by Jamie Davis
“So there’s an afterlife,” Barry said as he tied a rubber tourniquet around her arm to get the IV started. She needed fluids. “I guess that makes you a sort of angel of death.”
“I’m not the angel of death; I just work for her,” Katya said.
Dean was cutting away the denim of her black jeans from around the wound so he could see what he was doing.
“So you’re a sort of Eldara like the Valkyries are?” Dean asked.
“We’re not Eldara; like I said, we just work for them. We can sense the lingering souls of the dead who don’t want to leave this world. We use our scythes to cut the ties that bind them to their mortal bodies and help them on their way.”
Dean looked around for a long pole with a curved blade like in the pictures he’d seen of grim reapers. “Where’s your blade? I don’t want to trip over it and lose a toe.”
Katya shifted her robes to show a small hand-tool-sized scythe that could be held in one hand. It lay on the floor next to her leg.
“I was all excited and anxious about my first reaping. The rules say you don’t deploy your blade until you need it, but I couldn’t wait, and I was a little freaked out by the darkened house. Man, I’m in so much trouble,” she said again shaking her head.
She shifted her position, and the dressing moved a little where she held it in place, renewing the flow of blood from her leg. Dean reassured her while he slapped another pile of gauze on top of the first and renewed pressure on it, holding it himself this time and pressing down hard.
“Don’t worry about that. We’ll help you explain to your bosses if you want. Right now, though, we need to make sure you don’t lose any more blood so hold still, alright?”
Barry had the IV flowing and was getting a set of vital signs while Dean continued to try and stem the flow of blood. He decided he needed to stop fooling around and pulled his tactical tourniquet from his pocket and started wrapping it around Katya’s leg above the wound. He cinched the strap tight before securing the end and looked at his patient.
“Katya, I’m going to twist this windlass and tighten this tourniquet. That’s going to hurt. A lot. I need you to try and hold still so I can get the bleeding stopped, though.”
She nodded and gritted her teeth as he started winding the windlass, tightening the tourniquet down until the blood flowing from the wound stopped. Katya was gasping in pain by the time he was finished securing and labeling the tourniquet with the time of application using a permanent marker. That would be important when they got her to the ER, and the doc’s started working on her leg.
“I know it hurts. You’re doing great, and I’ve been able to stop the bleeding. We’ll get you to the ambulance and keep giving you fluids. I can also give you something for the pain when you’re all loaded up.”
Katya nodded and pointed to the bed.
“You have to help me collect Mr. Anderson’s soul. He has to be freed from this world.”
“What do you need us to do?” Dean asked. “If you tell me, maybe I can sever the connection.”
“I have to do it. It’s my job, and I can’t leave until it’s done,” Katya insisted.
Dean looked at Barry, and his partner shrugged. They lifted the woman up with ease. She had grabbed her scythe, and she reached out over the body with it and grabbed at something with her free hand, swiping her blade in the air just below her closed fist. Dean thought he could see a wisp of smoke or something extending from her fist upward for an instant then it was gone.
“It is done,” Katya said, relaxing in their arms. “I can go with you now.”
Dean and Barry set her down on the edge of the bed and Barry left to bring in the stair chair to wheel her out to the ambulance. There was no way they’d get the stretcher in these narrow hallways.
While they waited for Barry to return with the wheeled stair chair, Dean and Katya talked about her work as a reaper. They continued chatting in the back of the ambulance while Barry pulled out of the driveway and headed to the hospital.
“You know, it’s been strange lately around Elk City. I’ve heard my superiors talking about it. So many dead we’ve been called to serve here, only to arrive and find no body and no lost soul.”
“There’s been a problem with a power struggle in Elk City of late. Someone is raising the dead and creating new undead to serve his own purposes,” Dean explained.
“Well, I hope they find the person who’s doing it soon,” Katya said. “There’s an imbalance happening, and it’s strongest on this side of town right now. I can feel it.”
“I hope we find them, too,” Dean said. Somewhere out there that person held the woman he had grown to care very much for. He thought about Jaz and watched out the back windows of the Ambulance as Barry drove them down the street past a large, run-down mansion with an overgrown yard.
Chapter 22
After dropping Katya off at the hospital to get her leg attended to, Dean and Barry ran a series of non-stop calls taking them from one end of the city to the other. As a result, Dean never got the catnaps he had hoped to take during the day, and he was even more exhausted at the end of the shift. They finally returned to the station, but then he was tied up for another hour wrapping up his patient reports and making sure they were filed before he was finished for the day.
By the time Bill and Lynn arrived to take over, Dean was done. He wasn’t just finished with his work; he was finished with everything. He was closer to total exhaustion than he’d ever been before and it showed in his every movement. Lynn commented on it when she walked into the squad room and saw him for the first time.
“Damn, Dean, you look like crap.”
“Gee, thanks,” Dean replied managing a half-smile.
“Don’t worry about him, Lynn,” Barry said. “He’s running on a solid thirty-six hours with no sleep right now. He just needs a good night’s sleep.”
“Well then, get the hell out of here, Dean. We’ve got this,” Lynn offered.
“I still have to go and run the final shift checks on the gear I used today,” Dean said. “We’ve run a lot of calls since this morning.”
“Nonsense,” Lynn said. “Barry and I will finish up. Bill’s running late, so one of you has to stay late anyway. Barry will do it, won’t you?”
“Sure thing, partner. Go home, Dean. Get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Dean sat for a moment longer, his exhaustion-slowed brain processing what his friends and coworkers told him. Then he nodded and stood up.
“Thanks, guys. I owe you one.”
“Nonsense,” Lynn said. “You’d do the same for us. Get some rest. We’ll see you in twelve hours.”
Dean picked up his coat and phone and walked from the squad room to the parking lot. The sun was setting over the buildings to his right as he walked to his truck. His phone buzzed in his pocket with a text message. After he climbed into his pickup and started the engine, Dean checked the message on his phone. His heart skipped a beat when he saw it was from Jaz; then he read the message itself.
“I have your hunter friend. If you want to see her again alive, come to 1367 Mockingbird Lane. Come alone, or she dies.”
Dean double checked the address and entered it into his GPS. He thought only once about calling James and Rudy and asking for help. The message had been clear. “Come alone, or she dies” was the kind of thing you expected from a kidnapper but in this case, Dean knew it was meant in all seriousness. Dean pulled out of the parking lot and gunned the engine, heading out into the darkening city streets.
As Dean pulled away, a dark SUV pulled from the lot across the street and followed him down the road.
“He’s on the move,” Rudy said, hanging up his phone.
Brynne looked up from the magazine she was reading. “Where’s he headed? Is he going home?”
Rudy shook his head. “He’s headed across town. My guy watching him said he got a message on his phone and then drove away in a hurry. He’s following Dean now.”
&
nbsp; “That has to be a message from Artur to lure Dean in,” Brynne said. “Let me get James and Celeste from the other room. They’re on a conference call with one of the Nightwing Corporate factors overseas.”
Brynne walked back to the large office Celeste used to help run James’ international business empire. She was helping James on the call, handing him documents while the caller on the other end of the video conference talked about numbers and figures that meant nothing to Brynne.
She wrote a hasty message on a piece of scrap paper and handed it to Celeste. The redheaded assistant glanced at the paper and passed it along to James.
“I just got an urgent message, Bernard,” James said after reading the scrap of paper. “I have to attend to something. Do you have all you need to move forward right now?”
“I do,” the man on the other end of the connection said.
“Very well, then,” James reached out and disconnected the call. He looked at Brynne. “Dean’s not going home or coming here?”
She shook her head. “He’s not going home, and if he’s coming here, he’s not taking the most direct route. He got that message and took off at a high rate of speed. It has to be a message from Artur.”
“Alright,” James said. “Rudy and I will head out and catch up with the vehicle tailing Dean. We’ll get back in touch with you when we know where he’s headed.”
Brynne shook her head. “No way. I’m going with you.”
“Are you crazy, Brynne,” James protested. “You can’t do that. You’re not able to control yourself well enough to go on a mission like this.”
“Artur has a lot to answer for, not the least of which is how he made me kill people. I’m a healer, James. I won’t be compromised that way, ever again. I was working towards getting back on the street, doing the things I cared the most about. I was doing fine until Artur started messing with my mind. Ask Celeste. She said I was progressing in my tests. On top of that, I owe Dean too much not to be there when he needs me. If you leave me behind, I’ll just come on my own and follow you.”
James started to protest again, but Celeste raised a hand to stop him.
“I’ll come along and be responsible for her, James. She’s right on both counts. I think she’s ready to go out on her own and she needs to be there for herself and Dean.”
James opened his mouth to say something but stopped and nodded. “Come on then. We’ve got to catch up with him before it’s too late. I can’t believe that Artur is going to let Dean live for long, especially once he finds out about Dean’s newfound power over vampires who seek to harm him.”
“Do you think Jaz is still alive?” Brynne asked as they walked back into the main apartment. “I don’t know what Dean will do if she’s harmed in any way.”
“I don’t know, Brynne. Maybe. Artur would surely like to cause them both a great deal of pain before he kills them. I can imagine inflicting that pain on one of them while the other watches would be something he would seek to do.”
Rudy looked up as the three of them entered the main room of the penthouse. “I just got off the phone with my security teams. They’re all spread out around the city. Aside from the one guy tailing Dean, it’s going to take me a while to pull a tactical team together for a raid.”
“I don’t think we have time for that, Rudy,” James said. “Dean’s on the move, and I’ve got a feeling he’s not going to wait for us to catch up if he calls us at all. I’m sure Artur told him to come alone in that message.”
“And Dean’s just pig-headed enough to do it,” Brynne added.
Rudy nodded. “He is if history is any judge. So it’s just you, me, and Celeste?”
“And Brynne,” James added. “She’s convinced me she should join us.” He shot her a glance. “But, she’s assured me she’s going to stay back and let us handle things, right?”
“I’ll let you take the lead,” Brynne said. She hoped he didn’t notice that she didn’t promise to stay out of the action. She was gratified to see James turn back to Rudy as the two of them started talking about plans and how soon they could expect any backup.
“Should we notify the human authorities?” Rudy asked.
James shook his head. “We may be going on a wild goose chase. We need to know more about where we’re going and what we’re facing first. I suspect, though, that this is going to be a problem we’re better off solving for ourselves. The human police authorities, even those from their Station U will only get in our way.”
“Agreed,” Rudy said. “I just wanted to hear it from you. I’ll start my teams moving west after they gather and arm up. Hopefully, we have time to wait for them.”
“I hope so, too,” James agreed. “Let’s get to it.”
Brynne smiled, and she had a spring in her step she hadn’t felt for some time. She was going to get out of this penthouse apartment and do it under her own power and control. Dean needed her help, and she wasn’t going to sit on the sidelines and watch while everyone else went to his rescue without her. This was her fight, too.
Chapter 23
Dean stood on the street outside the address the text message had given him. He recognized it as the dilapidated mansion he had seen from the back of the ambulance earlier in the day. He couldn’t believe he’d been so close and hadn’t realized it. What if Jaz was already dead but had been alive when he went by on an ambulance call earlier in the day? He couldn’t bring himself to think about it. She had to be alive; she had to be.
He had parked by the gate, but it was shut, and there was no call box or anyone in attendance to let him inside. Getting out, he walked along the street, looking for a way in past the tall, wrought-iron fence. There were pillars along the fence built with cut stone blocks. They were spaced periodically securing the fencing and acting as posts. Examining one of the pillars, he saw some gaps in the masonry he thought he could use to climb over but he’d rather not if there was another, easier way inside. He needed a quick way out if he managed to rescue Jaz and they had to get out on the run.
He checked a section of fence overgrown with bushes and found what he was looking for. There was a gap in the fence where the bushes had pushed through the fence and caused it to rust away over the years. He was able to detach and move a couple of the bars aside, creating an opening large enough to climb through.
Satisfied with his work, he returned to his truck and retrieved Jaz’s Katana from behind the seat. He’d been carrying it with him since she’d been taken, knowing if he found her, she’d want it back to take her revenge on Artur. He looped the sword’s belt over his head and settled it across his back the way he’d seen Jaz carry it so many times.
He returned to the open section of fence and squeezed through, crouching in the bushes on the other side as he scanned the grounds in the moonlight for any signs of movement. He was thankful for the full moon tonight. It would provide him some light to see. He’d never be able to see as well as an Unusual could at night, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. He watched in silence for a solid ten minutes before he left his position of cover and started across the overgrown lawn towards the main house. He decided against going to the front door. They’d expect him to do that and might be watching it. Instead, he moved to the side of the house and worked his way around to the back. He was about to turn the corner and walk into the backyard when he saw a figure walk out from the door closest to him and onto the patio. He thought it might be Artur himself, but when the person stepped from the shadows and into a pool of moonlight, he saw it was a man or probably a vampire in a three-piece suit. He soon saw it was a vampire. Dean could see the elongated canines when the man yawned as he looked around the yard. He could also see the white earbuds in the vampire’s ears and, judging the nodding of his head, he was listening to music.
Dean reached up and grabbed the hilt of the katana for a moment, thinking about using it to kill the vampire. He wanted to kill one of the bastards but decided against it at the last minute. He wasn’t a killer, and he wouldn’t s
tart now. He would try and use his other ability, new as it was, to try and control or overcome the vampire in front of him. He waited until the man turned around to go back inside to make his move.
He rushed from his hiding place, vaulting over the low patio wall and opened his left hand to strike at the side of the vampire’s head with the flat of his palm. He felt rather than saw a flash of whiteness coming from the point of contact and the vampire crumpled to the ground at his feet. Looking around to see if anyone had spotted him, Dean reached under the unconscious man’s arms and dragged him back to the low patio wall. With a grunt of effort, he dumped the limp form over the edge and jumped down after it. He pulled the body into the bushes at the side of the house and crouched down there to plan what he was going to do next.
He still didn’t know if Jaz was even here. It could all be a trap to capture him. Dean snorted a chuckle at that thought. Of course, it was a trap. He decided he needed information most of all. He crouched next to the vampire lying on the ground at his feet. He unwrapped the bandage covering the cut on his hand so he could grip the vampire’s head with skin-to-skin contact. Just like with the vampire they’d interrogated back at the Nightwing building, he was doing this by instinct alone since he had no idea what or how much he could do. Grabbing the vampire’s head in his hands, he whispered a single word.
“Wake.”
The vampire’s eyes sprang open, and though his body was immobile, his eyes darted around as if trying to get his bearings.
“Look at me,” Dean ordered.
The eyes moved to lock on his own. Dean could feel some more of the power behind what he was doing this time as if with each use, he became more attuned to the ability. He could also sense for the first time that the power was finite. If he weren't careful, his source of this strange energy would run out. He might only have one shot at this, so he needed to work quickly.