Blood Work (20 page)

Easier said
than done, but I had a couple of ways of getting things done.

I laid still,
trying not to think of the hard shell around me. Moving from the
tips of my toes to the top of my head, I relaxed muscles. It helped
even out my breathing and settled my mind into a calm state. Since
I’d developed psychic abilities, I’d taken up a bit of general
meditation. Dr Campbell was pleased with it, said it would help me
curb my ‘impulsive behaviour’. I don’t know about that, but it
certainly helped me do other things.

There’s a
moment between being awake and being asleep. Your body is loose,
leaking out the strains of the day. Your mind is discarding all the
issues you’ve had to deal with throughout the day and prepping for
sorting through all the issues you didn’t get to. This instant of
time is a blank canvas. Not a skirret of paint, not a sketch, not
even an idea of what it’s going to become. You aren’t thinking, you
aren’t dreaming. A moment that is empty, but one that can become
anything. In that space between one beat and the next, all you are
is potential.

And that is
where all the cool kids go to get their psychic powers.

Awareness
rushed into me through the spot just above the middle point between
my eyebrows. This was different to the link with Mercy. That was
more internal, a private hot line to the emergency services. What I
did now was sort of empty all that out and create, if you will, a
vacuum inside that let all the external things rush in to fill up
the imbalance.

Everything
became sharper, brighter, far more intense. I could sense the
coffin, the rotting satin, feel the life that lingered still in the
wood and material. I could taste the old death and the new life the
decaying corpse had birthed. There was a low level, background hum,
pleasant when you weren’t trying to figure it out or where it came
from; not so pleasant and a lot scary when you turned your full
attention to it. I could almost feel the molecules of air against
my skin and knew that I could touch and manipulate them to do some
pretty funky things.

I reached out
and gathered together those molecules, moulded them into a me
outside of me. He formed up just over my physical body, face toward
my face, a replica made from air and the energy I poured into it.
Behold, Invisible Matt! I suppose I could have used any shape I
wanted—sphere, cube, Jessica Alba—but I’ve been in this body for a
while now and I think it suits me, so I went with that.

Transferring
my mind to Invisible Matt was a little trickier. I found the big
whack of energy sitting in my solar plexus and began spooling it
out like a fire hose. The cord wavered around for a moment, then
hit Invisible Matt in his corresponding solar plexus and plugged
in. It was a rollercoaster ride, funnelling down into my chest and
then up into the umbilical, tumbling and turning and finally
crashing down in my new, temporary home. It was scary like a
rollercoaster ride, and fun like one too.

You don’t
really ‘see’ when you’re outside of your body. No eyes. But you do
sense the shape of the energies around you. It’s a bit like
infrared, except in tones of black through grey to white, with
spots of silver for the really intense things. You also don’t just
‘see’ out the front, either. Baby, is a full 360 on both the X and
Y axis. Nothing is being filtered to you through two relatively
stationary organs. Everything comes in from all angles. That can
get very disorientating, so the trick is to find something and
concentrate on it, train your mind to pretend it’s still looking
out at the world through the eyeballs. Because I always formed up
Invisible Matt as if I was looking in a mirror, when I settled into
his driving seat, my first order of business was to fix my
attention on my own face.

My real body
was a dim, androgynous shape to Invisible Matt. It was slightly
brighter than the dead wood and material around it, but not a lot.
That’s only natural. Part of me was AWOL after all. There were
patches of brightness though, around the wounds I’d acquired the
night before. I hoped it was just a concentration of my body’s
immune system and not hot spots of bacterial hoe-downs. Nolan
hadn’t seen fit to give me a prescription for antibiotics before I
dropped him like a bad date and escaped.

I rolled
Invisible Matt over and rose up through the lid of the coffin.
Because he’s just an amalgamation of air molecules, Invisible Matt
is, well, invisible. Shine a bright light on him and he shows up a
tiny bit, but that’s all. It also means he can go through solid
objects. Gives new meaning to the term ‘air head’.

We came out
into an empty place. By that, I mean, we didn’t emerge into soil.
There was a faint enclosure of light, about ten meters square, the
edges lined with the hazy, shifting glow of concentrated, but
small, life. I guessed we were in an underground hole. Great.
Kermit’s lair. The coffin I’d risen from was a vague patch of pale
light and I saw several others about the place, some of them still
partly buried in the floor or protruding from the walls. They were
probably some of the forty-one criminals from Boggo Road. I didn’t
want to think about who’s coffin I was now leasing.

Ghouls, I
suppose, lead a rather Spartan life. No need for many material
goods when your whole existence centres around eating rotting dead
things. There was little in the lair apart from the coffins and two
burning points of silver that each flickered around central points,
candles or lamps. Of course, there was the two ghouls.

Somewhat
disturbingly, they’d stacked three of the coffins into a rough
couch construction and both of them lounged on it. One was holding
a long, very dim object, much the same proportions as an average
femur. The ghoul waved it about like a mad conductor, leaning
toward the other one as if in impassioned discussion. Whatever
clothes he’d scavenged to wear had a waistband, because a
piercingly bright L shape of silver sat over his groin. My Cougar,
tucked in the front of his pants. Oh for a Glock that might go off
and pulverise his balls.

Hearing while
lurking about in Invisible Matt was no issue. Sound was just
resonating molecules, and that’s pretty much all Invisible Matt
was.

“I still can’t
believe it,” the ghoul waving the leg bone about was saying. “He
was here all along. What sort of luck is that?” He cackled. “Oh
well, I still had fun at least. Should have seen the human cow’s
face when she saw me—”

“Someone saw
you?” Kermit demanded. “You weren’t supposed to be seen. It was
supposed to be a quick job. See if he was at that address and take
him out if he was.”

“Well, he
wasn’t there, obviously, but there were these two others sniffing
about the place. I decided to leave a message for Hawkins with
them.” He snickered. “She’s not going to say anything. No one will
believe her. Even if she does talk, they’ll send her off to be anal
probed.”

“Gah.
Analysed, you twat. Martínez won’t be happy you were seen,
Saif.

You’ll be
lucky if he doesn’t tear your arms and legs off.”

“Whatever.”
Saif gnawed at the bone.

So it was Big
Red he’d sold me out to. It hurt. Not a lot, but a bit. Kermit had
been a good snitch, as far as snitches go, I guess. But by his very
nature as a snitch, he was fairly mercenary in his dealings. I
wondered what Big Red had offered him. Heh. Probably much the same
he’d offered me—continued life. Mental note, get watch back from
Kermit. The backstabbing bastard didn’t deserve it.

There’d been a
hit on my house, as well. For a moment, I worried about Mercy, then
rationalised it away. No one knew about the house at the ’Cliffe.
It wasn’t under my name. I kept a small flat in Ipswich as a decoy,
with my name all over the lease, insurance details and bank
accounts. That was where the hit would have been.

Shit!

It was a good
little neighbourhood. Quiet and full of young families. Miss Browne
next door was a bit of a busy body, but she was sweet (a little
fond of Roberts, too) and collected mail for me. What sort of ‘hit’
had Saif laid down on the place? Damn him. If any of the neighbours
were hurt, he wouldn’t have to worry about Big Red tearing him
apart. I wouldn’t leave enough behind for the vampire to find let
alone pick up.

Then there
were the pair Saif had seen there. Cops? If so, they’d have to be
plainclothes because I’m sure Saif would know a police uniform if
he saw one. That meant more than a simple matter if the detectives
were out looking for me. Crap. What had I done now? Unless it
wasn’t the police. But who else would come looking for me? Duh.
Saif had, at the behest of a big vampire colonel. A daytime hit
when I wouldn’t be expecting it. I guess I had pissed Big Red off
so much he was past the negotiation stage. Could then these other
pair be snooping around for a similar reason? Who else had I
bothered lately? No one, if you ignored Barry of Surf Wars, who
might resent me charging him for the pleasure of messing up his
business.

This wasn’t
fair. Two parties after me and I only knew half the reason. Or
maybe it was the whole reason. If Big Red wanted Mercy for his very
own, maybe the other clans were after her as well. It was an
answer, but not a very encouraging one. Brilliant.

And here I
was, trapped underground in a coffin. Chances were it wasn’t
daylight outside anymore. Which meant Mercy was free to move
around. While she didn’t have to eat every night like most other
vampires, she was just recovering from a serious beating and meal
of incompatible blood. She would probably be hungry. As if I didn’t
have enough problems.

Still, she was
out of the cage and mobile. I could reach her through the link and
get her to come break me out. Oh, look at that very grey cloud, but
is that a silver lining I see peeking through? Whacko.

The good thing
about psychic powers is that they go wherever your psyche is. I
reached out through the link to Mercy from Invisible Matt. If she
was still at home, she was a good forty odd kilometres away. I
hadn’t tried to contact her over such a distance before. Of course,
I hadn’t needed to in the past. This was about the deepest shit I’d
been in on my own. Usually events conspired to get me and Mercy in
the one shit pile at the same time. First time for everything.

Mercy was not
forty kilometres away. She was a lot closer. At least that’s what I
thought when I smacked into her within moments of starting along
the link. Excitement didn’t last long however.

Her mind was a
solid barrier, a hard mass of seething hunger and anger. She was
completely gone into a frenzy, more so than the other night at Surf
Wars. There, she’d been hunting. Here, she wasn’t even that
focused. Her empty stomach bellowed at her, whipped her into an
insane fury. She was operating on the most basic instincts, the
ones that required no higher consciousness. This red hot, raging
cyclone of purely physical needs and wants was what Mercy could
have been all the time if I hadn’t taken her in. This was what
she’d been yesterday morning, a vicious, violent creature intent on
only one thing. Thing was, she was free tonight.

I felt sick.
Even in Invisible Matt’s nebulous form. What sort of carnage was
she creating out there? How many people had got in her way? Damn
it. I should have put her down when I had the chance. I should
never have messed with the natural order of the supernatural world.
It was my fault. She was out there and she was a pinnacle predator.
Dear God.

The funny
thing about getting angry is that you don’t always start off mad.
Sometimes, okay, most times, anger comes from fear. You don’t
understand something and get the notion that it might harm you, so
you get angry. It’s a defensive reaction. See, I did listen to Dr
Campbell.

I was plenty
scared right about now.

Invisible Matt
was a loose concentration of molecules. With a bit of effort, I
could turn that looseness into something with more substance. Right
then, it was hardly any sort of effort. I channelled my growing
fear and anger into it and everything became much denser. Moving
now had a weight to it, a drag of resistance. Great.

Invisible
Matt—a little less invisible now—spun around and crashed into my
coffin. He kicked and punched and tore at the old wood. It broke
apart and my body tumbled out of the wreckage. Behind us, Kermit
and Saif were on their feet, staring bug-eyed at the shadowy figure
breaking their captive from the box they’d stuffed him in. I didn’t
wait to see what they’d do. I dissolved Invisible Matt and rode the
umbilical back into my physical body. I slammed home and was moving
before I’d even fully settled in.

Idiot ghouls
had left my pockets alone and I reached for the two handiest
weapons.

Still focusing
my eyes, I rolled and came to my feet, unsheathed SAS knife in one
hand, the other flicking out the telescoping nightstick. The freaks
didn’t even see it coming.

I hit Afzal
first. He still oozed from the bullet wounds. Ghouls didn’t really
care about wounds. He would let the bullets work their own way out
or leave them in, whatever. Bacteria meant nothing to something
that lived off putrefying flesh. If I was a bacteria, I wouldn’t
want to go squirming about inside Afzal if I had a choice,
either.

We met in the
middle of the room. He came in low, hunched up, arms out wide. I
jumped and rolled over his back, landing behind him. A sweep from
the nightstick took out one of his knees. He roared and went
down.

Then Saif was
there. He took a wide swing at me with the femur. I ducked and
darted inside his reach. I slashed across his gut with the knife
and grey blood spilled. He staggered and tried to take me down with
him. Slipping his hold, I twisted around and planted my boot on his
neck, forcing him down the rest of the way. Bones crunched, but he
managed to grab a hold of my foot. He jerked it to the side and
turned it sharply. I rolled with the turn but it put me on the
floor beside him.