by Lee Killough
“Certainly not.” Allison’s voice was mild...soothing. She lounged against the island. “Yes, there’s bound to be someone with you most of the time for a while...but we normally do things in groups. And how best to learn how to interact with the clan than by observing and practicing--”
“You mean behavior modification!” Heat boiled around Sunny. “No!” she shrieked. “No, NO, NO! No more therapy!”
Heat blasted from her and a black wolf streaked past Allison toward the door.
Zane dived to tackle her. The forms of Sergeant Makepeace and Mike Fairchild launched out of the shadows on the opposite side. Then a vise clamped on his throat, crushing his larynx and trachea. His breath shut off.
15.
Holding Zane by the throat, Sunny spun to make him a shield between her and the rest of the room...turning so fast Zane’s feet flung out, smashing into Drew’s chest and knocking him backward.
Zane chopped at the wolf neck. Trying for pain compliance points, Allison guessed. But confused by the perceived wolf form, he missed his targets.
Going for her gun was one reflex Allison had never developed, but she found the weapon in her hand, aimed at Zane’s back. “Sunny, don’t be foolish! Try to run and we’ll have to stop you. But there’s nothing to run from. We only want to help you.”
“That’s what everyone says! I only end up hurting worse. Well...to hell with you!” She bared her fangs. “Come near me and your pet human dies!”
Allison heard a snarl that had to be Rikki.
Tom called, “No problem. If you can’t bring yourself to shoot through him, Allison, I will.”
Which he would enjoy doing. “I have the clearest shot.” Damned if she would let killing Zane be a pleasure for anyone. “Last chance, Sunny. Join us or die.”
Sunny backed another step toward the door with Zane now trying to push his thumbs in her eyes. Missing those, too.
No choice now but to shoot. Allison drew a bead on his back that coincided with the position of Sunny’s heart.
Rikki snarled again, and Allison felt a heat surge that told her Rikki had Shifted.
“Rikki, don’t you dare move!”
Her finger tightened on the trigger.
16.
Through the roar in his ears and the losing struggle for breath, Zane heard the shouting and braced for the bullet. An efficient elimination of two problems with one shot, came a bitter thought. At the same time, the voices of instructors and field training officers made a chorus in his head: don’t panic; don’t give in; fight the bitch. With his throat crushed and terrible pain in his chest, and vision disappearing in a red haze, he clawed for his gun. Don’t give up. Don’t stop fighting. Survive! He shoved the muzzle against her body and pulled the trigger.
Sunny jerked, and the shot echoed, which he never expected. Then he realized the “echo” came from behind him. Allison! Blessedly, the pain in his neck left no room to feel her shot. But for a moment his lungs found air again as Sunny’s grip loosened. Until, with a vicious jerk, the vice closed on his neck once more.
He fired again. Felt her stagger and release his throat. As he fell to the deck, he fired one last time.
Triumphantly, he felt her body slump over him. Got her! He was her last victim. While his throat and lungs felt on fire and the struggle to pull air into them sent him into bone-jarring coughing, at least his last moments of life would be breathing ones.
17.
Allison saw Zane grope for his gun, still fighting Sunny as stubbornly and determinedly as he had her in the office, and she heard the muffled report of his shot. Sunny jerked, and when that moved Zane enough to expose her head, Allison took a chance and switched targets. It appeared she grazed Sunny’s head...but both shots only staggered her. Bullets of any metal worked equally well...if the shots were placed right. Not easy with a Shift form.
Sunny straightened again, and Allison reluctantly switched her aim back to Zane. Sorry, partner. Before she pulled the trigger, she heard Zane fire a second time...and a dark form moved behind Sunny. Allison held her fire, heart wrenching in horror. Rikki!
To her relief, Sunny began collapsing...but not Rikki.
No, not Rikki, she saw as Sunny folded down over the gasping Zane. Deirdre! Surrounded by a Shift halo and swinging a cast iron skillet.
She brought the side of it down on her daughter’s head like a hatchet...again and again and again. Allison stood frozen, staring...feeling the others staring...while the repeated blows crushed Sunny’s skull. And when the girl lay with her head bloody pulp, Deirdre sank to the deck hugging the skillet. Splattered with blood and brains, she stared whimpering at the body.
“Son of a bitch,” someone breathed.
Movement flashed on the other side of the island. Definitely Rikki this time, racing around to drag Zane out from under Sunny’s body and sit him upright against a storeroom door. She pulled off his tie and unbuttoned his shirt, then whipped off her motorcycle jacket and t-shirt. Using the shirt, she wiped the blood and brains from his face.
Drew found a light switch. Squinting in the sudden glare, everyone slowly gathered around the body.
Seemingly oblivious to them, Deirdre talked to the body. “We tried to save you but you’re his, the fruit of Evil. The Evil has to be destroyed. I had to escape. He made me want him.” She set aside the skillet and reached out to pick up Sunny’s hand. “You have to understand. I had to destroy the Evil. It was the only way to escape, the only way not to go with him.” Deirdre gathered up her daughter’s body, snuggling her cheek against the bloody hair. “Why did you have to be his? Why did the Evil have to live on?”
Beside Allison, Gina said, “Do you think she means she killed Sunny’s father?”
“That’s what it sounds like to me.” Somehow no one knew but her, and she had lived alone with her crime all these years.
The whispering at their feet turned into prayer...hurried, desperate, more and more unintelligible. Allison looked up from the body to find everyone eyeing her. Waiting to learn what she wanted to do now.
While she gave it thought, Allison checked Zane. He leaned against Rikki, coughing. The rasp of his breathing made Allison’s throat hurt to hear. Nothing compared to the pain he must feel, however. Bruises already darkened his neck from jaw to collar bones. He stared dazed at Sunny’s body, but quickly abandoned any attempt to talk, and just drew a question mark in the air.
“You tell him what happened, Rikki.”
She turned back to the body and Deirdre. This did give her a physical killer to present to Garroway and the press, along with a name with a fitting history of psychological problems. The case would be closed...the killer dead, the city relieved, the clan safe. Breaking the news in the middle of the press briefing would also make Garroway look good in Investigation’s first big case on his watch. Only she could not give them Sunny’s body as it was. Let Pedicaris have a look at the teeth and confirm the girl as the killer, but other anatomical “anomalies” might raise too many eyebrows.
“We need a partial cremation.”
Tom Sweet said, “There’s fuel oil on board.”
“How about a car crash?” Rikki said. “The suspect takes off in a car. There’s a high speed chase through the West Bay...patrol cars after her, sirens screaming. Suspect’s car goes out of control, hits a wall, bursts into flame.”
Something like that would occur to Rikki. Allison shook her head. “That’s dangerous.”
“Excuse me?” Rikki’s chin jutted. “I do this for a living, remember?”
“Don’t they take a careful setup?” Drew asked.
The chin lifted more. “I can stage one on the fly.” She leaped to her feet. “You pick the site--somewhere human witnesses can’t see me vault out of the car and toss a match into the gas tank--and I’ll guarantee you a crash that won’t make anyone question an incinerated body.” As she spoke she pulled back on her t-shirt.
“Problem,” Rick Bliss said. “What car? It has to be one Sunny would
have keys for. And how do we get both Rikki and the body in it without the security camera recording the event?”
Allison eyed the deck door. “The MG Sunny has been driving is in Marais Park. Our story is Sunny escaped by jumping overboard. It’s Rikki who jumps. We’ll lower the body to her wrapped in something waterproof. There must be canvas or tarps on this ship. Rikki swims to the park with the body, signals us when she’s in the car--leaving the tarp, of course, for one of us to pick up--and takes off from there.”
Rikki grinned. “Right. Then you do a little Keystone Kops...go tearing down to your car...take off across the parking lot and across the grass of the park.”
Keystone Kops? Allison winced. But she nodded. “All right. It’s a performance. We might as well make it look dramatic for the security camera. Drew calls in my pursuit and requests Ident and an ambulance here. So...we need to lay out a route that will be long enough for people to notice and not long enough for human officers to arrive in time to see us torch the car. Rikki, you’d better remove the gas cap before taking off so all we have to do is toss in a match.”
Rikki nodded. “This is gonna be a blast. It’ll be great!”
Allison would settle for credible. “Let’s plan our chase route.”
Zane’s lips formed a word.
“What?”
Rikki leaned down to his mouth. “I think he said Lavaca Street?”
Of course. Allison nodded. “Good idea. We’ll finish this where it started, in the building where she killed Demry.”
Drew looked thoughtful. “Yes...there’ll be minimal traffic and chance of eye witnesses there.”
During laying out a route, Gina had found a purse on the deck behind the open freezer door with MG keys and the fake police ID in it. Rick brought a tarp he remembered seeing in one of the areas they searched below, and Tom found rope.
Drew handed Rikki the MG’s keys. “The rest is up to your driving skill.”
Rikki grinned. “Piece of cake.”
Deirdre still clung to the body, whispering and crooning, but offered no resistance when they pulled it away to wrap in the tarp. She sat staring straight ahead, whispering on.
Zane shook his head.
Allison took a breath. “Let’s do it.”
Rikki kissed Zane. “I’ll see you later at the hospital. After they release you, I’m bringing you home with me to take care of.”
Then she was gone through the deck door and vaulting the rail, not even bothering to Shift for the drop to the water.
Coming back inside once the body had been lowered, Drew grinned. “She’s a pistol, isn’t she?”
Allison nodded. “Honora says there’s a lot of Georgiana in her. I see a lot of you, too.”
His winked. “Want to make another?”
“Not right this minute. All right, everyone, let’s arrange the scene.”
While they spread the clotting blood in the stock pot over Sunny’s on the deck and arranged Kakashvili’s body in it, Allison called Ident to give Connie Swann a heads up.
This could never pass a legitimate crime scene examination, of course, but with Tran and Castenado still at the Hilst house, Connie could arrange be the only Ident tech here and document the scene to support their story. Besides, who would to look too closely with the killer dead?
“What do we do with her?” Gina pointed at Deirdre.
Zane had slid over and wrapped her in the blanket again, but she no more reacted to that than to taking away her daughter’s body. It appeared her only need in the foreseeable future was custodial care.
“We let her family take care of her. I’ll call Julie Hilst from the hospital. They are her family,” she said when Tom Sweet scowled. “Forget DNA. In thought and behavior, she’s human. We’re the stuff of her nightmares.”
“What happens when she outlives them all?”
Eyeing the huddled figure, Allison shook her head. “I doubt she will, not when she’s locked up her head with her nightmares.” Trapped in a body wracked with unfulfilled longings...never once experiencing the exhilaration and joy of Shifting. Death by suffocation. What would happen to her soul? Would it snuff out in darkness, unable to burn free...denied the singing fire of the Northern Lights? Allison shuddered. That was a true nightmare.
The same thought must have occurred to all of them. Every pair of clan eyes around her reflected pity and horror.
They headed down through the superstructure to wait in the passage on the main deck level for Rikki’s call. Zane led Deirdre.
Allison shook her head. “What a disaster.” She felt exhausted. “Gary dead. Deirdre lost. Five innocent humans butchered.”
“At least we’ve given them the killer, and she’ll never kill again,” Drew said. He lowered his voice. “What are you going to do about Kerr?”
“Take him home with us.” When had she decided he posed no threat? When he became “Zane” to her...or joined the jury...or maybe as early as leaving him alone at the Hilst house? “Nursing chores will keep Rikki out of trouble while I spend the weekend on paperwork. She might even learn responsibility. It’ll be all right.” She smiled at Drew’s skeptical frown. “We’re not the stuff of his nightmares. We do have our amici familia, friends of the family.”
A dentist, a doctor. Zane might end up more. Perhaps Honora’s intention since meeting him. Looking back on conversations with her grandmother, and Honora’s comments to Rikki last night, Allison saw a clan chief’s manipulative touch. After all, if Deirdre had become human in spirit, what better protection for the clan than reversing that...giving Zane the family he wanted by making him part of theirs.
She strolled over to whisper in Zane’s ear and welcome him to the clan.
About The Author
Lee Killough has been storytelling since the age of four or five, when she started making up her own bedtime stories, then later, her own episodes of her favorite radio and TV shows. Because she loves both SF and mysteries, her work combines the two genres. Although published as SF, most of her novels are actually mysteries with SF or fantasy elements...with a preference--thanks to a childhood hooked on TV cop shows--for cop protagonists.
Also published by Books We Love
Aftershock
Killer Karma
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From the Garreth Mikaelian Mystery Series
Blood Hunt
Blood Games
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