Vampire's Shade Discounted Box Set

Chapter 9

Chapter 9I left the mall feeling frustrated andtired, and that made me grumpy. I tore down the road, speedingtickets be damned. My head was spinning with information, and myfingers were itching for some action. I hadn’t slept yet, but Ineeded to get this poison out of my system.

I hated being the one who wasn’t ontop of things. I hated being on the bottom rung of the ladder. Thiswoman, whoever she was, was messing with my people. And with me.

On top of that – Connor and vampiretrafficking? I had no loyalty to vampires; I was a killer, for cryingout loud. But trafficking? That just seemed wrong. The whole idea ofa life that stretched to infinity, all of it filled with torture,made me feel uncomfortable.

I shook my head, my view of the roadshaking. I had to get my mind straight. But I couldn’t pick andchoose. I couldn’t hate vampires and protect them at the same time.

But what did I feel, then? Why did thisnews upset me so much? It felt like a stake lodged under my ribs, andit moved around painfully every time I moved, every time I breathed.This was why I had to kill Connor. This was why it had been such amistake that I’d let him go.

I thought suddenly of Jennifer. Howmuch did she know about the trafficking? How much was she involvedin? Giving the police a story was one thing. I was starting to wonderabout her motivation for finding Connor, and I was pissed that she’dlied to me. Was it to give him up? Or was it to save him, and thussave herself?

By the time I got home, the only thingI allowed to keep rolling around in my mind was the fact that mypeople were being messed with – and someone had to pay for that.

I fell into bed, but not before I hadreloaded the Glock under my pillow and slid the Smith & Wessonunder my bed instead of returning it to my gun safe.

Nervous, much?

The fact was, if I woke up with ablonde b***h hovering over my face, I wanted to end her with theleast amount of effort. I was done playing games. I had never beenone to toe the line. I just stepped over the damn thing and startedshooting.

I woke up to three messages on my phoneand a handful of missed calls from private numbers. None of them werefrom Aspen, and that was enough for me to relax.

Ruben had tried to get hold of me. Idialed his cell.

“Anxious to see me?” I asked whenhe picked up on the first ring.

“I want to make sure you’re gettingyour ass in here the moment the sun goes down and taking care ofbusiness. I want this finished.”

“You sound like someone’s chewingyour ass.”

He took a deep breath. I knew it was tocalm down before he broke something on his end of the line. “Youhave no idea what’s at stake here.”

“A lot of cash?”

He chuckled without emotion. “If itwere only that easy. Your life is simple enough – you pull atrigger, and you troubles are over. My troubles live long enough tocome back and bite me.”

“I’ll be there,” I said, and hungup.

My life was easy, was it? Because Icould just shoot my troubles and go to bed without a headache?

If only it were that simple. Theproblem with killing was that it really did come back to haunt you,no matter how justified it was. And there had been plenty of reasonsfor me to pick up a gun in the first place. But it was safer to letRuben believe that his life was difficult, cocooned in the safety ofhis office, while I got blood on my hands. There were some offensesthat couldn’t be repaid in any other way.

I got dressed in my leathers and lookedat myself in the mirror. I looked as deadly as my father, with mydark hair and haunted eyes. I curled my lips back to confirm that Iwas only looking at myself. No fangs. No threat.

I shuddered and shrugged into myholsters. The guns against my body were a kind of security. They weresomething I understood, something solid. A gun was something I couldtrust. It didn’t pretend that it loved me when all it could reallyoffer was death.

I looked at the clock. It was stillearly, even though the sun was casting a fiery glow through mywindow. I walked out the door anyway and got on my bike. I switchedit on and let it idle for a minute, then twisted the throttle andpulled out into the street, with the intention of driving arounduntil it was time to head to the office.

Instead, I ended up in front of WesthamPenitentiary. The big grey building was low and squat, like it hadsunk in on itself. It was divided into two sides, one half reinforcedwith metal rebar inside the walls and no windows, and the guards hadsilver bullets. The visitor lines shifted from the human buildingduring the day to the vampire building at night.

The realization of where my body hadtaken me when my mind was occupied swirled like nausea in my stomach.

I walked inside and went through theusual motions, filling out the forms and producing my ID. EventuallyI was sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair with thick glass infront of me. I shivered, and my chest felt like lead. Suddenly Iwanted to run, but just as I began to get up, he walkedthrough the door.

My father.

He was wearing an orange jumpsuit, andhis formerly black hair was almost completely grey now. He lookedlike he hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. But it was what wasunderneath the hair and clothes that scared me. My father looked likehe had doubled in age. His face sagged and his cheeks were sunken in;his blue irises were so pale that it was difficult to tell what colorthey had once been. And at the same time, the face that stared backat me was still the face of the father I’d grown up with.

He picked up the phone attached to thepartition and held it against his ear. I did the same. The receiverwas cold and heavy against my cheek.

“I didn’t expect to see you,” hesaid.

“I didn’t expect to come.”

A silence hung between us, filled witheverything we couldn’t say.

“How’s Aspen?”

“She’s doing all right,” Ianswered stiffly. No thanks to you, I added silently. “I’mdoing well too. Thank you for asking.”

He didn’t need to say the words. Icould hear them anyway. I didn’t look like I was doing okay. Ididn’t feel like it, either.

His eyes glazed over, and he seemed tolook past me at a memory that transported him to a different world. Iguessed that in a place as colorless and drab as this, he had toescape to a world he’d created himself. He’d gotten good at it. Iknow I had, and my prison wasn’t even something tangible.

“I never meant to do any of it,” hesaid so softly I could barely make out the words. But what he saidwasn’t lost on me.

“It’s a bit late for that now.”

“I miss her.”

He rubbed his eyes like he was wipingaway tears, but when he looked at me I saw no trace of tears. Therewas no question about where Aspen had gotten that skill.

I wondered who she was. Themother I’d lost, or the sister I was fighting to keep? He’d lostboth of them, even though it hadn’t been a straight kill the secondtime around. Goose bumps spread over my body like a duvet, stuffedwith memories of times past and loved ones lost, rather than thefeathers of geese.

“Will you ask Aspen to come see me?”he asked.

“You’re the last person on thisearth she wants to see, Dad. Besides, the jailhouse isn’t exactlywheelchair friendly.”

He flinched at my remark. I wonderedhow much he was refusing to acknowledge.

“I…” His face was a blank mask,his lips moving without producing a sound.

It was enough quiet space for me tospill my own bitterness into the silence.

“You remember that, don’t you? Whyyou’re here? Mom’s dead, and Aspen is crippled for the rest ofher life. And I’m left behind, fixing every mistake you madebecause you weren’t enough of a man to do it yourself.”

My dad looked down at his hand, lyingon the plastic table in front of him. He picked at his forefingernail with his thumb and began to hum a little, and I wondered for amoment if he was sane at all. Maybe all of this would have beeneasier to accept if he’d been declared clinically insane. If acrazy person had made those decisions, I could forgive them somehow –a lapse in judgment, a lapse in who my father really was – but twopsychologists had visited with my father, and both had declared himmore sane than most of the people who were walking the streets. Ifanything, insanity was just beginning to creep in now, without thepresence of the real world to keep him in check.

“Why are you here?” he suddenlyasked, looking at me, and it was the sharpest I’d seen his eyes inyears.

I looked at him for a long time beforeI answered him. “I don’t know. I never really know why I end upcoming to see you.”

No matter how many kills I made, I knewthat the man I really wanted dead was still here. Maybe one day Icould lay down my guns, but there were too many vampires out there,too many people who could still be killed. Too many Aspens in thisworld, and not enough Adeles.

“Maybe it’s because every time youwalk in here, I hope that I’ll see a different person. Someone whohasn’t done all those things. But every time it’s just you comingthrough that door.”

“Just me,” he said.

I put down the phone and stood up. Iwas running late for work. I shouldn’t have come in the firstplace. I never knew why I kept running back to the one man I trulyhated, in the most raw sense of the word. It was his face I saw everytime I forced my stake into a vampire’s heart, or pulled a trigger.It was his blood I saw splattered on the walls behind the victims, onmy hands after a long night. In my nightmares.

I looked over my shoulder. A guard wasalready leading him away from the booth, but my father’s eyeslocked with mine, and his lips were moving. “I love you,” hemouthed.

I turned my back and kept walking.

In the parking lot, I sat on my bike.The last fingers of sunlight were lying across the horizon, leavingstretched shadows behind them like scars.

I felt ripped apart, like there was agaping hole in my chest and every breath I took escaped through itagain. I gasped for air, fighting down the lump that was rising in mythroat.

“Are you all right?” a voice saidfrom behind me.

I swallowed my emotions and turnedaround. My hand was already on the knife on my thigh.

Connor was standing half behind me, andhe looked concerned. Something inside me jumped, and I tried to placewhat I was feeling. I looked toward the horizon again and noticedthat the last light was gone. What remained now was just anafterthought.

“You’re out early,” I said, notanswering his question. “It’s a big risk for a purebred to be outthis close to sunset.”

“A purebred?”

I bit my tongue. I was suggesting thatthere was a breed that wasn’t pure. I shook my head.

“What are you doing here?” heasked.

“I guess I could ask you the samething.”

“You avoid all my questions,” hepointed out. “I have unfinished business I need to tie up.”

He sighed, and he looked so sad for amoment that I wondered if it was my job to do something about it. Wassomeone going to take care of my unfinished business? We all had todeal with our own troubles.

Then the emotion cleared as quickly asit had arrived, and his face was carefully expressionless. “Whenyou join the dark side, you don’t realize how many ends you can’tseem to tie up. Even if none of it was your choice in the firstplace.”

“As opposed to the darkness youcreated in you past life?” I asked.

Connor blanched, if that was possiblefor a vampire whose skin was already too pale. “So you’ve heard,”he said.

“Anyone who reads the paper knows.”

“Except you didn’t read the papers.It was like talking to a long-lost friend when I realized you didn’tknow. You’re only hunting me as a job, aren’t you?”

I shrugged. Admitting to that made itsound worse than it was. I didn’t need to be classified in the samegroup as him.

“I’m guessing you have an interestin there,” he said, tipping his head toward the building.“Vampire?”

I stilled. “How did you guess?”

“The entrance to the human facilityis on the other side.” He smiled a brilliant smile that flashedlong white teeth. He would have to learn to hide those in public. “Ididn’t peg you for the vampire-loving type. What with you trying tostake me and all.”

“I’m not,” I said flatly.

Speaking of staking, for someone whoknew for a fact that I’d intended to kill him, he was being verycasual around me.

“So, are all those stories true?” Iwanted to stop myself, but I had to ask. It was about the vampires.About them, about their lives. I didn’t want to admit that it wasalso about Connor. That I didn’t want to be disappointed in him.

“Would it make a difference to you ifit were? Weren’t you going to kill me anyway?”

I looked down at my hands. I didn’tknow the answer to that question, and that pissed me off.

“You don’t seem too worried aboutit,” I said instead. “The fact that the reason you know me at allis because I was about to kill you.”

“But you didn’t.”

He shrugged and jammed his hands intohis pockets. He was wearing civilian clothes, and if it weren’t forthe small telltale signs and the obvious fangs, I would say he couldpass for human. His ability to disguise himself was amusing. I hadn’tmet a vampire before who could do that. Though I hadn’t reallygiven any of them a chance.

“I don’t know. Maybe I like you,”he said, and his words knocked whatever I was thinking out of myhead.

“You go for the hard-asses, do you? Ahandsome guy like you? What would Jennifer say?”

His face turned to stone, his lips setin a straight line. “She’s not really the kind of person who fitsinto this world,” he said.

“Are you talking about thetrafficking world, or the vampire one?”

He looked at me for a long time. Whenhe finally spoke, it wasn’t to answer my question. We were playingthe same game.

He looked down at his shoes. “Inanother life... Sometimes it takes nearly dying to realize how muchtime you were wasting on the wrong stuff, and how many people youdedicated yourself to for the wrong reasons.”

I groaned. “I don’t do sagas,” Isaid.

I hated it when people, or vampires inthis case, got all emotional on me. Emotion was for weaklings. I’dworked hard to push mine far enough away to believe they didn’texist. I really would have appreciated it if others could do thesame.

Connor chuckled. “I want to see youagain.”

“See me again?” I echoed, because Icouldn’t remember any of our meetings where I hadn’t tried tokill him, so it seemed strange. Maybe he wanted a challenge.

“Yeah. Saturday.”

“During the day?”

He shrugged again. “Nighttime wouldsuit me better.” He looked toward the horizon, and then toward thejail. “I have to get going,” he said. “One of my friends waslocked up for trafficking. Imagine that.”

“Won’t they be looking for you?”

“It’s hard to find someone whenthey’re not what you expect.”

I smiled despite myself. “I’ll seeyou after sunset on Saturday. You have some explaining to do if Iwant to take my job seriously.”

“That sounds a lot like a compromiseto me. I didn’t think you did that often.”

“Never,” I agreed.

“Promise to leave the stake behind?”

I nodded, noting that he hadn’t saidanything about knives and guns.

Connor had started to fade,see-through, when he spoke again. “For what it’s worth, I didn’tdo it. Some people I hired did. When I found out, I had to savemyself. You can fill in the blanks for yourself.”

Then he dematerialized, and I was leftalone again, cursing myself for being an i***t. For feeling theemptiness he’d left behind.

It was okay, I reassured myself. Ineeded to know who was after him and why. That was why I’d agreedto meet him. When I drove toward the office I kept repeating that tomyself, like a mantra.

Maybe if I did it often enough, I wouldstart believing it.