The Taste Of Night

27

I was winging along L and Stone Street, trying to decide where to ditch my ride, when I spotted the first undercover cop. He was slouched in a nondescript Taurus, and I drove past him, circled the block, and came to a stop two streets south of where he was parked. Being an intelligent girl, I’d left the Porsche back at the condo and pulled out the old Vic instead. We were on the cusp of one of Vegas’s seedier projects, and while the Porsche would’ve screamed, Rape me!, the Vic was more of a I-double-dog-dare-ya sort of vehicle.

Or hopefully something a little more gangsta than that.

Through the violet tint of my new worldview, I checked out my reflection again, and satisfied with my dark hair, dark clothing, and dark eyes, pushed the car door shut with a slam that ricocheted through the weed-choked lot and into the concrete buildings beyond. I doubted anyone in this neighborhood even flinched.

It was one very nervous cop in that lone unmarked car. His anxiety was as sharp as week-old sweat as he sat, hardly moving, one hand clenched around a walkie-talkie, head turned toward the building across the street on his left. There was a portable receiver in the passenger seat, which meant whatever room in that building he was trying to maintain visual on was already tapped and live. I crouched in the gutter next to the passenger side door, praying he didn’t have a partner who would be returning soon. The pocked and ill-lit street was silent and unmoving.

“Where you think you goin’?”

I jumped before I realized the voice had come over the receiver. Fortunately the young cop inside had jolted too.

“None of yo damn,” a male voice returned, followed by a door slamming. The walkie-talkie immediately came to life.

“Suspect on the move. Stairwell. I’m on him.”

The young cop’s anxiety spiked, and the car jostled as he lowered himself further, giving me ample opportunity to raise my head and survey my surroundings. I was only using visual as a secondary sense, having already located the other four undercovers-including Ben-by scent. Visual confirmed they were all in the same locations; the first man two blocks down in a beat-up Eldorado; a second, female, standing in full view beneath the lone working streetlight a hundred yards away; another seated and seemingly dozing in a sagging lawn chair kitty-corner to the first complex, and Ben, lying beside a stack of overflowing trash cans, dressed in the same guise Warren liked to use, a street bum playing with less than a full stack.

“Suspect leaving through front entrance,” I heard, and then a pop as the front door flew open. It bounced off its hinges, ricocheting back, but by that time a man the size of a small vehicle-the suspect, I presumed-had already cleared out, and the door slammed shut behind him. He began to walk, slouched, hands tucked in his oversized pockets, heading in the direction of the Eldorado.

His head was down, a black bandana wrapped around his bald skull, but every once in a while he’d lift his chin like he was looking for someone, in almost a syncopated beat, before lowering it again.

“Headed your way, Collins,” my cop said.

“I see him.”

The man stopped next to Collins’s car, no more than a second, then bobbed his head again in that off-beat, and continued on.

Probably looking to score, I thought, watching as he crossed the intersection, past the lone streetlight and the female cop without so much as a glance at her long, exposed legs. When he’d disappeared around the chain-link fence, she began to follow. “I’m shadowing him.”

“Be careful.” This was from Ben.

A gnawing feeling began to grow at the base of my neck, and I couldn’t have agreed more. I scented fresh blood. I pushed myself forward again, careful not to jostle the car, and peered past the front tire to the Eldorado, which lay silent and dark, Collins unmoving inside. I glanced over at the man in the lawn chair, and realized he was already dead. I wanted to jump up, tell the rookie next to me to radio Ben, but I couldn’t risk spooking him so that he shot me, injuring Jasmine’s aura, and I didn’t want to blow his cover if he hadn’t already been made. Unfortunately, the suspect returned just then, strolling down this side of the street as coolly as if it were midday, whistling under drug-soaked breath. He brought the scent of more blood with him.

If I’d had only myself to worry about, I’d have rushed him…stakeout be damned. But mindful of Jasmine’s frail shell, pale and inanimate, waiting back home, I rolled under the chassis of the car instead, and remained silent. What happened next would haunt my dreams.

“He’s heading back your way, Brown.” Ben again.

My officer answered, the sweat now pouring off him in sheets. “I see him.”

Brown stayed where he was. The man drew closer. I shut my eyes and fixed my mind on Jasmine’s trusting face.

He was quick. That was how he’d gotten by Collins, killing him without missing one step of his psychotic beat. I smelled the steel of his gun, and that pop sounded again…the same I’d heard over the radio minutes earlier in the stairwell. I flinched as the bullet plowed through the floor, but held my breath. I hadn’t felt this vulnerable in a long time…not only in the months I’d been a superhero, but years.

I swallowed as the hard toe combat boots turned from me, and a walkie-talkie clattered to the pavement. It had to belong to the guy in the lawn chair. That’s how the suspect knew where everyone was located. Then the whistling began again, and trapped beneath a car with a dead cop in it, wrapped in a little girl’s fragile skin, I could only watch as the killer headed straight for the trash-strewn lot and Ben.

Ben wasn’t stupid. He knew their cover had been blown, so he didn’t try to radio, and he was no longer slumped next to the pile of trash. Instead he’d fled to the back of the gated lot, a narrow, weed-choked strip of iron fencing separating two project houses from each other, but by the lazy gait of his pursuer, and that meandering song he was whistling-which I now recognized as some sort of sadistic death march-I knew there was no way out. So I waited until the killer’s shadow had lengthened into giantlike proportions on the street, and let it snap and disappear before grabbing the radio he’d abandoned, and followed.

My choices were limited. I might be a superhero, but I couldn’t be everywhere at once. I couldn’t be behind the killer and still stop a bullet from entering my lover. I couldn’t protect both Jasmine and Ben at the same time. “Hang on, Jasmine,” I whispered.

I ran along the outside of the fence, crouched low as I leaped over bottles and cans and anything else that would give up my presence and location. I slowed fifteen feet behind my target, who stood an equal distance to the end of the fencing, and saw I was right. The fence there was high, barbed, and there was no way out.

“Know what we call this, Po-Po?” the man called out, his baritone ringing beautifully through the silent night. “This be Dog Run. ’Cause of its length and ’cause you only get out if I feel like lettin’ you out.”

Silence from the end of the run, but I knew Ben was there. The killer knew it too.

“You want out, you gonna have to go for a little run.”

“You’re under arrest.”

The man laughed with his rich, deep voice. “Now I know you think ’cause you got that big ol’ forty-five pointed my way that I be steppin’ aside and let you on your way, but we both know I can’t do that. You’re what ya’ll call an eyewitness. I call you a loose end, and Magnum don’t abide no loose ends. But maybe we can come to some sort of agreement. Step on out here before I start punching some more holes through that back fence…and anything standing in front of it.”

And he reached into the front of his baggy pants to pull out a sawed-off shotgun. I lifted my walkie-talkie to my mouth, and pushed the button before he could point. From somewhere in the darkness, Ben’s radio squawked to life.

“You put that big bitch down or I’ll show you exactly how to tie up a loose end.”

Magnum jerked like a fish on a line, and swiveled to face the entrance of Dog Run. His grip tightened as he turned back to Ben.

“To your left,” I told him, through the radio. He strained to peer over his wide shoulder. “Your other left, asshole.”

As his head jerked away, I dropped the walkie-talkie and leaped, clearing the fence to land beside him in the space of two seconds. Despite my speed, and Ben’s surprised gasp, it was about one second too long. The jittery gangster was already turning back, and I was stuck in a precarious crouch beneath him, but not so precarious I couldn’t jam my fist upward in a superstrength undercut that rocked the breath from his body. I know. Such a girl thing to do. But as he crumpled, curling into himself with a strangled groan, I rose and hammered my locked fists down onto the back of his neck. Lucky for him, I didn’t want him to identify me later. I’d just taken the edge off his misery.

I planted a boot on his back to make sure he remained motionless, then looked up into the shadows at the back fence. “You can come out now.”

Ben didn’t move. His nerves were spiked, his anxiety and indecision sour on the still air.

“Ben,” I said, knowing his name on my lips would jar him into action. “Come out.”

It wasn’t the happy reunion I had imagined. He emerged like a refugee, his figure hunched in ragged clothes and lank hair, stinking of garbage and sweat and whatever else he’d smeared over his body, though his eyes flashed, sharp and assessing. It wasn’t a look like Joaquin’s, with marble-hard orbs burning from beneath a skeleton’s frame. It wasn’t like any of the agents of Light either; he didn’t possess the confidence of a nonmortal, or the ability to scent out danger before it was seen. No, this was an altogether human gaze, but still cold, petrified emotion. It was the look of a predator.

And I didn’t care. I sucked in a deep, grateful breath. He was perfect, and safe, and whole.

“How do you know my-”

But by then he was close enough to see me.

“What’s wrong?” I said, his expression making my throat tight. “Never seen a dead girl before?”

Joking was the wrong approach to take. Ben began to shake.

“Shh. Okay,” I said, stepping toward him. “It’s okay.”

“J-Jo?” he said, his voice thin with disbelief.

Magnum began to stir on the ground. I brought my boot down, knocking him unconscious again. “Yeah, honey. It’s me.”

“But y-you’re…”

“I know,” I said, nodding sadly. “Meaner.”

“But how-?”

“Ben, honey, there’s not really time, is there? You have five dead officers out there and, I assume, a lot of explaining to do. Cuff this asshole, and get to it. We’ll talk later.” I glanced back down at Magnum’s sprawled bulk. “He didn’t see me, so whatever story you come up with will do. He didn’t put up a fight, so you won’t have to explain my footprints in the dirt. Cover them with your own and-”

I stopped, tilting my head, listening to sounds far in the distance.

“What?” Ben asked. “What is it?”

“Sirens,” I said, a moment before they could be heard by a mortal.

His face cleared once he made them out, and he looked at me with renewed astonishment. “I called them on my cell while I was running back here.”

“Good. Tighter time frame. Your story, whatever it is, will hold.” I took a step past him toward the back of Dog Run as the first flashing lights careened around the corner. Ben stopped me, grip tight on my arm. I should have kissed him once, because once would be enough, saving him in a single instant. It was enough to make him remember me, and us, and to keep him from going on that date with Rose. From accepting poisonous kisses from strangers. From leaving me behind entirely.

But his eyes were warm and moist and he was looking at me with such naked longing that more adrenaline pumped through my veins than the entire short-lived chase into the Dog Run. So many people in this world, I thought wonderingly, but only one man who spoke to my soul. How could a superhero beholden to uphold peace and protect all the innocents in an entire city single out one as special, as more worthy than all the rest? How were soul mates retained when years and realities and even death stood between them?

“Don’t leave,” he said, and in my heart I heard what he wasn’t saying. Don’t leave me. Not again.

Tires squealed to a halt at the front of the Dog Run, and sirens and lights bathed the quiet, violent street in crimson and cream slashes. And still he looked at me. Not Olivia. And that made all the difference.

“Blue Angel,” I said, and though it was a statement, my voice rose on a questioning note. I wasn’t even sure I should be saying it.

A sigh of relief, and Ben nodded. “Wait for me. No matter how long this takes.”

I reached up and put a hand to his cheek, and after a second his body heat soaked through Jasmine’s aura and warmed me throughout. I smiled. “I have been.”

And I stepped away, leaped, and cleared the back fence just as the first flashlights came arching our way.