Flight of Shadows: A Novel

by Brouwer, Sigmund

  From the floor, Caitlyn was stunned but was still able to focus on Mason. The second hybrid moved into her vision.

  “Hey,” Mason said. “Didn’t I just…”

  In the light, it was clear that both hybrids had slash wounds. But their blood had already congealed.

  “You know anything about this?” Mason called to Caitlyn, keeping his attention on both hybrids. “These are the two I left for dead. How’d they get up again?”

  Caitlyn found the strength to get on her hands and knees. She wobbled from dizziness and shock.

  Mason danced past the hybrids, and Caitlyn understood Mason’s plan when Mason reached the doorway.

  “Thought you’d get away, bird girl?” Mason said. “Now you got to get past them and me.”

  The hybrids lumbered in a half circle to follow Mason’s voice.

  “Come on then,” Mason said. “If knife don’t do it, I’ve got my nice little electric surprise for you.”

  Caitlyn saw past Razor’s motionless body on the floor, between the two bodies of the hybrids, as Mason tucked his knife behind his belt and pulled out the Taser.

  She also saw something round and smooth lying among the shattered glass pieces. With the two hybrids blocking Mason from a direct route to stop her.

  On her feet now, Caitlyn lunged forward and grabbed the flashball. Like Mason had just done, she moved around the hybrids to get a clear view of Mason in the doorway.

  “Still here,” he cackled, waving the Taser. “One on three, but I like my odds.”

  Caitlyn lifted her right hand, ensuring that Mason had to keep his eye on it. She threw her hand forward and down, closing her eyes and averting her head as she released the flashball onto the floor at Mason’s feet.

  Even with her eyes squinted shut, the sudden light was bright enough to hurt.

  Mason screamed with the agony of that same mini-nova burning his vision.

  Eyes open now after a couple seconds of waiting, Caitlyn saw that Mason had dropped the Taser. He was on his knees, blindly reaching for it. There was still a large gap between Mason and the hybrids. Caitlyn darted forward and kicked the Taser away.

  The clattering of the Taser across the floor was enough for Mason to realize what had happened.

  “Bird girl, you’re dead,” he shouted in rage. Standing again, he brandished the knife he pulled from behind his back. It was obvious he couldn’t see.

  Caitlyn thought about trying to fight him, but the hybrids, mewling back and forth, had shuffled even closer. That’s when she realized that the flashball would not have affected them. They were blind anyway, their faces a horrible grimace of rage and exposed canines as they waved their flipper arms and closed in on Mason.

  At first contact, Mason slashed out with his knife, stabbing the closest hybrid in the shoulder. But the second one lunged, knocking Mason away from the doorway and into the wall. Mason slid sideways and onto his knees. The first hybrid fell on him with a guttural roar.

  Mason screamed as those massive canines found the bicep of his oncecasted arm. Mason tried to stand and run, but he couldn’t escape those teeth. With his good hand, he tried to plunge the knife into the hybrid’s back, but the second one managed to find his other shoulder with its face and buried teeth deep into the muscle.

  Mason went down, with both hybrids on him like the Rottweilers that Mason had many times before released on trapped men.

  And like those same men before, Mason’s screams became gargles of desperation as he stabbed and stabbed in an effort to protect himself.

  The doorway was open.

  If Caitlyn could drag Razor clear, they’d both have a chance of escape. As she tried to lift Razor by the shoulders, she was desperately afraid that Dawkins or Charmaine would appear at any moment.

  “Come on,” she pleaded to Razor. “Come on.”

  She was able to pull him up to his knees, but she couldn’t get the leverage to put him in a position to drag him.

  From the doorway came a single word.

  “Caitlyn.”

  It wasn’t Charmaine or Dawkins. But Billy, with a twisted expression of relief and pain, one arm hanging awkwardly at his side.

  EIGHTY-SEVEN

  Open his shirt,” Caitlyn instructed Razor.

  When he hesitated, she snapped, “Do it. Billy can’t. Theo can’t.”

  Razor knelt above Pierce’s prone body and reached down, keeping his own body as far from Pierce as he could, using his fingertips to delicately touch the shirt.

  “No,” Caitlyn said. “That’s not going to work. I can’t get to the wound. Get behind him, cradle him upright. Reach around with both hands.”

  “I can’t. I already told you I’m freaked out by blood.”

  “Watch this,” Caitlyn said. She held Mason’s knife in her right hand. She pressed the blade diagonally across her left palm. With a swift motion of both hands, she applied pressure and pulled the left away from the right. She opened her left palm to show a blossoming gash.

  It shocked Razor into continued silence.

  “If I can do that,” she told Razor, “you can hold him.”

  Blood began to drip down Caitlyn’s wrist. Instead of letting it splatter on the ground, she held her palm over Pierce’s forehead, streaming her blood into the knife gash that Mason had left behind.

  “Do it!” Caitlyn said. “Or he’s dead.”

  Her willpower was so intense that Razor nodded. He reached under Pierce’s neck and lifted. Pierce was too far gone to resist. Razor pushed more and managed to get Pierce into an upright position. Then, as instructed, he reached around and lifted and held Pierce’s blood-soaked shirt away from the wound.

  Caitlyn pressed her bleeding palm directly onto Pierce’s belly and held it in place.

  For Pierce, the first sensation was reluctance. He was in a deep, dark peace. Now, pulled upward and outward, his peace and surrender were replaced by cold, shivering, and the consciousness of renewed pain. His belly. His arm.

  Then came the sensation of pressure. Soft pressure. Against the wound.

  He opened his eyes.

  There she was. Caitlyn. The young woman he’d hunted for months. Her eyes open. Staring at him.

  He glanced down. Her hand was on his belly.

  Back at her eyes. Intensity. Compassion. Determination.

  He was shaking. So cold. Arms around him from behind. He closed his eyes. He wanted to go back to the warmth. The calm. The cessation of everything.

  “Don’t go back,” she said. “Stay with me.”

  Pierce’s eyelids were sticky. But the blood flow from his forehead had stopped. He reached up and touched it with his fingers, expecting more stickiness. Instead, he discovered it had hardened into a scab.

  “You?”

  She nodded.

  “And down there?” he asked.

  She lifted her hand off his belly, showing a diagonal gash in her palm. “It stopped bleeding. I had to cut it again to get you more blood.”

  With her hand removed and the pressure relieved, Pierce felt warmth where Mason had plunged the knife.

  “The pain,” Pierce said. “It’s going away.”

  This was true. Except for his arm, where Mason had snapped the bone.

  Caitlyn opened and closed her palm. “Mine too. Don’t ask me how. But that’s the way it is.”

  Then Pierce completely understood all that was at stake. Her blood was capable of this. Caitlyn had the gift of life. Hers to bestow. Or withhold. Unless she was a prisoner, giving her captor the same gift. And if the secret to this could be genetically unraveled…

  “Mason…,” he said. Slowly. His lips were losing the numbness of cold as his shock receded.

  She jerked her head toward the house. “Still in there. But it’s over.”

  “No,” Pierce said. “It’s not.”

  The immensity of the blessing and the curse of her gift was like a deep, black chasm in front of him. Free, she would live with it all her life, government always s
earching. Held by the government, the power of life and death would be taken from her, owned by the rich and powerful and the too often corrupt.

  “Yes. Mason’s dead,” she said. “And some others. Like me but not like me. It’s over.”

  Arm limp at his side, Pierce now had the strength to sit upright without help. That’s when he discovered Razor behind him.

  “You’re here,” he said to Razor. Pierce was coherent, his pain was fading, and the concerns of the world were back on his shoulders. He was also aware that the warmth in his belly was growing more intense, and he wondered if that was part of the healing process.

  “You’re surprised?” Razor asked.

  Pierce rolled forward to his knees, a movement that suddenly shot stabbing pain from his broken arm. He’d broken bones before and expected the pain should have been worse. What was the extent of the healing powers of Caitlyn’s blood?

  “No longer surprised when you surprise me,” Pierce answered. “Tell me what was inside.”

  With Billy and Theo standing silently in the background, Razor described it with succinct and efficient detail. It wasn’t difficult for Pierce to make solid conclusions. A scaled-down genetic program needing Caitlyn or her DNA for the final pieces.

  “You’ve got to run,” Pierce said. “All of you.”

  If they didn’t, Caitlyn would be in agency hands. But how long before they found her?

  Pierce glanced at Wilson’s motionless body. If his friend was dead, there would be less to cover up. If Wilson survived, he still wouldn’t know what was going to happen in the next minutes. And later, Pierce would be in a good position to negotiate with Wilson.

  “Run?” Razor echoed.

  “Get them safe,” Pierce said, nodding his head at Caitlyn and Billy and Theo. “Keep them safe. Later, get to me. We’ll talk. But I don’t ever want to know where they are.”

  “We want to go west,” Theo said. “Across the Mississippi.”

  “I’ll help Razor make it happen,” Pierce said. “Go.”

  “You want them free?” Razor asked. Near disbelief.

  Free. And with no pursuit from the agency again. He needed to get into the house and clean things up. Before he called in the agency. Maybe there was a way to stop anyone looking for her again.

  “How much clearer do I have to be?” Pierce got to his feet. “And I want to recruit you for the agency after that. You’ll get immunity for killing Timothy Raymond Zornenbach.”

  “What?” Razor said. “How did you figure it—”

  “That was a bluff,” Pierce said. “Thanks for confirmation. If the rest of my guess is correct, you had good reason for it. My offer stands. Join the agency. Get immunity. But I can’t make any of this happen unless you go.”

  “Thought you didn’t make moral decisions,” Razor said.

  “I lied.” Pierce grinned. Incredibly, except for his broken arm, he was feeling close to one hundred percent. “But obviously, so did you.”

  EIGHTY-EIGHT

  Pierce had dragged Charmaine outside after finding her unconscious in the hallway of her home. The homeowner’s gender didn’t necessarily mean the house had to have candles, he figured, but given how obvious it was that she pampered her looks, he decided in this case it was a sure bet.

  Pierce found them in the first place he looked. The master bathroom. Cinnamon candles, big round block candles perched on the counter nearest the tub. The wicks were blackened, with dried puddles of wax.

  Pierce briefly wondered about the nights Charmaine spent alone in the house. Reclining in a hot bath in the candlelight, with the hybrids imprisoned below in the lab, hidden away from the world.

  She would have needed something to light the candles.

  Pierce hoped it wasn’t matches. It would be hell to try to strike matches one-handed. Ignoring the pain in his broken arm, Pierce threw open drawers, scattered various toiletries as he pulled out the contents and flung them on the floor. His second break—he found a lighter, not matches. He shoved it into his pocket and dropped the candles down the front of his shirt to carry them kangaroo style while he went to look for the hidden lab in the basement.

  Conscious of the pain that throbbed through his broken arm, Pierce never thought he’d see any circumstance where he might feel pity for Mason Lee. Until this.

  Blood. On the walls, on the floor.

  With the bodies of two beasts beside a motionless Mason Lee. The man’s face had been ravaged, almost torn off. A knife to the hilt in the chest of one of the hybrids and the throat slashed on the other. Giant pools of blood. They were beyond recovery.

  No time to study the scene here. Too much to do.

  Pierce scanned the rest of the room. There was shattered glass on the floor. Operating table. Different medical machines. A small white refrigerator across the room.

  He found the canister inside.

  When Pierce leaned forward to grab it, the candles inside his shirt rolled forward and mildly bumped at the bottom of his tucked in shirt. He took the canister and added it to the pouch.

  Wilson’s son would live.

  Pierce moved out of the room again. The next step was to get rid of all of this permanently. He’d make sure that later Mason’s body would be identified as Caitlyn’s.

  Mason should have been dead, but some of the blood that had drenched him from the hybrids had begun a viral healing action that kept him alive and barely conscious.

  Dimly, Mason was aware that someone else was in the room. There were footsteps, crunching of glass. The sucking sound of a refrigerator door opening. Closing. Retreating footsteps.

  In the silence that followed, he found the strength to roll over. He bumped into the bodies of the hybrids. It was dark, and Mason wished he could walk over to the wall and switch on the lights. He felt around until he found his knife, still in the chest of one of the hybrids. Mason twisted the knife loose and tucked it into the back of his pants.

  When he tried to sit, it took so much effort that he began to pant, but he was resolute. He wanted light.

  He refused to let pain overwhelm him. He managed to crawl until he bumped into a wall. He blindly followed the walls, on his hands and knees, until he found the doorway. With a groan, he pulled himself up to a standing position. He fumbled for the light switch.

  He clicked it, expecting light to flood the room.

  It didn’t.

  Disbelieving, he brought his hands to his face and explored the wreckage.

  And with a guttural moan of rage, he realized his worst nightmare had come true.

  The water heater was in a utility room in the center of the house. Copper pipe entered the bottom of the tank, where it fed natural gas to the heater.

  On his knees, Pierce shut off the pilot light. He wanted charred bodies left in the house. But didn’t want one of them to be his.

  He stood again, lifted one foot, and smashed his heel down on the copper pipe at the base of the heater, again and again and again until it broke free.

  He knew he imagined the hissing of natural gas from the jagged end of the badly bent pipe—the system ensured it was a low-pressure feed—but the rotten-egg smell of the odorant added to the gas was not his imagination.

  At a fast pace, but not in panic, he backed away and shut the door to the room. He needed for it to fill with the methane of the natural gas, and estimated he had about five minutes.

  Outside the door, he retrieved a candle from his shirt. He’d pulled a chair up earlier, and he set the candle on the chair. Then the second candle. Eventually, the gas would escape the utility room and lick outward until reaching open flame. And the ignition would follow that first small stream of gas back into the huge pocket waiting to explode. Putting the candles on the chair instead of at floor level would buy a little extra time.

  Pierce pulled out the lighter and hesitated.

  It was one thing to intellectually believe that the natural gas wouldn’t seep out from under the door until it had filled the utility room. It w
as another thing to test it while standing there.

  He didn’t have a choice, however. And the longer he hesitated, the greater the chances of a finger of that gas reaching for the flame.

  He flicked the lighter. Found himself still alive.

  He lit both candles. He touched the front of his shirt to make sure he still had the canister in a safe place.

  Then he spun and ran.

  A monstrous figure loomed in front of Pierce, blocking the hallway.

  It took Pierce a second to realize it was Mason, knife extended, lurching toward him.

  Pierce backed up slowly, swallowing horror at the damage inflicted on Mason.

  “I know you’re there,” Mason said, stabbing at air. “Who are you?”

  “Drop the knife,” Pierce said. “We’ve got to clear the house.”

  “You? I killed you. I’ll do it again.”

  More pathetic stabs into the air.

  The man was blind; Pierce knew in a flash.

  “Drop it,” Pierce said. “I’ll help you out. The house is about to explode.”

  “Explode.” Mason seemed to savor the word.

  Pierce was expecting a forward lunge or some other form of attack. Instead, Mason dropped to his knees, then sat.

  “Come on,” Pierce urged. The natural gas was pooling. When it seeped out from under the door…

  “I’m staying,” Mason said.

  “That would make you a dead man.”

  “I guess you live blind.” Mason’s head was tilted, and he seemed to be speaking to someone else. “Or you decide not to live. What other choices are there?”

  “No choice,” Pierce said. “I’ll drag you.”

  Seated, Mason lurched his upper body forward and started stabbing at the air again. “Try. I’ll fight until we both die.”

  Every second counted. Pierce needed to be well clear of the house. He didn’t know that he had much choice. He could disarm Mason, but if the man was intent on staying, the fight truly would kill both of them.