Crimson City Part 20

"What are we doing, Kipp?" Dain asked softly. "Let's cut the c.r.a.p. Give me something to work with. Give me something to believe in, here. Why this changeup with the Dumonts? You've got me in the dark. It didn't used to be that way. We used to be friends-you, me, and Serena. You make me a p.a.w.n when I know I should be a major player. Give me all the information and let me play the game with you."

Kippenham wore an inscrutable look. He seemed amused, tickled by Dain's words in a way that was incredibly disconcerting. Kipp double-checked that the interrogation voice recorder was in the off position, then leaned forward. "We did send the mech," he said.

Dain felt the blood drain from his face.

Kippenham started laughing, a deep, dark rolling sound. "Didn't expect that, did you?"

"Not really," Dain said quietly and calmly, though he felt rocked to his core.

Catching his breath and slipping easily back into his usual offhand demeanor, Kippenham added, "To be more specific, I ordered the mech sent. On our behalf. On the behalf of all humans."

"You ordered the mech to a.s.sa.s.sinate Fleur's brothers?"

"Absolutely," Kippenham sneered, his expression ugly. "As encouraged by certain superiors."

"Then what the h.e.l.l am I doing out there?" Dain asked almost desperately. "What has all this been for?" And did Cyd really have to die?

"We wanted someone on the inside of the vampire world." With some amused sarcasm, Kipp added, "I think you got about as close as any man could get."

Dain felt dizzy. "I usually find that it's a bad sign when superiors reveal a secret to someone in circ.u.mstances like these. Why are you telling me?"

"I think you're slipping. But your memory of Serena-well, if there's a chance of keeping you in the program, I've got a lot invested in you. We've learned a h.e.l.l of a lot from you, Dain. You're kind of a special case."

Dain gritted his teeth. This all made him sound like a commodity. Like the program had spent so much on his training that it was a shame to lose him. The cold facts were, he knew so much that they'd either have to be a.s.sured of his loyalty or delete him. He understood that. And he was glad Kippenham had been frank.

As if reading his mind, Kippenham leaned forward and said, "Dain, so many things happen behind the scenes that you don't see. In spite of what you said, I'm going to give you a little lat.i.tude because 1 think you deserve it. But I'd like you to go home and rest and think about what you believe in. I'd like you to think about your wife, Serena, about Cydney, and about the others we've known and lost to the vampires over the years. Think about the fact that we didn't invite these bloodsucking monsters into our midst. And I think when you take a moment to step back and reflect, you'll remember what your purpose is here. You'll know what's right.

"Don't think we're stupid. Fleur Dumont is persona non grata in Crimson City as far as we're concerned. Whether you recognize it or not, a strike back against the vampires has been a long time coming. It's become clear that, if we don't strike first and hard, they will-and with fatal results. And if you choose to personally ally with these killers, the rest of your life is going to be lonely and short."

"Is that a threat or a promise?" Dain asked softly.

"It's just a fact, Dain. Just a fact."

Chapter Twenty-five.

Dain stared out the window at Crimson City, which was flying by as JB drove like a maniac through the crowded streets. Dain wasn't in the driver's seat this time. Numb, he didn't even try to pump a nonexistent brake as they took a corner too fast and fish-tailed into the opposite lane, narrowly missing a cyclist on a jetbike.

Maybe it was because he didn't fear death anymore, he thought with a wry smile. There wasn't much worth getting out of bed for these days. He and JB were responding to reports of a second vampire death cl.u.s.ter, and Dain couldn't muster any enthusiasm for the job. With his loyal watchdog at his side, he felt exhausted by being forced to fake caring about things. All he could think about was Fleur, and wanting to talk to Fleur, and wanting to apologize for that crazy night and wanting to have it back.

The more he thought about it, the more he wished he'd made a different choice. The only piece of him that felt alive was the piece of his heart that now hoped to see Fleur at the scene of the crime. The antic.i.p.ation of that moment, of just seeing her standing there, seemed worth any consequence.

JB apparently could read his thoughts. As he parked the car and Dain went to open the door, the locks went down.

Dain looked at JB in surprise. His new partner looked slightly embarra.s.sed. "I don't mean to get in your business, but if Dumont is there, just play it smart and don't do anything I'll have to report."

Dain looked at him keenly. "What would you have to report? As your boss, I recall quite a few items on you that didn't make it into my reports."

JB glanced away. "Don't make this hard on me, man. They're going to have a microscope on you right now. And that means they're looking at me too. So don't show me any dirt. Just play it smart until everything blows over."

Dain c.o.c.ked his head. "Exactly what is it you think I'm going to do?"

JB looked torn. He wiped the sheen of sweat off his forehead. "d.a.m.n it, Dain. I don't care if you screw her. I really don't, and I don't think anyone else does either. But the bra.s.s think it's gone beyond that. They think you're in over your head, so just do us both a favor and make everything real clean while I'm around. I don't want to see anything, I don't want to know anything, and I don't want to have to report anything."

Dain reached over, popped the locks, and got out of the car, stalking toward the small gathering by the mouth of the alley. Since when had his juniors started talking to him like a greenie? Screw him. Screw them all.

Fleur was already there, and while Dain kept his face blank, inside his heart beat out a very different story. She turned as he approached, and he watched a number of jumbled emotions flit over her face. She looked quickly away and smiled at JB. "h.e.l.lo."

"Hi," JB responded curtly. He glanced at Dain, sighed heavily, and said too loudly, "I'm going to walk way over there and look at the bodies."

As he stalked off, Dain looked down at Fleur and couldn't believe that he'd been such an a.s.s. If only he had that night to do over. "It's... it's my turn to apologize. I'm sorry."

Fleur studied his face, then frowned at all of the personnel still standing close by. "Let's go somewhere else. Somewhere it's not so complicated."

Surprised she didn't seem angrier, he just shrugged. "Absolutely."

Fleur swung around and looked at the businesses lining the street, then without another word headed straight for the nearest bar, a corner dive with unfulfilled aspirations toward a Western theme. Dain followed her through the swinging doors bolted into the metal doorframe, and while she went straight to the bar and ordered, he surveyed the place and chose the most strategically sound table.

Fleur returned with the bartender, who slapped down a c.o.c.ktail for her and a soda for Dain. Dain almost smiled, thinking that vamps had better working rules. He wanted to make a joke, but instinct told him Fleur wasn't in the mood. Instead, he asked, "Do you accept my apology?"

Fleur sipped her drink, then poked at the ice with her straw. "I nicked you and you got angry. I think we're even. Still, given what you said, I'm surprised you're not still angry."

"It's in your nature," he said, watching her face.

She looked up at him in surprise. Maybe she saw what he was thinking-that he'd had second thoughts; that maybe the second time around he let her bite him. Of course, maybe she really believed that she hadn't been about to bite him.

She might have been thinking a lot of things. All she said was, "We're getting ourselves into a bit of a mess, you and I. This is really impossible. You know that, right?"

Dain did his best to smile. "You breaking up with me?" he joked.

Fleur burst out into laughter. "I didn't realize we were dating. You never call." They both laughed at that, but after a pause she added, "I'm not your kind. And you're not mine."

Who was she trying to convince? She didn't sound very sure of herself. "I don't really know what my kind is," Dain said.

"Well, it's not mine, anyway."

Dain looked away from her, at the spa.r.s.e crowd in the bar. Who was human? Who was just pa.s.sing? Was anyone for real? He shook his head. "Man. Nothing's what it should be. Nothing's logical anymore. I thought I knew everything about the human defense systems and intelligence. I have security clearance at the highest levels. I share information with the leaders of all the top levels. I should know everything. Everything." But all he knew was that he couldn't trust anyone.

"Maybe you do know everything-in just the way they want you to know it. Dain, have you ever considered why you do what you do?" It seemed to take a lot for her to say that.

"What do you mean?"

"Please don't take this the wrong way, but you don't do what you do out of loyalty or allegiance to your species. You do it for the thrill of the chase. For the pleasure of finding the truth. Or something like that."

Dain blinked, a little-no, a lot surprised. A slow grin came over his face. "So... what? Does that make me a bad person?"

She tilted her head and studied him. "Well, I might argue that it makes you more trustworthy. You don't operate based on blind loyalty. You operate based on facts and sense. Really, if you think about it... you make the perfect investigator."

He stared at her for a moment and then took a deep breath. "There's something I want you to know. Something I just found out."

Fleur raised an eyebrow.

Dain leaned in so close he could smell the faint perfume of her hair. "We did send the mech. Someone high up sent that mech to kill your brothers."

He pulled away to see how she'd take it, and Fleur just stared at him. For a moment she was absolutely speechless. "You just found out?"

Dain nodded. "The boss just told me. I felt... I felt you should know"-he looked down at the countertop-"since the idea of us working together was to find out."

Fleur processed Dain's words slowly, trying to guess, judge, a.n.a.lyze... trying to figure out if he was lying now to set her up, or if he'd been lying before. But for all her natural suspicions, she couldn't believe that what he'd said was anything but the truth.

In part, her faith was because of something in Dain she could sense. Something had changed. Dain wasn't for his employers anymore. He wasn't for anybody. He was like a man without a country. And Fleur had to decide if that meant she could trust him, or if it meant he was simply slipping into oblivion. People like him made fantastic informants, but he knew that better than anybody.

Was he using her? She didn't think so. She had a sense that even if he couldn't be loyal to cause, to a species, to a mind-set anymore, he was loyal to her. And knowing that made her heart ache even while she determined how it could serve her people.

When he looked up and their eyes met, there was a question there: Do you believe me? Fleur nodded without waiting to hear the words, and she watched as something within Dain, some sort of desperate tension, released. He stretched his arm out across the table and opened his palm.

Fleur never broke eye contact as she put her hand in his. He leaned over the table and pressed his lips to hers so tenderly that it nearly broke her heart. And when their lips parted once more, there was the barest hint of sadness there.

She looked away. "You shouldn't start what can't be finished," she said, a sad smile on her lips. She looked up. "Did the bite really scare you... or was it just an excuse?"

Dain c.o.c.ked his head. "Were you really in control of what you were doing?" he asked in return.

A silence pa.s.sed between them. "You're saying you don't really know."

"I don't know what scared me, really." More softly, he added, "What I do know is that a lot can change in the span of a few days."

Fleur looked at their hands, still clasped on the table. His were strong, the texture both smooth from his scars and rough from his calluses. They were so distinct, warm, possessive around hers. "I have to go," she said. They both knew what she would do with his information. She'd take it back to the a.s.sembly. It wasn't worth killing the moment to discuss.

"Fleur," he said, his voice urgent. "I don't want to talk like this, with one eye on the door. There are other things I need to say to you, things-"

"Dain?" JB appeared in the doorway, his arms propped up on the swinging doors, his hip c.o.c.ked like that of some brash young gunslinger. "Issues?"

Dain pulled his hands away and stood up. "Nah. Just arguing about who's zooming whom," he replied, taking his smart card from his pocket and swiping it through a reader to pay for the drinks.

Then, without looking back, he waved a careless adios behind his back at Fleur.

"Catch you later, sweetheart," he said. And to JB: "Dead fangs always make me hungry. Cheeseburger?"

Fleur watched the younger man's face relax. There was no question the humans were monitoring Dain now. He'd lost their loyalty, their trust. There had to be a very good reason why Dain's boss had told him about the mech. She just hoped that good reason wasn't waiting around the corner for him. Literally or figuratively.

Dain picked his way over a b.u.m sleeping on the walkway and stood in front of Cyd's apartment. JB was a great kid. He reminded Dain of himself in better days. But eating a cheeseburger and shooting the s.h.i.t with him had made Dain miss Cyd more than ever. It wouldn't have been the same without her if things had been normal, and it definitely wasn't the same with things the way they were. It was almost ridiculous. The whole situation had been a sham. His own people-his own boss-had sent that mech to kill those vampires. To start the unrest that now plagued the city. He'd give a lot to talk it over with Cyd. He'd give a lot to know what she'd known.

Glancing back to make sure the guy really was just a b.u.m, Dain stepped past the police tape. He got out his pocket knife to jimmy the lock, but found Cyd had left the apartment unsecured. Shaking his head he stepped inside, and in the smoky green gloom, sure enough, her place had all the signs of someone who'd been planning to come back.

They hadn't found a body. They wouldn't. And Forensics had found mixed blood types all over that gla.s.s. Suddenly, everything had so many possibilities. The questions were racking up, one after the next without any being answered. It was all too unfair and confusing.

Dain walked into the kitchen, noting the cigarettes on the floor and dirty dishes piled in the sink. Drug paraphernalia was out in the open in a meat-loaf pan, sitting on the phone book, both dumped uncar-ingly into the open garbage now moldering in the damp heat. On the bottom of the refrigerator door was a fingertip tracing that looked relatively fresh- "Cyd + ?" An arrow pointed down from the question mark to the word, "n.o.body."

Dain angrily wiped at his eyes, then reached under the kitchen sink and rummaged around until he found an empty cardboard box. There wasn't much in the apartment anybody would miss. The landlord would clear it out soon enough in lieu of next month's missing rent if the Triangle's squatters and down-and-outers didn't hear of it first. Leaving the kitchen behind, he went to Cyd's bedroom and opened the drawers until he found a small lockbox. He dumped the lockbox in the cardboard box, added her jewelry and the only party dress hanging in the closet that looked like it had never been worn. He also took a stuffed animal off the bed and some pictures of people he didn't recognize and had never asked about.

Maybe that was his mistake. Maybe he should have been asking. Maybe he should have been proactively trying to get her some help, someone to help her talk about whatever had happened in her past. Maybe he'd done it all wrong. He folded the box top down and surveyed the tiny apartment one last time. He'd keep the box until he didn't hurt so much. Until he was ready to accept that she was never coming back.

Strange, Dain had always thought he was the one keeping Cyd from slipping into a darker role, into some sort of sad solitude. Maybe she'd been the glue keeping him together.

This was what you got when you played the game.

Cyd + n.o.body. Dain + n.o.body. It was a lonely game. He'd thought he'd managed to fill the voids in his life. But his job and his friendships had only concealed the fact that he felt blank. Except when he was with Fleur. The blanks got filled in when he looked in her eyes.

What the h.e.l.l did it mean to be human versus anything else? Mech, vampire, werewolf, human-what would it buy him if he continued working for his own race, which was moving toward crushing everybody else? The fear of losing Fleur-really losing her-was overwhelming. And the answer was so simple. It balanced the equation. Fleur balanced all equations.

He didn't know what it meant to feel human. He only knew he wanted to be whatever he needed to be to love her. Fleur was all that sparked life in him. She was the only reason to wake up in the morning anymore. And he wasn't going to hold back, resist, or conceal anything that would put that fact in jeopardy. He'd once thought his goal was a promotion to the top of the intelligence community, following Kippenham in policy and position. But Kippenham, the job, the policies of the humans for or against anyone else-none of it held interest for him anymore. It all was a handful of hollow victories. He could do better. And where all he ever really wanted was a little peace, a little joy, something to put the fuzzy memories in his brain into focus, now he had a different plan to achieve that.

He picked through the stuff in the box. "Who'd have thunk it, Cyd? I'm in love with a vampire, and I'm going to do something about it. You were right- things in this city can turn in a heartbeat."

Dain found a copy of the surveillance tape of that fateful night, recorded in their car from the mech's broadcast. He found an old reader and stuck the cartridge in, then brought the reader's goggles to his eyes. It showed the point of view of the mech.

There was Fleur, as she'd been on that eve. There was something so skittish and vulnerable in her. That something was still under the surface, but it had been hidden under the layers of experience and pain she'd found over the course of this crazy struggle. They'd all changed. And kudos to Fleur, because she'd become stronger, more powerful, more self-a.s.sured. Dain felt like he'd been falling apart all this time, and there was barely enough of him left to function.

Though he'd run this film before-before he knew all the players and understood the game-this time felt different. He felt different about watching the mech's bullets burn into Fleur's half-brothers, and he felt different watching Fleur's horror and fear as her family died before her eyes. Then she herself stared death down.

Fleur had suggested that immortality could be a curse, but in the moment where death stares you down, Dain saw you wanted to live. You'd always rather live. And from the expression on Fleur's face as the mech's arm came up once more at the bottom of the frame, pointing a weapon at her heart, he could tell that she believed she was going to die.

Dain watched every detail. He saw the edge of metal flip over. It wasn't a weaponry malfunction; the mech had switched on purpose. It was either purposeful or a mistake in orders. But as if he'd never seen the film before, this time when the bullet went into Fleur's flesh and crimson bloomed over the fabric of her sleeve, Dain's heart nearly stopped. And in a world gone mad, a city headed unstop-pably toward chaos, all he knew and all that mattered to him was Fleur. He was beyond loyalty to any one species. He was beyond honor. He just wanted Fleur to be safe. To be safe, to love him back, and to give him a reason to live. Fleur was his reason, now, and he'd make every sacrifice to keep her safe. Any sacrifice at all.

Dain took Serena's picture from his wallet and ran his fingertip over her hair. "I just don't remember you. I admit it, okay? I admit it. I don't remember knowing you, sensing you, or loving you the way I do Fleur. Forgive me, but I need her." If Serena had lived instead of him, he would have wanted her to find happiness anyway she could. "I can only hope this is what you'd have wanted for me. If it's wrong, you're going to have to give me some kind of sign."

Chapter Twenty-six.

Hayden Wilks looked lean, hungry and dangerous. But also he looked oddly unfamiliar. Fleur shouldn't have been surprised about that. From the moment she'd sunk her fangs into him, he'd become a stranger. Something had shut down inside of him. He'd never even tried to indulge in the rich lifestyle that being vampire offered, a testament to how wrong the transformation had felt. He'd simply opened his eyes and known it was wrong. And then, as Fleur knelt at his feet, crying and saying she was sorry, he'd screamed in horror until he went hoa.r.s.e. Everything about him still suggested he felt that way; he had the look of a man who was uncomfortable in his own skin, who was searching for a solution that evaded him.

Shockingly, the rogue she'd taken down at a.s.sembly had been true to his word; he'd pa.s.sed along Fleur's message, and she'd received a cursory response. The place to meet-in the human strata- was a pointed choice.

And when Hayden stepped forward to reveal himself after all this time, it had been as much a shock as she'd antic.i.p.ated.