He swallowed. “I-uh… I told you we need to talk.”
“Hell yeah, we need to talk.” She eyed his hands, and for a moment he thought they were going blue again, but nothing. Didn’t matter. She grit her teeth, jaw flexing. “But first, we have to sort this out. How the hell am I going to explain that the city’s favorite film star single-handedly took down a gang of armed and dangerous men during a drive by? I’m supposed to be your bodyguard. Some of that stuff you did was insane.” She gaped and waved at the roof of the car. “You flew across the—Godammit, Tony!”
“Hey, hey. It’s all good.” He tried a comforting grin. “They’ll just think I’m a method actor or some shit.”
“That was reckless and stupid. This isn’t a movie set. For Christ’s sake, these are real people. Those are real kids.”
Seeing the group gather on the porch stoop, Tony flinched. They must have all come out of the house. Hopefully none had seen him in action. But Bailey had. And she was furious.
“Don’t forget I served,” he offered.
She cocked her hip. “Real life action hero, huh?”
“Something like that.”
For a moment, she just stared at him, jaw clenched. “That was pretty impressive. And I mean, impressive.” She didn’t look impressed. She looked pissed. “You just took down three armed men, inside a vehicle, with nothing but your bare hands.”
Shit. He’d have a hell of a time explaining this.
Then she said something he never expected. “Is this some kind of joke? Are you making fun of me?”
“Wh-what?”
“You have all these… skills, and yet you hired me to be your bodyguard. And then you let me school you in self-defense moves!” Her face went beet red. “Well, screw you, Lazarus. I know when I’m being made a fool of.”
“That’s not it. I swear.” He reached for her, but she shirked away.
“Do me a favor, Rambo.” She jerked the rifle toward the street, in the direction of the distant sirens. “When the cops get here, maybe try telling the truth for once.”
He opened his mouth but shut it. Maybe now wasn’t a good time to tell her everything.
Police sirens got louder. Bailey pinned him with her big brown eyes. “Don’t you dare run off. We are definitely having that chat.”
He wasn’t so sure. She already thought he was a philandering addict. Back at his trailer, she’d accused him of having an affair, and that was why someone stalked him. What would she say when she discovered he was prone to random explosions of blue light that burned like fire? And she was his mate. And he’d been lying to her.
The whoop of a siren, and the flash of red and blue against the house’s gate made many of the kids disappear inside. Bailey jogged over to meet the cop car as it arrived. Tony used the commotion to slip away.
Twelve
Before setting out on a hunt beneath the sewers of Cardinal City, Wayne Bosch and the enforcer had gathered their intel and pooled their resources. Or, perhaps he should call her Despair. It had only taken him a moment or two to connect the dots. She could sense the sin. She was the same age as the Deadly Seven. They were original Syndicate experiments. For all Wayne knew, there were plenty of others like her out there.
Between the two of them, they’d collected evidence of random suspicious activity matching their parameters across state lines, moving west from the black site, and toward the coast where Cardinal City lay.
From random bodies of water being drained to farm animals going missing, only to turn up with their corpses as dried out desiccated husks. When Wayne and Despair had gone to investigate, they’d recognized the same striations on the husks that had been clear on the corpses in the lab. It looked liked indents from vines. From the lack of actual plant-monster sightings, they also believed their prey to be traveling by night, or perfectly camouflaging itself amongst other foliage. The creature was smart.
But one thing was certain, it was getting a taste for living meat, and it wasn’t sated. It was hungry.
Despair crouched at the opening of a manhole and heaved the sewer grate open. “After you.”
Wayne peered down into the dark unknown, flinched at the smell, and then glanced around their surrounds. They were in the middle of a street on the outskirts of the city, nestled between an old abandoned warehouse and an industrial factory. Since it was the weekend, traffic was quiet. The only moving person he’d spotted was a homeless lady pushing a shopping trolley filled with a hodgepodge of belongings. He shifted his gaze up and noted the fading light. The temperature was dropping, which meant it would be cold underground, and his flimsy houndstooth-patterned suit would do little to protect him from the elements. They had maybe an hour or two of light left until nightfall. But none of that mattered down there where it was dark twenty-four-seven.
Despite knowing this, he couldn’t help asking her, “Are you sure this is a safe time to go down? Shouldn’t we wait until morning?”
Couldn’t she go without him?
Dressed in her white leather battle outfit, she’d neglected to place the half-face bird mask on. Instead, he was treated to the full exposure of her stunningly pale and expressionless face. Unblinking violet eyes studied him.
“The trail will go cold,” she stated simply.
The trail… meaning the educated guess they took based on the pattern of incidents moving across the state. Considering its nature and its hunger, it made sense that the plant would head to a more populated area, and if it was here in the city, it made sense it went underground. More water to drink. More rats to eat. It had sucked most farm animal corpses dry of fluid to leave desiccated husks. The animals were alive before the farmers went to bed, and dead in the morning. Same went for the bodies of water that had been drained, confirming the attacks occurred during the night hours.
Wayne pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He didn’t really have a choice, did he? He needed his funding to remain. He needed a job. Thoughts flickered to his wife, the debt she knew nothing about, and the hopes and dreams he wasn’t ready to give up on. Not yet.
He had his trusty torch and a can of spray accelerant he would use together with a lab-sized blowtorch to make his own flame thrower. Despair had a net slung over her shoulder, a bullwhip attached to her hip, and some kind of feudal Japanese sword strapped to her back.
“This is insane,” he mumbled. “How do we hunt a sentient plant?”
“Any way we can,” Despair answered, and then booted him down the manhole.
Despair landed gracefully in the ankle-deep sewer water of the culvert leading through the underground tunnels. She watched the bumbling scientist flounder on his knees, hands blindly splashing about him.
“My glasses. I can’t find them,” he shouted. Contaminated water splashed into his open mouth and he gagged.
She crinkled her nose. It smelled rather bad there—a mix of mildew, sour trash and human waste. The sooner she was out, the better.
The only light came from the open manhole directly above, but it was enough for her to see the water at her feet and the double-barreled brick walls around them.
More splashing. More shouting.
She clicked on her torch. White light illuminated the tunnel, casting the damp domed walls into sharp relief. Sounds of the scientist echoed down into the black caverns beyond their sight.
Every nerve in her body woke, including the one in her gut. Somewhere in the tunnels, she sensed fading despair like a scrape of nails down the lining of her stomach, getting lighter with each stroke. It must be the creature. She shouldn’t be able to sense a plant, but it had mutated into something else. Back in the lab, it had wanted freedom from the shackles of its life. She’d known, because she’d sensed its sorrow. When she’d released it from its cage, its despair stopped. She’d never thought it would leave a senseless trail of bodies behind. She’d thought the creature would only attack sinners, but even the poor farm animals weren’t discriminated against.
“I need my g
lasses,” the scientist wailed. “I can’t do this without them. Please.”
Keeping her eyes glued to the direction she sensed the plant, she bent, dipped her hand below the waterline and retrieved the man’s spectacles. She pushed them into his palm and ignored his stumbling apologies and gratitude.
“Shh.” She moved her torchlight around the tunnel. The sense of despair flickered and waned. The plant was there, yet it became less sorrowful. Perhaps more purposeful, more clouded with hunger. Its desire was changing.
Pausing, she listened. Water dripped from curved walls. Cockroaches scuttled. She angled the torch low at the water. Reflections refracted onto the walls, shimmering eerily.
The hairs on her arms lifted in warning. She stepped forward, then thought better of it. She turned, took hold of the scientist’s collar. “Walk.”
She pushed between his shoulder blades and he lurched, slushing forward.
“B-but, my torch,” he protested.
“It’s in the water. It won’t work. Move.”
He shuffled along. Trembling hands moved to unclip his weapons from his belt. With each sloshing step, rats scuttled and squeaked, water splashed, and something… something moved in the shadows.
Slowly, slowly they approached a junction where four sewer tunnels met in the middle. Water sporadically dripped from above, giving a hollow acoustic sound that revealed the sewerage system went on for miles.
Her torch flickered. Darkness threatened to swallow them whole.
She sensed it again and swung the torch in the right direction, just glimpsing movement in the dark. The light flickered again, then went dark.
“What happened?” The scientist hissed into the vast dark.
She hit the torch to correct the light. The beam came back on. When she looked up, the steady stream of light illuminated the space behind the scientist, and incomprehensible black slithering lines moved against the concrete tunnel walls. Adrenaline shot into her system.
What the hell?
The torch failed and darkness engulfed them, but the squiggling lines had burned into her retina. She couldn’t unsee them. Squeezing her eyes shut, she shook her head, as though to smack sense back into her mind, for what she’d glimpsed had not been logical. Black slithering vines massed over the entire tunnel. Above their heads, on the sides… perhaps below. Gathering her wits, she smacked the torch until it worked. The scientist’s hand shadowed his squinting eyes under the glare of her spotlight.
“We should go back,” he said, unaware of what was amassing behind him. “I lost my torch, and yours is fault—“
The scientist froze, body going board stiff. Behind his misted spectacles, his eyes widened in panic.
“What is it?” she hissed, but he didn’t answer. He was petrified, arms pinned to his side, fingers balled into fists from fear, or something else.
Why wasn’t he moving?
“Bosch,” she hissed. “What…” Terror stole her words. Thin tendrils appeared from beneath the collar of his shirt, as though they’d been inside his clothing the entire time, climbing, slithering up his torso.
Bosch had mentioned earlier that the plant had a natural poison. It was supposed to wrap a tendril around any sinner who got too close and numb them. She hadn’t thought the toxin was selective, she’d thought it was always there, but Wayne Bosch wasn’t stunned or petrified as each little squirming spike slid up his neck, over his jaw and onto his face. He struggled against the vines, even when the tendrils entered his mouth… his nostrils… his ears.
Could the plant enjoy watching its prey squirm? Could it use its toxin selectively?
The scientist’s spectacles fell with a splash.
A scream froze in Despair’s throat. She backed up.
Bosch gurgled, mumbled, choked, but the vines soon filled his mouth.
She didn’t know what to do. She should help him, shouldn’t she?
But the plant… the one she’d helped escape was wrapping itself around him, slowly making him disappear as though it were bandages and he the mummy.
One foot back, then another, she backed up. She should run. Forget about the scientist. But Julius insisted she had to end this.
Choking wet sounds filled her ears, and she lifted her hands to cover them, but she still held onto her torch. She couldn’t keep out the disgusting wet sucking sounds. All she could do was watch in horror as the man disappeared while the plant fed. Its writhing vines and tentacles and leaves growing plumper by the second, filling with the lifeblood of a man as it became one with it.
There was no telling how many creatures this thing had absorbed while hunting between the black site and here. It had started out as a simple plant in the lab. Security footage showed it eating rats, physically morphing in shape, and then crawling out of the black site. The creature had taken on characteristics and mannerisms of its prey, mimicking them, becoming something else, something unbiased towards sinners, and just hungry.
Wayne Bosch was no longer. There was no husk this time. All that remained was a coiling collection of vines shaped like a man, and when the thing approached Despair, she flattened herself against the brick wall. She reached for her sword, but something stopped her. The moment she’d moved, the sense of despair flared in her gut. Slowly, she lowered her hand from the hilt of her sword and returned her fist to her side. Hoping against all hope that she would survive, she held her breath and tried not to whimper as a tendril unfurled itself from the being and came toward her face. A scream gurgled in her throat as it brushed against her cheek. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to hold her breath steady, but all she wanted to do was lose the contents of her stomach. When she next opened her eyes, the creature was gone, as was its despair because it was free.
Thirteen
Tony walked home from Hudson House, sucking on a raspberry slushie and kicking an empty can at parked cars lining the well-to-do city street. With his baseball cap down low to obscure his face, he’d meandered the time away with no wayward fans or paparazzi mobbing him. He drained the slushie with big slurps.
He would rather drink something else, taste someone else. Bailey’s hot, curvy body entered his mind. Again. For the zillionth time that walk. The entire morning with her had been filled with arms brushing against each other, body heat jumping from skin to skin, a casual smile thrown his way. He’d craved no one so much. But the woman who gave him a great morning, had also made him feel two inches tall. She thought he was making fun of her, when in fact, it had been the opposite.
When his feet brought him back in line with his can, he booted it with renewed vigor. The tiny metal projectile went airborne, spun, and hit the side of a slick black Maserati.
The alarm went off.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Could his day get any worse?
“Hey, dickhead,” someone shouted from behind him, but he had no fucks to give. He ignored studiously and kept walking until a police siren whoop-whooped. Fuck! He threw his head back and roared his frustration, staring at the darkening sky, only then realizing he’d been walking aimlessly for most of the day. He gripped the slushie, ready to launch it.
“Get off the road, you big lug!” came a feminine voice from the cop car behind him, and for the first time all afternoon, he relaxed.
Finally. Something going his way. Pivoting, he came face to face with Liza as she climbed out of her unmarked detective’s car.
“What the hell are you doing?” She glanced around the tree-lined street, probably looking for his imaginary friends. “Having a pity party for one?”
An affluent couple walking their Japanese Spitz down the sidewalk stopped to watch the excitement. Out of habit, Tony ducked his head to avoid being recognized. He growled at his sister, “How did you know where I was?”
“All of us have microdot trackers on our cells.”
Of course they did. “Here to check up on me?”
He’d meant it as a joke, but she hesitated. “It’s time to go home, Tony.”
/> “Why? So you or Parker can lecture me about what happened?” Because he knew, without a doubt, that word had already reached them. If it wasn’t Bailey who’d told Max, it would have been Liza who’d heard about the incident at the sobriety house through law enforcement channels. It could even be all over social media. Didn’t really matter. It wouldn’t change the fact he’d stuffed up. “Or because you don’t think I can handle my power and I’m going to blow up in front of these poor people.”
“Come on, get in,” Liza growled. “I’ll take you home.”
There was no point in arguing, so Tony threw his almost empty slushie cup into a trash can and let himself into the front passenger side of Liza’s car. He adjusted the seat back to accommodate his long legs and then helped himself to a stick of gum from the console. He started poking the buttons on her cop computer dashboard while she entered her side.
“Touch another button, and you die,” she warned as she removed her magnetic siren light from the car roof and put it on the dash.
“Jeez. Touchy. Someone needs to get laid.”
Brown eyes hot as the sun burned into him. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
“What?”
“You left the scene of a crime. I had to cover for you, again.” And there it was. She’d been called out to Hudson House and disapproved of the way he’d handled things. She continued, “I had to talk your woman down from the ledge.”
His ears perked up. “What do you mean?”
“I mean”—Liza planted her foot on the accelerator and launched them forward—“that your mate was in all sorts of twists worried about you.”
“Worried?” That wasn’t right. The woman had snapped his head off.
“God, you’re such an idiot. All men are.”
Gluttony Page 10