Pool of Crimson (7 page)

“Well, Ma’am, it’s not the battery. I can tow it back to the garage on Third Avenue for you but that’s about all I can do here,” the tow truck driver said, after fifteen minutes of tinkering under my hood.

“I guess if it’s not going to start, I’ll have to take that,” I replied, my shoulders slumping in frustration.

“Do you need a ride, Ma’am?” he asked after watching me for a silent moment.

“No, Sir,” Jade said with a broad and bright smile that turned the corners of her mouth up in a sexy grin. The tow truck driver noticed, too, and couldn’t seem to take his eyes from her smile. “I’ll take her home,” she finished with a cocky hand on her hip.

The guy hoisted my car up onto the back of his flatbed and I waved goodbye to my ten year old, piece of shit, Pontiac.
Damn it.

I slid into the warm leather seats of Jade’s fairly new BMW 3 Series Sedan. Everything was jet black, smooth, and sleek. It looked as if it was built for stealth. When she said that her dad had money, she wasn’t kidding. This thing was top of the line.

“So, where to?” she asked with a smile as she started the car in a roar of a beautifully tuned engine, something I hadn’t heard in a very long time.

“Grandview,” I said as I fastened my seatbelt. “I hope this isn’t taking you out of your way?” I suddenly felt ashamed. We’d gone to a sushi restaurant on the North end of town, but I had no idea where she lived.

“Don’t worry about it. I was just going to go home and start working on this Atiman thingy,” she said with a smile.

“Ahriman.”

“Right, so this Ahriman could be a lot of things but if we combine it with the amulet you found, I’d say demon.”

“Demon, huh?” I asked as I shifted in my seat to face her. I’d grown up Catholic so I knew theoretically about demons but being told as a child about the fall of Lucifer and knowing that vampires were actually protecting themselves against demons were two different things.

“Yeah,” she said as she glanced at me from the corner of her eye then pulled onto I-71 South.

I caught a flash of headlights as I glanced out the rearview window.

“Especially with the caraway. That ingredient would guard against any demon since it’s powerful enough to guard against Lilith, the mother of all demons. The obsidian gives it a special twist I can’t quite figure out yet.”

A brand new white Dodge Charger pulled up alongside us at high speed in the lane to the left of Jade’s car. They slowed and maintained our speed, then dropped to just behind Jade’s rear bumper. The driver, a small woman with thick, curly, dark hair who could barely see over the dashboard, gawked at us. The passenger, however, kept his head turned toward the driver and away from us.

The look in the driver’s eyes as they met mine was predatory and hungry and set my teeth on edge.

The passenger finally looked at me with a sneer.
SMARMY!
The glint of recognition in his eyes made my pulse race. Their presence was no coincidence.

“Now, I’ve never seen—”

“Jade,” I interrupted with a sharp tone. Her bright green eyes turned to me in surprise. “Can you slow down for me, please?” I said in a calmer tone, belying the pounding of my heart. An exit was coming up. We needed to make that without the Dodge Charger getting off, too.

Jade looked confused, but she dropped a good five miles per hour off her speed, taking her foot from the gas and not applying the brake. The white Dodge Charger did the same.

“Are we in trouble?” Jade glanced in her side mirror at the car slowing in the lane beside her.

“Not yet, just keep it at this speed and then take the I-270 West exit at the very last minute, then gun it,” I said, keeping an eye on the smirk cresting Smarmy’s lips.

I really wish I was driving. I’d show him a few tricks.

Jade did exactly what I said and when we hit the onramp, she laid her foot down on the gas, hard. The turbo engine revved and I whipped around in my seat to see where the white Charger was. It was hard to find in the darkness, and then I spotted it.

The driver was coming for us, across three damned lanes of traffic. Horns blared from the highway in long angry cries. She made the turn through the grass and headed up the hill, off-road, and toward us.

“Shit.” Smarmy and the crazy lady were gaining on us. “Go, go, go,” I yelled as the Charger closed in. I felt Jade’s car change gears and knew we had already hit 75 miles per hour.

“Get around this car, now!”

Jade swerved the car hard, and I drifted up, straining again the seatbelt before slamming my back into the door. I pulled myself back into the seat, my fingers clutched around the headrest as she straightened the car out. The white Charger bore down on us like a rampaging beast, all growling grill and glaring headlights. It was going to hit us. No, it was going to ram us.

Jade drove like a woman who wanted to avoid an accident or a ticket and the Charger drove like it wanted to send us into oblivion. That was the only thing keeping the Charger in proximity to Jade’s BMW.

God, I wish I was driving.

“Change lanes,” I screamed at her.

Jade slid the car easily into the next lane. A BMW should have been able to outrun the Charger any day of the week but not with Jade driving. “Drive this fucking car like you mean it!” I shouted in frustration.

The Charger got within a few feet of the bumper of Jade’s car and everything seemed to move in slow motion. I couldn’t do a damned thing but watch it happen. The Charger bumped Jade’s back end almost gently but the jolt rippled through the car like it was on a chain-pulled roller coaster. The force of the impact slammed me back in my seat and against the door. “Get over,” I screamed again over the pounding in my ears.

Jade jerked the car into the next lane then fought to straighten it out and keep control. Just as we were almost out of reach and I could see another exit, the metallic sound of metal on metal ripped through the air as the Charger clipped the back end of Jade’s car. I was flung back against my seat from the pull of the spin and pinned to the passenger side door as the car spun out of control. The entire world went silent as the tires squealed.

Tail lights. Trees. Head lights.

Taillights, trees, headlights.

Taillightstreesheadlights.

Taillights ...

I opened my eyes to flashing red and blue lights and the deafening sound of a siren filling my ears. My neck was stiff and my chest hurt like someone had hit me with a brick. The airbag pressed me back into my seat, pinning me against the seat and door. A paramedic stood on the other side of the passenger side door screaming something I couldn’t understand. I couldn’t focus on him. My vision was blurry and blood pounded in my head, which scared me more than the throbbing in my side. A soft groan to my left brought my attention back into the car. I turned my head slowly as my brain seemed to slosh around in my skull.

“Uhhn.”

“Jade? You all right?” I asked, my voice harsh and gravelly. It hurt to talk. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to move.

“Uhhn,” she groaned again as her head rolled to her shoulder. Her bright green eyes fluttered open, then looked at me, unseeing and unfocused.

“What happened?” she whispered in a hoarse voice that sounded like she’d been smoking for the past thirty years.

“We got run off the damned road,” I bit out.

“Why?” she asked in a pain-filled groan as she tried to push the airbag out of her way. A fireman was at my door with a crow bar. The scrunch of metal sent shivers up my spine as he pried the door open.

“I think we’re getting close,” I said, just before the smoke from the wreck rushed into the car and I coughed as the smoky air filled my lungs. The fireman cut the airbag and my seatbelt before pushing both out of his way.

“Can you move?” he yelled at me. The sound from the sirens combined with people yelling on the closed-off highway and the blare of distant horns honking rang in my ears.

“Yeah,” I said defiantly. I moved to step out of the car but he stopped me with a firm hand on my shoulder. A Paramedic pushed his way through to my side and knelt down in front of me.

“Ma’am, where does it hurt?” he asked quickly as he turned deep hazel eyes up to meet mine.

“It might be faster to ask where
doesn’t
it hurt,” I said in a raspy reply. The paramedic froze where he knelt as he looked at me, his eyes wide as if I’d just sprouted a second head with fangs with fear behind his surprised expression. It made me nervous. “Hey, it was a joke,” I said putting my hand on his shoulder, using him as leverage to push myself out of the rumpled metal that had once been Jade’s beautiful car.

“Uh, yeah,” he said in a breathy disoriented tone as he shook his head. He stood and moved a step closer behind me, flanking me.

“I’m fine. Check on her please,” I said with a little authority to my tone. Hell, if I convinced them I was fine, maybe they’d leave me alone. I didn’t need the police discovering the knife in my boot. That was always hard to explain. Anyway, Jade looked worse off.

“Yes, Ma’am,” he said in a bright cheery tone and hopped to it like a good little soldier. The paramedic walked around the hunk of now useless metal and met the fireman as he pried Jade’s door off. He met my eyes one last time over the roof of Jade’s crumpled car with a wistful smile before he knelt beside her.

All right, that was weird.

“Ms. ...?” I heard from over my left shoulder. I turned. A tall, dark-haired man stood behind me in a police uniform. He had light blue eyes and a handsome enough face. He was too bulky, though, and looked like he’d spent too much time in a frat house to do any woman any good.

“Sabin,” I said, straightening my back with a wince and working the kinks from my neck. “Dahlia Sabin.”

“Your friend ...”

“Jade,” I finished for him. His eyes shot to meet mine, wide with fear. He took the few steps around me, his eyes peering through the shattered tempered glass of the windshield to find Jade still sitting in the front seat.

“Danny, is she ...” he started to ask in a voice that was softer than it should have been for a total stranger. He cleared his throat and refocused on me. “Jade Markowitz was driving?” he asked, forcing a business tone into his voice but I’d made him. He knew her.

“She’s all right,” I said softly. He looked up at me with gratitude etched across his brow and gave me a quick nod. “Yes, she was driving,” I said, back to business. I mean, she was still sitting in the driver’s seat. I gave him the make and model of the car that ran us off the road and a partial plate. I could only remember the first three letters. Everything else was fuzzy around the edges since that bitch had hit us.

Once he had all my information, Officer Derek Hamlin and I walked back over to Jade’s side of the car. The paramedic had picked Jade out of the car and placed her on a gurney like she weighed next to nothing.

“Are you all right?” I asked her, suddenly afraid that she really was hurt. Her face was so pale, her eyes sunken in and without the usual playful luster that I’d grown to count on. She looked suddenly fragile.

“She needs some stitches, and I’d like to get her to the hospital to make sure there’s no internal bleeding,” the paramedic said as he met my eyes again with his own beautiful hazel gaze. He looked at me as if he knew me inside and out. As much as I wanted that to frighten me, it didn’t.

They wheeled her to the ambulance on a waiting gurney and lifted her in. I hopped in after her and took a seat. Officer Hamlin whispered something in Jade’s ear that made her smile weakly before the paramedics closed the doors.

That probably happens a lot to her.

I expected the paramedic to have the same reaction to Jade as, it seemed, every other man did in her presence. He checked her vitals and started an IV but he watched me, even when he thought I
wasn’t
paying attention.

I leaned back and sank into the bench as I tried to disappear in the small space of the back of the ambulance. I wasn’t used to being the center of attention, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. He scrutinized me as if he didn’t know what to do with me. Under the sharp examination of his gaze, I was consumed with a deep sense of comfort and belonging.
That
was the part that was wiggin’ me the hell out. Somewhere deep in my gut, it seemed oddly right.

I rested my head in my hands with my elbows on my knees, trying to get a handle on what I’d learned and what I hadn’t. My head was still spinning from the accident, which wasn’t helping me make sense of any of it. I was tired. I ached all over, and I hurt more than I was willing to admit. I rubbed my eyes with the palm of my hand before I remembered I was wearing eye makeup. My fingers came away coated in burgundy sparkles and black mascara.

“Damn it,” I said as I rubbed my eye-shadow-covered fingers together. I was already covered in blood, grime, and dirt. I guess a little smeared makeup didn’t matter. I rolled my eyes in disgust and with a heavy breath tried to focus on what actually mattered.

Someone had tried to kill me.

Someone had tried to kill me while Jade was in the car.

Warmth spread across my skin like the heat from the hot July sun, pushing against my skin like a raging fire. I scanned the empty space around me. No one sat within twenty feet of me. No one wanted anything to do with the woman covered in dirt, grime, and blood. No one, that is, except the paramedic that was striding confidently across the hospital waiting room. It was quiet as he approached, as if the entire room waited on pins and needles with me to see what happened. He had an energy that seemed to spread out around him like heat from a fire. It was warm and homey and made me feel safe in a way that I’d never felt before. He stood silently a few feet from me for a long moment, waiting for me to acknowledge him.

I didn’t want to look at him. I was tired. I wanted to go home, and God only knew what he wanted. I didn’t have the brainpower left to be smart and play verbal chess with anyone. I needed sleep and a hot bath.

I finally raised my head, trying to convey to him my fatigue and annoyance that he would bother me at such a fragile time. He smiled; big, brilliant, and inviting.
What exactly was there to smile about?
It had been a real shitty night.