Crimson City Part 14

"Not really." She stood up and offered him her hand.

Dain let her help him to his feet. "d.a.m.n. I forgot how strong you are. It's been a while since the last time I earned one of those." He gave her a wary look. "Are you sure you're not non-human and pa.s.sing, 'cause that would explain a lot."

She gave him a disgusted look, but even as he made the joke, it suddenly occurred to him that it wasn't an entirely ridiculous proposition. He shook his head and headed in for her apartment, but Cyd didn't follow. He turned around and looked at her, waiting.

"It's raining, Cyd." He held out his palm. She didn't seem to notice, or care. "I don't want to lose you, Dain," she said. "I need you." Dain froze. Things were getting very deep all of a sudden. This wasn't in character for her. Not at all. He squinted through the pelting rain at her eyes, but she didn't seem to be on something-not at the moment, anyway.

She pushed a clump of wet hair out of her face. "Do you understand?"

He reached out and tried to pull her into a hug or something, but she shook him off. Dain wasn't sure how to handle her. "Cyd, you're not going to 'lose' me. No matter what happens, I swear. And I came here to apologize for what happened with Fleur. That was totally out of control, it was my responsibility, and I'm completely sorry about it. I a.s.sure you, it will not happen again."

"Fleur changes everything. I admit it." Cyd looked up at the sky, a flickering lamppost illuminating the desperation in her face.

Dain could only pray she wasn't going to say what he feared. Cyd was the closest person in his life. Like he'd told Fleur, she was his family. His only family. But he couldn't give her more than that, and he could only hope she didn't want more from him. "She doesn't have to change anything," he said.

Cyd c.o.c.ked her head, furious. "That's bulls.h.i.+t. Tell me the truth... would you go vamp for her? Would you trade sides?"

He stared at her. "Wait a minute. This is about loyalty? My loyalty to you?" Anger boiled up inside him. "I have backed you one hundred percent, Cyd. Always. I've always been there for you and that's never going to change." His voice lowered to a whisper. "How dare you? After everything I've done for you? You know what I've been through with you... for you. The first day you got into my car. A f.u.c.king basket case, Cyd, that's what you were. I never asked. I never expected you to tell me what happened. I just accepted you. And through it all, especially those first few years... with the demons in your head and the drugs in your purse and the backup lies I told-"

"Okay!" Cyd blinked. "Okay." She looked down at her soaked tennis shoes. "Things are just... I don't even know who to trust anymore. And the thought of you going against me... I just couldn't... I just can't... deal."

"Come 'ere," he said gruffly, pulling her into his arms and resting his chin atop her head. "I will always be here for you. I swear. We're on the same side."

She didn't answer, but he felt her body relax into his. "Um, Cyd?"

"Yeah," came her m.u.f.fled reply.

"It's raining pretty hard."

Her head popped up. "Yeah, let's go inside," she agreed.

She led the way back into her apartment, pulled a cigarette pack from her pocket, tapped out the last one and lit it, then flopped down on her bed.

Dain lay down next to her and put his arms behind his head. "I've got a question," he said.

"Mmm?"

"I'm getting a little fuzzy." He turned and looked at her. "Do you think, at its very core, that our job is to keep the peace, to keep everything in line, to keep everybody from stepping too far over the edge-or is our job to advance the human cause?"

She looked at him, furrowing her brow. "Well, I mean... I thought peace and equality was the point of the truce. Obviously equality was a bunch of c.r.a.p, but there was that big 'togetherness' campaign which, while being totally dorky, was admittedly at the root a nice idea."

Dain nodded. "I remember when they enacted that truce. I felt like I could relax for the first in a long time." He held up his hand for Cyd's cigarette. She gave it to him and out of curiosity he took a drag, immediately wincing. "G.o.d d.a.m.n, Cyd-this stuff sounds like a better idea than it is, and it never sounded that good. Serious burn."

"Street stuff." She took the b.u.t.t back. "I don't even notice it anymore. What does that say?" "Got me." After another moment of companionable silence he asked, "Is it progress when you're notsure whose point of view is more reasonable? Is that progress? When you start to feel that everyone'sgot a point?"

Cyd chuckled. "You really want to know what I think? I think this isn't anything new. You've always thought most everyone had a point of view. You never had a rock-solid allegiance. If you did, you'd see the black and white more clearly and would have gone with the I-Ops job."

"Point. And that's a good thing, right? I mean, refusing to take sides either means you want to get alongwith everybody... or you're just reserving the right to kick everybody's a.s.s." Cyd laughed. "I'll go with the latter."

Dain ruffled his hair. "You know, I think I'm having some sort of crisis of conscience."

"Oh, for G.o.d sakes, Dain. Stop with the big words and the deep thoughts. You don't have to make everything so complicated. It's really very simple."

Dain sat up. "What?"

"You fell for a vampire. Beginning and end of story."

"What?"

She shrugged. "You fell for a vampire and now you're trying to reconcile the fact that it's starting to

become hard to work. Especially since we're in human defense, and we're revving up for an offensive

against the very group you've discovered you don't actually dislike." "Thank you, Dr. Freud," Dain muttered under his breath, annoyed that she had a point. "I just feel like everything's changing so fast. As if the pressure has been building and building in this city and someone's just uncorked it. I don't know." He got up, opened the door and leaned against the doorway, watching the rain pour down in the moonlight like diamonds streaking from the sky.

"Almost a full-moon," he noted. He glanced back at Cyd, who looked a bit scared.

"I didn't think it was possible for things to get more interesting than they already were," she said. "But I

think we're about to find out. I... I think somebody's been jiggling the locks on the door to the underworld again."

"You think?"

She regained her composure and shrugged. "Somebody's always jiggling the locks. Human nature."

Dain seconded that thought. Human nature was in challenging everything. What would happen if he just

stopped listening to the boss? What would happen if he just stopped showing up to work? He'd had no idea he even harbored such a fantasy. But what if he just made his owns rules, played his own game, and chose his own allies? What if, like Cyd said, he just stopped a.s.suming allegiance to the human side.

Cyd stared out at the sidewalk, and when she finally looked up she said, "You have the soul of a wanderer, Dain."

Dain looked at her like she was insane, but she just smiled.

"I told you once that I thought there was something very dark inside of you. I think so more and more. I think it might be true of both of us. Maybe we should start getting used to it."

Dain held his hand out; the rain had slowed to a manageable level. "I'd better get back and file some paperwork. You coming with me or what?"

"Nah. I need to go off-comm for some informant stuff. I called in sick, and I'm going unofficial."

Dain studied her face. Her green eyes locked with his, careful and inscrutable. He just sighed and said, "Okay. But I expect to see you at work tomorrow, young lady."

She grinned and shrugged him off. "I'm still working, you know."

He pointed his finger at her. "Show up for work tomorrow," he commanded.

"I will." Suddenly, she came at him and squeezed her arms around him. " 'Night, Dain."

It took him a second to process the move and to put his arms around her as well. She hung on for a good while, long enough for him to tell from the way she clung that she was still as much haunted by the same old fear and uncertainty as ever. Oddly choked up, he kissed the top of her head and stepped away. "Good night, Cyd."

Cyd watched Dain disappear around the corner; then she turned around and went back inside her apartment. Some people were lucky. Some just weren't. Cyd figured she fell hard into that second category, like a weight flung off the side of a building.

It wasn't an issue of getting what she deserved. Yeah, she was crooked. Yeah, she'd done more illegal things on and off the job than she could even remember. But everybody she knew did, even Dain. He was a big believer of "a time and a place for everything." If any of the Battlefield Ops team had been the type to follow the letter of the law, they'd be sitting with the suits instead of the armor.

Frankly, it was a miracle Cyd was still around. Dain was that miracle. Somewhere along the way, he'd turned into her lifeline, was the only person, place or thing that really kept her alive. They both knew that. But what only one of them really understood was that it went both ways.

This was about loyalty in the way he'd a.s.sumed. But it wasn't about humans versus vampires. It was much more personal than that. Dain couldn't see what Cyd had done for him in all the years since his accident. She'd prevented Serena's memory from fading. She'd made Dain believe he had a life worth living. She'd helped him keep the fragments of his life together. He didn't understand it, and she would never explain it to him. But if he could ever really see everything for what it was, he'd see that she'd been as much his lifeline as he'd been hers.

Cyd went into the kitchen and rummaged around in the cupboard, oblivious to the packages of dry noodle soup and soy sauce packets raining down around her. She finally found what she was looking for-a carton of smokes-and ripped the thing open, not bothering to rehide the rest from herself. Her shaking, clumsy hands scattered them at her feet.

She slid to the dirty kitchen floor against the drawers and lit up, trying to take a deep drag in spite of the trembling of her lips. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. Dain was probably disgusted with how she'd let this place go. Poor guy did his best walking her tightrope. She could see the wheels turning when he looked at her, always trying to calibrate her mood, wondering how much to say, how much to ask, how much to just let go.

It wasn't up to him, though. Everything he'd said was true. He had done right by her. In spite of this latest ripple, he'd always done right by her. She should have been dead a long time ago. She had to admit she rather liked the mystique that surrounded her, the way the others regarded her as special property-Dain's untouchable sidekick, his project.

Cyd took a last drag, jammed the cigarette stub out against the refrigerator, picked another one off the ground and indulged once more. It would be nice to have something stronger, something that would really numb her demons. She glanced at her watch, ash falling on her forearm; she let it sit there as long as she could stand, then shook it off.

Such wasted potential. Nope, she'd never been lucky. And she never would be.

Was the fork in the road that day she'd sat for entrance exams to the Academy? She'd scored high enough to submit three choices for her concentration. She'd submitted only one: R&D. Research & Development with an emphasis in demonology. If she'd submitted others-and had been a.s.signed to one of them instead-would she still be the person she was today?

What she'd seen in that research group, over the course of what was at first considered the division's watershed year, but then was quickly dismantled in a shroud of mystery-would she have seen the same somewhere else, somehow else? Was this her destiny? Had she been meant to see what she'd seen?

Cyd stubbed out her second cigarette and rested her head back against the drawers. She wasn't strong enough to change anything about herself anymore. She'd waited too long, gotten herself embedded in too many difficult places. She was so d.a.m.n tired, and a part of her didn't even care anymore what happened to her. She probably had more collective intel than anyone else working the streets right now. She'd had plenty of opportunities to sell out, and the thought crossed her mind a lot these days.

Could she do that to Dain, though? That was her one sticking point. She hated the idea of him having to deal with all those told-you-so's back on base, all those higher-ups who'd wanted to delete or disappear her like they'd done the rest of her team. Not officially, of course. There was no doc.u.ment that explained what had gone on, but you didn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what it meant when none of the people you'd had lunch with five days a week for the past four years answered the door anymore.

Cyd glanced at her watch again, then heaved herself to her feet and ran her fingers under her eyes to wipe away any streaking mascara. She reaffixed her ponytail, checked her ammunition, then slipped a gun and a dagger in her belt holder, plus a couple of spares and her comm device concealed inside her jacket.

After shutting off all the lights in the apartment, Cyd let the door slam behind her and headed out into the darkness.

Chapter Eighteen.

A glance at his watch told Dain he wasn't late yet, but if he didn't pick up the pace, he would be. He parked the car in the far lot, guessing that the main lot at the station would already be full, then took up the block at a jog. Inside, the alert board was going nuts. Full moon, tension between the species, PDI p.i.s.sing everybody off-his teams were going to be seeing more action tonight than they'd seen in recent memory.

The break room looked like the dressing room for a battle sequence at the movies. Snapping on armor, checking weaponry; everyone appeared to be present-except, of course, for Cyd, who'd clearly ignored his direct order to be at work on time tonight, probably just to prove she could. In any case, the collective energy in the room more than made up for her absence.

"Anybody catch those vamps on surveillance last night? They were flying pretty low again."

"I am so ready to rock n' roll on 'em."

"Who's killed both? JB, you ever done in a vamp? Or just a dog?"

"Just a dog. Couple of them, though. All legit, I swear. I'd like to get my first vamp. And I feel it's gonna happen soon. Somebody's gonna do something wrong very soon. And then... boom!"

Dain couldn't help shaking his head as the teams compared the sizes and weapons of their recent street adversaries. JB and Trask obviously had their hands full in Dogtown, trying to keep the peace. Outbreaks of violence were on the rise there, as they were everywhere, nearing the levels of pre-truce, though each seemed more a result of individual anger than any coordinated effort to wreak revenge.

Running covert operations, reeling information out of traitors from the other species, and preventing any species other than humans from achieving dominance in the city were some of the many items on the B-Ops charter. Inside the city break rooms of this Federal sub-agency the monotony of the so-called peace-keeping a.s.signments was now happily brushed aside in the preparation for action. Peacekeeping would be left solely to the city's regular police force. B-Ops was clearly ready for a fight. The only question was whether the action would come in the name of self-defense or as part of a calculated attack.

Yes, the razor-thin boundaries between the three species' worlds were weakening. And with Kippen-ham planning to enact even more obvious changes, it was only going to get worse.

Dain didn't really see how civil war was going to be avoided. It was beginning to feel inevitable. And if that happened, it wouldn't matter one bit how he felt about Fleur. In a wartime situation, a vampire of any cla.s.sification-rebel or inner circle, murderous or human-sympathetic-would be public enemy number one. His job would be to shoot or stake to kill. It made him feel slightly ill. He forced himself to talk tough.

"So, did everybody read up on the imminent PDI measures? They're going to go into full effect soon, and when the species get p.i.s.sed off enough, there's going to be a backlash. Don't think there won't." Dain had his team's attention. "It won't matter what the official werewolf and vampire leaders.h.i.+p decisions are at first. There's going to be some kind of knee-jerk reaction on the streets before... well, I hope then most of them will listen to their leaders and back off.

"But not all of them will. It's going to be fast, chaotic, and unpredictable out there. We're not going to know really where we stand, so you gotta watch your back. Be ready to make some hard decisions. For those of you without a kill, you might get it this week. And I'm not saying this like it's a good thing, so don't go getting excited. Killing a vamp or a dog... well, it may feel stranger and more wrong than you think."

He shuffled through some of his papers. "Oh. Also this from I-Ops. The emergency warning system is still in test mode for the general populace, but as of now, we are to a.s.sume the sirens are not a drill. You hear them go off, you must react as if there is either an air-based fang attack or a ground-based dog attack somewhere in the city." He looked up at the team. "Got that? If you are out on the streets when they go off, head immediately to your pre-a.s.signed coordinates and have your comms on for further instructions. And try to make sure the humans out there take it seriously. We want them ready for the real thing. Get them inside or into the light."

JB waved his arm. "Are we already under attack? What about those killings?"

"As far as I know, those humans were random deaths and not part of any coordinated a.s.sault. I believe we're just ramping up our defense. That doesn't mean that we have license to provoke either the fangs or the dogs. That's important. You all got that?"

They murmured their a.s.sent.

Some of the older guys were kind of looking at him askance. Dain faked a smile. "Not your usual gung-ho go-get-'em speech? I guess it's because I don't like the idea of seeing any of you guys hurt. Speaking of which, anybody seen Cyd this morning?"

They all shook their heads in the negative, looking a little surprised. He waved them off. "Okay. Well, if you do, tell her to check in with me. And that's a direct order." A couple of eyebrows went up, but he ignored them. "Now, unless you have any questions about your specific street a.s.signments, get on out and-be careful out there!"

The teams filed out, Dain following behind. He punched Cyd's autodial number on his comm. No answer. He dialed her off-job voice mail and the message kicked in, Cyd's voice ringing out: "I'm not here." The sound of her laughing. "And obviously, I'm not there. Leave a message or take your chances." Beep.

"Cyd, it's me. Where the h.e.l.l are you? Check in. That's an order. Or I'm filing you AWOL. Look, you promised. And now I'm seriously worried. Just... call."

Rounding the corner, he barreled into Bridget Rothschild. He caught her before she fell to the sidewalk, her sports bag flying out of her hand. "Jesus," he said. "Are you okay?"

She answered him with a brilliant smile as he helped her regain her balance, and it was hard not to notice how tightly she'd poured herself into her pristine white tennis outfit.

"Was it as good for you as it was for me? Seriously, Dain, I'm fine!" She scrambled for her bag, then put her hand to her heart and took a deep breath. "Surprised me, though. Are you okay?"