Maisey didn't complain and waved off my offer to help as we went down the stairs. Thankfully, my sister was serious about her fitness, and she seemed to take carrying Steve as a sort of personal challenge. That, or she considered it a "fuck you" to Riggs, who probably hadn't thought she'd be able to manage to get him outside.
Riggs pulled out a cell phone as we were going down the stairs and called someone. “Yeah. Meet me at the bar. Five minutes.”
He hung up the phone, then took us outside to where a beat-up truck was waiting with the engine running and the door still hanging open.
Half a dozen people who had been casually going about their night stopped to gawk at us. Steve was leaking blood all over my sister and looked very much like a dead body. Without Riggs' imposing size, I imagined somebody would've probably tried to stop us or call the cops. Instead, he just glared at anybody who stared too long and ushered us all in the truck. He made Maisey put Steve in the bed of the truck, where he strapped him down with bungie cord like a load of cargo, despite Maisey's protests and even a few useless punches she'd landed on his back.
The whole process took less than a minute. Before I knew it, he was driving, and we were in a car with a dangerous man while being pursued by vampires.
Exactly how I'd expected my Wednesday to go.
There were about a thousand questions I wanted to ask, but I blurted out the most mundane of them a few seconds after he started driving. “You just left this running in the middle of the street? What if someone stole your truck?”
“Then I would hunt them down and kill them. And we would’ve walked to the bar instead of drove.”
I shook my head to myself, staring out the window.
Despite the obvious shit we were in, a thudding thrill was pumping through my body. I was doing something. Even if it was running for my life. Even if it made absolutely no sense. I looked around the interior of his old truck and felt the familiar fear rise up in me. If the “vampires” hunting us didn’t kill us first, I had a feeling whatever I caught in this filthy truck was going to do the job. I didn't even have my hand sanitizer with me.
I did my best to breathe shallow, although I was fairly sure that wasn't a true preventative technique.
“Who are you?” Maisey asked.
Riggs was driving now with either some of the worst driving skills I’d ever seen or the best. I couldn’t decide. He was weaving onto the sidewalk to avoid traffic and nearly killing pedestrians who got in his way. But he did it all with that same calm, deadly serious look on his face.
“I told you already. I'm Riggs, and I'm unwillingly coming out of retirement to help your dumb asses. You're welcome,” he said. “We can discuss payment now, if you like.”
“Payment?” Maisey sputtered. “For abducting us and-” she clutched the dashboard to stop from being flung across the cab as he swerved to avoid an old lady who was giving us the middle finger from the center of a crosswalk.
“For saving you. Yes. You can pay me in cold hard cash, or you can owe me. Either one works. But you’ll owe me pretty good for this. The cleaners are no joke.”
“We can owe you?” I asked. “What kind of respectable businessman lets people “owe” him?”
“Who said I was respectable?” Riggs asked. Somehow, while looking at me, he weaved the truck around a stopped car and passed into oncoming traffic, then narrowly dodged a bus coming toward us. “Nobody particularly wants an asshole. But I’m the asshole you got, and, unfortunately for you, the one you need.”
I wanted to roll my eyes. What an egotistical prick. As far as I could tell, Maisey and I were in mortal danger. But this guy was treating it all like it was an ordinary day at work. And he had the nerve to start trying to extort money or “favors” out of us while we were still on the run? Besides, he looked like he couldn't have been much past his mid-thirties. Who retired in their thirties?
“Look on the bright side,” he said. “The fact that I’m asking for payment means I expect to get you two through this in one piece. You would need to be worried if I wasn’t asking.”
“Or it means you’re hoping to collect as quickly as possible because you don’t think we’ll last long,” I muttered.
He gave me another concerning look—considering he was still driving like a lunatic in an action movie—then chuckled. “Good point. We can pick this discussion back up when we’ve met with my partner, then.”
Oh, great. He had a partner. Of course he did.
He pulled the truck to a screeching stop outside a nondescript bar, then tossed the keys to a young guy about my age outside. “Park this somewhere inconspicuous.”
The guy caught the keys and nodded at Riggs like he was afraid of him.
"Oh, hold on." Riggs went to the bed of the truck and unstrapped Steve. "There's a wounded vamp in the back. Put him in storage for now."
"No," Maisey said.
"Calm down Wonder Woman. We can't take him in there. The howlers will tear him to pieces the second they smell him. He'll be safe in storage. Safer than anywhere else, at least. Anybody finds out I brought a half-dead vamp to The Wet Flea, and he'll be fucked, though. That means you'll be fucked if anyone finds out, got it kid?" He was speaking to the young guy still holding the keys, who gulped and nodded.
"Storage," Riggs repeated. "Nobody knows what's in the back."
The kid nodded rapidly, then half-ran to get in the truck and took it around the block and out of sight.
"I don't like this," Maisey said.
Riggs sighed. "And I don't like missing my favorite food truck, which is closing in about ten minutes. But here we are, aren't we?"
"What is a howler?" I asked.
"One step above feral," he said offhandedly. "Oh, uh," he paused, frowning at me. "Steve might've spurted on you a bit."
"What?" I asked.
Maisey winced. "You got some blood on your face."
My stomach sank and I started to rub furiously. Blood. On my face? Calling myself a germaphobe wouldn't be accurate. It was more like I was allergic to germs. Blood was like the king of germs, and the idea of it on my face made me want to step into the nearest washing machine head-first.
"Here," Riggs said. He actually licked his thumb and started rubbing at my face. "You're just smearing it around like that."
I swatted at him and squirmed, but he just gripped me by the back of my head and proceeded to clean me with his spit. Just beneath my outrage, I found the whole ordeal equal parts mortifying and embarrassingly exciting.
As sad as it was to admit, having a hot guy thumb his spit around my lips and chin was about as erotic as my life had ever become. My poor, deprived body was humming with heat by the time he was done, and it definitely wasn’t all embarrassment.
Maisey tried slap at him to get him to stop, too, but it was all over in a few seconds. "She's got a compromised immune system, asshole," she grunted in between useless swings. “Quit slobbering on her face!"
"She's going to have a compromised neck if she goes in there smelling like vamp blood," he said.
He reached out and took hold of Maisey, just like he had with me, and started cleaning the blood from her skin with spit and elbow grease.