by Kelly Meding
“Sorry, honey,” he said.
“Phin, don’t.” I didn’t have to fake my fear.
He tugged; I stumbled toward him, raising my knee to deliver a firm kick to the crotch. He spun me so fast I lost my balance. Fell with my back to his chest, one arm pinned behind me. I clawed at his arm with my free hand, sufficiently alarmed when his slid upward and pressed to my throat. Not quite hard enough to choke. I felt the cold blade at the top of my breasts, flat against my breastbone.
He kissed my ear again. Whispered, “Trust me,” in a leaf rustle of volume.
Trust—a tall order when he was holding me like that.
The vampire chick leered at me, fangs exposed, practically drooling for the sight of my blood. The Therian teens gaped at the drama playing out for them like their very own home video. Black Hat showed no interest. The alley was quiet, too quiet. No one to see us, no one to interfere.
“Phin?” I croaked. I trust you.
He spun me again, this time to face him. I thought he meant to try another kiss, a nod or shake to communicate our plan of attack. Instead, he stabbed me in the stomach.
Chapter Ten
Four Years Ago
“Stay behind me, goddammit.”
The ferocity of Ash’s whisper stops my forward movement, and I pause at the bottom step of the dank stairwell. It’s blazing hot in here—just another low-rent apartment building without air conditioning to stave off the stifling summer heat. The cement and metal stairwell reeks of sweat—and not just what’s rolling down my back.
Ash slips around in front of me and stands on the next step up. She’s almost at eye level now. I’ve worked with her for only two weeks, so can’t say I know her facial tics yet, but I do know this one—anger. Great; she’s pissed at me again. So what else is new? She’s disliked me since the moment I was assigned. I get that a friend of hers died to make room for me on the Triad, but seriously? I didn’t kill him. And the massive stick up her ass is getting to be a major pain in mine.
“Disobey me again and I will knock you into next week,” she growls.
I bristle, knowing full well she can and will carry out such a threat—holy God, I can only hope to ever be as good a martial artist as she is—only I don’t suffer threats well. Never have, never will. “You didn’t order me back,” I reply.
Her dark eyes flash. “You’re the rookie, Blondie. You know you take rear.”
I open my mouth to snap off a few choice—and really stupid—comments. Jesse nudges his way between us, his massive build a solid wall of muscle and annoyance. “Not now,” he says, always the peacemaker. His double-blade ax rests against his left shoulder. It’s his favorite weapon, and he wields it like a Mexican lumberjack. The sheer heft of it would drive me crazy. I prefer my knives.
Jesse has at least given me a chance, so I back off.
Ash turns and sprints up the stairs. Jesse follows. I hesitate, then go. Our destination is the third floor, apartment G. The assignment came in thirty minutes ago, with very few details and a terse “Be ready for anything” from our absentee Handler. Jesse said Wyatt had rushed to the hospital to help with some emergency. An emergency in someone else’s Triad.
Nice leader we have.
The third-floor hallway is quiet—unusual for a place with paper-thin walls and hundreds of residents. I hear no television sets blaring, no music blasting, not even the familiar ruckus of verbal arguments. The faux-wood floor is scuffed and cracked, plaster walls in severe need of new paint. I’ve seen worse. So where is everyone? Do they know?
People in this city have developed an uncanny sense of when to ignore something. Maybe because Dregs have been around for so long that strange activity is becoming commonplace. It’s easier to disregard the unusual than to try to make sense of it. Those of us who know the truth don’t sleep any easier than those who do not.
The silence raises my hackles. Each soft touch of my boot to the floor sounds gunshot-loud. My stomach twists. Whatever’s in apartment G is bad.
Ash stops in front of our target. The door is unremarkable—cheap wood, easy to shatter open with a well-placed kick. No need. The cops who responded to a neighbor’s nine-one-one call were ordered to leave the place unlocked. I imagine they were more than eager to turn the crime scene over to someone else. City cops don’t know about the Triads—not exactly.
Handlers carry badges identifying them as Special Cases officers—supposedly a deep-cover unit of the Metro Police Department that was harder to get into than a nun’s underpants. It gives Handlers the authority to take over Dreg-related crime scenes so we Hunters can go in and play, no questions asked. Kind of like on television shows, when FBI guys go in and take over from the local cops—it’s a jurisdiction thing, I think.
After all, cleaning up after Dregs is our job.
Ash turns the knob and pauses, sniffing the air. I can smell the blood as well. Thick and metallic, so pungent beyond the closed door I almost don’t want to see what awaits us. I’ve got a strong stomach, though, and curiosity won’t let me stay in the hall. She opens the door, and a wall of hot, blood-soaked air slams into us.
Ash gags. Jesse pales. I breathe through my mouth, waiting for my senior teammates to enter first.
I go over our sketchy info. The apartment belongs to a nursing student named Rebecca Trainor, who hasn’t attended classes in almost two weeks. One neighbor reported seeing her with a young man, probably a boyfriend, on and off for the last six months. No name for him, just a vague description. Same neighbor—a font of information, this one—also heard a lot of arguing and screaming the last two weeks, mostly Rebecca’s voice. It was the sound of a man screaming in terror that finally got someone to call the cops.
Adding all of that together with our being summoned equals a Dreg attack. Quite likely this Rebecca got bitten and infected, and her steadfast boyfriend didn’t know what to make of his Halfie girlfriend. Not until tonight, when she finally turned him into Boyfriend Tartare.
The interior of the apartment supports my theory, I realize, as we finally go inside. I shut the door from prying eyes, then turn and peer into hell.
Blood splatters every available surface—floors, walls, tables, chairs, curtains, even the light fixture over the dining space. Some splatters are thick crimson blobs; others are light sprays. More than the blood, though, is the gore. A foot and ankle stick out of a potted plant. Bits of skin are arranged on a cardboard chessboard like playing pieces. Shredded remains of internal organs litter the kitchen floor like macabre confetti. An arm and hand dangle over the back of the sofa, attached to nothing except torn muscle and ligaments.
I try to categorize it all, but my mind is shutting down. Forcing me to look away, at the floor, at anything except the remains of this person. Only I look in the wrong direction—at a candy dish on the kitchen counter. Nestled among whips of red licorice is something that makes dinner surge into my mouth—the dead man’s severed testicles.
“Holy fuck,” Jesse says. He’s seen it. He backs up and steps on my foot. I yelp.
Something snuffles behind a closed door. We three tense, as instinctively as squinting against sunshine. We aren’t alone.
Using hand signals, Ash directs us. Knife in each hand, I dart around the mess and crouch on the left of the target. Ash does the same, coming around on the right, armed with her favorite katana—she named the damned thing Hex. Ax back and ready to swing, Jesse goes up the middle, straight at the door.
Sweat trickles down my jaw. Adrenaline surges and sets my heart pounding. We’re all ready to kill the monster who did this to a human being.
Jesse kicks open the door. Ash surges in, and he follows. I start forward, only to hit a barrier. He’s stopped just inside the room, as has Ash. Annoyed, I slip around to get a look at what has given them pause.
A woman sits in the middle of a blood-soaked bed, clutching a hollowed male torso in her arms. It has one arm and one leg attached, a bloody hole where his privates had once been, and very litt
le holding his head on to his shoulders. The neck is chewed away, gaping in places, oozing in others. His mouth is open in a death shriek, eyes wide and unseeing.
She sobs as she holds him close. Blood covers her face and clothes. She doesn’t seem to care she’s cuddling a flayed corpse, and I realize why when she finally looks up. Fangs glitter in the dim light cast by a bedside lamp, its shade as bloodstained as the walls and carpet. She bares them at us, making no move to attack.
“I tried so hard,” she wails. Human grief paints her words, but she is no longer human. She’s a monster, nothing more. “He wouldn’t let them kill me, and I tried so hard for him, but I couldn’t control it.”
Ash circles to the right, Jesse left. I stay put, and we create a perimeter. She has nowhere to go now except Hell.
The Halfie lifts the dead man’s head and kisses his lips. Ash makes a choked sound. I glance at her, thinking it’s a noise of disgust. No. She’s gaping at the bed, pale, chin trembling. I look at Jesse. He wears a similar expression. I long to knock their heads together and demand to be told what they know. I wait, finding a rare reserve of patience.
“He loved me,” the Halfie says, more to herself than to her audience. “Loved me so much, and this is what I did to him. But his blood … Oh, his blood smells so sweet. It always has.”
Ash takes a step closer, katana at the ready. “Rebecca, when did you get infected?” she asks.
Wide, speckled eyes stare, surprised by the question. “I think two weeks.”
The timeline fit with the neighbor’s story. Rebecca gets infected, her boyfriend tries to help her through the physical and psychological changes in her life. Only she snaps and strews him around the apartment, as her new nature demands. Poor guy, blinded by love. Too bad he didn’t know Halfie infection is something no one recovers from.
“I didn’t want to hurt Bradford,” Rebecca sobs. “I really didn’t. I love him. Love him so much, and I wanted to make him part of me. Wanted to share this new experience, but he wouldn’t let me. Said he’d help me, but he’d never become what I was.”
I stare, confused now. How did Bradford know what she is? So many humans, guided by popular culture and misinformation, still think vampirism is cool. It’s all about immortality and hot sex and lusty things. No one ever guesses just how brutal the change is to a human being, or that true vampires are not human beings at all. Never were. Hell, learning all that during Boot Camp shocked the shit out of me.
“He should have known better,” Ash says. “He should have killed you the instant he found out you were infected.”
Okay, now I’m really confused. I start to ask, only the pieces are sinking into place. Recognition. Knowledge. Consequences. I look again at the dead man’s face, at how young he is. My age. What’s left of his body is toned to perfection, built for fighting. Like us.
“Holy Christ,” I say. “He’s a Hunter.”
As though my voice snaps her back, Ash slashes her blade down and neatly chops off Rebecca’s head. Thick purplish red blood sprays, and she jumps back. Bodies sink to the bed. Ash stalks past me, not fast enough to hide the tears in her eyes, and into the outer room.
“Stupid bastard,” Jesse says.
I can’t look away from the bed and the sprawled bodies of a man and woman who, quite literally, loved each other to death. “I don’t get it,” I say.
“He didn’t do his job and kill her when he found out she was infected. End of story.”
“No, I get that part.” Hot and nauseated and confused, I look at him. “I don’t get why he didn’t kill her. He knew she was a monster, and that she’d eventually turn on him. We’re Hunters. We’re taught to not fucking trust Dregs.”
He raises a shoulder in a half shrug. “Guess he didn’t see her as a Dreg, just as a woman he loved. Still fucking stupid, though.”
“No kidding.”
“It’s hard to kill someone you love.” Jesse squeezes my shoulder as he passes. “Even when you know it’s the kindest damned thing you can do for them.”
I chew my bottom lip. “Hey, Jesse?”
He turns, thick eyebrows slanting. “Yeah?”
“If I ever get bitten, promise you’ll be kind?”
“Promise.” He tugs a lock of my short blond hair. “Same for me. I don’t want to be one of those fucking things. Not ever.”
“Deal.”
I linger in the bedroom only a moment longer, then join my team in the other room. Time to report it and get the mess cleaned up. I don’t know whose Triad Bradford belonged to, and I don’t envy them the pain of discovering what he’d done. Or of his grisly demise. Horrifying as it is, it’s also an object lesson for every single Hunter policing the city.
Don’t trust a Dreg, and don’t ever fall in love with one—they’ll only stab you in the back.
Chapter Eleven
Friday, 5:45 P.M.
I don’t remember passing out, but waking up proved an unforgettably disgusting experience. Smells hit me first: odors of food long since spoiled and left to rot in the oven-temp heat of some container. Too many to identify and nearly joined by my own vomit. Close by and almost as stomach-churning as the restaurant waste was the distinct stench of blood. Too strong and too much to be just mine.
Twisted uncomfortably and lying on solid corners, damp plastic, and any number of squishy things, I tried to move with little effect. Blinking didn’t help matters much. I wasn’t blind, just in the dark. More plastic and rot pressed down on me from above, pinning arms and legs and torso in place. My stomach burned. My limbs ached. I wasn’t convinced that I was facing up.
Motherfucker. Phineas stabbed me and dumped me in a trash bin.
“Fuck!” The shout barely echoed in the close quarters of my rotting tomb.
I tested toes and fingers—check. Flexed muscles everywhere I could manage, and aside from bumps and scrapes from being tossed into the damned trash, only my abdomen was seriously injured. Couldn’t have been in there long if I could still feel the small wounds. That was the good news.
The bad news: I hadn’t a clue how far down I’d been buried or if I could dig my way out. Death by Dumpster-induced heatstroke was not what I wanted on my tombstone. Not that I’d get a tombstone. Hunters never did. Anonymous cremation for anonymous lives. No way in hell was I going out like that.
Cell phone. I wiggled my ass as best I could. Felt the familiar lump. Elation was immediately tempered by logic. Okay, fine, I had the phone on me, but both arms were currently pinned beneath an unknown poundage of used napkins, plastic cups, and yesterday’s lunch special.
Sweat trickled down my forehead and stung my left eye. My right arm had more mobility than the left, so I finger-creeped it closer to my body. More plastic, more oozy mess. From the stretch of my shoulder, I guessed it was at a forty-five-degree angle from my body. My elbow snagged on something hard and sharp. Shit.
The air I had was quickly growing stale, heavy. Teleporting from an unknown starting point to an unknown exterior was beginning to seem like an acceptable risk. Better than smothering beneath a mountain of trash. Dying now meant I’d miss out on grinding Phin’s face into the pavement.
His earlier words came back: No matter what happens or what they say, I need you to trust me to protect you. Ha! Fat lot of fucking good that had done me. If this was his play to get in good with Black Hat and his Merry Band of Dreg Terrorists, he’d better come out of that meet with solid information. Something we could use to take them out and keep them out.
Unless he helped them take us out first. The voice of my Boot Camp instructor rang clearly in the back of my mind, reminding me that it was foolish to trust Phin. No matter how handsome he was, no matter how well he could spin words into gold, he was still a Dreg, still unworthy of my complete trust. He could easily lead Kismet, Baylor, and the others into a trap. Kill the rest of the Triad forces in one fell swoop.
My stomach twisted; my heart jackhammered. Fuck no.
I jerked my right arm toward my b
ody. Flesh ripped with scorching agony. Tears stung my eyes. My hand found a small pocket of space near my hips. I shifted a little, angled my arm, and pushed. The trash lifted a bit, but not enough. I tried again—same deal. I screamed in frustration.
Muffled voices made it through my tomb. I screamed again, no longer caring who found me. I needed out. Out of the heat, the stink, and the ever-crushing pile of refuse bearing down on my chest and legs.
The side of the bin thundered. Metal squealed, punctuated by a crash-bang! Pinpricks of light appeared above. The lid was off. They’d heard me, whoever they were. I shouted again.
“Down there,” someone said.
Bit by bit, the trash was removed and weight lifted. The pinpricks became shafts. Cooler, fresh air wafted down, making the odor of spoilage much, much worse. I retched but didn’t vomit. The garbage bag above my head finally lifted away. Sunlight glared, blinding me. I slammed my eyelids down, a soft whimper catching in my throat.
“There,” another someone said. “She is wounded.”
“You doubted it?” the first someone asked. “The scent of blood permeates this place.”
I knew that voice. No longer muffled, the familiar tone and cadence was the most beautiful thing I’d heard all day. I forced one eye open and squinted past the glare. A shadow fell as she moved sideways, blocking the offending light.
Dressed in black from head to toe, white hair pulled back in a tight braid, Isleen gazed down at me. She and two other female Bloods stood around me in a half circle, actually inside among the garbage. Her glimmering purple eyes took stock of my now-exposed body before looking right at me. “It pleases me that you are not dead,” she said.
Laughter bubbled out of my throat, as much from relief as shock. “Pleases me, too. Now get me out of here.”
Her two helpers looped steel-strong arms beneath me and lifted. My stomach wound shrieked at me, but I focused on my legs. Getting them to move, supporting my weight, and ultimately climbing over the lip of the sunbaked Dumpster. Two male Bloods waited in the alley, arms extended to help. I vaguely recalled losing my balance and falling. Being caught and lowered to the ground.
