Chapter 35
River
The sun had set by the time we arrived at what looked to me like a neon monstrosity of rundown buildings all clustered together in a shady part of the city.
The distinct smell of greasy street food and cigarette smoke wafted toward us and I nearly gagged at the overwhelming clash of stomach-turning scents.
I looked over at Laurie, surprise and confusion evident on my face. “Wanna tell me what exactly we’re doing here?”
Laurie stared back for a beat like she was contemplating how much she wanted to reveal, before she shrugged and sauntered forward, crossing the street without waiting for me to catch up.
“We’re finding allies,” she called over her shoulder as she strode toward what had to be the grimiest, hole-in-the-wall kind of nightclub I’d ever seen.
I couldn’t imagine someone like Laurie setting so much as a foot in the place, but she waltzed right up to the bouncer, nodded like she knew him personally, and beckoned me inside.
I followed, cautious and curious, taking in the purple strobe lights and the slight stickiness of the floor under my boots with a curled lip.
“Well, this is….” I looked around, noting the crush of bodies moving on the dance floor and the distinct tangy aroma of cheap booze, sweat, and general debauchery. “Lively.”
A passing group of partiers had Laurie and me wedged up against the wall as they squeezed by. I watched Laurie bristle at the contact and felt her aura spike out here and there. Not quite panic but uneasy enough to have me reaching for her hand.
“How exactly are we supposed to find allies here?” I murmured in her ear, looking over the top of her head at the undulating crowd of clubbers. “This place is full of humans. I can’t smell anything supernatural other than what I’m pretty sure is a radioactive bathroom cubicle over there.”
Laurie rolled her eyes, but her jaw was set tight. She flinched when the strobe lights flashed overhead, picking up a dizzying, flickering pace alongside the pounding music.
“This is where I met the escapees.” She practically had to yell over the beat drop, leaning back with her lips at my ear. “And this is a good place to get information on what’s going on under the radar in the city. You want rumors? This block is the unofficial bulletin board.”
It looked like a run of the mill shithole to me, but I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.
“How did you find this place to begin with?” I let her drag me along, flashing a very subtle shark-like sneer at anyone who looked at her twice. “This doesn’t really seem like your kind of hangout.”
“I used to work here,” she called over her shoulder, and then nearly slipped in a puddle of spilled beer on the floor. She rightened herself on my arm and glared at the puddle like it had insulted her personally. “Wouldn’t recommend it.”
We ducked through a side door into a graffiti-tagged corridor that smelled of bleach and vodka. The ceiling light overhead cast everything in a sickly yellow hue. Two drunk stragglers leaned up against the wall, bouncing a cigarette between themselves. They paid us no mind as we passed them by.
At the end of the corridor, at a moldering shut door, Laurie let go of my hand and looked back at me. “Uh—wait here. I’ll be right back.”
My brows shot up and I looked pointedly around the grimy hallway. “Wait here?”
Laurie clearly wasn’t impressed with my snarky attitude because she fixed a blank stare on me while her hand fumbled with the door handle.
“I’ll be five minutes. You can be patient for five minutes, right?
” When my brows climbed higher, she groaned.
“You’re a vampire, you’re supposed to be good at lurking. ”
I folded my arms, but took the dig gracefully. “Fine, fine. Five minutes—then I’m going to assume you’ve escaped out a window.”
That earned me an extra eye-roll and Laurie hauled the door open with a sigh. Blaring music and a cacophony of voices burst in from what looked like a VIP lounge behind her. She slipped inside, shutting the door slowly—and her parting words came a little quieter. “Just… wait here. I’ll be back.”
Then she closed the door and I leaned back against the wall, entertaining myself by counting the pockmarks on the ceiling.
Through the door I could still hear faint chatter, followed up by a particularly booming voice shouting, “Montgomery! Where the hell have you been all this time?”
My fingers tightened on my forearm and I snapped my head toward the door. I itched to fling it open and meet the owner of that booming voice head-on, but Laurie told me to wait… So, maybe this was a friend of hers?
I cast my aura outward, trawling the area for hers until I felt the familiar fluctuations of her emotions. She didn’t feel particularly panicked, some light nerves and nothing more. If she wasn’t in danger I would have to stay put, rather than ruin whatever her plan was.
So I waited, straining to catch snippets of conversation through the door. But Laurie must have moved further in, because I couldn’t hear anything other than the occasional murmur, garbled words swallowed up by the pounding music.
A minute ticked by. And then two more.
I glanced at the door again, mentally feeling around for a tendril of Laurie’s aura. It was faint at first, tense but not fearful—and then it detonated, out of nowhere, smacking into me like a tidal wave of panic and feral terror.
A jagged spike of fear sliced through my chest so abruptly I gasped. To hell with lurking.
I kicked the door open in a blink, hard enough to rattle the glassware in the swanky bar set up in the corner. A handful of slick suit-and-Rolex types jerked upright, whiskey sloshing from their glasses. Laurie was not among them.
“Where’s the girl?” I barked, looking from one wrinkled face to the next with a steadily growing panic of my own. Laurie’s aura had my own pulse ticking up, sirens ringing loud and clear in my ears.
I was met with blank stares and half-hearted shrugs.
Laurie’s aura was elsewhere, moving—pulling me toward a side exit at the far end.
I tore across plush carpeting, shouldered through the service door, and burst into another narrow brick corridor.
Her aura burned brighter ahead, past a battered security gate.
I pushed through it and spilled down the concrete steps, tumbling into an alleyway just in time to see a thick-necked man drive Laurie back against the wall beside a battered green dumpster. She was kicking, cursing, writhing in his grip—biting and spitting like a wet cat.
“Do you know how much money you owe me?!” the guy was shouting, red in the face and utterly livid. “Six thousand dollars went missing the night you quit—I know it was you!”
“I didn’t steal shit!” Laurie bucked and wriggled, straining to break free from his grip on her collar. “You want to point fingers, start with your ‘friends’ in the VIP lounge. They’ve been swindling you from the start—”
The angry man cocked his fist back and Laurie tensed against the wall. He moved to swing—but I moved faster.
He barely turned before I was on him. One wrench on his wrist, a strategic knee to the ribcage, and the guy howled and let her go. Laurie dropped to her knees, shaking all over. I planted myself between her and the wheezing man, fangs fully bared, aura flooding the narrow space with cold menace.
“Fuck off,” I hissed through a mouthful of teeth, towering over him with fiery fury burning in my chest. “Unless you want to lose your head.”
“What the–” The guy took one look at my face—taking in pointed canines, pure bloodlust in glowing ochre eyes—and blanched.
“Fucking hell…” He backed up a step before turning on his heel and scrambling away down the alleyway, disappearing back through the security gate and slamming it shut behind him.
The echoing clang rang through the alleyway, sharp in the sudden silence.
I watched him go, resisting the urge to bolt after him and show him what kind of damage these teeth were capable of inflicting. It took monumental effort to turn away, to let him leave without earning so much as a black eye for daring to lay a finger on Laurie.
Laurie…
Adrenaline roared in my ears as I spun around to help her to her feet. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“No. I mean… I’m fine,” she muttered, but she kept her eyes down, rubbing her hands over her face. “That was my old boss, Micky. I—uh, I didn’t expect him to be quite so butthurt about my quitting six months ago.”
“Laurie, that guy was fully prepared to punch you in the face. If I hadn’t shown up…” I tried to tamp the anger out of my tone, but it flared anyway. “The next time you plan to get yourself into trouble, don’t leave me waiting outside!”
“River, relax. I’m fine.” Laurie snapped her eyes up to glare at me, arms rising to fold across her chest. “It was just a misunderstanding. I quit working at the bar a while back—by walking out mid-shift. Apparently some money went missing from the cash register after that and darling Micky back there—” she inclined her head toward the security door with a sour scowl on her face, “assumed that I was the one responsible.”
“Why were you even talking to him in the first place?!” I resisted the urge to grab her shoulders and shake, to holler at her that this reckless behavior had to end before she got herself seriously hurt.
Her hair was falling over her face and I reached up to brush it aside, working overtime to keep my voice even.
“Why did you have to leave me behind to do it?”
“I was trying to find out if he’d seen the escapees hanging around lately.” She slapped my hand away and backed up a step, shutting down my attempted intervention. “He doesn’t trust strangers, and that includes you. I had to speak to him alone.”
Her voice was rough and rocky, her face crumpled in a scowl.
But I caught the slight shake of her shoulders, and the faintest prickle of moisture in the corner of her eyes.
She was shaken—and trying her best not to show it, but her aura was easy to read.
She’d been scared. Terrified. That thought brought a lump to my throat.
“You could have at least told me that,” I murmured, stooping to meet her eye. “We’re a team, remember?”
Laurie looked away, refusing to meet my gaze.
“Yeah, River, I know. All right?” She leaned back against the wall, the back of her head thunking against the brickwork.
“Look, I appreciate you working with me—I really do. It’s nice to know you have my back, but…
You can’t shield me from everything. You have to let me do what I need to do. ”
“All I’m asking is for you to think about your own safety for five seconds!” My words slipped out sharper than I intended. I cleared my throat, steadied my tone, brushed hair from my eyes instead of hers. “You don’t have to rush into every alley by yourself. Ask for help—ask me.”
“Ask for help?!” Her shoulders bunched, defenses snapping into place. “Yeah, I’ve tried that. You know what happens? People let me down. Every. Single. Time. So, pardon me if I’d rather rely on the one person who hasn’t failed me yet—myself.”
Her aura radiated outward, bitter and chaotic, too many tangled emotions overlapping one another.
In a way, my partnering up with her seemed to send her into an internal crisis.
On one hand, she appreciated the company, the care.
But the other part of her, the traumatized voice in her head, screamed for her to pull away from any semblance of softness I had to offer.
That’s why she got defensive, cagey. She had to admit that she needed help, but she didn’t want to need it in the first place. There was a war going on in her head and I could do nothing to soothe it.
“Laurie, I get it—” I faltered, struggling to find the words that wouldn’t have her clamming up further. “I don’t want to tell you what to do, or how to do it. I just… I want you to take care of yourself. I want you to survive this—”
“It doesn’t matter.” She cut me off, voice cracking on that last word. “It doesn’t matter whether I live or die, River. You want to keep me safe? You want to keep talking like I have some shiny future on the horizon? I don’t. I’m already running on borrowed time.”
The statement rocked me. Her aura convulsed. Grief, fury, resignation all tangling together. I felt it like shards under my skin.
“As long as we take down the organization,” Laurie let out a serrated breath, shutting her eyes to the world as she banged her head back on the wall, “it doesn’t matter what happens to me. It doesn’t matter at all.”