Blood Call by Lilith Saintcrow
Why hadn’t he told her? If he had, would she have believed him, or signed him up for the rubber room?
She could just imagine the conversation. Sis, I’ve got a contact. He’s nocturnal, has blue lips, let’s not even talk about the teeth! Oh, and he lives on blood. Got any silver bullets? Maybe a crucifix?
She liked to think that she would have believed him. She’d believed him about everything else since their parents had died. Eric had worked two jobs, attending night school and getting the job at the Post even though he was talented enough to get a spot on a New York paper, or something way more secure. New York wasn’t safe for kids, as he often pointed out. And you’re a kid, dearest sis.
Why hadn’t he told her? Trying to protect her, again?
She carried the unfinished letter from the file, tucked into her purse. Eric’s last words to her.
Just get out and go. I love you.
Not even a memorial service, because she had to hide. The police, if what she was hearing was any indication, didn’t want to look too closely into this. Whoever wanted to…use…that creature Kit had stolen her brother, and the life her brother could have lived—who knew, maybe even a Pulitzer; that had been his cherished dream. He had a lot of dreams, like settling down with someone special and maybe breaking a huge story or two.
All of them were gone now. Finally, irrevocably gone.
“You’re quiet.” Josiah hit his turn signal and turned left on Greenboro. They were very close to the post office, and he was going to circle the block once or twice to make sure they were, in his terms, “clean.”
I don’t know if I’ll ever feel clean again. “Thinking.” She stared at the sidewalks, full of umbrellas and hooded jackets, the occasional bareheaded person, hats bobbing up and down. The hard, cold feeling in her chest was new. She had never felt dangerous before.
“About?” He sounded only mildly curious. This politeness between them was new, brittle and fragile and full of things left unsaid. Had last night been payment? After seeing something no rational person would admit existed, they had clutched at each other like shipwreck survivors. He had two round little sticking plasters over the wounds on his neck; she’d watched him apply them this morning.
The two little rounds did more than anything else to unsettle her. She could have comfortably consigned last night to a particularly bad and vivid dream if they weren’t there glaring at her, clearly visible proof. She couldn’t even pretend Josiah had nicked himself shaving.
“About Eric.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. What the hell, what can it matter now? I might as well say it. “He didn’t tell me, you know.”
“What?” Josiah checked traffic, took a right on Fortieth.
“Eric didn’t tell me about you.”
“Huh.”
Damn the man, did he have to pick now to get all male and grunt? “I found the file. I was looking through his safe for my birth certificate, I wanted to get my passport renewed before we…before we eloped, so maybe I could go with you on some of your trips. I found the file. I don’t know how long it had been in there. He didn’t tell me.”
“Is that so.” Even, unsurprised. His profile didn’t change, clean and nondescript, handsome in his own unremarkable way. His irises didn’t lighten, either. He looked completely unmoved.
So she kept going. Might as well tell him the whole thing. “I went to see him after I left your place.”
“After you dumped me.” A small, precise correction. He touched the brakes. They passed the post office, a large granite block built in the fifties. People marched up the steps, marched down; the bus stop in front was packed with people huddled in the flimsy shelter. She craned her neck to stare as they rolled past, looking for anything out of the ordinary.
If she kept looking out the window, she might be able to keep discussing it as if it didn’t matter. “Yes. After. He told me I was an idiot. He was furious with me for taking the file. He also told me that when I was with you he didn’t worry so much, but now he was going to have to start worrying all over again.”
“An implicit vote of confidence.” Josiah didn’t take his eyes from the road, and she had a sudden intense longing to shake him, to make him react. This calmness was infuriating.
She took a deep breath, stared at the rivulets of water sliding down the windshield as they reached the end of the block and Josiah hit the turn signal again. Her mouth burned with the memory of his lips on hers, and a few other places on her body twinged. Last night she hadn’t cared about her back or her ankle. This morning, however, she wished she hadn’t been quite so athletic. “I want whoever killed him to die, Josiah.”
Did she imagine it, or did he take in a short, soft breath? “If I get you out of this without any more bruises it’ll be a miracle. It will be an even bigger miracle if neither of us comes down with a serious case of lead poisoning. I am not in this for revenge, goddammit.”
“Then what are you in for? You told me that if I paid you, you’d kill whoever killed Eric.” Her jaw set stubbornly, aching. Why am I doing this? I know better than to push him when he’s like this. Miserably compelled, she forged ahead. “You made the deal, not me.”
“That’s not quite what I said. Seriously, Anna.” He turned again, circling the block, his eyes light blue now, piercing as he looked through the windshield, scanning. His knuckles were white. “Now is not the time.”
“Then when? We haven’t exactly had a lot of time for discussion lately, in case you haven’t noticed.” She shifted in the seat, easing her back slightly. The Advil he’d given her was beginning to work, blunting the pain. The welcome relief didn’t bring relaxation in its wake, though.
“If it would bring Eric back for you I’d get my hands on some Semtex and a freelance backup crew and blow up half this fucking city. But it won’t. This is bigger than either of us thought. That nice polite man we met yesterday, in the restaurant? If he thinks he can get his hands on that thing we saw last night, we’ll never see the light of day again. If that thing comes back and we don’t have whatever he thinks Eric was holding for him, it could get even uglier.” He took a deep breath. The windshield wipers went back and forth. “The cops are looking for us, and yesterday I pulled the resident organized-crime syndicate’s tail so hard they’re probably cursing my name in between trips to Wal-Mart to buy more ammunition. I have no backup, little gear, and you to look out for. Liquidation isn’t my primary objective on this run, Anna. Keeping your ass in one piece is.”
Well, isn’t that a compliment. “So you enjoyed yourself?”
“I forgot how temperamental you can be.” He took one hand from the wheel, ran it back through his dark hair, and sighed. “Of course I fucking enjoyed myself. That’s never been the problem. The problem is, you clutter up my goddamn head and twist me around so hard I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. And if I don’t think clearly, we are both going to end up dead.”
“You promised.” She couldn’t help herself. Life’s not fair, Anna, Eric had repeated over and over again. Still, the injustice of it filled her eyes and her throat at the same time.
“Even if I had promised, I wouldn’t do it. Not as things stand now.” By this time they had completed another circuit of the block, and he whipped neatly into a parking garage across the street from the post office. He rolled his window down and took the ticket from the machine, glancing up as if to reassure himself. Anna looked up too, and saw a security camera aimed right at the car. “Don’t worry, it’s not loaded.” Josiah’s tone held a great deal of dry humor. “That’s why I chose this place; the cameras here are fakes.” He crept through the garage until he found a spot that seemed to satisfy him, and cut the wheel hard, pulling into it.
“I want whoever killed Eric to answer for it,” she repeated, searching for the words to make him see, make him understand. “He was my brother. He was all I had.”
“He was not all you had. Give me the key.” He reached over and actually took her purse. She grabbed for
She stared at his profile. His gaze kept flicking over the dripping cars waiting silently for their masters to return. An elevator sign glowed next to a fire exit stairwell; a small sign proclaiming 2 and STAIRS was painted next to an unprepossessing door laden with layers and layers of chipped yellow paint.
I am not going to just sit here. To hell with that. “What if you don’t come back?”
“Then I’m dead and they’ll scoop you up in a matter of minutes too. Don’t worry so much; we’re clean and nobody knows about the post office box, or they would have already dangled the ring in front of Dead Boy like a worm on a hook. I want to hear you say it. Tell me you’re going to stay here and not get out of this car for any reason.”
Fine. “I’ll stay here.” She tried not to sound sulky.
“Good girl.” He did look at her then, his hair falling across his forehead and faint dark circles smudged under his eyes. They had darkened a bit, the hazel turning deeper. He wore a little armor-clad half smile. “Work on decoding that file. I’ll be back in two shakes.”
“Exactly how long is two shakes?”
“Temper, temper.” He reached for the door handle, paused. Turned back to her. “Anna.”
Oh, for Christ’s sake. Her eyes were full, and she was sure there was a box of Kleenex in the back. She wanted him to get out and get away so she could blow her nose, at least. Why was she such a weeping idiot?
“Eric wanted me to take care of you. That’s what I’m going to do. I don’t know why he didn’t call me, but it doesn’t matter. He wasn’t all you had.” The door creaked as he yanked savagely on the handle and pushed it open, almost smashing a dent into the red SUV parked next door. “You have me.”
With that he was gone, the door slamming, and she watched him walk quickly to the entrance to the stairs. Fluorescent light glinted in his dark hair, and he moved gracefully, with a smooth economy of motion—and a little bounce in his step that hadn’t been there yesterday.
“For fuck’s sake,” Anna whispered, as the yellow fire escape door closed behind him. She swallowed the tears, and looked at the ignition. Today he’d taken the keys with him. Her hands ached for paper and pencil, just long enough to draw something to steady her mind a little.
She stared at the steering column for a long minute. It felt like an hour. When she lifted her head, silent rows of parked cars mocked her. Eric’s apartment was less than eight blocks from here.
The church of St. Simeon was twelve.
What are you thinking, Anna?
Her hand stole toward the door handle, dropped to her side. Staying with Josiah was her safest bet, true. He’d just admitted he wasn’t likely to do anything more than just get her out of town safely. There was no “profit” in revenge.
Really, that was the best course of action, wasn’t it? Getting out with her life was seeming more and more like the most she could hope for.
Two left feet and a brain full of glitter. Run away and hide, little Annie.
She’d always counted on Eric to make things better. Now she was counting on Josiah. She might get out of this alive, sure.
Would she be able to look herself in the mirror if she did, though?
What’s really bothering me? Other than her brother dead and her own frantic running away and whining? Well, a lot of uncomfortable things she hadn’t had any chance to voice or even think about too deeply.
The deepest of them, a half-formed, nagging little suspicion, suddenly became a full-fledged certainty. Whatever “agency” the narrow little man in the restaurant worked for probably wouldn’t care much about the truth surfacing. If they were a government agency, the potential use for someone with Kit’s abilities would be staggering. What if the government itself locked Kit away underground and bled him dry? Instead of a mayor and a chief of police getting younger—and the pictures Eric had snapped were thought-provoking, to say the least—there could be a President getting younger, or Chiefs of Staff. The effect of Kit’s blood could be bargained to the military or even foreign countries, the “gene therapy” used to create supersoldiers, and Eric, wherever he was now, would throw up his hands in disgust.
To find the truth. Not because people deserved to know, but because he wanted to know. To lift the veil.
That had been most of it. Eric had also wanted to make things right. It was why he’d gone to Guatemala, why he’d broken the big corruption story eighteen months ago that ushered Denton into office.
Now it was up to her.
Not so incidentally, what would stop Josiah from giving this “agency” the truth, as unbelievable as it was? He had the marks on his throat and the file as proof. More proof was probably in this brownstone everyone was talking about.
Take the chain of logic one step further, Anna. That thing bit him. What if he’s somehow infected? They could take him, too, just to find out. That’s probably already occurred to Josiah. He’s smart enough. This isn’t a good position for him to be in.
He could get hurt. We already know these people shoot to kill.
Her hand crept out again. Rested on the door handle. How many exits did this place have? Also, could she walk for a while without getting noticed? The painkiller was a good one, and her head was starting to get a little blurry. Her ankle hurt, and she was limping badly, but if she walked slowly…
He told you to stay here. He’s done everything he can for you so far, up to and including falling back into bed with you. Which was your own idea, Anna, even if he did make it an explicit condition of his helping you.
Would Eric still be alive now if she hadn’t found the file and hurried off to punish Josiah? Would Eric have come to Josiah and maybe gotten some protection or at least some good advice if they’d still been involved?
Would Josiah have eventually told her everything?
Quit dithering. It’s time for you to take some action. Eric is depending on you to see this thing gets out, not just swept under the carpet. Josiah also might get himself hurt or worse if this went any further. She had to do something.
Eric had done what was right all his life, no matter the consequences or the cost. Now it was Anna’s turn.
She pushed the door lock open. Josiah would be back soon, depending on how quickly he could cross the street and get into the post office.
“Come on,” she whispered. “It’s not so hard. You just get out of the car and start walking.”
Here was safe, though. Doing what he told her was safe. Or at least, safer than anything she had in mind.
Safer for her, but what about for Josiah?
The vision of Eric’s battered, swollen face rose up in front of her again, so vividly she let out a small hurt sound. Her fingers curled around the door handle.
What makes you think this idiotic, stupid, crazy plan will work?
It had to. As much as Anna needed revenge, the creature called Kit seemed to need it even more. She didn’t think for a moment that he was hampered by any of Josiah’s sudden caution, either. Not to mention, he was probably a lot less likely to end up…dead.
Maybe he’s already dead, in which case it’s all academic, right? He won’t even be there, Anna. Come on. You’re being stupid. If this was a horror movie you’d be shouting, “Don’t do it!” at the screen right now. It’s idiotic.
Her fingers curled around the door handle. She pulled. With a loud, decisive click, the latch released. She only had to push the door open and wriggle out, since Josiah had parked next to an old black Jeep that had apparently been piloted into its space by a drunkard.
Don’t do it, Anna. Don’t.
Anna told the little voice of cowardice inside her head to shu
* * *
Rain drummed against the windows, a steady, monotonous sound underscoring soft chanting. Some form of service was in session. Mom had been a lapsed Catholic, Dad a Presbyterian, and Eric an atheist almost to a fault, so Anna had rarely ever been in a church except for a few weddings and funerals. The ranks of candles, the wooden pews, and the soft hushed singing from the choir loft as a robed priest lifted something above his head all made her dizzy. Not to mention the heavy, cloying incense and the echoing space inside the cathedral. Her hair dripped and the new boots squeaked a little as she edged along the wall, hoping nobody would notice a half-drowned artist. The coat Josiah had bought for her had shed most of the water, but her jeans were wet almost to the knee.
St. Simeon was a towering pile of faux-crenellated stone, and even though there was no sunlight to make them burn, the stained-glass windows were comforting. She moved aside, into a windowless narrow room holding small statues in niches behind racks of candles, some lit, some not; she came to a halt in front of a small wooden Madonna and Child varnished with dark age.
The Madonna’s face was kind, and under the layers of darkness her blue robe could still be seen. She was perfectly proportioned, too. Chipped, beaten, repainted, and obviously antique, the Mother of God looked right through anyone standing before her, jotting down and forgiving each human frailty.
A small box of white matches crouched in a little wrought-iron holder, hanging below the rack of candles. Anna took one with trembling fingers.
It’s daylight. Even if he’s here, which I seriously doubt, what am I going to do? Besides, shouldn’t he not be able to come into a church? Not to mention that he was supposed to meet Eric here how long ago? This isn’t going to work. He won’t be here, and I’ll…Jesus, I’ll do what? What can I do?
I’ll figure out something.
The match lit with a sizzle when she held it in a candle-flame. She lit a short white candle, for Eric. Thought about it, lit one for Josiah. Then, before the match burned her fingers, she lit a third.