Don’t Bite the Messenger (3 page)

“Ms. Pike,” the vamp said as he stalked down the stairs. The gooseflesh on my nape spread outward like a stampede and I was glad—goddamn grateful—that he didn’t know my real name. I had a feeling that hearing “
Sydney Kildare
” leave his thin lips would signal the beginning of the end of my careful life. His hand slid down the banister, leaving a red smear of blood behind. Shadows wriggled over the back of his hand, then disappeared, and my stomach lurched at the realization that he was absorbing blood through his skin.

“We have a package that we would like you to deliver to Master Bronson. You know of him?” His accept was thick and Russian, and the hollow timbre of his voice gave goose bumps to my goose bumps. My hand strayed toward my bag and the knife I kept there. I could always go for the Mace if I had to, but I longed for the solid reassurance of the hilt in my hand.

“I’ll check the database at I&O.” It was the standard reply. I knew four Bronson homes and two hangouts, one of which wasn’t even in the database, but this guy didn’t need to know that.

The vampire reached the bottom of the staircase. He loomed over me, freaky skinny, his eyes sunken into dark holes, the skin tight over the bones of his face. I flexed my legs to still my knees, which were trying to move me toward the door. My knees are smart, and it takes a lot of willpower to overcome smart.

“Richard, could you please provide our messenger with the package?” Skinny stretched his lips before settling them against his teeth, the fangs still partially extended.

I swiveled ninety degrees on one heel so that I could see both of them. Richard, the one that had been behind me, smirked. With straight yellow hair combed forward and to the side, he looked like he was trying out for a movie role as an aspiring Hitler youth. He stretched his arm out and I waited until the motion ended before I gingerly took the foot-long cardboard tube from him. It was surprisingly heavy. I tucked it under my elbow and handed him the small clipboard I’d been holding. The paper curled around the damp fingerprints I’d left.

“Sign there please.” I glanced at the green digital readout of my watch while keeping an eye on the vampire at the bottom of the stairs and half listening for signs of life up above. “The time is eleven twenty-three.” The Nazi signed with a flourish and I tucked the clipboard back into my bag.

“Delivery is guaranteed for tonight, sir.” I turned toward the door. Richard backed away, the movement too quick, and I swung around, fists clenched. Skinny was right in front of me, his thin lips parting grotesquely wide to exhibit his fangs. He leaned forward and inhaled, and I bit down on the inside of my cheek to keep from punching him in the throat. I’m such a goddamn professional.

“You stink,” he said, his breath coppery.

I fumbled through the door and all but ran, the sound of my steps muffled by deep snow and the thud of my heart in my ears. I slid as I turned halfway down the path, but the door had closed behind me and I was alone. Years of conditioning allowed me to slow to a walk, but I was spooked in a way I hadn’t been since my first year running. He’d tried to take my scent, hadn’t even disguised what he was doing. That couldn’t be good.

They’d erected a vinyl tent in the middle of the circular drive, for which I was thankful. I’d left my car running, but the snow was coming down thick, and this saved me from having to brush and scrape. I disengaged the security system with a code and the print from my ring finger and popped the trunk, one eye still on the house. I secured the tube in a heavy plastic bag, squeezing the air out of it and sealing it with a zip tie before locking it in a lead box. My own invention after Tens, one of I&O’s first couriers, was found dead in his car half a decade ago. Poison gas, they’d said. I threw myself inside the car and skidded out of the drive.

I picked up a tail on Dimond Boulevard, an older maroon sedan with cockeyed headlights. It had all-wheel drive but skinny tires and the muffler rattled ominously. I shook my head. I can’t stand when people don’t take care of their cars. I cranked up Shinzu Cormera’s death-metal cover of Grieg’s
In the Hall of the Mountain King
. The original is a classic, but evasive driving requires something less nuanced than a symphony orchestra.

We took it slow off the green light, trading leads for ninety seconds while I tried to get a look at the driver through his dark smoke tint. He had a passenger with him, a big guy who looked like they’d have to use a tire iron to pop him out of his seat. The next light turned red and I bombed through—rear end sliding out before the electronic stabilizers growled to life—then shot into a twisty neighborhood with only one hard-to-find exit. The sedan crept down the center of the street while I jackrabbited through the subdivision, losing them with a couple of quick turns and the use of an unmarked alley.

With that cheap a car and that much muscle, they were probably prowling for money-runners—vampires don’t trust the banks—not couriers. Still, if they caught me, they’d try to make me worth their time. My job might give me protection from vampires, but to the low end of human society, I was another girl on her own. The scarecrow vamp had me on edge, and I wasn’t in the mood to set a couple of idiots straight on how little I liked being messed with.

I left them to their prowling and popped out onto the Seward Highway. I cruised for a half mile to see if they had followed. Nada. I melded back into the sparse late-night traffic, smiling wide enough that my cheeks hurt. That part of the job never got old.

I got lucky, finding Bronson and his modern court in the second residence I tried, a big house in an older neighborhood of large lots and full-grown trees. I waited in the entryway, empty but for a heavily carved wooden table holding a bowl of waxy red apples, and a thick-necked doorman with a similarly ruddy complexion. The house was warm but not uncomfortable and, more importantly, I couldn’t hear anyone getting their teeth knocked around. Lucille didn’t make me wait long. She breezed out in a smart gray suit tailored to her long, sinuous lines. She dismissed the beefy doorman and pulled her ash-blond hair to drape over her left shoulder. It ran almost to her waist in a smooth cascade. I pulled my stocking cap tighter to my scalp.

“Hey, Luc.”

“Good evening, Mary.” Lucille smiled a genuine smile that reached her eyes but didn’t quite reveal her fangs. I shivered at the memory of Skinny grinning at me. Lucille reached for the brown-paper-and-twine-wrapped package that we delivered three times a week after FedEx flew it in.

“I have something else for you,” I said. “In the car.”

“Big delivery this week,” she murmured, checking the contents of the envelopes.

“Not from your regular sender. It was a whistle-stop. In-town.” Her hands stilled and she looked up, her smile tightening.

“One moment, please.” She disappeared back down the hall from which she had come. I pulled my hat off and ran a hand through my hair, wondering if I had something dangerous in my car. If I did, I wanted it out. The Audi was paid for. I pulled my hat back on, blinked and then almost fell over backward.

Bronson stood not a foot in front of me. He was shorter than Skinny, slightly over six feet, but built deep and dense, and energy ran riot in the air around him. The doorman was back as well, hovering behind the Master, tense as a live wire.

“Who sent it?” Bronson asked, and I stared dumbly at him. Just wavered on my feet, looking him right in the eye like a complete moron. I swallowed and dragged my gaze to the clipboard.

“The name he gave was Price.” Bronson glanced at Lucille and she shook her head. Not somebody they knew, then. I couldn’t reveal the address, but I had a little wiggle room before I said something that could justify the state pulling my license. “I’ve never made a pickup from this location before. Don’t think anyone at I&O has.”

“What did he look like?” Bronson’s deep baritone filled the room and made it seem oppressively tight. Though I wanted to step back, I cocked my hip against the wall, almost shaking from the effort of feigning calm.

“Tall. Gaunt. Dark hair, slicked back, silver on the sides. Dark eyes. He was older, could absorb blood through his skin.” I tried to remember any other details. “His suit looked expensive.”

“Whose blood?” Bronson asked, and his harsh tone surprised me into looking up at him again. Lucille took a half step forward, her eyes scanning me.

“Not mine,” I squeaked. Vampires could track blood to the square foot you occupied once they’d tasted it. It was a far more effective lure than scent. When a courier got bit, she was out of a job. End of story. She was also usually on her way to a short, shoddy life in some vampire’s back pocket. I took great pride in evading fangs.

“He was…engaged with someone when I arrived. His buddy gave me the package. Richard, I think. Regular tall guy, hair like cheddar cheese. The color, not the texture.” I looked back at Lucille, whose face was now blank. That wasn’t a good sign. When vampires go poker face it’s scary, both because it means they’re hiding something from you, and because it makes them look a little bit alien. They go still in a way that no human can, and end up looking like smooth wax sculptures. It’s disconcerting to see them for what they are: unliving.

“Mary,” Bronson said quietly. “I need you to take that package to an associate of mine so that he can examine it. Can you do that?” His words brushed over me like a cool sea spray across my eyes, then repeated
inside
my head, a cold whisper pressing against my mind. I blinked against the throbbing ache that accompanied it. Then I got mad.

“I’m a runner,” I said through gritted teeth. “Delivery is my freaking job. You don’t have to
will
me. All you have to do is sign a goddamn
form
.” Maybe it was my short-timer’s attitude or maybe I was spooked beyond common sense, but I blew a cardinal rule. I antagonized a vamp.
Brilliant fucking work, Kildare.
I stared at him, holding my breath, unable to pretend I was anything but terrified.

He laughed, actually opened his mouth and chuckled. Lucille rolled her eyes, and I would have relaxed, but my heart was pinballing through my chest and I was afraid that if I let go at all, it might break out. Behind Bronson, the doorman had gone pale.

“My apologies.” The Master’s voice was pleasant with mirth. “Believe me when I say I did not mean to upset you. Lucille will provide you with directions.” Bronson shook his head as he walked away, and I think he laughed again as he disappeared through a door.

“I’m so glad he finds me funny.”

“My master has an odd sense of humor,” Lucille said apologetically. “He likes you, you know. He told me that once, that you’d worked your way up like he did. He finds it an admirable quality sorely lacking in today’s mortal youth. Come with me.”

I followed her around the corner into what was once an oversized coat closet, but which now housed a roll-top desk lit by a small, antique lamp. Yellow sticky notes dotted the surface of the desk.

“How is Mr. McHenry?” Lucille scribbled out a note on thick, white paper. I blinked, wondering why she was asking about him.

“Grumpy. He’s on a diet.”

“He should stop by.” Lucille winked. “I have a plan that I’m certain would work for him.”

“I think he’s interested in better heart health,” I said. “Losing blood weight isn’t quite what the doctor ordered. Wait a minute, do you have a thing…for Doughboy?”

“No.” She hastily folded the note.

“Oh my God, you do.” I couldn’t help but laugh, and Lucille’s creeping blush only confirmed my suspicion.

“That’s nonsense. What would I do with that…that…”

“Sweet apple dumpling of a man?” I finished for her. She snorted out a distinctly unladylike laugh, then looked around as if afraid someone had overheard. I drew myself together. Even though it was only the two of us, one never knew who was listening.

“Mr. Kelly is outside of Anchorage. Approach his home slowly, and offer him this. He’ll want the explanation first.” She reached her hand up to her mouth and swiped her thumb across a fang. I stared intently at my boots while she pressed a bloody fingerprint into the paper, making the vampire equivalent of a wax seal.

She handed me the folded note, followed by a thick, white envelope. I opened it and my eyebrows jacked up at the sight of a wad of hundred dollar bills. Lucille, smiling her warm smile, leaned close and whispered, “It’s for Hawaii.”

“I can’t take this!” I whispered back.

“Yes, you can.”

“Holy shit, Lucille.”

“It’s just a few grand. Consider it a housewarming present, though I’ll be sad to see you go. The other couriers are so boring.”

“No, they…actually I can’t argue with that.” The doorman knocked lightly on the door, and I crammed the envelope and note into my bag. I looked up at Lucille and mouthed “thank you.” She pulled me into a bone-crunching hug, then straightened my scarf and led me out the door.

I flew down the highway, having called Rogers to have him tell McHenry I was out on an El Mufferd, doctored slang for “last minute from a fucking regular, dumbass.” I&O wasn’t what you’d call urbane before McHenry came along.

I completed my last two drops in record time and headed north out of Anchorage at 3:00 a.m. under the warm, pink glow of artificial streetlight filtered through hazy snow.

I’d memorized the directions and planned to be at this Mr. Kelly’s place by three thirty. That wasn’t a problem. The problem was that I hadn’t given notice to McHenry, and Lucille knew I was moving. Maybe she kept tabs on me—down to the minute—since we interacted a lot. Regular contact with humans was a risk that probably had to be monitored, since humans are easy to corrupt. Greed, blackmail, misguided affections. You name it and we fall for it. I’m notoriously keen on money, so maybe they thought I’d turn on them. But for me greed is a means to survival and, while I’ve seen some scary shit, I haven’t yet seen anything that makes me want to roll over on the toughest guy in town. Anyway, Luc had whispered, which meant she hadn’t told Bronson. I hoped.

I didn’t bother with evasive driving. If Skinny had set a tail on me, I would have noticed it while evading my stalkers in the sedan or, in the event it had picked me up after, it would have seen me stop at Bronson’s. Lucille allowed me to back into a closed garage, so anyone watching would think that I had delivered the package.

I crept down a long, L-shaped driveway with my parking lights on. I hoped this Kelly fellow was decent. Most of Bronson’s people politely ignored me, and that was how I preferred it.

The house was tragic pea-soup green, around three thousand square feet thrown together in the seventies, nothing special. I got out of the car slowly, my messenger bag and I&O laminate visible, and my hands limp at my sides. Snow crunched under my feet and a few lazy flakes drifted around me. I didn’t hear or see a vampire, but the sensation that ran up my spine like the scrape of a cold nail told me he was behind me.

“I have a delivery for you.” Adrenaline spiked my tongue copper. This was the second strange location I’d been to in one night, and we were miles from where anyone could hear me.

“Good of you to bring it so far off the beaten path,” he said. My hair stirred against the back of my head and I really hoped it was the wind, not his breath.

“I’m going to reach into my bag.” My fingers twitched in the cold.

“I scent Lucille,” he said, giving me a second to hear that correctly. His voice was familiar, and irritation swiftly followed recognition. “What’s the message?”

“I don’t…I didn’t read it,” I snapped, my mind whirring as it tried to make sense of what I was hearing—whom I was hearing. Something brushed my elbow and an instant later I heard the rustle of paper. Shifty bastard had lifted the message from me.

He made a sound as he read and my cheeks heated. Yeah, I recognized that voice. It belonged to a dark-haired asshole with a penchant for richly colored, deliciously fitted sweaters. I really should have asked for his full name. Now all I wanted to know was how he had hidden the fact that he was a sucker, and why.

“Will you show it to me?” he asked. I started. He was farther away, back by the trunk of the car. I moved stiffly, half-afraid now that I knew what he was, half-pissed that I’d let him get so close to me, and somewhere in between a little bit disappointed.

I had to rub my finger over the print scanner for a few seconds before it heated enough to register me. Any other vamp, all I’d have been worried about would have been my neck. With him, I was also a little concerned with protecting my backside from groping.

“Why have you been following me?” I asked, opening the trunk and working the lock on the box.

“Your employer asked me to.”

“McHenry?” He surprised me into looking at him. I couldn’t see much more than his dim outline beyond the red arc of the taillights, but it was definitely him. Malcolm Kelly. The corners of his mouth were turned down. Maybe he wasn’t happy seeing me in this context either.

“Bronson.” Typical paranoid vampire. Malcolm stepped forward to peer into the trunk. “What is that?”

“Felt-lined lead.” My voice trailed off as my throat tightened up. He looked even better than before, his skin smoother, his lips a little darker, fuller. Hell, he might have even been taller. He hadn’t merely been hiding his energy. He’d been
passing
as a human. “The package is inside, wrapped in plastic.”

He smiled, or smirked, his handsome profile and perfect hair making me self-conscious of my hat head and clownish makeup. Why, I had no idea. He’d already seen me like this.

“Is that courier standard?”

“I’ve learned to be cautious in my old age.” I put my hands on my hips and then wished I hadn’t. His eyes ran over me in a way that made me feel like I was wearing a lot less than long johns, jeans, a puffy down coat and a scarf. I cleared my throat. “I was thinking of getting a vacuum sealer, but they’re loud, take too long.”

“Interesting.” Presumably, he meant the containment system, though his eyes remained on me. “Proceed.”

I ground my teeth as I opened the case and extracted the package. I held it out toward him. He didn’t take it.

“Could you please unwrap it?”

It took serious effort not to roll my eyes, and I concentrated on working the tie with stiff fingers.

“M. Pike,” he said, reading my ID. I nodded slowly. “Mary. You have been delivering to Bronson for how long?”

“Almost six years,” I ground out. It was odd that he did not refer to Bronson as “my master” or “the Master.” Lucille never failed to sound faintly awed when she spoke to or about Bronson. Malcolm barely sounded respectful.

“And why do you think Bronson always uses you as his runner?”

“Look,” I said, giving in to frustration and ripping the plastic open, “I’m not a vamp tramp, so don’t get any ideas. I…” He moved on me and I jumped back, smacking the back of my head against the open trunk. He snatched the tube from my hand and threw it. I blinked—that was all I had time for—and then he grabbed me around the waist and started running, our knees banging together, my teeth chattering.

“What the fu—” Over the horizon of his shoulder, the night lit up in a searing blast of flame. An explosion? The concussion lifted and tossed us toward the stark birch forest. I screamed, until we landed in a bone-crunching heap.

Malcolm twisted at the last second, landing first, and I crashed down on top of him. The snow-covered ground might have been softer. My head snapped forward, and my ears filled in a high squealing sound. I couldn’t breathe.

Darkness intruded over the bright orange sky, and I realized that Malcolm had rolled me over and was leaning down over me. His mouth moved, but his voice came to me in stuttered waves. I clutched at his arms. Pinpoints danced in my vision as I fought for more air.

“…hurt…feed you…ud…”

I felt my head shaking vigorously in response before my stunned brain translated his offer to feed me blood. Vampire blood: the elixir of life, the medical miracle. If only the side effects didn’t hit one out of ten lappers. Blood-bonding, an artful phrasing of dependency on your donor. If you didn’t drink regularly, you’d suffer permanent loss of reason. Cardiac arrest. And I had no idea what it might do to
me
.

“You’re hurt,” he shouted. I shook my head again, then stopped abruptly as I recovered from having the wind knocked out of me. I gasped, and with the cold air came jagged scraping along my ribs and a halo of pain around my skull.

“Hell, no,” I ground out. I
was
hurt, and this was the perfect opportunity for him to use my pain—my weakness—to ruin me. I’d never met a vampire that could pass up a chance to manipulate a human. Even Lucille, I realized, with that money, was probably working me in some way. My chest tightened and tears leaked from my eyes. “Please don’t force me.”

Malcolm raised a hand, ignoring the way I flinched, and stroked my cheek. I felt more than heard myself make a small, pitiful sound.

“Stubborn. Sleep.” Cool mist covered my eyes, drifted into my mind. My head crunched once in a spike of agony, and then I slept.

***

I woke to a terrible taste in a dry mouth, a splitting headache and ringing ears and the feel of McHenry stroking my hand. The last was the most disturbing.

“Let go.” I groaned, pulling my hand back and hissing as the IV line tangled in the bedding and the needle squirmed under my skin. I looked around, blinking until my eyes focused. “Did I win?”

“Jeez, Syd. What happened? You’ve been so careful, so good this year. We thought we’d lost you. Your GPS went offline, out in gosh darn Chugiak.” My name sounded strange spoken aloud. McHenry always remembered to call me Mary. He was reliable like that. I blinked, trying to pull my memories together through the army of hammers pounding away in my head. Not winning, then. The boss’s soft, pale face was so roughened by worry that he almost looked like an adult instead of a forty-year-old child.

“The Price delivery was an explosive,” I said, mentally backtracking through the night’s events. “Where’s my car?”

McHenry looked around as though he expected someone had parked it in the hospital room with me.

“We called emergency services when your signal went out. They found your car blown to bits, and you twenty yards away in the damn woods.”

“Language,” I muttered. A flash of memory, strong arms around me, the breathless sensation as we flew, propelled by the blast.

“You’ve got about a million stitches in your head and your left arm. They said it’s going to hurt to breathe for a couple days, ’cause your ribs are all banged up.”

Pain registered in each body part as if being mentioned turned it on, and the light around the edges of the vertical blinds seared my eyes. The light. Sunlight.
Shit
.

“I gotta go,” I mumbled, examining the IV. “Sign me out, will you?” I unwrapped the tape from my arm and gritted my teeth as I extracted the needle. McHenry paled and dropped his head between his knees.

“There, there, tough guy.” My own nausea took its sweet time twisting my stomach before it allowed me to stand. I found my bag and pulled it over my shoulder with shaky hands. I aimed for the door. After a few steps, walking got easier. McHenry’s chair scraped over the linoleum as he stood, bounding forward and blocking my way. “I need to borrow your car.”

“You’re in no condition to be going anywhere. You need to rest, Syd. And if you think…”

“I didn’t finish Bronson’s last delivery,” I said. The idea of failing his biggest client shut him up instantly. His pale blue eyes ran over my face, skittered up to where I could feel the stiches pulling at my scalp. He dropped his keys into my hand.

***

I parked McHenry’s old blue Suburban at the edge of the scorched, black wreck that had been my car, and permitted myself one sad little whine. The Audi had been a beauty, but it was merely a possession. Hopefully Eugenie hadn’t called in my favor at the auto dealer, since it looked like I’d need it. Beyond the remains, Malcolm’s house was torn open. Icicles hung like teeth in the fractured opening. Now I knew what happened when the fire department hosed a house down on a frozen night. I’d hoped that Malcolm had made it back inside, maybe down to the safety of some secret lair, but the splintered bones of the foundation were exposed. No such luck.

I turned, my sore neck and wavering vision protesting, and looked toward the woods, to where he had run with me. I felt better than I should, according to the chart I’d snatched from the holder outside my door, but it still seemed like a long walk. I put my head down against the cold and trudged forward.

The tramped-down trail made by emergency services ended in an oblong circle at the foot of a big, dead cottonwood tree. The snow was spotted with blood and a couple of pieces of green bandage. It was amazing they’d been able to see me in the dark. Or maybe the house had been burning brightly enough to cast light that far. I twisted the space blanket I carried in my fists. McHenry would have mentioned if I’d been found in the company of a vampire.

I looked around, through the white-skinned birch trees and the dark, hunched spruce. Had Malcolm kept going after setting me down? Had he willed me to sleep and abandoned me, left me to freeze to death? And what was I thinking, trying to save a vampire from the sun in the middle of the day? Maybe I
had
suffered serious neurological damage.

“All right,” I called out, “if you’re here, let me know. Because it would be awesome to find out I didn’t drive out here to talk to myself.” Two ravens lit off from a tree branch at the sound of my voice, startling me and dropping a soft line of snow to the ground.

“Tempting as it is to let you think you’re talking to yourself,” Malcolm responded from somewhere to my left, making me jump again, “I’m curious to hear what you think you’re doing.” I waded through knee-deep snow toward the sound of his voice. There were no footprints other than the floundering trail I was making.

I finally spotted him through the low branches of a large spruce tree, his knees drawn up toward his chest, surrounded on all sides by walls of snow. Protected from the sun but essentially trapped. He must have been freezing.

“I came to rescue you, but I can see you’re enjoying yourself.”

“Below-zero temperatures are quite refreshing.”

I ignored the guilt that rose at that statement. He had probably tried to wait out the fire department, and gotten trapped by daylight. I shook out the space blanket, and the crinkled foil surface reflected light all around. He scrambled back, shaking the tree trunk. Pine needles fell around me.

“Jesus Christ! I wasn’t burned before. What kind of a rescue is this?”

“Feel free to stay there for the rest of the day then,” I yelled back. “I thought—stupidly, I guess—that you might have been injured last night and require feeding.”

“Are you offering?”

“I already gave at the office.” I paused to think about that. “The hospital, actually. But I’ve got a couple pints of pig blood in the car.” He made a disgusted noise, similar to the sound I’d made when I’d reached into the cooler at the Asian market for said blood.