by C. T. Adams
When the hatchling realized what was about to happen she panicked. She screamed her will at me; tried desperately to make me remove the shoelace around my arm. I had to let her reach my mind. I was the Host. It was my duty to protect her! The effect of the toxin had worn off. I could move. Human hands with inhuman strength held me down as I screamed and thrashed.
In the background I felt the wave of heat as Rob changed to wolf form. There was no more time. In a last ditch effort to save herself and the last tattered remains of the nest She ripped through flesh and muscle using the sharp head horn that had cut through the shell of her egg. There was a small explosion of tissue and blood as she broke through my arm to open air.
For a moment, I felt the mental control weaken. She had to concentrate on breathing and moving through air instead of blood. She skittered across my pinned body—a slimy pulsating eyeless maggot, the tendrils that would become the ganglia dragging behind her. I slammed my mouth shut, screaming again and again through gritted teeth as I caught a glimpse of her plan in my mind. The mouth or the nose. She would go in through the mouth . . .
Brooks and the others flinched and recoiled from the sight of her. I heard their screams of surprise and alarm as she moved across my chest. A flash of light and power enveloped me as the rest of the wolves changed form in a rush of adrenaline. She kept moving; struggling across the foreign landscape of cloth and flesh. She was on my chin when I felt a splash of wetness across my chest and face.
I tasted the harsh bite of whiskey as she slid onto my lips, and her scream of pain was ripped from my throat. The whiskey flooded my nostrils until I couldn’t breathe. It seared down my throat and into my lungs. With the last of my awareness before the pain took me, I heard a familiar, long-ago voice.
“Ka . . . tie?”
23
I woke in a hospital bed. As if in a dream, I tried to move my head and arms. A sting and ache in my left arm was my first shock of sensation. I looked down to see the arm tied to a board which was fastened to the bed. A long row of stitches was black against my pale skin. Wires and tubes snaked from my arm to disappear behind me. The other arm was wrapped in gauze. My mind was foggy, but it was my mind. I was Mary Kathleen Elizabeth Reilly and while I could hear the buzz of Thrall voices in my mind I wasn’t one of them. I’d escaped. I felt the rage of the other queens at my joy but it didn’t diminish it a bit. I looked again at my left arm. Still there. I closed my eyes under a wave of pure relief.
“Thank you God.” It wasn’t much of a prayer, but it was heartfelt.
I opened my eyes again, taking a look around the room.
Joe was asleep in one of the two guest chairs and I felt tears well. He was alive! He wore his usual hospital garb—blue shapeless scrubs with the St. Elizabeth logo printed on the front and one shoe. His left leg was in a walking brace and his face was a mass of bruises. What had happened? The scrubs were rumpled and looked like they’d been slept in. Obviously they had.
Michael snored peacefully in the other chair, his neck at a ridiculous angle that was guaranteed to cause him problems when he woke up. Still, he looked fine. Crisp as ever. Made me wonder what fabric those clerical uniforms are made out of. Bryan sat cross-legged on the tile floor. His neck was bent at a painful angle as he stared wide-eyed up at a television hung near the ceiling. Cartoon images rollicked mutely across the screen.
Bright daylight streamed through the slats of the vertical blinds, sending stripes of shadow across the floral wallpaper. It was a private room. One bed. There were bunches of flowers on the dresser along with a four-foot-tall stuffed wolf with a big red bow on its neck.
My thought processes weren’t working very well but I didn’t feel any pain. Even fuzzy logic dictated that one of the tubes running into the veins of my right arm must be painkillers. I remembered going into the church. Remembered getting my arm sliced open. Remembered being part of the Nest. Other than that, everything was a blur.
But somehow we’d won, and I still had the arm.
“Joe? What happened?” My voice was slurred and about an octave deeper than normal, but I could talk.
Mike and Joe both jerked awake at the sound of my voice.
“You’re awake.” Joe growled in a sleep-filled voice. “ ’Bout damned time.”
“What happened to you? Is Tom okay? Did Miles find you?”
He stood up and walked the few steps to the bed and clasped my good hand. He looked almost embarrassed. “Dylan saved us. Never thought he had it in him. He kicked butt on half a dozen Thrall and freed Tom. Then he got me out of there right before a couple of Hosts were going to make me lunch. Tom’s in the next room over. Broken ribs, fractured tibia and a nasty gash on his bicep from crashing down through the belfry floor. Miles sewed him up. My bet is that he’ll be released later today. He’ll be healed a lot quicker than you will be.”
A part of me didn’t want to know, but “Did Dylan . . . did he make it out?”
Joe shut his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t think so. He stayed behind so we could escape. But they were all over him when we left, and I haven’t heard from him since.”
“You didn’t think he’d wind up a hero, did you?” I wanted to be angry, but I was ashamed to admit that I agreed with him.
He growled and glared at me. When he replied, his voice was low and gruff, like it was just after we learned my parents had died. “Didn’t think he had it in him. He saved our lives.”
“KAY . . . TIE wake?”
The words from the end of the bed startled me. They were strangely childlike, but the voice was the same deep baritone I remembered from a dream.
“Bryan?” My eyes began to fog as he reached over and petted my hand like it was a puppy.
A bright smile lit his face and it cut through the rest of the fog. “Kay . . . tie.” He recognized me. My brother recognized me.
Joe was smiling. “Amazing, isn’t it? It happened right after the queen broke into the open. We don’t know how or why.”
Michael placed a gentle hand on Bryan’s shoulder and added, “I think it was from seeing you being hurt. When you screamed, he took the bowl of whiskey and tossed it in your face just as the hatchling was slipping into your mouth. It died instantly.”
Bryan was smiling broadly. It was the smile of a four-year-old child. Open, trusting, and so damned beautiful that I found myself crying. He gave me a puzzled look, but then launched himself into my arms.
Despite the awkwardness of the tubes and the bandages, I held him. I held him as though I’d never, ever let him go.
24
“I’m not quite ready to talk about it, Peg.”
I stood in front of the apartment windows, staring down at the street below. Monica’s death took the entire nest of Hosts and a good number of the Herd. In all, close to 160 people died that night, most of them in the churchyard of Our Lady of Perpetual Hope. In fact, photographs of the scene made the national news. There was a big hoopla for a few days nationally, but it faded after an attempted terrorist attack on the Statue of Liberty. Could I have saved the people? I just don’t know, and that bothers me—a lot. But I couldn’t talk about it yet, even with Peg, who is the closest thing I have to a best friend.
“I know it has to be bothering you, Kate. A lot of people you knew died. Try to talk to someone about it. Please?” She sighed sadly when I didn’t respond for long moments, and then tried to brighten the mood. “Did you get the package yet?”
I glanced at the coffee table, and the massive wicker monstrosity with crumpled yellow film that resembled an Easter basket on steroids.
I smiled the smallest bit. “I cannot believe you took the time to do this. Or is there some company out there that’s warped enough to sell these?”
She chuckled. “Nope. I’m guilty all on my own. But I know how you are about coffee. And I’m all over the world every week. So, I just dropped into a few gift shops at a few airports, picked up that pretty reed basket in Kenya and poof, instant gift basket. I kne
w that you couldn’t refuse a coffee basket!”
I’d been delighted when it arrived. There was enough Colombian and Kenyan and even German brews to feed my, and Tom’s, caffeine addiction for months. We were still laughing when I hung up, but the happiness didn’t last for long. I couldn’t pick up the basket or even make my own coffee right now. But I didn’t want to tell Peg that either. Tom thought my lingering nervousness was a result of feeling helpless. They had to do arthroscopic surgery on the shoulder and the elbow and I had a nice long row of stitches the arm where Monica laid her eggs. I did feel helpless. But that’s not it.
Every time I was outside of the apartment, I could feel my skin crawl. Someone was watching me. I’d dropped my shields, tried to find whoever it is. Nothing. It was maddening.
I was reading a magazine a little later, which is not as easy as it sounds with only one arm. There was a knock on the door, then two more with a hard rap at the end. That was the signal. One of the wolves was at the door. Just to be safe, I let my senses flow outward, but couldn’t feel any hive presence. I braced one heel against the bottom of the couch and rolled my body forward to get to a standing position. God, I hated this sling! Whoever was on the other side of the door was patient. Joe and Tom would keep knocking until I got there.
I unlocked the door and stepped back so I had room to move. “Come on in.”
The door opened a fraction and stopped. It took another shove before Dusty Walker poked in her head. “Are you decent?” Her body was mostly still outside the door.
I raised my brows. “What are you doing here, Dusty?”
She smiled and gave a little laugh, which made her purple hair bounce. “Just dropped by to give you a little present to make you feel better.” She stepped fully into the doorway. She was wearing a black tank top with a skull and crossbones emblazoned across the chest. The black jeans and boots showed off her toned muscles. I glanced down to see that she was holding a glass vase with red carnations and baby’s breath in one hand and a grey plastic box with a handle and a wire door. A small, oddly familiar meow came from the back of the cage. I let out a little squeal and bolted forward.
“Blank?” I tried to take the cage from Dusty, but the weight of it was too much for my elbow. She pulled back the cage, stepped across the entry and down into the pit, and set it on the couch. The flowers were placed next to the coffee gift basket.
I sat down on the couch and opened the wire door as Dusty returned to the front door to close it. She had to put her butt against it and brace her feet to get it to latch.
I could only hope he would remember me. Six years is a long time for a cat. I put a tentative hand inside the cage and let Blank sniff it. I needn’t have worried. He licked my fingers and crawled out of the cage, directly into my lap. Then he curled up and started to purr. His long white fur was still silky, but he was heavy and well muscled compared to the adolescent puffball he had been when Dylan took him away. I had always hoped he would grow into his huge head and feet. I held up his head to look at him closely. His nose was criss-crossed with black lines of scars, some old and some fresh, but his eyes were clear. A throaty rumbling vibrated my palm.
I looked up at Dusty and could feel wetness edging my eyelids. “How . . . where—?”
Dusty smiled and it turned her back into the young girl in the photo Matt originally gave me. “The cat was Uncle Dylan’s. It never liked Aunt Amanda. The cops let her out of jail to go to the memorial service and Mom and I dropped by her house afterward. I saw the cat scratch her, and I was afraid she was going to hurt it. I convinced her to let me take it home. I always thought that Blank was a better name than Snowball anyway, so I thought I’d bring it here.”
Jail? I must have looked startled, because she elaborated. “Oh! Didn’t you know? Aunt Amanda apparently tried to get someone at a pool hall to tell her where Uncle Dylan was, and it got ugly. The bouncer called the cops and the guy pressed charges. She’s been locked up since before the whole thing went down at the motel. She even rated her own guard at the service.”
I hadn’t known that, but it would explain why she hadn’t been bothering me. I didn’t mind at all. I scratched under Blank’s chin and smiled. “He was just a kitten when Dylan found him at the pound. His eyes were such a pale blue that they were nearly clear. He looked like a blank canvas, something that just needed a splash of color to be finished. So, he became Blank.”
She threw herself sideways into the chair and then dropped her feet onto the floor after an annoyed look from me. “And . . . I was hoping that if I brought him, I might be able to ask you a favor.”
I readjusted myself on the couch so that I didn’t keep sinking back into the cushions. It’s harder to get up when I get all squished. I didn’t want to sound as suspicious as I felt, so I kept my question short.
“What’s the favor?”
She took a deep breath and then looked at me squarely. “It’s so bogus! The press found out Matt was at the church scene, and the news said Rob was there, too. He lost his job, and he hasn’t found another one yet. We can’t go home and live with Mom, so we were wondering—”
I stood up so fast that my shoulder screamed. “Oh no! I am not in any condition to have house guests. Especially ones that are actively trying to have babies, Dusty. As you can see, there isn’t a room in this apartment with a door!”
She shook her head quickly and held up her hands in a mollifying manner. I could smell roast beef and onions on her breath as she stood as well. “No, no! I was just hoping we could stay in the apartment that’s not quite done on the first floor. Tom mentioned you had one that was almost ready. Just until Rob can get back on his feet. I have some money. I can buy the appliances, and Rob said he would be happy to paint to your specifications.” Her face was hopeful and scared at the same time. “We don’t have anywhere else, and after what happened to Matt—”
Shit! That’s right. I’d forgotten. Matt Quinn didn’t die in the Thrall fallout. He’d been shot execution style, his body dumped by the side of 1-25 not far from the exit to his house. It was a very professional hit, but there are no leads or suspects. The poor kid must be a nervous wreck, and I didn’t blame her.
“I was going to ask you at Uncle Dylan’s memorial, but I didn’t see you. Did you go?”
I sighed and closed my eyes. “I miss Dylan, Dusty. I really wish I could’ve paid my final respects. He was stronger than any of us gave him credit for. But I know Amanda too well. She’ll blame me for his death—”
It was as if my words summoned her.
The front door flew open and I jerked my head to the sound. It slammed into the wall with a crash that shook the wall of the building. She stood there, shaking with fury, her face contorted with rage.
“You’re right, Kate. I will blame you for his death. They all died because of you and your damned need to win. You even had the gall to send flowers to my husband’s funeral! You couldn’t possibly think that a clueless deputy could keep me from making sure that you pay, did you?”
She leapt forward toward me. Dusty stood up in a rush and tried to stop her. “Aunt Amanda! No! Don’t do this!”
Amanda grabbed her hair and literally threw her out of the way. Dusty hit the back of the chair and tumbled to the ground. She rolled to the side and got back to her feet. “I won’t let you hurt her, Aunt Amanda!”
I was backing away from Amanda. I was in no condition to fight her, but I didn’t want Dusty to get hurt either. “Dusty, go! Get out. Find Tom.”
She nodded once and moved. Amanda tried to grab Dusty to stop her, but missed. She didn’t follow the girl, but turned back to me. Her smile was a vicious baring of teeth as she pulled something out of her pocket. But she hid it behind her arm, so I couldn’t tell what it was.
“So you’re going to try to kill me? Is that it, Amanda?” I needed to stall. This time I really did need help. She was in a lot better shape than me.
The resulting laugh had that same maniacal edge that Monica’s had at
the end. “Oh no, Kate. Not right away. I want to hurt you first.” She stepped slowly closer and I backed around the room, always keeping a piece of furniture between us.
“And what do you think can possibly still hurt me? I nearly lost my arm, I lost people I cared about. If you don’t kill me, what’s left?”
She revealed the item in her hand. It was an old fashioned metal syringe with twin finger loops and a thick veterinary-style needle.
She darted around the coffee table and nearly grabbed me. I just barely got behind the couch in time. “I’m going to finish what Monica started, Kate. I’m going to crown you queen.”
I felt little hairs prick up on the back of my neck and a shiver crawl slowly up my spine. My voice cracked when I spoke. “That’s not possible. Only another queen can lay eggs.”
She slid her fingers into the metal guides and held out her other arm, where I could see a string of puncture wounds in a trailing line below her elbow. “I thought so, too, but there’s another way. It wasn’t easy to figure out how, but I’ve got the technique down. Once you’re a queen, you’ll be alone. All alone, like Monica was. Will you go insane? Or will you turn all your friends? What will you do to survive, Kate? Monica told me that not everything goes away. You’ll remember them. You’ll know what you’ve done, but you won’t be able to stop yourself.”
My heart was beating like a triphammer. She was insane. What the hell had she done to herself?
I grabbed the nearest potted plant left-handed and flung it in Amanda’s face. Pain shot through my arm, and I knew that I’d torn open several stitches. She flinched just enough that she missed by a fraction of an inch. Blank darted up the stairs and hissed his outrage from the landing edge.
I ducked and spun, aiming a side kick at her knee but she twisted at the last second, the blow landing on her calf. It made her grunt, but she didn’t go down. She grabbed for me again and caught my bad arm. I screamed as she threw me to the ground and kicked my other arm, tearing more stitches.
