He waited, but when she didn’t continue, he said, his patience fraying, “I don’t see the problem—”
“Driver said the woman grabbed Beverly,” the cook said. “Said he thought she put a cloth over Bev’s mouth.”
And John closed his own.
“How do you feel now?” Thomas asked. He’d retreated to the shadows.
Patty rattled the map across the hood of the car. “Fine.” The hairs on the back of her neck said he was close by. She found Route 15, put her finger on it. “It’s only four hours to LA. Put some distance between us and here.”
“Why?”
She wouldn’t look up. “Do I really have to explain that? Real-ly?”
“Why not take our time?” He talked like he was grinning again. “We’ve been doing it for years now.”
(because I’m fucking tired of your shit)
“We’re only four hours away,” she repeated, slowly.
“Don’t you like it here?”
She beat the map back along its folds. “It’s the same as any other goddamn place—”
(except the motel. except you went fuckin apeshit)
“—and I’m tired of them.”
Silence for a moment.
Then: “Are you happy, Patricia?”
A chill swept her.
(he knows)
“What?” she asked.
“You heard me.”
“You haven’t called me Patricia in years.”
(not since the bar and Before and “(I Just) Died in Your Arms”—)
“Answer the question,” he said.
“What do you mean, Tommy?”
(—on the jukebox and I open my mouth and then it’s dark and then there’s screaming and we’re on the floor and my back’s killing me ‘cause the table’s busted on top of me and it’s the stink of mold and sulfur and Tommy’s hands in mine, but I’m still stuck on a moment ago, still thinking, Is he breaking up with me?—)
“That girl,” Thomas purred, and a line of branches broke, too fast for a human to move. “I’ve always hunted. Why’d you feel the need to come in there and ruin my fun?”
(—and then Tommy’s hand’s gone and I hear him scream and the stink is unbearable—)
Patty straightened. “Because you’d just had a fucking free-for-all at that goddamn motel and, I don’t know, it might not be all that smart to hang around.”
(—and I grab something, a piece of table, and I throw myself at where I think Tommy is and I’m stabbing and Tommy’s screaming and I’m screaming and that whatever’s screaming, but we learned what it was, didn’t we, Tommy?—)
Another line of branches, right to left. “Ah, the motel. Didn’t stick around for that, did you, Patricia?”
(—and a fire’s broken out and I can see and when I get the thing off you, your chest is torn to shit and covered in what looks like slime and all I can think of is fucking scouts and snakebites, like I’m still a fucking kid—)
“I was moving the cars,” she said. “I don’t feed. I’m not a vampire. Remember?”
A thick branch snapped, like a mortar shell. She jumped, couldn’t help it.
“Every time I look at you,” he said. “Why move the cars? Why move the cars and not turn off the light?”
(—so I try draining the venom, its enzyme—)
“I need something to do, Tommy,” she yelled. “What the fuck am I supposed to do? We agreed on LA years ago, but now we’re so close and we putz around?”
(—and it’s like cold honey without the sweetness and we figure, later, it must’ve been sick to come into a college bar like that—)
“Call the police maybe?” he asked.
(—and I get you out of there, and you die, and then come back and kill someone and we know what you are, don’t we?—)
Blink, and Thomas stood in front of her, gripped her chin with his solid-cold fingers, so cold it hurt.
“That’s when you came back,” he said, and his black eyes seemed to pulse. “How coincidental.”
(—and when I go to a church, like I’m a little girl again, just to get a moment to fucking clear my head and think this all over, the door handle burns my hand and I know what I am, don’t we?—)
Blink, and she was flying, crash-landing, gravel going down her shirt. She looked up and Thomas was much taller, much darker.
“Aren’t you happy, Patricia?” he asked and his voice was as cold as his skin. “Aren’t you?”
(—and for just a second, before I remember how absolutely fucked I am, I consider running)
And so, thirty years too late, she did.
They led John back to his car.
The cook coughed. “You, uh, parked where the guy said he saw Bev get snatched.”
He was going to scream. He felt his brain strip a gear, even as the mold-and-sulfur stink slapped him anew. His circuits were already fried and this was just too much juice.
“Excuse me,” he said, and couldn’t help the strangled sound he made.
He walked back to his cruiser, feeling as if someone had buried a steel-toed boot in his ass. The asphalt around the car was blameless, aside from tar used to seal cracks, but he stayed there, hands on his belt, trying to appear as if he was studying something. He hunkered down, and it was the same view up-close.
(what the hell is going on here?)
The stench was stupendous, cramming his nostrils, but the waitress and cook hadn’t seemed to notice it. He’d smelled it as soon as they’d walked around back, and it was only worse here.
A quiet voice spoke up:
Only I can.
He cocked his head. “The hell?” he murmured.
“You see anything?” the waitress asked, and he winced, tried blocking her out. He felt the end of a thread, dangling right in front of his mental hands, and if he could only grab it.
(I can smell this, but they can’t)
It made his gut churn. His hand went for St. Anthony.
(did it follow me here? on my clothes? the car?)
That quiet voice spoke up again, the part of him that had stepped aside when he’d gotten out of his car at Mae’s. The cop part, the objective part.
I followed it here.
He stood up so fast his knees popped.
“The hell?” he said.
“Everything all right, officer?” the waitress called, and he winced again. Shit.
John walked back to the waitress and cook, ignoring their curious expressions. He didn’t want to know what they were thinking.
“Folks,” he said, trying his best a-policeman-is-your-friend grin. It made his face feel molded out of clay. “I’m gonna need you to step inside for a bit while I call this in. I’m designating this area a crime scene until we can fully see what’s what.” He dry-coughed, avoiding their eyes. “Don’t go too far, though.”
I sound like an asshole!
“I’m gonna need your statements, and one from the man who initially reported it.”
They didn’t immediately move, and John was aware of sweat, itchy and distracting, along his hairline. He wanted to shove them, scream at them, get them as far away as humanly possible.
With agonizing slowness, the waitress said, “Of course, officer,” and she led the cook around the corner.
John made himself wait until he was sure they were gone, then pelted back to the spot, diving into that awful smell.
(I followed this here?)
No dissent was raised, no alternative theory given.
(how?)
He felt the medallion in his hand and, surprised, looked down.
St. Anthony, finder of lost things.
He’d lost his brother tonight.
But a person, slaughtering an entire motel and then plucking this waitress? Who could pull that off? And could he still find her and whatever answers she might have?
Doesn’t matter. Not yet. That will sort itself out when it needs to.
That was the cop-part talking. And it was right.
He
took a great big whiff and smelled the mold and sulfur.
Now she knew how that stupid bitch had felt.
She vaulted over a downed trunk as branches and trees broke all around her.
“Why?” Thomas yelled, as directionless as the destruction. “Why, you bitch?”
She kept the moon to her right, thinking this godless little patch of nowhere scrub forest couldn’t last forever, not in fucking Nevada.
(and go where?)
She ignored that. Eventually, she’d break cover, and, ironically, she’d have the advantage over Thomas. Thomas was strong, but Thomas wasn’t direct. And then Thomas proved her a liar by coming out of nowhere and shoving her. Her feet left the ground, still running. She crashed, somersaulted so hard her neck creaked, and got checked by an outcropping of rock. She felt the give of ribs breaking. The pain, the jaw-snap of a great monster, was instantaneous. She screamed.
Thomas’s icy marble hand grabbed her neck and hoisted her off the ground, choking off her cry and whatever wind she still had in her lungs.
“Who do you think you are?” he bellowed. Blackness had eaten most of his face. “When did you become my keeper? When did YOU get the right to say what I can and can’t do?”
He shook her roughly. She gagged, his coldness burning her flesh. Black poppies bloomed and died in her eyes.
“I rule you, you dumb twat!” he screamed. “Own you like chattel! You are my servant, to keep or to throw away!”
She could feel her tongue protruding from her mouth, and the ridiculous image of a cash register with its money drawer extended wouldn’t leave her mind.
(I’m going to die with that in my head)
She grabbed the sides of Thomas’s hand, and it was like grabbing frozen meat. She swung back as hard as she could and then pile-drove her sneakers into his center. It was like slamming her feet into a brick wall, and her broken ribs stabbed inward. Still, the move surprised him and he dropped her. The air her lungs sucked in was cold and delicious. Her hands found a tree, used it to pick herself up, aware of the irony of this; nothing totally human could still stand up. Her limbs shook like over-tightened guitar strings, a heady mix of adrenaline, pain, and rage.
She felt the .38 in her pocket and pawed for it.
Thomas was entirely black, a hole cut into the fabric of reality, and his voice was that of crushing rocks. “Look how well this has worked out for you.”
She pulled the .38 from her pocket and raised it.
“Fuck you, Tommy,” she panted around a mouthful of blood, and pulled the trigger. Thomas doubled over, more from shock than anything else, and she took her chance, bolting to his left and back to the car as best as her ribs would allow. Still, in spite of the pain, in spite of the rage, a lightness grew in her chest, like a candlewick beginning to catch, and she, at first, had no idea what the hell it was.
The air cracked open with Thomas’s bellow. “I’ll rip your fucking throat out for that!”
It wasn’t a tug in the back of her head this time, but an all-out yank that she thought would sweep her feet out from under her. She put more speed on.
(you have to catch me first, you prick)
The cruiser ate up the road, taking curves with barely a touch of the brakes, as John held onto the last vestiges of his conscious mind.
The mold-and-sulfur stench was all around him now. All his other senses had funneled into his sense of smell, and it made thinking incredibly difficult. A door had been opened at the bottom of his mind and what was clawing out was an instinctual creature, wanting nothing but to rend and destroy.
(get you I’ll get you)
But he didn’t even know what those words meant.
In his free hand, he clutched St. Anthony and felt the medallion grow warm.
Laughing.
She was laughing.
In spite of the pain, in spite of the rage, in spite of the fear, she was laughing.
(almost free)
She broke through the tree line, nearly colliding with the fence surrounding the cell tower, and made a bee-line for the car. Feelings—relief, anticipation—she’d thought dead, or so-close-as-to-be-no-different, had reawakened, stretching their limbs and looking around.
And it’d only taken the slaughter of a dozen people and being batted around like a cat toy for her to discover this.
She cackled, spritzing the air with blood.
(almost free almost)
She yanked the driver side door open, then dived into the car, already reaching for the keys still in the ignition.
Which were gone, of course.
She froze, and everything broke within her with a sound like shattering glass.
“No!” she shrieked, as if volume could make the keys reappear.
The wretched scream of twisting metal and then the driver side door was gone, flung with a crash into the underbrush. Thomas’s white hands darted out of the darkness and ripped her from the car. His voice crashed down on her like waves breaking on rocks.
“Fucking worthless BITCH!”
He heaved her through the air and she bounced liked a basketball along the access lane, the air getting punched out of her, shredding the skin off her arms and face. The back of her head met a rock, and white comets shot across her spinning vision. Her ribs, pulverized now, jabbed and poked at her soft insides. Her hand, still holding the .38, spasmed, and she fired a shot that seemed very far away.
She came to a rest, and her vision was a gummy haze. She felt herself bleeding in a half-dozen places, and it was like a drain-plug had been pulled—every bit of Thomas’s power she’d fed on was leaving her, turning her into just another broken human.
“I think we both knew this was inevitable,” Thomas said, his voice re-verberating through her head. “No more LA, no more road-trip, no more us. I can do a lot here. I can have a lot of fun here. So, I’ll stay and you … well, you won’t, Patricia.”
She made herself smile, blood leaking from between her teeth.
“I want that very much,” she said, forcing herself to speak as clearly as she could. “You fucking prick.”
And then the world filled with light.
A flash, off to the right, a bit up ahead.
And then a voice, what a nightmare would sound like, riding on the air. “I think we both knew this was inevitable.”
John sat bolt upright, like a man suffering a widow-making coronary, and his foot momentarily hit the brakes. The tires shrieked. The smell of peeled rubber filled the car, cutting through the stench of mold and sulfur.
He hit the gas again and the cruiser surged forward. He saw the access break in the tree line and wrenched the steering wheel right, two tires coming off the ground.
His headlights pinned a woman bleeding on the ground—
(the waitress?)
—and a figure towering over her, a vague, black humanoid form that jacked every nerve to ten.
John slammed on the brakes, but was out before his cruiser had come to a full stop, yanking his pistol from his holster. He leapt over the woman without a downward glance and launched at the thing, already firing.
And the thing laughed at him.
It was as if a switch had been thrown, and he had an instant of returned reason—brief wonderment of how so much could’ve happened so fast—before the thing batted him aside with what felt like a thick marble beam. John’s shoulder broke with the sound of snapping twigs. He crashed into the underbrush, losing his gun. He hit a trunk and his broken shoulder burst into holy, righteous fire. He peeled his throat shrieking.
The nightmare figure came for him, picking him up by the shirt with the ease of someone lifting an empty laundry bag. John bit his lip and blood trickled down his chin. He felt a growing warmth on his chest but didn’t immediately recognize it. There were more pressing matters.
“You look familiar,” the figure said, and it seemed his voice was both audible and in John’s mind.
(my brother)
He tried to say it, but couldn�
��t find his voice. He felt warmth, dialing up slowly and spreading outward. A strange sound, like crackling cellophane, grew in his ears as his pain began to lessen.
And the creature seemed to feel it, too.
It made a strangled noise and some of the darkness left its face, revealing a cleft chin, a mouth seemingly crammed with needle teeth.
(took Eric’s head off)
It tried to speak, “What—” and then it felt like John’s chest exploded in white light.
The creature dropped him, the light revealing white hands, monstrous nails. Its bulging black eyes, too large for an otherwise normal face, glared at John with a mixture of hatred, confusion, and pain.
“What—” it tried to say again, but the warmth was building and climbing, the light blinding, making John wince. The creature went crashing through the brush back to the access road.
John grabbed at the light. His St. Anthony medallion, its details almost obliterated by its illumination.
(what the hell)
“Motherfucker!” the creature barked, and John looked up. It was still retreating, the darkness drained, revealing a man younger than John. It bared its teeth at him.
And the light in John’s hand was fading as the pain in his shoulder returned. John staggered to his feet and lurched towards the creature, ignoring the rusty-saw-burr of his shoulder.
Immediately, the light returned, the buzz grew louder, and his pain faded.
“Got you,” he breathed, and was able to run.
Tommy’s pained scream brought Patty to a soupy consciousness. She raised her head just in time to see him, devoid of his Master of the Dark look, diving into the underbrush. A moment later, a burly cop, holding what looked like the tiniest LED lantern, appeared and chased after him, grinning.
(this is what blood loss does to you)
She lowered her head, waiting for the lapping gray waters of unconsciousness to pull her back out again.
Bones are Made to be Broken Page 3