Page 28

23

Selling Out

T obias held his hand against his stomach and stomped. “Jesus, kid. I need a rabies shot!”

Unable to swallow, she spat away the bloody taste in her mouth. “What were you doing? You scared the shit outta me!”

“Stoppin’ you from something stupid.”

Marisol kicked wave after wave of water in his direction. “He was right there! He needed us!”

“And what were we going to do? Storm the place like we’re invading Poland?”

She sucked in a snippet of air, and whispered, “Useless pig.”

He put a finger behind his ear, “I can’t quite hear you being a crazy bitch.”

Something possessed her to charge at him. She crashed into him. The heels of her hands landed with muted thuds into his thick chest muscles. “Can you hear me now?” She wished the chest she struck was Vincent’s. “You let everything break and then call yourself a hero when you shoddily glue it back together!” And he took ineffective blows like Vincent took them. She hated him more. Foam must’ve flown from her mouth. “You’re just a swinging dick with a shit clearance rate!”

He stood expressionless and unmoved, a mountain, and she obviously wasn’t a prophet.

She drew back her fist. “A useless..." And swung. “...piece of—”

He stepped back. She slipped on a pile of coagulated dead leaves and muck in front of her and fell onto her knees, smack into Shadowhaven’s toilet—her new home.

He kept his sights on the slaughterhouse. “Get up.”

Marisol hugged her knees to her chest. The water drenched her jeans and reminded her that after that tantrum, rolling around in poop water seemed like her proper place. “No.”

“You’ll get dysentery.”

“So?”

“Frankly, if you diarrhea yourself to death out here, we’d attract a lot of unwanted attention.”

Tears filled her eyes as she tried to bring herself back to reason. “I don’t care.”

“You damn well do, kid! We’re fixers. If you don’t like that we put broken things together, why the hell do you work in an ER? ”

Her job meant she had mended things for the better. At sixty percent, what the fuck did he or his homicide cronies ever fix than have a name in black for the quarterly statement? The ER would be shut down at a sixty percent success rate. Maybe if he had the balls to walk a beat, there’d be no Bloodsuckers. Or Cazzes. Or any other chewed up people this city spat out. Maybe try prevention instead. To articulate that would mean she’d have to swallow a drop of sewer water. It would be best to keep that bit to herself.

So, she rooted her wet butt to the ground and stayed silent. Icy water numbed her lower limbs. When she thought about it, her actual pain came from her devastated heart. Her inability to save Vincent as he suffered perpetually felt like a cleaver to the chest. But to make it worse, watching him get pulled apart and slowly regenerate was like having the cleaver pulled out over and over, and not knowing if he’d come back as a man or zombie made it worse when she realized…

She hadn’t returned those words when it mattered.

She hadn’t long to clutch at the phantom pain before Tobias grabbed her by the front of her hoodie and almost lifted her out of the water. “I stopped you from shattering, didn’t I?”

Her vision turned into watercolors, blurring Tobias’s features into splatters. She ran her fingers over his calloused knuckles to pry him off. Once his grip tightened, her chin trembled. Was he going to shake her? Hit her? Snap her neck? Kiss her?

His face turned bright red. He breathed in through his nose slowly and out again. Then he let go of her and skulked a few steps away, keeping his back to her. “You’re good, kid, but you’re not that good. To face the remnants of the Mob and the Bloodsucker, we’d need a whole force.” He turned and pointed a finger. “And I’d sooner convince my Commissioner I found a unicorn that could fart rainbows than I could get him to use the police to save our good-as-dead friend.” By the time he said friend, he seemed defeated, and his posture sank, no longer tall. After a sigh, he continued just above a whisper, “I take the successes where I get ‘em. You’re alive. It’s a good day.”

She returned a disgusted snort. Tobias knew nothing. Vincent couldn’t die.

His strength came back. “Do you wanna be like Caz? Destined for a body bag or prison?”

Was he kidding? She had spent the last twenty years of her life ensuring she was the antithesis to Caz. She made it this far, striking no deals and owing no favors. But if she couldn’t get the police to save Vincent…

Marisol stood and wiped the water from her upper lip. “Sorry.”

Without a pause, Tobias shrugged. His eyes turned back to their kaleidoscopic color.

Marisol reached in her pocket and drew out the commlink button. She wished she knew Morse code. She’d tap it to say, “I will save you,” or “I’m coming back.” Instead, she pushed the button four times.

Each click was for the four words she hadn’t said to Vincent.

“C’mon, kid,” Tobias said.

They trudged up the hill, climbed over the fence, and pulled their coats from the barbs. “I haven’t told you everything,” Marisol said. “Our friend is like the mouse. The DNA that Annie synthesized? That was his. He can’t die. You think he’s good as dead, but he can’t die.”

Tobias smiled faintly. “So, all this time our friend’s been that asshole, Vinnie Varian?”

She crossed her arms. “H-h-how do you know?”

He tied his helmet on and took his spot on the motorcycle. “He was messed up, but I’d recognize his golden hair and perfect face anywhere.” As he rubbed the back of his neck, he added, “Besides, a beautiful woman into a rich guy? I’ve heard taller tales.”

Marisol scooched in front of him, putting on her helmet. “It’s not like that!” Her shoulders tensed into knots. If she protested more, he’d probably get off from burrowing under her skin with more “astute” observations.

Tobias unlocked the motorcycle with a palm print. Marisol commandeered the controls. “Staci, take us to The Pink Curtain,” she ordered .

“The stripper joint?”

“Gentlemen’s club,” she corrected. The blue line traced in another direction across the computerized map, and they were off.

Once they reached a red light, she eased her shoulder blades down. “Vincent is so much more.” The traffic light lasted long enough for Marisol to inform Tobias how their friend was a 500ish-year-old cursed former conquistador. And a pirate, a philosopher, a scientist, a doctor, a freedom fighter. “And the man I—” A passing bus drowned out her murmuring. It was of no consequence. The light had turned green.

They arrived outside The Pink Curtain, a gray, windowless storefront decorated with neon tubes bent in the shape of naked women. Live Nude Girls intermittently flashed. Despite the bright electric signs, the pièce de résistance was a wooden folded sign posted on the sidewalk promising an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet.

Tobias stepped onto the pavement and removed his helmet. “Last year when we took out a portion of the Mob? They really lit into him. Never seen a man face that many bullets and live. I thought it was a ninja thing. But…” He shrugged. “The super thing checks out, but 500 years old?”

“And cursed.”

“I thought those guys were radioactive or alien. Like in the comics.”

“No, there’s another option.” Marisol dismounted. Her soaked boots squished. She should have stopped to change shoes, but time was precious. She’d risk trench foot if it meant Vincent would be safe in her apartment, his lake house, or—hell—his creepy estate.

“I remember when he was born. It was all over the magazines back when I had to go to the store with my ma.” Tobias knocked on the motorcycle. The seat opened and swallowed their helmets.

“Hired actors. You shouldn’t believe everything you read.” Marisol tied her hair up into a ponytail and zipped up her jacket to collect herself.

“As opposed to everything from the mouth of an ER nurse?”

She lifted her chin. “But I’m right.”

His face beamed as if struck by an idea. “If he’s like how you say he is, we could take our sweet time. Wait ’til I get my badge back and serve them a warrant.” He rubbed his hands together. “By then, he could superpower himself out of the situation.”

“If he takes on damage too great, it can become permanent. Think of all the sick things the Bloodsucker is capable of at a slaughterhouse and ask yourself, ‘Would I want to live through that forever?’ Because those are the rules we’re dealing with.” Tobias’s forehead creased, an expression of pity. Whatever he thought, it sucked the wind out of her. “You still don’t believe me,” she said.

The stress lines eased from his face. “I helped duct tape a zombie rat in your freezer.” He gestured to the building. “And I like lap dances like any red- blooded American man, but I’m failing to see how this could help our situation.”

“When you roll in shit, you get shitty ideas. You said we need a force to fight the Bloodsucker. I know a gang who owes my brother a favor.”

He chortled. “You think The Shadows are going to help?”

Marisol opened the heavy door of the entrance. What did he think? She’d ask the dancers in eight-inch Pleasers and a sheet of body glitter to kick down the slaughterhouse doors?

His mouth dropped. “You’re serious.” He followed her, the mission handcuffing them together.

A host sat behind a window of golden bars, propping her chin on the tops of her hands as if she expected them. She purred in a deep twang, “Welcome inside my Pink Curtain, friends. I’m Mijo Ray, and entry will cost you twenty dollars today.” She tossed back her black waves of hair. Light caught her glossy, red lips framed by a meticulously shaped goatee.

“I’m here to see Tiny.” Marisol chewed the inside of her cheek before adding, “I’m... Caz’s sister.”

Mijo Ray clicked her slender, glittering nails together. “As in Casimir Novotny?”

Marisol nodded.

Mijo Ray shook her head. “Shame he’s locked up. ”

Great, Marisol could leverage Caz’s history to see The Pink Curtain’s owner, Tiny. In the hierarchy of The Shadows, Tiny was second-in-command. Except he hadn’t relied on Caz to enforce timely payments or to silence witnesses.

As if this host had zero time for pity parties or excuses, Mijo Ray rubbed her fingers together. “Twenty dollars.” Then she arched a flawlessly penciled-in eyebrow in Tobias’s direction. “Each.” Who needed Caz when Tiny had Mijo Ray?

Tobias edged forward. “Our business is with Tiny.”

“Your business is with everyone here, baby. Let me put this in a language even a straight boy can understand. Our day players may be in the minor leagues, but the only way to the majors is with a little practice and money. And I don’t care if you’re only coming in to use the bathroom. A tit’s a tit, even in your periphery.”

“You won’t make an exception?” Marisol asked.

“You have a wad of nerves asking for an exception, Miss Casimir’s Sister, especially considering,” Mijo Ray’s nostrils flared, “that you smell like shit.”

Marisol retreated behind Tobias. A little fresh air at a motorcycle’s speed should’ve taken care of her sewer water problem. Obviously, it hadn’t.

“We’re a little short on cash.” Tobias upturned his eyebrows into a face that must’ve melted a few hearts in his lifetime .

Mijo Ray leaned forward, peering through her pink, tinsel-like eyelashes. “Your eyes are different colors.”

Tobias hunched closer to the golden bars. His tone became husky. “It’s a condition. Sectoral heterochromia.”

“Is it?” Mijo Ray glided a finger down a strand of her hair. Then she blinked and twirled another finger in the air. “ATM is right behind you, Marlboro Man.”

Tobias looked at Marisol. Marisol returned the look, gesticulating toward his back pocket. She finally held up her hands. “I didn’t bring my purse.”

He scoffed and turned to the ATM. “My head hurts. My hand hurts. You owe me big time, kid.” After a few of his forceful button presses shook the machine, he asked, “Ten-dollar fee?”

Mijo Ray batted her eyelashes.

With a beep and a grinding of gears, Tobias had the cash. He passed the bills through the bars of the window.

Mijo Ray plopped two plastic tokens into the small metal tray below the partition. “Don’t you worry, my ruggedly handsome friend. Entry gets you a complimentary drink and all the food you care to eat. Not to mention the ladies.” Tobias pocketed the tokens and winked at Mijo Ray. She giggled and tossed her hair again. “Ask for Tiny at the bar. I’ll let him know Caz’s sister is here. ”

Marisol pulled the door open, entering the club. “Here goes nothing.”

A slow-pulsing, bass-heavy song rumbled the floor beneath them. Customers were so dispersed throughout the club, the place appeared empty. Lunch at the gentlemen’s club was a lonely endeavor, even with purchased company.

The featured dancer bent and flexed slowly on the main stage, ensuring a customer didn’t miss one inch of skin. Her movements revealed sturdy, compact muscles. Yet her tattoos and belly ring emphasized the delicate line dividing Marisol from her. Under another set of circumstances, she would be the bikini-clad dancer spinning upside down on the pole, working through the sting of a friction burn.

Tobias flicked Marisol in her bicep. “You drinking anything?”

Marisol scowled and shook her head. They were on a mission. That meant not getting sidetracked by The Pink Curtain’s many vices.

He waved to a bartender who had a mane of spiral curls. She wore a fishnet body stocking and strategically placed pasties. As soon as she approached them, Marisol said, “I have a meeting with Tiny.”

The bartender ignored her.

Tobias pushed the plastic tokens across the bar. “A shot of whiskey. Irish. And a shot of rail vodka. The kind that gives you gut rot. ”

Marisol slammed her fist down. “Now is not the time.”

In an instant, Tobias’s pupils eclipsed his speckled irises. Instinctively, Marisol clenched her body together to hide from his dark glare. When the shots arrived, he poured the vodka on his injured hand and drank the whiskey in one swallow. He shook the excess liquid off his palm and wrapped it in a series of cocktail napkins he had tied together. While the bartender collected the empty glasses, Tobias handed her a tip. “We’re here to see Tiny.”

“He’s back in the Champagne Room.” She gestured to a doorway lined with beaded curtains.

Tobias thanked the bartender and smiled at Marisol. “You can’t make demands without sweetening the pot, kid.”

Okay, so she flubbed playing a shot-caller. She duly noted Tobias’s advice, but not without an eye roll to keep her ego protected and his in check.

Marisol approached the doorway’s magenta glow and ran her fingers across the beads. Once she crossed here, she’d sell out to the Shadows. But the air felt too cool behind her. Accustomed to her towering companion hanging close, she spun around.

Someone needed to put him on a leash. She had lost Tobias to the buffet where he heaped chicken fingers onto a plate. Marisol placed her tongue against her upper teeth and whistled. How could he eat at a time and place like this ?

He stuffed a chicken finger in his mouth and held out the plate. “Does this look like fifty bucks’ worth of food?”

Marisol snapped her fingers and jerked her thumb behind her. Tobias grabbed a piece to-go and set the plate down. As they moved past the beaded curtain, he chewed down on another strip and mumbled, “I’ve never been to a Champagne Room before.”

“I’m happy to be a part of your first time.” Fully in control of her innuendo, she flashed a halfhearted smile. In that moment, she pictured a gangly, teenage version Tobias, falsely confident from beer and whiskey struggling to unhook a bra on a ragged couch.

Even in the dim purple and pink lights of the hall, she caught a glint in Tobias’s eyes. She recognized the look. It was like Vincent’s when he asked, “How may I please you?”

Marisol gulped. “Tiny,” she murmured and moved through the last set of beaded curtains.

In the waning violet lights of the Champagne Room, every face became a tinted silhouette. All of Tiny’s six feet and 350 pounds waited for them in a velvet booth, though he looked like he lost weight from the last time Marisol saw him. Despite people needing an elephant gun to take Tiny out, a set of baby-faced enforcers stood and flanked around him. If a truant officer braved the bowels of the Pink Curtain, he’d cart off the enforcers to high school. Most definitely with a fight .

Far in the corner, an old man sat, buried in layers of winter clothes. A dancer contorted into a shoulder stand, presenting the old man with a salacious view.

Tiny whistled. She rolled onto her feet and seamlessly gathered her money and top. Tiny held up a hundred-dollar bill. “Go get yourself some new shoes.”

She snatched the bill, staring at Marisol. “Fresh meat or what?”

“Or what, you nosey-ass bitch,” Tiny said.

“Figured. A little old to be fresh.” She tied her top, flicked her hair back, and left.

“Kick her out but not the customer?” Marisol asked as she grabbed a chair, spun it once on its leg, and sat across from Tiny.

“Him? He’s too damn old to know what’s up. He brings in a couple stacks and just sits there. It takes a pair of jiggling titties and a rolling pussy for him to even register a pulse.”

“Better Business would be proud.” Tobias settled next to Marisol. She elbowed him to keep him on his best behavior.

”So Mare, what makes you step down from your downtown high-rise to the Westside?”

“Considering my brother is doing multiples at the Hill for the Shadows, I thought I could trade in a favor.”

“What’s up? ”

Marisol leaned forward. “The Bloodsucker and surviving leftovers of Shadowhaven’s favorite gangs are holed up at the Clark’s Slaughterhouse. They captured a friend of mine, and I can’t go to the cops. I need the Shadows to help me fight the Bloodsucker and free my friend.”

Tiny laughed until a glob of phlegm interrupted him midroar. He coughed it away. “When we said we’d be looking out for your family after Caz’s situation, we meant financially. Like if you needed to get diapers or school clothes or something. If you ever had kids, that is.”

Marisol crossed her legs. Not a chance. “The Bloodsucker got rid of Izzy and tore up the Mob and the Bratva. It’s only a matter of time before he comes for you.”

“And we’ll be ready for him. Until then—” Tiny motioned to his boys, who encroached on Marisol and Tobias.

She raised her hands in surrender. “We’re not dealing with the same rules. He can’t be killed!” Purple light caught the gleam of a brass knuckle. “How do you think he got Izzy?”

Tiny shook his head. One enforcer yanked her to her feet by the hood of her sweatshirt. Tobias reached to grab him. A gravelly voice barked, “She’s right.”

The enforcers stopped. Tiny turned his head, facing the old man. He stood, possessing the straight spine of someone a quarter his age. The old man tossed his stocking cap, revealing a shaved head. Underneath his coat hid a wiry build. He lifted his sunglasses and uncovered shining onyx eyes, like a shark’s. He unwound one layer of the scarf, exposing a broad nose dented in tiny cuts. His thin mustache dusted over his bruised lips, swollen to the point of looking like a pair of slugs pushed together. The “old man” was none other than Israel Ramirez, aka Big Iz, aka Izzy himself.

The chapter Vincent helped her close reopened again, as if Fate had a crack in the bind. What had she expected? The city’s pseudo-justice came with bail bonds, hung juries, appeals, parole. It’d take more than a broken nose and a pair of handcuffs to snuff out Izzy. The urge to reopen at least one scab on his face conflicted with her need to save Vincent. She scrunched her hand into a fist and gulped again.

Izzy tipped his head, and Tiny took his place among the enforcers. From his new demoted spot, Tiny bowed his head. For a big ass tough guy, Tiny played the subservient part well. Or was he feeling remorse for lying to her? Izzy adjusted into the middle of the booth. “What’s the plan, Mare?”

“Um…” She hadn’t thought that far.

Tobias returned to his seat. “I’m glad you asked. Our friend is hangin’ by his wrists just off the Clark’s old kill floor. Luckily, that spot leads to a loading garage. I’d say we split into two groups. One distracts the Bloodsucker and his minions at the entrance while the other, smaller group escapes with our friend out the garage. ”

“Good work.” Izzy smiled like a shark circling its dinner. “Officer.”

Uh-oh, Marisol hadn’t contemplated the full extent of dragging an unarmed cop into the lion’s den. In plain clothes, Tobias should’ve slipped under their radar. She touched his elbow, anticipating a bolt to the exit. But Tobias returned Izzy’s smile. There was something familiar about it, as if this was a dance that began long before Marisol entered the scene and would continue long after she left.

“Detective Quinlan,” Tobias said. Although the lights had turned all the faces into magenta-lined shadows, Marisol swore Tobias’s eyes reflected a hint of blue.

Once Tobias showed he wasn’t an easy meal, Izzy raised his lips to his nose. His thin mustache bristled under the tip. “Sounds simple enough, but the Bloodsucker punched a hole through Santino’s chest. How do you stop that?”

Marisol leaned in, echoing Tobias’s stance. “We took out something similar using a hefty amount of tranquilizer.”

Izzy licked his lips. “I suppose as a nurse you keep the good stuff on hand?”

“I’m clean out.” Another shitty idea—manipulating the hospital records to obtain tranquilizing drugs—gurgled into her mind like some kind of swamp creature.

Tobias jut out his chin. “What about your heroin? ”

Izzy shifted his gaze to Tiny and then to the floor. “My heroin? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m not a narc, Iz. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about your drugs as long as you’re not leaving around stone-cold whodunnits.”

Too many bad ideas—drugs and murder—curdled Marisol’s insides. She swallowed back the tang of bile.

Izzy looked up. “How much would we need?”

Marisol wiped her clammy hands on her thighs and murmured, “For the Bloodsucker? Enough to flatten out ten people.”

Izzy nodded. “And his lackeys? Light ‘em up?”

Tiny’s enforcers beamed with boyish glee at the suggestion.

Marisol sprang to her feet. “No guns. No killing.” A chorus of, “They’re armed!” and “You lost your damn mind!” met her from both sides of the table.

She silenced them with a slap of her hand in the center of the table. “No one here wants a gang war. There’d be blood in the streets.”

Tobias leaned back in his chair and linked his hands behind his head. Purple shadows cast a pall over his face. “What do we do then? Buy them all a Coke?”

If Vincent’s motorcycle was any sign, she might have an insider’s access to his basement. “Give me an hour. If I don’t have the supplies to take them out non-lethally, we can discuss another plan.” Marisol stiffened as Izzy and Tobias shared glances. They were different predators, a shark and a grizzly bear, but predators all the same. And out for blood.

“You’re on.” Izzy eased back into the booth. Marisol wiped her hand on the shoulder of her jacket and held it out. Izzy shook it. “Aren’t you glad you’re in my pocket?”

Whether she was glad wasn’t the issue. In Izzy’s pocket, Caz had become a murderer whose fury was for sale, but her fury was righteous. If the city’s gutters ran deep with blood, it would be for Vincent.

It would be for love.