Blackout
The rising night was heavy, clouds pressing down on the city as the city lights pushed back. People were caught in the middle, rushing home and splashing through puddles. I cut in front of a car that honked its displeasure, water soaking through my shoes. The soles made an irritating squeaking sound as I ran through the underground parking lot for the elevator.
Zara waited for me upstairs, already armed to the teeth. Well, including her teeth, I should say—she didn’t have a gun up there but fangs would pop out when needed, I guessed. Black boots added to her height, black skinny jeans showed off every curve, a red tank top touched her midriff, and a black vinyl bolero jacket completed the ensemble. Guns were holstered at her hips, under her coat by the look of the way the material sat, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find knives in her boots.
I admired her in a weaponry geeky, totally heterosexual way.
“Who has her?” she asked as I stalked forward.
“Looks like maybe the van I saw before—the one where the kid was almost killed. Maybe they need me for this apocalypse thing.”
“And grabbed her instead. Thinking you’d show up.”
I shrugged. “The sentry demons saw me with her. So maybe? Whole thing is fucked up. Michelle sent you the file in case you can check the license plate. Can I have more ammo?”
I could indeed, as she had me follow her upstairs to her room where a cabinet by the bathroom door opened to show the tools of the trade. Guns and knives polished, racks of magazines. It was lovely. I stuck what I could fit in the pockets of the coat. “My guess is that they’re at Mishka’s demolished apartment lot.”
Zara nodded and I followed her back downstairs. “Likely. I’ll send the video to some techy guys to follow up with, in case we have problems. We also shouldn’t go in blind—I’ll call Ryann and have her get Ellie to contact Peter.”
“Um...” I was unsympathetic, sure, but even I figured that might be a bit of a problem. “Won’t she kinda give you a big fat no? He’s still recovering after last time.”
“Peter won’t hurt him, first of all, and when I say it’s for Nic...”
Right. Nic. An innocent—someone who didn’t feed from living people, who probably helped the helpless and all that jazz. I tried not to think about her because beyond knowing our objective was to find her, anything else about what could be happening just had me ready to upchuck, like the coffee I’d been drinking while she was off being kidnapped hadn’t gone down right.
It wasn’t just the coffee, either. I sat on that fucking bench with Adrian Lachlan, of the Veil itself. The Veil who could help me right now...
Of course, they also wanted Zara dead, apparently. And I’d tossed their business card. Nic might not be okay with me rescuing her by hopping into bed with those wanting her best friend in the ground.
If she was still alive even. Way to think positive, dumbass.
“I didn’t find your lab coat.”
“Huh?”
She tilted her head to the side, shiny hair shooting darts of white light. “Your coat is gone. The gun is gone and I found a bullet hole in the wall not far from the elevator.”
Maybe Nic grabbed it? And shot it? Or...
Wait. Back up there. “Lab coat is totally gone?”
“I think I’d notice it.”
“What about what was in it?”
“How would I know what the fuck was in the pockets?”
Shit. “Computer hard drive. Nothing?”
She shook her head.
Well, hell. So they took off with Nic and a hard drive full of medical information about yours truly. The night was getting better and better.
As we ran into the elevator, Zara had her phone out, already shouting at Ryann. “I don’t fucking care, Buff—you get Peter, and you get him now. If Nic dies, I’ll kill both of you.”
If Nic dies...
If you seek out that light again, perhaps you’re not entirely broken.
****
Tires squealed as Zara made a hard right, speedometer needle jerking as wildly as the car. Someone blasted their horn; she gave them the finger.
This car was a seventies Dodge Challenger with a white paint job, all souped-up and like something out of a racing movie. The interior gleamed and I wasn’t sure if she’d ever taken it out of the parking lot. Or if it had even been in the parking lot the other night when I glanced around.
Lifestyles of the rich and famous all right.
The city sped by in a rush of colourful lights popping in the night and wind roared against the car, tires sloshing and spitting up water. Ahead I felt the bend in the air, the barrier up to keep things in the space where they were raising Mishka. Zara’s phone sat in my lap and it buzzed, danced, as Ryann’s number flashed on the screen. I put it on speaker phone.
“What does Peter say?” Zara said without waiting for a greeting.
“He says you’re an idiot for getting messed up in this,” Ryann said, her voice tight and annoyed.
“Yeah, that sounds more like what you would say. Peter was sorta Brit—he’d call me a bint or something.”
A voice chuckled in the background and Ellie spoke next, sounding weary and drunken. “He says hi. But totally did call you an idiot.”
Zara launched straight into business. “What is this ritual going to entail and what are we headed into?”
Voices softened, whispering, like Ellie confirmed with the dead guy before continuing. “Another ritual sacrifice.” A pause. “Probably of Nic.”
My blood ran cold, world halting around me even as Zara sped on. “What?”
“It all comes back to Oblivion, he says,” Ellie continued. “And demons. The parasite in her brain came from that dimension. She’s an easy sacrifice to open the gateway.”
Motherfucker. So they didn’t go to the apartment to get me—they went to get Nic.
Or Zara.
The car launched over a bump in the road, landed hard, kept rolling, and we jostled around. I nearly lost my grip on the phone but steadied, kept it between us.
“I am the most prominent undead chick in the city,” she answered my thoughts. “An obvious target. So when does it go down? Midnight?”
“No. Too cliché. Probably more like nine or ten. The ritual would start at nightfall.”
Which we were already several minutes into. Fuck. I should’ve headed straight there from Zara’s, I should have—
The engine cut out and the Challenger rolled forward into darkness, slowing, slowing, before coming to rest with a rock.
“What the fuck now?” Zara muttered. The phone was dead too, and as we peered out into the rainy night, we saw no lights on either side of us, nothing beyond either, just a few hazy city lights from the road behind us.
A blackout in the middle of the city. It even killed the fucking car.
“Well. That can’t be good.” She stuffed the phone back in her pocket and reached for the door. “I can probably get a signal back—”
“You do that, I’ll go for Nic.”
“You don’t know what’s out there—”
I counted off on my fingers. “Humans committing ritual sacrifice, sentry demons crouching in innocent people, and Nicolette about to be killed to bring back my bitch of a sister.” Sure, Lachlan might’ve been right—nothing might happen. But the fuckwads doing the sacrificing didn’t know that and they still intended to kill her.
“Which means there’s a lot to do, little time to do it in, and we need to know what the fuck is in there and how to get rid of it. I have been alive three centuries. You have been alive three decades.”
“I can take out the sentries—”
“And you were incapacitated last time. Jesus, are your fucking roots secretly blonde or something?”
“Then I take out all of them and you get Nic and you get the hell out of there.” I yanked hard on the car door handle and slipped out into the rain, padding off into the darkness. Zara didn’t answer, nor did she follow, so I guessed that she agreed.
And pulling a Jericho out of its holster, I seriously hoped I wasn’t making yet another fucking mistake.