“We have a van outside to take us to the park,” the grunt up front announced, and I realized I’d probably missed a few key phrases while I was doing my amateur-hour psychic spelunking. “Though the park is open to the public, we have special permission from the park service to cordon off one acre for use with our activities. Some of you guys who’ve been doing this longer can go ahead and get your pissing and moaning out of the way now, but the newbies have to start somewhere, and this is a safe place to test your physical capacity and your commitment to the sport. Any questions?”
I raised my hand so swiftly that it would’ve shocked anyone who’d watched me do it. But no one was watching, much to my chagrin. The hand successfully drew Bolton’s attention, though, and he pointed at me. The finger-point was accompanied by that gaze, the same one that I’d felt earlier. It was not exactly a knowing gaze, but a suspicious one.
I had the floor, so I asked, “I know what parkour is and I’m pretty sure I’ll be fine, but I want to know what that other thing is.”
“What other thing?”
“The other thing you said, at the beginning. Urban exploring. What’s that?” As if I didn’t know. I thought of my storehouse, and of Domino and Pepper, and it was all I could do to keep from seething.
I felt it more intensely, when he looked at me now. His interest was less a vague fog in a room full of mist, and more like a flashlight beam. “We’ll get to that later.”
“Well, before we get to it, I want to know what it is.” Really, I wanted to get his attention and get him talking. I wanted him to look at me and know that something was wrong.
I lucked out and a couple of the other guys in front of me were ignorant on the matter, and they mumbled that they, too, would like some information. I was half afraid Cal would chime in, but he didn’t.
Good ghoul, Cal. Don’t agree with me too much. Don’t even notice me. Don’t forget, you’re mostly here in case something goes horribly, horribly wrong.
“All right,” Bolton relented. The irritated twitch to one eyebrow told me that this was considered jumping some gun, somewhere, and that I’d derailed his evening’s lesson plans. But he was game, and so he said, “Urban exploration is, at its core, a propensity toward trespassing in abandoned buildings. It doesn’t always go hand in hand with parkour, but you could … I don’t know. You could think of it as a master’s class in parkour, if you wanted to.”
“A master’s class with night-vision goggles and burglary gear?” I followed up, knowing I was pushing my luck and wondering if it wasn’t too much—if he didn’t have some secret panic button hidden in his uniform, or a lackey at the table behind me. Any moment, the doors could burst in and armed maniacs from Project Bloodshot (or whatever it’d morphed into) would take me away and drop me in a basement on an island, never to be seen again.
Or I could needle the fucker a little more and trust my powers of bullshit and escape to see me through. I squeezed the handles of my go-bag and it gave me confidence. Maybe undue confidence. It didn’t matter.
“No,” he barked. “We don’t do that kind of thing.”
Everybody in the room instantly thought he was lying.
He stuck to his guns anyway. “It’s not a master’s class because anybody’s burglarizing anything. It’s a master’s class because there’s a lot of legal legwork to untangle, making sure that the abandoned buildings are actually abandoned, and that they don’t belong to anybody who’ll prosecute if you get caught. Working your way up to urban exploration also means you go out there with a good working knowledge of the distinctions between breaking-and-entering and merely trespassing, and the legal hairsplitting that can mean the difference between jail time and a slap on the wrist. But since that’s the master’s class and this is the bunny slope, we’re going to save that for later, Miss …”
He was clearly cueing me to give him a name, so I said, “Raylene. Raylene Spade.”
“Spade, very nice,” he said, and I felt a stab of condescension that said he knew for a fact that I was lying. I didn’t like the condescension because it had come radiating off him, flaring through my psychic radar like a laser beam, not a flashlight. Oh yes. He knew something now, or he suspected it so positively that the semantics wouldn’t mean the difference between saving my ass and becoming a pain in his.
“Something funny about that?” I played it cool.
“Not at all, Miss Spade. But we’ll save the UE talk for later and for now, if you don’t mind, we’ll talk brass tacks instead.”
What a stupid expression. There were no tacks involved, and not much that any idiot who’d ever seen a cop show on television couldn’t have sussed out. That which followed was a miniature thesis on how to fall without breaking an ankle, how to roll without bashing your head in, and how to climb without tearing all the skin off your knees. It was basically a twenty-minute starter class on stunt falls, and I could see how it might be useful to some of the pasty-faced high-schoolers present, but I had to pretend to give it my rapt attention while my real attention wandered elsewhere.
Near as I could gather—a qualifier that was in no way authoritative—Bolton seemed to be alone, insomuch as he seemed to be the only military representative present. If anyone else was there on Uncle Sam’s dime, he was out of uniform and keeping his allegiances to himself. But as I’d previously speculated, that didn’t mean Bolton didn’t have an easy means of summoning more of his camo-uniformed buddies at a moment’s notice.
I didn’t really know anything. I had nothing but suspicion and a crappy psychic sense urging me to play my cards carefully. I kept an eagle eye on Bolton as he pranced back and forth up front, lacking only a long wooden pointer and a blackboard to be a junior caricature of Patton himself. Wait. Did Patton have either of those things? Or just a big American flag behind him? Maybe I’m confusing him with John Madden.
Things eventually wound down and Bolton quit pacing up front, announcing that this was the time for people to finish up coffee and use the restroom before getting into the van and heading out to the park. And just this once, the line for the men’s room was the slow-moving one.
Actually, I think there was only one bathroom, one small single-seater with a naked yellow bulb and a box of matches for air freshener. Thank Christ I didn’t need to go. No woman anywhere wants to follow that filthy man-funk parade to a potty. I may have been functionally dead for a few decades, but some things never change. And trust me, that’s one of ’em.
While the boys lined up to do their duty, at least the ones who had to go, I considered sidling up to the lieutenant but he sidled up to me first, giving me quite a start. “Why hello there,” I said, shooting for casual but idly interested, and ooh, aren’t you kind of cute? This was a stretch, since his sudden appearance had in no way charmed me and frankly made me a little worried, but this had been the plan, hadn’t it? Figure out if he—or anyone else affiliated with the club—knew about my kind.
I hadn’t thought past the point where he might. If he were utterly clueless, that’d be one thing. I’d write it off and continue exploring the exciting and aerobic world of parkour for fun and fitness (as the awkward marketing text suggested). But if he knew? About me? I hadn’t considered that far in advance. Because it’s always the one thing I don’t think about that turns around to bite me in the ass.
He said, “Hey. You new in town?” Only it didn’t sound like a line. It sounded like he actually wanted to know, in a calculating fashion.
“Sort of.”
“I can’t place your accent.”
“Oh. I wasn’t aware that I had one,” I said coyly. I knew I didn’t have one. I’d been in the Northwest long enough to have matched the bland diction that’s so common there. Unless you want to argue that the absence of an accent is an accent in itself, in which case I’d have to kick you in the shins. And I can kick very hard.
“Where’d you move here from?”
“I haven’t moved here from anywhere. Just visiting. Saw your flyer. T
hought I’d check this out on my free night. It was either this or wander around on the lawn with a map of the big white monuments, trying to tell the difference and deciding whether or not to care.”
He grunted like a man from a tourist town who’d already seen all the tourist bits himself. “Okay. Welcome, then.”
Standing so close like that, almost right up against me in a fashion that might be considered harassment under different circumstances, he was a whole goddamn cluster of laser beams, projecting his intentions like a searchlight on a river. He’d locked on to me, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like his welcome. I didn’t want it. And suddenly I didn’t want to be anywhere near him, and I considered bolting on the spot except that a flash of panic kept me standing there, not quite touching this guy and not quite running away.
“Thanks,” I said. My mouth was dry. His was predatory. I lowered my voice, thinking it might be best to barrel forward, rather than play patty-cake politics until he could rouse the cavalry and have me carted off. So I said, “Maybe we could take a moment to talk in private, eh, Lieutenant?”
“Why would we do that?” Ah. Not stupid. Not wanting to be alone with me, even though a casual observer might’ve assumed that was all he wanted. The body language is not so different, when you watch it from afar.
“Because I want to ask you some questions. And you want to ask me some, too, or maybe you don’t want to ask me anything. Maybe you just want to get the hell away from me and get on with your Cub Scout activities.”
“You’re quite a—”
I turned to face him full-on, letting him get a good and nasty look at my too-black eyes and my too-white skin with the fragile blue veins crawling spider-like beneath it. I wasn’t wearing any makeup and that, too, had been deliberate. “Look buddy,” I growled, still keeping it quiet. “I know about your program, and I know what you’re doing here, rounding up these assholes for reconnaissance.” I used Major Bruner’s word. The one that gave me the shakes if I thought about it too hard.
“You don’t know dick,” he argued.
Trying to lure him now, trying to draw him outside, I turned my back to him halfway and began to ooze toward the rearward door where the back stairs appeared to be. “Dick? Oh, I know him. But I think his name is actually Bruner,” I sneered, keeping close watch on his face as I retreated.
“Boss?” somebody said. One of the young grunts, the parkour acolytes.
“Not now!” he hissed, reaching out to take me by the arm.
I moved it out of his grasp fast enough to make his eyebrows shoot skyward. And still it looked like I hadn’t moved at all. Catlike, I lingered a step beyond him, but I did not run. “We should talk,” I told him.
And I practically slithered toward the stairs.
He shuffled behind me, too heavy and loud for a man who taught a class on how to sneak around and run away, but maybe he was just that nervous. He was young after all, and maybe he’d heard lots about my kind but hadn’t encountered many of us.
Or, as I considered with scorn, it might be that he’d only ever encountered us while we were restrained, or blinded, or crippled, or dead. The very thought made me want to turn around and rip his head off but I didn’t, not yet. Self-restraint is not one of my chief virtues, but self-preservation is—and I still had my uncertainties to anchor me to nonviolence.
We slipped together into the stairwell and let the door ease shut behind us. It was dark in there, and would’ve been romantic or, like, totally hot under different circumstances. He started to talk, but I wasn’t listening yet. I was looking upstairs and downstairs, and opening my psychic sense to feel around for other people in either direction. I was wondering about the bare lightbulbs screwed into the wall fixtures at the platforms where the stairs leveled, and turned.
“What are you doing here—what are you really doing here? I know what you are, yes, if that’s what you want to know. I know, and I’m not going to sit here and bring you along on one of these game nights, just to have you toy with the kids who—”
I caught up to his rambling and chose this point to interrupt. “Toy?” I blurted. “You accuse me of planning to toy with your Boy Scouts? A fine attitude, you motherfucker, given what you’ve been known to do to my breed.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Project Bloodshot, and Major Bruner and his sick Nazi experiments.”
He paled. “Bloodshot’s a closed program,” he insisted.
“That’s what I heard, but that’s not what I’m seeing. Bruner’s still at it, and you’re in it with him.”
“No. You have no idea!”
“Then what’s this for? These junior paramilitary enthusiasts? Don’t try to tell me you’re not using them for recon; don’t lie to me and say that this is some stupid extracurricular activity. You’re sending them after us, using them as disposable pawns to track down safe spots and homes, and then raid them and turn them inside out.”
“No one said they were disposable,” he objected. I couldn’t gauge his sincerity. He was too rattled by being so close to me, which told me I was probably a novelty. A known novelty, but a novelty all the same.
“You send them into facilities that are owned and maintained by vampires, unarmed,” I added, remembering Trevor’s utter lack of defensive weaponry. “If you don’t expect them to get killed, you’re stupider than you look.”
“Fuck you,” he said, resorting to that last argument of vice presidents.
“I know you’re working with Bruner,” I added. “I know he’s been using parkour clubs like this to scout, and I know he recommends this one in particular.”
“Then what do you want?” he asked, hands in the air in a shrug that might’ve been reaching for a weapon for all I could see. I had an image in mind of Bruce Willis in Die Hard, with the guns duct-taped to his back (see? A thousand and one uses). So rather than take any Hollywood-inspired chances I kicked him backward against the stairs, hard enough to take his breath away and keep it away for a few seconds.
I used this interlude to stand over him. “I want to know what it’ll take to close the program. For good this time.”
“You’re … out of … your mind,” he wheezed, clutching at his chest.
I jammed my foot down on top of his fingers, pressing harder against the place where I’d kicked, and where I suspected a rib or two had cracked, and must surely be jabbing against his lungs. He grimaced and grabbed at my calf, trying to force me off. If I gave him time, he’d do it. I’m crazy strong but I don’t weigh much, and he probably had me beat by eighty pounds.
I said, “His funding was pulled years ago, and he’s retired. So he’s gone civilian. Using mercenaries and someone else’s money.”
“Is that what you think?”
“Yeah, that’s what I think.” I jerked backward, clipping his jaw with the toe of my boot as I retreated. “And I’m not alone. Not like you are,” I said, trying to make it menacing and cruel.
“Oh yeah, that’s me. Lone gunman, grassy knoll. You already know it’s Bruner’s pet project. So go after him, for fuck’s sake!”
He was getting scared, and I liked it. I could also smell a little blood. Maybe he’d bitten his tongue? “But Bruner isn’t acting alone. Someone’s signing his checks.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” he said, and the words came out with a whistle. His right hand was sneaking toward his boot, so I kicked that, too—and a flash of metal flicked out of his hand to clatter on the stairs below.
“Pathetic,” I said. “Big man like you, trying to take a tiny vamp like me. Cheating, and still not getting anywhere. That ought to tell you something, dickwad. It ought to give you some idea of what we’re capable of—and if it scares you, well, it ought to. You know what?” I blathered on, oblivious to the events on the other side of the door, whatever they were. “I’m not even the oldest or strongest of my kind. Not by a long shot. I’m just the little lady who twigged to your schemes first. I’ve already p
ulled a few friends onto this … onto this case,” I called it the only thing that fit. “And we’re going to put a stop to it. All of it.”
“And how do you think you’re going to do that? You can’t just delete a few files, kill a few people, and it’ll all be over!”
I knew that already, so I asked: “Where’s the money coming from, then?” Because shutting off the money was the one surefire way to shut down the program—and that was the one big puzzle piece I was missing.
“Private backer. Nobody knows who he is.”
“Give me something I can work with,” I ordered, “and I might let you walk out of here in one piece.”
“All I do is … I just herd the volunteers, that’s all.”
“Kids like these, I get it. And just a few minutes ago you were telling me how they weren’t disposable.”
He shook his head. “Most of these kids never go near anything interesting. Only the A-grade gets recommended up the food chain. That’s all I do. Send them up the food chain.”
“Fine choice of words,” I said.
“You know what I mean!”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” And it didn’t make him a choirboy, even if I thought he was telling the whole truth, and I didn’t.
While I stood there deciding what else to ask, if anything, he wanted to know, “Then what about me?” He was wobbly, trying to sit up. I thought I heard something scrape and slide—definitely a rib.
“What about you? Oh, darling,” I said with a purr, having concluded that really, there was no way out for Mr. Bolton. Not now. Not unless I wanted him to go running to his boss and let the whole world know I was in town ahead of schedule. “You’re going to give Bruner a message for me. That’s what you’re going to do.”
“A message?”
“That’s right.” I reached back quickly to the spot on the stairs where the knife had fallen. It was a good one, gator-edged and curved. Probably a climber’s knife, made to slice through bungee cables and ropes. I didn’t want it. But I picked it up anyway, and I chucked it hard up at the nearest gleaming yellow bulb, smashing it with a clatter and plunging the stairwell into total darkness.