He reached out his right arm. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something white blurring through the parking lot. Too late to abort. Far too fuckin’ late, man.
His arm slammed into her and wrapped around her midsection. He hoisted her to his hip and restrained her head against his shoulder with his free arm. He faltered a step from the shift in weight but kept running without breaking stride. The white blur of a VW Jetta stopped abruptly. A shrill cry followed the dull clack of a door opening.
“What the hell are you doing with my daughter!?”
Bad timing. If only he hadn’t waited so damn long. He ignored the woman’s cries; witness or not, nothing had changed. He had the girl, and her mother’s voice receded rapidly behind him. Up ahead, at the edge of the park, the wild growth of the woods broke against the flat and tasteless facade of the old Miltonway Shopping Arcade, beyond which awaited the tangled alleys of freedom. He’d be safe there, and then Gauge and the rest of the motherfuckers in Theta would find him and take the responsibility off his damn shoulders.
The girl against his chest barely struggled. The clacking of heeled steps far behind him was dull and meaningless now. Piedman whispered a prayer for forgiveness and sprinted into the waiting crevice behind the abandoned butcher shop, leaving the mother behind. He tightened his grip across the girl’s body with his right arm, balancing his sprint with his left. She seemed to be clinging for dear life. Good. All the easier for me. Her spidery appendages, too, clutched at his arm and shoulders, but made no attempt to free her. Still at a full run, he carried her through the network of shaded and ill-frequented alleys. If her mother was still giving chase, she must have gotten lost behind him. Panting, he allowed his footfalls to slow. After ducking behind one last brick wall into a narrow alley behind an old barbershop, he finally stopped.
His breath was raspy and hot, and a burst of rapid coughs ripped at his throat. The place smelled like death had molded over. He shifted the girl, turning her and putting her back against his chest. He barred his left arm against her windpipe in a light chokehold. After making it this far, he wasn’t taking any chances while he made the call.
“Now be a good little girl,” he said in a low, savage tone. “Don’t struggle. Make it easy on yourself, darlin’.” He gave her throat a quick squeeze to show her he was serious as he dug through the pocket of his coat. He pulled out the gray cellphone he’d been given, flicked the device open, and pressed a short sequence of buttons before bringing it to his ear.
His lungs burned, and he coughed another tar-flavored sputter. “Don’t worry, just relax, girl. You’re gonna be just fine. If you don’t make any trouble for me, that is.” He again closed off her airway with his forearm for a moment. She flailed briefly with her spider legs and made a quiet, high-pitched staccato sound. It was a sound he couldn’t quite make sense of. Insane though it was, it almost sounded like she was laughing. Nah, that’s not it. Crying, most likely.
The phone clicked, and a voice spoke low and menacing into his ear. “Piedman. Have you got Nexara?”
“Aye,” he said with a wheeze. “Got her right here, Mr. Clearwater.”
Silence on the other end. Then a sigh. “Good. Excellent work. I will see to it that you’re promoted for this. Now call the others and get them to pick you up. Quickly.”
He nodded, his hair flopping in front of his face. “Yes, sir. No worries.” With another cough, he clicked a button and ended the call. His heart pounded in his chest, adrenaline still pulsing against the edges of his vision. He’d done it. That faggot Roy was going to shit himself when he saw that he pulled it off without any backup. And Gauge . . . actually, he didn’t want to think about it; that man-thing was horrid in the best of moods, and catching a ten-year-old girl didn’t have a high probability of impressing that robed fuck. In any case, he needed a good gut-punch of a line to dropkick that pompous dickbag with when he called.
But his prisoner’s squirming appendages thwarted his attempts at thinking up something clever and demeaning. They clawed at his left arm, which was still barred across her throat. Those legs barely exerted any force at all; he may have felt bad, were his own neck not on the line. Sorry, kid. Better you than me.
But as Piedman started dialing Edgar’s phone number, a dark brown blur dove across his field of vision and into his right hand. The thing collided with the phone, and there came a loud crunch of metal grinding plastic. The sick, wet ripping that followed turned his stomach. Before the sound had left his ears, his hand burned with a savage, biting agony. He let out a horrified bellow. As if in response, the viciously sharp spider leg pushed itself further through his palm, grinding shards of smashed metal and plastic into bone. His balance waned, and the girl slipped through a narrow gap in his grip as gracefully as a fish down a stream. As her feet touched the ground she withdrew the impaling leg, and the return trip broke his hand into a clump of obtusely splayed fingers.
There was a wet clatter as the remains of the phone struck the stone pavement. Pain echoed through all the bones of his arm and into his ribs. His ears rang. His knees wobbled. Piedman stumbled backward in horror. His misshapen hand was painted a luminous crimson from the quarter-sized hole in the palm. Seeing the damage was even worse than the nerve-searing agony rippling through his muscles. The taste of vomit bubbled up from his gut. Staggering back, his blurred gaze flew to the girl Clearwater called Nexara. He watched in disbelief as that girl, who until seconds ago had been soundly under his control, turned toward him. Her bright blue eyes blazed with malicious intent. They were anything but the innocent eyes that had regarded him as he approached her near the parking lot. Now, they were powerful. They were wild and ruthless. They were the eyes of a lioness poised to leap upon her prey.
They were hunter’s eyes.
Kara didn’t know where the man was taking her, but she was too excited to care. As he ran, she pressed her face into the coarse material of his coat. She couldn’t imagine why he’d worn the coat on such a sunny day. Sweat rolled off him, and it was clearly weighing him down. Either way, she was glad he had. Its musty scent reminded her of the pantry at home.
The alleys he was taking her through were old, overgrown with ivy and wide stains of mildew. Boarded windows, shattered windows. Battered doors, missing doors. Broken asphalt now covered the ground, and where the cobbles were thinnest there sprouted withered weeds and crabgrass that the surrounding pines had choked of all but the faintest traces of light.
The man’s path took them through several alleyways and paths, and Kara knew her mom had been left far behind. I’ll still be able to smell her, though, she thought, and I bet Mr. Yellow doesn’t know it. That particular ability would come in handy when it came time to find her way back; that would be sooner rather than later if the ragged breaths seething from the man’s mouth were any indication of his fitness. He may have been fast, but he had little stamina. Smokers rarely did. She knew this was irresponsible, but it was so fun to be the center of attention, to let things run out of control just a bit before reining them back in.
Mr. Uglycoat took another right, almost tripping in the process. His footfalls slowed and then stopped. His chest heaved, and the air exiting his lungs made a sandy rasp. The man grabbed her and jerked her across the trunk of his body. His left arm found its way across her neck, pushing her chin upwards.
His hot breath gushed out not far above her right ear. “Now be a good little girl. Don’t struggle. Make it easy on yourself, darlin’.” His arm pushed harder against her airway. Her throat closed, and she wriggled her spider legs to make up for the diminished airflow. She felt him rummage for something. After a moment, he ceased his toil, and she heard a series of musical tones coming from his phone. “Don’t worry, just relax, girl. You’re gonna be just fine. If you don’t make any trouble for me, that is.”
His chokehold tightened, a show of force. Though it was unpleasant, Kara couldn’t help but smile to herself. Mr. Yellow didn’t know that she had other ways to breathe. She flaile
d her legs more than before, letting her spiracles—as Spins had told her the openings in their joints were called—drink in the alley’s dank aroma. A couple seconds later the man relaxed his grip, and Kara stifled a giggle.
The man shifted a little more and began speaking to someone on the other line of the cellular device. Kara didn’t listen; she just focused on the arm restraining her. She placed three of her leg-tips on the lining of the coat, raking them gently across its gritty surface. The texture sent small shivers through her legs, and she wished she had a coat of the same material. It would have to be a different color, though; this mucky yellow was too ugly to be seen in public with. A sigh slipped out from somewhere deep within. The flow of blood running through his arm grew stronger as the Hunting began to creep into her own bloodstream. She could almost taste the heat of it.
“Yes, sir. No worries,” Mr. Yellow yelled, and a soft beep announced the call’s end.
She felt the pulse pounding in his veins. She heard the excitement that came to his breath, and that amplified her own. He was at his emotional peak, and that meant it was time to tear him down. Absorbed in thought, the man extended his right arm again and began playing an encore of those musical tones. The bittersweet feeling subsided, and the sharpened perception of the Hunting boiled into a familiar primal thrill. The real fun begins now, Mr. Yellow. Better luck next time.
As he dialed the sixth number in the sequence, she hooked the second leg on her right side and drove it toward the source of that sound. She felt the satisfying crunch of metal and plastic breaking, followed by the sensation of her leg piercing through the warm slab of his hand. He screamed, and the bones of his fingers bent, flexing against her chitin. The fresh smell of blood bathed Kara’s leg, and she shivered in growing anticipation. She pushed her leg further through the hole in his right hand, grimacing at the texture of bone grinding on her plating.
The man wobbled. His scream wavered. Kara’s other spider legs pried a gap between his arm and trunk, and she slipped away from him. When her human-feet touched down, she tore her leg out from his hand. The violated bones cracked and popped.
The man took a rapid series of unsteady steps away from her. He held his red, gleaming hand away from him as his eyes, wide with disbelief, took in the visceral horror of the sight. His hand was a luscious crimson stream pouring out onto the stone pavement of the alley, plop-plopping against the cobbles.
She turned to face Mr. Yellow straight on, a smile splitting her cheeks. The blood was thick and wet in the air now. Her spiracles tingled at that scent. She could so easily lose herself to it. Yet she wouldn’t drink it; Mom would never forgive her for doing that if she ever found out. But she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to thoroughly enjoy it.
Jaw tensed and trembling, broken hand bending where it shouldn’t have, the man lurched another step back and screamed a slur of half-words punctuated by familiar profanity. “Stay away from me!”
Kara’s spider legs stretched around her, curling and folding, taking the raw aroma into her spiracles and lungs. She took a single step toward him, and that was all it took to push him over the edge. His left hand dove into the recesses of his coat pocket, his face twisting in rage. Kara bent her human-knees, allowing her real legs to take over, splaying themselves along the ground in a menacing posture. A handgun came free, a clunky silver thing, and Kara sprang toward him with a malign agility. The cobbled pavement blurred beneath her. She closed the distance in a heartbeat.
Mr. Yellow’s gun thundered twice in rapid succession, but the bullets went wild, drilling into the brick wall high to the left. Kara pranced to the side, watching as his aim sank and rose. She then skittered to the right, closing the gap. His reflexes were slow; he couldn’t lead her with the shot. Even if he could, he was shaking too badly for it to matter. As soon as she came within range, she lashed out with one of her forelegs and struck the barrel of the gun. The weapon went flying, slamming into the alley wall and falling with a clack.
Her abductor’s legs once again began their backward shuffle, and Kara pursued. With a sweep of her anterior legs, his feet flew out from beneath him and sent him crashing to the ground with a terrified groan. The thrill of the battle ran thicker with each beat of her heart. She scuttled atop him, her appendages stabbing shallowly into him as she advanced up and over his form. Not too deep, for that would ruin the sensation. She was deliberate and careful in her steps, jabbing just hard enough so as not to rip the fabric of the coat. With every step she could feel his skin scratch, sometimes tear, and sometimes begin to bleed.
Mr. Yellow tried to hit her with his wrecked hands, but she pinned them both back against the cracked pavement with her spider legs. She continued to skitter forward, inch by inch, until her face hovered just above her kidnapper’s. She stared into his wide eyes, showing him a playful look. I am the hunter, she thought, and you are but my unlucky prey. She hoped he was telepathic, for it was the sort of cliche she could never bring herself to say aloud. The fresh blood leaking from his pinned arms brought a new ecstasy to Kara’s senses, and shivers danced down the length of her plated legs. He was trembling, and why shouldn’t he be? She’d been born for this. “I win,” she said with a giggle.
The man’s eyes bulged, his lips thin and pale. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, and a dry whisper slipped out of his reeking tobacco-hole. “What . . . ?”
A louder laugh this time. “I win!” She threw her curtain of hair back and jumped off of him, cackling. Holding back the adrenal force, she leapt to her feet. “I win, I win! You can’t kidnap me because I beat you! You lost because you’re a bad man, you know.”
His gaze followed her as she hopped about him. Laughing, she danced playfully between the streaks of blood pooling on the ground, careful not to get any on her shoes. Mom would be unhappy if she knew how she’d really gotten away. Her thoughts pushed back, forcing the Hunting back into the recesses of her mind. The yearning for carnage began to recede from her bloodstream. The heat stinging her skin faded, and she set her eyes upon Mr. Yellow’s prone form. “You lost,” she said again, “and that means I get to take a prize!”
Again she threw herself toward him. He screamed, but before he could lift a battered arm to defend himself she lanced her legs across his torso and seized hold of a torn flap of fabric. As he trembled in shock, she ripped the strip of his coat off. She passed it to her hands and started running her fingernails across its addictively gritty material. “I choose this.”
Kara turned from him and made her way to the old brick wall of the alley. Her spider legs stretched out and laid themselves against its surface. She gave one last look over her shoulder. “Don’t do bad things, and next time I won’t have to hurt you.” Appendages writhing, she scaled the squat structure in the blink of an eye. When she reached the roof, she allowed her legs to carry her a little farther before she dropped and rolled onto her back. She held her prize in both hands, running the tips of her legs back and forth across it. It would serve as the dessert to the primal thrashing. The scent of blood was far thinner up here, and her overloaded nerves gradually calmed.
It’d been a long time since she’d enjoyed herself so much, and even longer since she’d allowed the Hunting to take over to this extent. Her amplified sense of smell easily discerned when Mr. Yellow finally struggled to his feet and hobbled away, groaning in agony. For a few minutes, Kara just stared at the blue sky and the lovely pine groves surrounding the abandoned stores at the edge of Old Town. But now that the killing haze had lifted from her mind, she remembered how hungry she was. When a pigeon landed on a rusted roof fan close by, she decided to make a light pre-dinner snack out of it before going back and finding her mom.
Maybe soccer practice wasn’t so boring after all.
Chapter 7
No Looking Back
Gauge hissed through his crooked, eroded teeth when he saw the blood painting the alleyway. Fury curled the long, leg-like chitin fingers of his right hand. There were no thoughts in hi
s mind; just a seething red wall.
“Sir,” Roy called from the tangled nest of alleys behind him. “Shall we clean this mess up, too?”
Gauge nearly turned on his heel and roared at the man. What else were they supposed to do? What good was removing Piedman if they left the evidence behind? Then again, he could forgive the man’s idiocy. This time. Gauge turned to the coated man. “No,” he said in a low, rumbling tone. “I will deal with this.”
Roy’s forehead wrinkled. “Sir?”
Gauge unfurled his great claw. “He’s been disposed of. I’ll handle the rest personally.”
Roy nodded, though he looked uncertain. “Yes, sir.” With a pointless salute, Roy disappeared beyond the bend to join the others.
Gauge turned his gaze back to the ground. Broken cellphone, streaks of blood, two bullet casings. Damn you, Dwyre, he thought. He closed his eyes, focusing on the brilliant blue shine behind his lids. Then, he intoned a single word into the thoughtstream. “Kaj.”
A moment passed, and the chattering of the other Vant’therax through the network faded into a distant static. The shadows creeping along the walls began to roll, streaming downward and pooling into a great, dark stain on the ground, from which arose another man-shaped thing wrapped in a matching yellow robe.
Kaj’s eyes were at once drawn to the blood at his feet. “I was going to ask why you summoned me,” he said, “but I can see there is no point. Your men are truly incompetent. Who was assigned to take Nexara?”
Gauge growled. “Piedman. He’s been dealt with already.”
Kaj crossed his arms. “And the others haven’t even disposed of this evidence yet? What did you call me for? Surely you do not expect me to clean up your mess, slime.”
For a moment, Gauge was quiet. He stared Kaj right in his hideous eye-ridden face. “Consider this: this would not have happened had the Conduit given us greater autonomy to act.”
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