by Mac Flynn
"Yes."
"-but shouldn't we be staying away from those guys?"
Vincent stopped so suddenly that I clothes-lined myself into his arm. I fell to the hard, cold ground, and he half-turned and glanced down at me. "Do you wish for your friend to be safe?" he asked me.
"Yeah, if he was alive, but he's not. Even that guy said he'd been murdered," I reminded him.
Vincent's frown deepened to the depth of the Grand Canyon, or maybe even a little lower. "Have you learned nothing?" he commented.
I stood and brushed myself off. "From what? Bits and pieces of information that I drag kicking and screaming out of your undead carcass? How the hell am I supposed to learn anything from that?"
He turned and strode toward me. I retreated until my back hit the wall of the tunnel, and he towered over me. His voice was low and dangerous. "You no longer exist in the human world. This is the world of the paranormal where morals are a dead-weight, and magic and science grant people their greatest wishes and nightmares. Life is created and nothing ends until the corpse is consumed by fire or the earth. We must retrieve Tim's body before they use their powers to return him to an existence they can use."
I cringed, not so much from the words but from the hideous warning in his voice. "What can they do to Tim?" I asked him.
Vincent pulled back and glanced down the tunnel. "We haven't time for the possibilities. That corpse holds memories that must not be revealed, and so it must be destroyed."
"Isn't there some way to save Tim's memories? You know, for good?" I wondered. Memories were what made us, and destroying those meant finishing Tim off for good.
"It would be too dangerous, but we've wasted enough time." He grabbed my hand and tugged me along down the tunnel. Nothing strange about that except my feet left the ground when he shifted from human to vampire speed. I yelped and grasped onto his arm with my free hand.
We sailed through the tunnels, zig-zagging our way from one dark passage to the next. I didn't doubt that this system went beneath the entire city, a subterranean subway system for the paranormal express. Vincent didn't slow down until well after my face was plastered with bugs and my hand was numb from his firm grip. This speed stuff wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and it definitely wasn't fun.
My feet touched the ground and I wobbled on my weak knees. "Isn't there some train or bus we can take?" I begged him.
"No." Vincent stepped up to a ladder, and I glanced up and saw a circular light that outlined another manhole. He climbed the ladder and left me to scramble after him. Vincent opened the heavy round door and disappeared into the clear night air. I followed, and saw we were one road away from the river and not too far from the warehouse where I'd met Vincent.
"I thought we were going to the Third Precinct?" I asked him.
"It's only a mile down the river," he replied.
"That close to your old hideout?"
"What better place to hide than beneath their noses?"
"Any place cleaner than beneath their noses."
Vincent ignored my snark and led me across the block to the riverfront. Only a worn dirt road separated us from the large rocks and trash that made up the bank. We kept to the shadows of the tall, brick industrial buildings that lined the waterfront and in a few minutes I spotted some activity along one of the buildings that lay on the other side of the river road. Vincent and I stepped into the nearest alley, and we both glanced around the corner at our target.
Our target was an island of boulders and gravel created in the days when river conservation meant keeping it open for traffic. On the island was a tall, square building with twenty floors and a flat roof. It was one hundred yards by one hundred yards square, and loomed over the old buildings on the opposite side of the road. Around the perimeter was a barbed wire fence several feet tall and tipped with spikes. The fence was open on the far side and a short flight of steps led down to several long docks that stretched out into the river. Between the building and the docks sat a half dozen large container trucks, and I noticed they were unloading the trucks onto the small boats on the docks. All but one of the craft were wide fishing boats most suitable for carrying cargo. The odd one was a jet craft with black paint and red racing stripes along the sides to make it go faster.
Guards with large, scoped guns and dogs on thick, black leashes patrolled every inch inside and outside the fence. There was a gap of ten feet from the edge of the island to the fence, and a gap of fifty feet from the fence to the building. The island was connected to land by a road that led along the fence to a rolling chain-link gate where sat two small guardhouses, one on either side. One of the black dock trucks exited the compound through the front gate and drove down the road away from us.
"Cozy place," I murmured.
Vincent slapped his hand over my mouth and his eyes wandered over the island. I didn't know how he thought we'd get in there unless he had a few magic tricks up his sleeve. The place was like Fort Knox on high alert. While Vincent tried his hand at infiltration I wrenched myself from his other hand and wandered down the alley away from the terrifying guns, dogs, and imminent death. I reached the end of the alley and peeked down the neighboring blocks. Far off in the direction we'd come I saw a pair of headlights that belonged to a vehicle like those in the compound. An idea struck me and I turned around only to collide into Vincent's chest.
His eyes looked in the direction of the vehicle that was barreling down the road toward us, and a twisted grin slipped onto his face. "Let me guess, you want to stow away in the back of the truck?" I spoke up.
"No."
"In the cab?"
"No."
"On top?"
"No."
"The grill? Tailgate?"
"No."
I paled. That left only the undercarriage. "Oh hell no."
"That may be our destination if this doesn't succeed."
"You're making that trip alone. I plan on going up on the elevator. Besides, how are we going to get under that thing with it moving? We'd have to do some epic sliding or-" The grin on his face widened. "You know, maybe I should stay here. I want to survive to see another sunrise, and even if this does work and we do get inside I'd just be a target for them," I pointed out.
"That is why you're coming," he told me.
My face drooped and I glared at him. "Thanks. Makes me feel so special, but I'm still not going." I held up the ring on my finger. "Unless this thing gives me the ability to make roads into slip-n-slides then there isn't any way you're getting-ah!" Vincent wrapped an arm around my waist and pressed me against him. I blushed and squirmed, and generally did a whole bunch of useless actions that tried to get me out of this trouble. Yeah, it all failed. "Let go! Damn it, I don't want to go!" The truck was fast approaching us.
"Not even for Tim?" he wondered.
I froze, and my eyes narrowed as I glanced up at him. "I hate you."
"Focus on that hatred and use it to stay alive."
"So I can what? Join the darksieee!" Vincent jumped out when the truck passed and pulled me onto his chest.
I clung to his coat as he slid down onto the road ten yards from the path of the truck. Our momentum sped us along and I closed my eyes when I saw we were headed toward the front passenger wheel. We avoided that squishy fate by a few inches and slid between the front and rear wheels. Vincent reached out and grabbed the muffler pipe, but the damn thing must have been made in China because it disintegrated in his hand. Fortunately, he latched onto another one of the doohickeys beneath the truck that I had no idea what it did, and that held. He lifted his legs and jammed them between the rear axle. Vincent pulled himself off the ground and me on his chest, so I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
This was not fun. The road was bumpy, rocks and litter littered the street, and the ground zoomed below me like a spinning top of death. I clutched onto Vincent's chest and cursed his cursed existence. "This is not one of your better ideas," I yelled over the noise of the truck.
"S
o long as it works," he countered.
"That doesn't make it a good idea," I quipped.
The truck took the first right and drove down the driveway to the gate on the Island of Doom. It stopped for inspection at the gate. I held my breath and Vincent had the good fortune not to need to breathe as heavy boots walked around the truck. There were a few words exchanged and the truck lurched forward into the compound. It drove around the far side of the building to the docks and stopped.
Vincent dropped quietly to the ground and wrapped his arms around me so we were stuck face-to-face. This would have been romantic with the promise of a dinner and a movie afterward, but I expected shootouts and chases to ensue once we got inside. That was another problem we had to deal with before this rescue-corpse operation really got underway, getting inside. The driver jumped out of the truck and his heavy boots crunched against the gravel. Other boots joined his from the direction of the docks, and they unloaded the vehicle.
One of the guys was clumsy and dropped part of the shipment. A wooden crate fell to the ground and broke open beside the truck. Vincent and I got a good look at the contents, and it wasn't drugs and guns. Instead what fell out was books. Thick, hardcover books with strange symbols on the covers. I noticed Vincent's eyes narrow and his lips pursed together.
"Watch what you're doing! Those things are dangerous!" one of the men yelled.
I saw a man's hand come into view and grab at one of the open books. A dark light sprang from the pages along with a slithery, slimy tentacle. It grabbed the man's hand and yanked him down into the pages. I caught a good look at his terrified face and couldn't clap my hands over my ears hard enough to block out the terrible scream he cried before he was sucked into the book. Knowledge was not only powerful, it was terrifyingly strong and ugly.
"That's why ya gotta be careful!" shouted the first man.
The rest of the books were shut and picked up, but we still had other problems to deal with than possessed papers. Vincent scooted along beneath the truck toward the side of the building. I noticed a door along the wall, but it was closed and probably locked. I prayed for some way to get out from beneath this truck, and lo and behold but the door opened and a man in a gray business suit stepped out. The man was shorter than me, about fifty years old, and wore a pair of spectacles. I felt Vincent stiffen beneath me, but he didn't move. The strange man propped the door open with a heavy metal stapler and strode around the truck to speak with the work mules.
Vincent waited for the men on the right side of the vehicle to be deep in conversation with the new stranger before he rolled us both out from beneath the truck. He pulled me against him and sprinted over to the door. I hung there like a limp doll praying none of the guards would see us. Again we were successful, and I was starting to think this praying stuff really worked for me.
Chapter 12
Vincent hit the wall near the entrance and used me as a cushion. My shoulder knocked into the hard concrete and I glared at him. He ignored my look of love and opened the door to slide us inside. Once safely inside the very unsafe building he dropped me and we looked around the place. We stood in a long, white hallway that was intersected by numerous perpendicular passages and dotted with countless doorways. It was a rat maze of white with our reward at the end being Tim's body. Voices floated down all the halls and the place was a beehive of activity. High-heels and boots clacked along the tiled floors and
Vincent slunk along the hall with his black coat blending in like a brown thumb at a Garden Party. I slunk along with him until we came to the first hall where he peeked around the corner to the front of the building. The new hall led to the lobby where we could just see the front desk with a bunch of people in police uniforms. One of them looked very familiar, and I paled when I recognized Officer Sutton. That guy hadn't lied about bringing me down to the Third Precinct, but he deceived me about everything else.
I didn't have much time to wallow in my grumblings before Vincent grabbed my hand and yanked me in the opposite direction. The building stretched into the distance, but the structure was cut in half by a large dividing wall. Our hall stopped there, and turned off to the left and right, but not forward. The right passage took us to a dead end, and the left led to the center of the building. For all the busyness in the bustling building the halls we walked down were surprisingly empty.
The plain white halls gave me a headache and I was already disoriented. Then again, I got lost in walk-in closets. "Any idea where they keep the bodies?" I whispered to Vincent.
"No, but I don't believe think we'll-" Vincent yanked me down the right hall, pulled me against him and clapped his cold hand over my mouth.
I was getting real tired of him doing that to me, but at least it was for a good reason. The short, suited man from before strode up the hall behind us and took a left. He didn't look in our direction or he would have noticed us standing around the corner and in the open. The little man walked twenty yards and took a right to disappear out of sight. Vincent released me and hurried after the stranger, and I hurried after him.
I misjudged my speed, probably because some ass didn't teach me how to control this new-found superpower, so when Vincent reached the corner I reached him just a split second later. We collided and fell onto the floor in a mass of legs, arms and, in my case, teeth. Vincent tried to roughly push me off and I bit his arm. He growled and smoothly slid out from beneath my flailing body. Somehow through all that madness nobody noticed us snooping around. I started to get the feeling that maybe this successful sneaking was a little too good to be true.
Vincent's pursed lips and narrow eyes told me something was up in his mind. I hated to do it, but I needed to find out what was going on in those rusted gears of his thoughts. "You get a bad feeling about this?" I whispered. He turned to me with a glare that silenced any more questions.
We heard a noise like a door latch, and both Vincent and I glanced down the hallway. The passage led into the other half of the building, and thirty yards down I noticed an open door on the left. Vincent hurried toward it and I followed behind him. We paused at the entrance and Vincent peeked his head inside. Vincent grabbed my arm and pulled me inside.
It turned out to be a coroner's office complete with silver-covered metal furniture and a door opposite the entrance that led to freezer in the back. Vincent led us to the rear room where we found metal drawers placed in a large wall. On the front of the square drawers were plates with words written on them. I shuddered and rubbed my arms to stay warm against the chill of the room.
Vincent stepped forward and his eyes swept over the plates. He started from the right and reached the middle when he froze at a drawer that stood waist-high. I stepped up beside him, and read the name plate. "Timothy Hamilton." The color drained from my face, and I looked to Vincent. "You really think it's him?"
"Only one way to answer that question," he commented.
We stepped to either side of the plate and Vincent pulled the drawer open. It slid out and revealed a frosted, semi-transparent bag that held something with the outline of a body. Vincent pulled down the zipper at the top and the bag split open to show a corpse of a man. It was Tim. I covered my mouth and turned away. I felt light-headed and the world spun around me.
My back hit the freezer wall and I shuddered. "Oh my god. . ." I murmured. Vincent unzipped the rest of the bag and drew Tim's naked body out of the freezer drawer. "We're really taking him with us?" I choked out.
"Unless you have the ability to transport him to another place," Vincent countered.
"Then at least find a sheet for him," I protested. His frozen parts were distracting me.
We found a white cloth close at hand and wrapped the blanket around corpse. Vincent hefted Tim's body over his shoulder, and the corpse lay stiffly against his back. I pushed off the wall and kept my distance from the grisly pair. We turned to the door, and found a new and frightening surprise.
The short, bespectacled guy stood in the doorway with a crooked grin on his
face. "Good evening," he greeted us. His voice was soft, smooth, and creepy as hell. The man wasn't at all surprised to see us, and I realized why it'd been so easy to get into this place. So much for God's divine intervention.
Vincent's teeth ground together. "Get out of the way, Field," he ordered the short man.
"I'm afraid I can't do that, Vincent. Mr. Ruthven would like to speak with you." He glanced at me and I shuddered when those glassy eyes stared at me. "He especially wishes to meet you, miss."
"Ruthven will have to be disappointed," Vincent argued. He pulled Tim off his shoulder and tossed the corpse at our captor.
Field's eyes widened and he tried to move aside, but the body hit him in the side and they collapsed in a mess of stiff and squirming limbs. The man raised his head from the floor and Vincent knelt and punched him in the face. The man's glasses broke, and by the sounds of it so did his jaw. Field dropped to the floor unconscious, and I stood over them in shock.
"You threw Tim!" I yelled at him.
"It was a necessity," Vincent countered while he picked up Tim.
"How could you just toss him like a heavy popsicle?" I protested.
"With strength, now move," he ordered as he shoved me toward the hall door.
I led the way out into the passage, but we skidded to a halt when we noticed a group of armed guards coming at us from the front of the building. They were dressed the same as the ones from the warehouse, and with them were a half dozen men who wore police uniforms. I saw Officer Sutton among them. He didn't look happy to see me, and I sure wasn't happy to see him. Vincent and I shot down the passage in the opposite direction and came to a four-path crossroad. I opted for the left, and Vincent took the right.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw half the officers take Vincent and the other half follow me. I also noticed those with the police uniforms tore out of their suits as their bodies expanded and fur sprouted from their skin. Their eyes turned that familiar shade of predatory orange and their faces stretched while their mouths filled with razor-sharp teeth. Pretty soon I was being chased by a pack of werewolves with the men in black right behind them.
Now the formerly-uniformed cops were much faster and a lot more agile. They bounded down the hallway and lunged for me, their pointed, glistening claws sprayed out to tear me to shreds. I yelped and shifted into superhuman overdrive. My feet flew across the linoleum floors and I had the benefit of traction. Their claws clacked against the floor and they wasted a lot of energy using more claw than pad.