“I do hope you have a plan after this point,” I said.
Aidan nodded. “I do, but it ain’t going to be pretty.”
“Do tell.” A stronger gust of wind blew in and I stepped back from the wall into the room.
“We’re flying out of here, but…”
The pile of unconscious-but hopefully still living-guards at the door was getting higher, but more were still coming, crawling over them. “Spill it!”
“Maybe it’s just better if I show you,” he said. “Stand back.” Aidan stopped talking and closed his eyes. Everything that was human about him melted away, his face turning leathery and gaunt, the veins beneath the surface of his skin showing in gnarled twists. His hands shifted to look like those of someone much older, the nails thickening into hooklike claws. I had seen him slightly vampiric before, but when he was done transforming, he looked truly terrifying for the first time. He looked at me. “I told you it wasn’t going to be pretty.”
“Oh,” I said, trying to remain calm in the middle of all this. “Did you transform or something?”
Aidan actually cracked a smile, making him look more Crypt Keeper by the second. “Funny,” he said. “I have to be like this if we’re going to fly out of here and actually stay in the air. If I don’t transform, I can’t fly very far.”
I repressed the urge to shudder.
“Fly?” I repeated. “If you sprout wings and have to flap… If that’s the case, I’ll take my chances diving into the water below.”
Aidan shook his head. “Just grab ahold of my shoulders.”
With some reluctance, I stepped closer to him and, despite my revulsion at the leatheriness of his skin, I wrapped my arms in a sleeper hold around his neck.
“Hold on tight,” he said. “I’m not used to someone ‘sitting bitch’ like this.”
“ ‘Sitting bitch’?” I asked.
“Like the back passenger on a motorcycle…?” he said. I stared blankly at him. “Never mind… Just hold on.”
As he leapt out into the darkness of the night, my stomach lurched as the two of us plummeted downward.
“Well, this is very Greatest American Hero,” I said.
“Shut it,” Aidan snapped. “Just give me a minute to get used to the added weight.”
If we died because I had put on the Fraternal fifteen with my short time in F.O.G., it would be a really sad, sad end. Before I could worry any more, the sinking sensation in my stomach evened out and I felt us beginning to rise as Aidan twisted himself toward Manhattan.
Terrified as I was, the whole process of flight was exhilarating. Climbing higher, the sounds of the conflict in the prison faded away in the roar of the wind. I looked back over my shoulder as the floating prison barge faded into miniature below us. Beatriz jumped through the hole in a graceful dive, then shot up into the air and caught up quickly with us. The rest of the vampires came behind her at a distance, and one by one they broke away from the three of us and headed off in all directions. Up close, Beatriz was just as hideous in this form as Aidan, but I figured now was not the time to mention it.
“I’m taking you back to the Gibson-Case Center,” Aidan said.
I shook my head, the wind getting colder and colder against my skin the longer we flew. “There’s one place I have to stop first.”
“Home?” he asked.
“Nope. They’ll be looking for me there, no doubt.”
“Where to, then?” he asked. “No offense, but you’re getting kind of heavy.”
“None taken… I think.” I thought for a moment, and then knew where I needed to go. “Can we head over to Eleventh Avenue and Twenty-third? I’ve got a little one-stop shopping to do.”
29
Landing was a lot more jarring than I thought it would be. Aidan had no reaction to his impact with the ground, but his sudden contact with it jarred me, and my grip around his neck loosened. I fell to the pavement in the pool of shadows Aidan had landed us in. Before I could even pick myself up, Aidan reached down, grabbed me by the back of my prison coverall, and lifted me to my feet. Beatriz landed seconds later and by then Aidan had taken the time to tear away the rest of the restraints on my arms.
“Thanks,” I said, and started walking across the street to the Manhattan Mini Storage on the corner, keeping to the shadowy edge of the cars parked along the street. I turned to look back. Beatriz was still standing where we landed but Aidan was right behind me. “What are you doing?” I asked him.
“Coming with you,” he said. “What are you doing?”
“I’m hitting my storage unit,” I said, pointing toward the building.
Beatriz came over to us in a flash. “You really think this is a good time to organize your belongings?”
“Less explaining, more walking,” I said, starting off across the street. At the side of the building, I opened the door into an empty, well-lit foyer leading into the storage facility and reached for the electronic keypad. I went for my wallet, and then paused.
“Shit.”
“What’s wrong?” Aidan asked.
“My code for the door was in my wallet,” I said. “You know, the one they took from me when they checked me into jail?”
Beatriz stepped forward, grabbed the door, and shoved inward. The metal of the door caved in, leaving two tiny handprints, but the door snapped off its hinges and clattered off across the hallway behind it.
I sighed. “Must your people always go for the extreme solution? Geez.”
Aidan gave Beatriz a look of disapproval.
She threw her hands up. “What? It got the door open!”
I held up my hands and wiggled my fingers. “I think I could have gotten us in. Hello, psychometrist here!”
“Fine,” she said. “See if I try to be helpful again.”
I hurried into the storage center and headed down the hall where I had been lucky enough to get a first-floor unit. Although I wasn’t alone, mine was the only set of footsteps I could hear echoing as I walked. I turned to make sure my vampiric honor guard was still with me, and sure enough they were keeping pace.
“Your silence is unnerving,” I said. “Can’t you at least pretend to make some kind of noise when you walk?”
“Sorry,” Aidan said, and in an instant the sound of his footfalls became noticeable. “Better?”
I nodded. “Much.”
I hurried along to my storage unit, thankful for the noise. When I reached the rolled-down metal gate, I punched my code in and the lock on it clicked open. I pulled up the rolling garage-door front of it. “Inside.”
“You want to tell us why we’re here?” Aidan asked.
I pulled the gate down behind us and clicked on the single overhead light in the unit. One wall was covered with shelves, but only a few cardboard boxes were on them. Off to the other side were several garment bags hanging from a pipe.
“I set this place up for just such an emergency,” I said. I pulled a towel down from the shelves and threw it down onto the single table in the center of the room. I pointed to another shelf with gallon camping containers of water.
“Could one of you bring me one of those? I think I’m a little too beaten up to lift it.”
Aidan grabbed it and brought it to the table for me. “So you planned for getting all busted up like this?” He looked a bit skeptical.
I nodded and pulled off my prison clothes, wincing as the pain throughout my body cried out. Using the towel, I soaked up some of the water and began to wash the blood off of me.
“More or less,” I said. “I was a bit of a miscreant a few years back, got into a lot of trouble, and when you do that, it usually comes back to bite you in the ass. My particular trauma showed up a few months ago, under the name of Mina Saria. My dealings with her taught me a harsh lesson about always being prepared. So yeah, nowadays I have a bit of a contingency plan set up for a rainy day. I think this definitely counts as one of those.”