Karyn wrinkled her nose. A ripe rotting smell had begun to fill the car, and now she noticed that the Annas were going through some kind of accelerated decay. Their skin had changed to a yellowed, waxy color, and flies had begun buzzing around them. She cracked the window.
“How many will be there?”
Drew-Anna shrugged. “All of ’em. What did you expect?”
“Shit.” Nail-Anna ran a hand over his forehead, dislodging a half dozen flies that flew around erratically before lighting again on his face.
“I told you, they’re really pissed. This was supposed to be the big deal, the Brotherhood rising to power at the side of their”—he looked sidelong at Genevieve-Anna—“boss.”
“Goddammit,” Nail-Anna said. “No wonder Sobell hired us. He didn’t want a shitload of nutcases gunning for him, so he hired out the job. That’s why he wants to waste us now. With us out of the picture, those crazy fuckers will never know where the bone ended up.”
“Those ‘crazy fuckers’ have a ton of guys, a pile of guns, and I have no idea what else. If they have your friend, they’re only going to keep her alive if they think she can deliver the relic or the rest of you. Any idea how you’re going to deal with the whole mob of them?”
“No clue,” Nail-Anna said.
Conversation died quickly after that. Genevieve-Anna went into her own thoughts and watched the road. Nail-Anna simply stared back, almost without blinking, waiting for an excuse to put more holes in Drew-Anna’s corpse.
Karyn watched the others and tried to keep an eye out, but that was rapidly becoming hopeless. Straightforward visions of decay weren’t all she saw out there now. The streets were filling up with monsters, and even the buildings had taken odd new forms. A ziggurat-looking thing had taken the place of what she was fairly certain had been a Conoco last time she’d driven by, and it was by no means the strangest building she saw. She watched them pass with amusement at first, then greater concern. If her symptoms kept getting worse, the world would soon become impossible to navigate. No wonder Adelaide stayed in all the time.
The scene around her was so bizarre it took her a moment to acknowledge the white streaks blazing from a vehicle on a cross street ahead. It ran the light, careening into the intersection ahead of them and drawing angry honks from the cars with the right-of-way.
“Asshole,” Genevieve-Anna said.
Karyn spared it a glance. Then the shock hit her—it was a black SUV, and it was on fire.
“Follow them,” she said.
“What about the motel?”
“I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that.”
Genevieve-Anna pressed the accelerator and matched speed with the SUV, hanging back half a block or so. Another SUV joined the first from the right, and a third pulled in on the left, speeding to catch up with the other two. White light poured from each, but the flames blazing from the first one burned brighter. As Karyn watched, it exploded, yet somehow kept speeding forward. The windows blew outward on the one on the left.
“Something bad’s going to happen to them,” Karyn said.
“I can’t wait,” Nail-Anna muttered.
* * *
There had been shouting, the sounds of breaking furniture, and the occasional burst of senseless chatter from Adelaide, but if the Brotherhood and their Revered One were going to get what they wanted, it must have been obvious to them by now that they weren’t going to get it from Adelaide.
Unfortunately, it was looking like Anna wasn’t going to get anything from her, either. But I can’t leave her with these bastards, she thought. That sentiment had occupied most of her concentration for the last ten minutes or so, but she couldn’t seem to do anything with it. The same situation held—the room was crowded, she was alone, and she couldn’t see a way through this that wouldn’t end in blood.
I should get out of here. Maybe try to get some help. She pushed back from the little hole she’d cut in the wall—but then somebody in the next room shouted, and she stopped, listening once more.
“Where is she?” the Revered One bellowed. Oh, come on. You know she can’t help you. What’s another round of this going to do?
A high keening sound began, then cut off abruptly with a heavy thud.
“Where is she?”
“Adelaide doesn’t know!”
“Where is the relic?”
“Adelaide needs—I need to go home! I can’t think! I can’t think here, everything is—everything is everything, all the time! I need—I need to go home! You said you could help me, I saw that, Adelaide can I can we can—”
“Where is Ames?”
A pause, and then: “She’s coming! Coming here!” Adelaide shouted, a note of triumph in her voice.
What?
The sound of the lock turning pulled Anna’s attention from the drama next door. For half a second, she thought about dashing back to the closet and hiding, but she knew she’d never make it. She stood and raised her gun just as the door opened.
Two men stood there, staring. The one in front had only his key in hand and no weapons visible. The other had a small revolver jammed into his belt.
“Back the fuck up,” she said. “Right now.”
* * *
“Not good,” Genevieve said as she pulled the car up to the curb.
Nail nodded agreement, adding, “Damn,” under his breath.
The motel was a two-story building, planned in the shape of a giant U, with faded red doors at regular intervals. Lights glowed through the curtains in a handful of units, but it was obvious that business wasn’t so good these days. The small armada of black SUVs that rolled in doubled the number of cars in the parking lot.
Genevieve had kept the car back a ways, hoping the guys in the SUVs wouldn’t see them, but that had created another problem for Nail to worry about. “Sobell’s guys got here first,” he said. “What do we do about that?”
“How many you think there are?” Genevieve asked. She’d started tapping her fingers on the dash again, which made Nail want to tie her hands to her belt or something. That nervous shit spread.
“Dozen. Maybe fifteen. Depends how many guys they jammed into the cars.”
“How’d they know to come here?”
“How the hell should I know? Shut up a second, OK?”
Genevieve went back to wearing a hole in the dash while Nail studied the scene. Fifteen of Sobell’s thugs on one side, surely armed to the teeth and beyond; a shitload of deranged fanatics on the other side; and Anna in the middle.
“Who’s strapped?” he asked.
“I am,” Karyn said. Genevieve shook her head, and Drew just looked down.
“Gen, you got any magic tricks ready if we gotta throw down?”
Genevieve shook her head. Nail could see her sweating, her usual cool composure cracked and useless. “I got nothing. Maybe if I’da prepped, but . . .”
“All right. That’s what we got, then.”
“This is insane,” Drew said. “We’re outnumbered ten to one.”
Nail brushed the comment aside. Wasn’t nothing to be done about it anyway. “Which room?” he asked Drew.
“One forty-four. And one forty-five, six, seven, and eight. Maybe others.”
“Jesus.”
“What’s the plan?” Karyn asked.
Nail shook his head. “Ain’t got one. Love to hear it if you do.”
She didn’t say anything, just kept staring across the way, her eyes distant and haunted in that way they got sometimes. Nail checked his weapon rather than look at her. She’s great, he thought, love that woman, but sometimes she freaks me right the fuck out.
Across the courtyard, the SUVs waited, rumbling, exhaust belching from their tailpipes.
“No plan,” Nail said. It came out even and calm, despite the adrenaline that coursed throu
gh his system. “No time for a plan, and I don’t know that I coulda come up with anything even if I had a few hours to work on it. We wait for an opening, that’s all.”
Nobody said it aloud, but Nail could see it reflected in their eyes and, hell, he thought it himself: Great. Just great.
* * *
“This place is a shithole,” Enoch Sobell announced. To his right, Brown nodded. “I’m half inclined to burn the entire stinking edifice to the ground on principle, Ms. Ames and the bone be damned.”
Brown’s eyes widened fractionally, and Sobell could see him trying to come up with the whole litany of reasons why that was a bad idea. Unfortunately for him, they all tried to come out at once and got logjammed in his throat. His mouth hung open soundlessly.
So tough to find underlings with a sense of humor these days. I suppose I should let him off the hook. “Not today’s job, though,” Sobell said. “We must stay on task.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t suppose that gadget of yours will tell us what room?”
“It’s accurate to within a meter.”
“I don’t know a meter from a furlong, Mr. Brown. Will it tell us the room or not?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
Brown pointed at a door barely fifty feet away. “There.”
“Hm. I would have hoped she’d have better taste. Ah, well. Reconnaissance?”
“None yet. This is the first we’ve been here.”
“Well, then. Let’s have a look around. Slow and steady wins the race, eh? One thing, though—I very much need Ames alive. Her companions, well, feel free to kill any or all of them if they’re in the way. Just don’t hit Ames. It’ll piss me off.”
“Got it.”
“And—oh, hell.” Sobell inclined his head toward the door. “Here they come.”
The door opened and two men stepped out. They exchanged a couple of words, and one of the guys pointed at the other. Even from here, Sobell could see by the buzzing white light outside the door that the second guy had blood on his face. The guy wiped at it, smearing it around some. Then the other guy pulled out a set of keys and, oddly enough, opened the door to the unit right next door.
“What is—”
“Shh,” Sobell said. He leaned forward eagerly. The two men were backing up as a woman emerged from the room, gun in hand. It wasn’t Ames, but almost as good. Ruiz might have answers, and she would surely know where Ames was.
Brown frowned. “I don’t think those are her friends.”
“I concur,” Sobell said. “Shoot both of those men.”
* * *
“Drive!” Karyn yelled.
Genevieve floored it. The car leaped forward with a wail of burning tires.
* * *
The two men backed up out of Anna’s way, but not before sharing a glance. When they backed up, they moved in opposite directions, apparently figuring that one of them could rush her if she turned far enough to shoot the other. She hoped they wouldn’t be stupid enough to try that.
Anna stepped outside. The quartet of black SUVs in the parking lot registered immediately. They didn’t belong in this neighborhood.
Oh, shit.
The doors of the SUVs flew open, disgorging a dozen or more men.
The loud, dry crack of a gunshot echoed through the courtyard. One of the guys in front of her staggered and fell.
Out of reflex, she crouched, getting as low as possible. A moment later, it seemed the whole world erupted in gunfire.
* * *
“One down! Hit ’em, hit ’em!” Brown shouted. He had a lot of enthusiasm for this kind of work, Sobell noted. He had formerly been part of the army or the marines or some ridiculous, testosterone-laden enterprise like that, if Sobell recalled correctly, and this sort of absurd, unsubtle action must have given him the chance to relive his glory days, however briefly.
He was good at it, Sobell had to admit. And Ruiz had done them a favor and dropped out of the way. The guy on the left had been killed immediately, and the other was still moving, stumbling around but filled with holes. Sobell grinned as the guy pulled a gun from his belt and fired a random shot into the air.
A bullet hole appeared in the windshield of Sobell’s vehicle, and the window next to him blew out. He watched, bemused, as the guy fell down and Ruiz started running.
“Well, that’s that,” he said to himself. “Time to go get—”
Another shot, and one of Brown’s bruisers fell backward.
Where did that come from? Sobell wondered, but then he saw a glint of light on a rifle barrel sticking out of a window in the next room over from the one the woman had recently vacated.
Christ, there’s another one? That’s tiresome.
“Mr. Brown, would you—”
Another motel window exploded, then another. A door swung open. The night came alive with noise and blood. Two more of Brown’s men went down before they even started shooting back.
Huh. I think they have more guys than we do, Sobell noted with calm surprise.
He thought it prudent to get down on the floor.
* * *
Bullets smashed into the wall behind Anna, shattering glass and punching holes in wood. Nearer to her, the hail of answering gunfire sounded like an entire invading army had just dropped in. Her first instinct was to stay down, no matter what—most of the shooters were aiming high, and maybe she could stay below the exchange and somehow survive this. Then the body in front of her jumped a couple of times as stray slugs pounded into it.
Too close. Time to go! She started moving in a low, fast crouch. The light fixture overhead exploded, showering glass over her.
The screech of wailing tires cut through the sound of the guns.
Anna blinked. At the end of the row of motel units, not a hundred feet away, Nail’s van came to a shrieking, juddering stop. The side door flew open.
Karyn was there, beckoning to her.
I’ve lost my mind, she thought—but she was already running, bent low and staying as close to the wall as she could manage. A bullet hit the sidewalk ahead of her and chips of cement flew. Two steps past that, she stumbled and nearly fell. Somebody to her right shouted.
She ran past a second door, then a third. There were four more before the car, and she thought her heart might burst from an overdose of adrenaline before then, but she ran.
One of the doors opened, and a man jumped out, seizing her by the arm. She pulled and struggled, she kicked at him, but he was much bigger than she was, and he dragged her toward the door.
* * *
Karyn watched in horror as one of the Brotherhood grabbed Anna’s arm and started hauling her away.
“No!” she screamed—and then she saw. The guy had a bullet wound in his neck.
“Shoot him!” she said.
Nail held his gun, steady as always, but he didn’t pull the trigger. “I got no shot! She’s in the way!”
“Shoot him!”
Nail’s finger tightened, but he still didn’t shoot. He shook his head from side to side. Sweat poured down his forehead, down his face. “She—she ain’t clear! I got no shot.”
“Now!”
He squeezed the trigger. The hammer pulled back.
For the first time ever, Karyn saw Nail’s hand tremble.
The guy behind Anna jerked. His hand flew to his neck, where bright blood quickly flowed through his fingers, and he fell.
No sound had come from Nail’s gun, and his finger was still frozen on the trigger. He hadn’t fired.
He looked at Karyn, eyes wide and spooked. “I woulda hit her. I know it.”
* * *
The hand on her arm abruptly fell away, and Anna ran. The car seemed a thousand yards away, and the war around her went on endlessly, and she ran
harder than she ever had. Her legs burned, and the impact of each footfall on the cement traveled up her body and jarred everything loose, but she pushed herself even harder.
A small explosion came from the parking lot, and she flinched as tiny, stinging fragments of metal cut her neck and legs.
Then she was at the car. Karyn reached for her, pulled her into the backseat, and slammed the door shut. Instantly, the war zone became muted, a TV program in the apartment next door instead of lead-filled reality.
“Go!” she yelled, laughing crazily. “Christ, just go!”
Chapter 24
Well. This has gone rather astonishingly sour. Sobell peeked up over the seat. Sure enough, the firefight was still raging. Half of Brown’s guys, give or take, were down on the ground, either not moving or moving in a way that suggested their moving days had a very limited time horizon remaining. The others had wisely taken cover behind open vehicle doors or the vehicles themselves. The motel, Sobell noted with some satisfaction, was shot full of holes along a fifty-foot stretch, and more appeared every second. Sadly, the people inside were still shooting back.
Of even more concern, it appeared that the front of the vehicle Sobell was in had caught fire.
That’s my cue. He crawled toward the door and slipped awkwardly out, keeping low as he did. Ahead of him, Brown was still returning fire over the burning hood of the vehicle.
He wondered what it took to blow up a car in real life. In the movies, it seemed they’d explode if you sneezed on them particularly violently, but he didn’t think it actually worked that way. How is it that I’ve never found that out in all my years on earth?
Now was probably not the time, he reflected.
“Mr. Brown!”
Brown squeezed off two shots, sending one of the enemy ducking below a blown-out window frame. “Sir?”
“A strategic retreat is in order.”
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