Chapter 14
There was nothing left of Joel’s house. The entire place had been burned to the ground, leaving only the outline of the floor plan and singed rubble lying in heaps all over the place.
This hadn’t been done by human hands. Humans couldn’t burn a place like this, so that there was virtually nothing left.
I knew who’d done this. Some master vampires had fire as their ability, and most of them were destructive. This was beyond a warning. This was their first move.
I walked onto the property and stood where the garage used to be. The sun was sinking below the horizon, casting long, creepy shadows across the ground, making the burned lot seem so much more morbid.
Any normal person would be spending this Sunday evening inside with their family. I was the only one who was out on what was supposed to be a day of rest, trying to do some form of chaos control. I could feel the people in the neighborhood around me: calm, peaceful, content, if not overly happy. I was suddenly jealous.
I kicked around a bit, ash flying up into the air in a grey cloud. My toe stubbed against a latch, and I scraped away the ash with my foot to reveal the trap door that led down to the pit.
When I opened the door, the stairs that led into the ground weren’t destroyed, like the rest of the place. The fire hadn’t gotten this far. The pit had served its intended use as a bomb shelter after all.
I stepped into the darkness, and flicked the switch. The hum of the generator kicking in filled the air around me, and the pit lit up in a light-green flicker.
It looked a lot like it had on the video Joel had shown me after Celia had trashed his place. But it wasn’t quite the same. Then, it had looked like someone had left a warning. Now it looked like someone had fought for their life here.
A splatter of blood on the far wall drew my attention. There were more smears on the floor. I inhaled deeply and recognized Joel straight away. He’d been hurt here, bleeding. There was no more blood than this.
He was still alive, unless they’d killed him somewhere else. I had to find him.
I rummaged through the rubble, looking for something, anything, that I could use to find a lead. There were a lot of papers lying around, most of them with information on them that I didn’t understand. His filing system was shot to hell, and all the gun cabinets and safes had been thrown open. If there had been any weapons and ammunition here, they had been taken.
But I still didn’t get the feeling that whoever had done this was interested in his belongings. They were interested only in Joel. And that had to be because of his involvement with me.
My stomach turned, guilt swirling around inside me. A bitter taste in the back of my throat told me what I didn’t want to admit: that this was all my fault. If people had died here, their blood would be on my hands.
As a killer, that shouldn’t have bothered me. But it did, because Joel was a friend. And Aspen… I took a deep breath. I couldn’t even bring myself to imagine what it would be like to lose her. There would be nothing left in my life, no reason why I was doing any of this.
My hands grazed something hard underneath the papers I’d been fishing through, and I found a laptop. It looked like it had been caught in the fire. Which meant it had been upstairs when the fire had started, and someone had moved it down here afterwards.
Joel?
That had to mean that there was something on the computer that was important. That he didn’t want to lose in the fire. Joel had always uploaded everything onto backup servers that were protected and out of the way. Whatever it was he wanted to protect wasn’t in the cloud of data online. It was only on this laptop.
I tucked the laptop under my arm.
When I turned, she was standing at the bottom of the stairs. Her white hair caught the light streaming in through the trapdoor, and it looked like silk. She was smiling, but her green eyes didn’t reflect any kind of emotion other than cold hatred.
“Can Adele come out and play?” she said in a mocking voice.
I rolled my eyes. “Not today, princess.”
She scowled. I went on looking through the pit, pretending to ignore her, but I kept my attention on her. She didn’t move, although I could feel contempt radiating off her in waves. She didn’t like being ignored. I kept moving, trying to mask the nerves that were bunching at the bottom of my throat, clenching my stomach.
She took a deep breath through her nose, and then she cackled a laugh.
“You’re afraid of me,” she said.
Well, yes, I was. Because I hadn’t been able to defeat her – I hadn’t even figured out how to defeat her. And the memories of my previous fights with her, where I’d lost horribly, were too fresh in my mind. But I put on an emotionless smile of my own.
“Being fearless is reckless. You have nothing to gain. I do.”
I was talking about love. About emotion, about having something left in life that wasn’t materialistic. That wasn’t based on achievements. I didn’t think she understood something like that.
“Well, if you wait long enough, you won’t have anything to gain, either. The difference between you and me is that I have nothing left to lose, either. You, on the other hand, still do. And your time’s running out.”
I lost my cool. I could only put on a game face for so long. I put the laptop casually on a table and turned to face her as calmly as I could. I launched myself toward her, faster and stronger than I’d been before. Fear and anger were a deadly combination if you applied them right.
She laughed in a cackle again, and the sound danced around me, singing inside my head, echoing through my hollow bones. She was quicker than I was, and was now standing where I’d stood before I reached her.
She dragged a long black nail over the laptop. I wondered if she’d had those nails during the interview with Ruben, or if she could retract them like claws. When she smiled, I realized she could take away the only lead I might have – so I attacked again without thinking. This time I reached her before she had a chance to move, and I managed to hit her in the face, a strong blow to the jaw. She stumbled backward, and I got between her and the laptop.
She hissed at me, her eyes flashing rage.
Then she disappeared, moving in a blur around me and out of the door, the image of her remaining until long after she’d left. A cold feeling stayed behind too, like frost that licked up my body. I shivered, and the nerves I’d felt before solidified and became a rock of terror in my stomach.
She did know what I was talking about. And I was about to lose someone if I didn’t make a plan soon.
Joel was my techie. He was the one I would have run to with this laptop to find a way to hack out the information. I had no idea where else to go.
So I took out my phone and did the one thing I hadn’t ever thought I would do.
I phoned Carl.
“Listen, I need a favor,” I said into the speaker when he answered, sounding as crisp as ever.
Didn’t this man ever sleep? The only reason I was up and running was that life-threatening events tended to pump adrenaline into me. Otherwise I would have been home in bed too. That made me think about Connor’s house, and I pushed the memories away.
Maybe Carl had a hell of a life too. Who knew what turned someone to a gun as a way of making a living?
“Oh, the great Adele Griffin comes to me. What did I do to deserve this honor?” Sarcasm bled through his words.
“Can it, Carl. I need help, and it’s urgent.”
He groaned into the phone. “What do you want?”
“A technician who’ll help me crack a laptop that’s been… damaged.” I turned the piece of scrap around in my hands.
“What happened to yours?”
“It was in a fire.”
“Your technician was in a fire?”
Well, yeah, but that wasn’t what I wanted him to know. “The laptop.”
Carl chuckled, like it was a joke.
“Don’t you know someone? P
eople are going to die if I can’t crack this thing.”
Carl whistled through his teeth. “Sounds like you’ve been getting some action. Better than me. I’ve been in a dry spell for far too long.”
I tried not to imagine what he meant by that.
“I’ll give it to you on one condition,” he said.
“What?”
“I want in on whatever it is you’re doing.”
“Are you crazy?”
He took a deep breath. “There are days I think I might be,” he said, and his voice was so sincere that I had the feeling he wasn’t joking this time.
“Fine,” I said. He gave me the number of a guy. “I’ve used him a couple of times. He’s good, knows what he’s doing. He should have some time for you. His busy time is at night.”
So, more technicians had the wrong friends. It was calming somehow to know that this guy wasn’t straightforward vanilla. Maybe he wouldn’t chase me away, with my leathers and guns.
“Thanks,” I said to Carl, and hung up before he could say anything more.
I phoned the guy. His voice was gravelly over the phone, and he sounded weary. After a bit of smooth talking, I finally got him to agree to taking on a client he didn’t know. I guessed that in his line of work, being cautious could save your life. I felt the same way about strangers, so I could respect that.
I got an address and set a meeting for eight tomorrow morning. My week was going to start with a bang. He had openings for tonight, but I had a rule about going to meet people in the middle of the night. I’d done enough killing under the cloak of darkness to know I didn’t want to be the one who ended up at the other end of that food chain.
The only thing left for me to do now was to go home. I took a deep breath and blew it out in a shudder. I didn’t want to leave Joel to fend for himself alone, but I didn’t have much of a choice. I would be no good to him if I were dead – I had to take care of myself first.
My apartment was cold and dark when I arrived. I didn’t usually spend nighttime indoors. I was a nocturnal creature, and the walls always felt like they were closing down on me and suffocating me. I opened the curtains so I could see the inky black sky with the pinpricks of stars stretching across it like a blanket.
The whole apartment looked different in the yellow light that replaced sunlight, and I didn’t feel like I was at my own home. When I crawled into bed after a quick shower, I fell asleep right away, but that wasn’t enough for me to escape my life.
I had nightmares about Joel burning alive, throwing his laptop at me, yelling for me to get to Aspen before she burned too. The sound of bullets splintering tiles came out of his mouth every time he called for me.
I tried to get to Aspen, but hot black tar stopped my bike’s wheels from turning. When I got off and tried to run, my feet were sucked into it and I had to fight for every step.
When I finally got to Aspen’s house, it was dark and Zelda was there, beckoning me into the blackness. Aspen’s voice called out to me, crystal-clear as always, music in the night. I couldn’t see anything, but I followed the sound of her voice, feeling around for her in the dark.
Flames started licking around us, consuming the house, lighting up the place enough for me to see. I found Aspen and wrapped my arms around her frail body, but she felt stronger and firmer than usual. When I pulled away again, it was Connor staring back at me.
“Where’s Aspen?” I asked him, drawing back. I didn’t want to touch him. The warmth that flowed from him threatened to suck me in, and my memories of Aspen slipped away from me like bathwater down a drain.
“She’s right there,” he said, pointing at someone behind me.
When I spun around, it was Celia standing behind me. Her hair was white, her eyes a brilliant green. When I looked at Connor again, frowning, he looked like her too. They both laughed, and their cackling surrounded me like a storm.
I sat up, the darkness in my room folding around me. The nightmare slowly faded, but my heart was hammering in my chest and I was hyperventilating. I swung my legs off the bed and leaned my head down between my knees. I focused on getting my breathing back to normal.
When I looked up again, the night sky had a silvery quality to it, hinting at the arrival of dawn. Thank god.
I got up and climbed into the shower again. I turned on only the hot water and stood underneath the scalding stream. The drops hit my skin like a thousand needles. I ignored the pain in my leg; the graze was a lot smaller, but still there. At least it didn’t bother me anymore, not like it had before. Steam fogged up the entire bathroom, and I couldn’t breathe in the humidity. But at least through all the pain and discomfort I knew I was alive. I was back in reality.
I got into running clothes, found my chain, and left my apartment. The hallways and the lobby smelled dusty and moldy, and I wondered how I’d survived in this place for so long. When I finally stepped into the crisp morning air I took a deep breath. Then I ran.
I ran until my muscles screamed at me, until my legs felt numb and my chest burned every time I took a breath. My neck and shoulders had been rubbed numb by the weight of the chain. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore, and then I turned around and started the run home.
Finally it rolled onto seven thirty. I got dressed in my leathers and suited up: my knife in its thigh sheath, my S&W in the shoulder holster under my jacket, my SIG at my back. I glanced at the carbine, but decided against it. I needed Carlos to let me in. I did make sure I had the black chain in the bike’s compartment, though. Just in case. I always fell back onto my favorite saying – luck favors the prepared.
Carlos was a couple of blocks away from my place, in an even worse part of town. I hadn’t been sure that was possible. The street looked like the garbage men just skipped it on garbage day, and there weren’t even stray cats around. If the cats didn’t bother, you had to know things were bad.
I found the apartment he’d described and buzzed the first intercom on the list. None of them were marked. The wind picked up and a chilly finger sliced through me, despite the leathers. It was the kind of cold that came with foreboding.
The door buzzed open, and I stepped into an apartment building that looked like it had been abandoned decades ago. The decorations inside were old, the wallpaper seemed like golden floral print under the dust, and the carpet seemed like it had once been a deep red. I could see that on the few patches that weren’t worn down to the concrete beneath. It, too, was dusty.
A chandelier hung from the ceiling with real candles in it, all burned down to a pile of wax, and the elevator behind it still had a steel gate in front of the wooden door that closed it.
I walked past reception, where a visitor’s book was open and signed here and there with curly handwriting, but there was no doorman. Not physically, anyway. The presence that hung in the lobby made me wonder if he was still around from time to time, checking in from the afterlife.
I knocked on the first door on the ground floor, a white door that looked used and lacked cobwebs, unlike the others. Two seconds later the door opened.
A man stood in front of me with long hair that hung in greasy strings around his face. He was clean-shaven, but he had a slimy quality about him. His shirt had grease stains all the way down the front, covering a body that he obviously maintained with fast foods, and his eyes were a watered-down grey.
“Carlos Sanchez?” I asked, and he nodded. “I’m Adele Griffin.”
“Come on in,” he said, opening the door wider.
The inside of his apartment was a staggering contrast to the horrible neighborhood and the rest of the building. He had plush grey carpets and salmon-colored walls, with high-tech equipment on a desk in the corner and a wide screen television on the wall. It looked and smelled like it had all been cleaned half an hour ago.
“Do you want coffee?” he asked, walking into the kitchen.
“I’m okay,” I said. I wasn’t sure what to expect in the cup. Better not to expect anything
.
He came out with one cup of coffee with steam curling out of it. The aroma wrapped around the room and reminded me suddenly of home – when I was little and Aspen and I would watch my dad make breakfast in bed for my mom. The reminder was so strong I felt like I had been shoved backward in time.
“What do you have for me?” he asked, nodding at the laptop under my arm and yanking me back to the present.
I handed it over to him. “I think it’s been in a fire. I just need to know why someone wanted to save it. I think there’s something on there that might be important.”
He looked at it, lifting his eyebrows. “Well, if we get something out of it, we’ll be lucky, but I can have a look,” he said.
We moved to his desk in the corner and he sat down. I perched on the edge of the armchair nearby.
He unscrewed the case and pulled out the insides. There, he found a green plate-like thing and turned it over in his hands, staring at it like it could break under his gaze. “Well, this survived a lot better than I expected,” he said. “Let’s have a look.”
He hooked it up to a silver box with wires, then his fingers flew over his keyboard the same way Joel’s usually did. I wondered if all techies were the same: how they got into this line of work, what made them stray away from the daily grind, where they wouldn’t have to worry about being kidnapped or burned to death.
After ten minutes, he swiveled his chair to face me.
“Okay, so it looks like the standard stuff, for the most part. Nothing I’d say I might be killed over, if it were me. But there is one thing here…”
I leaned forward. “What is it?”
“A tracking system. It was installed two days ago.”
“What is it tracking?”
“It’s not tracking anymore, but I can tell you where it was pointing the last time it worked.”
He squinted at the screen and read me the address. It was Aspen’s house.
Relief spread through my body like warm liquid, and I slipped down to the seat of the armchair. “Thank god,” I said out loud. “He was watching her after all.”
“Someone you know?” he asked. I nodded, and he went on. “Yes, someone close, I gather. People don’t watch over people they don’t care about. But there’s something you should know. I know this system, because I installed a very similar one for somebody yesterday.”
“Okay…” I didn’t feel like having a techie heart-to-heart. I wanted to interrupt, but he kept talking.
“The address for it was the same one.”
It took me a couple of seconds to register what he was saying, and then my body went cold. The blood drained from my face, and I felt like I had to put my head between my knees if I didn’t want to faint. “It’s them, isn’t it?” I whispered.
“If by ‘them’ you mean—”
“Master vampires,” I finished for him.
He nodded grimly.
“They want to kill her.”
“They didn’t look like the kind who were doing it for fun,” he agreed.
“They won’t find her, though. She’s not at that address anymore.” It was a small consolation, but right now it meant the difference between life and death for my sister. “Why did you do it for them? If you knew they didn’t have good intentions?”
Carlos swiveled to face me dead on. “They offered me more money than I make in a year. I have standards… but for that kind of money?” He shrugged. “What I can do for you, though, and I’ll throw this one in free of charge, is look up the tracker location.”
I frowned. “On their system? You can do that?”
“Well, I installed it, didn’t I? I can hack in and check the system. I set up the firewalls in the first place.”
He typed in a couple of commands, and a moment later a screen popped up. It showed a map of town, and I could see a round loading icon.
“It should give me the address,” he said. “Just give me a min—ah-hah. Here we are.”
The map had a red blinking dot on it. I got up and leaned in closer. The dot was blinking steadily in one spot; it wasn’t moving. But it wasn’t at Aspen’s house. It was at the safe house.
“This is right?” I asked.
Carlos looked at me indignantly. “I wouldn’t charge this much if—”
“Just tell me if it’s right, dammit!” I yelled.
His face became stony, but he nodded.
I spun and ran out the door.
“You owe me money!” he shouted after me.
“I’ll pay you later,” I answered, then ran through the dusty lobby and out into the sunlight to my bike.