Falling from the Light (The Night Runner Series Book 3) (13 page)

“She’s on the roof, with the other humans. She needs a family to…” He narrowed his eyes as he searched for the word. “Thrive.” He nodded to himself, then pulled a magazine out from a stack. It was a travel rag, with a bright glacial lake on the cover. Homesickness hit me like a dart to the soft belly. Hiding out in Alaska would be fun. It would also give me the opportunity to tell my employer I wasn’t dead and touch base with my mom. She would have been notified of my missing-presumed-dead status, but there’d been no pings on my email, and no obituary. No mention of a funeral in the papers from home. Maybe she’d been disappointed, sacrificing herself to vampires to raise me, only to have me lose myself while working for them.

If I closed my eyes, I could still remember her slipping into the apartment. Leaning over me and smoothing my hair away from my face as I pretended to be asleep. She smelled of cold and antibacterial ointment, sometimes like gin if one of them had bought her a drink. I took a long breath and let it out slowly. Now who was being all sad and hopeless?

“I’ll take you there sometime if you want,” I said, tapping the picture. “Maybe not that exact place, but to a glacier-fed lake. Do the hopeless like to go hiking?”

A foxfire sheen rolled through his eyes before disappearing, but the feeling he emitted wasn’t hostility. It was thin, bitter. He didn’t believe me.

“Don’t answer too fast,” I said, heading for the door. “Take a few days to think it over. I expect to hear your full fantasy. The wildlife you want to see. The berries you want to pick. Every sordid detail.”

“You are generous, mistress,” he said, his voice flat.

“Yep, that’s me. The generous mistress.” I chewed on my lip. He was grieving. In a melodramatic way, but he was grieving. And clearly having trouble adjusting. Surely another vampire could help him. They’d all had to deal with loss, over and over the longer they existed. Maybe he needed to talk it through. I’d once overheard a counselor talking about how most of his patients simply wanted someone to
listen
. But it wasn’t like Thurston sat around waiting for someone to meet his eye so he could unroll his tongue like an unwelcome red carpet.

“You can get over this, Thurston. You’re not hopeless. Far from it. You have more power and…greater potential than you did when you were human.” I raised a hand when he stood. “Don’t say anything right now. But think about what it means, what it could mean.”

I took my time climbing the stairs. The hotel felt like an asylum, a riot of vampire energy compartmentalized by the heavy walls and doors, by the division between human and vampire spaces. Even though it was still hot, heat lingering in the air and wafting off the stone and metal, outside was still refreshing.

The pool was covered with a white plastic sheet, and that was weighed down by a layer of mud. It must have rained here after the dust had blown through. A few humans, including Mickey, had circled up to a round table covered in candles. Across the deck, a couple of men hosed off the rest of the chairs. It was the first imprecise, dirty thing I’d seen at Tenth World.

Mickey waved, and I waved back before joining her. She needed a hive, a family, even if nobody was related. Or, in this case, even if it was composed of brand-new acquaintances. I felt a little guilty. The trip hadn’t turned out how she’d wanted it.

“Hey.” I perched on the arm of her chair and she wrapped a thin arm around me and laid her head on my shoulder.

“Have you heard the news?” she asked.

“About what?” I asked, startled. I’d heard all kinds of news, but wasn’t sure what might have trickled up to her.

“Another intrusion,” one of the guys said. Shay—Mickey’s diver—sat beside him, messing with his cuticles. A line of empty glasses fanned out on the table beside him. “A foreign vampire approached two of the girls while they were at lunch.”

“During the day?” I asked.

“At the mall. They said he was cocky. Walked right up and propositioned them. Luckily his glamour was weak.”

“He could have been thrown out into the sun,” Mickey whispered.

“I think there are laws against that, even here,” I said. “Did anyone recognize him?”

“Judging by the accent, he was part of that sect that got kicked out of Quebec.” The woman who answered was blonde, with darker brows and thick, dark eyelashes. Small white scars peeked out from beneath billowing white sleeves. She was smooth and vibrant, but carried herself with the assurance of an older woman.

“What do they think they’re doing?”

“They don’t understand that we aren’t available at their whim.” Shay sighed.

“Why don’t they come here?” I asked. There had been a couple of polite notices in the hotel room advising that drinking from unregulated feeders was a no-no in Arizona. Chev didn’t want her guests breaking the law outside her reservation and, if memory served, Arizona wasn’t known for its leniency. But why bother soliciting outside of the resort? Guest Services seemed pretty damn accommodating.

“Tenth World is above their price range,” the blonde said, earning a few smug laughs.

Talk turned to the amenities and luxuries handed to them, to how much better things were here than other places they’d worked. I caught Mickey’s eye and tilted my head toward the door. We tumbled off the chair in opposite directions, then circled around to each other.

“She’s Chev’s companion,” Micky whispered, one hand half covering her mouth as she pointed to the blonde. “Laura. She’s almost sixty. Can you believe it?”

I wouldn’t have pegged her at more than thirty-five, a damn good thirty-five at that. “Impressive.”

“How old are you really? Fifty?” She looked me up and down with mock seriousness.

“Eighty. When I met Mal, my boobs hung down to my knees.”

“Some guys are ass men, some are low boob men.”

I snickered, then cleared my throat and pushed her into the stairwell. “Look, things are about to get gnarly around here. I’m going to work tomorrow, but then we’re taking off. Let’s pack tonight. We’ll head for Montana—”

“Can we stop at Disneyland?”

“Uh, sure.”

“And Las Vegas?”

I pulled up the map in my head. “Yeah, that’s doable. Might as well engage in some sanctioned debauchery after you make all your childhood fantasies come true.”

“Yes!” She raised a triumphant fist. “What about Thurston?”

“Dr. Downer?”

“What downer? He’s always smiling. Such a funny guy. I think we should bring him with us.”

Thurston at Disneyland. I would actually pay to see that.

“
Y
ou’re early
,” Lil barked.

I threw my hands out. “I’m on time!”

“HR emailed. Said they weren’t changing your shift for two weeks, so now you’re early.” She wore a cream-colored uniform shirt that brought out the jaundiced tone of her skin.

“Well, if you don’t have any work to be done…” I turned as if to leave, and smiled to myself when she grumbled.

“Get your scrawny ass in here.”

“So, what’s on the agenda today? More sweet videos?” I’d be able to clock out by three, which would give me enough time to launch a minor assault on the key-card-guarded labs, say good-bye to Mal, and drive off before the sun set. Not quite as dramatic as driving off into the sunset, but survival was more important than making a sweet scene.

“You were supposed to ride with Hernandez but he called in sick.”

“I hope he feels better.”

“There’s nothing wrong with him. He just don’t want to drive. Probably because he gets lost and the guys make fun of him. Or he loses the van in a parking lot and I make fun of him. D should cover for him, but—” She raised her voice a couple of decibels, turning all nearby heads. “He went and got himself a
U
and an
I
to add to that
D
.”

“What kind of a truck is it?” I asked. “Does it require a commercial driver license?”

“It’s a Savana.”

Standard cargo van. That was doable, and way better than safety videos. “How many drops?”

“One at the airport, one to FedEx.” She checked her clipboard. “Seven to locals.”

“Any priorities or rush status? Anything refrigerated, fragile, or perishable?”

“Yes, maybe, and no.” Lil stuck a hand on her bony hips, assessing me with a squint. “You do this kind of work before?”

“Little bit.”

“Well, I can’t have you out there alone on your second day on the job.”

“What am I going to do here, Lil?” I smiled. I couldn’t help it. “Your crew’s got the floor covered. Even if a truck comes, you don’t have another forklift. Send me out on the road. What could go wrong?”

She snorted. “Everything.”

“Let me rephrase, then. Could I possibly do worse than Hernandez?”

She screwed her mouth up, then snorted productively. “Fine, but only ’cause I don’t want to have to explain to the sales jackasses in the ivory tower why they’re getting calls from spa docs who ran out of placenta cream to rub on their customers’ faces at a hundred bucks a pop.”

“That is repulsive.”

“Rich people can afford to be disgusting.” She looked me up and down, then gestured with the clipboard. “Come on, then. Let’s get you on the road before I come to my senses.”

I followed her to a neat stack of plastic crates and boxes at the edge of the loading bay, then hopped to the ground. The van was brown and scuffed. Lil fished a set of keys from her pocket and handed them to me, along with a clipboard that had been sitting on the boxes. It felt proper in my hands, fitting. A few days of doing nothing and even a milk run attached to a low hourly wage that I wouldn’t be around to collect was appealing.

I tapped the first address into my phone and slid the map around until I could place it, then repeated the process for the second address.

“What’re you doing?” Lil asked.

“Setting up a route to minimize time on the road.” Traffic around Phoenix had a way of making itself inefficient. I glanced up after I’d finished mentally arranging the drop-offs in a promising order. Lil was grinning at me.

“You might just do all right here, girl.” She yelled back over her shoulder, “D, come help get the newbie loaded up.”

The front of the van was hot and stale, and the odor of old food hung around like the ghosts of burgers past.

“I’ll be back before closing time.”

“You better be, or I’m reporting you to highway patrol.”

“This isn’t a ploy to steal the placenta cream, Lil.”

Bodyguard Derrick was reclined in his SUV when I rounded the building, his ball cap pulled low. Sleeping, dead from heat, or simply really, really bored. I blew him a kiss as I barreled out of the parking lot, laughing when he spun out trying to catch up. Then I dialed Mickey, who answered with a muffled sound that was barely words, let alone a greeting.

“Hey, any chance you can help me out for a couple of hours?”

A yawn, and the sound of sheets sliding around. Her packing had taken longer than mine, on account of how she’d apparently spent every minute I’d been away shopping. “
Sí. Claro
.”

“Can one of your pool buddies drive you to the convenience store at the end of vampire lane?”

“Somebody is always up.”

“I’ll be there in thirty minutes. Bring scissors and brown packing tape.”

“Brown scissors. Tapping cake. Got it.” She hung up.

I glanced in the rearview mirror, at the boxes shivering benignly as I drove over a speed bump. I could just make out the beginning of a cursive letter
R
on the side of one box.

Someone at Goya knew that their product wasn’t merely fast-drying with a pleasant tingling sensation and, as Kevin had said, products weren’t developed unless someone was willing to pay for them. Bronson wanted more information. If any of the places that had ordered Radia didn’t look to be on the up-and-up, I’d be happy to turn the names and addresses over to him.

“
S
o what do I do
?” Mickey asked, gulping from a giant cup of coffee. I scowled when a drop fell onto her shirt, mostly because it was my shirt.

“Slice the tape open and, if there’s any Radia inside, note the amount and address here.” I handed her a clean sheet of paper and the clipboard. “And why are you wearing my clothes? You packed four suitcases yesterday.”

“Yeah.” She yawned, then set down the board and cup and rubbed at her cheeks. “That is the problem. All of my clothes were packed and you called and I thought it was an emergency, that you had kidnapped someone and we had a body to dispose of.”

“You thought that helping me dispose of a body was more important that wearing your own underwear? Awwww.” I pulled her into a hug and whispered, “You’re the sweetest.”

“I’m not wearing your underwear,” she whispered back. “I’m wearing the boxer briefs that Thurston wouldn’t wear. Do you know that he still refuses—”

“Okay, that’s enough sharing for today.” I crawled back into the front seat.

“You’re a prude.”

“He’s practically my employee. I need to respect his privacy. There are laws about that sort of thing.”

The first two drops were simple. Clinics in medical office towers where I had to use freight elevators. With the logo’d shirt, nobody questioned me and hardly anyone even gave me a second glance. Not that they should. I was legit. Using a fake name, working under false pretenses, and about to split town, but otherwise legit. The third drop was a spa where a woman with lips so plump that I winced each time she spoke gushed about her delivery of bee venom products.

“Have you ever used them?” she asked, holding a box like it was the Holy Grail.

“I’ve been stung. When I was seven, the bedroom window didn’t close all the way, and a bee came through and burrowed into my blanket. Got me good on the back of the knee.” The look she gave me implied I wasn’t saying the right words. “It was very invigorating.”

“That’s the idea,” she said tartly as she shoved the signature sheet at me. I’d had vampire customers who were easier to relate to.

“Got them all,” Mickey said as I climbed into the van. She shot a paper airplane over the seat. I opened it and frowned at her notes.

“Only two orders with Radia?”

“The doctor in Peoria ordered a bunch of stuff other than the vials. The spa in Glendale only ordered Radia. Two cases.”

“Probably an organic place that doesn’t use the harsher stuff. It’s close, though, so let’s hit that first.” Night was still hours away but, if Mal was right and Abel was going to be showing up at Tenth World tonight, I wanted to be a hundred miles up the road before he was able to even leave his hidey-hole.

My phone directed me on and off major roads and around startlingly bright golf courses. We turned down a wide boulevard lined with flowering bushes and pale two-story buildings. The large porches were shaded and I was glad as I stepped out into the noon heat. Mickey leaned out the window as I unloaded the delivery.

“Do you smell that?” she asked, pushing up on her arms until she was halfway out the window. “There has to be a restaurant around her somewhere. I smell French fries and rosemary.”

“All I smell is hot.” I sneezed as I shut the door. “And dust. I don’t think I’m cut out for the desert.”

“And maybe bacon.” She inhaled deeply, then sank down to rest her head on folded arms. “I don’t think that humans were meant to live in places without water. Maybe you are allergic to low survival odds.”

“Isn’t everybody allergic to low survival odds? In the end, I mean.” I hefted the box onto my hip and headed for the door. “Let’s grab lunch after this. Hopefully we can find a place that serves chilled drinks and bacon.”

“Bloody Marys with iced bacon cubes.”

I took a deep breath and did everything in my power not to think of a cold piece of bacon melting inside of my mouth. Thankfully the door was locked, giving me a moment to get my gag reflex under control. I rang the bell and the ingrained routine of the delivery overcame my nausea. Time to be professional.

The seconds ticked past. This was one of those really prestigious spas—you could probably get a two-hundred-dollar massage along with your placenta face cream—that didn’t have a real sign, just a small business name placard below the street number. The places in Anchorage this discreet offered happy endings and moved every couple of months.

The dead bolt clanked and the handle jiggled for a moment before the door opened.

“Hi there. I’ve got a delivery from Goya.”

The woman on the other side of the door was several inches shorter than me. She wore a short-sleeved black sweater, red capris, and black ballet flats. A white scarf was tied smartly around her neck. The cuteness was dulled by her bored expression.

“Where do you want these?”

“There is fine.” She gestured toward a knobby mahogany desk in the room adjacent to the vestibule. The place was spotless and uncluttered.

“Sign here, please.” I tore the sheet off the crate and offered it to her. She shook her head, then jerked her chin toward the hallway.

“Someone down there has to sign?”

She nodded and crossed her arms. Her hands closed around her elbows. The building was quiet. There was no soothing music piped in so softly you’d think it was floating inside the ambient oxygen molecules. My steps slowed. There was nobody to take shoes and jackets and wrap you in plush robes and oversize slippers. There were no signs of life.

“I think I forgot your last box in the van,” I said, sidestepping toward the door. As I passed the girl I caught the acrid bite of unchecked body odor. Nobody who dressed like that and worked in a place like this would ignore hygiene. Not if she had any control over her situation. My head started to buzz. The place was wrong.

I reached for the door, then leaped back when it slammed shut.

“Fuck.” I tore my phone out of my bag as a chill rose from beneath the floor, skittering up my legs, and wrapping around my middle. I put my back against the door, dialing with one hand while cranking the doorknob with the other. It was so cold that my skin stuck to the metal, and it didn’t turn at all. The hallway the girl had pointed to was dark. The shades were drawn in the front of the house, dimming it, but there was zero sunlight back there.

The phone rang. Petr would send someone. He could organize on a dime. All he had to do was ping my bodyguard and…

A door creaked open toward the back of the house, and the feel of vampire increased. There must have been a bunch of them, and while they’d been sleeping when I arrived, they were waking now, extending their power. Reaching for me.

The line went dead and I didn’t have to look to tell the phone was kaput. I needed another way out and I needed it fast. A figure emerged from that dark hallway, tall and smooth with the eerie glide of a vampire emulating human motion. I backed into the other room as she stepped into view. Her hair was silver, so long it fell to her waist, and parted down the middle.

I grabbed the chair behind the desk and whipped it at the window. Glass shattered and I dropped the chair and reached through the blinds. If I could get out, I was good. If I could get sunlight in, I was—

She jerked my head back and stared down at me with owlish black eyes.

“Stop.” Her voice was soft, but the sound of it reverberated in my mind, cold, slick, and harsh. Inside my bag, my fingers brushed the pepper spray. It clinked against another hard object. Her eyes narrowed. Then she slammed my head into the windowsill. Light exploded in my head. Somewhere behind me a man yelled, echoing her word.
Stop
.

Too late. My bones gave out, and darkness closed in.