by E. A. Copen
I moved his head aside and stood, pacing over underneath the torch and flexing my hands. Maybe I'd recovered enough to try a little magick. I raised my hands and focused all my will, feeling the flow of energy within myself. It started to rise, to move where I wanted it... and then dissipated into nothingness. I tried again and, this time, barely got any juice at all. Dammit, I thought and plopped down where I was. Something's blocking me. He must have warded this whole place.
Magick was out. So was climbing out, and no one was going to throw us a ladder. The only way out was if someone came down to get us and that wasn't going to happen until LeDuc ordered it. By that time, Hunter would be dead. Seventy-two hours. That was the magic number. Everyone in law enforcement across the country knew that number when it came to kids. You had seventy-two hours to find a missing kid. After that, you were looking for a body. With my passing out and falling asleep, it was hard to judge how long it had been since Hunter disappeared but it had to have been at least twenty-four hours. To come after me so blatantly, LeDuc must have been desperate to end this quickly. Chances were good that my son was already dead.
“Stop it,” I said and slapped myself in the face. “Don't focus on that. Focus on the task at hand. Survive. Escape. Then, search and rescue, Judah. This is just like any other situation.” But it wasn't. This was Hunter.
I was about to get up and pace around the edge again when there was a loud thump off to my right. A rope ladder fell down into the pit. “Stay where you are, princess,” came Ozzie's voice down from the top. “My man's got his gun on you. Don't try anything funny, now.”
I looked up. The red dot of a laser sight trailed down the wall behind me and landed dead center on my forehead. “Tell me why I should. If my boy's dead, I've got nothing to lose by charging you.”
Ozzie's big shape swung over the edge of the pit and he hooked one boot into the rope ladder. “Calm your tits, lady. Your boy's fine. The apple of the boss' eye these days. So long as you cooperate...” He dropped down from the ladder with a thud. “That will continue to be true.”
Ozzie was a vampire and a big one. He was built like a pro linebacker with shoulders twice as wide as Ed. All of Ed. He wore hiking boots, black and tan fatigues and a black tank top. There was probably a nice military style buzz cut on top of his head, too, but I couldn't see it thanks to the cap he wore backwards. He grinned at me, showing off his fangs.
“Your boss. That'd be LeDuc?”
“Don't interrogate me, bitch.”
“Bitch?” I raised an eyebrow. “I'm not the one being ordered around on grunt duty by a good-for-nothing Frenchman. I'd say you're the bitch.”
Ozzie laughed. “Oh, I ain't here on orders. The way I see it, LeDuc owes me for this.” He stepped into the torchlight where I could see his face. Three deep gashes ran down the right side of his face, through his eye which was lidless, white and cloudy. He turned his gnarled lips upward in a smile. “That wetback werewolf gave me this when I helped LeDuc's whore grab that brat.”
Elias, I thought. He must've scratched Ozzie's face up when they took Leo. So, he did try to stop it.
“That's fine,” Ozzie continued. “I gave the brat one to match, right across his little baby belly. Guts spilling out everywhere. It was beautiful.” I put a hand to my mouth and turned away, trying not to imagine a baby ripped open like that. He was gloating. Maybe he was lying to get under my skin. “It's a shame, really. Kid was tough as nails. I chewed on that one for days.” Ozzie had started circling me, his chin tucked low, eyes glued to me. “If we'd known the pack was this easy to take out, we would have done it ages ago. As it is, it was stupid to think a pack of rabid dogs would stand in our way. Andre's too cautious.”
“Andre's smart. The last thing you guys wanted was a bunch of pissed off werewolves.”
“Like that wet pussy over there?” Ozzie jerked his head toward Ed. “Or the old man on the breathers in the hospital? Or maybe you mean the asshole sitting behind bars at the station?” In the blink of an eye, Ozzie closed the distance between us. I closed my eyes and winced at the feeling of his breath on my neck. “Maybe you mean those dike bitches you were with at the ranch. Let me clue you in, sweetheart. I ain't afraid of dogs.”
I turned and stepped away from him, for whatever good it was going to do me. I needed to get my back against a wall for sure. That way, he could only come at me from one direction. “Maybe you should be.”
He laughed again and casually strolled toward me. “The way I see it, the only thing I've got to be afraid of is the Master in his high rise raising an army and sending it our way. 'Cause that's the only way his ass is taking this town back. Marcus should've known better than to send his little BSI bitch. You ain't even special. You're human. You're food.”
I kept backing up, glancing toward the source of the laser sight to gauge which direction I should go. There was enough of a height difference between Ozzie and I that, if I backed the right way, his sniper wouldn't have a clear shot at me. If I was quick, if everything went perfect, I could take Ozzie down and make a run for the ladder. Maybe I could climb up it before he shot me in the head, though that wasn't likely.
“Is that why you're keeping me alive? You going to eat us like the rest?” My foot struck the wall behind me and I shrank up against it, as small and tight as I could.
“You think you've got it all figured out. You and that stupid straight arrow cop in town. You two think you're so smart. You don't even know what you're dealing with.”
“Wendigo.” The word stopped Ozzie in his tracks. The stupid, scarred up smirk faded from his face. “That's what they're called, right? That thing you're following? You know, he used to be a man, too, right?”
“You don't know shit.” He took another step toward me. Two more steps and he'd block the shot. He only took one.
“I didn't know for sure until I saw him toss that car like it was nothing. He sounded like my boy, trapped under there. It was very convincing, the way he mimicked his voice. And how he looked like Sal? They can do that, too, can't they? Shapeshift? They're supposed to be the perfect hunters, wendigos. So, what I can't figure out is why the perfect hunter needs someone else, a whole crew of people, to go out and find his food for him. I'm food?” I laughed. “You're nothing but a pizza delivery boy for a French bastard who's too coward to even hunt.”
Ozzie roared and charged forward, head dropped as if he were going to tackle me. Vampires might be fast and strong but their intelligence varies. Ozzie was apparently at the bottom of the barrel when it came to smarts. All I had to do was side step and let him slam head first into the cave wall. He went down with thud followed by the crack of thunder from the sniper up on the lip of the pit. It hit right above Ozzie's head, which was stuck in the wall. I ducked under Ozzie and out of the range of fire but right into his reach. He grabbed me and squeezed. I did what comes naturally to a woman trapped by a threatening male that's bigger than her; I landed a good, hard kick to his balls. Vampire or not, a crack to the family jewels hurts. The force was enough to free him from the wall, taking with him the only cover I had from the sniper above.
I made a mad dash for the other side of the pit, right under where the gunman was and where I thought I'd be harder to hit. No matter how fast I ran, though, I knew I couldn't outrun a bullet. It was the reload I was trying to beat. I made it with a fraction of a second to spare. I reached the other side and turned around in time for Ozzie to tackle me.
Even if I'd been at my best, I was no competition for a vampire. It was only a matter of seconds before he had me pinned. “Oh, I'm going to enjoy this,” he said, running his tongue over his fangs. I turned my head to the side, still trying to free myself. It was no use and I knew it. I wasn't strong enough.
Of all the ways to die, I thought. Why a vampire? Couldn't it be something nice like a landmine or something?
Ozzie leaned down. I could feel his breath on me, the dampness of his open mouth, coming in for the bite that was now unavoidable.
>
And then his head promptly exploded all over me.
My eyes snapped open as his body slumped down on top of mine, limbs twitching. The echo of the gunshot was still ringing in my ears when I looked up and saw Zoe now had the rifle pointed where Ozzie's head had been. The man who had been shooting at me was nothing more than a pile of twitching skin lying next to her.
She lifted the gun and pointed it at the ceiling. “Andre has requested your presence in the main hall. Both of you.”
I pushed Ozzie away, which took a lot of grunting and squirming, and wiped the brains off my face. “Ed... He’s sick. I don't even know if he can stand.” I don't know why I told her that. She was as likely to shoot him as she was to understand why he couldn't climb the ladder.
Zoe bit her lower lip and raised her chin. “Ed. That's the boy down there with you?” I nodded. Zoe stood, unhooked something from her belt and tossed it down to me. It clanked to the floor, sounding like a metal canteen. “Give him that. I'll wait.” I hesitated, afraid that she would shoot the moment I moved. “Well? Go on. I don't have all day.”
I tried not to take my eyes off of her as I half walked, half crawled over the pit floor to collect the canteen. Before I could give it to Ed on good conscience, I needed to know what was in it so I pulled out the stopper and gave it a sniff. It smelled like dead skunk warmed over. “It's medicine,” Zoe shouted down. “Temporary but it'll get him on his feet.”
I looked up at her and narrowed my eyes. “Why?”
“Do you want to help your friend or not?” she spat back. “Fine, if it makes you feel better. It's a pain in the ass to retrieve bodies from the pit, that's why. Now, hurry up.”
Ed opened his eyes weakly when I touched his cheek. “Thirsty.”
“Here,” I said and tried to hand him the canteen but he was too weak. I had to push it to his lips, but he drank it down pretty eagerly.
After a few gulps, he pushed it away and doubled over coughing. “What the hell is that shit? Tastes like ass syrup.”
“Ed.” I grabbed him by the arm. “I know your leg's not better yet. I'm pretty sure you've got an infection. That fever's pretty bad. But we need to go up right now.”
He looked at me, confused. “Up? Are we getting out?”
I looked up at Zoe. Her face was stern, blank and unreadable. “LeDuc wants to see us.”
Ed looked around like a man seeing for the first time and his shoulders sank when his eyes settled on the rope ladder. “Judah, I'm not making it up a ladder.”
“How much do you weigh?”
“'Bout a hundred pounds. Why?”
I sighed through my nose, turned my back and squatted down. “Get on my back. I'll carry you.”
“Up a ladder? A rickety rope ladder? Judah...”
“You can be my arms. We'll do it together.” He hesitated. “Come on,” I whispered. “We get to the top and maybe we can find a way out. It might be our only chance.”
I carried a werewolf with two broken legs in his underwear up a rope ladder. We must have looked the sight, him pulling, me stepping and doing my best to keep a balance by grabbing the rope with one hand, holding his legs with the other. At any time, Zoe could have lowered us a rope to tie around him and hoisted him up that way. LeDuc could have come to see us himself and that would have made my life all that much easier. Someone that thought he was that important probably couldn't be bothered to do so. I thought we'd never reach the top that way but, somehow, we did. Ed pulled himself up and collapsed, exhausted, and I climbed up in a hurry, placing myself between Zoe and Ed to make sure she didn't shoot him.
Zoe frowned at us, lying there, gasping for breath. “Stubborn,” she growled and pointed to an old, rusty wheelbarrow leaned against the wall. “You can put him in that. This will take too long if you have to carry him the whole way.”
I glanced around. “No other guards? What's to stop me from killing you and making a run for it?”
“For one, I have the gun. Two, you'd never find your way out. This place is a labyrinth. Your friend would die of infection before you could get out. Third, we still have your son.”
I closed my hand around a rock sitting next to me. “How do you know I won't kill you out of spite?”
Her eyes were cold and emotionless as she stared me down. “Because you love your son. You want him back, don't you?” I didn't tell Zoe that I wasn't going to make any deals with LeDuc to get my son back. That wouldn't have been true. I would have done anything to make sure he was safe. She pointed again to the wheelbarrow. “It's a limited time offer. You'd better hurry.”
It took a lot of doing but, eventually, I managed to get Ed into the wheelbarrow. Meanwhile, Zoe sat by, taking some of the scopes off the sniper rifle so that it was more manageable at a walking pace. When she was done, she pointed it at me and waved me forward. “Walk. I'll tell you which way to go.”
Zoe had called LeDuc's lair a labyrinth. That was the understatement of the century. Labyrinths have some sense of order and logic to them. Those caves had nothing of the sort. There were narrow walkways that opened into wide, gaping mouths of a room and wide openings that dropped off to nowhere. Alone, without a guide, I would have been trapped and wandering for days. To this day, I still have no idea how Zoe knew which way to go. It seemed as if we were walking around in circles. Doing that with a high caliber rifle pointed at your head was pretty exhausting, especially when the only sound was your own footsteps echoing back against you.
When I couldn't stand it anymore, I turned my head slightly and decided that it was worth the risk to appeal to her as a woman and mother-to-be. “How far along are you?”
“None of your business,” Zoe snapped. “Keep walking.”
I slowed my pace and turned a little more. “You've dropped. That means you've got less than two weeks to go. Is Andre going to make you raise your baby in a cave? Sounds pretty unsanitary to me.”
“This place is equipped with a state of the art laboratory. I’m better off having her here than in that butchery Eden calls a hospital.”
“It's pretty shitty of him to make a pregnant woman do all the heavy lifting,” I continued, slowing even further. “In fact, he hasn't done much of anything, has he? If the cops busted in on this operation, I bet he'd make it out scott free, leaving you to take the fall. I guess raising your baby in prison is better than in a cave.”
“Andre is a great man,” Zoe said, her voice proud. “Scientific advancement exists outside the realm of right and wrong. You can't apply ethics to a sterile situation. All it does is slow progress.”
“I bet Hitler thought the same thing.”
Zoe passed me, turned and pointed the gun at my head, forcing me to stop. “What is it with you people? He's trying to save you. Do you really want to be feared and hated by the rest of the world, shoved into reservations and killed more often than you stand trial?” She shook her head. “Do you really think that BSI is going to let you retire one day? Or is it more likely that, once you've outlived your usefulness, you'll simply disappear?”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But maybe I don't want innocent kids to get hurt because I got dealt a shit hand in life.”
Zoe lowered one hand from the gun and touched it to her swollen belly. “All happiness comes at a price. The difference between you and me, Black, is that I was willing to pay it.”
I dropped the wheelbarrow and stepped toward her. “Look me in the eye, Zoe, and tell me you're really happy with how things have turned out for you.”
Her eyes met mine but her lips trembled. She waved the gun sideways. “Move. No more talking.”
“Why'd you shoot your man?”
“Oswald?” She laughed. “Ozzie was never my man. He was always Andre's. That rat bastard had it coming. He never could keep his hands to himself. You should be thanking me. That fanged freak didn't have a gentle bone in his body. He plays with his food, sometimes for days.” She rounded me and pressed the barrel of the gun gently into my back. “Now, move.”
We came to a large chamber with a long table and some chairs. Though it looked as if the hall could seat a dozen or more, it was completely empty now. “Through the opening on the other side,” Zoe directed. “Quickly.”
I took a few steps and then slowed my pace again. “You know, you don't have to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Listen to LeDuc.”
“You don't know what you're talking about.” She shoved me forward. “Get going.”
“I know plenty. I know you left Sal. I know about the child you two lost. That must’ve been terrible.”
“You have no idea.”
“You said he doesn’t deserve to take the fall for this. You still love him, don’t you Zoe?”
“Love,” she mused with an icy chuckle. “What’s the point of love? We stand up there in our pretty dresses and sing about a feeling but it isn’t real. Love dies. We all die. When that happens the only thing that lives on are our children. Our children, Judah Black, make us immortal. If we can’t have children...” She paused and adjusted her gun. “If we can’t have children, why are we here?”
“That’s a question you have to answer for yourself, Zoe. But I know being a parent doesn’t make your life worth any more or less. You can’t do it if you’re not whole first. Having a baby isn’t going to fix everything for you.”
“Shut up. That’s none of your business. You don’t even know me.”
“Whose baby is it, Zoe? Given the timeline, that could get a little murky, couldn’t it?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“How about the kidnappings? Is that you or LeDuc? You’re in this too deep, Zoe. You really think you’ll get away clean? Even if you kill me, there’s no way you walk away. LeDuc is going to betray you.”