Immortal Rage

by Jax Garren

  Emma pushed her cup from one hand to another. “Cash going with you?”

  “No. We’re not supposed to be doing this at all. If he goes, it’ll be noticed. But I can go and report back.” She crossed her fingers, alerting Emma to the lie she was about to tell, and held them up. “Promise I won’t engage, just check it out.” She uncrossed her fingers and scrunched her face up. “It probably won’t be anything. I mean, it’ll likely take me to an abandoned field of nothing. But who knows?”

  “Yeah. Who knows?” Emma said slowly. Rhiannon’s cup was empty. “Want another?”

  “Uhh… sure.”

  Emma brought the pot back and refilled both cups. “Since you don’t know what’s there, how’s about I go with you? Not like I’m anyone important who would get noticed. But I’m good in a fight and not a terrible shot. Just in case.”

  Rhiannon looked her up and down, a smile slowly forming. “I was going to talk to Javier before asking you, but I’m not gonna pretend I wasn’t hoping you’d volunteer.”

  Emma hesitated a moment before patting Rhiannon on the arm. “Your brother’s my fledgling. What you think was happening wasn’t happening last night, but he does mean something special to me.” She sat and spooned more sugar into her coffee. “That makes us like family, I figure. Just ask away in the future. I’ll help.”

  Rhiannon’s dark eyes turned thoughtful, and almost angry. Finally she nodded. “Okay. Maybe. I’ll ask instead of hint in the future, but you’re not family.” She took another bite of apple before adding, if somewhat grudgingly, “At least not yet.”

  * * *

  Javier woke to laughter in his kitchen. Rhi was here, and Emma hadn’t left. Two reasons to smile. After years of cramped quarters, he’d never entirely gotten used to waking up alone in a silent home.

  A fresh pot percolated; he could hear it and smell coffee’s bitter beauty. He bumbled to the kitchen—suddenly his kitchen—happy to no longer need his glasses to see when he awoke, one more vampire perk. His two favorite women—coincidentally, also the two most aggravating women he knew—sat at his table with two cups of coffee and an apple core between them.

  He took a breath at the eaten fruit. Seven lovely pounds; that’s about what Rhi had gained since this whole thing had started six months ago. As much as he hated Cash Geirson, Rhi had complained that he wouldn’t let her donate when she was “skin and bones.” The asshat was the reason for those seven pieces of life. Javier could forgive him almost anything for that reason alone… provided he didn’t break Rhi’s spirit with some boneheaded move, like fucking his secretary, and send her spiraling down.

  Rhi had always been better at casual relationships than he was. If she was happy…

  “Evening, sunshine! Coffee’s a brewin’!”

  He grinned at Emma. She looked good in the evening, her hair mussed and her legs bare beneath his T-shirt. He busied himself mixing blood and coffee, trying not to think about his sire in all the ways he shouldn’t. Particularly in front of his sister. “So how’d we land?”

  Rhiannon snorted. “Land?”

  “I told you!” Emma announced, boisterous as always. “It was a game last night! You jump in the air right afore you die for the night and see where you land. Weren’t nothing more to it. Joe Crackin, your brother’s grandsire, he and I used to play. And we weren’t nothing like that to each other. I guess I can say now Joe’s dead, he was bent.”

  Rhi slapped the table. “Dude! It’s not bent! He was gay.”

  Emma blinked at Rhi like they were speaking different languages. Sometimes when Javier talked to vampires from other eras, it felt like they were speaking different tongues, even if it was all technically English. Once Javier had started speaking Spanish to someone just to see what would happen. The man had answered back in Old Castilian Spanish that was even more opaque than his English.

  “No,” Emma answered, “Vince and Charlie are gay. Joe was b-e-n-t bent. You don’t know the half of what he liked, and when a whore’s saying that, I ain’t talking a little slap and tickle. We’re descended from that asshole Alaric, so I figure we all got us some fucked-up somewhere, except for Javi here, who’s all Mister Normal. I have no idea how I sired him.” She shot him an overly quizzical look. “Maybe you’re just too normal. That your weird, Javi?”

  “Sure,” he answered, unwilling to list any of the myriad ways he fit into the category of “fucked-up.”

  Emma fired a finger gun at him. “That’s what I thought. But yeah, Joe was great and didn’t force his predilections onto nobody, but we wasn’t exactly hopping into the sack for more than sun-sleep. Collapse is a game. Stupid game. But a game.”

  Rhiannon looked at him like she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing, and Javier could feel his ears burning.

  What Emma had said about her relationship with Joe made perfect sense now that he knew her a little better. He was an asshole for being jealous and pissed yesterday. He was an asshole this morning because being shot with a finger gun made him want to kick Rhi out so he could bend Emma over the breakfast table. Understanding where he stood didn’t stop him from wanting her. But the petulant hurt was gone. He poured himself a mug, calm as he could, and verified Emma’s story. “You jump in the air right before you collapse for the night and see where you land.”

  “See,” Emma said.

  “So how’d we do?” Javier asked as he sipped his first cup and felt the heat burn down his throat. The pain healed instantly. Vampire. “This game disadvantages the long sleeper.”

  Emma wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, I didn’t think about that. Joe was only a few years deader than me, so we woke up within five minutes of each other. That spin move you did made an impressive tangle.”

  Rhiannon guffawed loud enough to challenge Emma’s hearty laugh. “Tangle? The pose was so porn I didn’t realize you were wearing clothes. My retinas caught fire. Disturbed for life here.”

  Javier shoved his sister’s head, careful with the familiar move now that he had vampire strength.

  “Fraternal abuse. See what I’ve put up with my whole damn life?” Her voice was whiny, but Rhi was smiling.

  He sat between them and stretched out his legs. “What are you doing here, other than checking out my sweet new place?”

  “Enlisting your partner in unrelieved sexual tension to guard my person on a scouting mission.” She hopped up. “And enlisting you for help with a spell.” She grinned impishly. “And, of course, sending Cash’s sincere appreciation for today’s Herculean feats of science.”

  Javier shook his head. “Cash said nothing of the kind.”

  His sister grabbed Emma by the wrist and toted her along as she patted Javi on the chest, right over the heart. “But I know he feels it right here. Where it counts.” She continued toward the door, Emma in tow. “Come on. I’ve probably got something upstairs that’ll fit you.”

  “You have clothes here?” Cash barely spent time at CoVIn. What was his sister doing with a wardrobe here?

  “I have clothes everywhere. For reasons I can’t fathom, people trust me with their lives.” She pulled out an epic key ring and flipped through it as she walked. “My place. Cash’s house. Cash’s CoVIn apartment. Modron’s suite. Charlie and Vince’s old place—I’ve had that for six years. Sofia’s apartment. Winnie’s condo—I don’t have clothes there and seriously have no idea how I got this. One of my dad’s old places—I need to toss that. Your place—the other one, I mean. I think you should move in here, though.” She tapped a key against her forehead as she opened the door. “I have no idea whose car this is.”

  Emma shot him a look of fear-mixed awe. He shook his head. Rhi didn’t always tell the truth, but he believed her now.

  Having shown off keys from an extensive chunk of CoVIn’s elite, Rhiannon hauled pants-less Emma out the door.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Where exactly is this spell taking us?” Javier asked as he drove to the outskirts of east Austin. Windowless churches—the creepy kind
with names like Sacrificial Lamb of the Holy Word—butted up against cement-block houses with crumbling fences. Grassland, planted by the state, feathered the sides of the highway with pockets of the white and purple wildflowers of fall. For now, before winter turned everything brown, the neighborhood possessed at least a little beauty, particularly on a moonlit night like right now. It was deceptively peaceful.

  Or would have been if police sirens weren’t sounding on an irregular basis. They’d seen three cop cars going different directions already—far more than normal. Each one made Javier more nervous that someone else had spontaneously turned into a rage machine.

  “I’m not sure,” Rhiannon said in answer to his question. She had a crystal ball in the back seat of his car and would occasionally yell out directions it somehow gave her. About half the time she changed her mind and they wandered somewhere else in a giant waste of time and gas. If this spell was real and not his sister’s damn imagination—a possibility he hadn’t ruled out—it was still unlikely to give them anything useful.

  He agreed that so-called magic was a real thing. He’d seen it affect reality, so it must exist. However, it was like medieval medicine all over again. Herbal medicine, leeches, and other rudimentary practices could do real good, but as no one back then understood the mechanisms behind how they worked, healers misapplied remedies and could easily do more harm than good. Each spell Rhi cast was like dabbling in the dark with melted crayons and hoping to re-create the Mona Lisa, and right now it was frustrating the fuck out of him, because he had actual science to do back at the lab.

  “You’re not sure,” he repeated. Because that wasn’t apparent from her constant redirection. Or, no, wait, it was totally obvious she had no idea where they were going. He huffed in frustration and turned his gaze to Emma in the seat next to him. She smiled back with a cute twitch of lips. At least she had a sense of humor about wandering around with little direction and no reason to believe the damn spell was directing them to anywhere. Her calm helped him relax.

  “We’re either going to the place the spell happened or maybe where Oscar contracted it. Possibly to the person who gave it to him.”

  Javier nearly slammed the brakes. “Wait, not only do you have no idea where we’re going, you don’t even know what the destination represents? You made the spell! How do you not know?”

  “Yeah…” Her voice trailed off. “Oh! Oh! Exit here!”

  “There’s no exit!” he roared at her. Just a stretch of wildflowers. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not in an off-roading vehicle.” No way in hell he was driving his baby over that.

  “Well, exit when you can and double back.”

  “For the love of…” His sister was totally loca. “I could be working on that diagnosis for Cash, but no, we’re driving around the middle of nowhere looking for we don’t know what with a crystal ball as our guide.”

  “Hey, if we find the root of the spell, that’s more important in the long run.”

  “Or the abandoned field where it might have happened. Or the place where someone was cursed. Or…” He pulled off at the next exit and headed for a turnaround. Again.

  “A powerful spell like one that makes killer zombies will leave traces. Likely physical evidence.” She shuffled around in the back, squinting at the crystal ball.

  “Where are your glasses?”

  “I’ve got on my contacts.”

  “You are such a liar.” He was taking directions from a blind woman following a crystal ball. Maybe the spell was working and she couldn’t see it. “You’re paying for my gas.” Not that she had the money.

  “Cash’ll reimburse you.”

  “I’m not asking your fuck buddy for money,” he gritted out.

  “Ooh! Ooh! Right! Turn right!”

  Glory be, there was actually a right to take. Sort of. He turned into the broken-up parking lot of an abandoned redbrick strip mall and stopped at the construction fence. Graffiti of a royal woman in a gas mask decorated one side, and a pile of refuse filled half the lot. Before the car had come to a halt, Emma was out and had the chain broken. Javier drove through into the grassed-over parking area—apparently he was off-roading in his Beamer—and stopped to let Emma back in.

  He got a look at the building and slowed the vehicle. The place sent a chill down his back and made his throat feel dry. Maybe there was something to Rhi’s spell. The building had been practically gutted. Overhanging storefronts, the brown-red of blood, hooded black windows like sunken eyes. It had been a long time since any life had happened here.

  Purple spiderwort and yellow sunflowers had started to reclaim the lot. The noises of light traffic drifted across the emptiness, but no sounds came from the building or the trees beyond. Silver clouds swam in the sky, obscuring the moon. No lights shone. He and Emma would be fine, but Rhi would be blind.

  Well, even more blind.

  “Where to?” Emma asked, her own voice hushed like she felt uneasy too.

  Rhi didn’t look up, and maybe it was Javier’s imagination, but the crystal ball seemed to glow in her hands, lighting her face with ghoulish green light. “That way.” Sure enough, she pointed at the building.

  “Well,” he said, gathering his courage. He shouldn’t need to; he was a vampire, for God’s sake. He could handle an empty building. Something felt wrong though. There was no better word for it. “Let’s check it out.”

  Strip malls were creepsville, and that was before they were empty, with broken glass and the wind hollering through them like ghosts. The stench of dead things hung in the air, souring Emma’s stomach. Even Javier, ever stoic, rolled his head back and forth like he needed to loosen up his muscles. Rhiannon led the way, glowing crystal in hand, and Javier gripped her elbow so she wouldn’t end up ass over teakettle, tripping on debris.

  And debris there was, strewn all over like another building had come down, leaving naught but tan rubble. Rhi led them toward the giant queen’s head in a gas mask. Police wore masks when they teargassed a crowd. You could tell who was in charge by who got masks. You could tell who wasn’t worth shit by who didn’t get one. It wasn’t like they passed them out to anyone on the street not part of the crowd. Children crying, women scrounging for something to feed them, men on their knees with their hands in the air, if they were in the wrong part of town, they got gassed with everyone else.

  You couldn’t help where you were born. Hell, you couldn’t much help where you lived after you grew up, not on this side of town anyway.

  No, that wasn’t entirely true. She watched Javier, his gaze on the ground as he guided his sister around heaps of rock and over windblown litter. He’d crossed the barricades between “us” and “them.” She’d purposefully not even tried. Before recently, it hadn’t even been a possibility, as a fallen woman, to have a chance at anything else. Now—maybe. But as she and Rhi had said earlier, fuck the ledger.

  She shook her head and focused on the present.

  The remains of a homeless camp had been erected on the other side of the largest debris pile, blocking it from the road’s view. An empty storage drum was ringed with soot, and aging cans had been scattered around from several meals of beans.

  Was that blood on the ground? She took a step toward it. It was dry enough and old enough that she couldn’t tell for sure by smell. The dark stain on the caliche was large enough to drain a man—or the radiator of a car. Or maybe a very large tin of coffee.

  “It’s this way,” Rhiannon said, her voice hushed as she pursued forward, ignoring the camp.

  “Lemme just…” Gulping down the wad of spit lodged in her throat, Emma sped to the stain. Brown-black and thick enough that it stood up from the ground, she finally got a good whiff. “Blood.” The death smell was closer too. What she’d thought was a cat…

  “What?” Javier called. “Did you find something?”

  The blood trailed around a curve in the rubble. She followed it. A mangled foot stuck out from behind the rocks. “Shit.” She rounded the cor
ner, and the fetid odor assaulted her.

  Two men, a woman, and a toddler had been mauled. Blood congealed against lumps of flesh and muscle that appeared to have been ripped and bludgeoned to mash. The hollows of one man’s face had sunken into skeletal parchment. The other three figures had nothing left of their faces to see. Hair and scalps flapped off each body where the skulls were crushed in.

  “Oh.” Javier gulped like he was choking back vomit. “Oh! God.”

  She could feel how pale, how cold, she was as she took in the carnage. In her long life, she’d seen cruelty and vengeance, but she’d seen nothing as feral as this. It wasn’t even an animal attack. Animals were efficient. This was brutal. Messy. Obscene in its complete absence of anything but destructive force. She managed to speak, spitting words out of her mouth so she didn’t scream. “Why, doc, I thought you’d be at one with death and dismemberment.”

  “What is it?” Rhiannon shouted, then yelled, “Hey!”

  Only then did Emma turn enough to see Rhiannon tossed over Javier’s shoulder. “No,” he said, too harshly. “You don’t need to see this.”

  “Fuck that protective shit, Jav. Lemme—”

  Javier clamped down hard on her, forcing her face away from the scene. “I’ve seen a lot of death. Well after the fact, as an object of study. Right as it happens, when there’s nothing else we can do. Not this. Not…” He jerked, dropping his sister, then catching her just before her head landed. “I’m your brother! Don’t punch me in the nu—”

  “Oh.” In the awkward catch, Rhiannon had managed to face the scene. “Oh! Oh…” She threw up.

  Javier moved again, vampire fast, getting her knees gently onto the ground and her hair out of her face as she emptied what little was in her stomach.