by Anya Breton
"What?" He said with a nervous laugh of desperation, clearly hearing at least some truth to my words. I had his attention now that I'd mentioned his supernatural affliction. "Nah, I wouldn't do that."
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure you not only would, but you are," I drawled. "Now tell me what I want to know, or so help me gods, I'm going to stop intentionally missing." I made a dramatic show of sighting down the sleek Kahr handgun I was holding in my right hand.
He was going to make a move soon. It had been a series of minuscule movements masked as nervous fidgeting. But I'd seen it. He'd positioned himself so that he could launch onto the middle bough of the sole tree within the courtyard.
The fact that he wasn't simply giving me answers made me reconsider how I was going to handle this. I'd thought him a hostile witness that just needed a little push. This was more than that. This mailman had something to hide. There was something bigger and badder out there than me and that something had its claws in him. I was probably going to have to get more brutal than I was comfortable with getting.
"You know, if you get out of here alive, whoever you're protecting is going to assume you squealed. You're as good as dead out there," I pointed out with the gun still trained on his right thigh.
There was a tiny easing of his pose. He was listening to me. That was a good sign.
He called up, "You offerin' your protection?"
My eyebrows lifted because I hadn't thought this far ahead. "I didn't say that." Protecting humanity at large was kind of my thing but keeping just one person alive, I wasn't so good at.
"So either I die out there," he gestured over the roof and then pointed to the ground, "Or I die in here."
His legs bunched. He was going to jump. I braced myself for it.
"Sorry, sweetheart, I choose out there." The moment the final word left his lips he launched upward.
I did nothing. I could have shot his leg like I'd intended to do. I'd had enough time to line it up so that factoring in speed, velocity and all that mumbo jumbo I'd hit his ankle. Something in me told me not to. I listened to that something because it rarely led me astray.
He'd gotten to the middle bough on the tree with ease but from there he'd have problems. The walls were sheer stone extending fifty more feet up from where he was. Curiously the courtyard lacked even gutters, bad for the roof but superb for interrogating members of the Underground. I calmly watched while he sprung upwards in a feat of incredible athleticism only a member of the factions could boast.
It wasn't incredible enough to get him out of the trap. He landed against the wall three feet too low, scrambled to get a hold of something, anything and then hurdled to the gravel below after his fingers had merely slid along the smooth stone. The seventy-foot drop hadn't killed him. Probably.
I peered over the edge of the roof to see how he'd landed. A tibia through the chest would cut his chances of survival a bit even with the supernaturally fast healing. It didn't look like anything quite that detrimental had resulted from his attempt at escape. He was face down, sprawled spread eagle as if he'd performed a belly flop onto the granite chips. That couldn't have felt good.
"Mailman," I called down. "You alive?"
His answering moan was promising.
"You know I can't let you leave without the information I need."
There was no response for a full minute. I'd begun to think maybe he'd taken a turn for the worse before he rolled himself enough to peer up in my general direction. It was too dark for me to make out what shape his face was in without the moon's help. His hair was blocking that.
"I don't have any information," he said in a pained voice.
I ignored his boldfaced lie. "Tell me about the packages you're dropping off at the club."
He coughed. It wasn't a pained or ill cough. That was the kind of sound a guy made right before he lied. "I don't know what you're talkin' about."
"Yes. You do." It was my don't-fuck-with-me tone. "The packages you're dropping off at the club, who are they for? Where are they from? When do they arrive?"
"What club?"
I sighted down the gun to a granite chip a foot and a half to his left and squeezed the trigger. The bullet struck it on the right side, kicking it into his face a centimeter below where I thought his eye would be. He howled in pain. It wasn't a human noise but thankfully this part of the city was deserted at night.
"Tell me about the packages," I repeated.
"I'm not tellin' you shit," he snarled.
These are the ones I disliked most, the informants who weren't cowed enough by my inherited brownstone's interrogation trap to spill the beans with a simple request. I switched back into my sarcastically sweet voice. "Dyin' ain't the worst thing that can happen to you. I can take you to the brink of death only to bring you back again, rinse and repeat. Tell me what I want to know."
"You have nothin'!"
He meant I wasn't scary enough. Well, if he wanted to play that game...
"No?" I shot him. Sure, it was in the right thigh, not a killing wound, but he did scream an impressive set of echoing shouts within his stone cage. "Where are the packages from, Mailman?"
"From the good ol' U.S.P.S.," he called back in a strained voice.
So I shot him in the other thigh.
He let out a manly groan between gnashed teeth. "Fuck!"
"I'm getting impatient, Mailman."
"I'm losing blood," he shot back.
"Yup," I said flippantly emphasizing the "p" with a breathy puff. "Where are the packages from, Mailman?"
"I'm not..."
I shot him in both arms, one after the other as quickly as my ordinary hands would move.
He shrieked like a girl. "Fuck! Fuck! I don't know where they're from! They're covered in brown paper with no return labels!"
Finally.
Taking advantage of his currently cowed mood, I shouted down a new question. "When do they arrive?"
"It's not the same day. Some weeks it's a Monday, others it's Thursday. It changes every week. Fuck! I'm seriously bleeding to death! I can't die!"
Of course he couldn't. Few ever wanted to and the ones that did, I didn't bother sticking in the courtyard. "Who are they for?"
"I don't know."
I sighted down the gun at his left shoulder, the one lifted toward me, and made damn sure he saw me do it.
"I just leave them there!" He shouted desperately. "They take care of delivering it!"
"That may be the case, but you know who they end up with ultimately. Who is it mailman?"
"I don't..."
I shot his shoulder.
"Agghhhh! Fuck!"
He was starting to look a bit hairier than usual. That probably wasn't good. My fingers tightened on the gun's grip.
"I wouldn't Change if I were you, Mailman," I called down while exchanging cartridges. "You wouldn't want me to switch to silver bullets now would you?"
"I'm going to kill you!" He barked in a guttural voice.
My eyes rolled to the Domain. "Oh, I haven't heard that one before." I spent a moment aiming at his right shoulder, the one on which he'd propped himself. I didn't actually need to aim. I was merely making sure he knew I'd shoot him again if he didn't start singing a different song.
A tinny rendition of "So What'cha Want" rang out from my pocket. I kept my eyes trained on the mailman while fishing my phone out of my pocket.
The digital screen had a picture of the devil with the name "Jonas Levi" displayed beneath it in bold white text. Crap. It was my boss. I had to take this.
"Scream and I shoot you in the larynx, got it?" I mimed answering the call to fake him out. "Hello?"
The mailman, of course, screamed. And earned himself a shot right through the larynx. I heaved a heavy sigh while listening to his gurgling noises then answered the phone for real.
"Hello?" I was halfway to the rooftop door when the voice on the other end spoke.
"Laura?" The thickly accented voice of my boss, the music director with
the Boston Symphony Orchestra, hesitantly greeted me by name. He continued once he was sure it was me. "This is Jonas Levi. I'm sorry to call this late but we've had to reschedule the rehearsal for the Chamber Tea at the last minute. It won't be tomorrow afternoon as planned but instead will meet Wednesday. Can you make it?"
Jonas was being polite but his hard-edged tone meant I had no choice. Either I showed up to rehearsal Wednesday, with my shiny flute in hand, cheerfully ready to play my heart out, or I'd be replaced in the Chamber Tea by one of my bloodthirsty rivals. I wasn't about to let a rival take my spot.
"Yeah, I can make it," I told him as I bounced down the third flight of stairs toward the courtyard.
"We'll see you then." He hung up without waiting for me to say something in response.
My phone went back into my pocket so that I could switch the clip out on my gun with a fresh one. In front of me was a rather ordinary looking wooden door with a brass handle and matching deadbolt. It looked and sounded standard. In reality there was a complex locking system behind it set into a vault-like door. It was as high-tech as my laptop and had probably cost the previous owner far more.
The door swung open emitting me into an antechamber decorated like a small atrium with a coat closet. Behind me the lock clicked quietly. Without the special code, no one, even me, was getting out of this space. I swiped my hand over the control panel to the exterior door, the one that would let me into the courtyard itself. The interior door, a glued façade of wood on stone, slid a foot and a half to the right for one point five seconds. I had just enough time to get outside before the thing closed on me. Now the only way to get back inside was a call from my phone to the security panel's special number.
My senses tingled. The breeze floating across the nearby dried branches stilled. A distant siren silenced in mid wail. Apollo's Warning, a gift from my father, had kicked in. I would be sensing what was about to happen to me unless I moved to stop it.
I whirled around on my heel to find the hairy, bloody figure of a man caught midway through the transformation to wolf. His hands were already deadly claws that were extended toward my neck. And they were frozen in place thanks to my gift. There was just enough time to hop three steps to the left out of the way before the scene resumed its normal flow.
The werewolf's hands slashed in an "X" shape where my body had been. He gave an outraged howl when he realized he'd missed me. My warning system reengaged as he pounced toward me, this time nearly in his finished wolf form. While time was seemingly frozen I sprinted across the courtyard so I'd have a second to talk to him before he'd close to attack.
"You're bleeding out too fast for werewolf healing to fix," I rushed to call out as soon as time had resumed its ordinary pace. "You're going to die unless I help you. You can..." I had to pause while another warning gave me a chance to duck his vault for my head across the granite chips. "...attack me, maybe temporarily slowing me, or you can stand down and let me Heal you."
My reasonable suggestion was blatantly ignored while we played cat and mouse for several minutes. The mailman dripped his life fluid all over the granite chips at an alarming rate. Finally he tripped, landed face first in the rocks and couldn't seem to get up. I took the opportunity to hop on his furry back in hopes that he was too weak to throw me off. He bucked twice. The movement did little more than move me a few inches upward.
I pushed my hand through the wiry fur on his neck to get closer to his skin. I needed skin-to-skin contact before I could hear the medical reports whispering in my head. I already knew the mailman had been shot six times. And as I suspected he had a few broken, bruised or fractured bones from the fall he'd taken.
My palm lit up with a warm golden glow as my Healing energy snaked through his prone body. I focused on the neck wound first then rolled him over so the bullets had room to exit. As a precaution I shoved the barrel of my gun in between his weary brown eyes before I began Healing the rest of him.
Once I was satisfied that I'd fixed the damage I was personally responsible for I stepped back from him with my gun still aimed at him. He made a soft snuffling noise. That was probably better news than a growl.
My trigger finger went on alert when the wolf pulled himself onto his haunches. In confusion I watched him maneuver himself until his back was to me. Then I saw why he'd done it. The dark coating of fur slowly began to bleed away to human skin to the tune of disgusting pops and slurps that couldn't have felt good.
It took him five full minutes to complete the Change back to his human form. I'd expected him to say something once he'd finished. It was the only reason he'd have needed to transform back. But the mailman said nothing.
I stood watching him warily for any sign of movement for a minute, fully expecting Apollo's Warning to kick in for a renewed attack. The only movement I saw was a curious shaking of his back. It took me longer still to realize what it was. He was crying.
Now it was important to understand that I'd not had the best track record with men in my twenty-five years. But I did know they tended not to like people witnessing their breakdowns. So I was left with the unsettling task of figuring out what the hell to do with a crying werewolf that wouldn't snitch. Did I stand there hoping he'd explain why he was crying? Or threaten him some more?
I made the mistake of adjusting my weight onto one hip. My clothes must have made a rustling noise because his profile turned enough for him to see me out of the very corner of his eye.
"Why couldn't you have just left me alone?" He snarled.
"You're the dealer, mailman," I said calmly. "I need you to get to the kingpin."
"The kingpin is going to kill her because of you, you selfish bitch." And then he broke down into sobs.
Oh gods. I couldn't handle sobbing men. I went all kinds of weird when faced with a blubbering guy. It had been responsible for one or two of the worst decisions in life.
Carefully I questioned him, "Who is going to kill who?"
"Chet is going to kill my sister."
"Chet?" I hated the name Chet. I'd gone to school with a Chet and he'd been a complete asshole.
The blubbering went on for a little bit longer but ended with, "As soon as he makes sure I'm dead, he'll kill her."
"Is Chet the guy receiving all of these packages?"
He shot to his feet the turn on me with rage filled eyes. "Fuck you!"
My eyebrows lifted at him but it was the only response he'd gotten out of me.
"All you care about is the fuckin' useless packages!" The mailman roared, "My sister is gonna die!"
I wasn't impressed by the savagery of his shouts. "Look, brainchild, if you'd told me the dude taking the packages would kill your sister if he found out you'd squealed, this would have been an entirely different kind of conversation!"
"Like you'd do anything," he snapped back.
That's when I remembered something. I'd picked the mailman up at a bar not far from here. "Wait a second. What the hell were you doing trolling a bar for women if your sister is being held prisoner?"
I saw a flicker of something pass through his eyes that he quickly hid behind a lame attempt at swagger. "A man's got needs..."
The gun was aimed at his forehead now. "Wrong answer."
He went pale, eyes shooting wide.
In a low voice I said, "Even I can't heal a gunshot to the brain. Spill it."
The mailman's head shook wildly. "No way! You'll kill me!"
My right eyebrow cocked at him. "Not too bright, are you?"
"Oh," he said dully when he realized I'd already threatened to kill him if he didn't answer me. With a petulant sigh he lowered himself into a kneeling position on the ground. His chin lifted until he could see my face again. "He sends me out to pick up chicks, drug them and then bring them back to his place."
"Chet does?"
"Yeah," he sighed.
"I need a straight answer from you, mailman. Is Chet the one who is getting the packages?"
"Yeah."
My shoulder
s relaxed just a smidgen. "Is Chet a witch?"
"No."
"Damn it," I exclaimed without realizing it.
"What?" The mailman wiped the moisture from his cheeks and watched me through widened eyes.
"Does Chet work for someone else?"
"I don't know," he answered and I believed him. "He's the one that has been threatening me and giving me orders."
"What is Chet then?"
"Besides an asshole? I think he's some kind of shapeshifter. I don't really know."
"It's never occurred to you to, I don't know, kick the shit out of him?"
I knew that the big difference between the Were and pure shapeshifters was that Were were infected humans. Shapeshifters were born. Oh and they had longevity like vampires. But in terms of a fight, I'd always thought the two factions were pretty well matched. Then again, I'd never actually asked them who was more powerful. I could easily be wrong.
"He's never alone," he replied in a higher-pitched voice. "He's always surrounded by Rhinos. And I haven't been Were that long."
"Rhinos," I muttered under my breath.
Rhinos were universally thought of as bad news. I wasn't sure I'd actually seen one in person. Supposedly they had the body of professional wrestlers on steroids from hell and the head of a rhinoceros to top it off. I imagined it was quite a disgusting sight.
Holstering my gun I grabbed hold of the guy's arm. "Here's the deal, Mailman. I need to see Chet. You're going to take me to him."
"I can't do that. They'll kill you, then he'll kill me and my sister," the mailman replied with a quick shake of his head.
"Which is why you're going to take me in as a girl you picked up from the bar."
CHAPTER FOUR
I woke up in a cage, an honest to gods cage. It was a three-foot by three-foot metal prison with smooth walls and a metal barred door. I couldn't see others around me but I heard their soft whimpers and light feminine breath.
This was a dog pound for women!
My head was fuzzy, an unfortunate byproduct of letting the mailman, Michael, drug me. He'd insisted that they checked for that sort of thing. So I'd stupidly let him slip something in my drink. But it had worked. I was on the inside.
