It was clear it could break her arm in two if it clenched down. It wouldn’t even need to try to snap her like a twig. The message was clear. If she ran again, he would make her regret it.
It pulled her away from the wall, and she looked up at it, getting her first up-close view of the monster. The man underneath was easily seven feet tall, judging by where his shoulders were. Where the mask had a gap in it, she could see his neck, clothed in black.
Hey, at least it wasn’t empty armor running around trying to kill her. That was a plus. Somehow that made it less spooky, that he wasn’t just some empty piece of furniture stomping around. If he had a neck with black clothing, there was somebody inside.
His neck.
Somewhere, all those years watching horror movies finally served some kind of purpose. Somewhere, Lydia summoned from fear, or adrenaline, or simply the raw need to survive, the strength to do something smart for once.
Lydia lifted Nick’s gun that she had picked up from the ground before running and put the end of it, point-blank, against the gap in his armor where his mask ended and his shoulder armor began. She angled it up under his chin, which was easy to do since she was so much shorter than he was. Before the man could react, she pulled the trigger.
Lydia had seen a lot of gore in her days.
Really, there was a lot of gore in her life. From the horror movies she watched willingly, to the dead bodies that wound up on her slab, to her years as an EMT and her continued service as a first responder.
She’d seen a lot of gross, torn-up people, including that guy who had disrespected an industrial lathe when she had been an EMT. She’d seen a lot of disgusting things, period. But the spray of blood that hit her was enough to send her dinner right back up to her throat. This was different. This was fresh. This was real. And this was her fault.
Lydia stood stock still, unsure of what to do or even to think, as she felt the warmth of the blood against the skin of her hand and face.
After what seemed like an eternity, the man collapsed to his knees, his grip on her arm slackening as he fell. He lingered there for a moment before falling to his side with a thud and the rattle of armor.
Lydia backed up slowly against the wall and swallowed hard, trying to keep herself from losing her dinner all over the ground as she felt the warm liquid on her start to ooze. She wiped away at it frantically and realized her hands were shaking violently.
I just shot a man. I just shot a man. I just shot a man.
The words kept going over in her head like a skipping record player. It was in self-defense. It didn’t matter; she shot him. He had been chasing her. He didn’t seem human. He had summoned a sword from thin air. Didn’t matter; she shot him. He was dead. He had bled. Therefore, she shot a man. Her thoughts were a jumbled mess as she tried to make sense of what had just happened.
All Lydia wanted in the world was to be away from here. To be home and in bed. To let this all be fake, a fever dream. Maybe she was in a coma, and this was summoned forth out of her cancer-ridden brain.
Lydia punched herself in the thigh, trying to wake herself up. Nope. That had just hurt, and she was still here. I just shot a man. The thought kept going in her head, threatening to drive everything else away and push her into a straight-up, all-out breakdown.
No, idiot! No! Panic later. Solve the problem first. Panic later. Some part of her EMT training was kicking in. Panic later. She could panic later.
Lydia flipped the safety on the gun and tucked it into her bag. She rummaged around and found a napkin from her breakfast coffee that she had shoved in there. Desperately, she tried to wipe away the splatter that must still be on her face and her arms. She had to get home. She couldn’t take the T like this, couldn’t call a cab. That left only one option.
Walking home, it was. At least it was late and dark. Maybe she could go unseen. Lydia walked hurriedly out of the alley and toward home. It’d take her an hour or two to make the long trek, but it wasn’t like she had a choice.
Yanking her phone out of her pocket, she called Nick. It rang a few times then went to voicemail. She didn’t bother leaving him one. Instead, she hung up and dialed again.
I just shot a man. A man in full plate armor, who was trying to do…who knew what. Lydia tried to trace through what had happened, working backward. The woman in the red dress and the strange crimson mask. She had said that “Master Edu”—was that who she had shot?—had asked them to come with him.
Was he trying to abduct them? Why? To where? Who was he? What did this have to do with the mark on her arm or the corpse who had attacked her? Edu was dead now. She had shot him point blank and up into his skull, after all, so at least he wouldn’t be a problem anymore. What about the woman in the red dress, with the freaky mask?
Eight phone calls to Nick and no answer, so she finally gave up. She’d try again in an hour or two. Something about the drudge of walking and the time alone made it sink in. All of it, all at once, settled on her like the impact of a brick. Without Nick there to help carry the weight, she felt the tears she had been holding back all day finally win out and run down her face.
At least nobody was around who might see her, bloody and crying, walking through the streets at night by herself. Lydia wiped at the tears with the napkin and let them run their course.
Now, the task was to accept everything as fact. Lydia had a tattoo that was impossible—fine, but it was still there. Fact. She had been attacked by a corpse of a man who had risen from the dead. Unlikely, but reality. Lydia and Nick had been pursued by a monster in a full suit of armor who could move faster than she could see. Absurd, but the truth.
All she could hope was that Nick was okay. That he dropped his phone. That he escaped and was fine. That whatever was hunting them hadn’t sent more people after the two of them. A sudden realization came to her that sparked both fear and dread in the same moment.
Was it these marks that they were hunting?
She rolled up her coat and looked down at the little tattoo on her arm and let out a wavering breath. These marks were the only things connecting it all. The only thing linking her to the corpse and the monstrous man in the red armor. If they were hunting the marks, then…there was one thing she could try.
There was one way she knew to get rid of it.
Lydia let out an audible groan.
Oh, this was going to hurt.
Chapter Four
Breathe in, breathe out.
It wouldn’t be so awful. Right? There wasn’t another option. It was this or do nothing, and nothing was worse. Nothing was admitting she was helpless—and she hated feeling helpless, more than anything else.
Lydia sat at her kitchen counter and looked down at the mark on her left forearm. It had been surreal but harmless until two different monsters with matching symbols had chased her. Lydia was resting her arm on one of the junky bath towels she kept shoved on a shelf. They always came in handy. You never knew when you needed a bath towel that you didn’t care if you had to throw out when you were done with it. Spills, leaks, messy projects…
Home surgery.
Y’know. Normal stuff.
All her first aid equipment was scattered around her on the counter. She had a sizable collection from her EMT days. It was hard to throw that kind of thing out.
Lydia sighed heavily and reached for the metal handle sticking out of the cup of rubbing alcohol on the counter. Pulling her hobby knife out of the glass, she looked at it and let out a groan of dismay. No chickening out. This had to be done.
If she cut this thing off her, there was a small chance she’d be safe. In theory. It was the only theory she had, so she was going to have to go with it.
Oh, hell, this was going to hurt.
Lydia had already swabbed her arm and tied a tourniquet around her upper forearm above the tattoo, just in case. It wasn’t near any major arteries, and she only had to go down the tiniest amount, but she might slip. Lydia even had a cookie tray all set and sterilized for her
used equipment—and bits of flesh. That reminder of what she was going to do made her stomach flip, and she wished she had drunk more at the bar earlier. Finally, she put the edge of the blade to her skin.
Oh, yeah…oh, yeah, this hurt. Lydia made it about a quarter of the way around the symbol before she had to stop, her eyes were watering so badly. She slammed the knife down onto the cookie sheet and punched herself in the thigh a few times, gagging in pain.
Lydia picked up a washcloth and rubbed at her face then decided to stick it into her mouth to bite down on and muffle her hollering from the neighbors if she had to resort to that. Picking up a swab, she wiped the blood away from the wound and, picking up the knife, resumed the cut where she left off.
Letting the tears flow, as they didn’t matter, Lydia tried to focus on what she was doing. It got less painful as she went because the nerves in her arms couldn’t scream much louder. At least she knew what she was doing. At least she did this kind of shit for a living. Oh man, at least the dead people didn’t feel it, though. This…oh, god, she was going to be sick. Too bad she had to do this with her off hand.
Standing from the counter, she tore the washcloth from her mouth and doubled over the sink. Retching into it, she ran the cold water and the garbage disposal before retching again. Cold shivers ran up her spine as the adrenaline—whatever was left of it in her system—rampaged through her. She cupped the cold water and rinsed out her mouth then ran more cold water over her face, trying to cool herself down.
Okay. So close. So close. Lydia put the bloody and sliced-up part of her forearm under the cold water and let out a breath of relief as it poured across her agonized skin. She had finished cutting around the tattoo, and now all that was left was to, y’know…peel it off. No big deal.
Perfectly normal.
Skin peeled. It was a thing. Lydia had done it to hundreds of corpses before. She’d just never done it to a living person before. It was the same thing, right? Totally.
Don’t chicken out now. You’re so close, Lydia coached herself. One grab with the forceps…and pull. Tattoos were only a few millimeters under the skin. It wasn’t like you were yanking up muscles and tendons. This was nothing. It’s nothing. Totally nothing. Perfectly normal.
Sitting back down on the stool, she reached into the cup of rubbing alcohol and picked up the small pair of forceps that had been soaking in it. Grab and peel. The other option was to try to slice out the skin as she went, and she’d need two hands for that. One-handed as she was, that option was out. Just rip it off. One movement.
Like a Band-Aid, right?
Just like a Band-Aid.
Lydia wormed the edge of one half of the forceps’ teeth into her skin and nearly threw up again. It took a few minutes of her doing nothing but breathing before she could try to talk herself back into doing this. Just a yank. One yank and it would be over.
One.
Two.
The next thing she knew, she was lying on the floor on her back, staring up at the ceiling. Her arm felt like it was on fire. What had happened? She had decided to count to three, and then she was here.
Lifting her arm, she saw a bloody circle there, oozing up onto her elbow and the floor. A crimson ring, the size of a nickel—and no tattoo.
She must have ripped it off and, well, passed the hell out like a champ.
All right, fine, she’d accept that without any injury to her pride. Most people didn’t do at-home tattoo removal. Pushing herself back up to standing, she gripped the edge of the kitchen sink counter hard with her other hand to steady herself.
First things first. Rinse it off and make sure the damn black ink mark wasn’t still there under the blood. This time, as the cold water touched her skin, she screwed her eyes shut and swore loudly, pounding her other fist into the counter repeatedly to try to distract herself from the stinging pain.
Finally, when she felt like she could see straight, she looked down at her arm. She could see the red patch underneath, and thankfully, there was no black ink in the skin there.
The bandage she wrapped around it instantly soaked through red. The wound would ooze for a while. Lydia would have to treat it like a nasty burn. Maybe she’d scar, not that she really honestly cared. She’d shot a man in a full suit of armor and been chased by a dead man today. A scar was not really on her radar of things to care about tonight.
Okay. The deed was done. The thing was gone. She found the section of skin on the floor where she had passed out, and she stuck it down the garbage disposal and ran it. Take that, evil, weird tattoo thing!
Was now the time for another drink? It was three in the morning. And she had just done home surgery. Wandering to her fridge, she opened it, and then she saw something on her right forearm.
There was only one word that came to mind for what she saw. One four-letter word that she screamed loud enough to wake the neighbors. She didn’t care.
On her right forearm—not the left one, with the bleeding hole in it—was a small, nickel-sized mark. A backward N with a spiral cutting it in half. It was the same symbol. Identical. Just on the other arm now.
Lydia felt herself crying again, this time not out of pain, but out of frustration. That was supposed to work. The stupid thing wasn’t just supposed to reappear! That wasn’t possible. None of this was. It might be time to chuck what she considered possible out the window.
Now she really needed a goddamn drink.
Lydia threw herself onto her sofa once she poured herself the straight glass of bourbon. Picking up her phone, she called Nick again. No answer. This time, she left a message and told him what she had tried to do and how she’d failed. Begged him to call her if he got this. Hanging up, she knew the message was only to make herself feel better. Somehow talking into the void meant he might hear her, and he might be safe.
Downing her drink in short order, she folded her phone down onto her stomach and let herself shut her eyes. Her arm was aching. Her head hurt. Her feet and her legs hurt. And she was exhausted.
When her phone buzzed violently on her chest, she let out a startled noise and blinked back to consciousness. Looking at her phone, she saw it was now half past four. She’d been out for a little over an hour.
The buzz wasn’t a text; it was a call. She flipped it over and saw Nick’s name on the display. Oh, hallelujah! She answered the phone and put it on speaker, not wanting to deal with the earpiece. “Nick! Oh, my god, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I am. I’m okay. I got away. I dropped my phone, and it took me this long to trace back and find it. Are you okay?” he asked, equally as excitable. “How’d you get away?”
“I shot the guy,” she said and sat up, running a hand through her hair, combing it back. “I got it in under his armor and put a bullet in his head.”
“You what?” he said through a laugh. “No way. Holy fuck, good job, Lyd! Where are you now?”
“Home. I tried to cut the symbol off my arm, to see if that would work. To see if that’s how they’re finding us.” She looked down at the spot on her arm, and it had grown bigger while she was asleep. Time to change the dressing already. She got up and went to the kitchen and put the phone down, now glad she could use two hands with Nick on speakerphone.
“You…you what? Jesus Christ, you’re kidding me. Are you okay?”
“I’m okay, it just…shit, that sucked. And it didn’t work either.” Lydia winced as she unwrapped the bandage from her arm. Good glory hell, it stung. But it was a lot less painful than it was earlier, at least. Tossing the gross and oozy red-stained gauze into the trash, she started re-wrapping the wound with a fresh roll.
“What do you mean, it didn’t work?”
“I mean the symbol just appeared on my other arm as soon as I was done.” Saying it made it real, and she let out a worried sigh as she finished wrapping the proof of her attempt. She went to the freezer for an ice pack. Maybe that’d help the stinging.
Nick was silent on the other side, no doubt trying to reconcile her ne
ws with the reality they both believed they had been living in until this point.
“Hey,” he said finally, “we should circle up. Let’s meet over by Rogers Street and wait for the Starbucks to open.”
Rogers Street Park, with its two baseball diamonds, sat about halfway between Nick’s apartment and hers. They’d met there a few times before walking for coffee. It was still early, and Starbucks wouldn’t open for another hour. But circling up sounded good, and god knew she wanted to talk to someone about the fact that she straight up had to shoot a man.
“Sure,” Lydia said. Starbucks was calling her name. It was even pumpkin spice latte season. “Twenty minutes?” She’d need to change and wanted to take a shower.
“Twenty minutes, Lyd. Be safe, please.”
***
Twenty-five was what it took Lydia to get ready. But, hey, she had long hair. It took time. The streets were just as silent as they were when she walked home, and she found Nick sitting on a bench by one of the baseball diamonds.
Nick raised his head. He looked exhausted, and she was sure she didn’t look much better. He stood to greet her and reached out to hug her. Lydia hugged him tightly and let out a wavering breath. They had been chased by a monster who had nearly done god-knew-what to them.
“You all right, Nick?” she asked, knowing it was a stupid goddamn question. Neither of them could be considered anywhere close to being all right.
“No, Lyd, I’m not. None of this is okay.”
“Hey, you should take this back,” Lydia said as she pushed away from him gently and reached into her bag. She handed him the gun, making sure for the twentieth time that the safety was still clicked on.
Nick laughed and shot her a lopsided grin. “You sure? You did better with it than I did. Did you seriously kill him? How?” He didn’t seem like he believed her. Honestly, she didn’t blame him. Lydia wasn’t the kind of person to shoot someone. And Nick had the misfortune of trying to play online games with her. She was awful at it. Still, Nick took it back even as he teased her and tucked it into his holster at his side under his hoodie and pulled it back around him.
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