"These are not your average vamps, dearie. Not by a long shot."
Black and Red have been Nightwalkers for longer than they care to count, and that alone is unusual enough to attract unwanted attention.
Life and survival in the Blue Light District is...
I considered hoofing it the remaining distance across the park to the botanical gardens, where Blue was this time of day. My only real dilemma? I didn't know if I had the energy for all that without ending up gutter sludge somewhere between here and there.
Of course, Blue received word of the town car heading his way long before Dee eased up at the gardens, where the glass front refracted the last of the morning's sunlight like a huge beacon. And there stood Blue, ankles crossed as he leaned on the wall by the doors— lanky arms folded over his baby blue tank and dyed denim jacket, matching skinny jeans and Chucks, violent turquoise hair spiked in an artful mess that would take out an eye with ease.
When I climbed out of the car, he straightened, frowned, and ran toward me. Jhez hadn't had time yet to tell him anything, then. I'd thought for sure she'd at least call to say I was headed his way, unable to pass up the chance to give him all the sordid details of 'how Black fucked up' so that he could properly read me the riot act.
I staggered back against the side of the car under the weight of his hug.
"Well, hello to you too," I gasped, smiling so wide my face hurt as I hugged him back. "It's good to see you. Feels like it's been forever."
"Black." With just one syllable— my name, no less— he managed to chastise me. He pushed away, vivid blue gaze behind rose-tinted glasses piercing through any shoddy excuses I might've offered as he studied me. "Ugh, you smell of vamp. What level of hell did you just crawl out of? And you got one driving you around?" he added, eyes narrowing at the sigil when I pushed the door shut.
The driver lowered the window enough to make eye contact with me, and waited. Surely she didn't think Blue some sort of threat?
"Give me five minutes. Or so. I'll be right back," I said.
She nodded and turned away, closing the window again. An illusion of privacy, I presumed. Garthelle struck me as the sort to have the vehicle bugged out the ass, with external video and audio feed capabilities. When he didn't just mind-ride his servants.
Vamps did that kind of shit. Everyone knew it. Especially Blue, who glanced from the driver's tinted window, to the emblem, to me, and scowled.
"Damn, you got in it thick didn't you," he said. "Thought you learned that first time. You ain't some virgin rookie no more." He shook his head as he gave me a once-over from head to toe and back. "You sound like shit. Come on, I got a new cocktail that'll fix you right up, I swear it."
I raised my brows in disbelief, but let him grab my hand and drag me in his wake. "I'd settle for a booster and a dime bag of that new leaf you're growing. It did the trick, last time I pushed anywhere near this hard." I did sometimes get careless with vamps. Not often, but after doing this as long as I had, I found sometimes I relaxed my vigilance a fraction too far.
"Yeah, but that ain't all that's wrong with your song. Did you think I wouldn't hear?"
Sometimes Blue's synesthesia gave him a downright inconvenient level of perceptiveness. He knew everything I'd done to my aura, heard the changes in the energy no matter what I did to hide it from him. I tried blaring shitty boy band music once, but not even that worked.
"You gonna tell me what else you did?" he prompted, pulling me up against him as he walked us through the revolving door, letting go of my wrist to sling his arm around my waist.
"Uh, nothing?" I ventured. He arched a brow. "I'm serious, I swear. I didn't do anything different than usual. We've been doing it the same way for..." I trailed off and shrugged.
"And..." he prompted, gait slowing once we'd escaped inside the massive greenhouse, away from Garthelle's car and driver.
This was his home, his element. A few of his people looked up from their work tending the plants as we passed, but he smiled and nodded at them, and they relaxed and returned to ignoring us.
They were his team, and he was their the front man. A commune of drug dealers. Instead of pushing the hypno-hits which killed so many humans, he'd established a guild of ethical dealers and helped reverse engineer homeopathic remedies from organically grown herbs and spices. They sold substitutes for things the vamps controlled. I caught sight of a few sections of flowering poppies and arched my brows at Blue.
"Yeah, they're new," he said, and then smiled wide enough to split his face. "Smuggled a few cuttings in from an Alpha Circle human a few months back. I've been nervous, waiting for them to flower. If I can get viable seeds from them, it'll be a serious boon."
He sounded like a businessman. I would've laughed if I didn't know firsthand how serious the situation was. The prospect of an actual painkiller like morphine, once it had been properly refined, was a major obstacle overcome. Their turmeric-based version of an anti-inflammatory had launched Blue to a pinnacle position in the Green District. This would make him a kingpin, if he pulled it off.
But he'd always just be Blue to me. The street-smart beanpole who saved me from a sour ending to my first sale, back before I knew one vamp from another.
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