Sky Like Bone: a serial killer thriller

by V. J. Chambers

  “I’m fine,” he assured her. He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “It’s okay. We’re okay.”

  “You keep saying that,” she said. “I don’t know who you’re trying to convince.”

  He sighed. “We’ll talk when we get out of here. Let’s go find Krieger and take off.”

  “Find our clothes first,” she said. “If we get dressed, it’ll fix everything.”

  He laughed again, helplessly.

  “I mean, not everything,” she said. She fidgeted, looking nervous. Then abruptly, she hopped up off him, leaving him to fumble to pull the robe closed over his skin.

  She tugged her own tightly over her body, hunching into it as she looked around.

  He stood up, and now he was certain that the room was emptying out. There was one other couple in the room. They were on one of the couches, and the guy was lying down and the woman was hovering over him, nude, her breasts elongated—

  Reilly looked away. He felt soiled suddenly, almost like he had when he’d kissed Warren Brock.

  The woman on the other couch was getting up. She was laughing, pulling the man up from the couch, and they headed for the door. As they were going out, Doug came in.

  He was dressed now, wearing a t-shirt under a blazer along with a pair of jeans. Reilly never understood that look. Why have the blazer at all? The look was still casual. Doug shut the door behind the other couple and then strode toward Reilly and Wren.

  Reilly turned toward him. What the hell was he going to say to this guy?

  Doug reached inside the blazer and came out with a gun.

  Reilly was so stunned he froze.

  Doug leveled the pistol and pulled the trigger.

  Belatedly, Reilly moved.

  But he wasn’t faster than a bullet. It hit him, hot and then cold and then overwhelming, tearing pain.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  WREN screamed.

  She ran for Doug—on instinct—because he had a gun and she had to—

  No, that was the wrong thing to do. He had a gun, and if he shot her, she couldn’t do anything for Reilly.

  Doug pulled the trigger.

  It didn’t come anywhere near her, but Wren crumpled to the floor as if it had. This was instinct too. She didn’t have a plan yet, but this seemed better than rushing at him while he pulled the trigger over and over again.

  She lay motionless.

  She felt the nudge of Doug’s boot against her flesh. She thought about springing up, taking him by surprise, getting the gun from him—

  He was gone.

  She could hear his footsteps moving away from her.

  She tensed, trying not to breathe too much, trying not to move at all.

  The sound of the door opening.

  Then, she heard a woman’s voice, a little cry of dismay.

  “Gloria, please,” came Doug’s voice. “You knew this was what had to happen.”

  Gloria whimpered. “But… but Doug. When does this end?”

  “You go out there and reassure anyone who heard the shot,” he said. “Tell them it’s the air conditioning, and that we’re getting it worked on.”

  “Right, right,” she said. “And get them all out of here. To your place. For the gathering afterward.”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said.

  Wren needed to see Reilly. She needed to know if Reilly was… oh, God, she couldn’t even think it.

  Reilly is fine, because I need him to be fine, she thought to herself.

  How many awful situations had they gotten through? How many times had their lives been in danger? This was no different. Reilly was fine, and she was going to figure out a way to take down Doug, and they’d get to the bottom of this, they’d understand what this was all about.

  Suddenly, Doug was next to her, kneeling down, his fingers against her neck, feeling around for a pulse.

  Shit.

  Well, this was it. Any second, he was going to find out she was alive, and the minute he did, she would spring up and claw at his face and—

  He got up, walking away from her.

  What?

  Hadn’t he felt her pulse?

  Maybe he was stupid and hadn’t put his fingers in the right place? Wren wanted to put her own fingers to her neck, but she couldn’t move.

  On the other hand, maybe he knew she was alive, and he was getting ready to put a bullet in her back right now.

  She slowly lifted her head to look around.

  Doug was at the doors to the cafeteria, his back to her.

  Fuck.

  She put her head back down. Was that the position she’d had it in?

  Well, it was close anyway, and now she could see Reilly. He was bleeding. He wasn’t moving, and there was a growing pool of blood under him. There was a lot of blood.

  She whimpered under her breath. Reilly is fine, she told herself. I need him to be fine, and he is.

  Even though it was obvious that he wasn’t fine, not at all. Was he dead, though? Well, if Doug had checked Reilly’s pulse, Wren determined that didn’t mean anything.

  Wren needed to do something. Lying here on the floor, it wasn’t getting them anywhere. She needed a plan. What to do?

  Well, when he came close again, she would take him by surprise, like she had been thinking. She simply needed to wait until he came close.

  Wait, wait, wait. Right.

  She breathed as silently as possible, and she didn’t dare move.

  And time ticked on and on, endless. And Reilly was still bleeding. The blood was soaking into the edge of her robe.

  She wanted to sob.

  She swallowed it.

  Then, suddenly, she heard the sound of the door opening.

  “Everyone’s gone,” came Gloria’s voice.

  “All right,” said Doug. “Good. You help me move the bodies then.”

  Gloria let out a sob. Wren hated her for being able to let one out. She needed to sob. Right now.

  “You know we had to do this,” said Doug. “For Love Over Want. For the Order. For the service of the light.”

  “Maybe,” said Gloria.

  “I know you didn’t like it with Harmony either,” said Doug.

  “You said you didn’t like it either,” Gloria’s voice was accusatory.

  “Of course I didn’t like it.” Now, the voices were getting closer. “But it was necessary.”

  “Won’t the FBI come looking for them?” said Gloria.

  “Well, we know they weren’t wired up,” said Doug. “Not in those robes. So, the FBI doesn’t know anything. And if we have to, we’ll blame Paul.”

  “But Doug—”

  “Paul’s crazy,” said Doug, close enough now that Wren could see him, though not close enough that she could grab or hurt him. He shrugged out of his blazer, so that he was only in his t-shirt. He draped the blazer over the back of a couch, and then came for her. He knelt down, hooking his arms under Wren’s armpits. He hauled her up. “Get her feet.”

  Wren cursed herself. Why hadn’t she moved? Now, she didn’t think she could. He was holding her in an awkward position, and she wouldn’t be able to hurt him. Instead, she let herself be limp, as if she were actually dead.

  Gloria sniffled. “Doug, I…”

  “Gloria.”

  Gloria picked up Wren’s legs.

  Wren’s robe fell down, dragging on the ground, completely exposing her body. Wren felt this indignity more deeply than she thought she might. Maybe she was focusing on that to stop thinking about Reilly—

  They carried her out into the parking lot and tossed her body onto a layer of plastic bags in the back of a mini-van. Krieger was already there, pretzeled unnaturally into the corner.

  The minute that Gloria and Doug were gone, Wren started shaking Krieger, whispering his name.

  But Krieger didn’t respond, and from the waxy, cool feel of his skin, she knew he was dead.

  She sat up, shaking him furiously, tears forming in her eyes, a
nd then she heard the sound of Doug and Gloria’s voices and she debated about what she should do.

  Should she fight or should she lay back down?

  “…so heavy,” Gloria was saying.

  “I’ve got most of the weight here,” Doug grunted.

  She played dead again. She didn’t know why. Maybe she was too frightened to do anything else. Maybe it was because she didn’t have clothes. Being naked made her feel another layer of panic that she couldn’t quite explain. Or maybe it was because she needed to know if Reilly was dead or not.

  Oh, God, she’d just thought it.

  No, no, Cai can’t be dead. Cai can’t be—

  She barely managed to stifle a sob as they tossed Reilly’s body in next to her. Reilly’s robe had come completely off, and his naked flesh slapped against hers—the smell of blood and bile and—hell, where had they shot him?

  But then she heard a noise, a beautiful, wonderful noise. It was a faint grunt of pain.

  Reilly was alive.

  Doug slammed the hatch of the van closed on them.

  THE car was moving.

  Doug was driving alone. He hadn’t brought Gloria with him. He was listening to Madonna and singing along, and this made Wren feel ill.

  The van’s hatch was not separated from the front of the car the way a trunk might be, so Wren was very aware that if she wasn’t careful, she’d bring attention to herself. So, she was very careful as she maneuvered herself around Reilly.

  It took a long time, but she managed to get to a position where she could see his face, and he could see hers.

  Well, he would have been able to see her, anyway, if his eyes were open, but they weren’t.

  He’d been shot in the stomach. It was just below his rib cage, on the left side of his body. Obviously, Doug had been aiming for the heart and just managed to get it a little bit too low. This wasn’t good. She didn’t know a lot about gunshot wounds, but she knew a bit, since they’d both been shot before. Reilly’d been shot in the abdomen before, in fact, but it hadn’t been like this. This was worse.

  He was still bleeding.

  He was bleeding too much.

  That was probably why he’d lost consciousness.

  She needed to stop the bleeding, and she wriggled out of her robe and pressed the fabric against Reilly’s wound for the rest of the drive, putting as much pressure on it as she could muster.

  She needed to get Reilly to safety. He needed a doctor. He needed surgery and medicine and blood transfusions and she would get those things for him, because she had to.

  So, when the van finally stopped, she was ready.

  Doug opened the hatch.

  She jumped out on him and tackled him.

  He lost his balanced and fell backwards.

  Now, they were on the ground, a tangle of limbs. She went for his face, digging her fingers into the soft part of his cheeks, into his eye sockets.

  He roared, fighting her. He pushed her off of him, and he was stronger than she was.

  She collided with the back of the van. It hit the back of her skull, stunning her. Pain radiated out through her head and neck and shoulders. She groaned.

  Doug scrambled to his feet.

  He reached into his shoulder holster for his gun.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  WREN had to stop that.

  Why did I go for his face instead of his gun?

  She was up, though, despite any pain she felt, despite the way that sharp rocks and briars on the ground beneath her dug into her bare feet. She hurtled herself at him.

  He had the gun halfway out of the holster.

  She scrabbled for it.

  He yanked it away—but with too much force, because it flew out of his grasp and twirled through the air.

  It landed on the ground and went off.

  Wren went for the gun.

  She landed on a bed of leaves that crunched.

  Doug was on top of her. He put one palm on the back of her head and pushed her face into the forest floor.

  Because that was where they were, in the middle of the forest, somewhere. California was highly populated in the southern part, but up here, it was like the rest of America—whole lot of nothing.

  She didn’t know where they were, but it was the middle of fucking nowhere.

  She drove her elbow into his midsection.

  He grunted, but he didn’t get off her.

  She tried again.

  Abruptly, he got off of her.

  She got up on all fours.

  He had the gun.

  He pointed it at her.

  She feinted left.

  He shot.

  She went right.

  He let out a cry of frustration and now, he was pulling the trigger willy-nilly. Gunshots hit nearby tree trunks. They hit the side of the car.

  She shrieked, frightened he’d hit Reilly again.

  She dove in between the trees, hoping he’d follow her.

  He did.

  The gun went off again.

  She squealed, pain cutting into her. It was her arm. He’d grazed her. She was okay, but she collapsed again. Apparently, when she was frightened, she only had a tiny bag of tricks. Playing dead hadn’t worked before, so why did she think—

  Doug set the gun down right next to her head and turned her over.

  She spat in his face.

  He reached for the gun.

  So did she. She grazed it, but she knocked it over, and it tumbled through the leaves. Just out of reach. Just… inches…

  He had his hands around her neck.

  She dug her fingers under his grasp, trying to pry him off.

  He tightened his grip.

  She bucked, bringing up her chest, trying to knock him off.

  He settled his hips against hers, grinding her into the ground.

  The world was starting to go white at the edges.

  Fear bloomed in her stomach, bright orange like a sickness—before, she had been too desperate to feel fear this bad.

  She could die out here, and if she did, who would she meet on the other side?

  My daughter. My lover, came the scaly voice of the Crimson Ram.

  No. She reached back behind her again, confident that her fingers would close on the gun, never mind the fact that the gun hadn’t been there a moment ago, never mind that it had been out of reach.

  Now, it was there.

  And it was.

  She seized it and slammed the barrel into Doug’s temple.

  She pulled the trigger.

  He made a noise of surprise and blood burst out of the exit wound.

  He collapsed lifeless onto her naked body.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  WREN’S teeth were chattering.

  “How can I be cold when I have a Doug blanket?” she said, letting out a wild, high-pitched laugh. Doug was warm, and he was dead, and he was sprawled on top of her. She was trapped under his girth.

  Her teeth slammed against each other.

  “It’s shock,” she said. “I’m just in shock, that’s all.” She laughed again.

  It threatened to turn into a sob.

  No, no. She couldn’t cry. She couldn’t afford to cry. She couldn’t really afford to be in shock either.

  “Get it together, Delacroix,” she said to the trees crisscrossing the sky above her. “If you really are the magical daughter of the Crimson Ram, if you really did move that gun with your mind—”

  Maybe it was better if she didn’t talk to herself.

  She heaved, and Doug rolled off her.

  She busied herself taking off his shirt with trembling hands. It was spattered in blood, but she didn’t care. It was better than nothing.

  She shrugged into it. Sometimes it was good to be short. Doug’s shirt came all the way to her knees.

  She took off Doug’s pants too and took them back to the van.

  Then she didn’t know why she’d done that. What did Reilly care about dignity right now? Getting him dressed would only
probably make him bleed more.

  But the nakedness… something about it made everything worse.

  Her teeth were still chattering.

  She caressed Reilly’s face. “Hey,” she said. “Hey, are you awake?”

  He grunted.

  “Hey,” she said, laughing a little. “I have pants. Do you… do you want pants?”

  Nothing from Reilly.

  “I killed him, Cai,” she said, fierceness stealing into her tone. “I fucking killed him, so don’t you worry. He can’t hurt you again, okay?”

  She really wanted to cry now.

  “No crying,” she ordered herself harshly.

  She hugged herself. There was blood on her hands. Was it Doug’s or Reilly’s? Oh, it didn’t matter.

  “Okay,” she said. “Doug, you must have had a phone, didn’t you?” She felt around in the pockets of Doug’s pants, but there was nothing there.

  She went around to the front of the car and tried to open the front door.

  Locked.

  “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” she said. Sometimes, cars did that, though. They were programmed to automatically lock when you shut the door, and you just needed the keys, to click them back open and—

  Keys.

  Where were the keys?

  She went back to check the pockets of Doug’s pants, but she would have found them if they were in there.

  No keys.

  They must have fallen out. Either while she and Doug were struggling or while she was carrying the pants back to the van.

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “I’ll just retrace my steps and I’ll find the keys. And maybe the phone. Or maybe the phone’s in the front seat. But I have to find the keys anyway, so there’s no point in climbing up through the van over the back seats…” She cocked her head, gazing inside the van. It would be possible to climb.

  But no, she should look for the keys first. Because she couldn’t drive the car without the keys, and she needed to drive out of there.

  So, she headed back out to where Doug’s body was. Her feet hurt.

  She stopped to examine them and realized that she had shallow cuts all over her feet and ankles. They were bleeding. She hadn’t noticed before.