Death's Rival (8 page)

“You’re not a hit man, right?”

“Right. Just a bodyguard, applying for a job.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire.

“I’ll wait unless I hear gunfire. Then I’m outta here.”

“Fair enough. Thanks for the phone,” I said, tucking it in my pocket. He had brought
me a new one—no bells or whistles, but at least in one piece and functioning—on the
orders of Leo. Having learned my lesson, I had another in my back pocket.

I spun on a heel and walked to the front door. It was a double door, wavery panes
of leaded glass in the doors and side lights. One door hung open.

A Walther was in my hand in an instant, the Benelli sliding from the back sheath.
From inside, I smelled a familiar sickly-sweet scent, heard raspy breathing and an
irregular moaning. Using a toe, I pushed open the door.

The foyer looked immaculate, twelve-foot-tall ceilings, walls a pale cream, wainscoting
a muted beige, and the millwork at ceiling and floor in a yellow the color of twenty-four-karat
gold in candlelight. I slid inside and to my left into the formal room. Hardwood floors,
Oriental rugs, marble fireplace surrounded by massive millwork. Cloth upholstery on
couches and chairs, which was weird. Vamps liked leather; the feel of skin against
theirs appealed to their predatory instincts. But I saw no leather anywhere. And even
more odd, the shutters were open. Sunlight poured into the front room.

I moved on to the left, into the music room/library. A baby grand piano stood in the
middle of the room, and couches and bookshelves lined the walls. The lower floor of
the house was set up in a circular pattern for formal entertaining. I kept on circling
to my left, into the breakfast room that looked out over the water and toward the
Seattle cityscape, through the kitchen—lots of copper and brass, even on the walls
and ceiling—and into the dining room, which had a table that would seat twelve. I
hadn’t seen anyone. No security cameras. Nothing. The sickly smells were all coming
from upstairs.

I took the stairs to the second floor cautiously, the M4 pointed up, the handgun covering
my backside. There were four bedrooms and ten sick blood-servants. Crap. There was
no info anywhere on blood-servants getting sick. This was new, and not in a good way.
The humans were sick like I had never seen anyone sick before, covered in pustules,
many of them ruptured and seeping onto the bedding. The closest thing I could have
guessed was smallpox. They were the source of the raspy breathing and moans.

I climbed the stairs to the third floor, which was empty, and then into the finished
attic. The smell of rot about blew me away, and with Beast’s experience, I can take
a lot of decomposition. The upper floor was an apartment, and on the floor lay a woman.
She had died by multiple gunshots. She had been beheaded, the way one would kill a
vamp or were, to make certain of death. I kept the Benelli on the doorway to the stairs
and slid the handgun into its holster. Avoiding the body fluids, I dropped to one
knee at her side and reached into her mouth, feeling for fangs. Nothing. Human teeth.
So why the beheading?

In the corner, something moved in the air currents. A bright blue feather, downy,
fluffy. I swiveled on my knee and studied the rest of the floor. There were a lot
of blue feathers, everywhere. But no bird or boa to explain why.

I drew a steel blade and pulled on Beast’s vision to look at the woman. She still
looked human. With the blade, I sliced down. Fast. Hard. And for an instant, I saw,
not a woman, but a huge blue – and rosy-hued bird. “Crap,” I whispered. The woman
was an Anzu—a Mercy Blade. The supernatural species lived under a blanket of glamours
that could be disrupted momentarily by the proper application of a steel blade. They
were fierce fighters. If she was dead, then the clan home had been physically attacked
as well as the vamps made sick. There was no sign of them here; they were likely hiding
in their lairs.

I went back to the second floor and asked permission of the sick humans who were conscious,
and took their blood, promising to call for ambulances. Oddly, they weren’t panicked
or worried, and even insisted that they were getting better, which sounded just plain
weird, unless the disease affected their brains, like meningitis. The one I stuck
last seemed the most lucid, and I asked, “What happened here? I thought your MOC had
accepted a new master.”

“Our Mercy Blade said we must fight, not accept the fist at our throats. She said
we would win with her fighting at our sides. It was a mistake.” Tears leaked from
her eyes. “They killed her. They killed Mithrans, and then they . . . spent some time
with us.”

I had a feeling that “spent some time with us” had been really, really bad. “Did any
of your vamps survive the attack? Are they in their lairs?”

“Some died true-dead. Some didn’t,” she whispered. “We killed four of theirs, though
they were old and powerful. But when we were overwhelmed, I told my masters to run.
I haven’t seen them since then.”

After I obtained her blood, I washed my hands thoroughly in the hall bath. Even with
gloves, I wasn’t taking chances. Like Ro, the humans had kept bleeding and I had to
apply pressure bandages at the puncture sites.

Back downstairs, I found an Apple laptop and shoved it into my tote with the blood,
grabbed up several cell phones, and added them in too. Maybe the call histories would
tell us something. I also found a business card tacked to a corkboard near a rack
of cell chargers. It was black, white, and red, with a stylized drawing of a neck
with holes in it, bleeding fresh blood, like a blood-whore’s calling card. The name
on the card was Blood-Call, the number and address local. It was the only thing on
the board, which was odd, so I pocketed the card. On a desk, I found several other
business cards, most of them of local businessmen: lawyers, accountants, a PR firm,
people who might conceivably want a vamp’s business and money. I found another Blood-Call
card, this one creased and folded as if it had been carried around for a while. I
took all the cards.

Standing just inside the front door, breathing fresh air through the open crack, I
dialed Leo’s number and told his
secundo
to wake Bruiser. He did it without demur and when Bruiser came on, he sounded chipper
and alert, even though it was his sleep schedule. I told him what I’d seen and done,
everything but the part about Mercy Blade being Anzu. I wasn’t sure that the vamps
knew that part. “I have blood samples from four human individuals, and had a devil
of a time getting them to stop bleeding.

“You have any idea why these guys are still sick when their master gave in to the
vamp we’re chasing?”

“Someone rebelled after the fact, and the new master is teaching them a lesson.” Which
was totally something a vamp would do. Bruiser went on. “I’ll find Gee DiMercy and
tell him about the Mercy Blade. You get out of there and back here. I’ll handle calling
ambulances and alerting the authorities about the pla—the disease.”

I hung up and stepped outside, still thinking about the word he had almost used for
a disease that had attacked vamps
and
humans.
Plague
.

* * *

The stench clung to me, so bad even the patient driver’s nose curled, so I tipped
him two twenties when he dropped me off at the small, private airport in the boonies
outside Seattle. The terminal was a single-story building with all the charm of a
saltbox, but it lit up the early night like a beacon. This afternoon, I had passed
through with a minimum of effort, even carrying the weapons, guessing that Leo’s money
had greased enough palms to make that happen. But there had been three people in the
terminal. Now, as I stepped inside, there was no one.

My hackles rose. The car that brought me, and was the fastest way outta here, drove
off, tires abrading on cement. I stepped to the right of the windowed door, wall at
my back. I pulled the M4 and the Walther that was loaded with silver. It didn’t have
the stopping power of the H&K, but it was the weapon of choice when there was a likelihood
of collateral damage—innocent humans who might get killed. The Benelli would take
care of any vamps.

I felt the door close beside me with a little puff of air. Standing just inside, I
slid to my right, along the wall. If I’d had a pelt, it would have bristled. Something
was very wrong here.

The terminal was silent except for the hum of electronics and the whir of an overhead
fan. The air was permeated with an acrid sting of overheated electronics and dissipated
gun smoke. I breathed in, scenting for traces of blood, urine, feces—the body fluids
that escape when humans die. The terminal didn’t seem to contain any dead humans;
nor did it smell like it had when I left. Beneath the reek of smoke, it stank of fear
and blood-servant and the now-familiar vamp. And the burned powder of fired weapons.

A soft scrape like skin on something smooth sounded from the office door. I moved
silently around the room, my back to the walls where possible, knowing that I was
a sitting duck to anyone outside, hidden by the darkness. My reflection moved with
a catlike effortlessness, and seeing myself in the windows gave me a weird feeling
of déjà vu I couldn’t specify but that felt like being tracked by another predator.
My weapons swept the room. I used the windows to check behind the counter. Nothing.
No one. But that soft scrape sounded again.

I ducked my head into the office and back out. Letting the image of the room resolve
itself in my mind. Cheap metal folding table. Chairs. Papers scattered on the floor.
Barrage of busted electronics still leaking smoke. Bullet holes in the equipment,
walls, computers.

A bundle of body on the floor. Human. Tied up. Lying on his belly, hands secured behind
his back, feet tied together, and then the ties laced through the binding on his hands
and tightened, pulling him into an uncomfortable squashed C shape. Hog-tied.

There was a ball of something in his mouth. I edged into the doorway, forced to turn
my back to the windows, which I hated. The man on the floor was wide-eyed, bobbing
his head emphatically. His hands were dark purple, and I guessed that he had been
tied up for at least twenty minutes. I moved in fast, looked behind the door, stepped
to the side, and opened the closet, securing the room. It was clear.

I knelt beside the man and set the handgun on the floor, so I could work the wad out
of his mouth. It was wet and gooey with blood and saliva and was wedged in tightly.
Nothing is ever as easy in real life as it is on TV. As I worked, I whispered to him,
“When this comes free, talk softly. Tell me three things. How many? Were you alone?
And where are the people who did this? If you shout or talk too loudly, I’ll stuff
it back in. Understand?”

He grunted what might have been an affirmative. When the mushy cloth plopped out he
said, “Three. One a fanghead. I was alone, but Beatrice will be back any minute with
supper. They went back to the aircraft. I heard screaming. A lot of screaming. Then
they drove off without walking back through here. Which is crazy because the fencing
is twelve feet high with razor wire at the top and they didn’t have time to cut—”

“Shut up,” I said. He did, gasping for breath. “You’re bound with plastic and it’ll
take time to free you. I don’t have that time. I’ll be back.” I stood and breathed
in and out, hard, pulling on Beast-speed. She wasn’t talking to me much, but I could
still access her traits. I raced out of the room and through the back terminal doors.
Outside. Slammed my back against the wall. Took a quick look around as I ran into
the shadows that would make me a less-easy target. Beast-vision made everything green
and silvery and bright. No one was here.

Up the stairs of the Learjet. The smell of blood hit me hard. Fresh blood is not a
smell humans can detect. But I can. Wet, sweet, and a lot of it. Blood in massive
quantities aerated by arterial spraying.

I stopped just inside the hatch.

I share my soul with a predator, a big-cat who doesn’t mind if her prey is still struggling
when she starts to feed, who likes to play blood-games with her food. I’m used to
death. But this blood-game had been played with a human. And it was bad.

CHAPTER FIVE

Deer Antlers Piercing Through His Shoulders

The carpet was soaked scarlet. The walls had been spray painted crimson. The leather
chairs had been painted. The rounded roof ran with red rivulets. A naked body had
been tacked beside the entrance of the sleeping quarters. The body was bluish white
skin everywhere except for the raw, gaping wounds, still leaking. His limbs spread
in a grotesque X. Nails, huge six-inch-long nails, held him in place on the bulkhead
wall. Steel nails though his wrists and above his ankles.
Crucified
.

It was the part-timer, Flyboy Dan.

My scalp tingled. My vision telescoped down to the bloody man hanging on the wall.
The vision of the nailed man triggered something deep inside, in some dark and shadowy
place in my soul, some memory of fear and pain. It was like a tight, scarlet bud,
the flower of some unseen, unremembered horror still concealed in bloody, deadly petals.

Crucified
. But not like the Christ. Like something else.

I smelled blood and the stink of bowels released in death. Heard the soft, wet sound
of a drop of blood falling to the saturated carpet. I took a slow, deep breath and
the darkness receded, the flower of old pain softened and blurred, losing its power
over my mind.

But in some tiny, logical place of my brain that was still functioning, I thought,
It isn’t like the suckheads to let blood go to waste.

Stupid thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid thought. I forced myself to breathe, breathe,
slowly, deeply. Underneath the blood-death-stink I smelled vamp. Now-familiar vamp.
The vamp I was chasing. I drew my weapons back into firing readiness. I’d let them
drop at the sight of the man. Stupid rookie mistake. Stupid thoughts. I blinked away
tears I didn’t know I’d cried and scanned the small jet, looking for anything alive
or undead.

There was no way to avoid stepping in blood, but I did my best as I peeked into the
cockpit and then circled around to the galley. Both were empty. I flipped the light
switch in the sleeping quarters. There was no blood here. No. The vamp had left me
a different kind of message. The new part-time first mate was naked, positioned on
the bed where I had slept. Dead, with two holes in his neck, still trickling blood.
A smile on his face. An envelope lying on his fish white belly.

It had my name on it.

I toed off my bloody boots, walked barefoot to the bed, and took the envelope. Tucked
it into the blood-bottle tote. Grabbed my belongings and slid back into my boots.
Not sure where the calm actions were coming from. Training or instinct. Maybe a bit
of both, taking over when my mind went on hiatus and my soul was aching. I paused
at the hatch and looked back at the crucified man.

The ancient, blooming horror opened before me, in fast forward.

I had a momentary vision of another man, white, bearded, bloodied, hanging over hot
coals, deer antlers piercing through his shoulders, ropes leading up from the antlers
into the dark of night. The sound of drums. The smell of herbed smoke and blood. A
phantom memory, new, yet oldoldold. And then it was gone, as if it had never been
real. As if the memory was a dream, half lost upon waking.

I went down the steps, leaving bloody footprints, and washed my boots at a low faucet
on the terminal building wall. Entered the terminal. I was sawing at the bindings
on the hog-tied air traffic controller when the tears that were gathered in my eyes
started to fall. This was crazy. People were being drained, were being crucified.
People were dying of
plague
. I was on a mission of peaceful parley that should have been known only to a few
specific people, but it felt as if my every move had been telegraphed to Leo’s enemies
and I didn’t know how, or who was giving away inside information. More people were
dead by violent means and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know a lot of stuff, and it
had come back to haunt me.

I blinked and saw the man stuck to the Learjet wall like a bug on felt. I took a steadying
breath. I could mourn later. I bore down on the bindings holding the air traffic controller.
Dulling my blade. Because his hands had swollen around the plastic strips, it took
all my strength and concentration to saw through the strips on his wrists and not
cut him badly. One of the zip strips parted. I bent into the struggle with the plastic.
It took a whole minute and several cuts to his hands and wrists, even with my highest-quality
steel edges, to free him. Whoever had trussed up the air traffic controller had known
what he was doing. When the last binding on his hands broke through, the man collapsed
on the floor, pulling his hands up to shoulder height. They looked awful, but I thought
they would be okay. Tying up someone’s hands that tight can result in permanent damage
from something called compartment syndrome. I’d seen it before and it wasn’t pretty.
“See a doctor,” I said shortly, not letting my relief sound in my voice.

I cleaned his blood from the blade by wiping it on his pants and put it away in a
sheath not easy to hand. I didn’t want to draw it again until it had some attention.
I should question him again. Hard and thoroughly. Just because he had been trussed
up at a crime scene like a young calf didn’t mean he hadn’t been culpable on some
level. Maybe he let the bad guys in. Maybe he did something else. But I wouldn’t interrogate
him. I would take the coward’s way out and vanish. I stood and said, “Is there video
surveillance of the attackers?”

Using one purpled palm, he pushed up and rolled over, looking at the destroyed computer
and electronic equipment. He laughed, a pained chuffing sound. “I doubt it. Looks
like they shot up the whole works.”

“I need transportation.”

“I have a Yamaha Super Ténéré bike beside the building out front. Can you ride?”

“I’m a Harley girl. Yeah.”

“Keys in my pocket.” He tried to move his fingers and hissed through his teeth at
the pain.

“Give me ten minutes before you call the cops,” I said. “Mr. Pellissier will make
it worth your time.” I fished for the keys and left through the front door. The bike
was in the shadows at the side of the building, hidden from the parking lot, helmet
on the back. It was a sleek, sporty street bike, all black, built for speed and comfort.
I stored my weapons and clothes in the aluminum side cases and strapped the Benelli
to the bike along my knee. The weight and balance were different from Bitsa, and it
used a key start, which I had always thought was a wussy way to start a bike, but
I wasn’t complaining. I keyed it on and it had the nice steady purr of a well-kept
engine. The last thing I did before leaving the airport was to throw the new cell
phone as far as I could and let my braids down from the crown to put on the helmet.
It smelled of the air traffic controller but wasn’t too horrible. I’d been around
worse smells today. I tucked the braids into my collar and was on the road in seconds,
heading toward the city lights.

Popular wisdom says it’s supposed to rain all the time in Seattle, but it was dry
and balmy for November, in the high seventies, even this late. Scudding clouds were
advancing across the sky, and the night was black with buffeting winds and unfamiliar
scents, mostly fecund earth and dense greenery, exposed rock, still warm from the
sun. I shifted gears and climbed a hill, gaining speed. Putting the past behind me.
Right now no one knew where I was. No one could contact me. If I wanted, I could take
off and just disappear. Start over.

Beast does not run away,
she growled softly.

But I could. If I wanted. A large part of me did want to head for the hills. Every
time I blinked I saw the man I had left in the Learjet.
Black road. Blink. Bloody body hanging on the jet’s bulkhead wall. Open eyes.
The man I had left alone, unprotected, to be tortured by vamps.
Black road. Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes. Black road.
The hanging, bloody man had been familiar, part of an old memory, a memory from my
Cherokee past. Familiar, but fading. Already the vision of the man in the past had
merged with the dead man of tonight. The familiar, hanging pose. The distant memory
tumbling into the present, yet not quite sliding into place. I had seen such a thing
when I was a young child. I was nearly certain. Nearly.

For months, little bits and pieces of my current life had fallen away or were ripped
from me, much like the man’s flesh had been flayed off. But my grief had all been
internal—not overt—and therefore easily pushed away, shunted aside in favor of more
immediately important matters. Ignored. But at the sight of the tortured flyboy, and
the half-recalled memory, the enormity of my life changes had socked me in the face
like some dark demon risen from hell.

Black road. Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes. Black road. Grip bike. Apply more speed.
Bend into the turn
. Wind beating at me. My breath was hot under the faceplate, almost panting. Almost
a sob.

I’d lost my best friend, Molly, when I killed her sister. I could still feel the eighteen
inches of vamp-killer-blade sliding into Evangelina. Her demon-heated blood, pumping
across my hand.

I’d lost my boyfriend Rick LaFleur when he was attacked by werewolves and were-cats,
and I had been unsuccessful in helping him with his shift-to-furry problem. I had
been forced to say good-bye to him while he went to a special training camp outside
Quantico for agents of Big Brother—PsyLED—the Psychometry Law Enforcement Division
of Homeland Security.

I was, for the first time in my adult life, essentially homeless, friendless, empty,
and alone. Just as I had been at age twelve when I wandered out of the forest after
being stuck in Beast form for decades. But this time, I remembered some of my past,
and the memories left me flayed just as the pilot had been. Just as the man had been
in the old memory. Had he? I remembered blood. I think. But the distant past was shifting
and changing and drifting away.
Black road. Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes. Black road.
My own bleeding was all internal.

I was stupid and pathetic and spineless. Everything I’d done, every decision I’d made,
had taken me to a place I had never intended to go—working long-term for the vamps
instead of just beheading the crazy ones. Learning that some of them were thinking,
feeling creatures. Not human—but not worthy of death just because of their vamp-nature.
Black road. Blink. Bloody body. Open eyes. Black road
.

Tears started to fall behind the face-shield, caught by the air currents sweeping
up underneath like mini tornadoes, cool and damp across my face and into my hair.
I deserved losing my best friend because I’d killed her sister. I had blood on my
hands and on my soul and I’d added to the toll tonight—it was my fault that the men
in the jet were dead, because I hadn’t considered that someone would come after me,
because I hadn’t taken precautions. I didn’t recognize myself anymore in the killing
machine I was becoming.

Jane is killer. Only killer,
Beast murmured.

“Go away,” I shouted into the teeth of the wind. She growled and went silent. I gave
the engine gas, speeding into the dark, passing headlights that left smears on my
retinas. Bent low over the bike, leaning into the turns, taking chances that would
have been deadly to anyone with human reflexes.
Black road. Blink. Bloody pilot. Bloody bearded man. Nails. Antlers. Open eyes. Black
road.
The bloody body was a nightmare memory brought forward in time. Was the man from my
past someone I had cared for? A white man? How would that be possible? And I’d never
know, not for sure.

Lost. They were all lost. Everyone I knew from my first life.
Etsi
, my mother,
Edoda
, my father,
Elisi,
my grandmother. All gone. All dead. Decades and decades ago. And now everyone I truly
loved and truly trusted from my current life, Molly and Rick, were gone. I screamed
out my grief, in long, hoarse sobs as the miles and black pavement raced beneath me,
and wind buffeted the misery that dogged me. I screamed until there was only the wind
against my clothes and the road beneath my tires.
Black road. Blink. Bloody pilot. Open eyes. Black road.

When the tears finally stopped, my voice was hoarse and my throat was raw. I was empty
and purposeless and useless.
Jane is killer only,
Beast thought at me.

“Shut up,” I whispered. “I didn’t kill the man with the antlers through his body.”

Jane is killer only.

In a small town outside Seattle, I passed a bank with a well-lit ATM and pulled over.
If I had to go to ground, I needed money. I inserted my card and punched in the special
PIN that allowed me a onetime withdrawal of an unlimited amount of cash. I removed
five thousand dollars and added it to the wad of money Bruiser had given me for this
gig. I wasn’t sure why I might need to go into hiding, but the imperative was there.
Take money. Stock up. Be prepared. Now I had to get back to New Orleans, which meant
flying commercial, so I had to get rid of my weapons.

Two blocks over, in a brand-new strip mall, I found a one-stop shopping spot, most
stores still open. In a high-end luggage store I paid cash for two hard-bodied cases
used for shipping electronic musical equipment. Outside, I took my weapons apart so
they couldn’t fire, packaging the pieces in separate shipping containers, so that
if someone stole one case, there weren’t enough parts to make a whole weapon. It isn’t
easy to ship firearms and I didn’t want any problems. In a UPS franchise store that
was trying to close, I purchased a third container and shipping materials for the
bladed weapons. The fifty I tipped the manager ensured that he stopped making noises
about needing to close the store and got helpful, handing me padding and foam and
layers of cardboard to keep the knives from shifting in transit. I kept only two weapons—two
wooden stakes that I could use as hair sticks. If I got stopped by airport security,
I wouldn’t mind tossing them, and I’d feel safer if I had something on hand to defend
myself.