Chip in His Shoulder, A

by Witt, L. A.

  I swallowed hard and looked away.

  “But I never once thought about doing you harm. Even when I found out you’d accepted the contract on me, or when you showed up tonight. There isn’t enough money in the Sky to make me think about killing you.” His shoulders sagged, and his cool, calm façade crumbled a little more. He gestured toward the door like that simple motion took everything he had. “You want out of here? Say the word. I’ll get you out. I’ve said my piece, so . . .”

  “But, opening that would trigger your ProxEn.”

  He met and held my gaze. “I know.”

  My mouth went dry. I’d come here to kill him, but now I could barely move. I could barely look at him.

  Daniel not-so-casually hooked his thumbs in his pockets. “I am curious, though. How did you turn into this? I mean, crime is one thing. But murder?”

  “Prostitution didn’t pay enough,” I said, even as the thought of my former profession twisted my gut into knots. That job bothered my conscience almost as much as my current one.

  Daniel’s eyes widened. “You . . . were a prostitute?”

  “Rules of the Gutter, my friend. Survival of the fittest and the most willing to do anything for money.”

  Daniel shuddered. “But now you’re a killer. How . . .?”

  “I wasn’t making enough as a prostitute, so I started stealing.” I folded my arms across my chest and met Daniel’s eyes in spite of wanting to look anywhere else. “Then I started stealing from bigger players. I got cocky, and I got caught by someone who didn’t think his security system could be breached.”

  “If it could be breached, then how did you get caught?”

  “He was right,” I said. “It couldn’t be. But I got further than anyone ever had, and I guess he was surprised. So he said he wouldn’t press charges if I ‘took care of something’ for him.”

  “So you killed someone.”

  I nodded.

  “To avoid jail time for theft.”

  “You’ve never seen the prisons in the Gutter, have you?”

  “I’ve never seen anything in the Gutter,” he admitted. “But I’ve heard the stories.”

  “Trust me, if you’d seen those prisons, you’d kill to stay out of them too. Did that job, and he told me he’d pay me for the next one.” Daniel drew back a little, his posture stiffening and his expression hardening, and I realized how my comment must have sounded. “I’m a predator, all right? Killing’s been in my nature ever since I converted, and what can I say? This line of work came easier than I usually care to admit, and I’m good at it. That doesn’t mean I’m proud of it.”

  “Wow. I . . .” He shook his head and laughed dryly. “I guess we’re both full of surprises.” His eyes narrowed. “Though I’d say what I did was rather predictable. You knew me. Can’t say I ever saw you turning into a cold-blooded killer.”

  “Oh, fuck you, Daniel. Why don’t you come down off your goddamned high horse for a minute. I mean, do you have any idea what it’s like to be in hell and hold out hope that the person who fucked you over might give enough of a shit to at least try to save you?”

  “Probably feels a lot like finding out the man you still love is willing to fucking kill you.”

  I opened my mouth to reply, but the echo of his words hammered across my consciousness. “Wait, what did you say?”

  Daniel clenched his jaw and pushed his shoulders back. “I still love you. Even now. Knowing what you are and why you’re here. Happy?” He held his hands out to the sides. “So if you’re still going to kill me,” he said, his voice wavering, “would you just get it over with?”

  I stared at him. I couldn’t move. Speak. Breathe. The shine in his eyes, it . . . it was . . . Daniel never fucking cried.

  “I . . .” Can’t? Won’t?

  “I never set out to hurt you in any way,” Daniel said, his voice cracking. “I hope you of all people know that. You can’t ever have thought that I did what I did because I wanted you to suffer. I just couldn’t sit back and watch you turn into a goddamned cyborg.”

  Anger surged to the surface, masking the ache that tried to rise in my throat. “And isn’t it poetic that you fucking drove me to getting more mods than I ever wanted?”

  “I drove you to that?” he snapped. He reached up and swiped at his eyes. “Bullshit. You were hooked just like any other mod junkie. You’re half machine. You’re a murderer. Vampire or not, are you even remotely human anymore?”

  “You tell me.”

  I forced him up against the thick glass wall, and kissed him.

  Daniel shoved me back, his lips parted and his eyes wide. It hadn’t been a long kiss, lasting only the few seconds it took him to realize what had happened, but it left me breathless. Him too.

  “What the—” He shook his head, but I didn’t miss the sweep of his tongue across his lower lip. “Did you really think, after . . . Did—?”

  “Daniel, you—”

  He lunged at me, grabbed both sides of my neck, and kissed me.

  My balance faltered for a split second before a mod corrected it, but it was still a damned good excuse to hold onto him. Arms around him, I grabbed handfuls of his shirt just to keep him as close to me as possible.

  He tried to push me back, but didn’t break the kiss or embrace. Probably trying to guide me to somewhere else. His bed, if I knew him. But I held him against the glass, pinning him with my body. I wasn’t ready to let him go. Not even for a second. Not yet.

  He wasn’t in any hurry either. His kiss was desperate. Angry. Passionate. He was breathless and unrelenting, dragging his fingers through my hair and gripping the back of my neck.

  The long, violent kiss awakened a deeply suppressed hunger, and my God, if Daniel only knew how much the mods enhanced how much I experienced him. His scent was more intense, like I was breathing in pure pheromones, pure sex. The heat of his body against mine, the coolness of his breath whispering across my nerve endings, the percussion of his blood rushing through his veins just beneath his skin, all amplified now.

  He overwhelmed me.

  I pressed my hips to his, dragging the breath out of his lungs with every kiss, and he ground his hips against mine. Even through our clothes, the closeness of his thick erection made me lightheaded. Much as I’d convinced myself all these years that I hated him, now I just . . . I just . . . Fuck, I just wanted him.

  I dipped my head to kiss his neck. With his pulse so close to my lips, the ache below my belt wasn’t the only thing he aroused. I’d fed off him dozens of times, and I wanted to sink my teeth in as badly as I wanted to strip him down and fuck him. The salt of his skin was like a prelude to the metallic rush of blood—his blood—across my tongue. I ground my cock against his, groaning with the double desire to have him. To consume him.

  Daniel moaned and dug his fingers into my shoulders. He pulled in a breath like he meant to speak, but I kissed beneath his jaw, right where his blood pulsed beneath the surface, and only a soft whimper escaped his lips.

  “God, Daniel,” I murmured, dragging my lower lip along the side of his neck. “I want you so fucking bad.”

  “There’s—” His breath caught. He shivered, gripping my shoulders even tighter. Then, all at once, the words came: “We can get out of here.”

  I froze, then slowly lifted my head. “What?”

  Panting, Daniel closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the glass. “There might be a way out. For both of us, I mean.”

  I pulled back. “There is?”

  “Yeah. It’s risky, but . . .”

  “In that case”—though it was the last thing my body wanted, I made myself step back—“I’m all ears.”

  He opened his eyes and nodded toward the door. “I can hack into the building’s security system and get us out of here. The only reason I haven’t tried is it’ll set off an alarm. Once that door opens, the whole building will get mobbed by security.” His eyes shifted back toward me. “And there’s a good chance it’s also tied to my imp
lant. I open the door, the mod releases the toxin, I’m fucked.”

  “Okay, you mentioned that before. But how do we get both of us out of here?”

  Daniel inhaled slowly through his nose, then let out that breath just as slowly. He rolled his shoulders as if to mask a shudder. “I need you to get this mod out of my shoulder.”

  “Come again?” He was kidding. He had to be.

  “Any better ideas?”

  “Daniel, I’m . . .” I shook my head. “Not a surgeon. If I do something wrong, I’ll set it off and kill you.”

  He held my gaze. “Then I would suggest you be careful.”

  Goddamnit, he was completely serious.

  “It’s our only shot at getting out of here alive,” he added, almost pleading.

  “There has to be another way.”

  “There isn’t. If there were, I would have done it myself and wouldn’t have been here waiting for you to show up.”

  We locked eyes once again. I mentally ran through a dozen alternative escape routes, and every damned one had a flaw with worse odds than what he was suggesting. Every one of them ended with either Daniel or both of us dead.

  My shoulders dropped as I forced out a breath. “All right. Turn around so I can take a look at it.”

  He turned around and pulled off his shirt. For a moment, I just stared at his broad shoulders and narrow waist. I should’ve been thinking about the damn mod and getting out of here, but oh, God, he was fucking beautiful. He always had been, but time had trimmed and toned him to lean, chiseled perfection. It didn’t help that I was already aroused as I ran my gaze over his body, or that the taste of his kiss was still on my tongue and the vibration of his pulse still lingered on my lips.

  I shook my head, ignoring the urge to touch him. Focus, Liam.

  Just above the lower edge of his right shoulder blade was a healing incision about three centimeters long. Beside that incision, a vague shadow beneath the skin revealed the mod’s location.

  “Hold still.” I toggled the nodule between my knuckles, then put my left hand on his arm to keep him steady. My vision darkened until only his silhouette was visible. With my right hand, I gestured to cue my optical mod to bring up a scanner that would zero in on the implant, then swept my fingers in midair a few times, scrolling through commands to the option for a schematic.

  A glowing blue line panned back and forth across the mod. After a moment, a three-dimensional diagram appeared in the center of my vision. With a series of quick, subtle motions, I rotated the image to examine all sides. It was two centimeters square and about half a centimeter thick. Like most mods, it had three small anchor nodules on the underside made of artificial tissue, which fused with flesh to hold it in place.

  “How long have you had it?” I asked.

  “Five days.”

  Well, that was a plus. The anchor nodules wouldn’t have had time to heal completely. Enough that the mod’s removal wouldn’t be pleasant for Daniel, but it wouldn’t be impossible. ProxEns were, after all, intended to be temporary.

  A small node on the surface caught my attention. I zoomed in on it. Judicial network mods often had sensors in place to keep inmates from removing them. Lifting the skin off the mod triggered a timer that gave a surgeon only two to four minutes for deactivation before the implant delivered its shock or, in this case, toxin.

  “Shit,” I muttered.

  Daniel stiffened. “What?”

  “From the looks of it,” I said, masking a shudder, “I won’t have much time to get it out. Four minutes at best, but I don’t dare push it past two.”

  “But can you get it?”

  “Probably. But it’ll hurt like hell, especially since I’ll have to work fast.”

  He laughed dryly. “I didn’t expect any less.”

  I pursed my lips. The pain wasn’t my primary concern. The half dozen hair-thin pins along each side of the mod could be a problem, though. They were extremely delicate, and the slightest disturbance could trigger one of the many anti-removal safeguards, every one of which ended with the toxin killing Daniel.

  I closed the display, and my vision returned to normal. “Before I start digging around in your shoulder, let’s figure out the rest of our plan.”

  Daniel nodded. He pulled on his shirt and faced me again, but then tensed. “How . . .” He bit his lip and alternated between holding my gaze and looking at the floor.

  “How, what?”

  “Okay, look. I . . . I want to trust you. I do. But . . .” Daniel met my eyes, and his expression hardened. He set his jaw and pushed his shoulders back just slightly. “Let’s face it, knowing why you’re here in the first place, how do I know you won’t blow my head off as soon as you’re out that door and in the clear?”

  “You—” I nearly choked on my own damned voice. “Seriously? After—”

  “You did come up here to kill me.” His tone was equal parts ice and uncertainty. “I would like to get out of this alive, and even after our little heart-to-heart, I don’t think you can really hold it against me if I’m still not sure I trust you.”

  “So one minute you’re making out with me against the window,” I said, pointing at the glass like it was a guilty party in all this, “and the next you don’t trust me?”

  He folded his arms across his chest and glared at me. “To be fair, one minute you were ready to blow my head off, and the next you were making out with me against the window.”

  Okay. He had a point. “You know what? Fine. Let’s just quit playing games and get out of here.” Swearing and grumbling, I leaned down, withdrew the gun from my ankle holster, and offered it to him. “I do anything stupid? Fucking shoot me.”

  He glanced at the pistol, but his posture remained steely and defensive. “You really think I’m stupid enough to think a gun is a viable defense against a vampire? Especially a vampire who’s been modified as much as you have?”

  “Shoot me in the throat,” I said. “Even if it doesn’t kill me, the blood loss will slow me down enough to get you a damn good head start.” I raised my chin and gestured at the exposed flesh. “And if you hit me right, the blood loss will kill me, so . . .”

  He eyed me skeptically, but didn’t move. “That’s an urban legend. Vampires don’t bleed to death.”

  “Believe what you will.” I shoved the weapon into his hand. “That’s all I can offer. Short of letting you shoot me, I can’t prove it’ll do anything.”

  He looked at the gun in his hand, turning it over and handling it with much more ease and comfort than I ever thought he would. Then his gaze shifted to me, and one eyebrow slowly rose.

  I put my hands out and took a half step back. “Daniel . . .”

  “Well, I suppose we could prove it, couldn’t we?” He raised the gun. Before he’d even leveled the barrel at me, he jumped, eyes darting toward the weapon I’d already drawn and aimed. “How did you—”

  “Ready to quit fucking around and get out of here?” I snarled.

  He met my eyes. “Oh, that makes me feel so much better.” He nodded toward our weapons. “I have a gun that probably won’t hurt you, and you can outdraw me. Great. Sign me the fuck up.”

  I kept my gun trained on his chest. He kept his trained on mine. The barrel of his was unnervingly steady, and his stance was rock solid and unflinching.

  “We can do this all night if you want.” His words were carved in ice. “I don’t know if I can trust you, and pointing a gun at me isn’t going to help that.”

  “I seem to recall you drew first.”

  “And if you want me to trust you, I’d suggest you lower yours first.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or I test what you said about this thing being able to hurt you. At which point you’ll shoot me, and then you can sit here and wait for the sun to come up. Put yours down, and we can get the fuck out of here.”

  I released a slow breath. Someone had grown a pair over the last half a decade. Cautiously, slowly, I lowered my weapon. “All right. No
w you put yours down.”

  He laughed. “I’ve seen how fast you can draw.” He gestured with his chin at my gun. “Put it all the way down.”

  Biting back my annoyance, I tucked the pistol back into its holster under my jacket and showed my palms. “Better?”

  “Much.”

  Bang!

  The muzzle flashed in the same instant excruciating pain ripped through my left shoulder.

  “What the—” My voice lodged in my throat as my hand went to the wound and I slumped against the bar. “You fucker!”

  “Huh.” Daniel sounded as amused as he was surprised. “I’ll be damned.”

  I blinked through the pain until my eyes focused. Daniel stared at the weapon in his hand, turning it over and over like he couldn’t believe it was a real motherfucking gun.

  “So bullets can slow vampires down,” he said, more amusement slipping into his voice. “Who knew?”

  “Thanks for your concern,” I muttered.

  He didn’t even look at me. “The nanobots will take care of you.”

  I ground my teeth as the bots in question burned their way to my wounded shoulder. “How do you know I even have them, idiot?”

  Daniel shrugged. “You’re not stupid, Liam. You never were.” He ejected the magazine and furrowed his brow at it. Counting rounds, maybe. I couldn’t be sure. Then he slapped it back in and flicked his gaze toward me. “You wouldn’t have given me a gun unless you knew either the ammo wouldn’t do anything or you could heal quickly.”