Bloodshot (41 page)

I stopped, dangling by my hands perhaps half a dozen floors above the ground. When I stopped, Adrian stopped, too.

“What?” he asked in a quiet hiss.

I looked up and saw nothing but the underside of the balcony. In the distance I heard police cars and fire engines; someone with a walkie-talkie had made it out in one piece.

Someone had found Cal, I assumed. Someone was looking for us.

My companion was straining to hold himself in position, balancing on the edge of a rail that looked too thin to hold him. “Raylene?” he asked, more urgently this time.

I told him, “Up.”

“You can’t be fucking serious!”

I looked down and over to where he was perched—not ten feet away. I said, “Yeah, I think I am. I think Ian’s up there. I think he’s on the roof,” I added, even though I had virtually nothing to back up that hunch. Just that warm, strange pull that leaned against me and made me want to climb.

“What is it with your kind and rooftops?” he muttered, not really expecting an answer.

I gave him one anyway. “Rooftops are a way inside,” I said, pulling myself up now, instead of lowering myself down. “They’re someplace where people tend not to go, and once you’re up there, especially at night, it’s easy to hide. And sometimes, if you need a way out, it’s the last stop and only way to run.”

Up, lift, and over the balcony.

Half a floor down and … I looked up, craning my neck around. We’d started from the fifteenth. We’d descended maybe seven. I thought there were twenty floors in total, so maybe twelve floors to the top from where we were camped out.

Adrian was struggling, and I wasn’t so far away from exhaustion myself. I looked back at him, teetering on that rail, trying hard just to make it to the ground. He’d never be able to take himself up another however-many-floors.

I told him, “Go down without me.”

He said, “No.”

“Yeah, seriously. You won’t make it to the top, and I promise,”
I said, turning around and getting a better grip, “I won’t think less of you as a man or anything.” I tried to give it a wink and a grin.

Say one thing for him, say he wasn’t crazy. The sweat was shining on his forehead, dripping down his temples, and his arms were shaking. “Okay.” He nodded. “Okay, you’re right.”

“Meet me back by Lincoln, in … I don’t know. Another hour or two. I’ll meet you over there, soon as I can.”

“Got it,” he told me, and he gave me a head-bob that said
good-bye
and
I’ll see you there
, or possibly just
whatever
. Regardless, he began to descend again, a little more jerkily than before, but I was pretty sure he’d be all right. It’d been a long night for everyone, and he needed a break worse than I did.

But not much worse.

I scrabbled, clawed, and heaved myself up another few floors until I thought I couldn’t go even another foot, and all the while that pulse, or that warning, or that summons … whatever it was … it was still drawing me along.

With a sigh and an upturned nose, I reached into my satchel and drew out that god-awful little pouch of blood.

I gave it a disdainful squish, noting that although it was cold, it didn’t appear to be chunky with ice—which believe you me is fucking
disgusting
. And it’s not like my body heat would warm it up or keep it nice and gooey. Best I can hope for (unless I want to tote a hot-water bottle around with me) is Not Frozen and Totally Preservative-Laden Dribble of Sustenance.

God. Half a pint. Barely enough to bother with, and if I hadn’t been so busted and worn out by the evening’s activities I wouldn’t have done it. I would’ve sucked up my pride, wandered down to skid row, and taken a nibble off a bum like a civilized woman.

But I didn’t have such a homeless meat-sack handy, so it was just me and my pouch of goo. I scrunched up my nose and bit down on a corner, puncturing it and spilling a bit down my chin. Ladylike,
yes. Also ladylike was the way I guzzled it as if I were dying of thirst in the goddamn desert. It was revolting, but it was exactly what I needed, and my body demanded it with such a vicious insistence that I came close to sucking the plastic bag down, too. Then, I guess, I would’ve starved to death like one of those sea turtles that swallows a baggie, thinking it’s a jellyfish. Man. What a way to go.

I wadded up the empty baggie and tossed it off the balcony.

Thus somewhat invigorated, I resumed my climb. It wasn’t the shot in the arm I wanted, but it was enough to let me man-haul myself up and over the balconies, one after another, straight up into the sky—well beyond the point at which I would’ve collapsed and given up if I hadn’t had any refreshments.

Finally my fingertips crossed over the very tippy-top of the building’s edge. I grunted, heaved, crawled, and hauled until I’d slung one leg up over the side and could flop onto the tar-covered surface.

But even through my exhaustion, I had to look. I had to see.

The sky above was swirling, very faintly but very distinctly—pitching to and fro as if it were being stirred. All the clouds swished like they’d been flushed, doing that lazy, sliding spin. My head was spinning, too. My eyes were closing from the pressure of it … not just the crushing psychic fog but from pure weariness the likes of which I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt before.

I dragged myself to my knees, and then staggered up to my feet. It was dark there, darker than it should’ve been. I rubbed at my eyes in case that would clear them.

It didn’t.

Stepping forward, I immediately tripped and fell on my face—or rather, onto one cheek and one hand. The other hand got caught in the strap of my go-bag and the short version is, I tumbled over the obstacle with every bit as much dainty precision as I’d dropped myself onto the roof in the first place.

It was not an auspicious beginning.

As I pushed myself up I patted the obstacle. It was wearing wool pants and some kind of uniform. Something with a badge clipped onto a pocket. Didn’t matter. The obstacle was dead and posed no threat to yours truly, so I tried to ignore it and keep moving.

If only I could see … What was wrong with my eyes? What had happened to my superlative night vision and my winning stealth?

I could only see clearly when I looked at the sky, so I tipped my chin up and gazed at the immense funnel, hoping it could tell me something.

Hands out, I stumbled forward, feeling my way around.

I tripped again, dropped to my knees this time, and cried out because, hot damn, that hurt! The impact split my favorite black burgling pants and jammed my knees clear down to the bone.

My feeble whimper was answered by a shudder in the fog, something I couldn’t describe but could feel up and down my spine.

At this point, I figured I was screwed coming or going, so I hunkered beside what turned out to be yet another corpse and I whispered, because I couldn’t bring myself to shout. “Ian?” It came out in a squeak that hardly sounded like me at all. I wished I wasn’t so worn out; I wished I had fresh blood handy, and lots of it—but all the blood at my immediate disposal was cooling and pooling in the corpses, and corpses are notoriously bad bleeders. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but drinking from the already-dead requires a lot more patience and leisure time than I had right then.

The fog shuddered again and I shuddered with it.

“Ian, is that you? Are you up here?” I tried again.

The fog remained, but it thinned.

“Ian, I know you’re up here,” I lied. I only
prayed
he was up
there. Because if this wasn’t his doing, I had no idea what I was dealing with and I was genuinely afraid. Hell, I was genuinely afraid regardless. I’d never seen anything like this before—from a vampire or any other immortal. “It’s me, Raylene.”

The story Ian had told me—his vague, reluctantly shared story about how he’d escaped Jordan Roe, and the weird power he’d somehow developed—was this what he’d meant?

Then I heard Ian’s voice, thick and wet. “They killed Cal.” He was somewhere in front of me, and to my left. I tried to scoot toward the sound of him, and kicked some dead bastard’s hand.

“Jesus,” I said, wondering how many people had followed him up there, and how many people he’d killed. What was he doing up here? Was this the result of some weird new sense, developed to make up for the lack of his eyesight, as he believed? It was a tantalizing thought; it made me wonder if I could develop it, too—or if any other vampire could, given the right set of circumstances. Not that I wanted to go blind in order to find out.

“I couldn’t save him,” he said.

I’d almost caught my breath. Almost found my footing. “I saw him, downstairs. There were two other guys hanging out in your room, but I took care of them.”

“Violently, I hope.” His voice was so cold it was brittle, and ready to snap.

I followed it, drawing myself through the shaded dark, hoping to reach him. Any minute. Any second. He was only a few feet in front of me—he couldn’t be any farther than that. Any moment my fingers would graze his shoulder, or maybe his knee. From the sound of the echo, I thought he might be sitting down on something.

“Ian?” I said, hoping I sounded sweet, innocent, harmless, and interested. “What’s going on?”

“They shouldn’t have taken Cal. He had nothing to do with
this—not any of it. He was only a helper, not a conspirator. But there was nothing I could do. They surprised us. And I don’t understand … there’s so much I don’t understand.”

“Maybe I can help.”

“They took everything,” he told me, as if I hadn’t said a thing. “They destroyed everything.”

“Ian, Adrian, and I made it to Major Bruner’s office. We found more paperwork—more files. Much more than what I was able to give you from Adrian’s stash.”

The black fog held its breath. “Is that true?”

“Of course it’s true! I’ve got it in my bag. Let’s get downstairs and get the hell out of here. I’ll read it to you, start to finish. We’ll find someplace calm to sort this out.”

Dream-like, he said, “We can’t go downstairs. We can never go back there. They’ll try to take us away.”

“Not downstairs in the room. Downstairs
outside
. We’re meeting up at the Lincoln Memorial—”

“When?”

“As soon as I can talk you down off this ledge,” I said, though it seemed like an appalling choice of words and it no doubt was. “Please, Ian. Come with me. Let’s get out of here. Let’s go, and we can sort everything out somewhere else.”

“I should’ve left when Cal wanted me to leave. He’d been begging, insisting. But I stayed, because you wanted me to. You convinced me to.” The swirling above became more aggressive—more like a hurricane than a mere storm front.

“That’s true.” I still held out my hands, hoping to find him.

Where the hell was he? I felt like an idiot, sweeping around in the dark, hoping to knock up against him. “But I didn’t know it would come to this—you have to believe me. I was only trying to help, and now I know why they came after us. I know how they kept finding us.”

“It was my fault. I could’ve packed up and returned home at any time, but I did not. The fault lies with me.”

Yes and no, but this wasn’t the time to emphasize the “yes.” “Ian, the Canadian doctor you’ve been feeding information to—his name’s David, isn’t it? David Keene?”

Time ground to a halt. The barometric pressure changed, and the fog pulsed with something like rage, something like horror.

“David, yes.” His words were choked now.

“Ian, he was one of the original contacts for Project Bloodshot. He was either an investor or a researcher—we didn’t have time to read everything on the spot.”

“That … it can’t be!”

“Did you ever meet him in person?” I asked.

“No. We corresponded by phone and email.”

“You’ve been talking to him, since I’ve been on your case?”

A pause. A swallow. Then a protest. “Only a bit. Only to keep him abreast of progress, since he would be leaving the country soon.”

“You told him I was in Atlanta. Did you tell him I was looking for someone who’d stolen the files you wanted?”

More silence. Finally he said, “Not … not in so many words. But yes. I think. I certainly didn’t tell him our address, though—or give him any names!”

“He didn’t need addresses, and he already had enough information on hand to put the names together.” If he knew I’d gone to Atlanta, and he knew one of the program’s subjects came from Atlanta, the math was fairly easy. All Keene had to do was have somebody watch the deJesus household and wait for me to appear. “Ian.” I wanted to change the subject. He couldn’t have known. I couldn’t hold it against him. “I think he was trying to lure you back for more. The program started again as a civilian enterprise; it’s run out of Bruner’s office, in a building owned by a guy named
Sykes. I don’t know the whole picture yet, Ian. But I’ve learned a lot, and I’ll tell you everything. All of it. You can help me put the pieces together. And … and … Bruner is still out there. We’ll hunt him down and ask him the rest. There’s a lot I don’t know, but I do know this—it’s not your fault Cal’s dead. It’s Bruner, and that lying bastard Keene. Please.” I was reduced to begging. “Please, stop this. Let’s get out of here. I’ll help you … or …” It might’ve only been my imagination, but I felt like the fog was thinning. I saw two more bodies, for a total tally of six, I thought. “Or I’ll just keep you company. And you and me and Adrian, we’ll put an end to this. We’ll dig it up the rest of the way, and tear it out by the root. Whatever it takes.”

“I can’t ask you to do that.”

“I’m offering—on the house! You’ve lost your ghoul, Ian. Listen, I’m not much of a guide-vampire, but I’ll do my best. I promise you, among the three of us, we’ll put a total, complete, and
apocalyptic
end to this.” And then I said something I’m pretty sure I’d never said to anyone else before, ever.

I said, “I won’t leave you.”

Whatever was holding the sky in that amazing pattern of swirls and stars … it shattered … and the motion came to an abrupt sloshing halt. As if a carousel had stopped spinning, everything drawled back into focus, and into stillness.