Bloodshot (44 page)

“I don’t know!” he insisted. “She was just one more thing we lost in the storm. The roof came off, the walls fell in, and the subjects who didn’t die, disappeared.”

“You didn’t kill her?”

“No! We just told her family she’d died so you’d lay the fuck off! You were keeping her name in the papers, enlisting missing persons organizations, and drawing too much attention to her! We didn’t need the scrutiny!” He was talking in exclamation points now. I noticed it, and I liked it.

“So she’s still out there.”

“As far as I know, yes!”

As far as he knew. But there was a lot he didn’t know, like maybe the House had gotten hold of her—though my phone call to Atlanta implied she hadn’t gone home to roost. But they still knew of her, and they knew more than they were willing to tell me, which was going around a lot lately. The entry-level ghoul whom I’d finally badgered into talking … he was the one who told me she’d gone deaf, but that’s all he could be persuaded to say. If he knew where she was or what she was doing these days, I couldn’t pry it out of him over the phone.

Of course, it was always possible she’d been caught and killed by something or someone else. Or she might’ve ended it all herself—which was a distinct possibility. Not every young vamp is cut out to go it alone, much less with a significant disability and a House that had turned on her. With all that stacked against her … some people would give up.

“Well?” Bruner asked, since I’d been quiet while pondering these things.

“Well what?”

“Well, are you going to leave me alone now, and get the fuck out of my house?” Ooh. Fake bravado. Almost as obnoxious as real bravado.

“Well, I’ll tell you what,” I said slowly.

Then, faster than he could blink (no, literally), my hands were on his throat and my knee was on his chest. He’d leaned back so far that the chair nearly buckled under both our weight—and he was gasping, more with surprise than the pressure I was not yet applying.

In the next moment Adrian was at my side. He reached into the back of my belt, where I’d stashed the major’s knife. He did it fast, but not so fast that I couldn’t have stopped him if I wanted to.

I didn’t want to. I let him slash at Bruner’s throat just beneath the place where I held him, and together we let him bleed. Bruner’s eyes bulged, and he struggled to speak.

But he didn’t say anything. And we didn’t, either.

When we were sure he was dead, and that no one would reasonably expect a vampire to have done it (yes, I know how that sounds), we torched the place and left. Bruner wasn’t the beginning and end of the program, no. But he was a big, nasty part of it; and without him, it wouldn’t be half so effective.

And there was one more thing I hoped Bruner’s death might accomplish.

I hoped it might force the mysterious Jeffery Sykes to emerge from whatever hole he was hiding in. After all, we’d now killed two of his lead researchers and one of his parkour recruiters. He’d need more people. He obviously needed more vampires, too—because he’d put me on the shopping list. Oh, sure, first he’d wanted to help me find that paperwork, because he needed it, too—but once I had it in hand, he didn’t just want the files. He wanted
me
. So he came after me. And I believe the record will reflect, that was a
huge
fucking mistake.

But I had time, and now I knew what to watch for. I also knew to drive less, and change cars more frequently. I knew to plant a few false leads in a few other cities, to beware of men in black suits, and to watch for urban explorers.

And I knew to start looking for Jeffery Sykes.

I
lost my storehouse holdings in the raid that nearly spelled the end of Domino and Pepper’s leisure squatting, but I recovered some of that loot, too—from the federal facility downtown where it was cataloged as evidence but, as far as I could tell, mostly tied up in red tape. Serious efforts to identify and return the property hadn’t been made, or if they had, they’d met with minimal success.

It was difficult to say how much the authorities knew about what they’d found.

Bruner had staged the initial raid, but he didn’t have any real interest in the building’s contents, since I, personally, was not among them. The stash had just been dumped off at a precinct storage facility where cold-case miscellany and stray evidential bits were sent to be forgotten.

I didn’t bust down the door and throw everything into the back of a U-Haul, even though I probably could have. Instead I let myself inside the quiet way, and after deciding what I could and couldn’t live without, I removed the choicer pieces an item at a time, over a period of weeks.

The history of international crime is the history of official agencies fighting for dominance, and failing to communicate. I might never know exactly how much of this had occurred. I could only proceed as if everyone knew everything about me—worst-case scenario—and act with appropriate caution.

But I’m good at caution.

I bought a new building, since my old one was formally condemned and taped off. The “new” building was 110 years old, and it was only a couple of miles from my original hiding place.

Because I’m nothing if not a creature of habit.

The new location had some perks over the old one. For one thing, it was almost fully restored inside. Much like the parkour parlor in D.C., it had been gutted and refitted for office space … but the economy had tanked, and the offices had never come. So I picked it up for pennies on the dollar, turned the top floor into perfectly serviceable housing in less than five weeks, and furnished three separate lofts.

One was for Pepper and Domino, because it was time to quit deluding myself. One was for Ian, who had no place else to go … and I didn’t want him to leave yet anyway. I’d made him a promise and I didn’t intend to break it. Or maybe that was only the excuse I used in order to keep him close. Because I definitely wanted him close, and he wasn’t exactly running away from me, either.

The kiss on the roof of Bruner’s office … it’d meant something. And given time, given space—and given a little distance from the events that had upended both our lives—I think we both hoped it’d turn into something more.

But for the moment, we were both on edge and both trying to find our equilibrium. We didn’t talk about the kiss, and for a while we didn’t repeat it. I think we were too afraid of chasing each other away, when all we wanted to do was cling together like a couple of baby monkeys. Yeah, we’re pretty goddamn stupid. And broken, and lonely, and needy in very different ways, but those differences weren’t enough to pry us apart or let us really come together. If you know what I mean.

So one of the lofts was for me, because (a) I wasn’t ready to share absolutely everything with Ian; and (b) my Capitol Hill condo was contaminated by filthy feeb fingers. I’d never returned to it.

Instead, I’d faked my death for the fourth time since I’d actually died in 1924.

This time, by all reports I had been Helene Marks, who sadly passed away of cancer in Canada, where I’d gone to seek treatment—lacking sufficient health insurance to seek treatment in the United States. The death before, I was Amelia Westerfeld, and I perished in 1978—in a car crash in Mexico. Before I became Amelia, I was Christine Johnson, who expired of an allergy to shellfish in Singapore in 1951; and before I masqueraded as Christine I was Ruth Chesters, who vanished in the Andes in 1933.

Before that, of course, I was just Raylene Pendle.

I never die at home in California. It’s a matter of paperwork.

I let the state of Washington auction off my condo and all the property therein, what little there was. I then activated one of the other half a dozen potential identities I keep on tap, and started over as Emily Benton.

Say one thing for me, I’m prepared.

Say two things for me, and I’ve got a soft spot for drag queens.

A couple of months after the very fucking timely demise of Ed Bruner, I found myself up on Capitol Hill overlooking downtown Seattle, seated in a coffee shop because I like the smell of the stuff. It was a lazy night, which was good. I needed one. I had a copy of
The Stranger
and my laptop. And in the background, a guy who didn’t completely suck was ensconced on the corner stage, strumming his guitar and treating us all to an evening of boring shoe-gazer tunes.

The coffeehouse’s door opened with a jingle of the Tibetan bells that were strung along its handle. I wouldn’t have looked up except that with the opening of the door a familiar scent was carried by the night air right up into my nostrils. I knew that scent. It was hair spray and self-tanner, mixed with Nair and glitter gel.

Sister Rose sauntered up to the counter, ordered a double shot of something that’d keep her awake all night, and came to sit across from me at the two-person table I was hogging.

I should’ve been embarrassed by my big stupid grin, but I wasn’t. I only said, “Hey there, beautiful. Long time no see.”

“Back at you, hot stuff.” I was pleased to note that she was grinning, too, so at least I wasn’t alone in my dorky delight. “I’ve been looking all over town for you.”

“Really?”

“No, not really. I know you’re back down on the Square someplace. I just hadn’t pinned it down yet. Then I was walking home from work, and I saw you here in the window.”

“Work?”

She cocked her head toward the door. “
Neighbors,
” she said, naming a drag bar a few blocks away. “I picked up a place over on First Hill—but, you know. Not the ghetto part. Thanks for the seed money, by the way.”

I’d given Adrian fifty grand and a kiss on the cheek before we’d last parted company. “You’re more than welcome.”

The barista called out “Rose?” meaning that the double shot was ready. She left my company to pick it up and returned with a to-go cup. When she sat back down, she asked, “Any news on the mysterious Mr. Sykes?”

I filled her in on what I’d learned since then, mostly with risky legwork conducted through the vampire grapevine. “He was a high-ranking ghoul, so far as these things go, for the biggest House in San Diego. Apparently, all the money he made from selling his soul to the Department of Defense didn’t make him happy. He figured out one day that he couldn’t take it with him … so he fell in with the Castors. I don’t know what he did to piss them off—nobody’s talking, but I’m still digging—but it was enough for them to give him an overhaul the likes of which he’d never recover from.”

“Yikes.”

“Yeah. Somehow, he got away from them. I guess when you have more money than God”—I borrowed Bruner’s phrase—“you can do things like that. Anyway, he heard about Project Bloodshot, and I guess he thought there was a chance he could learn from the research—maybe get some of his vision or hearing or whatever back. That’s why he wanted the paperwork on Ian and your sister. Whatever experimentation had been conducted on them might help him fix his own problems. So he restarted the program, hiring everyone back in a civilian capacity; and then he went looking for the former participants, if any of them were still alive. It took him a while, but he eventually lured Ian out of hiding by using David Keene. Keene had been in on the program back at the beginning, but Ian had never been anywhere near him, so he wouldn’t have known that. Ian thought he’d found someone who could help him. In fact, all he’d found was someone who was trying to help Jeffery Sykes.”

Rose blew at the foam on top of her drink, and said, “Devious.”

I sighed. “Rationally, I know we haven’t seen the end of this yet, and we won’t until I can track down Sykes and put a nail in his coffin for good. But he’s going to be hard to find. I know this, because the Castors haven’t found him yet—and they have damn fine resources at their disposal.”

“You think maybe he’ll lie low for a while? Since you kind of fucked up his plans?”

“
We
kind of fucked up his plans.” I smiled evilly. “And to answer your question, for now he’ll go quiet if he knows what’s good for him. The tables have turned, my friend. It’s his turn to hide from us.”

“I hope you’re right. I don’t know about you, but I could use a break.”

“Agreed. I don’t need that kind of excitement anymore. I’m getting too old for all this action and adventure shit.”

“Preach it,” she said.

I lifted the cup of cooling java in a toast. “To boring lives of total anonymity.”

“To boring lives,” she echoed wryly. “Filled with bitch-techno, too-high heels, and hefty tips in a lady’s thong.”

I laughed and set the cup down. “Or to new friends, and pet people, and shiny new storehouses for hot goods.”

She lifted an eyebrow so sharp it could’ve poked a hole in a tire. “Pet people? Oh yes. The kids.”

“One big happy family.” I sighed.

“And that’s why you’re out here alone, on a Saturday night? Reading the paper and surfing the ’Net for … what, porn?”

Of course. Always the porn. It has a way of finding me. “Yes, you’ve pretty much got it. Last I saw them, Domino had stomped off in a huff over some perceived insult on my part—”

“Merely perceived, I’m sure.”

“—and Ian was arguing with Pepper over whether or not she
needed to submit to his tutoring process, since she refuses to go to school, and I just didn’t feel like listening to it.”