The Man Who Walked in Darkness (Miles Franco #2) (Miles Franco Urban Fantasy)

by Chris Strange

  Bohr crushed his cigarette butt beneath his heel, his fingers flexing on the ivory handle. Have you used up all your luck yet, Miles? I asked myself.

  “Perhaps you do not have the crystals at all,” Bohr said. “Perhaps I should kill you now.”

  I fished in my pocket and retrieved a single crystal. I held it above my head. It glinted green in the sunlight.

  “A sample,” I said. I tossed the crystal to him. Behind Bohr, McCaffrey’s eyes widened, her hungry gaze following the crystal as it arced through the air. Bohr caught it one-handed, and McCaffrey’s face went impassive again. She seemed almost serene, even with a gun barrel pressed against the back of her head. What was her play going to be?

  Bohr brought the crystal up to his eye and examined it. “How do I know it is real, hmm?”

  “Can’t you feel it?” I said. “Don’t you hear that song in your head?”

  He frowned and cocked his head again. “I hear nothing.”

  “Don’t you trust me?” I asked. “After all we’ve been through together.”

  He brought the crystal to his ear and listened. After a few moments, he shook his head. “Nothing. Test it, yes?”

  He tossed it back to me. The instant it touched my skin, I heard it calling again.

  “Be quick, Miles Franco.”

  “What do you want me to do? AISOR’s the one with all the chemical analysts.”

  “Use it. Should be enough for a small change, yes? What do you want?”

  I looked at the crystal and scratched my chin. “I’ve been broke all my life. Maybe it’d be nice to be rich, for once.”

  I pulled my wallet out of my pocket, opened it, and showed Bohr there was nothing inside but a large pile of receipts and a driver’s license.

  “Make it work,” Bohr said. He gestured to the gangsters behind him, and one of them shoved Detective Wade out in front and forced him to his knees. Bohr pulled the ivory handle from under his jacket and pressed something. The thin spike instantly extended to its full length. He pressed the point against Wade’s forehead. The cop looked like he’d forgotten how to breath. Bohr stared at me. “Do not delay, hmm?”

  “Seriously?” I asked. “That’s the hostage you’re threatening me with? I don’t even like the guy.” Wade set his jaw and widened his eyes at me, his nostrils flaring. I grinned at him, trying to look more confident than I felt. “All right, all right, you know I can’t stand those puppy dog eyes.”

  With my empty wallet in my left hand and the crystal in my right fist, I closed my eyes. The song grew louder in my head, and the sound of the gangsters shuffling in place and the wind coming down the street died away. My hands were slippery around my wallet.

  I waited, counting the seconds away in my head. With every one that passed, my gut tied itself a little tighter. I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. My skin prickled.

  The song changed. No, it didn’t change. Another tune laid itself over the top. A nonsense tune, a distant sense of chaos. Reality shimmered, and something seemed to crack far away to my left. Maybe it was my muscles playing tricks on me, but my wallet felt slightly heavier. The crystal still dug into my palm, pulsing as always.

  I opened my eyes and lifted my wallet. At the same time, while everyone’s eyes were fixed on my left hand, I palmed the crystal with my right and slipped it up my sleeve. The sense of disorder still sang distantly in my head.

  “It is done?” Bohr asked. His spike had drawn a drop of blood from the center of Wade’s forehead.

  I opened the wallet so everyone could see it. A thick wad of crisp hundreds sat inside.

  “Next round’s on me,” I said.

  I glanced at McCaffrey. Her eyes were shining, her smile lines creased and deep. Proud of yourself, Doc?

  Bohr wasn’t so reserved in his expression. His face was practically split in two by his shark grin. “Good. Very good. Yes. The crystal is used up?”

  I showed him my empty right hand.

  “Yes,” he said, turning his attention back to my wallet. “See, we all come out happy.”

  “We’re good?” I asked.

  “Hmm? Oh, yes, yes.”

  He waved at the Collectivists and retracted his spike from Wade’s head. The cop sighed and deflated like a kid’s bouncy castle.

  “Lock the police officers and the others in the basement,” he said to one of the gangsters. “Leave two guards, but pull everyone else out. We will notify the police where they can find their comrades when this is done.”

  The gangster nodded and hurried away, dividing up the rest of the Collectivists. My heart wasn’t trying to punch its way out of my chest anymore, but I wasn’t done yet. I tried to look like I wasn’t about to pass out.

  Finally, the gangsters got their act together. Most of the mob marched away, the cops going with them. And then it was only the cool kids left in the street. Me, Bohr, one of his human goons, and the three hostages: Detective Wade, Kowalski shivering in his boots, and McCaffrey, smiling like the cat who’d worked out how to open the cream bottle.

  “That was beautiful, Miles,” she said.

  I tore my eyes away from her to stop myself breaking her neck.

  Bohr pulled a pistol from the back of his pants, glanced at it, and let it dangle from the end of his arm. “Insurance.” He gestured at the other gangster. “I need this man to search you.”

  “Sure,” I said, holding my arms to the side. The goon patted me down. He found the coins jingling in my pocket, but I didn’t have any Kemia. He shook his head at Bohr and stepped back.

  I held the wallet out to Bohr. “You want any of this cash? Now that I have it, I don’t know what to do with it.”

  “Keep it. You will think of something, yes?”

  I shrugged and pocketed the wallet.

  “I have a vehicle down the end of the street,” Bohr said. He gestured with the gun. “After you, Miles Franco.”

  I turned, trying not to care about having guns pointed at my back, and walked back down the street, hands in my pockets.

  Somewhere far away, the nonsense tune finally ceased. My wallet got lighter again. I didn’t stop walking.

  THIRTY

  “This is another of your jokes, yes?” Bohr asked.

  “For once, no,” I said.

  Bohr sat behind me in the van, holding the pistol against the back of my head. His goon was in the driver’s seat, and the hostages were bound and gagged in the back. Wade had groaned every time the van hit a bump. I hoped the gunshot wound in his shoulder didn’t finish him off before we were done. I still wanted to screw with him a little more.

  Trying to ignore the bullet that was one trigger pull away from shredding my brain, I looked out the van’s window at the damage that the Collective had done to the AISOR offices. They’d used a small bomb on the entranceway, blowing the doors in and turning part of the lobby into rubble. The upper floors were undamaged, apart from a few bullet holes in the windows.

  Vivian had said that so far the cops had found no evidence of illegal activity in the building. AISOR’s Tunneling activity was licensed, and no records suggested any human experiments had been conducted. McCaffrey was too smart for that. I’d bet my trumpet she’d done everything off-site, and even then her name wouldn’t appear anywhere. Kowalski was her new fall guy, like Bohr had been all those years ago.

  I’d got Vivian to convince her bosses to clear out most of the cops and forensics guys that were investigating after the attack. It went down better than I expected. They had pretty much all they could deal with at the moment, and were more interested in chasing down the Collective than hanging around collecting ballistics evidence. Besides, with twenty cops vanished while chasing the gangsters down, they were having a severe manpower shortage.

  Now only a handful of cops were in the area, and from what I gathered on our drive around, most of them were blockading the street to keep any rubberneckers away.

  “I do not like this,” Bohr said. He tapped the back of my head with the gun. �
�If this is a trap, you will be the first one I kill.”

  “Of course,” I said. I’d directed the driver goon to park down an alley on the parallel street that the cops hadn’t blocked off. The van was hidden from view from any cops, but from where we were sitting we got a clear view of the AISOR building.

  “Shall we?” I asked.

  Bohr grunted, and the cold metal left the back of my head.

  We got out of the van. Bohr kept the gun on me while the other gangster got the hostages out of the back and untied their ankles. He left their gags in place. Kowalski’s eyes were as big as his spectacles. Wade looked like he was chewing his gag in pain—the bloodstain on his shoulder bandage was getting bigger. And McCaffrey managed to look like she was out for a pleasant stroll with her grandson.

  Bohr kept us in the alley for a full five minutes while his head swiveled around, checking the street, the buildings, the windows, and any shadow that could conceivably hide a man with a gun. Finally, he nodded and waved at me with his gun. “You first, hmm?”

  He pushed me ahead of him, out into the street. I looked around as I walked, but there were no cops in sight. Better that way. Saved Bohr from turning the back of my head into a soup bowl. Strange, how much I wanted to live. The last few hours had convinced me of that. I’d been so ready to die, eager for it, almost. But no more. I wanted to get McCaffrey alone, get some answers. That was all that mattered. And then I had to make it up to some people. I couldn’t do that if I was dead. I didn’t want to carry this guilt with me to the grave.

  I made it to AISOR’s destroyed entranceway, clambered through the criss-crossing police tape, and glanced back. Bohr looked up and down the street again. Then he waved to his goon, and all five of them hurried across the street. The goon kept his gun on Detective Wade. The gangster wasn’t dumb; he knew the value of a police hostage.

  Bohr didn’t bother with climbing around the police tape. He just pulled out his ivory-hilted spike and sliced through it. The yellow tape drooped over the twisted metal door frame as Bohr stepped through, the others behind him.

  Something in McCaffrey’s face changed as she entered the building. The muscles of her face slackened briefly. She met my eyes and smiled around her cloth gag.

  “Good to be home, huh?” I said.

  Bohr waved his spike at me. “Talk later, yes? I dislike this place. I want it gone. Walk.”

  I held up a finger and reached into McCaffrey’s pockets. She smiled at me while I searched. I found a swipe card in a plastic sleeve in her side pocket. I led everyone to the elevators. They were still working. We piled in, and I swiped the card as I pressed the button for B4. The doors slid closed, and the elevator started moving with a whisper. I was close enough to smell the blood on Wade’s shoulder and the sweat dripping from Kowalski.

  “You are tough, Miles Franco,” Bohr said.

  “What?”

  “I should have brought you in with us from the start. These ones killed your friend, yes? We could have destroyed them together.”

  “Don’t fuck with a fucker, Daniel.” I could swear I felt Claudia’s hand on my shoulder, trying to soothe me. “You might not have killed her, but you let her die. I talked to your ex-employee Aran. You don’t care about the people who died, not anymore. This is all about you throwing your toys. They screwed you over, cut you out, so if you can’t have Tartarus, no one can. You’re over the edge.”

  Bohr bared his teeth. “You are not far behind, hmm?”

  The elevator doors slid open. If the cops or the Collective had been down here, it didn’t show. The black marble walls looked as shiny as ever, and all the computers remained in place, powered down. The only sounds were the humming coming from some unidentifiable machine and the elevator announcing we’d reached our destination. I stepped out, the others behind me.

  “Search the place,” Bohr ordered, and his bodyguard snapped to attention. The Collectivist shoved me aside and swept through the room, his gun swinging around. He did a circuit of the room, poking his gun into any place large enough to hold a person, kicking open the few doors that left the main workspace. Apparently satisfied the bogeyman wasn’t going to jump out of the closet, he lowered his gun and nodded to Bohr.

  “We are here,” Bohr said, tucking his spike back into his jacket. “The crystals.”

  “Undo their gags,” I said, pointing at the hostages. “I want to make sure you haven’t hurt any of them too badly.”

  Bohr’s forehead ridges lowered, but he nodded to his goon. The bodyguard tugged the gags out of each of their mouths in turn. Detective Wade spat blood on the ground when his came out.

  “How you going, Detective?” I asked.

  “Bite me, Franco.”

  I grinned and inspected his wound. “They tagged you good.”

  “It’s nothing. Is…is everyone okay?”

  He meant Vivian. “Yeah. Everyone’s peachy.”

  “Don’t give these bastards what they want.”

  “Stop trying to be a hero,” I said. “Just sit down, shut up, and let Uncle Miles sort everything out.”

  He scowled for a moment, his face lined with pain and annoyance. “I’m a dead man, aren’t I?”

  I slapped him on his good shoulder and turned to the other two. Kowalski had been steadily trying to edge away from McCaffrey since we got out of the elevator. Even now, he seemed more afraid of her than he did of Bohr and the other goon.

  “Sorry for nearly blowing your head off last night,” I said.

  I don’t think he heard me.

  I turned to McCaffrey last. “What are you smiling about?” I asked.

  “You really were the best choice,” she said. “I studied you for months, but humans being what they are, you can never be sure what will happen when you wind them up and start them moving.”

  “It was just easier getting to me than busting Caterina Andrews out of prison. All you wanted was someone with Chroma in their blood.”

  She shook her head. “Not at all. Most people we tested the fluid on didn’t survive a day. The fluid drained them so quick it didn’t even get a chance to crystallize fully before they died. Only the strong survived. A homeless man who used to be a boxer. The Vei girl, the prostitute. And your friend. What was her name again?”

  I brought my face close to hers, my fists balled in my pocket. “You know her name.”

  McCaffrey smiled. “This is exactly what I mean. So much fire inside you. And somehow you’re still standing. How did you do it?”

  “With great fucking difficulty.” I shot a glance at Bohr. He looked like he was getting impatient. I returned my attention to McCaffrey. “Why did you do all this? Why did Claudia have to die?”

  “Get me out of here and I’ll tell you.”

  I wanted to break her legs. I wanted to wail on her like I had Stretch, and then when it was all done I wanted to pour gasoline over her and light a match. But I stepped back and looked at Bohr.

  “All right. I’m ready. You want your crystals?”

  “Yes,” Bohr said.

  I walked over to the bench, grabbed a pair of black goggles, and tossed them to Bohr. “Put those on. All of you.”

  He examined the goggles and glared at me. “What is this?”

  I tugged a pair of goggles over my eyes. Everything turned to blackness and white outlines. “This is your safety gear. The crystals aren’t here, exactly. They’re on Tartarus.”

  I was feeling pretty proud of myself. Everything was falling into place. And then a bell dinged behind me.

  That’s not part of the plan.

  I pulled up my goggles in time to see the elevator doors slide open again. Aran, that damn Vei bastard, stood inside, his teeth bared. The machine pistol was in his hands.

  “Shit,” I said. “Aran, wait—”

  Somewhere behind me, the bodyguard swore. I glanced back to see him raising his gat.

  He didn’t even get it to his hip before Aran opened fire. The roar of the machine pistol was deafening. Th
e goon dropped in a cloud of red mist and sparks from a nearby computer. I couldn’t take my eyes off his face. He looked like someone had caved in his forehead with a railway spike. Poor bastard. This isn’t supposed to happen. Everyone was supposed to get out alive!

  I ducked and clutched my ears to block out the pain of the noise. Kowalski scrambled along the ground, out of the line of fire. Wade went for cover. But McCaffrey and Bohr stood motionless. The smile hadn’t left McCaffrey’s face.

  Finally, the roar of the gunfire stopped. But Aran wasn’t done yet. The Vei charged out of the elevator. His mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I didn’t need to.

  “No!” I shouted, diving in front of Bohr and McCaffrey. Aran’s finger hesitated over the trigger. The ringing in my ears slowly faded. I could hear Kowalski whimpering.

  “What are you doing?” Aran shouted in Vei. “Why are they still alive?”

  “I’m not killing them,” I said, taking a deep breath. Inside, I was screaming like a toddler at a toy store. The son of a bitch was going to ruin everything. If I told him the plan now, everything would be screwed up. I had to get them to Tartarus. I had to.

  “They killed my family,” Aran said, advancing. “They killed your friend.”

  I moved to keep myself between Aran and the others. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Bohr’s fingers flexing around his pistol, but he kept it at his side. Wade stood slowly and gave me a look, his jaw tight. He glanced pointedly at Aran, asking if he should try to tackle him. I shook my head slightly. He’d never be fast enough.

  I looked back at Aran. “I’m dealing with it.”

  “Dealing with it?” he said in English. “I saw the police follow you here. I told you I don’t want them involved. I’m doing this my way.”

  Fuck.

  “The police?” Bohr said. He snarled at me. “You tried to trick me.” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed.

  McCaffrey smiled at him. “You can’t contact your friends, Daniel. There’s no reception in here. But I can help with the police problem.” She looked at Aran. “If you want to stop the police getting in here, press that red button by the elevator.” She pointed with her cuffed hands. “It’ll seal the shaft. It will take them an hour to get through.”