BDB 13 The Shadows (37 page)

Au contraire.

Selena was alive with excitement, her fangs flashing thanks to a huge smile, a giggling laugh bubbling out of her as she hung on to the door.

“Faster!” she yelled at Fritz. “Let’s go even faster!”

“As you wish, mistress!”

A fresh roar from that massive piece of German engineering under the hood sent them careening not just down the sidewalk, but right up to the very edge of the laws of physics.

Selena looked over at him. “This is the best night ever!”

“Okay, time to pull out.”

Rhage nodded at Manny. “I wonder what they had for dinner.” He checked his phone again and wished he had actually gone to that steakhouse. He’d only flown that shit to put Trez at ease. “He said nothing about the entrée or dessert. I mean, come on, he could have given a few deets. We only got eight letters from the guy.”

“Actually, it was five.”

“That’s what I said.”

The Doritos had worn off an hour ago. Then again, sometimes he could say that about three-course meals.

Manny put the RV in drive and started off, the ambulance trundling over a pothole, then gathering speed. “I’d better get a move on. Fritz has a heavy foot.”

“Like, did they have the roast beef? I saw a picture of the way they do it up there in a magazine—”

Boom!

Just as they came to a four-way juncture of alleys, something big flashed out in front of them and bounced off the hood. As Manny slammed on the brakes, the massive weight rolled off.

“Jesus Christ, was that a deer?” the doctor hollered.

“Try moose.”

Rhage palmed both his guns and was about to jump out when the bullet shower started. High-pitched metallic pings ricocheted off the RV and spiderwebbed the thick glass.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Manny bit out. Then he screamed through the windshield to the shooters, “I just got this thing!”

Rhage went for the door handle, but got nowhere with it. “Let me out!”

Ping-ping-ping.
“No way, you’ll get killed!”

“We’re sitting ducks!”

“No, we’re not!”

All at once, the RV settled about four inches and metal plating dropped down over every square inch of glass there was. Instantly, the sound of the gunfire was dulled to a distant snare drum.

Rhage glanced over in the relative silence. “You are a genius.”

“Harold Ramis is.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You ever see
Stripes
? My favorite movie of all time. I based this thing on Bill Murray’s ride.”

“I knew I liked you.” Rhage quickly glanced at his phone. No Brothers were in the vicinity, and that was a good thing given the firepower. “Only one problem—we can’t just sit here. The human police are going to be all over—”

An LED screen the size of a TV rose vertically from the dash, taking up most of the now-blocked windshield space. And on its flat surface was a green pictorial of the streetscape in HD—so they got a really good picture of the shooters as the pair of trigger-fingers ran into their headlights. The two were both sporting long-nosed guns, AKs in his opinion, each discharge causing a bright flash from the muzzles as they kept those rounds pumping.

They didn’t pause as they went by Manny’s vehicle.

“Those are
lessers
,” Rhage muttered. “They’re going too fast for humans. Plus only slayers would be dumb enough to make this kind of racket. Let me the fuck out of here.”

“You’re not going after them—”

Rhage reached over and grabbed the front of the man’s shirt, dragging him into the aisle between the seats. “Let. Me. Out.”

Manny met his eyes. Cursed. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

“No. I won’t.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I got fun and games no one can handle.” He nodded to the window. “Crack it and I can ghost out through the slats between your armed plates. Unless you have steel mesh in there somewhere.”

Manny started muttering all kinds of vile things as he went for the requisite button and Rhage’s little slice of see-through went down about two inches.

“As soon as I’m gone, hit the gas,” Rhage demanded. “We need you on Trez’s tail. No joke.”

Closing his eyes, he concentrated and …

… dematerialized out of the interior, re-forming beside the RV and then pounding on the door. The shooters had gone past them, tracking their prey, which put him in a perfect position. As the engine under all that metal plating revved up, and Manny’s little portable clinic rambled off, he started to run. The scent in the air told him he’d been right; this was a pair of slayers with a very expensive set of toys—something they hadn’t seen in how long?

Not since Lash, that bastard, had been
Forelesser
.

Thighs pumping, guns ready, he was closing the distance when the sirens came behind him. Suddenly, he was spotlit from the rear, and not in a good way. With two autoloaders in his palms, they were liable to think he was the goddamn problem, instead of the solution trying to catch up with his enemy.

Sure enough, a male voice projected out of a high-res speaker came down the alley. “CPD! Stop! Stop or we’ll shoot!”

God. Damn. It.

Humans: Nature’s remedy for an otherwise good time.

B
ack in his cell at the palace, iAm was busy wearing a track in the polished marble floor, going back and forth between that new bedding platform and the shelf of books.

The longer he was left by his little lonesome, the more he became convinced that the
maichen
had made the offer to get him to the healing texts out of an abundance of impotent compassion. But, hell, even if she had been serious and did show up again with some kind of plan, it wasn’t like he was going to accept her help. There were so many people sucked into this mess already, and he wasn’t sure she knew what she was volunteering for: He was a prisoner of the executioner’s, which meant even though many could have access to him, there was only one son of a bitch who had the keys to his escape.

And it was not that lowly female.

If she did spring him? Even if it was not to the great outdoors, but the library? The monitoring systems would surely report them both—and then sudden death would be the best outcome she could hope for.

What was more likely was a long, suffering period of torture during which she would pray to be—

As that panel slid open, he made sure his sex was covered and wheeled around.

It was the maid, and she had bolts of cloth in her hands. As the door slid back into place, she tucked something next to the jamb to prevent it from closing all the way and rushed over to him.

“Put this on. We have no time—”

“Wait, what—”

“Put it on! The security staff is changing shift and they are required to have a mandatory prayer of sorrow and remembrance for the infant. We have to get you down the hallways now—”

“I can’t let you do this—”

“You want help, right. For your brother’s love, right.”

iAm gritted his teeth. Rock, meet hard place. “Fuck!”

“I do not know what that means.”

He grabbed whatever it was out of her hands, but kept up the arguing as he threw the folds over himself. “What about the trip back?”

“I’ll create a diversion. You’re going to need some time in the library—unless you know exactly what you’re looking for?”

The heavy robing rushed down his legs. “What about in here?”

Without warning, the lights went out. “I activated the circadian system.”

Ah, yes, the alternation of light and dark without which you couldn’t sleep.

Click!

A tiny flashlight showed her the way to the bedding platform, and she quickly arranged the pillows and duvets such that it appeared there was someone in there. Then she ran back and put something up to his face.

Spritz!

He coughed as the heavy scent of lavender and something citrus-y shot into his nose. “What the hell—”

More with the spritzing. “That’s a maid’s uniform. No one will question if they happen upon the pair of us together, but your scent is too male. This should cover it up well enough for us to get by. Now crouch down—you’re too tall for the robe. We can’t have your feet showing or they’ll know. Come
on
.”

He followed her over to the panel, but before she could open things up, he grabbed her arm and spun her around. “You shouldn’t be doing this.”

“We don’t have time—”

“It’s going to get you killed.”

“Your brother needs help. For his mate. Do you have another solution for getting out of here to see those texts?”

When she went to turn away, he pulled her back. “What’s your name?”

“
maichen
.”

“No, that’s your station. What’s your name?”

“That’s it. Now, come—enough talk,” she said urgently. “And don’t forget to crouch.”

Just like that, he was out of the cell and into the hallway. As he looked left and right, she jabbed him in the side with her elbow.

“Crouch,” she hissed. “This way.”

Bending his knees, he hunched his shoulders and followed in her wake, trying to mimic her spare movements. She was fast and decisive through the corridors, taking lefts and rights in a sequence that rendered him so turned around he was lost in the maze. Incredibly, they ran into no one, but that was the nature of mourning for the s’Hisbe. Lockdown for everybody.

Maybe she could just take him to a rear exit after this?

Yeah, but then what would happen to her?

“The security recording,” he said.

“Shut up.”

“When we’re back, you need to take care of the monitoring video files or they’ll know what you did if they ever review it.”

She didn’t answer him, just pressed on, leading him down the various corridors.

In keeping with the s’Hisbe tradition that simplicity elevated the soul, there was little signage anywhere in the palace, nothing but subtle plates up high on doorjambs to illustrate the covert entrances to various rooms and storage places and exits. Gradually, his years at the palace came back to him, and he was surprised to find he knew where they were: She was taking him the long way to the library, but it was smart. This was the rear of the palace, where if they did run into somebody, it was more likely to be a servant.

Which, considering he was masquerading as one, made the route all the better.

“Up here,” she said, taking one last right and stopping on a black marble tile square, the vein of which ran counter to the prevailing direction of all the others. Putting her palm on the wall, she triggered the door, which slid open readily.

As they stepped into the darkness, motion-sensitive lights came on, illuminating stacks upon stacks of leather-bound volumes. The air was dry and vaguely dusty, but the library was neat as a pin, the floors polished to a mirror shine, the shelving gleaming. There were no chairs and no tables if you wanted to read anything—the expectation was that you’d take whatever you needed to your quarters and sit down with it there.

Shit, how were they going to find anything in here?

“The medical journals have been moved,” she whispered, jogging forward.

He followed her once again, and didn’t bother trying to shrink his stature anymore: No one around to see, and this part of the palace was not monitored.

The cataloging system, such that it was, was noted with black-on-black numerals on the flanks of the stacks. But again, it was vague, and presumed that you already knew where to find what you were looking for.

“Here,” she said. “We go down here.”

Eventually, she stopped and indicated a row of stacks. “This is where they have been relocated.”

Frowning, he stepped in. The numbering system on the spines was no fucking help at all, so he pulled one of the volumes out and cracked the cover. When he finally got to some words in the Shadow dialect of the Old Language, he discovered he was about to read a treatise on setting broken bones.

Going down a row, he took out another random tome. Something on eyesight.

Farther on, he’d made it to pregnancy and childbirth.

“Diseases,” he muttered. “I’m looking for diseases. Or congenital defects. Or … recessive genes…”

“I shall help.”
maichen
began pulling out volumes. “What can you tell me about the sickness?”

“It’s called the Arrest. They freeze—they get … it’s like bone grows spontaneously … it’s supposed to be fatal…”

God, he didn’t know enough about what he was talking about.

As the two of them worked their way down the stack, the categories and organization of the volumes became clearer and clearer. Like all vampires, Shadows didn’t have to deal with human viruses or cancer, but there were plenty of other things that took them down—although not as many as the Homo sapiens had to battle against. With every book he slid out, he was aware that time was passing, and he was more worried about
maichen
getting caught than anything about himself.

Faster, faster with the reading, the returning, the picking another from the lineup.

There had to be something here, he thought. There just had to be.

Trez’s entire body was rigid as he remained braced against the interior of the Benz. Fritz was still proceeding down the sidewalk—which would have been great if the
doggen
had been a pedestrian. Squeezing a sedan the size of an ocean-faring yacht into a concrete lane built for holding four or five people at a time?

Not so great—

Selena let out some kind of a yeeeee-haw! as they came up to another corner and sent a second set of
Caldwell Courier Journal
boxes airborne.

He was honestly glad she was enjoying herself.

He just really fucking wished they were watching this action movie instead of living it.

“Fritz,” he yelled over the roaring engine. “Head down toward the river.”

“As you wish, sire!”

Without warning, Fritz wrenched things left and sent them flying toward a pedestrian mall that skirted another of the skyscrapers. The Benz took to the stairs like a man wearing knee braces, the bumping, jostling, disjointed ascent the kind of thing that left your molars clapping and your kidneys begging for mercy. But then they were on the flat area that gave people all kinds of choices as to which of the four different entrance points to head through.