Blood and Fire

by McKenna, Shannon

  Except that she was sweating, profusely. A glance through the open bathroom door at the mirror over the sink confirmed that she was red, hot, her face shiny. She’d have to wait a few moments before she was presentable. Very bad. Mhe needed to have her programming sequences tweaked, or her meds. She’d have to tell King. The thought made her wince, but keeping secrets would be a far worse infraction.

  In her training period, overexcitement had always been her downfall. She’d risked being culled for it on every single cull day. King always concluded that her other gifts compensated for that glitch.

  God, how she hoped he’d continue to think so.

  Zoe peeled off the gloves, tucked them in the bag she’d prepared for them. Took off the rest of the plastic, folding it carefully. Put on fresh latex to peel off Howie’s gag, fish out the ball, the Ace bandage.

  She closed his hand carefully around the bloody shard, pressing his fingerprints over it again. Dropped it gently into the dark pool.

  She peered out the window one more time, seized with sudden tension when she did not see Lily Parr in the garden, or Cal’s cab.

  Could Cal have possibly already come and gone away with her, while Zoe was busy with Howard? She certainly hoped so. She peered down the road, wondering if she should call . . . No. She had to concentrate on her part. No distractions. Distraction would be her downfall.

  She pulled the door shut, quietly stowed her bag, and poked her head into the nurses’ station. “I’m running down to grab coffee and a muffin from the bakery cart,” she said to her colleague, marveling at her own perfectly casual tone. “Want one?”

  “No, I’m good,” the woman said. “See you in a few.”

  Zoe unlocked the ward, exchanged some flirtatious comments with the guard, and called the elevator. God, she was good. Now, a shot of simple carbs to calm the jitters, slow down her heartbeat, and it would be time for the fun part. The discovery, the trauma, the blood.

  Too bad she couldn’t tape the show somehow, for King’s benefit.

  She had to fight not to giggle, imagining it.

  Lily was foul-tempered and footsore by the time she got on the uptown West Side express train. Her stupid impulse du jour had reminded her, in itchy, crawling detail, why she didn’t do nature. She’d misjudged the time it would take to walk to the Shaversham Point train station by two endless, plodding hours, and arrived at the train station stumbling with exhaustion, chilled to the bone, shoes slimed with mud, and creeping, itchy sensations under her clothes. Ticks? Spiders? Ick.

  By some pathetic crumb of luck, she’d burst out of a thicket next to the train tracks just as the last NYC-bound train was about to leave. She practically decapitated herself diving for the open door and spent the trip taking notes about Howard’s revelations, jotting them on the laptop to fix the details in her mind. She left three messages on Stark’s voice mail during the trip, and two more during the exhausting cross-town walk through underground tunnels to the uptown West Side trains. Too busy to call her back? Damn doctors.

  The only thing that made it all bearable was the fact that Nina had promised her Indian food, a soothing cool mango lassi to wash it down, and sympathy. Lily was desperately in need of all three. She was mustering the oomph to climb the stairs to street level when the phone finally buzzed. Howard’s doctor. Finally. She snatched it out of her purse, covering her other ear in a vain attempt to block out the rattling screech of the train as it pulled out. She yelled into it. “Dr. Stark? I’m so glad you called! I wanted to talk to you about Howard.”

  “Lily. I have bad news.” His voice was unusually stiff.

  Bad news? What strength she had drained promptly out of her legs and left her wobbling on the stairs. What could be worse about Howard’s condition other than . . .

  Her belly lurched with dread. “What bad news?”

  “I’m so sorry to tell you this,” the doctor said. “But after you left this afternoon, I’m afraid Howard, ah . . . well, he took his own life.”

  “Took his own . . .” Her voice trailed off. “He what?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Afraid so? Afraid of what? What the fuck did this guy have to be afraid of? She was the one who’d lived in fear for eighteen goddamn years.

  Her mind picked at the guy’s stupid word choice so she didn’t have to process what he’d actually said. What it meant for her.

  Ah, God. For so long now, the whole purpose of her existence had been to stop Howard from doing this. And he’d done it anyway. After all these years. All the nets she’d held out. They hadn’t been enough to catch him. All pointless. All her frantic effort. Flailing like an idiot. Oh, God.

  Stark’s voice droned on. She couldn’t make out his words. She was seeing all the times she’d found Howard on the floor and sat with him there for hours, waiting for him to wake up. Feeling his pulse, holding a mirror in front of his nose, trying to judge if this was a normal opiate binge that he would sleep off, or one of the deadly biggies, before she called the ambulance, again, and wasted the EMTs’ valuable time, to say nothing of her meager household budget.

  The man’s whole fucking life, one long goddamn suicide attempt.

  And he’d pulled it off. That selfish bastard. She wanted to scream, explode, shoot things, smash things. Her chest burned, her throat was imploding. She felt stupid. Made a fool of once again. Just another little joke of Fate at Lily Parr’s expense. Hah, hah.

  Dr. Stark’s voice came back into focus. “. . . what arrangements need to be made, so you should contact our administrative—”

  “How?” she cut in.

  “Uh . . . uh, what? You mean, how should you contact our administrative—”

  “No, I mean, how did he do it? Was it pills? Where the fuck did he get pills in that place? What the fuck was I paying you guys for? Wasn’t he locked up? Wasn’t he guarded, watched all the time? Wasn’t that the deal we made? I pay, you guys watch? Exactly what part of that arrangement was unclear to you?”

  Stark hesitated, clearing his throat nervously for several seconds. “Ah, well, no. It wasn’t pills. Believe me, Lily, I’m mortified about this. We’re all so shocked . . . We just can’t imagine how he found it. He got a piece of broken glass someplace, evidently. I can’t imagine where, or from what. He never went out, and you were his only visitor. He was constantly supervised. I’m so sorry, Lily, but he opened the artery in his wrist with the glass shard. It was probably over in a couple of minutes.”

  “Bullshit,” she said.

  That cut off Stark’s monologue, startling him into a nervous stammer. “Ah . . . ah, ex-excuse me?”

  “I said, that’s bullshit,” she repeated. “Howard would never cut himself. Not in a million years. He was terrified of blood. Blood made him pass out. Howard liked pills. He would never slit his wrist.”

  “Ah” Dr. Stark’s voice strengthened. “Well, I’m sorry to say it, Lily, but he did. He most unquestionably did. I saw him myself.”

  Then someone else killed him. She almost blurted it out, but stopped herself. Howard’s words echoed in her head.

  They’re listening, Lil. They’re always listening.

  The world retreated. She felt the jostle of people forcing their way past her on the stairs, but they seemed very far away, and the real Lily was deep within, locked in a place of breathless, gelid stillness.

  If I tell you, they’ll know. They’ll come for you. They’ll kill both of us.

  She clawed her way back. Forced lungs to breathe, legs to climb. She tried to tune in to what Stark was saying, but there was so much noise. Her ears buzzed. So loud. She stumbled out onto the sidewalk. Autopilot guided her toward Nina’s apartment.

  “Who was the last one to see him?” she blurted, cutting off the senseless babble from the phone.

  Stark made a huffy sound. He did not like to be interrupted. “As I said, the nurse on duty, Miriam Vargas, was the one who found him.”

  The cold inside her deepened, spread. “I want to talk to he
r,” Lily said. “Now. I’ll come right back up. I’ll take the next train.”

  “No,” Stark snapped. “You can’t speak to her now. She was shocked. She couldn’t stop crying. She’s been sedated.”

  “Oh, really? That poor, sweet baby. You’re breaking my heart.”

  Stark sucked in air audibly. “Ms. Parr,” he said, his voice tight and prissy with disapproval. “I know this is shocking news for you, and very painful. It’s impossible to accept all at once. You might need help processing it, and no one could blame you, believe me. If you like, I can give you the number of someone you can call—”

  “She’ll have stopped crying by tomorrow, right?” She couldn’t keep the edge out of her voice. “Will the drugs have worn off by then?”

  “Leave the interviews to the professionals.” Stark’s voice was crisp. “There will be a police investigation. The last thing Miriam needs is for distraught family members to descend upon her and—”

  “To be honest, Dr. Stark, I really don’t care what Miriam needs.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you cared what Howard needed, either!”

  Lily stopped dead, jaw sagging. “Excuse me?” she said. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Ms. Vargas gave me a full report of what transpired between you and she and Howard this afternoon, Ms. Parr—”

  “Well, then, she lied!” This conversation was a lost cause, but so was her self-control. “She was the one who agitated him, not me! And Howard would never have cut himself!”

  “Ms. Parr?”

  The new voice called to her, from outside the babble of the doctor’s scolding voice coming through her cell. Lily looked around to see where it was coming from.

  A man in a gray hoodie, standing above her on Nina’s stoop. Young, dark-haired, good-looking. Smiling a blank sort of smile. He was familiar. The kind of familiar when you don’t really know a person, but you see him regularly, like the guy who sold her bananas from the fruit cart on the corner. She knew him, but from where . . .?

  It exploded in her mind, jolting alarm through her rattled system. The cab driver from the Shaversham Point train station. What in the hell was he . . . oh. Oh, God. Oh, shit.

  And this was Nina’s apartment. Not even her own place. So how did they . . . how could they . . . her mind couldn’t even embrace it.

  How had he known where she was?

  She looked at the cell phone in her hand, heard the tinny warbling still coming from it. Dr. Stark was continuing his rant, but she no longer heard him. She had bigger problems now. Much bigger.

  Her heart thudded. Her eyes locked with his and stuck there.

  He took a step toward her. “Can I have a word with you, please?”

  The scrape of a door sliding open behind her. It was a big SUV, humming on the curb. It all came together. The prickles on her neck, Howard’s garbled confession, his impossible suicide.

  And now, this guy with the blank, empty smile advancing on her from above, and the open SUV yawning behind—

  Fuck this. She flashed the guy her most blinding bimbo bombshell smile. “Oh, my God! You’re the cabbie, right? The guy from Shaversham Point?” Her voice sounded high and thin and stupid. “Look, I’m, like, so sorry about standing you up for that cab ride, but things got really crazy for me today! But I do owe you that fare, and a tip, so let me just get that for ya right now, ’kay?” She beamed, reached in her purse—

  Whipped out the Mace can. Squirt. Sucker punched.

  The man reeled back, clawing at his eyes. She twirled to meet the other guy, heaving her computer bag in an arc into his face. He whipped his arm up to block it. She used that split second to zap a front kick to his crotch. He stumbled back with a grunt of outrage.

  She recognized the other guy as his leg snapped up and his boot heel cracked agonizingly against her wrist. The Mace can flew, bounced, rolled. She scrambled back into a cluster of garbage cans. Kicked one into his path. He bounded over it, blade glinting, slashing down—

  Thud. She ran backward into a parked car, did a flying flip-’n’roll over the hood, and hit the street at a dead run. She darted between cars, heedless of braying horns, squealing brakes. Guy Number Two was another cabbie from Shaversham Point. Normal reality had ripped open, releasing demons from hell. Busy street. She needed an avenue block, a subway stop. Witnesses. She groped for her phone. Gone.

  Her legs pumped, past the Indian restaurant, the sushi bar, the Laundromat, the clothing boutique, the florist. No one in those places could defend her against knife-wielding demons while she called 911 and waited for the cops to sort it out. She’d be meat. So would they.

  She peeked over her shoulder and shit, he was gaining. Subway stairs. She flew down the steps, praying that it was a turnstile one, not the revolving cage with no fare booth. It had turnstiles, thank God, but the fare booth was closed, just an automated machine. No one to see her plight, call the cops. A train pulled in, squealing. She leaped the turnstile like a jackrabbit, sped toward the train on the tracks, its doors agape. Ping, the doors were closing. She dove for it.

  Crunch, the closing doors stuck on her shoulders and gnawed at her, burping and hiccupping in their efforts to close around her body. Pinned. She could only twist her head and watch death pounding down the stairs, straight toward her. The door lurched open. She tumbled inside, ambled like a crab on the floor to the middle of the car. Her legs shook too much to get up. He was going to make it inside, too.

  Whoosh, the doors slid closed in his face. Thunk, her attacker slammed into the train. He tried to pry his fingers into the rubberized closure, scrabbling. The train took off, smoothly gaining speed.

  The guy jogged alongside, shouting something unintelligible. He bared his teeth, mouthed something vicious, grabbed at his crotch.

  Lily huddled on the floor, breath rasping in and out. There was almost no one in the subway car. A teenage girl with earbuds, rocking out to her iPod, eyes shut. A homeless man, fast asleep and taking up a row of seats. An exhausted middle-aged woman, looking carefully away, wanting only to get home from work and put her butt into a chair.

  Something warm and wet on her hand. Blood, dripping from a slash on her forearm. Heavy drops pattered onto the floor.

  Wow. He’d cut her outside of Nina’s apartment. She hadn’t even noticed, she’d been so frantic. She stared at it stupidly for a moment, then pulled off her hoodie, wadded up the cloth of her sleeve, and applied direct pressure. She was chilly without the sweatshirt. Tremors racked her. She couldn’t tell if it was shock or cold. Both, probably.

  Outside Nina’s apartment. How in the hell had they known she wasn’t going straight home? She’d made her evening plans with Nina via cell phone, during the train ride. They were spying on her phone?

  Or worse, they were spying on Nina’s phone. That unleashed an even deeper, nastier thrill of dread. The killers knew all about her. They knew about her best friend. They probably knew everyone in the world she might call on for help. God knows, it was a short list, at this point.

  She couldn’t even call Nina, make sure she was OK. Any contact would put her friend in more danger. The blood on the floor made her think of Howard’s shard of glass, and the anger and shock were sucked into the deeper, wider well of agonizing sadness.

  When she came to her senses, she was huddled up, gasping for air. Rocking, like an autistic child. Like Howard before a suicidal pill binge. So this was why he did it. This was how it had felt to him.

  She didn’t know which direction the train was going. People got on and off, stepping around her. She wanted to get up, but her muscles wouldn’t move. Fear had frozen her stiff.

  She used to scold Howard for that obsessive rocking. It had infuriated her. It came across as so childish, so self-indulgent.

  But he’d never been able to stop, once he’d started.

  Now she knew why. Oh, Dad. Finally, she got it.

  4

  Portland, Oregon

  Six weeks later

>   I have important things to do. You are not one of them.

  The nonverbal message vibing off the hard-ass brunette’s haughtily turned back was impossible for Bruno to misinterpret. But perverse, self-flagellating idiot that he was, it went straight to his dick.

  She’d walked into Tony’s Diner at 3:45 A.M., and he’d swear to God, he’d felt her coming before she even turned the corner and moved into the light uder the awning outside. He was primed for her, after the last two nights of torture and titillation.

  Fate had been kind. After hours of anticipation, finally the follicles on his skin tightened, lifting hairs on end in a breezy, ticklish rush of animal awareness. The bells over the doors jingled. Ta-da.

  His hair follicles weren’t all that lifted and tightened. Good thing he wore an apron over his jeans. When the chick with the black pageboy sashayed into Tony’s Diner, no matter how blitzed from lack of sleep he was, his glands promptly pumped a substance into his body that made him want to break into an oldtime movie dance number. An incredible rush. A tingling sense of infinite possibility combined with a mega-boner. A huge, awestruck “wow” from the depths of his being.

  She’d chosen a table today, rather than the counter. Each seating option offered different viewpoints, with varying advantages and disadvantages. He hadn’t yet settled on his favorite. The back view was nice for legs, ass, the graceful nipped-in curve of her back, the nape of her slender, soft-looking neck, and he could do a lot of easy, blatant ogling while hustling around behind her back. When she took a table, he got more frontal scoping action but had to resort to old tricks from adolescence, developed before he’d discovered the ease and simplicity of mirrored sunglasses. Take it in, in one sweeping glance, and then pore over the gathered data in the privacy of his own dirty mind. He could never gulp enough of this girl in a single glance, though. He wanted to sit down across from her. Fix her with an unblinking, predatory stare.