Crimson City Part 16

"I wasn't requesting a rescue," Fleur said, unable to prevent herself from smiling.

Dain focused on her, flashing a c.o.c.ky grin. "Well, you got one." He tilted his head and looked at her, and she felt suddenly self-conscious in her simple black trench coat, her hair in a loose ponytail, and no makeup.

Dain didn't say anything, but he didn't have to. He just reached out and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, his attention on her mouth, a very unprofessional look in his eye. He dropped his hand abruptly and turned to face the street. "So, what do you think?"

Fleur shrugged. "I don't know what to think. I was informed that..." Her gaze moved past Dain's face to the crowd. "Well, here they are now. Better late than never."

Dain followed her eyes to the faces of a pair of men who seemed to be craning their necks over the sea of bobbing heads to stare right back at them. Then he looked away and brought his hand up to his earpiece. "Cyd, is that you again? For G.o.d's sake, find a pay phone or something."

"Is something wrong?" Fleur asked.

"She didn't clock in this morning and has been triggering my comm all day. When I answer, she doesn't."

"Go find her," Fleur said quietly. "I can handle this on my own." But she wanted him to stay. She had called him for a reason. She wanted to be near him. She was being selfish. She wanted him to choose her, no matter who was in danger. No matter what happened.

Dain looked into her eyes and she could see weariness. His eyes reflected thoughts unsaid, words unspoken. Which was just as well. Fleur smiled and looked away, remembering she had no right to him. No right at all. "Go to her. Go find her," she repeated, this time doing her best to mean it. She gestured to the two men separating from the crowd, now intent upon them. "This is nothing special."

"I'll stay here with you if it's all the same," he said.

Fleur was out of words. She just swallowed and pulled herself together, turning to the men she knew to be rogues. There were two of them, one dressed rather like a b.a.s.t.a.r.dized version of a British schoolboy, dark cosmetics smudged around his eyes and a rep tie around his neck. The other was in more traditional street attire, with tattoos covering his forearms and a jet black mohawk almost as arresting as his piercing green eyes.

"You pa.s.s well," Fleur said.

"So we're told. And what do you know? We don't just get Fleur Dumont. We get the whole First Couple of Don't Even Think About It," the schoolboy rogue said, looking between them.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Dain asked, stepping up. He stood next to Fleur, obviously itch-ing for a fight. She could tell his blood was up. She doubted he even realized how far he disappeared within himself when the blind desire to wreak havoc took over. Of course, she'd certainly set the standard, losing control like that in Dogtown.

"Ask her," the rogue said, gesturing to Fleur.

Fleur raised an eyebrow and said in a bored voice, "If you're here to pick a fight, maybe we should just get on with it."

The answer came in the form of a left hook. Fleur ducked and threw off her trench coat. Dain reacted like lightning, lining up in front of the tattooed rogue, fists at the ready. "Give me an excuse to be bad," he said with a grin, curling his fingers to beckon his foe forward.

The fighters squared off and went at it.

It was clear the rogues weren't carrying any special weapons, not anything that could kill Fleur anyway. The most they'd be able to do was cause her pain. And yet, that didn't seem to be their intent either.

Fleur stepped down her game a bit, just to see what her attacker would do. She sensed that he adjusted as well, throwing his punches a little easier, moving a little slower. This wasn't a fight so much as an exercise of some kind.

As she slowly and methodically sparred, matching fists, feet, daggers, and brute strength against those of her opponent, Fleur watched Dain fight the other rogue from the corner of her eye. There was a more serious match. After all, Dain could be killed with one well-placed thrust of a dagger. And he was fighting as she suspected he always did, a.s.suming his life was on the line.

With Fleur's focus more on Dain's match than her own, her opponent took advantage and slipped her up, kicking her feet out from beneath her. Fleur fell back hard to the ground, knocking her head on the cement. Stunned as she was, the rogue took the opening and came down atop her, sitting on her as if he'd bested his mate in a high-school wrestling match. His weight effectively holding her down, he stuck his dagger to her throat.

Fleur rolled her eyes. "Lovely," she said. Then both she and her captor waited for the second fight to play out.

Circling his foe, Dain glanced over at Fleur lying in surrender on the ground and reacted like a man possessed. His opponent leaped into a hard roundhouse kick, but Dain grabbed his ankle and sent him crashing headfirst to the ground. The rogue groaned in pain and Dain leaped on him, pounding his fist into the rogue's face as his other arm locked around the vampire's neck.

"Uncle." Fleur's captor said it sarcastically at first, but when Dain didn't seem to hear him-or perhaps chose to ignore him-he repeated the word more urgently.

"Dain," Fleur called.

Dain looked up in surprise, his fist poised in midair, then looked down at the rogue in his grasp as if seeing more clearly.

"Tell me," Fleur said, shifting uncomfortably under the weight of her captor, "Are you here because I lead the Primary a.s.sembly now... or are you here because I once made one of your kind?"

He didn't answer her, just turned to his friend who'd slumped a bit in Dain's grasp. "She's not half bad," he said.

"How personal is this?" Fleur continued.

The rogue looked more self-satisfied than bloods thirsty. He knew that she felt pain just like anyone, and he could have meted out a little if he'd wanted. Instead, straddling her with a knife at her throat, he looked over at Dain and said, "Trade?"

"Sure," Dain said.

The rogue moved the blade away from Fleur's throat, flipping it over to show that he hadn't cut her. He raised an index finger. "One?"

Dain nodded, and the rogue sheathed his knife at the same time Dain holstered his own weapon.

"Two?" Dain and the rogue simultaneously stood, both still straddling their conquered counterparts.

The rogue held up three fingers. "Done." The two men stepped completely away from their victims. Dain held out his hand and helped Fleur to her feet. The first rogue turned to Fleur and bowed. "Oh, where are my manners? I throw down, Fleur Du-mont," he said mockingly. He gestured to his friend and they walked away as easily as if they'd all just had lunch.

Fleur watched them retreat. "That's it?" she called. She didn't think they'd ever intended to hurt her. But they hadn't imparted any information, either. It was almost as if they'd come for sport not politics. That made it personal, but didn't shed light on the bigger picture.

Dain picked up her trench coat and brushed it off. "You okay?" he asked.

"Nothing bruised but my pride," she answered.

"But you went easy on him, didn't you?"

"Can't get 'em every time," she said obliquely.

He looked at her carefully, but didn't pursue his point. "So... those are vampires, but they aren't your

people. Rogues, yeah?"

Fleur wiped the sweat off her forehead. "Rogues. You handled yours nicely."

"And you let yours off easy."

"He got the better of me," she said, "but I wasn't afraid for myself. From the get-go, I knew they just

wanted sport. A bit odd."

"Two on one wouldn't have been sport. You'd think your Protectors would manage to be around when you need them."

Fleur whirled around. Dain was right; there was no one there. Her cousins weren't there. She smiled to

herself.

"If they had been, they would have been impressed with you," she said.

And then the city sirens wailed once more, having an instant effect. The marketplace instantly filled with

people headed for home. Dain's hand went to his comm as he got a message. "This is Dain. Who is this? h.e.l.lo?" "Is somebody else requesting a rescue?" Fleur teased. But Dain only flinched, and the blood drained from his face. "Go," Fleur said, taking her coat back. He nodded, took her hand and kissed it, then disappeared into the crowd. She watched him go. When he was gone, Fleur slipped her arms into her sleeves and pulled her coat tight against her, looking over her shoulder at where the four of them had fought only moments before. The attack had seemed really personal. To her. About her. If that pair had had a message to impart in the name of the rogues as a whole, wouldn't they have communicated it? Or were they building up to something?

Fleur walked through the crowded streets, taking the pulse of things, watching the faces of the anxious pa.s.sersby. She couldn't be sure of anything, but Dain had seemed quite certain that his bosses had not sent the mech to create tension between the vampire and human worlds. Everything that the humans were doing now, he claimed was in self-defense, as a reaction to the tensions the mech had triggered.

Now, she felt a sudden instinct to rule out the rogues. Those fighters hadn't seemed to have much of an agenda. Which left the dogs-but she still didn't know anything about them.

As the sirens continued to wail, Fleur knew that time was running out. She had to choose the right enemy. So it was time to see if there was a plan to set the rogues even more firmly against the primaries than they already were. It was time to track down Hay den.

Chapter Twenty.

Cyd's voice was finally coming in loud and clear, saying Dain's name over and over. Screaming it.

A horrible chill swept over him. "Cyd, I need to know exactly where you are," he said into his comm. His voice sounded cracked, scared, to his own ears. He was scared. He hadn't felt this scared in a long time.

Her terrified screams couldn't tell him what he needed to know, and Dain simply drove toward Cyd's neighborhood, praying he'd guessed correctly and relying on reflex and instinct to get him as fast as possible through the maze of the streets. It took too long to get there. Dain stared straight ahead as lights blurred into rainbow streaks through the damp windshield, and the city seemed to unravel in front of him like an endless, slow-motion movie reel.

"Help me! Dain, help me!" Cyd's breath came in gasps between her words.

A total rage replaced the edge of Dain's panic. His hands clenched around the steering wheel. "Cyd, turn your GPS on," he called. He fought to keep his voice steady. "Flip your GPS on. Cyd? Flip your GPS on or give me one word. A landmark."

She just kept screaming. Then she went eerily silent and the green light of her GPS flickered. She had finally turned on her locator.

Dain's hands shook as he hit the all-call. "Emergency units to downtown. Follow the coordinates for Cydney Brighton on the GPS. She's in trouble." In trouble on the opposite side of town.

Dain slammed his palm against the steering wheel, tears welling in his eyes. He took a deep breath and focused on the blinking lights of the dashboard. "JB, do you copy?"

"JB, copy."

"You're closest."

"Consider me there."

"Cyd, give me something more to work with," Dain muttered, his voice already hoa.r.s.e. But static on the other end of the line would have drowned her out even if she'd been talking.

Somebody's been jiggling the locks on the door to the underworld.

"No." Dain stepped down even harder on the accelerator, which was already to the floor. "No!" He dodged a scooter, overcorrected and clipped a parked car. The side mirror snapped off and hit the back of his transport, bouncing to the pavement behind him.

Away from the tonier parts of town, the "off" feeling, the tension and antic.i.p.ation he'd felt back at the station was being answered. It was as if the city hung in the balance, was on the edge of chaos. Indeed, as he sped down city blocks, entire streets seemed de-serted. Then in the next minute, he'd see someone running. And a pocket of activity.

It wasn't unusual for this area, except the urgency of it all. Furtive glances, fear, and always people were running from something. Or to something. The sky was filled with dark shadows, thin traces of those who weren't necessarily human-and who weren't necessarily friendly.

"Cyd, can you hear me? Cyd, if you can you hear me, go somewhere we know. Do you hear me?" One hand on the volume b.u.t.ton, one hand on the steering wheel, Dain fishtailed around a corner and smashed the back end of his car into a group of trash cans, ignoring them as they tumbled down the street behind him.

Closer, closer... Cyd's apartment was just down the street, though she herself was on the move. Dain careened onward, nearly barreling into a pack of canines racing across an intersection. They scattered, barking. "Cyd, give me something. Can you hear me?" he called.

Dead silence, save for the sound of frightened, labored breathing. Then, suddenly, Cyd was speaking, loud and clear. "They're coming for me," she said, her voice oddly measured.

Dain drove out of the side streets and merged back into traffic on Main, weaving through the lanes like they were his own personal obstacle course. He pa.s.sed Cyd's apartment complex, the corner store where she bought cigarettes, the side streets leading to the hidden places where her informants lived...

His history with Cyd, his entire friendship with her flashed through his mind, a slide show of memories more vivid than any he had left from his for-mer life. There came the sound of smashing gla.s.s over the comm. The car lurched as Dain reacted. Cyd was screaming b.l.o.o.d.y murder at the top of her lungs. A gunshot sounded.

Dain glanced down at the dashboard; her comm light was out. Her GPS light went out. And he was left with nothing.

He screeched to stop. He wanted to get out and walk around. He found himself at the front of a line of cars at a light that had just turned green. Behind him, horns blared, m.u.f.fled curses just barely penetrating the windows of his transport. But Dain sat in the car, his foot poised above the accelerator, his gaze fixated on the dashboard. He had no idea how long he sat there, idling as the cars swerved around him.

"Dain, it's JB." The voice was bleak. "Dain? I'm here, and... and..."

It's bad. He didn't need anyone to tell him it was bad. He already knew. "I'm almost there," he choked out. He put the car back in drive, rounded the corner and drove to Cyd's last GPS signal. It was all a blur.

People cl.u.s.tered on a street corner. Dain double-parked, turned on his hazards, and got out of the transport. Numbly a.s.sessing the scene from a distance, he could tell they were focused on what had once been a phone booth. Nearer, he saw it was now just a metal frame with a pile of gla.s.s spread out around it. The gla.s.s sparkled like gemstones in the flickering neon from the billboards above. The phone was ripped out, the black cord lying limp in the shards like a dead snake half-buried in red-speckled ice.

Most of his B-Ops teams were there, shoulders hunched, hands to faces, arms around each other. Dain steeled himself. He tried to, anyway, knowing that they were all watching him as he approached. n.o.body said a word as he stepped to the edge of the scene and stared down. Blood spattered everything in a two-foot radius.

Dain ran his hand over the stubble on his face, feeling slightly faint. Then, with the lights flashing and the sirens wailing, he removed an evidence swab from a kit in his jacket pocket and began to take samples.

"1 can finish that, sir," JB said. He was uncharacteristically formal, probably just trying to keep his s.h.i.t together like everybody else.

"No, I need to make sure we get everything. It's gonna rain again."

"I know. Let me do it, sir." JB actually put his hand around Dain's wrist and gently took the swab kit away.

Dain let him. He stumbled to his feet and finally focused on the faces of his teams. They were looking to him for answers. He didn't have any. "Where's the body?" he asked, his voice still hoa.r.s.e.

The others just looked at each other, at the ground... anywhere but at him.

Dain held out his arms, palms up. "I said, where's the body?" He honed in on Jill Cooper, the reporter, standing there with her camera held loosely at her side. She looked like she'd been crying. "Where's the body, Jill?"

Jill swallowed and shook her head. "There's no body."