Dead of Night (Ghosts & Magic #1) (14 page)

I should have gotten out of there. I should have turned and ran down the stairs. Every instinct told me to, and I would have if I hadn't heard the whimper.

It was small, and frightened. It was coming from down the hallway. Shit. I listened for the fields, getting just the barest whisper of a ping back. It was only just strong enough to be accessed from this height. I wasn't about to risk pulling the energy in before I knew I needed it, but it was good to know it was there. I steeled myself and stepped forward, closing the door softly behind me. My boots squished against the carpeting, wet from all the blood.

I don't want to die. That was the thought that always ran through my head at times like this. It was a thought that had served me pretty well so far. I gripped the dice more tightly and removed them from my pocket. I wouldn't have much time to use them if I needed to. If I tossed them without naming a target they would choose at random, and I wasn't excluded from the pool.
 

Not that I heard anyone else. Maybe whoever was in there was alone. Maybe they had somehow survived their injuries and were a few breaths away from death. There was little I could do for them in that case. This place was a nightmare. What the hell was I still doing here?

Tiptoeing through a mess of dead bodies, my boots getting bathed in their blood, that's what. It was a new experience for me, and I fucking hated it.

I examined the bodies as I crept past them. All traditional human, all men, all between twenty and forty years old. The majority were asian, Japanese I think, with a couple of mean-looking caucasians thrown in. They wore suits, blazers, jeans, t-shirts. Random clothing, but their presence here was anything but random.
 

The doors to the apartments I passed were hanging open. Televisions were still casting flickering light in a few of them. I could picture the scene in my mind. The ferals coming into the hallway, maybe busting into Jin's apartment. The other people on the floor hearing the ruckus and moving out to intercept. Moving out... not hiding.
 

Protecting them, or at least trying to.

My initial reaction to this place had been that I was way off-base. That whoever Red had asked me to find would never be living the slum life. The carnage here was suggesting otherwise. Unfortunately, it was also suggesting I had gotten here second, and I was going to be shit out of luck.

Another whimper brought me out of my head. It was stronger this time, and it sounded strained. A third, louder cry made me stop moving. I waited while my heart pounded through my chest, and then inched forward towards 1024 - the apartment that was supposed to belong to Jin Mori.

I didn't trust that whoever had killed these people had left. It would have been stupid to drop my guard. I kept myself near the wall opposite Jin's door, crouching low. As I did, I saw that one of the bodies nearby was armed, a gun in a hand that was positioned unnaturally behind his back.
 

I rolled the dice in my fingers. They were what they looked like: an element of randomness, of chance. My luck was running pretty lousy right now, and that made me hesitant to trust them.

I put them back in my pocket and glanced from the gun to the doorway, figuring my route, running through it a few times in my mind. If I fucked it up, it could mean my life.

Screw that. I took three long, quick steps towards the corpse with the firepower, swung low to scoop it up, ripped it from the dead hand, dropped to a crouch, and turned to fire into the room in one quick motion.
 

I didn't pull the trigger.

A girl was hanging from a motionless ceiling fan, her face and clothes bloody, her lifeless hands gripping the bottom of the belt that had been wrapped around her neck. She was young, too young, and pretty. Japanese, with short, bobbed hair and delicate features.
 

She was dead.
 

I kept the gun out and aimed into the room, walking forward. I swung the weapon back and forth as I entered, making sure I was alone. There was a door on either side of the living room, whose furniture had been thrown into the back corner to make space for the hanging. Those doors were open, too.

The whimpering had been coming from somewhere in here. I reached up and put my hand to the girl's face. It was still warm. She had been dying when I had come in, which meant she hadn't been hung too long ago.

The floor creaked. The door on the right pushed open a little more, and a pale figure with dark hair burst through it. I turned and fired, but my attacker was too fast. The bullets chipped the wood around the doorframe, and a hand slashed across my wrist, opening the skin and trying to make me drop the weapon. I brought my other arm up and around, catching the vampire in the jaw. It was enough to get it off-balance, and I slipped back and away, gaining a couple of feet of space and setting myself for round two.

It turned and glowered at me with bloodshot brown eyes and a twisted scowl. Its fangs dripped the poison secretions that would paralyze me if they managed to break the skin, and its lithe muscles flexed with anticipation.
 

It had been sitting in the room, waiting. For me? For something else? Vampires didn't wait. They were either hunting, or sleeping. That was it. Like the creature that had done in the clerk, this one wasn't acting quite right.
 

That didn't make it less dangerous.
 

My left hand held the gun, but it could take a dozen rounds and still kill me before it would even register the damage. My right hand dove into my pocket to find the dice again. They were warm in my grip, which was good. The vamp wasn't going to wait for me to use them, which was bad.

It leaped towards me, a hissing screech preceding clawed fingers. I put three rounds into its chest as I backpedaled into the wall, and then rolled to the side while it scraped the plaster and turned to track me. I put my left side towards it and brought the dice to my mouth, whispering into them at the same time the claws raked my forearm, tearing through my coat and hoodie, but not quite getting the skin. I leaned in and shoved it back, and then dropped the dice at its feet.

Fire, and fire. The dark magic flowed out of them towards the vampire, and it screamed as its skin exploded in burns and blisters. I kicked it away from me and brought the gun up to shoot it a few more times.

I didn't need to. Six more pops sounded behind me, and six bullets made a nice cluster in the feral's skull. It tumbled backwards and didn't move.

I turned around and aimed at the interloper, only to find a similar weapon trained on me. Another young woman, her features close enough to those of the hanging corpse that I knew they were related. She was a little older, a little prettier, her thick black hair in chunks instead of a bob and elongated ears pushing out between dyed purple locks. She was wearing a flower-printed camisole and cotton sweatpants, her feet bare.

Her eyes were red from crying. They were narrowed with anger. She said something to me in Japanese, and then glanced at the girl.

"I'm not with them," I said. I lowered the gun.

She walked over to me in four quick steps, shouting something at me in Japanese and putting the barrel of the gun against my forehead. I didn't move to stop her. I didn't move at all.

"I'm not going to hurt you. I was trying to kill the vamp."

Her eyes shifted, looking at the mess of a feral behind me, showing me she understood English.
 

"I'm looking for Jin Mori."

She pushed the gun harder against my forehead.
 

"Whoa. Wait a second. I came to help. Mrs. Red sent me."

Her eyebrows creased and her head tilted slightly.

"Prove it," she said, with only the slight hint of an accent.

"I need to reach into my pocket."

"Slowly."

I did as she asked, dropping the gun to the floor and digging into my pocket. I found the necklace there, and lifted it out into the open. "She said to bring it with-"

There was a crash as the stairwell door slammed open. Her eyes widened, and she reached out with her free hand and grabbed my bleeding wrist. "This way."

I tugged against her, the blood making her grip weak. I broke free and swooped down to grab my dice. "Where?"

She ran ahead of me, across the living room to the room on the other side. I wasn't sure why she was going that way. We weren't going to be any safer staying boxed in, but I followed. She had come from somewhere.

We were in a bedroom. She went past the bed and vanished into the closet, reaching out and tugging me in, and then closing the door, even as I heard the growls and claws moving through the hallway.
 

"We're hiding in a closet?" I asked, keeping my voice low. "How is this going to help?"

She put her finger to her lips and knelt down, moving her hand to the wall below a row of blouses and dresses. A small, hidden door slid silently away.
 

"In here," she said.

I got down on my hands and knees and crawled through the opening, into a tiny room that was obviously only intended to hold one person. It had a couple of pillows, some bottles of water and a few cans of food stacked in a corner. I shoved my back against the wall.

The woman followed after me, climbing up into my lap, and then putting her hand to another part of the drywall. The secret door slid closed, leaving us in claustrophobic darkness.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Too close for comfort.

I could feel her breath on my neck. I could smell the sickly sweetness of her sweat mixed with the scent of fruit and spice that was so common with elves. The warmth of her body pressed down on mine, settling onto my lap as best she could. I couldn't see anything. In another place, another time, the whole thing might have been exciting.
 

We didn't speak. I could hear the ferals in the hallway, the creaking of the floor as they entered the apartment. They must have found the vampire, because they yapped at one another excitedly and the feet shifted around again. By the sounds, I was guessing there were three of them.
 

Two left the apartment.

The other moved into the bedroom.

Pounding heartbeats passed in silence.
 

The feet moved closer.
 

The door to the closet creaked open.
 

I could feel her muscles tensing on my lap, and I was sure my own were tensing as well. We waited for whatever was on the other side of the wall to react, to figure out we were right there, and start scraping away in an effort to reach us. Instead, the feet turned and moved away. The bed creaked as something heavy bounded onto it, and an impact sounded when it landed on the other side. Only then did I take a breath.

We stayed silent for another minute. I could feel her hair tickling my cheek, her breast pressed against my shoulder. I could feel the throbbing of my wounded wrist.
 

"We're lucky it didn't smell your blood," she said, breaking the silence. "We need to put pressure on it." Her hands gripped at the sleeve of my hoodie in the pitch, exploring until they found a tear. "This may hurt." She grabbed the ends and pulled, ripping it apart into a single strip of cloth. She wrapped it tight around my wrist and tied it off.

It hurt, but nowhere near enough to affect me. I was used to pain.

"Who are you?" she asked.
 

"I'm nobody."

"You came looking for Jin. Mrs. Red sent you. How did you know her?"

I could feel the heat rising to my face. There was no point being dodgy. "I was hired by a fixer who claimed he was working for Mr. Black. The job was to break into Red's house and steal something."

"The treasure? You were set up."

"To put it mildly. I feel like I'm the only one who didn't know what was going to happen."
 

Her breath waved against my neck, making the hairs stand on up end. It had a warm cinnamon smell to it, and we were so close I couldn't help but take it in with my own.
 

"We expected someone would make a move on the treasure. The house was guarded..."

"They took out the guards and replaced them with ringers. They killed Mrs. Red. I was there. She told me if I wanted to survive this, I needed to bring the necklace to Jin. The girl-"

"She was my sister, Natsumi. She was sleeping in the other bedroom. She didn't make it in time." Her voice trembled.

"You're Jin?" I hated myself for feeling relieved that she was still alive, when her sister was dangling from the ceiling fan in the living room.

"Yes."

"What happened?"

"They got here before you did. I never saw them, but I heard the fighting. Did they kill everyone?"

"Yes. They were trying to protect you."
 

"Only a few of them were users, and only a couple were armed. No one was supposed to know I was here. No one was even supposed to know I'm related to Mrs. Red."
 

I felt the weight of her head against my chest. She rested it there and sobbed, as though I had known her for more than five minutes. I was stiff, unsure how to react to her.

"They were my family, my friends. They didn't deserve this. Natsumi... we heard them coming. She tried to get to safety in time. They caught her. I could hear her screaming and crying. Someone asked her where I was. A woman's voice. They hung her there for me to find. They wanted me to see."

"They left the vampire for you, too."
 

"I didn't know it was out there. I could hear Natsumi crying... choking... dying. I was afraid to come out. It is my duty and place to survive, even though it meant letting her die. When I heard the gunshots, I thought my aunt had sent a team to save me. Now I know the truth."

She had been waiting for a whole team. All she had gotten was me.
 

"I'm sorry." The words were like trying to salve a wound with salt.

A few minutes passed while she cried into my chest. I was tentative as I moved my hand to her back and lightly held her. I couldn't have a woman crying in my lap and not try to at least be a little comforting.