Chapter Thirty-Eight
Vishous hated to do it. He really did.
But he switched on the restricted ping inside Allhan’s phone.
This was the one that law enforcement could use to locate anybody and everybody, a mandatory requirement for all cellular units sold in the U.S.
as of about ten years ago under Courtney’s Law, a federal statute.
Of course, the humans with the badges who wanted to utilize it had to get court orders, and even with that legal gatekeeping, privacy concerns were still litigated from time to time.
Fortunately, that was not his fucking problem.
As V located the address, and re-formed on the roof of a municipal building downtown in the avenues, he wanted a hand-rolled, except he kept that shit on lockdown while he walked to the edge and looked over the drop-off.
The facility was almost half the size of a football field, and the brightly lit parking lot below was necklaced with chain-link and barbed wire.
Cars and trucks in various crash conditions were lined up like patients waiting for the OR, but not because they were going to be fixed. Not here at any rate.
This was the Caldwell Police Department’s impound, so everything here was evidence in some crime.
Down on the ground, Allhan was inside the gate, stomping his feet and blowing into his cupped hands. He was in a different sweatshirt tonight, a black one, not the gray, and blue jeans. It was still a readjustment to get used to the size of him, but V wasn’t measuring him for new fucking clothes.
What the hell was he doing—
A door opened, and a man in overalls came out with an iPad. “We don’t usually do this after hours. You must be someone important.”
“Not really.”
“Sign here.” He put the lit screen forward. “And I’ll bring her out.”
“Thanks.” Allhan scribbled something. “I really appreciate it.”
All he got was a grunt back and then the man disappeared out of view.
As a door clapped shut, Allhan looked around, twisting his torso and grimacing like his back hurt, and it was fucked up.
As V stared down, he didn’t recognize anything about the male in a way that had nothing to do with his post-transition maturity.
There was no way not to wonder what the hell had been welcomed into the residence at the Wheel, into FT.
The story Allhan had supplied at Safe Place had been blinded in a lot of ways—the parental, names and the bloodline particularly—but that wasn’t that unusual.
Young who were homeless and without resources were still allowed to have pride and want to protect their families.
Even if they’d been left high and dry in the big, bad world.
And Christ, the fucker had been so damned timid. Al had always given off the vibes of a frightened forest animal, all stutters and lowered eyes, looking like he was going to bolt at any moment—
A low rumble vibrated through V’s shitkickers and he glanced at the snow he was standing on.
Moments later, the clinking, metal-on-metal rise of a garage door rippled upward, and then there was a hot breath of gas and oil.
That wasn’t what he tracked. The engine was big, loud, and nasty, and every car-guy neuron in his brain exploded with gimme, gimme, gimme.
He even leaned forward a little farther than he should have.
What rolled out was a straight-up thing of beauty, and he didn’t even like trucks. Fully murdered, a dually, and naturally aspirated, which had to be special order, the Ford F-whatever-the-fuck was badass and then some.
“Don’t know how this is getting released,” the human said as he got out from behind the wheel. “I thought this was part of that helicopter ch—”
The guy grunted and put his hand up to his head like it hurt.
Al went around to the driver’s side. “Thanks for your help.”
“Whatever.”
As the human disappeared back into the building, Al peered into the truck like something in the cockpit was going to sting him on the eyeball.
It was a good full minute before he pulled himself into the cab and shut the door.
And then there was another long pause, as if he was maybe looking up “how to drive” on his phone.
Either one of his phones.
Finally, the red taillights flared, there was a change in engine cadence, and the—
Talk about going at an idle. The truck rip-roared at two inches an hour while approaching the gate, which retracted on its own.
After that, there was more granny driving out to the street and then a turn signal like Al was breaking into a traffic jam even though there were no other vehicles around.
Once on the road proper, he puttered off to the left and stayed to the center as if the parallel parked cars were sporting box cutters.
V dematerialized to the roof of a storage unit place. Then a parking garage. Next up was a series of data processing buildings, at least going by the humming.
It was not hard to follow the truck. Hell, if he’d been on the ground, he could have gone at a stroll’s pace.
Also good job this wasn’t at a busier time of night.
The male would have had a streamer of pissed-off drivers behind him, and maybe a cop-bot or two pulling him over to make sure he wasn’t under the influence: He pumped the brakes at every intersection, whether or not there was a stop sign, even if there was a green light.
Finally, the creeping speed increased to a whopping fifteen miles an hour. In a thirty.
And he just kept going.
It was a triathlon at a turtle pace, all the way out of downtown to the ring of strip-mall suburbia that had rebounded when people decided they’d had enough of online buying and wanted to play touchy-feely again with things like clothes, books, and home goods.
But confidence was gaining by the mile.
Now Al was cruising at a blistering twenty-five miles an hour on the four-laner that had stoplights, turning lanes to cut across opposing traffic, and cars that wanted to actually make it to wherever they were going before the close of this century.
And every time he was passed, he topped the brakes like he’d panicked and then took a while to get back up to speed.
Eventually, he eased off Route 9 into the Latham Plaza.
A weird tightening squeezed the back of V’s neck as he recognized the place. God, he hadn’t been here in over thirty years.
Mr. X’s martial arts studio had been here. The Fore-lesser who had abducted Beth all those years ago, when she’d first come into the vampire world, first learned who and what she really was.
That bastard. If you could dig a slayer up and kill it all over again, that one would be high on the list.
There were all kinds of tall lights shining down on empty parking spaces and snowbanks, and V stayed with the rooftop hops as the murdered truck proceeded all the way to the back corner and around behind the horseshoe-shaped building.
Al rolled to a stop at a freestanding, warehouse-sized box that declared itself “Mac’s Detailing and Body Shop. Est. 1987.”
A guy immediately came out.
“Hey!” Unlike the last human, this one was smiling, and instead of some muni-uniform, he had on overalls, and was covered with tattoos. “Nice ride.”
Al got out. “Thank you so much for this.”
“No problem, I gotchu. Rhamp’s been a customer of mine for years and years. Brings his bikes here.”
“You know what to do?”
“Yup. You can come back in—” The man checked his watch. “Let’s see, three hours?”
“That’ll be perfect.” Al hesitated and then opened the driver’s-side door a little wider. “Um, things are a little… messy inside.”
“No worries. I’ve dealt with it before.”
“I’m not sure you have.”
Two tattooed hands were put up. “Listen, I don’t ask questions about things that are not my business.” The man leaned in and lowered his voice. “And I have chemicals that can get blood out of anything. Don’t worry.”
Al sagged with relief. “Thank you so much. This means a lot to me.”
“See you in three.”
The pair shook hands, and then Al dematerialized into thin air right in front of the guy.
As the man just went back inside like nothing unusual had happened, it was clear that he was either a half-breed who could go out in the daytime or he’d somehow been working with members of the species for a while now.
As one of the bays started to open, V didn’t care about all of that.
He wanted to know what the fuck was going on. Especially as the wind switched directions.
The scent of human blood was so loud in V’s nose, he almost sneezed from the shit.
What the hell had Al gotten himself into?