The Lady is a Killer

Part VI - A Pact

            “A formula. One of the problems with Daddy’s experiment is that we require maintenance. Cain stole the formula for our maintenance.”

            “What happens if you don’t get it?”

            “We don’t know.” She shrugged, but tension coiled around her. “But I heard him talking sometimes. When we work, a…different sense takes over. We fixate, and anything that isn’t an enemy or a weapon falls away. It’s like if you put a blindfold on in the dark and all of your senses tune out except for your hearing. But that only rises when we need it to. I suspect that, if we do not get that formula, that the sense will rise up. It will take over, and it will not be limited to vampires.”

            “You make it sound so matter of fact.”

            “Make no mistake, Mr. Mathisen.” She smiled grimly. “I am terrified.”

            And I’d been the one to bring this about. It was a wonder she could stand to look at me.

            “Do you have someone who can make the formula work?”

            “It’s ingredients and timing of reactions. I have someone, a proper chemist. Discreet.”

            “Then we get the formula.”

            “You’d change allegiances, as simple as that?”

            The question was edged with suspicion, and she had every right to feel it, to aim it at me. I started the car up again, easing it only the road.

            “Maybe this looks like I’m a turncoat, but it ain’t that. I’ve been drifting. You nailed that. I’ve been drifting and happened to get caught in his wake, but I’m not Cain’s man. I owe him nothing, but I wouldn’t turn on him unless there were a good reason to do so. He is a mean individual, and I’ve no doubt that he brought you here for mean reasons and with a promise of that formula.”

            "He wanted me to kill Mart Randolph. Knowing the leech would underestimate someone of my proportions. Testing whether I could deliver the bill of goods that Daddy sold us under.”

            “Randolph is dead, dead?” I scowled at edge where darkness met headlights.

            “Went out with a look of abject shock on his fanged kisser.”

            “Will Cain give you the formula as payment?”

            “I asked nicely. He knows what the formula is for. Said he didn’t bargain with things he now owns.”

            I glanced in the rearview mirror, so angry at Cain that I almost wished someone were following us.

            “So we get the formula.”

            “We don’t have much time. What Cain doesn't know is that Randolph answers to a vampire in Chicago, name of Caliban Rose."

            "Never heard of him," I said.

            "He makes Mart Randolph look like a salted slug, Matty. Won't take more than a couple of nights for this news to reach him and then, well, Cain's going to wish he'd never done what he did.”

            "Why didn't you take Cain out? You must have had an opportunity, despite his hired muscle."

            "Why Matty," she exclaimed, "what kind of a girl do you think I am? I don't kill humans!"

            I laughed softly and she sighed, resting her head on my shoulder. It made sense now, the two goons focused on Vera. They weren't there to protect her. They were there to watch her, to keep her from Cain. The big man had no idea what he’d brought into his house. I shook my head, twisted so she could nestle tighter against me.

            The lights of the Travel Air hanger came into view, the far end of the figure eight route. It was just starting to snow, sparse flakes that would grow and grow until Wichita was blanketed in white. Vera Avery's heat curled into the right side of my body.

            “We do it tonight." I said.

            “Are you sure?”

            “This snow’ll keep falling. By this time tomorrow, airplanes won’t be able to fly. Cars might not be able to drive. We do it tonight, I fly us out of here. Once that vampire gets to Cain, nobody’ll even be thinking about us.”

            She sat up and faced me, her mouth quirking up into a smile, a rosebud blooming with fierce amusement.

            “Why Matty, don’t you know how to say all the right things to a girl.” She twirled one of her deadly sticks through her fingers. “That sounds like a party and a half.”