Dead Matter

29

Landing was a lot more jarring than I thought it would be. Aidan had no reaction to his impact with the ground, but his sudden contact with it jarred me, and my grip around his neck loosened. I fell to the pavement in the pool of shadows Aidan had landed us in. Before I could even pick myself up, Aidan reached down, grabbed me by the back of my prison coverall, and lifted me to my feet. Beatriz landed seconds later and by then Aidan had taken the time to tear away the rest of the restraints on my arms.

“Thanks,” I said, and started walking across the street to the Manhattan Mini Storage on the corner, keeping to the shadowy edge of the cars parked along the street. I turned to look back. Beatriz was still standing where we landed but Aidan was right behind me. “What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Coming with you,” he said. “What are you doing?”

“I’m hitting my storage unit,” I said, pointing toward the building.

Beatriz came over to us in a flash. “You really think this is a good time to organize your belongings?”

“Less explaining, more walking,” I said, starting off across the street. At the side of the building, I opened the door into an empty, well-lit foyer leading into the storage facility and reached for the electronic keypad. I went for my wallet, and then paused.

“Shit.”

“What’s wrong?” Aidan asked.

“My code for the door was in my wallet,” I said. “You know, the one they took from me when they checked me into jail?”

Beatriz stepped forward, grabbed the door, and shoved inward. The metal of the door caved in, leaving two tiny handprints, but the door snapped off its hinges and clattered off across the hallway behind it.

I sighed. “Must your people always go for the extreme solution? Geez.”

Aidan gave Beatriz a look of disapproval.

She threw her hands up. “What? It got the door open!”

I held up my hands and wiggled my fingers. “I think I could have gotten us in. Hello, psychometrist here!”

“Fine,” she said. “See if I try to be helpful again.”

I hurried into the storage center and headed down the hall where I had been lucky enough to get a first-floor unit. Although I wasn’t alone, mine was the only set of footsteps I could hear echoing as I walked. I turned to make sure my vampiric honor guard was still with me, and sure enough they were keeping pace.

“Your silence is unnerving,” I said. “Can’t you at least pretend to make some kind of noise when you walk?”

“Sorry,” Aidan said, and in an instant the sound of his footfalls became noticeable. “Better?”

I nodded. “Much.”

I hurried along to my storage unit, thankful for the noise. When I reached the rolled-down metal gate, I punched my code in and the lock on it clicked open. I pulled up the rolling garage-door front of it. “Inside.”

“You want to tell us why we’re here?” Aidan asked.

I pulled the gate down behind us and clicked on the single overhead light in the unit. One wall was covered with shelves, but only a few cardboard boxes were on them. Off to the other side were several garment bags hanging from a pipe.

“I set this place up for just such an emergency,” I said. I pulled a towel down from the shelves and threw it down onto the single table in the center of the room. I pointed to another shelf with gallon camping containers of water.

“Could one of you bring me one of those? I think I’m a little too beaten up to lift it.”

Aidan grabbed it and brought it to the table for me. “So you planned for getting all busted up like this?” He looked a bit skeptical.

I nodded and pulled off my prison clothes, wincing as the pain throughout my body cried out. Using the towel, I soaked up some of the water and began to wash the blood off of me.

“More or less,” I said. “I was a bit of a miscreant a few years back, got into a lot of trouble, and when you do that, it usually comes back to bite you in the ass. My particular trauma showed up a few months ago, under the name of Mina Saria. My dealings with her taught me a harsh lesson about always being prepared. So yeah, nowadays I have a bit of a contingency plan set up for a rainy day. I think this definitely counts as one of those.”

“I see,” Aidan said and went back to standing there in silence.

“I’ll be okay,” I said. “I can clean up. I’ve got clothes, some money. You can go now.”

“No,” he said, “I can’t.”

“No, really,” I said. “You can.”

“I have my orders,” he said, “and they weren’t just to break you out. I’m supposed to watch over you and bring you back to the Gibson-Case Center.”

I dried myself and fished a shirt out of one of the garment bags, slipping it on gingerly. “I’ll be fine. I’m not even sure I want to head back there anyway. I’ve got to deal with Allorah and the Department. I just need to figure out what to do next. Besides, in a few hours when the sun comes up, there’s not going to be all that much watching over me that you can do.”

Aidan grabbed me by the arm, stopping me. He looked pissed. “Haven’t you been listening to Brandon? You don’t seem to realize the importance you hold for me and my kind. We need to take you back to the castle, both for your sake and ours.”

“Bringing you back there is like granting you sanctuary,” Beatriz added. “The center is like its own sovereign nation. You saw what happened when you and your girlfriend tried to get in there the other night. Your department won’t be able to touch you.”

“But Jane and I did eventually get in, though.”

“Yes,” Aidan said, giving a grin far from saintly, “but I defy them to get through an army of vampires sworn to protect you.”

“Fair point,” I said, then realized what was missing from all this. “Shit… my bat. Jane had that custom-crafted for me.”

Aidan gave a laugh. “You mean the one you gave to Connor when you let him and me escape?”

I nodded. “Yeah.” I went to the boxes and started looking though them. “I think I have some other stuff in here…”

Aidan cleared his throat, the kind of human gesture that just didn’t fit on him. I turned to see him holding my custom-made bat retracted down in one of his hands. “Connor thought you might be wanting this back.”

I walked over and reached for it, but Aidan pulled it just out of reach. “So you’ll come back to the Gibson-Case Center with us?”

I nodded and he handed me my bat. It felt good in my hands, and I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed its presence until just that moment. Even some of my pain seemed to fade away.

“Excellent,” he said. “It will be much easier to keep an eye on you that way as well.”

“Thank you,” I said. “For everything tonight.”

“Don’t thank me,” Aidan said. “All in a night’s work.”

“You can thank me,” Beatriz said, chiming in. “I busted my ass getting you out of that floating prison thing tonight.”

“Thank you,” I said, this time to her.

“That’s better,” she said, then looked around. “Do you mind if we get out of here? This place makes me claustrophobic.”

“Don’t you sleep in coffins?”

Beatriz shook her head. “Only the real divas among us. I haven’t been in one since the 1800s.”

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s get to the castle, then. The sooner I talk to your boss, the sooner I can deal with the D.E.A.”

I reached into one of the other garment bags and pulled out one of my older, more beaten-up jackets. The leather was soft like butter and fit like a second skin, which, given the amount of damage I had taken lately, was a welcome sensation. I slid my bat inside it and walked over to the gate, lifting it. The harsh fluorescents of the outer hallway poured in.

“Let’s go,” I said. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m actually missing the artificial daylight back at the castle.”