Downside Rain: Downside book one (11 page)

And
I’m wide awake. I can’t believe I am this restless when exhaustion drained me
moments ago. How is that for contrary?

Watching
him, I draw back from River. His breathing doesn’t change. Almost imperceptible
to sight, his body settles into normal density. Normal for Downside, that is.

I
listen to River’s quiet breathing.

The
excitement of the past day allowed me to ignore the searing grief below my breastbone,
still there but manageable. Now, as my mind winds down, sorrow expands in a
swamping wave.

Why?
First the hellion, then Castle murdered. Is it connected? Had to be.
Why didn’t
we see it coming? Who’s behind it?

I
need Castle. With all my heart, I yearn for the moments of quiet companionship,
the bantering, his sarcastic asides. His big body and deadly moves protecting my
back.

River
occupied me today, but as he sleeps, the absence of Castle, the lack of him in my
life makes me want to dissolve in a puddle of tears.

I
can’t sleep. Quietly, I dress and slip out of the apartment.

Rain
drips from gutters and signs. Light splashes from doorways and shop windows.
The streets are no longer crowded but by no means deserted. Gettaholt never
sleeps.

I
wander aimlessly. Passing Popkins, I look through the window to the rear of the
café, but Castle isn’t at his table. I search for black spiked hair and broad
shoulders in a canvas coat rising above other pedestrians. I’m making it harder
on myself, I know it but can’t stop looking, and everywhere I look, Castle
isn’t there. I’m not too surprised to end up the cemetery. I didn’t mean to
come but my feet decided otherwise.

Wet
grass soaks the knees of my jeans. Drooping, I look at the dark earth which
marks Castle’s resting place and wish it could tell me something about where he
is. Castle has always been with me, how can I operate without him? I couldn’t
even retrieve Verity on my own.

“I
miss you.” My entire body is heavy with new grief. A tear trickles down my
cheek and falls before I can catch it.

“I’ll
find who killed you, Castle. They’re going to die.”

I
squeeze my shoulders together. “Pathetic, huh? Moping all over your grave.”

I
tell him about River and how we met, about retrieving Verity from Upside. Finished,
I just sit, determined not to cry again.

I
should get back before River wakes. I use my hands to push up from the ground. “Sleep
well. I loved you, you fucking idiot.”

“Aw,
cut it out,” Castle says. “You’re making me blush.”

I
almost wet myself.

Castle
stands a few feet away, grinning at me, legs apart, hands in the pockets of his
canvas trench coat. I don’t think past the fact he’s here and propel myself at
him. But the ground grabs my feet as I realize he can’t be, and he isn’t.

Not
Castle. Then what? I palm a knife and back off.

He
spreads his hands. “Aw, Rain! Is this how you greet your best buddy?”

I
don’t waste breath talking. A shape changer? I have never seen nor heard of one
that can assume another person’s physical appearance. Not only body - this
thing has his voice and mannerisms down pat. An illusion? Physically harmless,
but sent to. . . .

My
brain stalls.

The
thing slouches at me with a lopsided smile and outstretched arms. “Betcha
missed me. Where’s my hug?”

“Back
off!” My blade makes circles in the air. “Go back to whichever hell you came
from.”

“Don’t
be stupid! You can’t hurt me.” It jabs one hand at me. “Go ahead, try, I dare
you.”

Heart
pounding, I stop skittering backward. “Well, if you’re inviting me. . . .” And I
sweep the knife at it.

I
mean it as a warning but it steps into the blow and my hand . . . my hand and
the knife cut through it.

I
feel absolutely nothing but gooseflesh popping out all over.

Staggering,
I hop back again. An illusion, formless, it can’t hurt me, but I hold onto the
knife. Is whoever sent the thing speaking through it? “What do you want?”

“Want?
Want?” Castle-like, its hands flail all over the place. “I
want
to spend
time with my best gal-pal.”

I
can’t stand any more. This is sick and I have had enough. “If you got nothing
important to say, I’m leaving.” I move away, walking sideways so I can keep an
eye on the Castle thing.

“Wait
up!” It flanks me. “Rain, I’m here. You’re not imagining me.”

“Go
away. With everything else, I refuse to add crazy to the mix.”

“No.”
Its hand waves up and down in my face. “Hold up a minute. Look at me.”

I
can’t help myself. I stop and face it. Seeing Castle so close, so real, about
kills me.

Its
eyes crinkle. “I’m a ghost.”

“And
I’m a fairy godmother.”

It
humphs.
“You’re provoking me, girl. What happens to a wraith when he
dies? Huh? Tell me that.”

My
shoulders hunch. “I suppose he dies, period. Gone. Poof.” I bite my lower lip,
hard. “I don’t want to talk about this. I already saw Castle die, he can’t come
back. You are
not
him.”

It
gestures toward the sky. “Why not? My point is, I’ve never personally known a
wraith who passed on so I’ve nothing to go by, but I’m thinking this is what
happens.”

I
don’t understand and screw up my face. “Piss off!”

I
start off again and it stays with me, moving sideways in a kind of hop and
skip. “Think about it. We always figured we were Upside people who died. Right?
If you’re dead, how can you die all over again? Maybe I’m what I was supposed
to be Upside, a ghost.”

“But
Downside? You’re making my head ache.”

“There
you go again. You, you - it’s always about you.”

We
approach the gate. Castle’s phantom faces front again, hands back in pockets as
he saunters along.

I
inhale through my teeth, hiss air back out. “Whatever your game is, I’m not
buying into it. Take your illusion and shove it up your ass.”

“Nope.”
It shakes its head. “Get it through your thick little skull. I am not an
illusion, the only one talking with my voice is me.”

I
glare at the ground.

Its
tone perks. “Okay, how about this. Remember our first training session? What
you saw? You barely got the words out, ‘Fuck me, is that a fucking unicorn?’”

A
tiny piece of my brain tells me not to buy into it, but I don’t listen. In the
early hours, Castle took me to a small south-side park where we could train.
Trees were dark against the dark-red sky when an impossible, majestic creature
stepped from them, a beautiful ethereal girl on her back, long white hair
floating like thistledown, so pale her legs seemed to merge with the unicorn’s
pale hide. A unicorn and her maiden. The sight stunned me, until Castle
explained the unicorn was indeed absorbing the poor child into her body. I
wanted to kill it. He said I didn’t have a hope in hell and the girl was a
corpse. It was my first encounter with Downside horror disguised as beauty.

I
know, without a doubt, “This is real, isn’t it?”

“Sure
is, pumpkin.” He rubs his hands together. “Now that’s cleared up, down to
business. You vowed to find my killer. I’m gonna help you.”

I
stop in the middle of the path. “You don’t know who killed you?”

His
chin pulls into his neck. “Masked man, Kimosabe.”

“A
fat lot of good that is, smart ass.” How easily I fall into the old pattern,
the verbal jousting. “But he’s a vampire, right?”

“I
don’t know. I thought so at first, but I wanted to ‘cause I despise the
bastards and . . . you know . . . one of us. . . ? If it’s any help, I think I
smashed his nose when I broke free.”

“A
vampire heals fast and. . . .” I lose the words and swallow hard.

“But
it wasn’t long ago and healing takes a few days. You didn’t see a messed up
vampire at the Peralta place?”

I
start again in a small, strained voice. “You got away from him, Castle? Why
didn’t you drop flesh?”

“Overconfidence?”
His nose wrinkles. “Not everyone embraces the ultimate release like you do.”

I’d
noticed that about Castle. He didn’t lose it all unless he had to, and waited
until the last possible moment.

“It’s
too much like death,” he adds.

My
tone is bitter. “And this isn’t?”

“Learn
from my mistakes, honeybun.”

The
ache in my chest us almost too much to bear. I knocked on his door, yelled, and
sat on the step for a while before going inside. Did my voice distract him for
a few vital seconds, long enough for his killer to stick the blade in his neck?
Would I have been able to save him if I’d gone in immediately? I can’t bring
myself to ask.

I
drop my gaze and nudge a pebble off the path with my toe. “Do you remember
dying, Castle? Do you remember me there?”

“I
was . . . frantic, but at the last I felt calm, at peace, at the same time kind
of euphoric. You held my hand and cried all over it,” he says gently.

My
heart is breaking all over again.

“Your
face was the last thing I saw. It made me happy.”

“And
then?”

“Nothing,
until now, when I opened my eyes and saw you.”

I
pause at the gate and look back over my shoulder. The patch of black earth stands
out in the cemetery. It seems too small for Castle’s big body. I guess it
couldn’t hold him.

“Either
I’m insane, or you’re really here. And I know I’m not insane.”

“You
better watch that.”

My
gaze shoots to Castle’s face. “Watch what.”

“Talking
to me in public. You know you’re rational but these fine folk will think
otherwise.”

“Oh.”
I glance back and spot a few pedestrians eyeing me doubtfully.

Castle
faces a shop window as he brushes hair back from his ears. His hands hover.
“Hell, I’m invisible.”

“You’re
not. I see you.” I peer around his shoulder at my reflection in the glass, but don’t
see Castle.

He
palms his face. “Shit, Rain, what do I look like?”

“Well,”
I begin, and hesitate.

His
face contorts. “Tell me.”

“Well,”
I say again, and catch my lower lip between my teeth.

“Give
it to me straight.”

I
lift one shoulder apologetically. “The red eyes kind of threw me at first. And
the bones. But the innards are worse.”

“Holy
hells.” He paces away, comes back. “How can you stand to look at me?”

I
bite down real hard on my lip but mirth bubbles out anyway.

His
brows crunch together. “You are so funny, trying to freak out a dead person. C’mon,
what do I really look like?”

“You.
You’re you, although not one hundred percent solid. When I look at you just so,
there’s a vague impression of what’s behind you. If it’s any consolation, I
don’t see you in the glass, either.”

We
walk along a lane and come out the other end on the alley which cuts behind my
building.

My
lips twitch. Castle at my side, still with me, as if he didn’t die. My brain still
tries to object every now and then but is fighting a losing battle.

“Rain!
Nine o’clock!”

Like
being pulled from a pleasant dream into nightmare, I go down under a mound of
muscle, fur and fang before I can turn my head. Meaty breath is thick on the
side of my face, incisors pierce my left shoulder. Claws rake my thighs. A
scream tears from my throat but cuts off as all breath is expunged by the
weight on my back.

I
drop flesh and come back inches from where a large tawny cat savages my
clothes.

Rolling
up to my feet, I take off, but the cat brings me down on my face after a few
steps. It crushes me to the ground. Fangs pierce the base of my neck and pull
upward, lifting my upper body. The pain is awful. Like any big predator with
prey, it will whip its head and break my neck.

I
fade out again and propel toward the far side of the alley a second later,
gathering flesh as I run. Desperation puts springs under my feet and I sprint
faster than I ever have, heading for a set of metal rungs in the wall, a utility
ladder leading to the roof.

I
feel
the beast lunge, and take a flying leap.

Teeth
close on my foot as I hit the ladder. Crazy with desperation, dangling by my
hands from a rung, I twist, gather full flesh and kick the cat’s sensitive nose
with my other heel.

Miraculously,
it lets go. I scuttle up the rungs to fifteen feet above the ground.

Down
below, the cat rears on hind legs and roars. The sound reverberates in the
alley. Heart banging double-time, I try to catch my breath. Heat radiates from
the bricks at my back.

The
cat is between me and my weapons. I have to get around it somehow.

It
stops yowling and bows over, seeming to fold into itself. I watch in horror as its
body undulates and shimmers as if covered by a silver fog beneath which limbs
contort - oh hell, a shifter; a young one or his change would be faster.

A
slim, sinuous naked man with a shock of tawny hair looks up at me. Burning
citrine-yellow eyes well with fury.

He
grasps the first rung and hauls up.

“Through
the wall,” Castle yells.

Through
the wall.
I should have done it in the first place, not
climbed the stupid ladder, but fear made me light-headed. Swinging into the
wall, I drop flesh. A second later, I hit a galvanized steel bucket, bounce on my
butt and a mop hits me on the head. The bucket makes an unholy racket as it
rolls over a tiled floor.

Castle
stands in front of me with fingers to his lips.

Motionless,
I barely breathe.

“I
think we’re okay,” he says after a moment.

We
are in a janitor’s closet and I remember the building is a self-service laundromat
on the first floor with apartments above. “What the
fuck
happened? He’s
a shifter!”

Castle
goes through the motions of pounding his fist on his forehead. “I couldn’t do a
damn thing to help you. Just about killed me. Again.”

“You
helped.”

“What
have you been up to while I was gone?”

“Nothing!”
I brace my hands on the floor. “Nothing much. I can’t imagine this has anything
to do with Verity and the Greché.”

“Doubtful,
but . . . the hellion, my death?”

I
make a noise of skepticism. Shifters don’t dabble in evil. Anyway, I can’t reflect
on it now.

A
racket pierces the depths of the closet. I concentrate, trying to sort out a
confusion of sounds. Over the next two or three minutes, doors bang open, wood
splinters, crockery smashes. Angry voices, a couple of screams.

The
shifter is in the building and getting closer.

“He’s
heading up,” Castle says. “Don’t panic.”

My
voice hisses. “Don’t panic?” Easy for him to say. The shifter is in human form
but retains his animal senses. Did he get my scent? Will he hear my heart
pounding?

The
small room is crammed with brooms, mops, buckets and two ladders. Rags, lightbulbs
and detergent stack a shelf. I scramble upright, grab a spray bottle from the
shelf and sniff. Ammonia. A squirt in the eyes will make any creature back off
if only for a moment.

You’re
not using your brain. Get it together.
If he comes in here, the
shifter won’t find me if I go through the wall. But for how long can we play
tag through this building?

“Castle,
can you take a look next door?”

He
nods and blinks out, and I clamp my lips to contain a surprised gasp. That was
eerie.

Castle
is back in seconds. “Nobody home.”

“Good.
You can warn me when the shifter gets near. I’ll slip into the next room.”

The
noises are getting louder. “Sure,” Castle agrees. “Sounds like he’s searching
every square inch of this place.”

The
smell of cleaning chemicals tickles my nose. I squeeze it with two fingers to
contain a sneeze which makes my nostrils sting.

The
building is in an uproar. Children’s cries mix with the din. The shifter must
be crazy to crash through the place like this. Someone will try to stop him.

I
turn to the door. “I’m going out there, draw him off before anyone gets hurt.”

Castle
opens his mouth as the door disintegrates in a hail of giant splinters which spray
the closet like missiles. I drop flesh and fall through the wall. Yep, the
shifter has my scent.

The
apartment walls are so thin, the cat’s roar sounds as if it’s in the dark room
with me. He’s back in feline form. More crashing noises, and the apartment door
shudders from the thud of a large body. I crouch, tense, ready to go through
the wall again.

“Holy
hell,” from Castle.

“I’m
going to make a run for it.”

“No,
wait.” Castle holds up his hand. “The police are here.”

The
cat keens. The door bursts open and impacts the wall. Glass and china ornaments
fall from a shelf and shatter on the floor. I hurl myself through the wall,
back into the closet, through there and into the next apartment.

This
is a bedroom and muffled voices come from the next room. I ease over to a door
cracked ajar and look through. An elderly white-haired desert troll holds an
equally elderly female troll in his arms as they kneel behind a sofa.

Feet
thunder. Voices bark. The police are in the building.

Back
in the empty apartment, shaken, I squat with back braced on the wall, arms holding
knees. The shifter is gone, so are the police.

“You’re
sure he’s not hiding out there somewhere?”

Castle
stands over me. “He took off up the stairs, through the attic and over the
rooftops. Babe, you need to get out, too.”

I
push up using one hand on the wall.

“Except
there is one teensy problem: your gear is gone.”

“Great.”
Not surprised, I roll my head and neck, making the vertebrae crack. Someone has
a set of new clothes, and if they don’t want the knives, they will surface on
the black market.

“You’ll
have to take something from here.” Castle sweeps a hand at the bedroom. “Can’t
have you walking naked through the city. Well, you can, and folk will probably
appreciate it as much as I do.” He twitches both eyebrows and leers.

I
won’t take anything fancy. Dresses and a man’s suit fill the small closet. So I
pull open a dresser drawer and find a man’s blue sweat shirt and pair of track
pants.

“What
now?” I step into the pants. “It has my scent. It’ll find me.”

“What
makes you think it isn’t over?”

Tying
the drawstring, I meet his eyes. “Did you see his eyes? He didn’t just happen
on me and decide he fancied a tasty wraith steak. It’s personal. He hates me.
He’s not going to stop.”

“You
don’t know that. Maybe he’s sick - do they get rabies? - or a bad case of mange
can drive a cat crazy.”

“I
know
what I saw.” The pants are too big and baggy. I bend to roll up the
hems. Donning the shirt, it hangs on me like a dress.

“Hm.”
Castle swings around. “Let me think.”

“You
do that,” I mutter as I roll up the sleeves.

“We
go to Val,” Castle says, his back to me.

I
can’t believe he said that. “A shifter attacked me and I should walk into their
lair? Are you insane?”

He
turns back. “Abnormal behavior for a shifter. If they believed you did
something to warrant a death hunt, the entire clan would be after you with Val
in the lead. The shifter acted alone.”

Running
the idea through my head, I frown. Castle is right. Shifters live by pretty
rigid rules. Threaten one, hurt one, you hurt the entire pack and all of them come
after you. Another thing - no matter the provocation, shifters hunt discreetly.
The pack leader wouldn’t give permission for a lone shifter to rampage through
an apartment building, put innocent bystanders at risk and attract the
attention of law enforcement.

But
every rule can have an exception. “And if you’re wrong?”

“We
stake out their place first. If it looks like your shifter acted under orders,
we think again.”

“Agreed.”
But getting through Gettaholt to the shifters’ territory with one of them mad
for my blood worries me. I tug the sweater’s sleeve - if I have to dodge him
like I did in the apartment, I shall walk into Valerianus Quintus’ house in my
birthday suit.

Outside
the building, I shed a few pounds of flesh and start jogging.

“We’re
walking?” from Castle.

“My
stylish new outfit didn’t come with cash for a cab.”

‘You
know how easy I get blisters.”

“Castle,
you didn’t get blisters when you were alive, you won’t get them now.”

The
shifters’ autos and three motorcycles are lined up on a graveled flat outside
the forest. Their home is accessible only by foot.

I
step over a line of white rocks onto a dirt path which goes into the forest.
The Auld Wood covers one hundred and twenty acres. Dank and dripping from the
last heavy rainfall, it smells of moist earth, rotting vegetation and mold. The
path wends around trees, beds of tall soggy fern and deadfalls. The undergrowth
becomes thicker, the trees closer together and fungi mottles the trunks. I look
up and glimpse patches of sky through meshed branches.

They
don’t make a sound. The first I know of the two shifters is when they step in
either side of me.

“So
much for staking out the place,” Castle murmurs in a singsong voice.

Both
guys are near six-feet-tall and brawny, lightweight T-shirts hugging their
chests and abdomens, jeans low on their hips and smoothed over muscular thighs.
They are barefoot. Their dark hair is long and shaggy.

I
know they smell my fear, see the perspiration which dots my brow and hairline,
hear my breath hitch. But I can’t do anything about it. I can fade out and
disappear into the forest, but this is their domain, they will find me, and running
will make Val distrust my motives.