Still wobbly, she half hopped, half stepped her way out the kitchen door and into the garage. The stench of old grease and rusty car parts assailed her nose, too similar to her memory of the basement where she’d nearly died.
Caroline fought for her control, shoving past the traumatic memories that flew at her. If she couldn’t control her own emotions, how could she expect to control her adversary’s? She had to keep her head, or she’d be paralyzed by fear.
She stepped into the smelly darkness and felt for a light switch on the wall. One bare bulb in the ceiling. Way too much like that basement had been. She slammed it off and clung to the wall, willing herself to breathe.
When she was sure of herself again, she explored, keeping her hands in front of her as she went along. A little sunlight shone in through greasy windows in the weathered double doors. This place was more like an old carriage house than a garage.
There was one car and a boat. She spent one precious hour going through them and returned to the kitchen with her treasures: a pulley, a sizable coil of rope and a very dull ax. She eyed the ax blade for a long moment. The obvious possibilities ran through her mind.
But she’d meant what she said to Burke. She wouldn’t kill him. She wouldn’t stoop to his level. The only thing that made the difference tonight, between the hunter and the hunted, was her refusal to cross a line he’d erased long ago.
As she piled all her defenses on the kitchen floor and set to work, a twinge of animosity, mixed with hope, made her face flush hot.
Look out, Goliath.
Chapter 14
The sun had all but gone. Burke cocked his rifle and proceeded up the driveway toward the house. He passed through a green-black tangle of shrubs that closed in on the yard and shuddered. The memory of rubber bullets whizzing overhead and hard gazes watching him from the trees drove him on.
As he crossed the yard, he schooled his mind to focus on the job at hand, and only that. But the trees seemed to be alive tonight. Watching him.
He mounted the porch. The door stood slightly ajar, welcoming him. That was cocky of her. Noise poured out of the house. He listened. It sounded as if she’d turned on every radio, stereo and TV she could reach. Smart. Being less than nimble, she wouldn’t be very quiet on foot; hence, the noise pollution to cover the sounds of her movements. She would put up a delicious fight.
Not that it would last long.
He walked forward, gripped the doorknob in his gloved hand and pushed the door open slowly. In the instant between training his eye on the dark interior of the house and hearing a scraping noise above his head, Burke realized he had underestimated Caroline.
A heavy metal object crashed down on his head, crushing the light out of his eyes and jarring him with pain. He staggered across the threshold and caught himself on a wall that kept turning sideways. Seeing double, he felt for the bleeding lump on his head, scowled at the fallen fire extinguisher at his feet and tried to adjust to his double vision and pitching stomach.
“Very good, Caroline,” he called out in the emptiness. “You’ve struck the first blow.”
No pain. No sickness. Move. Move. Carry out the mission. Find the target. Terminate her.
Burke proceeded unsteadily into the noisy, shadowy room. The place was oppressive. His chest felt as heavy as his pounding skull did. He swallowed and wiped the sweat from his upper lip as senseless dread unfurled in the pit of his stomach, leaving his limbs icy and heavy and unresponsive.
He hadn’t felt this way since…
The terror that had ruled his childhood erupted inside him, setting his heart pounding. The room stifled him with his boyhood horrors. He turned his face toward the window and tried to breathe, tried to separate himself from his emotions as he’d been taught to do.
A board creaked in the darkness behind him. He turned and lashed out, felt his fist connect with a sinewy arm, as something sharp skidded from his ribs all the way down to his thigh. A gouging pain in his leg tore the breath from his lungs. What had she skewered him with?
As he collapsed to his knees, he felt her lithe little body tumble past him in the gathering grayness. A scuffling noise could barely be heard above the roar in his ears, and a hard jerk on his shoulder thrust his forehead to the floor. His gun was gone. Fear shook him again. His prey was armed.
Burke clamped his eyes and teeth shut as nausea swept over him. He waited for the shower of bullets from his semiautomatic. When she didn’t fire on him, he lifted his head and looked around. He saw no sign of her.
Cursing, he felt along his wounded thigh. His groping fingers found the handle of a screwdriver. The rest of it was buried in his flesh. He yanked it out and fought to stay conscious.
She should have shot him when she had the chance. Her determination to play by her own rules would lead her right into his hands.
Burke slid his belt off, wrapped it around his bleeding leg and pulled it tight. Reaching into his flack vest, he pulled out a loaded M9 and pushed himself to his feet with a groan.
The curtain in the window across from him billowed in the night breeze. Burke approached the window carefully, dragging his leg as he moved. He nudged the curtains aside with the tip of his pistol, expecting to see a hobbling figure retreating to the woods.
A shard of something sharp pelted him from behind. Whipping around, he ducked as another sliced his forehead. Turning that fast on his feet made his head spin again, and his stomach gurgled and pitched. The room duplicated itself in a sickly swirl of black and white and flying glass.
With a roar, he emptied his pistol in all directions, until the humiliation of her attack stopped. Looking around him, he scrutinized the best hiding places in the room. There was only one. The sofa near the front door.
Hiding herself in this room had been a serious error on her part. He had her trapped now. There was no way she could get past him. Let her have time to realize he’d pinned her down. For ordinary people, the shock alone usually immobilized them. No need to hurry now. She was his. He kept his gaze on the sofa while he reloaded and picked as much of the glass out of his back and shoulders as he could reach.
“You know, Caroline, usually when my target gives me this much trouble, even though I admire their stamina, I make them suffer for it when I catch up with them. But not you.” He took a breath, reveling in the power over her that his next words gave him. “If you give yourself up now, I can keep a promise I made to your father. I told him your death would be painless.”
Burke stalked to the sofa, thinking he’d find her huddling behind it, ready to beg for her life. He shoved it aside. She wasn’t there. He staggered in a circle. There were only three directions she could have gone. Out the front door, into the kitchen and up the stairs to the second floor.
He had never made the mistake of hemming himself in like that. If he had, they’d have hurt him for it.
The dread he had felt moments ago budded inside him again. For a moment the wallpaper on the walls seemed to resemble eyes watching him from forest greenery. It woke every ounce of caution he had. He wouldn’t underestimate her again.
He scarcely heard the chopping noise and soft whir of movement over the sound of the blaring radio nearby. He turned in time to see Caroline rising into the darkness like an angel. He leaped toward her, but missed. She’d taken the high ground. Panic seized him. He’d expected a tearful, pleading Caroline to come forward and give herself up to him to save her father’s life. Nothing moved above him. He couldn’t hear her. He couldn’t see her. He waited, holding his breath.
The sound of a cell phone ringing behind him nearly made him waste more of his ammunition. He answered it.
Her voice was icy. “You lied to me. You wanted this to be between you and me. You said none of my loved ones would be hurt if I gave you a good hunt. But now you’ve involved my father. A real warrior accomplishes his objective without using hostages. We’re playing by my rules now.”
She hung up.
An instant later, something careened out of the d
arkness, nicking his shoulder before it hit the floorboards behind him with a thunk.
He turned. An ax was lodged in the floor.
He threw the cell phone down and waited, gun ready. She could have killed him anytime. Why hadn’t she?
Something swung out of the darkness and slammed into his chest, knocking him backward. He ricocheted against the wall and landed facedown on the floor. He came to his feet, firing at the ceiling. Another magazine spent. Another loaded.
A rope dangled in front of him. He caught it, bleary-eyed and feeling sick, just as he heard the same whirring sound as before. This time he ducked and covered his head. He caught the sound of a bare foot hitting the second-floor landing only yards above him and fired toward the sound.
She yelped and clamored down the hallway, just ahead of his next barrage of bullets.
She was definitely wounded. Burke began his slow ascent.
Watching Hicks pace was enough to drive Meical mad.
Suddenly the revenant halted, squeaked out a laugh and turned to Meical with a gloating smile. “I’ve got Neshi’s blood in my veins. There’s nothing you have that can make me stronger than I am now.”
Meical gathered his composure, his desperate thoughts all for Caroline. “Yeah. Right.”
The revenant looked at him more closely. Really studied him. Meical shielded his intentions, just in case Hicks could read him better than he thought.
Hicks crept closer and leaned against the wall, just out of reach. Meical could almost taste the revenant’s blood now. He yearned for it. The thought woke an ache in his gums. This time, he welcomed the pain.
“He didn’t give you his blood,” said Hicks. “That’s not how he made you an incubus. So what did he give you?”
Meical answered offhandedly. “Some kind of herbal crap.”
“I could get some if I wanted it, freak.”
“No, he has to give it to you. And he didn’t. And he won’t.”
Meical watched Hicks seethe.
“Where does he keep it?” asked Hicks.
“You think I’d tell you? I’d rather rip out your spinal cord and strangle you with it.”
Hicks’s eyes reddened and glowed. He slipped a knife out of his boot and held it up in the lantern light. “I bet you’ll tell me if I bleed you a little.”
Meical bade his entire body to relax, while underneath, he gathered his energy. “Bad idea, Hicks. Don’t do this.”
The pain caught him by surprise, but another pain, very familiar, followed swiftly on its heels. When Meical opened his eyes, the knife was buried in the palm of his manacled hand and a new set of fangs had emerged from his gums.
As Hicks plucked the knife out of his hand, Meical clamped his mouth shut to keep his canines out of sight and freed the beast inside him at last.
Hicks’s gaze was fixed on the blood that ran down Meical’s sleeve. Meical summoned his strength, ripped his hands free of the manacles and grabbed Hicks by the head. The revenant tried once to gouge him with the knife, but Meical caught his wrist and twisted it a half turn to the right. The knife clanged on the floor, and Hicks howled with pain.
Even as Hicks twitched and struggled, the might of Neshi’s blood in his veins manifested in the unearthly speed of his healing. Before Meical’s eyes, his twisted hand righted itself and knit together again.
Meical shook Hicks hard and jerked his head up to make him look him in the eyes. “Well, well, well. Here we are, two of Neshi’s recent accomplishments. Abominations, both of us.”
Hicks screamed again. The scream ended in an animalistic squeal.
“If it’s any consolation to you,” Meical growled, “I probably can’t kill you, since Neshi created you.” He wrenched Hicks’s head back. “Not that I won’t try.”
Meical plunged his fangs into the translucent, scrawny throat and drank. The first three gulps went down like acid and came back up again. He managed to hold on to his squirming prey while he emptied his stomach. When he quit vomiting, he jerked Hicks upright and drank again. He had to make this work.
This time he tasted Neshi’s blood. It went straight to his head. Yesssss…the red darkness slipped over him and finally…finally…euphoria.
The same thing that would finish him hours from now swept like a river through him now. Meical felt himself shatter beneath the weight of the sheer timelessness of Neshi’s power until there was no more Meical.
The succubus had said he’d be unfit for Caroline. Surely this was what she had meant. Nothing left of him, not the man he’d been once so long ago…not the vampire he had become…
All that remained was the beast of appetite within him, a gift from Neshi’s ancient, insatiable hunger.
He’d make it serve him well.
Caroline got as far as the last bedroom and slipped to the floor with her back against the wall. She could see the attic stairway just beyond the door. It was as good a place as any to make her last stand. Then let him find her. He’d regret it forever. No more running.
Focus. Focus. Where was Burke now?
She sought out the red-hot mass of rage and fear that filled the house and followed it to its epicenter. He was coming upstairs. His search for her below had bought her time. But now he knew she could only be somewhere up here. If she hesitated another minute, the only thing that would separate them was the length of the hallway. Move. Move now. Now, now, now…
Caroline dragged herself to her feet, wobbled on her prosthetic leg and leaned in the open doorway of the bedroom to take a look down the hallway. He was just coming into view as he topped the stairway, intent at the moment on managing those last few steps. By the way he was struggling, it looked as if she’d made that climb harder on him that it had been for her.
She slipped into the hallway, keeping an eye on him as she moved, and made it to the short stairway to the attic. She took her gaze off him long enough to get to the narrow doorway and reached for the doorknob.
A bullet hit the wall just over her right shoulder, then another at her feet, and the stair beneath her seemed to explode. Suddenly she was on her knees, clinging to the doorknob. She twisted it in all directions. The next bullet wouldn’t miss. The door flew open, and she rolled into the waiting darkness, slamming the door shut behind her with her good foot.
Her prosthetic leg was gone. He would pay for that. Pushing herself up from the floor on her knee, she felt and fumbled in the dark for a lock on the door, a sliding bolt, anything. She just needed time to recover her focus and work on him.
But there was nothing.
She could hear him just outside, kicking aside the debris from the attic steps, moving closer.
Caroline turned and eyed the warm, dark room. She just needed a little time and something to put between her and his gun. She lay down on her belly and dogpaddled over the floor to the back of the room, around and between an assortment of discarded furniture, until she found the back wall. Once she had a forest of inanimate objects around her, she rolled onto her back, scooted behind an old wardrobe and leaned against the wall for support.
She got a moment of blessed silence, a respite in which she could just breathe and renew her grip on her runaway emotions, and then the door crashed open.
She clutched at the gunman’s psychotic fear and stoked it like a fire. She sensed his inward flinching, his attempt to cast off the mounting terror she built inside him. She could almost feel him gripping his gun more tightly, turning this way and that, fighting the loss of control over his emotions.
When he was close enough for her to feel the vibration of his boots on the floor, she peeked out to get a look at him.
Yes, she was definitely getting to him. He was loading a second pistol, so he’d have one for each hand.
“I promised your father,” he said, “that I’d give you a painless death. Don’t make me go back on that promise.”
He was toying with her.
“Come out now, Miss Olek, and let’s do what we have to do. Do it now, and I give you my
word I can keep that promise to your father.”
The thought of what her dad might have endured at this maniac’s hands turned Caroline’s anger to rage. She gave her attacker a psychic shove, using the memories of his old abusers and bore down on the hot thread of his terror, feeding it until it escalated to panic.
When he gasped a couple of times and groaned, she knew she had him. She surrounded him with endless trees and a gauntlet of armed men who fired at him from all sides until that became his only reality, and his inner demons pushed him toward his breaking point.
In an effort to rid himself of his invisible enemies, he yelled and sprayed the attic with bullets.
Caught between the wardrobe and the wall, Caroline flattened herself on the floor and covered her head, as the furnishings around her splintered in a thousand directions, toppling in on her one by one.
The next thing she knew, someone yanked her off the floor, knocking the breath out of her. She came up fighting, slinging her fists and kicking with her leg. An iron-strong arm squeezed her close, and a hand closed on her mouth before she could scream. She opened her watering eyes to find herself looking down at the attic from the ceiling.
Caroline had just enough presence of mind to realize she was dangling from a familiar arm before a wave of energy clapped like lightning in her head and she passed out.
She came to on the floor of the attic, thirsty and shaking. Where was he? Where was Meical? She felt his presence, but he didn’t feel right.
The shuffle of a shoe on the floor reached her, and she opened her eyes to look for him. A splash of moonlight from a window on the far side of the room illuminated two figures in the corner nearest her. Caroline blinked and stared.
Meical clutched the motionless gunman close and ripped into his neck with his teeth, catching blood in his mouth as though drinking from a fountain. He’d slipped over the edge.
“Stop, Meical!”
His head shot up. “Better him than you.”
What did he mean by that? “Let go of him. Just listen to me. Look, I’m not hurt. I’m safe. You came in time. Just let him go.”
Incubus Page 18
