By a Thread

by Nyna Queen

  “Well, she certainly isn’t a first-timer that one,” Keane finally muttered looking slightly sheepish. “Unfortunately, she hasn’t been identified so far. They just got the prints. No name. No picture. Not much helpful in there in fact.”

  Donnaghue sighed. Well, of course not, why, that would have made his job easier. He took the folder from his officer and opened it. It held several sheets of a thin, crystalline paper, the kind you got out of a holographic printer. Probably just printed out for the sake of him and his men. Likely easier than giving the underbred halfborns access to their fancy gadgets, but nonetheless it was the first thoughtful act this day, so he wouldn’t complain. He let his eyes wander down the front page and gave a low whistle.

  “That is quite a record,” he admitted. And not just petty crime, either. Still. He flipped through the pages, frowning. “It’s quite stretch, though, don’t you think?” He nodded toward the dark laboratory tent, where the trueborn corpses were finally resting peacefully after being chopped up and examined for most of the day.

  Keane shrugged. “Who knows how their minds work?” he muttered with a slightly disgusted look on his face. “Maybe she sniffed a chance for some money or just saw them as a good source of fodder.”

  Donnaghue nodded absently, scanning the last few pages. He closed the folder. Not quite a gold mine, but it was something to start from.

  “Suppose I’ll have a chat with the Liaison Officer.” Maybe they’d have the heart to assign his team to do some background research on these lead crimes. He was getting sick of sitting on his thumbs while two children were in danger.

  “Good luck, Chief.”

  He glanced at Keane’s face, but there was no sign of irony there, just gloomy frustration.

  Oh, well, he could certainly use some.

  He left his lieutenant and walked toward the Jester’s Inn, where the guardaí lead unit had installed their contemporary headquarters. Outside the spotlights, the darkness was impervious and solid, like an undulating black mass licking at the edges of the light cones trying to gnaw pieces from it and assimilate it. People still hustled around the perimeter, guardaí, crime scene purifiers, technical and administrative staff, as well as a couple of persistent media representatives fishing for some additional information. He passed the laboratory unit, a silent pale structure in the darkness, manned with scowling guards on all sides.

  Suddenly his skin prickled, and a shiver ran down his back like a ghostly finger sliding along his spine. Donnaghue wheeled around, peeking into the alleyway to his right. Something moved in the darkness, a figure knitted from shadows. A feeling of stark terror washed over him. Invisible eyes fixed on him, sharp, predatory.

  Donnaghue stumbled backward in panic, reaching for his gun. When he finally managed to pull it from its holster and pointed it at the alleyway, the shadow was gone. He blinked. It lay deserted and silent, as far as he could see into the impermeable sheen of night.

  He took an uncertain step forward. Nothing moved in the dark. But he had … hadn’t he? Heart hammering, he spun around, gun raised with both hands. Spun again. People were slowing around him, giving him wary looks and it occurred to him that he was waving his gun around like a lunatic.

  Nodding toward a passing group of anxious looking catalogers with a strained smile he quickly holstered the firearm, but not without an itchy feeling in his fingertips. His eyes wandered back to the alleyway, but there was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen. And yet … there was this feeling, like hundreds of tiny hot needles pricking his flesh.

  He swallowed. Perhaps one of the hounds …

  You know that they were pulled off the scene hours ago, old son!

  With trembling fingers, he pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed his sweaty forehead. This case was straining his nerves way more than he’d admitted to himself. Seeing spooks in the shadows now! He shook his head. Too much coffee, that had to be it.

  After one last glance into the dark alley, he shook his head again and crossed over to the Jester’s Inn. He just hoped this whole thing would be over soon, so he could go back into his old routine.

  The bar door opened to a dimly lit room, where a group of grim looking guardaí was clustered around a long table, talking softly among themselves.

  Squaring his shoulders, Donnaghue took a deep breath and made his way over to them. Oh, he really hoped this would be over soon.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE car sped along the deserted country road.

  Night covered the world in its smothering dark blanket, drowning the land in inky blackness.

  Alex stifled a yawn.

  They’d left the lights of the city and the villages behind a long time ago and now made their way northward across the countryside, going at a steady pace that turned the rolling hills and forests around them into a smudged would-be oil painting as they whooshed past.

  Taking the freeway would have been a lot faster, Alex reflected, as she coaxed the car around yet another bend that forced her to slow down to almost twenty miles an hour.

  Faster, yes, but also a lot more risky. Let’s face it, she had precious cargo and since the law enforcement seemed to have an unhealthy interest in this case, she would bet her ass that all the major roads leading out of Bhellidor County were closely monitored. And if they were flagged down … well, disguise or not, those kids were hard to overlook.

  So, she’d settled for taking the smaller and slower roads through the backcountry—there was just no way they could keep all of those watched. Fast was good, but then safe was better.

  Alex squashed another yawn and threw a glance in the rearview mirror. It had been suspiciously quiet for a while and now she saw why. When they had taken off it had been all “ohhs” and “ahhs” since the kids had never been in a halfborn car before and they didn’t seem to run out of questions like “How did it work without magic?” and “What was this petrol it ran on?” and “How fast could it go?” After about a quarter of an hour or so, Alex had to tell them to stop rolling up and down the windows; it was getting rather cold in the car by then. After that, the excitement about the novelty had slowly worn off and boredom had taken over, resulting in another round of “are we there yet’s” that had made her clench the steering wheel so hard she had made permanent dents into the leather. But now the exhaustion of the day seemed to have finally taken its toll and they’d both passed out, Josy leaning against the window of the passenger side, her face vanishing behind a curtain of long brown hair, Max sprawled all over the backseat.

  Suppressing a sigh, Alex reached forward and turned down the radio. An eerie silence fell around her, only broken by the soft sound of the motor and the monotonous swooshing of the wind that rubbed itself at the steely hide of the car. Blurred shapes of trees and groves flew past the windows on both sides, their shadowy silhouettes waving in and out of the darkness.

  Somehow the absence of sounds made the night around her appear even deeper, darker, like a giant fist slowly closing in on her. The narrow cones of the headlights were her only beacon in the endless darkness. It made her feel strangely isolated, like she was all alone in the world.

  Max thrashed about a little in the backseat and muttered something in his sleep. Alex permitted herself a small smile. Oh, well, perhaps not quite alone.

  She studied the shapes of the kids and rubbed her forehead. Everything was so surreal: Yesterday she worried about bothersome customers and how she’d pay the rent while having something to eat in her fridge—now she sat in a stolen car with two ticking time bombs for luggage, who were on the hit list of some murderous trueborn impostors. No apartment. No money. Nothing. How could it all have gone so wrong in such a short time?

  Up ahead the trees lightened, giving way to dark fields and pastures. To her right, faint golden lights appeared in the distance like fireflies floating above the lazy band of the River Kells that curved like a black snake through the land. The lights grew steadily until she could make out the outlines of houses, peeling out of
the dark, faint lines carefully rubbed out of the coal painting of the night. Riverside houses, idly overlooking the riverbanks, their windows reflecting on the surface of the river.

  She watched the lights and automatically imagined warm, cozy rooms with crackling open fires and the gentle sound of the river lapping on the shores, singing a peaceful lullaby. Quiet. Serenity. Nature.

  A wave of melancholy washed over her, cold and bitter, like the currents of the river. It stirred an intense longing deep in her chest, a yearn she usually kept buried deeply beneath all of her day to day worries. This was the kind of place she’d always dreamed of in a secret space of her heart. A little house with a small garden. Some flowers, perhaps. A pier from which you could dangle your legs into the water. Maybe a porch with a rocking chair where you could snuggle up and read a book, having a mug of tea or a glass of wine, watching the sun setting over the shore. Nothing too fancy. Just a cozy little place she could call home.

  Yeah, like that was ever going to happen. She’d never be able to afford a place like that and even if she miraculously obtained the money … settling down, sprouting roots, that simply wasn’t for her kind. Like recent events had shown again quite impressively.

  Nothing but stupid dreams. Cloud castles and foam on top of rolling waves. Beautiful to look at from the distance but bound to dissolve into thin air when you tried to grab for them.

  Her hands squeezed the steering wheel. Hard. Until her fingers ached, the pain giving her the tiniest bit of relief from the one inside her chest.

  Behind her, the lights slowly became smaller and smaller again, as the road led away from them, like life leading her away from those sneaking desires.

  She was done dreaming. She’d drop off these kids at a safe place and be off. Nothing had changed. Nothing ever changed.

  ALEX slowed and pulled into the empty gravel parking lot of a lone highway petrol station. At the horizon, the sky was just beginning to lighten with the first gray of dawn, as the sun started to rise behind the clouds.

  Boy, she was tired. With a soft groan, she leaned her forehead against the cool leather of the stirring wheel and closed her eyes for a second.

  Tired. So terribly, terribly tired.

  At first, it had been prudent to bring as much distance between them and the Trash Bin as possible, but now things were looking quite different. Her energy level was down to the blinking red, demanding to be recharged, and relying on her spider senses was starting to border on suicide. During the last hour, her mind had grown more and more fuzzy, her thoughts zoning in and out, and more than once she’d caught herself dozing off and suddenly jerked up, barely able to keep the car steady on the road.

  They would have to stop to get some sleep. Soon. A few hours at least. Three. Better four. If they ran into trouble—and somehow, she had the feeling with these kids, trouble was imminent—she’d like to have her wits together.

  But first things first.

  Taking a deep breath, she straightened and opened her eyes. There was a faint ringing in her ears like the low buzz of a wasp nest. She realized it had been there for a while now. Not good. Not good at all.

  Grabbing the back of the passenger’s seat, she turned and glanced at the kids. They were just waking up and blinked at her from small sleepy eyes. Max yawned deeply. A red mark graced his cheek from lying on a crease of his sweater.

  “Alright,” Alex said businesslike, “time to stock up on some provisions.”

  They stared at her as if she was speaking in a foreign language. Obviously, their brains were still stuck somewhere in dreamland.

  Alex spoke very slowly, pronouncing each word. “You—food. I—gas. Got it?”

  They nodded sluggishly. Yeah, right.

  She fished a few coins out of her leather jacket and held them out to Josy. Halfway through the night when they’d stopped at a small village for a pee break, Alex had spotted one of these dubious little side-of-the-street pawnbroker’s shops, where they would take almost everything in exchange for some cash—for a reduction in price, naturally. It had given her an idea. “You still got those earrings?” she’d asked Josy. Puzzled, the girl had retrieved them from her jeans pocket. Alex had taken them and marched up to the shop. The other shoe had dropped when she’d been almost through the shop door. “Excuse me, those are real pearls!” Josy had exclaimed. Well, Alex had certainly counted on that or else they wouldn’t be of much use. “It’s either that or no breakfast.” That had cut the protest short, but the sweetheart had still sulked for the rest of the night, not saying a single word until she’d fallen asleep again.

  Alex had been able to trade those real pearl earrings for some dough. Of course, they’d been ripped off balls to the wall, but what could she do? Need dictated the price. Unfortunately, the shop keeper, a slimy weasel of a man, was the kind of low life who had an infallible instinct for these things, so her space to bargain had been rather limited. He’d offered her an extremely insulting deal, telling her that “she was the indigent one here.” For a tiny moment she’d considered pulling out the spider and giving him “indigent,” but on second thought, it didn’t seem like such a good idea to call that much attention to herself, or her passengers for that matter.

  So, she’d grudgingly taken the money, what little it was, and silently hoped his greed would get the payback it deserved at some point. Shame was, those people usually got away with anything.

  Josy was frowning at the money on Alex’s outstretched palm as if she didn’t quite know what to do with it. Or maybe she was still pissed because of her earrings. It was then that Alex realized that her fingers had started to tremble. Ah, shit!

  She quickly shoved the money into Josy’s hand and curled her fingers to a fist in her lap. “Just get us some water and something to eat, alright?”

  Since they still made no move to get their asses off their seats, she clapped her hands impatiently. “Chop-chop.”

  Grumbling, they scrambled out of the car and shuffled off toward the shop. Once they had vanished inside, Alex released her own seatbelt and slowly heaved herself out of the car. Her whole body was sore, and every inch of her skin was tingling with fatigue. Of both skins.

  Only two rusty fuel pumps hunkered in front of the grimy shop front of the little store that sported a broken green neon sign saying “open” to all the non-existent customers. Several cigarette butts littered the stained ground. Alex raised an eyebrow. It seemed that fire safety wasn’t written in big letters here.

  When she walked over to the nearest fuel pump, her legs shook with exhaustion. Damn it all to the bowels of hell! Her shaper’s bite was back in full force. And with such perfect timing, too. Well, if a day couldn’t get shittier!

  Ignoring her trembling fingers, she stuffed the nozzle into the fuel tank opening and leaned against the side of the car, while she waited for the needle to rise. Rubbed her eyes. Sweet Jester, she felt so horribly tired. Like she hadn’t slept in weeks.

  In the far distance, black rainclouds hovered over the horizon. She eyed them warily and breathed in deeply, sampling the air. Already humid. A few more hours and this place would be soaked in another downpour. Whoop-de-do, as if it hadn’t rained enough these past days.

  Alex checked the fuel gauge. Enough for another three hundred miles. She’d have to go a little slower to save gas or they’d be sucked dry again too fast. The thought made her teeth itch, but it couldn’t be helped.

  Alex followed the kids into the petrol shop, having the doorbell give a mad jingle as she stepped over the threshold. Max and Josy, who seemed to be the only customers in the shop—likely even the only customers all day—just reached the check stand and piled their hunted treasures onto the checkout belt. Alex spotted a couple of paper-wrapped sandwiches, water bottles and apples, and, with an inward sigh of relief, several chocolate bars in different flavors and a yellow bag of cheese-and-onion chips. Thank goodness, there was something childlike inside them, after all. It would have been just too creepy if two children l
eft to their own devices went out of a shop without any sugary stuff in their bags.

  Alex stepped up to the counter.

  “And the petrol,” she told the dull looking checkout girl who was typing on the cashier with the speed of a sloth.

  She threw a longing eye at the coffee vending machine, which probably hadn’t been used for a year, from the looks of it, but in her current state it wouldn’t do her any good anyway, and the total sum appearing on the cashier display was already painful. So, there it all went. How would they pay for the next meal? Well, she’d think about it when they got there.

  Back in the car, Alex gulped down half a liter of water, while Josy joined Max in the backseat and the treats were unpacked. After the kids had had their pick, she chose a ham and lettuce sandwich for herself. She would have killed for a real piece of meat, but a ham sandwich was better than nothing. No really, it was. If she kept telling herself, maybe she’d start to believe it.

  A few minutes and a couple of chocolate bars later, they were back on the road. The brave sun had partly managed to break through the cloud cover, sprinkling the blue cornflowers along the road with dots of pale gold light. Having something in her belly, Alex had to put up a real fight to keep her eyes open. As if something in that sandwich had hooked a pole into her upper lids and was now tugging at them. Must be the lettuce. Treacherous greens.

  The flower field expanded beside the road like a wavy blue ocean. Pretty, Alex thought drowsily as she watched them gently swaying in the wind. She floated toward the blue and gold dots that burst into sparkling big bubbles. Pretty … sooo pretty … so—

  “HEY!”

  A shrill sound pierced through her fog-filled brain like a ripping chord. Alex snapped upright, half-closed eyes flying wide open, jerking the wheel violently. The car bucked like a wild horse. The kids squalled. They slid across the road, the brake screaming under Alex’s foot. Somehow, she got the vehicle under control, barely missing a tree at the roadside and brought it slithering back into the right lane. Her heart was sprinting against her ribs as if it wanted to break free, throbbing up into her fingertips.