MudMan (The Golem Chronicles Book 1) (7 page)

The kid leaned back in his seat, shook his head, and shrugged. “Sorry,” he replied. “I got on shift this morning. Do you have a name? If you have a name, I can point you to the right room.”

Levi frowned, trying to recall the Old English tattoo he’d seen inked across the top of the girl’s chest.
Punk Rock Susie? Punk Rock Sammy? Punk Rock Something,
that much he was sure of. Wait,
Sally, Punk Rock Sally
. “Could be wrong,” he said, “but I think it’s Sally something or other. Look, I’m supposed to be doing some follow-up, but I left her file back in my cruiser. Can’t you help me out here?”

The attendant hesitated. This was irregular, and irregular slowed things down, got people thinking, which, in this case, was a bad thing.

Then the receptionist glanced down at his book and back up to Levi, a measuring look in his hazel eyes.

“Yeah, sure. No problem, officer,” he said after a time. “Let me just get the log.” He pulled out a binder and riffled through the contents, sorted by time and date. Then he moved over to the computer and ran his hands along the keyboard, fingers dancing over the keys while his eyes scanned the screen. Levi was a firm believer that honey worked better than vinegar, at least with humans. With his usual clientele—the monsters in the Hub, say—vinegar, usually in the form of a meat-cleaver-shaped hand, was always the ticket.

“Bingo was her name o,” the desk jockey said. “I’ve got it right here. Name’s Sally Ryder.” His fingers hit a few more computer keys as he searched for whatever information he needed. “And”—he paused, double clicking something with the mouse—“it looks like she’s up on six. Room 615.”

“I sure appreciate it, you’re a lifesaver.” Levi beamed and bumped a fist on the desk.

The attendant shrugged in return. “Hey, like I said, no problem. Have a good day, officer.”

Levi nodded, walked to the elevator bank, and rode up to six.

He gave the attending nurse at the sixth floor desk—a hefty-set black woman with short hair and square glasses—Miss Ryder’s name and room number. She, in turn, gave him a bored once-over and lazily waved him in, pointing down the connecting hallway. Levi walked to the door and knocked softly. No answer.

He knocked harder, more insistently. Still nothing. So, he pushed his way in while a seed of worry tugged at his mind like a fishhook.
What if they already got to her? What if I’m was too late? Nonsense,
the rational part of his mind insisted,
she’s fine.
As though to prove he wasn’t worried, Levi carefully shut the door behind him with a soft click, no rush at all. She was in, and likely sleeping, so no point in startling the poor girl.

He made his way down a short hallway and pulled back a sliding curtain concealing the sleeping quarters. He breathed out a sigh of relief. Sally Ryder, with her pink hair and colorful tats, sat propped up in her bed watching some bad movie on a too small TV, a pair of headphones snaking from the hospital bed to her ears.

“Excuse me, Miss Ryder? Sally Ryder?” he asked.

No response. Her eyes were glazed, heavily lidded, puffy, and fixed firmly on the television. The look of a person who wanted very badly to forget about life for a while.

He cleared his throat. Nothing. “Excuse me, Miss Ryder? Sally Ryder?” he said again, this time raising his volume.

She startled, giving a small jump before turning toward him, green eyes tightening at the corners with worry. She was terrified, which explained the purple bags riding below her eyes—not sleeping. Levi thought her fear was well warranted. Her lips curled down when she saw him, disapproval and disdain evident in equal measures on her face. The look of someone with no love for cops. She reached up and pulled the headphones free, then folded her arms across her slight chest.

“Look, I already gave my statement,” she said, voice hard edged. “I’m not interested in talking anymore. I’m not going to recant, if that’s why you’re here. I wasn’t on drugs. I know what happened and what I saw. So please, just leave me alone. I need to rest.”

“Yeah, it sure does look like you could use some rest,” Levi muttered under his breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” Levi replied loud enough for her to hear. “I was just saying my name’s Officer Adams, and I’m going to need you to go over the details for me one more time.” Levi pulled over one of the visitor chairs and took a seat. “From the beginning if you wouldn’t mind.”

“But I
would
mind,” she replied. “I’m not interested in being laughed at again. You guys already have the report, and I’m not changing a word.”

“All the same, miss.” He paused for a beat. “Please, the details could be important. I understand you might not feel like discussing the issue further, but whoever did this to you is still out there. If you don’t help us stop them, what happened to you could easily happen to someone else. I know you don’t want to see that happen. So just once more, from the beginning.” He flashed her his most winsome smile.

She scowled, pulled her arms even more tightly against her body, and looked away, uncooperative. After a second she reached up and ran the back of one hand across her cheek, obliterating a tear track. Levi just sat there, waiting. It was awkward, uncomfortable, and too quiet, but Levi was fine with awkward, uncomfortable, and too quiet. He thrived on those conditions and he knew she would cave first. Humans almost always did with this kind of thing—it was the need to fill the silence with noise. With something, anything really, so they wouldn’t have to sit alone with their own thoughts.

Not a terribly introspective species.

After a couple more uncomfortable minutes, Ryder shrugged her shoulders and turned back toward him.

“Fine, if it’ll get you outta my hair quicker, I’ll talk. I was kidnapped,” she said. “Kidnapped by a bunch of freaky monsters. Creepers with blue skin. Cultists, maybe, I dunno. Had to be something like that. They drugged me and took me somewhere. I don’t know where, but it was dark and it smelled like shit. There were a few other people with me, but …” She trailed off. “I can’t remember—and it’s not important anyway. They-they cut me open.” She uncrossed her arms and traced a finger along her stomach.

“That’s what’s important. They did something to me, I dunno what. Stole an organ? All the docs around here say I’m not missing anything, but that’s what I think. Only thing that makes any fucking sense. What else?” She paused for effect. “Oh right, then some colossal, gray-skinned dude busted in, snatched me up, and dropped me off at this hospital. Truth is, I’m from Pennsylvania and I don’t have a clue, not a fucking clue, how in the hell I ended up in Colorado.”

Levi nodded noncommittally as she spoke. Still, he could understand why the cops had thought she was on drugs. The story was unbelievable and sounded far closer to a bad LSD trip than anything that might happen in reality. Sometimes the truth could be a damn hard pill to swallow. That’s how all the monsters stayed hidden: most humans unfortunate enough to run afoul of the preternatural crowd ended up dead.

And for the few that escaped? Written off as crazies, druggies, conspiracy theorists. Humans who lived to tell the tale quickly learned where spouting such stories got you. Alienated from friends and family. Laid off. Living in a cardboard box on the wrong side of the tracks. And sometimes, in a padded cell, loaded to the gills with Clozapine or Risperdal.

A tough pill to swallow, indeed.

“Listen,” Levi said, “I know how difficult this must be, but can you think of anyone who might want to harm you? Any reason you might’ve been abducted? Any reason at all?”

She was still for a few heartbeats, silent, eyes turned inward. “No,” she said eventually with a slight shake of her head. “Nothing. Now can you please leave? I’m tired.” She pressed her eyes closed.

Liar.
She was hiding something, that much was obvious, but then Levi found
most
people were hiding something: a secret sin, not unlike his own need for murder, that they would do anything to leave buried. Likely, the girl was just an unfortunate casualty in some bigger game.

“Thank you for your cooperation, Miss Ryder.”

He got up and let himself out of the room, shutting the door behind him, heading back out toward the nursing station. His finger brushed at the note in his pocket. He wasn’t prepared to let this thing go, not quite yet, but the girl looked to be a dead end …

Or maybe not
.

Two men loitered near the elevators.

Except they weren’t actually men. Some clueless human might believe the ruse, but Levi’s eyes saw true. Both fellows stood at five and a half feet and had ropy arms, strangely lopsided shoulders, and distended bellies. The skin on their meat suits was too loose, like poorly done Halloween costumes, only in reverse: instead of humans pretending to be monstrous things of the dark places, these suits allowed monsters to pretend to be civilized beings of the surface world.

Though Levi couldn’t see beneath their masks, he didn’t need too. He could tell a Kobock when he saw one, even up here. These were murderous bastards, too. He could see it around them like a hazy black cloud polluting the air. The reek of death stained their auras.

Levi grinned at the Kobos riding around in their human suits like a pair of kids out trick or treating, and reached into his pocket. He fumbled around as if searching for a pair of keys or maybe a cell phone and, after a few fruitless seconds, pulled his hand out empty. He snapped his fingers, pivoted, and strode back the way he’d come from. Just some poor uni who’d forgotten something, no big deal—at least that’s what he wanted the Kobos and the station nurse to think.

“Forgot my phone,” he said in passing.

“No problem,” the nurse replied, eyes still glued to the computer screen, not even bothering to look up from her work.

A few long strides put him back into Ryder’s room. Her eyes, now red-rimmed from heavy crying, shot toward him as the door swung open. She flashed him a frosty glare, then rubbed the palms of her hands into her eye sockets.
These tears aren’t for you to see
, the action said.

“I told you I need to rest. Go. Away.”

Levi shut the door and thumbed the lock with a
click
. Fear streaked across her face, and she drew her knees up toward her chest with a grimace.

“You’d better unlock that door, Officer Adams, or whatever you said your name was. I’m only gonna say this once. You’re making me uncomfortable, so if you take
one more step
”—she held up a hand as though to ward him away—“I’ll press the help button and scream like a banshee.”

Levi snorted. The girl’s words were unintentionally comical. “You have no idea what a banshee scream can do,” he said.

“Excuse me,” she said, attitude radiating off her like gale force winds.

The Mudman waved a hand through the air, brushing her objection away. “It’s nothing. Please don’t scream, Miss Ryder. There’s something of an emergency situation, and I need you to get dressed. Put your pants on and get whatever you need, because we’re leaving. Right now.”

“I’m not screwing around,” she replied. “I’ll do it, I’ll scream my ass off, right here in this hospital, and then I’ll get your badge number and report you for sexual harassment. This isn’t the first time I’ve been around some skeezy cop, and I know how this works. So unless you want a suspension or worse, you’d better turn around, unlock that door, and march on outta here, big shot. I’m serious—I know my rights.”

“Shut up,” he said, patience gone. “We don’t have time for this. Some of the men that took you are here. Standing out in the hallway near the elevator. They’re waiting for me to leave and once I do, they’re going to come in here and take you. You try screaming your way out of that and see how far it gets you.”

“They’re here?” she asked, frantic, body trembling. “Well, go fuckin’ arrest them. You’re a cop, that’s like your whole job.”

“No, I’m not. And these aren’t the kind of things you can arrest.” A tense silence hung between them, a thing as fragile as thin lake ice—one wrong step could shatter everything.

“Who are you?” she finally asked, her voice small and frail as she hugged her knees even tighter into her body.

SEVEN:

The Chase

The woman, Sally Ryder, sat on her hospital bed, eyes wide, ready to bolt in an instant like a wary deer. “I’m going to show you something that’ll help you understand,” Levi said, hoping to put her at ease, “but it’s important that you remain quiet. It’ll be bad if you scream. They’ll know something’s up, you understand that?”

She said nothing but nodded, her head bobbing a fraction of an inch.

Levi grunted in return, then shifted, letting the uniform disappear back into his flesh, allowing his bulk to ripple outward and upward, skin returning to the colorless gray of moist clay. She squealed and gasped, clasping hands over her mouth to stifle the sound. But she didn’t scream. Good girl.

“It’s you. You saved me …” She faltered. “What are you?” The last was a mere whisper.

Levi morphed, drawing his formidable mass back in, muscles becoming more dense and compact as the officer façade emerged once again. “Later,” he said. “I’ll tell you whatever you want, but not now. Now, we leave. We have to go. Hurry.”

In reply, she scooted off the bed, snagged a pair of gray sweatpants with the word “POLICE” written down one leg from the nightstand and slipped them on. She shrugged out of her hospital gown, her chest covered only by a plain white bra—Levi turned his head, lending her some measure of privacy—and pulled on a baggy white T-shirt, two or three times too big. A pair of thin hospital slippers, sitting near the bathroom, completed the outfit.

“Okay, I’m ready.”

“Good,” he replied, eyeing her attire. Not exactly Kevlar body armor, but better than nothing. Besides, if they ended up in a brawl, Levi would do the heavy lifting anyway. “Follow my lead. Don’t panic, that’s the important thing to remember. These things, they don’t know about me. Not yet. They’ll think I’m a cop just like you did and they won’t try anything. Not out in the open. So just remain calm. Natural.” He took her by the hand, opened the door, and waltzed into the hallway, a false smile gracing his lips.