by Anna Windsor
“They smell you by now.” Cole sounded defeated. “They’ll be here in seconds. One of us won’t make it out of here.”
Duncan ignored the delusional crap. Cole was still as buff as he had been in their Army days, but minus the black suit and white collar. The former priest was wearing torn fatigues.
No bloodstains that I can make out …
A chain with what looked like an ancient Afghan dinar hung around Cole’s corded neck. He had long black hair now, loose at his shoulders. Duncan couldn’t see the man’s laughing green eyes in the growing darkness, eyes that had broken the hearts of dozens of nurses and officers and barmaids from Fort Benning to Bagram, but he was willing to bet they had a lunatic gleam.
“Drop the knife and get on the ground.” Duncan kept the Glock trained on Cole’s head.
Cole didn’t move. “If you run now, I can hold them off. You have no idea what’s happening here.”
Duncan had a little bit of a clue. If he wasn’t way lucky, Cole’s “friends” at the federal level would interfere after the arrest, like they had been interfering in the investigations all summer. Sealing Cole’s records, refusing to provide information on his whereabouts, stopping just short of ordering the NYPD to quit trying to track and apprehend a dangerous serial killer.
Whatever Cole had gotten into that last day in the mountains of Afghanistan, it was major. And apparently the government would just as soon no one knew about it—or about John Cole—at all.
But Cole was a murderer, and he had to be stopped.
“Drop the weapon,” Duncan growled, this time through his teeth. “Now.”
A sound like foot-long nails scraping down a chalkboard echoed through the three-sided warehouse ruins.
Duncan felt the grating noise in his bones. His nostrils flared. His skin prickled.
What in the living … ?
Claws on brick?
Claws … ripping into brick?
Was that even possible?
Every aspect of his consciousness tried to tear away from Cole and look to his right, toward the East River, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off the suspect he had chased through half of Manhattan.
Cole kept his hands and that knife over his head, but faster than a blink, he was on his feet and facing away from Duncan, staring toward the riverside warehouse wall.
The air was getting colder. Duncan’s breath fogged in front of his face—in August, for God’s sake. A nasty smell, something like ammonia and dung, made him cough.
The spine-curling rake of claws on brick came again.
This was weird shit.
Duncan didn’t do weird shit. He didn’t believe in weird shit, he didn’t accept weird shit—this needed to stop. Whatever was clawing the brick, he’d shoot it along with John Cole if he had to.
A feral howl, utterly out of place in New York City, drove Duncan to wheel toward the wall.
His skin was crawling now.
“What the hell was that?” Duncan asked Cole, more reflex than anything else.
“Last chance, Duncan.” The former priest gazed into the darkness, bringing his dagger down to the ready position. All of the worry and anxiety had left him. What remained, Duncan knew, was the raw, toneless voice of a soldier about to die in a firefight.
“Run!” Cole shouted. Then he leaped between Duncan and the far side of the warehouse.
Brick shattered as the riverside wall exploded inward.
Cole’s body shielded Duncan from the worst of it, but Duncan turned his head and took a load of rock shrapnel in the temple. Too-bright light flared through his vision, and his head hurt like a bastard—then stopped.
Not good.
Am I dead?
But he was still standing, and his dulled eyesight took in Cole, who hit the ground hard, not five feet from him. Flecks of stone stung Duncan’s forehead, and a cloud of dust rained across the whole space.
Blood and sweat blurred Duncan’s vision even worse, but he steadied himself, turned back to the wall in a shooting stance—and wondered if the blast had knocked him out.
Because he had to be hallucinating.
Cole was prone on the debris-strewn concrete, his knife a few feet away from him. The skyline of Manhattan still rose in the background, split by the big suspension bridge. The world looked completely normal—except for the three human-sized cats slowly creeping toward him from the ruined wall.
Giant tigers, a white one, a black one, and a golden one.
Except they’re walking like men.
His heart just … stopped thumping. The blood thundering in his ears went silent, and his whole body turned polar cold.
The things coming toward him—how far? Thirty yards? Twenty?
They had as much skin as fur, human-like faces, wicked claws, and fangs. Their striped fur glowed in the rising light of the moon, and the stench of ammonia made Duncan’s eyes water.
From the concrete, a bloodied, groaning Cole was getting up, grabbing for his knife, urging Duncan over and over again to run.
“Get out … not here for you … Duncan, go …”
The words didn’t compute at all. Nothing in Duncan’s mind was working very well, but he sighted the creatures and squeezed off nine rounds. Triple-tap for each beast, chest level, right in the hearts.
The tiger-things flinched but kept coming. Fifteen yards. Fourteen. Thirteen.
Holy God.
Duncan fired again and again, barely processing the sound of his own gunfire. A raking, maddening tickle started in his brain, like something was rifling through his thoughts and memories. Images flashed from his childhood, from his life as a cop, from his military service. No order. No logic. He shook his head, still holding his Glock even though some part of him knew the magazine was empty.
I’m unconscious.
This isn’t happening.
Tiger-men who reacted to bullets like they were spit-wads—that shit didn’t exist in his universe.
Nothing happened, except that the black tiger-thing closest to Duncan … changed.
Took on a more human form. The light from its fur—no, skin now—let Duncan see the man’s black hair and black eyes. His high cheekbones and darker complexion. For a few seconds, the thing actually looked familiar.
Then it looked too familiar.
Cropped brown hair. Fashion-plate suit. Big smile. The thing had turned into Calvin, one of the Brent brothers, one of the few men Duncan called friends in his adult life. But Cal Brent was a desk jockey now. His brother Saul was in narcotics—and now the tiger-thing shifted into Saul, long hair, earring, T-shirt, torn jeans, and all.
Right in front of him. Raising his tattooed hand … only the hand had tiger claws.
The Saul-thing swung its fist, claws out.
The blow staggered Duncan and sliced the flesh on his left side, neck to chest. He heard Cole swearing. There was a scuffle, and the tiger-man backed off. Duncan felt somebody grabbing him, pulling him upright. Duncan’s mind swam laps around his skull, but he couldn’t make sense out of any of this. The cut on his left side burned like somebody had a torch to his neck and shoulder.
A bloodied, dirty hand jerked at his arm, and Duncan swung the muzzle of his useless weapon into John Cole’s face.
The green eyes of his first—and for so long, his only—friend pierced Duncan’s brain fog. He lowered his weapon.
John’s eyes were dull with grief and narrow with fear. “I can’t let you die,” he said as he gazed at the cuts on Duncan’s left side. “Not you. Anybody but you. Fuck, Duncan! Why couldn’t you listen, just once in your life?”
Time was moving funny, and the world seemed sideways and unreal to Duncan now. He was hearing John on two levels, as a grown man and a fugitive, and as the little boy he had known way, way too long ago. Was John seeing Duncan as a cop now, or a kid in a cornfield?
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to find some way to heal yourself and keep this fight going.” John’s tone turned grim as he pressed the hilt of th
at Roman knife into Duncan’s free hand. “Use this if you have to cut them to get out of here.”
“John—” Duncan started, but Cole kept talking.
“And keep this around your neck at all times—forever, you understand? Get in touch with Jack Blackmore through the Pentagon. He’ll tell you what you need to know.” John pulled the chain and coin over his head, thrust it out, and dropped it over Duncan’s head. As Duncan felt the coin bounce against his chest and dangling badge, John gave him a huge, sudden shove.
Caught off guard, Duncan sailed backward.
His Glock clattered against the concrete as he crashed shoulder-first onto the rough warehouse floor. Bone cracked. Fresh bolts of pain stole his awareness, and his breath left in a rush. It was all he could do to kick his legs enough to get to a sitting position and reorient himself. The knife was still clutched in his good hand. That had to be worth something.
The tiger-things ringed John, and none of them looked like Cal or Saul Brent anymore. They looked like cover models for a bodybuilding magazine, if you didn’t count the paws and claws part. And they were laughing.
Then they were growling.
They roared and fell on John, tearing and snarling and ripping and howling, howling so loud Duncan thought the sounds would bash his ears off his head.
He raised the knife and lurched toward the bloody, awful scene, shouting even though his throat was trying to close. His badge and that damned coin necklace seemed to weigh four thousand pounds. Closer. Almost there.
“Off him,” he managed. “Get. Off!”
Fighting a weird repelling force, kind of like a magnet shoving away the wrong charge, Duncan sliced at the nearest tiger-thing with the knife.
Missed.
He jammed the knife into his belt and used his freed hand to jerk the big cat away from John. The one with darker fur. The one who had made itself look like the Brent brothers. It spun on Duncan and let out a roar, but its hateful yellow cat eyes fixed on the chain and necklace. It looked like it wanted to rip out Duncan’s throat, but it didn’t so much as raise a clawed hand to take action.
Duncan lifted his good arm. His face was on fire. His head throbbed. His busted arm felt like it had swords sticking through the bone. He couldn’t see shit. Could barely hear anything except the gut-sickening sounds of animals in a feeding frenzy. With what little strength he still had, Duncan punched the tiger-thing right in its blood-streaked nose.
The repelling force shoved him backward. He hit the concrete, and that’s when the real hallucinations started.
As he rolled to his back, a bunch of women dressed in black leather bodysuits leaped over him.
The women had swords.
And daggers.
And something that looked like a dart gun.
One of them was on fire.
Then everything was on fire in Duncan’s mind.
I’m history.
He thought the visions in leather were fighting off the cat-things. Lots of shouting. Lots of swearing. The stink of burned hair—or was it fur?
“I think I got one.”
“Shit, then get this one!”
“At the river, Andy! The big one’s getting away.”
“Move, Camille!”
“Sorry. Sorry.”
The earth shook. Wind howled over Duncan’s head.
The sounds and burning and shaking and all the weird shit was moving away from him. He rolled over and puked, then used his good arm to drag himself toward John Cole.
It took seconds. Then minutes.
Outside the warehouse, water splashed like some freak-ass tidal wave had just come down the East River.
Duncan reached Cole.
He turned his head and puked again.
The man was torn wide open. Guts everywhere. Limbs chewed. Not breathing. Eyes staring—yet blinking. Somehow blinking.
“John?” Duncan’s question came out hoarse, nothing but a whisper.
The brutalized, dying man managed to look Duncan right in the face.
Everything faded away. The strange crap in Afghanistan. The years of no contact. The murders. All of it. In that instant, nothing in the universe mattered more to Duncan than helping his friend.
He held his bad arm against his badge and that necklace and used his good hand to press against one of the wounds on John’s neck. “Don’t die. Hey. You hear me?”
John made no response. Of course he didn’t. How could he? Logic warred with reality in Duncan’s brain, and his consciousness starting swirling and lurching.
Then John blinked. Once. Twice.
He was still alive.
“Don’t you die.” Duncan’s messed-up perceptions heard the voice of a little boy from Georgia, a younger version of himself, calling out to this torn husk of a human being on the warehouse floor. Blood spread around them in a black, hot pool. Oozing. Not pumping. All the works were shutting down.
Everything inside Duncan balled up like a fist as he focused his will and belief in miracles in that total way only little boys could achieve. “Damnit, John, stay with me.”
Sorry, John mouthed.
Then his eyes widened, and he went still.
The necklace under Duncan’s bad arm tingled.
A blast of lightning hit him full force in the forehead, and he crashed backward. More pain. Agony now. His neck. His arm. His back. His heart.
John’s knife vibrated, then seemed to melt away from his belt.
Energy.
Too much—
What the hell was that?
But it didn’t matter.
Whatever was happening, maybe it would kill him, and maybe it should, because John Cole was dead. His friend was ripped open and bloodless, and those green eyes were empty now, forever.
“John!”
Did he yell that name?
Duncan couldn’t be sure.
He wished he could tear apart the warehouse with his bare hands, find those tiger-things, and start on them next.
Rakshasa.
The word blared through Duncan’s mind like somebody shouted it through a megaphone.
Rakshasa. The Unrighteous. That’s what they are, Duncan. Murdering, evil demons called Rakshasa.
A megaphone in his brain … speaking in the voice of John Cole?
You asked me to stay. Here I am.
A thunderstorm broke across Duncan’s awareness. Lots of crashing and raining and blue-white flares of hurt and misery. He shoved his good hand against the side of his head and managed to roll away from John’s corpse.
Sounds and voices rose from every direction.
Duncan couldn’t tell what was happening inside his body and what was happening in the world. The world that had gone completely insane.
He rolled into something solid and lost the little bit of air he had left.
Legs.
Legs clad in leather.
“Did we kill any of them?”
“I don’t think so, but we cut the hell out of one of them.”
“Good.”
As Duncan once more collapsed on his back, a woman said, “Damn, Bela, he’s got head and neck wounds and a broken arm—and look at how those cuts are swelling on his neck—they go all the way to his chest!”
Okay, that sounded halfway normal. When Duncan heard the woman who’d just spoken talking on her phone or radio or whatever, he had no doubt she was an officer. The inflection, the jargon, the way she reported their position—definitely law enforcement.
He turned his head to his left even though his neck nearly cracked from the effort.
An officer in a black leather bodysuit complete with face mask, talking on a pink cell phone and carrying some kind of dart gun?
The woman standing next to the cop, the one with the big honking scimitar sword, had her face mask off, and she was on fire. Like, everywhere. And the long-haired blonde beside her was holding a bunch of evil-looking three-clawed throwing knives and had wind-devils coming out of her head.
I’ve go
t a helluva concussion. I’m hallucinating hot women with kick-ass weapons. I even thought my dead best friend was talking to me. At least the tiger-things are gone.
Fingers pressed against his neck, gentle and warm.
Duncan’s attention turned to the woman touching him.
In the ever-brightening moonlight, he saw long dark hair falling in loose waves, a shade that reminded him of night itself, like her black, black eyes.
“Pulse is stable,” she said in a voice so sexy it made him blink. “We need to get him back to the brownstone.”
Need’a get’im back to thah brownstone.
Oh, yeah. Now that was an accent. He was good at accents, and this one was something interesting—like a mix of Bronx and European, getting more Bronx as she got worked up. Very exotic. Like the tilt of her eyes and her perfect, regal features.
A Slavic goddess, tall and athletic, sword belted at her waist, breasts pushing against her tightly zipped leather bodysuit.
Now, this was one hallucination he could get behind. Duncan let the image of the beautiful woman chase back his grief, his aches and pains, and the strangeness of everything in the warehouse. He let her fill his eyes, his senses.
Somehow through all the blood and singed hair, he caught an earthy, comforting almond scent. He wanted to lift his hand and touch her face just to see if she was real, but one of his arms was broken, and the arm that sort of worked was pinned under his side.
The woman’s graceful fingers drifted to the burning wounds on his neck, shoulder, and chest, and she stared at him so intently he thought she might bend down and brush her lips against his face.
Duncan’s entire body tensed with anticipation. Those lips would be cool and wet. He thought he might crumble to dust from the pain if he moved to kiss her back, though it might be worth it to taste her, to feel this woman against him a single time.
The goddess vision lowered her face closer, closer, until her soft, sweet breath played off his skin. She stared at him so deeply, so completely, that he had to believe she was seeing everything about him, understanding all that could be understood.
Her beautiful lips parted, and that sexy voice said, “He’s infected. We’ll have to call the Mothers.”
Damn, Duncan, said the voice of dead John Cole, directly in the center of Duncan’s brain. I see you still know how to impress the ladies.