Viper Moon (23 page)

Thor sat with his back against the door. His wideeyed, openmouthed face looked like he’d been struck with the hammer and lightning bolt painted above him.

“Help me,” I gasped. If I moved, I’d topple over.

Thor just stared, his mouth open.

Oh, shit. My hands, my arms, glowed with silver light. “Please,” I begged.

Thor shook his head, as if he needed to toss out a bad dream. He crawled to me, then reached out a tentative hand to touch the glowing skin on my arm. As he did, the shine faded, leaving me as near normal as I’d ever been.

“You okay?” Thor asked.

“Yeah. It’s not as bad as it looks.” Strength seeped back into me, but blood soaked my clothes from my shirt to the knees of my jeans.

Thor helped me to my feet. “You were . . . shining. You
shined
.”

I swayed, hoping I wouldn’t fall on top of him.

“Come on.” My voice sounded like I had bronchitis. “We need to clean up this mess.” Sirens came in the distance. Someone in the residential area over the wall must have heard the shots and called 911. “There’s no way we can explain this to the cops.”

I staggered to my car and opened the trunk. A struggle, since I still felt drained. From the look of things, Theron’s man had bled out from the shoulder wound. Thor helped me lift and mash him and Theron in, but he had to jump up on the trunk lid to get it closed and latched. Maybe the damned thing wouldn’t pop open if I hit a bump. Messy, nasty business. A late-model sedan was parked at the end of the alley, but I couldn’t deal with that. I doubted the car would be registered to Theron, and most likely he covered his tracks when it came to such things.

The sirens came closer.

I was, however, curious. “Bodies don’t bother you, Thor?”

“Nah. Worked nights in the city morgue in college. Really quiet.”

Maybe, but his shoulders hunched and his hands were shaking.

“You have to come with me,” I said.

Thor nodded. Then he frowned. “Look.” He pointed at the spot where the two men had died. There was no trace of blood. Even the trail leading to my car had disappeared. The Mother had conveniently cleaned up after us. My clothes were sopping and that was fine since I never wanted her to touch me again. If my little journey into a past life were true, she’d allowed me to throw my beloved child into a hideous blaze. When I’d accepted the duties as the Huntress, I’d felt special. I had a mission. Now I knew I was simply being used. A tool. One she tortured to drag back to life and be used again.

I climbed in the car, jammed the key in the ignition, and twisted.

Nothing happened.

“Not again!” I screamed and slammed my fist into the dash. “Lying bastard of a mechanic.”

I turned the key again.

The dash lights came on.

Another time.

The engine turned over but didn’t catch.

Thor whimpered.

Again.

The engine thumped and chattered like teeth in a blizzard, then smoothed.

I headed out and rolled onto the street as the first patrol car pulled into the strip center’s parking lot. Such a fun night, driving a car wearing blood-soaked clothes, carrying a very frightened computer geek as a passenger, and hauling a trunk full of bodies. Things to do: take a bath, get Abby to erase Thor’s memory, dispose of bodies. And, oh, yes, try to forget what it felt like to be shot, start to die, and have a power beyond comprehension drag me back. I doubted even Abby could do that for me.

“You okay?” I glanced at Thor. He made a honking sound, stuck his head out the window, and puked for half a mile. He gagged a little when he finished and slumped back down on the seat like a rag doll.

“Hey, buddy, I thought bodies didn’t bother you?”

“Don’t.” His voice wavered and squeaked like a teenage boy with fluctuating hormones. “Bodies in trunk. Police.”

“Yeah, that would be inconvenient.” And Flynn would be justifiably pissed.

Thor once spent three months in jail for hacking into the Duivel National Bank. He didn’t steal any money; it was more of a challenge thing. The jail was minimum security, but it scared him. If they caught us with bodies, the stakes would be higher than a bit of keyboard finger play or a room full of laptops with questionable ownership. Especially since those bodies had bullet holes. I’m sure he imagined himself spending many years in state prison, sharing a cell with Bruiser Big Dog.

“Thor, I know you don’t understand, but when we get to my friend’s house, I’ll explain.”

“You were beautiful.” Thor sighed. “When you were glowing. Not when you were shot.”

I didn’t know what to say, so we rode in silence after that. I drove into Abby’s driveway and pulled the car around to the back. It would be harder to see. Then I led Thor inside and sat him at Abby’s kitchen table. Only then did I realize how lucky I’d been. Flynn hadn’t arrived yet. The instinct that led me to Abby’s house had overridden the knowledge that he would be there at any time.

“Thor’s had a rough evening,” I said to an, as usual, calm and levelheaded Abby.

“Is any of that blood yours?” Abby asked, nodding at my clothes.

“All of it is mine. But I’m okay.”

Abby gazed into Thor’s eyes as he sat frozen in his chair. When she turned back to me, he stayed lost in his trance. He would remember nothing of the evening.

Before Abby could say anything else, I grabbed her telephone and dialed Dacardi.

“Yeah.” He answered on the first ring.

“I need your help, fast. I have some good leads, but there was a problem.” I started to speak again, then stopped. “Is this phone . . . ?”

“Not tapped. Guaranteed. How about yours?”

I glanced at Abby. She gave me an insulted look. Of course she would take care of minor things like spelling her phone line for privacy.

I went back to my call. “I have something I need to get rid of.”

“What?”

“Bodies. Two of them.”

Dacardi chuckled. “I’m getting to like you. Your cop—”

“Doesn’t know and doesn’t need to.” I started to pray to the Mother not to let Flynn find out, then remembered I wasn’t speaking to the insufferable hag.

“I’ll send a couple of guys,” Dacardi said.

“There’s another problem.”

“What?”

“One of the bodies is Pericles Theron.”

Dacardi didn’t say anything.

“He tried to kill me!” I yelled.

“Okay, okay,” Dacardi grumbled. “Fucker owed me money. Dead men don’t pay bills. You’d better find my boy. That witch’s house?”

“Yeah.”

Dacardi hung up.

I gave Abby a brief description of what had happened.

“She came to you.” Abby rubbed her face with her hands. “And healed you. That’s not the way. She doesn’t . . .”

“I was dying. Then I wasn’t.” A great deal of physical and emotional upheaval came between those two little sentences, but I needed time before I spoke of the event again.

I heard a vehicle pull in, so I went outside and opened the trunk of my POS. A van backed up the driveway toward me. Two men jumped out. The only light came from the kitchen windows, but it was enough for me to recognize Dacardi’s men. They started toward me, then suddenly stopped. I realized that I had drawn my gun—or maybe it was my bloody clothes. The light wasn’t that dim.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve had a rough night.” I walked back toward the house. This was their job, not mine.

“Holy shit!” one of the men behind me exclaimed.

“Damn! I forgot the plastic tarp.” The other one wasn’t happy, either.

I left them to deal with the disposal problem.

When I walked into the kitchen, Thor sat hypnotized at the kitchen table.

“You go downstairs and clean up,” Abby said. “I’ve called a cab for this young man. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

Doors slammed outside and the van drove away. That didn’t take long. Experienced corpse handlers, Dacardi’s guys.

My body longed for rest, but I had another problem. “My trunk is full of blood. I need to clean it.”

“I’ll take care of it.” She sounded annoyed. “And the next time you have a body to dispose of, talk to me first. I
do
have a fast-acting compost pile.”

I choked. The mental image of Theron and his goon buried and rotting in Abby’s compost pile was too much for that night.

A horn sounded out front. Thor’s cab. Abby beckoned and he followed her. He was going home with a dreamy smile on his face and no memory of the evening’s events. Wish I could do the same.

I opened the pantry door, went in, and tugged on the false shelves at the back wall. The rooms downstairs had magical wards that no one could see. They gently brushed my skin as I passed through them. No stranger would enter this place. Anyone searching Abby’s house would swear it sat on a slab and had no basement. The basement has a bathroom and the bed where I’ve spent many hours recovering from injuries. I lifted the paper with the aerial photo out of my jacket pocket. No blood. I sighed. All that trouble for a single piece of paper.

I showered, wrapped myself in a large towel, and lay on the bed for a few moments. It was one o’clock in the morning and I’d been going for eighteen hours straight. If I could lie there for thirty minutes, I’d probably be okay. The bed felt good and I closed my eyes.

Next thing I knew, Abby was gently shaking me.

 

“How are you, love?” Abby asked. She smoothed a hand over my forehead.

“I’m fine,” I lied. My body ached and memories overwhelmed me. Yesterday, I fell in the Barrows’ storm sewers with Flynn and Michael, had the Darkness taunt me, Pericles Theron’s goon killed me, and the Mother healed me with an iron hand. I shivered.

Abby gripped my face in her gentle hands. “Lie still. You’re in pain.”

I relaxed and let her touch me. She slowly ran her hands down my body, stopping at my shoulders to knead the joints. Warmth spread as I healed. Abby’s power to heal comes from the earth, but she has to make an offering, part of her own life force. I knew what it cost her. In a few moments, I felt much better and even yesterday’s terrible events seemed more distant and less traumatizing.

“There,” Abby said. “It’s all I can do now, but a little tea will help.” Her shoulders slumped and dark circles formed under her eyes.

“Thank you, Abby.” I sat up and hugged her. “Did Flynn call?”

“He called at seven this morning and asked me not to disturb you if you were sleeping. He said there were more questions and paperwork. He’d be delayed.”

A twinge of disappointment must have shown on my face.

“Don’t worry, love. He said he’d see you as soon as possible. I heard a great deal of stress in his voice.”

Stress? Not surprising. Ten years as the Huntress, I’d never had anything that approached yesterday and last night.

I showered again and dressed. I always kept clothes at Abby’s house in case I needed to crash before I went on. She offered to let me live with her, but I’m a loner by nature and I wouldn’t want her to know some things. She’d cleaned the blood off my boots and placed them by the bed.

When I went upstairs, I found Abby sitting at the kitchen table staring at a pile of garbage. I sat and glanced at the scattered sticks, bones, rocks, and feathers.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Trying to read the future.” She almost snarled the words. Obviously, she wasn’t having much success. The business of reading objects was way out of her field, but it was better than her venture into pyromancy, when she’d set the kitchen on fire. I’d thought the incident ended her excursions into alternative methods of magic. She’d accept the Mother’s gifts and leave the exotic stuff to others.

“See!” She pointed at assorted objects. “It shows a kind of chaotic roller coaster, up and down and—”

“Sounds like my life.”

Abby scooped the objects up and dropped them in a leather bag. She handed it to me.

“You cast then.”

I reached for the bag with a reluctant hand, rolled it around, and dumped the contents on the table. With impossible precision, they fell in the exact same configuration as before.

“Oh, dear,” Abby said. “That is impossible. They’re saying we can’t change the future. I don’t believe it.”

She gathered the things, stuffed them back in the bag, opened a kitchen drawer, and tossed it in. She wiped her hands on her skirt as if she’d dirtied them. Then she went to the sink, covered her palms with soap, and scrubbed under running water. “Now let’s get you some breakfast.” Abby always liked to feed me.

Flynn called as I was finishing eating.

“Hi,” he said. “Did you rest?” His voice sounded cool and empty.

“Yes. Abby gave me some great tea. I’m fine now.”

“There are questions about the guns, Cass. And more questions about Exeter Street.”

“Who connected me with Exeter Street?”

“I don’t know. No one will talk to me.”

My world closed down on me. I heard it in his voice and understood, because I’d heard it from men before. The cold, impersonal tone that said he needed to distance himself from me. Men sounded like that when they couldn’t deal with my strangeness anymore. I’d dumped an incredible dose of that strangeness on Flynn. I’d never really cared before, but this time I did. This time it mattered.

“I’ll call you later,” Flynn said. He hung up.

“I’ll find Selene,” I said to a dead phone.

“Have a little faith in him, love,” Abby said from across the room.

I shrugged. After all, or maybe because of all we’d been through, Flynn was drawing away.

I’d gain nothing wallowing in self-pity, so I pushed it aside and decided to head back to the Barrows. My usual sources might not give me information on Richard and Selene because of Michael’s offer of a fantastic reward, but who knows what I might stir up if I dug around.