As much as I wanted to, I didn’t call her back to apologize. Instead I waited until I was certain she’d gone, and slipped behind a pillar to snatch a slim leather satchel I’d deposited there only an hour before. Then I placed my shield over my eyes and yanked back the propulsion lever.
A whoosh of air jerked the breath from my body, then biting cold stung my skin as I hurtled up the chute, the voices of those who’d gone before me still echoing off the cylindrical chamber. Bright lights streamed past my mask, but Hunter’s invention did its job, shading my Shadow side from the light so I cleared the bright spiraling tube safely, vaulting in the air with the same sort of free-falling emergence a child must feel at birth. Suddenly my limbs were free and reeling, and I was reversing direction, again the victim of gravity. I spotted my landing and dropped to a crouch on the Silver Slipper.
Backlit in the approaching dawn, perched on the highest sign in the boneyard, I was now at the greatest risk of discovery. All any member of the troop had to do was look behind them, and that they didn’t revealed how much they trusted me, or how little they really knew of me. I was about to set them straight, though if all went well they’d never know it. Vaulting the fifteen feet to the dusty ground, I charged ahead, careful to keep silent, downwind, following their lead.
The exact moment when night and day split isn’t a palpable thing. I don’t know how to explain it, except to say it’s like entering the embrace of a familiar lover. At some point you’re able to anticipate timing and touch, melding the new sensation in with the familiar experience, so that your movement from one side to the other is sure, smooth, and relaxed. So at the moment Gregor gunned his engine, wheels spinning madly against gravel and broken glass, and just before the cab shot forward like a greyhound out of the gate, I lowered myself into a runner’s crouch.
He barreled ahead, and I bolted across the remaining acreage of the boneyard, eating up the ground with long, sure strides. Metal screamed through stone as the cab hit, the high-pitched tearing of the car’s body muffled by the explosion of disintegrating concrete blocks. When the ripple came around the final wall-the one I’d breached before-I fired another full round into the congealing concrete, then plunged headlong into the chasm. I knew it’d be close, but when the shockwaves shuddered around my frame, and concrete pressed in, pressuring my skull, I could only hold my breath, keep my eyes shut, and work my way through what felt like a mile of concrete. The wall was solidifying at my heels so quickly it would swallow me if I stopped. My satchel took on drag, like a parachute opening after a diver, and I had to fight it-limbs wheeling madly-to power through to the other side.
The wall suddenly released me and momentum thrust me forward, so I ended up on hands and knees, concrete dropping from my face in wet chunks. It took a moment of wracking coughs, but eventually I was able to reach blindly behind into my backpack. I washed my face with a wet towel, then my hands, the towel quickly stiffening as I blew my nose and started digging out the concrete in my ears.
Senses restored, I stripped off the bandana protecting my hair and dropped it to the ground. It fell like a rock. My jeans crackled as I stood, and I glanced behind me to see a splinter in the newly formed wall, an opening, if one knew where to look. I pushed away my unease at leaving the barrier compromised yet again, and reasoned that the Shadows had to know we were looking everywhere for them. The last thing they’d do was come knocking on our front door, and I’d return and mend the small fissure before it was found…by Shadow
So, mentally apologizing to the God of Fine Vehicles, I clicked open Olivia’s Porsche and climbed into the driver’s seat with brittle chunks of cement falling off me everywhere. First stop, home to change. It didn’t matter how fast Gregor and the rest were. They had seven stops to make before they could begin their investigation. I had two. And in this car, I’d make them both in record time.
14
If you don’t count the traffic, Vegas is an easy town to get around. It’s laid out like a grid, one flat street bisecting another, north to south and east to west, with a swirl of interstate looping psychotically about the middle. There wasn’t much traffic this early in the morning, and I reached my second destination in five minutes flat.
This time I drove my other car. I’d bought the old clunker last winter, and nobody knew about it, not even Warren. This was what I used for my late-night hunts, when taking a Porsche into the city’s underbelly would be like taking Pam Anderson into a high school boys’ locker room. I kept it in a remote corner of my high-rise’s garage, where the shadows ate up most of the chipped paint and dented bodywork, and while the community board didn’t like it, I paid them enough in association and parking fees to keep them quiet. Besides, I always kept it covered.
As manic and peopled as the site of the first attack must have been a dozen hours ago, it was deserted now, all the cops back in the shop typing up their reports, all the curious onlookers locked safely behind closed doors, thanking their lucky stars that whatever ill fate had befallen their neighbors, at least it hadn’t visited two doors down. I sat in my beat-up two-door, dressed in black fatigues, a dingy wig covering my hair as I waited for the others to make their way into the core of the city.
As I waited, I listened to the scanner I’d had installed in this car, a page out of Gregor’s book, though this one was tuned to the station the troop used to communicate. Even expecting it, I jolted when the static burst into syllables, straightening from my slouch so quickly, Wild Turkey sloshed over the scarred leather seat. It was Gregor’s voice, and I upped the volume to make out his words and code.
“There’s been a mix-up at Sky-Chem, Inc. Two tests have been tampered with, though one has gone missing.”
Warren’s voice returned immediately. “Has the technician made contact with the other concerned party?”
“Affirmative. Second party is not currently in residence, but en route from California. Expected at Sky-Chem’s downtown office, First and Ogden, ASAP.”
In context, the dialogue made sense. Chandra worked at Sky-Chem laboratories doing drug tests on city employees. She had found another victim. She’d moved the body and was now a short distance from the California Hotel. The crossroads had been given as a reference point. The remaining agents would scent her out from there.
And with a body to examine, there was a biological template to work from. Since said body was also just four blocks from here, I yanked my keys from the ignition and immediately took off in that direction. If I waited, the others would close the perimeter, and I wouldn’t get close enough to see or learn anything at all. So I needed to get there first using a route none of them would use, remotely possible only because I’d already legged countless hours on these streets.
Most of the roadways in this area were short but wide, trapped between railroad homes built in the early 1900s, now renovated office buildings, with a spattering of new construction. A few blocks over, downtown Vegas teemed with slot machines, dollar-ninety-nine breakfasts, and a multimillion-dollar canopy of lights, but on this side of the metaphorical tracks, cheap thrills were the thing of dreams. As was, it seemed, indoor plumbing. There was so much urine on the walls of the alley I veered through that I could see the stains even in the moonlight.
I paused when I reached the alley’s end to peer around the corner, covering my nose as I studied the building across the street. A brick affair that’d seen its best days about three decades past, it was shrouded in darkness, its business day long concluded. The building adjacent to it had been renovated into a bank, which meant security, sensors, and cameras. In comparison, this one looked like a neglected dog. Even a break-in would be welcome attention. Happy to oblige, I skirted across the street.
There was a dim alcove with dual glass doors, and I peeked through them into the lobby, redesigned to look edgy and modern, though stripping the yellowed linoleum had apparently been beyond the budget. Black tape along the floor showed where the cattle-or customers-were to line up, and walls of half brick, half glass, probably bulletproof, held cages where clerks served their time. The place was otherwise windowless.
Only one place to go, I decided, sticking my head out from beneath the portico to survey the rest of the building, and that was up.
A good rock climber can wedge fingertips and body parts into the smallest of crannies, stem from the most unlikely of places, and defy gravity with nothing more than flexibility, confidence, and strong thighs. I wasn’t a good rock climber…but I was a heroine, and if I wanted to hang on to a measly piece of brick, I could. It helped that I had no fear of falling, but it would have helped more if I could’ve just leaped the thirty feet to the roof, which I
