as pretty as they had in that motel room. That seemed so long ago.
She was waiting for me to ask the question, the only question that could be asked. In spite of myself, the words clawed their way out of my throat, my lips growing dry as they passed. “Knew what?”
“We can be together. You understand me. I know you do.”
“You’ve been jerking the strings on this deal the whole time,” I said. It wasn’t a question, but she nodded anyway, still smiling that terrible smile. I closed my eyes, but that just made me more aware of her breath on my neck. “I told you about Todd. I told you where to find the Chroma.”
“I’ve known about Detective Todd’s plan for months. One of John’s people—well, my people, in truth—they spotted that bitch O’Neil meeting with him. I had someone investigate the two of them.” She shrugged. “It wasn’t hard to get the truth out of their chemist. I’ve been watching them ever since, mapping out their networks.”
“It was you who had O’Neil killed?”
“Better than that. I killed her myself, her and her bodyguards.” A perfect smile slid into place. “I admit I did enjoy that one.”
My head pounded like someone was going at me with a jackhammer. “So when I told you about Todd, you knew when to move on him, when to seize the Chroma. You had your own people?”
“Some. The others thought they were working for my husband.” She smiled. “They were wrong.”
“And then you started your war. You tried to take Bluegate.”
“Oh, sweetie, I didn’t try. I succeeded.” She ran her fingertips along a scratch Andrews had gouged in my cheek and strained her face up toward me, her lips an inch from mine. “The other gangs are all but crushed. My Tunnelers have done well. Alas, my poor husband didn’t survive the war, but I’m sure most of them will see the sense in following me. And the ones who oppose us, well…”
“Christ, Cat, why? Why the hell are you doing this?”
“I’m going to rule this city, Mr. Franco. There’s no stopping it.” She leaned forward. “And I want you by my side.”
Her lips brushed mine. Warm, moist, inviting. I was getting lightheaded. My left arm was going cold, blood from one of my nastier scratches dripping from my fingertips. Drip, drip, drip.
Wake up, Miles. I wasn’t done yet. I jerked away from the kiss, leaning back as far as I could with my butt against the broken piano. Caterina’s eyes snapped open, her lips still parted slightly, shock morphing into rage.
“What are you doing?” she asked in a tone that suggested my having a pulse depended on my answer.
Naturally, I didn’t want to disappoint. “Hell, Cat, you’re crazy enough to make Norman Bates look like a paragon of reason. I’m nowhere near psychotic enough to board this ride.”
I could tell from her facial twitches my words weren’t going down well. I was bleeding like a stuck pig anyway; if I was going to die, I wanted to die like the asshole I was. I’d been manipulated from the beginning, by the cops, by Todd, by Spencer, by Caterina. Well, to hell with that. To hell with them all.
I was going out my way.
Caterina snarled. Her hands slipped away from me and she flicked her wrist. “I offered you a chance, Mr. Franco. I want you to remember that.” I sensed reality shifting, a Pin Hole cracking into existence.
So I headbutted her in the face.
Not my classiest move, but I wasn’t going gently into that good night. A dull pain split through my forehead as I connected with her nose. She screeched, stumbling back with blood trickling from her nose.
I realized I still had my nightstick in my hand, a hammer no more, but still effective enough. I whipped it across her wrist just as she got her gun up. The gat went off next to my head, deafening me, then it went flying across the room.
With my ears ringing and my head stinging, I bolted. I couldn’t go toe to toe with her when she was on Chroma, no way in hell. I had to lay low until the drug wore off. The mansion was big; surely I could find somewhere to hide for an hour or two without getting my skin blown off.
Yeah, like my luck was that good.
The open door ahead of me was suddenly shut, reality still twisting around it, but I put my shoulder into it without stopping and crashed right through. Caterina’s scream of rage followed me as I raced up a set of stairs and into a maze of wide hallways.
The off-white walls were covered in portraits of Vei men and woman, but I didn’t stop to study them. Something exploded behind me, nearly shaking me from my feet. I just kept running, taking turns at random.
Caterina’s heels clicked on the floor behind me, sounding like a machine gun. She was fast, and I was growing tired, weak. My blood left a morbid trail behind me. I couldn’t keep this up, and I couldn’t escape. I was royally screwed.
The room I found myself diving into was a bedroom that looked so lifeless I doubted it’d ever been used. A guest room, maybe. The huge bed looked lost in the center of the room, with high ceilings stretching above it. A matching set of antique wooden bedside tables flanked the bed, and a vanity complete with polished mirror sat along the opposite wall to catch the light from the wide windows. A makeup kit sat on top, apparently the only non-furniture item in the room. There wasn’t even a phone for me to call for help.
I closed the door as quietly as I could, already knowing it was useless; the blood I’d left behind me made for a perfect trail of bread crumbs. For half a second I considered shoving the vanity against the door like they always do in movies, then decided against it. It never stopped the monsters, and it sure as hell wouldn’t stop a Tunneler.
I put pressure on the worst of my cuts and backed away from the door. Think, Miles. I could make a jump from the window, maybe break an ankle or two. Hell, I could just toss myself out headfirst and speed this whole thing up a little.
It was already plain there was nothing in here I could use to defend myself. I chucked my nightstick on the bed and shoved my hands in my pockets, feeling around for something I could use. I wished I hadn’t thrown away my knife so carelessly, but I still had maybe a third of a bottle of Kemia and my standard collection of Pin Hole coins. Rolling them through my fingers, I tried to come up with a use for them, but it was hopeless. Any of the cute little tricks I’d used to get away from Todd or the cops wouldn’t do me a lick of good now; Caterina would reverse them and blow me away before I could say, “Boo.”
The clicking of Caterina’s heels slowed, getting louder, and then stopped completely. She’d found me. I picked up my nightstick and backed away from the door in case she set it on fire or put a lightning bolt through it or something.
Instead, there was just her voice, purring through the crack in the door. “That was very mean of you to attack me like that, Mr. Franco. But I understand. You’ve been under a lot of pressure lately, and you had to lash out. I forgive you.”
“That’s awful big of you, Cat,” I said, still going through my pockets and praying something useful appeared in there. I was rethinking my policy against guns. “What say we forget this whole thing and have some friends round for a bit of fun? I know some great folks, they bring their own handcuffs. I’m sure they’d love you.”
Her laugh drifted through the door. I could only stall her for so long; once she decided it wasn’t worth talking to me I’d be no more than a bug for her to squash.
If only I had a little more Kemia I could make myself a Tunnel to Heaven, try to outrun her that way.
But no, she’d just disrupt the Tunnel behind me, and I could deal without going through the whole ordeal of a collapsing Tunnel again.
The thought didn’t strike me hard, like a bomb going off in my brain. It was more like a worm nibbling its way through my ear. Like all my recent plans, it was stupid, suicidal, and crazy, but my luck had to turn one of these days. Hell, my last crazy plan had ended in me killing a few dozen people; this one couldn’t be much worse. It’d be a freaking miracle if I could even pull it off.
“You still in there, sweetie?” Caterina asked, knocking lightly on the door.
“Sure am, babe.” I crossed the room to the makeup box on the vanity and flipped it open. There had to be one in here. There had to be. “I’m just getting myself prettied up for you.”
“I don’t understand why you’re being like this. Don’t you see what I’m trying to do?”
“Sure I do. You fancy yourself Queen of Bluegate.” Ah-ha. I pulled the golden bullet of lipstick from the makeup kit and held it up to the light, unscrewing it. A deep red, a blood red. Fitting, I guess.
“Don’t be silly,” Caterina said. “I’m trying to make this city better.”
“Yeah? That was Todd’s plan too. You guys must’ve got on like a house on fire.”
I crept closer to the door, not wanting her to know exactly where I was in case she got sick of talking. This wasn’t going to be a circle, it wasn’t going to be a normal Tunnel. I had no training for this, no experience, just my gut and a sense of desperation only countered by the silent calm of blood loss. I bent down and began drawing the lipstick along the hardwood floor in a large triangle.
“Miles, I’m being serious. I want you with me. I want you by my side. You’ve seen how corrupt this city is, how pathetic. Todd thought he could solve all its problems by bringing the gangs down, but he was an idiot. More gangs would rise in their place, there’s too much money in Bluegate for it to be any other way. This whole city is rotten, all the way through. But if we took Bluegate, if we controlled it, we could make it better. We could root out all the evil, we could bring justice to the city. Isn’t that what you want? Don’t you want to be the hero?”
The Man Who Crossed Worlds (A Miles Franco Urban Fantasy) Page 25
