Page 2 of Clay White
Untouched—such an old-fashioned way to put it. I shrugged again. My first was a wild girl two years older than me. She’d set her eyes on me the first day of my sophomore year, and although I’d already been fairly certain I played for the other team, the offer had been too good to refuse. I hadn’t fucked a man until college.
Marek huffed with irritation or laughter—I couldn’t tell which—and snaked a hand between us to squeeze my erection. “It’s a pity when youthful lust goes to waste,” he said.
“I’m not youthful.” Hadn’t been for a very long time. Hell, possibly never was. Sometimes I looked in the mirror and concluded that I’d been born old. My body was only now catching up to my real age.
“I was old before your grandparents were born.Youare youthful.”
He massaged my cock a moment more, and I didn’t reply. I was wondering exactly when he’d been turned and what that meant to me. New vampires are impulsive, prone to biting before thinking. Makes them easy to destroy. The ones who survive for decades have learned caution and self-control.
The song ended. When another began, Marek remained unmoving against me, his mouth inches from my neck. “Will you follow me, Clay?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He took my hand and led me across the floor. A few dancers leered our way and others reached toward us, but I glared and they pulled back. Instead of going to the front of the club, which was crowded, Marek took us to a side door. He pushed it open, and we exited into a narrow alley that reeked of garbage and cat piss.
I thought he might pause there. Darkness bathed the alley, nobody else was nearby, and the thump of music from the club would have muffled any sounds. But he kept a gentle tug on my arm, sometimes turning his head to give me a small smile as we left the narrow space between brick buildings and turned onto the sidewalk. I knew it was my imagination, but it almost seemed as if his footsteps made no sound while my own boots clomped heavily enough to crack the pavement.
The calendar showed us well into September, and yet San Francisco baked in an early-autumn heat wave. Even now, hours after sunset, sweat beaded on my skin. Marek’s dry palm absorbed the moisture, as if his body would take in any of my fluids. Perhaps it would. Sweat isn’t so very different from blood, both being cousins to the seawater that birthed us all.
A few blocks away, the neighborhood turned seedier, although several newly refurbished buildings proved that gentrification was creeping in. Nowadays even falling-down shacks fetched a million dollars or more from tech company employees. I couldn’t afford to live in the city, not even with my severance package from the Bureau, which I called “fuck-off money.” Just enough to send me on my way quietly. Just enough for a shitty apartment in the East Bay, where the cockroaches resembled some of the demons I’d killed when I was an agent.
Marek finally stopped at the door to a defunct Chinese restaurant. Brown paper lined the inside of the windows that still sported painted lettering offering lunch discounts on beef chow fun and wonton soup. The red awning had faded to pale pink and was tattered at the edges.
To my considerable surprise, Marek pulled out a key and unlocked the door. Then he bowed deeply and gestured me inside. “Please. You’re invited,” he said.
I scowled at his little joke. We both knew that the old saw about vamps needing an invitation to enter was horseshit. As was most of the other crap people wrote about the monsters. They are damned hard to kill, but you don’t need to stake them or drag them into sunlight. The Bureau issued special bullets—silver with tiny wooden particles—and as long as you aimed well, they’d do the trick for vamps, shifters, and most other species. They’d work just fine on humans too.
I don’t know how long ago the restaurant had closed, but the interior still carried faint odors of soy sauce and oil. Several yellowish lights cast a dim glow, revealing the few tables and chairs that remained on the scuffed tile floor. A thick layer of dust shrouded the long counter, and discolored walls showed lighter patches where pictures had once hung.
“Why here?” I asked, kicking at a pile of stained tablecloths.
“Privacy.” Marek had closed and locked the door as I was looking around. Now he approached me with his hands loose at his sides and the corners of his lips curled upward. Even his walk was graceful, as if music were playing and only he could hear it. Maybe there was music. Vamp senses were better than human to begin with, and too many years of shooting firearms had dulled my own ears a bit.
“Okay,” I said when he was almost within reach. “But why here specifically?”
His smile faded and his gaze shifted to the floor. “It’s where I’m staying. For now.”
I wondered whether desiccated corpses lurked in a storeroom or somewhere in the kitchen.
When Marek looked at me again, he somehow looked both very young and exceedingly ancient. “Are you ready, Agent White?” he asked quietly.
“I’m not an agent!” It had been a long time since I raised my voice, and I startled myself a little. I’d thought myself no longer capable of true anger. I’d been picturing my amygdalae—the almond-shaped spots in the brain that process emotions—as withered and shrunken. But Marek’s words made my hands shake and the blood churn through my head.
He didn’t back away from my fury. Stone-faced and soft-voiced, he said, “Not anymore.”
I bent and reached into my right boot.
The rules are clear. When the Bureau terminates an agent, there’s paperwork. Mounds of it. Then the agent—theformeragent—turns in his badge, his ID, his gun. He’s escorted to the door by grim-faced men in dark suits. And fuck-off money is deposited into his bank account.
Although most of the details were gray and blurry in my memory, there had been one important deviation. When I’d set my gun on Townsend’s desk, he gave me a long, narrow-eyed look before downing the generous shot of scotch he’d poured himself when I sat down. Then he slowly pushed the weapon back toward me. “Keep it,” he said.
“But the Bureau—”
“Rules. There’s ways around them, White. You worked here long enough to know that. When a guy’s spent some years rounding up monsters, killing some of ’em, he collects enemies. I’m not coldhearted enough to send him back into the world unarmed.” He moved the gun a little closer to me. “Take it.”
And I had. He hadn’t asked for my Bureau-supplied bullets either.
I’d had to buy a boot holster, since they weren’t standard-issue for the Bureau. And I wasn’t licensed to carry the thing. But that hardly mattered to me.
