BloodMarked (The Fraktioneers Book 1)

by Lu J Whitley

  Like a light bulb over a cartoon head, the knowledge struck. “Gods!” He ignored the nauseating flood of panic that burned through him. He was such an idiot. He hadn’t felt it in so long. Hadn’t been close enough to feel the connection.

  He stumbled from the last viable shadow out into the waning sunlight. Fiery agony broke out across his face and chest, the light singeing patches of skin. He watched them flake off as he ran, but there was nothing he could do. He didn’t have time to bother. He might be too late already. No. He didn’t let his brain stick on that thought for long. If she was afraid, she was still alive. As long as that panic lasted, he wasn’t too late.

  But the feeling didn’t last. Whether it was a false alarm, or... Or... Shit, he didn’t want to think about that fucking ‘Or.’

  As the sparse quads of the university gave way to rows of residential streets, he picked up the pace even more. Darting through the sinking twilight like a runaway freight train, until he came to a stop at 223 Pine Court, the beat up, but homey, painted lady the Brandt women shared.

  His eyes took a quick inventory around front, needing no help to see in the deepening dark. No sign of a struggle. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. At this stage in the game, he didn’t need to breathe, but an eight hundred year old habit was hard to break. Plus, no breathing meant no sense of smell, and that was something he desperately needed now. Taking a deep inhale, Ragnarsson nearly choked on the acrid stench of rot and decay. Fear clenched his insides like a swift kick in the gut. “Shit!”

  He ran - full pelt - down the side alley, not giving a damn if anyone saw. Vaulting easily over the five-foot privacy fence that separated the Brandt’s yard from any neighbor’s prying eyes, and sending up a silent prayer of thanks that Hannah Brandt had an iron-clad no pets policy. The last thing he needed was some yappy mongrel ruining any element of surprise.

  A quick scan of the small back yard revealed no hidden enemies. Not that he’d expected any. Considering the back door was gaping wide, he knew exactly where the party was. He let out a muffled string of curses as he jogged across the yard and made his way onto the meticulously kept brick patio that separated lawn and house. In the grand German tradition, Hannah Brandt was fastidious about the way her house and garden were kept, so when he saw the state of the tiny mud room past the open door, he knew. The sinking feeling threatened to swallow him whole.

  He took a few steps into the mud room and positioned himself with his back to the door that led off to the left, into the kitchen. Though his heart was racing a mile a minute, he took a moment to stand still, even out his breathing, and listen to the house. Something was definitely moving around in the kitchen… And that something definitely wasn’t human.

  He reached for his sidearm, popping the snap on the holster and sliding the matte black metal free. Under normal circumstances, he preferred hand to hand combat. Maybe a little knife work. Getting a few 911 dial-outs over gunshots fired wasn't exactly the best way to fly under the radar, but this was tantamount to taking a dump on his front porch. He was, to say the least, taking it personally.

  Takers wouldn’t die unless exposed to direct sunlight while not wearing human haute couture. Not an easy thing to accomplish. Once they were in, they were in for good. So he knew full well the bullets wouldn’t kill the bastards, but they’d certainly hurt like hell. And human skin didn’t just magically regenerate when you blew it full of holes. They’d have to abandon ship at some point. And he had plenty of time to wait. Yeah. Now that he was too late, he had so much damn time.

  Gods, he prayed, please let it not be Greta’s face on the other side of that door. He’d handled a lot of terrible shit in his lifetime, but he knew, with complete certainty, he wouldn’t be able to handle that.

  With a deep breath and another silent prayer, he began to turn toward the door, arms outstretched, gun leading the way. But he stopped. Short. A rattling sound from the front of the house snapped him to attention. The scratch of metal against metal. Turn of a key. Snick of a tumbled lock. The groan of hinges that had seen a few too many openings and closings.

  “Mama,” Greta Brandt called from the front foyer, and if Ragnarsson had ever heard anything more beautiful in his whole damn life, he couldn’t remember it. She was alive!

  He was suddenly caught between a wave of relief and a knot of sheer terror. Takers were in the house. He didn’t know how many. And he couldn’t get to her without going through them first.

  ★ ★ ★

  Greta was so glad to finally be home. She felt like she’d walked for hours. Though, in truth, as soon as she’d made it to Walmart, she’d been able to use a pay phone (who knew pay phones even still existed?) to call a cab.

  Still, it’d been quite a night for her. Probably the most excitement she’d had in weeks, which was just… depressing.

  She dropped her keys on the hall table and slung her backpack up onto the coat rack. Mama would have a cow if she left her dingy bag on the gleaming hardwood floor. “Mama,” she called a second time, but no one answered. Hmm. Dinner must've moved over to Florence’s.

  She’d have to fend for herself in the food department. Her stomach decided at that moment to remind her with a loud growl that she hadn’t eaten since, what, noon? Christ, no wonder she was hungry. Traitorous thoughts of Florence’s chicken and dumplings danced through her head, soliciting another growl. Nope. She wouldn’t give in to temptation. She’d rather cook her own meals for the rest of her life than have to sit and be pretty and make small talk with Steve Ramsay. Jerk.

  So she’d been a little overweight in High School… and Junior High… that didn’t give him the right to make ‘Moo’ sounds behind her back or loosen all the bolts on her desk in eighth grade so it would look like she’d sat down and crushed the whole thing. He didn’t have to write ‘Fat Ass’ on her locker every year, because it'd been so funny after the first few times.

  No, she wasn’t bitter. Not at all.

  She stomped off in the direction of the kitchen. Lost in thought. Until a tingling sense of unease washed over her, bringing her back to reality. The kitchen light was burning brightly. Which was odd. Her mother was nothing, if not obsessive about conserving energy. ‘Greta, you trying to light the whole neighborhood?’ She’d heard it a million times. She couldn’t blame her mother, though, electric bills were hard to manage on a fixed income.

  That she could remember, her mother had never worked, at least not outside the home. Greta’s father had had some highbrow, and no doubt less than legal, job back in Soviet East Germany before the Berlin Wall fell. Though he’d been dead now for almost eighteen years, her mother still received a monthly... pension, if you will. It wasn’t much, but it kept a roof over their heads and food on the table. Which was good, because her job at Moe’s didn’t pay enough to light a room, much less an entire two-story house.

  “Mama,” she tried again, though she knew she wasn’t going to get an answer. Greta held her breath as she stepped over the threshold that divided hardwood from slick tile, then let out that breath on a gasp. The kitchen looked as though someone, and someone BIG, had gone at it with a sledge hammer. The refrigerator door stood open, hanging on the one hinge that hadn’t been ripped to shreds. Food was splattered over the once immaculate cream ceramic tile, staining the grout between the squares. Cabinet doors hung at odd angles, and thick gouges had been cut into the counter tops.

  She stood there. Dazed. Knowing she should turn and run, but not able to move a muscle. Movement in her peripheral vision caught her attention. She turned her head, but not fast enough, as six foot something of solid muscle and scary bashed into her from the side. The air left her lungs in a whoosh. Her assailant trapping her between his big body and the pantry door.

  Instinct kicked in with a deep inhale. She punched. She kicked. She used every trick she’d ever learned from her unhealthy obsession with martial arts movies. Every surface of her body became a weapon. She tried for a misplaced head-butt and n
early knocked herself unconscious. But she kept fighting. Her nails raked down the big man’s face, drawing blood, and for the first time, she paused to really look at him.

  The ‘Stevenator’ Ramsay was in her kitchen, holding her by the shoulders with his meaty hands. And he stared at her with the oddest yellow eyes. Reptilian. Deadly.

  Maybe she’d fully brained herself when she’d gone for that head-butt. She opened and closed her eyes a few times, trying to blink away the nightmare. But no matter how many times she let her lids slip closed, the scene was the same when they opened.

  A wave of nausea came on so quickly it would have dropped her to her knees if Steve hadn’t been holding her up. No, not Steve. Not Steve’s giant fist connected with her jaw, sending her head reeling to the side. Get a grip, Brandt. She had to fight. She had to…

  “Nice to see you again, Little One,” he rasped as she stopped her head from spinning and faced forward. She was in deep, deep shit. “It’s good to see you again.” His hissing voice was garbled, so similar to the one from her nightmares. But she'd heard that voice in her head nearly every night for the last eighteen years. She knew it wasn't the same. She looked into those eyes again. They were that same sickly yellow, but they were different - unique.

  “Nice try.” She actually surprised herself with her nonchalant tone, considering she didn’t know whether she wanted to piss herself or have a heart attack and die. Perhaps both. “I know you’re not him.”

  “Ah,” Not Steve sighed, “but we are all him. One, and yet many.” He leaned forward, his eyes never breaking from hers, as if he planned to… kiss her?

  Not in this fucking lifetime, buddy. She threw her head back to go in for another head-butt. Not the most sound course of action, but she had to give it a try. This time, she cracked him square in the nose, leaving it gushing blood. He grunted and relaxed his grip just enough that she could slide to the side and charge past his big body.

  Keeping her eyes on the big man, she ran blindly forward. Her shoes sliding in the food remnants that littered the floor. She was home free, if she could...

  Smack. She spun around to look at the obstacle keeping her from getting the hell out of Dodge, and she was face to face with another creature. This one smaller than the other, but with no less impact. “No.” She stumbled back a few steps, her hands rising to her eyes, trying to shield her fragile mind from what she was seeing. She choked back a sob as she stared into the reptilian, yellow eyes that glared back at her from her mother’s face.

  ★ ★ ★

  Ragnarsson could see Greta across the small kitchen, though random cabinet doors blocked his view from time to time. She was magnificent, giving back everything she got and then some.

  “Shit.” Focus! He’d been distracted just enough to let the tiny Taker in front of him catch him with a dirty stab to his left side. She was barely tall enough to register in his field of vision. Had probably been a nice lady, at some point. But the knife wielding little bitch - grinning at him with teeth so white and straight they had to be dentures - was not a happy neighbor. He’d slashed a hole in her chest so wide she’d have to find a new body by morning or she’d be toast. He’d see to that. She knew it too. So she was trying to push past him. Take him out so she could get back into the night and find some unsuspecting hobo to take for a test drive. Not on his watch.

  He kept glancing over her head to make sure Greta was safe, but she was holding her own. Now they’d found her, he was in a take no prisoners kind of mood. He’d already left three crippled and bleeding out in the hallway. Time to cancel out Mrs. Brady.

  He let the little woman think he’d spaced out again, but this time, as she tried to get past him, he landed a mean elbow to her left temple. If she’d have been human, she’d have woken up three days later, or not at all. But a human body could take a lot more damage when there was a Taker behind the wheel. He did no more than confuse her/it for a few seconds. But that was more than enough time for him to dip down onto one knee, proposal-like, and slice cleanly across the backs of both knees with his field knife. With a muttered curse, the woman went down hard. Switching his Beretta back to his dominant hand, he gave her eyes in the back of her head… or at least spare eye holes. That wouldn’t keep her out long, but he’d think about that later. He looked up from the still twitching corpse, turning all of his attention back to the other side of the kitchen.

  “Fuck!” He didn't need to see her face to know. The woman meeting Greta's horrified gaze was Hannah Brandt. Or used to be. “Fuck!” Ragnarsson looked from Greta to the giant Taker that was rounding on her, his nose still gushing blood from where she'd butted him in the face. But she didn't look back. Didn't take her eyes off the slightly smaller woman in front of her. Unshed tears shimmered in the harsh fluorescent light. “Greta,” he yelled, thinking he might be able to break through her shock and get her to fight. To make his decision a little easier. But she didn't as much as flinch.

  The big Taker on the other hand, he flinched. He glanced across the expanse of the kitchen, his big eyes widening to the size of dinner plates. “Ragnarsson,” he breathed. Then he turned tail, running out of the kitchen and the house as if an entire army was hot on his heels.

  Good to see his reputation preceded him.

  ★ ★ ★

  “No,” Greta gasped. To herself? Out loud? She really didn’t know. The thing wearing her mother’s face held out its/her arms at an unnatural angle. Her dress was covered in blood and bits of spilled food. It was her good dress. Her Sunday dress. Though Mama had never made her attend church. Greta didn’t know if her mother even believed in God. What a terrible thing to not know about your mother. Something she would never know now.

  She/It took an advancing step, shuffling ever so slightly. Reminding Greta, if she needed another damn reminder, that this thing wasn't her mother anymore. Mama had never shuffled a day in her life. She'd walked proud and straight, as she’d tried to train Greta to do on at least a hundred occasions, but Greta was a sloucher. She was a coward too. And as the creature kept advancing on her, she couldn’t move. Couldn’t react. She just stood there, numb from the brain down.

  With a few more steps, it was within arm’s reach. She could extend her hand and touch the beautifully strong face she’d never truly appreciated until now. Flashing a sinister smile, the creature drawled, “Come to Mama.” The sibilant sound made her skin crawl, but Greta didn't – couldn't – move away. It took the last step, reaching out its arms, and began to enclose her in a macabre embrace.

  A sudden deafening roar shook the kitchen. Delicate cups and saucers that had somehow survived the destruction rattled in their display cases. Greta flinched, but she still couldn’t force her body to move. React. All she could do was stare down at the thing that was not her mother - that was not the only person she had left in the world - and watch, almost in slow motion, as a bullet whistled across the room. It entered her mother’s skull on the left side just above her eye socket and blew out the front half of her forehead on the right. Shattering her beautiful face, until she looked like poor Humpty Dumpty, never to be put back together again. Tissue and bone fragments plastered Greta's face. Her chest. Blew back to stain the pale oak cabinets a terrifying red.

  She finally found the will to move, trying to retreat the spreading flow of blood. But she was helpless against the pull of the dead weight of her mother’s body as it sagged to the ground, taking her along for the ride.

  She heard someone screaming. The fractured wail a mix of grief and rage. So loud, the sound seemed to be coming from inside her own head. Was she alone in the kitchen? Who had more cause to scream than her?

  Greta sat on the floor, cradling her mother’s still warm corpse in her hands. Her eyes were blurred by a haze of blood splatter and fat tears. Her hands slick with some foreign black goo. With her mother’s head in her lap, she rocked. Rocked. Back and forth. Swayed with her mother like she had so many times quieted Greta when the nightmares had been too much to bear. Thi
ck black ooze poured from her mother’s nose and mouth. But still Greta rocked.

  Strong fingers closed around her shoulders, but she shrugged them off. She heard a gruff voice calling her name, saying she needed to go. They needed to go. But where could she go? Everything she had in the world was lying there on the floor in an ever widening pool of blood and black muck.

  “Greta,” the voice said, “Let go. We need to leave. Now.” She didn't answer, and the rough hands on her shoulders became more insistent. Pulling her from the floor like she weighed no more than a child. “We need to leave. It's not safe.”

  “No.” She pitched her body forward. Fighting. Battling for just a few more minutes. Just one more minute.

  Faintly. So softly she thought she’d imagined it, her mother’s body began to tremble. “Mama,” she screamed. The hands closing around her shoulders slipped underneath her arms and started dragging her mercilessly from the floor. With everything she had, she resisted. She was still alive! Her Mama was still alive. “No,” she shouted at the offending hands, wriggling to try and escape the hold. “She’s still alive!” She managed to shimmy free, curling protectively around her mother's prone form.

  “Greta.” The voice said again, one thick hand grasping her by the wrist and tugging violently. She pulled back, but she made the mistake of looking up at her assailant. Wanting to look in the eyes of her mother's murderer. Incandescent crimson orbs glared back at her.

  She choked on a scream and scrambled backward, trying to pull her mother's broken body along the slippery tile. “N...N...No.”

  The nightmare didn't let go. He advanced with her, following her across the kitchen. “Greta,” he said again. How did he know her name? Her back flattened against the remnants of her mother's oak cabinets. The nightmare man halted a few feet away, still holding her wrist in his inexorable grasp. “Greta,” he repeated, the sound tired, cautious. As if he was trying to be patient with her. Why?