Hoarfrost (Blood of Cain Book 2)

by J. L. Murray

  THIRTEEN

  "What do you mean she isn't here?" Dekker said, glowering at the nurse. It was Chelsea Park, the same nurse who'd blushed and giggled at Dekker before, but who quailed in front of him now. I put a hand on Dekker's arm and pushed him back a little. We were standing at a counter in the front of the small hospital, two nurses – Chelsea and a young man in scrubs – exchanging frightened looks.

  "Where is she?" I said mildly, smiling at Chelsea and the male nurse, whose name tag read Ryan. Chelsea glanced at Dekker. "Don't worry," I said, "he won't bite while I'm here. I can't guarantee what will happen after I leave, though."

  Chelsea laughed nervously, keeping her eyes on me. "She's in the basement," she whispered.

  "Goddammit!" her coworker said, glaring at her. "You’re going to get us fired."

  "They're FBI," Chelsea hissed back. "It's against the law to lie to them." She turned back to me. "Isn't it?"

  "Sure, yes, probably," I said. "Who's going to fire you?" I turned my smile on the man. His name tag read Ryan Lopez, LPN.

  He swallowed hard. "I have patients. I can't just chat all night."

  "You'll answer my questions first," I said, keeping the smile on my face. "Or you're going to lose more than your fucking job." He looked at me like a frightened rabbit, moving his mouth to speak, no sound coming out.

  "The doctor," Chelsea said quickly. "He comes and goes at the weirdest times. He's apparently Esme's family doctor, which is super shady because I thought he was some kind of surgeon. We saw him taking her down the elevator in a wheelchair and when I tried to stop him, he said he'd have me fired if I told anyone. If I lose this job, I have to go work at that old folk's home that smells like urine when you walk by. There aren't a lot of good nursing jobs around here, if you haven't noticed." She at least had the decency to look ashamed.

  "Every man for himself," I said. "Even if something bad's going on in the basement. And you know something is, don't you, Chelsea? You know a doctor doesn't take a traumatized patient who's likely in shock down to hang out with dead people for anything wholesome."

  "I don't know what he's doing," she said, straightening. "Maybe it's therapy."

  "You're lucky I don't throw you down a dark hole for this," I said. "And I could, you know. You're an accessory, Chelsea. You and Ryan here. If I find out that doctor did anything to hurt Esme, I'm holding you both responsible. Me and the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

  "We didn't do anything!" said Ryan.

  "That's the fucking point," said Dekker, and both nurses flinched and were silent.

  "What's this doctor's name again?" I said, calmly.

  "Saladin," said Chelsea. "Doctor Saladin."

  Dekker and I exchanged a look. "Wait,” I said, “the same doctor in charge of the frozen victims in the basement?"

  "Yeah," said Chelsea. "He seems okay. A little creepy, but okay."

  We took the stairs.

  Through the glass set in the door I could see the back of Esme's head as we came around the corner. Dekker had his gun out and I had my knife. I pushed the door open slowly, searching the room for the doctor and not finding him. Dekker followed me in. Esme was in a wheelchair, her eyes hooded and glazed. She blinked slowly at me, raising the back of her hand for me to see. Her knuckles were scuffed, a finger of blood dripping toward her wrist.

  "It's him," she slurred. "I figured it out. He did this to me."

  "Who did?" She blinked and rubbed at a red mark on her neck. "Did he drug you?" I said.

  "Maybe that's for the best," said Dekker, bending down behind a gurney and coming back up with a grunt holding a small man by the lapels of his lab coat. The man's head lolled, his eye swollen shut where Esme had presumably clocked him before the drugs took hold. I looked back at her, a trickle of sweat running down from her hair and trailing down the side of her temple. She was saying something, too softly for me to hear. I bent down.

  "It's going to happen again," she said. "Kill me."

  "I'm not going to kill you, Esme. I'm going to help you."

  "There's no help for me." She was trying to focus on me, her eyes bloodshot. "I killed my husband. If I stay here, I'm going to kill everyone in this hospital. Kill me or get me out."

  I nodded and reached down to take her hand, but she pulled it away. Her eyes rolled up then and her head bobbed backward as she lost her grip on consciousness. I walked over to Dekker where he'd gotten the little man up onto the only empty gurney in the room, the others occupied by frozen bodies covered in sheets.

  He had dark hair, cut close and thinning on top, two small scars apparent on his hairline, circular and deep, as though he’d surgically removed two horns from his scalp. His skin was darker than mine, his features Middle Eastern. The tag sewn onto his white coat said A. Saladin, M.D. But I knew who he was. If the horn scars wasn’t a giveaway, there was the crusted, dead quality to the air coming off him, a wrongness that seemed to encircle him like light from the sun. I understood and recognized the unnatural like a shadowy grit that I could feel on my tongue and the roof of my mouth. I felt the darkness inside me bubbling up as his eyes fluttered. He raised a hand to his eye, feeling gingerly. Then he blinked rapidly in the bright light of the morgue. He froze when he saw Dekker looking down at him. Then his eyes flicked to me and his face went slack with horror, and his mouth opened to scream. I clamped a hand over his mouth.

  "Hey, Abel," I said, my voice tight with anger. "I thought it would take a lot longer to find you. Someone is looking for you."

  He tried to shake his head under my hand, but I had a tight grip. Dekker was holding his chest with one hand.

  "Abel?" said Dekker, watching me. "Seriously? This guy?"

  "I'm going to let go," I said, keeping my voice low, controlled, "and you're not going to scream. You're going to get one chance to save your own life. If you scream, that chance is wasted. Understood?" He nodded quickly. "If you do scream, I'll call the Mother. You know about her, don't you? Calls herself the Mother of Hearts? Tall and looks like she needs to eat a sandwich? She's very interested in you. So now you get one chance to give me a reason to save your life. Are you ready?"

  He nodded, visibly calmer. I slowly removed my hand from his mouth.

  "I can save her," he said, breathless. "The woman. I can take the power back."

  "Is she going to die?" Dekker said.

  "Oh, yes, undoubtedly," Abel said, smiling. I grasped his throat in my hand. It would be easy to kill him.

  "I thought you'd be taller," I said.

  "Wait," he croaked as I squeezed. "I have a place. We'll be safe there. It's secluded. No one will get hurt." I released his neck, looking over him at Dekker. "That's all you really want, isn't it, Frankie? For no one to get hurt? We're a lot alike, you know. We just want to end everyone's suffering."

  "Keep talking," said Dekker. "I'd love to put a fucking bullet in you."

  "He'd just find me," he said, his voice bitter. "My brother always finds me."

  "Join the fucking club," I said. "Why would anyone get hurt? Why do we need a secluded place?"

  "It's a dangerous process."

  "And yet, you gave it to her without anyone noticing. Including her." I squeezed his throat ever so slightly.

  "It's dangerous, I swear!" he rasped. I loosened my grip. "The giving," he said desperately, "it's easy. But the taking away, that takes skill. And there may be blow back."

  "Blow back?" Dekker said.

  "You shouldn't play with fire, Detective," Abel said, watching Dekker. Dekker rolled his eyes.

  "Take us to this place, then," I said. "And if you try anything, I will gut you in the most disgusting, painful way possible."

  "You won't call her?" he said.

  "The Mother?" I said. "Why, are you afraid?"

  "Of course I'm afraid," he said. "Why aren't you?"

  Dekker handcuffed Abel and we wheeled him with Esme out the back in wheelchairs, Esme slumped and unconscious, Abel gagged after we asked him nicely to write down
directions to the house. He writhed and tried to squirm away when I opened the trunk, but Dekker was quicker and I closed the trunk before he could hurt himself. We stopped and listened to a series of furious thumps as Abel kicked and hit the inside of the trunk.

  "Nothing personal," I said loudly. "We just don't want you running off and leaving our friend to die."

  "That sounds personal," said Dekker.

  "Maybe it's a little personal," I called into the trunk.

  Dekker took more care getting Esme into the backseat, lying her down the length of it, propping her head with a sweatshirt. I started the engine.

  "How long do you think she'll stay out?" he said, glancing back at Esme.

  "I don't know," I said. "I got the feeling whatever was in that syringe was pretty strong."

  He nodded, staring at Esme. "You didn't see it, Frankie," he said. "She was like a completely different person. I put a gun on her. I should have..." He shook his head, turning in his seat and facing front, staring out the windshield at the streetlights in the hospital parking lot.

  "It's not her," I said, reaching over and taking his hand. He squeezed mine back, but he didn't look at me.

  "She just killed him," he said. "It was like something inside her just burst out of her, and she was covered in this weird fire. And she just went for him. Will, he never had a chance. He didn't even have time to scream."

  The silence hung heavy, the only sound the engine of the car.

  "Dekker," I said finally. "I'm the same kind of dangerous."

  "Yeah," he said, smiling. But his eyes were wet. "I know. You've told me half a hundred times."

  "If you want to go–"

  "Don't," he said. "Don't ever say that again."

  "Just, I'd understand. I wasn't easy to love before, and now..."

  "I'm not leaving you," he said. He looked at me and it broke my heart. My chest ached to see him so open, so raw. "I never will. Don't you know that?"

  I nodded. "But you should. What you saw Esme do, I can do worse. And it wouldn't be nearly so glamorous as a blistering fire. It would be dark and wicked and full of chaos."

  "You can control it," he said. He was squeezing my hand hard now, too hard. But I didn't try to get away from him, and after a moment, he eased his grip, realizing what he was doing. "You can control it, Frankie. You just need time. All we need is more time," he repeated, like a mantra. "Just a little more time."

  I nodded. "Okay."

  "It's going to be okay," he said, reaching up and smoothing my hair away from my face. "We're going to come out of this."

  "Just, if it ever comes down to it," I said, "I don't want you to hesitate."

  "What?" he said. He took his hand away from my hair.

  "Maybe you're right, maybe with time I'll learn to control it. But until then, promise me one thing. Don't let me hurt anyone innocent."

  "Frankie..."

  "Dekker, this is important. I'm serious. If I were to hurt anyone that didn't deserve it, I don't think I could take it. Do you know what that feels like?"

  He was quiet for a long time. He unclasped his fingers from mine and looked down at his hands by the light of the streetlights. "Yeah, I do."

  "You have to promise me," I said. "I know, it's a shitty fucking promise, in a shitty world. But maybe that's why we found each other. Maybe everything does happen for a reason. Maybe we met because you're supposed to stop me when I get out of control. Maybe you're supposed to kill me."

  "I can't kill you," he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. "I see what you want, and I get it. But I don't think I can do that. Anything else, Frankie. Anything else."

  "You might have to," I said.

  "What if you don't come back?"

  "Then I'll be dead," I said.

  "If I kill you," he said, his voice thick, "I may as well be killing myself."

  "Think of it as putting down a killer," I said. "If I can't keep myself from killing innocent people, I'm no better than those scumbag serial killers."

  "That's bullshit and you know it."

  "Do I?" I said. "I don't know anything anymore. It's like I've stepped into Alice's looking glass, and Wonderland is full of monsters."

  He put a hand over mine again and I opened my eyes to find him staring intently at me. I met his eyes. "If you get out of control," said Dekker slowly, "and I've exhausted every other option, then yes, I'll kill you. But I have one condition."

  "What's that?"

  "Stop running."

  "You literally asked me to run away with you tonight."

  "That's not what I meant. Stop running from me."

  "I'm only thinking of you," I said. "Everything I've done has been about you. I don't want to hurt you."

  "It hurts more to be away from you," he said. "Run if you don't want to be with me. But stop it, Frankie. Stop trying to fucking save me. Sometimes, whether you like it or not, you have to let someone save you back."

  "How are you going to save me, Dekker?" I felt a tingle behind my eyes but thankfully the tears didn't come.

  "I don't know yet," he said. "But it's not going to end the way you think. You can control it."

  "We just need time," I said.

  "Goddamn right," he said.

  Esme moaned in her sleep and we both looked back at her. "Maybe we should go," I said. "Woman filled with exploding fire in the backseat and all."

  "Can you help her?" he said. "Do you think she even wants help at this point?"

  "Never seemed to matter to you," I said and smiled at him.

  "Excellent point," he said. "Let's drive."

  The raven with the white eyes landed on the hood of the car with a thud and squawked as if in agreement. I shifted into first and headed out of town, the raven leading the way.

  FOURTEEN

  I turned onto a private drive heading inland about three miles up the coast. The road was rutted dirt with a few sprinkles of gravel, enough to send a spray of rocks up into the underside of the car. Weeds occasionally thumped underneath us and the tires kept finding deep potholes, spraying dirty water up onto the windshield. I turned the headlights on high as cedars crowded close around us.

  "Is this the right place?" said Dekker.

  "You're the one who got the directions," I said. "We can pop the trunk and ask."

  "I'd rather leave him back there."

  The road switchbacked along a series of chalky hills. Then it turned almost completely in on itself, before veering into an even denser pocket of forest. It suddenly dipped down, and I slammed on the brakes, forcing Dekker to bang his head on the dash, and Esme to roll off the backseat onto the floor.

  "Jesus Christ!" Dekker shouted, touching the spot on his forehead where he smacked it. It looked like a lump was rising there.

  "Should have worn your seat belt," I said. "Look at this shit."

  Dekker looked up, seeing what had startled me. The cliff rose in front of us, straight up to the sky, it seemed. Up on top I could see the faint outline of cars, the glow of headlights waxing and waning as they passed on the coastal highway above. Dekker's eyes trailed down until he was looking straight ahead. A tunnel opened in front of us, sections of it collapsed, the rubble in the Challenger’s headlights seeming to glow white. Though caved in, an area remained at the top big enough for a person who could occasionally crouch. On the other side, I could just see the rotted roof of a porch, bowing low and dark.

  "We're here," I said.

  "I guess I envisioned a cute little cottage," said Dekker.

  "Does anything you know about Abel suggest that he likes nice, cozy places with fluffy pillows and a blazing fire?"

  "I don't know anything about him," said Dekker. ”This is your call, Frankie. What do you want to do? He's made your life hell, or your afterlife. If you want to kill him, if you want me to kill him, if you want to torture him until he doesn't know his own name, I’m with you."

  I looked at Esme, snoring on the floor of the backseat. I shook my head. "I don't really have a choice."


  "You always have a choice," said Dekker. "I'm not going to try to convince you one way or another, but sometimes your own life is more important than some random stranger you just met. Someone like Esme here, who might lock you up or put a bullet in you, and wouldn't really care which she did first."

  "Esme's not a random stranger to her son," I said. I met his eyes in the semidarkness.

  "It all comes back down to family," he said. "It’s always family with you."

  "Everything is about family," I said.

  "Your family doesn't own you anymore, Frankie. You don't have to keep saving them."

  I looked away. "Sometimes family is the people we choose."

  "If we're family," said Dekker, "this could get real weird." He winked at me.

  "Jesus. Just try to get Esme through the tunnel without exploding her."

  "What about Abel?"

  "Let me handle Abel."

  He blinked at me when I opened the trunk, his glasses askew and glinting in the amber trunk light. He re-positioned them, his movements as precise as the stitches I found on my body every time I woke after dying. And suddenly I felt grimy, to know those hands touched me when I was dead, even to fix my broken body.

  "Get out," I said.

  "No," he said, shaking his head. "First, you have to promise not to hurt me."

  "Hurt you?" I said. "I thought you were all-powerful. I thought me living in this world depended on you. Isn't that what your wraiths told me?"

  "I'm not the same," he said quickly, nervously. "I had to run. I had to get away. She was tracking me, the Mother of Hearts."

  "Get out," I said again. When he didn't respond, I reached down and grabbed the back of his collar and pulled, toppling him out headfirst from the trunk. I slammed it shut just as he pulled his legs free, making him squeal. With a flapping of wings in my ear, I felt the satisfyingly heavy weight of my raven on my shoulder. I found his presence comforting to me. I saw Abel's eyes widen.

  "What did you do?" he said, crab walking away from me. "That raven, it's not right. Did you bring it back?"