by P. N. Elord
She dropped the gun. Rookwood flinched. It would be just his luck for the damn thing to go off.
There wasn’t any time to thank her. The Thing, its mutilated head crawling with smoking ick, scrabbled against the concrete, its claws leaving spark-strike scratches. The stake ripped away from the outside of Rookwood’s right thigh, Velcro straps giving with a tearing sound, and he rammed it through the Thing’s chest.
It was a good thing she’d blown its head off. Otherwise the death scream might’ve made her pass out or something. As it was, Amelia King was sobbing. The Thing twitched, and she made a miserable, frightened sound, stumbling back and almost falling on the broken stairs.
How the hell had she got down here? Jesus.
“It’s okay,” he managed through a throat gone dry and sand raspy. “Relax.”
She swallowed hard, gulping at air gone close and foul. “Which one? Which one is that?” The words broke on sucking gasps of air, but she didn’t look ready to faint just yet.
Good for you. “It’s not your husband. I’m pretty sure it’s Briggs.” He checked the Thing carefully, moving his eyes over the Brooks Brothers suit, finding the gold-and-opal signet ring. The stone was cracked and discolored. “Yup. It’s Briggs. I wonder . . .”
But he didn’t say what he wondered. There was no point. Instead, he tugged the kukri out of its sheath. The blade gleamed, a clean silver dart. The kitchen—and sunlight—was very far away, but the trickle of illumination down the broken stairs was enough to make him feel a little better. He scooped up the UV, checked it, and was even more relieved when it was still working. God bless quality construction.
“What are you going to do?” She sounded very young, but she hadn’t thrown up yet. She was dealing with this better than he had his first time out.
“Cut off what’s left of his head, babe.” He didn’t sound sarcastic, just tired. “Then I’m going to look for your husband.” And he was pretty sure he was going to wonder, the whole time, how she’d got down the stairs—and why she’d pulled the trigger.
The widow was turning out to be just full of surprises.
“Do they always scream like that?” She hunched her shoulders. Pale, rainy sunlight through kitchen windows flooded her hair, now tangled and not so glossy. She looked a lot less suburbia and a lot more terrified.
And she hadn’t fainted when the Thing that had been her husband had let loose its dying wail.
Rookwood taped down the bandage. He’d heal, but there was no point in irritating the wound. He uncurled his arm, and the white glare of gauze against his biceps tinted itself faint pink. Claw marks stung like hell, and he was glad he didn’t seem to ever get infected. “Every one I’ve killed.”
She swallowed audibly. “How many have you . . . killed?”
I was a cop eight months ago, babe. This is a new line of work for me. “Enough to be a professional.” His shirt was torn, and as he shrugged back into his jacket, he saw that it was also torn, but not as badly. “Listen, Mrs. King—”
“It’s Amelia,” she said flatly. “How long have you been doing this?”
The time for those questions was when you first met me, you know. But she was a civilian. Still, she’d come down to the basement and blown the head off a daywalking old one. She was made of stronger stuff than most civvies.
But then he thought of the bites all over her. The more he thought about it, the more he thought a new one wouldn’t play with her like that. Which made the widow a question mark.
Still, he hated himself for what he was about to do. “Long enough. Look, you should go to a hotel or something. Don’t come back here, unless it’s during the day. Even then you probably shouldn’t come back. They have human bodies to do their dirty work, you know.”
“For Christ’s sake, this is my home!” Her hands on the kitchen counter were white-knuckled. The two paper cups of coffee were probably cold by now, but they smelled good to him. Almost as good as she smelled. The burning tang on her had faded a little.
It wouldn’t go away completely, but most probably the one who’d bitten her was dead. If she didn’t get bitten again, she’d probably be okay. And when she died it would be a true death.
Of course, there was always the alternative. If what he was thinking was right, he’d probably end up shoving a stake through her and lopping off her pretty head as well.
It wasn’t a comfortable thought. Especially when his eyes drifted down of their own accord behind the shades and touched the shape of those bitten breasts under the spattered white shirt. What was a woman like this doing wasting herself as a housewife? Did he even want to ask?
Of course not.
“Stay here and die, then.” The kukri was clean; he slid it back in its sheath. The stake was strapped to his thigh again, hawthorn wood easily shedding acidic corruption. “Or get bit again, maybe by Chisholm or another one of their protégés.” He felt low and dirty even as he said it.
“I hired you for—”
“You hired me to kill your husband. He’s dead. Anything else is extra, and I’m busy.” He checked the gun again. The spare ammo in his jacket pockets was a negligible weight. “Enjoy your coffee.”
He turned on his heel, scooped up his duffel bag, and was halfway down the hall before he heard her footsteps behind him. Staggering just slightly.
“What am I supposed to do?”
It was a forlorn little cry, and he almost stopped.
But his work wasn’t done. He sped up, heels jabbing the hardwood, and crunched through the remainder of the vase in the hall.
Outside, the cool, rainy air was a balm to his burning cheeks. He made it to the Cadillac, dropped into the driver’s seat, and was gone before she could come out in her yard and start yelling. Not that he thought she would—Mrs. King wasn’t the type.
But if she did come out, he wasn’t sure his resolve would hold. There was a suspicious blurring in his eyes, and Rookwood wasn’t sure how much more he could hate what he was about to do—or himself.
The house crouched, one window glowing gold. Someone was up late, probably sitting in the kitchen. He didn’t get close enough to look.
Rain flirted down, kissed the leaves of trees planted when this housing development was put in. It touched the wide sidewalks, drenched the thirsty lawns, dripped from eaves, and gurgled in gutters. There was no drone of traffic as there was in the city, just the sea-sound of the city in the distance and the occasional rolling breaker of tires on wet asphalt closer.
The rain didn’t matter. He stood or crouched easily, moving only enough to keep himself flexible. The night breathed, full of damp dreaming.
The neighbors had both had dinner. Someone brought garbage out across the street behind him. But the widow’s house stood, closed and self-contained as the woman herself.
Rookwood waited. She’d come home before dusk, in a silver SUV, and didn’t open the garage but carried plastic and paper bags inside with her shoulders up, hurrying. Since then, just the light in the kitchen, mocking the gathering and fallen night.
Lights turned off in the houses around hers. A dog yapped a few yards away until someone yelled, “Max, get in here!” A series of happy yips, then a door closing and more silence.
The neighborhood prepared itself for sleep. Rookwood lifted the flask to his mouth, took another swallow of the red stuff. The problem wasn’t with it being cold or the flat copper tang to it.
The problem was how good this pale substitute tasted. And how good he could imagine it coming straight from the vein.
His nape tickled. He eased farther back into the shadows, melding with them, his pulse and breathing smoothing out into an imperceptible hum under the ambient nighttime noise. Quiet as a mole in a hole.
It had taken him two months to get his pulse under control. It was worth the work.
The widow’s house was like a sore tooth. His gaze kept drifting across it. What was she doing in there? What had she brought home? Had she made any phone calls?
> Do your job, Rookwood. He was barely breathing under the dripping fringes of some kind of evergreen. He almost stopped blinking, his pulse struggling with the iron grip of training, instinct whispering that it would be soon, very soon.
He still almost missed it. A shadow flitted over the roof, a quick, lizardlike movement. A faint tinkle of glass breaking, almost lost under the rush of rain, half swallowed by the cloak of fetid silence suddenly drawn choking close around the white walls and green shutters.
He moved. Slippery, squishing grass underfoot, getting up a good head of speed. Spatters of rain broke against his face. The UV in one hand, its light stuttering on as his thumb flicked, the gun in the other, he streaked for the French doors with only a slight squelching sound betraying his position.
And hit, hard, the glass shivering away in fragments and long swords. The noise was incredible, a crashing through the silence the Thing had pulled close around the entire house, and he saw the short white blond hair, the blue eyes, the expensive business suit, in flashes before Rookwood’s gun spoke and Chisholm’s arm flicked, throwing Amelia King across the kitchen and into the wall as though she weighed less than nothing. She slid down the wall in a queer boneless way, leaving a huge dent behind, and the hot red fury bubbled up under Rookwood’s skin.
The Thirst screamed as he hit the Thing with a bone-crunching thud. Fell, his head clipping the tiled counter, and the gun tracked the Thing as it loomed over him, snarling. Five bullets, their sound blurring into and over one another. The UV slashed across Chisholm’s face. Smoke burst free.
He looked again into the face of the Thing that had made him, and its mad blue gaze dug into the inside of his skull. It bent down, its snarl ripping across violated air, and he saw a thick, broken wooden dowel protruding from its chest.
I didn’t do that. Confusion fought with the Thirst, and instinct jerked his hand with the UV up again. Smoke boiled through the kitchen, bubbling black flesh rising. At night, when they dropped their shield of humanity, the light hurt them. During the day, they never dropped that mask. Maybe it was a survival mechanism—
“I wondered what happened to you.” Chisholm’s voice, a rich baritone. He reached up, plucked the wood from his flesh with clawed fingers. The mask of humanity was back over the face of the Thing that glutted itself on suffering, and if not for the stripes of bubbling black tissue across his chiseled features, you wouldn’t guess he was a terror as ancient as darkness itself. “Baited a little trap, did we, Rook?” Chisholm dropped the sharpened dowel. It clattered on the floor.
Rookwood raised the gun, the Thirst screaming inside his veins. Kill kill kill! it yelled, pushed, screeched. Kill it, kill it now!
“How’s Fann?” he croaked through a dry-burning throat. “Legs grown back yet?”
Amelia King moaned shapelessly. Rookwood forced himself to stare up at Chisholm. Steady. Pick your shot. Four bullets left. Didn’t hit him, worse fucking luck.
“Your ridiculous little crusade.” Chisholm sighed. He was popular in a courtroom, in a nightclub, with the ladies. Courtly, even.
But the ones who wouldn’t be missed knew what he really was. The trouble was, they didn’t know until too late—and they couldn’t tell anyone from beyond the grave.
Nobody except Rookwood.
Rookwood’s hand tightened. Chisholm smiled. It was a gentle, paternal smile, the fangs curving down to dimple his chin, the black-charred stripe across his face tingeing with red at the edges as it healed. Fann was the oldest, Briggs was the most adept at using people—but Chisholm was the most dangerous. And now Rookwood had him right in his sights.
“It’s not too late to belong to the night, Jeremy.” Again that soft, paternal tone. Patient. Loving. “All can be forgiven. I marked you because you’re one of us, deep down. You know it.”
He’s afraid. Of me. It was like a bath of ice water. “Fuck you,” Rookwood snarled, and squeezed the trigger.
The gun spoke. Chisholm moved with the inhuman speed of the damned—but not fast enough. The bullet tore into his chest, mushrooming, and a huge black blotch appeared.
The Thing’s scream shattered glass, and Rookwood fired again, hit it again. It scrabbled away, still screaming, and smashed through the ruin of the French doors, more glass shivering free.
Got him! Savage joy filled his chest. He struggled to his feet. The Thirst burned, plucked at him. Go now. Hunt him down. He’s bleeding bad.
He glanced over. Amelia King lay slumped against the wall, her glossy hair tangled and matted with bright blood. She was crumpled like a doll thrown carelessly by a child.
Go! Go and get him! He’ll go to ground, you can mark the spot and wait for dawn. Then you can put a stake through his fucking heart and cut off his head and be free.
Six months of training, three of lying in wait for just this chance. He’d just flushed the monster out of hiding, and now here he was hesitating.
Amelia King surprised him again. Her eyes opened. Her throat was smeared with blood, and she blinked, dazed.
Oh, goddammit. He bit her. I’d bet money on it. Probably not for the first time, either. But that dowel in his chest . . .
Rookwood surprised himself this time by reaching down. His hand closed around her shoulder—why had he dropped the gun? That was a fool’s move. “It’s okay.” The words cut through the Thirst. “You’re safe.”
She scrabbled back from his touch. Drywall dust puffed down, snowdust in her hair and over her blood-spattered blue T-shirt. The blood was amazingly red, and his fangs slid free. The bones in his jaw crackled as he wrestled down the Thirst.
She gulped. “Bait.” It was the voice of a child caught in a nightmare. “You used me as bait.”
“I’m sorry.” Pale words for the guilt that twisted inside his ribs, tearing at tender tissue. “Amelia—”
“Molstein’s dead.” Sense came back into her eyes. She scrabbled back even farther, pressing herself against the wall, and clapped a hand to her bleeding neck. “They killed him. Last week before I came to you. I was bait for you, too.”
“I knew that,” he heard himself say. “Don’t worry about it.” It was too much to hope for, that one betrayal would balance the other. “Just stay here. I’ll be back in a little bit.”
She closed her eyes. Her throat worked as she swallowed. He supposed they should both be grateful she was bitten and halfway there. If she’d been safe and uncontaminated, she’d be broken inside. Bleeding to death internally. As it was, her pulse was strong and she looked all right. Pale, but all right.
“You tried to stake him.” Rookwood’s fingers fell away from her shoulder. “Right?”
“Dowels from the hardware store. Didn’t work.” She coughed, a lonely, tired sound.
Get after him. If he gets to a safe place, he’ll come back tomorrow night and kill her. He rose, scooping up his gun, and she sighed.
“Good fucking deal.” His tone was harsher than it needed to be, with the Thirst burning in his throat, spreading down his chest. “Next time use hawthorn. It’s the only thing that works well enough to immobilize them. Stay here, I’ll be back.”
He reloaded as he stepped out into the night. Wet wind slapped him in the face. Chisholm’s passage was a drift of reek against the damp, and Rookwood gathered himself. The last flask of red stuff burned against his lips; he swallowed as he ran. It scorched all the way down, and the Thirst snarled. It wanted him to go back and sink his teeth in the bleeding woman, put his mark on her throat instead of the other bleeding hole of contamination.
And there were other things he thought he’d left behind wanting to be done, too. No time for them, either. But maybe . . .
He finished gulping and stuffed the flask back in his pocket. The UV was out, and the gun, and he pulled on every inch of more-than-human speed he could gather.
Out here in suburbia, there were even parks. In the city, it would have been a chase across rooftops and through alleys, dodging crowds and sliding across neon. Here there were
fences, covered swimming pools—in this wet, cold part of the country, they were ridiculous status symbols—and the freeway like a giant artery.
The reek was flagging by the time he got to the park. He had to double back twice, cutting across fences, struggling through wet underbrush, and cursing. If this were his part of city, he’d know every back alley and sight line, every potential hiding place.
As it was, he almost stepped straight across the little depression in a soccer field. The Thirst jerked him back just in time, avoiding the clawed hand that shot up out of the wet turf.
Brought to bay at last, Chisholm dropped all pretense of humanity. Gone was the smooth courtroom baritone, the neatly combed shock of glossy white hair, the waxen, charming smile. This was the Thing without its daylight mask, its canines long and razor sharp, black sludge dribbling down its chin, and the sodden rags of its expensive suit flapping as it climbed out of its death hole.
He hadn’t expected the Thing to have so much pep left. It was still bleeding heavily, the grass smoking as ichor splashed. It crouched, a glassy squeal rising from its foul, bleeding lips. The UV lashed across it, a whip of light. More thin black blood bubbled.
It hit him hard, a last desperate gambit, claws slicing in through cloth and flesh, tangling with his ribs. Agony roared through him, but he was prepared, months of fighting in dark corners and hunting around the edges boiling down to undeniable instinct that had jerked the hawthorn stake free and—
It thudded home. His aim was true.
Rookwood lay flat in the mud, the Thirst burning all through him like alcohol fumes. The stab wounds between his ribs ran with red agony. Chisholm’s body began to vaporize itself, shredding under the lash of water. Stinging needles of rain peppered both of them, living flesh and dead, rotting sludge. The silver had done its work, poisoning and breaking up the fabric of Chisholm’s ancient body. The hawthorn was doing the rest.
Rookwood coughed twice, rackingly. Spat to clear his mouth. The stake quivered in his numb hand.
It took two tries to heave himself up, shoving aside the rotting thing. The rain was a baptism as the Thirst retreated into its deep hole, snarling with each step. Hot blood trickled its fingers down his rib cage. Nothing vital hit. Or so he hoped.
