“I was going to leave you there,” said Rex. She shifted her one eye to look at the old man. He was smiling too. “I figured, you’d only slow us down.”
Carlisle licked her lips. “Either of you got some water?”
“Here,” said John, holding up a bottle of Evian. She tried to reach for it, but her arms were just too weak. He held it for her and she drank. It tasted sweet and clean and perfect.
She managed to wipe her lips with the back of an arm, then saw a bandage — more like a ripped piece of curtain backing, if she was any judge — wrapped around her arm. She did a quick status check, a few bandages hastily applied, all of them showing more red than she liked. It’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. It’s not like you’re alone in the dark. Not anymore. “Status.”
“It’s like this,” said Rex. “We’re pretty much fucked.”
“More detail,” said Carlisle. “I need something to work with.”
“Sure, okay,” said Rex. “We’re about two floors from the top. Got no clue where the werewolf—”
“Danny,” said John.
“—is,” said Rex. “Or Val. Haven’t seen that guy since he crashed our helicopter.”
“It was shot down,” said John. “I was there.”
“Was it on fire when it touched down?” Rex gave John a hard stare.
“More or less,” said John.
“Crashed,” said Rex. He turned to Carlisle. “Anyway. You’re pretty busted up, but I’ve tried to tourniquet the bits of you that looked the worst. The bits I could reach. That you could tourniquet. Okay, look, you’re still leaking in a lot of places. You could use a little bit of rest, maybe a couple pints of O negative, it’ll see you right. Fighting the legions of the damned doesn’t count as bed rest. Not sure you’ll be doing much fighting for the rest of the day, or maybe the week, or … hell, let’s just say your professional fights this year are all called off. I’m old, but angry, so I can probably get in someone’s way. John’s the best of us, maybe superficial burns and a couple of cat scratches, but I figure he’s borderline incompetent so I’m not sure what we should do.”
“Cat scratches?” John blinked at him. “I was fighting a piece of living flame with an axe.”
“You’ll be fine,” said Rex.
“You’ll be fine,” said Carlisle. John looked at her. “You’re always going to be fine.” There was no malice in her words — she just knew it was true.
“Yeah,” John said, his voice turning bitter as burnt coffee. “I’ll be fine. It’s everyone else who … dies.”
“No, I … Miles, I didn’t mean it like that,” said Carlisle.
“It’s okay,” said John. “I…”
“No,” said Carlisle. “It’s not okay.”
“It’s not?” He blinked.
“No,” she said. “Help me the fuck up.”
“No way,” said Rex. “Not a chance.”
“Was I talking to you?” Carlisle gave him a look she’d cultivated through years on the job, one she reserved for low ranking officers who said something stupid. Rex took a step back, swallowed. Carlisle turned back to John. “I was talking to Miles, because he knows we have to make it right.”
“We … have to,” said John. He put his hands on his knees, then got up. He looked like he was considering something. “I don’t know if we can.”
“I do,” said Carlisle. “So be a champ, and help me up.”
She took his hand, warm and strong and full of life, and let herself be pulled to her feet. She tried to ignore the look of worry on Rex’s face, tried to ignore the flash of dizziness that hit her. She turned to look at the wall she’d been leaning against, and then turned away. She definitely, definitely didn’t want to see the red streak of her blood against the wall. Quite a lot there, Carlisle. Not a lot more where that came from.
“Tourniquet, huh,” she said to Rex.
“Hard to tourniquet your back,” he said. “You were the one who went through a blender. Don’t look at me.”
“Let’s get this done,” she said. She flexed her arms, worked a kink out through her shoulder, and then patted the Eagle at her back. “Couple more floors, right?”
“Couple more floors,” said Rex. He looked at his feet. “I really think you should stay here.”
“I think you should help me climb,” said Carlisle. She let her voice soften. “Do you know what it’s like to have a family?”
“Yeah, I think so,” said Rex. He looked at John, then at her. “I really think I do.”
“I didn’t,” said Carlisle. “Not really. Not until a few years back. I met this guy, you know, suspect on a case. I mean, sure, everyone says that cops are a family. But it’s not real. It’s … except for Elliot. Doesn’t matter. This guy, Everard, he … had a family. One that he made. Can you believe it?”
Rex nodded, a wry smile tugging at his lips. “I’ve met him.”
“The family that I got when I was born, well,” said Carlisle. Her words ran dry for a moment, because she couldn’t—
You can’t tell. You can’t ever tell. It’s our secret.
—put into words, not the right way, what she wanted to say. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is I’ve got one now. It’s full of wonderful people, and,” and she spared a glance at John, “the odd black sheep, but you know, every family’s got one, right? And this family, it’s worth everything.”
“Worth dying for?” said Rex. “Because that’s what’s going to happen. The blood loss alone—”
“It’s worth everything,” said Carlisle, thinking of a young girl sitting in an apartment waiting for them to make the world safe for her again. A young girl who’d allowed a much-tarnished ex-cop to be her friend. “Do you hear?”
Rex looked at his feet, then at John. John’s face was stone, but he nodded at Rex.
The old man blew out a breath. “Okay then. Guess I’ll help you up the stairs.”
∙ • ● • ∙
It wasn’t far, no more than two flights, like they’d said. But when they got there, Carlisle was sweating like she’d run a marathon. Not that she knew what that was like, the only reason people ran marathons at all was so they could brag about it, but she could imagine. The door to the penthouse lobby stood in front of them, quiet, dark, cold. She felt the air caress her, sending shivers down her spine.
“Miles,” she said.
“I’m here.”
“I know,” she said, smiling into the gloom. You’ll always be where you’re most needed. “You’re up.”
“Some motherfucker,” said John Miles, hefting the axe, “is going to pay.” He grabbed the axe’s haft, then slammed the door open with his shoulder. It rocked open, John leading the way into—
Well.
The demarcation between ‘foyer’ and ‘penthouse suite’ was gone. Walls were missing, rubble strewn everywhere. A cage of silver sat in the rough middle of the area, surrounded on all sides by an army — no other word for it — of zombies. In the cage stood Danny, looking small and frail under the terrible heat of the silver around her. At the far end of the room, near a hole that must once have been doors or windows or some other shit were two men. They were standing near the open air of Chicago, and at her quick glance looked no more concerned about the temperature than the wreckage around them.
She knew one of those men.
Danny’s eyes found hers across the muddle of ruins and people, widened in shock. “Run, Melissa. Run.”
“Yes,” said the man at the far end that she didn’t know. “You really should run. You’re not needed, and you’re not wanted.”
Carlisle did a quick count. Army might have been too strong a term. Ten dudes, maybe fifteen. No problem. “You’d be Talin Moray.” Her voice sounded weak to her own ears, and she cleared her throat.
“Ms. Kendrick said you wouldn’t run. Couldn’t be reasoned with, she put it.” Talin tugged at the lapels of a suit jacket worth more than she used to make in a week. It was grubby with dirt and blood and dust. “I
was hoping she was right.”
“Asshole,” she said, looking at Ajay. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to make it perfect,” said Ajay. “I came—”
“He helped Talin finish the cage,” said Danny.
“That true?” said Carlisle, the feeling in her gut turning to acid. “I thought you were on our team.”
“I am,” said Ajay. “It needs to be perfect before it can be broken. Before it can be fixed. All the pieces. They needed to be in the right places. Do you see?”
Carlisle sighed, tired, tired, tired. Damn, but she was tired. Tired of Ajay’s cryptic word puzzles, tired of people not doing what they should, tired of people lying. She was tired of feeling attracted to this man who—
You’ll never be good for another. You’ll always be mine, Daddy’s little girl.
Goddammit, but she was tired of feeling lost, even after all these years. “Ajay?”
“Yes, Detective.”
You put a cage on my best friend, she wanted to say. I want to know why you’re standing shoulder to shoulder with the man who can end the world, she wanted to say. I want to know why you don’t want me, she wanted to say. You’ve damned us all, she wanted to say. She licked her lips instead. “Do you remember when I made you a promise? I promised to God.”
“You said if I hurt your family, you would kill me.” His face started to frown, doubt creeping in at the sides. “But—”
“That’s right.” Carlisle looked at Danny, weak in a cage. Thought of Adalia, hiding in an apartment. Of Everard. Their new friend Rex. Just James, another kid out of place and out of time. Even, now she could admit it in her dark and blackened heart, of John. Of all the pain they’d carried for so long. Her hands were trembling. “Time to pay up.” Something had been clouding her thoughts, holding her back, checking her decisions, and she wasn’t sure what she should do. What she should say. Carlisle felt her words dry up, her limbs stiffen, her need to act fall away. But the Eagle was in her hand, its strong voice shouting across the distance between her and Ajay. The Eagle held her up, as it always had. It acted when she wasn’t strong enough, as it always had. It spoke three times, hurling all her anger across the space. The first round took Ajay in the head, the high caliber round turning his face into red mist. The second two took him in the chest, and Ajay’s lifeless body fell to the ground. As it fell, something inside her released, let go its grip on her heart, and she staggered for a moment. Free. Carlisle was gasping for breath, sucking in lungfuls of air like she’d sprinted up those damn stairs.
“Bet you didn’t expect that,” said John to Talin, spinning his axe.
Talin’s face looked astonished. “You did … do you know … why?”
“We weren’t,” said Carlisle, “on the same page.” She looked at the Eagle, held out in front of her, her hand steady now despite her blood loss. She felt the strength of the weapon, her talisman against the evil in this world. “Your turn.” She pulled the trigger, the Eagle roaring and screaming again, kept pulling the trigger until the magazine was empty.
Not a single round hit home. Talin moved like water, danced aside like the bullets were underarm tosses he could just move away from. She’d seen someone else — something — do that before. It struck her that this was going to be a hard fight. One she wasn’t going to walk away from. And she thought about Adalia, that girl who was counting on her, and shrugged. That’s the way it’s got to be? No problem.
Talin’s fingers came away from his arm, sticky red. Oh, thought Carlisle. Clipped him. Not so fast after all, asshole. Talin was looking at his fingers, face incredulous, then his features contorted into rage. “Now,” he said, spittle flecking his lips, “you will fall.”
The zombies lurched forward, some running, some walking. It looked like a mass, a wave, an avalanche, and Carlisle thought that maybe this time, this fucking time, she’d pushed a little too hard. Too far, because she wasn’t a goddamn werewolf, she was just a person, and zombies didn’t leave people alive. Her free hand fed a fresh clip into her weapon. Carlisle swallowed, then pointed the Eagle at the horde.
Someone stepped in front of her. John fucking Miles. He spared her a backward glance, hefting his axe. She could have sworn he had that Miles Megawatt Smile out, pointed at her, just for a moment. “I got this,” he said, then turned around and started swinging.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Some of the shit that was getting old, like ancient, ice age old, was the damn blood that kept coming from his nose. And eyes. And ears now, if you’d believe it. Val paused for a breath on the stairs, shaking his flashlight. The beam flickered, maybe the batteries running low, maybe it was just broken. Val had some sympathy there: he felt a little broken, a little low on batteries himself. He’d been climbing these damn stairs for what seemed like forever, hadn’t seen a soul, heard a thing. He hoped everyone else was having as easy a trip to the top as he scrubbed his nose against his sleeve.
A hammer of sound came from above. Carlisle’s gun? Three shots right next to each other sounded a little like Carlisle, a little too much like her. Just a few more floors up, just a few more steps in front of each other. Val took a step, his foot slipping on the stairs, and he fell. The flashlight skittered away from him, bouncing in the gloom, the beam flickering as it tumbled down the stairs, so many floors down below. As he hit the ground, the sharp edge of a step hit him, something wet and soft giving way inside him. He realized it was a rib, and a second after he realized ribs shouldn’t feel soft. And a second after that the pain, sweet baby Jesus the pain. It left him gasping, weak.
Carlisle’s gun fired again. Not three shots, but … all of them, as near as he could work out. In around the shooting was yelling, all of it muffled by distance and doors and whatever else was in the way.
Pack is dying.
“I got that,” said Val, and pushed himself to his feet. His fingers scrabbled over something wet on the stairwell, and he didn’t need a light to know it was his blood. This damn Russian virus was going to do him in before he could finish climbing these damn stairs.
Pack is DYING.
That soft touch, something small and gentle, pulled at his hand. It felt like an old friend, trying to show him the way. In a way, maybe it was. “I know,” he said. “We’ve got to get up these stairs. We’ve got to … do something.”
Without Pack, we are alone.
Val remembered being alone. Through the memories of a hundred, a thousand, or thousands that came before him. He could see it, through the long lines of history, stretching back like a kaleidoscope of loneliness. Almost always just one wolf, looking for another. For a—
Pack.
—place to call home. That small touch on his hand, it was all that was left of the terrible, beautiful thing that had been inside him for five years. “Plach' i ty plachesh' v odinochku,” said Val. “Da?”
We have howled at the darkness alone.
“Yeah,” said Val. He started climbing again. Reaching the top really didn’t take all that long. Since Carlisle had vanished to God knows where — one minute she was there, the next minute she wasn’t — he’d been climbing by himself. He was climbing mostly by feel in the stairwell, some residual influence of the creature letting him pick out small details, shapes. Nothing like the night vision he’d known days ago, but enough that he wasn’t going to slip and kill himself. “We’ll have a talk about loneliness later. Because a key, like a fucking integral part of not being alone, is not killing everything that comes across your path. It’s like you never read The Monstrous Glisson Glop.” Val wiped more blood from his face. “It’s a story about a monster that eats everything. I’m sure you know how it ends.”
No response came from inside him, and it didn’t matter anyway because he was at the top. Or, as high as he was going to go. A door stood in front of him. He touched it, not knowing what—
Pack is HERE.
—would be on the other side. He opened the door, and saw—
“Huh,” s
aid Val.
The room was a mess, no two ways about it. He blinked, not sure what he was seeing at first. He was taking in wreckage, broken walls, smashed appliances and furniture, and scattered among it was bodies. Lots of bodies, more than ten. A silver—
Hated, vile metal.
—cage stood in the middle of the room, Danny inside it. He wanted to run to her, but—
It BURNS.
—he knew he wouldn’t be able to help. Not in his state. Maybe together, but — no. She had slumped to the floor, pale, the curls he loved to touch lying matted against her head. It made him—
Pack mate.
—ache. His eyes kept roving the room. He saw Carlisle’s body on the ground. He moved as fast as he could — more a quick shuffle than a run — to her. She was pale, cut, blood everywhere, probably half of it hers. Her gun was on the ground next to her. Val checked for a pulse, found it, breathed a sigh of relief, then reached for her gun. He ejected the clip, something inside him knowing the motions, and it fell into his hand. The clip was red, the bullets inside—
Throw it.
—smelling sharp to him. His hand trembled with the urge to toss it far away, but he pushed the clip back into the weapon and levered himself to his feet. He shuffled on across the room, finding Rex lying unconscious under three bodies. The old man was bashed up, bleeding from his head, but — also, thank God — alive.
“Hey,” said John. His voice was a whisper. “Over here.” Val looked around, and saw that the blood-covered corpse he’d seen slumped against half a wall was not actually a corpse but John Miles.
Val moved to his friend. “Man, you look like shit.”
“Is that true love I hear?” John coughed and wiped some blood from his face. He had a fire axe across his legs. He was covered in gashes, bruises, the circular indentations of bite marks.
“What, and I mean this in a loving way, the actual fuck happened to you?” Val looked at John, then at the room. “Did you … did you do this?”
Night's Fall (Night's Champion Book 2) Page 36