The Darkest Kiss

Page 17

 

  I pulled the laser's trigger. The bright beam shot out, slicing the air in front of me and continuing on, through another doorway before shattering yet more plaster and wood.

  I didn't hit Young, but just for an instant, I caught a glimpse of a gaunt, ghostly face, thin lips stretched back into a snarl and yellowed canines glistening. I fired again.

  Missed again.

  Then he was gone, and the sense of wrongness retreated.

  I was losing him.

  I swore and pushed off the doorway, but the sudden movement had pain burning through every nerve ending and sent the room spinning around me. I grabbed at the wall to steady myself and took several slow, deep breaths. God, it felt like my whole damn shoulder had just gone into a spasm and it fucking hurt.

  But I couldn't just stand here. I had to move, had to go after Young, no matter how much agony I was in. I couldn't let him get away.

  I carefully shifted my sore arm and cradled it with my left, giving it some support as I walked forward. Young's scent was already drifting, dispersing on the air. What the hell was going on? How could a young vampire - and I still had no doubt that he was young - move around in sunlit rooms so easily?

  And how the fuck could he be invisible?

  That wasn't any vampire power I'd heard of. But then, I wasn't exactly up on vampire law and history. There could be a dozen different types of suckers, for all I knew. The emos had certainly been a surprise.

  I followed the tenuous scent forward. It led straight out the door and into the sunshine. Any normal vampire would have burned right there and then, but not Young. I followed his trail out the gate and down the street, until the rising wind tore the trail apart and left me with nothing.

  I'd lost him.

  God, this day was not going well.

  I sat down on a brick fence and carefully let go of my arm so I could press the com-link in my ear.

  "Hello, anyone out there?"

  There was a pause, then a deep voice said, "Liaison Benson here, Riley. You okay? You're sounding a little off. "

  "That's because I am a little off. Is Jack around?"

  "Not in the immediate vicinity, no. "

  Damn. "Tell him I checked that address Vinny gave me, and it was our vamp's lair, but the bastard got away. Ask him what sort of vampire is immune to sunlight and invisible. "

  "Invisible?" I could hear the doubt in Benson's voice. "I know there's day-walkers, but they tend to be humans - "

  "Yeah, I know all that," I snapped. "Just ask him. "

  "Okay. Anything else?"

  The sudden lack of warmth in his tone suggested I'd offended him, and I sighed. A common problem with new liaisons was the fact they expected civility - and while I was generally more than happy to provide it, now was not one of those times.

  Still, I'd been new once, too. So I said, "Benson, not only am I pissed off about losing my target, but I'm also sitting here with a busted shoulder. If I sound a little snappish, I'm sorry. "

  "You want medical assistance?"

  "Just send someone to take me to the hospital. I can't drive like this, and shifting shape won't help. " The bones would still be out, regardless of what shape I took. What hurt in one form was going to hurt in another.

  "Janny's on her way home and is currently close to your location. I'll get her to detour and drive you to hospital. "

  "Janny? Where's she from?"

  "She's part of Mel's cleanup team. You would have seen her yesterday. She's tall and thin. "

  Ah, the woman who had reminded me of an insect. "That would be great. Thanks, Benson. "

  "No problem. "

  He signed off. I switched the com-link to receive only, so that they wouldn't hear me swearing when the pain flared, and waited for my ride to arrive.

  It turned out my shoulder wasn't busted, but rather dislocated. Which meant that once everything was put back into place, the pain would vanish and I'd only be left with soreness.

  The bad news, of course, was that I had to get the shoulder put back into place to achieve this result.

  It was a process that hurt more than the actual injury did, and the wolf within came roaring to the surface in retaliation. It was a real battle to curb my instinctive need to batter the cause of all this pain away from me.

  Once the doctor had gotten the ball back into the socket, the pain stopped almost instantly. An ache remained, but that I could handle.

  "You should wear a sling for a day or two," he commented, stepping back warily as I jumped off the table. "And ice it regularly to help with the swelling. "

  "I'm a werewolf, Doc. " I grabbed my sweater and my gun from the nearby chair. "And the Directorate doesn't give time off for minor injuries like this. "

  "That's against the labor laws - "

  I snorted softly. "Like either the Directorate or the bad guys give two hoots about the labor laws. " Hell, I couldn't even see many humans being overly worried about the noncompliance of the laws at the Directorate. Not when it was being done to protect their butts. "Thanks for patching me up, though. "

  He nodded, and I got out of there as quickly as possible. Hospitals were high on my list of unfavorite places - mainly because, like cemeteries, they held far too many ghosts. And I'd had more than enough of those today.

  I found Liander waiting at the bottom of the hospital's front steps. He was dressed in dark jeans and an aqua shirt, and his silver hair was streaked with a blue that matched his shirt. His scent spun around me, rich and warm. Much like the man himself. I smiled a greeting.

  "Hey, makeup man, what are you doing here?" I gave him a kiss on the cheek, then linked my good arm through his. "And don't you look smashing. "

  He grinned, silver eyes twinkling. "I just came from a series of interviews about the special effects. Drumming up interest in the new movie and all that. "

  "So why are you here? Not that I'm complaining, mind. "

  "Rhoan rang and said you might need a lift. I wanted to talk to you anyway, so here I am. " He glanced down at my arm. "How's the busted shoulder?"

  Someone at the Directorate had obviously contacted Rhoan. Jack might be the only one who knew we were brother and sister, but everyone knew we were from the same pack, and living together. And they knew better than to keep injury information from Rhoan - even if he generally knew if I was hurt before they did. "It wasn't busted, just dislocated. "

  "Ow. " He screwed up his nose. "I think that's more painful than a break. "

  Having had a few breaks in my time, I'd have to disagree. Dislocation might be fucking painful, but so was a busted limb.

  "So what do you want to talk about?" I said, as he guided me to the right. "Not that useless brother of mine again, I hope. You know I have little influence over him. "

  Liander smiled. "Your useless brother has been rather well behaved of late. No complaints, either in or out of the bedroom. "

  For which I was glad. The last couple of years had been pretty rough for Liander when it came to the relationship between him and my brother, and he deserved some good times for a change. "So what's the problem?"

  He unlocked the door of his old Ford, then said, "You remember that name you mentioned? The one I said sounded familiar?"

  "Aron Young?"

  "Yeah. I remembered where I knew it from. " He motioned me to sit, so I did. He slammed the door shut, then ran around to the driver's side and climbed in. After starting up the car, he added, "I've got pictures at home, if you'd like to see if it's the same man. "

  "I would, but I need to pick up my car from Glenroy, first. " I gave him the street name, then shifted in the seat so that I was facing him and said, "So tell me all. "

  "He was briefly in the same school as me. " He glanced in the rearview mirror, then pulled out into the traffic. "Tenth grade, at Beechworth Secondary College. "

  I raised my eyebrows. "You went to a state school?"
>
  He nodded. "The Moore pack was a small one, and we certainly couldn't afford to set up our own private school. The cost of building and hiring teachers was just too much. "

  "And the local community didn't mind?" While wolves and other supernaturals might have become an accepted - even if sometimes not liked - part of city living, there were still pockets in country areas that preferred to keep their towns as free as possible from the nonhuman "taint. "

  A task that was harder in the alpine areas, simply because there were so many wolf packs up there. Mountains were a good place to run free and wild.

  "Unlike some of the packs around, the Moores were well integrated into the local community. " He shrugged. "We did community stuff, Dad coached the local football team, and Mom was heavily involved in church fetes. People forgot what we were, to a great extent. "

  "Sounds like it was a nice place to grow up. " Better than what Rhoan and I had, anyway. But then, that wouldn't have been hard.

  "It was. " He gave me a quick smile, then added, "Anyway, Young transferred into our school at the start of tenth grade. He was there long enough for the school photos, but disappeared a month or so before the end of the year. "

  "Was he pulled out or suspended?"

  "Neither. He actually disappeared. " He pulled to a halt at a red light and glanced at me. "There were rumors, of course. He got mixed up with some pretty bad elements, and there was talk he'd been involved in some sort of initiation gone wrong. "

  "Was he human?"

  "Shifter. Some sort of bird. " He shrugged. "I never had much to do with him, so I really couldn't say for sure. "

  At least that explained how he'd disappeared on me the night I'd chased him from Vinny's. When a nonhuman became a vampire, they took whatever shifting skill they had into unlife. But if he could shift shape, why didn't he simply fly from the building from the very start? Hell, if he could disappear, why hadn't he simply done that rather than run? "Did the police investigate the disappearance?"

  "Yeah. No charges were ever brought, and a body was never found. If something did happen, it was well covered up by everyone involved. "

  "What about his parents?"

  He raised his eyebrows. "What about them?"

  "How did they react to their son going missing?"

  "From what I remember, furiously. But about a month after the disappearance, they picked up stakes and left town. We never saw them again. "

  "And there were no whispers around town about why they might have left?"

  "Not that I can remember. But I was a kid, so I'd probably lost interest in the whole situation by then. "

  Which was one major difference between him, and me and my brother. We would have investigated. I had a nose for trouble, and I hadn't been afraid to use it - as the many scars that scattered my body would attest.

  "Has the school photo got names attached?"

  "Yep. " He looked at me. "You think your Aron Young's recent spate of murders has something to do with this Aron Young's disappearance all those years ago?"

  "I have no idea what to think. I don't even know if I have the right Aron Young. Right now, I'm just grabbing at straws. "

  "If it is him, it's a long time to hold a grudge. "

  "Maybe he needed time to build up courage. " Or strength, perhaps. It couldn't be easy for a ghost to pick up solid objects. "Is there anyone up in Beechworth who might remember more about the case? Who was the cop on the case?"

  "Old Jerry Mayberry was the local cop. He's retired, but still living up there, as far as I know. " He gave me a half-smile. "Haven't been back up there for a while now. "

  I shifted in my seat and looked at him. "How did your pack react when they realized you were gay?"

  "I got more grief from the local kids than I did from the pack. " He shrugged. "I think it was a disappointment to my mom, more than anything, because she wanted grandkids. But my sister has had five in the last seven years, so that's one problem solved. "

  A little bit of envy swirled through me. Having a whole pack of kids had once been my dream, too. But that was gone forever - well, mostly. I still had viable eggs frozen, but I would never be the one to carry them. "Your sister has five kids? How come we've never met them?"

  He laughed. "She comes down here to escape the kids, not show them off. "

  "But I'd love to meet them sometime. "

  He gave me an amused look. "Spend an hour with that lot, and the whole idea of being a mom will suddenly not seem so alluring. Trust me, they're a handful. "

  "Kids are. Hell, I was. "

  "Imagine you and Rhoan multiplied by about ten. That's how bad they are. "

  I grinned. "No one can be that bad. "

  "Okay, so maybe I exaggerate a little. " The amusement in his expression and the twinkle in his eyes did little to deny the statement. It also showed just how much he loved those kids. "Seeing you're coming back to my place after you pick up your car, you want to stop for some lunch?"

  "If you're going to cook it, I'll definitely eat it. " My cell phone decided to ring at that precise point, so I added as I reached for it, "At least, I hope I can, if this isn't Jack with another problem. "

  Unfortunately, it was.

  "Riley?" Jack said, as soon as I pressed the receive button. "We've got another one. "

  "Man or woman?"

  "Woman. Another one of the names in James's Rolodex. "