Assassins Bite (9 page)

Chapter Nine

I swallowed hard and trained my gun on him. “Aiden Blackthorne, you're under arrest.” I only had a couple bullets left but hopefully he hadn't been counting.

Yet knowing him even the short time I had, of course he'd been counting.

His back was to me, watching the last Lestat disappear into the night. I expected him to whirl and attack me with his deadly skill but he just stood there, not moving in any way.

Finally he drew breath. Still without turning he said, “What for?”

“Um…did you pay your ticket?”

“I have ten days, remember?”

“You're a criminal.”

“Not for nine more days.”

“I'm pretty sure intent means something.”

“I'm pretty sure only action counts.”

“Well…” I glanced at the broken bodies. “Assault, then. With a deadly weapon.”

“They're vampires. They'll be fine.”

I lowered the gun with a sigh. “I know.”

He turned at last, slowly. He was frowning. “You're not supposed to know that. Haven't you been connected with Iowa yet?”

“No. Why?”

He didn't answer directly. “Talk with any bass-voiced men lately?”

“Look, while the enigmatic stuff is sexy, it's also annoying as hell.” I had questions about vampires, about
him—
and tonight I had my cuffs. I holstered my weapon with an irritated snick and stalked to him, collecting my restraints on the way, fastening one bracelet on my wrist using the thud of my shoes to cover the click. “You're coming with me to Interview.”

“I don't think so.” He gazed down on me in cool amusement.

“I
do
think so.” I glared up. That amusement was so annoying. With him I forgot avoidance and politeness and even the nuclear option and went straight to a shrieking mess. “You are coming with me and I'm going to interrogate you so hard you'll scream for mercy.” My face heated as other reasons to scream occurred to me. To cover it, I slapped the open cuff on him, tethering our wrists. “So there.”

He looked down at where we were joined and almost smiled. He rattled his wrist. “Handfasting? How sweet. But you should have asked first.”

My cheeks burned but I spat, “Arrest.” I spun and resolutely stalked off.

So my arm nearly yanked out of its socket when he refused to budge, steady as a rock.

I half-turned, grabbed my own arm and gave it a good tug. “We're going to the station and that's the end of it—hey!” I nearly fell on my keister. My cuff had somehow become attached to nothing but air. Ninja rock.

I flailed and would have fallen but he swooped in and swept me off my feet. “We'll go to the station, all right. But I'm not staying. You are.”

We were over the bridge before I'd drawn a full breath. “I'm not—”

“You are.” We were outside the cop shop. Damn, he was fast. “There are bad guys out here, extraordinarily hard to stop, and you know both too much about them and not enough.” He set me down. “Do me a favor. Go inside and don't come out until dawn.” He turned, about to disappear yet again.

“You're not the boss of me.” Besides, he'd seen me handle them. Shooting out that vampire's heart, turning vampy chest into a mass of meat but I kept shooting. And shooting.
And shooting…

The dark side of me laughed. Five-three plus a gun was seven feet tall.
Shooting again and again, and heaven help anyone who got in my way…

I shuddered. Maybe, just for once, he was right.

Blackthorne disappeared into the night. I didn't try to call him back, wondering who the real threat was.

Chicago wilderness, early 1800s

The boy had a name, but no one used it. To the clan elders he was Young Chief, always leading around bands of children. To those children he was First Friend. To his mother he was simply Beautiful Son.

To his father he was Halfbreed.

He paid attention to none of it. Those were the golden days, drenched in sun and companionship and challenges, always a game to play or animal tracks to follow or hidden places for talk.

He lived with his mother, unless his father was visiting. The man made threatening gestures and gave the boy evil looks when his mother's back was turned, then acted like nothing had happened. The boy might have told his mother, but she smiled as if everything was fine, and he was too young to understand. So when the man visited, the boy hid. Except for that, the boy was by nature a happy, outgoing child, trusting. He learned quickly and made friends easily.

Until his mother died—and his father stole him.

Because the boy knew the man, he didn't run away when his father came upon him alone. Then his father grabbed him and gagged him and stuffed him in a canoe under a pile of furs.

The boy nearly suffocated before his father uncovered him. Even then, the instant the furs came off, he sucked what air he could and tried to call out to his people. But all that emerged was a muffled cry.

“Shut up, kid. Ain't no one coming for you.”

The boy knew his father was wrong. His mother's people would find him. He kept alert for an opportunity to escape, ready. The hours wore on and his father gave him no food or water, but the boy stayed awake, waiting. Hoping.

It was two days downriver before his father removed the gag and gave the boy water. The boy had gone without food before, but his throat burned and the gulp barely made a dent. Still, he managed, “Why have you taken me?”

His father didn't answer. He untied the boy's wrists but left his legs hobbled. His father dragged him out of the canoe, onto land that no longer felt solid. His father hoisted the canoe over his head. “We walk here.”

The boy still hoped for rescue and tried to leave a trail, but the ground was frozen and his mind was dull from lack of water and sleep, and his father butted him along with the canoe. They made camp that night on bare soil without a fire. The boy dozed fitfully, still trying to be alert. Ready.

The next morning his father kicked him awake.

“Your ma bragged what a great hunter you are. Show me.”

The boy sat slowly. His belly was starting to eat at him, but the air was too cold and the smells were wrong. “No.”

The man smacked him, hard palm shocking his cheekbone, snapping his head around, pitching him onto his back.

That was the first time the boy had been hit. He lay in pained stupor. “W-why?”

“For your own good, to learn you not to sass.” His father grabbed the boy by his hair and dragged him to his feet. “Now
hunt
.”

The boy glared, trying to kill his father with his eyes, but the man just laughed. So the boy pointed at some scat. “Rabbit.” He hobbled off, pretending to follow the animal's spoor in a dusting of snow.

The moment he got out of the man's sight he tried to run.

But his legs were still bound by the hobble. He fell, and fell again. Hope prodded him up from increasingly skinned hands and knees. His breath made quick puffs and soon he couldn't feel his feet. Still he tried to run.

The crack of a twig was his only warning. His father came from nowhere and planted a fist in his gut. The boy folded in two.

“You think you can run from me?” The man jerked him straight and backhanded him. The boy reeled, ears ringing. “You'll never get away, you hear? Never.” The man punched his face. The boy fell, nose broken, blood running into his mouth. “Now hunt!”

Bleeding, sparks of pain floating in his eyes, the boy did.

He found the small telltale hole of a ground squirrel. He looked for the back entrance and filled it in, then used his hands to dig into the tunnel. He hoped for a hibernating rodent but the tunnel was too shallow and the animal awake. It tried to escape. The boy grabbed, forgot he was hobbled, and went crashing.

His father was waiting. He snatched the creature up and killed it with a shake.

The boy started to say the proper thanks for the animal sharing its life but his father waggled the body in front of him. “What the hell is this?”

“Food.” The boy glared. The man had no respect.

“This ain't but a mouthful.” He threw the carcass in the boy's face. Tiny claws slashed already bruised skin. The man yanked the boy to his feet and dragged him stumbling back to their campsite. “You ain't getting food 'til you catch something worth eating or worth selling.”

The trip continued. The boy lost count of the days. Doubt crept in that his mother's people would find him. Alone for the first time in his life, sick in body and soul, the boy felt the nibble of fear.

That was the first time he gave in, telling himself he couldn't escape if he was weak from starvation, though he hated himself for it. He trapped a fox for the man. When he turned the pelt over for a mouthful of food, he felt dirty.

Only the memory of his mother's voice comforted him, soft and sweet. “Beautiful Son. Life, friendship and love. They are worth fighting for.”

The moon waxed and waned many times before his father finally stopped in a place the boy didn't recognize, a place of straight wide trails and fences and box houses.

The boy remembered his mother's words and tried to fight for life and friendship and love. But as a hated alien among his father's people, trust and friendship withered away; under his father's fist, hope and love died, until the boy clung to life alone, and that only by a thread.

One day a man came to meet with his father, a small, thin man with rich clothes and an odd marking on his cheek, a line with two humps like a bird or bat. The boy hid behind his father's chair and watched. His father pointed to a pile of furs, animals trapped and killed in the cruel way without proper thanks, although the boy said thanks to them after, behind his father's back.

The rich man held out a silver coin.

“Ain't nearly enough.” The boy's father puffed up, threatening like a thundercloud. The boy cringed. The man only laughed.

His father swung one large, hard fist. The boy flinched.

But the man caught his father's fist. With a thin, ugly smile, he squeezed. His father cried out. When the man released him, he backed away, face bloodless.

The man pocketed the silver coin and held out a copper one.

His father snatched it from the man's hand and slammed out of the cabin.

The boy clutched himself. He knew what happened when his father had copper. He'd return smelling of whiskey and hate. The boy could only hope the man's squeeze had softened his father's fist.

Then the man approached the boy where he hid behind the chair. “Do you want away from this?”

The boy released his middle. How had the man known he was there?

“Come out, boy.”

Slowly, the boy did.

The man smiled—flashing fangs.

The boy ran, but it was too late.

If Aiden Blackthorne thought he could plunk me down, order me to stay, and that would be the end of it, he didn't know me very well. I had a job to do.

I stomped into the station, fumbling with my belt to release my keys.
I could so use me some anti-ninja cuffs.
As I unlocked the restraints from my wrist, I found myself fingering them, naughty uses on certain sexy ninjas in mind.

Abruptly I jammed the cuffs into the holder on my duty belt—not the small of the back because I'm not rupturing
my
L-5 disk—and mounted the stairs to the second floor. That trap in the park, with its electrified pool and the salt nearby, had been set deliberately. For Blackthorne? Most Wanted be damned, if Smith had tried to kill him, that put her at the top of my personal to-do list. As soon as I talked to Elena, I'd run the dark sedan's plates.

Three scarred desks held the combined clutter of busy detectives sharing space across multiple shifts. During the day all three desks would be full, but graveyard was only Elena and my brother.

Yet all of them were empty, especially the desk I wanted. I headed for it to see if I could find where she was.

Three sets of pictures took pride of place, including a family shot of my hero with a baby on her lap, her Viking of a husband, her blonde cheerleader sister, the sister's husband and their family of three. I stole some peanuts from the ever-present box of Cracker Jacks Detective Gruen used as a paperweight and munched as I searched. Nearby Lieutenant Roet's calming fountain burbled—I'd babysat his eight kids and honestly, he needed it just to stay sane.

The phone on my brother's desk rang. I hesitated answering. The phones were the same black Bakelite they'd been for fifty years, without caller ID. But it might be important. I trotted over and picked up the handset. “Detectives' unit, Ruffles speaking.”

“Dirk, your voice has changed,” Elena said dryly.

“Detective Strongwell!” I snapped to attention. “I was just looking for you.”

“You're supposed to be keeping track of Blackthorne.”

“I was…I mean I did…I mean I found him but he sort of deposited me here…well not deposited exactly—”

“Detective Ma'am!” Dirk's rasp came from the speaker, sounding distant. “Fancy meeting you here. Are you and your husband on vampire patrol?”

I heard a hasty hand thrown over the phone. It didn't quite cover the voices. “Dirk,” Elena said patiently. “What have we talked about?”

“No using the v-word in public,” Dirk sang as if parroting an often-taught lesson. “But I didn't, Detective Ma'am. I didn't say ‘v-word'. I said ‘vampire'.”

“So you did, Dirk.” There was a smile in Elena's voice. “What's that you're carrying? Never mind, I don't think I want to know. Why don't you head back to the station? I'll meet you there later.” She uncovered and said to me, “Look, Sun-Hee, we need to talk. I'm busy for the next several hours, but I'll be back by end of shift to write my reports. Meet me at the police station, okay? No later than seven a.m.” She hung up.