Chameleon's Challenge (Chameleon Assassin Series Book 3) Read online

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll keep my ears open.”

  Out on the street again, I looked at Mike and asked, “What do you think?”

  “We’ve heard Lady Vivien’s name from two different sources.”

  “It’s quite a hike. Do you think Grenier is up to it?” I asked.

  My phone rang. “Miss Nelson? Inspector Donofrio. We found the car Grenier escaped in. It was stolen and he abandoned it. There was a lot of blood on the inside.”

  “I imagine quite a bit of it was Sandra’s,” I told him. “Grenier wasn’t terribly fastidious. Where did you find the car?”

  I turned to Mike when I hung up. “They found the car about a mile from the address we have for Lady Vivien.”

  “Do we take the long way around, or the direct route?” Mike asked.

  The long way took us through vampire neighborhoods for the most part. The more direct path ran through lycan areas and skirted an area controlled by trolls and another area controlled by a drug gang with a particularly nasty reputation.

  “Good question. One of these days I’ll have to buy an aircar.”

  “One of these days, you’ll have to learn how to drive one. But for tonight?”

  I gave him a dirty look, then sighed. “The long way. It doesn’t do us any good to get beat up or worse before we get there.”

  “Considering how much blood he’s lost, I doubt he’ll be going far after she’s dug your bullet out of him.”

  We managed to make it most of the way to Lady Vivien’s when our luck ran out. I guess we just looked too prosperous—after all, we had shoes and filter masks—and a gang couldn’t withstand the temptation.

  Three ragged vampires stepped into the street about thirty feet in front of us. I could also hear movement behind and above us. I glanced up and wondered how much we needed to worry about the guys above. Maybe a vampire would be in fighting shape after a three-story drop, but I wouldn’t.

  “May I help you gentlemen?” Mike asked. That brought laughter in response.

  “I think they’re lost,” I said. “They probably need directions, because they’re definitely in the wrong place.”

  Their laughter died. “No, sweetie, I think we’re in the right place. You’re in the right place, too,” one of them said.

  “How many behind us?” I muttered as low as I could. Vampires had much better hearing than normal humans, so I tried to be barely audible.

  “Four,” Mike breathed.

  “You take them,” I said. Raising my voice, I said to the men in front of us, “I’m sure you all want to go home alive tonight, so just let us pass, and everyone will be happy.”

  Footsteps closed behind us. Mike spun around as I pulled my pistol from my bag, aimed, and shot the guy with the big mouth, right in his forehead. The guy to his left leaped at me, and I shot him twice in the chest. I blurred my form and ducked as the third guy reached for me. He sailed past me, and I barely turned around in time to shoot him in the back a moment before he reached Mike.

  A quick glance behind me showed two men down, with another one circling to Mike’s left, holding a knife and bleeding from a head wound. The fourth vampire circled the other way, directly toward me. I shot him in the head and he went down.

  The man with the knife charged and Mike sidestepped him, whirling and delivering a roundhouse kick to the man’s back as he stumbled past. I stuck out my leg, tripping the guy, and he skidded into the street.

  Mike was past me in an instant, kicking the guy and then taking careful aim and shooting him in the head. I glanced up and saw a couple of bricks falling toward us.

  “Watch out above,” I yelled and scampered out of the way. One of the bricks hit the pavement only a foot from where Mike had been standing. One of the vamps on the roof raised his arm to throw another brick, and I shot him. It wasn’t a clean hit, but he stumbled back from the parapet of the building. I waited, but I didn’t see anyone else, and no new bricks appeared.

  Vampires were really tough and difficult to kill. Unless you destroyed their brains, you took the chance they’d get up and come after you again. I walked over to the guy I’d shot in the back and shot him in the head. Turning, I saw Mike do the same thing with the man I’d shot in the chest.

  A quick look around didn’t reveal any more enemies.

  “Shall we get the hell out of here?” I asked.

  Mike’s head swiveled back and forth. “Probably a good idea. Where are you?”

  I unblurred my form and took off running. Mike fell in beside me, and we kept up that pace for several hundred yards.

  There didn’t appear to be anyone following us, so we slowed to a walk.

  “Sorry about that,” I said.

  He gave me a quizzical look. “Sorry for what?”

  “I’m pretty sure they were attracted by my gender.” And my normal human blood.

  Mike shook his head. “Naw, I’d have been even more tempting a target if I was alone. Poor vamps hate rich vamps because we put the lie to their whining about prejudice. You did well.”

  We had to ask for directions twice, but soon we came to a street of dilapidated townhouses. The one on the corner had iron bars in the windows and appeared to be a food store. Places that sold nutritional yeast products could be found throughout most of the enclave. They usually also sold a changing variety of other things. Their customers rarely had a credit card, but instead bartered stolen goods.

  Four or five houses down was another store with a neatly hand-lettered sign saying ‘Apothecary and Surgery’ above the front door. A little lower was a smaller sign that read ‘Fortunes Told’.

  A bit of a crowd gathered outside. A vampire woman stood with her arm around a little boy. His arm was swollen and bent unnaturally. A human woman accompanied a little girl that was coughing and sneezing. Four or five lycan teenagers were closest to the building, and they seemed excited, but not in a good way.

  “What’s going on?” Mike asked as we walked up.

  “Some man beatin the hell outa Lady Viv,” one of the lycans said.

  I drew my pistol and dove for the front door, Mike following close behind me. Inside, I saw the front room was set up as a shop, with packages of herbs and bottles on display. The sounds of a beating in progress came from the back.

  Sure enough, Grenier was pounding on a woman dressed in black. He looked up and saw me, then pushed her toward me, and blurred his form. The woman stumbled back into me, and I caught her in my arms.

  Mike stepped up beside us, his pistol leveled, and began firing toward the back door, which swung open, and then slammed shut. Mike rushed to follow.

  “Mike, he has a gun!” I shouted. I checked the woman I’d caught and verified that she was still breathing. Grenier had savagely beaten her, and even if I’d known her, her face would have been unrecognizable.

  “Mike, I’ll go around back. Be careful going through that door.”

  I laid the woman, who I assumed was Lady Vivien, on the floor, blurred my form, and rushed out the front door. Sprinting past the store and around the corner, I came to the alley behind Vivien’s shop. I froze, eyes searching for the telltale distortion of Grenier moving.

  I moved my head so that only one eye could see down the alley, and tried to see if a man-shaped bump stood out from the wall. Nothing, so I leaped to the other side of the alley and tried the same thing. It occurred to me that he might have got there before me, so I turned around.

  The distortion I sought was moving away from me down the alley across the street. I aimed and fired, but didn’t see anything to indicate I’d hit him. Then the distortion vanished. I assumed he’d turned the corner.

  If I was chasing anyone normal, I would have pursued him, but I knew how easy a chameleon could disappear, and also how easy it would be to walk into an ambush. Considering Grenier’s propensity for shooting people in the back of the head, following him didn’t sound like a very good idea.

  I went back around the block and through the front
door of Vivien’s shop.

  “How is she?” I asked Mike.

  “Not good. She needs more than a little first aid.”

  I pulled out my phone and called Donofrio. “Inspector, this is Elizabeth Nelson. I found Peter Grenier, but he escaped again. Do you suppose I could ask a favor? Grenier left a woman severely beaten, and I think she may have a lead as to where we can find him. The problem is, it’s in a part of town ambulances don’t normally go. Could you please send one anyway? Probably with an escort.”

  It took a bit of wheedling, but he finally agreed. I think it was out of civic-minded morality, but it might have been because he got tired of my whining, and I offered to buy him a drink.

  “You know,” Mike said when I hung up, “he might think you’re attracted to him.”

  “Huh? Why would he think that?”

  “A girl asks a guy out for a drink, using one of the most seductive voices I’ve ever heard outside of a brothel?” He shrugged. “I have no idea why he’d think that.”

  “I’m sure the inspector doesn’t mix business and pleasure.”

  “In that case, he’ll be off duty when he accepts that drink.”

  “I got an ambulance, didn’t I? Do you want to argue over methods, or just be thankful?”

  Mike chuckled. “Come take a look at this.”

  I looked around as I walked over to him. The room was a small, neat surgery. Very clean, very professional looking. The white sheet covering a narrow table was soaked in blood. Next to it was a smaller table with surgical instruments. An empty IV bag hung from a hook above the table. Mike pointed at a small dish.

  Inside the dish were bullet and bone fragments covered in blood. A lot of bullet and bone fragments.

  “You shoot hollow points?” Mike asked.

  “Yeah.” Hollow point bullets exploded when they hit their target, whereas solid bullets tended to bore through.

  “Looks like she patched him up before he started in on her.”

  I agreed. “Wonder what set him off?”

  “Maybe she wanted to be paid. Maybe he just hates women that much. Maybe he thought she looked like his wife. Or you.”

  The woman lying unconscious on the floor was blonde, but it came from a bottle.

  “He never saw me before today.” Something on the floor across the room caught my eye. When I fished it out from under a bloody towel, I saw it was a payment card. Not one linked to a bank, but the kind that were blank and you downloaded credit to the card itself. Even people without bank accounts needed to use money. I was very familiar with them since criminals often used them. I put it in my pocket, wondering if it belonged to Vivien or Grenier.

  Donofrio showed up with three squad cars full of cops in riot gear and an ambulance. The locals treated it like a parade. Everyone came out to see, and a couple of girls set up a stand selling some kind of drink. I talked the paramedic who earlier sewed Mike up into looking at the little vampire boy’s arm, and she splinted it.

  “We just took too long getting here,” I told Donofrio. “It looks like she took out the bullet. His right arm was in a sling, but he still ran better than I would have.”

  The inspector shook his head. “He beat her that badly with only one hand? Any chance he’s a vampire? Or part vampire?”

  “Not according to his records at Entertaincorp,” I said. “Of course, mama could have been dallying with a mutie, and his corporate VP daddy wasn’t actually daddy at all. He’s big—as tall as I am, and at least two hundred thirty pounds. Even weirder looking in person than in his pictures. He almost looks as though he has a bit of a hunchback.”

  The ambulance driver signaled he was ready to go, and the cops all pulled back to their cars.

  “Would you like a ride back to civilization?” Donofrio asked.

  Before I could open my mouth, Mike said, “Yes. Definitely.”

  I grinned at him. “Wimp.”

  Donofrio dropped us at the orphanage and we retrieved our car. I had Mike take me by Lilith’s. Mom was busy, but I left the payment card on her desk with a note asking if she would please crack its security. I could have done it if I had time. In the hacker-cracker online community, I was considered a superstar. Anonymously, of course. But even among the top rungs of hackers and security people, most weren’t aware of the higher pantheon of computer-hacking gods and goddesses who owned the infonet. One of them was my mother.

  After that, we went back to The Pinnacle in time to catch the end of Nellie’s act. I had a couple of drinks with a hamburger and bought Mike a Sadie Green, a bloody Mary made with the real stuff.

  Even with the drinks, I had trouble sleeping that night. When I finally fell asleep, I had very unpleasant nightmares.

  Chapter 9

  Mom called around noon. “I cracked this card you left. It was originally loaded with a hundred thousand credits, and it now has around two hundred sixty-five thousand. Most of the charges are piddly amounts, five or ten creds, but a few are larger. The additions are very large. Ten thousand is the smallest, the largest was one hundred twenty-three thousand. The last charge was ten thousand yesterday. So, what’s the deal?”

  “Found it at an enclave surgery. The doctor evidently cut one of my bullets out of the serial killer, then he beat the crap out of her for thanks. Interesting that he paid her.”

  “More than interesting if he paid her that much. I’d be shocked if she ever made that much on a job. Hell, she might not make that much in a year. You need to think about what other services he paid for.”

  “Mom, I’m not following you.”

  “Have you had your coffee yet?”

  “Just pouring the first cup now. It was a long day and a late night.”

  “Okay, stick with me here. Enclave doctors aren’t real doctors. People in the enclave don’t have money. Even Lady Vivien gets by mainly on barter, and she’s the best. For your cutter to charge ten grand, first she’d have to suspect the patient had ten grand, then she’d have to know he couldn’t afford to go someplace else, like a real hospital. With me so far?”

  “Yeah. How did you know it was Lady Viv? I didn’t think I told you that.”

  “You didn’t. I simply mentioned her as an example. Now, if she knew him as a corporate type who couldn’t afford the questions about how he got shot if he went to a hospital, then he’d be paying for discretion, not just her medical services. Right?”

  “Uh, yeah, I guess so.”

  “Think about it. You’re a bright girl. It’ll make sense after you get enough coffee in you. What do you want me to do with this card?”

  “I dunno. Hang onto it, I guess. Can you tell who the payments were made to?”

  “No, just amounts and date stamps.”

  “Well, that might be something. I’ll pick it up next time I’m over there.”

  I hung up as Nellie stumbled into the kitchen and sat down at the table. I poured her a cup of coffee.

  “Who was that calling at the crack of dawn?” she asked with a yawn.

  “Mom, and dawn cracked several hours ago.”

  “On your planet, maybe. You can just wave your hand and be beautiful, but us normal people need our beauty sleep.”

  Nellie’s smooth dark skin didn’t even need makeup. She looked better first thing in the morning than most women ever hoped to look. At her worst, she stopped traffic, so I ignored her whining. “Where do you want to go for breakfast?”

  “Don’t we have to wait until Mike gets up?”

  “Only if you want to feed him. He’ll sleep most of the day. I’m hungry.”

  “You’re always hungry.”

  “I burned a lot of energy yesterday.”

  “I need to wash my hair.” I glanced at her thick, black, shiny waist-length hair. Straight as a laser, unlike my unruly blonde mess.

  “Hell, Nellie, it won’t dry until dinner time. Starve then. I’m going out.”

  “You should buy some groceries.”

  “Yeah? Who’s going to cook them?”
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  That stopped her. She thought for a few moments. “Maybe Mike can cook.”

  “He’s a vampire. Why in the hell would he learn to cook?”

  She braided her hair and put on some jeans and a top. We took my cycle down to a place by the university that served breakfast to students twenty-four hours a day.

  While we waited for our meal, I called Inspector Donofrio.

  “How’s Lady Vivien doing?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Penelope Jones is in a lot of pain, but she’ll survive. The doctors say they need for the swelling to go down before they can operate.”

  “Penelope Jones?”

  “Yeah, that’s her real name. From Des Moines, Iowa.”

  “Operate for what?”

  “Broken nose, broken orbital bone, and broken jaw. The six broken ribs won’t require surgery. He did a real number on her.”

  “So, she can’t talk?”

  “She can write. Actually, I could use your services. I think she’d be more forthcoming with someone who didn’t carry a badge.”

  “And how much is the Toronto Police Department willing to pay for my services?”

  A long silence ensued while Nellie sat across the table from me and giggled.

  “Why would we pay you?” Donofrio finally asked.

  “Because you probably want to know what she tells me, and I only share confidential information with my clients. You can contract me, or you can contact Entertaincorp if you want information.”

  More silence. “How much?”

  “My normal rates are five thousand a day, but for you, I’ll give you an hourly rate. Two fifty.”

  Silence, then, “I’ll authorize an hour.”

  “I’ll have a contract ready for you to sign. I don’t think this is the last hour I’ll be giving you. You’re lucky I don’t charge you retroactively for going out to the Goldberg’s house. I charge triple time for looking at butchered children.”

  “You’re rather mercenary, aren’t you?”

  “Would you chase down murderers for free? I don’t get a salary, Inspector.”