“Cease firing your weapon,” Darc said, his tone as flat as Trey had ever heard. “It is a waste of resources.”
“Yeah?” Trey shot back. “I’m not seeing you come up with any brilliant ideas.”
The tall detective continued to back toward the storage units, Trey pressed against his side. All around them, the dogs advanced, snarling their rage.
Darc remained silent. Well, crap. That hadn’t exactly been the plan.
“Listen, Darc. That was kind of your cue, you know? To come up with a brilliant plan? In case that wasn’t clear or something…”
But Trey’s partner just turned a look on him that seemed like it was filled with death and despair. Seriously, what was up Darc’s butt?
“Dude, what’s happening with you? I’ve never seen you so--”
A lunge from one of the dogs cut off that line of communication. Trey lifted a knee, catching the dog right in the sternum and sending it careening back into its pack mates. The animals seemed to be working their way up to a fever pitch.
“This doesn’t seem to be one of our finer moments, you know?” Trey looked around for what felt like the twentieth time, hoping that maybe this time he would notice something he’d missed. “I’m not seeing a way out.”
Just then there was a yell from a distance. Sounded like a woman’s voice.
The dogs all around them stopped for a moment, ears perked up. The call came again, louder. This time a few of the animals nearest to where the sound was coming from peeled off, sniffing in that direction.
The ones nearest to Darc and Trey still hadn’t budged, but their attention seemed a bit divided. And by that, Trey meant that they weren’t staring right at him like he was a slab of beef that had been properly seasoned and grilled.
To Trey’s side, Darc cocked his head and clenched his fist.
Well, that was it. Trey had no idea what was coming next. He only knew one thing for certain.
He wasn’t going to like it.
* * *
Mala strained against her incision, feeling the pull of the stitches. It had to be her imagination, but it felt as if she could sense every single individual knot. Every place the surgeon had tied off one of the sutures.
And every last one of them hurt.
Maybe she should have taken the morphine hit when Carly had offered it. All five times. But as much as the pain was real and present, Mala was glad to have all of her senses about her at the moment.
It could just be Carly, right? She could have slipped in while Mala was asleep and now didn’t want to bother anyone. That was a valid reason for remaining silent.
But this stillness wasn’t only the absence of sound. Mala knew that feeling well. How many nights had she spent with a suicidal patient recovering from a failed attempt?
The feel of that silence was a far cry from the menace she sensed inside this room. Something was wrong, and to ignore it would be to go against every instinct that existed in Mala’s body.
So rather than call out, rather than test the identity with an acknowledgment of its presence, Mala chose another path. The path of pain.
She shifted a bit in the bed, hearing the rustling of the bed linens. That wasn’t good. The sound was far too loud in the crypt of a room she was trapped in right now.
But even as she despaired, knowing that there was no way out for her, another sound appeared in the room. The whirring of the ventilation. The air was moving in her room as the central heating kicked on.
The noise was just enough to mask the movement, but wouldn’t stay that way for long. Within moments, her assailant would adjust to the new source of sound and be able to hear every other nuance.
Sliding out of her hospital bed was one of the most difficult things Mala had ever attempted in her life. Angling her body so that she landed on the far side of where the sound had first alerted her, Mala bit down on her tongue to keep from moaning in pain.
As her feet touched the cold floor, Mala tried to think through her options with a mind that was singing with agony. Marshaling her thoughts while slithering around with a large incision in her chest was maybe not the best plan in the world.
There was another sound, this time the swishing of fabric against fabric. The unknown entity was on the move.
Mala, her exact position no longer a known quantity, was out of immediate danger. But the moment her attacker realized she was no longer in the bed, it wouldn’t take any time at all before she was found. Alone, naked but for a hospital gown, and completely unarmed.
This wasn’t good.
And then she remembered the syringe. The empty syringe that Carly may or may not have left on the bed next to Mala.
There had been no way that Mala was just going to leave it where it was, right next to her IV tube. But she hadn’t really wanted to ask Carly about it, either.
The teenager had gotten snippy about Mala not wanting to push the button for the morphine drip. Imagine asking a question like, Hey, was it you that left the air-filled syringe right next to the IV drip, or was it someone else that was trying to maybe kill me? That would have gone over fantastically.
And it always could have just been a mistake. Some nurse who had stored a syringe in the breast pocket of her lab coat, where it had fallen out when Mala was getting her blood pressure checked or something. That was possible, right?
So Mala had slid it over and underneath her leg. And it was now just sitting up there, exposed on the empty bed.
Some stray breath of air must have warned her, but just as Mala reached up to find the syringe, whoever was in the room chose that moment to lunge toward the bed. Somehow, Mala’s hand closed around the syringe with no searching, and she managed to move to the end of the bed.
There were multiple flashes of light, and the sharp hiss-pop of bullets fired through a suppressor. The bed vibrated against Mala with the impact of the shots, and her heart quailed within her.
Up to that moment, it could have all just been her overactive imagination. Now it was clear how serious this was. Estimating where her attacker’s torso might be, Mala dove from around the end of the bed, wielding her syringe like a knife, jabbing it into soft, yielding flesh.
There was a sharp intake of breath followed by a moan, but Mala didn’t wait to hear more. She twisted her hand down with a sharp movement, breaking off the needle in her assailant’s body, then dashed for the door.
All she needed to do was to make it out to where the guards were. They could take care of all the rest.
Wrenching the door open felt like it was wrenching her open in turn, but she managed to get through without any bullets ripping through her back. But what she found once she was out in the hall stopped her more thoroughly than any bullet could have.
There was no one there. No police guard whatsoever.
Mala was on her own against a homicidal maniac.
* * *
Darc waited for one more instant, calculating the risk of the move he was about to make against the chance of success. The odds were less than he would have liked, but greater than any of the other scenarios that had been running through his network of logic over the last twenty seconds.
No, twenty-one point three seconds. Trey, by demanding that he come up with a solution, had slowed him down by one point three seconds.
And then, the one dog that was still starting straight at Darc looked off in the direction of the calls they had heard. That was the last piece of the puzzle.
Darc sprang into motion, leaping onto the back of the nearest animal. Bearing down with all his weight, he used his forward momentum to both incapacitate the canine, as well as springing on to the next animal in the pattern laid out by the streams of color.
There was only enough force to take down two dogs before Darc ran out of both kinetic energy, as well as the element of surprise. These animals were trained to fight and were currently pumped full of drugs that heightened their reflexes.
The yelps of the two animals going down was matched only b
y the cry of surprise coming from Trey. That had been anticipated, and was part of the pattern.
The dogs, responding to this new threat, had turned their attention on Darc, but the cry from Trey held them suspended between the two men. Just for a brief moment. Long enough for Darc to bring the other elements of the plan into play.
He had held one last shot from his canister of pepper spray in reserve. That final bit he sprayed into the muzzle of the nearest animal, sending the dog into paroxysms of whining and sneezing.
A knee into the ribs of one last canine, and Darc was free of the pack. Now the final part of the plan came into play.
Darc would run, and the dogs would chase him.
The instinct for these animals to pursue a fleeing prey would overcome all other considerations. They would eventually overtake Darc, but they would be far enough away from Trey that his partner would be able to escape.
Darc had heard his partner calling Dispatch. They would be here soon, and Animal Control with them. Trey would be fine.
Where the plan left Darc was an unfortunate, but logical, consequence.
* * *
“Stay in the car!”
Those had been the last words Cat had said as she and Jake opened up the door and headed out into the night. Jessalyn was still out cold, but as the sound of the dogs barking filtered in through the closed windows, she stirred a little bit. Or maybe that was just the lights of a passing car making it look like she’d shifted position.
Janey felt bad.
First, she felt bad because she wasn’t even going to try to stay in the car. That piece of guilt wasn’t so hard to deal with. Even Cat should know better than to think that Janey would listen when Darc and Trey were involved.
But the second one was more difficult. It wasn’t just that she was leaving to help out Darc and Trey. It was that she was leaving Jessalyn all by herself.
Janey would lock the door, but if her friend woke up here in a scary place in the dark, hearing guns and dogs everywhere… There was no way of knowing how she’d react, but Janey was pretty sure it wouldn’t be good.
Then, Janey accidentally bumped into her friend. Jessalyn didn’t move a muscle. Even her breathing stayed the same.
Popeye snorted and said something about rocks being more alert. It wasn’t very nice, and Janey was glad that Jessalyn was asleep so she didn’t have to hear it.
She opened the door, making sure to be as quiet as possible, just in case Jessalyn was more sensitive to sound than she was to touch. As she locked the doors to the car, Janey checked to make sure the keys weren’t in the ignition. Wouldn’t be a good idea to trap her best friend in there, if Cat and Jake weren’t smart enough to take their keys with them as they went off to…
What? What were they doing?
That was the part that didn’t make much sense. Cat was a good friend to Mala, and she seemed to like Darc well enough, but for her to risk danger to help out? Maybe Janey had underestimated the strength of that friendship.
But then the sound of the dogs started to get louder and louder, and Janey’s attention was dragged back to the night around her. There was one streetlight a ways off that cast a hazy light through the light mist that was falling. And in that light, Janey watched as a familiar silhouette raced around the corner.
It was Darc.
And there were dozens of angry dogs right on his heels.
CHAPTER 9
The Servant felt… unsettled.
Back at the hospital, Mala was being taken care of. And while that involved causing suffering that would trouble the Servant for years to come, Mala being removed from the larger game was a necessity. She seemed to be one of the true innocents, not one of the corrupt who deserved to be purged from a slime-infested city.
But now, the two detectives were trapped by a pack of hopped up and vicious animals. The likelihood that they would escape unharmed was miniscule.
Of course, the Servant had seen those two men elude far more elaborate traps. Truth be told, this particular scenario was less about killing or incapacitating them. It was more about keeping them away so that the Master’s forces could converge on Mala.
She was the one who kept the Master up at night. It was her digging after the symbols and clues that had caused the timetable to be advanced.
While Darcmel had the intellectual acumen to cause the Master difficulties, it was the way Mala seemed to be able to see the interpersonal relationships that was causing the Master to sweat. It was a capability they had anticipated in her, but its effects had been disturbingly far-reaching.
She had managed to escape the Master’s reach more than once. But tonight should end the chase. Mala was incapacitated, drugged and in pain, and all of those who were supposed to be guarding her had been removed from play.
Once Mala was no longer an issue, the final countdown to the true plan could begin. There would be no one with the necessary skill set to halt its progress.
Then, finally, the Master would be pleased, and the Servant would gain ascendance through the chaos of what was to come. It was time.
Past time.
* * *
Mala could feel her stitches pull with every movement she made as she groped her way down the empty hallway. It was late at night… possibly early in the morning… but the fact that there was no one there was disconcerting.
There should at least be nurses bustling about. Something. But instead, all that existed was this dim nothingness. Like the world had been nudged into some other dimension that was sucking away at the fabric of reality.
Her first instinct as she left the room had been to scream for help, but that very sense of unreality had stilled her tongue. Now that some of the haze had been pushed back, Mala was glad she had refrained.
How could she know whom to trust? Anyone could be a threat.
The more and more Mala had peeled back the layers of hazy information shrouding this Master, the more she had encountered walls of protection. That was only possible for someone with strong connections everywhere.
And Mala had now been attacked twice in this hospital. While under guard.
She slipped into a room that she thought at first was empty. Turned out to hold a sleeping patient, who didn’t stir as Mala entered the room.
Turning back to peer into the hallway from the glass window, Mala searched for her attacker. Certainly whoever it was would follow? And yet she saw no one.
She waited, trying to still her pounding heart, quiet her ragged breathing. If for no other reason than that it was causing her considerable pain.
This was not sustainable. Mala had to find a way out of the hospital, but she was currently only wearing one of those hospital dressing gowns. That wouldn’t get her far.
After waiting for what felt like another hour, but was more than likely less than five minutes, Mala risked opening the door once more. Edging out into the hall, she peered around the nearby rooms, trying to assess which one might hold what she needed.
If only she’d been able to grab her clothes from her own room. But there had been no way she was going to spend another second in that place, with some unseen assailant with a silenced gun coming after her.
She entered another room, startling a family of four who appeared to be gathered around an older relative’s bedside. Waving and backing out, Mala apologized.
“Sorry. Wrong room.”
What she must have looked like to them, she could only imagine.
Pushing her way into another room, this one darkened, Mala felt her breath catch in her throat as the lights all through the hall went out at once. Muffled cries of protest arose from the rooms.
Was it just a blackout? Her gut told her that the timing was far too convenient.
This was her attacker, looking for a way to move through the darkness. Panic rose up inside her, and she felt her limbs wanting to lock in place, a primal instinct to evade the visual acuity of a predator.
But this predator had a human mind. One that would not
be fooled by mere stillness. She had to stay present, with all of her faculties fully engaged.
If her attacker wished to move in the darkness, that meant that whoever it was had no desire to be exposed. Which meant that it was less likely that there were multiple accomplices running around, right?
But did it mean that for sure? Mala’s guards had disappeared. Reassigned? Forcibly removed? She had no way of knowing.
Another room. She groped for the handle in the darkness, cringing at the sound the latch made as it disengaged. A dim glow came from the monitor near the side of the patient’s bed… running on battery power, a precaution against power outages. Right now, it provided Mala with just what she needed. Illumination.
The patient in this room was a younger woman, approximately Mala’s size. A quick search uncovered clothing that Mala then took with her into the bathroom.
Waiting until the door closed entirely, Mala stripped off her gown in the pitch blackness, undressing and then dressing based on feel. She might have no idea what she was going to do next, but at least she would do it dressed.
It was small comfort, but if Mala were to die tonight, she was going out clothed.
* * *
Dogs barked from behind, their cries echoing off the walls of the storage units on either side. The sound of the hunt tugged at Darc’s consciousness, affecting him in spite of his normal state of detachment. The black cords inside blossomed with the sounds, writhing and twisting in either agony or ecstasy.
The plan had now changed. There was no way it could remain the same, not with Janey now in the picture. A violent end could not include her.
Darc scooped up Janey in his arms, feeling the solid heft of the girl as he did so. She had grown in the past year, was changing physically and mentally. Something about that logical fact disturbed Darc, caused a stirring down inside. A brief flush of silver that was quickly snuffed out by the surrounding darkness.
That entire train of thought ran underneath the processing of the colored strands of light. Observation occurring in real time, but heightened by the dark bindings that supported the interplay of logic.
The 2nd Cycle of the Darc Murders Omnibus (the acclaimed series from #1 Police Procedural and Hard Boiled authors Carolyn McCray and Ben Hopkin) Page 61
