The Man Who Crossed Worlds (Miles Franco #1)

Chapter Four

I rode a 250cc Yamaha motorbike constructed sometime between the Ice Age and the Fall of Rome. Like all my things, it was dented and scratched almost beyond recognition, but it ran well, and it was damn fuel efficient.

The rain was already hammering down when I rode out of my basement’s parking lot. The dark clouds reflected the city’s light back onto me. I revved the bike, wiped the rain of my helmet visor with the back of my hand, and peeled out onto the road.

The address I had for Lance Peterson was in John Andrews’ territory to the north of the city, back past the police station. There was even less traffic now, but the increasingly heavy rain and wind made me take things carefully. It’d be a real fine thing if I screwed this up before I began because I hit an oil patch that was slick with rain and went tumbling onto the road. The bike would survive—it was a solid old thing—but I didn’t count myself that lucky, especially if some opportunistic criminals decided they liked the look of my shoes.

Peterson’s neighborhood was full of run-down Chinese restaurants and squashed-together villas. I slowed, squinting through the rain and the darkness to find the right address. After a few minutes of weaving through the streets, I found it, a white villa with paint peeling from the weatherboard and a non-matching gaudy staircase leading up to the front door.

I switched off my bike, put out the kickstand, and removed my helmet. The house was dark, like all the others. This wasn’t really a bad neighborhood, so people here were probably sleeping at this time of night instead of shooting up Ink or trawling the streets as the police department’s shiny new lackey. I put my hands in my pockets and hurried up the stairs to the shelter of the house’s veranda, despite already being thoroughly soaked on the ride there.

As I tried to wipe the rain from my face, I pondered what to do now I was there. Detective Todd hadn’t exactly been specific about Peterson’s situation these days. Last time I saw him he was just a poor Vei kid trying to make a new life for himself in Bluegate. Vei immigrants tended to live in groups to make the rent easier to pay, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find eight or ten Vei living in this little villa, crammed in like kittens in a sack. It probably wouldn’t make a good impression on them if I kicked in the door and started demanding to speak to Peterson.

So it was going to have to be the old-fashioned way: bang on the door until someone woke up and let me in. I straightened my tie, tucked in my shirt, and started hammering.

I was at it for two minutes before a light finally flicked on behind the frosted glass of the front door. My hand had gone red and was starting to ache when the door slowly opened.

It was a child. Damn, I hadn’t counted on that. She was a little Vei girl, wearing Earth-style pajamas and clutching a plastic doll to her chest. It was sometimes hard to judge ages of Vei children, but I’d guess she was about three or four.

Vei were strange-looking people, if you hadn’t seen them before. I use the term “people” loosely, because as similar as they were to us in some ways, they were very different. From a distance they looked almost human; two arms, two legs, all the appendages you’d expect, but when you got up close it wasn’t hard to tell the difference. They were generally shorter and more slender than humans, with skin an almost impossible white. The most off-putting feature by far was the face.

Their heads were round, almost spherical, and completely devoid of hair. They tended to have oversized eyes as well, though that varied from Vei to Vei.

Their mouths were what really freak people out. Shark-like, I suppose you could call them. Two rows of pointed teeth on both jaws, no lips, and mouths that stretched all the way to the side of their face.