Lost Angeles (2 page)

“I could have asked if you fell from heaven…”

When I spin around, Fig Leaf is there, the strap of my computer case already slung over his shoulder, and I don’t even have the grace to wonder where he found it. Behind the TV probably, or in the bathtub. It hardly matters, considering I’m not even sure where
I
am or how I got here or who I was with. Or who the hell
he
is, slapping me awake and throwing clothes at me like he’s my fucking
dad
.

It’s happening again.

Fig Leaf stares at me with no little bit of concern. “You okay, kid?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

Except, I’m not; I’m one hyperventilation bag away from a complete freak-out, and he seems to realize it a second later. Strong hands come up, smooth palms meeting the bare skin of my jaw. He starts nodding and keeps at it until I follow suit. The words tumble out of him, chased by thoughts that are clear as those damn eyes of his.

“It’s all right, kid.”
Take a breath.
“I’ve got you now.”
I can’t change the past.
“It’s going to be fine.”
But we’ll see about the future.
“Okay?”
Together
.

“Okay,” I find myself repeating. A shiver runs down my spine, but it seems to take all the angst and trepidation with it. I don’t know what kind of motivational mojo Fig Leaf is packing, but whatever it is, it’s powerful stuff.

“Okay. Great. Awesome. Fabulous. Now, we need to get the fuck outta here.” One of those capable hands curls around my bicep and hauls me toward the door before I’ve even managed to put my shoes on. Apparently I’m out of time, because the next second he slips a smooth gold disk into the palm of my hand with a curt, “Hold onto this for me, will ya, kid?”

I stare down at the coin settled in the dip of my hand. It’s like some sort of magic trick prop, the smooth surface manifesting the image of a bird: a dove maybe, or something similar. No time to study it, because Fig Leaf drags me toward the exit like so much baggage. He pauses only long enough to close his other hand around the knob before he wrenches it open—

And draws up short because another man’s standing there.

“Jackson,” the newcomer murmurs, betraying not a speck of surprise.

Fig Leaf tightens down on everything until I can practically feel his butthole pucker. Bachelor Number Two behind Door Number One has eyes so dark that I can’t even distinguish between the pupils and irises. Black hair falls in gentle waves to his shoulders, so that even the ultra-clean lines of his suit feel the tiniest bit Old World. The leather gloves, though, they’re the same bright red as Dorothy’s ruby slippers and twice as out of place in the Los Angeles heat. The whole effect weirds me out a little, raising the hairs on my arms and sending a tiny chill racing down my spine.

“Dickhead,” my chaperon fires back at him. “Perfect timing, as usual.”

“Still the epitome of class, I see. It’s been a long time, old friend.”

“I’m not your friend. Now, move.”

I glance between the two of them, feeling like the filling in some kind of hangover sandwich. “Of course you know each other. Of course you do. Am I being punked?”

Both men ignore me in favor of glaring holes into one another.

“How long
has
it been, Jackson?” Red Gloves arches one black brow. “Couple of decades, at least. You must be feeling a bit
old
these days.”

My blue-eyed companion—the man named Jackson—shoots a glance my way, like he's checking to see if I’m paying attention. He doesn’t look old to me. There isn’t a stray white hair on his head, not a single wrinkle on his face beyond a few laugh lines at the corners of his mouth. Forty, tops.

He tightens his grasp on my arm, tugging me to his side “You’re too late.”

Those dark eyes are deadly calm when Red Gloves says, “She’s mine.”

“Not anymore.” Jackson’s grasp slides down to my wrist, and he raises my hand to eye level to display my fingers still clamped down on the gold coin.

I don’t know what it means, but my eyes are drawn to the little tic of a muscle in the other man’s jaw. He stares impassively at my fist, but the tension is palpable.

“I could take her alive,” Red Gloves says.

“Yes, but then you’d have to
take her
,” Jackson shoots back. “And no fight between us has ever ended well for you.”

“Whoa, whoa!” I blurt out. “Nobody’s fighting anyone!”

“Shut up,” Jackson barks.

Panic bubbles up in my chest. I don’t know either of these men. My blue-eyed kidnapper seems to know a few things about me, but whatever squishy feelings I was entertaining back on the bed fly right out the window in the face of the strange, electric intensity crackling between the two of them.

Jackson returns his attention to the other man. “Unless you want to wipe the slate clean?”

He uses my hand to offer the coin to Red Gloves, peeling back my curled fingers to expose the golden disk. I swallow a little thickly, because I get the feeling that I’m witnessing something huge here. Something epic. Something earth-shattering.

Something biblical.

Red Gloves’s stoic expression betrays nothing in the way of emotion. It’s not until I see him swallow, until I actually witness the slow bobbing motion of his Adam’s apple that I realize something.

He’s afraid
.

“Yeah,” Jackson says with a smug smile as he closes my fingers again. “That’s what I thought.”

Coward
.

He doesn’t speak the word out loud, but I can hear it all the same, a tiny unspoken
thing
that pings between them.

Challenge
not
accepted
.

Red Gloves draws himself up and fixes Jackson with a stony stare, pride ruffling all his feathers. “Your time is coming, sooner rather than later. And when you’re gone—”

“Whatever, asshole.” Jackson cuts him off, hauling me around the other man as if hell is on his heels. “Better luck next time. Call me when you find your balls.”

Then I have two options: I can either follow him or get dragged like a recalcitrant cat on a leash. It takes a few steps on sharp pebbles to register the fact that I’m still barefoot. Hopping along behind Jackson, I manage to get one ballet flat on, and good thing too, because the entire parking lot is nothing but gravel and broken glass. I shove my other foot into the second shoe, but the exercise was enough to leave me slightly winded when I demand, “Who are you?”

“Consider me your guardian angel, kid.”

“What does that make
him
?” I jerk a thumb at the man standing in the hotel room doorway.

“The goddamn devil,” Jackson answers bitterly, leading me toward a gunmetal-grey Audi parked next to the glittering swimming pool.

It’s a joke, but a really bad one. Vampires might be mainstream now—amazing what a couple hundred years and scientific proof that they’re simply one rung up the evolutionary ladder can do—but that doesn’t mean that people aren’t looking over their collective, fragile,
human
shoulders and wondering
what’s next?

“Yeah, right,” I scoff as I give him the once-over. “He was
way
more polite than you, and you swear too much for an angel.”

“You talk too much for a woman.”

“Oh, my bad, are the
slutty
ones usually quieter?” I can’t help the small, vengeful grin that hits my face.

Jackson doesn’t answer, just opens the door of the Audi and shoves me inside so abruptly that I almost bang my head on the roof. He drops the computer case into my lap, and I hug it to my chest. Slamming the door closed behind me, he marches around to the driver’s side and plops into the seat next to mine. The moment he’s in, he leans back against the dark leather, taking a moment to breathe.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to talk to strangers?” Jackson asks on the exhale as he starts the engine, shifts into reverse, and backs out of the parking space.

“Well, yeah,” I say, tightening my arms around the laptop case, “but they left out the part where a strange man breaks
into
my hotel room, demands that I put
on
my clothes, then offers to drive me to my preferred destination. You’re doing this whole kidnapping thing a little ass-backwards, you know, but I guess I’m glad you sorta super-suck at it?”

“He sorta super-sucks at everything,” pipes a cheerful voice from the backseat. A second later, a hand appears in front of my face holding a colorfully packaged sucker. “Blow Pop?”

I reach for the candy, but Jackson slaps it out of my hand before I even have the chance to get the wrapper off.

I shoot him a slightly boggled glare. “Sonovabiscuit, Fig Leaf, and what the hell?”

“Candy from strangers,” is all he says, concentrating on the road.

“
Fig Leaf?!
” The voice manifests between us as a lot of neon-orange hair and clear, silver eyes. The girl hanging over my seat looks like a twelve-year-old Japanese anime character come to life, from the Union Jack tank dress to her six-inch platform boots. “Well, that’s a new one,” she giggles, leaning in until I catch whiffs of cherry from her sucker. “This boy’s about as far from Adam as it gets. Jax here wouldn’t be caught
dead
wearing a leaf unless it had a designer label on it. And if there was some post-apocalyptic deep-woods action happening, he’d be the fucktard folding poison sumac over his balls—”

Jackson lifts his hand from the gearshift long enough to put one big palm on her face and shove her rather unceremoniously back into her seat. Classic big brother maneuver, except they don’t look related. He flicks a quick glance at me, then refocuses his eyes on the road.

“Why don’t you take a nap or something?” Then he tacks on, “Give your mouth a rest.”

All I can really say at this point is, “Worst. Guardian Angel.
Ever
.”

It’s probably a good thing we’re all talking theoretical theology anyway, because if he really was my guardian angel, I would have earned myself a lightning strike from the heavens for that one. Spinning around in my seat, I disregard his annoyed glare, holding a hand out to the girl whose chunky boots are rapping a sharp staccato against my chair. “Hi, I’m Lo—”

But just like with the Blow Pop, Jackson’s hand swats mine away, grabbing me by the wrist and tossing my own limb back at me like my fist is a damn baseball. “Turn around and sit down.”

“Better listen to Figgy, Lo,” says the girl in the backseat. “He’s using his serious voice.”

“Shut your head, Tam,” Jackson tells her. “And no hanky-panky in the Audi. I just had it detailed.”

“My
whole
head?” she asks.

“The
whole
Audi?” I add.

“Jesus fucking Christ.” He rakes a hand through his hair, breaking the gel shell in his frustration. “God save me from smart-assed women.”

Tam snorts. “Pffft. Keep dreaming.”

“If only this
were
a dream,” he mutters under his breath, “then maybe we could all wake up.”

The moment those words fall out of his mouth, I can’t help but feel a little something for Jackson, even if I don’t know him at all. That sympathy, empathy,
whatever
carries over to Tam, because we both go completely silent at the exact same moment, the smiles wiped from our faces.

“Sorry,” I mutter, turning around in my seat, facing forward and staring out the windshield.

“Don’t mind him,” Tam chirps over my shoulder, her chin digging into the seat back. “He hasn’t gotten laid in a
really
long time.”

“Seriously?!” Jackson snaps at her, but she only leans forward a little more, inhaling deeply and breathing out a little expletive.

“Phew, you
reek
of Benny, Lo.”

I frown at the name, then I get a flash of—
Hi, I’m Benicio
—but she’s still yapping away.

“Gross, Lo, it smells like he rolled all over you.”

“He did.” The words rumble out of Jackson. “Then he left her there for
you know who
to find.”

“Voldemort?” Not what I’d planned to say, but it’s like I can’t help myself right now. Like being a smartass is my last defense against all the things that I don’t really want to think about. Against all the
weird
that’s happening at this very moment.

“The Dark Lord?” Tam sputters out. “Close enough!”

Jackson darts a glance in the rearview, conveying some silent message to his friend that kills the conversation and leaves another trailing silence in its wake. When he shifts his attention to the front window again, the tension slowly eases its way out of his shoulders.

“Thank you,” I say, and he turns those crazy-blue eyes toward me for a second. “I think.” Then I pause, frowning a little. “Unless this really
is
a kidnapping…”

Jackson heaves a beleaguered sigh and rolls his eyes. “Nobody’s kidnapping you, kid.”

“Well, then. I guess the ‘thank you’ still stands.” I offer up a reconciliatory smile and offer my hand to him in truce. He stares at it grimly for a moment before transferring his scrutiny to my face. “C’mon, Fig Leaf, I can wait you out. I could do this
all day.”

He snorts through his nose, but he takes his hand off the wheel long enough to grasp mine. Warm and solid and reassuring, on the scale of handshakes, it’s at least a nine-point-five. When he finally lets go, that hand ends up on his knee instead of the steering wheel.