Killing Time (5 page)

All around us, humans were chatting and laughing. Music thumped from the open windows of a car stopped at a red light just down the block. Two girls skipped past us, one of them brushing against me as she hurried to keep up with her twin sister. Smiling, I ducked my head to avoid her balloon sailing past, the thing made to look like an Egyptian pharaoh.

I realized that Koda was watching me, his expression unfathomable as he took in my reaction to the humans around us. When he saw me glance up at him, his gaze tracked over my features, but he said only, “No one seems to notice we’re covered in soot or that we stink of smoke.”

I wasn’t sure if I should be amused by his apparent effort at diplomacy in not mentioning my eyes and ears, or offended that he’d thought it necessary. “It’s a combination of humans ignoring what doesn’t make sense and a little
nothing-to-see-here
effort on my part.”

“Why not stay invisible?”

“It burns too much energy. Besides, a little camouflage goes a long way. To the mortals, you and I are a nondescript couple walking down the street. They can see us, but the odd bits don’t register.”

We went several blocks before he spoke again. “Why are you so determined to talk with Jack?” Koda asked the question like he was curious and genuinely wanted to hear my reasoning.

Thrown, I looked up at him. “You’ll believe me?”

His lips twitched. “Try me.”

I thought about it for a little while, surprised he seemed content to wait for an answer and even more surprised by my own inclination to give him one. “How much about the vampires’ civil war do you know?”

“This is about their in-fighting?” he asked, surprised.

“Only up to a point, but bear with me.”

Koda shrugged. “I know what James has told me. Their Ancients want vampires to remain hidden, relegated to myth, in keeping with a treaty they signed with Rome’s Church centuries ago. Earlier this year, a renegade named Philippe broke away from their Ancients’ dictates and violated the treaty, setting the Vatican’s slayers after all immortals in retaliation. Now Philippe and his lieutenants are going city to city, changing gang members into vampires and setting them loose to kill at will. The Ancients and their seconds-in-command, the Elders, are so busy trying to destroy the psychotic changelings and dodge the slayers’ squads that Philippe is left to pretty much do what he wants.”

“Which is where I come in,” I said, pleased that Koda knew so much. It meant he really was close to the vampires, since they didn’t share information about themselves lightly. “The fae king, Cham Reiden, is fueling Philippe’s anarchy. He’s also supplying him with bodach to deal with opponents like your friends, who are too powerful to annihilate head-on. In exchange, Philippe supplies Reiden and the four lord masters with vampire security. Every one of their castles is guarded by a troop of immortals, with at least double that guarding the king’s.”

Koda’s head whipped toward me, his face darkening.

I held up a hand, silencing what looked like a torrent of angry words. “I can’t get near any of the bastards while they’ve got vampire security. But if I kill Philippe, his followers will abandon the fae altogether since there’s no love lost between the two races, despite their leaders’ business arrangement.”

His jaw muscles working, Koda asked, “How does Jack fit into your plans?”

“He was once loyal to Philippe, so he knows his patterns, where he hangs out, who his closest friends are, what his security arrangements are like. Jack will know the best time and place I can find Philippe and kill him.”

Koda pulled me to a stop, his hands hard on my shoulders. “Then what?”

“Leaderless, the vampires will abandon their posts, leaving the lord masters and the king with only their usual contingent of guards.”

His glittering eyes staring into mine, Koda said in a harsh voice, “So you can kill them too.”

I bared my teeth. “Every last one of them, right up to the king himself.”

“And when they’re all dead?”

I looked away, wresting myself out of Koda’s grip and continuing down the street.

He caught up in a few strides. “What happens after you kill them, Sephti?”

I shoved my hands in my jacket pockets and kept on walking.

Koda swore and pulled me to a stop again. “You’re not planning to survive this, are you? You figure you’ll live to take out the lords, but the only way to get the king is to go berserker and die in the effort.”

I shrugged. “He has better security than the lords do. I can get in and get past them, but once the alarm is raised, getting back out will be impossible.”

“You’re talking about suicide!”

“It’s what I was created for!” Jerking free of Koda’s grip again, I glared up at him. “Reiden, himself, once called me his race’s greatest creation. So isn’t it rich that the last thing they will see is what they, themselves, brought into being? How perfectly ironic to use everything they engineered into me to destroy the lords and king who caused it all to happen. Who did this to my kind and to
me.
”

Koda flinched like I’d burned him. “Does your life have so little value to you?”

Turning my back on him and continuing down the sidewalk, I muttered, “What life?” I felt rather than heard him following, the strength of his outrage palpable from several feet away.

Three blocks later, we entered a huge parking lot packed with cars. Walking to the far side, Koda strode ahead of me, pulling keys out of his jeans pocket and pointing the fob toward a gleaming black-and-chrome four-door pickup truck. He went to the front passenger door like he intended to open it for me, then stopped and turned to face me. Whatever he’d intended to say died on his lips as he saw that I held his knife.

In a soft voice, I said, “Now you understand why it’s so important that I talk with Jack.”

“You’re quite the pickpocket, aren’t you?” Koda shook his head. There was anger in his dark gaze and something else I couldn’t identify, but it set my heart thundering in my chest. “There’s a hole in your plan or else you lied to me.”

“No, the plan is perfect and I told you the truth.”

He lifted a brow. “The fae don’t reside on the mortal plane and you can’t shift. How are you going to get anywhere near them?”

I grinned, triumphant. “Five weeks from now, at midnight on Samhain, what you call Halloween, the walls between the planes will fall. I can slip across then.”

“Leaving you trapped in the fae world when dawn comes.” He barked a humorless laugh. “Ah, that’s right. It doesn’t matter since you don’t plan to survive.”

For some damn reason, I had the urge to apologize. But for what, I had no idea—I’d put this plan together meticulously, long before I’d met Koda. He had no place in it. And as demonstrated by the highrise’s inferno and the weh yetar’s presence, he would be safer the sooner we parted ways. Even if the thought of leaving was strangely repugnant.

Which meant it was definitely time to go.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I slipped the blade through the binding on my left wrist. Even as the keen edge sliced through the soft leather, Koda roared, “No!”

I felt the beginning of a jolt of unfathomable power explode from the bracelet, then Koda’s hand closed over my wrist. The energy flowed up his arm and slammed into him, spinning him around into the side of his truck. His head rocked forward into the passenger window, making a spiderweb of cracks on the glass as blood flowed from his forehead.

I cried out, dropping the knife and reaching for him. Staggering under his weight, I managed to catch him before he collapsed to the ground, barely supporting him against the truck’s shining flank.

“Dammit, Koda,” I whispered, pressing my ear to his chest, alarmed at how weakly his heart beat. “What did you do?”

Maneuvering his limp body so I supported him against my hip, I struggled to open the pickup’s back door. The guy was huge and solid muscle and I thought I’d never get him inside the truck. I managed to lever his rear end against the backseat and sorta tilt him, letting gravity do the rest. Running around, I opened the other back door and caught him under his arms, tugging his inert form across the seat. I winced when his head lolled, leaving a bright red streak that was immediately absorbed by the fine-grained, pale gray leather—the immaculate Koda was going to be incensed when he saw the mess.

I shut the door and jogged back around to the passenger side, tucking up his booted feet before closing him in. Bending to pick up the truck keys he’d dropped, I raced to the driver’s seat and climbed in, only then pausing for breath. The whole thing—Koda’s collapse and my stuffing him in the backseat—had taken only a span of minutes. Between the short timeframe and his having parked on the packed lot’s far side where we were sheltered by enormous SUVs and pickups on jacked-up struts, the entire episode had apparently gone unseen.

I fumbled the keys into the ignition, startled by how badly I was shaking. Leaning my forehead against the steering wheel, I made myself breathe in and out. I’d just begun calming down when I realized I’d left Koda’s huge knife lying on the ground. Cursing, I hustled out of the truck and scurried around to the passenger side, having no trouble finding the blade where I’d dropped it.

I stood over it, staring in shock, as its condition sank in to my befuddled thoughts. Once bright and keen-edged, the knife was now cracked with fissures and striations, its sheen a dull matte gray. When I picked it up, the blade disintegrated, pieces of it flaking off and falling to the parking lot’s blacktop.

“
Churrashme,
” I swore, thinking of how Koda had purposely absorbed the binding’s hideous impact and wondering what it had done to his insides if this was what the knife looked like.

Voices from the lot’s far side shook me from my stupor and I shoved the knife’s pommel in my jacket pocket. Scooting around the truck’s rear bumper, I climbed back into the driver’s seat and got us rolling. Leaning forward, I looked up through the windshield at the pall of black smoke still rising from the blazing highrise Koda and I escaped. A chill raced down my spine at the knowledge that we were mere blocks away from the weh yetar. My gut tightened as I wondered if the thing might even now be advancing on the firefighters battling the inferno. Or if it might be looking for us. For me.

Driving across downtown Dallas, I determinedly avoided thoughts of how badly Koda was hurt. Knowing the best place to hide was in a huge city’s underbelly, in a section where even the humans went to be forgotten, I found just the place I was looking for—a motel that took only cash, rented by the hour and where everyone thrived on anonymity. I was a veteran of places like this, having learned that they made for the best retreats.

Pulling into the lot and driving erratically, I pointed the pickup sideways in front of the pay window, making the tires bark when I stopped. Messing up my already messy hair, I shrugged out of my jacket before climbing down from the truck. Using the open door as a screen, I tore off the lower half of my sliced-up T-shirt, exposing my flat midriff and narrow waist. Letting my camouflage drop just enough that the bruises and some of the soot would be visible to the human clerk, I staggered like a drunk up to the bullet-proof window, blinking owlishly at the pot-bellied male.

“Need a woo…” I frowned as if I was having to concentrate. “A woo…”

“A room?” the pock-marked guy supplied, letting his gaze linger on my breasts. “You all by yourself, baby? You want some company? I’ll trade you. A room for a little fun.”

I beamed a bleary smile at him. “Got a friend in the pick…in the pick…In the
truck.
We wan’ party.” I bit my lower lip. “Y’know. Party?”

Running a calloused hand through his greasy hair, the guy shook his head dismissively. “Yeah, I know. How long you and your
friend
gonna need?”

I waved a vague hand. “I dunno. Watsa cost?”

Bored now and wanting to return to the porn magazine on the counter in front of him, the clerk scowled. Eyeing the custom pickup and looking scornfully at my beaten-up appearance, he snapped, “You got money?”

I brightened. “Yeah. My friend, he gave me some.” Pulling a wad out of my back pocket, I made a show of studying the bills up close, like I couldn’t focus my eyes.

The guy licked his lips greedily. “Eighty’ll do it. I’ll tell the maids to skip your room for another twenty.”

Maids, my alabaster ass, I thought.

“You will?” I gushed, staggering against the money drawer the clerk pushed open and shoving a hundred dollars into it. “Tha’s nice, sugar. Tha’s awful nice.”

Retracting the drawer, the guy reached in and pulled out the money. “Whatever.” He dropped a key into the drawer and pushed the lever to extend the drawer on my side. Staying in character, I fumbled around before taking the key out and almost dropping it twice.

Knowing I’d been dismissed, I shuffled back to the truck and made a show of grinding the gears, grateful that Koda was unconscious and couldn’t hear what I was doing to his transmission. In fitful stops and starts, I drove around to the back of the one-floor, hot-sheet motel and parked outside the door to room eleven. There were only three other vehicles, but it was early evening still—plenty of time for the prostitutes who frequented the twenty-room dump to find customers and bring them here for some one-on-one time.

Eyeing the parking lot’s one street light, I pulled out the useless knife pommel. Making sure no one was around, I threw the thing, swallowing a crow of triumph when the globe shattered. The sun would take another hour to set, but I wanted the parking lot to be dark when night fell, just in case we had to make a quick escape. It would also make Koda’s black truck a little harder to spot—if it wasn’t stolen before morning, I’d be amazed.

Retrieving the pommel, I returned to the pickup and swung open the back door. After another quick look around the lot, I grabbed Koda’s feet and pulled, once again grateful for the smooth leather seats since he slid easily across them. His boots touched ground and I caught him around the waist, struggling to keep him upright.