As Lie The Dead (22 page)

Two gunshots popped nearby. Belle snarled, and her weight was suddenly gone. I rolled to my left side, sucking air greedily, filling my starved lungs. A pair of wide, dead eyes stared back at me from a few feet away. Jaguar Man lay on his stomach, blood soaking the carpet beneath him.

A third gunshot, and then Belle yowled. A fourth
wild shot shattered the television screen. A man hollered.

I raised my head and looked toward the apartment door. Belle was on the ground, stark naked, curled in on herself. Wounded. Past her, just inside the open door, was Leo Forrester. He had a small pistol clutched tight in both hands, still aimed at Belle. Pale as paste and sweating intensely, he gaped at her, eyes wide and mouth open. Breathing so loudly I thought he’d hyperventilate and pass out.

My wounded back shrieked at me as I sat up, dizzy. A little confused. I blinked at Leo. He didn’t seem to see me.

“She … she …,” Leo was muttering, trying to make some sense out of what he’d just seen. His expression was not unlike Alex’s the first time I told him about the existence of Dregs. In Leo, I saw Alex’s innocence. All too briefly.

“Leo, close the door,” I said.

He snapped his mouth shut and did as ordered, never taking his eyes or his gun off Belle. I crawled to my feet, weak-limbed and wobbly. I had a dead were-cat in my living room and a wounded one in the foyer. After all that screaming and three gunshots, the neighbors had to be awake and calling the cops. Again. The Triads had been able to explain away the day Wormer and Tully broke in. There was no one to explain this.

When I leave the apartment tonight, I’d never be coming back.

“Chalice?” Leo asked. He sounded like a child, unsure and tentative about asking what was happening.

“Watch her. I need a minute,” I said.

“You’re bleeding.”

Ignoring him, I bolted into my bedroom, running on pure adrenaline. And instinct. I snatched a carry-on bag from the closet and stuffed clothing into it, paying little attention except to grab shirts, two pairs of jeans, and changes of underwear. Her laptop was still on her desk, untouched. I crammed it in with the clothes. It might be useful later, depending on what I got from the gremlins.

I gazed around the white and pink room. Foreign to me only four days ago, now it felt like my home. Another home being left behind. But there was no time for that. I could miss it later.

Leo and Belle hadn’t moved. She was alternately breathing and shivering, and I took pity on her. I snagged one of Aurora’s nested blankets and draped it across Belle. She glared at me over the blue cotton, baring her front teeth.

“Where did they take Joseph and Aurora?” I asked.

“A safer place than this, human,” Belle hissed.

Trying to break her was useless, and we didn’t have time. I’d have to track them another way. I retrieved my bag from the sofa, paused, then dashed over to the kitchen counter. I grabbed the framed photo of Chalice and Alex and tucked it in with everything else. One final memento.

Leo gave me a puzzled sideways look as I approached. He was still pasty, sweat darkening the collar and armpits of his shirt, but he was breathing normally.

“Kill me if you’re going to,” Belle said.

“I’m not going to kill you,” I replied over my
shoulder, not giving her the respect of looking her in the eye. “If anything happens to Aurora or Joseph, then I make no guarantees the next time we meet.”

“Likewise.”

“I’m not your enemy, Belle.”

No reply.

“You can put that away,” I said to Leo. He tucked the gun into his jacket. “We’re going to take the service stairs down. Do you have a car?”

He nodded.

“Good, then you’re driving.”

I ushered him into the hallway and pulled the door shut. No last looks over my shoulder. No time for emotional good-byes as I closed a chapter, not only in Chalice’s life but also in my own. There was no going back this time.

There was only forward.

Saturday, 12:44
A.M.

Leo’s station wagon was across the street, half a block down—a sore thumb among dozens of shiny, late-model cars and trucks. In the dark, it could have been tan or yellow, with dark brown paneling on the sides and rust spots near the rear wheels. The cargo area was stuffed with suitcases, cardboard boxes, paper shopping bags, and a plastic laundry basket. Similar items packed the backseat.

I didn’t do more than observe the oddity of it. My back burned, and the blood loss was making me dizzy. The jaguar must have cut me deeper than I thought.

Leo fumbled his keys with trembling hands and unlocked the passenger-side door. “You’re bleeding,” he said again.

“Yeah, sorry,” I replied.

He shrugged out of his jacket, took the carry-on away from me, and draped the coat over my shoulders. I hissed when he brushed one of the open wounds.

“You need a hospital.”

“It’s fine. We just need to get the hell out of here.”

Sirens punctuated my statement, too close for comfort. Leo tossed my bag into the backseat while I slid inside. I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, head on the dash. Nauseated beyond belief. I closed my eyes. The driver’s door opened and shut, then the engine roared to life.

“Where—?” he started.

“Your motel.” I could patch up, clean up, and lie down for a minute. Catch my breath.

We moved away from the sounds of sirens. Leo impressed me with his silence. I had no energy for fielding a hundred questions on the whos and whys and what the hells. Just wanted to rest until—shit. I would have banged my head on the dash if it weren’t too heavy to lift.

My cell phone was still under the pillow.

I groaned.

Leo must have mistaken it for pain or discomfort, because he asked, “You okay over there?”

“Just trying to not bleed on your upholstery. We almost there?”

“Yes.”

He made a left turn and, a few seconds later, pulled to a stop. The engine cut off. I mustered the energy to raise my head, expecting some garish neon sign and peeling exterior. I blinked hard, confused by the brick wall and near-dark to my right, and the long, narrow alley stretching out in front of the wagon.

Panic set in, cold and quick. I was in a car with a man I didn’t trust, in a blind Mercy’s Lot alley. I cleared my throat, hoping to keep my voice level. “This isn’t—”

“I don’t have a motel room. They cost money.”

I forced my head to turn and look at him. He seemed smaller behind the wheel of the massive station wagon, and not just from the shock of shooting two were-cats. He was ashamed.

“Oh” was all I managed.

“I’ve got first aid.” He flipped on an overhead light, unlocked his seat belt, and reached into the backseat. He produced a large fishing tackle box, grimy from wear and faded with age. “You really should—”

“No hospital. Not for this.”

“Those scratches could get infected.” He snapped open the lid and started rummaging around inside.

“They won’t.” I swallowed, suddenly thirsty. “Leo, what were you doing there?”

“You told me to leave the apartment, so I left. Didn’t have anywhere to go, though. I guess I just hoped Alex would turn up, so I waited.” He put cotton bandages and medical tape on the seat between us, then looked at me. Confusion was etched all over his face. “I saw your friends leaving with three people. The girl looked scared. I knew you hadn’t left, so I went back up.”

“You saved my life.”

He shrugged and dipped back into the tackle box. Scissors, gauze, cotton balls, and peroxide were added to his pile before he snapped the lid shut and settled the box on the floor.

“Don’t you want to know—?”

“Hell no.” He shook his head emphatically, wire glasses sliding to the tip of his nose. “Because if I even entertain the notion that I saw what I saw, I’m going
to want a drink. And then I’ll want another drink, and then five drinks, and then I’ll be off the wagon for the first time in six years. So I didn’t see what I saw.”

Fair enough.

“Take off your shirt,” he said.

It took some doing—every time I moved my shoulder, the gaping wounds shrieked at me—but we got the shirt off. I shifted to face the window and watched Leo’s partial reflection in the glass. He soaked a cotton ball in peroxide. I closed my eyes, clasped my hands, and clenched my teeth until the painful process was over and he was taping down the last of the gauze pads.

“It’s the best I can do, but they need stitches,” he said.

“They’ll heal. Can you get my bag?”

He retrieved it, then put it on the seat between us. I rummaged inside for a clean shirt. Put it on with a little help from Leo. The pain was lessening but still present, as was the need to vomit. I was eager for the familiar itch of the healing process. His bloodstained jacket was on the floor by my feet, ruined.

“Thank you for this,” I said.

“You’re in some bad trouble, aren’t you?”

“It’s not good trouble.”

“Was Alex in trouble, too?”

I turned to look at him. He had the framed photo out, clenched in his hands. He looked so miserable, I wanted to spill the truth right there. I didn’t. If he thought accepting that he’d just shot two shape-shifters would dump him off the wagon, the real truth would send him on a fatal bender. “Alex isn’t involved in
this,” I said, as close to the truth as I could manage. “How long have you lived in your car?”

“About four months.” He continued to speak to the photo. “Alex doesn’t know.”

“Why not?”

“Me and Alex, we were talking and trying to fix things. I lost the job he helped me get, then I lost my apartment. I was too ashamed to tell him. That’s why it took me so long to get here. Had to hustle some cash for gas.”

“He would have understood.”

Leo shook his head and put the photo back in the bag. “No, not about this. I’m an old fool, thinking he’ll ever forgive me.”

“You might have been surprised.” Forgiveness is a tricky thing—a lesson I’d learned the hard way, many times. A lesson I was still learning—especially when it came to forgiving myself.

We didn’t speak for several minutes, and I was grateful for the silence. I needed to think. The relationships among the Clans were beyond confusing, and I still couldn’t reconcile my feelings for Phineas. He could have been playing me this entire time, using me to get inside information on the Triads’ plans. Setting me up so Belle could take me out and be a hero to the Clans for protecting their secrets. Facts and events pointed toward his treachery.

My gut told me otherwise.

I hadn’t a clue where to start looking for Joseph and Aurora. Part of me wondered if they’d be safer with Belle’s people. She seemed to have resources beyond that of a simple diner waitress, and I didn’t
doubt her hatred of me. Or her sincere belief in protecting the identities of the other bi-shifters at any cost. Including my murder.

My hand jerked. She hadn’t mentioned Wyatt, but he also knew about the bi-shifters. Had she sent people to silence him as well?

“I need a phone,” I said.

“There’s a cell in the glove compartment,” Leo said. I gave him a sideways frown. “Borrowed it from a friend, but the battery’s low.”

It was also about five years out of date, but it was still a cell phone. I waited for it to power up, my anxiety mounting. Wyatt would already be in fits from our interrupted phone call. The Triads would have heard about the throw-down at the apartment by now.

I pulled the antenna, punched in the number I’d called back earlier, and waited. It rang and rang. No one picked up. “Shit.” I canceled the call and tried to drum up Kismet’s phone number. My mind blanked. “We need to go to St. Eustachius.”

“Now you want the hospital?” Leo asked blankly.

“My friends are there. They can help us.”

He seemed poised to argue—or beg against it, I couldn’t be sure—but started the engine. I leaned gently against the seat as he drove, concentrating on the alternating sensations of pain and itching as I fed Leo directions.

The city quieted as we left Mercy’s Lot for downtown, moving closer to the Anjean River. Everything seemed still, as though it were holding its collective breath. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. I hated that
feeling. It left me tense, on edge, ready to burst out of my own skin.

I directed Leo to the same side street Phin had parked on. “You don’t have to wait for me,” I said as he parallel parked on the curb opposite the river.

He gave me a wan smile. “If I don’t, then I’m likely to go find the first all-night bar I can, and I’d rather avoid that temptation.”

“It might be safer.”

“Maybe.” He paused. “Chalice, can I ask you a question and get the God’s honest truth?”

I almost said no. I didn’t want to give him a truthful answer, especially if he asked about Alex. Maybe the were-cats hadn’t sent him off on a bender, but learning his son had been turned into a vampire half-breed was the perfect excuse to end a six-year sober streak.

“Please?”

The reply leaked out. “Okay.”

I braced for the question I didn’t want him to ask. He surprised me with, “You’re not really a barista, are you?”

I blinked, almost relieved. Granted, the question opened up a whole nother set of complications, but these I could handle. “No, I’m not. I help deal with things that most people don’t see and don’t want to see.”

“Like tigers who turn into girls?”

“Yeah, like that.”

He blew hard through his nose. “And Alex found out? Is that why he left?”

In a roundabout way … “Yes.”

“Is it really more complicated than that?”

“Yes.”

“I see.”

I wished he did, but complicated didn’t even begin to cover my world. “What time is it?”

He glanced at his watch. “Almost quarter to two.”

“I’ll be back before three. I need to be somewhere at sunrise.”

“Be careful.”

With the most confident smile I could muster, I climbed out and jogged to the corner, gritting my teeth the entire time. The block was quiet, save the gentle rumble of the river. Even the hospital seemed to be sleeping, despite dozens of windows blazing with light. I turned the corner, out of Leo’s sight. I just hoped he stayed in the car.