Bone Hunter

by Thea Atkinson

  But that didn't make sense.

  "You're a strange one," she said, looking up at me. "No wonder Morrigan enjoys you so much."

  Something was off. Something I couldn't put my finger on. Those eyes were too mature for her age. They sparked within like a blade slicing across a beam of light.

  I took an involuntary step backward, letting go the material. The jacket gaped open again, showing a delicate collarbone. No blood at all. Clean, unblemished skin. I could barely lift my eyes from the way the bones curved and moved as she did.

  "You're not human," I said.

  She grinned, flashing perfectly even teeth that looked like they might have been filed into small points.

  "Where is she?" the girl said.

  More water seeped into my shoes as I scuffed backwards. She advanced for each step I took.

  "Tell us where she is, and we'll intervene," she said.

  "Intervene in what?" I was scared now.

  She glanced at the coil of dress, still showing bloody and torn beside the dumpster.

  "Your death."

  My death. Those words coming from the mouth of a teenager were chilling enough, but the way it sounded on her lips, expectant, premonitory. Every muscle went tense. I felt as though the blackness swimming at the edges of my eyesight had darkened my hearing too. I couldn't feel my feet.

  "Who are you?" I managed to get out. I wiggled my toes, trying to get some sense of feeling back, enough that I could scuffle backwards. I needed to back up because she was coming at me, slowly, with measured steps, but advancing. My chest shuddered.

  I could swear she was getting taller with each step. The eyes that looked too mature began to match the features.

  "You're afraid," she said, but it wasn't surprise in her voice or empathy.

  There was no tone at all in it in fact; and all I could think was she was dead. She was a ghost or a spirit and she had no humanity or emotion in her.

  "Stay away from me," I said, reaching backward to see how close I was to the door.

  "Don't be afraid," she said. "Death comes for all."

  She spread her arms wide as though to embrace me. "Warriors must be ready to face it."

  "I'm no warrior," I protested. "Just a regular mortal with a need to get out of the city. Let me pass."

  She took another step. "I don't bar your way."

  I looked past her but found I couldn't bring myself to sprint by. She watched me thinking it through.

  I was out of the puddle; my shoes were catching on dry asphalt. I stumbled and caught myself before I could fall.

  "What are you?" I said.

  She chuckled, a low and throaty sound that didn't have a hint of sanity in it. She was mad, I thought. Totally gone.

  "I was trying to help you," I protested, knowing it probably didn't matter to her, but for some reason it mattered to me. It seemed incredibly important and that the tables being turned was unfair somehow. Foul play. The worst of repayments for a good deed.

  I was just a few feet away from the bar's door. A rat squealed from the dumpster and it reminded me of my cat and the way the little thing had fought for its life the night I'd found her. I felt very much like the tiny kitten in that moment.

  "You haven't begun to help," she said smoothly.

  "But I did. I wanted to," I said again and reached behind me, feeling for the door. I wasn't sure why I was so scared, but I was.

  "You visit the vampires. The vampires took her." The girl's voice deepened. A timbre of age crept in. "Therefore, you know where she is. And in the end, you will die to get her back."

  All I could register was the word die. The rest of it, getting someone back, knowing where she was, trying to figure out who the 'she' even was? All just Scrabble tiles of words trying to be sorted into rational thought.

  "That's how you'll help, you know," the girl said, as though I should have made that leap all on my own. "You're Ambrogio's flaw."

  It was all I could do to wrest a question from my beleaguered mind.

  "Who?" I said. "Who are you talking about? Who do the vampires have?"

  "Morrigan," she said, looking annoyed.

  She stretched her arms out to her sides. I fancied I saw broad wings stretch out beneath her arms, trails of black feathers hanging down and reaching for her fingers, and yet she remained the same 14-year-old teenager standing in front of me.

  She met me, body for body as I pressed against the door. I rattled the knob behind my back, but it wouldn't budge. She smelled of copper and wet dog. I could feel her heart beating against mine, but I knew my rhythm outpaced hers and the very fact that hers was beating so calmly taunted me. She was the aggressor. She was the one with all the cards. Her heartbeat proved it.

  "Your death will set you free," she said.

  And that was the thing that broke the protective glass of my fear. Without wanting to, I screamed. Loud. It hurt my ears and made my throat burn and I didn't stop to catch a breath even when she let go my arms and those hands of hers transformed right in front of me into birdlike talons.

  She reached for my throat.

  The shriek that erupted from her was a partner to my own, and I couldn't help throwing my hands over my ears.

  A fold of feathers surrounded me, rigid but buckling as they enfolded my shoulders. I smelled the stink of old detritus and rotten meat. The shriek of a crow overtook the girl's cries and even though I wanted to look at her, beneath the black darkness the enshrouded me I couldn't see anything, couldn't hear anything but that heartbeat.

  I flat-out lost my shit.

  I thrashed against the door.

  I yelled. I screamed. I don't remember the feel of the door against my hands or my shoulders, only the way it finally flew open and the sense of vacant space felt like freefall. I would have hit the floor of the bar with my cheek if someone hadn't caught me and pulled me inside. The door slammed shut behind us.

  I couldn't catch my breath.

  "What in the hell is going on?" Fayed growled.

  I could barely focus through the dizziness. I struggled to master my breathing.

  "I'm not sure," I murmured. I was intact, nothing broken, but I didn't feel okay. I lifted my gaze to his. "Didn't you see her?"

  His brow crinkled in confusion. "See who?" without waiting for an answer he moved to pull open the door.

  "No," I said, thinking that thing would be there, waiting. "Don't."

  His hand paused on the knob.

  "Don't go out there. She's mad."

  I might have expected him to answer to that but a small sort of sigh from behind me caught my attention. I looked at Fayed as his eyes flicked beyond my shoulders. I knew by the expression on his face he didn't want me to turn around.

  "Isabella," he murmured and this time he did look at me.

  I felt something in my chest give way at the look on his face. Dread filled up the space it left, and I turned, slowly at first, giving him time to grapple me because I did not want to see what I knew I would see and yet I had to turn. Had to see what waited for me inside the bar.

  Fayed and I were alone. Whoever his patrons had been, they were long gone. The girl who had delivered my water earlier, however, remained, if in body only. She lay outstretched on the surface of the bar, her feet, shod in sensible shoes, pointed toward the bathroom.

  Her arms were flung to the sides and hanging off the sides of the bar. A long line of red fluid ran down the white skin of her bare arm. Her head strained so far backwards that I could see the deadpan look on her face, the last moment of living terror in her eyes.

  Dead, my mind whispered. She was dead. I thought for a second it had been the girl from out front who had killed her. It would certainly explain the blood.

  Then I remembered the thing outside was not human and not covered in blood at all, and I realized her killer was standing directly beside me.

  CHAPTER 19

  "I told you to never come back," he said as thought that was an apt explanation that made what I'd s
een perfectly plausible and right as rain.

  It was so much like Maddox's excuse that I spun on him with all the anger and fear I'd felt over the last hours. Without thinking, I struck him against the collar bone with a tight fist and got nothing but a cracked and aching set of knuckles for my trouble.

  "Fuck you," I said through tight lips trying to contain a sob. I felt betrayed. I'd trusted him. Trusted Maddox. Was there anyone in the world at all who hold up to a small standard of honesty anymore?

  I was pissed and confused and terrified all at once and all I could think was my bug-out bag must still be there on the table and if it was, I wanted it. I'd yank out the Ruger, the pepper spray, whatever the heck I had in there and I'd give him everything I had because this was not happening. Not today. Not when I'd already seen what I'd seen and lost faith in every other man.

  And most definitely because that girl on the bar counter did not deserve to die that way, chewed on and drained of her life's blood.

  Any other vampire, I might have just been disgusted or angry or afraid. But Fayed?

  Words didn't describe how I felt.

  "You fucker," I said because it was the only thing that seemed to convey it all.

  I stumbled backwards to where I'd been sitting earlier, cradling my sore hand in the crook of my elbow. The pain was already subsiding, but I wasn't about to give in to the relief. Things felt too wrong to let myself feel okay. I couldn't feel better with that girl dead, with Fayed standing, looking at me like that.

  I kicked around with my feet, trying to find the legs of the chair so I could collapse into it. I needed to sit before I fell.

  It was in that search that I spied the bag beneath the table.

  The legs were wobbly and spidered out from beneath the tabletop in five different directions. Even if I knocked my head on the edge and saw a dozen stars sear through the darkness as I dove for it, I knew exactly where the bag was. My fingers strained for the leather handle. I felt the belly of it brush against my fingertips.

  I felt a sure, singular elation in that one moment of decision.

  I'd get him first. Then I'd go for that creature outside whatever the heck she was and then I'd take out that damn fae, and then...

  And then I just sobbed there underneath the table because if I'd learned anything in the last couple of weeks it was that I couldn't count on anything in the supernatural world. Guns, pepper spray, maces were about as useful as a whispered prayer.

  Who knew? Maybe a whispered prayer was the best weapon.

  Here I'd thought I had it all under control. Decision made. Easy.

  Now I was lying on the floor of a vampire bar, throat deep in shit I didn't understand.

  And I knew none of it could be fixed by a blast of pepper spray or a shot of lead.

  I met up with Fayed's gaze beneath the table and he grabbed for my wrists, yanking hard enough that my chest collided with the legs and the wind hiccupped out of me. The bag skittered out of reach as he wormed his way beneath the table with me. The legs cut into my chest.

  "It's not what you think," he said.

  Damn if he didn't sound reasonable. I twisted away from him.

  "Isabella," he said. "Look at me."

  I squeezed my eyes shut so he couldn't compel me. "How can it be anything else?" I demanded.

  He sighed and let go my wrists. "OK, maybe it's exactly what you think."

  I peered out from half open eyes. He'd settled for hefting my bag over his shoulder out of my reach.

  There was nothing left to argue with. No safety net. I was in freefall. What end could there be but the logical one?

  "If you going to kill me," I said. "Do it now. I'm exhausted. I won't fight you. I can't."

  It was true. I had nothing left in me.

  I don't know how I expected him to actually do it. Maybe I imagined he would launch himself at me, teeth bared, his grip pinning me to the floor while he drained way the last bit of blood in my body.

  What he did was pick up the table and throw it to the side. It crashed into the four piece setting nearby and the sound of it was almost too much. I cringed. I was exposed, lying supine on the floor where the table had been, chairs tumbled onto their sides around me.

  My heart clogged up my throat, keeping the whimpers and sobs nicely stuck inside. No sound, my mind whispered. Don't make a sound. I peered sideways to catch sight of him, to brace myself for the inevitable. I was going to die; that thing outside had said so. Because of a vampire.

  Fayed was a roar housed in a trembling body. He was fearsome, terrifying. For a moment I thought he really was going to kill me. He looked down at me with an expression I rarely saw in a man's face unless he was about to do something violent.

  I braced myself for impact, wrapping my arms over my head and tensing up.

  Impact never came. Instead, I was lifted to my feet. The brush of soft hands whispered up my arms to my throat. He cupped the back of my neck, his thumbs cradling my earlobes.

  "How could you think I'd do that, Isabella?" he murmured.

  A chiding note under-painted the anguish in his voice. "If I wanted to kill you, you would have been dead the first time you stepped into my bar."

  I felt a shuddering relief travel my core. I was alive.

  It should have been enough to drain away the anger and the fear, but it wasn't. There was no good way to smooth over the girl lying on the bar with the last of her blood draining down her arms. How could he explain that to me? How could he make that right?

  "You should leave," he said, letting his shoulders sag. He released me and turned his back on me.

  Leave. The idea was laughable if I wasn't so terrified.

  "I can't," I said and laughed out loud at the very thought. It was hopeless. All of it.

  He looked over his shoulder at me. I noticed he aimed his body away from the bar, away from Ismé's accusing stare.

  "You can," he said. "And you should."

  "I'm serious," I said and crawled toward an upended chair.

  He watched me pluck it from its side and put it to rights with a trembling hand. I scooted onto its seat and clutched the edges because I felt like even sitting down, I was too close to a razor sharp edge.

  "What is going on, Isabella?" he said. "You were fine, things were fine not ten minutes ago."

  His confusion was evident. I noticed he was making a point of keeping his movements as quiet and unassuming as his expression. No doubt he thought I'd lost my mind. Maybe I had.

  I pointed to the door and noticed how much my hand shook. I eased out a long breath, purposefully trying to exhale the baddies.

  "Out there," I said and hung over my knees, propping myself there on my elbows because sitting up just seemed like too much effort. "Then in here." I coughed into my hand because the words came out all scratchy. "Maddox." I waved my hand in front of my face. "All of it. Too much."

  I eyed him. "Way too much."

  I expected him to say something in response to the nonsensical statements, but what he did was go over to the bar and lift Ismé into his arms ever so carefully and carry her down the hall toward the bathrooms. He had a back room, I knew. Maybe he took her there so her presence wouldn't bother him anymore. Maybe he felt guilty.

  I let him go because I didn't have it in me to question it or to argue. Whoever she had been, whatever she'd wanted I had to either trust his truth or admit to myself that I was no safer inside than outside and I still didn't know exactly how much trouble I was in outside.

  And that thought alone was enough to keep me pinned to the chair, staring at the door.

  Inside seemed much better. Devil you know and all that.

  I realized I was trembling and laid my palm on my stomach. Definitely in shock. I wondered how much more I could take before things shut down completely. I wondered how long it had been since I'd eaten.

  I looked toward the bar, thinking maybe I could grab a couple of peanuts from a bowl and then remembered Ismé's body that had lain there.
/>   I turned away, feeling as though I'd be sick. I hung over the table, tapping the surface with a fingernail until I heard Fayed pulling a bottle from the shelf behind me and pouring something into a glass. When he approached me again, he slid a shot of amber liquid toward me. It wasn't food by any stretch, but I couldn't imagine a better sustenance right then. I bolted it back and set the glass back onto the table.

  I ran my fingers through my hair. It was a tangled mess and it was sticking to my face from sweat.

  He flipped a chair around and straddled it as he studied me.

  "Start from the beginning," he said and watched as I waited out the burn of the whiskey.

  And then I did. I recounted the creature outside and ended with asking for another bolt of whiskey.

  He retrieved it and passed me a new shot glass.

  "I've heard of the Morrigan," he said, putting an article in front the name. "I've never seen her, and I'm glad for that mercy."

  He eyed me over the bottle of whiskey he held out to me.

  I shook my head at the proffered bottle and he pursed his lips in thought. He was working something out, or at least trying to.

  "Tell me," I prodded. "It can't be worse than me discovering my favorite vampire is a killer or that some of his buddies are going to kill me." I didn't mention how gut-wrenching it was to witness the things Maddox had done.

  I kicked Fayed with my toe. We were far off from normal again, but the booze helped calm me, and that was something. I could even pretend there wasn't some strange creature outside waiting for me.

  "No buddies of mine," he said. "I'm rogue." As though that would explain everything.

  He sighed and stretched his legs out in front of him.