Born To Bleed (The Roger Huntington Saga, Book 2)

by Ryan C. Thomas

  It was all I needed.

  I threw my arm around his waist and lifted with all my might, catching an elbow in my throat which made me scream so loud I thought my own ears would bleed, but I heaved until my back was twisted in agony and felt him start to go over. I thought of Victoria upstairs and what Marshalll might be doing to her, thought of how this bastard Ben had brought her up there and chained her down.

  I thought of Jamie, and how I hadn’t been able to save her.

  Ben’s body reached its fulcrum point and started to tip. In his frantic struggle to stay upright he fired at the ground below and tried to push back from the railing. But I pushed harder than I’ve ever pushed before and felt his weight lift off of me as he went over.

  He fell to the ground below, his back hitting one of the chairs around the medical table. Funny thing is he stood up right away, screaming, holding his backbone, and then staggered forward a few steps before falling into the tiny fire on the rug that had once been Philip Marlowe’s life story.

  Then he went still, groaning. “Marshalll,” he said. I think it hurt him too much to even talk.

  His pant legs caught fire.

  “Marshalll. I can’t . . .”

  The flames were crawling up to his knees, as well as across the rug to the couch. He couldn’t move, most likely had broken a few vertebrae on the chair, which was now splintered. He was burning, and the sad thing is it wasn’t even the first time I’d seen someone burn to death.

  The fire crawled up faster than I would have expected, perhaps aided by something in Ben’s cheap suit. I caught a glimpse of white calf melting away to red goo, saw him start twitching, then shaking, trying to slither away, but impeded by whatever had become of his skeletal system.

  Finally he screamed as the fire reached his groin and licked out around the sides of him on the rug. Everything below me was crackling and popping, including Ben’s flesh.

  And then . . . agony, pain, fire in my head, white light and a final image of my feet covered in my own blood.

  I fainted.

  CHAPTER 20

  I wasn’t out very long, not long enough to remember anything I might have dreamed of, because when I woke up in a sitting position against the bookcase, I could still see Ben’s head in one piece.

  And no doubt everyone in the house could hear him screaming.

  “No! NO!” followed by a bunch of bloodcurdling screeches that should have cracked any glass in their vicinity.

  Figured I was out only a few seconds, my body recharging form the exertion I’d forced on it getting Ben over the railing. There were no new bullet holes anywhere in me that I could see or feel, which had been my first concern. Somehow that damn nightstand had saved me and if I ever found out who made the thing I’d buy twenty of them.

  Victoria, I thought.

  Ben had taken his gun down to the dining room with him, but I wasn’t about to play firefighter trying to get it. As much as I wanted it, I couldn’t waste time wading through the flames for it. I’d have to make do with an empty one and hope my acting skills were better than my fighting skills. Before I left back through the guest room I finally saw Ben’s hair catch on fire.

  His screams were shrill.

  I leapt over Mr. Letter Opener and raced back toward the main stairs, aware now the smoke from the dining room was pluming out in thick black clouds. With all the art and antiques Marshalll had collected I expected a fire sprinkling system to kick in, but there wasn’t one.

  When I got back up to the Observation Room I simply walked in gun raised, and stopped.

  They were all huddled against the floor-to-ceiling windows, bent over Marshalll’s wife, who was still cursing in pain.

  Marshalll turned at my approach and stood up. Some others stood up beside him. “Roger, you’ve come back to us.”

  “Shut up! Just shut up and don’t fucking move!”

  “Are you going to shoot us? Right here? Just put an end to us in cold blood?”

  “He can’t get all of us, Marshalll,” said Judge Coates, “Not if we rush him.”

  I stabbed the gun forward. “You go first, asshole. Take a step and I put the first bullet in your head.”

  The judge stopped, stood still, looking to Marshalll for instructions.

  I backed up to the medical table, which was still flipped over. A puddle of blood had formed around it, already turning tacky on the hardwood floor. Victoria’s whimpers drifted out from underneath, and I watched her hands and feet moving as if she were trying to walk away somewhere.

  “Hang on,” I said, and bent down. Now here’s where I got scared, because I had one good arm, and that was holding the gun. But I needed to flip the table over and free Victoria. “It’s me, Roger. Just hang on.”

  I think she cried a little louder at my voice but I can’t be sure.

  “You, old bitch, get over here. Now!” I said.

  The white-haired lady couldn’t care less about what I’d called her, and to prove she wasn’t afraid she didn’t move.

  “I said get over here.”

  “You little brat. Don’t you realize if you kill me I am just made stronger. I am loyal to Veles and he will send me back to eat your girlie soul.”

  I’d heard that damn name, Veles, so many times tonight, but still had no idea who they were talking about, and right then I didn’t care.

  “For people who aren’t afraid to die you spend a lot of time eating humans to stay young. But I’m in no mood to debate. If you don’t move now I’m gonna SHOOT YOU IN THE FUCKING FACE!”

  Marshalll touched her shoulder, keeping his eyes on me. “Go ahead, Belle, I won’t let him hurt you.”

  “Marshalll I don’t want--”

  “Belle! Move!” Marshalll’s eyes narrowed into devilish little slits. He was not amused by any of this.

  Belle waddled her cannibalistic fat ass over toward me with her lips curled in a snarl.

  I gestured down at Victoria. “Undo her cuffs, flip the table off her.”

  “I don’t have the key.”

  “Who does?”

  “How should I know? I’m not hosting tonight.”

  Marshalll pulled the key from his breast pocket and held it up. “I have it here. But you do realize it is fruitless to unbind her. You’ll have to carry her and unless you shoot us . . .” His eyes flicked to the floor between us, to the two dead goons lying in a heap of unnatural muscles and oversized bones. I saw what he saw: the gun squished between them.

  It was just what I needed to have the upperhand. I moved forward and wrenched it free, keeping my gun on Marshalll the whole time. “Throw the key to Broom Hilda. Now!” I dropped my unloaded gun and aimed the new one at him, and for a moment I saw him questioning the move. Thing is, he was either kicking himself for not realizing my first gun was empty, or he knew this one was. It really didn’t matter either way: if he charged and this gun was empty, I was going to have to fight him man-to-man regardless.

  Belle attempted to catch the key, dropped it, but then stopped and picked it up and began unlocking Victoria.

  “Faster,” I said. Smoke meandered into the room, and the guests were starting to both notice it and smell it. “Flip the table off of her. Now! Hurry!”

  The old lady heaved as she struggled to move the heavy medical table, slowly revealing Victoria, who was still on her stomach, lying in her own blood.

  I bent down and whispered in her ear: “Victoria, it’s Roger, can you hear me?”

  She whimpered and moaned. Could have been in response to my voice or could just have been in response to the awkward pain she was in.

  “I’m still here and I’m getting you out, but I need you to stand. C’mon, take my shoulder. That’s it.”

  She started crying, refusing to look at me, but she reached up and found my right shoulder, pulled herself up off the floor. I did my best to help her up without taking my gun off the Crazy Clan. Immediately I realized that Marshalll was dead right, that carrying Victoria was going to be a pain
in the ass.

  Still, I managed to get her up and fought back a gasp at what I saw. She was completely red with blood so thick it looked like she’d gone swimming in molasses. Deep cuts were gouged in her flesh, in her belly, her thighs, her breasts. She was going to need plenty of stitches and possible skin grafts to fix it all. Worst of all was the giant slice in her left cheek, which was open from the back of her jaw to her lips. It reminded me of Tooth after Skinny Man had wrapped razor wire around his head. You’re not supposed to see someone’s face like that, so exposed and skeletal. If they could fix it the scar would leave her looking like the Joker.

  I grabbed the nearest covering I could find—the tablecloth that had been folded up and put on a small chair—wrapped it around her like a toga. Blood seeped through it before I could even tie it, which wasn’t easy with my injuries.

  If I’d been at the other end of the room staring at us, I’m sure I would have been shocked we were even still mobile. Gun shot, stabbed, beaten, cut, bleeding out, purple and black all over.

  “We have to go, just walk the best you can. And you” –I pointed the gun at Belle—“back up to your friends there. Go!”

  “We’re going to find you and kill you,” she said, so I kicked her in the back and sent her flying toward the others. She screamed and landed on her hip and I prayed that I’d broken it. Cite me for elderly abuse if you want, the bitch had it coming.

  Together, Victoria and I backed up slowly toward the doorway, then to the stairs, keeping my gun trained on Marshalll and his friends.

  I yelled at Marshalll through the doorway. “If you take one step from there I will shoot you.”

  “You could shoot us now. Your weakness will only bring us to you faster.”

  I could shoot now, I thought, but something stopped me. Maybe it was the look in Victoria’s eyes, the way she stared into the distance as if something had died inside of her and been replaced by a darkness too vast to understand. Maybe it was the way I wanted something more appropriate for these lunatics. Maybe it was the way I was scared of how much I wanted to kill them.

  Yeah, it was all of that.

  Smoke danced up the stairwell and started to cloud my vision. Victoria coughed and clutched me tighter.

  I looked at her, put my chin on her bare shoulder and brushed my nose against her bloody cheek. “I’m not afraid of him anymore.”

  She had no idea what I meant, and I had no idea why I said it. I just knew that this time, I wasn’t going to let her die first.

  We hurried down the steps as fast as we could go. When we got to the ground floor, flames were already licking out of the dining room. The chaise lounge was on fire, and one hallway was cut off with thick, black smoke.

  “This way,” I said, shuttling her toward the small kitchen. She limped as we walked, shuddering with each step. For the first time, I couldn’t feel my left arm at all. It reminded me of what it feels like to wake up after sleeping on it too long. You can see it, but you can’t move it or even sense it. Down one of the labyrinthine hallways I saw some of the staff running about. I also saw the bald-headed man looking at me, before he stepped out of view and disappeared.

  The temperature in the house was rising, and I felt like we were walking through an oven. Things sizzled around us, and I caught sight of flames in other rooms now. The fire was spreading fast, fueling itself on old dry rugs, wooden antiques, scores of furniture and art. The wide open rooms gave it plenty of oxygen, enough that it was jumping from room to room like it was being shot from a flamethrower.

  “Almost there.” Through the smoke, I saw the entrance to the kitchen in front of us. “Just keep walking. We’re almost—”

  Then the kitchen exploded.

  A wall of flame came at us like a tidal wave, the heat so intense the hairs on my good arm burned off. Instinctively, I threw myself over Victoria as we dove to the ground. The flames passed over us and lit up the ceiling above, black smoke shrouding us as if we were underwater. My bare torso stung with the heat and I prayed I didn’t get third-degree burns.

  It was all I could do to roll us into the nearest hallway, choking and coughing, gasping for any bit of air we could find like fish on a beach.

  “Gas stoves,” I said, “don’t do well in fires.”

  In the darkness I saw a shadowy door handle and reached up for it. My eyes stung, my lungs burned, I thought we would melt away to nothing. When I opened the door, there were stairs going down.

  “This way. C’mon.”

  We crawled toward the stairs, went down them on our asses, trying to stay as low as we could. The air cooled ever so slightly and finally we were out of the smoke.

  Burning holes in the floor above us provided enough light to see we were in the basement. Glowing embers fell down like tiny falling stars. They’d soon catch something on fire around us but for now the fire remained above us. I could see this wasn’t the same area as before but it was similar, with more wolf statues and old furniture draped in coverings. The only way out I knew of from down here was through the tunnel.

  “Roger.” She said my name with a quivering voice. It could have meant a million different things. Could have been out of fear, or resignation, or perhaps just sudden realization of where she was.

  “I’m here. Breathe through the cloth, it’ll filter the air.”

  She did as I told her, her brain somehow knowing enough to follow my command.

  We weaved among the statues, trying to get a bearing. There was a door to my right. I opened it and emerged in a larger room, also glowing from the fire above. This room was familiar, the one you emerged in from the stairs in the kitchen.

  “This way. I know where we are.”

  We went around more statues, ducking out of the way of falling tinder, hearing the rush of air above us as it was eaten by the fire. The house above us roared like an angry dragon awakened from thousands of years of sleep.

  The doorway to the tunnel was just ahead of us, and my heart leapt. We were going to make it.

  And then they all stepped out from the shadows.

  Wolves.

  Wolves walking on their hind legs. Each one carrying something sharp: an ax, a spear, a sword, a machete, even scissors.

  The creatures formed a half moon in front of us, blocking our exit, laughing in a macabre song of death.

  “We warned you to kill us upstairs, boy.”

  That voice. I knew it.

  “Judge Coates.”

  Before I could say any more there was an order given. It came from Marshalll, the wolfman standing in the center of the blockade. “Kill him.”

  CHAPTER 21

  The arc of wolves drew closer, illuminated under small fiery holes in the ceiling; they each wore masks. If you could call them masks. They were real wolf heads, at least they looked real, hollowed out and fashioned to fit snugly on the top of one’s head. Every one had had its eyes removed and replaced with an eyeball in the center of the head.

  I could tell who was who from their voices and clothing, but still the effect was hellish. These people were beyond nuts. Victoria shook her head no but could not find her voice.

  I knew now I’d have to kill them to get by. I wasn’t going to go out like this nor was I going to let them touch Victoria. I raised my gun and fired. A single bullet shot out and plugged a hole in Marshalll’s chest. He stopped advancing for a second, then resumed his walk.

  “Praise Veles,” he said.

  I couldn’t tell if he was bleeding or not. He looked hurt, but how he was still walking was beyond me. Then again here I was with a bullet hole in my arm and I was moving okay. Maybe he had a protective vest on. Maybe he was lucky and the bullet missed his major organs.

  He just kept coming.

  “Praise Veles,” they all chanted in unison, raising their weapons over their heads.

  I squeezed the trigger again and the gun went click.

  A choir of laughs rose above the roaring flames in the house above. Had Marshalll somehow known the
re was only one bullet in the gun? Or did they all just not care in light of letting us escape and facing the idea I’d get their story out.

  “Stay back! I’ll kill you, I swear.”

  “My boy,” Marshalll laughed. “It is our hour, not yours. You made the worst mistake of your life coming here. Bullets cannot stop us. Nothing can.”

  I stepped in front of Victoria, surrounded on the sides by wolf statues, watching the shimmering silhouettes of the cannibals advancing forward, wondering if we could run back to the kitchen stairs, wondering how we were going to get out from underneath the burning house.

  And then I heard the voice. The voice I hear a lot that makes me realize I am crazy, that I need a padded room. The voice I have heard for ten years, even while on my meds, even when I hit my own head to make it go away and appear normal in public.

  It’s the voice that scares me even more than Skinny Man’s, because unlike Skinny Man’s, I can feel it. And it feels so real that I secretly long for it.

  Tooth.

  It was unmistakable, even though it was probably just me misinterpreting the roaring fire above, shouting in my ear with a sense of urgency that forced me to move before I could even think. “This way! Jump!”

  I lunged sideways, bodychecking Victoria in front of me, both of us crashing to the floor at the base of a statue. I looked back just in time to see the entire ceiling fall in a flaming circle the diameter of a redwood tree, crushing the group of masked crazies beneath it. Above me the giant hole looked up into some kind of wood-paneled room, totally engulfed in fire.

  “Up. Let’s go.” I grabbed Victoria and helped her to her feet. Together we raced over the burning circle of floor, through the flames, vaguely hearing the cries of the people underneath it. It wobbled and teetered as we crossed it, crushing Marshalll and his followers’ bones.

  We were through the door to the tunnel just as they all started screaming. When I shut the door, I glanced through the window and saw arms and legs sticking out from under the fallen floor on the other side, all of them on fire. I watched them for a second, seeing their flesh roasting and turning black.