Blood Work (29 page)

He was close,
he’d been here bare minutes ahead of us. His scent was thick, that
old rush of cab sav, but souring, like a badly aged bottle. It was
almost tangible in the air, a ribbon winding through the room,
following a condensed pattern much like the one Mercy had created
getting here. He’d been hunting, too. In the hall by the toilets it
spiked into a heady rush of cold electricity. A mean mental whammy
had been laid down on some poor sucker. Or should that be
suckee?

I snapped back
to myself just as Mercy shot past us on her way out. We tucked
ourselves into her slip stream and followed. She wasn’t moving at
the speed of vampire this time, but it was still fast. She left
flapping coats and whipped up hair in her wake. Roberts and I just
left gasps for air and perplexed looks in ours. I lost sight of her
as she rounded a corner into a narrow, dark side street.

Roberts and I
skidded around the corner and saw… sweet bugger all. No Mercy, no
Big Red, no slumped body of his victim.

“Well, that
was a bit anti-climactic,” Roberts said.

I drew the
grand new paintball rifle. “Don’t talk too soon.”

Cold
electricity rippled down my spine. I raised the gun. A figure
stepped out of a recessed doorway. It raised its hands and took two
steps toward us. Long legs in not too tight jeans, a form fitting
tee and waves of long hair. Not Big Red.

“Help me,”
Erin said and slithered bonelessly to the ground.

I started
forward but Roberts grabbed my arm.

“It’s a trap,”
he said.

“I know. He’s
gone to all the trouble of setting it up, may as well spring the
stupid thing.”

He let me go,
held his hands up in defeat. “Fine, go ahead. Rush in foolishly. Be
the golden hero. I’ll send lilies to your funeral.”

Gun in hand, I
stalked forward. “I like roses better.”

“Roses are for
pretty things like love and weddings and babies. Lilies are for
dumb fools who go out batting for top position in the Darwin
Awards. You get lilies.”

Tracking
across the width of the street with the gun, I kept an eye out for
Big Red. The traces of the last compulsion he’d put on Erin
lingered in the air, but I got no sense of his aura. If he was
still close by, then he was doing something to hide his flavour
that I’d never encountered before. Last week, I would have said
with all sorts of confidence that he was long gone. But it was this
week and I’d already had my quota of earth-shaking surprises.

I reached her
without being side-tackled. Crouching, I checked her pulse with my
free hand. Strong if a little erratic. Her neck had no puncture
wounds. We’d either interrupted Big Red before he could chow down,
or it had never been his intention in the first place.

“Erin? Can you
hear me?”

She murmured
something and shifted under my hand.

“It’s okay.
I’m going to get you out of here.”

“Gah,” Roberts
hissed. “Famous last words much?”

“Got to do
something to drag him out of hiding. I’m getting tired of waiting.”
I shifted around on my toes, my left knee starting to ache.

“Hawkins?”
Erin’s voice was soft, tentative.

I brushed the
hair out of her face. “Yeah. You okay?”

“You lied to
me. Said your name was Dave.”

“Middle name
David. You got to do you some better research.”

“Not if you
just keep on dropping beans,” Roberts said, coming up behind
me.

I handed him
the gun. “Cover us. Come on,” I said to Erin. “Let’s get you off
the filthy ground.”

Between me and
Erin we got her to her feet. She was as wobbly as a bobblehead with
a loose spring. Arms draped over my shoulders, she slumped against
me, head lolling listlessly.

“That must
have been some whammy.” Roberts kept scanning the street while I
rearranged Erin.

“More than a
feeding compulsion, yeah. I think he must have been trying to get
information out of her.”

“Feeding
compulsion?”

“That’s what
Aurum called it. Hey, here’s a whacky idea. How about we get out of
here and then discuss nomenclature?”

“Not as whacky
as some of your ideas. I’m all for it.”

I staggered to
a stop, nearly dropping Erin as I coughed sharply. Cab sav drenched
me.

“Night
Caller.”

And Big Red
flowed out the empty recess Erin had come from.

The voice swept through Erin with
the force of a concussion grenade. She shuddered so hard she felt
her bones grate against each other.

Martin. She
had to go to him. He would protect her from werewolves and strange
men. Her feet took the first steps toward him, but something caught
around her waist, held her in place.

“Erin, no.”
The voice was gentle, soft. Not rough and abrasive like Martin’s.
It was a good voice, wasn’t it? “Erin, look at me.”

She was turned
around and drowned in hazel eyes.

“Hawkins?”

“Yeah. Don’t
listen to him. He’s dangerous.”

Her knees
about to collapse, she held on to him for dear life. “And you’re
not?”

“Not by half.
Let’s go.”

She did,
before she even thought about it. Hawkins swung her around behind
him, his hands still on her, keeping her upright. Beside them, the
other man held a strange rifle with a thick, cylindrical cartridge
on top of its wide barrel. Oddest looking weapon she’d ever seen.
Between Hawkins and his friend, she could barely see Martin
approaching from the far side of the street. The two men just
stepped backwards, forcing her along behind them.

“Martínez,”
Hawkins said, tone dry. “We must stop meeting like this.”

“Didn’t know
you two had a thing going,” the other man said, gun trained firmly
on Martin. “Want me and the girl to leave you two alone?”

“We’re not
exclusive.” Hawkins took one hand off Erin and reached into a
pocket on his cargo pants. He withdrew a telescoping nightstick. It
snapped out to its full length with a quick flick of his wrist.
“Remember this, Big Red? Care to go another round or two?”

Martin
continued his advance and Hawkins and friend continued their
retreat. Erin stumbled along with them, clutching at both of their
backs in a desperate effort to keep on her feet. She didn’t know
exactly what was going on, but she felt that ending up on her arse
wouldn’t be the best place to be. Her feet found the gutter and she
hopped up it. The men took it with more grace.

Hawkins
whistled the theme from ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’.

“Man, I hope
I’m the good,” his friend muttered.

“We already
know I’m the bad.” Hawkins flexed his wrist, spinning the
nightstick in a complete circle. “That just leaves you,
Martínez.”

There was a
tense silence filled with more shuffling backwards.

Hawkins
grunted. “Guess he’s not a Leone fan, huh?”

“Probably
missed that one.”

Erin’s back
hit the wall of the building behind them. Hawkins and Co pressed
back against her, shielding her. Firmly sandwiched, she was
released from Hawkins’ hold and he drew another weapon. This one
was a long knife that gleamed in the faint light from the city
around them.

“Roberts,” he
said, voice laden with meaning the other man understood if Erin
didn’t.

Roberts nodded
tersely.

Hawkins
stepped forward and Roberts slipped directly in front of Erin. She
peered around his shoulder to watch Hawkins retake the ground he’d
just given up. He moved in a slow, predatory stalk, keeping wide of
Martin, knife and stick held low and lethally ready. Martin,
however, stood in the middle of the street, cloaked in darkness,
eyes burning silver.

“I begin to
wonder,” Martin said and the words tugged at Erin as if they’d been
a command. She pushed against Roberts’ back and he just leaned
harder on her.

“Twice now I
have caught you,” the big man continued and Erin battled the urge
to crawl to him, “and twice you fail to bring along the crippled
one. Does she exist? Or have my children lied to me to cover their
weakness at letting a mere human cut into their ranks so
severely?”

“Well, hey, I
wouldn’t put it past the little tykes to slip you few white lies. I
mean, you’re not the most accessible of parental figures. All this
time and I never knew you existed. How must they feel without daddy
dearest around to beat some respect into them?”

Martin turned
to watch Hawkins circle him. “You talk much.”

“Compared to
most of your kind that I’ve met, you’re something of a
blabbermouth, too.” Hawkins lifted his weapons in a careless
seeming shrug. “Takes one to know one.”

Wide shoulders
rolling, Martin shifted his weight. It was a small movement, but
telling. He was about to attack.

A dark shape
dropped out of the sky. It landed feet first on Martin’s shoulders.
The big man crashed to the ground. The figure rolled off him and
came to its feet in a single action that was quicksilver fluid,
moving so fast it was a blur to Erin. It spun before completely
straightening and planted a bone cracking kick in Martin’s face.
Head snapping back, Martin was tossed over onto his back.

“Time to
leave,” Roberts announced and grabbed Erin’s arm. He hauled her
along the wall away from the fight.

Erin kept
watching regardless, fascinated, curious and horrified all at
once.

Martin was
upright so fast she didn’t see him move. Hawkins slashed in from
one side, the new comer from the other. The big man met them both
with precise, whip crack fast arms. He swept a flat-bladed hand at
neck height on Hawkins, who had to drop and roll away from it or
have his throat crushed. The new comer took a fist in the face that
set them flying backwards so far they hit the ground right beside
Erin and Roberts.

Erin stopped
and stared.

It was a girl.
A scantily clad girl in her early twenties at the most. She was a
tiny thing, all pale skin, masses of black hair and big heavy
boots. She flipped to her feet and tore back into the melee, but
not before Erin saw her bright, glittering eyes.

“Come on,”
Roberts snapped.

“But she’s a
child!” Erin tried to get free. They couldn’t let a girl go up
against such a big man like that. It was murder.

“A child who’s
a damn sight tougher than you, me and Matt put together. Now
move.”

Erin complied
as far as the end of the street. Roberts took a position at one
corner, leaning against the wall, gun to his shoulder. Erin
crouched by him, not ready to trust her legs to keep her standing
for much longer. Her knees shook and every muscle ached like she’d
just run five kilometres without warming up. A small, very distant
part of her brain was having its own private freak out. She was
certain it wouldn’t be long before it overtook the functioning
areas as well, but until then, she was determined to get as much
information as she could, just to make the eventual breakdown worth
it.

She still
didn’t know how she’d ended up outside with Martin, or Martínez,
whoever. She remembered him bumping into her, trying a cheesy line
and then, bang, here she was, clinging to Matthew Hawkins while the
Twilight Zone started up production around her. All she knew now
was that a ridiculously fast fight was taking place not that far
away, and that somehow, even though she was in the middle of it,
she wasn’t the cause of it. The catalyst maybe, but not the
reason.

The fight
changed. Where Hawkins and the girl had started out harassing
Martin from different sides, it seemed to have moved to a stage
where it was focused between girl and giant. Hawkins remained on
the side lines, weapons at the ready, watching as the others
battled. Though Erin wondered how he managed it. She could barely
make the combatants out. They blurred through twists and jumps,
vanished from one side of the street only to reappear instantly on
the other. At one point, she thought they crawled part way up one
wall, leapt to the other building across the street and tumbled
back to the ground. Occasionally, Hawkins would dart in with knife
or stick. There would be a solid thunk of the stick hitting or a
wet tearing of the knife biting and then Martin would rematerialise
for a moment, taking a swing or kick at the smaller man, then
spinning into near invisibility again.

“How?” she
asked, numb with shock.

“Best not to
ask,” was Roberts’ droll reply.

Then things
got bad.

The blur that
was Martin and the girl refocused into the horribly mismatched duo.
They fought still at speeds Erin didn’t think possible, even in the
movies. For all his size, Martin was a graceful, elastic fighter.
Similarly, for her lack of size, the girl matched him move for
move. Her smaller stature gave her the ability to slip away from
his wide arms or roll between his splayed feet. But it didn’t
always help her. She was stronger than she had any right to be, but
it didn’t mean she had the leverage Martin did.

She back
flipped away from a vicious kick, bounced up, and caught the next
huge boot aimed at her head. Twisting the foot, she tried to
dislodge his balance. Martin simply set his centre of gravity and
turned the other way. The girl was flung headlong down the street,
away from where Erin and Roberts waited. She disappeared into the
shadows.

With a violent
snarl, Hawkins leaped at Martin. He laid in with both stick and
knife, scoring several times, before he mistimed a dodge and
collected a meaty fist in his side. He slammed back into a wall and
slid down it.

“Shit,”
Roberts muttered.

Erin was on
her feet before she realised it. She hadn’t taken more than a step
or two before Martin was rocked off his feet. Spitting like cat
with a bur in its tail, the girl ripped into him. All pretences at
honest combat were gone. This was an irrational, furious attack.
She latched onto his back, little arms and legs locked around his
big torso. Fingernails clawed at his face and she lunged at his
neck with her mouth. He roared as she sank her teeth into his
flesh. Martin crashed to his knees, frantically reaching over his
shoulders, trying to pry the girl loose. She wasn’t budging, no
matter the big paws that groped at her hair and arms. Staggering to
his feet, his balance wavering, Martin rammed his passenger into a
wall once, twice, three times before he dislodged her mouth from
his neck and smacked her head into the bricks. She let go
reflexively and he shook her off with a savage twist of his
shoulders.