Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [116]
“Way ahead of you,” I said, snapping at the belt with my fingertips.
“Oh. Okay. You’re going to have to tell me how to get there,” he added.
“No problem.” I’d printed out map directions to and from the parkour meeting joint, as well as a larger map of the neighborhood in case we had to improvise an escape. Or in case we felt like going for gelato afterward.
You never know.
The field club meeting went down in a building that hosted a dive bar, a Christian Scientist bookstore, and empty restoration lofts. Upon parking a block or two away, paying for a sticker (you never know when those bastards are watching the lots), and poking around the building a bit, we realized that the empty and restored segment of the old building was populated after all. On the second floor a light was on and I could hear voices, and down by the stairwell was a handwritten sign that said, FIELD CLUB USE CODE #3314, COME TO ROOM 212.
Cal went to input the digits but I put out a hand and caught him by the arm.
I said, “Remember. You and me, we just showed up for this shindig around the same time. We don’t know each other.”
“I remember,” he said.
“And you should probably be aware, I’m going to let myself be a little … uh … conspicuous. I want to see if these guys would know a vampire if she—I mean, you know. If she walked up and bit them.”
His eyes widened. “You’re not going to—”
“No, I’m not planning to bite anybody.” It’d only been a week or two since I’d nibbled on the unfortunate Trevor, and I’d be set for another week or two, no problem. The extra blood I had in the bag was a backup just in case. Or to be more precise, just in case I got hurt and needed a quick hit to heal myself up enough to run. The blood would taste like ass and lose efficiency after a few hours, but I was crossing my fingers that “a few hours” would be plenty of time to get in and out of this joint.
I said, “I’m not going to sashay up there in a cape and you’re not going to behave like Renfield. I only want to see if they’re looking for some of the telltale signs that mark me as something else. I want to know if they’re trained to spot us, or if they have experience dealing with us. Do you understand?”
He scratched nervously at the back of his neck. “Yeah, I guess.” Oh, we were back on that again. “Just … I’m. I don’t know. Be careful, is all. Ian wouldn’t like it if you got yourself captured, or anything.”
“That’d make a pair of us,” I said curtly, but I was somewhat warmed.
“I mean, he’d want to come after you, you know? He’d want to try and rescue you, but with his eyes … like they are … I don’t know. I don’t know what he’d do. He’s a capable man, but … I don’t know what he’d do.”
I didn’t know either, so I said, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” as if that wasn’t something I did all the damn time. “This could turn out to be the most boring night out any two people ever had.”
“I’ll hold my breath,” he muttered.
I pressed the suggested digits into the keypad and a buzzing noise announced that the “security door” was more than willing to buzz itself aside and let us through. Cal let himself inside, and I stayed outside to wait for a slow, steady count of one hundred—then I buzzed myself up and stepped inside a narrow corridor that smelled like newly cut wood and drying cement.
Even before I opened the door to suite 212 I heard a man’s voice and the echo of people sitting unquietly in chairs and milling about on a hardwood floor. There’s a timbre to it, the sound of people not doing much in a big empty space.
From my vantage point at the bottom of the stairs a couple of floors down, I heard Cal say, “Hello?” in a voice that was firmer than I expected. “Is this the parkour field club?”
“Yes!” said a man inside. He sounded young but authoritative, which is rarely a good combination, in my experience. “Come on in, have a seat. We’re just giving an overview to the newbies. Do you count as a newbie?”
“Probably.” I could almost