Sunshine (54 page)

Maybe I didn't have time to die, when I ran back into the real world. Or maybe I was too surprised.

We ran straight into the arms of a division of SOF.

I
N A WAY
I was lucky: they recognized me almost immediately. I was hysterical; this was definitely one thing too many, and when I got grabbed by three guys I did one of them some damage before the other two got a bind on me. I couldn't
bear
the touch of—well, of flesh—against mine, especially against my hands, so it's a good thing they had a bind ready, rather than the old-fashioned routine of spread out on the ground with my hands twisted up behind my back. The bind should have stopped me cold, but I was still full of adrenaline, or dark blood, or the remains of the strength the light-web had gathered for me, or poison, or whatever you like, and I thrashed and squirmed like someone having a fit for a minute or two before it stopped me. By which time I'd heard a half-familiar voice say, “Wait a minute, isn't that—that's Rae, from Charlie's, remember, she—”

You have to hand it to the SOF training drill. A madwoman covered in blood runs out of nowhere, promptly tries to maim one of your teammates, and then goes off in fits, and this guy had enough presence of mind to make an ID. And then a completely familiar voice, now kneeling beside me as I panted inside the fully expanded bind, saying, “Sunshine.
Sunshine
. Can you hear me?”

I could. Just. His voice sounded like it was coming through a filter, or a bad phone connection, which might have been the bind. I don't think it was, but it might have been.

The person saying “Sunshine, can you hear me?” was Pat.

I nodded. I wasn't ready to try and say anything. I'm not sure a nod from a person in a bind is very recognizable, but Pat got it.

“I can let you out of the bind if you promise—if you're okay now.”

I thought about it. I was lying on the ground. A good bind will prevent you hurting yourself as well as hurting anyone else, and I didn't seem a whole lot worse than I'd been before SOF grabbed me. And from inside a bind you don't have any responsibilities. Did I want to be let out?

Gods and angels, what was happening to Con
? SOF knew me; they might listen to me. I couldn't do Con any good foaming at the mouth and being a loony. Couldn't afford to die yet either. First I owed it to him to get him out of this. If they hadn't staked him already. Urgency shot through me, tying some of the scattered bits of my personality and will together again. Granny knots probably, but hey.

I said as calmly as I could, “Yes. Okay. I'm a little—dizzy.”

Pat patted the bind where my shoulder was, and then pulled its plug. It
fwumped
and collapsed. He made to take my arm, help me to stand up, but I flinched away, saying, “Please don't touch me.” He nodded, but I could see he was worried—the way I must look would worry anyone—and the way the little ring of SOFs around us moved, they were ready to drop me again at the first sign of new trouble.

I turned slowly around—I
was
dizzy, and I didn't want anyone alarmed into doing something I would regret—and looked for Con. He'd apparently taken capture more quietly. He was standing, watching me. They had handcuffs on him.
Handcuffs
. You don't handcuff a vampire—well, there are sucker cuffs, but these were ordinary ones. From where I stood I didn't think there were even any ward signs on them. A vampire could break out of ordinary cuffs like a human might break out of a doughnut.

I'm not usually a very good liar. Whatever I'm thinking shows on my face. I hoped it wasn't on my face
Hey you halfwits you've put cuffs on a vampire
. I hope I only looked confused and dizzy. I certainly felt confused and dizzy. “You okay?” I managed.

Con nodded. He looked a little peculiar, but it had been a peculiar evening.

“Friend of yours?” Pat asked neutrally.

I nodded. They must have seen us running.…

I turned to look at what—where—whatever we had run from. I'd registered that we were in No Town.

We were in what remained of somewhere in No Town. A lot of it seemed to be lying in pieces on the ground around us. The doors we'd run through led from a building that ended in a jagged diagonal rake of broken wall about eight feet above the doors at its lowest point; there was no roof. Neither of the buildings on each side had any roof left either. One of them still had some of its front wall standing, which was nearly as tall as I was; the other one had a bit of side wall still in one piece. Not a very large piece.

I turned back to Pat. “What—happened?”

He almost smiled. “I was hoping you might be able to tell me. Since you're—er—here. We got a report that it was raining—um—body parts, in No Town. Really freaked some of the clubbers. We sent out a car to take a look and they were radioing for help before they arrived. By the time we got here it was raining exploded buildings as well. And more body parts. The—er—body parts appear to be vampire. Ex-vampire, as you might say. The ones we've had a closer look at.”

I nodded. I glanced again at Con. My brain was slowly beginning to function. I realized that the reason Con looked peculiar was because he was
passing
. Don't ask me how he was doing it. But SOF thought he was human.

“I can take the cuffs off your friend too, if you say you know him,” Pat said, a little too neutrally. “He was a little—upset, when you, er—”

“Went nuts,” I supplied. “Sorry.”

Pat looked at me. I saw it registering with him that the way I looked, whatever had caused it, I had reason to be a little on edge. He looked away again, and nodded, and someone stepped forward and released Con. He joined Pat and me. The circle of SOFs unobtrusively rearranged itself again to keep us under guard. Pat the lion tamer, in with the lions. Con moved a little stiffly, like a man who'd had a hard night. Or like a vampire trying to look human.

He looked a lot better than he had the afternoon we'd had to walk back from the lake. He didn't look like anyone you'd want to take home to meet the family, but he didn't look like a mad junkie either. Or a vampire. And
I
didn't look like anyone you'd want to take home to meet the family. We were both beat up, ragged, blood-saturated, and filthy, and my nose was as stunned as the rest of me, but I guess we stank. Con's black shirt stuck to his body in such a way I couldn't see the wound in his chest. If it was still there. My own breast ached and burned, but if I was still bleeding, it had slowed to an ooze.

I crossed my arms, but with my elbows well in front of my body, so that my hands hung loosely from my wrists out to either side, without touching any of the rest of me. I wasn't remembering any more of what had happened than I had to, but I knew there was something wrong with my hands.

I wondered where Con had picked up passing for human in the last five months. Was that one of the things I had given him, the night he had given me dark sight? Or was he taking his cue off our jailers somehow? Not that anybody had said they were our jailers. Yet. I didn't want to say anything like, can we go home now?, in case they did. Besides, I didn't know that I wanted to go home. I didn't know that I wanted to do anything. My pulse seemed to throb in my hands.

There was a tinny buzzing from someone's radiowire: Pat's. I saw his expression get grimmer, and it had been pretty grim already. “Yeah. Okay. No, my guess is things are going to stay quiet now. Yeah, I'll leave a few to keep an eye out, and you can send any cleanup crew you can find. Yeah.” He looked at me. “Deputy exec Jain wants to debrief you.”

My heart sank. The goddess of pain. And you don't debrief civilians.

“You and Mr.—” Pat turned politely to Con.

“Connor,” Con replied.

“Mr. Connor. You and Sunshine can ride back in my car, and Sunshine can tell you a little about our Depex Jain.”

I almost managed to be amused. The intrusive presence of the goddess had just put Pat on our side. I guessed we'd need him there. The effort to be amused faded, leaving cold exhaustion.

P
AT DID THE
best he could for us. The goddess wasn't going to wait for us to have showers, let alone food and sleep. (I would have liked to see Con in one of their fuzzy khaki jammy suits though.) Pat radioed ahead from the car, and Theo and John met us with blankets and tea. (I wondered who got to hose down the inside of the car.) We were also offered the opportunity to have a pee. Such magnanimity. I accepted. Con did not. Don't vampires
pee
? It had been one thing on the walk back from the lake, when he'd been on short rations for a long time. Okay, do they
have
a digestive system? Maybe it all goes straight into … never mind. At least I could wash my hands, although I felt the soap only slide over what I most needed to scour away. I cleaned my face with a paper towel, so my hands never touched anything but paper.

Con hesitated no more than a moment when offered tea or coffee, and chose tea. He wrapped the blanket around himself. It was yellow, and didn't help his complexion. He was impressive as a vampire but mostly just ugly as a human. There was a kind of
threatening-ness
to his ugliness but you couldn't have said why. There was a study once about whether ugly or good-looking people are more imposing. Generally the uglier you are the less imposing, till you reach a sort of nadir of ugliness and then you get
really
imposing. I thought Con just missed the nadir. Just. He was also shorter as a human. I didn't get this at all. But if it meant the goddess would underestimate him that would be expedient. Possibly even life-saving. Although I wasn't sure how I felt about going on having my life repeatedly saved. My thoughts were moving slowly and indistinctly, and they stumbled a lot. I'd had to take the tea mug into my hands to drink from it, but I kept my fingers well away from the brim where my lips would touch. They offered us food, but I refused; it would be sandwiches, something you'd have to touch with your hands. And my refusal made Con's look less odd, maybe.

When Pat took us up to the goddess' office, there were seven of us. Pat, Con and me, Theo and John and two people I didn't know beyond occasionally seeing them at Charlie's: Kate and Mike. The goddess wanted to dismiss everyone but Con and me—she had her own people present, of course—but Pat, going all formal, declined to be dismissed, and began reeling off some directive or other. I'd heard him asking for some SOF reg book and seen him poring over it in the little turnaround time between the car and the goddess' office, but I hadn't thought about it. He was now proving that since he'd nabbed us in the field, he was responsible for us, even in the presence of a superior officer, because he was a field specialist and she wasn't, and the situation was insecure.

One for Pat. But the lines around the goddess' mouth got harder, and her mouth more pinched. And we were all going to pay for it.

Mainly she went for Con. Because she knew there was something wrong about him? Or because he was the stranger? If she hadn't done it before I skegged the HQ com system, she would have read any available file on me after, which wasn't a happy thought, especially the presumption that it would get fatter as a result of her interest. I wondered if Yolande could make a ward against SOF 'fo-collecting techniques. A ward that didn't proclaim itself as a ward, that only made me look boring. Because my natural boring-ness would have taken a fatal injury tonight. Nobody—certainly not Pat or the goddess—was going waste any more time believing my story about having blown myself out the night I blew out their com system.

But there I went again, planning as if I had a future, and I hadn't decided about that yet. The future would be difficult without usable hands, and the old wound on my breast.… But I wanted to get Con out of here. His future was his business.

There were more voices. The goddess' voice made my head ache. I had to listen, to pay attention, and I had to
think
, to be careful, to be ready … ready.… The effort was making me start to disintegrate again.… I was drifting, it was so much easier to drift.…

What is your name? asked the goddess.

Connor, Con replied.

First name?

Malcolm.

And you live?

I have only recently come to this area, and have not yet decided if I am staying. I rather think that I am not.

But your local address?

I am renting a house by the lake.

Loud intake of breath from everyone except me and Con.

No one lives by the lake any more, said the goddess, as if she had caught him out in a lie.

Con shrugged gently. Yes: my rent is very reasonable, and I like the solitude.

There was a momentary pause. It was true that nobody lived by the lake any more, but there wasn't a good reason why not. There were bad spots, but there were bad spots everywhere, and there were perfectly good
not
bad spots by the lake too. The goddess might think no human could bear the hauntedness of the lake, but she couldn't nail him as an unregistered partblood or illegal Other on it. Let alone a vampire. And my little trouble five months ago had been the first of its kind in years. Con's choice of location would bring that trouble to mind, of course, but there wasn't any way that my presence in the middle of whatever had happened tonight wasn't going to bring that trouble back to center focus in everyone's mind. Maybe Con even had a plan. Which was a lot more than I had. I wanted to rub my aching head but I didn't want to use my hands.

Who is your landlord?

I do not know. I pay the rent to a post office box in Raindance. The rental was arranged through an agent.

What agent?

I do not remember; the papers are at home.

You could produce the papers.

Yes.

What brought you to this area?

Its natural beauty.

That stopped her for a moment. She wasn't a trees and sunsets sort of person. I wondered vaguely where she lived. She wasn't a downtown high-rise sort of person either. Nor could I see her in grotty unorthodox Old Town. I couldn't see her redoing one of the houses in Whiteout. I couldn't see her as a person with a life. I imagined her spending her off-duty hours folded up in a drawer. If she had any off-duty hours.