Flashback (Out of the Box Book 23)

by Robert J. Crane

  “I guess,” my mother said, sounding a little uneasy. “Not sure I quite recognize the girl standing in front of me, though. You're going to take his memories?” There was no amusement on her face. “You want to carry a little Wolfe around in your head?”

  “No.” I kept my expression cool, trying not to give away that I'd carried more than a little Wolfe around for years. “But it's what has to be done.”

  “What are you going to do with him after that?” Lethe asked, cradling little me against her shoulder. There was no sound, no movement from Sienna the child, which was scarily unsurprising. What effect did immense trauma have on memory formation, I wondered? “It's not like you can just leave him here for the cops to find. He'll go nuts and slaughter people, the moment they let him loose from whatever you do to him. And they will let him out, sooner or later.”

  “I need to incapacitate him for a little while.” I stood there for a second, trying to concentrate over the highway noise. “There's a... river or creek in the woods a little ways off. I'll tie him up and throw him in after I rip his memories, let the water carry him away.”

  My mother reached out for little me, and Lethe surrendered her without any fuss. My mom took her up, and little Sienna was still shaking, still catatonic. She looked into my little face, then up at me – big me: “You sure everything's going to turn out all right?”

  I pursed my lips as I finished threading the metal pieces together. I had enough to bind together Wolfe's hands and feet in addition to the noose already around his neck. It was all covered in my blood, and my palms were still dripping wildly, all over the inside of the trailer. “Yeah,” I said, nodding as I stepped past them, heading toward the light at the end of the trailer. “I've got it all figured out now.” I threw the binding metal threads over my shoulder like a rope. “I'll be back in a few, and then...”

  I didn't say it. Didn't want to speak it aloud, necessarily.

  There was just...so much to do to set things right.

  “'Then' what?” my mother asked, calling after me as I hopped out of the trailer and started around to deal with Wolfe.

  I didn't answer.

  She didn't chase me to ask again.

  They'd find out in time.

  43.

  Wolfe was a heavy bastard. This came as no surprise to me, given that I'd already lifted his ass once today in a leg press when I choked him out. Once I bound him, hand and foot, I dragged him by the aluminum noose down the wooded embankment away from the truck stop parking lot. It wasn't a lot of woods, or a lot of hill, for that matter, but it was a little more geographically diverse than most of Iowa, so credit to them for that. It was maybe a 10 degree slope, which in Iowa constituted a mountainous bit of topography.

  And Wolfe...his dead-ass weight made not a step of it easy. He just hung there, purple, eyes bugged out and dead, tongue lolling out of his mouth. He truly was dead, at least for the moment, and it was probably a testament to how messed up I was as a person that looking him right in his ugly face bothered me not at all.

  I found the river about a hundred feet down the slope, woods occluding it the whole way down. It wasn't much, just a running current about a hundred feet across, fast enough moving that it'd carry his sorry ass out of sight in a few minutes, but not strong enough to produce whitewater rapids or anything of the sort.

  When I reached the shore, I paused, sick of dragging this dead weight sack of meat. Being very careful to keep the noose tight so he couldn't get a single molecule of oxygen to his brain, I turned him over and looked for something convenient to bind him to.

  I found it in the form of a dead log about thirty yards up the bank. Hanging Wolfe from a nearby tree branch, I set to work dragging the log down and then unbinding and rebinding his hands and feet around it, careful not to let any tension out of the noose while I worked. It took a good twenty minutes to do all of this, and I probably slowed my progress by spending at least ten checking and rechecking his noose every thirty seconds.

  Once I finally had him on the log, ready to go for his Viking funeral (minus the fire, unfortunately), I stared at his face, which had turned a shade of violet not usually found in nature. At least not since we had started sending our dead to morgues instead of burying them ourselves.

  “You know what I said earlier about you being a piece of serial killing shit?” I asked his lifeless face. Naturally, he did not respond. “I meant it.”

  Casting a slow look up the embankment, just to make sure my mother or grandmother hadn't made their way down to see how I was doing, I turned back to him. “But...” I said, taking a breath, “...I didn't hate you at the end. I didn't love you, either, but...I didn't hate what you became. Just what you chose to be before that.”

  Shaking off the slightly gross feeling I got from saying that, I planted my hand on his forehead, which was already room temperature, the warmth gone from it. I took a deep breath, in and out, counting the seconds until-

  Shit.

  After a minute, I had to concede...

  I couldn't draw out Wolfe's memories with him dead.

  “Dammit,” I said. This was not optimal.

  I rolled the log over so that Wolfe was facedown, the weight of the tree planted firmly atop him, his face crushed into the earth. I got astride it, the whole ten foot or so plank of wood...

  And started to slowly – very slowly – let the tension out of the binding around his neck.

  I wanted him to get a breath, maybe two, and that was about it. Letting Wolfe fill his lungs sounded like a recipe for disaster, and I wanted to be able to choke him off in a heartbeat if he started to really stir.

  With one hand firmly on the metal twist-tie, ready to make it taut again with one good turn, I took another slow breath, my fingers planted on his cheek.

  Easy peasy. I'd just bring him back to life for a second, drag the memories of the last few days out of his oxygen-addled brain, and it'd be straight into the river with him. He'd get loose somewhere downstream, probably wondering how the hell he'd gotten there, and his life would go on. At least until the next time we met.

  I felt the burn start a few seconds later as enough oxygen got to Wolfe's brain to restart his higher brain functions. I tried to make my own breathing go slow and steady, easy, as the feel of my brain matching up with his began to-

  Uh oh.

  The log wobbled, jarring my grip on Wolfe's face, and I blinked in surprise as the connection was broken. I pitched forward, catching myself with my left hand before I shattered my face on the downed tree-

  But in catching myself...I let go of the noose.

  There was a bellowing roar as the log flew off the ground and I was launched into the air. It rolled and flipped, smashing me beneath it as it came back down, blood filling my nose and mouth as something broke in my face and something else cracked in my back.

  I lay there, drooling and bleeding, as the sound of sheering metal filtered in through my daze.

  Oh, man.

  The log was ripped from where it rested on my face just a moment later, and there were dark eyes inches from mine when my vision cleared, the light flooding in from above blinding me for a moment.

  Wolfe.

  Was.

  Free.

  “And now, little doll...” he said, breathing, a fleck of drool dripping onto my cheek as I lay there, unable to move, “...you're all mine.”

  And he licked my cheek.

  44.

  My face felt warm, wet, where Wolfe's slobber lay on my cheek, then suddenly cool after it had been out of his body for a moment. I lay there, staring up, past his long, matted hair that hung over me, looking into the blue sky past the treetops.

  I couldn't hear anything over his breathing. No rustling in the trees to indicate my mother or Lethe was charging down the slope to come save me. No hint that they'd heard the trouble I'd started, or the thundering of the log smashing me.

  They were probably consoling little Sienna, still catatonic and twitching, up in the
parking lot. Maybe they'd taken her in to the truck stop bathroom, trying to clean her up. She'd looked about as messy as you'd expect a five-year-old to look after being imprisoned by shitbirds like Henderschott and Wolfe for hours without food or water or a toilet.

  And here I was, flat on my back, stunned and out of it...

  With the world's most dangerous man hovering over me.

  He licked my cheek again and scratched it with a fang, drawing blood. I jerked in response to the stimuli, and another wave of pain rushed over me. He smelled like sweat, like filth, and I almost retched at the scent of him. It was so heavy, so musky, I could almost taste it over the peaty smell of the woods.

  Water ran in the background as I tried to marshal a defense. I struck at Wolfe, blindly, with a spasming arm.

  He batted it away, giggling. “Oh, little doll. No stopping the Wolfe now. This...is happening.”

  I couldn't see what he was doing, but it didn't take a genius to realize it wasn't good. There was a warm trickle along the back of my head, and the blurring at the edge of my vision told me I'd been concussed. Even for a meta with my healing ability, that didn't heal immediately.

  It felt as though someone had come in and laid thick carpeting all along the inner surfaces of my skull, fuzzing my brain. I blinked, blinked again, it didn't help.

  The log must have partially crushed my skull when it had landed. All that weight, and it'd caught me in the middle of the forehead. A twitch ran through my body. Wolfe was on me, pressure on my hips.

  I balled a fist. Swung again.

  He laughed. It didn't hurt him at all.

  “Ooh, brains.” He lifted my head, licked me somewhere on the back of my skull. “Oh, little doll. So tasty.”

  “Z... zombie,” I managed to get out, my synapses firing very poorly indeed, but that thought somehow escaping.

  Wolfe didn't even laugh. He always lacked an appreciation for humor.

  “We should go somewhere more private,” Wolfe said. “Where your little gal pals can't find you.” He picked up my ankles and started to drag me.

  Bump. Bump. Bump.

  My head hit every rock and uneven place along the slope, and then, suddenly, I was in the water.

  “Shhhh,” Wolfe said.

  I floated along for a little while, unable to see anything but sky and tree tops. He kept me above the water – mostly, except for a couple of moments of snorting and spitting and panic where water ran down into my nose and I choked.

  Then, suddenly, I was on dry land again, being dragged up a slope, trees rising above me.

  “We need privacy, doll,” Wolfe said in a whisper. “We're far enough away now...they'll never find you in time.” He was a towering shadow, dragging me by my ankle, hand gripping the pants leg. “Lethe and her little water-blooded offspring will get away, true, but...the Wolfe has you.”

  I wanted to heave, but I just got dragged along instead.

  “All for himself, the Wolfe has you,” Wolfe said, smacking his lips together. “The little doll has no more sass, with her brains leaking out. Wolfe likes that.”

  I wanted to say something to that but couldn't form the thought.

  “They'll never find you now,” Wolfe said, dragging me behind a little berm. He peeled his shirt off once he had me situated, and I found myself staring up at the hairiest chest I'd ever seen. “Never. The Wolfe will keep you alive for days. Days and days. Weeks. Years, maybe.”

  A stray thought drifted through my brain: Akiyama.

  But he couldn't help me anymore. He'd said so.

  Lethe?

  Mom?

  Both busy, and even if they weren't...

  Wolfe had dragged me away, possibly far away, from where I'd taken him.

  They were good – for all I knew Lethe was an expert tracker – but tracking him downriver?

  In time to save me?

  There was no chance.

  Wolfe was an expert predator. He would have made sure to cover his tracks.

  “Just you and me, little doll, together...forever,” and he licked my cheek again, slurping at me. A shudder of revulsion ran through my body, causing me to spasm in pain again. “Or at least...as long as you last.”

  And his shadowy face came down, again, on mine. His breath stunk like rancid meat, and the trees swayed overhead, a rush of wind running through them to my left-

  No.

  Not wind...

  Wolfe stiffened a moment before it happened. He started to turn his head-

  But it was too late.

  Wolfe was lifted, bodily, from me, ripped from the ground. His legs pinwheeled as he rose, shadowy, curling boughs from the trees surrounding us wrapping his arms, his torso, his upper body and yanking him from the ground and into the air.

  He hung there, suspended, trapped between two of them, a few feet off the ground, in crucifixion position as three trees seemed to gang up on him. One had seized him by each wrist, wrapping him up with branches and vines, leaning in impossibly to make this miracle happen. He hung there, legs still riding an invisible bike as he tried to free himself with the only two appendages he had free.

  It didn't work.

  The trees overhead rippled and shifted, and a shadow came moving through like a great hawk overhead, passed between rustling boughs as easily and as quickly as if it were flying. I blinked, staring up, dimly aware that it was not a hawk, not a bird. The shadow was-

  Human?

  And thin, feminine, long, dark hair wrapped into a tight ponytail. She was tanned, I could see as she descended, carried like an empress on the branches of the surrounding trees. As she came closer into view, a look of cold disgust played out on her features, which showed age mingled with anger.

  Even without knowing her...

  I knew her. Instantly.

  And as if I needed any further proof, she spoke. “I warned you a long time ago, Wolfe,” she said in a Texas drawl, so coldly it felt like all the world might freeze at her anger, “if you ever touched any of my girls with those filthy stinking meat hooks of yours...well...” She balled a fist, and a tree branch slithered like a snake around his neck, and Wolfe started to make squealing, choking noises as he began to turn purple again. “...You can't say I didn't warn you, you hairy turd.”

  It was Persephone.

  My great-grandmother.

  45.

  Wolfe was going to die.

  Branches wrapped his neck like a thick noose of wood and green shoots, twisting and pulling, and his hairy face was turning a shade of lavender – again – that just didn't look natural at all. His tongue was hanging out, but this time it was different.

  My savior, the Goddess of the Underworld, Persephone – my great-grandmother – was going to rip his damned head clean off. Her face was twisted, mottled with rage, and she clenched a fist tight in front of her. So tight I thought I saw a drip of blood running down her wrist.

  “Don't...” I managed to get out. “Per...sephone...don't...”

  She looked at me like the goddess she was, and drifted down, trees branches passing her to the earth. She landed next to me, and the stray weeds and shrubs that poked out of the ground around me seemed to dance closer, trying to touch her. She knelt at my side and her fingers brushed my face.

  I sucked in air, gasping, as the fuzzy feeling in my head left me suddenly and I coughed, sputtered, really.

  “Don't kill him,” I said, once I recovered, thanks to her healing touch. “You can't kill him.”

  “Oh, I can,” she said, “and I oughta.” Her Texas drawl seemed to come out even harder with the rage that rimmed her eyes.

  “No, please,” I said, brushing her hand away from me before I drained her. “I have to kill him...in the future.”

  She chewed that over for a second, then nodded. She squeezed her hand, and Wolfe choked, but she kept from squeezing his head entirely off. Which would have been cool to watch given what he'd just tried to do to me, but also hazardous to my existential health. She shot him a long, disg
usted look. “Your grandmama told me you came down to the creek to dispose of him. Reckon you ran into a little trouble on the way?”

  “I was trying to absorb his memory of...all this,” I said, brushing at the back of my head. It was bloody, crusted, and I felt a knot where Wolfe had fractured my skull. “Of me, of...little me. Lethe told you...?”

  “She told me everything,” Persephone said, looking straight into my eyes with her own. They were so bright and green. They reminded me of Kat's. How many generations from Persephone was Kat removed? It couldn't have been many, not with those eyes. “When she called, you know.”

  I nodded. “I kinda put it together. How'd you get here so fast? Hell, how'd you find us?”

  An impish smile formed on her lips. “Well, you ain't exactly hard to track, my darlin'. But I caught a ride on a Hermes. You know what that is?”

  “Speedster,” I said, blinking a little grit out of my eyes. I stood, and she rose to follow me. She didn't look any paler for having touched me. She'd healed me and didn't look any the worse for the wear.

  I could smell the power wafting off of her. It figured. She'd stood toe-to-toe with ol' Hades, my great-grandfather, after all. He was a hell of a pill; I doubted a lesser woman would have been able to survive his bullshit.

  “You got a look on your face,” Persephone said, giving me a shrewd stare. “You got questions.”

  “A million of them, probably,” I said.

  “Save 'em for later,” she said, and nodded at Wolfe. “I'll keep him bound up 'til we're good and gone, but you're going to have to do your memory thing, because all I've got in that department is the ability to choke his ass until he don't recall much besides his own name. I'm guessing that ain't what you have in mind.”

  “Right,” I said, and branches snaked their way to his legs, wrapping his ankles and ripping them apart. One of the boughs, a fresh, green one that looked like it had popped out this morning, lifted Wolfe's pant leg for me, and I placed my hand on his hairy leg.