The Man Who Walked in Darkness (Miles Franco #2) (Miles Franco Urban Fantasy) (24 page)

I still hadn’t told Vivian the full story about what happened when I followed Zhi Lu. It was the one thing I’d kept back, and I had no idea why. The woman seduced me, fucked me, then tried to drown me in a pool of happy-fluid in another dimension. That’s not how I like my dates to end. And more than that, there was something going on between her and the mayor. In this city, there was more corruption in the air than oxygen. So why did the idea of Mayor White being on the side of the bad guys sound out of tune to me? Was it just because her support had helped me stay out of the slammer? Was I just believing what I wanted to believe?

“I can tell there’s still something you’re not telling me, Miles,” Vivian said.

I closed my eyes. “How far would you go to crack this?” I asked her.

“It’s my job.”

I opened my eyes and met hers. “And you’re damn good at it. But these are nasty people we’re dealing with. And they’re powerful, Vivian. This isn’t like the thing with Todd. Some of these people….” I sighed. “If this thing goes to the wall, you could find yourself in a world of trouble.” I touched my hollow cheeks, felt my aching gums. “And I won’t be around much longer to watch your back.”

To my surprise, she reached across the table and touched my hand. Her skin was warm and smooth against mine. My heart skipped a beat, or that might just have been the poison coursing through my system.

“I’ll make you a deal,” she said with a smile that didn’t come within spitting distance of her eyes.

“I’m not going to the hospital,” I said. “Not yet.”

“I know. But you can’t do this alone, and somehow you’ve wormed your way further into this thing than Detective Wade and I could. So here’s the deal. We help each other out. No more going at this thing like the Lone Ranger after he’s put back too many whiskeys. We’ll do this together. And when this is all done, we’ll find you a doctor who knows how to get you better. We’ll figure out a way to cure you. Deal?”

She still didn’t understand how big this thing was, but the words stuck in my throat. I wasn’t going to survive this. I knew that, and deep down, I think she did as well. But Desmond’s words came back to me again, along with the numbness and the guilt. They were right. I couldn’t do this on my own. After everything that had happened to my friends last winter, I couldn’t bring myself to drag them into another snake pit full of trouble. But if I couldn’t finish this myself…

“All right,” I said. I put out my hand. “You’ve got yourself a deal, partner.”

She took my hand and shook it. She had a grip like a sumo wrestler. I was so distracted by it I didn’t notice the familiar feeling pressing against my mind until something scratched at the door to Vivian’s apartment.

Both our heads swiveled toward the door. There was a pause, just long enough to make me think I’d imagined it. Maybe it was just someone walking down the hall, their shopping bags brushing against the wall. Maybe I was hallucinating again, and the sensation in my head was the last gasps of a dying brain. But then it came again. A long, slow scratching sound, like someone scraping the door with a knife, and then a high-pitched whine like no animal Earth had ever given birth to.

“Is that…?” Vivian said.

“Yeah.” I stood. A bang, and the door rattled in its hinges. I grabbed my bottle of Kemia off the table. “If you’ve got a gun—” I glanced at her and saw the pistol already in her hands. “Oh. Good. Put a few rounds through the door, will you?”

“I’m not shooting before I see what I’m shooting at.”

Goddamn cops. “Fine,” I said.

The door shuddered again, and the frame gave a tortured groan. Wood cracked. My heart was firing like a machine gun. Wiping the sweat from my forehead, I edged toward the door.

“What are you doing?” Vivian hissed.

“Just be ready.” I shuffled slowly forward and reached for the door knob. As I approached, the squeals became more excited. The animal sensation pressing on my mind seemed different to what I’d felt yesterday, but I wasn’t in a position to analyze. Various Pin Holes I could use popped into my head, but I discarded each idea as it came along. No time. The door was ready to give; we had to act now. For once in my life, I was glad there was a gun nearby.

One more thud, and cracks appeared. I touched the door knob, cast a glance back at Vivian, and nodded. Her hands didn’t shake. Mine did.

I wrenched the door open and took a giant ball of fur right in the gut. Thought left me along with my air and my balance. I hit the ground ass-first, pain shooting up my tail bone. The bottle of Kemia I was clutching went rolling across the carpet, out of reach.

“Shoot it!” I shouted, knowing damn well there was no way Vivian could get a clean shot with the spider-dog on top of me. Alien drool splattered my face, and in an instant my entire world consisted solely of the rows upon rows of teeth before my eyes. More eyes than any creature had a right to stared at me, blinking out of sync, and the creature let out another high-pitched whine.

And that’s when I realized it wasn’t eating me.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Vivian maneuver to the side and level her weapon at the creature.

I threw out my hand. “Wait.” With the weight of the spider-dog on my chest, it came out as a rasp, and I wasn’t sure she’d heard. But no gunshot came.

It was only now I noticed the spider-dog was smaller than most of the others I’d seen, no bigger than most dogs. Its fur was soft, not coarse, and its eyes were milky.

“Well, fuck me,” I said. “It’s a baby.”

“What?” Vivian sounded a little on edge.

The creature pranced happily on my chest and let out another hoot. I finally allowed myself to really feel the animal sensations pulsing through my head. It was like the Pin Hole I’d sensed when the bat-thing attacked me, but there was something much more familiar about it. It was my Pin Hole.

I carefully sat up, pushing the creature down to my lap. It didn’t change its mind and try to bite me. That was promising.

“Miles,” Vivian said, still aiming her gun at the creature, “what the hell is going on?”

“I, uh, think it likes me.”

“Miles…”

“Remember that Pin Hole I told you about? The one I opened to take control of these things outside the Collective’s headquarters? This baby one must’ve been inside somewhere, close enough to be affected. It was a new Pin Hole I was trying. Powerful. Somehow, I think I…imprinted myself onto this thing.”

“What are you saying?”

I reached out a hand for the creature. It sniffed my hand, yipped a couple of times, and snuggled into me. “I’m saying I think I have a new pet.”

For a moment, the only sound was the whistling coming from between the creature’s teeth as it breathed.

“Can’t you go five minutes without something weird happening to you?” Vivian said.

“Hey, I didn’t know this would happen. It’s just an unintended side effect.” I awkwardly put my hands under the creature and lifted it. It was heavy, and I was weak, but I managed. “What should we do with it?”

She hadn’t put away her gun. “I’m still tempted to shoot it.”

“Come on,” I said, aiming the teeth and eyes in her direction. “It’s kind of cute.”

“Wait, I have a better idea. I’ll shoot you instead.”

I returned the thing to the ground. It sniffed my leg, squealed, and started sprinting around the room. “I think I’ll call it Toto.”

“You’re not seriously going to keep it,” she said. Then she cocked her head to the side. “Look who I’m talking to. Of course you’re going to. Don’t you think you’re a little busy right now to be dealing with—”

My cell phone started ringing on the table.

I raised my finger. “Rain check on the argument.” With one eye still on the spider-dog racing around Vivian’s apartment, I answered the phone.

“Franco’s Weird Pets,” I said. “How may I direct your call?”

The voice on the other end of the line was honey laced with hemlock. “Hello, Miles.”

No. No no no no no. Not now. Not anytime, but especially not now. Put my balls in a vice, pour acid in my eyes, anything but this. Anyone but her. Anyone.

“Caterina Andrews,” I said. I saw Vivian’s eyes widen. “How’s prison life treating you?”

“It’s good to hear your voice, Miles.”

“You know, I wish I could say the same, but ever since you got high on Chroma, executed your husband, and tried to shoot lightning at me last winter, I just have trouble summoning those warm fuzzies.”

Caterina laughed, and ice dripped down my spine. “Don’t be like that. We had some good times too, remember?”

“Sure. I’m hanging up now.”

“Wait,” she said. And damn her, I did. “I want to see you. We have so many things to talk about.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Like your friend. What was her name again? Oh yes, Claudia.”

The ice in my spine turned to acid.

“Tell me,” Caterina purred, “has she been haunting your dreams? Or perhaps more than just your dreams? Can you see her right now?”

And just like that, Claudia was there in the room with us. Vivian stared right through her, seeing nothing.

“Come and see me, Miles,” Caterina said. “Alone. We have so much to talk about.”

The line went dead. Claudia smiled. The screeching spider-dog nuzzled my leg. And some dead, forgotten part of my heart burned to life.

“Vivian,” I said. “I need a favor.”

TWENTY-TWO

Prisons. I hate prisons. Give me death, give me splinters under my toenails, just don’t put me in a box. And here I was walking into one voluntarily, through the gates and the metal detector, past the guards that looked like they could chew gravel and compliment the chef, into a tiny room not much bigger than a toilet cubicle with a telephone handpiece and a glass divider and a metal stool bolted to the floor. They’d even taken my Kemia and coins for safekeeping. The guard ushered me inside, waited until I sat down, then pulled the door closed. I shivered as it clicked, even though it wasn’t locked.

I wouldn’t have got in if it hadn’t been for Vivian. She called in some favors and got me a visit outside normal visiting hours. Deep down I was hoping she wouldn’t pull it off, but I got unlucky. She wanted to come in with me, but I convinced her not to. I knew Caterina Andrews wouldn’t talk with a cop in the room, except to screw with her. And if she knew something about Claudia and this whole goddamn mess, I needed to get it out of her. Besides, Vivian had her own investigations to conduct, and if she really wanted to figure out what was going on before I kicked off, we needed to use our time wisely. So I set up a makeshift litter box for Toto in Vivian’s apartment—I assumed spider-dogs must shit—then she dropped me off at the cemetery where my bike still sat. I rode north to Bluegate Women’s Correctional Facility alone.

I had just enough time to get gut-wrenchingly nervous before the door on the opposite side of the glass divider opened and Caterina Andrews entered. Even in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit, she still looked fan-fucking-tastic. Her red hair fell down around her cheeks in waves, and her slim frame flowed into the room like expensive French wine. The last time I saw her she was unconscious, bloodied, and torn from the spider-dogs I’d unleashed on her. But now, not a scar marred her skin. Her eyes met mine. Her lips curled into an impish smile.

My throat went as dry as a hangover in the Sahara.

She sat down on the other side of the glass. It took me a moment to realize a female guard had accompanied her. The woman worked a key into Cat’s handcuffs, removed them, and stepped back. The lock on the door made a heavy sliding sound as the guard left.

For a century or two we stared at each other through the divider. There was something in her eyes, something I couldn’t place. It made my skin crawl. I imagine I didn’t look half as confident as she did.
Focus, Miles. Just get what you need and get gone.
But my nerves were already throwing monkey wrenches into my plan. For one thing, her face kept shifting into that of Claudia. I’d come so close to killing Caterina last winter. Even after everything she’d done, that knowledge still got my guilt centers working. It would’ve been another woman dead by my hand. What kind of man was I?

Caterina was the first one to make a move. She stretched out an arm and plucked the telephone handpiece off the wall as delicately as if she was picking strawberries. With her eyes, she pointed to the one on my side of the divider. I swallowed, trying to get some saliva flowing, and brought the phone to my ear.

“You look terrible,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I was gonna shave before I came, but time got away from me. You know how it is.”

She twirled the phone cord around her finger. “I’ve missed you.”

“Look, I’m sure you’ve got lots of important prison stuff to be getting back to. So how about we skip all the femme fatale crap and cut to the chase.”

“You always were wound too tight,” she said with a wry smile. How the hell did she get her hands on lipstick in here? “I just wanted to catch up on old times. But you’re right. You don’t have time to waste, do you?”

I licked my lips and adjusted my grip on the phone. My palms were sweaty. “What do you know?”

“I know you’re dying.”

“Congratulations,” I said. “You don’t need glasses after all. Be sure to settle the bill with our clinic receptionist on the way out.”

“I know what’s killing you. Tartarus.” Her lips seemed to kiss the word as it left her.

That shut me up. She smirked.

“You’re so easy to impress, Miles,” she said. “Just because I’m in here doesn’t mean I’m gone for good.”

“You had something to do with this?”

She quirked an eyebrow. “No. Of course not. Does this seem like my style? But I have ways of finding things out, if I’m interested. And after that man came here to talk to me and offer me a way out of here in exchange for a special job, I got very interested.”

“Wait, you’re saying someone involved in this came to talk to you? When? Who was it?”

She shrugged. “Some man. Just a goon. A couple of weeks ago.”

“What did he want?”

“Not yet, Miles. This is important information I have. I can’t just give it away, can I? Not when you need it so desperately. Not when you need it to avenge your friend.”