Dark Heart (28 page)

Sandra sat quietly in a corner booth near the front door of Gwendolyne’s Flight. The place was hopping. Colored lights splashed across the crowd. A smoke machine sent billowy white clouds snaking around the dancing bodies. The smoke’s slow, sinuous movement accentuated the frenetic pace of the dancers. The club was packed and she was keeping a low profile. She did not want to alert Justin to her presence. If tonight was the night they nabbed Omar, and Omar turned out to be the killer, then she could relax into Justin’s arms after it was all over.

She had been tempted to let Justin in on the deal. He could have made things easier for her and McKenzie. But as much as she hated to admit it, there was still a nasty, lingering doubt about his involvement in her mind. Omar had been a regular in his bar. The redhead had bought drugs from Nick in his bar. Maybe it was coincidence—this was a big, popular place. But she couldn’t guarantee it. One of the first cop rules was that coincidences usually weren’t. So she wouldn’t risk the entire case by telling him anything. Because if Justin
were
involved…

Don’t think about it,
she told herself.
He’s not involved. Just focus on this Omar sonofabitch. Let the rest take care of itself…

Moments later she watched a guy cross to the bar and order a drink from Nick. The guy reminded her of Omar, but he wasn’t Omar. Nick made the drink and handed it over. As the guy turned away, Nick caught Sandra’s eye and nodded.

This one did look very much like the man who had mopped up the floor with her in California and then vanished into thin air, the man who’d tried to dance with her at the blues club. But it wasn’t Omar. This character was very well dressed. He acted like a wealthy snob, watching the dancers with a detached air of amusement, like someone thinking about ordering one of them from a menu. When the cocktail waitress arrived at his table to see if he needed another drink, he barely acknowledged her existence.

McKenzie showed up soon after. His bald spot was slick and his coat was splattered. The rain must’ve started up again. He did not come to join her, but glanced at her. She nodded toward where the Arab was enjoying his drink. McKenzie nodded back, shook off some of the rain, and headed straight for the guy’s table.

Deep down inside, despite his formidable appearance, McKenzie was a teddy bear. Nonetheless, McKenzie could be very intimidating when he put his mind to it. When he didn’t smile, his face looked stony. With his steely gaze and his immense bulk, he was a much more effective intimidator than Sandra was. They had used this routine before. McKenzie was the front man. Sandra was the backup nobody expected, just in case things got out of hand.

McKenzie approached the man and Sandra watched them exchange words. The Arab shook his head. McKenzie leaned over the table and said something else. The Arab stood to leave, obviously not with McKenzie.

Putting his big hand on the Arab’s shoulder, McKenzie started to shove him back into his seat. The man didn’t move. Instead, he reached up, grabbed McKenzie’s wrist, and did something to it. Sandra saw the pain lance through McKenzie’s face as he stumbled backward.

She was instantly on her feet. McKenzie staggered to his knees against an adjacent table, scattering the people seated there. He shoved his good hand into his coat and pulled out his gun. The people at the table jumped up and scurried away, as did several others nearby. The commotion caught the attention of the bouncers, who started pushing through the crowded bar in Mac’s direction.

The Arab walked calmly but quickly toward the kitchen doors.

McKenzie’s eyes caught hers. She could see the pain in them. The Arab must be devilishly strong! Mac was cradling his arm close to his body and looked hurt, but not in any real danger.

He nodded at her and she saw him say “Go!” though she could not hear a thing over the music and club commotion. She hesitated only long enough to see the Arab push open the kitchen door, and then she bolted for the front door.

There was only one place the Arab could hope to escape to, and that was the alley. She burst past the startled doorman and sprinted out into the pouring rain. She skidded a little as she rounded the corner of the building, then she poured on the speed.

She stopped at the mouth of the alley. There was no one there. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears.

The falling rain muted the streetlights, so the alley was darker than she’d have liked. She crept closer to the Flight’s back door. Their guy might’ve already emerged and hidden. She drew her gun and looked carefully in every direction. With each step, she looked over at the two back doors, the big grimy one, the small shiny one. Soon she was soaked to the skin.

She checked the two Dumpsters as she passed, but no one was hiding there. Her eyes adjusted to the dim light, and she started to wonder if McKenzie had grabbed the guy in the kitchen.

She abandoned that thought when the large, dirty utility door rattled sharply, then burst open. The expensively dressed Arab stepped out. His white silk shirt was instantly plastered to his dark skin. He did not have a chance to look around before Sandra yelled.

“Freeze, asshole!”

He looked at her, mildly startled, then smiled. It was that same supercilious, amused smile he gave the dancers inside.

“Hands in the air,” she commanded, walking slowly closer, keeping her weight centered and her arms rock steady, the pistol leveled at his chest.

His grin widened…and he disappeared.

“What the hell?”

Shocked, she dropped her arms, then snapped them back up, pointing all around, scanning the alley. She heard a strange noise, a kind of cracking sound.

Then there was nothing. Only the sounds of rain and traffic slogging through the Chicago night.

“Where the hell did you go, you bastard?” she said, moving to the doors, her gaze still jumping from shadow to shadow. Nobody there. She opened the dirty door and looked inside. The light from the kitchen flooded over her and she squinted.

“McKenzie!” she called. “McKenzie! Talk to me! Where are you?”

No answer. She was about to step inside when a hand clamped on her shoulder.

She gasped at the strength of it. Pain shot through her, but her training came to the fore and she spun. She could not see her opponent, but she centered her balance and sent the force of the attack beyond her. The grip on her shoulder faltered and she slid out from under it. But whatever had grabbed her had claws, and it ripped her shoulder as it tore loose.

Sandra gasped and gritted her teeth, raised her gun. What was this thing? Invisible? With claws? Her heart started pounding faster. Sandra felt as if she’d stepped into some weird nightmare. No one could just become invisible!

A whisper of air warned her that she was under attack again. Claws raked her hand, knocking away the gun. Blood flew and she cried out, pulling her wounded hand against her stomach and cradling it.

The silence fell again, but she could feel the thing there, somewhere very close. Her mind reeled. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening!

She backed away, looking desperately for her gun, not knowing where her attacker was, frantic to find someplace to take shelter, someplace she could defend herself. But her mind wouldn’t function right. Should she run? Where? How could she escape something she couldn’t see?

A claw scraped blacktop to her right and she spun to face it, almost falling. It scraped again, and then it had her.

“No!” she screamed, trying to roll with its weight, but it had picked her up off her feet, giving her no leverage whatsoever. Its arms squeezed her until she thought her ribs would break. Something like a tentacle wrapped around her legs, muffling the kicks she launched.

She gasped for breath, hoping to force air into her lungs. At this rate, she would pass out in seconds. She tried to scream and couldn’t. Terror gripped her.

Helpless again. Just like with Chuck. All her cop training, all the martial arts, and she was helpless once again. Her furious tears mixed with the rain.

A fetid smell surrounded her, and she felt something smooth, hard, and wet against her ear. Was it a tooth? Teeth? A quiet, gravelly voice began speaking.

“You look just like all the other women in Justin’s drawings. I’m surprised how many of you he finds, women who look so much like his dead wife. But you. You’re different, aren’t you? He must really fancy you. He defies the master to keep you alive. That’s sacrilege. It will cost him everything he has. He knows it will, and he does it anyway. He need not worry anymore, though. I’ll do him a favor tonight.”

A rough hand closed over her left breast. She could feel the points of his claws digging mercilessly into her chest.

“I’ll kill you now—his way,” the voice continued. “That will make him feel much better about the whole matter, I’m sure.” Throaty laughter from the shadowed, invisible creature holding her vibrated through her entire body.

Suddenly the monster’s body rocked and she heard the sound of flesh ripping. Its grip went slack and she fell to the blacktop. A great cry burst from the beast and she realized that the ripping flesh was not her own. There was another low growl and a new voice that seemed vaguely familiar.

“I told you not to touch her.”

“You will suffer dearly for this, Justin. The master will twist you into a bloody rope,” the first voice said.

Sandra sucked in a pain-wracked breath and tried to see what was happening, but there was nothing to see. She could only hear the noise of a terrible fight between the two invisible creatures—their slashing, their biting, the rip of flesh and crunch of breaking bones. The ground shook with their battle. Something slammed into one of the Dumpsters, knocking it three feet back into the building on the far side of the alley. A huge dent appeared in its side.

As she watched, mesmerized, dazed, she thought she could make out two barely perceptible shadows in the rain, charging each other, grappling, limbs pulling back and descending in fierce blows with blurring speed. The growls and ripping sounds came from that direction.

“I don’t believe this…” she whispered, trying to collect her senses, trying to think what to do next. “This isn’t real. I’ve lost my mind. This can’t be real.”

She pushed herself to her feet and lunged for the back door. Snatching up her gun in her good hand, she turned and concentrated again, was able to pinpoint the almost-invisible combatants. Bringing the gun to bear, she locked her elbow and began firing into the huge shadows. Two pain-filled roars split the night and blood spattered on the far wall.

The shadows broke apart and one of the shadows ran toward her. She followed it, continuing to fire until the chamber clicked empty. A harsh wind slammed past her and she threw herself to the side. The footsteps suddenly stopped. They didn’t slow or scrape to a halt. They just ended. Sandra looked to her right, but she couldn’t make out anything. Just the wall and the two doors. She thought she saw the smaller, polished door rippling, but she concentrated on it and realized she must’ve been mistaken.

A tremendous flapping of wings began down the alley. Sandra spun, even as she hit the catch on her pistol, letting the empty magazine fall to the ground. The flapping faded slowly upward. Then she heard nothing but the sounds of the city.

She thrust her hand into her coat pocket and withdrew another clip, jammed it in the gun. With her back against the wall, she pointed her weapon outward as she slid toward the door. This was crazy! It was all crazy! She couldn’t think anymore. She let her body move instinctively while her mind reeled.

“McKenzie!” she yelled, pulling on the cold metal handle, opening the grimy back door with her foot and slipping through. She butted shut the heavy door behind her, then turned the dead bolt. From what she had just experienced, it would hardly keep them out, but maybe it would give her a warning if they burst through. Like that would help. The strength of those things was unbelievable!

They had been invisible!

Lizard men…

Dr. Simmins’s words floated through her overworked brain.

No
, she thought.
Impossible. That’s not possible!

Don’t think about it, she told herself. One step at a time. Find McKenzie. Find—

Sandra looked down as she turned the corner into the kitchen.

“No!” she cried out, falling to her knees. McKenzie lay chest down on the red tiles. His head was twisted all the way around, his dead eyes fixed on the ceiling.

“No no no no no…”

She grabbed a fistful of his jacket and laid her face against his back. He was cooling already. Already inhumanly cold. Rage and remorse slammed into her, and she gritted her teeth so hard she could hear them grind. A waitress came around the corner from the interior.

She froze and screamed.

Sandra could hardly blame her.

“I’m a cop. Shut up!” Sandra snarled, fumbling for and then flashing her badge with her wounded hand, still clutching her pistol in her good one.

“Just shut up…call the police and an ambulance. Tell them an officer is down. Got that? An officer down!”

The girl scrambled away, her eyes wide.

She leaned over McKenzie’s back again. The butt of her pistol smacked angrily into the tile, cracking it. She held her dead partner in her arms, cradling him, even though it was too late to save him.

Tears ran down her face, spattered across Mac’s dead, staring eyes, a river of unbearable, unending pain.

J
ustin dropped in through the skylight and landed heavily on the floor of his apartment. He bled from a dozen slashes Kalzar had put into him, but he was sure that Kalzar was in far worse shape. His injuries were healing even as he watched.

Justin’s Wyrm body wanted to find Kalzar and rend him into such small pieces they could never be reassembled. He trembled as he tried to control the rage that surged through him.

Slouching over to the dais, Justin sat down and took a rapid inventory of his injuries. In addition to the gashes, he had taken three of Sandra’s bullets. They’d burned like fire—one through his wing, one through his forearm, and one into his upper side. The first two had passed through him harmlessly. But the third bullet was lodged between two ribs next to his breastbone, and he must remove it, or he would walk around with lead in his chest forever.

As happy as his dragonling body was to do harm to others, it was not nearly so excited about ripping holes in itself. Slowly he used his claws to widen the wound. The shiny green scales of his hide resisted him. He growled. He could not easily reach the bullet. It was too far inside him and too awkwardly placed to get a grip on.

He paused a moment, then growled again and punctured a new hole in his back, trying a different direction. There it was. His claws closed on the lead slug, and he plucked it out.

Levering himself to his feet, Justin stumbled into the bathroom and brought out an armload of clean towels. He threw them over his chair to protect its upholstery, then slumped into it.

He considered returning to human form, but the dragonling body would heal faster, and he must go out again soon. He had to find Sandra.

The huge mirror behind the dais rippled. Kalzar’s scales were the color of Arabian sand, and he had a slighter build than Justin, longer and thinner. His elongated face resembled that of an alligator. Justin was pleased to see how badly he’d wounded Kalzar. Great lines of red crisscrossed his chest. A huge chunk was missing from his neck and the back of one arm. One of his slender wings hung at a strange angle as he picked at a gaping hole in his thigh.

The bullet came free and he tossed it onto the dais. It clacked down the steps and came to rest on the carpet.

“I haven’t been shot by anything that painful in a hundred years,” Kalzar said. “I’d forgotten how much it hurts. The last time I was hit this nasty it was a musket ball in Palestine. I had the taste of lead in my mouth for weeks.”

Justin rose. Kalzar’s narrow eyes followed Justin’s progress as he walked toward the dais.

“I am going to make something perfectly clear to you, Kalzar,” Justin rasped. “Sandra is mine. Don’t touch her again. I will fight the master himself if that is what it takes to keep her from harm.”

Kalzar was unmoved by the threat. “Kill? Me?” His many rows of teeth shone in the light as his too-flexible lips peeled back in a smile. “You can’t kill me, Justin. And we both know it.”

“We are both Elders, Kalzar,” Justin said. “But you do not know all things. If you were a studious man, you would never make such a statement. Try frequenting libraries for a century or two, rather than staking out stray kittens and peeling the skin from their bodies.”

“Your bluffs are transparent, Justin,” Kalzar said.

“And your ignorance is immeasurable,” Justin replied.

“There is no way to kill us.”

“Read your
Beowulf,
Kalzar. There is a way. Cross me again, and I will show it to you. I promise you that.”

As he spoke, Justin again saw the thing in its hiding place. So commonplace a cache for something so deadly to one of his kind. He’d found it in the most unlikely of places, doing his master’s work; had found it, realized what it was, and bundled it up to take along with the artifact his master had sent him to fetch.

The museum guard had interrupted him as he was doing this. The guard’s name had been Baxter, though he hadn’t learned that till later. But Baxter’s death had been a necessity, not only to protect the Dragon, but to conceal any possible knowledge of what he’d found in the room Baxter had tried to guard. To conceal that knowledge
even from the master
…

Kalzar’s eyes narrowed, as he tried to determine whether or not Justin was lying. “The master will hear of this,” he said as he backed through the mirror and disappeared.

Good, Kalzar,
Justin thought.
Tell the master. I have suffered your incompetence long enough, and now it is time for you to fear, for I have come to the end of my patience with you.

As he stood there, staring at the disappearing Kalzar, Justin felt the mirror catch hold of him. He tried to turn away, but he was caught. Letting out a breath, he waited for the long-fanged face to appear. He waited to see the enormous dragon’s head, a head as large as his own body.

Instead, it was Justin’s reflection that began to talk to him, except that the eyes were smoldering red. The voice was deep, low, and tinged with enormous age.

“My servant, tell me,” the master said to him, “do you not think the time is ripe to put aside your small amusements?”

Justin closed his eyes and fought the impulse to immediately cry,
Yes! I will kill her now, for you, my master!

His defiance took every bit of strength he could muster.

“I would ask you, master, to give me time—”

“Time? I have given you enough time, Lord Sterling. Such a response is unacceptable. How much time do you require when all of eternity is before you?”

“I wish to turn her, my master. She is worthy, resourceful, intelligent. I want her to become a disciple, to serve you as I do, forever.”

The master narrowed his smoking eyes. The Dragon made no quick response to the request, but studied its disciple. It was the first time Justin had ever known the master to hesitate.

“What kind of offer is this, Lord Sterling?” the Dragon asked at last. “I have a purpose of my own—a noble cause. That purpose requires all my attention—and all of the attention of my servants. It is not in me to offer boons to you for your idle enjoyment. The trappings already bestowed upon you are sufficient for the work which needs you as its champion.”

“She would be a great asset to you, I assure you. I have watched her. Have you not watched her, as well?”

Again, the master paused. When the Dragon spoke, its voice was barely a whisper, “As I do watch you, Lord Sterling.”

Justin said nothing.

“You have served me well, Lord Sterling,” the Dragon continued. “Under this consideration, I do give you a single day to accomplish this. If she looks in the mirror with welcome in her heart, I shall make my own decision upon the span of your lady’s life.”

Justin gulped and nodded.

“One day, no more,” the master said.

And then Justin’s reflection was his own again. His own blue eyes looked out at him, blinked once, and looked at his clawed feet.

One day, no more. Justin rubbed his finger, looked down in curiosity at the sapphire ring the old Chinese man had given him so many years ago. It was an enigma to him—the only item of his apparel that had ever survived the transformation from his human form to his Wyrm form and back again unscathed. He’d left it on ever since he retrieved it from the trunk—it seemed to speak to him sometimes, to calm his rage, to flare with internal fire at each change of his emotions. It burned his flesh now as though someone had put it in an inferno…