I sight a few seconds into the future to scope this hellhole out. No probs. So we split up. Me and Mia and Lonny creep through the lower floor while Nash and Sorry head upstairs. I step over a few filthy mattresses and some scattered clothing, women’s mostly. There’s a little altar in the corner that looks like someone got their Catholic and alien invasion imagery mixed up: half-burned votive candles, some incense and rosary beads, a drawing of a humanoid thing with a huge bulging head and big round eyes and a drooping fang or sucker thing hanging off its face. There’s also pictures of women, Skin girls by the look of it, tacked up on the wall behind the altar.
I stomp on the alter, suddenly furious for no reason except it feels good.
Sorry hollers there’s something upstairs we should see, so we turn around and step carefully up the stairs, trying not to fall through the rotten planks. I slip into a room that takes up the entire back half of the building. Sorry and Lonny are there, staring at some trash bags strewn around on the floor.
The scent of death is so thick it makes my mouth water and and my hackles rise. I pull out the Glock I grabbed at the safe house just for the fuck of it.
Sorry carefully toes one of the garbage bags and steps back, wrinkling his nose. My little bro always did have a weak stomach.
I edge further into the room, and when I get closer I see they’re not garbage bags at all. They’re the heavy-duty bags used to carry biomedical waste, like from bodies infected with ebola and shit. I lean down, unzip one a few inches and look inside.
My wolf growls and snaps his jaws. He hates this twisted shit. Grotty apartments and body bags and whacked-out altars created by douchebag doomsday cults. The building reeks of diseased minds and twisted souls and all the nasty, corrupted shit the Skins and Stricken seem to thrive on. The Skins say mother nature’s brutal and savage. And that might be true. But at least she’s not…evil. There’s law in the wild. Order. But here? Among all this so-called civilization? There’s only—
“Sick fucks,” I mutter.
“Aaron?” Mia asks.
I zip up the bag.
There’s a woman’s body inside, bloated and green-blue. She’s been rotting for a while. Her eyes have been eaten or…burned out. I look around the room. There must be a dozen bags, and now that I’m noticing they’re not really strewn but arranged. Each one is connected to the other by a clear plastic tube, about a half inch wide, running along the floor.
“You scent that?” Sorry says.
“I sure as fuck do,” Nash answers.
Stricken. Shoulda known a psycho like our cult pal Mr. Holy Anointed What’s-His-Ass would be a twisted Stricken lackey.
“It’s a fucking lair,” Nash says, sounding excited.
“The bastard brings the girls in with stories about the end of the world,” Mia says, leaning over a partially opened sack. “Makes them feel safe for a while. Gives them a few easy answers. And he’s not lying. It is the end of their world.”
Mia zips up the bag. Her face has turned glittery green-blue with a thousand tiny scales.
“Alright, but where the fuck is he?” Sorry says. “And if it’s a lair…what are the Stricken doing with these girls?”
I’m thinking the same thing.
I’d like a little Stricken heart served blood-rare. And I’d like some answers. Like what the hell these twisted assholes were doing unloading automatic machine guns in my bar—
One of the bags begins moving.
Or more exactly: twitching.
I order Sorry to cover the door and head on over, dropping my fangs and claws on the way, then zip open the bag.
At first I don’t see much beside another dead Skin girl. But then the dead woman’s stomach shifts, just a little. I wait, barely breathing, trying to stay focused on what’s around me, the overpowering reek of decay and madness, the moldy smell of the rotting wood, the dust of old bricks and the sounds of Seattle at dusk outside.
Everything’s cool, I tell myself. Everything’s fucking ducky.
Then something small and sharp punches through the dead woman’s swollen belly.
I watch, more curious than disgusted, as a pale, long-limbed crab-human creature with hooked front pinchers wriggles out of the woman’s belly. It’s slick with some kind of grey mucus. The thing’s eyes are welded closed, but it lifts it’s oval-shaped head in my direction, sniffs, then opens a mouth that stretches right across it’s ugly little face, revealing row upon row of razor teeth.
I reach in and poke the little bastard with the mean end of the Glock.
The creature recoils slightly at the touch of cold metal, then screeches and swipes at the gun, knocking my hand away.
It’s surprisingly strong. Its eyes are beginning to open, and I see a pale green glow underneath.
“What the fuck is that?” Mia says.
“A natural born Stricken,” I say, trying to keep my voice even.
“But they…that’s not possible. The predator lines haven’t reproduced—”
“In eons,” I say. “Looks like things have changed.”
“Someone’s breeding them,” Mia says. “These girls…someone’s using them to breed Stricken.”
“Tell you what,” I say. “We need to find this Priest Holy Reverend Asshole. And we need to kill him.”
“Does its blood burn?” Nash asks.
I think I already know the answer, but I slip out my knife and slam it straight through the creature’s chest, pinning it to the floor. It shrieks and writhes, then dies.
“Well that’s a good thing,” I say. “It can be killed with steel.”
I cut its chest open, then carefully dip my finger in its black blood.
“Doesn’t burn,” I say, surprised by the relief in my voice.
I tear out the creature’s heart and lift it up for the crew to see.
“Oh, yum,” Mia says. “Give it to me, lover.”
“Not you,” Mia. “You got some making up to do.”
Mia flashes me a pouty glare.
Instead I motion Lonny over and hand him the Stricken heart. “For wrecking the Caddy,” I tell him. “And by the way—you’re patched in. Not that there’s much of an MC anymore.”
“There’s an MC,” Lonny says with a wide grin. “We just culled the weakest members.” Lonny pops the infant Stricken heart in his mouth and swallows in a single gulp.
“Tender,” he says, licking his lips. “Juicy.”
But something’s wrong.
Lonny’s skin is rippling, his fangs dropping.
“What’s the matter, Prez?” Lonny asks, seeing my look of concern.
“Keep it inside, Lonny. Keep the animal caged.”
“What the fuck are you—” Lonny begins, but he raises his hand and sees his claws and you bet your ass he’s worried. Very worried. His animal’s loose inside him, straining to bust free.
Lonny grips both hands around his neck, which is rapidly swelling tight against the iron collar. A thick black carpet of panther fur has sprouting along his arms. “I’m not…I can’t…” he says, but he doesn’t manage to finish, because the panther doesn’t speak in a human tongue, and Lonny’s on his knees now, his shoulders hunching up and his arms and legs lengthening.
“The animal’s close,” Mia says breathlessly. “Fucking help him, Aaron!”
I run over and crouch beside Lonny, grip his shoulder and peer into his eyes. “Stay with me, man,” I say, trying to speak calmly. But the collar is digging deep into Lonny’s neck, drawing blood.
Black blood.
My eyes widen in horror.
“You fucking see that, Prez?” Nash shouts. “You fucking see that?”
I do.
My friend’s animal is surfacing right before my eyes, and he’s bleeding the black blood of the Stricken filth I’ve been hunting since the First Fallen roamed and I have no idea how or why Lonny’s blood’s gone black but I know it’s shit news for all of us.
Lonny’s legs bend and buck and re-shape. He’d be
screaming if the collar wasn’t already cutting into his throat. I’m still holding his shoulder, trying to steady him. His muscles ripple and bulge beneath my hand, lean and powerful. The mighty panther uncaged, and all I can hope for is that my friend knows what a magnificent creature he is before he dies. He takes a swipe at me, mad with fear and pain, and his claws scratch across my chest.
Sorry and Nash and Mia stand at my side, watching a brother die.
We Purebloods aren’t immortal. We can be killed just as surely as a Skin…only not as easily.
There aren’t many still alive. Only the alpha of our species knows how many of us are left, and he’s vanished. No one’s seen or heard from him in centuries. He was once known as the One We Answer To. The alpha who ruled over all Pureblood and natural animals.
In other words, he’s a fucking fairy tale, just like the First Fallen—
Lonny’s twisting and squirming on the floor in a mad, pain-wracked, his useless half-formed panther legs digging into the wooden planks, smearing a circle of black blood around him, and I don’t even want to think about what that means, because if a Pureblood can be changed Stricken—
There’s a tiny metallic snap.
I blink, uncertain what the sound was but hit by a sense of dread unlike any I’ve ever known.
Lonny’s iron collar is lying on the floor beside him.
He’s broken free.
My wolf howls and wails, filled with envy, demanding freedom from these fucking collars.
He’s been waiting a long, long time.
Lonny the man is almost gone. In his place rises a night stalker, a shimmering black beast with glowing yellow eyes and fangs as long as a man’s finger and claws sharp enough to pierce steel. The panther is huge, twice the size of the ones born of earth.
It looks straight at me, snarls, licks its lips, and launches.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
LILY
I SPLURGE ON a cab home even though I can’t really afford it. It’s dusk. I haven’t slept in nearly forty-eight hours. I’m out of Adderall and that’s probably a good thing. My eyelids feel like lead, and my mind is a murky swamp. I sit in the cab and try to piece things together. Try to make sense of the last two days. But sometimes life doesn’t give you the luxury of making sense. Sometime’s its simply straight-up crazy, and the only thing you can do is strap yourself in and hang on for dear life.
That’s how I feel now, as tromp up the steps to my apartment and unlock my door. Like I’m losing control. I’ve felt this way before, after my mother was murdered. We build a life for ourselves, founded on nothing more than habit, and convince ourselves that routine has permanence.
But it doesn’t.
One event—call it bad luck or fate, it doesn’t matter—and the life we took for granted and thought was so permanent vanishes in a heartbeat, and we waking up going: who am I?
My apartment’s a tiny studio above a trendy vinyl record store in Seattle’s University District. Everything I own could fit in the back of a pick-up truck. A futon, a coffee table, a closet half-full of clothes. No TV. I tuned out of television years ago. Too much meaningless noise. No photos or pictures on the walls, either. I can’t find anything I like enough to see every single day.
I walk across the room and peer down onto a street lit by the yellow glow of streetlights. There’s a group of hipster university students about my age hanging out around the record store. Doing normal university-life things. Bitching about exams. Gossiping. Arguing about their vinyl collections or which late-night donair joint is best.
I’m suddenly envious of them.
I wonder about the moment my life changed forever. The day my mother was taken from me. Sarah Thompson. The kindest, most giving person I’ve ever known. What would mom say if she saw the life I’m living now?
She’d smile and say, “Three thing’s matter in this world, Lil. Family, friends and community. In that order.”
Well mom, lets see. I don’t have any family except a son I abandoned and my father, and Will’s been locked up in the Monroe Psychiatric Correctional Complex since your murder. Not like he was ever much of a father, right? Friends? Maybe one, and I abandoned her the other night to booty call a guy I’m not even sure I like. Community? Huh. You mean like this neighborhood?
I peer out the window at the chatting college kids, then loose a long sigh.
Mom had some hippy in her, for sure. Believed in reincarnation and chakras and all that eastern religion shit. Was big into colored crystals and gravity waves and energy vortexes. Spent a few years in a commune living off the grid in Idaho. She rarely talked about it, but one day when I pressed her about why she left she said, “You can’t change the world by removing yourself from it.”
She wanted to change the world. And maybe she was the last generation who could actually say that without an ironic sneer.
What do I want? A career that pays my bills and gives me enough money to travel. That’s about it. That’s the difference between my mother and me: she wanted something beyond herself. Believed in something bigger. I dunno. Maybe most of us have lost that ability. To want a better life not just for ourselves, but for those around us.
I settle into my lumpy futon, watching car headlights flicker across the ceiling and thinking of the girls we found recently. Murdered and thrown away. Trash.
That gets me thinking about some of the girls I used to hang with on the street. Alice. Patch. Charlene. Jen. How sometimes I’d go to the shelter and one of them wouldn’t show up. There’d be an empty spot on the couch where the missing girl liked to sit. There’d be a…hole in the conversation, like we were waiting to hear her voice. We wouldn’t say much of anything, as if speaking her name would mean she was really gone. But after a few days of a girl not showing up the cops would come in with her picture.
That was the kiss of death.
Once the cops are searching for you it’s already too late.
I remember feeling…helpless. At least the cops had their procedures. At least they were out there, searching. Doing something, even if that something was never enough. And there was this cop chick, I forget her name—and that bothers me, that I forget—one day I looked her straight in the eye and said, “You’re not going to find her. You never do.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “But we’re going to try.”
We’re going to try.
I guess I also want to try. I want to die knowing I tried to make things better, even if in the end it counts for shitballs.
Maybe I’m not so different from mom after all.
I get up and pull the drapes across the window. They’re lined with heavy fabric to block out the light. I sleep as little as possible, and usually during the day if I can.
I don’t sleep well at night.
Too many memories living in the darkness.
Memories that become dreams that seem almost real.
I latch the two deadbolts on the front door, strip off my stained and smelly clothes and take a shower, turning the hot water on full blast, steaming the entire apartment up. I’ve never been able to get my shower water hot enough.
I step out of the shower, bend down, open a drawer to dig out my house-robe and something solid and heavy smashes into the back of my head.
Boom.
You’re not going to find her.
There’s an explosion of red behind my eyes, then a thump as I hit the floor. I’m blinking, trying to figure out what’s happening when my arms are wrenched behind my waist. A plastic zap-strap makes an awful zipping sound as it cinches around my wrists. I try to scream but my tongue won’t move. The redness behind my eyes grows deeper, approaches midnight black.
Before I fade completely I see a pair of leather boots, the heavy one’s biker’s wear, then hear the tearing sound of duct tape being unrolled. The tape gets wrapped around my head so tight I can barely breathe, around and around, covering my mouth and eyes until only my nostrils are free. I find the strength to kick and squirm, to fight,
to try, knowing its useless but needing to do something.
A man’s leather-gloved hand pats me on the rear, then my ankles are zap-strapped together and all I can do is clench every muscle in my body, praying for some kind of hidden superhuman strength to burst me free, the kind of strength all children secretly believe they possess if only they knew the code to unlock it.
When we get older we call that secret strength god.
But there’s no superhuman strength, and there’s no fucking god. There’s only panic and fear and a heart that feels like its going to explode in my chest it’s beating so fast.
And if I’m wrong and there is a god I say fuck you god for making a world where kids are stolen and murdered and left behind dumpsters. Fuck you for a world where a woman’s eyes are burned out because she trusted the wrong guy. Yeah. Fuck you for a lot of things you could have just snapped your holy god fingers and done away with—
I’m gripped by the ankles and shoulders, then lifted into the air and carried a few steps. I smell my lavender shampoo in the steamy, too-warm air in the apartment. It doesn’t smell like lavender at all, I realize with the kind of senseless clarity a moment of absolute terror can bring.
It smells like chemicals.
I’m dropped on my belly. I’m still naked, and I realize I’m not on the hardwood floor. I’m lying on something…a rubbery and slightly sticky material.
Whatever it is smells like a hospital.
Like disinfectant and cleaning agents.
Then I hear a loud zipping sound and the material I’m lying on is wrapped around me. Oh god. They’re zipping into some kind of fucking bag. Oh god no, please. A body bag. Oh god help me you miserable old prick. Help me! You fucking asshole. Help me!
I kick and squirm and try and scream, but it’s too late.
It’s always too late, isn’t it?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
RODAS
“THE ONES WHO bleed black must have their hearts torn out and their heads burned,” Tamara says, stepping over the remains of the audience members scattered across the polished concrete floor. “Or they will heal and rise again.”
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