Trail of Dead

by Olson, Melissa F.

  He slid backward again and scooped up the candle he’d moved earlier, shielding it behind his body. He crawled back into the hallway, where he set it on top of a cheap fake-wood desk that had been abandoned against a wall. As quickly and quietly as he could, Jesse climbed up onto the table, lifted up one of the ceiling tiles, and shoved the Book of Mirrors on top of neighboring tiles. He replaced the tile he’d lifted, hopped down so fast he almost landed on his ass, and sneaked back into the room, crouching next to the generator. Jesse waited by the generator, tense, until the witch disconnected the old bag from the IV, and then he flipped the switch.

  The lamps on their side of the room snapped out, as did a couple of floor fans and an alarm clock. The room went silent for a heartbeat, and then Olivia and Mallory began asking questions. Jesse scooted back into the hallway as fast as he could, climbed onto the desk in his sock feet, and lifted the candle above his head, toward the little sprinkler spigot.

  Jesse knew sprinklers didn’t work like in the movies—you didn’t automatically get a building full of active sprinklers just because heat registered under one of them. Usually the only sprinkler that went off was the one that had detected heat. This was a medical clinic, though, and on the building map Jesse had seen the little symbols that indicated this was a zone-sprinkler building—if you set off one sprinkler, all the sprinklers in a designated zone would follow. He was just praying the hall spigot was part of the same zone as the nurse’s area. And that the emergency system was still working, period.

  Ten, fifteen, twenty seconds ticked by, and even the spigot he was under remained dry. Jesse began to worry that the system was too old, or perhaps it had been turned off, if that was possible—and then the water began. And a moment later, the screams.

  Chapter 31

  When the sprinklers went off, I knew immediately that it was Jesse, despite my not-unpleasant drug haze. He had found me. I felt a great swell of joy that he was there, but a simultaneous panic too. My chances of getting through this had probably increased, but this was also exactly what I didn’t want: risking someone else I cared about. I needed to wake up. I tilted my head back to let the rancid-smelling water splatter on my face, hoping it would clear my head a little. It wasn’t coming down like rain so much as misting all around us, and my arms were immediately as wet as my face. Which gave me an idea.

  Olivia and Mallory had both shrieked when the water began—for a second I entertained a brief hope that Mallory, anyway, would start melting into a puddle, but no dice—and then started screeching at each other. I ignored them and focused on my wrists. They were definitely bruised where the golem had been clutching them, but he wasn’t tightening his grip any. I wiggled my arms experimentally. There. If I could just get them a little wetter, I might be able to slip out of its grip.

  “You’re the vampire, go do something!” Mallory was screaming at Olivia. The sprinkler system was loud. I felt the massive buzz of her magic swell and spark with her frustration. “Kill him!”

  But Olivia had seen me wiggling my arms. “I’m not leaving her, not while your little pet is getting soaked!” she shouted back.

  “He’ll stay on task,” Mallory began, but Olivia shook her head stubbornly. She had her prize and wasn’t going to walk away from it. Mallory threw up her hands and stalked away into the dark drizzle toward the opposite end of the room, where the generator was. I heard her stumble and swear before she left my radius, and I couldn’t help but laugh at that. Then she let out an anguished cry, and Olivia called a question at her.

  “The book!” she screamed. “He’s taken the Book of Mirrors!” There was a rustling of feet and water as she ran in Jesse’s direction, and then Olivia and I didn’t hear anything else.

  I could only see about two feet in any direction, but Olivia pivoted to face me, her eyes inches from mine. “This is your doing, I suppose?” she said coolly.

  “Actually, I had—” I began, but she was coming at me now, leaning forward to pinch the skin on my upper arm, hard, and twist it. I cried out in pain.

  “What is wrong with you?” she exploded. “I gave you a home, a job, beautiful things, and then you betrayed me. Despite all of that, I came back to give you this gift”—she released me and gestured openly with her arms—“and you spit it back in my face. All the planning, all the work I put into you! You ungrateful little brat.” She hit me again, a backhand. It slid off my wet cheek, but I still felt a spurt of blood in my mouth.

  I laughed in her face. Couldn’t help it, didn’t want to. Olivia stared at me, shocked, like I’d just peed on her rug.

  “Let me make something clear, Liv,” I snarled. “And I want you to listen, because this is critical. You. Are. Not. My. Mother.” I spat the blood in her face, and even though the water washed it right off she took a step back, shocked. “You aren’t anyone’s mother, and you never will be, thank God, because you are so incredibly unhinged that it’s a little funny. You’re a psychotic parasite, and I am not your goddamned Barbie doll.”

  She was fast, but she was still human, and she telegraphed the punch. I saw her rear her arm back, but I was already moving, pulling my wrists up and free through the wet golem’s hands. I ducked just in time, and Olivia’s fist drove into the golem’s face.

  Wet clay or not, it had to hurt, because she cried out, backing up a few steps and clutching her right hand with her left, unaccustomed to pain. That’s what you get for trying to punch a null. I had a new problem, though: the golem was wet but not dead. His orders were to contain me, and he was going to keep coming. I slipped away from his first lunge and side-checked the off-balance Olivia, who slid on the carpeting and went down.

  I ran.

  Chapter 32

  Jesse dashed back through the hallway and into the nearest corridor where the sprinklers hadn’t come on. He ducked into the first open doorway—an office. He’d just drawn his gun when he heard Mallory rushing into the hallway. Jesse took a deep breath, in and out, and stepped out of the office with his gun drawn. He switched the flashlight on as he went, holding it against the gun and shining it directly into her eyes. “Police. Don’t move,” he said levelly.

  Mallory blinked in the sudden light. Her hands had been fussing at her neckline, but now she raised them slowly, the way everyone who has ever seen a cop movie knows to do. Then she began to mutter something, and this time Jesse recognized the language—it was Hebrew. He thumbed the safety off his weapon. “Stop. No spells, or I shoot now and try to figure out what the hell you were saying later.”

  The witch closed her mouth, a murderous look in her eye. “So what’s your plan?” she asked in English, her voice a little out of breath from running. “Are you going to arrest me?”

  “You killed two people, and were an accomplice in at least two more murders,” he pointed out.

  Her smile widened. “True,” she allowed, “but we both know that the human courts won’t see it that way. And you work for them.”

  She was extremely pretty, with thick dark hair plastered to her head, and might have been anywhere from thirty to fifty. She looked very small and wet all of a sudden, and the two of them stood there staring at each other. “I’ve been doing a lot of research lately,” Jesse told her, “and my guess is that you poured a lot of magic into that thing in there”—he nodded his head back in the direction they’d come from, where the golem was trapped inside Scarlett’s radius—“which hopefully means you don’t have much to burn right now.”

  An insidious smile spread across Mallory’s face. Her hands didn’t move, but all of a sudden the neckline of her blouse jumped, as if someone had plucked at it. Jesse leveled the gun. “Stop it!” he yelled.

  She took one small step closer to him, and Jesse tensed, standing his ground. Suddenly every light in the room flickered on, even the ones without light bulbs. The miscellaneous bits of trash and office supplies that had been scattered around the corridor suddenly rose in the air and began a whirling dance, like they were trying to form an invisible b
raid of energy. Jesse felt the gun tug and jump in his hand, and he dropped the flashlight and clutched the gun tighter, with both hands. “You were wrong,” Mallory called to him over the rustling of papers and junk. “I still have plenty of magic to burn.” And her blouse jumped again. The Transruah lifted out of her shirt and settled on her chest. She must have snatched it up when she came after him. Shit. “And I’m not just an animator,” she finished, her voice smug. “Now. Where’s my book?”

  The gun began to spin slowly, twisting out of his grip. “I’ll shoot,” he yelled amid the chaos. He was about a second away from having to decide whether to release the gun or have his fingers broken.

  “No you won’t,” Mallory said. He squeezed the trigger, but it was too late—the metal had crumpled, mangling the barrel. Yelping, Jesse released the weapon—which came flying straight at his head. He ducked the chunk of metal the first time, but it came right back at him, and Jesse took a hard blow to his temple, his ears ringing and his vision fuzzing over for a moment. Before he could really see what he was doing, Jesse lurched forward, missing the chunk of metal’s third effort to brain him. He tackled the witch, who merely laughed at him—until Jesse got his hands on the Jerusalem stone at her neck. He pulled hard, but the stone was on a leather string, not a chain, and Jesse took several more blows from flying objects before he was able to wrestle the leather thong from around her neck. Everything that had been flying around the room suddenly stilled, wavering in the air as Mallory tried to sustain the flow of magic without the Transruah to aid her. With no other ideas, Jesse gritted his teeth and lifted the witch to a seated position. And then he hit Mallory, a quick uppercut that snapped her head back. Her eyes went distant, and suddenly everything in the room crashed to the ground. The lights went out again.

  Chapter 33

  As it turns out, you can’t hide from a golem.

  He didn’t bother trying to cut me off or dodging to get to me; he simply beelined toward me, wherever I went, and I wanted to stay in the part of the clinic where the sprinklers were going. Whatever direction I ran, the clay figure followed me, his surgical scrubs and hat plastered with mud. His face had mostly washed away now, and whenever he got close enough for me to catch glimpses of him I was newly inspired to run. I was much faster, since the golem couldn’t really run without slipping on muddy feet, but I was also high on morphine and sick from chemo and injuries. And the golem couldn’t tire.

  Olivia was after me too, and I desperately wanted to buy myself one minute to get the gun that was still taped to my back. But this proved impossible with the golem chasing me, Terminator-style. For a while there, it was the world’s dumbest Benny Hill sketch. Then Olivia caught on to the golem’s uncomplicated plan—follow Scarlett anywhere—and positioned herself to circle around to where I would be, instead of following me. Then she just had to wait for me to come to her, a triumphant smile on her face.

  But she had miscalculated, either because she’d gotten used to vampiric powers or because she’d gotten used to me submitting, or both. Instead of allowing her to push me into the golem’s arms, I took the offensive. I had no training in martial arts or self-defense, but I did know that Olivia had had a knee injury in college. I kicked out with my right leg and hit the side of her left knee as hard as I could, slipping in the process but managing to remain on my feet. Olivia cried out with surprise and pain, falling on her butt and clutching at her leg. By now the golem had caught up with me, though, and it wrapped one hand around my upper left arm, just as it had before. The generator started suddenly, and the room was filled with dim lamplight, even as the water from the sprinklers began to slow. I didn’t pay attention to any of this, though. I knew if it caught my other arm I was screwed, so I flailed wildly, working to evade the golem’s searching hand.

  Olivia screamed again, only a few feet away now, and I managed to turn my head to see Jesse clutching a handful of her hair. He must have turned the generator on so he could see what the hell was happening. Olivia had gotten to her feet and pulled her gun out from somewhere, and Jesse had his other hand on hers as she tried to keep the gun from his grasp. His arms were longer, though, and one big hand was wrapped around hers where it clutched the gun. I heard two shots fire into the ceiling, but I had my own problems—the golem had wrapped his free hand around my entire upper body, trapping my whole right arm instead of trying to grab my wrist. I cried out in pain as it squeezed me in place like we were hugging. The air reeked of stale water and industrial clay. It was like being in a pressured mud bath.

  “The head,” Jesse yelled at me. “You have to rub his forehead—” His voice cut off in a strangled yelp. Olivia had bitten him on the forearm.

  That sounded ridiculous, but I wasn’t exactly suffering from an abundance of planning. Before the golem could do anything else I wrenched my left arm with everything I had, feeling it almost pull out of the socket. I felt the wet clay give a little, gritted my teeth, and did it again. I heard myself scream with the pain, but I managed to slip my left hand free. I reached up, pushed the scrub cap backward off the golem’s head—and could just make out a word carved into its forehead. My name. I flailed my arm, throwing the golem and myself off-balance as I tried to avoid his grasp. We began to tip backward as I scrubbed furiously at the writing with the heel of my hand. Suddenly all I could think of was Erin, and the way the heavy clay and the weight of the magic had crushed her. My back hit the ground—tilted to the side a bit rather than straight on, thank God—and I had one second to brace myself to be crushed. Instead, though, a few hundred pounds of loose wet clay crumbled gently around me, filling in the spaces between my limbs, coating my hair and face. The golem was dead.

  I found myself in a pile of mud just as the water from the sprinklers trickled into a drip. There was a metallic thud, and I turned to see Jesse pulling Olivia’s arms behind her back in the classic handcuffing-a-suspect position you see on television. She was facing me, and her expression was terrifying: wild-eyed and hungry. She actually lunged in my direction, but Jesse was ready for it and caught her weight easily.

  “Settle down,” he said sternly. To me, he said, “Scarlett, are you hurt?”

  “Not as much as I will be when this morphine wears off,” I said truthfully.

  Jesse frowned. “Morphine?”

  I shrugged. “Long story. Mallory?”

  “Dead.”

  “Did you…”

  Jesse shook his head. “I took off the amulet, and then I tried to just knock her out, but it was like her body had just…emptied.”

  “Kirsten would probably know why,” I said. “Maybe she OD’d on magic or something.”

  “You’re mine,” Olivia snarled at me, completely unaware that we had been talking. Spittle flew from her mouth as she spoke. “Wherever you go, whatever happens to me, you will always be mine. I made you.”

  Without being particularly conscious of it, I had started wriggling my way out of the pile of clay and backward, away from Olivia. “I’ve got her,” Jesse assured me. “Just stay close enough to keep her human.”

  That got through my momentary panic, and I stopped backing away. Jesse glanced around for a moment, and then frog-marched Olivia a couple of feet to an examination room with a long metal handle on the door, shaped roughly like a staple. He did something quickly with the handcuffs, and when he stepped back Olivia’s hands were cuffed together in front of her, through the door handle.

  Jesse slumped down to the floor a few feet away, leaning against the wall. He looked as tired and beat-up as I felt, which was quite an accomplishment. I was campaigning pretty hard for most fucked-up looking.

  “What do we do with her now?” I asked.

  Jesse sighed, looking miserable. “I have no idea. She should go to prison, but a human prison can’t hold her. Dashiell said I should call him when I caught her, and he’s probably on his way here anyway. But he’s just going to kill her.”

  Olivia suddenly went half-limp, clutching the door handle like it was
the only thing keeping her out of deep water. She was still staring at me, but her eyes had gone baby-deer soft, and tears began to slide down her cheeks. She slid down to the floor, letting herself dangle helplessly from the cuffs. “Scarlett, you won’t let them kill me, will you? After everything we’ve been through together? Everything I taught you?”

  I looked at Jesse for a long, foggy moment that felt siphoned off from the rest of the night’s timeline. And then I finally understood. If he turned Olivia over to Dashiell, in his own eyes, Jesse would be killing her. He’d be haunted forever, knowing that he’d compromised his deepest beliefs about order and justice and let a murderer die lawlessly. And in that way, Jesse would become another one of her victims.

  I was not going to let that happen. I lifted Will’s revolver, which I’d retrieved from my back as I scrambled away from the pile of clay. And I shot Olivia twice in the chest.

  It was loud. I dropped the gun and squeezed my eyes shut, listening to the ringing in my ears. I hadn’t looked at Jesse, and I was afraid to open my eyes and do so. I knew exactly what expression was going to be on his face—shock and disappointment that I’d let him down, that I’d demonstrated my complete lack of morals, ethics, or character yet again. I’d seen it before, and I didn’t even blame him, really. I just…wasn’t ready.

  I don’t know how much time passed, but eventually I could hear again. The only sound in the room was a slow drip-dripping of water, probably coming from sprinkler heads. Then I felt a warm hand touch mine, and I opened my eyes. Jesse was crouched in front of me, turning my hand over to press a wad of paper towels into my palm. “They’re wet,” he said softly, “but they’ll work.”