Chapter Nineteen – Jack
Chapter Nineteen
Jack
Five minutes later I was sitting in a car with a taciturn Tamo, him driving us off to who knew where.
“Are you…?” I let my voice drift, wondering if the huge man was like me.
“No.”
“Why didn’t you stop him when you had the chance?” I asked at a red light.
“I’m a lover not a fighter,” he said, leering over and daring me to contradict him.
I clenched my hands into unsure fists, like I was going to punch the air. “Do you have any advice? Or guns?”
“Neither. But you’ll be fine.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve seen things like this go down before.” He took a wide right hand turn, and took me to what I was sure was the seedier side of town.
The block we wound up on had a series of huge warehouses, all of them unmarked. He cut his headlights and engine and glided to a stop in neutral like someone who’d done this before.
“She’s in there. With the rest of them. The entrance is around the back.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“What happens if I get shot or knifed?”
He hit the unlock button on his door. “You’ll see.”
Uncertain of anything but my need to save Thea, I got out of the car.
I snuck around the building’s perimeter.
During my brief time on the streets, I’d learned how to skulk—it wasn’t always that you were up to no good, sometimes you just didn’t need the wrong kind of attention.
Walking boldly on sidewalks under streetlights was the kind of thing people who had homes got to do.
But this was slightly different. I felt like the dark welcomed me. I wasn’t in any danger of stepping on boards with nails, despite the omnipresent rubble—it was like even in sheer darkness I had a beam of moonlight guiding me, though when I looked up there was no moon to be seen.
And—I could smell things. I scented the strong cologne of the man guarding the door downwind. I heard his voice too, so clear it was like he was talking to me—but it was an argument, on his phone, with a girlfriend.
All in all, he wasn’t much of a guard.
Just like I wasn’t much of a vampire—yet.
But trusting in this new and untested part of me, I snuck as close as I could, coming in behind him and then—I snapped his neck. Completely naturally.
One moment he was talking, the next I reached out and clapped hands on head and jaw, and then a sound like the crack of a falling tree.
He crumpled, his phone dropping as he did, leaving his girlfriend to shout at the pavement.
I stepped back into the shadows and if I had had anything in my stomach, I would’ve barfed it up.
I’d fought before—but I’d never killed anyone.
I couldn’t believe I had now—whoever’d done that, couldn’t have been me.
But there the man was, at my feet, not breathing, his eyes staring blankly.
I stood, shaking all over in horrified disbelief as the door behind me opened, and caught on the fallen guard’s calf.
“What the,” I heard the man inside exclaim. The air that came out with him had a strong scent of nail polish mixed with gasoline—what I knew to be the scent of cocaine—and one tiny note of musk from Thea.
And that was that. Whatever I’d done—whatever I was about to do—all could be forgiven.
I slammed the door back into his face, heard it smack him silly and him stumble to the ground. I opened the door up and walked in, kicking him, watching him skid across a cement floored hallway. It felt like I was watching violence on TV, it couldn’t have been me doing it, no matter that I was.
“Hey!” shouted someone else as they ran in, reaching for a gun. I ignored it and ran for him—faster than I’d ever ran before. I reached him before he’d unholstered it fully and tackled him, taking him down, then pulling the gun out to bludgeon him with it.
From behind me, I heard a gun cock, and whirled, shooting at the new stranger.
My aim was instinctive and amazing—the bullet went right between his eyes and dropped him.
Red welled out of the hole, and something inside me churned eagerly.
Blood. Horrified, I threw away the gun—just as another three men ran in.
After that, it was almost like a video game.
Waves of angry men, brutal fighting, and then room after room cleared as they fell, half of them broken, half of them worse.
I made my way into the center of the building, past frightened people screaming, naked and chained to desks, packaging up kilos of cocaine into smaller bags.
I ignored them for now, I’d free them later, but first I had to find Thea—
I heard a muffled scream behind a door. I whirled on it and kicked it open, making it swing on its hinges, and heard a man shout in surprise inside.
“Who the hell are you?” It was King Kong. Behind him, Thea was chained, just like the workers outside—and he was trying to protect her. From me.
He didn’t wait for an answer. Bullets pummeled my chest. I felt the way they disrupted me as they passed through, churning organs that had each had their use in the mortal world, but now?
I didn’t know. He emptied his clip, some of his shots going wide in his terror, all the while Thea screamed behind him.
I looked down and saw blood, my blood, well out of five separate holes.
It seemed like both a fantastic waste and an invasion of my privacy.
My blood was mine—and all blood belonged to me.
I had caused so much carnage and ignored it all—not anymore.
Fangs tore through the palate of my mouth at the ready.
“What the fuck are you, man?” he shouted, his voice rising in terror.
It was too hard to talk with fangs down—plus I didn’t have an answer for him. I just let the hunger take me.