Betrayed by Blood: The Shelton Family Legacy : 1

by L. A. McGinnis

  Dawson’s thin face betrayed a glint of emotion. Guilt, maybe, if my mad PI skills were anything to go by. “Actually… no. I take the train everywhere.”

  “The train doesn’t get me out of the city,” I responded. “Also, there are tickets and cameras, so it’s just another way to track me. Aren’t you afraid they’ll connect me to you?”

  The hum of the microwave faded away as she answered, “Not particularly.”

  Which made no sense. I was worried, she should be plenty worried too.

  “I’m sorry I had to blow up your car, I really am, but we needed the distraction.” She added, “On those older models, it’s a simple matter to manipulate the gasoline and the spark plugs…” Her voice trailed off when she saw my face.

  “I don’t care how you did it,” I protested, feeling ill as my prospect for escape narrowed down to nothing. “Everything I own was in that car.” How was I supposed to put five hundred miles between myself and this disaster with no transpo?

  “It was the only solution,” Dawson countered mildly as I glared, not even the ding of the microwave breaking my dead-eye stare. “If I hadn’t, they would have traced the Beemer back to Lincoln, and your past would have caught up with you sooner than later. Didn’t you say a crooked cop was on your tail?”

  “Yes, yes, I said that. But the car wasn’t registered. They never would have traced it.”

  “Well, that would have been good information to have,” she said, avoiding my gaze completely.

  While we were at an impasse, I took the mac and cheese out and grabbed a semi-clean fork out of the sink. The first bite was too hot, so I dug into the still-cold middle. Much better. “Look. I’ve got to get out of New York. Any ideas on how to do that?”

  “Why was Lincoln killed, do you think?” she asked, ignoring my plight completely. “I’ve been mulling it over, and I can’t work it out. He’s spent nearly a century straddling the line between the underworld and high-class society. Very successfully, I might add.” The way Dawson was staring at me, she was beginning to figure out why Lincoln had been murdered. “But you. You always have a tendency to get into trouble, don’t you?”

  Guilty as charged. Not that I was proud of it.

  “For your information, it’s not always. However, this time…”

  “What? What about this time?”

  Trust was a delicate thing, especially for someone who’d never learned it. But maybe it was time I embraced the concept. I was on the run with no resources, and Mac had sent me straight to Dawson. I was looking at my last resort, albeit she was dressed in silk and loaded down with jewelry. I figured it was time to lay my cards on the table.

  Fishing out the disc, I set it on the counter, the faint rainbow glint in the plastic mocking me with its happy-happy-joy-joy colors when the contents were so grim. “This is what got me into this mess and brought me to New York. I don’t know if the information got Lincoln killed or not, but he opened the disc, and now he’s dead.”

  To Dawson’s lifted, plucked eyebrows, I explained, “This disc contains what’s really happening to the Elementals in Devilton.” Her gaze went to the disc and stayed there, a calculating look on her face, her lips pursed in concentration.

  “Lincoln figured it out, and someone killed him. But the more I think about Devilton, and what’s happening there…” I stopped, realizing what I was about to say was the truth. “I care about this, Dawson. I want to find out what’s going on in there, and something tells me you do too.”

  12

  “And that’s when I left. The only thing I had was this note, with your name and address on it.” I fished out Mac’s note and flattened it on the counter as I finished my tale of woe. Re-playing the last few days only made me realize how badly I’d fucked things up.

  “Jeez. Good thing I never give out my real address,” Dawson observed, dumping fish sticks on a plate and popping them in the microwave. At my grimace, she shrugged. “I’ve never been much of a cook, and these will do for now. Don’t judge.”

  “My car is rubble, I’m eating crappy mac and cheese, and I have no idea what to do. I’ll judge all I want,” I snapped, beyond pissed at my predicament. “Suggestions for what comes next would be great, right about now.”

  “Get some sleep and you’ll feel better in the morning.”

  Seriously, what kind of lame advice was that? “Do you really think I can sleep right now?” I gestured at the disc, the crumpled note, the darkened room around us. “I’m on the run…”

  “We are on the run,” Dawson corrected me, pulling her still-floppy fish sticks out of the microwave while I shuddered. “You brought disaster to my door. You screwed my life up as much as yours is screwed up. My plan is to eat my fish sticks and go to bed and figure out what to do in the morning. You’re welcome to take the spare room, or leave. I’m sure the Darkwing patrol outside will be happy to scoop you up. And then…”

  Her eyes brightened. “You’ll become a guest at Devilton’s finest establishment, the new prisoners’ wing. I’ve heard it’s fabulous.” She stuffed a fish stick into her mouth. “Not to mention you will cease to be my problem. Sounds like a plan to me.”

  “Consider me your problem until I find suitable transpo,” I countered.

  “Hmmm. The only reason we are alive at the moment is because I distracted them.”

  “Yes, you did. Spectacularly.” A thought occurred to me. “Since when can a Prometheus control fire?” Each elemental group had specific powers, confined to their designation. I, for instance, couldn’t so much as control a raindrop. Yet from what I’d seen, Dawson had controlled several elements. Fire, metal, and air.

  “I didn’t manipulate fire. I manipulated gasoline, a petroleum product from the earth, and spark plugs, a metal. I moved mass to suit my purpose.” But her eyes turned shifty while she ate her next fish stick.

  “What level are you?”

  “Now Andy, I don’t kiss and tell. My secrets are my own.”

  “Level five, I bet, or higher, going by your little history lesson.” My gaze narrowed while I tried to ignore her shoveling limp fish sticks into her mouth at an alarming rate. “If what you say is true, you have as good a chance of ending up inside the colony as I do.”

  “Just now figuring it out, are you? Wow, clients must be flocking to your door.”

  Okay, now she’d gone too far.

  “My clients love me. As a matter of fact…”

  The heavy pounding on the front door turned us both into wide-eyes statues. “Do not answer that door,” I whispered as the plate slid from Dawson’s manicured fingertips and shattered on the floor.

  13

  Through the leaded glass of the front door, flashlights danced through the darkness. From the semi-lit kitchen, it was easy to see outside. Hopefully the soldier banging on the other side of the door couldn’t say the same.

  “We should do something before they kick in the door,” Dawson whispered as the rapping grew ever louder. “We really should.” The number of flashlights on the other side of the door had grown alarmingly. “Fuck it, I love that door, it’s an antique. I’m answering it.” Dawson grumbled, limping toward the door.

  I cowered in the kitchen, in no hurry to go to jail or Devilton, which was looking far more likely.

  Straining to hear the muted conversation, I only made out Dawson’s sweet-sounding alto interspersed with a threatening mix of men’s voices, squawking radios, and the clatter of gear as the debate went on for longer than it should have. The entire time I braced myself to be hauled to my feet and dragged to the clink.

  How had things come to this? I asked myself, staring at my reflection in the oven door, past the clutter of a broken plate and limp fish sticks.

  Hiding. Running for my life. Forced to rely on perfect strangers to survive.

  Suddenly, fifteen years ago didn’t seem that far away. Of course, I’d been a child then, blessed with the exuberance and naivete of a ten-year-old. I’d grown up a lot since. At least, that
’s what I told myself. Even as a child, I’d never gotten this far in over my head. I was so lost in my little pity party I didn’t notice Dawson’s return until her bejeweled flats appeared in my line of sight.

  “That went well,” she said wryly, using the toe of her shoe to scoot the debris into a definitely unappetizing pile. “They’ve moved on and good riddance. I sent them to my neighbor’s house. They’re on vacation and have the entire place booby-trapped, which should keep the Darkwings busy for an hour or two.”

  “They’re definitely Darkwings?”

  “From the look of them, I’d say yes. Highly trained and highly brainwashed, so there’s no reasoning with them.”

  Dawson paused her cleaning up long enough to look me in the eye. “I don’t want any part of this. I don’t care about the disc, or Devilton, or whatever personal mission you are on. I’m too old to get involved, especially if that disc got Lincoln killed. I, for one, want to live out my boring, feckless life of white-collar crime. I can’t have the government sniffing around me or my enterprises. I want you to take this thing.” She scooped up the disc and tossed it to me. “And leave.”

  “How exactly should I do that?” I complained as I tucked the disc back into my pocket with my now-dead cell phone. My options were dwindling to nothing.

  “Well,” she said, her gaze narrowing beneath those thin, arched eyebrows, “I do have a friend. I’d be willing to call in a favor for you. Just one, mind you, since I really liked Lincoln.”

  “You, not so much.” She added beneath her breath.

  “Sounds good. The sooner I’m done with you, the better,” I shot back, tired of her pot shots and generally bad attitude.

  “I have a contact who can set you up with new ID, everything you’ll need to start over.”

  Well, goodbye hard-won PI business, hello starting all over again.

  “Once, he handled Lincoln’s art documentation, but he outgrew that role after his teens. He’s become quite famous, but since we go way back, he’ll do this solid for me.” Dawson got serious. “The catch is, you can’t ever say you know him. Once you meet him, you’ll understand why. You take the ID’s and you disappear yourself, and I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  “Trust me, this is the last place I wanted to end up. I swore once to never…” My voice trailed off, as I realized how close I’d almost come to revealing myself to this stranger. “Anyways, I don’t want to be here. Get me a new ID, and we’re even.”

  “I’ll text him, then grab a few hours of sleep. There’s a couch in the front room, help yourself.”

  Sounded like a plan. Sleep, get a new life, and destroy the disc.

  A good day’s work.

  14

  The couch was one of those tufted antique deals. The kind that grandmas covered in plastic, and no one ever sat on. I’d gotten better sleep on a marble headstone. Don’t ask.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” Dawson crowed as soon as the sun came up. She was dressed in all red today, her hair pulled up in a tight bun, jewelry winking with ruby highlights. I had to blink a couple times to get the spots out of my eyes.

  God save me from morning people. “Good morning to you too. Asshole.” I muted the last part and figured Dawson’s hearing was probably shit, since she was old and practically decrepit. “Thanks for the accommodations, they were stellar.”

  “Since I take great pride in being an asshole, I’m glad you recognize my talent in that area.”

  I rolled my eyes. She was starting to remind me a little too much of Lincoln.

  After enjoying a leisurely breakfast of frozen waffles and instant coffee, Dawson shrugged on what looked like a vintage mink coat, probably pre-Surge. I dearly hoped it was fake. “Come along, Andy, we have places to go and people to see. Soon, God willing, you’ll be out of my hair.”

  “Where are we going? If I may be so bold, who shall we be seeing?”

  “Like I said, an old friend. Practically like a son to me.”

  I rolled my eyes at her retreating back. Lincoln was much better at the cloak-and-dagger stuff, and his breakfasts were stellar. But Lincoln’s dead, I reminded myself. Maybe Dawson would come through. Maybe in a few hours, I’d have a new ID, and I’d put my old life behind me for a newer, shinier one.

  Not that my old life didn’t have its shiny bits. They were just outweighed by the darker, grimier bits. I felt a sharp pang as I remembered Lincoln, his fussy smoking jackets, his embroidered slippers. Lincoln Amherst had definitely been one of the brightest parts of my life. Following Dawson outside, I fingered the cool, flat disc, the pang of his loss growing sharper.

  Maybe I owed it to Lincoln to stay. To figure out who was behind this.

  Ha. Maybe I could sprout wings and fly.

  Going up against the government, the Sheltons, and the Darkwings all at the same time was not only stupid, it was suicide, and I very much enjoyed breathing.

  No, I’d take the fake ID’s, escape this cursed city, and set up somewhere else. Cleveland had seemed nice enough and wouldn’t look too closely at documentation. Bennett the Bastard could kiss my gorgeous ass. He could barely find a clue, much less an experienced PI with a new identity.

  Suck it, Bennett, I thought, imagining myself firmly ensconced in my new life, enjoying my burgeoning PI career, with not a care in the world.

  Feeling incrementally better, Dawson led me to the subway line and even paid my fare. What a gem. Instead of asking where we were going and who we were seeing—questions I knew Dawson wouldn’t answer anyway—I cased our fellow passengers. So many easy pickings here. If I was still a pick pocket. Which I was not.

  Still, it would be irresponsible of me not to keep my skill set honed and at the ready, especially when I saw a few lean months in my future. “Are there always this many people on the train?” I wondered aloud, my gaze skimming the crowd, picking out the most expensive coats paired with the least attentive owners.

  Nope. That was my old life. While I’d been very good at it, I had no real desire to go back to it. Too many sleepless nights looking over my shoulder.

  “Who are we going to see?” I asked again, knowing I wouldn’t get a straight answer, but nervous at the prospect of meeting another stranger, when I barely trusted the one in front of me. Distrust ran through my veins like blood, but it had kept me out of trouble more than once.

  “Like I said before, he’s practically a son to me.” Her eyes grew flinty, and her tone changed when she warned me, “I’m doing you a favor. Don’t make me regret this, McHale. You take your credentials, and then you get out of our lives.”

  “Will do,” I said, then spent the ride looking out the scratched, dirty window, fascinated despite myself.

  I’d always loved New York. Big cities were nothing but concrete and asphalt, but still… they felt so alive. Energy buzzed between the skyscrapers, along the crowded streets. It was the entire world wrapped up into a loud, dirty, diesel-fueled package, a place where incredible opportunity and impoverishment lived side by side, where the crowds felt homey and loneliness was the norm.

  Connectivity was never more disconnected than it was in the Big Apple.

  Which was a strange name, since there wasn’t an apple tree in sight. But the closer we got to downtown, the more nervous I became. Brooklyn was one thing. Manhattan was another.

  “Dawson, when are we getting off?” Phrasing, McHale. “I mean, how much longer are we going to be on this line? We’re switching soon, right?” The conductor’s voice came on, accompanied by a melodic bell sound, and the train began rocking as we sped up, sandwiched between two other lines running the opposite way.

  “We’re taking this all the way in. About fifteen more minutes.” She lifted an eyebrow at all my neck craning. “Didn’t figure you for a tourist.” Dawson straightened up and joined my window viewing. “It is really something, isn’t it?” Awestruck sarcasm coated her every word. “That view is always… exactly the same.” She flopped back into her seat. “We are, however, go
ing to the Flatiron Building. Top floor. Now that’s a view.”

  I tried to remember the last time I’d been to the Flatiron, and I couldn’t. A few hazy, childhood memories were all I could pull up, and none that I wanted to inspect too closely.

  “Don’t you want to keep a low profile?” I asked her, eyeing her outfit, which was drawing plenty of attention. “I’m not sure heading straight into downtown Manhattan signifies covertness. What if they pick us out of the crowd or something? Why couldn’t your friend have met us somewhere else… say a park or a dark alley?”

  “My friend is hard at work and doing you a big favor. Which means we meet him on his terms, at his convenience. We don’t push our luck.”

  “Still…” My gaze roamed around the car, all of a sudden feeling like every eye was upon us.

  “Look at me closely, Andy,” Dawson urged, laughter in her voice. “Use those PI skills of yours and tell me what you see.”

  “Older woman, badly in need of a haircut. Should tone down her wardrobe or join the circus.”

  “Run it down, as if I were a case. Or a perp.”

  “Okay, then.” I sat back, looking at her with newly critical eyes. “Female sub, over seventy years of age, five two, one hundred pounds. Grayish-blonde hair, untreated, shoulder-length. Eyes… hazel, race—I’ll say Caucasian. Walks with a slight limp, probably from bad knees. Left shoulder is lower than the right, clothing is a hideous dead animal, bright red silk pants and blouse, custom ruby jewelry, red lizard shoes… yeah, all the red.”

  Out the window, a series of smokestacks, billboards, and riveted iron girders flew past. Up ahead, the city loomed, dark pillars against a blue sky.