by J. R. Ward
“You shouldn’t be here, bitch.”
The click right next to her ear was soft, but she knew what it was.
The safety of a gun being taken off.
CHAPTER FIVE
The following evening, Rhage ran fast, ran strong, ran… too fast, in truth. Too strong.
Later, after the first of the night’s surprises came upon him, he would reflect that he should have known by his sprinting gait what was inevitable. But such portents were not on his mind as he chased after a pale-eyed, pale-haired lesser.
He and his enemy were far from where their footrace had started, back at the blacksmith’s shop behind the Village Arms rooming house. Up on the second floor of that dubious establishment of hospitality, Rhage had come out of a vigorous private session with a woman of questionable repute. Driven there by a desire to even himself out, as opposed to any true sexual need, he had done what he could to release some of his energy overload, and having exercised himself thus, his intention had been to eat and drink, and then set out in search of slayers to further take his edge off. As he’d proceeded down the stairwell, dissatisfied with his lot and itchy under his skin, he had regarded the night out of a window, hoping there was no rain.
Through bubbly glass, he had seen clearly what he now chased.
There was only one thing that had hair like corn silk and the flour-colored visage to match.
The slayer had been speaking with the horse minder, and money had changed hands. For animals to travel upon? Or fresh shoes for those already owned? Though motor carriages were being purchased by humans of late in some number, the Lessening Society had not embraced the newfangled conveyances.
Rhage had had a thought that he needed to let it go. But an image of Darius’s eyes sent him down those stairs two at a time.
That condemning stare had been what had kept him up during the day as well. And what was currently the nettle under the saddle of his mood.
As Rhage had emerged from the flophouse’s rear door, recognition had passed in an instant between enemies, and reaction was swift. Quickly departing itself of the blacksmith, the lesser had taken off at a fast walk down a narrow alley that smelled of horse dung and spoiled food. That the undead had limped suggested this would be over before it started, and Rhage had followed at a leisurely pace, keeping up without o’ertaking—for as long as they were in range of so many humans, there could be no conflict.
It was the one thing that vampires and the Lessening Society agreed upon. Neither side desired meddling from Homo sapiens.
After some number of blocks, the pace of the footrace had picked up some, and in any event, took them away from the settled part of the village’s core. Away from the stragglers idled by the search for sex and the imbibing of beer. Away from potential eyes behind the windows of the abodes.
As Rhage continued in the vile-smelling wake of the slayer, he was aware of a bad vibration in his head and his body, and he’d wondered if mayhap he should have stayed longer with the woman. Then again, the problem had been kindling even whilst he had been with her. Indeed, he had slept naught during the daylight hours in his underground lair. Haunted by a familiar ghost garbed in the tattered threads of self-loathing, he had tossed and turned upon his pallet and then given up altogether on finding repose.
His brother Darius had been a plague upon his mind, and he had found much to say unto the other male. The fantasized arguments had passed the time until sunset, even though it was difficult to argue with a person who was not in the same physical space as you were. The benefit to that, however, was that when it came to the point/counterpoint, he had won every round against Darius and taken a hollow satisfaction in his victories.
And now he and his enemy were upon this field by the shores of the river. So he had further opportunity to improve his lot.
Palming both his black daggers, Rhage dematerialized and re-formed in the path of the lesser. As he raised his blades, he planned his next hour. This. Then food. Then he was going to have to find Darius and speak unto him—
In the periphery of Rhage’s vision, he saw the other slayers emerge from the tree line, six wraiths glowing with menace, pale shadows of the humans they had been before their inductions into the Omega’s league of vampire murderers.
Instant frustration came upon him. He should have known. He had heard about this encampment down by the Hudson, and should have been more aware of the course he had been led upon. But there was no time for self-admonishment. Slashing the daggers back into their chest holster, he went to his hips and the pair of guns awaiting his grip there.
He was not the first to shoot, however. The popping of bullets discharged from enemy weapons ricocheted through the night, lead slugs entering his thigh. His side. His shoulder.
Without warning, this little excursion had gone the way of deadly complication, and he had only himself to blame. Closing his eyes, he started shooting in a circle at the same time he forced himself to concentrate so he could dematerialize. He had to calm himself in order to—
Another shot went into his shoulder, kicking his torso back.
Opening his lids, he witnessed that he’d made a dent in the picket fence of lessers that had surrounded him. There were holes in the vertical uprights, at least two down, and the others were ducking back behind the tree trunks. Unfortunately, they were shooting while they went. And they would continue to shoot after they were protected—
Beneath his skin, his curse awoke.
Rhage crouched down and continued to reload and discharge his own weapons, aware that he was very much alone in this skirmish—and tragically, that was about to change. Trying to find his breath, he did not dare to pause to try one last time to dematerialize, although he hoped he could perhaps avoid—
An unholy roar came out of him, rising up his throat and erupting from his mouth, and the sound was so unexpected and alarming to the enemy, there was a respite in all the shooting. And then everything receded for Rhage, his senses, his mind, his inner self, submerging under a great and terrible transformation.
As his bones flew apart and his joints exploded, as his body morphed and expanded, as his vision left him and he was forced to cede control of everything he was, and all that he was capable of, unto his curse, he panicked.
There was no fighting the tide, and his last thought was that his beast might well be saving his life.
At least in the short term.
But the problem was not these six slayers—well, four now—and their limping comrade. What he was concerned about was what happened after he woke up. If there were more lessers in those woods? An entire camp of them?
Then he was a sitting duck for the enemy when he resumed unto his true form and had no more strength or presence of mind than a newly born young.
And if there was no lesser presence? There were humans around and the sun rising in six hours. Worse, his brothers might show up to defend him, and risk getting eaten in the process, for his beast did not discriminate between friend and foe.
This was bad. All of it was so bad.
And he feared it was going to get much worse.
CHAPTER SIX
As Nyx froze, her awareness of reality bifurcated. One side of her brain focused on the very immediate present: The scent of the male standing beside her. The smell of gunmetal. The sound of his steady breathing.
Which suggested he was very familiar with pulling guns on females.
The other part of her thought back to her self-defense teacher. He had been a human, and she’d found him through a gym. The combat lessons had started as a thing to do, another way to exercise, but the more she had learned, the more she had liked being able to handle herself. She’d gotten a lot from her teacher, and the basis of it all had been something he had stressed over and over again: If you ever need to defend yourself, there will be no time and no conscious thought to do so. The only thing that will save you is your training and your practice because adrenaline will overwhelm the frontal lobe and your rational faculti
es, leaving you only with rote memory.
Nyx drew in a long, slow breath.
And then she moved faster than she would have believed possible.
Up with the flashlight, pegging her aggressor in the eyes with the beam and blinding him. Down with the torso, getting her head out of range if he discharged his weapon. Around with her body, taking control of the hand and wrist governing the gun. Punching out with her boot, nailing him in the kneecap.
As he pitched forward, Nyx almost dropped the gun as she transferred her hold from the base of the muzzle to the grip proper. And then the male got over his surprise at her quick response, going for her braid and yanking her off balance.
And that was when the gun discharged.
The sound was cracking loud in the echo chamber of the crypt, the kind of thing she felt in her skull rather than heard. Ducked on a reflex—
The hold on her hair instantly released, and the freedom from the torque was so unexpected, she flipped forward, her momentum pitching her into a headlong fall. Catching herself on the sarcophagus, she spun around—and gasped.
Her flashlight had fallen free during the scuffle and rolled off to one side.
So its shaft of illumination was trained on the face of her attacker.
Or what was left of it.
The bullet had hit him at the base of the jaw, and the angle of its trajectory had carried the lead slug through the interior structures of the front of his face. Its exit had been through the outside corner of the left eye, and it had taken extensive tissue and bone along with its departure.
Hollow-point bullet, she thought as her stomach rolled.
Clicking noises rose up from what remained of the mouth, and glossy red blood oozed out of the ruined anatomy, a puddle gathering width and depth on the dusty stone floor. There was twitching at the extremities, but even without medical training, she knew he wasn’t getting up anytime soon.
Nyx shuddered and leaned back against the sarcophagus, her lungs pumping too fast with draws that were too shallow. As her body went numb, her head grew fuzzy and her vision went bad bulb on her, flickering in between sight and blindness.
Control the breathing, she told herself. Slow and easy. Rebalance the carbon dioxide in the blood.
It was only through what she had practiced with her self-defense teacher that she was able to resist the urge to keep panting, and her eyes were the first function to stabilize. Then the trembling and strange paralysis that came with panic attacks eased up—as long as she didn’t look at the body. Hard to do. The male’s remains were slowly losing their autonomic jerks, death claiming what had been alive like a meal consumed—in bites.
Pushing her hair out of her face, even though there were no strands in her eyes, nose or mouth, she looked around. No backup coming into the space. No explosions. Nothing from outside of the crypt.
When she leaned down to pick up her flashlight, she realized she had a gun in her right hand. Duh.
God, she hated that fresh-copper smell of blood, and a part of her, way down inside her core, wanted to cry even though it had been a his-or-her-life situation. She needed to get over that. Forcing herself to go over, she frisked the body and came up with a bounty worth the trouble of overriding her gag reflex. Keys. A communicator. A pass card with no photo or name, just a magnetic strip. Three ammo clips that went with the gun.
This was the guard of a professionally maintained facility. She had to be close to the prison.
She pocketed or packed all of it, and stood up with her flashlight. Sending her instincts out, she listened for soft sounds and breathed deep, searching for any scents over and above the male she had…
Killed.
She debated hiding the body. Humans weren’t going to come this way, but maybe there would be others like him? Had she tripped an alarm of some kind? Or had he been on a regular security check? He’d come out from the side, but that wasn’t much of an indicator because he’d clearly dematerialized—
The trail of those little footsteps led her eyes to a vent down on the floor. The iron grating was about two feet high and three feet long, and given the pattern of scuffs in front of it, that was where the pretrans had gotten out of wherever he’d been. To hide his tracks, he must have put the grate back in place, even though the disruption in the dust layer was a flashing neon sign.
Going over, Nyx squatted down, put the gun and the flashlight off to the side, and squeezed her fingers in through the slats. When she pulled, the frame came out with a high-pitched screech, and she froze. When no one with a weapon appeared around her, she started breathing again, grabbed the flashlight, and trained the beam inside.
There was a shallow area about five feet down, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to dematerialize into it because she had no sense of what could be waiting for her down there. Big blind spot. Huge.
Leaning in even farther, she worried that it was her only choice—
A subtle beeping sound went off and then there was a whirrrrrrrrr.
Wheeling around, she palmed the guard’s gun and pointed it at the panel that was sliding back on the far side of the sarcophagus. In her light, the corridor that was revealed was gray, narrow… and empty.
For the moment.
Putting the grating back into place, she stood up and looked across at the guard. A split second later, she went over to the male’s feet and tucked his nine millimeter in her waistband.
“Sorry… sir.” Sir? Like she needed to be polite to a guy who’d been ready to kill her? And who, P.S., was frickin’ dead? “Just, ah, relax.”
Okay, she was losing it.
Bending down, she took the body by the ankles and pulled the dead weight—natch—across the floor. The stairs were tough. As she dragged him up the steps, the sound of the back of the skull bumping along had her wincing.
“Ouch, ouch, ouch,” she whispered.
Out in the hot air of the night, she took a deep breath. Then she pulled the male over between a pair of lichen-covered markers and let his feet drop into the tangle of grass and ivy. Checking on the sky, she tried to remember what the weather forecast was. Sunny. Wasn’t it supposed to be sunny tomorrow?
One ray of sunshine and the body would disappear, nothing but a scorch mark in the greenery.
Nyx gunned up again and rushed back to the crypt, thinking of that scene from The Sopranos where Tony killed Ralphie Cifaretto. In the movies, on TV—for the most part—murders were slick. People were killed in a coordinated set of moves. In real life? Someone like Tony gets wasp spray in the face while he’s offing someone for hurting an animal.
Or, in her situation, she leaves a hidden entrance wide-spanking-open while she drags her first murder victim out of a crypt.
Back inside, she made sure there was no one around and then penetrated the opening in the wall. A tiny red light blinked to the side of the doorway, and when she leaned in to look at it, there was a beep and the panel slid back into place.
Frowning, she took the guard’s pass card out of the pocket of her windbreaker. As she moved it over the red light, the panel slid open once more, and then she closed it with the same motion. There must have been another reader down by that vent? Whatever, she had bigger issues. A few self-defense classes and one lucky takedown were nothing compared to a professionally trained and outfitted police force in a facility with some level of sophisticated security.
Picturing Janelle’s face, she turned to the left and started walking. As she went along, motion-activated lights set into the tunnel’s ceiling flared to life, and she could have done without the help. But like her flashlight wouldn’t have given her away?
Walking toe-heel helped her keep the sound of her footsteps down, but it did absolutely nothing for the beating of her heart. The sense that she was in way over her head made her feel like someone was choking her, but at least the stalking thing was an easy monitor.
She looked behind herself every three feet.
And then she came up to a solid metal wall. Taking o
ut the pass card, she swiped it by another blinking red light and shifted to the side, trying to take some cover as the panel slid back.
The scent of the earth made her recoil.
What was on the other side was bare rock.
I should not do this, she thought. I need to turn around, right now.
* * *
Over the course of the century he’d been down below, the Jackal had made a study of the guards. Their ranks and shifts. Their pairings and solo trips. Their territories within the prison complex. He knew their eye and hair colors, and which ones were distractible, and who was cruel. He was aware of who had let their physical conditioning go and who was lean and muscled. He tracked them from where they entered the common halls from the Command’s private area to the furthest reaches of their responsibilities.
He witnessed them dealing drugs to prisoners. Having sex with the incarcerated. Throwing punches that were deserved and tormenting people who were following the rules. He knew their secrets and their vices, their blind spots and their fields of vision.
He was careful never to get noticed. It was not hard. There were so many prisoners.
One thing, among many, that was not readily available in the down-below were clocks, but the guards helped with that. With their regular schedules and routes, they were a metronome, a way of marking the passage of time. Provided he kept his stride at the same distance and at the same cadence, he could track and anticipate the shifts and their responsibilities and, thereby, the cycles of night and day. Or something close to night and day.
The Command made sure that people stuck to their duties.
And that was how he knew something was wrong.
Dropping his eyes, he looked down at the handmade leather slips on his feet. His stride was correct, an easy extension of his thigh out of his hip socket, and his speed was on point. He was in the right tunnel, too. Wait… was he?
The Jackal stopped and looked over his shoulder. Retracing his left and rights mentally, he thought… no, this was the correct location. He’d run his D, E, and F routes in the last three nights/days. This was G. He was supposed to be doing G.