Another One Bites the Dust

by Jennifer Rardin

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Holy crap, I’ve had another blackout! But as soon as the suspicion hit me I knew otherwise. I hadn’t experienced the usual warning signs, and I’d never before left my mind in a daydream while the rest of me got busy. This was something new. Something scary. Because after the knock-down drag-out with the Tor-al-Degan, I thought I’d kicked those nutty little habits that made me seem, well, nuts. Okay, the card shuffling kept up without much of a break. And sometimes words still ran loops around my brain until I forced them back on the road. But those moments were rarer now. And the blackouts really had stopped, along with the dread that someone I knew would find reason to recommend an asylum and a heavy dose of Zoloft.

  Familiar laughter caught my attention. The couple from the beach. They were here, just entering an elevator. Without conscious thought I’d followed them to their hotel and booked a room. I checked the receipt. At least I’d used my personal credit card. If I’d had to explain this to Pete, well, maybe I could’ve come up with something. But I probably would’ve just resigned.

  I shoved the stuff the clerk had handed me into my back pocket and strode outside. I needed to do something concrete. Something to bring me back to myself. So I phoned my sister.

  “Evie?”

  “Oh, Jaz, I’m so glad you called.”

  “You sound tired.”

  “I am. E.J. has hardly stopped crying all day. This doesn’t seem right, does it?”

  Hell no! But then I’m the least qualified to say. “Did you call the pediatrician?”

  “No. I know he’ll just say it’s that colic.” Her voice started to shake. “I just feel like such a terrible mother that I can’t make her stop crying!”

  Now here was something I could deal with. “Evie, you are an awesome mother. This I can tell you from experience. I’ve seen you in action. Plus, I have had a crappy mother. So I know what I’m saying here. You rock. It’s tough on you guys having a baby who cries all the time. The lack of sleep alone is probably making you a little crazy. I’m still kinda grouchy and I’ve only been gone, what, a couple of days? But listen, you will figure this out, okay?”

  Big pause. “O-kay.”

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  “It’s just . . . usually you tell me what to do. Then I do it, and things get better.”

  “That was before you started playing out of my league,” I said, smiling when I heard her soft laughter. “Just . . . trust yourself, okay? You and Tim know E.J. better than anybody, including the pediatrician. And get some sleep, would you? You’re going to have bags under your eyes that you’ll be able to store your winter clothes in.”

  “Okay. How are things going with you?”

  Well, let’s see. I think my vampire boss should pose for his own calendar and I’m having a crazy-daisy relapse. Otherwise—“I’m doing okay. Call me when you can, okay?”

  “Okay. Love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  Feeling somewhat rebalanced now that I’d touched base with the most stable person I knew, I walked around to the back of the building, which faced the festival site. As I wound my way through the first tier of cars in the parking lot, a green glow near some fencing that disguised a large garbage bin distracted me from my inner teeth gnashing. It didn’t mesh with the white of the lot lights. I drew Grief and chambered a round. The glow brightened, changing color from pine needles to ripe limes.

  I closed my eyes tight for a couple of seconds, activating the night-vision contacts Bergman had designed for me. They combined with my Sensitivity-upgraded sight to show me a greenish gold figure standing beside the fence. It faced me, but leaned over every few seconds, fully engrossed in whatever lay at its feet. Oddly, a black frame surrounded it, as if someone had outlined it with a Sharpie.

  I moved closer, sliding past the dark hulks of parked vehicles, taking quick glances every few steps, trying to identify the thing on the ground that acted as both the source of the green glow and the subject of the outlined figure’s interest. When I finally caught a glance, I bit my lip to keep from gasping. It was the body of the security guard, the one who’d been hanging out with the two-faced man. His face, a twisted photo of his last tortured moments, warned me not to look any further. But I had to. One of the suckier parts of my job.

  Okay, enough with the procrastinating. You’re at a possible murder scene with a potential suspect. Look at the body already.

  Blood, everywhere, as if someone had tapped a geyser. Exposed ribs. Dark, glistening organs. Someone had ripped this guy’s chest open from neck to navel! The smell, damn, you just never get used to it. And thank God we were outside; otherwise I’d be puking like a bulimic after an Oreo cookie binge. Above it all hovered a jeweled cloud I could only think of as his soul. I wanted to regard it as untouched. The one part of the man his murderer couldn’t soil. But I could not. Because this is what had his killer’s attention.

  No doubt, the one who’d taken his life stood right next to him still, and had been all day, posing as a man with only one face. “Man” was the wrong descriptor though. That outline—nobody I’d ever met had that. And when he leaned over, the frame split at his head and his fingers, allowing some of the greenish gold of his inner aura to seep through.

  His mouth opened wide and from it unrolled a huge pink tongue covered with spikelike appendages. He ran it along the length of the dead man’s soul. It shivered, frantically trying to fly apart, to meld with his family, his friends, his Maker. But the spikes released some sort of glue that forced the jewels into immobility. At the same time the soul cloud bleached to pastel.

  The two-faced man looked up, his eyes closed, ecstasy lifting the corners of his flabby lips. And then a third eye opened on his forehead—a large, emerald-green eye that darkened at the same rate at which the dead man’s soul lightened. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

  I’d had enough.

  I stepped forward, skirted the bumper of an Eldorado Coupe, and trained my gun on the monster’s face.

  “Dinner’s over, pissant.”

  The two-faced man opened his regular eyes, which were blue, took one long look at me, and growled.

  “Give me a break,” I drawled, sounding oh-so-bored though my stomach spun like a roulette wheel. “I know special-effects guys who can produce scarier roars than that.” Okay, I don’t really know any, but I’ve watched Resident Evil, haven’t I?

  This time he bellowed, and I admit, it gave me something of a chill. But it didn’t freeze me like it was intended to. I was ready when he charged, leaping over the body like some meat-hoarding gorilla, his hands stretched wide, a full set of lethal-looking claws appearing and disappearing as he moved. If he raked those vein-poppers across my throat while they were just fingernails, would they still leave stitch-worthy gashes?

  Not something I wanted to find out. I fired five shots in quick succession. They staggered him, though I could see the black outline had worked as a shield, preventing them from delivering any fatal wounds. Five more shots backed him up, almost to the body. Thanks to Bergman’s modifications I still had five left. And I intended to make them count.

  As he moved on me again, I concentrated on the breaks in his shield. They came and went in rapid succession, but I noticed a pattern based on his movements. It helped that he approached more warily this time. Apparently it still hurt to be shot. I should be thankful, but small favors sometimes suck.

  I watched his face, waiting for the blur and the accompanying break in his shield. There!

  I fired once, but the shield had already closed. I would have to anticipate the breaks, rather than wait for them to reveal themselves. Four rounds left. I took careful aim and fired. One. Two. Three. Four. Damn! The timing just missed with every shot. And now I’d used the last of my ammunition. If Grief didn’t work in gun mode I didn’t anticipate much success from it as a crossbow. I holstered my weapon.

  But I was still armed.

  Unlike Vayl, I don’t use blades as a rule. Gene
rally if I have to get that close to a target, something’s gone terribly wrong. Same deal defensively speaking. Still, I keep one on me. My nod to the wisdom of weapons redundancy.

  My backup plan started life as a bolo. It had been issued to the first of my military ancestors, Samuel Parks, before he marched off to war in 1917. Handed down father to son since that time, the ugly old knife had lost its appeal for David after Mom threw it at Dad upon finding him on top of her best pal. Since it had sailed clear through the bedroom window on that occasion, I’d discovered it on the lawn the next morning. Thus, it came to me.

  I carry the knife, sheath and all, in a special pocket designed for near invisibility by my seamstress, Mistress Kiss My Ass. I call her this because it’s the response she gives me every time I call and say, “Sherry Lynn, guess what. I just got a new pair of pants!”

  Reaching into my pocket, I grabbed the artfully disguised hilt and pulled. A blade the length of my shin slid out. Originally meant more as an all-purpose tool, the bolo had been refined to my needs thanks to Bergman. Now it was sharp enough to cut metal or, better yet, defend my life.

  The creature circled me, looking a lot less intimidated by Great-Great-Grandpa’s knife than I would’ve liked. Well, screw it. I ran straight at him, yelling like a pissed-off soccer mom, waving my blade like a samurai warrior. I faked left, right, left, watching as his shield opened wider and wider. It couldn’t keep up with his bobbing head as he tried to avoid getting his throat cut. One more feint and I jumped forward, burying my blade in the shield gap his movements had caused.

  He died instantly.

  I pulled my weapon free and cleaned it on his stolen uniform. Glad the bolo had saved me. Sorry the same family had subjected it to nearly one hundred years of blood and guts. We seem to spawn killers, no doubt about that. I found myself hoping hard that E.J. could break that chain. Maybe when I got a free second I’d give her a call and make that suggestion. Never mind that she was less than a month old and would spend the entire time trying to eat the receiver. It’s never too early to start brainwashing your young.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  As I leaned over the body, trying to figure out what I’d just killed, Vayl stepped from the shadows, our crew dogging his heels. I looked up, surprised to see them. “I had a feeling you might need some assistance,” Vayl said.

  “You did?” Oh. “Of course you did.” Ever since he’d taken my blood, Vayl could sense strong feelings in me, apparently at some distance. I thought he was referring to that until he nodded at the ring on my finger.

  “Cirilai gave me the impression you were fighting.”

  “He rushed us all over here; then he wouldn’t let us help,” Cole told me apologetically. “Said we might distract you at the wrong time. But we had your back!”

  I nodded my gratitude.

  Bergman crouched beside me, prodded the two-faced corpse’s third eye open with the clicky end of one of the pens he usually kept stuck in the pocket of his shirt. “What the heck is this?” he wondered aloud.

  “I don’t know, but keep that eye open,” I told him. The color leeched out of it even as the murdered guard’s soul brightened. Soon it was the forest green that had caught my attention to start with. It shivered for another tense moment, then split into hundreds of tiny pieces that whizzed off into the night.

  “Cool,” I whispered.

  “I don’t know,” said Cassandra. “I’m thinking more along the lines of stomach churning.” She stared at Bergman, who’d dug out another pen and used it to roll the spiked tongue out of the monster’s mouth.

  “What does the Enkyklios say about that?” he asked, his eyes shifting to the multileveled collection of bluish gold orbs in Cassandra’s hand.

  “Nothing yet,” she answered defensively, “but it will. Propheneum,” she said sharply. A single orb rolled to the top of the marble plateau. She began reciting the battle as she’d witnessed it, asking me for details here and there. When she’d finished, Cassandra said, “Daya ango le che le, Enkyklios occsallio terat.” The marbles rearranged themselves, always touching, never falling, until a new globe sat on top of the plateau with the one we’d just recorded my story into.

  “What did you just do?” Bergman asked, his eyes darting from the Enkyklios to Cassandra as if one or both of them might suddenly explode.

  “Cross-referencing,” she said shortly. “Now we will see what is already on record.” She touched the new orb, pressing hard enough to make a temporary indent, and said, “Dayavatem.” Then she held the magical library at arm’s length while the home movies began.

  At first, all we saw was a blinking light, as if the orb’s eyelids were just fluttering open. Then, voila, full color and sound poured from it, the images so detailed it didn’t seem like she should be able to hold them in her hands.

  Dark gray clouds scudded across the sky. A wild wind tossed the green-leafed trees, making them look as grim as the elderly couple who bumped along the rutted road in their fancy carriage. Had they just come from a funeral? Their black clothing led me to think so, though for all I knew they’d dressed for the opera. Suddenly the gentleman reigned in the horses and both he and the wife looked to their left, a dawning horror stretching their faces.

  As if sensing my frustration, the cause of their consternation came into view. A mounted bandit wearing a black tricorn. His dirty brown jacket covered a stained white shirt and even more blemished brown breeches, and his battered riding boots were falling apart at the seams. He brandished a rusted gun that seemed more likely to blow his own hand off than injure the person it threatened. A dirty red kerchief hid the lower third of his face.

  “Gimme yer valuables!” he snarled. The couple snapped to, laying a load of jewelry and cash into the hat he held out to them. He had to lean over to collect his loot, and when he sat back up in the saddle the kerchief slipped off his face.

  “Randy,” gasped the woman, “how could you?”

  “Goddammit!” swore the bandit. “Now I have ter kill ye!”

  The old man stood up. “No, wait!”

  Randy leveled his gun, but before he could fire, another rider came into view, pulling up so hard that clods of dirt flew and a cloud of dust lifted at his arrival. He’d run his horse so fast its sweat-soaked flanks heaved as it panted for air.

  The man himself looked harmless enough. If you had to pick him out of a lineup you’d say, “No, he couldn’t have beaten that poor woman over the head with a tire iron. He must be the desk sergeant you slipped in there to fool the witness.” He did have the broad-shouldered, straight-faced, lean-on-me look of the dependable cop. But when he turned his head to wink at the old folks, it blurred, as if another face hid behind the one he showed the world.

  “Who er you?” Randy demanded.

  The man grinned, exposing crooked yellow teeth and a hint of something horrid lurking behind them. “My name is Frederick Wyatt, and I am a great admirer of yours. Ah, Randy”—he rolled the R around his mouth as if it tasted like chocolate—“someday you will provide me with such pleasures. But just now, I have a job to do. So off with you. Shoo!” He smiled as a third eye opened in the middle of his forehead, making Randy scream like a kid in a haunted house. The bandit wheeled his horse around and galloped away.

  When Wyatt turned to the couple, that extra sphere rolling gleefully in its socket as it beheld their terrified faces, I thought the old guy was going to have a heart attack. He slapped his right hand to his chest and fell back in his seat, his hat flying out the rear of the carriage as his wife screamed and screamed.

  “Shut up, you old bat!” Wyatt kicked his horse forward so he could slap her across the face, leaving a thin line of blood on her cheekbone.

  It didn’t work. She just shrieked louder. “Run, Joshua, run! It is Satan made flesh!” They rolled out of their seats onto the floor of the carriage. From there they dropped to the ground. But Wyatt hemmed them in with his horse, edging those sharpened steel hooves close enough to keep them pinned bes
ide the back wheel.

  “I feel I must correct you,” he said. “I am, in fact, only a servant of the Great Taker. Though we reavers are his favorites.” He chuckled fondly as he dismounted. I expected the horse to wander off, but it stayed close, dripping globs of sweat and stringy bits of spit all over Joshua’s bald head. The reaver went to the old gal and lifted her by the scruff of the neck.

  “Now, you stop flailing and shut it tight, or I’ll rip your lungs out and call it self-defense,” he said, throwing her back into the carriage and returning for her husband.

  The picture froze just as Wyatt sunk his hands/claws into Joshua’s chest.

  “I fainted then,” said the tired, hopeless voice of Joshua’s widow. “The next thing I knew . . .”

  Wyatt had remounted. Joshua’s body lay across his legs, his chest torn open, his soul struggling for freedom as the reaver bent to run his spiked tongue over it. As I’d just witnessed, the soul slowly drained of color even as the reaver’s third eye filled. In the end, the husk of Joshua’s soul disintegrated, falling back into his body, which jerked eerily at the impact.

  Another fade to black, this time with no accompanying narration. Poor woman. My mind would supply no other thought. Poor, poor woman.

  When she came to again, the woman had been moved, along with her carriage, to the site of an old, abandoned cemetery. Tombstones peered through long tufts of grass. Most of them leaned hard to the left, as if a gigantic pissed-off chess player had tried to clear the board before stomping off into the hills beyond.

  Wyatt spurred his horse to the middle of the stones, reached into the corpse’s chest, yanked out the heart, and fastballed it at a vine-covered tree stump. When the vines blackened and crumbled, I realized the stump was actually a tall, spire-shaped monument.

  The woman hadn’t made a sound since the reaver’s threat to her life. In fact, I figured she was nearly catatonic by now.

  But when the heart hit that stone and shattered, and the etchings began to ooze thick gobbets of blood down the white marble, she moaned like a dying animal. I reluctantly acknowledged a growing feeling of we’re-so-screwed as my hands itched for my playing cards. I’d left them in the RV. For the last time, I vowed. This is some sick shit we’ve stepped into.