Читать книгу The Big Smoke - Jason Nahrung - Страница 7

'I hope this won't take long, Reece. I go on duty at nine.'

Felicity's voice followed him up the stairwell, echoing with their footsteps. The air tasted stale; the warehouse had been shut up for a long time, and Reece's occasional visits had done little to freshen the place.

'You still on the soup van?' he asked.

'It could be worse.'

'Ticket collector.'

'You haven't fallen that far. Yet.' Half humour, half warning. Fair enough. He hadn't told her why he'd called her here. It wasn't just the heat that'd made her take her jacket off. Basic training made a point of warning them how hard it was to pull a Staker from a shoulder sling; it was either that, though, or stick out like dog's balls in a trench coat if one was to conceal the metal tube.

He was in civvies today. Jeans, button-up shirt, leather jacket and Broncos cap. Sword in scabbard held in one sweaty hand.

She drew level with him. 'You're still hunting Matheson? Is that what this is about?'

'Kind of. I figure he's up north. Far north. Fuel thefts, some clothing, a couple of sightings of the Monaro.'

'You and that damn car.'

'It'll turn up. Whether he'll be with it is the thing.'

He paused at a landing, catching his breath. He was too old for this. And getting older by the day.

She waited beside him, her freckles glowing with exertion, her hair pulled back in a tight, short ponytail. She carried her jacket over one arm, exposing the double shoulder holsters for sidearm and Staker, her tightly stretched blouse he had to remind his eyes not to linger on. They'd been partners, after all; of sorts. Still were; of sorts.

Felicity had proven capable in the outback, when they'd been tracking Taipan's gang of outlaw vampires. So capable, Mira had taken a shine to the plucky Hunter.

That relationship linked them now in this conspiracy: save Mira, save themselves.

'So what is this about?' Felicity asked.

'All in good time. Have you heard anything about Mira?'

'She's still under wraps, still borderline bedlam. Though I think the doc's sugar coating it, for the Old Man's sake.'

The Old Man. That was an understatement. Maximilian von Schiller was centuries old, a product of his time. By all accounts, he was struggling to keep up with modern developments, and concepts such as democracy and women's lib. He relied on his vampiric daughter to help him cope, using her blood magic in his service. The power had come from her mother, Danica: Danica the betrayer, who had, tired of death and politics, fled Maximilian's organisation. The disastrous attempt to recapture her at Jasmine Turner's outback property had forced them to this risky course of action.

Reece had been there when Mira had fallen, one of the most horrible sights he'd ever seen. And after decades in her service, that was saying something.

Mira, injured and craving blood, had killed one of her own and taken his life into herself. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. Unable to navigate the storm of the lives she'd absorbed, she'd lapsed into the coma-like state, a prisoner in her own overcrowded mind.

Reece shrugged away the memory and resumed clomping, until they emerged on the roof. He blinked, the sun staring at him from the west where it hung low over the mountains, swollen and dirty red as it glowered through a haze of pollution.

Felicity reached for her sunglasses, then almost dropped them as she saw the figure tied to a rusting air-conditioning unit.

'Jesus, Reece, you've had him up here all day?' She stared around at the surrounding buildings. Over-exposed, aren't you?'

'There's no one around.' The building, one of the highest in this part of South Brisbane, was empty; one of many waiting for the urban renewal creeping out from the city like a slow wave of chrome, glass and lattes.

'Batcatcher? Aerial?'

'No reason for the foxes to be this far south. And the chances of airpol taking their cameras off the highways long enough to notice is remote. No money in it.'

She walked to the prisoner.

Bhagwan's groans were barely audible. Bone showed through the blistered flesh; he looked like a log that had rolled off a fire, black and grey and veined with soot. And there was the smell.

'Is this how you did it, back when you were a real copper?'

Ouch. 'We were more subtle back then. And the crims were more ordinary.'

She looked at him, biting her lip in that endearing manner. 'Was it worth it?'

'He gave me a name.'

'Do you believe him?'

'No reason not to.'

And I'm here because?'

'To witness. You found him, after all.'

She looked around again. The city's lights were coming on, warning lights flashing, a slick Legoland of dark and light burnished by the sunset. Buildings reflected blood.

'If anyone saw—'

'We'd know it. I only called you in so you could know it was over.'

'Noble of you.'

'Despite the popular misconception, chivalry is not quite dead.'

Felicity had found Bhagwan staked out in a hidey hole in the wreckage of Jasmine Turner's place, one of few survivors of the clusterfuck referred to around Thorn as "The Debacle". She'd smuggled him away, desperate to find some advantage in the disaster that had befallen them.

Reece drew the standard-issue broadsword, a cheap replacement for his Hunter's blade — a personal gift from Mira — that was probably rusting away somewhere out west.

'It's time for Bhaggy to go back to being dead,' he said.

Felicity nodded, her arms folded across her chest.

The blade cut through the throat as though it were dry grass and clanged against the metal of the air conditioning unit. The head plopped on the ground. Bhagwan had had a few years on him. The decay accelerated, the body shrivelling in on itself, until the ropes fell slack and the corpse crumbled. By the time the sun had sunk to touch the mountains, there was nothing left but a pile of dust. It eddied in the faint breeze coming in off the river, a dry wind carrying the smell of brine and petrochemicals. Reece sheathed the sword, then rolled and lit a cigarette.

Felicity held a hand up against the sunset. Her mirrored shades reflected the out-of-kilter world, an out-of-kilter Reece.

'So what was the name he gave you?'

'Are you sure you want to know?'

'We're both in it, Reece. Unless Mira recovers and reinstates us, we're in the doghouse for the rest of our days.' She rubbed her throat, an instinctual act of longing or loss; the skin there was unmarked. She was no one's favourite now. 'And that might not be that long.'

'Bhagwan said the Needle told him about Jasmine.'

'Why would he do that?'

'More to the point, how did the Needle know? He's not part of the firm.'

'We've got a leak.'

'And I'm going to plug it. See if I can't get us back in the good books.'

'Nice of you to care, old man. You going looking for the Needle then?'

'In the proverbial.' He gestured to the city, lights sparkling in the descending dusk. He imagined he could see Thorn amid the towers clustered in the city centre.

'I can check the rota, see when he's due to tithe,' she said.

'Not for two weeks. No, I'll have to find him sooner than that. Which means finding a snitch of my own. What you can do is start tracing from the other end. Draw up a list of anyone and everyone who might've known about Jasmine's expansion into the bovine business.'

'Should be a reasonably small list. It was meant to be hush-hush.'

He gripped her arm. 'Do it quietly. We don't know if the leak was intentional or just careless. Either way, they'll be keen to keep it quiet.'

She pulled on her jacket. An object fell from the pocket and bounced off her shoe. She retrieved the MP3 player, rotating it in her hand as though she was reassuring herself it was the one she'd dropped. Something red flashed as she turned it. She rubbed a thumb over the piece of tape, smiled grimly, the player bringing back a bad memory perhaps.

'Is that new?' Reece asked.

'Souvenir.' She tucked the player away, adjusted her holsters. 'Don't worry, Reece. I've got your back. We might not be able to save the Strigoi, but we just might be able to save ourselves.'

To hear her say it, there with the sunset reflecting bloody on her shades, the set of her mouth, her hand squeezing his arm, he could almost believe it.