Authors: Cherie Priest
Okay, so
most
of it’s my stuff.
Or at least
some
of it’s my stuff, and the things that aren’t my personal stuff are things that I personally have stolen, and that counts, right? Sometimes it takes a while for payment and paperwork to go through over some items. And every now and again a client will die or go to jail—leaving me holding the bag, or the diamonds, or the family heirloom, or the absurdly valuable painting, or whatever.
Anyway, this old factory serves as my personal, private storage unit for all the in-transit or in-process items that I would prefer not to keep around the house. Sure, it’s a bit of overkill. The place has four floors and eighteen-foot ceilings, and it occupies about a third of a city block in an old industrial neighborhood.
But nobody wants the old place, and as long as I don’t try to fix it up too nice, no one will even wonder about it. It looks abandoned, and I like it that way.
Hell, it
is
abandoned. Mostly.
Except for the kids.
And now one of them had called the number that she damn well knew was
only
for emergencies, and someone was trying to get inside.
If it’d been the police, Pepper would’ve said so. She fears and loathes the police like only a child who’s been minced through bad social service programs can. I’ve tried to explain to her that, at least hypothetically, the police are there to help—unless they’re looking too closely at my building. She’s tried to explain to
me
how she only ever sees cops when things are really terrible, and they only make things louder and scarier or worse. I maintain that we both have a point, but there’s only so much arguing you can do with a second-grader whose arm is covered in cigarette burn scars.
Her brother Domino is even worse. If I don’t keep an eye on him, he’ll deliberately antagonize the cops. One of these days that poor little asshole is going to end up dead or in jail for life.
And then who’ll look after his sister?
Not me.
No pet people. Even if they’re cute and slightly fey, and smart and somewhat needy. Absolutely not. It’s the cute ones you can’t get rid of. Just ask anyone who’s ever “kept an eye on” a stray puppy for a couple of days. You know what I’m talking about.
Also, forget everything I said before about not being a rooftop-to-rooftop kind of jogger, because I needed to get some real speed going—and I couldn’t do it there on the street, in front of God and everybody. The best way to preserve my anonymity was to take to the higher path, and I don’t mean Zen. I grabbed a fire escape and climbed that sucker like a scratching post.
Once I made it to the roof I was home free, for all practical values of the expression.
From my starting point I was maybe a mile from the factory
building. For the millionth time I wished that everything you hear about vampires is true. I wished I could fly, or turn into a bat, or do any one of a hundred useful things that would move me faster through space.
But I had to settle for the old-fashioned Run Like Hell.
Above the crowds, or at least the trickling late-night party-goers, I could go as fast as I’m capable—which, if I do say so myself, is pretty damn fast. I can manage a really good clip if the cityscape is even enough.
In the old part of town, most of the roofs are more or less the same height, give or take a story or two.
I took the longest strides I could, and I made the farthest, stretching leaps that I dared manage. I pitied anyone who might’ve been indoors. All the grace in the world isn’t church-mouse-quiet when it’s flinging itself fifteen or twenty yards at a time. I’m not very heavy—though I’m not sure how much I weigh, but let’s say 140 pounds. Still, drop something that weighs 140 pounds onto your roof from a great height and terrific speed, and you can bet it’s going to make an impact.
It was even colder on the rooftops than it was down on the street, though that might’ve been my imagination, or the fact that I was moving much faster. Above me, the moon spun low across the sky and a few watery clouds hung from the stars like cobwebs. In my ears there was only the rush of the frigid air, and the pumping and thudding of my feet and my heart.
I slowed down a block away from my destination.
No sense in announcing myself.
I scanned the area with every jump, straining to see the streets and sidewalks that surrounded my building. They were empty as far as I could tell, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.
I might have a transient, or I might have something weirder and worse on my hands. I hauled myself to a stop on the edge of the
roof next door. I stalked as far as I could around its perimeter, and I thought that the side door might be open a crack.
It shouldn’t be.
I launched myself over the side and landed more carefully, almost silently, in the alley beside the door.
A bending on the frame and a crease in the metal showed where it’d been jimmied, and I was not reassured to note that the jimmying job appeared to have gone quite smoothly. Someone had popped it fast, and without a lot of struggle.
My stomach tightened with irritation and outright anger. Another pro?
The thought made me want to bite something until it stopped twitching. If I found another thief inside, he’d suffice.
(Yeah, or “she.” I’m not trying to be a hideous sexist with my presumption of a male pronoun. I’m a lady in a tramp’s game, that’s all, and no one’s more aware of it than me.)
I pushed my fingers lightly against the door, and it opened inward on hinges that gave only the faintest squeak. I didn’t move. I waited for the squeaked alert to settle into the silence, and I listened around it.
Upstairs at least a floor—maybe even two floors—I heard footsteps that were far too dense to come from an eight-year-old girl or her teenage brother. Upstairs, a man was moving with the kind of careful precision that thinks it’s being sneaky, but I heard it anyway. My ears are just like the rest of my sensory organs—exceptional, courtesy of supernatural enhancement—and Mr. Sneaky Feet did not fool
me
.
I closed the door behind myself and didn’t mind the creak so much since I was alone on that floor.
I figured I was alone, anyway. I extended my mind just a tad, listening with my piddly-but-occasionally-useful psychic senses for the heartbeat of something small, crouched, and concealed. No,
Pepper wasn’t down here. She was upstairs someplace. At the very fringe of my perception, I sensed her heart fluttering like a canary in a coal-mine cage.
She was terrified, and becoming more so with every passing second. Wherever she was hiding, I hoped she was fully concealed.
I crossed the room lightly, dodging between the boxes and ducking past the crates stored on shelves overhead. I reached the stairwell door and gave it a swift but controlled yank, pulling it away from the frame and slipping through the opening. It shut itself behind me, tugged back into place by a set of fat iron coils that passed for springs.
It didn’t make enough noise to give me away, not to an intruder a full floor above.
Or so I thought—until he quit moving.
He froze and I froze, because I knew good and well that I’d been quiet even in my haste. So either he’d heard me, or he’d found something he wanted. But I didn’t get the feeling, from the eager silence that smothered the whole building, that he was examining anything. I got the feeling that he was waiting to hear that sound again.
If he’d found Pepper, everyone within a mile would’ve known it. That child can scream like no mere mortal I’ve ever met. I tell her that she must be part banshee, and I’m only half teasing.
Wherever she was stashed, her presence had gone undetected.
Mine, on the other hand, might have been blown.
I waited for him to make the next move. He didn’t. He was patient, the son of a bitch. I had to give him credit.
All right. That was fine. I had worn my comfy boots—chosen partly because they look good with everything, and partly because they have soft leather soles that don’t make a peep when I walk in them. Yes, I am
always
prepared for action. Trust me when I say it
seriously
beats the alternative.
My initial guess had been that this was another professional creeping in on my turf—trying to steal my rightfully ill-gotten gains. But a second possibility dawned on me. Could it be another vampire?
What were the odds? Prior to Ian Stott, I hadn’t seen or spoken with another one of my kind in … I had to think about it … the better part of five years. And then two in one night? Surely not.
But I didn’t believe he was holding still up there. I didn’t believe he was that patient, or that stupid. It’s one thing to hold your ground and wait out a threat—but this guy was out in the open on the floor above me. From his last foothold I’d guessed his location, and there was no way he was just camping there, waiting for me to come smack him around.
That’s what I told myself. My ears argued. They couldn’t hear a thing. Not a scraping boot or an accidentally brushed box. Nothing.
I wasn’t armed with much.
When I left the condo, I’d been heading out to meet a potential client in a public place; there was no sense in dragging a big blade or a big gun along. And it’s not like I live in fear of being mugged or anything.
However, I
do
live in semi-nervousness (if not fear) of having my storage facility breached, so there was a stash of weaponry on the premises. I don’t leave the stuff out in the open—not least of all because I don’t want Pepper or Domino to get hold of it—but behind a pair of loose boards under the stairwell I keep some sharp things, some loud things, and some heavy things.
“Fuck it,” I said under my breath. He knew I was there, and I knew he was there, and he was either sneaking up on me or sneaking away. I threw my quest for absolute silence out the window and made a headlong charge for my cache of deadly items. I didn’t feel like I had time to make a cautious prying of the boards, so I
punched my fist through the top one and grabbed whatever my hand found first.
The Glock subcompact. Noisy, but effective. I crammed it down the back of my waistband and made a little squeak. That thing was
cold
against my spine. But I’d rather not shoot if I don’t have to; why call more attention to a tense situation? Let’s not wake the neighbors.
I threw my purse into the hole. There was nothing useful inside it except the laptop, which wasn’t much of a melee weapon.
I took another split second to fish around and pulled out a reverse-blade katana that I almost never use, but in which I place a great deal of faith. I love a good sword. In this day and age, it’s so damn
unexpected
.
There was more inside the cubbyhole, but I was in a hurry.
With the gun in the back of my pants and the sword held in the ready position, I bounded up the stairs with more speed and light-footedness than anyone should’ve been prepared to expect. At the second-floor landing I made a fast ninety-degree turn and broke for the main room.
Its floor plan was open in order to accommodate machines and workstations; it wasn’t created to be a maze. But fifty years’ worth of accumulated junk can turn almost anyplace into a labyrinth, and for a brief second I thanked heaven that I hadn’t owned the building any longer than that. It was hard enough to navigate around the boxes, crates, slabs, and refurbish-ready sheets of drywall as it was.
I whipped my way around the corner and stopped, then jerked myself back into the hallway. The asshole had turned the light on. The lone bulb swung dimly from a contractor’s-style wire frame, which had been draped over a high beam.
On the floor beside me I saw a large black bolt, covered in dust. I picked it up and flung it into the light, which shattered, and the whole room fell into darkness.
Good.
The advantage was once again mine. If he’d had any special night-vision glasses, my intruder wouldn’t have turned the bulb on in the first place. So now he was blind, and I was in my element. We were on my turf, surrounded by my belongings. The setting was homey to me, and unfamiliar to him. It was only a matter of time before he blew it and I turned him inside out.
So why the hell couldn’t I find him?
Back in sneak mode, I crouched down low and went tiptoeing across the slightly cleared expanse between two rows of shelving units.
I saw boxes and books, and open crates with files, and old pieces of manufacturing equipment that had come with the building. I’d left them, because they were too heavy to move without assistance, and I didn’t want any assistance. Let ’em sit there and rust, that’s what I figured. They weren’t hurting anything.
Except now they were providing cover to my intruder.
I sniffed the air like a dog—which is not a comparison I’m fond of, but it’s accurate. I can’t smell as effectively as a dog can, but my nose is comparable to a cat’s, and I can learn a lot about a room by tipping my nostrils into the air.
For example, even though I couldn’t see her, I knew that Pepper was off to my left—burrowed back inside the old air system. I can’t always be so specific, but the scent of freshly disturbed aluminum and stale air gave away her hiding place. I felt a twinge of admiration for her. She’d found a good spot, and she was following directions. Hold still. Stay quiet.
Done
.
And I knew that there had been a man paused roughly beneath the now-broken lightbulb not thirty seconds earlier.
I couldn’t tell much about him, though. No after-odor of shampoo or cologne lingering in his wake. No
eau de guy
funk. All he left was a trace of minty-smelling astringent.
My nervousness was climbing to new heights.
A professional jimmy-job. Super-quiet movement. Prepared for the prospect of a superhuman nose, or at least a propensity toward mouthwash. This was Not Good.
And I still hadn’t gotten a good look at him yet. I didn’t even know where he was, but I didn’t think he’d left.
Pepper was still hiding, and even if she didn’t have my hearing or eyesight, she had exceptional instincts. I hunkered myself against a wall, taking preemptive cover between an old rubber-cutting device the size of a compact car and a set of steel shelves that reached halfway to the ceiling. There was nothing behind me but a brick wall. I was as safe as I was going to get.