Under the Gun (2 page)

I felt myself recoil, felt the ice water race through my veins. “They went after the
townspeople? I thought the trackers were only after werewolves.”

Sampson looked at me, his warm eyes full and wide. “It used to be that way. But this
new breed of trackers . . .” He looked away, breathing out a sigh that seemed to dwarf
his shoulders, seemed to carry the weight of the years in it. “They’re relentless.
They attack werewolves . . . and anyone who helps us.”

I looked over my shoulder, the hair on my arms standing on end. Sampson reached out
to touch my knee, then seemed to think better of it, his arm falling listlessly to
his side. “I don’t want to put you in any danger, Sophie. I’m only here to warn you.
I couldn’t stand it if I knew that this”—Sampson turned his hands palms up—“that I,
was responsible for anything bad happening to you. I think I’m going to leave tonight.
I just needed you to be aware.”

“You can’t keep running. You said so yourself. They’re just going to keep coming after
you.”

Sampson shrugged. “It’s nothing I’m not used to.”

“No.” I clamped my hand around Sampson’s arm. “I want to help you.” I paused. “I’m
going to help you. Me and Alex—and Will, and Nina—”

Sampson’s jaw clenched, fire blazing in his eyes. “I told you. No one can know I’m
here. It’s my fight.”

“You said they were coming after the Underworld. It’s our fight now, too.”

“You don’t understand, Sophie. It’s bad out there.” He gestured absently over his
shoulder, toward the San Francisco Bay or the entire world, I couldn’t be sure.

I sucked in a breath and forced a smile. “I’m okay with bad. I mean, how bad is bad?
Werewolf hunters. Silver bullets, right? Heh, that’s nothing. I was almost blown up.
And I was kidnapped. Held hostage in a restroom. A
public restroom.
” I raised my eyebrows in
Beat that!
style.

“After they attacked our den, they decapitated all the townspeople.”

My stomach lurched and bile tickled the back of my throat. “That’s nothing,” I whispered
hoarsely, my smile painted on.

“So it’s settled. You’ll stay here.” I looked around my apartment, feeling suddenly
hopeful. “Yeah. Yeah, you could stay here. They wouldn’t come looking for you here,
no one would.”

“And what about Nina? You think she won’t notice a big hairy wolf on her couch? Or
smell me?”

“First of all, it’s
our
couch. And you’re right. Nina smells all my friends.” I cringed. I wasn’t sure what
was worse: the need to hide someone I cared about deeply from someone else I cared
about deeply, or the fact that I cared deeply about someone who had the tendency to
smell all my visitors.

I snapped my fingers. “I’ve got it! I read on the Internet—work is slow, I’ve had
some time to read—that drug dealers pack dryer sheets with their pot so dogs won’t
be able to smell it. We could do that.”

Sampson’s smile was staid. “Well that’s . . . offensive.”

“I could make it work.”

Suddenly Sampson’s smile was gone.

His hands closed around my forearms, his eyes wide and dark. He shook his head. “No,
Sophie. You can’t tell anyone I’m here. And I don’t want to put you out.”

“But—”

“No one. Please. Please tell me I can trust you to keep my secret.”

I nodded, and the relief was visible on Sampson’s face.

“Wait—where are you going to go?” I asked. “Where are you going to stay?”

Sampson’s hands dropped to his sides and the deep look of exhaustion haunted his eyes
again. He sighed. “I’ll find somewhere.”

“But where? And, how will I be able to find you? I’m going to help.”

“Sophie, I don’t want you to get involved.”

I crossed my arms in front of my chest, feeling indignant. “It’s a little late for
that, isn’t it?”

 

 

Nina and I sat in my car, silent save for the nattering of the morning DJs on the
radio.

“I didn’t mean to overhear,” she said finally.

“Oh, I know,” I said, lightly pushing the gas.

While I was flopping over the couch and narrating an M. Night Shyamalan film, Nina
had been in her bedroom finishing off a Zumba DVD.

For a vampire who could eat all the fat guys she wanted and never gain an ounce, I
had to admire her pluck.

“So what are you going to do?”

I shook my head, gnawing on my bottom lip. “I don’t know. But I can’t just let him
go on running. What kind of life is that? Always looking over your shoulder, never
getting close to anyone.” A little prick of pride poked at me. “I’m going to help
him, Neens. After all he’s done for me? I owe him that. I can totally help him.”

Nina didn’t even bother to hide her skepticism. “You’re going to help him
not be
a werewolf?”

“I’ll figure something out.”

My sudden bravado was stemming from the new leaf I had been considering turning over.
In my life, I did a lot of crying. And sniveling. And falling down. For a girl whose
CONTACTS list was loaded with the undead, the overpowering, and the often stinky,
I didn’t have a heck of a whole lot going for myself other than my near infallible
ability to screw things up.

That stopped now.

“Yeah,” I muttered to the windshield, my super-hero grin widening. “I’m going to save
Sampson.”

Nina eyed me, then squirmed in her seat. She folded her shoulders in and put on a
pair of sunglasses that covered up the majority of her flawless pale face. “Sure.”

“What are you doing?”

“It’s hot.” She rolled down the window and tucked one of the many pieces of discarded
clothing-slash-garbage that I kept in my car just for situations such as these—or
just because I’m lazy—in the window. “Didn’t anyone tell the sun that this is summer
in San Francisco? You’re off for the season!” she yelled out the window.

While summer in San Francisco usually consisted of hoodies and hot chocolate, this
year the temperatures were unseasonably warm. I loved the opportunity to bare skin
that spent the majority of time cuddled in fleece; Nina hated it. I suppose I would,
too, if every ray of sunshine made me sizzle and smoke.

Vampires have sun-free immortality; we breathers have flip-flops, tank tops, and skin
cancer.

When the morning DJs rattled off a string of hotter-than-usual temperatures for the
rest of the week, Nina’s lip curled and her nostrils flared.

“God, I hate global warming.”

As we inched closer to the police station, my heartbeat started to speed up. Once
we pulled into the lot, I was fairly certain my spasming heart would bolt right out
of my throat. I swallowed hard and tried my most ordinary grin on Nina.

“Did you put your jeans in the dryer again?” She cocked a quizzical eyebrow then hovered
one perfectly manicured fingernail in front of my perma-grin. “You’re looking a little
pinched in the face area.”

I dialed down the grin and killed the engine.

Though the Underworld Detection Agency is firmly hidden beneath thirty-five floors
of earth and concrete, the very idea of it—and of me, walking through a place that
catered to a magical, mind-reading clientele with a secret the size of the
Titanic
—made my heart pound and my palms sweat.

Some days I wished I had stuck with my childhood dream of becoming an Avon lady or
a pony.

I closed my eyes and chanted to myself:
I’m good at keeping secrets, I’m good at keeping secrets....

And I am.

I’ve kept the lid on the entire existence of the demon Underworld, the fact that my
roommate is a vampire, and once, when I was on a plane from New York, the winner of
American Idol
. But walking through an office staffed with the undead, the unearthly, and the unable
to keep their noses out of my 100-percent-normal, breather mind, is a different story
entirely.

I felt the surge of pain before I heard her voice. “Jesus crap, Nina, what the hell
did you do that for?” I rubbed at the rapid bruise I was sure was forming on my rib
cage where Nina had zinged me with her index finger.

“You were doing your weird, freight-train breathing again. Are you okay?”

“It’s called relaxation breathing, and I’m just trying to center myself.” My eyes
darted to the police station’s double doors. “I need to act calm and normal or people
are going to suspect something’s up.”

Nina leaned over and pulled the biggest hat I’ve ever seen out of her shoulder bag,
then worked to arrange it on her head. Finally she turned to me and smiled. “Soph,
if you walk into the Underworld Detection Agency acting either calm or normal, everyone
is going to
know
something is up.”

Touché.

 

 

Like I said, the Underworld Detection Agency is housed in the same building as the
San Francisco Police Department, but nestled a cool thirty-five floors below. The
thin veil that separates the “breathers” (anyone with a beating heart and the breath
of life) and the Underworld inhabitants allows our elevators to go straight on down,
while theirs sticks to Lower Lobby and above. Hence, the San Francisco Police Department
doesn’t even know we’re here.

But not many breathers do.

My hand closed around the door handle and a shiver went through me—this one had nothing
to do with Sampson, nothing to do with my promise. This one was all about Alex Grace.

His face flashed in my mind: that cocky half smile, those sweet cherry lips—the surprised
look on his face when I walked out of another man’s apartment clad in little more
than an oversized soccer jersey and a handful of last night’s clothing.

We’re not together; we had “the talk,”
I reminded myself.
I didn’t do anything wrong.

But deep down in my gut, I was sure that I had.

I prayed that Alex would already be in his back office, head down, working away—oblivious
to the fact that I, Sophie Lawson, traitorous woman, walked among him and his law-and-order
associates.

Nina and I slipped into the police station vestibule and I kept my eyes firmly focused
on the prehistoric linoleum in front of me. I counted the cracks and the curled edges,
tapping my foot and willing the elevator to move at a slightly more acceptable pace.

“I can hear your blood rushing from here,” Nina said. “Calm down.”

When the big steel doors opened and I was still undiscovered, my heart did a joyful
double beat and I sent out a blanket thank-you to the universe and the Otis elevator
people.

I stepped inside the elevator, a myriad of feeling pummeling me. I was hoping for
another quiet day lining up Post-It notes and changing my outgoing message—“Hi, you’ve
reached Sophie Lawson, director of the Fallen Angel Division of the Underworld Detection
Agency. If you would like this message to continue in English, please press one.”
I didn’t speak any other languages so the message generally ended there.

Thankfully, the UDA waiting room seemed to be in full-swing, business-as-usual mode.
A few ex-clients of mine—my client list had quickly dwindled once I found my first
dead dragon—looked over their shoulders at me, then looked at the floor suddenly,
as if nappy industrial grade carpet were the most fascinating thing in the underworld.

Nina linked her arm through mine, her cool, bare arms making gooseflesh rise up on
mine immediately. “Don’t worry about it, Soph. Everything is going to go back to normal
soon enough, and you’ll be swimming in intake forms and slobber like the rest of us.”

She smiled, her small fangs even more visible in the overhead light, and though I
was up to my ears in nervous twitters, I had to smile back. Nina is my best friend,
my roommate, and by far the wisest person I know.

I was convinced that coming back from the dead must make you super smart.

She is tall and lanky to my short and square, with perennially perfect black hair
that swims over her shoulders and nips at her tiny waist. I like to believe that I
have the same lustrous hair just in a deep, radiant auburn. I also like to believe
that I look like a kick-ass warrior woman in black leather pants and skimpy tops that
crisscross my stair-step abs. But in actuality, my curls have a mind of their own,
auburn equals a red not found in nature, and the one and only time I wore leather
pants they chafed so badly I had to see a doctor. I do have a decent chest—not remarkable,
but passable, especially compared to Nina’s—and strong arms, generally from carrying
around loads of Granny-inspired cantaloupe (long story). Nina has a padded bra and
jaws that can rip a grown man’s throat out, so I guess she wins again.

She was born (the first time ’round) in nineteenth-century France and still holds
on to the poised countenance of a noblewoman. While I tend to be on the loud and falling-down-a-lot
side, Nina tends to glide, to bat her mile-long lashes and purse her heart-shape lips
and the world’s population falls at her feet. And if they don’t, she’ll bite them.
Luckily for you, centuries of roaming the Earth and a signed-and-sealed contract with
the Underworld Detection Agency mean that Nina kept her fangs to herself and breathers
like us never have to worry about becoming a vamp snack.

That’s mainly what we do here—file paperwork, keep demons in line, keep tabs on anyone
and anything just passing through. But before you think we work in a dark, dank cave
and wield stakes and swords to vanquish and behead, I should tell you that the UDA
office pretty much mirrors the humanoid DMV, and the only thing I’ve wielded down
here are Swingline staplers and Scotch tape notes. I vanquished a fallen angel with
a trident once, but that was strictly on private time.