The tugging in his bones, the yearning in his veins pulled him onward, slicing swiftly between snowgusts in mistform, bursting through the whispering speed when needing to cut against the wind, across rooftops. A foot brushing a cornice, the glass of an office building showing a subtle glimmer as light refracted from disturbed flakes, the startled bark of a vehicle’s horn as he touched down in the middle of a street, pushing off again with a crimson flash—his eyes glowed from lid to lid now, showing the rage of a sanguinant whose leman had been harmed.
Had been taken.
He might have expected earthbound prey to use a winding way, many a doubling and turn to throw off pursuit, but they had not. Still, constrained by roads, their route was longer than his; he arrowed for earth, the pull loud and clear instead of attenuated to a mere whisper by distance.
There. A large, ramshackle structure, its flank jutting on pilings over a polluted river, was all too easy to infiltrate. Mistform thickening as he streamed past piles of ephemera and sullen, long-abandoned machinery, swirling once about a grey delivery van, its side-hatch left open and the small interior light gamely carrying on. Every third fixture overhead was live, fluorescents buzzing to themselves and emptiness.
A pair of unsurprising scents; the traitors had spent some time here, making arrangements though hardly improvements. There might be security cameras pointed at likely approaches—he heard heartbeats as well, all three familiar yet only one welcome.
And a thread of glorious, wonderful scent reaching even into the the mistform’s haze, drawing him onward. Was this a second iteration of ambush, using his prize as bait?
Voices, now, as he swirled toward the source of the pull. While their interesting new ammunition was merely bothersome to him—necessitating some small attention paid to resealing wounds and keeping the claret where it belonged, two skills any daywalker was more than conversant with—it could quite possibly bleed his fledgling to the point of exhaustion, and she would require much care afterward. There was the risk of more open flame as well; even if he had proved his own immunity, she was still vulnerable.
He could celebrate his new status later. Lukas gathered himself, mistform clotting into the mortal-visible range as dense crimson fog, and followed the clarion call of shared blood toward the other end of the warehouse, downstream and shoreward.
Almost there. All will be well, Beatrice.
A gunshot boomed sharp and jarring between piles of rubbish, echoing against the roof’s exposed bones.
CHAPTER 37
“Look, I’ll do my best, I just don’t know how.” Bea stayed very still, the spring inside her coiling tighter and tighter. Could she get going fast enough to burst through whatever they had walling this office? She couldn’t tell if it was more than drywall. “You can put the gun down, okay? We can figure this out together.”
“Oh, I think I’ll be keeping it.” Wren was getting more worked up the longer conversation went on, and that was a very bad sign. “Jimmy, lad, bring out your needles. I think we’ll get the red stuff early, just in case.”
“Sure thing.” But the ginger guy hesitated. “Guess that means I’m going first, since you’re holding the gun. Right?”
From the crackling silence which ensued, Bea got the idea they hadn’t quite thought out this part of the plan. Which was kind of stupid—but then again, she’d only shown up a few days ago, unless this Wren guy had already known she was some kind of bloodsucker sex kitten?
No, probably not. They had Lukas’s murder planned to a T, this felt like extra credit.
Don’t worry about that, worry about getting out of this room without being shot.
Wren visibly made up his mind. “Age before beauty, Jimmy-boy. There’s a pistol in the kitchen, get it. Then she can bite me.”
I really would rather not. Bea forced herself not to grimace, to keep that steady, neutral expression.
“I dunno.” Hardison didn’t move. “Maybe we just need her to bite, since we already have some of his red stuff, you know? So I should go first, to check.”
That’s interesting. Lukas had definitely given both of these guys monster blood. Was it a regular thing? Did they get high off it, and that was how bloodsuckers controlled their daylight hires? She just didn’t know enough, but that probably wouldn’t matter.
“Jimmy, for fuck’s sake.” Wren’s cheek was back to twitching, tiny plucking motions now regular and constant instead of random. “Do what I fuckin’ tell you.”
“Don’t I always? I’m just asking, Thomas, you don’t have to be so?—”
It happened fast. The gun’s nozzle swung away from her, an eye-scouring flash and the roar was massive, world-ending. Bea cried out, clapping her hands over her ears, her body instinctively throwing itself aside, but before she landed on blue carpet Jimmy Hardison’s entire head was vaporized.
OhGod, Jesus Christ, oh no...Blinking furiously, her ears ringing, Bea peered through her hair.
Wren’s ribs heaved. A fine, sparkling mist of blood hung in the air as Hardison’s body folded, landing with a wet thump, and Bea discovered that even if she hadn’t eaten for days and might be entirely on a liquid diet from now on she could still be nauseated enough to retch. A heavy, coppery reek mixed with the acrid smokiness of gunfire, accompanied by a distinct tang of shit; her new vision was acute enough that even half-blinded by muzzleflash she could clearly distinguish white bone-chips and greyish brain spread in a blotch on the cabinet doors, all over the countertop and its medical paraphernalia.
Shouldn’t the blood smell better? The thought provoked another flare of nausea.
“Fucking kid,” Wren muttered. Faint vapor lifted from the gun’s barrel, its single eye very big and dark indeed. “But I guess it works, eh? Look at that.”
No, thanks. Bea decided the nearest wall was good enough to try. If there was rebar or something she couldn’t break through?—
“Get up off the floor,” he continued. ‘And by God and Mother Mary, ya bint, if you don’t stop stalling and do what I?—”
