More speed didn't mean I left them far behind, or behind at all. The men in black couldn't keep up, but a few of the werewolves reached and dove for me. I decided to steal home base and slid down so they grasped air and sailed over me. They hit the floor and skidded to a stop, or tried to. Their claws tap-danced along the linoleum and the werewolves ended up slammed against the wall directly in front of me.
And that brings me to another problem I had. I was running out of hallway. There was one last intersecting hallway that ran from the front to the back of the building, but I spotted a door on the right past the perpendicular passage with a bright, beautiful sign above it that read Exit. A third problem I found was I had no idea how to put on the breaks with this superhuman speed. I'd always had a couch made of Vincent to stop me, and I didn't think these werewolves would oblige. Then I noticed the knob on the door and with a little bit of skill I snatched the handle and managed to turn it. The door swung open and I pulled myself inside.
I found myself at the bottom of a fire escape stairwell, and to my left was the exit door. I shoved it open, tripped the alarm, heard the door behind me crash open thanks to the werewolves, and to top it all off standing in front of me was one of the perimeter patrol guards with not one but two attack dogs. This just wasn't my night. Things got worse when the patrol guard loosed his dogs and they jumped at me. I stepped back inside and plastered myself against the wall to the side of the exit. The dogs raced past me and collided with the werewolves. That quickly turned into a mess of gnashing teeth and claws.
With both doors blocked I shot up the stairs with several patrol guards close behind. They were too slow to keep up, but the werewolves extracted themselves from their canine brethren and raced after us. I didn't get a chance to take a detour onto another floor and so found myself at the top of the stairs with nowhere to go but through the roof door. I flung myself out into the fresh night air with the werewolves in close pursuit.
Chapter 13
I ran over to the edge of the roof and leaned over the three-foot tall border. The drop was seventy feet down onto the hard ground, and even if the water had been close enough I probably would have killed myself in that tall a dive. The werewolves burst through the door and whipped theirs heads around.
They spotted me, so I did the only sane thing I could think of. I climbed onto the roof border and turned to my pursuers. "Don't come any closer!" I warned. They skidded to a halt and snarled at me, and I shuffled a little closer to the edge. Sweat trailed down my brow and my eyes kept flitting to the drop below me. "I'll jump, I swear!" Yeah, that was my plan. Pretend to be an aspiring suicide and hope they wanted me more alive than dead so they'd give in to my demands to leave safely.
The werewolves glanced at one another and evidently didn't take me seriously because they smirked and crept toward me. I cringed and glanced over my shoulder. It was a long way down, and I wasn't sure if I hated the long drop or the sudden stop.
Jump. I nearly fell off when that word erupted in my head.
"What?" I yelled at my brain. The werewolves paused, unsure if they wanted to munch on someone who yelled at herself.
Jump! That voice sounded familiar in an annoying sort of way.
"A moment, gentleman," a smooth voice spoke up. I turned my attention back to my pursuer in time to see the werewolves part, and through their midst strode a man.
He wasn't any ordinary man, he was drop-dead gorgeous. The stranger stood a little over six feet tall and wore an impeccable black suit. His long black hair was tied back and accentuated his pale skin. He had a dazzling smile and a pair of blue eyes that shone like a fresh, clean lake, but were a little icy from the mountain runoff. His face was thin, his nose just the right amount of sharpness, and he had long, well-manicured fingernails.
"I don't think you really want to jump, Miss-?" the man asked me.
"Cognito. I.N. Cognito," I quipped.
The man chuckled. "It's a pleasure to meet Nobody, but allow me to introduce myself. I am Lord William Ruthven." He gallantly swept his arm in front of him and bowed to me. I cringed back and nearly slipped. That was the name of the guy four-eyes wanted to take us to. He raised his head and glanced at me left hand. A smooth grin swept across his lips. "I see you're the new partner for our mutual friend, Vincent. By the way, where is that interesting gentleman hiding? My men seem to have lost him in the bowels of my building."
"Maybe he was flushed out with all the other crap," I suggested.
Lord Ruthven chuckled and slowly strode toward me. I eyed him wearily, and he held out his hands as a show of good faith. "You're very amusing, much like Tim. Perhaps you and I can have a short chat inside?" He was five yards away. Four. Three.
Jump now!
I glanced over my shoulder at the fall, and his lordship didn't like that. Out of the corner of my eye his appearance changed. His face twisted with fury and he lunged for me. I dodged his hand, and in doing so my feet slipped and I dove over the edge. My scream pierced the air as I fell through it. I tumbled end-over-end with the world around me spinning in wild, uncontrollable circles. The ground raced toward me and I shut my eyes a few seconds before I hit. Only I didn't hit.
A strong and familiar pair of hands wrapped around me and plucked me three yards from the earth. I snapped open my eyes and found myself hugged against a dark coat. My savior landed us on the ground, and I looked up to find myself staring into Vincent's dark eyes. I'd never been so relieved, or relieved at all, to see those pair of eyes, but now I wrapped my arms around his neck and hugged him. He stiffened and quickly set me on the ground.
"Stop wasting time. We haven't escaped yet," he reminded me.
Indeed we still stood beside the Building of Doom inside the Compound of Death with the Big Bad Guy staring down at us from the roof. Our position in the Compound of Death was on the far side of the building close to the docks. I turned my head and noticed a couple of stacked bodies in the shadows of the building. They were the patrol guards and their dogs, and they weren't moving. I didn't see Tim's body.
Vincent didn't let me sight-see any long when he grabbed my hand and dragged me in the direction of the docks. "What'd you do with Tim?" I asked him.
"Worry about yourself," he argued.
Above us I could see what he meant because the werewolves dove over the side of the building. They scraped their claws along the wall to slow their descent so they could drop around us. We ran along the building and around the corner. There was another truck unloading more wooden crates, and Vincent pulled me toward the men who were loading the boxes onto the boats. He pushed me toward the boats and dove at the workers. Vincent smashed his hand into the box carried by the men, and the wood splintered apart and books spilled out. The workers screamed and scrambled back, but their feet kicked open the hardcovers and stepped onto the pages.
Phantom, demon, tentacle and monster hands reached out and sucked the men into the pages like an erotica novel come to life. Vincent dodged all the fallen books but one. His foot slipped on the corner of a page, and a skeletal hand reached out and grabbed him. He fell to the ground and twisted around to kick at the creature. At the same time the werewolves rounded the corner and ran at both of us.
I sprinted over to Vincent and the books, and proceeded to lodge the whole box at our furry foes. The book pages hit them and the things inside the paper kept the werewolves preoccupied while I grabbed the cover of Vincent's book and slammed it closed. The bony hand fell lifeless to the ground, and Vincent yanked it off and tossed it against the nearby truck so it shattered into a million pieces.
I grabbed a spare book before Vincent grabbed me and hauled me to my feet. He led me to the river boats where a few of the men stood, not daring to risk the books to jump us. I held out my spare book, and they screamed and jumped into the water to escape the deadly paper cuts. We commandeered the speedy jet craft and Vincent steered us out into the water. He shifted to full throttle and I fell back into the rear seat. We sped off, and I glanced behind
us at the shore. The werewolves still tussled with book demons, but on the docks we just left stood Lord Ruthven. We missed him by a split second, and from the furious look on his face I was glad we hadn't exchanged parting words.
We shot down the river and I slumped down in my seat. I flung an arm over my eyes and groaned. "Let's never do that again," I pleaded.
Vincent scoffed. "That is a normal night," he told me.
I raised my arm and looked at him with a horrified expression. "You're kidding, right?"
"No."
"For once can't you make a joke?" I begged.
"No."
We traveled in silence for a few miles and Vincent docked us on the lonely, quiet shore where we abandoned the boat for the cloak of the city. However, I refused to be carried like a damsel too feeble to put one foot in front of the other. He tried to pick me up, and I jumped out of his reach. "I can use my super speed just fine now," I argued.
"I haven't seen proof of this," Vincent countered.
"Probably because you went the wrong way."
"I escaped much quicker than you."
"I haven't seen proof of this," I shot back.
"Then where is Tim?" he asked me.
My face twisted into disbelief. "You didn't lose him, did you?"
Vincent rolled his eyes. "I had time to remove his body to a safe place and return for you."
"Oh. So you-so you came back for me?" I wondered. To be honest, even with our ring bond ruling us both I didn't think he'd go to so much trouble to save me.
He held up his ring. "I had little choice."
I crossed my arms over my chest and frowned. "Of course you had choices. You could have made me squirm up on that roof, or told me to jump and-" I paused and raised an eyebrow. "How did you tell me to jump, anyway? All I heard was this ringing voice in my head."
"Telepathy," was his bland response for a not-bland subject.
"Telepathy?" I repeated, and he nodded. I waved a finger back and forth between us. "So you're saying we can talk to each other without-well, talking?"
"Yes."
"Really?" I persisted.
"I will not lie to you," he returned.
My face broke open in a grin as I thought of the possibilities. We would perform at shows all across the country and show off our connection! We could make millions and retire to an exotic island where Vincent would probably end up turning into dust! All we needed to do was refine the act and—
A sudden, terrible thought struck me and I glared suspiciously at Vincent. "You can't read my thoughts, can you?" I asked him.
"No," he replied.
I mentally wiped my brow and dumped the idea of the millions. I was state-shy, anyway. "All right, so what do we do now?" I wondered.
"Now Tim's corpse must be destroyed."
My stomach fell and the color drained from my face. "How?" I squeaked.
"He wished to be cremated," Vincent told me.
I tilted my head and my face scrunched up. "Cremated? Isn't that kind of hard to do without a furnace?" Vincent's impatient reply was to turn his back to me and stride into the jungle of the city buildings. "Hey, wait!"
Chapter 14
I kept up, kind of. It was a lot easier running with superhuman speed on smooth, clean, even floors than it was over trashy, uneven streets filled with potholes the size of Buicks. The book in my hands didn't help, but I didn't want to drop it on the side of the road and doom a hobo to a grisly fate. Vincent led us back up the river toward the Compound of Doom, but veered onto several streets away from the water. We came to a bare lot with trash heaped taller than me, and in there he uncovered Tim's wrapped body where he'd hidden it beneath a bunch of clothes.
Vincent hefted Tim over his shoulder and I noticed the body wasn't as stiff and frozen. "We have to deal with this tonight, don't we?" I asked him.
"It cannot wait," Vincent replied. He glanced over me with a critical eye. "Can you run very far?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. Did this ring also give me a lot more strength?"
"Yes."
"Then I guess we'll see how far I can go."
Vincent turned away and sped along the streets, and I followed. We wound through commercial and industrial districts, houses and apartment buildings, and past the outskirts of the city. The hard road narrowed and the buildings became far and few. Corn fields replaced parking lots and large stores gave way to barns. I hadn't been out there except on joyrides, but I enjoyed what little I could see by the light of the stars above us.
Just when I thought I couldn't run any farther Vincent turned off onto a dirt road. It led up to an abandoned barn with stacks of dry hay in front of the large doors. He set Tim's body on the top of the stack and wandered into the barn. I noticed a few barn boards stuck out of the straw, and turned to Vincent when he emerged from the barn with a box of matches n his hand. "You guys were ready for this, weren't you?" I whispered.
"Yes." He lit a match and tossed it on the pile.
We both stepped back when the fire took to its food, and in a minute the hay was a bonfire of flames that licked at the sky. I glanced down at the book in my arms, and then to Vincent. "Should I burn this?" I asked him.
He looked to me, and took the book off my hands. I was glad for the less responsibility, but curious when he stuffed it away inside his coat. "Bat will be curious to see this," he explained to me.
"Oh, right." I didn't think I wanted to know anymore, at least not until it got me into trouble.
Knowing from movies how awful burning bodies smelled, I made sure to stay upwind of the smoke. Vincent and I silently stood beside one another and watched as the flames consumed Tim's body. It was a terrible sight to behold, but I couldn't look away. All the memories of the great jokes and laughs and teasing we'd had together went up with that smoke, and I felt a tearing inside me as I spoke a silent goodbye to my old friend. I didn't even notice I was crying until I felt the tiny droplets drip off my chin.
I rubbed my eyes to stop them, and Vincent glanced down at me. His face was dry. "Problems?" he wondered.
I snorted and managed a small smile. "Yeah, I'm human and these damn emotions are bothering me."
"Emotions tell you that you're alive," he countered.
I stopped my pawing at my tears and glanced up at him with a raised eyebrow. "That was strangely emotional for an undead guy," I commented. Vincent shrugged and turned away from me. I gave him a closer look. In the firelight I was reminded how handsome he was, and in the soft lines of his face I detected a hint-smidgen-possibility of sadness. "Could I ask you-"
"Yes," he interrupted me.
"Yes what?" I returned.
"Yes to your question."
I leaned in and narrowed my eyes. "You weren't digging around in my mind seeing what I was thinking, were you?"
"That's neither possible, nor anything I would care to do," he replied.
"Then what was I going to ask?"
"You were going to ask if I had a soul."
I blinked. "How'd you know that?"
"It was the first question Tim asked me." Vincent turned to me and looked me over. "He must have seen a lot of himself in you."
"So if you have a soul how do you manage to-well, to kill people?"
"My soul isn't like that of a human." He closed his eyes and chuckled. "Sometimes I even bring it out and look at it."
I took a step away from him. "Oookay, that's creepy."
"That's what Tim would say," he replied.
"And he was right." I glanced back at Tim's remains. The fire was hot enough I couldn't stare directly into the flames, but that meant there would be only ash left of him. "So, um, what do I do now?"
"You survive," Vincent answered.
"Will that really keep me busy for long?" I asked him.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean just surviving sounds boring. Isn't there something interesting Tim did? You know, to pass the time?"
"He had his occupation," he reminded me.
br /> "Oh, right, the business." I crossed my arms over my chest and furrowed my brow. "I suppose it can't be any more dangerous than what we did tonight?"
"Not often."
"And it pays decently?"
"Quite often."
"And it'll keep me out of trouble?"
"Not likely."
I clapped my hands together and playfully pushed my shoulder into Vincent. He swayed and raised an eyebrow "Well, why the hell not?" I mused. "I've got a lot of time on my hands so I may as well take over his business. Besides, with you as an employee somebody else has to be the front-man for the customers. Otherwise they'll all be scared away." Vincent cracked a smile, and I wagged my eyebrows. "There, that's the look I want from a happy employee of-" I frowned. "Um, what did I just take over, anyway?" Vincent's face fell and he looked at me with an annoyed expression. I shrugged and sheepishly smiled. "Tim just told me he was some kind of consultant."
"Private detective," he blandly replied.
I blinked. "Private detective? That's what got him into so much weird trouble?"
"Paranormal private detective."
"Oh, that would explain you and-well, everything else."
"Yes."
"What's the name of this business?"
"Vampire Dead-tective Agency."
"Catchy."
"It was Tim's idea."
"It would be. So is this sleuthing business hard? Any special skills I need to learn?"
"Yes."
I waited with baited breath for further explanation. I nearly suffocated. "Mind telling me what they are?" I gasped.
"Experience is the best teacher."
"If you don't tell me something useful I'll stick voodoo pins in my own crotch," I threatened. Through our joined pain that would hurt him more than me.
"Diplomacy is useful," he spoke up.
"I prefer the more direct route of threats."
"So I noticed."
"It gets results."
"So I noticed." I sighed and shrugged, but there was a mischievous smile on my face. "This is going to be a long, long relationship."