Running in the Dark Read online

  He saw it, even in the dark—a lane-wide pothole from the pocked road I’d complained about to Malcolm. It was so deep, a truck had broken an axle in it a week prior. And the rain had probably weakened it further. Bren hit the door with hammer fists until the latch broke.

  The front end of the Tercel dropped like I’d driven off the end of the world. The rear flew up. Gravity shifted and got all kinds of powerful. And then the car crashed down.

  I gasped in a breath, staring at the spider-veined windshield, astounded we hadn’t flipped over. Mickey was going to kill me.

  She’d have to get in line.

  Pain lanced my chest as I reached for the seat belt. I moved my jacket and shirt away from my neck, expecting to see a bullet hole. A dull red bruise stared back. Broken collarbone from the seat belt, maybe. Could have been worse. I dropped my head against the rest and breathed for a moment, quelling nausea and panic, and tried to think.

  I opened my eyes, turned my head and wished I hadn’t. Bren’s legs were stiff and straight. It looked as though his heels had dug into the floor of the car. The rest of his body was crammed into the twisted, V-shaped space between the car frame and the open door. He’d panicked, and now he was…

  I shoved my way out of the crumpled door and stumbled a few steps, left arm tucked against my stomach. The car steamed, one rear wheel spinning from where it dangled. Cold, gritty brick met my forehead as I leaned against the building, fighting the urge to vomit. Or cry. Or scream. Something warm ran down my neck before dissipating. Blood wasn’t good. I needed to take care of it before someone with fangs came along.

  My brain came back online, running the scenario, the setup. Who knew I’d be on that road at that time? Who would have sent suckers after me? Where the fuck was Soraya?

  I probed at my clavicle and winced. I needed my bag, a good place to hide and medical attention. In that order. I walked back to the car, facing upward as I crouched. The rain fell in cold sheets of temporary blindness. Blinking, I wormed my way in through the gaping passenger’s side, grinding my teeth as the ends of the bone in my chest ground.

  Blood dripped from the door and I breathed through my mouth to get enough air in. I felt around until I found the strap of my bag and a cold, slim canister. Bren’s leg twitched and I snatched my bag back and raised the pepper spray. As if that was going to make his body behave.

  I leaned in one more time—having to press against his legs to make room—swallowing a whimper until my fingers closed around my phone. I jerked back to my feet, and my gaze snagged on his crumpled torso. The back of his rucked-up jacket was marked with a white symbol. It was round and styled to appear as if it had been painted on with a fat brush. Maybe the homicidal sucker was sponsored.

  I tentatively reached out, knees ready to launch me backward, and pulled the side of his jacket to stretch the image flat. It was an eye and eyebrow with two brushstrokes dragged through it and downward to form a stylized G. The image was familiar, the Egyptian Eye of Ra or whatever. The G tickled my memory, though I’d seen it much smaller. I stretched the fabric a little farther. Goya Worldwide ran below the symbol in small, blocky letters. The jacket smelled slightly smoky. The two men at Livia’s had been dark haired and human. They’d also been smaller, which might explain why the jacket was three sizes too small. Why the hell was a vampire wearing it?

  And why was I standing around like a Muppet? I fumbled with the canister before I got the pepper spray to work, then ran it around the car, cringing when I did the passenger’s side. Bren would recover, so long as he got loose prior to dawn, but I felt bad for adding insult to catastrophic injury. The rain would eliminate the worst of the effects of the spray, but it should hide my scent. Whoever was after me might know me by sight, but they shouldn’t be able to pick up my trail. Not right away at least.

  I swore without heat. I hadn’t caught even a hint of a tail coming from Carla’s, and I’d driven into an ambush, not been caught from behind. I hadn’t been followed, which meant someone had tipped Bren and his buddy off. Someone had betrayed me, either a fellow runner or the vampire vassal who’d been instructed to keep me safe.

  My cell phone was dead. Bren’s presence had taken care of that. I started walking, rigging my arm inside my coat to hold it mostly steady. Each step still felt like a hammer blow. I was chilled within three blocks, shaking by six, but nothing pursued me no matter how many times I glanced back.

  Cars splashed me as they drove by and I almost climbed into each home I passed where lights were on. Even the smell of stale beer and discreet vomit outside a bar were welcome signs of human life. But nothing was quite as nice as shoving through the door of Mickey’s garage into the warmth and comforting smell of grease. A small black pickup sat engineless in the first bay. Mickey, keeping to her nocturnal hours, was waist deep in the engine of an experienced blue sedan. I slogged toward her, dripping on the stained concrete and leaving behind a sizable trail.

  “Hey, M-M-Mickey.” I was shaking so hard I could hear the bones grinding together in my chest. She popped up, and beamed at me before taking in my condition.

  “Aerin,” she chided, wiping her hands on a rag. “I meant for you to drive the car here. I cannot work on it if you don’t bring it to me.”

  “It’s gone to the great beyond. Where’s your bathroom?”

  She pointed to the back wall, concern darkening her wide eyes. Her long hair was tied up in some elaborate formation with a black bandana, and her pea-green coveralls were about five sizes too big.

  “Lock this place down,” I said as I struggled with the greasy brass doorknob. The fluorescent lights flickered when I turned them on. “And call Carla. Let her know I got jumped after leaving the shop. Have her check on the others. Please.”

  “Que mal rollo,” she muttered. Tools clanged on the floor when she bumped a rolling tray on her way to a wall phone. “Who was it?”

  “Don’t know. They were foreign and had fangs. One took out a brick wall. The other’s still, uh, with the car, I guess.”

  “Dry yourself. I will let the others know. The towels are clean.”

  I unzipped my coat and hung it on a peg on the wall, then sat down on the closed toilet. I pulled one leg up across the other and stared at the laces of my boots. The dregs of adrenaline and the continued slow burn of fear made me jittery, and I was abruptly, painfully, homesick. Mickey chattered away and I heard what sounded like metal bars scraping against the cement floor. One boot fell to the floor and I changed legs.

  “Everyone else is okay,” Mickey yelled through the door. “They all made it in. They’re going to wait there until morning. Dawn should be breaking soon.”

  They could have recruited humans to help them, whoever Bren worked for. But I doubted these guys would try anything else tonight, human or not. Not with one injured and one…broken. They’d need to think, try to figure out what went wrong on a simple grab job. At least, I hoped they would. I rubbed my eyes.

  “We’ll move when it gets light,” Mickey said. The door squeaked when she pushed it open, and she hissed when she saw how I was holding my arm. “You need a doctor.”

  “No.” I opened my eyes, tore at my other laces. She crouched, untying them with deft, stained fingers. “I think it’s a clean fracture. The bone’s in position.”

  She scrunched her nose, stood up and reached around the tile wall to start a shower, then trotted out of the room. I perked up. Warm water sounded like heaven. The room, despite the mildew in the corners and industrial-solvent-strength soap, wasn’t that different from the garage bathroom Malcolm had arranged for me. That thought sent a pang of longing straight through my center, and I felt a little guilty because I wasn’t thinking about him so much as what he could give me. A couple days of lying around with him would be enough for my body to use his ambient energy to seal the fracture in my collarbone. Healing without him would take weeks.

  I managed to get my pants off, and one soggy sock, when Mickey reappeared with a wicked pair of scis
sors. She’d taken her hair down and it twisted around her face like spastic snakes.

  “Here,” she said, “this will make it easier.” She reached for the left sleeve of my shirt, and I shoved her with my good arm.

  “This is from Shinzu Cormera’s ’97 Japan tour. I would rather chew my own arm off than cut it. It’s a classic.”

  Mickey pointed at it and grimaced. “It’s already ripped on the shoulder. And the lettering is all peeled off. I always wondered where you came from. Now I know it’s the place that says ‘classic’ when they mean ‘garbage.’”

  “You just don’t know quality when you see it.” My condescending tone lost its strength when I couldn’t get my head all the way out of the shirt and started worming around frantically. Claustrophobia, I has it. Mickey pulled the shirt gently over my head and slid it off my bad arm.

  “Is there someone you need to call?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I mumbled, then immediately snapped, “No.”

  She looked at me, puzzled, while I smiled, a pathetic attempt to reassure her I was okay while I was shivering and mostly naked. “Are you sure?”

  Malcolm needed to know what had happened but I couldn’t call him, because he wasn’t human. And I couldn’t order delivery of a message, because I would either have to ask Carla to send someone or walk in to another shop. While the odds were low that anybody else would recognize me as the new runner in town, once my name was linked to Malcolm, I’d be compromised. There was no law against having a relationship with a vampire. Couriers just didn’t do it…not unless they were compelled to.

  I sighed and rubbed at my eyes. Maybe the situation wasn’t so bad. Maybe this was a fluke, some Chilean version of hazing, but with less beer and more broken bones.

  “You tell me if you change your mind,” Mickey said gently. “Sometimes we think people do not care about us when they still do. Then, sometimes we think people care about us when all they really want is to know what’s for dinner and when we play Argentina. Hijos de puta.”

  She raised the scissors in her fist and I leaned back. “Yikes. Thinking about any particular son of a bitch, Mick?”

  A car rattled outside, slowing in front of the shop. We both froze. It sputtered, picked up and drove on. Mickey put her hands on my hips and pulled my panties down my legs.

  “Whoa!”

  “I don’t want to be caught in here by fangers.” She unhooked my bra and pushed me toward the shower. “Be quick. Two Brujas Found Naked and Dead in Kinky Vampire-Courier Sex Crime. My mother will kill me if she sees that headline.”

  Chapter Nine

  Mickey slid a heavy red platter onto the table and pushed it toward me as she nodded at whatever Jace told her over the phone.

  “They are bored,” she said, shoveling food onto my plate until I raised a hand to defend it. “And Tilde is very angry to be kept. Carla will not pay them for the hours.”

  I rolled my eyes. With so much competition, Carla wasn’t raking in the dough, but damn if she wasn’t tight with her margins. I was glad not to be trapped in the garage with the two runners and the boss. Mickey’s apartment, while small, was quiet and comfortable.

  “And…” Mickey’s voice rose half an octave. Her eyebrows knit together as she listened, still nodding as though Jace could see it. She turned toward me. “There’s been another body. A dead-ender in a mansion in the hills.” Her nose scrunched up and she pressed the cell phone against her chest and whispered, “His fangs were still out.”

  I almost dropped my fork. “A dead sucker?” She nodded and we stared at each other.

  “Wait, if there’s a body—if he hasn’t burned—then how can anybody tell if he’s actually, truly dead? Maybe he’s just resting.” Malcolm didn’t breathe when he slept. He needed to in order to talk, but I think he did it out of habit. A conscious habit. He moved sometimes in his sleep, smooth, undulating motions that made me wonder what vampires dreamed of. Probably not chasing rabbits.

  Mickey raised the phone again and relayed my question. I leaned back, grunting as I landed too hard against the chair back. I breathed out a curse when Mickey made a sharp, horrified sound.

  “The other vampires were scared,” she said, one hand fluttering over her mouth. “It was…inflated. Red all over. Skin, eyes, everything. Like it had—”

  “Overfilled with blood.” I stared at my plate, my gaze moving slowly from one grain of rice to the next as my mind tried to make sense of what I was hearing. Livia, flushed and bloated. The van. The men in blue. Did Thurston know what was happening to her, that the drug she was taking—I had no doubt it was Goya’s product—was killing her? Really killing her.

  “Can Jace ask the other shop if it delivered anything from a corporate sender to the dead…” Mickey glanced down at her phone and frowned.

  “She’s gone. Her phone was dying when I called. Eat.” She dropped into the chair across from me and smiled, any disturbance over the conversation gone. Of course, she didn’t know that this true death was connected to the dead humans, and that it probably wouldn’t be the last. Or she just wasn’t easily disturbed. Her place was cheerful—bright yellow and orange walls, tinkling beaded curtains, and a selection of brand-spanking-new electronics that looked suspiciously like they’d fallen off the back of a truck.

  “Just ask her when she gets home if the other runners delivered anything from Goya Worldwide.”

  “Bueno.” Mickey mounded rice and fish together on a tortilla. “Now, since you will not let me take you to a doctor, at least eat. Otherwise I might think you are a robot.”

  “I’m not a robot.” I grinned.

  “So you say. You drive too fast. You learn too quick. You don’t eat.” She raised her eyebrows. I took a bite.

  I spent the day alternately dozing, staring suspiciously out the window at Mickey’s innocent neighbors and being stuffed with endless leftovers. She had a thing for American pop music, the New York Yankees and delicious, delicious food.

  She also slept with a stuffed B. A. Baracas doll in her arms and the hilt of a knife sticking out from under her pillow. My kind of gal. Jace didn’t call back and night fell too soon. I tiptoed to the front door and pulled on a stiff blue ball cap. The clothes I was wearing—hers—were tighter than I was used to. My boots and coat were still damp and I didn’t have the tools for a proper makeup job, but it was time to move. Malcolm was due back at nightfall, and I had all kinds of things to tell him.

  He’d given me the address of the blood lounge that served as his headquarters in the city. Vampires liked to conduct business socially, probably because they were sneaky bastards and everybody wanted to see what the other guy was doing. Mal had said that if anything happened, I was to go there. Something had sure as shit happened. Soraya might have been there during the day, but since I got jumped while she was supposed to have been watching my back, I was leery of running to her for help. He trusted her, and maybe he had a reason to. I didn’t. I slid the last of Mickey’s four locks free and poked my head into an empty hallway painted just as brightly as her place.

  I locked the knob—she would be pissed about the rudimentary security when she woke—and headed out. Protocol dictated that I go to Carla, who would report my attack to her senator. Except the senator was only human, and I wasn’t sure about Carla. Not about her being human, but about her allegiances.

  I’d spent the day replaying the night in my mind. If I’d been marked due to my position in Santiago rather than who I was, that had something to do with my employment with her. Her other runners were safe. I was the only one who had been attacked, on the same night that she’d been surprised by a big deal and suddenly become interested in where I’d come from. That didn’t sound like a coincidence.

  Carla dressed well. She drove a pearlescent blue Porsche Cayenne, and she’d had enough work done that she looked a well-preserved forty instead of what I suspected was closer to fifty. I had no doubt her house was as new as her eyelids and as slick as her ride. She liked expensive th
ings, and three runners on the low end of the spectrum weren’t enough to finance a high-end life. There was at least one person who would pay big money to know my whereabouts.

  Alternatively, I was alone when I was jumped. After Malcolm had made it clear to his vassal, who should have followed his orders at least as well as he followed Bronson’s, that she was to watch over me.

  I hopped a bus to downtown and sat near the door. Twilight rolled over the mountains and rendered the city a spray of twinkling lights in a bowl of darkness. It had stopped raining, at least. I wasn’t looking forward to walking into El Arquero. The place was a blood lounge. I’d entered them a few times, pushing through the waiting lines of humans to make deliveries, but I’d never been inside one. The idea was creepy even if Malcolm was there, and if he wasn’t… I shifted in my seat, my stomach churning, my chest and shoulder throbbing despite the eight Tylenol I’d taken.

  Around me, people climbed on and off the bus. Going home to families, to daylight lives where they didn’t have to use other names or wear disguises. I scrubbed at my face, feeling silly and strange without makeup. I smelled like Mickey’s floral detergent, which was pleasant rather than revolting, and wore only a couple passes of navy eyeliner.

  I got off the bus as a group of young men clambered on in a cloud of boisterous singing, musky cologne and flashy threads. My breath plumed the air as I fast-walked, head down, through the business-casual crowd and jogged down the stairs into the metro.

  I switched trains twice, then cabbed it a half mile, getting out three blocks from the club. It was on the edge of a renovated industrial strip in between retail commercial and high-end lofts. The old, flat-roofed stone buildings had been cleaned up and given larger, modern windows, which were full of small locally manufactured goods—clothing, rugs, a stoneware company capitalizing off of Pomaire-style pottery.