Raw Deal (Bite Back) (16 page)

I stopped. He didn’t.

I saw him clearly, in shocking detail amidst the sparkling shards of glass. The exact point at which it registered with him that he was about to die, the widening of the eyes. The scream. An age later, the thud and the sudden silence.

I ran back down. It seemed much further. Five floors. The end of the adrenaline rush made me weak.

Emily screamed again when she saw me. I realized what I must look like, but I couldn’t help that.

“They’re gone, Emily,” I said, trying to soothe her. “All gone.”

“Amber?”

I pulled my bloody jacket off and hugged her to me.

There were bullhorns sounding outside.

She was sobbing as I sat us down.

“Shhh. It’s okay. It’s okay,” I said. I was trembling with the aftereffects of adrenaline. “You’re safe now. I’ve got you. The police are outside. They don’t know what’s happened. It’ll be noisy and frightening when they come in, but you’re safe now.”

“Don’t leave me.”

“I won’t. We’ll go out together. Let’s just lie down here on the floor, okay? Close your eyes and cover your ears.”

We lay down.

Even with our precautions, the thunder and lightning of the stun grenades was disorienting. Emily cried, the noise thin, and I hugged her back against me as the SWAT team came pouring in. They were in full gear: Kevlar armor, helmets and black masks. They came from three sides at once, yelling and shouting, streaming up the stairs like large, murderous ants.

A couple of them pulled at our arms, trying to separate us. Emily refused; she wasn’t letting go and they let us stay together as they hauled us to our feet. With a shield of four of them pressed close around us, we were hurried through the shattered front door, Emily’s face hidden in my shirt, wetting it with her tears.

We stumbled out into a strange, frozen silence. There were police cars scattered across the road, officers with guns crouched behind them. To one side an ambulance and the SWAT team transport waited, dwarfed by an armored army truck with its doors tightly closed.

Morales and Buchanan were standing in a group of uniformed police beside the truck. So was Colonel Laine. Our eyes met and the colonel gave me the smallest nod.

Medics pulled us into the ambulance. I shrugged off their attentions. As they closed the doors, I saw Knight’s face in the sea of blue shirts.

He raised his hand and said something. It might have been “well done, partner.”

Chapter 21

TUESDAY

I drove west, out to Red Rocks, and parked where I got a view back over Denver.

With the car door open I crossed my legs and rested my feet on the sill. Warm fall air blew across me, carrying with it the promise of coolness to come.

Morales and the colonel had held an emergency meeting, slamming down a news blackout around the case until Morales’ carefully worded press conference.

Today’s papers had run a great story. Gangs running successful underground clubs. Outsiders muscling in, killing staff, trying to take over. Police following clues, closing in. Hitmen cornered in a building, taking a child hostage. A textbook, surgical strike by the SWAT team. A neat, orderly operation all wrapped up. Move on folks, nothing to see here.

I’d mutually agreed with the police to resign, apparently, not that any newspapers bothered with that supposedly unrelated footnote.

Morales had praise showered on him from on high. Scuttlebutt said he’d been given the Captain slot in Major Crimes last night. He knew everything the army knew about me now, and had requested for me to be on call for him as a consultant. At least no one else in the police seemed to know, though he’d already said he would have to build a team in case of emergencies and they’d have to be briefed.

The colonel disappeared with the squad before anyone started asking questions about a tooled-up military team wandering around Denver. He was coming back for a meeting with me at the end of the week. Maybe that was how much time I had left free. Morales asking for me to be on call wasn’t the same as the army agreeing to it.

Club Agonia was gone. I’d walked into the echoing building with a profound sense of unreality. The entrance with the mechanized head was gone, nothing but a gaping hole left. They’d opened up huge shuttered windows on the upper floors and stripped all the black glass panels already. Bright sunbeams slanted across the empty shell, turning the dusty air into a slow honey. Workers were noisily dismantling the giant frames that had held the look-through glass while others carried stock out to waiting trucks. I saw Dominé’s elegant desk and chairs stacked in a corner, waiting for loading.

It all looked so everyday, almost tawdry, like a stage magician’s props exposed to the glare of sunlight. As if everything had been an illusion. My fingers ran over the skin of my neck, and I felt a prickle of pressure. No, not all illusion.

The site manager hurried over and shepherded me out. “It’s not safe in here, ma’am,” he said. I snorted.

As I started to move away, someone called.

“Ms. Farrell?”

I turned. It was difficult to be sure, but I thought it was the highwayman who had brought champagne for us in Dominé’s office. He was in jeans and a sweatshirt, looking like the college kid he probably was.

“I wasn’t sure it was you,” he said, stumbling over the words. He meant I wasn’t dressed as a vampire. “Dominé thought you might come.”

I gave him a tight, polite smile, which was as much as I could manage. “She’s not here?”

“She’s gone on to Albuquerque,” he said. “We’re moving.” He mumbled and waved a hand at the building. “Well, obviously.”

I sighed. “I came to tell her I’m sorry. I failed.”

He turned his head aside and nodded. He took an envelope from his pocket. “She left this for you.”

Inside was her card with her cell number. There was no written message. Pinned through the top corner was a single, shiny barb from an
angoisse
.

I got out of the car and sat cross-legged on the hood to take full advantage of the breeze. Between Dominé and Master Liu, I’d had my fill of mysterious warnings and messages this last week. I needed to keep it simple. There were things going on in my head and my body that I’d have to deal with. The opportunity to do that would be a privilege. Just at the moment, my head was full of staying human, free and sane. They all felt intimately related.

I cradled Tara’s plaque in my hands.

“
Wow, that’s a happy face
,” said Tara. “
Fill me in
.”

“Oh, let me see. I screwed up and a girl died because I wasn’t going to risk losing my job crying wolf. Which job, by the way, I lost anyway. I blew away three vampires, so the army’s pissed at me, because they wanted to have a little chat with them. I’ve breached the secrecy terms of my agreement, so I bet the army’s legal department wants me shot. Morales knows about me. The rest of the police, well, God knows what they think. Maybe that I’m some kind of mutant soldier experiment that escaped from a laboratory. Half of them are probably pissed at the army for doing that to me and the other half at the army for letting me out.”

“
Or both
.”

“Or both. Don’t interrupt when I’m sobbing.” I sighed. “The colonel hasn’t had me hauled back to base. Yet. That’s the real good news. He’s not going to get me another job, so what do I do? I’ve got to get a job, even if it’s cashier at McDonald’s. On the big assumption that I’m allowed to stay here, whatever job I get, I’m still going to be working for the army, for expenses and peanuts,
and
I’m expected to be available as a consultant for Morales. He hasn’t even got any peanuts, so I guess I’m doing that pro bono.”

“
Who’s Bono? Not the singer?
”

“Not funny. Where am I going to get a job that lets me drop everything to go chasing vampires for the police
and
the army?”

“
Doh! You have a job offer
.”

“I
had
a sort of job offer. That was on Monday. Today is Tuesday.”

“
Call
.”

Sane advice, given it came from a voice in my head.

I called Whitman.

“Mr. Whitman, it’s Amber Farrell. I’m sorry about missing the call yesterday. It got kinda busy at the station.”

“No problem, Amber, no problem. Y’know, you could make my day brighter…”

“Yeah, about that, Mr. Whitman. I…ah…I’d like to come in and talk about it.”

“That’s great! Fantastic! Look, I’m in meetings until silly time tonight. Come in first thing tomorrow, nine o’ clock?”

“Will do.”

“That’s great,” he said again. “Talk tomorrow.”

“Looking forward to it. Bye,” I said, trying to get the tone right as I ended the call. Positive, upbeat. Yeah!

I’d have to practice that. If I actually got clients, I’d have to make nice. I shuddered, and while the cell was in my hand, I decided I’d better make the next call before I lost my nerve.

“Mom, hi.”

“Amber! This is a pleasant surprise. Is it one of your days off?”

“Uh, not quite.”

“Hmm.” There was some background noise. “Well, dear, I’m sitting down. You can tell me now.”

“I’ve left the police.”

“Oh, that’s—”  she managed to stop herself from saying how wonderful it was, “—interesting. What are you going to do instead? Back to accounting? There’s this firm John knows—”

“I have…um…the thing is, I think I’m going to be a private investigator,” I blurted out.

“Let’s not be too hasty here,” she said, hastily. “You’re under no pressure to get a new job, Amber. You know you can come and stay anytime. Heaven knows, I owe you so much—”

“Thanks, Mom, but I need this. Really, it’s okay. It’s safer than being an accountant.”

“Exactly how did you come up with that?”

“Okay, it was off the top of my head. But I don’t think it’s like the PI shows on TV. It’s not that exciting.”

I hadn’t changed her opinion, even after another fifteen minutes. I’d never be able to explain to her. The best I could do was guide her generally in the direction of my needing my independence, and wanting a job that didn’t mean too much time behind a desk.

The truth about my life, the threat of the prions in my body, the obligations to the army and the police? Those I’d never be able to explain to her, even if I wanted to.

Far away in front of me, edges softened by the haze, lay Denver.

Sure as taxes, there were vampires down there. A community that had been hidden for who knows how long. And the army wanted me to find out all about them. In my free time.

There were roads down there as well. I-70 would take me to Kansas, I-25 to Cheyenne, I-76 and I-80 to Omaha. I pictured the network of roads spreading out like rivers across the land, full of little backwaters where I could hide. I could do it. I’d been trained by the best. It would be the easier option. But what would I say, as I-80 took me past North Platte and the biggest railroad junction in the country?

Sorry, Valerie.

And how many Valeries might be out there, now and in the future?

I drove back down into the city and went to the Schumachers’ shop, on the off chance they were around.

Werner was. Klara was with Emily and had sent Werner back to look after the shop. Emily was having another session down at the station. Rules dictated they had to give her plenty of breaks. Quite how they were explaining the need for the real story of what happened in the gallery to be secret, I didn’t know.

I got a big hug from Werner and a suspicion of shiny eyes.

Regardless of the reason he was there, he closed the shop, and insisted I stay until Emily got back, bribing me with coffee and cookies. As if that would work.

Then, when I was sitting down in his little kitchen area, he brought out a box.

“These,” he said, “these are for you, and this is my guarantee. Never, never so long as we live, will you not have a pair of my boots to wear.”

They were beautiful. Handmade cowboy boots, lower in the heel than some, so I could wear them even when I was working. There was a matching belt. They were my unique design, my very own, that he said he would never make for anyone else.

Call me shallow. I put them on and felt better.

PREVIEW

Read on for the opening chapters of

Sleight of Hand

Bite Back book 1

"Vampires are the flickering illusions of Hollywood.

They don't exist.

We do. We are the Athanate."
For Amber Farrell, post-military life as a PI has its ups and downs: She's been hit by a truck. She's being sued by a client. Denver's newest drug lord just put out a contract on her. The sinister Athanate want her to come in for a friendly chat. And it's only Tuesday.
Enter Jennifer Kingslund: rich, gorgeous--a tough businesswoman who's known for getting what she wants in the boardroom 
and
 the bedroom. Someone's trying to sabotage her new resort and destroy her company--and she wants Amber to find out who.
The answers lead Amber past Were and Adept, right back to the Athanate--and a centuries-old war that could threaten not just Denver, but the nation that Amber swore to protect and serve. 
And all sides want to claim her for their own...

Sleight of Hand Chapter 1

MONDAY

It had been a couple of years and I was neither dead, nor undead, which I ranked as an achievement.

It wasn’t as if I lacked opportunity. Even when I wasn’t really looking for it.

I was safe at the moment. My perch among the roof beams of the Crate & Freight warehouse in the Northfield section of Denver was only fifty feet above the concrete floor. Those SCAR assault rifles down on the loading bay weren’t aimed at me. No one knew I was here and it was dark in this corner. That was safe, by some definitions of the word safe. I was kind of enjoying myself.