Wrong Side of Dead dc-4

by Kelly Meding

  His path wound us in and out of clusters of dancers and groups of drinkers, but his goal always seemed to be the roof access door at the opposite end of the warehouse. Three-quarters of the way there, I spotted Quince. His attention was on Felix, who he knew on sight from photographs. If Felix sensed the full-Blood vampire nearby, he made no indication. But if Felix was signaling anyone else, I couldn’t tell.

  I passed into Quince’s line of sight and pretended to adjust one of my clip-on earrings—the signal that I had engaged the target.

  Felix reached the access door. It was partially hidden behind a stack of old wooden pallets, in what was a pretty lame attempt at keeping people from opening the door. The door itself was large and metal, but he opened it easily with one hand and slipped into the stairwell. I grabbed the door handle before it could slam shut and nearly wrenched my arm from its socket. The fucking thing was heavy.

  The stairwell itself was dark and stifling. I stopped inside and let my eyes adjust to the murky shadows. Felix’s pale skin came into focus, several steps up the first flight. He beckoned, and I followed the sound of his echoing footfalls.

  He could have attacked at any time, using his extra-sensitive night vision to gain the upper hand and kill me, but he didn’t. He just kept going until he reached the roof door. It didn’t open right away, probably rusted shut from disuse. I waited one step below the landing while he slammed his shoulder into the door.

  It squealed open, and he stumbled out onto the roof. I followed, maintaining distance and caution as I stepped into the humid night air. The roof was tar and metal, longer than it was wide, and dotted with dozens of vents. It sagged in places. We’d probably missed a sign warning that it wasn’t safe to walk on, but it was too late now.

  The noise of the rave was muffled, bass vibrations occasionally dancing up through my feet and ankles. The sounds of the city seemed far away, even though we were still in her midst. Maybe three blocks from here was the old potato chip factory where I’d nearly died.

  The rush of air clued me in to duck, and I narrowly missed the fist aimed at my skull. I slammed my right shoulder forward and up, hitting muscle and ribs, and ejected an “oof!” of air from Felix. I drove my left fist sideways and landed a perfect kidney shot. A regular human male might have dropped to the roof in pain. Felix only stumbled, and then returned the favor by driving his elbow down into the middle of my back.

  Bolts of fire blossomed from the point of contact, searing all the way to my toes. I dropped to my knees, saw his knee coming at my face, and rolled with the blow. It glanced off my cheekbone, a flash of pain, and I tumbled sideways. I used the momentum to keep rolling, and also to reach into my boot.

  I came up in a crouch a few feet away, one blade curled backward against my wrist, ready to slash at anything that came at me. My cheek smarted, and something warm dripped down my neck.

  Felix grinned, fangs gleaming brightly. “First blood,” he said, as if it were some sort of accomplishment. And maybe in some ways it was. Prior to his infection, he’d spent weeks battling chronic pain and poor mobility, courtesy of old injuries. He never thought he’d walk without a limp, much less draw first blood in a fistfight with an ex-Hunter. But he was still a half-Blood, and far worse (and far better) men had made me bleed.

  “Lucky shot,” I said. The open wound concerned me. If he managed to get saliva into the wound (gross, yeah, but possible), it could spread the parasite. Fighting the infection would hurt like hell, and I’d much rather avoid the agony.

  “I wish I could make this last, Evy, but we’ll be interrupted pretty soon.”

  I didn’t know if he meant by my people, or by his. “Come and get me, big boy,” I drawled.

  He lunged, and I leapt up to meet him.

  Chapter Two

  11:35 P.M.

  I seriously overestimated my leaping abilities.

  We slammed together in an awkward tangle and hit the roof with a dull thud, thrashing and seeking purchase. I slashed with my blade and felt it cut skin and cloth. Warm blood slicked my fingers, making my grip on the knife less certain. Felix clawed with his hands and kicked with his knees, landing blows on my thighs and upper arms. We probably looked like a pair of angry chicks in a catfight, for all the grace either of us was showing.

  Pretty sad for a pair of former Hunters.

  He snapped at my face with his fangs, and I rewarded him with a head butt that cracked his nose. He howled and reeled back, even as his grip on my arms tightened, fingernails digging into skin. It exposed his throat, but I couldn’t get my hand up. I couldn’t get the blade across his windpipe to put him out of his fucking misery.

  I did get my right knee up and between us (not a small feat, considering the leather miniskirt), and used it as a brace to keep him out of biting distance. My knife hand was stuck making shallow stabs at his ribs, but I was not close enough to cause real damage. We were at an awkward impasse that neither one of us was going to win.

  Interruption was inevitable. The only question was by his people, or by mine?

  It turned out to be both simultaneously. An explosion of activity stole Felix’s attention first, and it loosened his grip on my arms just enough. I shoved my knee against his chest, broke his hold, and rolled away. Someone slammed into me sideways, and we went tumbling across the tarred roof, my arms and legs scraping against what felt like a lifetime’s accumulation of grit. I ended up on top of my attacker, my back to his chest, and slammed my left elbow backward. Bone connected with bone and sent a jolt through my arm from wrist to shoulder.

  Plan B. I lifted up my head and crashed it back down. A nose crunched and the person below me—male, from the serious lack of breasts pressing in my shoulders—screeched and shoved. I lunged and came up in a crouch. He tried to scuttle away. I scrambled up behind him and slit his throat. As he slumped to the ground, gurgling out purplish blood, I observed the chaos.

  Kismet and Phineas were going two against five with some teenage Halfies about fifteen feet away. Neither of them had drawn guns. So close to the rave and hundreds of innocents, gunshots would be too damned loud. They fought with blades, and with as much skill as any Hunter I’d ever seen. Especially Phin. He moved like liquid, dancing out of arm’s reach, lunging in to draw blood, then back out before the Halfie could bite.

  I’d seen him fight before, several times. The very first time, though, he’d been in bi-shift form—still human, but with man-sized osprey wings protruding from his back that made him look like a dark-haired angel. He told me once that his people had been fierce warriors, and he proved it each time he went into battle.

  His wings weren’t out this time, but he was no less intense. He caught me watching, and gave me a wink and a grin. Uh-oh.

  Phin grabbed a Halfie by the neck and sent him at me like a bowling ball down a lane. I stopped the male Halfie’s progress with the sharp heel of my boot, crouched, and cleanly snapped his neck. He thudded to the roof. Kismet and Phin dispatched the other Halfies with only a bit more effort. The front of Kismet’s dress was ripped, nearly exposing her breasts, and her skin was spattered with Halfie blood. Phin, meanwhile, barely looked disheveled.

  He gave me another wicked grin, battle lust shining in his eyes. Eyes that flickered past me, then blinked. In surprise, not in warning. I turned, curious, and nearly burst out laughing.

  Marcus had shifted into jaguar form—a big black thing of beauty and power—but that wasn’t what was so funny. He was sitting on top of Felix, front paws pinning down the thrashing man’s shoulders like a giant paperweight. The fact that Felix was struggling to remove the two-hundred-pound immovable object threatened to give me a bad case of the giggles. It was just so ridiculous.

  I stared. Marcus yawned. Behind me, Phin laughed.

  Kismet appeared by my shoulder. She hadn’t seen Felix since the day he was infected. Her jaw was set, her expression hard. She had mourned him, just as Milo and Tybalt had, but that didn’t mean much when the “dead” person was still ali
ve and being held down by a were-cat.

  She looked up at me, and I held her gaze without blinking. I’d been where she was—about to end the suffering of a loved one because of vampire infection. I didn’t know exactly what she felt, but I could damned well guess. She blinked, then inhaled a deep breath. Let it out. Palmed a blade.

  Felix had stopped struggling. As Kismet walked toward him, he twisted his head around to look at her. He offered a sad smile. “Hey, Kis. We had a good couple years, huh?”

  She froze. Even with her back to me, I saw muscles tense and could just imagine her expression—ice and anger flashing in wide green eyes. “No,” she said in a voice full of cold fury, “we didn’t. You have his memories and body, but you aren’t Felix. Felix died the moment he was infected.”

  “Maybe. Probably. Shit.”

  He seemed so sane, so completely in his right mind that my curiosity bubbled over. I closed the distance between me and Kismet. “How did you not go insane from the infection?” I asked before I could censor myself.

  His iridescent eyes flickered from her to me. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.” He went on before I could ask for clarification. “I can smell your blood, Evy. It smells so sweet. I want to taste it. That’s really disgusting, right?”

  Marcus growled.

  “It’s partially impulse control,” Felix said as if he hadn’t even mentioned wanting to taste my blood. “The desire is there, but it doesn’t have to be. I want to hunt and feed, but I don’t do it.”

  “You just don’t?” I asked. “Bullshit.”

  He shrugged—or at least he tried to shrug. “It’s an addiction, a craving. I was a Hunter, so I know it’s wrong. I know I’m a monster, and I don’t want to be.” He sounded so … resigned. Almost sad. With the shimmering eyes and the fangs, it was pretty damned eerie.

  Half-Bloods were abominations. They weren’t controllable, hence the entire reason for our open execution policy. Even if Felix hadn’t run the night he was infected, we couldn’t have risked keeping him alive. You can feed and tame a wild animal, but you live with the constant risk of being turned on and attacked. The kindest thing you can do is set them free—and for Halfies, that means death.

  Marcus made a noise not unlike a bored grunt. His bright copper eyes shifted from me to Phin, then down to his trapped prey. He bared long, deadly teeth, silently asking if it was time to end this. Therians were not prone to infection, so he could crush Felix’s throat with those powerful jaws and not risk turning, but I knew that Kismet wouldn’t allow that.

  She squatted next to his head.

  “Tell Milo and Tybalt I’m sorry,” Felix said.

  She nodded, turning the blade in her hand.

  “Wait a moment,” Phineas said. He passed me to stand on the other side of Felix, then looked straight down. “Who’s organizing this?”

  Felix frowned. “Organizing what?”

  “Who sent you here tonight recruiting? Who’s turning young people into half-Bloods?”

  His eyes widened like a child caught in a lie, then hardened just as quickly. “You’re going to kill me anyway.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I think I’d rather not tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  He looked away, focusing on one of the big black paws holding him down. I turned it over in my mind for a moment. He seemed stuck, as though he wanted to tell us something but couldn’t. And I could only guess at the reasons. Glimpses of the old Felix kept peeking through, winking at us, while the monster remained in charge. Felix deserved release from that monster, but he did have information we needed. Hell.

  “Marcus, can you keep sitting on him for a minute?” I asked. “Phin, Kis, a word?”

  They followed me to a safe distance, far enough that with the pulse of the rave beneath us, Felix shouldn’t be able to hear.

  “What?” Kismet asked.

  “I think we should truss him up and take him back to the Watchtower with us,” I said. Before either could reply, I held up a silencing hand and kept talking. “He’s half-sane, and he knows a lot more than he’s saying about who’s organizing this. That’s valuable information we might be able to get out of him.”

  “You trust him?”

  “Absolutely not, but I think it’s worth the risk. He’s been out there for two weeks. He knows exactly where the Watchtower is, but we’ve yet to see an open attack, or even spies sniffing around. It’s possible there’s enough of the old Felix inside him to keep him from completely betraying us.”

  “You want him interrogated?” Phin said.

  “Yes.”

  “We cannot offer him freedom in exchange for information.”

  “I know that, and I wouldn’t even consider it. But maybe he’ll take something else.”

  “Such as?”

  I glanced at Kismet. “A chance to say good-bye to his friends.” She glared, but I didn’t relent. “Felix told me once about how much it hurt to lose Lucas, because they didn’t get to say good-bye. Maybe we can use that to reason with him.”

  Kismet flinched. Almost eighteen months ago, Milo had been Lucas Moore’s replacement in Kismet’s Triad. Lucas and Felix had been best friends, and Lucas’s sudden death from a brain aneurysm had devastated Felix. Hunters lived every day with the risk of dying on any patrol, but no one expects to lose a loved one while he’s watching a baseball game at home in your apartment.

  It was kind of a low blow, though, since Kismet and Lucas had been secretly, madly in love for most of his tenure in her Triad.

  “That might actually work,” she said. But she looked anything but happy about it.

  Goodie. “Phin?”

  “I think it’s worth trying.”

  “Awesome. Prisoner it is.”

  Halfway back, the roof door swung open and Quince stepped out with Kyle Jane, another Therian team member, close behind. They both stopped and surveyed the scene.

  “It seems we missed the party,” Quince said.

  Marcus couldn’t reasonably sit on Felix in the car, so he stayed put until Phin returned with enough restraints to bind a raging rhinoceros. The end package wasn’t pretty, but everyone seemed satisfied that Felix could neither get loose nor bite anyone on the drive back. He was dumped into the SUV’s rear compartment with jaguar-Marcus and Quince as guards. Kyle drove, with Kismet riding shotgun.

  I wasn’t sure if the mission was a success or not. Sure, we prevented other innocent (drunken idiot) bystanders from being infected and potentially executed. I’d kicked a little ass and had the bruises and an itchy, healing cheekbone to prove it. We got our hands on Felix, who’d been rogue for two weeks. We were one step closer to knowing who was organizing this and why, but it still felt … incomplete. I mulled on it during the drive back to the Watchtower.

  Carved out of the bones of the abandoned Capital City Mall, situated on the East Side near the Black River, our headquarters was more a small city than a tower of any sort. Individual stores were now rooms with designated uses—weapons storage, a central Operations room, a small infirmary, a gymnasium and training room, as well as converted showers and sleeping quarters. About two hundred humans, Therians, and vampires lived here full-time, including me.

  Its conversion began six weeks ago, after the vampire Families made a deal with the Assembly of Clan Elders. The mall was protected by the vampires, because it had a Sanctuary—a magical hot spot where the power of the Break bled through—and it was offered as a headquarters for their joint efforts in protecting their people.

  Humans were invited to play after Boot Camp was destroyed last month. The Watchtower was run by a Triumvirate—one representative of each of the three races, and all major decisions needed a unanimous vote. Astrid, a were-cat and Marcus’s sister, stood for the Therians, my kind-of friend Isleen for the vampires, and former-Handler Adrian Baylor for the humans.

  Tensions were high and for good reason, but everyone mostly got along. We all had the same goals now: protect the city and protect o
ur people. At all costs.

  Kyle followed a well-worn path through the weedy parking lot toward the interior of the U-shaped mall’s curve, which created a sort of canyon. The entire lot and structure were protected by a barrier spell, which urged anyone outside of it to look away. And that was only the first security measure in place.

  Kyle drove through the illusion of a wall and into a parking lot made of two hollowed-out former restaurants. The lot held an array of vehicles, mostly trucks, vans, and sport utility vehicles of various makes, models, and colors. No sense in being predictable.

  Quince and Kyle hauled Felix out of the back and carried him by the ropes like a trussed-up Christmas tree. He didn’t struggle or protest. Marcus followed, a silent sentinel. Something occurred to me as I shut my door.

  “Hey, did anyone pick up Marcus’s clothes at the rave?” I asked.

  Blank looks. Marcus snuffled, and if a jaguar could act annoyed, he did.

  Kyle chuckled. Therians had to remove their clothing in order to shift. And, likewise, they shifted back to human form completely nude. I’ve learned that most have little issue with nudity—at least, in small groups. But I imagined Marcus had no intention of walking the length of the mall to his sleeping quarters in just his bare skin.

  The parking lot led into a short, tiled corridor, which intersected with the main length of the mall’s interior. The old fountain in the center now held a thriving herb garden—not all the plants meant for spicing food. Left and right, the corridor stretched down about a hundred yards in either direction before sharply turning again. Each end of the mall was capped by an old department store. The structure on the right/east was being converted into larger living quarters. The old store on the left/west would eventually be a training facility, not unlike the obstacle course we ran at Boot Camp.

  Operations was straight ahead, with weapons storage right next door. To the right of weapons was our brand-new jail, complete with restraint cells and an interrogation room. I despised that place more than any other part of the Watchtower, and I avoided it as much as possible. My initial look at the completed design had lasted exactly ninety seconds, and I’d left shaking.