Finally Dead (Eve Benson: Vampire Book 1) (29 page)

She
jogged out with it, not using any particular speed, then set the thing down in
the parking lot behind the appliance store that adjoined the property in the
back. It really wasn’t very big, after all. Not that she knew how large
explosions were from the size of the initial bomb. Then she sprinted,
physically
and
using her full speed, to check out everything, as fast as
she could. There was nothing else, and no new shooters came as far as she could
tell.

It
wasn’t until the thing went off, about two minutes later, that she got the
idea. Even being behind the building, the bang was loud and fierce. Decently
large, to tell the truth. Everyone ran out the front door, and that would have
led to snipers hitting them, when they did. It was really a good plan. If
having a decently high death toll was the point. Why though? Just to cut down
on the number of people going to their club?

Eve
didn’t get the real reason, but knew that having captured one of the people
would probably help. If she knew anything at all. Why she even thought about
that she didn’t know, but all the compulsion talk in the last few days kind of
made her wonder about the idea. Couldn’t you compel people to do your bidding
for you like that? Talk about disposable manpower. You just grabbed up some
people you didn’t like, or who had the skills you needed already, and then let
them do the dirty work for you.

In this
case all that would be needed were the three shooters and a delivery person.
Unless one of the people set up to kill the crowd was their regular delivery
guy? Or gal. It was true that the job would probably be done by a man, but she
didn’t want to be sexist about it.

The big
problem at the moment however was that Edom had taken off with her car keys.
Then left in Troy’s vehicle, meaning that hers was sitting right there with two
corpses in the trunk. The police were
going
to want to have a look
inside, she was willing to bet. It was a bit annoying, now that it occurred to
her. The boom and the fleeing people would get that kind of attention too.

Honestly,
Eve wondered how the heck she was supposed to get out of the situation.

Hopefully
it wouldn’t take some kind of secret skill, or power, because she was about
tapped out that way.

Eve
hated to do it, but realized that she kind of needed to handle things like an
adult. A real one, that had bodies in the back of her personal vehicle. Since
she doubted that prison would work too well for her, she decided to go with
plan-B, and simply call Edom up. She even managed to sound fairly relaxed as
she spoke, inside the otherwise empty club.

The rest
of the people had fled, and a lot of them had just kept on going, once they got
out of the building. It was a good plan, honestly. They were there to dance,
not die. Staying at the club didn’t help anyone, even though the cops wouldn’t
think that way, she was willing to bet.

“Hey
Ed?”

“Problem?”
His voice wasn’t concerned really, just deep and resonant. Rich sounding, like
always. Sexy, even though it was a horrible time to be noticing things like
that.

“Yeah.
Bomb in the storeroom of the club. I got it out in time, so the building and
people are
fine
, but the police are coming and I don’t have my car keys.
Would you be a dear and send those over? I’m sure that the nice officers will
want to look inside, since there was just a bomb here. We don’t get along too,
so that will probably make me the prime suspect.” She didn’t sound sweet, but
there was no tension either. Not in particular.

“Crap.
I… There’s no way we can get from here to there in time. Can you pick the car
up and move it a few blocks away?”

Eve
blinked, practicing for acting shocked. She didn’t think she really could, to
tell the truth. The physics of it wouldn’t work. If she took one side and Barb
the other though, that could, possibly, work. It would have to be done quickly
though. That… Well, two fairly small women carrying a mid-sized car was
going
to attract attention.

Fuck.

“I’ll think
of something. I need to do that now. I can hear the sirens already.”

She
looked around and then made a face. Walking over to Brian, she tried to look
shifty.

“You
don’t know how to hot wire a car do you? Edom took my keys, and I’d rather not
have the police find what’s in there.”

The
bouncer, who was something like the second in charge of security for a
nightclub, just gave a knowing nod.

“Drugs?
Ed won’t be pleased if you try selling here. I don’t know how to do that, but
Rick does. I’ll get him to move it. You’ll owe me though.” Just in case she
didn’t get the idea, he made a smarmy face.
“You know what I mean?”

Sex, of
course. In this case, since she wasn’t really ready for that kind of thing for
certain, him being compelled into
thinking
they’d done it. It worked for
her.

“I’m
game. Get that done and I’ll do both of you for the next month. Hurry though.
I’d rather avoid prison, if it’s all the same. They make you wear such tacky
outfits.”

Rick
hurried over and wasn’t gentle with her car, but she could get a new one, she
decided. He had it going fast enough that she wondered why he bounced for a
living instead of boosting cars. Then again, she hardly knew him. For all she
knew this was just his day job. It worked though, and her car ended up being
five blocks away, at a grocery store,
well
before the cops came. By more
than fifteen minutes.

Honestly,
it took so long for the cops to get there after the initial explosion that Eve
wondered if she were viewing the whole world in some kind of slowed down time
frame. Except that the clocks all moved normally. Then, when they showed up,
they were slowly driving up in an armored personnel carrier. The thing was
basically a tank, and it led a caravan of police vehicles that moved along
behind it.

Brian
stared at the line of slow moving things and sighed.

“What,
this is Bagdad now? Are they going to search the roadside for IEDs too?” The
slightly beefy fellow acted as if he were nearly affronted by their slow
arrival.

Eve, for
her part didn’t care. These guys weren’t there to find anything, so it didn’t
matter if they took their time or not. The patrons had already left, and as far
as anyone knew the explosion didn’t have that much to do with the club anyway.
No, it was clearly an attack on the appliance store. Probably an attempted
robbery. Eve listened to the cops go on about the whole thing, biting her
tongue the whole time. It wasn’t their fault that she’d moved the device, but
she sure as heck wasn’t going to go and
tell
them about it all.

To make
the whole thing even better, they were pretty much required to stay for hours,
telling them all, over and again, how they heard a loud bang, and then everyone
ran away. This kept going, far past the time period that was reasonable. On the
good side they were allowed to go back inside and clean up for the day,
eventually. Well past when they would have left normally on a Monday night.
Tuesday morning now, of course, but that was the nature of the business, and
the police didn’t have much to do with that part of things.

So Eve
hurried and cleaned things up. Even as she felt the sun starting to creep up
along the horizon. It burned enough that it was hard to miss, now that she knew
to look for it. If anything it felt a bit worse, because she knew what was
coming. Pain. Pure burning agony would be on her in a few short hours. To make
it even better, Barb couldn’t leave either. Not until the last of their people
were let go. It was clearly uncomfortable for the woman, who shook slightly as
true daylight came upon them.

“This
sucks. I’m going to go down in about ten minutes. I… can’t drive.”

Technically
Eve wasn’t allowed to do that for her either, not having permission for it yet.
Not that she wasn’t going to have to go get, and move, her car as soon as she
could. Or Edom would have to. That would have been a larger problem, but when
the police left, they all cleared out of the area nicely, and she was able to
realize that whatever else was going on, she wasn’t going to be moving her
vehicle on her own that day.

Barb
made a face, then waved at her.

“I’m
locking myself in Ed’s office. Troy’s now. Tell…” There was an awkward waving
and she went inside, locking the door after her with a click. It was pretty
clear that she was going down hard and about to die for the day.

Eve for
her part just felt a bit sleepy, but not really like she couldn’t handle it
all. She was heavy, and in pain, but that was just daylight. That horrible time
of day which made her feel like she might have made a small mistake, becoming a
Vampire. It was her own fault though, she knew.

She was
the one that had insisted she have power, after all. If she would have been
content being used and abused like everyone else in the world, then it wouldn’t
have happened, would it? The thought got her to smile, since it was at the
heart of not being a victim, wasn’t it? She’d made a
mistake
, maybe, and
now had to deal with the fact that there were two bodies in the back of her
car. That was way different than being a
victim
though. Sure, she might
be annoyed at the moment, and uncomfortable, but that wasn’t the same thing as
being forced to do what other people wanted.

Thinking
about that she decided to try and do something about the bodies herself.
Sensibly though. Leaving them to be found in her abandoned car was asking to
come onto the police radar, so that couldn’t be allowed. She still didn’t have
the keys though. Worse, she wasn’t certain that Rick had left her car in
working order.

So she
tilted her head, and tried to think about what Edom would have done in the same
situation. Found a way to drive the car anyway? Probably not, really. No,
he
was organized. The Assistant Ambassador had people to do things for him, and if
something car related came up, he’d… Call to have it taken care of and fixed.

That got
her to smile. Of course she didn’t have Triple A herself, but she did have some
contacts, didn’t she? Calling Lenore at the embassy wasn’t going to go over
well, and it would probably cost her a lot to get the work done, but it was
better than letting the whole thing be found out by the wrong people.

The hard
part there was finding someplace that would let her use their phone that early,
so she could get things started. Rather cutely though she found a gas station
that wasn’t too busy yet, and the clerk let her use the phone without making
her promise to blow him for the privilege or anything like that. He was
decently cute, too. A bit too attentive, and it was clear that he was paying
attention to what she was saying, but as far as she could tell the short haired
younger guy in his red work shirt didn’t seem to realize what it was that was
actually happening. Standing at the counter, a small line trying to form behind
her, she stepped out of the way, so that the guy could keep working while she
chatted.

Of
course, no one answered.

That was
a bit odd, but not impossible, since Ed and Troy had a person to torture, and
might be doing that in the back room there. Eve hoped not, since getting blood
all over the place would be gross, and she knew for a fact that a certain newb
would be the one assigned to clean it all up, didn’t she?

That
left her scrambling though. Yes, she could call in Zack, who would come help
her without hesitation, she didn’t doubt. He was a Greater Demon though, and
even if she didn’t like to think about it, that meant there could be strings
attached. If she was going to have to pay for the service, it would be better
to do it in a way she could afford, not with her soul. More to the point, not
with a giant beating that would leave her broken in a pool of her own fluids.

She
wasn’t worried about the pain, as much as she was the embarrassment of it all.
Thinking of what Lenore had done a few days before got her to make a face and
feel weak for a moment. It was the kind of thing she really wanted to avoid in
life, if she could. Feeling like that was worse than anything else she could
think of. What could she do though? She didn’t know.

Finally
she asked to see a phone book and called the police station, using a
non-emergency number. It took a bit to get Althea Sims on the line, but it
didn’t shock her to find that the woman was actually at work already. It was
pretty clear that she had to be old enough to fake being Human. Otherwise she
wouldn’t have been able to hold her job, would she?

“Miss
Benson? I wasn’t expecting to hear from you. Is everything all right?” There
was a bit of coldness to the words. Suspicion coming from over the hand piece.
As if she thought that Eve was going to… That was a thing that she didn’t know
at all.

“Hi!
Sorry to be a pain, but I can’t find anyone I know, and I lost my car keys. A
friend from the club moved it last night, so that it would be out of the way of
the police. You know about the little bomb that went off?” She had to be vague,
since there were people listening to her in the store. The place smelled a bit,
but that was overwhelmingly of bad coffee. Donuts were mixed in too, which
combined to make her stomach turn a bit in the moment. Really, it was being up
still, feeling tired and having the sun burning her. The room she was in had
glass all the way around, after all.

Rather
than be a pain in the ass, the Police Chief just cleared her throat.

“Oh? I
can send a truck out. Do you need the car taken to someplace specific, or… To a
shop?”

Eve
sighed, and whispered, trying to sub-vocalize clearly enough to be understood
by the Vampire on the phone, and not the attentive store clerk. He, at least,
was
pretending
not to pay too much attention to her.

“I have
two bodies in the trunk. The attackers from last night. We could all be under
attack.” She couldn’t repeat herself, but from the silence on the line, she
thought that the woman got it.

Then she
mentioned that Edom had her keys, but had to go out of town.

The
woman, getting it, moved from suspicious to efficient without passing go.

There
was a light chuckle then.

“I can
send a tow truck then. Can you get by your car and wait there? I know it must
be very late for you. Young people need their sleep, after all.”

She
understood what was being asked, and faked a yawn.

“I’m
good. Thanks for the help. I’ll bring you a muffin basket or something?”

That got
a laugh, and the phone hung up. She handed the thing back to the clerk, who
took it as he finished helping the last person in line. He moved well. Quickly,
doing his job a bit
too
proficiently. Still, there was no attempt to do
anything, including getting her phone number. She nearly asked for his, but had
to go, so she smiled.

“Thanks.
I ended up having to call the mom of one of my friends. Thank God she’s cool.”
Not that Eve was going to trust her. For all she knew, the Chief was the one
behind it all. Or her maker was. Either way, being too cozy there might not
work for her too well.

The tow
truck was staffed with a slightly hung over man who sipped at coffee from a
thermos, but who managed to get her car up onto the back of the truck without
the keys. She had to ride with him though, even though it wasn’t allowed. She
didn’t love the idea, since that could lead to a humiliating beating, but she
knew that it would probably just have to be accepted. There was no way she was
leaving some guy she didn’t know be alone with her car at that moment.