“Wait,” I said, lowering my gun, “you have a pet turtle?”
He tilted his head to the side. “Yes, why?”
“Exactly my question,” I replied. “Why do you have a pet turtle?”
“Because when I was learning to live in your world, it was suggested I find a pet that was relatively easy to take care of,” he answered. “They said it would help me to understand the emotional ties that your kind have to creatures here.”
“But why a turtle?” said Brazen. “Why not get a dog or something?”
“Again, Officer Brazen,” Reaper said, “it needed to be a pet that was easy to maintain.”
“Cats are pretty easy to manage,” Kix noted. We all looked at him. “What? I’ve got two cats. They’re not a problem.”
I didn’t know why, but somehow seeing Kix as a cat-person kind of made sense. He even had a few tattoos of kittens on his neck, which made him look like a somewhat sensitive djinn. Brazen, on the other hand, was a dog-person all the way. It was obvious by looking at him that he probably had a couple of Rottweilers or even Great Danes hanging around his house.
In the grand scheme of things, I didn’t give a damn what kind of animals they had, but a vision of Reaper sitting on his couch watching Oprah while holding his pet turtle flashed through my mind.
I snorted and then caught myself.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“Her name is Agnes,” he answered without inflection.
“Agnes?”
“That’s right.”
I had to literally bite my lip to keep from smiling.
“Okay,” I said after getting myself under control. “Well, I’ll tell you what,” I added as I looked back at the bullets he was holding, “if you want to use those Numbshots and you can knock out Gallien with them, be my guest. I’m going to stick with the Death Nails.”
“You know I don’t like using guns, Piper,” he stressed.
“I do know that, Reap, yes. But as long as you don’t hit anyone in the head with a Numbshot, you won’t kill them.” Then I gave him a look. “And remember how you essentially obliterated everyone with your energy blast in the courtyard?” He winced. “Yeah,” I admonished, “I wouldn’t go out of my way to get on a high horse about how guns are too deadly.”
“That wasn’t my fault.”
“I can accept that,” I concurred, “but now that you know what that energy pulse can do, are you going to use it again?”
He hesitated.
I smiled.
“That’s what I thought.”
Then I held up my gun and cracked open the door for a look inside.
Reaper grabbed my arm.
“Wait,” he warned. “There are nearly one hundred forms in there.” He grabbed his head and began moving back and forth as if he were in pain. “Many of them are vampire zom…ravens.” His breathing was ragged. “They are all very angry. Controlled, but angry.”
“Reap,” I said, grabbing one of his arms and pulling it away from his head, “stop.”
He jolted.
“What the hell just happened?” I asked.
It took him a second to catch his breath.
“Sometimes when I track, the emotions of my prey sink in and I can get consumed by it.” He swallowed. “As a reaper, it’s something I could easily disassociate from. But in this form, separating myself from the emotion is not as easy.”
At some point, he and I were going to have to have a long talk about all of his idiosyncrasies. Assuming we were going to remain partners, that was. My vote on this subject was still out with my internal jury, but I had a feeling Chief Carter was going to try and make this a permanent situation. If that happened, I’d need to know what kind of weird shit was going on in Reaper’s head before we were put into situations…well, like this one.
“Are you going to be able to handle this, Reap?” I asked directly. “If not, you’re going back to base.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said in a tired voice. “I just can’t track those things in large groups like that.”
“Okay.” I gave him another glance and grunted. “We already know what’s behind this door, so you don’t need to track anything until we take them all out.”
“You’re going to kill all of—”
“Not if I can help it,” I interrupted.
That was another thing we were going to have a talk about. These were life-and-death situations…or at least very-painful-wait-to-heal types-but-don’t-really-die-because-you’re-immortal situations. Anyway, the point was that I wasn’t fond of having to deal with Reaper acting as my conscience when I was facing shit like this.
“Look,” I lectured, “if we can take out Gallien, Haley, and I’m assuming Phillip, then the ravens should all just fall down because they won’t be controlled anymore.”
“You sure about that?” asked Brazen.
“Not even slightly,” I admitted. “In fact, I’ll be damn surprised if it happens that way, but it’s worth a shot.”
Nobody said anything.
It was time for a fight.
Chapter 25
There were definitely a lot of bodies in the room when we walked in, guns held high.
It was one thing to have a hundred cops facing a hundred naughties, but it was quite another to have four cops doing it.
All faces turned to look at us.
“Ah, Officer Shaw,” Gallien said with a genuine smile. “I have to say that I’m surprised to see you here. You definitely have balls.”
“That makes one of us,” I replied and then frowned as I realized that comment didn’t really reflect positively on me. “Damn it.”
“I’m assuming you have surrounded the building with officers?” he asked.
I glanced at Reaper. Okay, so maybe this was an instance where having backup wouldn’t have been a bad idea. Yes, I expected that Gallien would have ravens with him but I didn’t think there’d be this many.
Gallien began to laugh. “You don’t have backup?” He slapped his leg. “Well, then I must say you really do have balls!” After a moment he wiped his eyes. “You’re also incredibly stupid, I might add.”
“Hard to argue that,” mumbled Brazen.
I gave him a warning stare.
“What?” he said. “It’s true.”
“Brazen,” I seethed, “why don’t you spend your time aiming your fucking weapon at Gallien, Haley, or Phillip, and pulling the trigger?”
“Oh, right.”
We all pointed our guns at the brass standing up on the platform who overlooked the sea of ravens.
Jax was standing with them, too, and there was a woman with him as well. She looked to be a bit older than him and she had straggly white hair. Her face was impassive, which just spelled to me that she’d already accepted her fate.
“What say we cut the shit, Gallien?” I called out to him. “We may not be able to kill all of your ravens, but we can certainly—”
“My what?” he interrupted, frowning.
“Ravens,” I responded while waving my gun at the mass of black-eyed creatures between us. “That’s what I call these things you’ve created.”
“They’re Vampire Zombies, Officer Shaw,” he corrected. “You’d think that would be obvious.”
I pointed at my crew with my free hand, but I didn’t look at them.
“Not a word out of you three.”
They didn’t say anything, but I could sense what they were thinking.
“Anyway, Cross,” I continued, “we can either do this the easy way or the hard way. Which would you prefer?”
“By all means, Officer Shaw,” he answered with a grand smile, “the hard way.”
My reply to his smug face was to fire a Death Nail right at his forehead.
It hit a shield and fell to the ground.
He laughed again.
“You had to know I was going to be protected, Officer Shaw,” he said with a laugh. “Honestly, I’d expected far more from you than this.”
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“Me, too,” said Brazen.
“That was just a check, Gallien,” I responded, ignoring Brazen. “Now that I know you’ve got another rune somewhere about, I’ll just have to destroy it and then your ass is grass.”
His smile faded instantly as he glanced over at the wall. There was the rune I was hoping to see.
It was my turn to grin.
Gallien’s eyes burned and he yelled, “Kill them!”
Chapter 26
I dived to the right and rolled back up to my feet, taking off at a full run.
It was only a matter of time before the ravens got to me so I needed to knock out that rune fast.
Hissing filled the room, along with angry grunts and screeches. The damn things sounded like ravens. I wanted to snark something back through the connector, but the cracking of gunfire told me my crew was neck-deep in fighting off claws and teeth.
I ducked as an arm swiped at me, doing its best to dislodge my head from my person.
A quick fire of my gun ended that attack.
But I could see I was being cut off and so I slowed and turned, firing round after round into the oncoming faces. I hadn’t wanted to kill any of the damn things, but it was either that or end up falling to their ripping hands. Something told me I wouldn’t survive full dismemberment. Plus, if I fell, that would be one less person Gallien had to worry about, which would likely spell the end of my crew.
Not on my watch.
With practiced precision, I started firing.
Nails burst through chests and skulls like a knife through butter. Fortunately, the Nails were working as intended on these beasts, which was a worry considering they weren’t fully turned. Ravens dropped left and right as I emptied my magazine repeatedly.
The nice thing about Death Nails was that each magazine carried fifty of them. The shitty thing about Death Nails magazines was that they tended to get stuck during changes, assuming you didn’t take your time.
I ejected the mag while simultaneously snatching a fresh one from my jacket. This I could do with haste. The next step was a slow entry back into the base of the gun. It was either that or the damn thing would get stuck. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’d argued with Pecker about this. His default reaction was always that he had more important things to work on and that I shouldn’t be putting myself in these situations anyway.
By the time the mag was fully seated, I had a raven right on me.
Fortunately, I remembered they were weak.
Claws raked at my head, but I ducked and bumped the creature headfirst into the wall. The sound it made was just like the one I’d heard back when I’d killed the raven down near the docks.
Another lurched through the air with its hands waving wildly.
I ducked.
It died.
That’s when I resumed firing while doing my best to get to that damned rune.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement on the stage. Gallien and his gang were taking off.
“Shit,” I yelled through the connector, “they’re getting away.”
“Don’t seem to be trying to get away,” Brazen grunted in response. “Fucking things are everywhere.”
“I’m talking about Gallien.”
I started thinking that getting to the rune really didn’t matter all that much at this point.
That’s when a claw caught me on the back of my head, spinning me hard to the ground. The damn things could punch, that was for sure.
It was time to get seriously bad-ass on these fuckers.
I started firing in double time, off my back, clearing just enough room to launch myself back to my feet. Then I started going into full fight-mode. That meant hands, feet, teeth, Death Nails, and anything I had at my disposal to maim and kill.
“You dicks want to hit me?” I roared as the sting of fresh cuts burned the back of my head. “Well, then let’s play.”
Like a woman possessed, I got into the fray.
I brought a left roundhouse kick up, catching one of the ravens on the cheek. Blood spurted from its mouth as it tumbled to the ground.
Continuing my motion, I spun and back-fisted another in the throat. It choked as I put my gun to its head and sent him off to the reapers.
Claws struck my arm, digging in firmly.
I swore and then yanked free, littering the attacker with Death Nails. One would have been enough, but I was pissed. He fell back, dead, as the next one dived over him.
I lunged forward, getting close to my attacker so her claws couldn’t do as much damage. Once we connected, my hand was on her throat, twisting and pulling with such ferociousness that I nearly took her head off.
Instinctively, I dropped to a knee and another of the ravens flew overhead. He didn’t hit a wall, but he did slam into one of his pals, which bought me a little time to spin and release a couple of Nails into the crowd.
The ravens were thinning, but there were still too many of them and I was starting to get tired.
“Anyone have any Empirics?” I exclaimed hopefully.
“I have two,” Reaper replied.
So he could use Empirics, but guns were uncivilized? That was one odd dude.
“Brazen and Kix, get the hell out of here right now,” I commanded while throwing another Raven at the wall. “Reaper, launch those Empirics.”
“We’re not going anywhere, Piper,” Brazen shot back.
“The fuck you aren’t,” I snapped. “You can’t survive the Empirics. We can. Now get the hell out!”
A raven tackled me, followed by another landing on top of him. Within seconds, I was trapped under a mass of swinging claws and gnashing teeth. It was all I could do to protect my neck and head.
“Throw them,” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
The world suddenly lit up like a thousand bolts of lightning had erupted in the room.
Pain ripped through my body with such power that getting shredded by claws was almost preferable in comparison.
Then everything went black.
Chapter 27
I woke up to find Brazen pulling bodies off of me. Even though my vision was blurred and wavering, I could see the look of concern on his face.
“I got you, Piper,” he said, putting my head on his lap as he pushed my hair out of my eyes. “You’ll be all right. Let me just get you some meds.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a bottle of something I’d never seen before. I held up my hand to stop him.
“I’ll heal,” I choked. “Thanks, though.”
Brazen nodded slowly and put the bottle back.
This wasn’t some odd thing where the guy thought I was smoking hot or anything, and it wasn’t one of those damsel-in-distress situations either. I hated those. I was just a fellow officer and Brazen was doing his best to make sure I survived. Just like I’d done for him.
Again, he was proving himself to be solid Retriever material.
Good.
“Help me up,” I said.
By the time I was on my feet, so was Reaper. Kix was standing with him.
“Thanks, Brazen,” I whispered while the world fought to right itself. “I appreciate it.”
“You’re a cop. I’m a cop. It’s what we do.”
Valid.
The fact was that when you dedicated your life to the protection of others, you became part of a fraternity. You could razz each other, despise each other, and be downright douchy to each other when in the office, but when there were bad guys about, you were a team. Period.
That entire “protection of others” thought was suddenly haunting me as I scanned around at the mass of bodies lying on the floor.
They were all normals. Slightly turned, yes, but normals nonetheless. It sucked.
“Reaper,” I said as we stepped over the corpses and headed over toward the stage that Gallien had previously occupied, “can you locate them anywhere?”
He nodded his head and pointed toward a door at the back as he and Kix moved to catch
up with us.
Then he added, “I thought Pecker updated our tattoos for tracking them?”
“You’re right,” I said, pulling up my sleeve and getting a fix on Gallien. Then I stopped and held out my arm to stop the others. “Wait a second. There may be more ravens in there.”
I started looking around for other entrances.
Nothing.
Then I looked up at the ceiling tiles.
“What are you thinking, Piper?” Reaper asked dubiously.
“I’m thinking that you guys are going to go in there with guns drawn,” I replied, studying the area. “You’ll talk with them, stalling as best you can, as I climb across the ceiling.”
“And what if there are a bunch of ravens, like you said?” asked Kix.
Reaper held up his hand, closed his eyes, and concentrated. It didn’t look like he was having much fun doing it either. If his head felt anything like mine, I could understand why.
“There are none,” Reaper panted as Kix held him from falling over. “It’s just Gallien, Haley, Phillip, Jax, and Jax’s wife.”
I nodded. “Perfect.”
This was going to be a challenge for sure, and chances were that my crew was going to be walking into an unfortunate situation. Another glance around at the mass of bodies reminded me that this wasn’t anything new.
“Do you have enough energy to put a shield around these two?” I asked while nodding at Brazen and Kix.
Reaper shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’m barely functioning now.”
“Okay, you guys are staying out here then.”
“And leaving Reaper to go in on his own?” Brazen said with a not-so-funny laugh. “Uh, no.”
“That’s a direct order, Brazen.”
“Fuck you, Piper,” he said. “I’m not letting a fellow officer go in there without backing him up.”
“I agree,” Kix stated firmly. “It’s not right.”
I crossed my arms and glared at them both. It was difficult to chastise them for what they were saying, but it was also my job to keep them alive.
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