“Jack!” Katie yelled over the thunder. “Please!” She didn’t know what she was asking for. She ran over to him, sending silent thanks to whatever spirits still lingered that they had given her the energy to do even that much. It would have been just her luck to be still lying drained on the ground, unable to even be with him as he breathed his last. If he was still breathing. The blood soaking through his beige t-shirt was dark red and fresh. That was good, right, his heart was still pumping blood. God, she wished she had paid more attention in biology. But rain was drenching him, the wind was trying to blow the clothes off his book. No energy of his own to save himself from this spiralling summer squall. It had to be possible to extend her borrowed cover to him. She was puzzling over the physics of this, hesitantly trying to get hold of one single spark, when strong, rough hands circled her neck and hauled her to her feet. Just when her breathing was becoming shallow and distressed, the hands shoved her flying through the air, over Jack and a yard or two further where she landed with a bone-crunching thud on the ground. Getting up, Katie saw the man standing over Jack, whip at the ready, silver glinting at his belt. He had put his long coat back on too. He looked every inch the psycho with an upside down sense of right and wrong. Why hadn’t she heard him coming up behind her? Because you were too busy worrying about the boy. Lose focus for a second and he’ll use it. Great. This was sounding more and more like a fight she couldn’t win. Not for the first time, Katie wondered why she was even in this fight at all. It didn’t matter, she was inn it now and wishful thinking was not going to change that. Besides, if not her, Jack would have only fallen for some other poor girl and sentenced her to this.
I didn’t mean to, Lady Katie. I only tried to buy you time.
Jack was still thinking. Thinking strange thoughts, things that were vague and meaningless but he was thinking and he remembered her name. That had to be good.
“Stop!” she shouted. “He’s had enough! You want to kill me. I’m standing right here.”
The bad man spared her a glance and them appeared to dismiss her, curving his arm back.
“NO! Jack’s dead. What’s the point in killing a guy with no defences, huh? You want me. You want the challenge, right? And I’m a screamer.” The two of hem started circling each other around Jack. “If you can catch me.” Katie bent her knees ever so slightly and took off at a gentle backwards run luring him into following. If she could wear him down just a tiny bit… okay, that was as far as the plan went but there was the distinct possibility she wouldn’t live past Phase One. Developing a Phase Two was a moot point. “Come on, I’m a distance runner. I can do this dance all day.”
“Same here,” he growled. “I’ve had 200 years to get ready for you little girl.”
“200 years? You should be better at this then. Death at the hands of an incompetent. It’s embarrassing really.” Frightening was a better word but showing fear just seemed like a bad idea. Katie reached into her pocket and found two things; her phone, a bit scratched and the screen was cracked but otherwise fine, and her house keys. She tossed them between her hands, thinking. She didn’t want to lose her keys but her phone had already taken a battering. A sudden close encounter with the ground might absolutely bust it. Oh well. She took aim and chucked it at the bad man, kind of amazed that her throw was on target for once. Unfortunately, accuracy didn’t make much difference. He didn’t even flinch as the missile hurtled towards his head, just side-stepped at the last second and let the phone sail right on through his chest. And it was gone. Useless. Her only weapon was floating somewhere inside the bad man. She watched as the man started moving her way, inching back but wanting so badly to turn tail and run as far and as fast as she could. Especially when he gave that low chuckle that started deep in his chest and then went lower, aiming for the lower levels of hell. There was evil in that laugh but a degree of humour too. As if he knew the bravado was just a front. Katie dropped to a crouch as the bad man started running for her and thrust her arm out to dislodge his legs. It always worked in the movies. The plucky heroine swept her opponents legs and his momentum – it was always a him – carried him into a sprawling forward roll, putting him on the losing side. Shame, then, that this was real.
Oh God, was this real.
He stopped inches before Katie. There was an instant before she realised he should have tripped over her and hadn’t where she didn’t move. She pulled herself up and, “I’m not living in fear of you.”
“Smells like you are.”
“I’ve had enough of running away. I used to run for fun. So, can we just stop this game and get to the fighting?”
“Fighting, killing. It’s all fun for me.”
Katie had basically just challenged this man to a hands-down dogfight. The paper-thin power of these – what had Jaye called herself, a Shade? – against twisted justice and a weapon that had killed a thousand times or more. How the bloody hell was she meant to win that? She threw her hands up as the man charged at her. If the bad man had been completely solid then she might have been able to protect herself from s fraction of the pain she suddenly felt tearing through her abdomen. He had faded his leg to pass right through her arms and then willed it back into flesh to connect firmly with her stomach. A boot in the belly was one of the most painful things Katie had ever experienced. It made her angry.
“Gonna cry, little girl? Gonna curl up and cry for your momma?”
“You’re not worth the tears,” she bit off. “I cry for love, loss, joy and pain. Not for pathetic little freaks with nothing better to do than terrorise teenagers.” But Katie felt like crying. It was hard to squeeze back the hot sting behind her eyes. It did match the hot sting of blood in her mouth.
The rain stopped for a brief second and a streak of lightning split the sky in two. The man took advantage of the instant to crack the whip at her. Something warned her a millisecond before and Katie jerked back and the leather strip missed her by an eighth of an inch. Too close.
The dark power swirled around Katie, and she tried to wrap it around herself tighter. The wind and rain still didn’t touch her. But the life the dead things had sent her was beginning to trickle out – dodging the whip cracks and advances, trying to keep out of reach, was not helping. Much longer and nervous exhaustion would come knocking – the Shades had only suppressed her tiredness, not taken it away like they had her cuts and scratches – it was still there, pushing the edges of her brain, biding it’s time before it could take her over once more. This had to be over before then.
He was definitely getting the closer. Katie thought fast. There had to be some weakness.
“Your family, friends, any of them left? Bet this is making them proud. Hey Daddy, what did you do today? Well son, I killed a kid.”
“No-one’s left. Just you, me and right and wrong.”
“I killed a kid because she saw me murder some other kid.”
“Got no-one to be ashamed of me. I’m already dead, little girl. Ain’t nothin’ no-one can do to stop me.”
So, what was he waiting for then? He was playing with her. The sicko was enjoying this! “What would your superiors think?” It was loud and dark but Katie was positive he paused for just a second; shadows blacker than the night flickered to life. Yes! Got him! “I mean, that’s why you’re hellbent on finishing me off, isn’t it? You killed a kid for stealing – and from the sheriff, of all people! You thought you were fireproof. And then you realised you had a witness. Which would be me.” Her mouth was working faster than her mind but these words seemed to be hitting all the right nerves so she was more than happy to let her mouth continue. She just wished she had known what she was about to do next before she did it. Because it was monumentally stupid.
Her arm shot out, grabbed something cold and uneven and yanked, risking him probably breaking her fingers if his reactions were quick enough. They were but some reflex of her own overrode the dark crackling energy and used whatever she had had grabbed to slice upwards feeling a satisfying resistance
as the points of the sheriff’s badge caught on and carved through flesh.
“Bitch!”
So I’m told. “Yeah, that’s me. Anyway, you decided to find me and kill me because you couldn’t risk this. I might have told your boss and I’m guessing the murder of a minor, whatever his crime, was frowned on.”
“Give that back. It’s mine!” he bellowed.
“Hmm…”
He made a grab for it. Katie held it tight to her chest with both hands, understanding on some level far below her consciousness that things were going to plan. Someone’s plan, anyway. Still holding tight, Katie felt his hand brush her cheek gently, almost tenderly. She closed her eyes against the touch, her mind rushing back almost four months to when another man had touched her that way… and how violent/intimate that touch had turned. It’s happening again,, she had time to panic, as rough fingers turned into claws, held her chin in a vice-like grip and forced her to her knees.
“Say please.”
Katie held the badge towards him but the bad man just glared at it like the inanimate object was responsible for all this trouble. To give it its due, the badge probably had been.
“You first.”
A weak moan cut through the howling storm. Jack. It hurt to admit it but Katie had forgotten about him. She glanced over. He sounded kind of pathetic. A kicked puppy had more fight in it and that moan had sounded suspiciously close to his last breath. The bad man used the distraction to walk up until he had forced the girl back onto her elbows and was straddling her chest. He flexed his strong hands around the handle of his whip and readied himself to deliver the killing.
“I said, scream for me!”
So she did.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Into that scream, Katie poured everything she had left. All that pent-up anger, every drop of fear, every ounce of hate, every last scrap of fight. She prayed – still unsure who to – that it would be enough to kill him and knew it wouldn’t.
They didn’t give me energy, give me life, she realised as she wailed longer and louder than she thought physically possible. There was so much power in that alien, animal sound that she had to wonder if it was really coming from her. They filled me with death. The possible consequences of that were too many to even think about right now but I don’t wanna die strobed through her head like a driving dance beat.
A broken red line folded out into the night, but slowly, so slowly. Katie fixed her gaze on the crimson line inching towards her and knew she had roughly half a second to react. It felt like an eternity though. She carried on screaming – time had either slowed down to less than a crawl or some kind of magic was constantly filling her lungs with the air she needed. The mundane physics of time, the basic biology behind respiration, none of it mattered. It was all working and that was all she cared about. The man grinned down at her, face contorted with effort and hate. She remembered how that whip carving a crimson slash through the night had drawn is’ own bright red streak in her flesh. It made her scream harder, pouring out fire. Purple-black fire but fire nonetheless. Katie raised a hand and felt time try to re-assert itself. She was running dangerously low on fuel. Crying now, but she didn’t even realise it, focussing instead on the haunted look in the killers eyes and how he was fading. Angry as hell and looking utterly homicidal, he was starting to blur at the edges.
Katie stopped screaming as a leather ribbon, jumping with red sparks, arc down and burnt an angry red line into her palm. It tingled, she could feel it, but there was o pain. Natural anaesthetic rushed down her arm and made her hand pleasantly numb. Where the whip broke the skin, it suddenly went limp and powerless. No matter how hard the man tried to shake the object back into lethal life, it was dead. Katie held onto it and, after an instant of searing white-hot pain, everywhere she touched lost power.
Katie used it like a pulley rope between her and the man with hate in his eyes to pull herself up. She turned her face to the ground and saw through tear-fogged eyes splatters of blood on her running shoes. Just that one chance moment of seeing a boys lifeblood on her feet and she knew what to do. He was weak now. Well, so was she. However, the adrenaline was pumping, her brain was whirling but not really moving, the end of every nerve was frazzled – sensitive as God knew what. He stalked after her, throwing the whip away in frustration. It wouldn’t do any good now. Once, it held the fury of ages. No more. He didn’t need the whip to silence this little girl. His hands, these hands that had dealt a thousand blows and pulled a hundred triggers, were the only weapons he needed. Katie turned on her heel and ran. She started the rhythmic jog she used when she wanted to lose herself on a training run.
It’s not fast enough. Put the speed on girl. Speed!
The bad man stomped behind her, the rage audible in his step, reached out and clamped down on her shoulder. Katie bit hard on the instinct to scream out. The time for screaming was done. The life/death/whatever that had filled her up had all drained away. Just a strand or two was clinging to her skin now, just enough to keep the rain from making her job harder. Like it was going to make any difference in a few minutes. At least I‘ll die dry. Oh, Christ, I don’t wanna die.
It’s not time for you to join us. Where was yet? They had to say yet! Order must be restored, child.
If anyone wanted Katie to be a kid, it might help if they backed off with all this shit! Uh-oh, she’d not only thought that but she’d said it too. Which would probably give this man a bit more sick pleasure. Maybe he already knew he was terrorising a broken-inside girl. Maybe that made it more fun.
In one fluid movement,, she gripped his hand, twisted under it and brought her other hand underneath, making a bizarre hand sandwich. If this didn’t work then she had just placed herself in the hands of a psychopath. He was fading, only a tiny bit, still solid enough to kill if he wanted to.
“You won’t get the chance,” she promised him and searched out his angry blue eyes. Something close to confusion and terror tinged his face. Their gazes locked down. Katie concentrated and pulled together the remaining scraps of dark power, feeling as though she was scraping vital membranes and linings from her organs. She imagined it coalescing into an uncomfortable ball deep in her stomach and then forced it up through her chest, down both her arms and through her hands into him. There wasn’t much of the darkness left. But it was so concentrated it might just be enough. No, it would be enough.
Of course it wasn’t. He stepped back, stumbled actually. Good sign? Bad sign? Did it mean anything? Purple-black wisps crept over the man and stopped sparking as Katie watched. The sparks throbbed, grew, multiplied until his face was barely visible inside a web of dead black energy. All semblance of life long gone.
And then he faded.
He vanished quickly, just like before when it had seemed like something was tearing him away from this world. Only this didn’t feel quite the same – not like he was being taken away, more like he was being taken back. Somehow, on some level so high Katie couldn’t even see it, she knew that was right.
She stood there for a few long minutes after the bad man had disappeared, positive he would come back. She realised she still had his precious badge in her hand and put it in her pocket, bending over and putting her hands on her knees to draw in some shuddering breaths whilst willing her legs to hold her up. The rain was battering her poor body now, every inch of her being was crying out for rest, a mile of bandage and enough painkiller to down a horse. There was no time to worry about that now though. “Jack!”
He was still lying facedown on the ground, his face turned ever so slightly to one side. Falling to the ground halfway over, Katie dragged herself to that side and smoothed his short sandy hair away from his face, not managing to shift the locks the rain had plastered to his face, her fingers too clumsy to pick them away. The thrown phone lay on the ground – too far away to reach without doing that impossible moving thing again – and she knew she should use it to call for the ambulance. If it still worked. As mobile phones weren’t generally water
proof beyond a quick splash in a puddle or accidental ride in the washing machine, it was a long shot.
“No, Jack, you can’t do this to me.”
Blood was soaking his t-shirt, so dark it was almost black. It wasn’t pumping out of him in dramatic, heart-stopping bursts. It wasn’t even leaking out of him now. It was just smothering his back, thick and gloopy. What did that mean? That he didn’t have enough blood left for it to ooze? “It’s okay. You’re safe now.” She repeated it over and over again but it made no difference. His chest didn’t start to rise and falll as her words willed him to breathe again. He didn’t roll over, give a weak smile and murmur her name, whatever the silver screen said. He was dad, she knew it in her heart but she had the stubborn disbelief of anyone caught in that first wave of grief. Katie put her hands on his back, not caring about the blood being splashed up her arms by the rain. By this time, Katie hardly felt the storm pounding her and making her rock on tired knees. She had filled a bad man with dark power and things had turned out okay. Perhaps the same could be done for Jack. She dug down deep and tried to grab hold of anything she had left and force it into Jack. Only thee was absolutely nothing left. She tried and she tried and then she cried and she cried as nothing worked.
“Dina, help me!” she yelled. There was no answer. Dina was not there.
Wait.
… a way. You must find a way. There is always a way. You must find a way. There is always…
She fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, slumped over her cowboy and listened to those words. The last few days had been a total screw up. And now someone was dead – maybe two people - that she cared about were dead. It was all her fault. If you can hear me Jack, please know that I tried.
Running Shoes (The Shades of Northwood) Page 25
