Blood Echo

by Rice, Christopher

  13

  Richard hears a sound like a giant guitar string getting plucked.

  What doesn’t come next is the harsh metallic clang of the jaws snapping shut against each other like they do when he tests the thing with a plank. Instead, there’s a soft thud that tells him the trap’s caught flesh and bone.

  The woman lets out a high-pitched grunt.

  But that’s all.

  No gasping. No shrieking. No begging for mercy.

  He squints into his night vision goggles.

  Probably best that she hit the thing right away, he thinks, given what a mouthy little bitch she turned out to be. Teach her some humility. But shouldn’t she be screaming at least?

  Just silence and the thick rustle of ice-clotted tree branches in the cold wind.

  He scans the darkness. There’s no sign of her. She’s got to be lying flat. There are enough gaps in the foliage that if she were trying to make a run for it, even crawling on all fours, he’d catch a glimpse of her after a few seconds. But he’s not.

  So she’s pressed to the ground, either dead or knocked out from the pain. That would be a new one. Knocked out from the pain, that one he’d believe.

  Killed by the trap alone? Doubtful.

  Amid these thoughts, he’s feeling something he’s never felt before during a hunt. Confusion. More than that, he realizes.

  Fear. A sense that for the first time in his hunting grounds that something is . . . not right.

  And now he’s hearing his father’s voice, tone shaking with anger the way it always did when he had to tell Richard something the boy needed to hear. Telling him he should have listened to his instincts when he first laid eyes on her—too young, too arrogant. Too much like pretty Stephanie of the Seattle Leather Company. And now he’s feeling strangely shamed and small and—

  Jesus Christ. I gotta go wake this bitch up or this is gonna be no fun at all.

  “So, girlie,” he says as soon as his boots hit the earth. “Let me explain something to you about how this works. There’s no escape, really. I mean, I might have fun letting you try, but you won’t, so why not try listening for once?”

  He raises the Weatherby Mark V so the rifle acts like a boat’s prow as he pushes through the branches. He’s cut back most of the really low foliage, but there are still a few branches at eye level and he doesn’t want them slapping the night vision goggles and amplifying their screwy effect on his depth perception.

  “If you just go on and accept what this is gonna be, then maybe you’ll learn a few things about—”

  What he sees next he assumes is a trick of the night vision’s green flare. For starters, the bear trap’s not only empty, it’s broken. His mind has trouble wrapping around the word, but there’s no other word for it. The thing must have misfired and come apart. But if that’s the case, why is one entire jaw missing?

  “Hey, fuckhead.”

  He spins so fast the goggles jostle. His vision’s gone hazy, crooked. Is he hallucinating? If so, there’s no time to process it, because the woman says, “Catch!”

  There’s no sound, but the force that explodes in his left shoulder feels as powerful as a rifle blast. For a second, he thinks he shot himself. But that’s impossible. He’s still holding the rifle aimed straight in front of him.

  Fiery pain shoots up the left side of his neck and coats his chest. He’s been hurled backward several feet. Whatever projectile the woman just threw at him pierced him with enough force to pin him to the tree trunk behind him. And there was only one thing out here the bitch could have hit him with—the bear trap’s missing jaw. But that’s impossible. The whole thing’s fucking impossible.

  He tries to move. He can’t. He’s pinned to the tree.

  Through me, he realizes. Straight fucking through me. Whatever she just threw, it went straight through me and pinned me to the goddamn tree.

  Too late, he realizes he’s completely forgotten about the rifle in his grip, that he’s even raising his left hand to reach for whatever’s torn through his left shoulder. That’s when there’s a deafening explosion followed by a burst of pain in his right foot so intense piss warms his underwear. And that’s when Richard Davies realizes he literally just shot himself in the foot.

  The next thing he feels is the gentle tug of the woman pulling off his night vision googles, followed by a soft thud when she tosses them to the ground.

  14

  If any of the techs doubted the momentousness of tonight’s test, those doubts probably evaporated as soon as Charlotte Rowe used a single overhand throw to send one jaw of the bear trap shooting through the air with the speed and precision of a tennis ball fired out of a practice machine.

  Cole feels as gratified by the stunned expressions on their faces as he is by Charlotte’s sudden transformation.

  Shannon Tran says, “Ground team would like to know if—”

  “Not yet,” Cole answers. “Let her play.”

  15

  Charlotte sinks to a crouch several feet from Davies as he tries to suck breath through snotty nostrils.

  She’s waiting patiently for him to look up from the shattered stump of gore that used to be his right foot. If she has to, she’ll wait all night.

  Zypraxon doesn’t trigger mood changes. It doesn’t remove remorse or accountability. Anything she feels in this moment comes from her true self, so her delight in his condition is her responsibility, and if she leans too far into the feeling, whatever she does next will be her responsibility as well.

  “I’m disappointed in you, Richard.”

  “Wh-whut are you, you fuck . . . you fucking bit—”

  “I guess I’d hoped for more. I guess I thought you’d learn something about yourself when I took your toys away. Discover who you really are inside the sack of flesh, or whatever bullshit you just shouted at me while you were safe in your little hunting blind and I was out here freezing to death.”

  She has his full attention now. He looks doped up suddenly, like he’s going numb from blood loss.

  “Oh, wait,” she says, “silly me. This is who you really are. A whiny crybaby who can’t fight for shit the minute he loses his weapons.”

  He’s shivering, so maybe the stony expression is a ruse. She can’t see much blood where the bear trap’s pinned him to the trunk, but the foot’s another story. If she had to guess, the blood’s flowing fast and free enough that he might not survive the cleanup operation Cole’s planned.

  “How many?” she asks.

  “I’m dead.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I died, didn’t I? Been dead all day. Everything’s . . . wrong. Everything about you was wrong. Shoulda never picked you up. But you found me, didn’t you? ’Cause I’m d-dead and that’s how you found me, ’cause you think you some kinda angel but really you’re just a demon bitch.”

  “That would make this hell, Richard.”

  “I’d believe it. How else would you know my name?”

  “How many people have you killed?”

  “You think I’m gonna answer to you?”

  Charlotte stands and snaps a branch the thickness of her arm from a nearby tree with one hand. She snaps it in two, then clears the twigs from both halves with a single quick slide of her fist. Both motions sound like popcorn popping in a microwave. If that wasn’t enough to frighten Davies into compliance, she takes both broken halves of the branch and begins rubbing them together. She’s practiced this move countless times in the lab but never out in the frigid air like this. She did a version of it the second time she was triggered, only she used steel rebar and the goal was to create sparks, not flame. Now, both ends of the branches are glowing; then the embers turn to flames.

  Goggle-eyed, jaw slack, and spilling drool, Davies looks up into the fire.

  “How many women have you killed?” she asks.

  “Five,” he says. “Was gonna be six.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not what you expected, am I?”

  “I ain’t talking
about you.”

  “Who are you talking about, Richard?”

  Davies’s leering, drooling mouth crooks into something close to a grin.

  She holds one torch close to his face, blows the other out with a puff of breath strong enough to rattle the branches nearby.

  “I said who are you talking about?”

  It’s a slight gesture, maybe the best he can do. He nods in the direction of the woods behind her. Was going to be six. Was. Which means . . . Memories from five months ago assault her as viciously as the bear trap did. There’d been some hope that she could rescue the captive Frederick Pemberton was holding, but they’d been too late, and the images that greeted her inside his walk-in freezer would never leave her. But now . . .

  If she’d been wearing the earpiece, no doubt Cole would have ordered the ground teams to move in as soon as he heard Davies mention anything like a captive. But TruGlass offers no audio, and since no one’s bursting through the trees behind her, they’ve got no mics planted in the area. In short, they’ve got no damn idea what Davies just told her. The plan was for her to confirm his kill site, then locate evidence linking him to the other murders, not just the attempt on her. Once she did both, Cole would order the ground teams in so they could move her out and drug Davies within an inch of insanity. That way, he’d look and act like a babbling fool by the time the authorities arrived and discovered him badly injured, paces from gruesome evidence of his long murder spree.

  But a live captive? This changes everything. Cole will insist on leaving her where she is for the police to rescue, she’s sure. He certainly won’t want anyone else seeing what Charlotte can do.

  Which means who knows how many more hours of terror for the poor woman. Of darkness. Of anticipating further torture. A fate just like the one suffered by her mother before Abigail Banning cut her throat.

  Yeah, I don’t think so.

  “Promise not to move?” she asks.

  “Fuck you, demon bitch.”

  Charlotte reaches out and presses ever so gently against the exposed tines of the bear trap jaw; it’s enough force to drive it deeper into the tree trunk behind him. In response, Davies moans like a frightened cow.

  “Where is she?”

  Davies mumbles something inaudible amid his groans. She drives the flaming end of the torch into the earth, right in front of his crotch. He cries out, then realizes she’s suffocated the flame.

  “Where is she?” She’s eye to eye with him.

  “T-tannery . . . by the house. Not the barn. Far-farther away. She’s in the cellar.”

  When she starts digging inside the flaps of his waffle-print coat, he lets out a series of stuttering whines. “Be still or you’ll hurt yourself,” she says.

  She doesn’t find a key ring in his pockets; instead she finds it attached to a hook on his belt. With a slight tug, she pulls the entire hook free.

  She’s on her feet now, running past the deer blind. After another minute or two, she comes to an access gate in the electric fence. She rips the cover off the power box, revealing a switch. She’s had extensive lab practice on performing small, everyday maneuvers after a trigger. So far, it’s proven to take a mixture of deep breathing and visualization. Thread the needle, thread the needle, thread the needle. It works, and she’s able to cut the power to the fence with a gentle flick of the wrist that doesn’t tear the switch plate in half.

  The woods beyond the fence are much thinner than inside Davies’s hunting ground. After a few minutes, she spots his house, which allows her to orient herself on the map she memorized. The property isn’t technically a farm, even though that was the shorthand Cole used for it; the region’s too sloping and mountainous to allow him to seed anything beyond a few winter-stripped vegetable gardens and a greenhouse that looks far too exposed to contain the implements of murder.

  As she runs toward the tannery—a converted garage—she feels a slight sense of alarm that she’s put so much distance between herself and Davies so quickly, but the words that keep thrumming through her head are, Not another minute. If he’s got a woman held captive, she’s not living in terror another goddamn minute.

  The worst that could happen is that Cole’s men might come streaming out of the woods to intervene before she can reach the captive. Which, in the end, wouldn’t be so bad.

  The tannery’s got a padlock. As much as she wants to tear it off, that’ll look suspicious to the authorities, so she takes the time to find the right key, and when she does, she pushes the door open into shadows.

  She’s reaching for the light switch when she hears a small, sharp click. It’s answered by a flashing red light somewhere deep within the darkness before her. There’s another sound, more distant.

  Laughter, she realizes. From out there. Richard Davies is laughing at—

  The deep, heavy thump she hears next reminds her of the time she was driving on the freeway in a rainstorm behind an eighteen-wheeler toting two decks of automobiles, and a strong wind blew into the plastic wrap enshrouding the cars with enough force to punch a giant hole through the other side.

  Then, in the instant before fire comes roaring toward her, Charlotte feels something she’s never felt on Zypraxon before.

  Terror.

  16

  It sounded like everyone inside the control center screamed at once, but only two of them are on their feet now: Cole and the med tech, whose name he’s already forgotten.

  He should have known something was wrong the minute he saw Davies shaking with laughter on the ground team’s shoulder cams. But he figured the sick fuck was just losing his mind, and how could that be a bad thing given their cleanup plan?

  Then came the explosion—fierce and white hot. Chemical, Cole realizes.

  Rigged.

  Now they’re watching the roof of the tannery tumble back down to earth in a fiery cascade.

  Whatever happened, Davies sent Charley into a trap, and for some reason, she fell for it.

  Where is she?

  Even though he’s so far away that Charley was previously just a tiny figure inside his shoulder-mounted cam, the sniper who’s been watching over her is knocked backward a few feet by the explosion. He manages not to lose his balance. His shoulder cam holds a fairly consistent angle on the burning tannery and the pieces of wall that went flying out from the blast.

  But there’s something that didn’t come flying out from the blast.

  Charley.

  A second later, it appears that the fire consuming the tannery’s remains has intensified. Then Cole realizes that’s not quite right.

  Part of the fire is walking toward them.

  Upright. Steady. Not flailing or weaving or running in panicked circles.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” the med tech whispers.

  And that’s when Cole sees Charlotte’s vital signs. Her blood ox is 200 percent, normal for a trigger zone. Her heart rate is 250 beats per minute, also normal for a trigger zone.

  Normal for the abnormal, Cole thinks.

  And that’s what’s not normal.

  Whatever explosives were rigged to blow inside the tannery, they were powerful. So powerful she should have at least lost consciousness, or been blown backward off her feet in the direction of her tail. But instead, she’s fully consumed by flame and walking a steady path out from the tannery’s perforated, burning shell.

  If she’s regenerating on the spot, it’s impossible to make it out on the night vision tail cam. The flames have made it something akin to an old 1980s video camera angled at a nest of bright lights; it’s all a smear of white.

  For a second, Cole thinks everything might be all right and that they’ve just completed a test of Zypraxon’s power they would have been far too frightened to try inside a lab.

  Then Charlotte, still burning, collapses to all fours.

  II

  17

  There are little indications along the way that it’s a dream.

  The steps to the beach aren’t as steep or jagged
as they are in real life. The crescent of mud-colored sand at the bottom looks deeper and wider than it did the last time she visited. But Bayard Rock’s still offshore like always, the same lumpy obelisk of stone that she’s gazed at meditatively on countless afternoons. Whitecaps are breaking across its western face, collapsing into something that resembles beer foam as it gurgles toward shore.

  This is a dream or a memory or something in between.

  It feels like she could wake herself up if she wanted.

  But she doesn’t want to because Luanne is there.

  Her grandmother walks several paces ahead of her, the ocean wind threatening to whip her mane of straw-colored hair free from its loose ponytail.

  When Luanne glances back and smiles, Charlotte sees she’s the same age as when Charlotte moved in with her as a teenager. That was the moment in time when their faces looked most alike—softened by the same curves, the same baby fat–padded cheeks that offset that sometimes hard glint in their narrow eyes, the same small button nose Luanne passed to her daughter, who in turn passed it to Charlotte.

  The next thing Charlotte knows, they’re sitting together on an expanse of coastal rock that has the quality of cooled magma. Glistening tide pools surround them. Luanne has a pail next to her for sand dollars and seashells.

  Just over her grandmother’s shoulder, she can make out the promontory where the new resort is taking shape, a resort that wasn’t even an idea back when her grandmother was alive. A resort now being funded by Graydon Pharmaceuticals as a show of exactly what, she’s not sure. When they first bought the abandoned property, Charlotte thought they were trying to frighten her, raise a monument to their dizzying financial power and relentless surveillance right in her backyard. Now it seems more like compensation.