by Faith Hunter
He grunted what might have been an affirmative. When the mushy cloth plopped out he said, “Three. One a fanghead. I was alone, but Beatrice will be back any minute with supper. They went back to the aircraft. I heard screaming. A lot of screaming. Then they drove off without walking back through here. Which is crazy because the fencing is twelve feet high with razor wire at the top and they didn’t have time to cut—”
“Shut up,” I said. He did, gasping for breath. “You’re bound with plastic and it’ll take time to free you. I don’t have that time. I’ll be back.” I stood and breathed in and out, hard, pulling on Beast-speed. She wasn’t talking to me much, but I could still access her traits. I raced out of the room and through the back terminal doors. Outside. Slammed my back against the wall. Took a quick look around as I ran into the shadows that would make me a less-easy target. Beast-vision made everything green and silvery and bright. No one was here.
Up the stairs of the Learjet. The smell of blood hit me hard. Fresh blood is not a smell humans can detect. But I can. Wet, sweet, and a lot of it. Blood in massive quantities aerated by arterial spraying.
I stopped just inside the hatch.
I share my soul with a predator, a big-cat who doesn’t mind if her prey is still struggling when she starts to feed, who likes to play blood-games with her food. I’m used to death. But this blood-game had been played with a human. And it was bad.
CHAPTER FIVE
Deer Antlers Piercing Through His Shoulders
The carpet was soaked scarlet. The walls had been spray painted crimson. The leather chairs had been painted. The rounded roof ran with red rivulets. A naked body had been tacked beside the entrance of the sleeping quarters. The body was bluish white skin everywhere except for the raw, gaping wounds, still leaking. His limbs spread in a grotesque X. Nails, huge six-inch-long nails, held him in place on the bulkhead wall. Steel nails though his wrists and above his ankles. Crucified.
It was the part-timer, Flyboy Dan.
My scalp tingled. My vision telescoped down to the bloody man hanging on the wall. The vision of the nailed man triggered something deep inside, in some dark and shadowy place in my soul, some memory of fear and pain. It was like a tight, scarlet bud, the flower of some unseen, unremembered horror still concealed in bloody, deadly petals.
Crucified. But not like the Christ. Like something else.
I smelled blood and the stink of bowels released in death. Heard the soft, wet sound of a drop of blood falling to the saturated carpet. I took a slow, deep breath and the darkness receded, the flower of old pain softened and blurred, losing its power over my mind.
But in some tiny, logical place of my brain that was still functioning, I thought, It isn’t like the suckheads to let blood go to waste.
Stupid thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid thought. I forced myself to breathe, breathe, slowly, deeply. Underneath the blood-death-stink I smelled vamp. Now-familiar vamp. The vamp I was chasing. I drew my weapons back into firing readiness. I’d let them drop at the sight of the man. Stupid rookie mistake. Stupid thoughts. I blinked away tears I didn’t know I’d cried and scanned the small jet, looking for anything alive or undead.
There was no way to avoid stepping in blood, but I did my best as I peeked into the cockpit and then circled around to the galley. Both were empty. I flipped the light switch in the sleeping quarters. There was no blood here. No. The vamp had left me a different kind of message. The new part-time first mate was naked, positioned on the bed where I had slept. Dead, with two holes in his neck, still trickling blood. A smile on his face. An envelope lying on his fish white belly.
It had my name on it.
I toed off my bloody boots, walked barefoot to the bed, and took the envelope. Tucked it into the blood-bottle tote. Grabbed my belongings and slid back into my boots. Not sure where the calm actions were coming from. Training or instinct. Maybe a bit of both, taking over when my mind went on hiatus and my soul was aching. I paused at the hatch and looked back at the crucified man.
The ancient, blooming horror opened before me, in fast forward.
I had a momentary vision of another man, white, bearded, bloodied, hanging over hot coals, deer antlers piercing through his shoulders, ropes leading up from the antlers into the dark of night. The sound of drums. The smell of herbed smoke and blood. A phantom memory, new, yet oldoldold. And then it was gone, as if it had never been real. As if the memory was a dream, half lost upon waking.
I went down the steps, leaving bloody footprints, and washed my boots at a low faucet on the terminal building wall. Entered the terminal. I was sawing at the bindings on the hog-tied air traffic controller when the tears that were gathered in my eyes started to fall. This was crazy. People were being drained, were being crucified. People were dying of plague. I was on a mission of peaceful parley that should have been known only to a few specific people, but it felt as if my every move had been telegraphed to Leo’s enemies and I didn’t know how, or who was giving away inside information. More people were dead by violent means and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know a lot of stuff, and it had come back to haunt me.
I blinked and saw the man stuck to the Learjet wall like a bug on felt. I took a steadying breath. I could mourn later. I bore down on the bindings holding the air traffic controller. Dulling my blade. Because his hands had swollen around the plastic strips, it took all my strength and concentration to saw through the strips on his wrists and not cut him badly. One of the zip strips parted. I bent into the struggle with the plastic. It took a whole minute and several cuts to his hands and wrists, even with my highest-quality steel edges, to free him. Whoever had trussed up the air traffic controller had known what he was doing. When the last binding on his hands broke through, the man collapsed on the floor, pulling his hands up to shoulder height. They looked awful, but I thought they would be okay. Tying up someone’s hands that tight can result in permanent damage from something called compartment syndrome. I’d seen it before and it wasn’t pretty. “See a doctor,” I said shortly, not letting my relief sound in my voice.
I cleaned his blood from the blade by wiping it on his pants and put it away in a sheath not easy to hand. I didn’t want to draw it again until it had some attention. I should question him again. Hard and thoroughly. Just because he had been trussed up at a crime scene like a young calf didn’t mean he hadn’t been culpable on some level. Maybe he let the bad guys in. Maybe he did something else. But I wouldn’t interrogate him. I would take the coward’s way out and vanish. I stood and said, “Is there video surveillance of the attackers?”
Using one purpled palm, he pushed up and rolled over, looking at the destroyed computer and electronic equipment. He laughed, a pained chuffing sound. “I doubt it. Looks like they shot up the whole works.”
“I need transportation.”
“I have a Yamaha Super Ténéré bike beside the building out front. Can you ride?”
“I’m a Harley girl. Yeah.”
“Keys in my pocket.” He tried to move his fingers and hissed through his teeth at the pain.
“Give me ten minutes before you call the cops,” I said. “Mr. Pellissier will make it worth your time.” I fished for the keys and left through the front door. The bike was in the shadows at the side of the building, hidden from the parking lot, helmet on the back. It was a sleek, sporty street bike, all black, built for speed and comfort. I stored my weapons and clothes in the aluminum side cases and strapped the Benelli to the bike along my knee. The weight and balance were different from Bitsa, and it used a key start, which I had always thought was a wussy way to start a bike, but I wasn’t complaining. I keyed it on and it had the nice steady purr of a well-kept engine. The last thing I did before leaving the airport was to throw the new cell phone as far as I could and let my braids down from the crown to put on the helmet. It smelled of the air traffic controller but wasn’t too horrible. I’d been around worse smells today. I tucked the braids into my collar and was on the road in seconds, headi
ng toward the city lights.
Popular wisdom says it’s supposed to rain all the time in Seattle, but it was dry and balmy for November, in the high seventies, even this late. Scudding clouds were advancing across the sky, and the night was black with buffeting winds and unfamiliar scents, mostly fecund earth and dense greenery, exposed rock, still warm from the sun. I shifted gears and climbed a hill, gaining speed. Putting the past behind me. Right now no one knew where I was. No one could contact me. If I wanted, I could take off and just disappear. Start over.
Beast does not run away, she growled softly.
But I could. If I wanted. A large part of me did want to head for the hills. Every time I blinked I saw the man I had left in the Learjet. Black road. Blink. Bloody body hanging on the jet’s bulkhead wall. Open eyes. The man I had left alone, unprotected, to be tortured by vamps. Black road. Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes. Black road. The hanging, bloody man had been familiar, part of an old memory, a memory from my Cherokee past. Familiar, but fading. Already the vision of the man in the past had merged with the dead man of tonight. The familiar, hanging pose. The distant memory tumbling into the present, yet not quite sliding into place. I had seen such a thing when I was a young child. I was nearly certain. Nearly.
For months, little bits and pieces of my current life had fallen away or were ripped from me, much like the man’s flesh had been flayed off. But my grief had all been internal—not overt—and therefore easily pushed away, shunted aside in favor of more immediately important matters. Ignored. But at the sight of the tortured flyboy, and the half-recalled memory, the enormity of my life changes had socked me in the face like some dark demon risen from hell.
Black road. Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes. Black road. Grip bike. Apply more speed. Bend into the turn. Wind beating at me. My breath was hot under the faceplate, almost panting. Almost a sob.
I’d lost my best friend, Molly, when I killed her sister. I could still feel the eighteen inches of vamp-killer-blade sliding into Evangelina. Her demon-heated blood, pumping across my hand.
I’d lost my boyfriend Rick LaFleur when he was attacked by werewolves and were-cats, and I had been unsuccessful in helping him with his shift-to-furry problem. I had been forced to say good-bye to him while he went to a special training camp outside Quantico for agents of Big Brother—PsyLED—the Psychometry Law Enforcement Division of Homeland Security.
I was, for the first time in my adult life, essentially homeless, friendless, empty, and alone. Just as I had been at age twelve when I wandered out of the forest after being stuck in Beast form for decades. But this time, I remembered some of my past, and the memories left me flayed just as the pilot had been. Just as the man had been in the old memory. Had he? I remembered blood. I think. But the distant past was shifting and changing and drifting away. Black road. Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes. Black road. My own bleeding was all internal.
I was stupid and pathetic and spineless. Everything I’d done, every decision I’d made, had taken me to a place I had never intended to go—working long-term for the vamps instead of just beheading the crazy ones. Learning that some of them were thinking, feeling creatures. Not human—but not worthy of death just because of their vamp-nature. Black road. Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes. Black road.
Tears started to fall behind the face-shield, caught by the air currents sweeping up underneath like mini tornadoes, cool and damp across my face and into my hair. I deserved losing my best friend because I’d killed her sister. I had blood on my hands and on my soul and I’d added to the toll tonight—it was my fault that the men in the jet were dead, because I hadn’t considered that someone would come after me, because I hadn’t taken precautions. I didn’t recognize myself anymore in the killing machine I was becoming.
Jane is killer. Only killer, Beast murmured.
“Go away,” I shouted into the teeth of the wind. She growled and went silent. I gave the engine gas, speeding into the dark, passing headlights that left smears on my retinas. Bent low over the bike, leaning into the turns, taking chances that would have been deadly to anyone with human reflexes. Black road. Blink. Bloody pilot. Bloody bearded man. Nails. Antlers. Open eyes. Black road. The bloody body was a nightmare memory brought forward in time. Was the man from my past someone I had cared for? A white man? How would that be possible? And I’d never know, not for sure.
Lost. They were all lost. Everyone I knew from my first life. Etsi, my mother, Edoda, my father, Elisi, my grandmother. All gone. All dead. Decades and decades ago. And now everyone I truly loved and truly trusted from my current life, Molly and Rick, were gone. I screamed out my grief, in long, hoarse sobs as the miles and black pavement raced beneath me, and wind buffeted the misery that dogged me. I screamed until there was only the wind against my clothes and the road beneath my tires. Black road. Blink. Bloody pilot. Open eyes. Black road.
When the tears finally stopped, my voice was hoarse and my throat was raw. I was empty and purposeless and useless. Jane is killer only, Beast thought at me.
“Shut up,” I whispered. “I didn’t kill the man with the antlers through his body.”
Jane is killer only.
In a small town outside Seattle, I passed a bank with a well-lit ATM and pulled over. If I had to go to ground, I needed money. I inserted my card and punched in the special PIN that allowed me a onetime withdrawal of an unlimited amount of cash. I removed five thousand dollars and added it to the wad of money Bruiser had given me for this gig. I wasn’t sure why I might need to go into hiding, but the imperative was there. Take money. Stock up. Be prepared. Now I had to get back to New Orleans, which meant flying commercial, so I had to get rid of my weapons.
Two blocks over, in a brand-new strip mall, I found a one-stop shopping spot, most stores still open. In a high-end luggage store I paid cash for two hard-bodied cases used for shipping electronic musical equipment. Outside, I took my weapons apart so they couldn’t fire, packaging the pieces in separate shipping containers, so that if someone stole one case, there weren’t enough parts to make a whole weapon. It isn’t easy to ship firearms and I didn’t want any problems. In a UPS franchise store that was trying to close, I purchased a third container and shipping materials for the bladed weapons. The fifty I tipped the manager ensured that he stopped making noises about needing to close the store and got helpful, handing me padding and foam and layers of cardboard to keep the knives from shifting in transit. I kept only two weapons—two wooden stakes that I could use as hair sticks. If I got stopped by airport security, I wouldn’t mind tossing them, and I’d feel safer if I had something on hand to defend myself.
I paid for insurance and overnight shipping to New Orleans and though it was an exorbitant price, I didn’t blink at the cost. Another way the vamps had ruined me. Money meant a lot less now, was a lot less dear. Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes. I put the latest blood vials into a bubble-wrap envelope without telling the helpful clerk about the blood, and then secured them into the shipping container so they wouldn’t roll around and burst.
I saw my reflection in the windows against the night outside. I looked like I’d been crying, my face strained and flushed. I took my receipts and left.
Inside the little town I also found a pay phone. I hadn’t seen one of those in forever. I went back to the UPS store and held a twenty up to the locked door, mouthing, “Change? Please?” Maybe it was the tear streaks on my face, but something worked because he cleared all the change out of his cash register for me. I tipped him another five. He was a happy camper. But he’d surely remember me.
Standing in the dark, I inserted coins and called Bruiser on the pay phone. He answered with a simple hello. He sounded very British in that moment, though he hadn’t been British since the early nineteen hundreds. He also sounded distant and unapproachable. If Leo told him to kill me, would he do it? I honestly didn’t know, and it was dangerous to be attracted to a man whose loyalties lay elsewhere. “Hello?” he repeated. Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes.
“Your pilot is dead,” I said. “Stuck to the bulkhead wall by nails just like a bug on display. His blood was sprayed all over the Lear.” My voice sounded hollow, empty, and rough as broken stone. “Your new first mate was drained and left on the bunk I slept on. The air traffic controller was injured. It was done by two blood-servants, one vamp. They knew where I’d be.” I placed a hand over the envelope in my pocket, the one I had taken from the drained body of the new first mate. It bent under the pressure but didn’t crinkle, a heavy cotton fiber paper. Bruiser started to reply but I interrupted with “You have a serious leak. I’ll get home on my own. We’ll talk then.” I hung up, walked back to the bike, and lifted the helmet. The phone rang. Dang caller ID. I walked over and picked up. “What?”
“You, little girl, are not human. And I have the security tape.”
I chuckled. “Reach. I know that was not a threat. Your clients would be horrified if they ever learned you could be enticed to blackmail.”
“Not blackmail. Self-protection. I don’t know what you are, but if I feel threatened, this will go viral so fast that cheap, pixeled-out video of you carrying a dead cop out of a cave will look like child’s play.”
My past was always coming back to haunt me, ghosts of the dead. I had nearly died killing off a whacked-out family of vamps in a closed gem mine in the Appalachian Mountains. I had survived but hadn’t been able to save the cop. Another failure I carried on my shoulders. A camper had caught the video on his camera as Molly and I exited the cave, the dead cop over my shoulder. “I’m not your enemy, Reach. But Leo would be, should I tell him you’re monitoring his incoming and outgoing calls. For now, let’s just call it even. I’ll keep your secrets. You keep mine.” I hung up again and got on the bike. The phone rang again as I rode away. I didn’t look back.
