by P. N. Elrod
Another thud.
I try to crawl away from the agony.
Can’t move.
God, my head.
Hodge yells something.
She keeps hitting me. Marian. With each strike, she gasps out some wordless sound. It’s ugly, full of hatred and perhaps a lifetime of frustration.
I try to vanish.
Nothing. The pain is too much. I’m paralyzed from it.
Wood. She’s using wood.
She’s not stopping.
She won’t stop until I’m dead.
Dead like Stan. She’d grabbed up a knife and struck out at him, venting God knows what fury onto his inert body when she couldn’t get her way.
Dead.
Others had tried to kill me before.
Maybe this time would finally…
Finally…
“You crazy bitch!”
Hodge’s voice. He seemed annoyed. I wasn’t overly concerned. Marian’s response was mumbled. “Yeah, he’s dead, so lay off.”
Bless you, my son. After that, pain distorted their voices past the point of understanding, and I drifted out of the conversation. I lay flat on my stomach with one arm awkwardly turned and the side of my fact-mashed against the rug. My left eye was partially open to a panoramic view of dark blue pile and a low slice of wall. Saliva oozed from my sagging mouth, making a wet place under my chin.
I’d had worse, but not recently, and past survivals give no comfort to current pains. For the time being all I could do was lie dormant until my nervous system decided to pull itself together. Too bad that Hodge had missed his chance at me; hit or miss, a metal bullet was nothing compared to wood. No wonder it was so popular for dispatching vampires.
Something dropped into my field of view with a clatter. I eventually identified it as the small table we’d knocked over earlier—Marian’s improvised murder weapon, now discarded. It had looked so fragile then, not the sort of thing I’d choose for such a job. Who’d have thought—
Shut up, you’re babbling.
The better to distract me from the pain, my dear. Christ, it felt like an elephant had used my skull for a batting practice.
“Get ready to go,” said Hodge.
“Why?”
“Because the boss wants to see you.”
“I can’t leave. Daddy and the others will be coming back.”
“And you want to wait here with the body?”
“Then get rid of it.”
It. I’d been reduced to being an it Coming from her, quite understandable.
“I don’t work that way, honey.”
“But I can pay you. I’ve got some money with me. It’s yours if you help me.”
Hodge coughed out a brief, shaken laugh. “Yeah, that’s how it all works for you rich bitches. Wave some money and get someone else to clean up your garbage.”
“Will you do it?”
He took his time answering and there was an edge to his voice when he did. “I’ll do it. Now, get your coat.”
“Where are we going?”
“Place by the river. Wrap up good, honey, it’s cold out there.”
“I’ll have to be back soon.”
“Don’t worry about it.” His tone was preoccupied. He was busy figuring out just what to do with me. I expected to be dragged to the trunk of his car, perhaps to wind up in the same spot as Willy Domax and Doolie Sanderson. Kyler probably had a regular assembly-line process for getting rid of troublemakers. Hopefully, it would take time, and by then I’d be in better shape to handle things. Hodge’s big surprise would be only a little delayed.
As for Marian…she stirred up an army of black thoughts and feelings. Most of them were Beyond voice, but not action. God help us both when I saw her again.
If I ever moved again.
Marian was in the kitchen; her heels clacked on the linoleum. Hodge prowled the living room. Something thumped and hissed. Marian returned, attracted by the noise.
“What are you—oh, my God, what are you doing!”
“Cleaning up the garbage. Now let’s get out.”
She started to make another objection, but he must have grabbed her to hustle her along. They went out through the kitchen, not bothering to shut the back door.
Without them for distraction, the pain in the back of my skull blossomed. I tried once more to crawl away from it, but my body was still frozen in place. Vanishing was impossible, negated by the use of wood. Damn it, why couldn’t she have hit me with the lamp?
The damage must have affected my ears; something like radio static filled the air. I should have been able to hear their car as it drove away, though if Hodge was using that Caddy with the smooth motor… I hadn’t heard him arrive, but then I’d been occupied with other things.
What had he meant by “cleaning up the garbage”?
Nothing good; even Marian hadn’t liked it.
After a solid minute of effort, I managed to blink one eye. The right one that lay hard against the rug remained shut. I must have looked like Charlie McCarthy on a bad day.
There was a dry, dusty tang in the air. Well, that’s what happens when you fall on a rug with your mouth hanging open. I spent another minute messily trying to work it shut.
Stick to blinking, it’s easier.
A few years ago, I’d once suffered the all-time mother of hangovers. Even if I’d blanked out the drunken journey, the memory of arrival was still uncomfortably clear. Just short of my bed, I’d collapsed on the floor, spending an oblivious night on its hard, cold surface. In the morning, my joints were stiff and unforgiving, but it turned out to be a good thing not to have made it to bed, after all. When I woke up, my stomach’s reaction to the excess abuse was instantaneous and awful. In acute physical agony, since my head felt like a popped balloon, I cleaned it up myself, too embarrassed to call the janitor.
The pain had been just as terrible then, but unlike tonight’s fiasco, self-inflicted. Oh, for the good old days when I was too smart to hook up with a private detective.
Agent, Escott’s voice automatically corrected in my mind.
This wasn’t tracing stolen goods to be returned in triumph to the owner, it was destroying lives. McAlister dead, Doreen… maybe, and eventually, Marian.
Part of me was ready to kill her for doing this to me. I wasn’t proud of that desire, but it was reassuringly human. No seductive draining of her blood figured in my mind, though. It would be up close and personal, a toss-up between strangulation or breaking her neck.
Babbling
The radio static was louder.
I tried moving my fingers next. They were farther from my damaged skull. Maybe the nerves there hadn’t heard the news, like a snake that keeps wriggling after the head is chopped off.
Queasy thought.
They felt like overstuffed sausages and were about as deft, but they faintly responded. As if in echo, my toes flexed a little. There was hope for me yet. Another month or so and I’d be tap-dancing on flagpoles. I’d embrace it as my new vocation. It probably paid better than writing and was safer than being assistant to a private agent.
Where the hell was Escott, anyway? Surely he’d have taken care of Summers by this time, unless there’d been trouble at the hospital If something had happened to Doreen, he might be reluctant to deliver flic news.
The static had developed into an unmistakable crackling.
Fire.
Mind-numbing panic washed over me for a few uncontrolled seconds before reason took hold. There was a fire, but in the fireplace. It had been burning earlier, all during that interview with Kitty, and when Marian had returned, she’d merely—
hire
As if in confirmation, the electricity failed and the lights went out except for a soft glow reflecting off the slice of wall. My one working eye lid blinked at it stupidly.
They’d left me to burn to death.
Not to death, my mind continued idiotically, they thought you were already dead.
Panic on top of pan
ic as I tried to crawl out. A wave of heat washed over the top of my head and down my body. I was pointed toward the living room, the direction I had to go to get to the door serving the kitchen. Behind me was the front door, a shorter distance, but it was closed and perhaps even locked. Hodge and Marian had left the one to the kitchen open. I had a wonderful vision of myself slithering through it, tumbling to cool safety.
It was countered with harsh memories of fires I’d covered for the paper in New York: bodies burned black, limbs stiffened into unlikely poses of death. Would my brain burn up as well, or would it continue to live on, trapped and insane inside a charred, grinning wreck?
My feet flinched but could not push me forward; my fingers grasped but had no strength.
Vanish. Try to ranish
Smoke flooded the room, dimming the firelight. Would anyone from the main house have noticed by now?
The desperation to wink out and swirl away was strong enough to fool me into thinking I’d actually done it. I felt the familiar disorientation take hold; the heated air of the room would lift me to the ceiling, then with a swift mental push I’d melt through it into the open air…
Illusion. I might as well have been welded to the floor.
The place was oven hot and loud. I’d forgotten how deafening a fire could be. Would anyone hear my screams? By the time the flames reached me, I would, indeed, be screaming.
My legs trembled. If I could get my arms under me—my toes caught on the rug, slipped, and caught again.
Move.
My arms spasmed, pushing me forward toward…. oh, God, I can’t go in there.
I was just able to raise my head briefly, long enough to see what hell looked like. Shifting, treacherous gleams of red, orange, and yellow-white danced along the living-room walls. The curtains were thick with flames; spinning clouds of smoke raced from them to the ceiling, filling the house. A forgotten magazine on the floor ignited and burned, the pages curling open one by one as though an invisible hand were swiftly turning them.
Half cursing, half sobbing, I urged my inert body to move before it was too late while begging for more time to recover. Another minute Just one more minute and I could crawl. Please, God, give me that much.
I flopped and twisted, trying to roll away. The kitchen exit was blocked by the growing fire and my own limitations. I’d have to try for the front door and hope it wasn’t locked.
Not enough time. The edge of the rug I lay upon was already being eaten away. The whole thing would soon catch and go up, enveloping my clothes… me…
If I could scream, I could move. Don’t waste the energy on anything else.
Coordination was too slow to match my level of terror. I got a water-weak elbow under me and pushed. It slewed me to the right. The worst part was trying to lift my head; the neck muscles weren’t up to holding it for more than a second or two. It dragged on the floor like an anchor.
Glass shattered somewhere, probably from the heat. I didn’t really care; I was too busy.
Christ, the door was miles away. Maybe if I rolled toward it…
I writhed, thinking of that damned headless snake again.
Another glassy crash. Air rushed in, feeding the fire.
Someone shouted. My name, I thought, but I couldn’t tell. My imagination had fooled me before.
More air. A sea of it rolled in; smoke dense enough to cut rolled out.
My name.
Someone coughing.
My name.
Blinded by the smoke, he blundered into me. Frantic hands clawed, randomly seized one arm, and tugged. I pushed in the same direction. Inelegant, but it worked. He cursed and coughed and damn near tore my arm from its socket. We made progress. The door loomed close, gloriously close. My head thumped against the threshold, reminding me of the original injury, but I didn’t care anymore. We were out of the furnace. One last pull and he dragged me clear of the porch and onto the hard ground.
Inexplicably, he began beating on my ankles with his hat. I understood why when a whole new kind of pain shot up from them and blasted through the top of my skull. Stung to movement, my legs kicked and flailed and generally interfered with his efforts. In spite of this, he managed to smother the flames before they got out of hand.
He dropped next to me, doubled over with hoarse coughing.
God looks after fools, after all. Thanks, Boss.
“Are you talking to me?” Escott wheezed, his eyes streaming and red from the smoke.
I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud. “Not exactly.”
“Good God, what happened to you?”
Having no need to breathe regularly, I hadn’t taken in the smoke and was better able to talk, only I didn’t feel like doing much. “I was dumb enough to turn my back on Marian.”
“Is she in there?” He made a half start toward the burning house.
“No,” I said quickly, waving him down. “Got away.”
“Where?”
Now was not the time for explanations. We had to be somewhere else and fast. “We gotta get outta here, Charles. Are you able to walk?”
“Are you?”
Details, details. “How far?”
He rubbed at his eyes and shook his head. I couldn’t tell if he was coughing or laughing. “Hang about.”
I wasn’t in any condition to do much else. He staggered away, returning a short age later to improvise a new driveway over the grounds with his Nash. He parked a narrow yard from where I lay and opened the passenger door. After that, it was a simple matter of hoisting me inside.
“The Stockyards?” he asked, sliding behind the wheel. First aid for me always meant a long, healing drink.
“The river.”
Which is full of water he seemed to be saying. Not your preferred draft, old man
“Just get us moving, Charles. I’ll tell you about it.”
He coughed again, but shifted gears and hauled the wheel around. As we passed the guesthouse garage, I nearly choked on a suppressed growl of outrage.
“That screw-faced son of a bitch stole my car!” A ridiculous reaction, considering what we’d both just been through, but it was one way of draining off some of the built-up stress.
“Which screw-faced son of a bitch?” he asked, managing to sound dignified despite his cough.
“Hodge. He came here tonight. When he left with Marian, they must have taken my car.”
His face was one big question mark.
Right. I owed him—among many other things now—an explanation, or at least part of one. In a few short sentences I covered the disaster, omitting only the details of what happened when I tried to hypnotize Marian. It left a noticeable gap open to questioning, and Escott jumped straight into the middle of it.
“How on earth was Hodge able to sneak up on you?”
I shrugged, as though uncertain myself, and hoped that it looked convincing. “I was preoccupied with Marian, with getting her to talk.”
He made a noise indicating that he understood and I belatedly realized that he thought I was referring to a hypnotic question-and-answer session. I let the misinterpretation stand. For the moment, it was better than the truth.
“She knew that I knew too much and jumped the gun—Hodge’s gun, to be exact—by lambasting me with that table,” I continued. “She couldn’t have been listening to him. She went crazy like she did with McAlister. Hodge stopped her. I think it shook him up to see her like that.”
“I daresay. Perhaps he even prevented her from inflicting more serious damage than she did.”
“Or he was mad that she cheated him of the satisfaction of doing it himself. It would have been so much simpler if she’d just waited and let him try to shoot me.”
“Most unfortunate that she did not. Are you better? You sound better.”
I opened and closed my hands, evidence of my physical recovery. My singed legs hurt, but I’d soon be able to take care of them. The emotions would take longer, perhaps a lifetime, even by my changed standards. “I’m g
etting control again. It takes a little time and I didn’t have any before. How’d you know I was there?”
“I didn’t, nor did I look for you since I did not see your car. That may have been why Hodge stole it. As for why he set fire to the place …”
“To confuse and distract, like stirring an anthill with a stick It leaves the ants running all over trying to put stuff back in order, and in the meantime they forget about the stick.”
“Or its possible return.”
“Okay, so if you weren’t looking for me, then how…?”
“I heard you,” he said in a muted tone that made me feel quiet as well. My throat wasn’t aching because of the smoke. “Then I saw you through the front window, which I had to break to open the door. I think you’re aware of the rest.”
“Thanks for pulling me out, Charles.”
Shows of gratitude always made him uncomfortable. “Well, good help is hard to come by,” he demurred. “I’ve but one request.”
“Anything.”
”Don’t do that again.”
I started to make a light reply, then for the first time noticed how tightly he gripped the steering wheel. His eyelids were jumping around and I could almost feel the nervous energy coming off him. He was putting up a calm front, but it was plain to me that I’d thoroughly scared the shit out of him.
“Scout’s honor,” I said humbly.
He nodded once, to close the subject, and switched to a new one. “You said the river. Do you think she’s getting away via the facilities offered by the IFT warehouse?”
“That’s my best guess. If she’s not there, then I don’t know where she’ll be. And it’s not a getaway or she wouldn’t have questioned him. All she planned to do was to turn over the bracelet, then I showed up and threw a monkey wrench into the works. Hodge had orders to take her out. Since she didn’t know what they’d done to Harry, she was just stupid enough to go with him.”
“So Kyler could sort her out about shooting Doreen?”
“Yeah, only she might not survive the experience.”
“Would he go so far?”
“What do you think?”
For an answer, Escott stepped on the gas.
11
THOUGH it had been a solid and busy six months since his last visit to International Freshwater Transport’s warehouse, Escott’s memory needed no prodding on how to get there. He picked out the fastest possible route, pausing only to chafe at stop signals. At this hour most of the intersections were empty, so the wait was doubly hard, but he wasn’t about to attract attention by running through them. A curious cop was the last thing we wanted.
