Blood Trails

by Alianne Donnelly

  Not good! Pixie was still blocking his path to Hailey. Jeremy couldn’t warn her telepathically and he couldn’t do it aloud. Not without provoking Arthur more. “Are you fucking deaf?” he yelled, his helplessness and his fear for her making him reckless. “Leave!”

  Arthur backhanded him with that damned heavy glove. Jeremy’s head snapped to the side and dropped forward again. He tasted more blood.

  “Stop that right now!” Hailey ordered. He felt her come closer with silent footsteps. Jeremy fought past the pain, the pounding in his head, and reached out to her again. A smooth barrier reflected his thoughts back to him. He tried again and again, seeking other paths. Pixie’s shield around Hailey was flawless. She wouldn’t let him through.

  “Why?” Arthur asked, sounding genuinely perplexed.

  Pissed off beyond reason, Jeremy did something he never thought he could do: he lashed out at his own sister, hurt her just enough to make her back off. He heard her cry of startled pain before her shields around Hailey gave way.

  Pixie would never forgive him for that. Just like he wouldn’t forgive her for letting Hailey put herself in danger for him, was spurring her on to do it.

  With the shields down, Jeremy was finally able to connect to Hailey.

  Shock stilled him. Her mind … her body!

  She was fighting so hard to keep steady. Her heart was racing out of control. Jeremy had no idea how she was keeping her breathing even. Looking through her eyes…

  “God, baby, what did you do?”

  “I’m trying to save you,” Arthur was saying.

  Jeremy felt, rather than saw Hailey shake her head to get him out. The state she was in, even that small movement made her sway on her feet. Jeremy wouldn’t budge. “You have to get out of here. He’s dangerous!”

  “Shut up,” she bit out. She’d noticed the glove. Jeremy felt her jaw begin to ache and throb.

  “And you’ve done a bang-up job so far,” Hailey told Arthur. “Kudos. Nice claws, by the way. Now back off a little, yeah?”

  Seeming confused, Arthur obeyed. Jeremy didn’t have to see his thoughts to know the man was in awe. He’d dreamed about talking to her directly.

  “Hailey…”

  She didn’t answer. Jeremy was shivering, mirroring her body’s response to whatever she’d injected herself with this time. He felt how weak she was. The world moved around him, making him feel seasick. She walked with her head high and her back straight but one of her feet was dragging slightly. Jeremy wouldn’t have noticed, except Hailey did.

  She was very much aware of that loss of dexterity and was making an effort to disguise it. The words partial paralysis made him cold with fear but Hailey just cataloged it in her mind, compensated, and moved on. How was she still standing?

  And the leopard!

  Jesus.

  Hailey touched him, one hand on his shoulder by his neck, the other on his arm. With a wrenching motion, she popped his shoulder back into place. The shock of pain made him yell out. When the stars faded from his vision, he craned his neck to glare at her. “You couldn’t have waited for anesthetics?”

  “The longer you wait, the worse it hurts,” she told him. She spoke from experience. “Stop being such a baby.”

  Arthur was watching them, mostly Hailey, with something akin to desperation. When Hailey sat on Jeremy’s lap outwardly calm as could be Jeremy thought the man would cry. Arthur didn’t know how close Hailey was to passing out. The small sigh of relief didn’t carry far enough for the man to hear. The tremble in her limbs—which Jeremy felt to his core—were faint enough not to show.

  “Now then,” she said, sounding tired. “How come you got my boy here all bondaged and bloody?”

  There was a psychotic killer before them, Jeremy was tied to a chair, and Hailey’s body was malfunctioning horribly. By all rights, Jeremy should have been terrified—and he was. But with Hailey in his lap, alive enough to taunt the psycho hell-bent on killing him, Jeremy was so damned relieved just to have her close that for a moment he got stupid and let his guard down.

  He let himself pretend that everything would be okay, that he could fix what was wrong with Hailey. Keep her from slipping away if he just stayed close enough, held on tight enough. She had one arm around the front of his neck, the other at his back, subtly prying at the rope. He turned his head into her hair and inhaled deeply. God, he’d missed her.

  “Am I too late?” Arthur asked, his voice suddenly shaky and unsure. No longer the man in charge, now he seemed more like a defeated hero already mourning the loss of his beloved.

  His voice brought Jeremy crashing back to reality. The guy was walking a razor’s edge. He could go off at any moment and the way he looked, he’d either turn those claws on Hailey or himself. Jeremy hoped for the latter.

  But in the face of Arthur’s vulnerability, Hailey had no mercy. Jeremy felt her shiver, felt the anger in her mind, but didn’t know which caused what. “You didn’t answer my question,” she said.

  “Hailey, please,” Jeremy said. “I need you to leave.” Don’t leave me. Don’t die.

  She looked away from Arthur to blink at Jeremy in surprise. Then she put a finger over his lips. “Shh. I got this.” She was killing him. The pain was nothing. He didn’t fear death; had long ago accepted that he would die young. His affairs were in order; Pixie would be taken care of.

  But the thought of Hailey coming to harm—more harm… “Is this what dying feels like?”

  Memories swamped her and Jeremy along with her. Pain. Unimaginable. Lasting. Body breaking, tearing; ending. She felt everything, remembered it in gory detail. It was a nightmare that used to haunt her night after night. “No,” she said. “Dying hurts. Being reborn hurts more.”

  “Well?” she said to Arthur. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  The rope was coming loose.

  “This … thing,” Arthur spat, “poisoned you.”

  Hailey snickered. “He called you a thing.”

  “Don’t,” Jeremy warned.

  “Too late,” she replied, her humor gone in a hurry. “I intend to see this through.” To Arthur, she said, “Explain yourself.”

  There was a complex dynamic between Arthur and Hailey that Jeremy could only watch, an observer looking at a transport hurtling toward a brick wall, unsure which would remain standing at the end. Hailey seemed a force of nature next to Arthur; she was his reason for living and … his superior. And yet from his shadows of anonymity Arthur had treated her as a fragile flower in need of his protection.

  Was he now finally understanding how unnecessary he was?

  What would that epiphany do to him?

  “I … I…” Arthur stuttered, “he’s the demon. I found him, Hailey. I can free you, and you can be the way you used to be again. We both can. Together.”

  Hailey stared. “Come again? What demon?”

  Arthur looked at Jeremy with murder in his eyes. “You bastard,” he snarled. “She doesn’t even know.”

  The rope loosened more, enough for Jeremy to do the rest, although it would take him a minute or two. Hailey, meanwhile, stood from his lap and placed herself between him and Arthur, breaking his stare. “You talk to me,” she told him with complete authority.

  Jeremy looked through her eyes at Arthur as his face went blank and he blushed. Wait, he was seeing the guy’s face?

  “Night vision,” Hailey explained.

  Cool. He twisted his hands again, trying to work them free of the rope. But he stayed with Hailey, carefully monitoring her mind and body, ready to step in if she needed it. He wanted to already but she was stubbornly hanging on to her independence.

  Hailey grinned inwardly at his attempts.

  “I was there,” Arthur said unsteadily. “I was always there, and you never knew it. I was there the night you got possessed. I … felt the demon take over you, and I saw what it did to you. Your hair … it used to be so beautiful.”

  Another shiver made Hailey sway slightly. Her kne
es were weak and she backed toward Jeremy, just enough to be able to lean against him a little. Enough to steady herself, without revealing a weakness. “You were there?”

  Arthur nodded eagerly. “And I was with you ever since. Helping you. I … I couldn’t see the demon.” He was grasping for words to explain, but looked so excited to finally be able to tell his story. “But I could feel him. I could draw his evil into me and…” Something must have shown on Hailey’s face, because he broke off. “Hailey?”

  She knew. Jeremy would give anything to spare her this. From the moment she’d seen the glove, Hailey had suspected, but hadn’t wanted to believe. She had no choice now. “Why?”

  Arthur chuckled as if he thought her adorable. “I love you,” he said. “I’ve loved you since the moment we met. Everything I did was for you.”

  *

  A stranger was telling her that he loved her. That his every action had been for her. The flood of images Pixie had shown her came back as a vague memory. An entire life centered around someone else. Such blind devotion.

  So many bodies…

  “Not for me,” she said with difficulty.

  “Yes, of course for you,” Arthur Glenn insisted. “Everything for you. If he slaked his thirst on others, he wouldn’t hurt you. I was protecting you!”

  “Shut up!”

  Arthur jerked at her shout, grew pale.

  His words… He believed what he was saying. The elusive stalker, the scent following her from world to world, always there, no matter how far she went, how well she hid.

  The bodies!

  Innocent people she’d met or simply made eye contact with. People she’d passed, bumped into, looked at from across the street. I’ve learned not to look.

  Not well enough. More kept dying. More turned up as nothing but lifeless shells, desecrated by a sick man’s obsession.

  The fear that she might be responsible had always been there, a kernel of self-doubt. Hailey had thought she was a monster, that she’d unleashed one by doing this to herself. So much regret and fear she’d had for herself.

  And all this time she’d been right?

  “No.” Jeremy’s voice whispered through her mind. “You are not to blame for any of this.”

  Can’t show weakness. There was another life hanging in the balance. And this one she could save. Have to. Be strong. “Don’t you dare lay this at my feet.” Her words were strong; her voice wasn’t. She leaned harder against Jeremy, needing his support, feeling unworthy of it. Stained.

  Feeling weaker by the second. No pain this time, but she felt herself begin to slip away.

  “Hailey!”

  Nothing she could do.

  So many people dead; killed in horrible ways.

  “You did this,” she said. “You … followed me from place to place and killed people who had absolutely nothing to do with me!” Hellcat rallied at this, growling her support. There was vindication in that, which Hailey wanted to feel too. She shut down her empathy and channeled her wrath. It made her heart pump a little stronger, gave her strength enough to stand on her own and advance on Arthur.

  “I had to! It would have killed you.” Arthur backed away a step. He tried to look at Jeremy but Hailey blocked his view. That visibly enraged him.

  “Don’t push him,” Jeremy warned. He was still struggling with the rope, which he’d somehow managed to tighten again. “Just stall. We’ll get out of here and let the cops deal with him.”

  Too easy. He didn’t deserve that.

  “Fuck deserve! We’re on our own here.”

  All the more reason to get on with it. No one was coming. Not in time.

  “Let me kill him,” Arthur said, eager to prove himself. “Just let me break his neck and you’ll see that I’m right. You can be free, Hailey. Don’t you want that?”

  “No one did this to me,” she said, throwing caution to the wind. Hellcat was sharpening her claws on the inside of Hailey’s brain. She wanted out, wanted to take her revenge. She understood things now, like pride and reputation—she had those and this person had stained them. Hellcat wasn’t having it. Oh, she’d take credit for a kill but not if she wasn’t the one to do it. “Nothing possessed me. I changed because I wanted to. I left because I wanted to. Do you understand that?”

  “Hailey, stop, you’re going too far.”

  “Is your sick, self-centered mind even capable of comprehending what I’m telling you?” Her voice broke; she was losing control of her body, and for once she welcomed it.

  “Hailey! Hailey, look at me,” Jeremy was saying. She could scent his fear, feel the tension in him as he fought to free himself. For her sake.

  But this was her mess to clean up.

  “Everything I did was of my free will and I would do it again in a heartbeat, even if it killed me.”

  Arthur was shaking his head. “No. You could never… This isn’t you!”

  “You want to see the real me, Arty?”

  His eyes widened at the nickname.

  “Don’t!” Jeremy shouted in her mind, and out loud, “Hailey, just stop for a minute.” His chair creaked. He was chafing his wrists raw with his struggles and the scent of it made Hailey’s eyes glow silver. She met Arthur’s gaze head-on, refused to let him look away.

  “You want to see what I’ve made of myself? I’ll show you.”

  Jeremy stopped fighting. He went completely still behind her.

  “But if you want to see the real demon, get a mirror. The only evil here is you.”

  “Hailey,” he sobbed.

  “Hailey,” Jeremy echoed him. Out loud, he said, “Hailey, don’t do it.”

  “One of us won’t be walking out of here,” Hailey told Arthur. “And if that happens to be me, then that will be your fault too, Arthur Glenn.”

  “Hailey, no!” Jeremy redoubled his efforts and she scented fresh blood. She heard his heart racing, beating so strong. It gave her strength she didn’t have. “Please, don’t do this,” he begged. “You can’t!”

  “I did it for you,” Arthur said. He was weeping now.

  Livid, Hailey felt her teeth sharpen and grow. “You forced me to do this.”

  “No!” Jeremy screamed, but it was too late.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Hailey was beyond hearing him. Sharing her mind, Jeremy became deaf to the outside world right along with her. Too late to pull out; he couldn’t break the connection now. He felt the leopard meld with Hailey’s mind. She’d named it Hellcat. It liked that name.

  Hailey’s back bowed and a growl tore out of her chest. Jeremy howled with her. He felt the wrenching pain, the dizziness as she dropped to her hands and knees. Her clothes were constrictive but couldn’t hope to contain her change.

  Jeremy felt as if it were him changing; his muscles stretching and his organs rearranging themselves until he thought he would throw up his innards just to get some relief. He felt his upper lip split and the bones in his face become malleable. Unlike the rest of Hailey’s body, her head didn’t break and snap. There, mercifully, the transformation was smooth and he only felt a slight ripple.

  But then her spine began to lengthen. Jeremy didn’t know how she wasn’t curling in a ball of misery yet but Hailey stubbornly stayed on her feet – paws – and endured the pain that would have killed a lesser creature. Her strength amazed him.

  And it was still her. Hailey didn’t disappear beneath the leopard’s consciousness. She was right there with it; there was no more barrier between them. Two separate beings merged together so that when Hailey raised her head, the leopard’s consciousness was only a split second behind her. And then there was just Hailey, with only the strongest of what the leopard had to offer.

  She wasn’t fighting it anymore, wasn’t afraid of it. This was the transformation she’d wanted from the very beginning. It had just taken her this long to fully accept it.

  Clothes tore, fur covered her nakedness, her shape steadied and solidified, becoming something other than human. It was a wretche
d, painful, beautiful thing to witness. Because at the end of it she was still alive.

  He didn’t know how long it took but by the time Jeremy was finally able to see through his own eyes the snow leopard stood before him, pissed off like nobody’s business, glaring death at Arthur. Her massive tail swung left and right, battering Jeremy’s legs but it was intended as a love tap to reassure him.

  “Hailey?” His wrists were bleeding behind him but the pain of his injuries was nothing now. After Hailey’s change, he hardly felt his shoulder and all that remained of his concussion was a little dizziness. But he knew Hailey could smell the blood. It angered her even more. Jeremy wrestled with the rope again, gaining very little ground, watching Hailey stalk her prey. “Hailey, want to help me out here?”

  She refused to be distracted. The connection between them hadn’t severed. He felt her lips draw back to show off her fangs. Hailey didn’t growl, or roar, just stared with those piercing silver eyes. She was Death and she knew it. She wanted Arthur to know it too.

  “I did it for you,” Arthur sobbed. The heavy glove was still on his hand but it was down at his side now. He was broken, far too shaken to do anything with it; he wasn’t even running or trying to defend himself, though he had to know he was about to die.

  Jeremy tugged at the rope one last time and finally it gave way. He pulled his hands free and quickly went to work on the ties around his ankles. Hailey was beyond caring now; he had to be her conscience. She might not forgive herself if she took a life. He didn’t want that for her. “Hailey, look at me.”

  The tail swung again, harder this time. It hit him in the head, nearly knocking him over in his condition. For a moment his vision blurred, but he persisted.

  “He’s not worth it, do you hear me?” When his vision cleared the world was unsteady again. His stomach roiled and he had to sit up to keep from vomiting. Concussions sucked major ass. For just a second, Jeremy hoped Hailey would beat the shit out of Arthur, but he wanted her to keep him alive long enough for Jeremy to do some beating of his own.

  Then he woke the hell up and reminded himself what was at stake. “You don’t have to do this.”