Hunters (Out of the Box Book 15)

by Robert J. Crane

  “You’ll come up with something,” she said as I started to descend toward Dunfermline. In another time, less harried perhaps, I might have admired her optimism.

  Dunfermline was a strange beast from overhead, almost like a small town that had sprawled large, without the mega commercial sectors I expected for a town of this size. I thought of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, a city that seemed from above to be of similar size, but looked completely different than this one. Any American suburb would be replete with miles of retail shopping strips, Walmarts and Targets and Home Depots and grocery stores as far as the eye could see.

  I caught sight of a supermarket-looking building in the distance, a kind of mini-development of retail, the little sister of the gigantic strip malls that had taken over American highway exits, and I angled toward it. Rose wrinkled her nose. “You feeling the need for a quick stop-off at Asda?”

  The store was coming into sight, and I realized with mild surprise that they actually had the little light bulb mark from Walmart in the top left of their signage. Apparently I’d found American retail’s British cousin. “I’m feeling the need for a public place where we can stop off and catch a breather. Somewhere that it won’t be immediately obvious we’ve come.” I reached up to my head, searching for the wig that had been on it when I’d gone into my confrontation with Frankie. Surprise, surprise, it was gone now, lost somewhere along with an arm that had now regrown and a coat sleeve that never would. “Well, maybe not obvious for you. I’m going to need a disguise.”

  She eyed me. “I can think of a way to handle that. Where are you planning to land?”

  I looked over the endless grey clouds that stretched over the horizon. “I dunno. Somewhere near the store, I guess. Or within walking distance, at least, since I left my bag back in Edinburgh and we’re going to need some freshening up in addition to a disguise.”

  She lapsed into a short silence. “Should we call the police?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Because they’ll get themselves killed if they go after Frankie?”

  “Yeah,” I said. I was damned pleased she was sharp enough to pick up my reasoning without me having to explain it in infinite detail, especially because I wasn’t in the sort of patient teaching mood I’d need to explain it without snapping right now.

  I brought us down in a grove of trees behind the Asda mega market, or whatever they called it. It didn’t look like a traditional Walmart, at least not from the front. As I’d overflown it I’d noticed a triangular, glass entry portico that people walked in through, which was far different from the usual square box Walmart approach with its door on either side of the parking lot, left or right.

  “What do you need me to get?” Rose asked, already rifling around in her pockets and pulling out credit cards.

  “Do they sell baseball caps here?” I asked. “Never mind, whatever. Get me a hat of some stripe and sunglasses. Baseball cap is preferable, but if you guys don’t have baseball—”

  “It’s not our national pastime, but we do have it,” she said, giving me an appraising look. “I’ll find a hat that’ll flatter ye as best I can.”

  “Good luck,” I said sourly, and settled down to wait while she headed out of the trees and disappeared around the edge of the store.

  As soon as she was out of earshot, I listened hard, trying to figure out if anyone was nearby. I could hear distant cars, but nothing close at hand, so the moment I was sure no one was eavesdropping I said, “All right, Wolfe, cut the shit and spill it.”

  There was a long silence, in which I could almost imagine him lurking in the back of my head. Spill what? Wolfe finally asked, quieter than I could ever recall hearing him.

  “Whatever is up your ass,” I said. “Out with it, because we are facing down some serious business here and I need you at peak badass in order to muscle through it.”

  Wolfe just doesn’t like Scotland, he said resentfully, still hiding in the shadows of my mind, more sedate than when I used to drug him.

  “Any particular reason for that, or do you just dislike the lack of sunshine?”

  Wolfe is a sunny creature, oh yes.

  “Screw off with that bullshit, Wolfe. You’re clouds and darkness all the way. Why are you stonewalling me now, when I need you most?”

  I told you. Don’t like Scotland.

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t like lots of places. Like California, for instance. That doesn’t mean I enter into a state of catatonia destined to cause fatal injury or death when I go there.”

  You wouldn’t understand.

  “Probably because you’re not bothering to explain it.”

  That brought on a nice, fat silence. Maybe expecting him to discuss it rationally is a little too much, Harmon said, stepping up like he was going to broker a peace.

  Shut up, mind reader, Wolfe said, or you’ll learn what your brains taste like.

  “I burned his body months ago, Wolfe. No one’s going to be learning what his brains taste like.”

  Wolfe can do wonders. Push him and see.

  I sighed. “This is going nowhere.”

  Good. Now that you’ve realized that…leave Wolfe alone.

  “I’d like nothing more,” I said. “In fact, there were whole years when that was practically my philosophy in life. But unfortunately, I’m looking at an incubus who seems to have followed a very strict all-meta diet, which is worse than steroids for our kind, and unless I get some assistance from someone who’s—I dunno, as well versed in hunting prey as I am—I’m kinda afraid I might be at my expiration date, here.”

  You beat Sovereign. Wolfe withdrew from the conversation, retreating into the shadows of my mind almost reluctantly, but still with that same reserve he’d shown throughout this entire conversation. You’ll beat this one, too. You always do. You even said so.

  “Dick,” I said, “this is serious.”

  It’s always serious.

  I brought my teeth together and gave them a good grind while I tried to control the wild, angry things that came to mind—slurs against Wolfe’s parentage, his life choices, his morality. This was a guy who’d never been shy about showing me the mental film of his slaughters, not bothering to discriminate whether they were men, women or children. Sometimes I forgot, occasionally and very briefly, that Wolfe was probably the most prolific serial killer of all time. He’d been murdering people, viciously and without remorse, for thousands of years. If there was worse than him, I hoped never to meet them without a bazooka firmly in hand.

  And yet, for all that (and oh, holy hell, was it a lot)…he’d helped me quite a bit over the years. Without him, I’d be dead eight hundred times over, if not more. Sure, I rarely showed him the gratitude he deserved, because honestly, he was lower than pond scum, but still…whatever was up his ass, it wasn’t about that.

  So what was it about? I didn’t buy the ‘I hate Scotland and it makes me super sad’ explainer. Places didn’t just have that effect on you, at least not enough to take a normally buoyant, playful serial killer and make him all emo or whatever. Especially not since Wolfe had absolutely no emotional depth whatsoever, no attachments to a single person on planet Earth—including his family (now dead)—and featured, exclusively, two modes: Kill and Kill Harder.

  “Okay, well,” I said, trying to bounce back from my rejection at the hands of the world’s worst man, “I’m open to suggestions from anyone else. Because all the ideas I have right now involve a sniper rifle, and unfortunately, I doubt they sell those in Asda over here.” Damn England. Didn’t they understand that sometimes you just flat out needed to put a bunch of bullets in someone?

  Apparently not, which was more the pity for me.

  Draw him back to the USA? Bastian suggested. Or use your resources to procure a weapon over here.

  “Both valid options,” I said. “I’d like to avoid the US if I could though, and we have no guarantee he’ll follow. Also, if he can find me over there, it’s a safe bet the US government is going to be right up my
ass shortly thereafter, which might not turn out that much better for me.” They had reached the point in our relationship where they were no longer bothering with being gentle and had decided to kill me. Not that Frankie was exhibiting much more mercy.

  Matching him power for power seems improbable, Bjorn said. Given his bountiful and never-ending list of powers. Though this does raise a point we have often broached with you—

  “Yes, I know. You’re always wanting me to add new people to the collection of you seven. But I don’t want to. Why can’t you understand that? New people get unruly, they have to be managed and convinced to help with their powers—”

  We would help you convince them, Eve said, and I imagined I heard her cracking the knuckles she no longer had. Forcefully.

  “I think that’s the way Sovereign did it,” I said, “but did I ever do that to any of you?” I waited only a second to answer my own question. “No. Because forcing you to fight on my side through—I dunno, torturing you in my heads or imprisoning you or compelling you via pain—those are wrong.” I swallowed heavily. “They’re too close to what Mom used to do to me.”

  But she got results, Gavrikov said.

  My eye twitched a little. “So did your dad, but I don’t think you’d condone what he d—” My arm lit on fire, and fortunately it was the one that didn’t have a sleeve covering it. “See?”

  Gavrikov took a second to compose himself before replying. But I am powerful, am I not? And I might never have fully learned the extent of my powers without his…cruelty.

  “Well, you’re all on my side now, so I don’t think I needed to get that vicious,” I said. “I mean, even Harmon’s on the team now.” I could almost feel Harmon sigh in my head, like he was too cool to be associated with us. “So…sure, maybe I could have absorbed a few evil metas I’ve faced along the way, tortured them into adding their powers to us. But…what then?”

  Then, Bjorn said, you would take those new powers and convert this Frankie into free-floating atoms, of course. Like it was the most natural thing in the world, he said this.

  I started to rebut his simplistic analysis, but…other than to be a sniping, sarcastic ass…I really couldn’t. Frankie had me overpowered, it was just that easy. It was an arms race I’d lost because it had somehow never occurred to me I was in one. And while it didn’t mean I was out of the fight entirely, it certainly made things a lot harder on me.

  Not that I was going to give up just because I was outgunned. That had happened to me a lot since I’d left my house the first time, and the only thing it had done was serve to encourage me to get mouthier and meaner.

  I started to voice this thought to them, especially the meaner part, when suddenly the Asda behind me exploded, a beam of red the size of a bus blasting a hole through the roof. “Rose,” I said, and lurched into flight, zooming into the air and toward the now gaping entry into the roof, intent on finding my new sidekick and hopefully saving her life before whoever was throwing meta powers around in the supermarket killed her.

  32.

  I dropped through the ceiling of the warehouse-like Asda, descending through smoke that smelled like singed building material, asbestos and who knew what else kind of chemical crap that would have probably given me cancer if I weren’t immune to it. The smoke obscured everything, but it wasn’t fire-smoke but rather a composite of shelving (I could smell the metal), cardboard, plastic bags, and about a hundred different kinds of cereal (I could smell those, too). Dropping to the ground, I found myself, utterly without surprise, in the cereal aisle.

  Rose was stumbling around ahead of me, shoving against the shelf. She locked eyes with me and barely got out, “He’s here!” before I saw him, marching out of the haze like the damned Terminator.

  Frankie.

  I wanted to shout something clever and witty, like, “How’d you find me?” but I was afflicted with a sort of mute, horrified lockjaw, which I did not remedy by throwing a box of Weetabix—whatever the hell those were—at him.

  “As though that will—” he started to say, using gravity to send the box flying toward the ceiling—

  Revealing the flame shot I’d concealed behind the cardboard box.

  He made a motion to dissolve it, and he definitely got most of it, but that last little bit was a real bitch to his face, sparking up as he waved to rid himself of it. He shouted in surprise, hands flying up to cover his wound. I shot another at his center mass, but by now he was dissolving any heat sources that were coming his way, so that game was up.

  “Shit,” I muttered and grabbed Rose by the arm. With her gripped firmly, I said, “Hold on.” I didn’t wait for her nod (which came a second later) before leaping into the air with her.

  I landed atop the shelf to our right and gave it a touch as I came down on it, a little shove that sent it Frankie’s way. It squeaked slightly, but wavered under my meta strength, and then wobbled, tipping over his way.

  We didn’t stick around to watch it fall. I grabbed Rose and we shot for the exit, blasting out under the triangle entry over the heads of a crowd of stampeding shoppers. Some bargains just weren’t worth the cost.

  I had to land us to get through the last door, and as I did, Rose staggered a little upon touchdown. “You all right?” I asked as she recovered her balance.

  “I just about had a heart attack in there when he showed up,” she said, leaning over like she needed to catch her breath. She looked like she’d seen a ghost. “He came out of nowhere!”

  I glanced back as some dark-haired dude in a European leather motorcycle jacket almost plowed into me, then apparently thought the better of it at the last second, avoiding the hell out of me. Smart move on his part right now. “Any idea how he found you?”

  “None,” she said, taking a breath. “Glad you realized what was going on, because my strategy only distracted him long enough to keep me from being completely vaporized by that beam that took the roof off.”

  I grabbed her by the arm again. I had a little grain of suspicion—what if Rose was the reason Frankie had found us here?

  There was no time to debate that, and I was left with two choices—drag Rose along with me, out of here, even if it meant bringing Frankie after us, potentially—again.

  Or I could leave her to her fate, which, if this little incident was any guide, would probably be death.

  Not much of a choice, I said in my head.

  Yeah, you can’t leave her behind to be murdered based on a suspicion, Zack said.

  I didn’t have a chance to answer, but I agreed with that, so I snatched up Rose and zoomed into the sky as one of Frankie’s ripper blasts of red cut a wall of red through the triangular entry to the Asda. Rose gasped as I dropped low, hugging the nape of the earth. I dodged between trees, circling around behind the building and then zooming off to the west, figuring I’d use the cover of ground rather than zooming out over the sea, or the Sixth of the Seventh of the Ninth or whatever the hell they called that body of water.

  “What do we do now?” Rose asked, raising her voice to compensate for the gusty nature of the world around us. We were flying about ten feet above the rooftops, and I lurched upward to avoid one, then dropped us back down. I wanted to avoid showing up on radar, in case that was how Frankie found us. I kept looking over my shoulder, wondering if he’d come zooming down on us at any moment.

  “Escape and evade,” I said, feeling like maybe—just maybe—we’d accomplished one of those. But then, I’d felt like we’d accomplished the escape part once before, and now look at us. “We need somewhere to lay low for a while.”

  “I know a place,” she said, “back in Edinburgh. I assume you don’t mean my flat.”

  “Can’t take the risk of yours,” I said. “I don’t know how Frankie’s doing what he’s doing, but he’s seen you enough at this point that if he’s got—I dunno, a mole in the Edinburgh PD or something—he’s bound to be able to figure out where you live now that he’s seen us together repeatedly.”

  She
nodded once. “A friend of mine works in Glasgow during the week and takes the train home on weekends. Her flat’s empty right now, and I’ve got a spare key.”

  “That’ll work,” I said after a moment, burying the nervousness I was feeling like butterflies flapping their fat wings in my belly. It was actually perfect, because this was going to be my acid test for Rose, a little something to either congeal or dispense my suspicions of her. Because if Frankie showed up here, in this place we were going to shelter, without any warning…

  It’d mean Rose had betrayed me.

  Question answered. Then all I’d have to do is evade him again; maybe easier the second time without an anchor that could be reporting my movements back to him…and then develop my plan to kill him, because—yeah, we’d reached that stage of the game. I was decided. There was no way I could let Frankie live. He’d wrecked a decent swath of Edinburgh, and then followed me out to the suburbs to level even more of the town. That was a bad deal, and I felt really responsible.

  “Take us on back to the city?” Rose suggested helpfully, and I veered us south, figuring I’d get us there eventually, taking the slow road so as to avoid as much attention as possible. Now we were whipping over empty fields and green forests, keeping close to the treetops and fields.

  “I’ll get us there,” I said, that gnawing worry I was heading into another trap settling in my stomach hopelessly. “Real soon.” And then, shortly thereafter, we’d know the truth about Rose, and whether or not she was betraying me to death.

  33.

  The flat in question was on a quiet side street in north Edinburgh, in what I reckoned was the new town. We landed without incident, and there wasn’t anybody around when we came down off the rooftops in a quick drift to the streets. It was quiet, moody. Fog would have set the scene for my purposes a lot better, but it was a clear night and there was almost no noise on the street save for cars in the distance. I looked left and right, waiting for Frankie to come wafting out of the sky followed by a ripper blast that cleaved the building behind us in two, but the quiet hung uninterrupted, a pleasant change from a battleground in the apartment tower or the supermarket.