Night Runner: Falling From The Light Part 9

"Okay. Well." He shifted his weight, gaze now everywhere but on me. "You got any questions, you ask Lil."

"Thank you, D." I turned back to the video and upped the volume as a man with '70s hair and a cowboy shirt started talking about how to clean up Hazmat spills. His sideburns were impressive. Maybe Thurston had taken fashion tips from safety videos before he'd been turned.

A few hours later, my a.s.s was numb, my body was restless, and I'd watched men of the 1970s, '80s, and '90s tell me how to do my job. I stretched and wandered out of my dusty cubbyhole. Pallets were stacked in a pile and the overhead door was open. The guys stood around as a truck backed up to the loading bay, and I took the opportunity to wander. The Goya logo still gave me the heebie-jeebies, but there was nothing sinister about the warehouse. Just a handful of people doing honest work. Inside the white cage, a woman wearing a pantsuit and small, dark-rimmed gla.s.ses examined cartons laid out on the counter.

"How you holding up, newbie?" Lil asked.

"It's a thrill a minute." We watched the woman as she plucked bottles from the racks. "How are products with vampire blood rated? Does the DEA say they have to go in the cage?"

"h.e.l.l if I know." Lil looked like she was going to spit, then thought better of it and swallowed. I nearly gagged. "Back in the day, Goya was family-owned. The old man was one of those anti-sucker people. Used to go on TV every time a politician talked about opening Arizona up to suckers, protesting and debating. He'd let employees off early on Fridays to picket outside the reservations that allowed suckers. It was a condition of the company selling out to Wall Street or whatsit. Goya couldn't do any vampire business for a hundred years, no matter who the shareholders were. Guess he wanted to be dead and then some before he saw his good name tarnished."

"I guess if your name's on something, you can decree whatever you want." Maybe Old Man Goya had left that att.i.tude behind, in a scientist or malicious executive. Except that, while Radia hurt vampires, it had the potential to harm more humans. Anti-vampire should equal pro-human, unless Goya's regime simply hated everybody. A skin serum seemed like a slow and indirect way to make the world burn.

"Sure, except it's stupid. That v-b vampire blood stuff is a wonder. I use Goya s.h.i.t 'cause I get it at cost, but look at this." She pulled back the collar of her shirt. An angry red rash stared at me. I grimaced.

"I get this every summer. Some kind of heat allergy. Goya's lotion takes three weeks to work. My sister-in-law gave me a v-b tincture one time. Gone within hours. Company's stupid not to try to get in on that. Anyway, you got an hour to eat."

As if I had an appet.i.te left.

Lunch was found in a bright dining room decorated in primary colors and doing its best to pretend it was a franchised box restaurant. Slouching over my taco salad and chocolate sundae, I texted Mickey to see what was up. A happy smiley popped up immediately. I dug a corn chip through the whipped cream and popped it into my mouth. A minute pa.s.sed. More chips, some accidental vegetables, more ice cream.

Since we were between the lunch rush and the dinner crowd, the place was mostly empty. A sullen dude with a goatee chopped fruit at the bar and a kid with his eyes locked on a mounted screen ran his push broom back and forth over the same stretch of carpet. My bodyguard and I were the only diners. I'd confronted him in the parking lot, mostly to make sure he hadn't died of heat stroke while waiting, and he'd confessed his name was Derrick. He sat a few rows back eating something green and probably fat free. He'd also downed about a gallon of water since we'd arrived. My phone vibrated.

The hotel is abuzz-Thurston says abuzz is a word-about the feeders. Remember that boy from the pool, with the abs and the diving? He went out with friends and a vampire solicited him. n.o.body knows her. Vampires are not allowed in Arizona except by special visa, and on a few of the reservations. They believe she's a part of this gang of rugby vampires...

Renegade vampires. Not rugby. That was the phone.

But they would be good at rugby. Vampires are so strong.

I smiled at Mickey's tangent. I'd never really had someone that I could chat with like this. My recent friends had been fellow runners, and they turned over and burned out so fast that I'd started withholding from them. It was nice, having a friend.

...this gang of renegade vampires who came from Quebec and Scandinavia. They were thrown out for trying to live among humans. So they ran away. This is very romantic, don't you think? Running for their existence and having to live in a scary world.

There was nothing romantic about suckers who didn't follow the rules. They could live in human cities, but they couldn't cohabitate. Vampire makers and masters enforced discipline, and without that vampires tended to lose control. It was one of the things that set Mal apart. His maker was gone and, while Bronson directed him, he was rarely under his direct control. His special talent had something to do with that, his ability to suppress his power.

Maybe I should take Mickey to a hotel after all. Her delight at all things vampire was reaching a disturbing level. Sighing, I texted back to ask how Thurston was doing. I'd taken a moment to remind him that I wanted Mickey looked after before I left, feeling ten kinds of nervous because he could tear my head off if he wanted to. Instead he'd appeared offended that I'd thought I had to mention it.

We had a late breakfast together. I had a yogurt parfait and he had a giant thermos of blood. SO VAMPIRE. We're looking at travel guides. He is interested in so many places. It's like he never imagined he'd be allowed to travel. Also Malcolm stopped by. He was sad you were not here.

I told Mickey I'd be back in a couple hours and tucked my phone into my bag. Mal had come looking for me. That was a good thing. We'd both been in a temper when we parted ways. Life was too short to walk around angry.

He was done with Bronson in two years, which meant no more restrictions and no more punishment. That thought should have been a relief, but instead it sobered me. In the casino at Tenth World, it was like he didn't have a care in the world. He was playful, even as he worked the other players. Twenty years he'd been tied to the master vampire, because he'd embarra.s.sed the guy once. One single time. Even if Bronson forgot about him most of the time, large portions of that sentence must have been h.e.l.l. Simply knowing that he had to watch his every step had to be a kind of torture. What would Malcolm do when he was free?

And would freedom to do all the things he'd been denied become more interesting than me?

I dumped my tray and went to wash my hands. The lights in the bathroom weren't flattering, but I didn't look half-bad. In fact, I looked better than I had a few years ago. My skin was smoother, the deep frown lines I'd had between my eyebrows since high school were gone. My lips never chapped. The knee I'd busted up s...o...b..arding didn't get stiff anymore, and the bone I'd broken in Chile barely even ached. And it wasn't because I was drinking eight gla.s.ses of water a day or getting bee pollen facials. The feeders around the pool, other than the recent cuts and bites they'd hidden under pristine little bandages, had been beautiful. Some of it was genetics, but the radiance-there was nothing natural or human about that.

I'd probably have a few years until time overwhelmed ambient vampire energy and dragged my body down. Until I didn't "compare favorably" anymore. A few years was enough time for me to grow to need Malcolm, to get attached in a way I couldn't shake. h.e.l.l, maybe I didn't even need a few years to get to that point.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the door ease open. I turned, knees bending, hand dropping into my bag. Derrick peeked in. I straightened.

"What the h.e.l.l, perv?"

He cleared his throat, glanced behind him, then swung the door wide as if that would make hovering on the cusp of the ladies' room less weird.

"Checking on you. You've been in here for fifteen minutes."

"I had to freshen up. You know, wash the grease off and calibrate my feminine emotions."

"You're working in a warehouse and drink gas station coffee. Not the girliest chick out there."

"Thank you for the a.s.sessment." I headed toward him. "I'm stopping at the convenience store on the way back. Want me to grab you some water?"

He stiffened. He wasn't tall, but the dude was ripped and screamed former military. Ramrod posture. Thick chest, trim waist. A patch of scars crisscrossed his left temple and cut gray lines into his black hair. He smelled faintly of sweat and aftershave.

"I'm fine, ma'am."

"That's great, sir. But I don't want to have to slow down so that you can keep up after you spend the afternoon dehydrating in your old-lady Buick."

"I'll be fine."

"Stubborn, more like. How was your salad?"

"Abominable."

"Mine, too."

The afternoon pa.s.sed in a blur of dusty boredom. I tried to be vigilant, taking a couple of stretch breaks to case the warehouse, trying to find something I could give Bronson. A truck showed up, was loaded, and left. Another truck arrived and was emptied. Rinse and repeat. The wind kicked up, making the overhead fans shudder.

"Clock out," Lil rasped as I practiced giving myself whiplash by nodding off at the little desk. "Go to the other building and get your badge. From here on out, you ain't here by six, you're done."

"Fair enough." I popped the last video out of the machine and closed the case.

"You'll be riding along with Hernandez on deliveries tomorrow."

Hernandez, who had been doing as little work as possible all day, cringed upon hearing his name.

"You're showing Andrea the ropes," Lil yelled at him. His shoulders drooped as he sidestepped behind a crate. "He don't talk much, but at least he's lazy as s.h.i.t."

"Nice that he's got something going for him."

"That's funny." She didn't laugh. "Now get out of here so's I can lock her down."

I walked to the other building, a decision I regretted ten steps in. I was panting by the time I reached the main building, sweat running down my back and pooling in unfortunate areas.

"Is it awful out there?" the receptionist asked, looking perky and crisp. My lip curled.

"It'd be considered a nice day in h.e.l.l, probably."

The security guard laughed at me as I dragged myself into the elevator. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d, so smug in his air-conditioned corner. The HR lady with the gray helmet of hair pretended she didn't remember me, but she did commiserate over the heat as she slapped a grainy digital image of me onto the desk.

"It's so nice to be legitimate," I said, shoving it into the badge holder. "So, Lil says I need to start work at six, not nine."

She glanced at her computer. It was running updates, in the process of shutting down. She rubbed the side of her nose as she stared at the screen and I could all but see her making the decision not to wait for it to start up again. She grabbed a sticky note and a pink pen.

"We can't change that until the next pay cycle, but I'll make a note of it right here."

As if I'd be around for the next pay cycle. "Great."

"You seeing this?" someone called from the office across the hall. I leaned back in my chair to see around the corner, then nearly fell over. A ma.s.sive cloud covered the horizon, and not the distant horizon, but the near horizon.

"What is that?" I asked as we joined him in his office, blinking as though that would clear the sight.

"Dust storm." Helmethead sighed. "I'd better call my sister to pick up my daughter. Last time, I couldn't get to her for two hours and she told her teacher that I'd probably killed my husband and been arrested."

Jesus. "How old is she?"

"Seven. Kids." She smiled whimsically as she stuck her phone to her ear and went back to her office.

The dust storm rose up from the ground and blotted out the sun. It looked like a wall, a moving wall consuming everything in its path. Had I seen that when I'd left the warehouse I would have jumped in the car and headed for high country, or wherever you went to get away from such a thing.

"Are these common?" I asked. The clerk shook his head.

"A few times a summer. Usually there's thunder and lightning, but that part of the storm must be somewhere else. Don't try to drive in it. Better to settle in and let it sweep past. It'll be gone in a few hours."

A few hours. Ample time to search out a smoking gun.

Chapter Eight.

After riding the elevator up and discovering I couldn't access any additional floors without a key card, I hunkered down in the cafeteria. It was closed but the vending machines drew a steady stream. Employees wandered through, b.i.t.c.hing about the "hab.o.o.b." It took me a while to figure out that it wasn't a really mean nickname for a coworker that everybody knew, but rather the word for this particular kind of storm. Most of the people were clerical types, but a few wore key cards with a red square on the corner and looked labbish. Unfortunately, I was all Ms. Stranger Mascara Sweat Eyes in a warehouse uniform, which wasn't inviting anyone to start talking.

Malcolm could have done something in this situation, rolled out the easy charm and humor. I'd picked up a few of his verbal tricks. Of course, he was also amnesia-inducing handsome, which wasn't something one could learn.

Desperate times called for desperate measures.

I bought all the chips out of the vending machine and crammed most of them in the garbage. Then I set three bags in the middle of the table in front of me and waited. If you can't do subtle, do tricky.

The bait was effective. A man wandered over and paid me three bucks for a bag of Doritos. He worked in Accounting, and was all too happy to talk about how stupid people were, especially vendors who were late on their payables. Or maybe it was receivables. I wasn't paying attention. Two minutes into the rant, I pretended I had a phone call. Time pa.s.sed. Restlessness gave way to boredom and boredom to sleepiness. How long could dust possibly wall off a city?

"You stuck here, too?" a scruffy thirtysomething man asked. He'd been standing in front of a vending machine for a couple of minutes, as though expecting it to spontaneously generate new offerings.

"Yep." I'd stretched out across three blue plastic chairs and was using my uniform shirt as a pillow. Since he was standing more or less directly over me, I swung my feet to the floor and stood up.

He immediately backed away. He was about my height, with thick, dark hair that crept around his face and neck, and wire-framed gla.s.ses. His eyes were wide and blue and his cheeks would never lose their baby-boy roundness. Cute if you were into short, harmless-looking men who probably earned good money doing things the average person could not understand.

"You took the last of the Cheetos," he said.

I held up the bag. "I'd be happy to share."

"s.h.i.t, that's hot."

Short, harmless-looking men with zero social skills.

"Sorry." He stared at the floor, a flush creeping up his neck and over his cheeks. "That was rude. I apologize for cursing."

"No harm done."

He glanced at me before adjusting his gla.s.ses and, finally, raised his head again. "I've got some more snacks up in the lab if you want to trade for something better than this."

"Lab snacks?" My mind boggled. "Will the test monkeys no longer eat them?"

"We don't test on monkeys. Humans, yes. Extensively. But not monkeys." He snickered then said, with a straight face, "That's done in our facility south of the border. Less political heat, Dr. Stone says."

"Well, Dr. Stone would know." Whoever that was. "My name's Andrea."

"Oh, hey. I'm Kevin." He stuck his soda in his armpit and extended his hand, then squealed and hunched over when the cold breached his clothing.

"Hi, Kevin."

"Houston, we have a problem."

I looked around. "Do we?"

"I'm sorry. I'm..." He made a gurgling sound and leaned down to grab both his knees. "I have a condition. I get these tic attacks. Usually it's not this bad, but I'm supposed to be somewhere and the storm has me stuck here."

"Tics? Like, Tourette's? For real?" My eyebrows shot up when he nodded. "I bet that's challenging. What department do you work in?"

"I'm a chemist in r-r-research and development. I work with Dr. Adams's oral care group and Dr. Stone, of course. In dermatology."

That perked me up. Radia, as it was originally intended, was a skin product, which I was pretty sure went under dermatology.