Blood World

by Chris Mooney

  Sebastian had an idea. He churned it in his mind for a moment, then decided, Yes. Do it. He had time.

  He had all the time in the world now.

  Sebastian lowered the AR-15, grinning, and walked up to Paul. He stopped a few feet away and took a knee, Paul coughing and struggling to move, Sebastian close enough to see the lacerations covering Paul’s face and scalp, his hands.

  “Son,” Sebastian said, “you don’t look so good.”

  Paul didn’t answer—didn’t even look at him. He was trying to catch his breath and doing a piss-poor job of it, Sebastian wondering if one of Paul’s lungs had collapsed, or maybe Paul had broken a rib or two.

  “I’ve decided not to kill you,” Sebastian said. “I’m going to let nature do that.”

  Paul eyed him, coughing from internal injuries, possibly, or maybe from the smoke. The heat of the surrounding fires was growing more intense with each passing moment. Soon, it would get to the point where it could melt skin from bone.

  “Feel that wind?” Sebastian said. “That’s the infamous Devil’s Winds blowing behind you, fanning the flames. They’re going to eat their way across these fields—across you.”

  Sebastian saw the knowledge hit Paul, saw the fear explode in his eyes. The joy bursting inside Sebastian’s chest was better than any combination of sex, booze, and drugs he had ever taken.

  “You’re going to burn alive, out here, in terrible, unimaginable agony,” Sebastian said. “That’s so much more satisfying than my original plan of shredding you to pieces with my AR-15. My only regret is not being able to stay here and savor the moment.”

  Sebastian got to his feet and jogged back to the Bugatti, the surrounding fires devouring the vegetation and trees. He glanced a couple of times over his shoulder, saw Paul army crawl limply across the dirt. There was no way he was going to make it out of here alive.

  Now Sebastian had to work on a new problem: finding a way home to see his daughter. The Bugatti wouldn’t make it to LA. He’d have to find another ride. It didn’t bother him, because he had Grace. She was the priority now. Grace and Ava and their new—

  A gunshot behind him, and Sebastian felt something hard and sharp slam into his back. He stumbled forward as he heard more gunshots, felt at least two more rounds slam into his back and one into his leg as he dropped to the ground.

  The vest, he thought. The vest he’d been wearing absorbed the shots—although it sure as shit didn’t feel like it. He scrambled to his feet, stumbling, and when he turned he saw Paul holding a handgun. Paul fired again, missed, as Sebastian brought up the AR. He was about to shoot when he thought he heard the crack of a rifle report coming from somewhere behind him.

  CHAPTER 52

  THE MOMENT SEBASTIAN drove away to go after Paul, Ellie considered her job done. She turned her attention to getting Grace safely to the Range Rover—getting her home and getting in touch with Roland.

  The young woman was clearly on something. Her thighs and arms were scraped and cut and bleeding from having fallen to the ground, but her face was serene. When Ellie grabbed her arm, Grace didn’t fight her. She had the first time, when Ellie ran to her. Grace screamed and tried to fight her off, relaxed after Ellie said, “I’m working with your father. Come with me.”

  Ellie led the woman across the backyard, heading toward a cluster of trees in front of the stone wall, when she heard a car engine racing somewhere behind her. She thought it was Sebastian—he had literally just left—but when she turned, she saw a compact black SUV tearing out of the garage.

  Ellie dropped to her knees, taking Grace down with her. Placed a hand over the young woman’s mouth and then watched the SUV—it was a Mercedes—come screaming down the driveway. It slowed a bit as it reached the gate, and in the interior glow coming from the dashboard controls Ellie saw a man behind the wheel—Bradley Guidry, she was sure. She caught just a flash of his face before the Mercedes turned left, heading in the same direction as Sebastian.

  The SUV tore into the street, skidding as it turned, tires peeling and smoking against the pavement. The driver killed the lights—He’s got to be wearing night-vision googles, she thought. That’s the only way he can see—and raced after Paul and Sebastian.

  With the headlights off, Sebastian would have no idea someone was chasing after him.

  Let it go, she thought, taking off her Windbreaker and giving it to Grace. You’ve done your job.

  Well, not all of it. She still didn’t know the location of Sebastian’s blood farm—or her brother. If Sebastian was killed, she’d lose her one and only connection in the blood world—the only person who could help her find J.C.

  She had an AR-15 and a spare clip and more than half a tank of gas. The Range Rover, Sebastian had told her during the drive, had been modified by the same company that had turned his Jaguar into a tank.

  Ellie tore onto the street. She turned the wheel hard to her right and, in the rearview, saw Grace thrown sideways against the backseat.

  “Buckle up,” Ellie said.

  Grace sat up and stared dreamily at her, then out the windshield.

  “Your seat belt,” Ellie said. “Put it on.”

  Grace nodded slowly. She was still looking straight ahead, her eyes, Ellie noticed, tilted up at the cyclones of smoke in the red sky. There was no fear in her expression or in her voice when she looked at Ellie, the young woman’s eyes clear when she said, “Is the world coming to an end? Has Judgment Day arrived?” Then she met Ellie’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “Tell me the truth.”

  * * *

  * * *

  It wasn’t easy to follow the Mercedes. Ellie killed her own lights, and she had to use the fiery red and orange glow in the sky to trail it across flat land and then winding dirt roads. When they dipped or curved suddenly, she worked the brakes and decreased the speed so the Rover wouldn’t overturn.

  Guidry, though, didn’t seem concerned about any of that happening to him. He drove fast and had no problem handling the terrain. In a few minutes, she lost sight of him.

  She thought the road would never stop curving, but then it did, and now she was driving across a long, mostly flat stretch. Far ahead, maybe half a mile away, she saw curtains of fire raining ash and the orange sparks of what she thought were embers across the valleys of sunbaked land.

  Where was the Mercedes? Ellie had both hands on the wheel and leaned forward, eyes darting back and forth, searching for the SUV. She crested an incline and then saw it less than a quarter of a mile away, parked at an angle along the dirt shoulder to her left—and saw Guidry standing outside. She knew it was Guidry because, as she tore down the road, drawing closer, she saw him staring into the scope attached to a sniper rifle with a bipod propped on the hood. His back was toward her and he was using the SUV for cover, and she caught a quick glimpse of the rifle—a massive, mean-looking weapon probably equipped with .50-caliber rounds. And he did, in fact, have night-vision gear; she saw it mounted on his head.

  Ellie saw a muzzle flash from his rifle. She flinched against her seat belt and gripped the wheel even tighter as Guidry fired off a second round. He smoothly picked the rifle off the hood like he was grabbing a suitcase, and then he turned around and brought the rifle up.

  Aiming it at her.

  Ellie knew Guidry could see her clearly, thanks to the night-vision goggles mounted across his eyes. Every cell in her body screamed for her to turn around, but it was too late to do that. She veered left, into the bumpy terrain full of scrub brush, and as she bounced in her seat, the top of her head slamming into the cab’s ceiling and Grace behind her screaming questions, Ellie wondered what grade of bulletproof glass had been installed in the Rover. She doubted it would withstand a .50-caliber round.

  Then she turned the wheel hard right, heading back to the road, Guidry trying to guess where she would turn and trying to compensate. He held the sniper rifle like the tr
ained marksman he was. She kept driving wildly, her foot never letting up on the accelerator, narrowing the distance between them.

  Her heart seized in her chest when she saw the muzzle flash leap from his rifle.

  The round penetrated the windshield to her right. She turned the wheel again, and in the rearview she caught Grace jumping against her seat belt; but Grace didn’t scream, even when her frightened gaze locked on the golf ball–sized hole left by the round. The hole had splintered, but the cracks hadn’t spread into Ellie’s field of vision. She could see well enough, and she righted the wheel and kept her foot on the gas and charged toward him at full throttle. Guidry lowered his weapon, realizing, maybe for the first time in his life, that he might not live to fight another day. He knew he wouldn’t be able to make it inside his car in time, which left him only one option: running.

  The rifle was heavy and cumbersome. He should have dropped it before turning to run, but he held it tight. He was trying to make his way around the front of the Mercedes when the rifle stock slammed against the front side of the SUV and slowed him down. Then he dropped it, but it was too late. Ellie hit him full-on, with the steel bullbar.

  Instead of flinging him across the windshield and tossing him over the roof and into the air, the bar slammed him forward. Ellie caught his shocked expression before he disappeared, thrown downward and underneath the Rover. Ellie didn’t slow down, but she did glance in the rearview, and looking past Grace’s horrified expression, she saw the crushed and twisted remains and felt her stomach lurch. Ellie looked away, back to the road in front of her, and as it dipped she saw, through the smoke, both Sebastian and Paul on the ground. Only Paul, though, appeared to be moving.

  Ellie skidded to a stop. She turned in her seat and said, “Stay in the car—and don’t roll down the windows. Understand?”

  Grace’s face had gone slack with shock. “You ran him over. You ran—”

  “Do you understand?”

  Grace flinched, then nodded, trying to catch her breath. Ellie grabbed her rifle and got out, slamming the door behind her.

  The heat from the surrounding fires was intense. Smoke filled her lungs and her eyes watered and burned and it hurt to breathe. She moved forward, looking down the sight at Paul. She saw a handgun lying on the road and she saw him lying flat on his stomach and his fingers clawing at the dirt as he tried to pull himself forward, tried to get some distance from the road fire that was moments away from engulfing the crushed shell of the Lamborghini. Paul was heading for the vehicle Sebastian had taken. It was also mangled, the hood crushed but the car still drivable; she could hear the motor running.

  The gun was behind Paul. His pants leg, she noticed, was rolled up, over the calf, revealing the ankle holster strapped to it. There was no way Paul could reach the gun, but she kept her attention locked on him as she knelt next to Sebastian’s head. Ellie couldn’t stop coughing.

  Sebastian was coughing, too—weakly. He lay on his side, eyes blinking rapidly as he stared down at his hands. They were pressed against the entry wound in his stomach; he was desperately trying to stem the flow of blood that was leaking through his fingers.

  “Guidry,” Sebastian said. “I think he shot me. He’s—”

  “He’s dead.” Ellie ripped open the front of Sebastian’s jacket, then his shirt, saw that a sizable round had penetrated the vest. Only an armor-piercing round could have done this, she thought.

  The blood pooled around Sebastian looked as black as oil in the firelight.

  “I can’t feel my legs,” he said, his voice surprisingly strong and clear.

  Eyeing Paul, who was focused solely on trying to reach Sebastian’s vehicle, which was never going to happen, not at Paul’s current pace, Ellie craned her head over Sebastian’s shoulder. The back of his Windbreaker was slick with blood and peppered with bullet holes. When she lifted up the Windbreaker and shirt, she saw that more rounds had penetrated the vest, knew that the handgun lying on the road had been equipped with armor-piercing ammo as well.

  “Grace?” Sebastian asked.

  “In the car.”

  The black fabric of the vest, Ellie saw, had been blown apart. When she saw the gaping exit wound in his back, the stomach-churning devastation caused by Guidry’s sniper round, she knew Sebastian had only minutes left.

  “Help me up,” Sebastian said. “We need to get out of here.”

  Ellie lowered her head closer to the ground, to get away from the smoke, watching Paul as she said, “You’ve lost too much blood. Even if I could get you to the hospital, they wouldn’t be able to save you. I’m sorry.”

  His eyes went wide with fear, Sebastian realizing, she suspected, that he was dying, all of his options used up, no way to turn back.

  “Grace doesn’t know,” he said.

  “Know what?”

  “That I’m her father. Bring her. Bring her to me so I can tell her.”

  For a brief moment she saw a window into his humanity. “Your carriers,” she said. “Where are they?”

  Sebastian was looking off in the direction of the Range Rover. “I need to tell her. She needs to hear it from me.” Then, when she didn’t answer: “I can’t die without her knowing. Please.”

  The desperate, terrified look in his eyes broke her heart.

  “Tell me where your carriers are,” she said, “and I promise I’ll take care of them.”

  Sebastian told her. Ellie leaned an ear closer to his mouth and made him repeat it to make sure she had heard him correctly.

  CHAPTER 53

  WHEN FAYE HAD scrambled to her feet, she staggered up the road, coughing, heading back to the Range Rover, its bright lights shining down on Sebastian like the eyes of God.

  Sebastian knew he was dying. The moment he’d reached around his back and prodded the exit wound with his fingers, his intestines coiling out from it like a nest of snakes, he knew he was going to die right here, on this dirt road.

  But he wasn’t alone. He had Paul for company.

  The fire had caught up to him. Sebastian had Paul’s agonizing, almost inhuman-sounding howls to keep him company. Sebastian turned his head and saw Paul lying on his back and frantically flapping his arms, trying to smother the flames devouring his legs.

  At least, Sebastian thought, I have this.

  Faye had heard Paul, too. Sebastian saw her whip her head around and look back down the road, past him.

  Sebastian looked only at the Rover. He squinted against the harsh bright white lights, hoping to catch a glimpse of Grace somewhere behind the reflection of the flames dancing across the tinted glass. He needed Grace to know something about him. That was how you continued to live long after you were gone, by sharing the story of your life. It made you real, kept you from fading away.

  But what would he tell her? Maybe start with a quick story about him and her mother, how they’d met (sophomore year of high school, when Ava and her family moved into the neighborhood); the exact moment when he fell in love with her (when Ava held his hand for the first time, at a football game); about their first kiss (on a brown couch at Kim Jackson’s house party, Ava drunk on wine poured from a box, Ava making the first move). He wanted to tell Grace how Ava, at sixteen, was already so confident, so sure of her place in the world. How if he lived with her for a hundred years he would come away knowing only a fraction of the world that lived behind her beautiful brown eyes; how when he saw those eyes for the first time they soothed that rage inside him, made him feel that everything was going to be okay—not perfect but okay. He wanted to tell his daughter how he had dreamed of this moment before she was born, being married to her mother and having kids. A family. He wanted—

  CHAPTER 54

  AVA CAME AWAKE to the sound of the doorbell, police lights flashing across her front windows.

  She had fallen asleep on the couch. Her mind was numb with fatigue and worry and too muc
h wine, and when she saw rising from the plush chair directly across from her a thin white man with a red beard and dressed in a suit, she almost screamed.

  Then she remembered: she had invited him into her house. His name was John Bace, the LAPD detective who had taken over her daughter’s case. Detective Alves was still hospitalized.

  John Bace was smiling now. Right then, Ava knew the police had found her daughter—alive.

  It was like she was rising from the depths of an ocean. She broke the surface of the water, gasping, the sweet air filling her lungs and rinsing away the iron grip of fear that had laid claim to her mind, body, and soul. Her eyes clouded with tears of relief and gratitude and she held on to the doorway to keep from falling.

  Detective Bace grabbed her by the arm. “Easy,” he said. “Easy. Everything’s fine. Your daughter is fine.”

  “Where?”

  “At a hospital in Ojai. No, she’s okay, I swear. Come on—I’ll take you to her.”

  Ava headed to Bace’s department car, a black Ford Fusion. She got into the back, and she didn’t realize she’d forgotten to put on her shoes until Bace brought them to her.

  “I want to talk to her,” Ava said, after Bace slid behind the wheel.

  He looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Cell signals up that way are spotty, because of all the wildfires. And they’re running some tests—standard stuff, don’t worry—and they don’t allow cell phones back there. Where’s Charles? I thought he was staying with you.”

  “He went into the office.” Ava caught his confusion and said, “China is fifteen hours ahead of us. Charles wanted to be there when the markets open. I’ll call him and let him know what’s happening. He can meet us there. Go. Please.”