Bare Bones (26 page)

But something weird happened when I got close to the skinwalker. I forgot about punching him or skipping around him and just stood there, staring at his shirt and wondering what I was supposed to be doing. Travis put his hands on my shoulders and eased them slowly down my arms. “I don’t like you going through our stuff. Think it’s best if you just stay here.”

Part of my brain was perfectly okay with that suggestion but part wanted me to leave. I thought about which option I should take as his hands worked their way down my arms, coming to rest on the leather bracelets.

I felt his hands tighten, heard an intake of breath and the snap of the leather cuff. His index finger touched the tattoo and it flamed to life, clearing my brain and causing the skinwalker to yelp and yank his hands away from me.

What the heck was I doing? This guy had murdered, and I was just standing like a mannequin in front of him. He hadn’t cast any spell to rebound back on him, so I tried the next suggestion of Garza’s

“Gary Jarvett. I know who you are and I reveal your true name to everyone. Everyone in Baltimore.” I was slurring my speech and wasn’t sure how effective option two was going to be on the skinwalker. It’d better work, because option three involved bullets.

I didn’t know if it hindered his magical abilities, but my words certainly had an impact.

“Fucking Templar.” he snarled. His hand came at my face and I ducked, blocking it with my right and punching out with my left.

His head jerked to the side as my fist hit his jaw. Without his magic I felt pretty confident that I could best him, so I swung with the right, surprised at the sticky-slippery feel of blood on my palm. He took the blow, punching toward me with his right. I had on the flak jacket, so I braced for the blow and kept swinging, blood beginning to fly from the cut on my hand.

How the hell was I bleeding? My palm stung just as I realized that whatever Travis held in his right hand was stuck in the plates of my jacket. With a twist he pulled free, slashing me across the arm with something long and sharp. He had a knife. I hadn’t seen one in his hand, but it was the only thing that made sense.

I punched and kicked and elbowed, trying both to stay free of the knife and disable him. No way I was escaping out the door and letting this guy get away. He was going down, whether it was by my fists or from a gunshot. Unfortunately I was too busy hitting him and trying to avoid getting stabbed to dig the gun out of the recesses of my cargo pants, where its weight slapped against my leg with each of my movements.

One of my punches went wide and I stumbled off balance, feeling the blade slice through the fabric covering my jacket. Before I could regain my balance, Travis punched me with far more force than a skinny teen should have. My head jerked to the side as I fell to my knee. I saw the foot coming toward my face and tried to launch myself upward and back, taking the kick in the chest instead.

Pain exploded across my ribs. I slid across the room from the impact, my back and head slamming into the concrete wall. Everything dimmed and I felt myself crumple in a heap on the floor. I struggled to catch my breath and with what was left of my foggy brain I dug in my pocket, feeling for my gun.

The door opened. “Hurry up, we’re getting ready to…” the male voice tapered off in confusion. My hand closed around the hard steel, but I hesitated, uncertain if the new guy was a band member who’d just stumbled upon us or a roadie. I wasn’t about to fire the gun and risk killing someone in the crossfire.

“It’s that Templar woman,” Travis told him. “Help me.”

Shit. The other skinwalker was one of the guys in the band. I took a painful breath and looked out from partially closed eyes, slowly sliding the gun free of my pocket.

“Break her neck and get out of here before the others come looking for you,” Travis said. “Stash her behind the benches and you can skin her later.”

“No!” the other boy said, his voice panicked. “Just tie her up and we’ll run for it.”

“Fine. I’ll kill her myself.” Travis took a step toward me and the other boy grabbed his arm.

“She’s a Templar, Gary. You can’t kill her. It will cause a war. They’ll exterminate every last one of us.”

Gary/Travis pulled free. “I don’t give a shit about the rest of them. They’ll never catch us. We’ll stay one step ahead of them.”

The rest of them?
I hesitated, my finger on the trigger. How many murderous skinwalkers
were
there? Everything had pointed to just these three teens, but from what Gary said, there were
more
? In Baltimore or spread all over the country?

I saw Gary walk toward me, saw the short dark-skinned boy with the bleach-blond hair behind him shut his eyes tight.
Not gonna happen
. I rolled to the side, yanking the gun from my pocket and firing at Gary. I know that Garza said to shoot them in the neck, but I couldn’t bring myself to take a shot that might miss and hit the concert goers on the other side of the plywood.

Red bloomed on his chest and Travis looked down in shock. “The bitch shot me. Did you see that? She shot me.”

Besides the brief stain of blood, my shot didn’t seem to do anything so I proceeded to unload the magazine in his chest, scooting upright when the clip was empty and using the wall at my back to get to my feet.

Travis dove for me, and I clubbed him with the pistol, suddenly regretting how the wall at my back hindered my mobility.

“Help me,” Travis shouted as I landed a hard blow against his jaw. In the background I heard people screaming and shouting. I kept hitting, every breath sending a stabbing pain through my ribs. The knife slashed along my arms and I kicked, trying to get room to maneuver out of its way.

“Help me you stupid fucker, before she knocks my brains out.”

I smashed the butt of the pistol against Travis’s nose, and he bent in half, head-butting me in the stomach. I looked up just in time to see a piece of lumber coming for my head and raised my arm a second too late to completely block it.

My arm went numb. I heard the pistol clatter to the floor. Everything spun as I went to one knee. Then I felt warm breath against my face. My eyelids grew heavy, my mind thick, then everything went black.

M
Y HEAD WAS
pounding as if my brains were trying to exit my skull. Even the shallow breaths I was taking sent a rhythmic ache through my chest. I kept my eyes closed and took in my surroundings with my other senses, unwilling to give away to my captors that I’d regained consciousness.

Hurting as I was, regaining consciousness was a good thing. I’d expected them to kill me right there, but I guessed the gunshots and the stampede of people would not have left much time to murder someone and skin them in a back room. How they managed to drag an unconscious woman out of the concert garage and take off was beyond me. I hoped they’d been seen. I hoped that right now Tremelay was on their trail, bearing down on them like a detective with Templar blood would.

There was no light filtering through my eyelids, so either it was dim, or it was night, or I was somewhere with no windows. Dark. I shivered in the damp chill, feeling the uneven ground beneath my body, the sharp jab of either rocks or dirt clods against me. It smelled of chemical fertilizer, of mold, of turpentine and bleach. And very faintly of laundry detergent. I could hear nothing beyond the pounding in my head.

Taking a cautious breath I eased open my eyes. I
was
in a basement—dirt floor with a cement pad in the corner serving as foundation for an ancient washer and dryer. Faint light filtered through a tiny window near the ceiling. A set of narrow wooden steps led up, presumably to the rest of the house. There was an old paint rag, stiff and rough in my mouth. My hands were bound together with silver duct tape, as were my ankles. I winced at the blood staining my shirt sleeves and pants, beginning to feel the sting of dozens of cuts and slices. Thank heaven for the vest or I would have suffered far worse from Gary’s knife.

There was a metal support pole a few feet in front of me, paint peeling. What caught my eye was the jagged edge of metal where something had been cut from it. Perfect for sawing through duct tape—and probably adding to my wounds. I rocked up to my knees, practically throwing up at the motion. I had to get this duct tape off and find something that could act as a weapon. There was no way I was going to fit through that tiny window, which meant my only way out was up the stairs and past whatever skinwalkers were in the upper part of the house. I scooted on my knees across the uneven dirt floor, managing to make it to the pole without face-planting into the ground. There, I wiggled around backward and arched my back, trying to reach the jagged piece of metal.

It was up too high. The only way I was going to do this was if I managed to get to my feet, and I already felt like the room was a carousel on top speed. There was no other choice. These guys were going to kill me. It was a wonder they hadn’t killed me already. So I braced my back against the metal pole and pushed myself upward, legs quivering with the effort. It put me at the perfect spot to rub the duct tape against the jagged piece.

I’d just gotten to work on my wrists when I heard the squawk of a door and the flick of a switch. A bright light blinded me and I panicked, dropping to the floor and closing my eyes. Idiot. As if they wouldn’t notice that I’d somehow moved across the room from where they’d originally dumped me.

Realizing there was no way I could fake this, I kept my eyes open and got back to my knees, watching as two sets of legs came down the creaking stairs.

“Oh good, she’s awake.” Gary grinned. He was still in Travis Dawson’s skin. I longed to punch that grin right off his face, but punching him before hadn’t seemed to have any lasting effects. Neither had shooting him. Beyond the bloody holes in his clothing, he appeared unhurt.

“She’s moved.” The other boy, Lawton, was in the bass player’s skin. He shifted nervously back and forth at the bottom of the stairs. “We’ll duct tape her to the pole and get out of here. A new city, somewhere different. We can make a 911 call once we’re clear of the state, so someone can come get her.”

Gary rolled his eyes. “Or we just kill her and leave her here. Who cares if anyone comes and gets her? This place is a flop house. It will be weeks before anyone comes down here and discovers her body. Longer if we throw a bunch of lime on it and wrap it in plastic.”

I liked the first guy’s idea better.

“She’s a Templar,” Lawton protested. “You’re crazy if you think they won’t track us down. I know you don’t care about the others, but we’re gonna die if we kill her. That cop knows us. And Templars have magical stuff. They’re like witches. No matter what skin we take, they’ll find us.”

For a brief second Gary looked concerned, then he shrugged. “Nah. They haven’t done that sort of thing for hundreds of years. She’s not chasing us on a sanctioned mission. She’s doing this on her own. They won’t spend any time or energy hunting us down.”

He was right, except it was the Elders who wouldn’t give a crap about my death. My family was another thing. I remembered the look on my mother’s face when I’d told her of my demon mark. She’d find these boys and make sure they met their death at the end of her sword.

“If we let you go, you’ll leave us alone, won’t you?” Lawton pleaded, his eyes desperate.

I couldn’t give him that reassurance. “You’ve killed people. You’ll kill again. I can’t let that stand”

I might be signing my death warrant, but I wasn’t about to lie. They’d know it. And I’d rather go down fighting.

Gary barked out a short, harsh laugh. “Hey, at least she’s honest. Kill her. Leave her body down here.”

Lawton caught his breath. “Are we going to leave Baltimore? Go elsewhere?”

“No. I like it here. And I like this Travis kid. He’s in a band. He gets the babes. Guys respect him. Did you see how we opened for Midnight Visitor? That fucking rocked. There’s no way I’m leaving that behind.”

“Where will we stay? We can’t come back here.” There was an odd look in Lawton’s eyes as his gaze met mine, like he was trying to tell me something.

Gary shrugged. “We’ve got options. Maybe we’ll just float for a while, or crash at this Travis kid’s place, or at the band practice spot. Doesn’t matter.”

“Okay.”

I felt sorry for Lawton, even though he was probably about to kill me. His face was pinched and white, his eyes wild and frightened. He licked his lips, hands shaking as he picked up an enormous wrench from beside the washing machine.

“Make sure she’s pulverized,” Gary instructed. “Take her skin and ditch it somewhere else. That way it will take longer for them to identify her.”

Lawton nodded, shifting the wrench to his other hand and wiping the free one on his pants.

Gary put his arm around the other man’s shoulder. “Your first kill. Sure you can? I had to kill Huang for you and this Strike kid you’re wearing. I’m getting tired of doing all the heavy lifting in this partnership.”

“I can do it.” Lawton said, his voice shaking.

“Good.” Gary patted him on the shoulder. “Because if I find out she’s not dead, then you are. You’re either all the way in or all the way out, and after that fiasco at the bus station and your brief stint in jail, I’m not sure I can trust you. I need to trust you. So it’s her, or it’s you. You heard her. You let her go and she’ll come back after us. I’ll check. And if I see her alive, then you won’t be. Got it?”

Lawton nodded. “Got it.”

Gary turned to walk up the stairs and Lawton swung. I dove to the side, rolling and the wrench slammed against the dirt. “Hold still,” he ordered, his voice more firm than it had been all evening.

“Have fun.” Gary laughed. I heard the squeak of the stairs, the slam of the door, then the impact of the wrench on the dirt as I frantically rolled around the basement.

“Hold still.” This time Lawton’s voice was a concerned whisper. “I don’t want to hit you.”

I froze, more from shock than any inclination to comply with his command. He hit the ground beside me with the wrench, reaching out with his other hand to yank the rag from my mouth. I didn’t have a drop of saliva left. The taste of dry fiber and old paint was the only thing on my tongue.