I stared at him, struck mute or stupid or both.
“You can’t kill me, you know,” he said. He held up his hands, palms toward me. “Not that I want to go on proving it to you. I do feel pain. You should be more compassionate.”
My gaze drifted back to the body on the table. What I saw tore the air from my lungs. It was no longer Jax. Now Sig lay there, his face bloody and torn, flesh ripped, bones broken. “You bastard!” I was on the balls of my feet, and the gun snapped up as if I were controlled remotely.
Hatton looked at me and grinned. “He was delicious. Not as tasty as I expect your wife to be. She’s a hottie.”
This was all wrong. Sig wasn’t dead. Hatton had killed and eaten Jax, not Sig. The woman outside was supposed to be Melanie Layne, not Jane! “What the hell is this, Hatton?”
“Just a little snack. I was hungry.” He was gloating, goading me.
Violence boiled in my blood. Once again, I was surprised by the movement of the pistol in my hand. The gun was pointed between Hatton’s eyes, and at this distance, it would be impossible to miss. I wanted to pull the trigger. I wanted to shoot Hatton in the face like I’ve never wanted anything else. But I couldn’t. It wasn’t right. I had to bring him to justice, not impose my own. Killing him would make me like him.
“Ah, Hank, you disappoint me.” His voice had changed. It was deeper, torn and abused. “The queen said you wouldn’t have the guts.”
“Tutor?” I asked in a tremulous voice.
Hatton nodded slowly. “My queen, yes. But you know that isn’t her name.” Hatton’s face stretched, his eyes bulging against his eyelids. “She cursed you to suffer, and suffer you will.”
Something was building inside me, something dark and terrible. At the same time, fear dragged icy fingers through my soul. “What in the hell are you, Hatton? What is she?”
“Come find us and find out. Don’t take too long, though. We are hungry, as always, and your son looks delectable.”
“Are you…are you two vampires, then?”
This wasn’t how the conversation was supposed to go. He should have been in handcuffs by now. He should be telling me some delusional crap about being a god.
Instead, he laughed. “No. Not vampires. Gods.”
Ah, there it is, I thought.
The darkness building inside me exploded, erasing coherent thought. The gun bucked again and again. When the slide locked back, my hands hurt like they’d been crushed under some heavy weight.
Hatton sat there like a statue, staring daggers at me. “I told you not to do that, Hank. I told you it was futile.” Blood ran down his face and neck from bullet holes in his cheeks and forehead. His left eye was gone, and his left deltoid twitched. I knew what was coming, what he was about to become, and I didn’t want to see it again.
He reached out with slow deliberation, his arm stretching, growing impossibly long, and took the Glock from my hands. Then, using just one hand, he squeezed the gun, muscles and tendons popping out on his forearms. The composite body of the pistol cracked like ice, and he tossed it to the floor in disgust.
“I told you not to do that,” he said, staring at me. His voice was several registers deeper than it had been, like someone had piped it through a vocal synthesizer. “I told you both times we had this conversation.” His tone took on a basso quality. “Why don’t you ever listen?”
“Both times? Just what in the blue fuck is going on here, Hatton?” Terror pounded in my temples in time with my racing heartbeat. I looked down at the table, unsure if I would see Jax or Sig. It was Sig. I swept his broken body into my arms and turned to run.
Stars and light exploded from the left side of my head, and I was airborne. Hatton roared like a cornered predator. “You can’t have him yet,” he screamed as I slammed into the plaster and lath wall. “You have to come find me first!”
Then I was through the wall and flying across another room. I smashed through that wall, too, coming to a stop only after colliding with a cast-iron tub.
“Hatton!” I screamed. “You leave them alone!”
Then something in my head snapped, and everything changed.
Four
It was around 5:30 in the morning when the phone yanked me out of the nightmare, adrenaline shrieking in my bloodstream. With the dream still fresh in my mind, memories of the actual event flooded in—Hatton’s monstrous eyes as he scooped Melanie Layne up off the ground and ran toward the woods, the smell of Jax’s blood, the spent cordite, and plaster dust. It felt like I’d gone fifteen rounds with Mike Tyson.
After a few seconds of confusion, I scrambled for the phone, full of hope and dread. “Jane?”
The line fuzzed and fizzed.
“Hello? Jane, is that you?”
Static screeched, but a female voice cut through it: “…hear me? I wanted…”
The voice was female, but it wasn’t Jane. Disappointment dragged me down like a concrete life preserver. “If you can hear me, the connection is terrible.”
“Is that better?”
The static was still intense, but at least I could make out the words. “Who is this?”
“Well, hello again, Hank. I’m not surprised you don’t recognize my voice; you spoke more to Bobby than to me back when we were still neighbors.”
“Bobbie Timmens?” I stood and began to pace around the bedroom, shock robbing me of any rational thought.
“Yep, it’s me. How are you, Hank?” asked Bobbie.
“I’m fine.” The response was automatic—hardwired into my genetics. My mind was awhirl with sleep and the stuff of nightmares. “Are you at home? I found Sig’s vampire cape in front—”
“Don’t worry about that right now, Hank. Just listen to me. Our mutual friends, the Bristol Butchers, asked me to bring them something. Well, a couple of somethings.”
“Bobbie, what are—”
“Just shut up and listen to me, Hank.” Her voice was suddenly cold and distant. Something about it brought to mind the morning I interviewed Liz Tutor in front of her house like a hammer to the forehead.
“No, Bobbie, you listen to me for a second. Jane and Sig—”
“Our friends want me to give you a message. Are you ready to hear it? Because I am ready to hang up if you aren’t. I’d much rather be with them than standing here in the cold, yabbering at you.”
“Who…who are these friends you keep talking about?” Of course she couldn’t mean anyone but Hatton and Tutor.
“Last chance,” said Bobbie.
There was a kind of promise, as hard and cold as steel, in her voice that caused a shiver to wiggle down my spine. “Don’t hang up! I’ll listen.”
The line crackled—a perfect storm of static. Bobbie was silent, drawing the moment out. “Okay, but I’m warning you, Hank, any more interruptions, and Jane will suffer for it.”
“Whatever you say, Bobbie.”
“Good. Luka said to tell you hello.”
I didn’t know that name, but I knew exactly who she meant.
“He wanted me to remind you of a conversation you had with him at Jay’s Diner. Remember when you said you’d chase him anywhere? Remember that he said that if you did, you’d have to leave everything behind—your life here, your job, your family, all of it?”
“I had that conversation with a serial killer—a man named Chris Hatton,” I said. Now, it was my voice that had gone frosty. “Are you telling me you are…I don’t know…in league with Hatton?”
She sighed as if I was the stupidest man she knew. “That’s not his real name, Hank. I think you knew that already. Do you remember the conversation at the diner?”
“Of course,” I snapped.
“We’ve made it easy for you. There’s nothing left of your life here. The queen took your job when she cursed you. She says hello, by the way. And Bobby and I have taken your family. We’re taking sweet Jane and precocious little Sig on a trip.”
“Bobbie, why would you do that?” My voice shook with rage. “Why wou
ld you throw in with those two? Why would you drag Jane and Sig into this?”
“Because Luka asked us to. After the gifts he and the Midnight Queen bestowed on Bobby and me, it was the least we could do. If you were smart, you’d do whatever it takes to get off their shit list. If you only knew what they could do for you, you’d be thanking me.”
I had no answer to that; I just sat there boiling and breathing hard.
After a short pause, Bobbie chuckled, low and sensuous. “Luka expects you to follow him. He’ll take care of Jane and Sig until you come for them. As long as you chase after him, he will not touch them. Do you understand?”
“I’ll kill him. If one hair on either of their heads is out of place, I’ll kill him with my bare hands.” My voice sounded strange—flat and distant, and at odds with the fist-shaking rage that I felt.
Bobbie laughed like a kid getting candy for lunch. “Luka said you could be quite funny. I see what he means now.”
“We still are, you know,” I muttered.
“What? We still are what?” she asked, sounding confused.
“We still are neighbors. I’m looking across the circle at your home as we speak.”
She chuckled again. “Oh, Hank, you are a dear. That is just an empty building now. Bobby and I are moving.” She tittered like a drunk. “We’ll never go back there.”
“Where will you go? If you go through with this, you’ll be a fugitive for the rest of your life.” I wished like hell the call was being traced.
“Hardly,” she scoffed. “I’ll have a place of honor where I’m going. Bobby and I will be valued retainers in the Court of the Dispossessed Queen.”
“The Dispossessed Queen? Is that supposed to be Elizabeth Tutor?”
“That isn’t her real name, either. She has vast holdings on the other side. Her—”
“Other side? What does that even mean?”
“—empire was unrivaled in its time and soon will be once more. We’re going with them to reclaim it.”
“Don’t tell me you buy into their twisted delusions. Bobbie, you have to know deep down that those two people—”
“That’s what you don’t understand, Hank. The queen and Luka are not people. They are gods.”
“Bobby, it’s not too late for—”
“Hank.” Her voice was tight and clipped. “This call is dragging on, and I have more information to share. Do you want to hear it or not?”
I shut my mouth with an audible click. I recognized the utter futility of trying to talk sense to an insane person. I wondered what a delusion shared by four people would be called. Folie à quatre?
“You have to go deep into the abattoir. Find the end of it, down deep. There is a door there. You have to go through it to—”
“He’s waiting for me in the cave?” I couldn’t keep the astonishment from my voice.
She chuckled again. “No, silly. I just said you have to go through the door and—”
“Bobby, you aren’t making—”
She sighed, sounding peeved. “I’m trying to help you, Hank. Well, I was. I’m not standing here in this damn cave and wasting any more time with you. Follow Luka, and your family will be safe. If you’re smart, you will bring what you need to survive away from civilization. I don’t care if you believe me or not. I’m going through now.”
There was a noise on the line like she’d dropped the phone onto stone or concrete. “Let’s go. Time for a swim, little Siggy,” she said.
Faintly, I could hear Jane start to protest, and the sick lethargy that had been spreading through my veins like molasses was burned away in an instant. “Jane! I’m coming, Jane! I’m coming!” I yelled so hard it felt like my voice box was going to break into a thousand pieces, but the line was dead. “No!” I screamed, frustration beating in my temples.
Before I even knew what I was doing, I was outside my front door, limping as fast as I could toward the Timmens’ house. Golden light had begun to break on the horizon, but everything looked gray to my eyes. The air was cold, and the ground was still wet from the rain. Stabbing pain ripped through my ankles with each step as if I were walking on sharp rocks. My knees had that sick feeling I associated with my worst flares, and it seemed as if my hip sockets were grinding the balls of my femurs into sharp glass fragments, but I didn’t slow down. Not one whit. Not one tittle.
The house looked the same as it had the night before. The front door was still locked, but my fifteen years in law enforcement had taught me many, many lessons. One of those lessons was how to kick in a door without falling on my ass.
The first impact sent a shockwave of pain slamming up my leg, and I understood at once that kicking a door open was no longer an option for me. So I grabbed the door handle with my left hand, rocked my body weight back like I was trying to pull the door open, and then rocketed forward. I slammed my shoulder into the door as hard as I could as close to the door jamb as possible. Through the haze of agony in my arm and shoulder, I heard a dry cracking noise, like tinder being readied for a campfire. Still, the door didn’t budge.
I set my jaw and repeated the process and failed again. The pain making me nauseated to the extent that, on top of everything else, I had to battle a case of dry heaves before I could try again. On the third hit, the door buckled inward, shards of wood flying from the door frame like shrapnel from a bomb. I staggered into the foyer, sliding a bit on the slick marble tile (which made no sense in the Northeast or anywhere else that’s buried in snow and ice for half the year).
The pain in my legs, back, and left arm made me want to curl up in a ball and cry for mercy, but I had to know for certain that Jane and Siggy were not somewhere in the house. I had to know if Bobbie Timmens was as insane as she sounded—or maybe just as insane as I must have sounded when I talked about what had happened the night Hatton put me in the hospital. That thought made my stomach churn. I knew what Hatton was capable of. What if the other things Bobbie had ranted about were true?
Lurching like Frankenstein’s monster, I dragged myself around the first floor. The place was a disaster: cabinet doors hung open, their contents on the ground; closets exposed and cleaned out; furniture up-ended like so many forgotten toys. The Two Bobbies had cleared out in a hurry.
I set my mouth in a grim but determined frown and pulled myself up the stairs. I had to rest every couple of steps, teeth gritted against the pain. The irony of how easily I’d climbed the steps in my own house yesterday ate away at the back of my mind; the pain was the price of my night of stress.
The upper story was even more of a disaster area than the ground floor. Loose clothing was strewn on the carpet, even in the hallway. In the master bedroom was a half-packed suitcase full of men’s jeans, T-shirts, and even a couple of ball caps—Bobby’s “at home” wardrobe. On top of a pile of poorly folded T-shirts lay a pistol and several loose magazines. It was a blackened semi-automatic—a Heckler and Koch .40 caliber with a Picatinny rail mounted to the frame beneath the barrel.
Without thinking, I scooped up the pistol and shoved it in the back of my jeans. The magazines I rammed into my front left pocket. I rifled through the packed clothes, looking for anything interesting, but all I found was the smell of dryer sheets.
The master bath looked as if a madman had whirled through it, smashing everything that looked fragile. Pieces of the broken mirror reflected the morning sunlight in strange patterns on the ceiling and walls. Perfume from broken crystal vials made the place smell like a whorehouse.
There wasn’t much of use on either of the two above-ground floors, but that was as I expected. Most sociopaths manage to keep up appearances for the neighbors, after all. Still, I wondered how long the Two Bobbies had been over the edge, right across the street from me.
I wondered how many victims had been brought to this house and butchered.
Our houses had been built in a similar fashion—both had basements consisting of large, open spaces with the house’s physical plant tucked under the stairs. That was w
here the similarities ended. My basement smelled like any moist room that was kept shut up and closed away: moldy and disused. The Timmens’ basement smelled more like a zoo. As I rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairs, I saw why.
Looking around the basement of the Bobbies’ house, all my questions about them were answered. The Two Bobbies had finished their basement—although not like any finished basement I’d ever seen. This basement was more like a medieval dungeon. Manacles hung from chains driven into the walls at shoulder height. Makeshift cells formed a small warren in the center of the floor. The most disturbing part, however, was the hundreds of pine-scented car air fresheners hanging from the floor joists. The sheer quantity of air fresheners could only mean one thing: the Timmens had kept decaying bodies here.
There was a sheetrock wall on the far end of the room with a door set in its center. I pulled Bobby’s pistol out of my waistband and checked the magazine. It was loaded to capacity. I pulled the slide back a fraction and saw a round gleaming in the chamber. I felt the old confidence returning. Point shooting is like riding a bike—you never forget how to do it.
I flung the door open and took a step to the left of the opening, pointing the pistol at the darkened doorway. I was set for an ambush—ready for some screaming maniac to lurch out of the darkness at me, swinging a rusty knife like something in a horror movie. But the only thing that rushed out of the room was the foul stench of decomposition.
I heard a strange hissing noise from over my left shoulder, and I pivoted to that side, snapping the gun around and almost firing a shot. I didn’t see the source of the noise until it hissed again: a small cream-colored box mounted in the left corner of the main space, up near the rafters. It was an industrial air freshener, one of those automatic jobs like you’d see at a hospital or nursing home. Instead of masking the stench from that little room, though, it just mixed with it to make a noxiously sweet nauseating smell—rotten meat dipped in French perfume.
Blood of the Isir Omnibus Page 4
