Night Runner: Falling From The Light Part 13

"Yes, maybe, and no." Lil stuck a hand on her bony hips, a.s.sessing me with a squint. "You do this kind of work before?"

"Little bit."

"Well, I can't have you out there alone on your second day on the job."

"What am I going to do here, Lil?" I smiled. I couldn't help it. "Your crew's got the floor covered. Even if a truck comes, you don't have another forklift. Send me out on the road. What could go wrong?"

She snorted. "Everything."

"Let me rephrase, then. Could I possibly do worse than Hernandez?"

She screwed her mouth up, then snorted productively. "Fine, but only 'cause I don't want to have to explain to the sales jacka.s.ses in the ivory tower why they're getting calls from spa docs who ran out of placenta cream to rub on their customers' faces at a hundred bucks a pop."

"That is repulsive."

"Rich people can afford to be disgusting." She looked me up and down, then gestured with the clipboard. "Come on, then. Let's get you on the road before I come to my senses."

I followed her to a neat stack of plastic crates and boxes at the edge of the loading bay, then hopped to the ground. The van was brown and scuffed. Lil fished a set of keys from her pocket and handed them to me, along with a clipboard that had been sitting on the boxes. It felt proper in my hands, fitting. A few days of doing nothing and even a milk run attached to a low hourly wage that I wouldn't be around to collect was appealing.

I tapped the first address into my phone and slid the map around until I could place it, then repeated the process for the second address.

"What're you doing?" Lil asked.

"Setting up a route to minimize time on the road." Traffic around Phoenix had a way of making itself inefficient. I glanced up after I'd finished mentally arranging the drop-offs in a promising order. Lil was grinning at me.

"You might just do all right here, girl." She yelled back over her shoulder, "D, come help get the newbie loaded up."

The front of the van was hot and stale, and the odor of old food hung around like the ghosts of burgers past.

"I'll be back before closing time."

"You better be, or I'm reporting you to highway patrol."

"This isn't a ploy to steal the placenta cream, Lil."

Bodyguard Derrick was reclined in his SUV when I rounded the building, his ball cap pulled low. Sleeping, dead from heat, or simply really, really bored. I blew him a kiss as I barreled out of the parking lot, laughing when he spun out trying to catch up. Then I dialed Mickey, who answered with a m.u.f.fled sound that was barely words, let alone a greeting.

"Hey, any chance you can help me out for a couple of hours?"

A yawn, and the sound of sheets sliding around. Her packing had taken longer than mine, on account of how she'd apparently spent every minute I'd been away shopping. "S. Claro."

"Can one of your pool buddies drive you to the convenience store at the end of vampire lane?"

"Somebody is always up."

"I'll be there in thirty minutes. Bring scissors and brown packing tape."

"Brown scissors. Tapping cake. Got it." She hung up.

I glanced in the rearview mirror, at the boxes shivering benignly as I drove over a speed b.u.mp. I could just make out the beginning of a cursive letter R on the side of one box.

Someone at Goya knew that their product wasn't merely fast-drying with a pleasant tingling sensation and, as Kevin had said, products weren't developed unless someone was willing to pay for them. Bronson wanted more information. If any of the places that had ordered Radia didn't look to be on the up-and-up, I'd be happy to turn the names and addresses over to him.

"So what do I do?" Mickey asked, gulping from a giant cup of coffee. I scowled when a drop fell onto her shirt, mostly because it was my shirt.

"Slice the tape open and, if there's any Radia inside, note the amount and address here." I handed her a clean sheet of paper and the clipboard. "And why are you wearing my clothes? You packed four suitcases yesterday."

"Yeah." She yawned, then set down the board and cup and rubbed at her cheeks. "That is the problem. All of my clothes were packed and you called and I thought it was an emergency, that you had kidnapped someone and we had a body to dispose of."

"You thought that helping me dispose of a body was more important that wearing your own underwear? Awwww." I pulled her into a hug and whispered, "You're the sweetest."

"I'm not wearing your underwear," she whispered back. "I'm wearing the boxer briefs that Thurston wouldn't wear. Do you know that he still refuses-"

"Okay, that's enough sharing for today." I crawled back into the front seat.

"You're a prude."

"He's practically my employee. I need to respect his privacy. There are laws about that sort of thing."

The first two drops were simple. Clinics in medical office towers where I had to use freight elevators. With the logo'd shirt, n.o.body questioned me and hardly anyone even gave me a second glance. Not that they should. I was legit. Using a fake name, working under false pretenses, and about to split town, but otherwise legit. The third drop was a spa where a woman with lips so plump that I winced each time she spoke gushed about her delivery of bee venom products.

"Have you ever used them?" she asked, holding a box like it was the Holy Grail.

"I've been stung. When I was seven, the bedroom window didn't close all the way, and a bee came through and burrowed into my blanket. Got me good on the back of the knee." The look she gave me implied I wasn't saying the right words. "It was very invigorating."

"That's the idea," she said tartly as she shoved the signature sheet at me. I'd had vampire customers who were easier to relate to.

"Got them all," Mickey said as I climbed into the van. She shot a paper airplane over the seat. I opened it and frowned at her notes.

"Only two orders with Radia?"

"The doctor in Peoria ordered a bunch of stuff other than the vials. The spa in Glendale only ordered Radia. Two cases."

"Probably an organic place that doesn't use the harsher stuff. It's close, though, so let's. .h.i.t that first." Night was still hours away but, if Mal was right and Abel was going to be showing up at Tenth World tonight, I wanted to be a hundred miles up the road before he was able to even leave his hidey-hole.

My phone directed me on and off major roads and around startlingly bright golf courses. We turned down a wide boulevard lined with flowering bushes and pale two-story buildings. The large porches were shaded and I was glad as I stepped out into the noon heat. Mickey leaned out the window as I unloaded the delivery.

"Do you smell that?" she asked, pushing up on her arms until she was halfway out the window. "There has to be a restaurant around her somewhere. I smell French fries and rosemary."

"All I smell is hot." I sneezed as I shut the door. "And dust. I don't think I'm cut out for the desert."

"And maybe bacon." She inhaled deeply, then sank down to rest her head on folded arms. "I don't think that humans were meant to live in places without water. Maybe you are allergic to low survival odds."

"Isn't everybody allergic to low survival odds? In the end, I mean." I hefted the box onto my hip and headed for the door. "Let's grab lunch after this. Hopefully we can find a place that serves chilled drinks and bacon."

"b.l.o.o.d.y Marys with iced bacon cubes."

I took a deep breath and did everything in my power not to think of a cold piece of bacon melting inside of my mouth. Thankfully the door was locked, giving me a moment to get my gag reflex under control. I rang the bell and the ingrained routine of the delivery overcame my nausea. Time to be professional.

The seconds ticked past. This was one of those really prestigious spas-you could probably get a two-hundred-dollar ma.s.sage along with your placenta face cream-that didn't have a real sign, just a small business name placard below the street number. The places in Anchorage this discreet offered happy endings and moved every couple of months.

The dead bolt clanked and the handle jiggled for a moment before the door opened.

"Hi there. I've got a delivery from Goya."

The woman on the other side of the door was several inches shorter than me. She wore a short-sleeved black sweater, red capris, and black ballet flats. A white scarf was tied smartly around her neck. The cuteness was dulled by her bored expression.

"Where do you want these?"

"There is fine." She gestured toward a k.n.o.bby mahogany desk in the room adjacent to the vestibule. The place was spotless and uncluttered.

"Sign here, please." I tore the sheet off the crate and offered it to her. She shook her head, then jerked her chin toward the hallway.

"Someone down there has to sign?"

She nodded and crossed her arms. Her hands closed around her elbows. The building was quiet. There was no soothing music piped in so softly you'd think it was floating inside the ambient oxygen molecules. My steps slowed. There was n.o.body to take shoes and jackets and wrap you in plush robes and oversize slippers. There were no signs of life.

"I think I forgot your last box in the van," I said, sidestepping toward the door. As I pa.s.sed the girl I caught the acrid bite of unchecked body odor. n.o.body who dressed like that and worked in a place like this would ignore hygiene. Not if she had any control over her situation. My head started to buzz. The place was wrong.

I reached for the door, then leaped back when it slammed shut.

"f.u.c.k." I tore my phone out of my bag as a chill rose from beneath the floor, skittering up my legs, and wrapping around my middle. I put my back against the door, dialing with one hand while cranking the doork.n.o.b with the other. It was so cold that my skin stuck to the metal, and it didn't turn at all. The hallway the girl had pointed to was dark. The shades were drawn in the front of the house, dimming it, but there was zero sunlight back there.

The phone rang. Petr would send someone. He could organize on a dime. All he had to do was ping my bodyguard and...

A door creaked open toward the back of the house, and the feel of vampire increased. There must have been a bunch of them, and while they'd been sleeping when I arrived, they were waking now, extending their power. Reaching for me.

The line went dead and I didn't have to look to tell the phone was kaput. I needed another way out and I needed it fast. A figure emerged from that dark hallway, tall and smooth with the eerie glide of a vampire emulating human motion. I backed into the other room as she stepped into view. Her hair was silver, so long it fell to her waist, and parted down the middle.

I grabbed the chair behind the desk and whipped it at the window. Gla.s.s shattered and I dropped the chair and reached through the blinds. If I could get out, I was good. If I could get sunlight in, I was- She jerked my head back and stared down at me with owlish black eyes.

"Stop." Her voice was soft, but the sound of it reverberated in my mind, cold, slick, and harsh. Inside my bag, my fingers brushed the pepper spray. It clinked against another hard object. Her eyes narrowed. Then she slammed my head into the windowsill. Light exploded in my head. Somewhere behind me a man yelled, echoing her word. Stop.

Too late. My bones gave out, and darkness closed in.

Chapter Eleven.

"What about now?" Mickey asked.

I blinked awake, then rolled onto my side to vomit weakly. I'd been hit by a truck. Or fallen off a bridge. Something terrible had happened but I wasn't in a hospital or a hotel or the back of an ambulance. My head pounded, and my vision jumped every time I blinked. My hand was cold when I wiped the back of it over my mouth.

"What's going on?"

"So you're with me now," Mickey went on. "Do you think that this is okay? I don't know if this is okay. I feel like it is okay." She giggled. Maybe she couldn't hear me. She sounded like she was talking to someone else.

On shaky arms, I pushed myself up to sit. When I raised my eyebrows in an effort to pull my eyes all the way open, the swollen skin of my forehead puckered and cracked. Blood pattered onto the floor. The cement floor. What had I done to deserve waking up on a cement floor?

"Mickey?"

"I thought it would be Thurston," she said. "I mean, I didn't know. But I hoped. Incluso cuando se medita, est atento. Entiendes? Me gusta su consideracin."

"What are you talking about?" I pressed the back of my hand to my head and hissed. One side of my forehead felt like a solid egg wrapped in sticky, exposed nerves. But that wasn't the worst thing.

I was in a cage, a large metal cage like you'd keep an animal in outside. Something bigger than a dog. One side was pressed against the wall and hefty sandbags were stacked against the others. A shiny new padlock secured the door. Mickey sat cross-legged about ten feet from me, square in the middle of her own cage, and she didn't look the least bit upset by it. We were in a large, low-ceilinged room. I squinted around the bare lightbulb that hung from a cord between our enclosures. There were no windows, not that I could see. Wood beams rose from the floor and the walls were unfinished drywall. Standard-issue bas.e.m.e.nt.

"Mickey, tell me what happened. Please."

She grinned. "I think that we can be happy here."

"We're f.u.c.king locked up." I winced at my own volume and leaned the undamaged side of my head against the bars. "Do you have anything with you? Your phone..."

I remembered holding my phone, dialing and getting cut off. I remembered running, and the vampiress grabbing me. Fear, pain. I should be dead, or drained to a husk. But someone had stopped her.

"Is anyone else here?" I whispered.

Mickey walked on her knees to the side of the cage. She grabbed the bars, nodding vehemently. "Oh, yes."

She didn't look hurt, didn't even look scared. Her hair hung forward over her shoulders. Her eyes were bright.

"Mickey, how did you get here?"

"We came together, in a camouflage limousine. It's so ugly." She flushed, smiled brightly, and whispered, "But I don't want to tell him that. Wait until you meet him."

A door opened above us, at the top of the stairs beyond her cage. At the sound of footsteps I pulled myself up to a standing position. I wasn't about to deal with our kidnapper from my knees, even if they were wobbling so badly I could barely stand.

A woman sashayed down the stairs. Tall, slim, with porcelain skin housed in a silky black shirt. Red lips. Sophie, I registered dimly. The woman from the casino, the one that Malcolm had been so wary of. Malcolm. How much time had pa.s.sed? Did he already know I was missing?

Another vampire descended the stairs. He was sandy-haired, and moved with an energetic bounce that brought my nausea back with a vengeance. Mickey squealed and pressed herself against the door of her cage.

My head fell forward. I couldn't help it. Humans didn't react that way to vampires who had kidnapped them, not unless they were under a strong compulsion. And the easiest way to enthrall a human was with a bite.