Page 16 of Heathens

Even from across the street, I could see her pulse racing in her neck. When she looked back at me as they drove by, could I have been imagining a little smile? No, it was there.

I should have just gotten back into my car and followed her.

She’s a temptress.

“So what’s your big plan, hotshot?” Theo asks, nudging me as he hands me a drink.

I shrug.

“Don’t know yet.”

He scoffs.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” He knocks on my skull and I swat him away. “You burn his lab down, steal a formula for a drug you know nothing about, and then you tell me you don’t know?Again?! You’re too reactive, Dominic. What about when he finds out this time, huh? What’re we going to do then? We still haven’t recovered from the last big clash. Motherfucker, what if Rene finds out we’re low on men? You think he’s just going to wait for us to get back on our feet?!”

“We’ll figure it out, get ahead of him. You have a degree, right? Chemistry?”

He stares at me like my face is melting.

“Yeah, Dom, yeah I do, but that doesn’t mean I know how to make this shit! I didn’t exactly keep up with modern scientific literature. Do you even remember how long ago that was?”

I turn to him and cock my head to the side.

“You’re the brains of this operation, aren’t you?”

He raises his middle finger as he plops down next to Mateo on the couch. I let out a long sigh. Sure, I’ve thought it through. We can sit on this formula for a while, maybe dangle it over Rene’s head, kidnap a few of his minions to see if they know how to make it. It’s all so dull, so rote; planning always takes the theater out of life. Besides, right now, all I want to do is bask in this victory, and maybe fuck some of this adrenaline out of my system.

That little redhead could help with that.

“Someone can make this, can’t they? I mean, Rene found people.” Mateo leans forward and unzips the bag, pulling out some of the supplies. Small vials of clear liquid, empty containers, syringes. What it’s for is anyone’s guess. “He must have just started making it recently, right?”

“The rest of the formulas looked like trials,” Theo replies. “Shit was all crossed out on the other notepads and notebooks, so we don’t even know how long it’s been in the works.” He turns to me. “We would have a better handle on this if our Fearless Fuckwit hadn’t burned the entire lab down.”

“Yeah, why’d you do that?” Mateo asks, his brows knitting together as if he was struggling to find the answer to a deep philosophical question.

“Why not?” I shrug. “We’ve done it before.”

“Before, we knew what we were dealing with,” Theo replies. “Before, we had a plan. This time you flew in there like a bat out of hell–”

“Nice metaphor,” Mateo chimes in.

“Little on the nose,” I mutter.

“Go fuck yourself!”

Theo takes a moment, sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Look, I’ll sniff around, see if I can find another vampire who knows enough to help us make this shit, one whodoesn’talready work for Deschamps, but we’re going to have to find a secure place to do it, and equipment.”

“Set up a lab in the office downstairs,” I tell him. “Get whatever you need, pay whoever you need to. We’re making this stuff, and we’re going to get it pushed through all the bars and the nightclubs. Hell, we can ship it to other cities and use it as a foothold to grab more territory. Expand.”

It’s a dangerous idea, but the rewards for success are massive.

“Why don’t you just kidnap one of Rene’s people?” Mateo asks. “Make them do it all for you.”

“Well, first off, we’d have to figure out which one of them knows how to make this shit, and people can lie,” Theo replies.

“Not if you–”

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