Cans rattled near the side of the warehouse, and a man emerged, pushing a shopping cart full of garbage. He wore a heavy overcoat—which I was learning was a summer necessity in San Francisco—and had long hair matted into gray-brown dreadlocks. Having seen the people of this city, I couldn’t tell if he’d been homeless so long his hair had come to look that way over time, or if he was just a hipster from the Mission with terrible style.
He grunted at us and opened the lid of a nearby garbage bin, rummaging inside for cans and bottles to add to his collection. He kept right on muttering as he worked, completely unconcerned by our arrival. I wondered what things he must see on a daily basis to make the three of us look right at home here.
As we approached the building, a group of five people in their early twenties stumbled out from inside. Two girls—whose hair looked strikingly similar to that of the homeless man—and three young men all came to a halt in front of us. They reeked of cheap beer and pot.
“Heeeyyyy,” one of the girls said, her tone loopy. “Watch where you’re going, ’kay?”
I couldn’t tell if it had been a threat or a concerned gesture. Was she telling us to watch our step inside, or berating us for getting in their way? With her high and saccharine voice it was impossible to know.
They all began giggling like maniacs and mimicking her ’kay over and over until she was blushing furiously, her cheeks a bright pink that made her look young and far too sweet to be out here at night.
People thought the only thing they had to fear in the night was other people. Sometimes I wished they understood how much there was to be afraid of in the darkness. It wasn’t that I wanted to strike terror into the hearts of mortals, but I did wish they knew more. Really knew what was out here in the streets with them.
“Guyyys. ” She staggered a step as she lurched along with them. “Isss not funneeeee. ”
Maxime’s nostrils flared, and he tilted his head as he watched her go. The way his eyes narrowed I knew what he was thinking. He was imagining how easy it would be to follow them. To wait until the girl lagged behind again, stopping to catch her breath from all the giggling. In that moment he could grab her and pull her into a back alley. She would never remember what he did to her.
I knew what Maxime was thinking because the same careful expression colored Holden’s face too. I knew, because I was thinking the exact same thing.
We were all predators, and no matter how domesticated you try to make a predatory animal, it will always have the instinct to hunt.
Inside me, my wolf was imagining how fun it would be with a pack, trailing the group from both sides and picking them off one at a time. She was no better than my vampire half. Every part of me craved the chase, and I didn’t give myself enough outlets for that anymore. I used to make do by hunting and killing rogue vampires.
What did I have now?
I was a killer by nature, and I’d managed to find myself locked in the nicest cage imaginable. But it was still a cage, and I was still denied my only release.
I shuddered and shook the feeling off.
The homeless man had stopped rattling his bottles and was staring at us with renewed interest. His eyes—visible even through the cloak of night—were an icy blue and showed no signs of warmth. They did, however, convey a sharp awareness I hadn’t previously believed the man had. He wasn’t drunk or crazy. This guy was watching us very carefully.
A pit of worry gnawed at my belly, overriding the guilt I was accustomed to feeling there. Something was off about the homeless man, and this whole place gave me a serious case of the willies.
“Let’s go. ” I refused to take my gaze off our observer until we were inside the building.
The warehouse had been modified from one large space into individual units. We were greeted by a seemingly endless hallway with a series of doors on either side.
Since we’d been unable to contact anyone by phone in the middle of the night to find out which space Sutherland had rented, we were on our own in determining which unit was his.
Normally I’d rely on scent since it was my strongest gift with the combined force of a vampire and a wolf to fuel it, but in here my nose was as good as useless. The ammonia tang of urine seemed to be an underlying theme, but the potpourri of stink went beyond that. The whole building reeked of mold and mildew, and from the rooms were varying chemical perfumes. Weed, like the kids outside smelled of, but different types as well, some sweet and others skunky. One room had the telltale brewing scents of a meth lab, which meant this entire building was a ticking time bomb.
I smelled sweat and sex and blood. There were so many rooms, all fixed with a basic padlock but others with secondary triggers like alarm systems or deadbolts.
Noises, too, made it difficult to concentrate. Several bands were using their storage spaces for practice rooms, and the cacophonous blend of bluegrass, hip-hop and jazz floated up and down the hall. Beneath the racket were moans or soft chatter. Behind one door someone was saying, “You don’t have to do this. ”
The white knight in me wanted to bust through the door and save someone from what was no doubt a bad situation. But we weren’t here for me to save anyone. Bad things happened, and people had good reason to fear other people, but right now they weren’t my job.
I had to find my father, and we needed to get out of this building fast, before the meth lab sparked, or I got overwhelmed by the sensory overload.
“Maxime, start at the end of the hall and work your way back towards us. Check every door to see if you recognize anything that might suggest Sutherland was using the space. ” I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out a barely used lipstick tube, handing it to Holden. “Mark all the doors occupied by humans so we don’t waste our time with those. ”
Holden palmed the lipstick tube, inspecting it. “Harlot Red?” He raised an eyebrow at me. Bless his twisted vampire heart that he could make even a facial gesture seem sarcastic.
“Shush. Just mark the doors. ”
He set to work, and Maxime followed my directions. There were fifteen doors on either side of the hallway, meaning we had to find one room in thirty. It didn’t seem like such a tall order, but when we started looking, the cool reality of it sank in. We were able to eliminate ten rooms right away because of their human occupants, but that still left twenty. We couldn’t just bust down twenty doors and hope one of the rooms seemed to belong to my father.
I couldn’t ask myself which space I would have selected, because the rooms would have been assigned randomly. Wouldn’t they?