The Man Who Walked in Darkness (Miles Franco #2) (Miles Franco Urban Fantasy) (38 page)

McCaffrey turned the gun back on me. I couldn’t see her eyes, but I could tell she was sizing me up for something. A noose, maybe. I shivered. She took a step toward me, moving in time to the song in my head. For an old lady with a gat, she was still more graceful than I’d ever managed to be.

“Miles,” she said. “Move over there, will you?”

She waved the gun toward the pool.

I did the mental arithmetic to work out if I could rush her. Old people had delayed reactions, right? Sure, there was no cover, but she could only shoot me, what, three, four times before I reached her. And how much damage could that tiny gun do?

I glanced at Bohr’s body splayed out on the stone, swallowed, and said, “Since you asked so politely.”

I backed up to the pool.

“You’re a survivor,” she said.

“So everyone keeps telling me.”

“I admire that. A dead man is only useful once. A live one…” She shrugged. “But it’s not just your propensity for living that I like about you, Miles. You have heart. You came after me hard and fast. You’re a man who doesn’t sit down and play quietly.”

“Put the gun down, we’ll see how I play,” I said.

She laughed. “I knew you’d come for me. You had things to make up for. How drunk were you that day when she called you, begging for your help?”

I took a step forward.

She raised the pistol to aim it at my head. “Don’t be silly.”

I stopped.

“All this time you’ve been chasing me,” she said, “you’ve really been chasing yourself, haven’t you? The chase is over now. But you can still make it all worthwhile.”

“Yeah?” I said. “How?”

“Take your goggles off. Go back in the pool.”

“I didn’t bring my swimsuit.”

“I can offer you the same deal I gave to Aran here,” she said, moving slowly closer. “You’re a survivor, Miles. Somehow you survived your last encounter with the fluid. You got the crystals out. You can do it again. Make us a Tunnel, then let yourself be taken by the fluid again, let us take you back to Earth. When it’s time, we’ll remove the crystals. We’ll all get what we want. You can even come back to Tartarus again, take the fluid once more. Have some crystals of your own. You can make it all okay.”

I swallowed, but my mouth was dry. “It will never be okay.”

“It can be,” she said. “You can bring her back. Claudia.”

I stared down the barrel of the gun. Aran and Wade were watching us, silent. They looked like they needed some popcorn. Tartarus sang in time with McCaffrey’s words, swirling around me like a stripper giving me a lap dance. Teasing me. Begging me to reach up and slip the goggles off. Just for a moment.

I took a shaky breath. “No.”

“Make the Tunnel,” she said. “Then go into the pool. We’ll get you back safe. I can manage the pain. It won’t be like last time.”

I shook my head. “No.”

She sighed and shifted her aim.

Ffump
.

I didn’t feel it at first. The flash of the pistol had left an afterimage on my goggles, a little flower-shaped light in a world of darkness. Then the burn started. It was in my left thigh, just above the knee and a little to the left. Like someone had pressed a soldering iron against my skin. My leg quivered.

“It’s going to be okay,” McCaffrey said through a fog. “Sit down.”

It seemed like a good idea. I sat.

“Aran,” she said. “Bind his wound, then get a stone and help Miles while he scratches a Tunnel back to Earth. He’ll get the Kemia when it’s drawn, and not before.”

The fire was spreading up my leg. Aran moved beside me.
Goddamn it. She’s got me.

“Franco.” It took me a moment to recognize the voice. Detective Wade. “Hey, asswipe. Look over here. Look at me.”

I tried to focus on him. He was still sitting. He had no chance of rushing McCaffrey.

“What the hell do you want?” I said.

“How bad are you bleeding?”

“How should I know? I can’t see shit.” I patted my leg, the pain searing me with every brush of fabric against the skin. “Somewhere between a trickle and a fire hose.”

Aran appeared next to me. He tore up the leg of my pants and worked on the bullet wound like he’d done it before. He packed fabric against the wound while white flashes of pain went off my head. By the time he was done I was sweating so much I needed a scuba tank. While I panted, Aran shoved a sharp rock the size of a fist into my hand. I tried to push it away, but Aran wouldn’t let up.

“Don’t do what she wants,” Wade said from somewhere far away.

“Hey, Detective,” I said. “How many cops does it take to screw in a light bulb? Just one, but he’s never around when you need him.”

I laughed my ass off. No one else seemed to find it funny.

“Miles,” McCaffrey said. “The Tunnel, please.”

I stopped laughing and sat there looking at the rock, trying to work out whether to scream or pass out from the pain or do what I was told. I was never good at doing what I was told, but her sitting idea had been a good one, so maybe this would be too. Then again, this whole thing was too funny, and no one had gotten the joke yet. I dropped the rock next to me. Aran tried to force it back into my hand.

“Do what she says,” he said in Vei.

“You in a hurry to get back to Earth?” I said.

“I want my family back.” He paused and lowered his voice, hissing at me in Vei. “Please. I need your help. You saw my sister in the hospital. You can do the same with your friend. We can still get back at McCaffrey. I promise you we’ll do it. We’ll kill her. But not today.”

I started laughing again. I laughed so hard tears rolled down my cheeks. It felt like someone was jamming a screwdriver into my bullet wound. I laughed harder.

“Why aren’t you all laughing?” I said, gasping for breath. “Don’t you get it yet?”

“Get what?” McCaffrey said. For the first time there was doubt in her voice, and that made it all the funnier.

“They don’t work,” I said. “The crystals. It’s all bullshit. You think I didn’t already try to use them? You think that wasn’t the first thing I did? I want everything back the way it was. But it never will be. Your research was all flawed. Tartarus wants you to think you can make them work because it wants you to feed it more victims. That’s all this place is. Empty temptation. Everything you’ve done has been a waste. It was all for nothing. Now you see why it’s so fucking funny?”

Aran bared his teeth and pulled the jar of crystals from his pocket. “They’re useless?”

“He’s lying,” McCaffrey said. “He’s trying to play us. I saw them work. The wallet, and the money…”

“A trick,” I said. “I had a Tunneler friend in the alley near us. That’s why I had to get Bohr’s Tunneler to piss off, otherwise he’d sense the trick. Tania just temporarily changed the receipts in my wallet into cash.”

“You’re lying,” she said again.

I rolled onto my side, pulled out my wallet, tossed it into Aran’s hands. The Vei opened it. Nothing but receipts.

He shouted something raw and pained and incomprehensible. And then he was on his feet. I opened my mouth to tell him to stop, but it was too late. He turned to McCaffrey, snarling in Vei.

Ffump
.
Ffump
.

He went down next to me, a hole in his chest, another in his stomach. He faced me, his mouth opening and closing, a low groan escaping his throat. I could hear Wade shouting and swearing.

“It’s not true,” McCaffrey said. “It…our research…”

I stretched out to put pressure on Aran’s wounds. His blood trickled downhill and into the pool.

“Give it up!” Wade was shouting. “Put down the gun. It’s over, McCaffrey.”

“Be quiet.” She swung the gun toward him. “It works! It has to work.”

“It doesn’t,” I said, tearing my eyes from Aran’s writhing form. “It’s just as fucked up as you and me.”

“Be quiet!” She turned the gat on me and pulled the trigger.

I rolled. The gun barked. The bullet struck the ground next to me, kicking up fragments of stone. I didn’t stop rolling. My leg stung like it was filled with hornets every time it struck stone. My ears pounded with blood and music.

And then I ran out of ground. My legs went into the pool first, numbing the pain. Everything felt better now. My body slipped into the fluid, spreading warmth outward from my chest. I still had my goggles on, but that didn’t help. I could
hear
the colors swirling around me.

My head slipped under the surface. I didn’t even make a splash as I sank.

THIRTY-TWO

A phone was ringing.

Consciousness came slowly. I opened my eyes, waited for the room to stop spinning. My mouth tasted like someone had pissed in it, and my clothes were starting to itch since I’d worn them for three days straight. Slowly, my apartment resolved itself around me. There was something wet and sticky on my shirt. I prodded it with a clumsy finger. I was still clutching a bottle of no-brand whiskey in my hand. I must’ve fallen asleep on the couch and spilled it all over myself.

Heh. The bottle couldn’t hold its liquor. Heh.

The phone rang again, driving nails through my skull. I tossed the empty bottle to the ground with the others and rubbed my eyes with the back of my sleeve. What time was it? I reached for the curtains, realized my arms were about three feet too short, and gave up. I was dry as hell, and my stomach was moving around like an accordion. I could do with a good long piss as well.

Ring ring.

“All right, fuckin’ all right,” I yelled in the phone’s general direction. I tried to determine precisely where up was, made a guess, and shoved myself in that direction. I got to my feet without falling. How about that? I was doing all right.

I staggered across my apartment. The carpet was strangely sticky beneath my bare feet.
I should get that sorted out.
Must be a leak again. I’d only been out on bail a couple of months, and already the place was falling to pieces around me. Maybe it was my lawyer calling me, telling me I’d missed court. Nah, they’d send cops around to haul me down, wouldn’t they? The phone let out another screeching ring like it was trying to find the resonant frequency to make my skull shatter.

I jerked the phone off the cradle before it could ring again and jammed it against my ear. “Yeah?”

“Miles. I thought you must be out.” It took me a moment to translate the woman’s accent.

I squeezed one eye shut tight to try to focus on the clock on the wall. No good. “Who is this?”

“It’s Claudia,” she said. “I’m not doing so good.”

I stopped squinting and gripped the phone a little tighter. “Claudia. Are you okay? Do you need help? I can be there in…” I tried the clock again, but I swear the numbers weren’t where they were supposed to be. “…soon. Where are you?”

“No, it’s all right. I don’t need help. I just wanted to talk.”

I rubbed my stubble. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d shaved. “What’s going on?”

“I wanted to say sorry.”

“Sorry? The hell for?”

“You were right,” she said. “I didn’t take your advice. I did the drug trial. It was a bad idea.”

She could’ve slipped back into German for all I could tell. “Drug trial? Advice? Help me out here, Claudia.”

“Last week, remember? I called you to talk about the drug trial I’d heard about. It would’ve paid for my visa to Heaven. The guy who talked to me seemed nervous, though, and I wasn’t sure, so I wanted to talk to you.”

“You did?”

For a few minutes, the phone was only filled with the sound of wet coughing. Was she sick? Finally, she came back on the line. “You’re the only one who’s always been there for me without wanting anything in return. You had a lot on with the trial and everything, and I think you’d had a lot to drink, but you told me not to do it. You said it sounded shady, and you were right. But I wanted that money.”

“I could’ve got you to Heaven,” I said. “I’ve told you that before.”

“I know.” She sounded sad. “I thought I could do everything by myself. Look how that turned out.”

Something about the way she was talking was making me nervous, but I couldn’t puzzle it out with all the booze swimming between my ears. “Where are you? We’ll go grab a bite.”

“I’m not very hungry,” she said. She coughed again. “My stomach is upset. I think the drug doesn’t agree with me.”

“What drug? Who gave you it?”

“I…I don’t remember. I think I blacked out. I woke up back in my bed last night.”

Even drunk, my mind skipped straight to the darkest theories. Claudia going alone to a shady drug trial and blacking out? My stomach churned. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t make the words come out.

“I’m going to the hospital now,” she said, sounding remarkably calm.

I nodded into the phone. “Good. Yeah, that’s good. Make sure they call the cops, huh? Just…just in case, you know? In fact, I’ll come with you.”

“No,” she said. “I’ve ordered a taxi. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I should have listened to you. And I should have been there more for you the last few months. You’ve always been there for me. With all this Chroma stuff, I should have—”

“Hey, I’m fine,” I said. “It’s you I’m worried about.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t worry about me. You did everything you could. I’m just stubborn.” There was the sound of a car horn. “The taxi’s here. Look after yourself, Miles. And let others look after you too. I know you don’t think you need it, but trust me, you do. I learned that too.”

“I’ll visit you,” I said.

“Goodbye, Miles. And thank you.”

“See you round.”

It took me three tries to get the phone back on the cradle. I swayed in place, trying to decide whether to get a taxi myself and meet her at the hospital. But she sounded like she wanted a bit of alone time first. I’d visit her in the morning. Whenever that was.

I staggered back to the couch, snagging another bottle of some unidentifiable substance on the way. It smelled like booze, so that was good enough. The alcohol kept the visions of the gangsters I’d killed away, made it easier to get through the days in court. I collapsed into the creaking cushions of the couch, took a swig, and closed my eyes.