Blood Hunt

by Lucienne Diver

  The door bucked and gave, and in the next instant, I heard glass break from the back of the house. Anyone inside would know they were being invaded.

  I entered cautiously, xiphos prepared to slash. The front entrance was crowded with shoes—sneakers, sandals, flip-flops from kid-sized to adult. Enough to trip over. I brushed them aside with my foot and kept going. The foyer opened immediately onto a small living room covered in laundry, as though someone had been folding and sorting when they’d been interrupted.

  Apollo met me a second later, coming from the back of the house, the kitchen entrance. He shook his head as our eyes met to let me know there was no one back there. Together we stopped and listened to the rest of the house. All was eerily silent, but my precog insisted that to be misleading.

  At least we didn’t have much to search. There was only one way to go. Off the living room was a hallway lined with closed doors. Four of them. Two on one side, one on the other and a door at the end which was probably the master bedroom.

  I took the lead. The first door I came to was on the left. I opened it quickly, poised with my xiphos in case anything jumped out, but it was just a bathroom…with a patina of red staining the sink and suspicious dark stains on the towels tossed to the side of the sink and onto the floor. The incongruously cheerful ducky shower curtain was yanked back and half off its rings, so it was clear no one was hiding behind it.

  I didn’t venture any farther. The police forensic team would want to sweep it for clues, evidence to wrap their murder cases up with neat little bows. I was interested in saving the survivors.

  Apollo looked over my shoulder, saw that there was nothing to see and moved on to the next room. I closed the door behind me to maintain the scene the best I could and waited to one side of the next door while he stood to the other side. My precog was going crazy as he turned the knob, but there was no need to say a word. His senses were even more developed than mine and we couldn’t be any more ready than we already were.

  He thrust the door open as soon as the catch released. The sight that greeted us was horrendous. Inside what was clearly meant to be a kids’ room—red with auto-racing details everywhere from the race-car runner to the checkered and yellow flags crossed decoratively on the walls—were twin beds sporting material that would definitely be disturbing to younger viewers. Bodies. Two of them. Both female. One with golden curls falling over the pillow and onto the floor like abandoned party streamers. The other with scads of dark hair that glistened wet with blood.

  Both had their chests laid bare. Not in the sense of clothing pulled back or ripped off, but in the sense of flesh rolled back like sod to reveal what was underneath—only I couldn’t see what that might be through all the blood. The sternum…the heart…I couldn’t tell what was still there and what wasn’t. Bile rose, and a vision started to rise up. I fought it down. My precog was still going insane, alarm bells now ringing loud enough to rattle my brain. I couldn’t afford to be distracted or out of time in my own little blood-slicked world.

  Apollo stepped toward the beds. One step, then another. My alarm bells were deafening.

  “Don’t,” I called, not sure why. Surely neither of these women—Sulis of the golden curls and perhaps Aphrodite’s missing nymph with the darker hair—were in any condition to harm him, but as he reached them, something whipped out from beneath the one bed and grabbed Apollo around both ankles, yanking his feet out from under him.

  He cried out as he toppled toward the other bed, about to, literally, fall on his sword. I lurched forward to catch him, knowing I’d be too late, when a shriek from behind warned me of my own danger. I whirled, instinctively raising my xiphos to ward off an on-rushing blow. A cartoonishly large kitchen knife caught on the cross guard of my blade just before it would have buried itself in my neck.

  I forced my gaze past it and looked beyond…straight into the crazed eyes of my client.

  “Jessica!” I cried, shocked.

  She answered with a snarl that sounded anything but human, crushed my hand around my hilt with her free hand and ripped loose her kitchen knife, swinging her freed blade for my gut. I tried to leap back, but she held me there with that hand bruising mine, and I only managed to get enough distance to lessen the depth of the slash, but the sharp pain in my abdomen and the sudden heat of gushing blood shouted that I hadn’t done enough. I whipped the dagger from my waistband, now doubly armed, and slashed it at her knife hand as she pulled back for another attack.

  I felt my blade slice, and took instant advantage of her reaction by pressing my trapped hand and xiphos toward her. She was prepared for me to try to yank the blade free, not to swing for her and she wasn’t able to adjust quickly enough. I twisted as I pushed so that if I hit her it would be with the blunt of the blade rather than the edge. She was my client and clearly not herself. I didn’t want to kill her. It wouldn’t do good things for my professional reputation or my conscience.

  The blunt of the xiphos struck her dead center of the forehead, and her eyes seemed to roll up to look, but I hadn’t hit her hard enough to knock her out. Not with her own hand still crushing my fingers to the hilt.

  I didn’t wait for her to recover, but jammed my foot down hard on her instep, whirled around, torquing to the side so her hand and body would have to move in unnatural ways that would put her off balance if she wanted to stay with me. She let go instead, which was what I’d been hoping for. I finished my spin, coming full circle and slashing the blade down toward her calves. Hoping for hamstrings or her Achilles’ heel, willing to settle for anything that took her down.

  But she wasn’t where I’d expected her to be. She danced back and now held her knife in front of her like a street fighter, the look on her face just as feral.

  “Jessica,” I said sharply, trying to break through her Set-induced fog. “Jessica, this is Tori. I’m here to help. Don’t—”

  She ran at me, stabbing with her knife, going for my center of mass. I jumped back, but there was no space to maneuver in the small room, and I didn’t want to trip over Apollo, who was fighting his own battle, kicking and flailing, but seeming as reluctant as I was to use his blade. I thought I heard him call, “Thalia!” but I couldn’t spare the attention to look. Anyway, it couldn’t be. Couldn’t.

  Dammit, there was not going to be any reasoning with Jessica. I waited for her crazed gaze to meet mine again and yelled, “Freeze!”

  She stopped dead, not so much as a twitch to her snarl. I didn’t wait to see if she’d shake herself out of it. If chaos could trump paralysis with her as it had with her brothers. I quickly stepped behind her and cold-cocked her with the hilt of my blade. She dropped like a stone and I whirled to help Apollo.

  His upper body was still free, but some slasher film version of Thalia had climbed her way up his legs from the ankles she’d grabbed to his thighs, her face now level with some very sensitive spots.

  Apollo had called on the force of the sun, which burned straight through the lowered shades of the room’s solo window and were focused on Thalia’s back as though she was an ant and someone outside held the mother of all magnifying glasses. I could see the smoke rising from her skin, but she didn’t appear even to notice. Her hands were covered in blood, which made me wonder whether she’d opened the other women’s chests with her bare hands…but then I noticed that her red carpet dress itself was laid open at the chest. Blood covered the skin and the fabric that now hung in shreds and yet…and yet, she still lived. Moved, anyway. But she, like Jessica, was not herself.

  I walked over and brained her like I had Jessica, feeling terrible about it. I could only hope I hadn’t given either of them a concussion, but at the moment, it seemed the least of their problems.

  “My hero,” Apollo said with no discernible resentment at being rescued by a woman.

  “It was my turn,” I said with a shrug.

  I helped him roll Thalia off his body a
nd then crouched down to study her. The huge gash in her chest was bloody, but no longer raw. Already the skin at the edges showed signs of reknitting, the scars pink and raised. But in the midst of the wound itself, something caught the bright stream of sunlight just as Apollo shut it down.

  “Wait!” I said. “I mean, don’t burn her, but can you kind of shine a beam right at her chest.”

  I realized how that sounded the second it was out of my mouth, but neither of us made a joke of it. The light hit something again, and held there. I leaned in, careful not to overshadow her, and… I started to reach for the spot.

  “Don’t touch it!” Apollo said, grabbing my hand back. “Just wait.”

  He looked around for something and apparently didn’t find what he was looking for. “I’ll be right back.”

  I didn’t protest as he left me there with the four unconscious women. Instead, I did a little exploration of my own, looking for something to tie up Thalia and Jessica before they could come to. I really wanted to check on Sulis and Iphigenia, but there was time for that once I made sure our threats were neutralized. I found two boys’ robes shoved into the bottom of the closet—one brown and one blue—and used the belts to bind Thalia and Jessica’s hands. Apollo was back before I found anything for the feet, and he carried a pair of those yellow plastic kitchen gloves that made the hands sweat but supposedly protected them from the rigors of dish detergent. He also came with a pair of tongs, the kind used for turning meat on a grill.

  “What are you going to do with those?” I asked, afraid I already knew the answer.

  “Here,” he said, handing me the tongs and donning the gloves himself, thank goodness.

  “I need you to use the tongs to hold back the edges of the wound,” he said. “I’m going in.”

  So we were playing a real, live game of Operation. My stomach rebelled. For the second time in not very long, I swallowed back bile.

  I squatted down close to Thalia and forced myself not to squinch my eyes shut to protect myself from the sight. Instead, I eased the tongs into her chest cavity. Apollo crouched on her other side, reached in gingerly with the gloves and tapped something hard. Her sternum, I thought at first, but then…

  Oh no, I was not going to lose my lunch.

  I fought it down. I was made of sterner stuff. I repeated it to myself like a mantra, but myself was unconvinced.

  He curled three fingers into his palm and used just the thumb and forefinger to grab at something inside her chest cavity.

  “It’s not coming loose,” he said. “It’s like it’s become part of her.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “A coin. Small, about the size of a nickel.”

  “One of the Set coins.”

  “At a guess.”

  “Embedded into her chest?” I said, just to be clear.

  “More like her heart,” he answered. “It’s—”

  “Barbaric,” I finished.

  He nodded. “I can’t just yank it loose. It’s really in there, and I don’t know what it will do to her.”

  “We don’t know what having it there has already done…or what it will do. Already she’s not in her right mind.”

  “We need to get her to a healer. A real one this time. The mud bath at Sulis’s spa is not going to cover this.”

  “Speaking of which—”

  I rose, my knees protesting the time I’d spent squatting, and went over to the bed with the blonde hair shining in the sun. It was Sulis, as expected, and her chest wasn’t the only part of her covered in blood. More had seeped out of her nose and coagulated on her upper lip, and… I concentrated on her chest, watching to see if it rose and fell. There was no movement. I put two fingers to the pulse point at her neck and didn’t feel anything there either.

  “Apollo,” I said softly.

  He gave Thalia a tortured look and then stood, stripping off the rubber gloves and following my gaze.

  “She’s gone,” I said. “At least I think so. I don’t know what the rule is for you gods, about resurrection and all that.”

  He rose to look at Sulis himself and did something I hadn’t even thought to do. He took an untouched hank of her hair, separated out a few strands and held them in front of her nose and mouth to see if there was any air passing at all to stir them, but there was nothing. With a heavy heart, I walked the few paces to the other bed.

  The woman who lay there—Iphigenia?—had clearly been through torments I didn’t want to fathom. She was all torn up. I could see her chest rise just slightly, and heard a single breath escape. Then, as if it had taken her soul with it, she lay still. I cried out and readied myself to do chest compressions and CPR when another breath issued forth, no less heart-wrenching. It was too shallow and far too slow. I didn’t know how much longer she’d hold on… And that was when I noticed that there was something glinting inside her chest as well. At a guess yet another of the insidious coins. I picked up the house phone and dialed 9-1-1 then held my hand over the receiver as it started to connect. “What do we do about Jessica and Thalia?” I asked. “Do I tell them two victims or four or…?”

  Apollo looked away from Sulis to me. “I don’t like this. Any of it. But…you’d better tell them four. These ladies need medical help and right now we’re not in a position to give it to them.”

  “What about the Set disks? We can’t just leave them behind for anyone to touch. We don’t know if they’re a one-time-use sort of thing or if they can still infect others.”

  “What choice do we have? Doctors use gloves and all that. They should be safe enough.”

  “But what if—”

  “Hello? Hello,” came a voice. “What is the nature of your emergency?” Time was up. Even if I had the leisure to think it all through, I wasn’t sure Genie had that kind of time. I explained everything to the dispatcher as best I could, which was to say “not very well”. I told her we needed medical help, stat. I told her it was pretty clearly a crime scene and that based on the violence it might have something to do with that case in the Hollywood Hills and that the police might want to come along. I could only hope that this would be enough to get the disks handled with care and with kid gloves, knowing they could be evidence and all that.

  I was told to stay on the line and had every intention of doing so, but just then Hermes’s frantic face appeared in the air right before me.

  “We need you!” he said, looking around and catching my gaze. “Bring Sigyn’s tracker.”

  “What’s happened?” Apollo asked, at the same time the dispatcher said, “Is there someone there with you?”

  I ignored her, hitting the Mute button and waiting for Hermes to continue. “We’ve got Richie.” I didn’t even have time to process relief at that before he went on. “But Ian’s got Neith.”

  “What? What happened?” I asked.

  “Another blast from that chaos amulet or whatever it is the one is wearing. You do not want to see modern art come to life.”

  Crap, crap, crap. “We’re on it,” I said. “Apollo, do you want to work with Hermes to turn his window into a portal?”

  “No!” Hermes said instantly, fear in his voice like I’d not heard it before. Mischief he was up for…mischief he could control, but it seemed chaos had him spooked. “Not with this field going here. You might get turned inside out. Or end up two dimensional or… Just no. Wings or wheels,” he said.

  I looked at Apollo and he at me. “Wings are faster,” I said. “Want to go for a ride? We can be like Superman and Lois Lane. Only, I wear the tights in this family.”

  “Good. No one wants to see my hairy legs in tights,” he said.

  The banter was a reflex. Neither of us felt very funny. I could feel his concern through our link. And it only got worse when I said, “Wait, what about Jessica and the others? We can’t just leave them. What if Ian comes back? Or Jessica and Tha
lia get free? Or Genie stops breathing…”

  “Poseidon’s puckery posterior! Fine, I’ll stay. You go. Anyway, you’ll be faster without me. Track Ian, save Neith. But be careful.”

  “But—”

  “Go!” he said. “I’ve got this.”

  There was no time to argue. I unmuted my phone and answered the dispatcher’s increasingly worried questions. “Sorry, I’m here! I just…I have to get out of here. So much blood…” I quickly told her about Apollo so the police wouldn’t shoot him on sight, thinking he was a danger, and handed the phone over to him.

  “I’m going to check the last two rooms before I go, just to be sure…” I said quietly. By my count, at least three of the Set coins had been used—one on Viktor, one on Genie and one on Thalia. Four coins, actually, because there was no way Jessica would have attacked if she hadn’t been under the influence, though at least her coin hadn’t been implanted straight into her chest. I didn’t think so anyway. For one, there was no blood and for another, she was still kicking, while Sulis, a goddess if not one of the biggies, wasn’t nearly so lucky.

  What I didn’t understand was why the brothers had mutilated the goddesses. Because they were more than human and theoretically able to take it? Because with humans Set could get into their heads, but with someone stronger he needed to seize control of their very hearts? Had Genie and Sulis been earlier experiments, before the system was perfected with Thalia? Had the shock to their bodies been too great? Too many questions, too little time.

  I walked quickly through the rest of the house, toward the back two bedrooms. The one at the end of the hall, the master, was a disaster of beer cans and bottles of even harder stuff. The comforter had been yanked off the bed to create a kind of nest or pallet on the floor. The bedding reeked with the acid bite of ammonia that signaled night sweats. The scent was strong enough to reach me even at the doorway. I stepped in quickly, careful to avoid landing in or on anything, and checked under the bed before moving to the accordion doors of the closet. I opened them in a flash, flailing inside with my blade, stabbing nothing but women’s clothing.