Don’t Bite the Messenger (2 page)

“Haven’t got the car yet,” Eugenie said, slurping bourbon from the middle of five glasses. I hoped she was sticking to a single round. “Had to replace the alternator in the Jetta again. Gotta get new tires. Don’t have enough cash.”

I grimaced, draining half of the remains of Rogers’s beer.

“How much have you got?” I asked, shuffling my feet. It took me a long time to come down after a shift, now that I’d given up chemical relaxation. Eugenie twirled her glass and shrugged. I leaned forward over the table. “Come on, Gene. How much are you short?”

“Rogers said that you’ve been pulling in fifteen K a month,” she said, gray eyes abruptly sharp. It was my turn to shrug. “The WRX I want is going for fifty-eight.”

I coughed, almost shooting beer out my nose. “Fifty-eight? That’s highway robbery.” I shook my head, unable to fathom how Eugenie made it through life this clueless. “Go down to that shop on Riddle Street. Two days, they’ll get you the year, model and goddamn color you want, for no more than forty-five.” Gene started to shake her head, automatically objecting before she’d even figured out what she was protesting.

“Ask for Davy. Tell him I’m calling in that favor he owes me. The big one.” I wasn’t planning to be around to use it, and I hated to let anything go to waste.

“Really?” Gene’s tongue wandered out to worry her piercing. I looked away, disturbed by the grateful expression working its way onto her puffy face. “Geez, Pike. That’s…well…thanks. That’s real nice of you.”

I nodded stiffly. The evening’s joy at my fattening wallet faded. Extracting oneself from a vampire-related gig was a glacially slow process. I liked my job, hitting each night at full speed, but there’s no such thing as an old runner. Statistics kill us. Drunk drivers. Missed turns that send us sideways into concrete bollards or streetlights. Adrenaline-soaked brains a few steps ahead of common sense. Low-level vampire turf wars. Hell, we barely even trusted each other. McHenry was a decent boss, but he was a manager, not a runner. To him, I&O was a way to make money and, after he retired, he’d shuffle it off to someone else, or sell out to one of the international conglomerates. I’d heard they required uniforms, the very idea of which made me shudder. My job, especially this job, couldn’t be everything I had. I needed something else to round out my life.

I glanced up at the TV, sighing at the sight of adults picketing somewhere flat and sunny. Closed-captioning sputtered out an explanation of a new anti-vampire bill coming up before the legislature somewhere in Middle America. Brilliant move, guys. Prohibiting vampires from owning property or businesses…in a state they’d never set foot in. The sun dominated too many hours of the day for places like Kansas or Texas to interest the undead. If I barely slept, I wouldn’t move somewhere where I’d be locked inside my house for half of any given day either.

The door at the end of the bar opened, and a pair of tall, bald men entered—imposing inside of leather coats. Long, leather coats like Bronson’s challengers had worn. I turned away and watched them peripherally in the mirror behind the bar. Their faces were serene but their eyes intense as they surveyed the shotgun-style room. Maybe Bronson’s opponent hadn’t taken well to having his attack parried by whatever I’d delivered tonight. Couriers were never in season, but that didn’t mean that we couldn’t be poached. Maybe the loser thought it was a good idea to shoot the messenger.

“Well, Gene.” I pulled my coat out from under my chair and stuffed it into my bag. I wasn’t about to let myself be the first casualty in a rogue vamp turf war. Bronson would probably resurrect me just to tell me he was disappointed that my death had caused a hiccup in his strategy. “Be seeing you.”

I rose slowly and didn’t look back as I started for the rear door. I put a little sway into my hips and let my head fall slightly to the side. A regular girl out for a good time and taking a bathroom break. Totally not running for my life.

The back door opened with a blast of winter air, and I had to work to keep myself from shoving through the gaggle of girls bubbling in. Panic was a hell of a red flag. I stepped to the side to let them pass, providing a nice cover between me and the suckers. I couldn’t feel that cold scratch of vampire energy yet.

The operative word being
yet
.

I tossed a furtive glance over my shoulder. The males walked slowly, their shorn heads panning back and forth like mechanical attachments. Clearly searching. Shit. I turned back, and plowed right into a hard chest wrapped in a soft, brown sweater. The vamps’ attention hit me like a static-electric shot to the back of the neck and I froze, because rule number two is that you never run from predators.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, flashing a sweet smile at the man I’d run into, hoping he would stay for a couple of minutes, reinforcing my civilian cover. “I’m such a klutz.”

“Quite all right.” He glanced down as I inched away from his large, warm hand resting loosely on my upper arm. I stopped inching. The red neon lights of a beer sign highlighted his dark brown hair and painted vivid color along sharp cheekbones. “You’d best be on your way home.”

“Why? Is the witching hour upon us?”

He released my arm and stepped back, looking me up and down in an appraising manner. “I suppose you could say that. Don’t you want to go home?”

I glanced back as the leather twins peeled off to the side, toward the table I’d vacated. Eugenie fit my general description. Scruffy girl with blue hair. I didn’t like her much, but that didn’t mean I wanted to see her hurt simply because she’d copied my hairstyle.

“Why would I want to go home?” I asked absently, angling to gain a better view. “This is a swell place. Great microbrews. Good music. Nice people.” Maybe I could con him into helping me get Eugenie off the vamps’ radar. With an internal grimace, I tilted my head and batted my lashes. He smiled as though he found me amusing. Not the reaction I was going for.

And then I remembered that I’d reached the end of the night. My eyeliner had probably leached out from my eyes, my cheeks were decorated with black wings, and I smelled like sweet and sour soup. He, on the other hand, smelled like cool, autumn rain and looked expensive.

“I am partial to nice people.” He stepped forward, effectively blocking my view of the bar. “You, for instance, seem exceptionally nice.”

I nodded, sidestepping, but I still couldn’t see Eugenie’s table. Nor could I see the vamps. Had they already taken her? One backed into view and I almost sighed in relief before registering what my hallway companion had said. I looked up, startled. His smile widened, an unlikely dimple emerging on one cheek.

If I had a type, he’d be it. Handsome, tall, with an easy carriage of obvious strength, and flexible in the face of strange situations. Behind him, one of the vampires turned and spotted me, and his eyes narrowed, glowing dully in the dim light. My breath caught and my heart began racing.

“I’m so glad you agreed to meet me here,” the guy said, raising my chin with a finger and drawing my awareness back into my frozen body. He winked. My fear must have been visible, and he must have understood that I was hiding from someone. Understood and wanted to help. If he knew what was after me, he would no doubt be running for the door. But if he was game, I would happily play along.

“Yeah, I’ve really missed you.” My sappy tone sounded like a foreign language. My heart had never beat faster for a man, but apparently it was a common reaction because the vampire dismissed me. His companion joined him and they went back to scanning the bar. Eugenie had been ruled out, and I was only a girl meeting her boyfriend, clearly not a panicked courier.

My “boyfriend” rested his hand on my shoulder blade in a strangely intimate gesture, pulling me toward him. I should have been skulking away, but instead I staggered a step forward, one hand landing on his chest. He immediately covered it with his own.

“So why don’t you give your old lover a kiss?” he asked. I snatched my hand back and shook my head sharply. He smiled, laugh lines crinkling around his dark eyes as he leaned down, mouth hovering a scant inch from my lips. “I believe you owe me.”

“That’s how you want to play it?” I whispered through clenched teeth. “Fine.” I grabbed him by the back of the neck, pulling his mouth roughly against mine. Our teeth banged together. He stiffened but then smiled against my mouth, tilting his head and turning the kiss into something different. Something that felt nothing like a game.

His hand snaked around my nape and wove into my hair. His tongue stroked my bottom lip, and a warm rush of need filled me, drawing me toward him until our bodies pressed together. Maybe if I kept my eyes closed and held very still in his shadow, I could pretend the moment was real, that he cared about me, and that I didn’t have fangs on legs hunting me.

I reached up, brushing my fingertips against the rough beginnings of stubble on his throat, and he made a low, hungry noise. The sound reverberated through my fingers. His hand tightened in my hair as his dark, savory flavor filled my senses, and through a heady crush of desire, I heard myself moan. He went rigid against me, and then let go. I stumbled back and we looked at each other, eyes wide.

Half-formed thoughts fired through my mind. Would he ask me to go home with him? Was I supposed to ask him? Why wasn’t he still kissing me? What if there were vampires in the parking lot? That thought diluted the heat in my blood. I looked back into the bar, smiling as two broad, leather-clad backs disappeared out the front door. Hell, if they’d moved on, maybe I could actually turn this strange encounter into something like a real date. I looked up, practically giddy, but my “boyfriend” was staring off into the middle distance, his jaw clenched tight. My smile faded.

“I have to go,” he said stiffly. “If—”

“Well, goodbye then.” I turned and walked mechanically out the door. I was hot all over, embarrassed to the core by the fact that I had all but melted when he was only playing.

I washed my hair five times, until the water went cold and stopped running blue, then pulled on rubber gloves and squished red dye through the bleached ends of my hair. I managed not to replay the kiss more than once every ten seconds, but the sharp end of the interaction refused to dull with time. I rinsed the gloves and set them on the side of the sink, then pulled a plastic bag over my head while the dye set. I left my sixties bathroom, with its globe light fixtures and gold wallpaper, and dropped into the pea-green plastic chair in front of the marbled red Formica table. Gotta love furnished apartments, even if they haven’t been updated in forever.

I woke my laptop and pulled up the most recent e-mail from the Realtor I’d been dealing with. The beach house of my dreams was still on the market. The price had even dropped a few thousand. Now all I had to do was give up my job, my car, every single person I knew, and I could sneak off to a retirement measured in glorious sunsets.

My hands hovered over the keys, trembling.

I’d have no income, no skill set that would be useful in the normal world. I’d be starting over, again, but I could be myself. Sean Oester had dummied my identification when I came to work for him, saying that allowing a vampire to know your true name was to give him control over you. For a girl living on the street because it was better than any home she’d had, the idea that I could deny someone else control was beyond tempting. It sounded like salvation.

Sean had given me a chance after seeing me being chased by the cops on a borrowed motorbike. I’d lost the cops, but a minute after I’d stopped Sean had pulled up, saying he could teach me how to drive so nobody could ever catch me. Months of instruction and games of pursuit later, and even he couldn’t keep up with me. He was the only runner I’d ever seen walk away from the job in roughly the same shape he’d arrived in. I don’t think he even planned it.

I’d rolled in, the last run of the night, to find him standing in the middle of the garage, staring down at his keys. Lost in the middle of the business he’d built from the ground up with old Terry Innsbruck. Terry had been dead almost five years after kissing a concrete barrier at full speed. Two weeks after I found him pensively impersonating a statue, Sean sold out. Two days after that he’d motored out of state, afraid that if he stayed he’d be drawn back in.

I’d resented him for a year after he left, blaming him for various couriers falling apart. Blaming him for my loneliness. We hadn’t been lovers, but we were friends, and he’d been proud of me. When he left, I’d fallen a peg. I followed his rules and stayed alive, but it wasn’t as fun without him there, and eventually I understood. You can’t build a life when you’re running, and running isn’t much of a life.

My watch beeped, a five-minute warning for my hair. I dropped my head into my hands, the plastic bag crinkling, the dye warm between my fingers. I was afraid to go, afraid to leave behind the safety of the rituals and intermittent thrills of running. I didn’t have any true friends, hadn’t had a real relationship—I scowled and instructed my brain to erase the image of the man in the hallway—in years. God, I spent more time with vampires than humans. I’d told myself that I kept myself at a distance because that was the safe thing to do, but it was because I’d never found anyone who seemed willing to put up with a vampire courier. Most of the world considered us half-mad at best, and the few pickup lines sent my way were invitations to do seriously freaky things in bed. It was almost enough to make a girl feel like she didn’t matter—didn’t exist—outside of her job.

And that decided it. It wouldn’t be hard to leave because I wasn’t leaving anything important behind. I hammered out a terse response to the Realtor, asking her to rush through the steps necessary to close, and had a minor heart palpitation when I transferred funds to her account for earnest money. Buying the plane ticket took a few minutes more, and I felt a bright glow of satisfaction when I printed and stowed the ticket alongside my real identification and passport.

I would finally be able to be myself.

***

I leaned down, stretching my left arm out under the table and pouring half the shot of tequila over my sleeve, rubbing it in with the bottom of the glass. I looked around, but nobody was focused on me. A couple of fake cowboys postured up on the other side of the chipped dance floor, drawing everybody’s attention. Honkytonk bars.

The music was bad, the bar surrounded by the hunched backs and loud laughter of locals. This close to the blood lounges the clientele leaned heavily toward low-ranking members of the fanged and their groupies. There were also a number of human movers and shakers—the front men for contractors, security firms, shipping companies, any outfit looking to land a juicy vampire contract. They waited here, five minutes from the lounges, all real nerves and false confidence, waiting to be summoned. The salesmen and their desperate prowling almost freaked me out more than the skittering undead energy. But bars were good places to find crowds, and bumping through crowds was the best way to pick up a jumble of scents, which was the base of my camo.

I casually switched the glass to my other hand, and then started.
He
was staring at me, chin down, expression unreadable in the shadows behind the loudest of the arguing cowboys. I stood jerkily, wrapping my bag over my shoulder and dropping the glass on the table. I hadn’t expected to see him again after he’d kissed me senseless, certainly not an hour after sunset the following night. What was he doing on the bad side of town? Slumming? Certainly not looking for me. I fit in like a strawberry in a bowl of peas. Maybe he was a closet line-dancer.

And how did he even recognize me? I’d traded my black coat for a green one, my makeup was different, a pale powdered mask and cherry lips, and even in the cowboy bar there were close to a dozen fake couriers, made up and kitted out like me. I slipped behind a group of brawny construction workers while yanking my black knit cap down over my now-flaming red hair. A couple ground against each other alongside a trophy hunter video game, and I picked up my pace, aiming for the back door. Maybe he’d get distracted by an old friend. Or trip and fall. Or get abducted by aliens.

“It’s so nice to see you again,
Mary
,” my once-upon-a-time pretend boyfriend said from directly behind me. So he’d given me the cold shoulder and then asked about me after I left. Passive-aggressive much?

I stopped, turned and gave him a stony glare, which he apparently took for an invitation. He moved in until I had to back up to the wall to avoid touching him. For some reason the idea of dragging his scent around town didn’t sit well.

“Yes. Lovely night, isn’t it?” I looked over his shoulder, keeping my face blank even though the thought that he had been looking for me, coupled with how close he was, sent heat coiling through my body.

“This doesn’t seem like your kind of place,” he said. “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable downtown?” Like I wasn’t good enough for a rinky-dink shitkicker bar?

“Unlike you with your Tony Lamas and blinding belt buckle?” I looked him up and down, trying not to linger on the ways his thighs stretched his flat-front slacks, or the smooth rounded muscles of his shoulders. “Oh, wait. You don’t look like you belong either. Awful pot and kettle there.”

“Have dinner with me,” he said quietly. I blinked, surprised into staring up into those rich, brown eyes. He almost looked sincere, but the glimmer of good humor lighting his face set off all kinds of warning bells.

“Sorry. I need to be somewhere else.”

He was like the drunken midnight-sun skydives I used to do: a bold, beautiful, very bad idea. It had been so long since I’d done anything fun. But in three weeks, two days and fourteen hours I would be waking up in a dream. Warm air, tradewind breeze, sand, surf and stiff drinks with paper umbrellas. This was the wrong time to get involved with a man, no matter how talented his mouth was.

“Alright,” he said. “Where would you like to go? Copenhagen? Melbourne?” I raised my eyebrows, anger replacing all the other feelings he inspired. Brushing me off after that kiss wasn’t bad enough? Now he wanted to bribe me into further humiliation?

“What’s your name?” I looked away when he brightened at the question, as if it
mattered
that I had asked.

“Malcolm.”

“Malcolm, do you know what they say about the kind of girl who gives herself away for flash and trinkets?” I asked, setting my jaw as his cool, clean—fiendishly tempting—scent surrounded me. “She’s not worth having.” I held his gaze.

Behind him, a man with a gut hanging out of a large, orange T-shirt ran his hand over his mouth as he stared at me, apparently thinking I was a costumed working girl negotiating a deal in the back hall. Not unusual for this kind of bar, and I was a working girl, but not that kind. I raised my voice for my observer’s benefit. “How many times do I have to tell you that I am not fucking interested?” Orangy’s eyes went wide before they snapped toward the nearest television screen.

“You could say it many times.” He spoke quietly, decidedly not playing along. “But I don’t think I would believe you.” I glowered and crossed my arms over my scuffed down coat, making myself as small as possible. He glanced at my wet sleeve and rocked back on his heels, probably afraid of messing up his five-hundred-dollar sweater.

“I’m sorry if I offended you,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Let’s start over. Can I buy you a drink, or will you just pour it on yourself?”

“Alas.” I peeked around him to see if I had enough room to make a break for the front door. “I have a drinking problem. Can’t get the shot glass all the way to my mouth.”

I regretted mentioning my mouth since he was now staring at it, looking like he’d recently put serious time into contriving a list of wicked ideas for it. Why couldn’t I find a normal, super-handsome guy? Or a regular-looking guy who was thoughtful and didn’t think he needed to buy me off? Or an ugly guy who would always be kind? A sigh escaped before I could stop it.

“What are you thinking about?” His voice softened, and my body threatened to melt along with it. Which meant it was time to get moving. I slipped my hand into my back pocket, wondering how far he’d let me push him.

“I’m wondering which you’d prefer.” I lowered my voice, shifting closer to him. His eyebrows drew slightly together, as though my not yelling at him was perplexing.
Cute.
I raised my hand and showed him the little silver canister I always carried. “Mace, or me screaming until a bouncer comes over and kicks your ass. They’re probably all tired of cowboy cock fights and wouldn’t mind helping out a lady in distress.”

I braced myself for the “you’re no lady” comeback, but instead he tapped a finger against his lips. I narrowed my eyes.

“I’m thinking,” he said. I flicked the release on the spray. He smiled—that dimple mocking me—gave a curiously formal bow and walked away. I scowled at the women who turned to look at him as he slipped into the denim-clad crowd.

“Le sigh,”
I muttered. I settled my bag against my hip. It was time to get to work.

***

Three weeks, two days and thirteen hours, and I would be done with working through endless, below-zero nights for McHenry the Doughboy, putting my neck on the line during every damn job I ran and having to stand in a foyer for a half hour while snow melted down the back of my calf. Not that I was counting. The Realtor had texted to say that our offer had been accepted, and I was about to become a resident of the west coast of Oahu. She’d even contracted movers for me. Normally, I paid my own way, but I had a vague idea of the commission she was making.

I swept the toe of my boot back and forth through a gritty puddle of melted water. I was on an early night call at a house I wasn’t familiar with and, if the customer didn’t hurry up, I was going to be late for my scheduled stops. I wasn’t a fan of unknown places, but beachfront homes didn’t furnish themselves.

Classical piano music played loudly somewhere upstairs, almost drowning out the irregular smacks and muffled cries of someone getting worked over. Definitely female, probably human. Some vamp chew toy too dependent on the bite to walk away from a degrading situation. Humans are funny like that, walking themselves straight into cages without bars. At least this pretty crash-test dummy—they were unfailingly beautiful, the humans vampires consorted with—was receiving some pleasure, however fleeting. I’d seen humans in the throes of a bite, and the unfettered ecstasy didn’t look like the sort of thing you could ignore one day at a time. Psychologists had opened clinics to treat feeders, but instead of twelve steps there was only one: stay the hell away from vampires. So you could either be trapped at the feet of a vampire, or locked away from them for the rest of your life. Either way, you were handing control to someone else.

My mom sold herself to my dad for a shitty life without even occasional good times. He wasn’t a vampire, just an asshole. For a while, I followed her pattern, running away from home straight into a pair of arms that could never figure out whether to hit me or hold me. It had taken me the better part of a year to build up the courage to walk out the door. But after I did, nothing could have made me go back.

A door opened above me and the music shut off. The woman went quiet as well. Maybe cleaning up. Maybe passed out. Maybe worse. I knew better than to ask, and if I focused hard enough on breathing steadily I could hold my own fist-filled memories at bay. I saw a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye, a vamp moving through the shadows above me. I didn’t look up, didn’t react. It’s not a good idea to peer into the shadows of a sucker’s house, just like it isn’t a good idea to look them in the eye. All those rumors about vampires, all of them, are true. But they aren’t universal. Some vamps are lethally strong, others are capable of worming into human minds or extracting blood without breaking through the skin. I wouldn’t be shocked to see one turn into a bat and fly out the window.

Another sucker slipped up behind me, silent and cold, emitting the low, steady hum of undead energy. The first vamp manifested out of the shadows at the top of the stairs, a sickly-slim figure, and the one behind me moved closer. My heartbeat did a giddy-up and the back of my neck prickled, but I stayed in place. I could probably get the Mace out in time to do some damage if they moved on me. Mace was effective on humans, but devastating to vampires, with their preternatural senses.