corner and moved to the stairwell. Once through the door, we headed down into the basement. I stepped off the stairs and stumbled, a wave of dizziness mixed with doubled vision slamming through me. The God Tear necklace on my chest suddenly burned hot—for just a second, before it all passed. The disorientation left and my vision cleared as the silver-wrapped jewel around my neck cooled to normal temperature.
“What happened?” Tanya asked.
“Somebody just tried to kill Toni,” I said, meeting bright blue eyes.
Chapter 3
The crappy old hotel was a good choice for a whole bunch of reasons—it was out of the way, set in a well-populated neighborhood, and out of the Big Apple. It also had an old utility access tunnel that traveled under the asphalt parking lot to a buried concrete storm sewer collection tank. It was one of those big, prefabricated things that you see work crews lowering into the ground as your car crawls by at the direction of a bored signal guy. Its most important feature was the steel grate cover at its top.
The access tunnel was small enough that we had to crawl on all fours. Tanya was just ahead of me, the tunnel dark, but my thermal vision gave me an interesting view of her from behind.
“Stop staring at my ass and tell me again that Toni and Gina are okay,” she said without looking around. Damn mental link. It’s one thing to wake up and find you have a super-hot girlfriend; it’s another thing altogether that she can just about read your mind.
Toni is my goddaughter, another shocking development that I had awoken to. Gina was her mother, an otherwise super-perceptive, intelligent woman who had come to the insane conclusion that I might make good godfather material. Go figure.
“They’re both fine. They were having lunch in a café when a van pulled up and three men with guns got out. That’s about all I saw as the God Tear around her neck activated and the men all sorta exploded.”
“Exploded?” she asked, her tone professionally curious.
“Yeah, well I think they all got shoved back toward the van but the shove was so hard and fast that their bodies just came apart. Gina covered Toni’s eyes and she didn’t see any of it.”
“Good. It’s still too early for her to see too much of that. Any idea who was behind it?”
“I didn’t get much other than what I told you. We’ll have to call them,” I replied, thinking about her phrase too early.
We climbed out of the tunnel and stood up in a concrete box. A couple inches of stagnant water sloshed around our feet as I climbed the inset concrete steps and popped the metal grate cover open. I looked back down at Tanya before sticking my head out. She was smirking and staring at my butt. I sighed.
“Turnaround is fair play, no?” she asked, letting her Russian accent roll through.
A vehicle was parked above us with an open trap door in its undercarriage, which let us climb up inside the back of what seemed to be a uniform delivery van. We came up right between stacks of clean, folded uniforms and several bags of dirty ones. The driver and passenger’s seats were empty. That changed a moment later when the sliding driver’s door popped open and a stocky, muscular man with a crew cut entered the vehicle. He had a bag of dirty uniforms in one hand, which he threw to me or maybe at me, and a bag of bagels in the other. He was whistling the theme song to a famous Disney movie about dwarves and a princess and work.
With a wink at my vampire, he swung into the driver’s seat and started the van, wheeling out of the parking lot with blatant disregard for the other drivers—in other words, just like every other delivery vehicle on the road. A string of black SUVs zoomed past us, careening into the parking lot.
I started to speak but he held up one hand for silence, a tattooed Semper Fi visible on one beefy
“What happened?” Tanya asked.
“Somebody just tried to kill Toni,” I said, meeting bright blue eyes.
Chapter 3
The crappy old hotel was a good choice for a whole bunch of reasons—it was out of the way, set in a well-populated neighborhood, and out of the Big Apple. It also had an old utility access tunnel that traveled under the asphalt parking lot to a buried concrete storm sewer collection tank. It was one of those big, prefabricated things that you see work crews lowering into the ground as your car crawls by at the direction of a bored signal guy. Its most important feature was the steel grate cover at its top.
The access tunnel was small enough that we had to crawl on all fours. Tanya was just ahead of me, the tunnel dark, but my thermal vision gave me an interesting view of her from behind.
“Stop staring at my ass and tell me again that Toni and Gina are okay,” she said without looking around. Damn mental link. It’s one thing to wake up and find you have a super-hot girlfriend; it’s another thing altogether that she can just about read your mind.
Toni is my goddaughter, another shocking development that I had awoken to. Gina was her mother, an otherwise super-perceptive, intelligent woman who had come to the insane conclusion that I might make good godfather material. Go figure.
“They’re both fine. They were having lunch in a café when a van pulled up and three men with guns got out. That’s about all I saw as the God Tear around her neck activated and the men all sorta exploded.”
“Exploded?” she asked, her tone professionally curious.
“Yeah, well I think they all got shoved back toward the van but the shove was so hard and fast that their bodies just came apart. Gina covered Toni’s eyes and she didn’t see any of it.”
“Good. It’s still too early for her to see too much of that. Any idea who was behind it?”
“I didn’t get much other than what I told you. We’ll have to call them,” I replied, thinking about her phrase too early.
We climbed out of the tunnel and stood up in a concrete box. A couple inches of stagnant water sloshed around our feet as I climbed the inset concrete steps and popped the metal grate cover open. I looked back down at Tanya before sticking my head out. She was smirking and staring at my butt. I sighed.
“Turnaround is fair play, no?” she asked, letting her Russian accent roll through.
A vehicle was parked above us with an open trap door in its undercarriage, which let us climb up inside the back of what seemed to be a uniform delivery van. We came up right between stacks of clean, folded uniforms and several bags of dirty ones. The driver and passenger’s seats were empty. That changed a moment later when the sliding driver’s door popped open and a stocky, muscular man with a crew cut entered the vehicle. He had a bag of dirty uniforms in one hand, which he threw to me or maybe at me, and a bag of bagels in the other. He was whistling the theme song to a famous Disney movie about dwarves and a princess and work.
With a wink at my vampire, he swung into the driver’s seat and started the van, wheeling out of the parking lot with blatant disregard for the other drivers—in other words, just like every other delivery vehicle on the road. A string of black SUVs zoomed past us, careening into the parking lot.
I started to speak but he held up one hand for silence, a tattooed Semper Fi visible on one beefy
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