“Hey,” Alice said, and the garbage man—who had been focused on the closet door—turned to look at Alice, but first he saw Raegan.
“Wh-what the… fuck?” he said. His face became a mask of horror, wide-eyed and open mouthed. “You’re d-dead!”
Raegan’s face twisted into an angry scowl and she lunged at him. The garbage man put his hands up to defend himself, but the shock had stolen his balance. He went down flat on his ass with Raegan on top of him. Alice used all of her remaining willpower to stand, and then she rushed around the corner, went past the garbage man, and dove for the knife.
Forget the fact that Raegan was up and moving; that was a thought to consider later, when she was free and clear of the garbage man. Now all that mattered was the knife, and when her hand closed around it again, she found herself suddenly filling with the thrill of the hunt. She wasn’t prey anymore—he was, and she had him where she wanted him.
Doug battled with Raegan, and while the big man was strong, the corpse seemed to be stronger. It was in many ways like watching someone struggle with a zombie who was trying to bite their face off, teeth snapping, eyes wide and hungry. But then Doug got a good grip on Raegan’s head and he bashed it into a nearby wall. Her skull split open and black blood sprayed out. The impact didn’t stop Raegan, but it did slow her down.
Alice’s glowing hands flickered like a TV screen losing reception when Doug smashed Raegan’s head into the wall, and she knew this meant her connection to Raegan was weakening. It was now or never. Doug was busy with Raegan, but he wouldn’t be for long and Alice was out of tricks. If she fled, he would find her again. She knew he would. The only alternative was to kill him, but while Alice had taken a person’s soul using Trapper before, she had never outright killed anyone—much less with a knife.
Doug got enough of a grip on Raegan’s arm to snap it in two. Raegan didn’t scream, didn’t register pain, she simply continued to growl and gnash, but with only one working arm left she quickly lost her hold on Doug, who slipped out from under her and began to get to his feet.
Alice didn’t think about it anymore. She took three quick steps and, screaming just as Doug turned to face her, plunged the knife into the soft skin of his throat. Warm blood came gushing out of the wound, covering the handle of the knife and Alice’s hands. She screamed again, this time forcing all of her anger—anger at Nyx, anger at Doug—out of her lungs, and twisted the blade. The skin gave easily, and the edge of the blade severed arteries, tendons, and veins before she finally let it go and stepped away.
Her hands had stopped glowing, and Raegan had fallen to the floor, limp and inert. The garbage man fell next, gargling on his own blood, and died on Alice’s living room floor. She stared at him for a moment—at both of them—shaking like a fig leaf on a strong breeze, and finally took in a breath of fresh air.
Clarity returned to her senses and she realized what had just happened, what she had just done, but her heart was pounding with a beat to match the ache in her temples. She was about to run her hands through her hair when she realized they were wet with Doug’s blood and thought better of it. Hide them, she thought, I need to hide them both and figure this out. It seemed like the sensible thing to do. Maybe she would deposit them in her bathtub while she cleaned the blood. It worked in movies, didn’t it?
A sudden expansion of light stole her attention and stopped her train of thought before it could leave the station. Doug’s chest was starting to glow.
Alice watched the light travel from his rib cage up past his collar, through his neck—illuminating the mess of tissue and severed tendons—and then into his open mouth. The light began to exhale from his mouth in a puff of blue and white motes which seemed to float, lighter than air, toward the ceiling.
Doug’s soul.
Immediately upon seeing the light, a pang surged through the pit of her stomach that had nothing to do with the kick she had received a moment ago. This pain wasn’t so much physical as it was spiritual—it was her body reacting to seeing its source of nourishment; a wolf’s mouth salivating at the sight and smell of fresh meat. Only this wolf hadn’t known it was hungry until it smelled the meat, and it didn’t know when it would get another chance to feed. She didn’t know how this was happening, how it was possible, and maybe if presented with another option—if she still had Trapper—she may have resisted, but she couldn’t pass this up.
Alice stretched her hand toward the cloud of light, almost as if to snatch it. The smoky curl snaked around her fingers, coiled up and around her arm, and travelled across her body until it reached her mouth. Alice sucked in a sharp breath of air, and the soul was gone, disappeared beyond her lips. For a moment she stood, numb and inert, then she shuddered and fell to her knees, shaking as the soul’s power coursed through her, empowering her, filling her with a fresh dose of supernatural energy.
The garbage man’s body, and the blood on Alice’s hands, began to slowly turn to dust. In the back of her mind she could hear the garbage man’s angry screams; on her lips she could taste whiskey, and in her heart she could feel his pain, echoing as though inside a cavern. Like a silent movie running in her head Alice saw Doug’s family—a wife and child, both deceased—saw the damage his alcoholism had done to them, how it had killed them, and heard the longing he had felt. He wanted to see them again, but he would never be with them now. Somewhere in his heart he had known this fate awaited him from the moment he saw Nyx steal souls.
Better to be here with Alice than with Nyx.
Right?
CHAPTER 21
Reunion
How did I do all that?
For someone who thought she had herself all figured out, the shock to the system that was life without Trapper had been nothing short of monumental. For years Alice had lived with her condition, had embraced it, and had even gone so far as to utilize her abilities to become a supernatural bounty hunter of note. Maybe the ‘of note’ part was questionable depending on who you asked, but the point was Alice had been perfectly grounded in who she was.
Until now…
When the euphoria of having consumed a fresh, healthy—albeit tortured—soul began to wear off and Alice’s insides stopped vibrating while she remained prone on the floor, she found herself with a little time to dwell on such things. A week ago, her arsenal of abilities consisted of capturing souls with Trapper’s help and sensing the auras of supernatural creatures and humans alike. She had never tried any other method of reaping souls—reaping being a term she had decided to coin then and there—other than using Trapper, but then this happened. Only what had this been, anyway?
Alice killed the garbage man—she ran a knife through the back of his throat and ended his life in a pool of blood. That’s what happened. What was it she had said yesterday? Guns were messy. This was why she never carried one. But she had never had to use a gun to kill anyone; had never killed anyone period. But that wasn’t exactly true either, because wasn’t reaping the same as murder? Reaping was the most natural thing in the world to her; it was part of her, a necessity. In her mind, murder was still abhorrent.
But was that righteousness or delusion talking?
She had seen her fair share of dead bodies before, had even been present at the time and place of the death of a woman who had run afoul of a vampire. He had wanted to feed, she had tried to get away, so he had broken her neck just as she reached the mouth of the alley and then ripped her jugular open. This had happened only feet away from where Alice was standing. She had considered intervening, but vampires… they weren’t easy to deal with, and she had been green at the time; at least greener than she was now.
There had definitely been no blue light then. Alice would have seen it. Maybe Doug’s soul had presented itself to her now because she had been the one to kill him. In all cultures, the act of taking a life carried with it a great deal of metaphysical power. Alice had real, supernatural power, so it wasn’t a crazy assumption to make.
When she finally felt like she
could sit up, she did so. Sparkling dust fell all around her, disturbed by her sudden movement. She checked her hands, which had been covered in blood the last time she had seen them, and noticed they too were covered in dust. Alice clapped her hands together and the dust fell away in little clouds. This was good. She wouldn’t need to deal with Doug’s body, and having taken his soul, no one would ever even know he existed.
No one but Nyx, she thought, but she pushed the idea away.
The only person she needed to worry herself with now was Raegan. Her corpse was there, flat on its face, sprawled out on the laminate floor. Her head was bashed in, and a trickle of black goop had slid from the hole and onto the floor. Nearby, coating the lower corner of a wall, was more of that black goop. Flies had gathered and were buzzing all around it, enjoying a taste of the now drying combination of old blood and gray-matter.
Alice planted her palms on the floor and stood upright, stretching her joints. She could taste whiskey in her mouth and noticed her lips had gone dry. Did she need a drink? Hell yeah I do, she thought, but that wasn’t right. Maybe she should grab her flask and take a swig, but that wasn’t right either. Alice shook her head to throw the echo of Doug’s thoughts and emotions away and centered herself. There was a body to deal with. The cop in her knew many ways one could discreetly dispose of a corpse, but Raegan… she had already been through enough, and had come through for Alice in a time of need.
Raegan needed a proper burial, and Alice would give her one.
From the laundry room, where Elvira had returned to after her sudden mad-dash against the garbage man, Alice retrieved a number of clean, spare bedsheets. She reached for Elvira, who was sitting on top of the washing machine, and the cat sniffed her fingers before nuzzling into them, but she clearly wasn’t ready to leave the safety of the tiny room.
Alice took the bedsheets to where Raegan lay, covered in sparkling dust, and carefully slid one of the sheets beneath her. When the first bedsheet was in position beneath the corpse, Alice grabbed Raegan by the shoulders and rolled her onto it, but disturbing the body caused a nauseating smell to come loose and fill the room. She fought the gag reflex and won only by the skin of her teeth, but the urgency of getting Raegan wrapped up became apparent.
It wasn’t until she had wrapped her up inside two bedsheets that the smell faded, but it did not disappear entirely. Alice didn’t think it ever would. She could bleach the place from top to bottom, and the smell would probably still remain; even if only in her mind. But with Raegan wrapped up, and eventually bound, transporting and then burying her would be much easier than it would otherwise.
With great effort, Alice hauled the body into the bathtub and drew the curtain closed. She wouldn’t have to see it, but if she needed to pee anytime between now and whenever Cameron showed up, she would definitely smell it.
“Now all I have to do is get her into the trunk of my car,” Alice said to herself.
But that would have to wait until sundown. Hauling the body into the bathroom had been a task all of its own, but dragging the body out of the apartment building, onto the streets, and into her car… that would attract eyes even if a Victoria local were the one doing the deed. Alice, who was already unwelcome even at the best of times, would draw more than just interest.
This gave her a couple of hours to herself, at least, so she decided to head for her bedroom with another fresh set of sheets in her hands, thinking about whether it would be better to throw the mattress out and buy a new one—probably—or spray it clean, flip it over, and hope for the best, but didn’t get far. Her skin began to crawl, her senses didn’t just tingle—they vibrated, and her heart jumped from zero to sixty. Whatever she was feeling, whatever was happening, it was powerful and close; as if a stampede of buffalo had suddenly materialized in her living room and was about to run her down.
Alice whipped around fast and saw violet lightning come arching out of what looked like some kind of rip in the fabric of reality. There was a booming roar, a growl, and more lightning whipped out, striking the walls, the sofa, and the TV, which exploded in a shower of sparks. She dashed toward the kitchenette, threw herself on the floor and skidded the last few feet into cover, only narrowly avoiding a crack of light that had seemed to come right for her.
She took a split second to catch her breath, and then crawled toward the cutlery drawer opposite her, reached inside, and came up with the other—smaller—knife she hadn’t been able to grab before the garbage man tossed her over the counter. When she came up, with the knife clutched firmly in her hand, blade out, she was ready to slice whatever thing had just invaded her apartment.
The crackling tear was still there, but the wind had calmed down and the roaring had transformed into a buzzing. Alice watched, mesmerized by the shifting light, the violet crackles, and the dark center of the event horizon, and then something started to emerge. First there came a foot, carefully slipping out of the yawning hole and finding the solid hardwood floor. A moment later, a person started to emerge. The shifting light and the hard shadows made it difficult for Alice to identify whoever it was stepping out of the portal, so she gripped the knife more tightly and ran toward the hole with it raised above her head.
“No, wait!”
It was Isaac. He had his hands up as he came through the opening, ready to protect himself against the slice that would surely come. His skin was pale, there were bags under his eyes, and his hair was a messy rag being tossed around by the cold wind spilling out of the portal, but it was him. Him, and not some shadow creature or Nyx herself.
The blood in her face simultaneously drained, and flushed. A cold sensation gripped her stomach, but a strange heat was rising through her chest and into her neck. She reaffirmed her grip on the knife, believing for a second this was a trap—that Isaac wasn’t really here. He couldn’t be. Isaac couldn’t just teleport anywhere. But then she didn’t know that with any kind of certainty, did she?
Isaac turned his head to look at her. He was pale, more than normal, and his long hair was messy and not at all brushed over his head like it usually was, but his eyes were sharp and present.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said, and then he flashed her one of his big, pearly white smiles.
Alice let the knife drop from her hand, closed the distance between them, took his face in her hands, and kissed him deeply. Isaac wrapped his own hands around her waist and reciprocated. His skin was cold for a moment, as if he had just come out of an extended stay in a walk-in freezer, but his lips warmed with her heat, as did his face, and then the rest of him.
Forever passed before they split apart, and then they remained standing in place, resting their foreheads on each other in a moment of quiet stillness.
“This better really be you,” Alice said, “Because after what’s happened today I could do with something good happening.”
“It’s me,” he said, cupping her face with his hands. He found her eyes. “It’s me.”
“Something’s different. What’s different?”
“I think I know what you’re feeling, but I won’t waste our time with explanations.”
“All we have is time,” she said, her voice now barely a whisper. She kissed him again, this time more forcefully. Her body was warm now, and she was pulling him close—tugging on his shirt to press his body against hers. She kissed his neck. “All we have is time,” she repeated into his ear.
“Alice,” Isaac said, but he arched his neck and exulted in the sensation of her lips on his skin, the warmth of her breath. “Alice, wait,” he said.
She pulled herself away from him, reluctantly, and gazed into his eyes. “What is it?” she asked.
“There’s a corpse in your house.”
Alice craned her neck and looked at the bathroom door. “Right… that… how’d you know?”
Isaac tapped his nose. “I can sense it, too. What happened?”
“It’s a long story. I could ask you the same.”
“Another long story, I’m afr
aid. At first I was with the magistrate, but last night I broke out.”
“Broke out? How?”
“That’s where the long story starts.”
“I hope it ends with the reason why you’re different. That’s gonna bug me.”
“I will tell you how it starts and how it ends, but every good story has a prologue.”
He leaned toward her, backing her into the closed bathroom door, and kissed her deeply. Alice’s heart began to beat hard within her chest. Her cheeks flushed warm with blood, and her body broke out into a frenzy of lustful tingles. She took his face in her hands, pushed his messy hair over his head, and responded to the kiss. Forget the zombie in the bathroom; her body had spoken.
No, it had roared.
An instant passed, and Alice was unbuttoning Isaac’s shirt and slipping it off his shoulders. He looked like he had been in a fight, maybe more than one. Purple bruises with yellow eyes stared up at her from the landscape of his body. She kissed them tenderly and then reached for his belt buckle. He pulled her along the small segment of wall connecting the bathroom and bedroom doors, but a warning bell went off in her mind.
“No,” she said, and she pushed her body into his and urged him into the living room. “Not the bed.”
Isaac didn’t question this; he was too busy tugging on her shirt and lifting it over her head. His fingers touched her bare hips, her ribs, and her scarred back, leaving little trails of soft fire everywhere they went, which caused Alice to shudder. She had his belt off now, and had managed to undo the button on his jeans. He slid out of them. Alice was breathing heavily, now—each quaking breath of hers passing into his mouth, and likewise.
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