Walking Shadows

by Narrelle M. Harris

  He seized the blade of the knife, which was a really stupid thing to do. It was extremely sharp and it cut into him. Abe wrenched the weapon to one side, trying to pull it free, and come free it did, lopping off Gary's index finger in the process.

  All three of us paused, watching the digit fall and bounce. Then Abe lunged again and the blade of the knife disappeared into Gary's right side. Gary stared down at the hilt in surprise.

  Abe began to pull it out again. Gary seized Abe's arm, holding the knife in place. In a fever of fear I realised what Gary had already worked out - it was the best way to keep Abe from using the knife to stab Gary in the heart.

  Scrambling to my feet, I threw myself at the table to look for another weapon. Anything. There. Next to my things. I grabbed my keys, my wallet, stuffed them in my pocket with one hand while I snatched up one of the blood-tinged syringes with the other. I pulled the cap off it with my teeth and turned.

  Evan had pulled himself out of Abe's way and lay there panting, hands against his own bruised throat, watching the tense struggle. The knife was shifting in Gary's side, widening the wound.

  I jammed the needle into Abe's back and thumped the plunger home. Abe reached one hand behind to slap me away and pull at the syringe I'd left in his skin, but splitting his attention allowed Gary to break free. Abe staggered back. The knife remained embedded in Gary's side.

  Abe was staring at the retrieved syringe in bewilderment. I ran past him, then stumbled into Gary as Evan threw himself at my legs. I tried to kick myself free, and then Gary laid in with a solid sneaker to Evan's ribs. With a cry of pain, Evan let go.

  Abe tried then, snatching at my shirt, but the heroin was doing its work, and when I smacked him in the ear with my cupped palm - so that the concentrated noise would bang distractingly into that excellent hearing - he let go.

  I pushed Gary towards the door. He wrested free from me, bent to gather up his severed digit, and then he was out, pushing me ahead of him.

  He stopped running, streets later, and I nearly screamed in frustration. "What are you doing?" I demanded, in a near-shriek, when I had to run back to where he was crouched in a pool of shadow beside an old brick office building. He didn't answer. He was too busy muttering curses as he lifted up his shirt. The knife was still sticking out from between his ribs. I squatted beside him, trying to keep out of sight.

  Gary wrenched the knife out and threw it into the bushes nearby. He didn't even stop to watch the wound close, like I did, gruesomely fixated on making sure it happened. Instead, he dug into his pocket and took out his severed finger.

  "Come on, come on," Gary was murmuring in a frantic undertone. He splayed his damaged right hand in front of him. Holding the digit in his left, he licked the raw end, turned it until it faced the right way, then held it against the stump and pushed it.

  Nothing happened.

  "Shit. Shit. Shit."

  The memory of what Mundy had tried to do with his own ruined arm came to me, and I fell to my hands and knees in the undergrowth. I found the knife, handed it to him. He stared at it. "Cut it," I urged. Comprehension dawned and he snatched it from me.

  I couldn't watch as he drew it across the skin that had closed over the knuckle, but I heard his drawn-out, hissed "Yes", and knew that it was taking.

  When I dared look again the line of skin between his knuckle and forefinger was fusing. Realigning and dissolving back into whole flesh. He flexed the hand gingerly.

  Trying to see if we had been followed, to see if anyone was watching, if anyone was near, I turned this way and that, like a hyperactive meerkat.

  "I…"

  "Shhh."

  Gary cocked his head, listening, then nodded.

  "Okay," he said.

  "Okay what? Okay how? What do we do now? Where do we go?" I was annoyed to hear my voice rising in panic, "Where are we?"

  "I don't know."

  "You don't…What? How?" Bloody hell. Bloody Gary. Hopeless, geographically-challenged, getting-himself-stabbed, stupendously lucky, utterly wonderful Gary.

  I took a shuddering breath. "How did you even find me?"

  "I followed the tall guy. It wasn't hard."

  "You were supposed to be getting away."

  "So were you, but you didn't. So I waited and I followed." He took a moment to lift his shirt again, inspecting the closing injury in his ribs. "Sorry it took me so long to get to the door. I was kind of hoping one of them would go out again and make it easier. Then I didn't know what they were doing to you, so I thought I'd better… you know. Knock."

  A gasp of faintly hysterical laughter escaped from me, and I drew breath sharply on it. If I got hysterical now I wouldn't stop.

  "Are you all right?" I managed to ask, looking from the hole in his shirt to the hand he was still gently flexing.

  "Yeah," he said, not sounding at all certain.

  "Good." I had to quash another rising sob.

  "You?"

  "Oh, fine. I'm fine. Just…" I buried my face in my hands. "Fine."

  A sense of his fingers near my skin made me come out of hiding. His hand hovered near my face, like he had started to touch me but changed his mind.

  "Lissa?"

  "I'm all right," I said, more like I meant it this time. "Thank you for coming to get me."

  "I couldn't let them keep you. You're the only friend I've got." He gave a half-hearted smile.

  "We should get out of here," I said.

  "Maybe I should go back."

  "Back? Gary, what the hell for?" Hitting him seemed like a good idea.

  He looked away from me, "Finish it. Them."

  "No." I grabbed him by the shirt and shook him. "Don't you dare. You're not like them. You don't just kill things. You don't…" The hysteria was rising again and I could hardly breathe, let alone speak.

  "Look what they did to you. They'll do worse to me if they get a chance."

  A sob broke free at last and tears leaked. "Please don't go back." Don't give them a chance to hurt you again. Don't be the one to stop Evan. Don't.

  He finally looked at me again. "Let's get you home."

  Gary raised his head, and having satisfied himself about the sounds and scents nearby, got to his feet. He held out his previously injured hand to me and I took it gingerly. Nothing came adrift from it while I got to my feet.

  The sleeve of my tattered shirt was the handiest thing I had to dry my face. My right knee was throbbing where I had crashed onto it several times. My whole leg was aching. And my arms and shoulders, and my neck, my face. My everything, actually. I longed to phone Kate, despite knowing how much it would frighten her, but my phone was still in Evan's pocket.

  With Gary at my side, I hobbled down the street past a mixture of residences and small businesses, avoiding the pools of light thrown by the street lamps. I finally recognised where we were when we emerged onto the main road.

  St Kilda. Of course. Where else, that close to Elsternwick, would there be a partly furnished holiday house? The suburban streets had led us to a road that fed into St Kilda Road, the long ribbon of corporate offices and Victorian era architecture that linked the city to the seaside.

  The hour wasn't yet too late for trams. First I had to make it to a tram stop, then keep standing until one arrived. I decided not to think about how my fellow passengers would react to my physical state. The important thing was to get home. Home was at the other end of St Kilda Road - a straight line to Kate, comfort and sanctuary.

  I limped towards St Kilda Road. Gary walked alongside me until I started stumbling. My feet kept stubbornly moving but the rest of me wasn't keeping up. The second time he caught my arm to steady me as I nearly tripped over my own feet, he slipped his arm around me to help.

  "I'm not a bloody invalid." Pain, terror, betrayal and eleventh hour rescues make me snippy.

  "Well, you limp like one. It's going to take forever at this rate, and I don't know if they're going to come after us. That kid can probably track us by..." he clammed
up abruptly. It puzzled me for a second until I twigged and finished the sentence for him.

  "My smell."

  "I never said you smelled bad," he said, testily, "Not usually." He seemed to realise he'd lost points on the tact-ometer again. "You still smell like you and he'll be able to follow that all right."

  "Fine. Good. He's an undead bloodhound and I'm distinctive. I get it."

  "We'll get there faster if I carry you." He matched my glare unflinchingly. "What's the problem?" he asked, more curious than challenging about my resistance to perfectly reasonable logistics.

  My sigh turned into a sob, so I smothered the sound. My problem? Who knew where to begin? But there was Gary staring at me in mixed bewilderment and concern, and I realised that Gary was not, in fact, one of my problems.

  "Carry me," I acquiesced humbly. "Please."

  Gary made me swing an arm across his neck, then scooped me up. I held on, pressed against his chest, my head pillowed on his shoulder. We made unbelievably swift progress to the nearest tram stop.

  Then, bloody typically, we saw a tram pulling out of the stop just before we got there. Without consultation, he kept on walking.

  St Kilda Road has some apartments on it, but mainly it's office blocks. We didn't meet many people on the way, and the few we did had no comment to share.

  The rhythm of his step was steady and calming. I didn't relax, precisely. I kept zoning out, concentrating on the minutiae of the texture of Gary's shirt and the strangely reassuring and comfortable expanse of his chest rather than how everything in my body and head and heart hurt.

  He said something and I had to ask him to repeat it.

  "I said, what was that thing you stuck in the kid's back?"

  "A syringe full of heroin and blood. It's what they've been using on everyone."

  Gary was thoughtful. "That's what the tall one tried to stick into me at the safe house. How do you know him?"

  "Who?"

  "The guy who tried to stick me."

  The question made me feel ill, but Gary sounded more curious than angry. "I met him on Sunday. We got talking."

  I wasn't prepared to tell the whole ugly story yet.

  "I didn't know what he was planning to do," I said. What he had already done, Friday night, to Mundy and Thomas.

  "Hmm."

  "How did you know I knew him?"

  "When we were playing pool on Sunday night you, uh, you won't like this."

  I hadn't liked anything so far. "Go on," I prompted.

  "You had a faint smell of something different about you. I didn't know what it was, but it wasn't the usual you. And tonight I recognised it."

  "Can you say 'scent' instead of 'smell'? It makes me sound rank."

  "It's not. It's just sm...ah, scents."

  "So you keep saying."

  "I can hear a tram coming now. Do you want to catch it?"

  Yes please, and let us stop talking about Evan and smells.

  We made it to the stop in time and Gary helped me up the steps and onto a seat. We got more stares here than on the road. At last I understood what it was like to be one of those poor sods that people avoid on public transport. On the plus side, I supposed, we were less likely to be leaving a trail for Abe to follow.

  CHAPTER 19

  Some time later, Gary stirred me out of my numbness and helped me off the tram, taking most of my weight on the walk home. Once off the main road, he lifted me up. Argument was pointless, and anyway, I was grateful.

  He set me down at the entrance to the apartments so I could find my keys. I managed to swipe the electronic pass across the security pad and leaned on him all the way up in the lift. After I dropped the keys for the second time, he picked them up and went to unlock the front door himself. It swung open, revealing Kate.

  A very distressed Kate. Who rapidly became a very, very angry Kate.

  "Where the hell have you been? I've been calling and calling you and you never answered. And you!" Kate turned on Gary with such ferocity that he took a step back from her. Never mind he'd just faced down a pair of cold blooded killers. They, apparently, were not as daunting as my sister in a rage.

  "You can't come in," Kate's eyes were very possibly shooting actual bolts of lightning, "You are absolutely uninvited. Don't you dare…"

  At this point I wobbled and began to fall. Kate and Gary tried to catch me at the same time, resulting in a squashing to add to all the bruises. I didn't mind. There were worse things than being sandwiched between your two best friends.

  Kate wasn't able to do much except support me while I tried to find my feet. Gary simply slung an arm across my back, another behind my knees and hoisted me back up and through the door. I felt the violent shudder go through him as he stepped over the threshold, then he deposited me on the sofa. Kate, close on his heels, was bending solicitously over me. I heard, without paying attention to, Kate's raised voice as she shouted at Gary over the state I was in.

  Gary finally lost his temper. "It's not my fault! I didn't do this to her!"

  "She didn't do it to herself!"

  "If she could keep her nose out of my business for more than a minute it wouldn't have happened."

  My protest was startled into silence when he scowled at me instead. "First Ballarat, now this. Look what happens to you when you do this."

  "And what would have happened to you if I hadn't been there?" I hurled back, "Ballarat or the safe house?"

  Useless bloody vampire, nearly setting yourself on fire, nearly getting yourself killed.

  "Look at you," and his expression was less anger and more anxiety now. "I'm already dead, Lissa. It can't get much worse for me, but you, you're…" The scowl deepened again. "I like you better alive, if that's okay with you. You're the only thing in 40 years that made me feel like becoming what I am wasn't the stupidest mistake I ever made. I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop getting in the line of fire."

  "Well, if you'd stop doing that yourself we'd all be much better off, wouldn't we?"

  "I told you not to come in here," Kate's tight, angry voice broke over the pair of us and we stopped. She glared at Gary. "Get the hell out of my house."

  Gary's gaze dropped. He walked to the door.

  There's nothing like a full blown panic attack to restore strength to tired and aching limbs. I lurched to my feet and attempted to fling myself across the room. "No! No! You can't go! They could be anywhere! It's not safe! You can't." My knees buckled again.

  Gary caught me, not very gracefully, under the armpits and hurriedly deposited me back on the sofa. Kate dropped down beside me and wrapped her arms around me to hold me still.

  "Get. Out." The hardness in Kate's voice was new to me, but it meant nothing. I had my fingers curled in Gary's shirt, refusing to let go.

  "Stay, stay, please, don't go out there, don't go, you can't go, they're out there, don't go." And more babbling to that effect, in between sobs of panic.

  Gary looked over my head at Kate, who was still hanging on to me, trying to pull me back from my frantic hold on him.

  "Tell me what to do, Kate," he said helplessly. "I'll go. I'll stay. Whatever helps her. But I don't know what to do. You need to tell me."

  Kate was still for a moment, then she disentangled herself from me. As soon as she let go I had both hands wrapped in Gary's shirt, telling him to stay, stay, stay.

  Kate gently prised my clenched hands off Gary.

  "He can stay," she said quietly, and then I could breathe again. I used the opportunity to collapse in a shuddering heap.

  Altogether, turning to marble like I used to had been much more dignified and less exhausting.

  "Look after her a minute," she said to Gary, and he awkwardly patted my shoulder while she disappeared.

  "You're okay now," he said in bemusement, "Kate's going to look after you."

  "Stay," I said again, unable to get the word out of my head.

  "I'm staying," he said.

  "It's dangerous for you out there."

/>   He kindly forbore from pointing out that I was the one covered in bruises and having hysterics. "I'm alright," he said.

  "They stabbed you."

  "That's all right," he said airily, "See? Not a mark." He lifted his shirt to show me the place where the knife had been buried, revealing a lightly padded ribcage and a fraction of belly covered in fine, dark hair. Suddenly self-conscious, he tugged the shirt down again. "Anyway, I've had worse. I got shot once."

  That was not helpful. Another wave of panic gripped me as Kate returned with an icepack and painkillers. Gary backed away while Kate gave me the tablets and pressed the pack to my face.

  "Hold that," she instructed him. Gary did as he was told, holding the icepack gently to my face while Kate knelt on the floor and removed my shoes. She gingerly ran her hands along the outside of my legs until I hissed in pain. She prodded my knee gently, and must have been satisfied that nothing was bleeding or broken, but it bloody hurt.

  "Help me get her to bed."

  Gary obliged, picking me up and carrying me, on instruction, to Kate's room. He laid me down on her double bed and stood out of the way.

  "Wait outside a minute." He left, and she closed the door. "Now. Who did this?"

  I didn't want to say but she gave me a Look of Pure Nanna, and I could no more be silent than I could lie. I told her everything about meeting Evan on Sunday. I told her about the attacks on Mundy and Thomas. I told her sparingly, without gruesome detail, but all the facts were there. At the end of it, she stroked my hair.

  "What am I going to do with you, sis?"

  "I don't mean to make such a mess."

  She patted me gently. "You didn't make the mess. You just jumped into the middle of it. What is it about that guy anyway?"

  "He had Daniel's eyes. Like, Evan was what Daniel could have been, only he didn't get to become it."

  "That's not…never mind. Lie down. I have to get some heat packs for you."

  She opened the door. Gary was hovering outside. "Sit with her a second, will you?"