Free Running in the Dark by Regan Summers Page B

you undressed me with your eyes, if that’s cool.”
    “You’re bruised,” she said, retreating a good ten feet in the blink of an eye. Quick, then.
    “You just kicked my ass—and several of my more tender organs—all over this warehouse. Of course I’m bruised.” I turned my left shoulder toward her, bringing my hands up and balancing my weight. Her lessons, when they weren’t punctuated by soft-tissue damage, were actually pretty good. “So, what’s next? Lemme have it.”
    She shook her head, and the lines between her eyes smoothed as her expression flattened. “He said you could heal.”
    I blinked, wondering exactly how much Malcolm had told her about me. Wondering what else they talked about. He was playful, for a vampire. She was about as fun as a two-by-four full of rusty nails.
    “Sure. But it takes time, maybe a couple of days.” And I had to open up and accept the vampire’s energy, which I wasn’t about to do with her. For all I knew, she had some secret vampire ninja technique for inserting poison into her energy. “Now, come on. It’s almost morning, and I’m sure you need to turn back into a bat or something.”
    “Maybe you should not think of fighting vampires.”
    “Believe me, I have never once thought it would be a good idea to fight a vampire. Now, come along…” Why the sudden reversal? She didn’t seem like it bothered her to toss me around, but I couldn’t get a good read on her. She’d gone from businesslike to hesitant in a heartbeat. Well, my heartbeat anyway.
    “You are too slow, too weak. I cannot help you.” And now she sounded almost fearful, which made no sense, because it wasn’t like I was getting stronger or faster.
    “You say the sweetest things, Soraya. But seriously. What’s next?”
    She paced back and forth on a small, precise circuit. “Very well, if you wish to continue. But you cannot fight to win. If you can distract or disable, do that. And then run.” She crouched and her fangs half dropped, visibly denting her lip. The hairs rose on the back of my neck. “You know how to run, don’t you? I will give you a minute’s head start.”
    I ran.
    I wouldn’t ever break any land-speed records, but I could move. And better yet, I could run in urban environments, like those that butted up against the warehouse. I sprinted past my sedan and up the road Soraya had pointed out on a map before meeting me, then took a left onto a side street I’d glimpsed on the way in. It was a tight residential area—the kind you find in old, poor communities where nobody cares about following ordinances or fire codes. There were lean-tos attached to houses, stairs chained off and scrap-metal walls thrown up between buildings to create shabby new living spaces. Some blocks had fifty houses on them. Others were vacant except for rusted heaps of refuse.
    I cruised down a narrow, rutted alley, then dodged through a grease-smelling shed that seemed to be shared by two small single-story homes. A chain rattled to my right, and a dog growled as I passed. Down ten stone steps and a right that had me vaulting over a retaining wall. I brushed gravel from my hands, leaped over sprawled and disemboweled lawn furniture and took another left toward a row of junked cars. Soraya’s chill presence brushed against my back, and adrenaline heated my veins. I smiled, deked around a puttering Moped and took a right.
    Three blocks away lights coursed evenly along a busier street. Streets meant witnesses, cabs and possibly unlocked doors. Doors meant vampire-proof barriers. I skimmed the long cinder-block wall of an apartment complex cracked by quake damage and nearly collided with a woman as she backed onto the street.
    I twisted, lost my footing and fell. Rolled, popped up and made it to the other side of the road before looking back. The woman squeezed against the wall and her hands rose defensively as a man stepped out of the alley she’d come from. He was big, solid, and she was