by Rob Cornell
The front end up Elka’s car had crumpled inward. Steam hissed from under the bent hood. The smell of burnt rubber filled the air. Pain jagged up and down Elka’s spine. Her head buzzed. And she didn’t have time to shake it off before her door swung open and a man wearing a rubber Ronald Reagan mask leaned into the car. His sleeveless shirt and bulletproof vest bared his dark, sweat-glistened arms. Despite the mask, a back of the brain certainty told Elka she recognized those muscled arms.
Tony.
He reached toward her, a vicious serrated knife in his hand.
They found me. Now they’re going to kill me.
But Tony didn’t plunge the blade into her, he used it to cut her seat belt’s shoulder strap, then the strap across her lap. Two swift moves nearly invisible in their efficiency. He had his knife sheathed and his hands on her before she could scream.
She tried to kick at him, but her legs were caught in the wheel well and he dragged her out backwards.
When he had her out, he wrapped his arms around her and pinned her arms to her sides.
She kicked and thrashed, but he carried her, unfazed, toward the van that had crashed into her. She noticed a metal sheeting across the van’s front end. The crash had bent and warped it, but it had done enough to protect the van itself from any major damage.
Earl sat behind the wheel, staring out at her with corpselike emptiness. Thinking Tony was going to kill her on the spot was all wrong. Elka had murdered Earl’s niece. He would want time with Elka himself. And he would not bring about her death with a simple stabbing.
Earl would take his time with her.
Horns blared and shouts rang out among the snarl of cars surrounding the scene. Elka tried to search for a sympathetic face. Someone who would answer her cries for help. But too much confusion over the crash occupied the bystanders’ attention.
The van’s side door slid open as she and Tony reached it. Another man in a Ronald Reagan mask stepped out, toting on his shoulder a thing that looked like a purplish animal, but with skin that shined as if painted on with high gloss. Judging by his height, Elka guessed this was Laz. But she didn’t have time to make out any more details. Tony threw her into the van and came in behind her, crowding her to the other side of the seatless interior.
Those ancient and inbred unicorn instincts pulsed through Elka. She tried to shove her way past the massive man.
He easily pushed her back against the inside wall. And this time, instead of using a needle loaded with a sedative, Tony cocked back a fist and slammed it straight into Elka’s face.
The blackness came instantly.
Chapter Forty-One
IT WAS DÉJÀ VU ALL over again.
The SUV had come to a stop after the back end swung halfway around from the pickup truck smashing into them. Dazed, Jessie stared out the side window now facing the initial crash site. At first, she didn’t trust her vision. She must have hit her head. But no matter how many times she blinked, the guy wearing the Ronald Reagan mask didn’t disappear.
He marched right up to the Civic that had been tailing them, yanked open the door, and grabbed for the woman inside. It looked like he had a knife. His arm jerked with a couple of quick movements. For a second, Jessie thought he was stabbing the woman, but then he dragged her out of the car seemingly unscathed. She writhed and bucked against the muscled Ronald Reagan in the flak jacket. The dark skin of his bare arms contrasted with the pasty rubber mask.
The woman’s struggles did her no good. Her attacker’s thick arms had her caught in a bear hug, and he easily carried her to the van, where the side door slid open and another Ronald Reagan stepped out.
Jessie gasped.
This new Reagan had a frighteningly familiar thing propped on his shoulder. That animalistic weapon she had seen once before. The weapon that had killed Wertz.
A hot anger burned through Jessie’s daze. She unfastened her seat belt and pushed her way out of the Explorer. The air that hit her on the outside smelled like hot metal and fresh tar. Her stomach quirked. Her anger helped her ignore it.
“Jessie,” Ree shouted from behind her.
But Jessie was already stalking toward the Reagan with the weapon, even as he stepped up and aimed the thing right at her. As crazy as it was, Jessie stood her ground.
“Put it down, asshole,” she said. The confused shouts and occasional rude bleats from car horns drowned her voice. She said it again, louder, “Put it down, asshole.”
Ronald Reagan number two stood about a car-length away. He cocked his head. The permanent rubber smile on the mask, never really changing, seemed to turn into one that mocked her. “Or what, little girl?”
Good question.
For the second time in as many days, Jessie had acted irrationally. She acted as if she were Rambo, some super soldier who could take on the bad guys, no matter how outgunned or outnumbered. Remnants from another life, a life where she had been a sort of super soldier, if you could call a soul-laden vampire that. She had been more like a monster, only fighting for the good guys.
She wasn’t any of that anymore, though.
And acting as if wouldn’t change that.
But she’d be damned if she let any of that show for this prick. For all he knew, she was fucking Rambo. Or, even better, Craig Fucking Lockman.
“You know who I am.” A statement. Not a question.
“Better get out of the way if you don’t want to meet your maker.”
Jessie huffed a laugh. “Meet your maker? Really? That’s what you’re going with?”
“You’re right. There’s no such thing as a maker. How about I just obliterate you with this here thing”—he shrugged the shoulder with the weapon, raising it up for a second—“just like I did that gnome friend of yours.” He laughed, the mask distorting the sound, giving it a maniacal, Darth Vader tone. Only totally lame coming from Ronald Reagan.
No matter how lame he sounded, his comment still pissed her off.
She had no power against this mortal. If he’d been a vamp or a shifter or a demon, she could have blasted him back to the hell he’d come from. But the mortal plane had monsters of its own—and, apparently, they sometimes dressed up like dead ex-presidents. This particular monster had nowhere to go. This poor world was stuck with him.
Despite all of that, Jessie took three steps forward.
“Was it you that killed him? You pulled the trigger on that thing?”
“Technically, this thing doesn’t have a ‘trigger,’ but yeah, I did it. You should have seen him blow apart. It was like turning the statue of an angel into brimstone. Almost beautiful enough to bring back my faith in the Lord.”
“Jessie,” Ree shouted again, now sounding like he was out of the SUV. “Get out of the way.”
Ronald Reagan nodded. “That’s good advice. I’m gonna have to incinerate your other friends there to make sure they don’t come after us when we take you.”
Take her?
So he wasn’t there to kill her. But where the hell was he going to take her? And why?
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, but her voice quivered. Fear had snuck up on her. Reality had asserted itself. That didn’t make her back down. If he didn’t want her dead, then he would have to go around her to get to the others. Right now, no matter how weak she felt, she was still a shield between the agents and this whack-job Ronald Reagan wannabe.
She had also acted as a distraction.
The sound of a gunshot made Jessie jump. An instant later, the Reagan with the weird weapon staggered sideways. A spray of blood spurted from his free shoulder. The mask muffled his outcry.
He swung in the direction of the gunfire.
Jessie turned in the same direction.
Ree stood in a shooter’s stance, his sidearm aimed at Reagan, eyes cold. Jessie couldn’t help but notice how much that expression reminded her of her father.
Ree fired again.
At the same time, Reagan let loose with his weapon. Ree’s shot caught him i
n the belly, doubling him over, the beam from the weapon tipping down and scouring the curb right in front of Ree’s feet.
The beam tore apart the concrete, turning it to dust and embers.
Ree flew backwards as if struck by a shockwave. He slammed against the brick façade of a string of shops with faded signs and weathered doors.
A cold terror ran through Jessie as she watched the weapon’s beam go wild. It cut across the street and into the back end of a rusty compact car. The metal turned to slag as the beam streaked across it. She didn’t know how Reagan triggered the device. His one hand opposite the shoulder it rested on propped it up from underneath. His other hand came up and held it in place on top. It looked like he was just holding it.
Which meant Jessie had no way of knowing how to get him to stop, short of knocking it out of his grasp.
By now, Reagan had dropped to his knees. But while the shot to his gut had knocked him down, he wore a flak jacket that had kept the bullet from penetrating. He righted the beam’s trajectory, swinging it back toward Ree.
The beam cut back across the concrete, opening a fissure at least five feet wide. The broken street tilted toward the giant crack and the slagged compact car slid backward until its back end dipped into the fissure. The fissure’s concrete edge scraped against the car’s underbelly, the sound like a shriek from Godzilla. The friction caused sparks to spurt from the car’s frame.
The beam continued on in a slow arc, drawing destruction across the ground in a line straight for Ree’s limp body.
She might not have had the same strength and skills she once had as a vamp, but Jessie still had the instincts her father had trained into her. She kicked out at Reagan, her sole slamming into his shoulder with the weapon on it.
He was still off balance and weakened by the shots he’d taken and the awkward weight of the weapon. He tipped easily. The beam swung upward as he fell onto his side, blazed into the sky like a sparkling blue-green searchlight. Then the weapon tumbled off his shoulder, out of his hands, and flopped to the ground with a wet slap, like a dropped dead fish. The weapon didn’t just look like it was made from organic matter—it was. Its spongy surface quivered like Jell-O.
But once it had left Reagan’s hold, the beam quit.
He cried out, trying to stand while at the same time adjusting his mask which had turned askew.
The crack of gunfire echoed above the swirl of panicked noise.
Reagan’s mask split open at the back and an explosion of blood, skull, and gray matter burst out from the opening. Reagan staggered two steps forward, then fell flat on his rubber face, motionless beside the gelatinous bazooka laser thing.
Jessie spun toward Ree and found him still on the ground, but with his shoulders lifted as if in the middle of an ab crunch. His arms formed a narrow triangle in front of him, his hands clasping his gun at the pinnacle. He had frozen in that position as if waiting for Reagan to stand back up despite his obliterated skull and brains. But only for a few seconds. Then he rolled onto his side and pushed himself up onto his feet.
A small gap of relief opened amid the chaos.
Jessie and Ree shared tense smiles.
Then the rattle of automatic gunfire cut the air and several bloody wounds bloomed from Ree’s chest.
Chapter Forty-Two
EARL, SEEING THE FACE OF his niece superimposed over everything that entered his eyes, released the trigger on his rifle once the Chinese-looking light-skinned Negro dropped to the ground. He pivoted his aim onto the girl, the one who had caused all this damned trouble in Earl’s life, all because she was somehow special to his mast—to Gabriel Dolan.
Dolan needed a corporeal body. Earl got that just fine. But why a little girl. A little, powerless girl with no sense, running into the middle of danger as if she were bulletproof.
Her frightened stare, the tears rolling down her cheeks as she looked back and forth between Earl and her bodyguard, gave him a satisfied twinge. For the first time in a while, he felt in control of things again.
The little bitch was finally his.
And once Dolan had done his thing with her, Earl could turn his attention to the unicorn, and do a whole manner of violent things he’d never imagined himself doing before.
“Get on into my van,” he said.
She flat ignored him and ran over to her bodyguard, dropped to her knees beside him.
Horns and screams and now the sound of sirens crackled in Earl’s ears. He grinded his teeth together as he felt that control he thought he had slip away. He aimed for the bodyguard’s still body and let loose a short burst. The burst caught him in the leg, chunking apart his kneecap. His body jerked and his scream cut through all the hubbub.
Tough bastard. Earl had thought sure he’d dropped dead.
The girl shrieked and drew back from her bodyguard as if he’d burst into flames. She fell back on her bottom and crab-walked backward on her hands and heels. Then she threw Earl one hell of a nasty look. If she had any kind of magic in her, she would have cut him down with that glare alone.
She didn’t, though. She didn’t seem to have a lick of power. Which made Earl wonder all the more why Dolan was so eager to put himself inside her.
“You bastard,” she screamed.
But Earl’s attention snapped toward movement from the SUV she’d been riding in. A man, forehead cut and bleeding, staggered out of the passenger seat, a pistol hanging in his limp hand. His other hand he had up to his head, as if he was trying to remember something.
Poor son of a bitch had stepped out into his own death.
Earl shot him with a fair grouping of rounds and pounded the fella right back into the SUV. He bounced off the side of the passenger seat, then flopped forward onto the ground. His gun skated off under the vehicle.
New movement drew Earl’s attention back to the girl. She was charging at him with something in her hand.
A gun.
She’d taken it from her bodyguard.
Instincts, as normal as any animal built with a survival mechanism, took control of Earl’s hands. He pulled the trigger without a single thought about what Dolan wanted.
The unexpected move from the girl didn’t give him a chance to aim right, though. His gunfire went wide, blowing apart a store window far beyond his target.
The girl never hesitated. The fright in her eyes had disappeared. But anger hadn’t replaced it. The look on her face spoke of cold experience. And in that instant, Earl knew the girl could use that gun and use it good.
Then she fired.
The bullet struck him in the chest. His vest took the brunt of the shot, but he still flailed backward, his rifle nearly—just nearly—slipping out of his hands.
The girl kept coming.
She fired again.
Earl heard a buzz go by his ear.
Again, she fired, still marching forward.
Another hit to his chest. He felt something crack beneath the vest. Breastbone maybe. The pain shot right into his heart. For a second he thought it might stop beating.
They were losing.
The control.
Just Tony and himself left.
How had this gone so wrong?
The girl had stepped up to only a handful of feet from him. She had the pistol aimed dead to rights in his face.
“I’m the fucking Return, you old cocksucker. And I’m sending your wrinkly ass to hell.”
She pulled the trigger.
The gun did nothing.
The slide was still forward, so the pistol had at least another round left. Jammed maybe?
Earl didn’t waste time on pondering. He swung the butt of his rifle and knocked the gun out of her hands, probably breaking some knuckles in the process.
The girl cried out and drew her hand against her belly, face pinched in a wince, but that dead cold look still in her eyes.
He wanted to knock that look clean off. He jabbed the rifle’s butt into her face.
Her nose crunched and blood flowed fre
ely down over her mouth. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she collapsed.
“Tony,” Earl shouted. The noise around him had muted some. Except for the sirens. They had swelled up too damn loud for comfort. “Get your ass out here and help me with her.”
Tony leapt out the side of the van like a good little black boy, grabbed the girl under the arms, then draped her over his shoulder. “This is seriously FUBAR,” he said. “We’re cuttin’ this too damn close.”
“Just get her in the fucking van.”
And, again, like a good little black boy, Tony grunted his way back inside the vehicle and rolled the door shut.
Earl got behind the wheel.
As he wrenched the van into reverse and weaved backward between a pair of cars, Earl happened to glance at the girl’s bodyguard. The sucker had rolled onto his side and watched as Earl backed over the curb, knocking aside a parking meter in the process.
Nothing the poor bastard could do, all chewed up like that. That didn’t stop him from making a hard promise with his eyes. Earl knew the message behind the look. He’d given it a few times since finding Kit run through by the unicorn.
It was a promise of death.
Too bad for the bodyguard, the only death promised was his own.
Earl threw the van into drive and turned it so that he lined up on the sidewalk. Then he hit the gas, using the sidewalk as a road. It got him out of the snarl. Then he dropped back onto the street proper and sped toward the planned escape route.
Chapter Forty-Three
IT’S GOING TO HAPPEN again. You have to be ready. It’s going to happen…
“Again,” Jessie whispered as she tumbled out of another dream about her dad and that weird phrase.
What’s going to happen again?
Stupid dreams. They never made any sense, and once they let you go, you had to deal with the real world, which often made even less sense. And, like now, real life could really hurt.
