As Lie The Dead (8 page)

Another elevator was on our left; I beelined for the
stairs next to it. Wyatt followed behind me, in silence, to the third level. I dug the keys out of my pocket and surveyed the long rows of parked vehicles.

“Next time,” I said, “remind me to ask what the damned thing looks like.”

“What’s the make?” Wyatt asked.

I looked at the symbol on the keys. A shadow flickered in the corner of my vision. My stomach clenched, senses on immediate alert. A dozen vehicles were parked on our right, and a dozen more across from them. Low fluorescent light fixtures cast a sickly orange glow on the spotty cement floor. Nothing else moved.

“What?” he whispered.

“Hey, bitch!”

I fought off Chalice’s initial instinct to turn toward the snarling male voice—such a greeting is never indicative of a pleasant encounter—and went with my own first thought. I launched sideways into Wyatt and knocked us both to the cool cement floor just shy of the bumper of the first parked car. Dust and bits of stone exploded from the cement block wall near us as it was peppered with silenced gunfire.

The same male voice started swearing loudly and violently about things he wanted to do to my personal anatomy. It was familiar without being identifiable.

Wyatt looked up at me, and I down at him, and his eyebrows scrunched together. “I know that voice,” he mouthed.

I mouthed back, “Me, too,” and rolled off him, sideways on my knees next to the car. Sneakers squeaked nearby, echoing off the low ceiling and
walls. Something thudded. Adrenaline surged and left a bitter taste in my mouth—Hunter’s training told me it was time for a fight. Ducking low next to a smear that stank of oil, I peered beneath the cars. No feet.

Damn.

Laughter, low and chilling, reverberated around the room like some awful B-movie effect. It bounced off the shot-peppered wall behind us. Not entirely as helpful as sonar.

“See him?” Wyatt asked, his voice so low it was barely audible.

“Nothing,” I replied.

“Guess you can’t teleport?”

I snorted, a little too loudly. “I don’t know where he is or where I’d end up.” I looked again, hoping I’d just missed him among the patterns of shadows and oil spots dotting the cement floor. “Can you summon his gun?”

“I can try, but I need him in the open first, so I can see the gun.”

“Then you’ll have to be fast, before he starts taking potshots at civilians.”

“How’s your throwing arm?”

I slipped my blade from its ankle sheath, tested the weight in my palm. Months of precision practice at Boot Camp had died with my old body. All this one knew was the technique, the stance, the constant drone of the instructor who taught us. “It’s been better,” I said.

Wyatt quirked one eyebrow, seemingly unconcerned that he was about to risk his life for a maneuver
I wasn’t sure I could pull off. “He’s no marksman, or we’d be dead already. Just don’t miss.”

I nodded and shifted to a squatting position at the end of the car. Wyatt shuffled backward a few feet, giving himself some space. Every moment that passed brought expectations of interruption—a car coming around the row or the elevator doors dinging open. Anything to put a crimp in this silly standoff and/or offer our attacker his choice of hostages.

I turned the knife, blade loose in my first three fingertips, and stretched my left hand out behind me, fisted. Took a breath. Exhaled.

The shooter laughed again—a sound like nails on a chalkboard with a shadow of lunacy—much closer than before. Shit. I flared the fingers of my left hand.

Wyatt stood up, both hands stretched out at his sides, eyes scanning the dozens of parked cars in front of him. The air around him crackled with energy and warmed me from the outside through my own connection to the Break. I stood, heart beating so hard I thought my chest might explode, and sought my target.

He stood in the bed of a parked, late-model pickup truck, about thirty feet away, aiming a handgun at his target. A handgun that began to shimmer, even from a distance, black to a glimmering silver. He shrieked and squeezed off a wild shot. It pinged the cement floor by Wyatt’s foot. Wyatt didn’t move, merely closed his right hand around the gun that suddenly appeared there.

I lined the shooter up, drew back to throw, and in
that moment he saw me. Recognition slapped me in the gut, and I loosed the knife as he pulled a second gun from the back of his jeans. The knife arched down at the last second and pierced his gut a few inches above the groin. He fell, screaming as he went. But he managed another wild shot that pinged twice before it hit. Agonizing heat seared my right forearm.

I raced toward the shrieking shooter, ignoring my wound. I had to shut him up before he caused a scene we couldn’t explain. I vaulted over the tailgate with less ease than I’d hoped—damned longer legs—and landed in a puddle of strangely colored blood. Halfie. Dead giveaway, even before I got a look at his mottled white-black hair and opalescent eyes.

He growled and tried to kick my ankles, survival instinct firmly in place, all the while holding one hand over the oozing wound in his abdomen. He’d landed on his other hand and trapped it beneath his left side. There was no sign of the knife. He bared his measly attempt at fangs—recently infected. Halfies that managed not to go bat shit from a vampire’s infectious bite didn’t manage a set of impressive fangs for a good two weeks. My attacker’s nubs put him around five days.

Past the fangs, I saw the face. One I’d seen two days before, in a cellar prison. I’d coined the name Jock Guy for him. Same clothes, same cocky expression. Only this time I wasn’t behind bars.

“Miss me?” I asked, and planted my foot flat on his sternum. He hissed and snarled but was in too much pain to put up a real fuss. “Maybe you missed the memo, but Tovin’s dead. Your boss lost.”

Even through the pain he had to be experiencing, Jock Guy sneered and then had the gall to laugh. The same maniacal laughter that had made my skin crawl earlier, as if he were enjoying a private joke at my expense. I ground my foot harder against his sternum. He squealed, still laughing.

“Careful, Evy,” Wyatt said, his voice somewhere behind me. Still on the ground. I couldn’t turn to look.

A car engine rumbled nearby, drawing closer. Echoing in the cavern. I held my breath. My quarry was out of sight, but my right arm had oozed enough blood to make folks stand up and notice. Then again, we were in a hospital parking garage. Maybe it wouldn’t shock anyone.

The car moved away, up toward the next level. One close call too many. I leaned down, putting all my balance on my right foot and his chest. Rancid breath puffed into my face as he continued to giggle.

“So before I kill you,” I said, “you wanna tell me what’s so fucking funny?”

“You got strange ideas about who I work for, bitch,” he replied.

Alarm bells clanged in my head, quickly silenced by logic. He was a Halfie—not prone to reasoned thought or personal planning—therefore lying. No one else would have wanted to hold me and Wyatt captive in a dingy underground jail cell while my clock ran out.

Jock Guy’s laughing snarl morphed into a familiar leer. “Told ’em we should’ve fucked you when we had the chance.”

My cheeks blazed, and my hands trembled. My
heart hammered in my ears and made it hard to hear. The world fuzzed out for just a second. Cold, oily skin and blinding pain fell like a theater curtain, heavy and suffocating. All over again.

I stood up, sensing the new elevation more than experiencing it, moved back, and slammed my right foot down on Jock Guy’s nose. Cartilage snapped and crackled. Blood spurted beneath my shoe. The laughter stopped.

I stumbled backward, hit my ankles on the wheel hub, and nearly fell out of the truck bed. I hit the edge instead and sat down hard, gripping the cold metal with both hands. Grounding me as I panted through the unexpected … what? Anxiety attack? So not what I needed.

The Halfie was dead, nose effectively driven up into his skull. Not the smartest move of my afterlife, but far from the dumbest. Blood pounded in my temples. My forearm throbbed, and I still hadn’t checked the wound. The bullet hadn’t exited; I was just lucky it hadn’t hit bone.

The truck bed bounced, then Wyatt was squatting in front of me. Warm hands covered my knees but didn’t squeeze. “Evy?”

“That was pretty stupid, huh?” I asked. Damn my voice for shaking. I’d killed a Halfie. So fucking what?

“We’ve both done dumb things when we lose control.”

Therein lay the problem. Too much was at stake to let myself lose control again. My emotional messes had to wait. I avoided looking at Wyatt. Didn’t want
to see any pity or understanding in his eyes. Didn’t need that side of him then. No, I needed my Handler—the guy who’d tell me to shape up or just go kill myself and save the Dregs the trouble of doing it.

“We should check the body before it desiccates,” I said.

Wyatt stood up and backed away, careful to avoid the mass of oozing blood filling the cracks and lines of the truck bed. The Halfie’s skin was already paler than white, nearly translucent. I crouched and patted the pockets of his jeans—nothing. No pockets in his T-shirt, nothing to identify him or where he’d come from.

“Seems strange that a kid who can barely shoot would be given a .45,” Wyatt said, more to himself than to me.

“Big gun,” I agreed. Whoever sent him should have been smart enough give him a model easier to handle, especially for a novice. Jock Guy had missed us both—sort of, but my wound was more an accident—and died without much of a fight. Wasted foot soldier, if you asked me.

I grabbed at his left arm, the one stuck beneath his body. Needed to roll him sideways to check his other jeans pockets. Just to be sure he didn’t have—

The kid fell onto his back, releasing his hidden hand and a pinless hand grenade.

I stared. “You have got to be kidding—”

“Get down!”

Wyatt slammed into my midsection, knocking us both backward and over the edge of the truck bed. The fury of the exploding grenade propelled us to the
hard ground in a wave of heat, sound, fire, and sizzling flesh. It was impossible to breathe.

I’m not ready to die again
, my brain screamed. Images of Jesse and Ash flashed in my mind, waiting for me, and were quickly chased away by blackness.

Four Years Ago

This can’t possibly be the right address. But it’s too late to question the cabbie. He’s already sped off down the street, disappearing into traffic. He knows better than to hang around this part of Mercy’s Lot after dark. Cottage Place sounds so innocent and peaceful. Ha.

I’m surrounded by struggling shops in old storefronts, each protected by rows of steel bars and less-than-impressive security systems. The uneven sidewalks are strewn with litter and overflowing trash cans. The strip club across the street flashes neon signs that invite all the wrong sort. As many hookers as johns pace the corners, all keeping an eye out for cruising cop cars.

As if they’ll see any around here.

The cab has left me in front of a tiny jewelry store called A Puzzlement. I’m curious about the name and mentally check it off as something to explore later. My destination is the shadowy alcove to the store’s right—supposedly
the entrance to stairs leading up to a series of cheap apartments. My new home.

I shift the plastic grocery bag that holds my entire life from my right hand to my left. Two changes of clothes are wrapped around a pair of sheathed, serrated knives—a graduation gift, of sorts—plus the sealed envelope I’m supposed to deliver to my Handler, Wyatt Truman. He even sounds like a prick—and if Handlers are anything like our Boot Camp instructors, I know I’ll hate this guy.

“How much for a blow job?” The man’s voice is nearby, slurred, drunk.

I ignore him, not caring much what the whore he’s addressing says, and stroll toward the alcove. Her rates are not my business. A bulky shape slips into my path. Meaty jowls and yellow teeth are all I see. Rum-soaked breath puffs in my face. I skid to a stop, disgusted.

“Hey, rude much?” I snarl.

“I said, how much for a blow job?”

My mouth falls open. I can’t help it. Okay, I’m wearing denim shorts cut a little high—I’ve got the legs, I’m going to show them off—and a blue midriff-baring T-shirt, but fucking hell! “Ask me that again.”

He blinks bleary eyes, not getting the warning in my tone. “How much for a fucking blow job, honey?”

I step closer. He misinterprets and doesn’t protect himself. I smash my knee into his groin, and the rummy drops to his knees, howling. No one pays much attention. I step around, into the alcove, past a row of metal mailboxes, and ascend the badly lit stairs.

They smell like sweat but are otherwise clean. At
the top of the stairs is a brief corridor lined with six thick metal doors. I track down to number 4, raise my hand to knock, and hesitate.

Going inside will change my life. Boot Camp had started out as an alternative to real jail time. I hated every single second of it. Hated the snarling instructors, the torturous training sessions, the exhaustion that was both mental and physical. Hated the way we’d killed to survive. And yet part of me loved it. Loved the sense of inclusion I’d felt for the first time in my eighteen years of existence. Loved the control I now had over my life. The training to hurt anyone who tried to hurt me. The ability to protect myself.

I could take this new power and leave. Get the hell out of this city and start over somewhere else. Forget that vampires and shape-shifters and goblins exist, and that my job now is to hunt them. To keep them in their place. To punish them for acts against humanity. I can’t do that anywhere else—the largest uncontrolled population of Dregs in the world is in this city. Out there, I’m alone. Here I can have a purpose.

The door opens before I can knock. An Asian woman gives me a once-over so cursory I might as well be invisible, then looks over her shoulder and shouts, “Fresh meat’s here.”

She retreats into the apartment, leaving me in the open doorway. I hesitate, then go inside.

It’s a hole. Peeling paint, stained floor, windows covered with ragged curtains. The sofa is faded beyond any reasonable color or pattern. Two other chairs look ready for the dump, and the small kitchenette is a grease fire waiting to happen. And yet it still feels … comfortable.