by Lauren Dawes
He and the EMTs wandered toward me, and I felt my shoulders tighten at their arrival.
Smith’s gaze drifted over my face, his mouth twisting in disdain. “You always seem to be here, McKenzie.”
“It’s my job, you asshole.”
“Yeah, you and the freaks get along really well, don’t you?” he spat back, hatred coating his words in barbed wire.
Reaver became visible at my side, making Smith’s eyes slide down to the blade. I saw a flash of fear in them before he barricaded those emotions up once more.
“Hey, hey, let’s just all calm down,” one of the EMTs said in an annoyingly placating voice, stepping between us. “We all don’t want to be here––”
“McKenzie does. She fucking loves the supes,” Smith sneered.
My hands hiked up on my hips. “I don’t love the supes, shitheel, but they certainly treat me with more professional respect than what you’re showing me.”
“That’s because you’re a freak just like them.”
My eyes darted to the white spittle gathering in the corners of his mouth. I wonder if I should tell him. Gross. “How do you figure?”
I didn’t know why I kept taking the bait. No, that’s a lie. I knew exactly why. I hated it when people made assumptions about me. They could underestimate me all they wanted––that was actually kind of fun––but putting words in my mouth or automatically assuming something about my character was something I couldn’t stand.
“You’re not coming back to the department, are you?”
I blinked at him. That wasn’t something I’d discussed outside of Wolfe’s office. “And what if I’m not. I doubt you’d miss me that much.”
He spat at my feet, then rubbed a hand over his mouth. “I wouldn’t. I want you gone. What you did to your first partner should have seen you thrown off the force.”
“Wow. Not big on forgiveness, are you?”
“Letting your partner get killed by a demon, then going to work for them is the action of a traitor,” he snarled.
I gripped Reaver’s pommel at my hip, anger radiating through me. “I didn’t let him get killed. And what the fuck was I supposed to do?” The truth of the matter was I’d frozen when the attack happened. I’d been terrified, and only two weeks ago when I was taking down the vampire who was terrorizing Buxton did I find out that that same vampire had been the one responsible for my partner’s death––all in an attempt to manipulate my actions into joining PIG. Yeah, I’d been pissed at the time, but after a couple of weeks of working with Sawyer and being put in more life-and-death situations than I’d probably ever experience in half a dozen lifetimes, I decided that supes were more loyal than humans could ever be.
“All right, folks, let’s just simmer down,” the EMT said.
I peered up at him and noted his name. “Jones, no offense, but stay the fuck out of this.” I looked back at the hate-filled sack of shit in front of me. “Smith and I are just having a lover’s spat. Isn’t that right?”
“Fuck you, McKenzie.” Turning on his heel, he stalked back to his squad car and slammed the door.
When I turned back to Jones, he and his partner were sharing a look. After I caught his eye again, I tried to explain what had happened. “Smith is an insecure asshole threatened not only by my gender, but by my ability to work with the supes without developing any fucking prejudices.”
“Look, I don’t want to know the details of the beef, but this situation…” he swept his arm out to encompass the whole entry in Wonderland thing, “… is stressful enough without you two bickering.”
“I think we were nitpicking but whatever.”
I could tell he was holding back an eye roll. “Whatever it is you were doing, it’s not helping. We’ll be waiting inside the rig for when they come out with the body.” Jones and his partner walked back to the ambulance, leaving me alone.
Sitting my ass down on the asphalt, I heaved a heavy sigh. I had no idea how long this was supposed to take, although if I had my necklace, I might have been able to help. How in the hell was I supposed to get it back?
The air shivered, then the sensation of spiders marching across my skin under my clothes made me leap to my feet. I narrowed my eyes at the stack of containers that marked the entrance to Wonderland, not seeing anything out of the ordinary.
It’s fine, I tried to tell myself. As long as there wasn’t a change in atmospheric pressure, I was fine.
Brushing at the invisible legs, I waited…
Waited…
Pop!
Oh, hell no.
Palming Reaver, I prepared myself for whatever the fuck Wonderland was about to spit out at me. I didn’t think about the reasons why I wasn’t dead right now since I was clearly in the realm of the fae. Spreading my feet a little more, I balanced my weight, focusing on my breathing—slowing it and my heart rate.
There was the scrape of shoes on the hard ground then…
“Oh, shit.” Keeping my grip on Reaver, I dove to the ground to avoid being hit by a fireball. Kseniya’s scream echoed the loud thump of the flames into the side of a container, and I quickly glanced over my shoulder to see that Smith, Jones, and his partner were still in their cars. They couldn’t see this, so for now—at least—they were safe.
When I clambered to my feet, Kseniya was there, her brown eyes flashing with rage. She hurled another fireball at me, and when that one missed me by a hair’s breadth, she shot a deluge of water from her cupped palms. It hit me in the chest, sending me flying backward. I hit the container with a grunt, all the air leaving my lungs in a mass evac order. Coughing, I blinked through my dripping hair to find Kseniya waving her hand around like she was casting a spell.
“I hate witches,” I muttered to myself, scrambling to find my footing again. I’d just taken a step when the ground beneath me began to rattle. “Oh my God, what now?” I yelled.
Kseniya smiled at me and sprinted off, leaving me to look up at a cyclops that had just lumbered out from behind a container. It looked as if his body was decomposing. His skin was sagging on all the joints, his jowls dripping from his skull like melted candle wax. The putrid smell of carrion and old blood made me gag, forcing me to cover my nose with one arm.
“Why can’t some things just be fictional?” I moaned. Maybe even a little petulantly.
The ground buckled under the weight, his footsteps leaving cracked asphalt in their wake. At least ten stories high, the cyclops lumbered toward me, the look of determination in his one rotting eye unnerving.
Unhappily, I uncovered my nose so I could ready myself as well as I could, bringing Reaver up in front of me. It heated in my two-handed grip, a comfort I needed now that I was fighting this thing alone. I eyed the cyclops’s long arms and legs and wondered what kind of reach he had.
When the monster was about twenty feet away, he swiped for me with a grunt. Ducking and rolling, I quickly got back to my feet, then I slashed at his wrist. The sword cleaved through skin, muscle, and bone, the blade singing with the taste of blood. The melody was accompanied by the baritone bellow of the cyclops as he wrenched his bloody handless arm back. Blood spurted from the bloody stump, falling like thick oil and covering the ground in swimming-pool sized puddles.
He reached for me again with his left hand, grunting in triumph when he caught me by the foot. Hauling me up into the air, the cyclops brought me up so I was level with his eye. His fetid roadkill-esque breath suffocated me when he opened his mouth and lined me up like I was a tasty morsel.
Nope. I was not going out like this.
Curling into a vertical sit up, I thanked Mike once more for punishing us with crunches and brought Reaver down on the cyclops’s finger that was holding me. I didn’t get enough momentum on the swing, though, and instead of severing the appendage, I only pissed him off with a deep cut.
The cyclops roared in pain and let me go.
Shit. Shit. Shit! I had not thought this through. I was ten stories high. Hurtling through the air, wind ru
shed past my ears and tore at my clothes. I was free-falling with fear as my only companion.
Think, McKenzie.
As I fell past his coarse fabric shirt, I managed to grab a handful of the hem, dangling there for a moment before I could pull myself up. Pain streaked through my shoulder, the joint reminding me that it wasn’t ready for lifting my body weight for another four to six months.
Tucking Reaver back into my belt, I hauled myself up the cyclops’s shirt. He tried to swipe me off, black blood splashing me in the face from the ragged stump. I wiped what I could off my face, then dragged myself up onto his shoulder, the cyclops shaking his body like a wet dog the whole time in an effort to dislodge me.
My hands shot out to keep my balance, but instead of a handful of shirt, I got a handful of rotting skin that was sloughing away from the muscle and bone of his shoulder. Disgusted, I instantly released it, shaking my hand to fling off the gore, then tried again. This time, my fist enclosed around rough cotton and just in time too. The cyclops opened his mouth and let out another petulant roar, spittle flying from his lips.
I scrambled up the open neck of his shirt, barely avoiding his blind gropes as he tried to knock me off. I looked up—looked around—trying to figure out how I could bring the bastard down.
“Think, McKenzie, think.”
There!
There had to be at least seven feet between me and where I needed to be. Scaling the bastard like a mountain, I pulled myself up onto his ear, balancing inside the giant silver ring through the lobe.
All of a sudden, the cyclops stopped moving and stood completely still. Maybe he was like a T-Rex, and he could only see movement? Cautiously, I stood, holding onto the loop and looked up. Brown, ropey hair was hanging above my head, but given the cyclops’s skin had literally fallen off his body, I wasn’t in a rush to use it to pull myself up with it.
How am I going to get to his eye? I wondered.
Reaver pulsed in my palm, and I looked down at the sword, a plan forming in my mind’s eye.
“Please, God, let this work.” Before I could kick my own ass for potentially making a stupid mistake, I threw the sword with all my strength toward the top of the cyclops’s head.
A moment later, the cyclops shrieked in pain, bringing his bloody hand up to cover his eye. When the bastard stumbled back a step, I held on tight to the earring as he crashed to the ground. Foul-smelling black blood oozed out from between his fingers, pooling around his head at an alarming rate. When he finally stopped twitching, I stepped free of the earring and straight into the mess.
I lifted my foot—black, sticky strands sticking to the sole. “Jesus,” I muttered, walking back a few steps. Looking up, I saw Reaver’s pommel sticking out of the cyclops’s eye. Then I wondered whose plan it had actually been to throw it up there—mine or Reaver’s?
One problem at a time, I reminded myself.
Peering over at the EMTs and Smith, I saw them still in their vehicles, completely unconcerned. They’d either watched the whole thing with popcorn, or I was still in the protection of Wonderland’s magic.
Walking toward them, I sucked in a breath when I got my spider-crawling sensation, the world coming back into existence and my senses with a pop that hurt my ears. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the cyclops’s body shimmer into existence too. The boundaries of Wonderland must’ve been snapping back into place, probably in protest from being manipulated in the first place.
The EMTs sitting up straight in their seats was my first clue they could now see me. Jones and his partner were out of the rig and running toward me a moment later, their eyes wide as they stared at the giant corpse.
“Jesus, what happened?” Jones practically yelled, easing me down onto the ground to check me over. He looked beyond me to where the cyclops had fallen, his poor human brain trying to piece together the tear in his reality. “And what the hell is that?”
“Just Cat, thanks. And I got bored of waiting. so I went to pick a fight with a zombie cyclops.”
Jones shared a look with his partner, then startled when he returned his gaze to me. He jabbed his finger at the ground beside me. “What is that?”
Points to him for not sounding as freaked out as he looked.
I glanced down and smiled. “Oh, that’s Reaver,” I replied, picking up the sword. Swiping my thumb over the etching of my face, it disappeared from view.
“How?” Jones shook his head vigorously. “No. I don’t want to know.”
“All right, why don’t we just check you over?” his partner said, moving Jones out of the way gently. “Jimmy, why don’t you go and sit down?”
Jimmy did just that, shaking his head and muttering to himself on the way to the ambulance.
“Right, now that’s he’s out of the way,” she said. “Let’s take a look at you.”
“You seem awfully cool with having the corpse of a cyclops within arm’s reach,” I told her. My eyes darted to her nametag. “Berman.”
She looked up at me, then back at the graze on my arm. “I always thought there had to be more out there than just us,” she replied with a shrug. After a moment more of prodding, she said, “Just superficial wounds.”
“Wow. Go me! I hardly got hurt that time.”
“Does this happen a lot?”
“Only in the last couple of weeks,” I replied. “Who knew being a cop was this insane?”
“I think if you weren’t a member of PIG, it would be less insane.”
Somehow, I doubted that. I think I was always bound to run head-first into crazy shit like this. She worked on cleaning the few grazes I had, then gave me a cloth to wipe the black blood from my face.
I looked over when there was a pop. Sawyer came out of Wonderland with Baba Yaga cradled in his arms. I hopped up immediately. If my partner was going to question me about the zombie, I wanted to be on my feet for it. I was short enough already and explaining myself from the ground always made me feel like I was a toddler.
“Do I want to know, pussy cat?” he asked wryly.
“Probably not.” I shrugged. “But, hey, I won.”
His lips quirked up into a slight smile. My stomach flipped at the sight of it, and I quickly refocused my attention on the old witch in his arms. She looked just the same as I remembered––like everyone’s favorite grandmother—until she opened her mouth to reveal her shark teeth that ate her grandchildren. Her filmy nightgown was in tatters, hanging off her body in sheer ribbons. Her chest was carved with symbols that were now burned into my memory.
“Same as before?” I asked.
Sawyer nodded and turned his attention to the rattling of a gurney being hauled down to us. Jones’s face was unreadable.
Berman took the head of the gurney as he arrived, steadying it, then unzipping the body bag. Sawyer put Baba Yaga’s body onto it and zipped it up. He strapped her in and turned his eyes to both EMTs. “Don’t touch the body without gloves on. She’s very powerful. Wait at the clinic until the ME takes custody of the body. You should have the address of our facility.” They nodded, then took Baba Yaga’s body back to the ambulance.
“We have a facility?” I asked.
“We do now,” Sawyer muttered, then turned his gray eyes to me. “I take it you’re responsible for that dead cyclops.”
“Maybe? In my defense, it was already dead… you know, given it was a zombie and everything.”
He pressed his lips into a hard line. “It could’ve killed you.”
I snorted, folding my arms. “Please. Have a little faith in my awesome abilities, Sawyer.”
“Did it just wander out of Wonderland?”
“Nope. Our girl Kseniya sent him after me. I think she’s still a little bitter over that beating I gave her.”
“Oh, the beating that you came home from black and blue?” he asked, his brows arching.
I jabbed my finger into his chest. “I don’t appreciate that tone,” I snarled, then added softly, “but that’s the one. Anyway, somehow, she manipul
ated the opening of Wonderland, and it crept forward to include me. Then she was there, throwing fireballs and torrents of water at me. The cyclops was her coup de grâce.”
He ran a hand through his hair, fisting it briefly before releasing it. His eyes held the kind of torment that belied his casual air. I braced for some yelling. Maybe a couple of well-timed and burn-worthy curses, so I was unprepared when he pulled me to him, clutching me tightly.
Into my hair, he whispered, “Can you please stop putting yourself into these situations?”
Unashamedly, I inhaled the scent of whisky and chocolate from his body. I loved being this close to him, and the fact that we’d had sex only made it worse.
His arms tightened around me. “Promise me, pussy cat.”
“You know I can’t do that.” Pulling away, I took a quick step back. “I’m a supernatural shit magnet.” He did not look amused, so I gave him my best smile and added, “Hey, at least we know my necklace wasn’t the thing responsible for letting me walk into Wonderland and not… you know… die.”
My statement didn’t seem to have the effect I’d wanted. “Come on. You need to eat to recover from your little jaunt into Wonderland, then we’ve got to get to the ME’s office. Our new supernatural examiner will be waiting.”
“We have one of those now, too?”
He nodded. “Got hired yesterday.”
At least we were being heard.
The next thing we needed was a team of CSI who were supes.
And some undercover patrol cars.
Baby steps.
Sixteen
“Here, put this on.”
A PIG jacket smacked me in the face, and I looked over at Sawyer. “Hey!”
He gestured to my own jacket that was splattered in black blood. “You need to change. Otherwise, you’ll scare the nice humans when we go inside.” Inside was the burger place we’d stopped at.