Daughter of the Blood. Nancy Holder

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СКАЧАТЬ go to his place, pop the cork, toast…and then they would make love. As on edge as she was, her body became energized with the thought of his hands on her body, of how it felt when they started the dance. She could smell his musky scent, feel the smoothness of his lips, hear his voice whispering her name in her ear just before he slid into her warm and willing body.

      “What is taking him, like, forever?” Sauvage asked Izzy, jolting her out of her reverie. Sauvage tap-danced against the pavement in her combat boots. “I don’t like this.”

      Izzy didn’t either like it, either.

      “Let’s check the store,” she said to Sauvage.

      “Be careful of the ice,” Sauvage cautioned her, as she herself slipped and slid, grabbing Izzy’s hand.

      When they reached the crosswalk, Izzy reached out to depress the pedestrian signal. As soon as she touched it, the streetlight above them flickered a few times and went out, casting them in relative darkness.

      “What the—?” Sauvage muttered, gazing upward.

      In the same instant, a black panel truck roared around the corner on the same side of the street as the convenience store and squealed up to the curb. Izzy yanked Sauvage back, hard. The front bumper missed Sauvage’s left knee by inches.

      Izzy aimed her weapon as the passenger door burst open and a dark silhouette leaped out. She recognized the pomaded hair—Julius Esposito—just as he lunged at her and slammed something against her arm. There was a sharp, painful jolt.

      Taser.

      Her vision fragmented into gray, shiny dots and there was a scream out in the world or maybe that was the nerves in her ears going haywire. She began to convulse, and she hit the icy sidewalk hard, her arms and legs twitching. For a few forevers, everything shorted out. Then as she swam back, her head began to throb.

      Stupid, stupid, stupid, she thought.

      It took her a while to wrap her right hand around the grip of her revolver and get to her feet. Her left ankle hurt worse than her head. Bad sprain.

      The car was long gone, but Esposito was two blocks ahead of her, dragging Sauvage on foot down the street. She was shrieking and batting at him. Esposito didn’t pay her the slightest attention. Neither did the solitary man staggering drunkenly past them in a pair of earmuffs over a do-rag and a black Mets jacket.

      Izzy shouted, “Stop! Police! Torres! Torres, get out here!”

      Esposito was hustling out of her kill zone—too far away to shoot. And she might hit Sauvage or Mets.

      She was surprised that Esposito had taken Sauvage.

      Why didn’t he drag her into the truck and tell his wheelman to take off? Obviously, he wants me to follow him.

      Great.

      Her best bet was to sic her uninjured partner on him. The mom-and-pop loomed across the street like a journey of a thousand miles. It took her a supreme effort to walk, but she put her pain on hold as she started across the street. She was still holding her gun, but she let her arm drop to her side, concealing it from view.

      A bell on the front door of the shop tinkled as she rushed inside. The store smelled of tobacco and floor cleaner, and the clerk, a short Asian man, leaned over the counter at the front and pointed toward the opposite end of the store.

      He said, “He go into the alley.”

      “Did he use your phone?” she asked, as she made her way down an aisle of canned lychee nuts and Japanese rice crackers. She spread her thumb and forefinger and held them against the side of her face like a phone. “Did he call the police?”

      “No call,” the man informed her, shaking his head. “No working.” He held up his white portable unit as if to corroborate his testimony, and shrugged apologetically.

      Why aren’t the phones working? What is going on?

      “Try again. Call 911! Tell them officers are in pursuit, on foot. Perp armed and dangerous. And tell ’em all the radios are jammed up down here.”

      “It no working,” the man insisted.

      “Keep trying!” she bellowed.

      She burst through the back door into the alley. There were Dumpsters and trash cans, but no Torres.

      She whirled in a circle, shouting, “Torres! Damn it! Where are you?”

      There was no answer.

      Figuring he’d circled back around, she flew back through the store and burst outside again.

      No Torres there, either.

      Damn it, she thought.

      Esposito had put a lot of distance between himself and her. Alone, without backup, she hobbled through East Harlem, one of the more impoverished neighborhoods in all of New York City. Fifth Avenue to the East River, Ninety-Sixth to One Hundred and Fifteenth Street. Night was a heavy lead weight slung across her shoulders, a sudden dumping of snow flurries slowing her pace as surely as the pain freezing up her ankle.

      Esposito maintained at least a fifty-yard lead, despite the fact that he was dragging Sauvage and she was fighting him every step. The young goth’s black combat boots kept scooting out from underneath her on the icy sidewalk; now he was screaming at her over his shoulder and brandishing his gun. Izzy wondered how long Sauvage would be able to struggle. Beneath her pea coat, her black-and-red bustier must be constricting her breathing, and her skirts were wrapped around her legs like a shroud.

      A handful of curious street people—“skels” in police parlance—materialized on door stoops and alley entrances to watch the excitement. She wondered if she should tell one of them to call for help. Probably the better course was for them not to know that she needed help.

      She kept going.

      Then a voice inside her head said, You need to hustle. You’re on point. She’s going to die.

      And you’ll be next .

      Izzy jerked, hard, and nearly fell. She knew that voice. It had whispered to her in her nightmares for over a decade, speaking in riddles, promising death. She’d gone to see a shrink about it; her father wanted her to talk to their priest.

      But I’m awake, she thought. I’m awake and I’m hearing it.

      She took her attention off Esposito and looked all around herself—at shadows and the icy falling snow.

      “Who’s there?” she called.

      Allez, vite, it told her. French, which she did not speak. But which she seemed to understand, if her dreams were any indication of her linguistic abilities. For the voice often spoke to her in French. And sometimes she woke herself up, responding aloud, also in French.

      Hurry. Stop him. Or they’ll die. And it will be your fault .

      Then a gun went off. Izzy ducked behind a row of newspaper dispensers. She felt no compression of air, heard no impact, no telltale ping of a casing. Had someone taken a potshot at her? More important, СКАЧАТЬ