Under the Gun (9 page)

“If you can’t be out in the sun to get to work, what makes you think Dixon will?”
Dixon Andrade, a vampire (and former Nina boy-toy) took over the UDA after Sampson’s
“disappearance.”

Nina waved her hand, the reflection catching in her Jackie O glasses. “Just let him
know I’ll be working from home today.”

“Holy crap!” The front door slammed open and I coughed, covering my mouth and nose
over the plume of smoke that came racing in. A man was hunched, an ugly, military-looking
blanket pulled over his head. The whole thing—the man, blanket and all—was smoking.

“Vlad!” Nina sprung to her feet and began smacking smoking Vlad with a rolled-up
US Weekly
.

“Oh my gosh!”

Vlad dropped the blanket and raised an eyebrow at me, nostrils flared. “I’m on fire.”

I tried to think of something soothing to say, but came up blank. “Sorry,” I muttered.

“Did you see the news?” Vlad asked.

Did you see the news?
should be a basic, non-sweat-inducing question. And for most people, it is. But for
me, it is nothing less than ominous and I had the sudden desire to jump in my Tae
Bo fighting stance, or at the very least call Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow in
for backup. I swallowed, finding my mouth immensely dry. “Did something happen?”

“Uh, yeah. The weather! The sun?” He gaped at me when my reaction wasn’t a mortified
as his. “This heat wave is supposed to last all week! It’s supposed to be
sunny in San Francisco
. For a whole week!”

“All week?” Nina groaned, then flopped back on the couch, fainting goat style. Sampson
edged away from her.

“What are we supposed to do cooped up in this house all week?”

“It won’t be so bad, guys,” I said. “We’re well stocked with blood bags and we’ve
got cable and”—I rummaged through our junk drawer—“almost an entire deck of Uno cards!
It’ll be like summer camp!”

Vlad and Nina glared at me, now both shoulder to shoulder on the couch, Sampson wedged
at the end.

“Fun!” I said, injecting as much joy into my voice as I could.

No one moved.

“Okay,” I said on a sigh, “I’ve got to get to work, so . . . call me if you need anything.”

Nina reached out and clamped a frozen hand around my wrist. She looked up at me, her
eyes an impossible black, wide and mournful. “Tell the world I said hi please.”

I blinked. “Um, okay.”

Nina and Vlad weren’t the only ones upset by our recent weather pattern. As I pulled
out from the underground parking garage, it was obvious that confusion riddled the
streets. People walked aimlessly around, faces upturned, brows furrowed. I poked my
head out of the car and spotted some teenagers sporting bare arms and naked bellies.
They zipped past on bicycles, hooting and hollering and loving the sun. Generally,
I feared ax murderers and the zombie apocalypse way more than good weather, but for
me and my fellow townspeople who were used to seeing spontaneous drag parades, roadside
preachers, and trees that spoke, heat was an uncomfortable anomaly and I wasn’t entirely
sure what to do with myself. After a few lights I began enjoying the natural warmth
so I rolled down all the windows and played “Walking on Sunshine” on an endless loop.

It’s going to be a good day
, I told myself.

I was still hopped up on vitamin D and walking on Katrina and the Waves’ special brand
of sun-kissed pop perkiness when I skipped into the police station vestibule, and
Alex made a beeline for me. He had a wad of file folders pushed under one arm and
an expression on his face that killed any hope for a big musical number.

“I’ve been waiting for you. I need to talk to you about the Sutro homicides.”

As I knew Katrina and the Waves never sang about homicide, the music in my heart came
to a slamming stop. “What, exactly, about them?”

It was then I noticed the heavy bags under Alex’s eyes; that the glistening blue of
his irises had dulled with lack of sleep. “Is everything okay?”

“Sophie!”

Will’s accented voice pinged through my head as I blinked at Alex, trying to make
sense of what had just happened—Alex in front of me, Will’s voice behind? I blinked
and Alex stiffened; I felt Will’s hand on my shoulder. I spun and gaped at him.

“Where did you come from?”

Will grinned and jutted a thumb over one shoulder. “Lift. I thought you’d be at work
by now.”

I looked from Will to Alex and back again, while the heat seemed to ratchet up at
least sixty degrees. I felt the sweat bead on my upper lip and at my hairline, could
feel my carefully straightened curls begin to spring back into place.

I don’t belong to either of them,
I told myself.
I’m walking on sunshine....

Uh-oh.

Nothing was said between the two men. There were no overt dirty looks or scowls, but
even without taking a single step, Alex and Will seemed to be doing that menacing
staring circle that dogs about to sink incisors in do. I should have felt glorious
to be the prize that they growled over, but all I felt was an awkward, both-of-these-men-have-seen-me-naked
tension. The ex-boyfriend, the almost-boyfriend—and me, not knowing which was which.

I licked my lips and forced a bared-teeth smile, patting Alex on the forearm. “Alex,
you remember Will.”

Alex’s ice-blue eyes were fixed on Will’s hazel ones. “You don’t usually forget the
guy who stabbed you,” he said evenly.

“Right, mate, sorry ’bout that. Misunderstanding with the whole Vessel–Fallen Angel
thing.” He shot out a hand. “We good?”

I tried to read Alex’s expression as his gaze scraped over Will’s outstretched hand.
I tried to decipher the nuance in Will’s stance, the inflection in his voice.

“Yeah,” Alex finally said, giving Will’s hand a quick, dismissive shake. “We’re good.”

“Great!”

Will clapped his hands, looking expectantly from Alex to me. “So, what are we Sherlocking
this week?”

I shot him a tight-lipped, keep-your-stupid-English-trap-shut look. He just kept grinning.

“We”—Alex pointed to me and then back to himself—“are working on a homicide. Multiple.
Nothing that would interest you. No fires, nothing about guarding the universe or
whatever.”

Will, firefighter by day, Vessel Guardian by later that day, narrowed his eyes. “I
don’t guard the universe. I guard Sophie from the big baddies in the universe. You
know, fallen angels and such.”

Alex’s bristle was physical. “I’ve seen Lawson in action. She can take care of herself.”

I jumped in between the two men, who somehow seemed to have gotten closer by the puffing
of chests alone. “Um, thank you, Will, for your guardianship. And Alex’s services
are excellent, too, and he’s not a bad angel.”

There was a juvenile flash of triumph in Alex’s eyes and just-as-juvenile indignance
in Will’s expression. “Your services are great, too, Will.”

I immediately dropped into a bout of lobster-red embarrassment. Because if you want
to keep your romantic trysts under wraps, the best thing you could possibly do is
thank a man for his
services
.

“Good Guardian,” I clarified, clapping Will on the shoulder. “You’re a good Guardian
and you’re a good angel.”

There was a beat of dead awkward silence that I’m fairly sure lasted just under a
millennium. Of all the times the earth couldn’t break open and swallow me whole.

“So,” I said, breaking the trance, “Will, what did you—?”

“What do you want, Will?” Alex broke in. “Lawson and I have a case to get through.
Some of us like to protect the population from actual danger.”

There was a slight flare in Will’s nostril, then an equally as slight upturn of his
lips. He raised his hand to eye level, a silver key on an Arsenal key chain pinched
between thumb and forefinger. “I just needed to give you my key, love,” he said, his
eyes focused hard on mine. I felt my mouth drop open as he looked over my head at
Alex, then grinned supremely.

I spun. “I’m looking in on his bush. His plant. His house. Will’s going out of town
and I’m watering his plant and thank you very much for coming all this way to bring
me your key even though you live across the hall and could have very easily slipped
it under the door.” I sucked in a huge breath.

“I know,” Will said calmly. “I meant to give it to you this morning at breakfast,
but it slipped my mind.” He cut his eyes to Alex, then they flitted back to me.

“Headed out of town, huh, Will? Didn’t know Guardians got vacation. What are you taking—two
weeks? Three?”

Will looked at Alex and back at me, then brushed a finger under my chin. “I’ll just
be gone a bit. You’re a cop, right? I trust you to take care of my girl.”

I felt myself gape. “Your girl?”

Then I felt Alex’s arm as he slung it around me, the edge of his chin brushing the
top of my head sweetly. “I always take care of my girl.”

Now I spun, fairly certain that one more gasp would send me into cardiac arrest. “Your
girl?”

Neither seemed to hear me—or see me—as they held each other in steely glares. I was
apoplectic, uncertain as to whether I would be in the middle of a massive fistfight
or cuddle fest. I snatched Will’s key and mashed the down button on the elevator,
then spun to point first at Will and then at Alex. “You’re an ass and you’re an ass,”
I yelled, jumping in the elevator once the doors opened.

 

 

“Can you believe those idiots?” I screamed into my phone as I paced a bald spot in
my office carpet.

“Yes,” Nina said. “What size do you wear?”

“Eight . . . ish. Ugh! I mean, neither Alex nor Will even raise an eyebrow and suddenly—”

“To be fair, Soph, both of them raised more than eyebrows. Or maybe it was you who
raised their—”

“Not helping!” I snapped.

“Sorry. Are you more of a heather blue or a heather gray kind of girl?”

“I don’t know, gray, I guess. What the—are you even listening to me? They were acting
like animals! One more minute, and one of them would have peed on me.”

“I’m listening, I’m all ears. I am. Have you ever actually watched the Home Shopping
Channel? They have some pretty good stuff.”

“Neens!”

“Right. The guys peeing on you.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, hoping to quell the ache that had started before
it became a full-blown migraine. “It’s just that for like, my whole life, I couldn’t
get a date. Not one!”

“I set you up with that one guy.”

“He was part goat, Nina.”

She harrumphed. “I’ve seen you eat. You might be half-goat yourself.”

“Remind me to drive a stake through your heart when I get home.”

“I wouldn’t fight you. This heat is killing me.”

“Nina?”

“Okay, I’m sorry. But Sophie, can you really blame two guys for fighting over you?
Two incredibly hot, save-the-world guys? I mean, in the last couple of months, you’ve
gone from sad and wimpy to uber-confident and gun toting. I mean, ask anyone. That’s
hot.”

Even though I had just been called sad and wimpy, my toothy best friend spoke the
God’s honest truth and it warmed me.

“Aw, Neens.”

“And you’re also just a little bit slutty.”

“Ms. Lawson?”

I was eyebrows up at “just a little bit slutty” when Dixon knocked on my door and
poked his head in.

“Gotta go,” I murmured to Nina. “Dixon, hi. I was just . . . giving Nina her assignments.”

Dixon nodded. “She’s staying out of the light?”

“Yeah. Um, sit down, please. Can I help you with something ?”

Dixon pulled the door to a soft close behind him and I felt my spine immediately stiffen.
When he turned to look at me there was something in his eyes—in his stance—that was
awkward, uncomfortable. In all the time I had known him, I had never seen Dixon misstep
or misspeak; he was a pinnacle of confidence and surety, and this air of uncertainty
made me nervous.

“Is everything okay?”

Dixon sat, and produced a folded newspaper from his breast pocket. “Do you know about
this?” he asked, handing the paper over.

I gave it a cursory scan, my eyes sticking the second they saw the word “murder.”
The story was detailing the incident as Sutro Point and the familiar sick feeling
in my stomach bubbled.

I nodded. “I know about it.” I pushed the paper aside. “I was there.”

Dixon’s eyebrows went up. “You and Alex?”

I nodded again and Dixon pulled the paper toward him, unfolded it one more time, and
slid it back. He stood over me now, and pressed a finger against the page. “Do you
know anything about this?”

It was a tiny article buried amongst the blowout sales and freeway closures—a single
emboldened headline: MARINA WOMAN SEES CREATURE.

I chuckled as I scanned the small story.

I looked up at Dixon. “Is there an article about Bat Boy in here, too?”

Apparently Dixon and I didn’t share the same sense of humor. He blinked at me and
I refolded the paper and cleared my throat, folding my hands in front of me.

“No, I hadn’t seen that article, nor did I know that Bigfoot lived in the Marina.
Must be making good money; I know I can’t afford a place down there.” I grinned.

“So, you’ve not heard of any sightings from any clients or any of your”—Dixon’s eyes
went up the ceiling—“other friends?”

“No, Dixon, I haven’t. And you know as well as I do that Bigfoot is a myth.”

Dixon quirked an eyebrow and I sighed. “An actual myth.”

Finally, Dixon’s shoulders slumped a quarter inch and he eyed me. “I ask because there
was another killing.”

I stiffened. “There was?”

“It was before the Sutro Point homicide and it was one of our own.”

I swallowed hard, my mental Rolodex scanning through UDA employees, staff members
I hadn’t seen lately. “Oh my God, who was it?”

“Octavia.”

“Octavia Aronson? But she’s a—” I held a hand out, gesturing toward Dixon, finding
myself strangely unable to say,
But she’s a vampire.

“Yes, she was a vampire.”

“But you’re immortal.”

Dixon laughed, a mirthless, short bark. “No one is truly immortal, Ms. Lawson.”

“Right, but . . .”

“Whoever attacked Octavia Aronson was able to kill her.”

I leaned back in my chair, sighing. While the Underworld Detection Agency is the only
agency tasked with keeping tabs on underworld inhabitants, the occasional over-world
“protection” agency has been known to spring up. Usually a host of Buffy-slash-Blade
type vampire killer wannabes or the intermittent Van Helsing throwbacks. They were
rarely successful and generally fell out of their chosen paths when a new superhero
took favor or Comic-Con ended, but now and again there was enough hubris to cause
my clients harm.

“I don’t see what Bigfoot has to do with a vampire slayer.”

Dixon laced his fingers together and pursed his pale lips. “I think whatever Ms. Holt
saw was what attacked Octavia. And we both know it wasn’t Bigfoot.”

“She wasn’t staked?”

“She was beheaded.”

Ice water shot through my veins. “Beheaded?”

“Torn apart, actually.”

Though Dixon’s voice was steady and held his usual air of nonchalance, he seemed paler
than usual and was still having a hard time getting comfortable.

He was actually upset.

“Why are you telling me this? And why—” I gestured to the newspaper.