I coughed on the dust, and nodded. The earthquakes weren’t normal, even for a city that felt shakes every now and then from the fault line that ran through the mountains. I thought about the sort of things that could make the ground under my feet shake, and wished I hadn’t.
Bryson jerked his head at the were pack. “What about them?”
The Serpent Eyes were gathered in a tight knot a few hundred feet away from us, checking one another over for injuries and shouting the names of the missing. No one made a move to go back into the sinking pier. When you live in a were pack, some of your friends survive and some don’t. You start to be grateful for every day with food and shelter and accept the rest as a will beyond your own.
At least, that’s what Dmitri had told me. Personally, it seemed like conciliatory bullshit, Reason Number 242 why I stayed an Insoli.
Nobody seemed to care that Carla was under the auspices of a human and a packless inferior. Without Joshua around to give her status, she probably ranked as low as I did among the Serpent Eyes. “Forget them,” I said to Bryson. “We’ve got to take Carla with us.”
Her eyelids fluttered after a minute and she opened her eyes, a hand going to touch the back of her head. “Something clocked me.”
“You’ll be all right,” I said. “Blurred vision? Funny smells? How many fingers?” I held up two.
“Eleven,” she said, rolling her eyes. She sat up fast, trying not to show that it made her wobble and hiss in pain. “I gotta get out of here . . .”
“Easy,” I said. “You got whacked pretty good in the quake. Let Bryson and me take you to a hospital.”
“Hex you, gutterwolf. I’m not going anywhere.”
“It’s not like you have a choice in the matter,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder and pushing her back to the pavement. She snarled and snapped at my hand, but I was faster.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “I gotta get back to Josh. I was just here to get some cash the pack owed me for my share of . . .” She looked at the badge clipped to my belt and reconsidered finishing her thought.
“Josh is Joshua Mackelroy, right?” I said.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” she muttered, trying to sit up again. She managed it, but made a little coo of pain when she tried to hold her head up.
“Hate to break it to you, Carla,” I said. “But you’re gonna have to try and smooch your boyfriend through bulletproof Plexiglas. That is, if the FBI agents will let you past the front desk.”
She frowned at me. “What’re you talking about?”
“Joshua is a slimy son of a bitch and he’s going to prison,” I said. She winced, but I kept on. “So instead of letting him drag you around like you’re on a Hexed leash, how about you go with Detective Bryson and let him put you in protective custody?”
“I don’t need protecting!” she snarled. “And you shut up about Josh! You don’t know him at all! You’re a liar. All Insoli lie.”
“Did that nugget of wisdom come from the man himself?” I said. I reached for my collar and then put my hand on my knee instead. She didn’t need to know who I was, or hear about my time with Joshua in the O’Halloran Tower or any of the rest. It wouldn’t change her mind. I knew from my own string of boyfriends with bitter exes that if anything, it would send her running away from me, far and fast.
“Carla, a kidnapper and a killer is targeting weres in this city and you’re next on the list,” I said. “Other girls have been taken. I was taken. It’s a miracle I got away, but he’ll come after you this time because you’re weak. Josh isn’t here to protect you. You’ve got no one.”
I wasn’t, however, above shameless manipulation. Call it a means to an end that didn’t involve a bullet in anyone’s skull or Carla rising from the dead to feast on my flesh.
“I ain’t heard of anything like that,” Carla muttered.
You didn’t hear about the first girl Joshua gave the bite to, either, but that’s a whole other session of therapy, I thought. I said, “It’s a different were pack every time. The Serpent Eyes—and you—are next.”
“But you’re Insoli,” said Carla.
I shrugged, arranging my face in a kind, sisterly smile that sort of hurt. “I guess they wanted a complete set.”
“Luna!” Bryson bellowed. “The Taurus made it through the quake! Let’s get moving! This damn place smells like wet dog,” he muttered, but only loud enough for Carla and me to hear. Bryson wasn’t as dumb as he looked, some days.
“Please,” I said to Carla. “You don’t know what’s out there, but I’ve seen it, and there’s no way you could survive.”
She whimpered, and curled in on herself and I fought the urge to get in Bryson’s car, drive back to LA, and beat the snot out of Joshua all over again. He’d done everything I had escaped from to this girl. He knew I’d see it, and he was probably laughing about it in his cell right now.
Bastard.
“O-okay,” Carla sniffed. “I’ll come. But if I don’t like it I’m walking out!”
“That’s fine,” I said, sighing. I inhaled smoke and it made me cough. “Let’s just go, please.”
Carla followed me obediently to Bryson’s unmarked, like a trained spaniel. “She’s all yours,” I told David. “Keep her safe, and don’t tell any more people than you have to where she’s stashed. Not even me,” I added, when he started to talk.
“You need a ride?” he said instead. “Most of the roads are probably closed, but . . .”
“Just back to the morgue,” I said. “I left my car there, before the scene last night.”
“Yeah,” said Bryson. “What happened there?”
I got into the passenger’s seat of the Taurus, once Carla was safely strapped into the back. “That’s what I’m gonna find out.”
CHAPTER 13
Before I could make good on my quest for knowledge, my beeper began buzzing angrily. I saw the scramble code on the screen. “Can you drop me at the plaza instead, Bryson?”
“Thought you were on leave,” he said.
My arm still felt like something large and starving was chewing on it, but I wasn’t bleeding anymore. That was a victory. “I still have to report in if I get a call.” That wasn’t true at all, but I was making a habit out of lying to everyone, so I figured Bryson was feeling left out. If Tac-3 ran into more of those things . . . well, that wasn’t worth thinking about.
“No one else,” I muttered as Bryson made an illegal left turn into the plaza parking lot.
“Say what, Wilder?”
No one else dies when I could have stopped it.
“Nothing. Get going, David. Keep her safe.”
He dropped me a salute and gunned the Taurus out of the lot. I went inside, trying to ignore the various hot points of pain all over me.
Cleolinda raised her eyebrows at me as I ran past. “It’s hitting in there, girl. Whole damn city’s gone crazy.”
Captain Delahunt was pacing back and forth while Eckstrom, Batista, Allen, and Fitzy traded looks. I tapped Javier on the shoulder. “What’s up?”
“Hostage situation,” he said. “Over by River Road. Something damn weird is going on, lemme tell you.”
Delahunt finally spotted me. “Didn’t I send you home for a few weeks, Wilder?”
“I got the code, sir,” I said. “I showed up.”
“Good, because we’re shorthanded,” he said. “Naturally, I assume any injuries that might result from active duty won’t be claimed as workers’ comp?”
Delahunt was one of those bullnecked ex-military types who thought health insurance and personal days were for weaker specimens. He was one of Mac’s poker buddies, though, and I’d never seen him be anything but decent.
“No, sir. Absolutely not.”
“Good.” He flicked the remote on the display set up at the far end of our situation room, and a sound file began to play.
“Nine-one-one emergency, how may I assist you?”
“Oh gods, they’re coming
in!” The scream overloaded the speakers and feedback hissed.
“Sir,” the operator’s voice hitched. “What is your location?”
“It’s inside . . . it’s eating me . . .” The screaming became wordless, and Delahunt cut off the file.
“That was an hour ago. Seventy-one River Road, on the far side of Garden Hill. Officers on the scene report at least two subjects inside the house, plus the hostage.” He clapped his hands. “Let’s go to work.”
“That tape was some freaky shit,” Fitzpatrick said after we’d loaded into the van. The reassuring press of my tactical gear was somewhat mitigated by the slow swirling nausea my arm was causing, but I held it together.
“PCP,” said Allen. “You know all the hopheads go back into the old part of the cemetery and shoot up. Serves those assholes on River Road right for building their mansions so damn close to a boneyard.”
I thought about the things in the morgue. PCPADDLED junkies seemed like a treat by comparison, but I wasn’t convinced that was what we were getting into.
The scene was small, two patrol cars and a negotiator arrayed behind a cordon. The house itself was a big Tudor pile that backed up to the greenbelt hiding the cemetery from view. There were no screams any longer—no birds, no traffic. It was so quiet it made my skin crawl.
“About time,” said the negotiator, who was thankfully not Lieutenant Brady.
“We just had our second quake in a week,” said Batista. “Sorry we couldn’t skip right over here.”
“Whatever. I’ve been trying to get through on the house line. No answer. No visuals from inside for almost thirty minutes. Owner’s name is Donovan Hess. Good luck.”
Batista stared through his binoculars. “Okay, I see a side patio door that looks likely. Big sunroom inside, no hidey-holes for surprises.”
Allen pointed to a small gazebo up the lawn from the side of the house. “I’ll set up there. Give me five.”
He sprinted away with his rifle case slung over his back. I checked my M4, loaded it. Fitzpatrick clapped me on the back and I staggered.
“You ready to rock-and-roll, Wilder?”
I had probably never been less ready, but I nodded and flipped my face shield down. I felt green—could only assume I looked it, too.
Eckstrom used his portable battering ram to bash through the patio door, and I followed him in, painting the far wall of the room with my laser crosshairs.
Nothing happened. No one yelled, no one shot at us. It was sort of a letdown. “See anything?” Batista panted in my ear.
“Not a damn thing,” I said. “I’ll check the kitchen.”
We all moved off, each covering a room. “Clear!” Fitzpatrick bellowed almost instantly from the front room.
Batista and Eckstrom both cleared their rooms, and I was about to when I heard giggling.
I stepped into the kitchen, broken glass from a picture window over the sink crunching under my boots.
A man who must have been Donovan Hess lay faceup on the stone flags, hundreds of bite marks covering his exposed skin. The smell of fresh blood and recent death made my stomach do unpleasant sideways movements, but I breathed in through my mouth and swung around slowly, trying to find the source of the giggles, which were sliding up the scale into insane rather more quickly than I was comfortable with.
A cabinet door banged behind me and I spun, rifle jumping up. Something small and black crawled up the wall, little talons digging pits out of the plaster and laughing away. It reached the ceiling and rotated its head toward me, hissing.
“Hex me,” I muttered.
Batista appeared in the door. “Wilder, what’s up? You didn’t clear your room . . .” He saw Donovan Hess. “Ah dios mio.”
“Javier, move!” I shouted as the thing let go of the ceiling and landed on his back, talons finding purchase in the Kevlar.
Batista let out a bellow and spun around, trying to swat the thing off. I grabbed a frying pan from the rack by the stove. “Hold still!”
He stopped, groaning as the thing’s talons cut clean through his body armor and into his skin. It bared silver teeth at me, a square ugly little face in a body like a rat’s. Its scaly tail lashed. I caught a whiff of its scent. It was the cold-metal, ice-water smell of the Wendigo, and that made my heart sink.
But I still hit the thing right in its ugly face with the frying pan. It squealed and flew off Batista, grabbing on to the wall again.
“Christ!” Batista shouted, taking aim. “What the Hex is it?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said. Batista let off a two-round burst and the bullets passed right through the thing, its slick black hide re-forming over the holes.
I dug under the sink and came up with industrial cleaning fluid. “Get back, Batista,” I said. I faced the thing, which could have been the pet of what Priscilla had turned into. “Come on, Ugly. You know you want to sink your teeth into this.”
I unscrewed the cap on the bottle and when the thing leapt for me, I tossed the contents over it. It cried out, shaking all over, and I turned on Batista.
“Give me your flare gun.”
He tossed it, and I drew down on the quivering creature and fired. The flare took it through the window and out into the yard, where it exploded in a puff of ichor, squealing.
It would be nice to say I had a pithy sentiment as I watched it burn, but I just shuddered with relief as it started to ash.
“Good gods above,” said Batista. Eckstrom and Fitzpatrick piled into the kitchen as the thing finally disintegrated. “Wilder, what the hell?”
I looked out the broken window, seeing gravestones between the gap in the trees. “Came from the cemetery,” I said. “Guess it was hungry.”
Sunny’s car was in front of my cottage when I got there, along with Dmitri’s bike. A big section of the driveway had fallen down the hill to the beach, but the cottage seemed intact and only heavy surf gave away that anything had even happened.
“Is this some kind of intervention?” I said when I came in and found both my cousin and my boyfriend sitting on the sofa. “Because I already know owning a hundred and sixty-seven pairs of shoes is a problem, trust me. I don’t even have closet space for those old Christmas decorations of yours anymore, Sunny.”
“I just came by to make sure you were okay, and Dmitri told me you took off,” she said.
“And then, you know . . . earthquake,” said Dmitri.
“Everything okay?” I asked him.
“Yeah, just a couple of plates got broken like the last time.”
“Thank God my parents don’t have heirloom china and Grandma Rhoda disowned me,” I said. “No harm done.”
“Your arm is bleeding,” Sunny pointed out.
I saw red teardrops leaking through the gauze and cursed. “This damn thing just won’t heal up.”
“Dmitri told me the doctors gave you about forty stitches,” said Sunny. “Be reasonable—even your body won’t heal from that.”
“When zombies get up and try to eat you,” I said, “and freakish voodoo makes critters crawl out of the cemetery and attack the living, ‘reasonable’ becomes moot.”
“Vaudun witches can’t actually reanimate the dead,” said Sunny. “It’s a discipline of blood magick with a very strong compulsion over a person’s will. A bokor can stop the heart, but he can’t make it beat again.”
I rubbed my face. It was cold and wet with sweat. “I have no idea what those things in the morgue were. They started as weres, but they acted like Wendigo. Eating hearts, drinking blood . . . I wish I knew what the Hex was going on, I really do.”
I worked a nail under the bandage and pulled the gauze away. The four slash marks on my forearm were inflamed, blood leaking from between the sutures. Sunny hissed when she saw it.
“That doesn’t look normal, Luna. Can you tell me any more about what attacked you? Maybe I have a working that will help you heal.”
“These things were like . . .” I sighed, thinking of their flat
silver eyes, their teeth. The sounds they made as they stalked their prey. “The closest thing to what they were is Stephen Duncan, when he was bespelled into a were,” I said. “But . . . not, at the same time. Stephen was a puppet . . . and these things were intelligent. They hunted Bart and me like we were rabbits in a hole.”
And turned to ash in fire, and healed from wounds faster than any were. “Strong, too,” I said. “Stronger than me.”
Sunny and Dmitri traded a look. “Wendigo don’t transform other species,” she said. “This sounds like something a summoning would call.”
“Well, isn’t that help—” I started. My arm throbbed, and I hissed, tucking it into my abdomen reflexively. I could feel dull, hot pain spreading from all of my claw cuts, persistent as if Priscilla still had her hooks in my shoulder. I was about to say that maybe I should lie down for a while when everything spun gently sideways and I found myself on the floor, with Dmitri standing over me, shaking me and slapping my face.
“Ow,” I said. The back of my head had joined the pain chorus. “What was that?”
“You blacked out,” said Dmitri. “Just fell over like a tree.”
“I don’t . . . feel so good,” I managed, my tongue feeling thick. Pain overtook everything. The only time I’d felt this bad was my first phase, one month after Joshua had given me the bite, when I’d almost forgotten about him except for the wounds that refused to heal.
He’d given me a lot more than the STD I’d been worrying about. Being a Serpent Eye meant rolling the cosmic dice, having no pack magick of your own. He’d turned me into a Path along with a were, made sure that I could never get close to magick without nasty side effects.
“Luna,” Dmitri said and my eyes fluttered open again. “Hex it. Sunny, she checked out again. You better call an ambulance.” He growled. “What were you thinking, running off to work after you’d been hurt?”
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