Dreams of Shreds and Tatters

by Amanda Downum

  “Not everyone wants to be rescued,” Alex murmured as he and Liz started down the dirt path toward the parking lot.

  Liz frowned and huddled deeper into her coat. Her skirt slapped against her boots as she walked. “That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t offer.”

  He glanced back as they reached the blacktop; through his fogging glasses Antja was a dark shape, nearly lost in the haze. Taillights flared as Rainer and his friends pulled away.

  As Liz and Alex neared their car, three people melted out of the deepening gloom. Two men and a woman—no one from the service. One man walked with a pained shuffle like a stroke victim, while the other hunched and hugged himself. Over the rain and earth and wet asphalt, Alex smelled the rank sourness of unwashed flesh, and something else, cloying and sickly sweet.

  The woman moved with a disturbing, disjointed grace. Dark hair streamed down her cheeks and shoulders, and her coat hung open over a slinky cocktail dress. Her feet were bare and tar-black with mud. Liz stared at her and stiffened.

  “Can we help you?” Alex asked, tightening his grip on the umbrella. Not much of a weapon. Pity he didn’t have a steel-lined bowler to match.

  “I know you,” the woman whispered, her glassy black eyes locked on Liz. “The dreamer, the door-opener. I saw you on the threshold. The King let you in.”

  Alex slipped his free hand into his pocket for the keys, calculating the distance to the car. He risked a glance over his shoulder, but Antja was lost in the shadows. The rain was falling harder. Where the hell was a Mountie when you needed one?

  “I don’t want in,” Liz said, as if the woman made sense to her. “I just want to get my friend out.”

  The woman laughed. “Why would anyone want out? Haven’t you seen him? You opened the door—open it for me. I need to be there.”

  Liz shook her head, hands clenching at her sides. Rain darkened her hair, plastered her bangs to her skin. “I can’t. It’s too much. My friend is drowning in there.”

  “He’s with the King. Where we all should be. The maenads promised I would join their hunt.”

  She moved closer, stretching out a hand. Alex swallowed his rising gorge at the sight of her bloody, broken fingernails. He took a step toward Liz, but the shuffling man hissed and he recoiled.

  The woman caught Liz’s shoulder. “I can smell it on you. You have to take us there. They promised.”

  Liz shook her head, scattering rain. “I can’t help you.”

  The woman grinned. “Don’t you remember what happened to Orpheus, little girl?”

  Alex shook off his stupor, thumbing the umbrella’s catch and tugging it closed. Icy needles of rain stung his face and streaked his glasses. “Leave her alone.”

  The woman laughed. The shuffler lunged with animal speed. Alex swung, and the jolt of plastic against flesh jarred his arm all the way to the shoulder. The man ripped the umbrella out of his hand and knocked him sprawling to the flooded pavement.

  Breath left in a painful rush. Over his ringing ears he heard Liz shout, but the world was a wash of rain and movement as his glasses slipped down his nose. He pushed himself up and saw the woman wrestling Liz to the ground. Then the shuffler was on him again, his face a waxen grey blur in the shadow of his hood as he seized Alex by his jacket and hauled him upright. His glasses tumbled to the asphalt. The man hissed again, and through the myopic haze his teeth looked sharper than they should.

  Somewhere behind them, Antja shouted. Alex would have let out a grateful breath if he’d had any to spare. The shuffler glanced up, evaluating the new threat, and Alex kicked him. It would have been the euphemistic foul blow, but his aim was off and instead his foot connected with the man’s knee. Cartilage crunched, but his attacker didn’t let go.

  Antja screamed.

  He’d thought she was loud the night before, but that was nothing. The shuffler stumbled back, dropping Alex. The man opened his mouth in a moan, but Alex couldn’t hear anything; his skull was unraveling at the seams. He would never have imagined her husky contralto could reach such a note, let alone hold it so long.

  It stopped abruptly, choked off. Blood throbbed in Alex’s ears and the world swayed beneath him. He could only sit, gravel scraping his palms and rain soaking his clothes. The shuffler shook himself like a dog, flinging water. Liz and the woman were still sprawled in a tangle of limbs. So where was the third—

  Alex turned, head throbbing, and saw the second man struggling with Antja, his hands locked around her throat. Not as efficacious a rescue as he’d hoped. He staggered up, swallowing bile. The sickly stench of their attackers clung to him, coated his tongue. How could he help anyone when he could barely stand?

  Liz yelped in pain and his stomach turned over. He stumbled toward her, grabbed at the other woman, and took an elbow in the chest for his trouble. Asphalt scored his hand as he caught himself. Useless!

  The air was too thick, too wet, and the pain in his head metastasized into something sharp and electric and blinding. Adrenaline coursed through him until he thought his skin would spark.

  “Let her go!” The words hurt, like swallowing a too-large mouthful. His head rang with them.

  The woman flung herself backwards off Liz, baring bloody teeth in a snarl. A shot cracked and Alex flinched. Well and truly deaf now, he spun toward the sound.

  Antja’s attacker had fallen. She stumbled away, clutching her throat. Alex knelt, groping for his glasses—not broken, thank god, only scratched and mud-splattered. The world snapped into focus again in time to see the man in the black coat walking toward them, a gun in his hand.

  No, he realized. A woman. She held the gun in a steady, twohanded grip. In a film her coat would have billowed dramatically around her, but she was as drenched as the rest of them.

  The muzzle flashed once, twice, before Alex could do more than flinch. Liz’s attacker—the maenad—slumped to the ground.

  “Everyone all right?” the woman asked. Her voice was harsh and distant through Alex’s ringing ears.

  For a moment he could only stare at the black gun. Then Liz made a soft hysterical sound and he scrambled to her side. Red scratches scored her cheek, dripping pink in the rain, and she cradled her left hand to her chest.

  “Are you hurt?” He felt his mouth shape the words, but his voice was queer and not his own.

  Liz looked up, her eyes wide and dark. “She bit me.”

  The maenad stirred, bloody hands scrabbling at the blacktop. Before she could rise, the gunwoman aimed and pulled the trigger again. Chunks of brain spewed like hamburger across the wet asphalt. Liz gasped, high and quick, and Alex choked down stomach acid. But when the corpse fell, baring the ruin of her once-pretty face, he couldn’t control his stomach any longer. He stumbled away from Liz to vomit up his lunch.

  “For fuck’s sake!” He scrubbed sour spit off his mouth as he stood. “Was that necessary?”

  The woman’s smile was sharp and cold. “You tell me.” She gestured toward Antja’s attacker.

  The man sat up, jerky marionette movements like some obscene Saint Vitus dance. Never mind the hole in his chest, the blood seeping across his shirt.

  “What do you think is necessary?” the woman asked. The pistol was trained and steady in her hand, but she didn’t fire.

  Alex swallowed the foul taste in his mouth. “Call the police. Call an ambulance.”

  The man rose, a black stain spreading down his shirt and dripping from the hem. He touched the wound and stared at his bloody fingers, then turned and bolted for the trees with that impossible animal speed. The woman let him go.

  Alex looked back at the shuffler, but he was down for good; the first shot had struck his head. A bloody halo like a think bubble dissolved in the rain.

  Liz rose, shaking, and Alex helped her stand. Beneath mud and blood her face was pasty grey. “Who are you?”

  The gun disappeared back into the woman’s coat. She crouched and collected her spent shell casings, every motion quick and brutally efficient. “My name
is Lailah.” When the last flash of brass had vanished into her pockets, she knelt beside Antja. “Are you all right?”

  Antja’s throat was already bruising, and pink rivulets of blood trailed from a split lip. She drew a breath, but before she could speak Liz let out a startled exclamation.

  The maenad was deflating. As they stared, her skin darkened from grey to green to plum-black and began to slough. Fluids oozed from her shattered face. The stench sent Alex staggering back, fighting not to retch again. Hair drifted free of her skull and crumbled; within moments all that remained was a greasy-grey mass deliquescing inside filthy clothes.

  The same process was happening to the shuffler. Alex watched the necrotic mess leaking toward the car tires, and wondered how much extra the rental company would charge for that. Lailah turned her head and spat.

  Alex fumbled for his inhaler. “What just happened?” he asked when he could draw a breath again.

  “We should get out of here,” Lailah said. “Someone will have heard the shots.”

  Half of Vancouver must have heard the shots—his ears still rang, and sound carried farther in the rain. “And then you’ll tell us what the bloody fuck is going on?”

  “We’ll see.” Lailah helped Antja to her feet, catching her when she stumbled. “Do any of you need a doctor?”

  Antja shook her head and winced at the motion. “No. No hospitals.” The words were an ugly croak.

  Alex glanced down at Liz, but she didn’t argue. Lailah nodded. “Where do you want to go?”

  Antja took a step back. “Why would I go anywhere with you?”

  “Come with us,” Alex said before Lailah could respond. Antja studied him, perhaps as surprised by the offer as he was. Then she nodded.

  ALEX OCCUPIED HIMSELF on the drive back to the hotel by cataloging symptoms of shock. Or acute stress reaction—whatever they were calling it these days. Whatever it was that happened after one was mugged and watched people get shot. People who melted.

  Never mind that, he told himself as he led Liz and Antja to the room. And never mind his own icy hands and still-racing heart; they were all three wet to the skin and shaking with cold, but he wasn’t injured. He kept himself busy to ignore his own nerves— dragging blankets off the bed, finding Liz a dry sweater and pressing one of his own shirts on Antja.

  Lailah let herself in soon after. She’d stayed behind to clean up the remains, a task that didn’t bear thinking of. Alex swallowed recriminations when he saw the first aid kit in her hand. For a time there was near-silence as Alex ransacked the kit and Lailah ignored Antja’s protests and inspected her throat.

  Liz hadn’t spoken since they got in the car. Her pupils had shrunk to normal, but she stared at nothing, cradling her injured hand in her lap. Occasionally he caught her mouthing words to herself. The door. Open the door.

  She understood what the madwoman had said to her. It meant something. What wasn’t she telling him?

  He couldn’t worry about that now, but he could do something about her hand. Her glove was crusted in mud and blood, leather torn around the base of her thumb. She let him take her hand, but yelped and jerked as soon as he began to cut the glove away. She finally focused on him, and the relief was nearly nauseating.

  “It will hurt less if you sit still,” he said, because it was the easiest thing to say. His voice was beyond calm, nearly flat. Disassociation. Internalization. Intellectualization. Whatever got him through the night.

  “Easy for you to say,” she muttered, but let him take her hand again.

  Dark flakes of blood and mud cracked and drifted to the floor as safety scissors chewed through leather. Liz’s throat worked as she watched, and so did his. Grime etched the lines of her palm, and beneath the filth a double crescent of teeth marks sank deep into her heel of her hand. The bleeding had stopped, but the flesh was swollen and hot to the touch.

  “Soap and water first,” he said. He tossed the ruined glove into the trash bin, wishing for a sterile environment.

  Liz nodded and rose, ignoring his attempts to help her off the couch. Stubborn or not, she moved clumsily, limbs jerky and out of sync. The aftermath of adrenaline—he’d shake himself to pieces given the chance. Not now. Not in front of strangers. When he heard water running, Alex poured himself a shot of Chartreuse. Maybe he could drown the reaction before it set in.

  Lailah glanced up and cocked one heavy black brow. Alex bit back a snarl. If they were going to play the judgment game, he had a few choice words for people who shot first and asked questions later.

  Even if she had saved his life? And Liz’s?

  He glared into his drink, and Lailah returned to washing Antja’s throat. Antja bore it in silence, but her eyes glistened and her hands clenched white-knuckled on the bedspread that draped her shoulders. In spite of the pain, she seemed calm. Shock, he wondered, or had she done things like this before?

  Without enough distraction, Alex felt the bruises throbbing down his back. His palms were stiff with drying scabs and the scratch on his glasses flashed white over his right eye whenever he turned his head.

  He hadn’t been in a fight since his first year in the States, when high school bullies had targeted him for his accent and glasses and precocious erudition. That had only lasted until summer, when he grew six inches in as many painful weeks. He’d despised the helplessness of being bullied then, and it didn’t taste any better now. He took another shot of Chartreuse, and nearly regretted it when he heard Liz retching in the bathroom. Let that be delayed reaction, he prayed, and not some fast-moving infection.

  She emerged a moment later, splotchy and miserable but steadier. Lailah uncoiled from her crouch and intercepted her; Alex stiffened, but she only took Liz’s hand and inspected it.

  “Well,” Liz said, her voice straining with forced lightness, “will I turn into a zombie?”

  Alex winced. It might be a joke, but it didn’t stop the images crowding behind his eyes.

  Lailah’s mouth twisted sideways, a crooked smile. “It doesn’t quite work that way.” Her voice was low and husky, a hint of accent in her vowels that he couldn’t pin down. “But this will turn septic if you don’t treat it.”

  Alex pushed himself away from the bar. “You need medical attention.” His own tone made him even angrier. He’d never gone in for jealousy or posturing, but something about Lailah—or her gun— roused atavistic territorial instincts in his amygdala. Liz’s mouth tightened, and he wished he had a bucket to drown his lizard brain.

  “She needs antibiotics,” Lailah said. “Which I have.” She rummaged in the first aid kit and produced a brown plastic prescription bottle. “Are you allergic to penicillin?”

  When Liz shook her head she tossed her the rattling bottle.

  “Are you always prepared for zombies?” Liz asked.

  Alex tried not to glare, but suspected he failed. “Could we not use the zed-word, please?”

  “Do you have a better one?”

  Maenad. He bit back the reply. Somehow it seemed worse. He remembered the painting at Rainer’s gallery; the woman’s tangled hair and wild glassy eyes were too close a match, her bloody lips and hands. Worry about blood poisoning instead, he told himself, the disgusting state of the human mouth. Liz sat down again and Alex poured hydrogen peroxide onto her hand. It fizzed and bubbled in the bites and she hissed. He flinched at the sound.

  “Why should we trust you?” Alex asked Lailah. “You’ve been stalking us all week.”

  “And you’re lucky I was.” She stepped away from Antja and leaned against the wall, a dark stain against creamy wallpaper. She was around Antja’s height, but broader through the shoulders and hips, with a square face and scarred, sinewy hands. Her hair clung to her face, drying in frizzing waves. “I didn’t imagine you’d get yourself in quite so much trouble so fast.”

  Alex’s chest swelled with an angry response, but he forced himself to deflate. Telling off a trigger-happy stalker might not be the most prudent choice. He helped Liz with ointm
ent and bandages instead. The swelling was already worse.

  “You’re sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?” A reasonable tone, he hoped, for a more than reasonable suggestion.

  But her mouth flattened again. “I’m fine.”

  It was one of the worst lies he’d ever heard. But a hospital would demand explanations and police reports, or clever prevarication. He wasn’t sure he had any cleverness left.

  He had stubbornness, at least. “Who were those people? And what the hell happened to them? No, wait.” He raised a hand before Lailah spoke. “Who are you—then who were they?”

  “You’re a jackal, aren’t you?” Antja whispered. Her voice was an ugly rasp. “I thought you didn’t get involved.”

  Lailah rounded on her, all her earlier solicitude vanishing in one snorted laugh. “We’ve been involved since we cleaned up your boyfriend’s mess. Messes, if you count all the maniacs I’ve been scraping off the streets.”

  Antja’s chin lifted and a muscle worked in her jaw. That was a fascinating line of inquiry, but Alex didn’t let himself get distracted. “What does any of this have to do with Liz or me?”

  Lailah’s black eyes turned to him, narrow and measuring. “That depends on how fast you get out. My job is to clean up messes, not babysit tourists. And not to give you answers that will only get you into more trouble.”

  Liz leaned forward, shrugging off Alex’s warning hand. “What happened to those people at the cemetery?”

  “That’s what happens when you take too much mania. One of the things that happens.”

  Liz stiffened. Her good hand curled against the chair. “Will it happen to Blake?”

  A shrug. A flicker of her eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “That’s not good enough!” Her voice cracked on the last word. A tremor shook her jaw.

  “It’s all I have. He’s been pretty damned lucky so far.”