“Livia?” His expression hardened. Maybe she hadn’t filed her taking-over-the-hive paperwork. “What’s the second thing?”
“I saw two men deliver what might have been a vanload of stuff from Goya Worldwide to this Livia the other night. I was coming to tell you that when, well…I think they’re distributing. They had a whole flock of visitors. Maybe Vorster’s behind that, or was working with Livia?”
“The substance started coming in months before I got here, and he doesn’t work well with others. Still…” He ran a hand over his face, and when he took it away, the warped edges of his energy straightened. Back to business, which was a relief. He looked me over in an appraising way. “Do you feel well enough to go for a ride?”
I grinned. “Baby, I’m always good to drive.”
Chapter Thirteen
I wasn’t allowed to drive, and I couldn’t keep Malcolm’s pants on. Even rolled and belted, they kept slipping off my hips or unraveling and trying to trip me. The three vampires, Malcolm in front and the two flanking me, didn’t comment, too busy scanning the street for threats. The battered industrial area was usually empty at night. It was so run-down that I doubted it was all that happening during the day, but after the roadway ambush and subsequent kidnapping, I wasn’t complaining.
We rounded the corner and I stopped sharp at the sight of Thurston’s red gate, now twisted and jutting a few feet into the roadway. An unwholesome brown cloud squatted over Livia’s land, and the smell of smoke was almost as bad as the jagged tendrils of vampire power leaking from the property. The whole place felt frayed.
Malcolm turned and came to a stop directly in front of me. I took a step to the side so that I could see the entrance to Livia’s driveway. I didn’t dare to blink. How he could turn his back on the place, I couldn’t fathom.
“There are dead things there,” he said conversationally. “And dying.” And he probably wanted me to wait in the car with Petr while he and his guys sorted them. Cool. “I’d like you to tell us if anything’s out of place, if you’re able.”
His guys watched me. Anton was tall and bald, his neck tattoos barely darker than his skin, his face as blank as I’d ever seen. The beefier one, Terrance, had a shock of white-blond hair and a concerned expression. It was more pitying than surprised, which is how he’d looked when Malcolm dropped me into the car with them. The two males acted the way vampires were supposed to act, alternately holding themselves a little too still, then moving too fluidly. Their faces were unlined to the point they seemed polished, though they’d been changed in their thirties or early forties. The anticipation in their energy tap-danced against me in overlapping harmony. Malcolm, on the other hand, was
passing,
his power quiet inside of him.
“Can you handle it?”
I nodded, surprised that he’d ask me to go with him. Maybe the dying things there were
really
close to dying and weren’t dangerous. He wrapped a hand around my upper arm. His thumbed stroked once, reassuringly, and we were on our way, me clumping along and them practically gliding.
“This was up,” I murmured, pointing to the gate and craning my head to see beyond the fence and the sapling trees growing in the neglected space around it. “They only used it that night, when the Goya people were here.”
I hitched up my pants again as we entered the property. My escorts all wore long coats, disguising the freaking swords they were carrying. Anton and Terrance had pulled theirs out on the way over, examining them like some kind of shiny, metallic biggest-dick competition. It had been a really uncomfortable car ride.
My knife was in my pocket. Malcolm had said they’d be all the protection that I needed. I trusted him, but there was nothing wrong with being ready. The warehouse light was out and I pulled a Maglite from my bag as we moved farther from the lit street. Malcolm stepped away and his guys disappeared along the perimeter. I shuffled along, the sound of my footsteps and the distant crackling sounds in the warehouse an ominous soundtrack.
We skirted the high weeds full of metal trash, the narrow light of the beam creating strange shapes from the debris. I paused. I didn’t make a habit of paying attention to piles of crap, but it seemed to be sitting differently than it had before.
“This stuff was higher, I think.” I jumped when Anton landed soundlessly on a large piece of rubbish ten feet in front of me. He lowered softly into a crouch and glanced at Malcolm. I pointed the flashlight down so I didn’t blind him, then shivered at the sight of his glowing eyes.
“Two,” he murmured, before leaping away—insectlike—into the darkness. Malcolm’s lips pressed into a thin slash. Anton hadn’t been counting useful relics hidden in the overgrowth.
I run around at night a lot, and my vision is good. But walking into an abandoned lot where at least two people—or vampires—had died was making me second-guess my peripheral vision, which was, in turn, filing my nerves raw. Plus there was all the ambient…residue, I guess. The vampire power I’d felt from half a block away drifted, untethered as the greasy smoke rising from the corner of the warehouse. Whatever had created it wasn’t here anymore.
I focused on Malcolm’s guys the way I’d learned to focus on him, which gave me a vague idea of where they were. Malcolm had said that we needed to be discreet—as in pretend not to really know each other—while we were here. Screaming his name and leaping into his arms when one of his escorts popped out of the darkness would not have been in line with that plan.
The van was still there, but it lay on its side. The tires were intact, the windshield whole. I couldn’t smell any antifreeze or oil or gas. It was like the vehicle had tipped over and died of old age. I stepped to the left to go around it and my flashlight beam passed over the front door of the warehouse. I froze with one foot in the air. The door hung outward, held on by the bottom hinge, and all around it were rust-colored splatters. My wrist twitched and the light bounced along the corrugated metal. Splatters turned to smears and then back again. And then the smell hit me. The sinister sweetness of death, the tang of blood and something more foul than sewage.
You hear the term
bloodbath
a lot, but you never want to see one, and you sure as shit never want to smell one.
“The door was on,” I murmured. “It squeaked. There wasn’t any blood.”
Malcolm’s hand closed on the nape of my neck, and only when the pressure increased did I realize that I’d been backing away toward the fence. Wanting something solid behind me. He didn’t turn me around to spare me the sight, but held my shoulders and pressed me against him. The feel of him flooded over me, a static-electric buffer, brighter and cleaner than our surroundings. I took a stuttering breath and exhaled smoothly. His presence righted me, made me feel like maybe I could traverse this bloody rabbit hole instead of tumbling down ass over teakettle.
“I want you to tell me what you feel in there,” he murmured against my hair. “We’re going to go in. You don’t have to. I’ll return you to the car, but I want you to tell me what you feel.” I glanced at him from beneath my lashes. His disguise had fallen away, that trick of the mind that made him seem human, and he was almost too beautiful to look at. Or maybe I was that freaked-out.
“I don’t want to endanger these men any more than I have to,” he said. “And you’re…attuned to us. How many vampires are in there?”
“Mal, I don’t think…” Terrance stepped into view and I snapped the flashlight toward him. The image of the bloody wall was burned into my eyes, but I saw him shake his head and raise both hands, showing seven fingers.
That was nine dead they’d discovered—I didn’t even want to know what a sucker left behind after a day had passed—and now they were going to go inside this decrepit building painted in blood. My hand crept up and found Malcolm’s, and he squeezed gently. I didn’t want him to go in there. I wanted us both to go back to the car and drive away, then fly out of this country that had, overnight, lost its shit.
But he couldn’t leave, and if I could somehow help him, I’d try. I focused on the building, trying to align. If there were a lot of them, I wouldn’t be able to feel anything but the press of the mass, the way I had when I’d first gone to Arquero. Of course, that would be telling in itself.
Ragged friction strummed across my senses. Anton glided up nearby. I ignored him, angling my head as I counted in time to my heartbeat. Instead of the sharp beacons I expected, the power signatures were…soggy.
“There are five vampires inside, I think.” I shivered. “There’s something seriously wrong with them.” Anton and Terrance glanced at Malcolm. I felt him move, either a nod or flick of his head. They slipped around the side of the building.
“Let’s go back to the car,” Malcolm said, taking my arm.
“Do you need—?” Creatures clashed inside the building and a singular vampire presence spasmed against my awareness. And then it moved toward us, fast. “Malcolm!” I jerked my arm out of his hold and dug for my knife. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do with it. The…thing that exploded out of the building—taking the door the rest of the way off the hinges—was nothing a pocketknife could have handled. It was huge, all bloated, exposed flesh and weeping blood.
Malcolm spun me out of its path. Its breath fogged the air and I refused to raise the flashlight to get a better view of its body. It charged. Malcolm shoved me and I ricocheted off the hood of the van and fell into the weedy gravel. His long black coat parted and his blade flashed in the beam of the flashlight. Gravel flew, pelting me in the face, and liquid splattered against the metal siding. I made it to my feet, knife out, and backed toward the fence. The van rocked and metal shrieked as something flew into it. Malcolm’s power surged, setting pinpoints of light dancing behind my eyes and flooding me with heat. Power scrabbled against my side, twisted and erratic, and I froze as another distorted vampire crashed through the doorway.
It wavered, its head swinging back and forth at a strange angle from its pale, bulging neck. Something screamed inside the warehouse. I flinched, and the head stopped its fleshy rotation and fixed on me. Son of a bitch.
I vaulted a junked-out axle, shoved my knife into my bag and jerked a long, ridged rod out of the weeds. Tuning out the sound of the thing crashing along behind me, I ran in an arc, then swung, all my strength and momentum extending through the metal rod. It connected, somewhere in the creature’s torso, and blood exploded in a fine mist.
“Aeeeeeeerin,” the thing gurgled. All the hair on the back of my neck shot up. I jerked at the rod. The thing grunted, but my weapon didn’t come free. Then it pulled. I dug my heels in and bent my knees, scraping along the ground. Toward it. Why the fuck was I allowing it to pull me closer?
I let go, flailing backward before I found my balance. I scrambled for my knife, finally finding the hilt. I jerked my head up, and gasped. The thing was noticeably shorter.
“Sydney,” Malcolm said calmly, walking around the creature as it collapsed in a squelching heap. His voice was soft, distorted around his fangs. “Go back to the gate. Petr will come for you. Wait in the car.” He flicked his sword and something landed in the weeds with a splat. He disappeared into the warehouse.
Wait in the car. Wait in the car. Wait in the car.
I ran, tripping and stumbling twice before I hit pavement. I spun, hands up, expecting one of those things to be right on my heels. There was nothing but the sound of screaming and crashing back at the warehouse. The smoking corner of the building collapsed, and flames and sparks sprang upward.
The car rumbled up behind me, a solid vibration. Those things were vampires, but they weren’t smooth and beautiful, seducing you by taking your name onto their tongues. They were true monsters. And the second one…the one that came at me…had black hair, and the rags falling from its shoulders were red…
She’d worn that cape to disguise what the drug was doing to her body.
Livia.
The sounds stopped all at once.
“What’s happened?” Petr asked from beside me.
“There were…monsters.” I shook my head, every sense focused on the narrow shadow moving through the darkness toward me, the gold of his eyes visible from twenty feet away.
“Hmm,” Petr said.
Hmm,
like this was a
normal
occurrence. I gaped at him.
Malcolm stopped, two steps in front of me, and leaned down to look me in the eye.
I raised a hand and turned my face away. “Turn it down, Malcolm.”
He took a harsh breath. The glow faded, but didn’t disappear. “You’re all right? You’re not hurt? You fell.”
I tried to laugh, but all that came out was a kind of brittle wheeze. “I tripped. It’s what happens when humans try to sprint at night.” I stepped toward him. “Are they…”
“It’s done.”
“And you?” I chewed my lip, examining him, wanting to tear his clothes off and prove to myself that he was whole.
“I’m fine.” Dark patches formed on either side of his boots, Rorschach blots sketched from the blood that dripped from his hands. I dragged my gaze up to his face. One cheek was bruised, and the side of his neck looked like a bear had been after him.
Petr stepped between us, offering a massive chamois cloth to Malcolm. They turned toward the warehouse, talking in low murmurs. How many other sites had Malcolm come to since we’d landed in Chile, places like this, full of bloody beasts and death? How many had he or the government hidden?
I rubbed at my face, my hand gritty, and climbed into the car. Rocking back and forth for about an hour sounded like a good idea. That, or putting a treadmill on high and running until I passed out. Or leaving. Except if Hendrik Vorster had never grabbed me, I might have driven up tonight, package in hand, and run straight into those…things. How long would I have lasted alone? Three seconds? Five?
Malcolm opened the door and dropped heavily onto the seat, beside me but as far away as he could get within the confines of the car. Another door shut and Petr found first gear.
“That was disgusting,” I said.
“The creatures or the killing?”
“The…” Those had been people—undead maybe, but still feeling and thinking—just days before. A month earlier they might have been productive members of society, even if they were a little parasitic. “All of it.”
“Terrance and Anton are securing the area. A team will examine the remains and cleanse the area,” he said, then added, flatly, “Vorster was here.” I groaned. “There were a dozen empty tubes of the substance, but there should have been ten thousand doses, according to Goya’s packing slips. It’s called Radia.”
“Because it’s supposed to give the user a sunny complexion?” I snorted. “What’s the rush? What do they…what did Livia expect it to do?” How phenomenal did the high have to be to ignore side effects like gruesome, violent mutation? And when was I going to stop shaking?