I threw the spent body to the ground and crouched against the wal, wondering if I could grab the unconscious girl and make off with her before Diego could catch up to me. Diego was already finished with the man. He looked at me with an expression that I could only describe as... sympathetic. But I could have been dead wrong. I couldn't remember anyone ever giving me sympathy before, so I wasn't positive what it looked like.
"Go for it," he told me, nodding to the limp girl on the ground.
"Are you kidding me?"
"Naw, I'm good for now. We've got time to hunt some more tonight."
Watching him careful y for some sign of a trick, I darted forward and snagged the girl. Diego made no move to stop me. He turned away slightly and looked up at the black sky. I sank my teeth into her neck, keeping my eyes on him. This one was even better than the last. Her blood was entirely clean. The blonde girl's blood had the bitter aftertaste that came with drugs - I was so used to that, I'd barely noticed. It was rare for me to get real y clean blood, because I fol owed the dregs rule. Diego seemed to fol ow the rules, too. He must have smel ed what he was giving up.
Why had he done it?
Chapters 2
When the second body was empty, my throat felt better. There was a lot of blood in my system. I probably wouldn't real y burn for a few days.
Diego was stil waiting, whistling quietly through his teeth. When I let the body fal to the ground with a thud, he turned back to me and smiled.
"Um, thanks," I said.
He nodded. "You looked like you needed it more than me. I remember how hard it is in the beginning."
"Does it get easier?"
He shrugged. "In some ways."
We looked at each other for a second.
"Why don't we dump these bodies in the sound?" he suggested.
I bent down, grabbed the dead blonde, and slung her limp body over my shoulder. I was about to get the other one, but Diego was there before me, the pimp already on his back.
"I got it," he said.
I fol owed him up the al ey wal, and then we swung across the girders under the freeway. The lights from the cars below didn't touch us. I thought how stupid people were, how oblivious, and I was glad I wasn't one of the clueless.
Hidden in the darkness, we made our way to an empty dock, closed for the night. Diego didn't hesitate at the end of the concrete, he just jumped right over the edge with his bulky burden and disappeared into the water. I slid in after him. He swam as sleek and quick as a shark, shooting deeper and farther out into the black sound. He stopped suddenly when he found what he was looking for - a huge, slime-covered boulder on the ocean floor, sea stars and garbage clinging to its sides. We had to be more than a hundred feet deep - to a human, it would have seemed pitch-black here. Diego let go of his bodies. They swayed slowly in the current beside him while he shoved his hand into the mucky sand at the base of the rock. After a second he found a hold and ripped the boulder up from its resting spot. The weight of it drove him waist-deep into the dark seafloor.
He looked up and nodded to me.
I swam down to him, hooking his bodies with one hand on my way. I shoved the blonde into the black hole under the rock, then pushed the second girl and the pimp in after her. I kicked them lightly to make sure they were in, and then got out of the way. Diego let the boulder fal . It wobbled a little, adjusting to the newly uneven foundation. He kicked his way out of the muck, swam to the top of the boulder, and then pushed it down, grinding the obstructions flat underneath.
He swam back a few yards to view his work.
Perfect, I mouthed. These three bodies would never resurface. Riley would never hear a story about them on the news.
He grinned and held up his hand.
It took me a minute to understand that he was looking for a high five. Hesitantly, I swam forward, tapped my palm to his, then kicked away, putting some distance between us. Diego got a weird expression on his face, and then he shot to the surface like a bul et.
I darted up after him, confused. When I broke through to the air, he was almost choking on his laughter.
"What?"
He couldn't answer me for a minute. Final y he blurted out,
"Worst high five ever."
I sniffed, irritated. "Couldn't be sure you weren't just going to rip my arm off or something."
Diego snorted. "I wouldn't do that."
"Anyone else would," I countered.
"True, that," he agreed, suddenly not as amused. "You up for a little more hunting?"
"Do you have to ask?"
We came out of the water under a bridge and lucked right into two homeless guys sleeping in ancient, filthy sleeping bags on top of a shared mattress of old newspapers. Neither one of them woke up. Their blood was soured by alcohol, but stil better than nothing. We buried them in the sound, too, under a different rock.
"Wel, I'm good for a few weeks," Diego said when we were out of the water again, dripping on the end of another empty dock.
I sighed. "I guess that's the easier part, right? I'l be burning again in a couple of days. And then Riley wil probably send me out with more of Raoul's mutants again."
"I can come with you, if you want. Riley pretty much lets me do what I want."
I thought about the offer, suspicious for a second. But Diego real y didn't seem like any of the others. I felt different with him. Like I didn't need to watch my back so much.
"I'd like that," I admitted. It felt off to say this. Too vulnerable or something.
But Diego just said "cool" and smiled at me.
"So how come Riley gives you such a long leash?" I asked, wondering about the relationship there. The more time I spent with Diego, the less I could picture him being in tight with Riley. Diego was so... friendly. Nothing like Riley. But maybe it was an opposites-attract thing.